Hating Jews in Elementary School: Berkeley Public Schools Tolerating Antisemitism

The focus of much of the recent explosion of antisemitism across the nation has seemed to be the college campus.

But in Berkeley, it appears to start in elementary school with Palestinian flags in second grade classrooms and kids – at the direction of their teacher – writing “stop killing babies” on sticky notes and attaching them to the door of the only Jewish teacher in school.

Earlier this year, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under the Law and the Anti-Defamation League filed a federal complaint against the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD,) alleging those above and many other acts of overt antisemitic acts committed by students and teachers which the district in turn ignored.

The situation is so dire that BUSD Superintendent Ford Morthel has been called to testify before Congress, specifically the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, the committee that has been spearheading the congressional investigation of antisemitism at the university level.  This is not the only  investigation into educational antisemitism occurring now in the famously woke city – the same committee has already been started into UC Berkeley.  

A spokeswoman for BUSD said Morthel will appear before the committee Wednesday, May 8 but declined to make any comment on the allegations beyond repeating a boilerplate answer from last month:

“As our Superintendent has shared many times, Berkeley Unified celebrates our diversity and stands against all forms of hate and othering, including antisemitism and Islamophobia. We strive every day to ensure that our classrooms are respectful, humanizing, and joyful places for all our students, where they are welcomed, seen, valued, and heard. We will continue to center our students and take care of each other during this time.”

You can tell it’s Berkeley because they “center” their students.

At the heart of the allegations against the District are the multiple complaints made by students and parents regarding bullying and harassment and the District’s apparent refusal to follow their own code of conduct and not do anything about them except to move the Jewish students who complain to different classes.

The complaint states that “non-Jewish students are led by their teachers’ example to believe that they can freely denigrate their Jewish and Israeli classmates, telling them, e.g., that ‘it is excellent what Hamas did to Israel’ and ‘you have a big nose because you are a stupid Jew.’”

Marci Miller of the Brandeis Center called the current atmosphere “viciously hostile” to Jewish students, noting that while there may have been an undercurrent of antisemitism prior to the Hamas sneak attack on October 7 of last year, the “problem has increased exponentially.”

“Most people across the globe were horrified, but at BUSD, a virulent wave of anti-Semitism swept through its schools immediately following the massacre,” reads the complaint.  “Jewish and Israeli students have since been subjected to nonstop anti-Semitic bullying and harassment by their teachers and peers, in hallways, in classrooms, and in school yards.”

Miller said a number of teachers are “indoctrinating” their students in antisemitic hatred of Jews and Israel.  

For example, as noted above, in a second grade class a teacher “led an activity for second grade students in which they were instructed to write “messages of anti-hate” on sticky notes to hang in the school hallway. The sticky note written by (redacted) said, “Stop Bombing Babies.” Many second-grade children followed suit, writing, “Stop Bombing Babies” on their sticky notes. Instead of posting these notes on the wall outside of her own classroom, they posted these notes in another part of the building, outside of the classroom of the only Jewish teacher in the school. This sent a chilling message to all Jewish and Israeli families at Malcom X (elementary school.)”

An art class featured antisemitic paintings and drawings, numerous students have been often heard to say ‘Fuck the Jews,” and high school and middle school “walkouts” have featured slogans such as ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a saying that calls for the elimination of the state of Israel.

Students and parents have complained about the constant feeling of being harassed and bullied but say their pleas have fallen on deaf administrative ears.  If anything is done it involves moving the complaining Jewish kid to a new class, away from a teacher who preaches antisemitism and, in at least two cases, into another class in which the teacher also preaches antisemitism.

In one high school history class, Jewish and Israeli students have repeatedly made requests to transfer out of a class that was being taught that Israel is an “apartheid” state and any disagreement with that “fact” was “laughable.”

Students have also complained that a Berkeley High School art teacher “has spent significant class time imposing his anti-Semitic views on students by showing them violent pro-Hamas videos, projecting anti-Israel and anti- Semitic images during class, papering his classroom walls with these images.”

During a middle school walkout (allegedly encouraged and led by staff,) students were heard to shout “Kill the Jews,” “Fuck the Jews,” “Fuck Israel,” “KKK,” “Kill Israel,” “I hate those people,” and “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” as teachers and administrators did nothing.

“The conduct of teachers and administrators in the face of calls for the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel sends a chilling message to Jewish and Israeli students—namely, that their BUSD teachers and administrators support anti- Semitic hatred and will therefore permit, and even support, anti-Semitic activity,” the complaint states.

Miller said by doing nothing to stop the antisemitism, by not even following the District’s own rules regarding hate and bullying and harassment, and by simply moving Jewish kids from class to class, BUSD is “normalizing” antisemitism.

And BUSD does seem it thinks it has something to hide, as it has been very difficult for parents, etc. to get copies of relevant curricular materials, though it has released a vocabulary definition grid that says “anti-Zionists” are people who believe in a future where “all people on the land live in freedom, safety, and equality.”

Note the definition does not reference Israel.

Miller has been able to obtain what she said was most likely to be a similar curriculum plan to Berkeley’s that Oakland schools follow. That plan involves reading “P is for Palestine” to first graders (note – even putting aside the politics for a moment, it’s a terrible children’s book.) Lessons also involve a worksheet in which kids are asked to draw pictures to match the following sentence:

“The Zionist leaders of Israel receive money and support to conduct a two-tiered (unfair) system where Palestinians are mistreated and attacked.”

“Imagine if this were anybody else but Jews,” Miller said.  “Fill in the blank.  It just wouldn’t happen.”

The sad irony of the Berkeley situation is that the Jewish parents there are proto-typical liberals.

“These are educated, progressive, intellectual families who wanted a progressive education for their kids,” Miller said.  “They’re shocked by what is happening.”

You can read the entire complaint here.