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To Protect Zionism, We Must Reject Ethnic Studies

Demonstrators holding a “Stand Up for Internationals” rally on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, California, US, April 17, 2025. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.

There are two hard truths at the core of the ethnic studies mandate debate currently raging across California, which continue to generate intense division and a growing number of lawsuits.

For those of us in the Jewish community, acknowledging these truths is urgent. Wherever ethnic studies — and its ideological sibling, DEI — are implemented, Jewish students have faced some of the most egregious violations of Constitutionally protected civil rights our country has experienced in recent times.

The first hard truth is that to teach “authentic” ethnic studies (as its architects intended), one must categorically reject Zionism. That’s not a flaw in the system — it’s the point.

The second point follows with painful clarity: you cannot fight antisemitism while embracing the very ideological framework that perpetuates it.

Zionism is inseparable from the Jewish people — it is our identity, our origin story, our homeland, and our essence.

And yet, across California classrooms — and increasingly across the country — Zionism is being smeared, redefined, and dismantled by the purveyors of “authentic” ethnic studies. And it’s showing up in the vast majority of school districts, classrooms, and colleges across America.

Ethnic studies teaches that Zionism — and even Israel’s existence — is something to be rejected. But the vast majority of Jews worldwide believe Zionism simply means that the Jewish people have the right to live freely and safely in their own homeland. Calling Zionism “racist” isn’t education — it’s hate dressed up as justice.

This isn’t a misunderstanding, or the fault of “a few bad teachers.” Hostility to Zionism is not incidental — it is central to the ethnic studies project.

By its own definition, ethnic studies is not about cultural understanding. It is a radical ideological framework born out of revolutionary Marxism and the Third World Liberation Front. It’s about dismantling systems it views as oppressive — “white supremacy,” settler colonialism, and capitalism. From its inception, ethnic studies was designed to “decolonize” the world — which in practical terms, means the dismantling of Western democracies, including the United States and Israel.

This is not my interpretation. It is, nearly word-for-word, how ethnic studies scholars describe their own discipline.

One ethnic studies professor, Dr. Marcelo Garzo Montalvo, describes the curriculum as rooted in a “fundamental critique of power,” with the explicit goal of “engagement” with “white supremacy, settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and other global structures of power.” He explicitly states that California’s high school ethnic studies requirement “has no other origin besides [Third World Studies] and their relevant demands.” The curriculum’s origins lie in revolutionary movements, not multicultural education.

Those familiar with the origins of the Third World Liberation Front know this: Zionism was never going to be recognized as the Jewish liberation movement. Ethnic studies would never portray it as progressive, aspirational, or worthy of respect.

Ironically, Zionism is the only real-world example of the very “decolonization” ethnic studies claims to pursue. And yet, rather than celebrate it, ethnic studies revives a familiar tactic: taking whatever society deems the ultimate evil and projecting it onto the Jews.

That’s the danger: ethnic studies packages ancient hate as modern “social justice.” And in ethnic studies, it’s not just present — it’s institutionalized. At this point, any effort to add “balance” to ethnic studies through Holocaust education or occasional references to Sephardic Jewish diversity is utterly futile.

And still, some major Jewish organizations continue to try and reform ethnic studies from within — offering feedback, drafting addendums, proposing lesson plans. Why? Out of fear, or perhaps the belief that being “at the table” means having a say?

The answer is a cocktail of fear, ignorance, wishful thinking, and institutional groupthink. Many hoped ethnic studies could be tamed — turned into a tool for inclusion, maybe even used to elevate Jewish identity alongside others.

They believed that by having a seat at the table, they could influence what’s on the menu. But the truth is: we were never meant to be at that table. Not as equals. Not when Zionism — central to Jewish identity — is framed as part of the problem.

And so long as we continue to assert our right to self-determination in our ancestral homeland (Zionism), we will always be portrayed as the villain. The more we try to sanitize the ethnic studies movement as a plea for inclusion, the more legitimacy we give to the latest iteration of Jew-hatred that seeks to destroy us.

We cannot protect Jewish students while endorsing a curriculum that teaches others to hate Jews. And we cannot defend Zionism while legitimizing an ideology that slanders it as oppression.

The solution to ethnic studies is not reform, it is rejection.

Zionism is the civil rights movement of the Jewish people. It deserves to be taught with truth, not twisted into a caricature. Not reduced to a slur.

And if defending Zionism means standing alone, so be it. It wouldn’t be the first time. It won’t be the last.

When a movement tells you — clearly and proudly — that it opposes everything you stand for, the most self-respecting thing you can do is believe them.

Nicole Bernstein is the co-founder of PeerK12, a grassroots organization combating institutionalized Jew-hatred in K-12 education. A mother of two public school students, she serves on her School District’s Equity Advisory Council.

The post To Protect Zionism, We Must Reject Ethnic Studies first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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‘All Hamas, Out!’ New Round of Palestinian Protests Erupt in Gaza Against Ruling Terror Group

Palestinians protest to demand an end to war, chanting anti-Hamas slogans, in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, March 26, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer

Anti-Hamas protests erupted in the Gaza Strip for a third straight day on Wednesday, after indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group in Qatar failed to yield any breakthroughs.

Since Monday, hundreds of protesters in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis have taken to the streets to rally against Hamas, which has ruled the war-torn Palestinian enclave for nearly two decades, and to call for an end to the war with Israel, as captured in footage shared by local news outlets and widely circulated on social media.

According to local reports, protests spread across multiple neighborhoods in Khan Younis, with many demonstrators demanding that Hamas give up control of Gaza.

Protesters had similarly gathered in Khan Younis, a long-time Hamas stronghold, on Monday and Tuesday demanding, “All of Hamas, out!”

This week’s protests against the terrorist group in Gaza are the first in several weeks, coming after a series of demonstrations in northern parts of the Strip in March and April.

During the first wave of protests in the early spring, thousands of Palestinians across the enclave took to the streets to protest against Hamas, calling for an end to the war and condemning the terrorist group’s rule.

Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist group and offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, violently eliminated its Palestinian opposition in a brief conflict in 2007, taking full control of Gaza after winning legislative elections the prior year.

In footage circulated on social media, demonstrators were seen in the first round of demonstrations chanting slogans such as “Down with Hamas, we’ve had enough,” “For God’s sake, Hamas out,” “We want an end to the war,” and “Hamas terrorists.”

At the time, several prominent activists and social media influencers had gone missing, with local reports indicating that some were being tortured and killed.

The Palestinian terrorist group accused Israel of inciting the demonstrations and warned of punishment for those involved.

According to local reports, Hamas had been persecuting Palestinians who participated in such protests, executing six individuals and publicly beating others.

The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) released a poll earlier this month showing that nearly half of Gazans support the anti-Hamas protests.

The terrorist group has a history of violently attacking those it considers to be “collaborators” with Israel. Earlier this year, the terrorist group executed 11 people for allegedly doing so in what its aligned media termed a “punishment of bullets.”

While Hamas is trying to silence dissent and crack down on the demonstrations, the group is also confronting Israel’s renewed operations as the Israeli military targets terrorist operatives in the territory.

Earlier this week, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued a wide evacuation order for all of Khan Younis, declaring the area a “combat zone” ahead of what it called an “unprecedented attack” aimed at dismantling terrorist infrastructure and pressuring Hamas to release the remaining Israeli hostages still being held by the Islamist group.

As part of its ongoing ground offensive dubbed “Gideon’s Chariots,” Israel’s military has struck over 670 Hamas targets in Gaza over the past week.

Tensions on the ground intensified after ceasefire negotiations between the Jewish state and the Palestinian terrorist group in Qatar stalled without yielding any progress.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the recent talks in Doha covered a potential truce and hostage exchange, along with a proposal to end the war in exchange for the exile of Hamas terrorists and the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip — terms that Hamas has previously rejected.

The latest PCPSR poll from earlier this month found that the perception that Hamas would win the war has dropped precipitously since it began. Just 23 percent of Gazans said they think Hamas will win the current war, while 29 percent responded they think Israel will win, and 46 percent put neither side will win. In contrast, 50 percent of Gazans thought Hamas would win back in December 2023, while 31 percent thought Israel would win.

The post ‘All Hamas, Out!’ New Round of Palestinian Protests Erupt in Gaza Against Ruling Terror Group first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Dartmouth College Committee Rejects Anti-Israel Divestment Proposal

Students walking on a college campus. Photo: Fortune via Reuters Connect.

Dartmouth College’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility (ACIR) has unanimously rejected a proposal which urged the school to adopt the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel and explained the decision in a lengthy report, dealing the anti-Zionist campus movement another major setback.

“By a vote of nine to zero, the [ACIR] at Dartmouth College finds that the divestment proposal submitted by Dartmouth Divest for Palestine and dated Feb. 18, 2025, does not meet criteria, laid out in the Dartmouth Board of Trustees’ Statement on Investment and Social Responsibility and in ACIR’s charge, that must be satisfied for the proposal to undergo further review,” the report said. “ACIR recommends not to advance the proposal.”

A copy of the document reviewed by The Algemeiner shows that the committee evaluated the BDS proposal, submitted by a group which calls itself Dartmouth Divest for Palestine (DDP), based on five criteria regarding the college’s divestment history, capacity to address controversial issues through discourse and learning, and campus unity. It concluded that DDP “partially” met one of them by demonstrating that Dartmouth has divested from a country or industry in the past to establish its moral credibility on pressing cultural and geopolitical issues but noted that its analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lacks nuance, betraying the group’s “lack of engagement with counter arguments.”

ACIR added that DDP also does not account for the sheer divisiveness of BDS — which seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination — and its potential to “degrade” rather than facilitate “additional dialogue on campus.”

It continued, “The proposal includes no compelling evidence on the level of support for divestment among students, among faculty, among staff, and among alumni. Moreover, the [roposal is silent on the matter of how divestment can be treated as a consensus position in the face of what is almost certainly deep opposition to it among some members of the Dartmouth community.”

Writing to The Dartmouth, DDP reiterated an argument that — in addition to echoing the propaganda of neo-Nazi groups and jihadist terrorist organizations — has been deemed as fallacious by Dartmouth and other colleges and universities across the US.

“Our coalition of students, alumni, faculty, and staff remain committed to the basic principle behind our proposal: institutions of higher learning should not be invested in weapons companies and other corporations complicit in genocide, scholasticide, and violations of international law,” the group’s statement said. “Such investments are not in keeping with Dartmouth’s academic mission and its responsibility to its community and the broader world.”

Dartmouth College is not the first higher education institution to foreclose divestment from Israel.

Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine did so in March when its Board of Trustees voted to accept the counsel of a committee that recommended maintaining investment practices which safeguard the institution’s financial health and educational mission.

“The endowment exists solely to provide financial support of the college across generations,” said a report submitted to trustees in February and, according to The Bowdoin Orient, subsequently ratified by them. “It should not be used as a tool for the advocacy of public policy.”

The reported, authored by the college’s Ad Hoc Committee on Investments and Responsibility, continued, “Interventions in the management of the endowment that are rooted in moral or political considerations should be exceedingly rare and restricted to those cases where there is near-universal consensus among Bowdoin’s community of stakeholders … if such actions are pursued, they should be taken only where the financial trade-offs are identifiable, measurable, and limited.”

Boston University rejected BDS in February, with its president, Melissa Gilliam, saying, “the endowment is no longer the vehicle for political debate; nevertheless, I will continue to seek ways that members of our community can engage with each other on political issues of our day including the conflict in the Middle East.”

Trinity College turned away BDS advocates in November, citing its “fiduciary responsibilities” and “primary objective of maintaining the endowment’s intergeneration equity.” It also noted that acceding to demands for divestment for the sake of “utilizing the endowment to exert political influence” would injure the college financially, stressing that doing so would “compromise our access to fund managers, in turn undermining the board’s ability to perform its fiduciary obligation.”

The University of Minnesota in August pointed to the same reason for spurning divestment while stressing the extent to which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict polarizes its campus community. It coupled its pronouncement with a new investment policy, a so-called “position of neutrality” which, it says, will be a guardrail protecting university business from the caprices of political opinion.

Colleges and universities will squander tens of billions of dollars in endowment returns if they capitulate to demands to divest from Israel, according to a report published in September 2024 by JLens, a Jewish investor network that is part of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Titled “The Impact of Israel Divestment on Equity Portfolios: Forecasting BDS’s Financial Toll on University Endowments,” the report presented the potential financial impact of universities adopting the BDS movement, which is widely condemned for being antisemitic.

The losses JLens projected are catastrophic. Adopting BDS, it said, would incinerate $33.21 billion of future returns for the 100 largest university endowments over the next 10 years, with Harvard University losing $2.5 billion and the University of Texas losing $2.2 billion. Other schools would forfeit over $1 billion in growth, including the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, and Princeton University. For others, such as the University of Michigan and Dartmouth College, the damages would total in the hundreds of millions.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Dartmouth College Committee Rejects Anti-Israel Divestment Proposal first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Irish Rap Group Kneecap Threatens to Sue Industry Critics Calling for Glastonbury Ban After Anti-Israel Remarks

Members of Kneecap pose on the red carpet at the Irish Film and Television Academy (IFTA) Awards in Dublin, Ireland, February 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne/File Photo

The Irish rap group Kneecap has threatened to sue music industry figures who have allegedly called for organizers of the Glastonbury Festival in the United Kingdom to remove the trio from its lineup of performers following anti-Israel comments and other offensive remarks made by group members.

Kneecap is currently being investigated by counter-terrorism police in the UK after footage emerged online of them shouting “up Hezbollah, up Hamas” and “kill your local MP [Member of Parliament]” at concerts in 2023 and 2024. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are designated by the UK as terrorist organizations, and it is illegal in the UK to express support for the two Iran-backed Islamist groups.

The Metropolitan Police confirmed on Monday that a man was interviewed in Belfast on Sunday as part of an ongoing investigation related to the videos and that there are “grounds for further investigation into potential offenses” relating to the footage. The clips surfaced online after Kneecap stirred controversy by projecting anti-Israel messages on stage during their performance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in California in April. “F–k Israel, Free Palestine” and “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people” were both projected onto the stage backdrop.

Meanwhile, Communities Minister Gordon Lyons said on Monday he thinks the UK and Irish governments should “consider their actions” in relation to providing any fundings to Kneecap, RTE reported. During ministerial question time at the Northern Ireland Assembly, Lyons was asked if he thinks the UK and Irish governments should “distance themselves from the funding of racist, antisemitic, and sectarian state sponsorship in the view of Kneecap.”

“There are always things we can disagree with which other people do in the arts sphere, but this is going far beyond anything which comes anywhere close to dealing with artistic license,” Lyons said in response. “This is the glorification of terrorism and this is also supporting, calling for violence towards MPs. It is incumbent on us to call that out, and I would also call on the UK government and the Irish government to consider their actions in this regard.”

Lyons added that neither his department “nor any of its arm’s length bodies” have provided any funding to Kneecap since 2017.

Glastonbury organizers have been facing pressure to ban the group from the iconic music festival from music industry figures, politicians in the UK, and also pro-Israel supporters in the entertainment industry, including Sharon Osbourne, a former judge on “The X Factor” and the wife of Black Sabbath lead singer Ozzy Osbourne. A number of music industry figures recently sent an email to Glastonbury founder Emily Eavis and two other organizers of the festival, urging them to ban Kneecap from the event set to take place from June 25-29, the Daily Mail reported.

In response, Kneecap’s legal team, Phoenix Law, issued a formal letter to those individuals, threatening to sue them for pressuring Glastonbury organizers to drop the band from the music festival. Kneecap said the music industry figures should issue an “immediate and unequivocal” apology or face legal action.

“Your correspondence seeks to monopolize your status within the industry to impose direct and concerted pressure on Glastonbury, to restrict freedom of expression,” said the legal letter, as reported by the Daily Mail. “Such a direct and coordinated approach seeks to create a chilling effect upon the wider music industry whereby those who hold opposing views, will seek to impose their own view on the wider industry,” it further stated.

“Whilst our clients feel particularly strongly about the freedom of expression, we cannot allow false statements to be asserted dressed up as statements of fact,” Kneecap’s representatives said in the legal letter. “To that end, we write to put you on notice that we are now formally instructed to commence high court civil proceedings for damages for the damage you have inflicted on our client’s reputation. However, before our clients formally seek to issue pre action correspondence, we write to offer you the opportunity to resolve these matters by way of an immediate and unequivocal apology.”

Glastonbury organizers have yet to comment on Kneecap’s offensive remarks and the pressure they are facing to remove the Irish group from the music festival.

So far, Kneecap have been dropped from a number of music festivals this summer — including two in Germany and the Eden Project concert series in the UK — in light of their offensive comments. Others, such as the Wide Awake Festival in southern London, have not canceled their performance and defended the band.

In April, Kneecap apologized and clarified its remarks from 2023 and 2024 in a released statement.

“Let us be unequivocal: we do not, and have never, supported Hamas or Hezbollah. We condemn all attacks on civilians,” the group said in part. “We also reject any suggestion that we would seek to incite violence against any MP or individual. An extract of footage, deliberately taken out of all context, is now being exploited and weaponized, as if it were a call to action.”

In the same statement, Kneecap continued to make anti-Israel remarks, accusing the Jewish state of genocide. The group has made similar anti-Israel comments many times and continues to do so on social media.

“Israel is the most depraved regime on earth,” Kneecap wrote in a post on X on May 14. “They lie day after day and are starving an entire population to death, whilst a few miles away Israeli kids eat fast food … This is supported by Western governments and it’s unforgivable.”

On May 9, the band shared on X a picture of the message “Israel is committing a genocide” being projected on the former Israeli Embassy in Dublin. Kneecap said it projected the anti-Israel message on the embassy last November, before the embassy closed amid tensions between Dublin and Jerusalem over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

The post Irish Rap Group Kneecap Threatens to Sue Industry Critics Calling for Glastonbury Ban After Anti-Israel Remarks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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