The Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) has been accused before the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education because of the hell that its Jewish students suffer from the educational community, given that district administrators have ignored thousands of complaints from parents and allowed their schools to be openly Judeophobic.
The incidents include persistent chants in classrooms and hallways like, "Kill the Jews," and Jewish students being asked what their number is in reference to the numbers tattooed on Jews during the Holocaust. Jewish students have also had to endure antisemitic indoctrination at the hands teachers and activities such as "strikes" promoted by teachers to dedicate themselves to praising Hamas. One second grade teacher even forced children to write, "Stop Bombing Babies" on notes to display in the classroom. Students in the district's schools are learning to keep their heads down, hide their Judaism, and spend their school days in fear of physical violence.
This normalization of antisemitism in the media, theaters, universities and entire school districts represents a state of violence that cannot be understood without analyzing the origin of this hatred that is no longer attributable to small ideological groups. The hostility towards the State of Israel is based on a propaganda narrative from the postmodern left that uses accusations of "colonialism" as the key to disguise its antisemitism. But the massacre on Oct. 7 demonstrated that the justification and even enjoyment of the torture, rapes and death of children cannot be attributed to the disagreements over the creation of the Jewish state in 1948. Describing the cremation of a live baby as "resistance" indicates a situation far worse than imagined, and much more so if this narrative is proclaimed systematically and institutionally in entire cities as is happening in the United States.
Reports filed by the Louis D. Brandeis Center and ADL (Anti-Defamation League) maintain that Berkeley teachers used BUSD resources and facilities to "promote, support, and organize walkouts and activities denigrating Israelis and calling for the elimination of Jews." The activities were carried out during class hours and encouraged children and adolescents to leave their studies, offering excused absences to encourage attendance without parental permission. The rallies were events in which The students shouted "Kill the Jews," "Fu** the Jews," "Fu** Israel," "Kill Israel," "I hate those people," and "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free."
By turning the Hamas terrorists into heroes of the resistance, the educational community has achieved safe conduct to be able to express its happiness at the crimes committed against Jews for the mere fact of being Jews.
The cases are so frequent, that the stance being taken by not only education authorities, but also law enforcement and political officials is evident. For example, a high school art teacher used many of his classes to show teenagers violent pro-Hamas videos, projecting antisemitic images and covering the classroom walls with images that condoned violence against civilians. Another history teacher asked his students to answer the following question in class: "To what extent should Israel be considered an apartheid state?" and then screened an anti-Israel video, saying that arguments opposing the apartheid narrative were "laughable." A second-grade teacher asked children to write messages to post in the school hallway, using one she wrote as an example that read, "Stop Bombing Babies," which her students copied. The notes were posted in the classroom of the school's only Jewish teacher.
Why were teachers able to carry out these acts unpunished for months? According to the complaint, antisemitic harassment among students has increased, as students follow their teachers. For example, a Jewish student submitted a project related to his Jewish ancestry, and his fellow student crossed out the word "Jew" and wrote "Free Palestine." Another young student was told, "I don't like your people," and when a group of students made a mistake during a laboratory experiment, one student shouted, "Of course it was the Jews." While BUSD has received a record number of complaints for antisemitism, the Berkeley Board of Education has ignored parents' concerns. To make matters worse, the principals have moved Jewish students to other classes, which caused serious interruptions in students’ schedules, having to sit in the nurse’s office or in the library, making them feel separated and ashamed. The displacement of Jewish students also allowed teachers to feel freer to continue indoctrinating the remaining students, while forcing the Jewish students to have to catch up on the classes they missed in the semester.
What Berkeley’s antisemitic sanctuary is justifying is an act that caused a deliberate and unimaginable level of suffering under the guise of "resistance to power." By turning the Hamas terrorists into heroes of the resistance, the educational community has achieved safe conduct to be able to express its happiness at the crimes committed against Jews for the mere fact of being Jews. It is vital to understand the nature of the desires that the school district authorities feed, what makes them happy. It should be remembered that, after Oct. 7, there were more celebrations and marches in support of Hamas in the West than in all Arab countries.
Curiously, those who hate Israel do not have the same feelings towards countries whose history documents rejection against Palestinians. They do not criticize the widespread violence against Palestinians in the region as well as in Asia and Africa. There are no marches about these events, and only the tiny Hebrew country generates instant outrage. Nor is there any mention of the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Jews from all the countries of the Middle East while the smallest country in the region is called colonialist and is also criticized for the circumstances surrounding its founding, which are the same as those of the rest from neighboring countries. Those who seek the elimination of Israel say nothing about what would be the fate of the millions of Jewish refugees fleeing discrimination and persecution in Europe, Russia and the rest of the Middle East.
Antisemitic harassment has led some families to decide to move away from their homes.
Acknowledging any of these issues would ruin the antisemitic narrative that presents Jews as enormously powerful and morally inferior, a narrative that underpins the accusation of genocide frequently leveled against Israel to portray the country as the perpetrator of one of the worst crimes of humanity that can be committed. This is the accusation that has been made for decades, regardless of the fact that the size of the Palestinian population is constantly increasing. But antisemitism doesn't care about data. An example of this can be seen in the recent conference called "For an immediate ceasefire in Gaza! For the end of colonial occupation and apartheid in Palestine!" in which a group of intellectuals, inheritors of the rancid lineage of ’60s antisemitism such as Judith Butler, considered the Oct. 7 attack an act of legitimate resistance. The standard bearer of radical feminism does not stop at the fact that women under the yoke of Hamas lack the slightest rights, and as the creators of queer theory, they do not worry that homosexuals are executed there with unparalleled sadism. They, and those who think like them, believe that they are supported by their superior morality, they consider themselves superior to the Jewish girls systematically raped since Oct. 7. That is the basis of antisemitism, which is why the data is superfluous.
They are modern witch hunters, and that is why they are waiting to boycott everything that has any connection with Israel. This is the ideology that the teachers and students of the Berkeley school district were trained to follow. According to Kenneth L. Marcus, former United States assistant secretary of education, "The eruption of antisemitism in Berkeley elementary and middle schools is like nothing I have ever seen before," adding, "It is dangerous enough to see teachers fanning the flames of antisemitism on college campuses, but to see teachers inciting hate in the younger grades while Berkeley administrators stand by while it continues to escalate day by day is reprehensible. Where is the responsibility? Where are the people who are supposed to protect and educate the students?"
Berkeley is not the only district that has been reported. Lawsuits have been filed at other institutions to prevent antisemitic content from being taught in public schools in Santa Ana, Wellesley, the University of Southern California (USC), Brooklyn College, the University of Illinois and the American University among others. During Christmas, a group of students at Mount Holyoke College posted several graphics claiming that an "armed struggle" is the only way to "liberate Palestine" and called on the university to sever ties with Costa Coffee, Coca-Cola and study programs. abroad in Israel. The group invited University of Michigan professor Umayyah Cable, who called the Hamas attack "the liberation of Palestine."
Antisemitic harassment has led some families to decide to move away from their homes. In the Oakland Unified School District, at least 30 Jewish families moved because they could not stand the harassment. Hostile teaching toward Israel and Jews has sparked fear among parents, as the Oakland Education Association union (OAS) imposed an activity called "OAS for Palestine" for teachers to give lessons about the conflict in Gaza from a Palestinian point of view to students as young as 4 years old.
For a society to tolerate, justify and finally desire and enjoy the suffering of a group, it is necessary to have a narrative, a morality and an institutionality in accordance with the misery of the proposal.
One parent told CBS, "Right now, frankly, none of us in the community feel like anyone has our back. We are all looking over our shoulders and don't know who to trust." In classes, children were told that they had to be "in full solidarity with my Palestinian brothers as they fight for the right of return." Judy Greenspan, one of the organizers, said the union's board members approved a resolution and added that more than 100 teachers signed up, in addition to maintaining that although this was the first class, they plan to have more during the school year.
This climate foreshadowed physical violence that was going to occur sooner or later. Ultimately, that is what happened, precisely in Berkeley. In late February, a student group called Bears for Palestine posted about their intention to prevent an event involving Israel Defense Forces reservist and lawyer Ran Bar-Yoshafat from taking place. Before the event began, hundreds of students surrounded the building, banging on doors and windows, preventing attendees from entering and forcing entry shouting "intifada." Then everything became more violent. The students who wanted to attend the event were spat on, insulted and beaten, and the antisemites even got their way by preventing the conference from taking place.
The darkest moments in human history did not happen overnight. For a society to tolerate, justify and finally desire and enjoy the suffering of a group, it is necessary to have a narrative, a morality and an institutionality in accordance with the misery of the proposal. One of the victims of the canceled conference, Sharon Knafleman, described the violent demonstration on campus, with pro-Palestinian protesters breaking everything in Zellerbach Hall: "Behind me the crowd grabbed a girl by the neck and pushed her … Is this the Germany of 1938-39? Nazi Germany? Where do I have to hide because my safety is at risk?" the young woman asked herself. Perhaps that is the question that citizens throughout the free world should ask themselves, because this wave of hatred is not exclusive to Israel. It is huge, it is deep, it is lethal and it is anti-Western.
