Beloved Berkeley Teachers Under Attack Over Palestine
For me, education is a precious gift. I first received it after entering the California public school system at the age of nine.
However, because my roots are in Iran, I was immediately associated with a religion and a people that are demonized in the news media, so I experienced many forms of discrimination. Still, I cherished each moment — however few and far between they might’ve been — of teachers who reached out to me beyond the stereotypes that isolate us from one another.
These moments illuminated my search to learn about both the lives of the oppressed and the silenced and those who’ve won the right to tell their histories because they’re on the winning side of wars, power and the accumulation of capital. These moments spurred me to listen to and learn from others, to help whomever I can and to join with those who seek to make a better world.
Happily, I’ve seen both of my sons experience 100 times such moments of illumination in the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD), acquiring a beautifully broad and challenging range of learning experiences. I gratefully observe their insight on many human rights struggles, here and abroad.
That’s why I’m deeply saddened to hear unfounded and hurtful accusations of antisemitism leveled against BUSD teachers, who’ve selflessly worked to invent new ways of helping us all — not only students, but also parents, grandparents and guardians — to learn about and appreciate the rich, diverse experiences in our community, which encompass both the established voices and the silent ones.
I recently met with one of our beloved BUSD teachers of color, who was recently targeted as antisemitic and has had many complaints lodged against her by a small group of extremist parents — who aren’t associated with her school.
One of the main accusations of antisemitism stems from a Palestinian flag that this second-grade teacher had in her classroom window, one of many flags representing the diverse identities of her students, including African Americans (Black Lives Matter) and queer (rainbow).
A resident who is not associated with this school and who the teacher does not know shared her personal information on a national listserv with photographs of the flag window — soliciting harassment.
Within hours, her school received thousands of calls from all over the United States, including threats demanding that the flag be taken down. During that week, she noticed a drone hovering outside her classroom window. “It followed me and my students to garden class, as well, like it was surveilling and recording us.”
Another antisemitic accusation against this teacher referred to a message written on a sticky note by a second-grade student reading, “Stop bombing babies,” which was allegedly placed on the only Jewish teacher’s classroom door.
She reports: “In accordance with BUSD’s resolution for the annual ‘United Against Hate Week’ November 13–17, I brought my students to the ‘No Hate Wall.’”
This is an interactive bulletin board in a community space with messages of love for different populations of people and pictures of our diverse community holding signs to stop hate. It’s been in the same place with the same pictures for the past seven years.
Every year the school community engages with the wall by bringing classes to sit in front of it, read the love notes, see the pictures, then create their own messages on post-it notes to add to the wall with their ideas of how to stop hate.
“I asked my students what messages they had for ways to stop hate and wrote the students’ ideas on sticky notes. One of the shared ideas to stop hate was to ‘stop bombing babies.’ Given the current humanitarian crisis [in the Gaza Strip], this seemed like an appropriate universal message for justice and love.”
“The words were from a student and I included everyone’s ideas. After many students got a chance to share their ideas, the kids created many of their own Post-its to add to the bulletin board, like ‘love everyone’ and ‘end discrimination.’ In the end, there were nearly 50 messages from my class, mostly ways to spread more love. That’s it. It was a very sweet and tender visit to the ‘No Hate Wall.’ And from that, someone fabricated an entirely contradictory story.”
This teacher also reported being surveilled on her private social media accounts, where screenshots were sent to national listservs and members of the school administration. It’s clear that she is being targeted.
“With all of this harassment, defamation, and instigating in the time of a humanitarian crisis that breaks all kinds of international laws, all we need now is love,” she explained. “Calling for justice and freedom and safety and value and love for Palestinian children is not racism, or anti-Jewish. Just like calling for justice and freedom and safety and value and love for Black children is not anti-white. It’s just pro-Black. If people feel uncomfortable, that is their responsibility to unpack, and teachers are here to help. A safe classroom environment is the perfect place for this to happen with community, humility and reflection.”
What most impresses me about this teacher, who is also a BUSD parent, is her unwavering compassion and love for the young people that she teaches. Her commitment to developing deep relationships with all her students, and their families, is inspiring.
Her focus is on fostering strong identities, individuality and creating a basis for self-love and self-respect — all in a safe and caring environment.
Her lessons include concrete models that she acts out with her students in order to teach them mindfulness, life skills, civil rights and anti-racism, nurturing their positive, self-respecting identities and encouraging them to authentically learn and connect with each other.
She also includes her students’ families, which is why she remains close to most of them. In fact, this deep identity work is what ethnic studies is all about. This is the kind of teacher who goes above and beyond and touches her children’s hearts, “assuring that we all belong and bring a gift to be shared for all to be lifted,” as she says.
She showed me a stack of letters from many of her students and their families, testifying to her qualities and impact as a teacher. She’s taught over 500 students in BUSD and has never received a formal complaint in 19 years of service.
She considers these accusations from a small group of extremist parents, who are unassociated with her school community, to be a direct attack upon her reputation and an insidious attempt to erase the affirmative experiences of the hundreds of children who she’s taught.
I also explored the predicament of a high school history teacher, who’s facing accusations that his lesson plans about Palestine and Israel have been antisemitic. They claim that sources associated with Palestinian institutions are not valid and should be excluded from the teaching materials.
He reports that this lesson plan was created by BUSD staff and teachers, was vetted by district officials and the curriculum was derived from multiple fact-based sources. He added, “We provide students with a foundation of facts, from multiple perspectives, from which they can create their own truth about the situation.” He was adamant that the voices of all peoples must be raised to really teach a people’s history of the world.
I wondered how he sees the future of education if these complaints lead to the censure of teachers. His response was chilling. “In the Brandeis Institute/ADL [Anti-Defamation League] complaint, one of the recommendations was that the district adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which equates criticism of Israel’s abuses against Palestinians as antisemitism.
“I feel like that’s the biggest danger, which would then cement as antisemitic any discussion of Palestinian history and experience. This would be essentially a racist policy against Palestinians in our educational curriculum, silencing and erasing Palestinian history.”
Remember this — because this is what could happen.
This article was written by Negeene Mosaed. A portion of it appeared in the Berkeley Times on March 21, 2024.
