Now the other national teachers’ union is considering anti-Israel resolutions

I previously wrote about several anti-Israel resolutions that union delegates submitted for consideration at the National Education Association’s Representative Assembly. An unexpected turn of events, including union president Becky Pringle choosing to skip over a handful of them during the floor debate and the union’s staff initiating a strike that ultimately halted the assembly, has left it unclear what proposals actually passed.

Now, the American Federation for Teachers (AFT), the other national teachers’ union, is set to consider its own series of anti-Israel resolutions during its annual convention in Houston starting on July 22, reports Francesca Block for The Free Press.

The resolutions before the American Federation of Teachers include calls to “halt U.S. military aid to Israel” and to “stop enabling genocide,” and include praise of pro-Palestinian protesters who faced “state-sanctioned violence.” 

They accuse the Jewish state of “apartheid” and “genocide,” and criticize Israel for “scholasticide,” a term referencing the destruction of schools in Gaza. One resolution calls for the AFT to divest from the Jewish state by pulling member pensions out of companies with even tangential connections to Israel — such as Boeing and Palantir. Of the eight proposed resolutions that mention Israel, only one advocates for a “two-state solution” and the “safe return of Hamas’s hostages.” 

A group of members is pushing back, circulating an anonymous letter that they hope will “convince union leaders to drop the inflammatory resolutions and ‘avoid the public stain of antisemitism,'” continues Block.

Tova Plaut, an AFT member and Jewish educator in New York City, told The Free Press she fears the resolutions would encourage teachers to depict “Israel as a colonizing country that is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.” … “It’s telling their members this is what we want you to teach about.”

AFT president Randi Weingarten told The Free Press the union has “condemned antisemitism and Islamophobia and clearly established our values on this issue.” “In a democratic union, members have the right to propose any resolution they like — and I will be advocating at the convention to uphold our position.”

The union’s executive council passed a resolution in January that “condemn[ed] all forms of antisemitism and Islamophobia,” called for “a negotiated bilateral cease-fire, agreed to by both sides in this war,” and for “a two-state solution.”

But to Amy Leserman, an educator and AFT member from Los Angeles, such resolutions “have nothing to do with the AFT’s mission” of advocating “on behalf of teachers and the quality of their workplace.” She continued to The Free Press:

“We are not international politicians,” she said. “And there is no foreign government that has any interest in what the teachers union or any labor union has to say about how they should function. . . . So the entire purpose behind these motions and these resolutions is that they generate a hostile teaching environment and learning environment for students.” 

Minnesota teachers who are union members pay dues to the AFT. Learn more here about opting out and liability insurance options without the politics.