Report > Teacher Unions, Title VI and Equal Protection
Breaking Solidarity: How Anti-Semitic Activists Turned Teacher Unions Against Israel
By Paul Zimmerman | September 25, 2025
Key findings
- The celebratory reactions of American college and university professors and students to the murder of approximately 1,200 people in Israel on October 7, 2023, have dominated headlines and sparked a long-needed discussion of what has gone wrong in the culture of our institutions of higher education. The same discussion is needed with regard to K–12, where union activists are spurring hatred against the West, Israel, and the Jews among children as young as four.
- The American labor movement owes much to the Jewish intellectual tradition, and labor unions once saw their counterparts in Israel as important allies and partners. The United Federation of Teachers of the 1960s and its leader, Albert Shanker, embodied support for a strong Israel and against the ugly anti-Semitism that surfaced at times against Jewish teachers and school leaders, including the political “civil war” that exploded in New York as a result of the Ocean Hill-Brownsville teacher firings of 1968.
- Under the influence of the radical Left and its obsession with dismantling supposedly racist Western institutions and “settler colonialism,” this has changed dramatically. Teacher unions that once proudly invested in Israel and fiercely affirmed its right to defend itself now, in the wake of the worst single attack on Jews since the Holocaust, demand boycotts of, divestments from, and sanctions against the world’s only Jewish state. Union activists use their influence to infect teacher trainings and curricular materials—beginning in preschool—with propaganda opposing Israel and the “Zionists.”
Introduction
Introduction On October 7, 2023, at least 3,800 Hamas terrorists penetrated Israel’s border at 120 different places, raping victims and burning them alive, murdering children and the elderly, killing husbands in front of wives and fathers in front of their children, and mutilating the bodies of the dead. Approximately 1,200 people in Israel died in the attacks, and Hamas militants abducted some 250 others, dozens of whom have by now died in Gaza.
For Jewish people in Western countries, including those with family members and close friends in Israel, the terror did not end with the horrific events of that day. Infamously, on and just after October 7, many American college campuses erupted in celebrations of the atrocities, including memorialization of dead Hamas militants as “martyrs” and violence against and intimidation of Jewish students. Campus courtyards were soon filled with encampments to pressure university administrators to reward Hamas by diverting investments from Israel.
The response in K–12 to the events of October 7 has been less remarked but arguably more sinister, with students being incited against Israel and the “Zionists.” For instance, at a Brooklyn high school shortly after October 7, students reportedly targeted a Jewish teacher and a student with death threats, Swastikas, and Nazi salutes and rampaged through the halls chanting “Death to Israel!” and “Kill the Jews!” In Berkeley, California, teachers encouraged students to participate in a “walkout” during the school day as part of a campaign against Israel; some parents who witnessed the stunt overheard some students say “Kill the Jews,” “F–k Israel,” and “Kill Israel.” Teachers in Oakland opted for a “teach-in” where they shared anti-Semitic literature referring to Israel as “apartheid” and promoted the slogan “from the river to the sea”—meaning the annihilation of the Israeli state.
At one time, educators subject to such violent threats and discriminatory rhetoric could expect the support of their teacher unions in forcing school administrators to ensure that they could continue to report to work safely. After all, one of the fundamental responsibilities of a union is to advocate for the safety and welfare of its members in the workplace, and feeling intimidated or threatened at work on account of one’s religion or shared ancestry is certainly a matter of safety and welfare. Yet, in far too many cases, teacher unions failed in that basic responsibility to protect Jewish teachers and instead opted to pursue a virulently anti-Israel agenda.
