Portland Teachers’ Group Offers Kindergarten Curriculum Teaching Anti-Israel Hate

The Portland Association of Teachers, an affiliate of the state teachers’ union which has 4,500 members, reportedly created an anti-Israel and anti-America curriculum for children as young as kindergarteners that says Zionists are “bullies” and blames Israel and the United States for “settler colonialism.”

Journalist Christopher Rufo, the author of America’s Cultural Revolution, published the information and obtained the curriculum materials called “Teach Palestine!” Pre-kindergarten teachers are urged to use a workbook by the Palestinian Feminist Collective with a story of a fictional Palestinian boy named Handala who states, “A group of bullies called Zionists wanted our land so they stole it by force and hurt many people.”

“Students are encouraged to come up with a slogan that they can chant at a protest and complete a maze so that Handala can ‘get back home to Palestine’—represented as a map of Israel,” Rufo notes.

Other leftist tropes are urged for the pre-kindergarteners, including a video stating, “I feel safe when there are no police,” and a slideshow that salutes the First and Second Palestinian Intifadas. According to the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, during the Second Intifada from September 2000 to February 2005, 887 of the 1,137 Israelis murdered in the attacks were civilians.

“The recommended resource list also includes a ‘sensory guide for kids’ on attending protests. It teaches children what they might see, hear, taste, touch, and smell at protests, and promotes photographs of slogans such as ‘Abolish Prisons’ and ‘From the River to the Sea,’” Rufo writes.

Once the children are in kindergarten through second grade, a lesson, “Art and Action for Palestine,” is provided to teach the children to “connect histories of settler colonialism from Palestine to the United States” and to “celebrate Palestinian culture and resistance throughout history and in the present, with a focus on Palestinian children’s resistance.”

“75 years ago, a lot of decision makers around the world decided to take away Palestinian land to make a country called Israel. Israel would be a country where rules were mostly fair for Jewish people with White skin,” the lesson reads. “There’s a BIG word for when Indigenous land gets taken away to make a country, that’s called settler colonialism.”\

Among the “suggested materials” are “keffiyehs, flags, and protest signs.” The curriculum also includes a pamphlet called “All Out for Palestine,” which states, “STOP THE GENOCIDE! END U.S. AID TO ISRAEL! FREE PALESTINE!” The pamphlet refers to “Zionism‘s long genocidal war on Palestinian life,” adding, “End all US aid to Israel and nullify all joint US-Israeli agreements and collaboration in arms trade and policing.”

“The pamphlet includes chants that teachers can adopt in the classroom,” Rufo points out. “Some imply support for militancy and political violence: ‘Resistance is justified when people are occupied!’; ‘We salute all our martyrs! mothers, fathers, sons and daughters!’; ‘Justice is our demand! No peace on stolen land!’”