RELEASE: Gottheimer Calls on NJEA to Cancel “Teaching Palestine” Session Promoting Anti-Israel Bias at Teacher Convention

NEW JERSEY - This week, U.S. Congressman Josh Gottheimer (NJ-5) sent a letter to the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) expressing deep concern over the upcoming "Teaching Palestine" session scheduled as a part of NJEA's annual convention tomorrow in Atlantic City.

Gottheimer urged the NJEA to immediately review and remove programming that promotes misinformation and antisemitic narratives for New Jersey's educators and students.

The session's instructor is affiliated with the Racial Justice and Organizing Committee (RJOC), whose members have taken part in demonstrations characterizing the October 7 attacks as "resistance" and blaming the attacks on Israel. Find more information in the letter here and below.

"The individuals you have invited to teach our state's educators about the Middle East and combating antisemitism have a clear bias against our key democratic ally, Israel, and the Jewish people. The program presents a clear political narrative that promotes one side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a skewed view of antisemitism, while ignoring key historical facts," Congressman Josh Gottheimer (NJ-5) wrote in a letter to the NJEA this week. "This type of biased content has no place in New Jersey classrooms, undermines our state's values, and raises serious concerns about potential targeting of Jewish students and educators."

Gottheimer continued, "The NJEA's behavior reflects a troubling pattern and practice - both within NJEA and its national parent, the NEA - that have deeply upset our community and state, and, unfortunately, have led me to send multiple letters addressing antisemitic incidents linked to NJEA and NEA."

Gottheimer also recently called on the NJEA multiple times to terminate an editor of the NJEA Review who promoted hate-filled violent, antisemitic, and anti-Christian rhetoric on her public, verified social media and public blog.

Find this week's letter to NJEA President Steve Beatty here and below.

President Beatty:

I am writing to express serious concern regarding the "Teaching Palestine" session scheduled during the New Jersey Education Association's annual convention this week. The individuals you have invited to teach our state's educators about the Middle East and combating antisemitism have a clear bias against our key democratic ally, Israel, and the Jewish people. The program presents a clear political narrative that promotes one side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a skewed view of antisemitism, while ignoring key historical facts. This type of biased content has no place in New Jersey classrooms, undermines our state's values, and raises serious concerns about potential targeting of Jewish students and educators.

Moreover, the NJEA's behavior reflects a troubling pattern and practice - both within NJEA and its national parent, the NEA - that have deeply upset our community and state, and, unfortunately, have led me to send multiple letters addressing antisemitic incidents linked to NJEA and NEA. Examples include:

• NEA members voting to sever ties with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) - an organization dedicated to combating hate in all its forms through education in our schools.
• The NEA posting, and later removing, a resource from its website that erased Israel from the map, falsely labeling the entire territory as "Palestine."
• The NJEA hiring of Ayat Oraby as an editor of your magazine, despite her public record of hate-filled rhetoric toward Jews and Christians, including referring to Jews as "filthy" and the terrorist group, Hamas, as "martyrs" on her publicly viewable X account. The fact that someone with such a record was hired in the first place underscores serious issues within NJEA's ranks.

The "Teaching Palestine" session next week in Atlantic City is part of this same disturbing trend.

1. The session's instructor, Adam Sanchez, is affiliated with the Racial Justice and Organizing Committee (RJOC), whose members have taken part in demonstrations characterizing the October 7 attacks as "resistance" and blaming them on Israel.
2. The session is based on the book Teaching Palestine, which asserts that "U.S. students need a curriculum that helps them decide whether they want their tax dollars used by Israel to oppress Palestinians." It claims that "advocates for Israel have long used false accusations of antisemitism to silence supporters of Palestinians." The authors go further, teaching that Israel's creation was "a colonial war waged against the indigenous population" and instructing teachers to "critically examine Zionism" as a central theme of the curriculum. These are not lessons in critical thinking grounded in fact, but the biased political stances of the book's authors. The material itself reads less like an educational resource and more like an extremist political activist agenda.
3. A co-author of Teaching Palestine, Keziah Ridgeway, was suspended by the School District of Philadelphia following social media posts that alluded to violence against Jewish parents, including asking in one post where she could find a gun shop.
4. In its final section, the book issues a call to action in a section titled, "Dear Teachers, Please Support BDS," which explicitly urges educators to teach their students to boycott the world's only Jewish state.
5. Perhaps, most egregiously, the book instructs teachers to use "Israeli Apartheid: A Simulation" in class, staging a reenactment using our students that accuses Israel of apartheid and "settler colonialism."
6. Another section, "The Antisemitism Awareness Act Bars the Teaching of Modern Jewish History," directly attacks bipartisan legislation that I have led, and that passed the U.S. House of Representatives, designed to protect Jewish students, twisting efforts to combat antisemitism.

New Jersey educators have a duty to teach facts, not ideology. Programs like "Teaching Palestine" replace facts with bias and use our classrooms to push divisive, politicized agendas. Our children deserve to learn history based on facts, not bias.

I urge the NJEA to immediately review the materials for "Teaching Palestine" and remove any programming that spreads misinformation or undermines the core mission of public education. Classrooms should be places of learning - not platforms for political propaganda.

Sincerely,

Josh Gottheimer

MEMBER OF CONGRESS

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