Illustrative: May 1, 2024; Los Angeles, California, USA. Photo: USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

California lawmakers have passed legislation, Assembly Bill 715, which would require the state to establish a new Office for Civil Rights for monitoring antisemitism in public schools at a time of rising anti-Jewish hatred across the US.

The measure, which will now head to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk potentially to be signed into law, also comes amid the state government’s embrace of the controversial ethnic studies movement, which largely promotes anti-Zionism in its course materials.

Receiving near-unanimous support, the legislation passed the state Senate on Friday in a 35-0 vote with five abstentions and then, hours later, cleared the state Assembly in a 71-0 vote with nine abstentions.

The bill is California’s response to an epidemic of antisemitism in K-12 schools, which, as The Algemeiner has previously reported, has produced a slew of complaints alleging violations of civil rights. If signed by Newsom, a Democrat, it would establish an Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator, set parameters within which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be equitably discussed, and potentially bar antisemitic materials from reaching the classroom.

“Antisemitism in K-12 education is a major crisis. AB 715 creates new tools to address this proactively, protect Jewish students from discrimination, hold school districts accountable, and stop outside interests from weaponizing our schools to promote hate,” said Roz Rothstein, chief executive officer of StandWithUs, a Jewish civil rights advocacy group based in Los Angeles. “We deeply appreciate the tireless work of legislators, some of whom endured outrageous attempts to smear and intimidate them. This bill was weakened, in part because interest groups who are complicit in K-12 antisemitism have so much influence over our education system. While we achieved progress, much remains to be done if California is going to earn back the trust of Jewish families.”

Pro-Hamas groups, left-wing nonprofits, and teachers unions have emerged to denounce the bill even as it declined codification of the widely recognized International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism — the exclusion of which constitutes a significant compromise for Jewish and pro-Israel activists. Additionally, the bill’s effect on California’s politicized and racially divisive ethnic studies curricula remains unclear.

“This isn’t just curriculum — it’s about whose histories and lived experiences are allowed in our schools,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in a statement, imploring Newsom to veto the bill. “By anchoring enforcement to a politicized definition of antisemitism and inviting politically motivated complaints, AB 715 sets a dangerous precent of censorship and erasure.”

AB 715 enjoys the backing of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). On Saturday, the organization’s office praised it as a “landmark bill” while Robert Trestan, vice president of the organization’s western office, said it is a “foundational step toward addressing systemic antisemitism in K-12 classrooms and a national model” for similar bills.

Antisemitism in K-12 schools has increased every year of this decade, according to data compiled by the ADL. In 2023, antisemitic incidents in US public schools increased 135 percent, a figure which included a rise in vandalism and assault.

In September 2023 some of America’s most prominent Jewish and civil rights groups sued the Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD) in California for concealing from the public its adoption of ethnic studies curricula containing antisemitic and anti-Zionist themes. Then in February, the school district paused implementation of the program to settle the lawsuit.

One month later, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, StandWithUs, and the ADL filed a civil rights complaint accusing the Etiwanda School District in San Bernardino County, California, of doing nothing after a 12-year-old Jewish girl was assaulted, having been beaten with stick, on school grounds and teased with jokes about Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

On Sept. 9, EndJewHatred (EJH), a Jewish civil rights nonprofit group based in New York City, declared war on K-12 antisemitism, launching a new “End Hate in Education” initiative in the US and beginning preparations for a push into the Canadian media market.

“For too long, classrooms have been used as platforms for pushing divisive ideologies that undermine our core values,” EJH founder Brooke Goldstein said in a statement. “Across the United States, K-12 schools and college campuses have become incubators of extremist ideology, including pro-terror and radical Islamist agendas. The End Hate in Education campaign is about reclaiming our schools, defending civil liberties, and ensuring that every child — regardless of background — can learn in an environment grounded in truth, respect, and constitutional values.”

In press materials, EJH outlined six objectives for the campaign — “curriculum transparency,” “rejecting political indoctrination,” “accountability through funding,” “examination of the rule of foreign funding,” “strategic legal action,” and “grassroots mobilization” — all of which serve its larger, ambitious goal of eradicating from public schools not just antisemitism but all forms of “hate and harassment.”

Speaking to The Algemeiner during an interview on Tuesday, Gerard Filitti, senior counsel of EJH and The Lawfare Project, a partner organization, said antisemitism and anti-Israel bias have been planted in public schools.

“What we’re seeing in colleges and universities is just the tip of the iceberg. The radicalization in schooling, in reality, starts much earlier,” Filitti said. “We’re seeing lesson plans which push the idea that Israel is a genocidal state, or that it is an illegitimate state. We see faculty and administrators who do not support Zionist identity and reject that it can be the basis of discriminatory hate.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

Anthony Aguilar, a former contractor for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) who previously served as a US Army Green Beret. Photo: Screenshot

A US Army veteran and former contractor for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) who has made discredited claims against Israel is scheduled to speak later this week at a conference organized by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a nonprofit advocacy group long accused of having ties to terrorist organizations including Hamas.

Anthony Aguilar will appear as a “special guest” at a conference-wide dinner on Friday night in Washington, DC, according to itinerary of the event posted on CAIR’s website.

“CAIR’s Leadership & Policy Conference and annual banquet aren’t just another event. It’s where real conversations happen, where policy meets purpose, and where you should probably be,” the organization said on X/Twitter. 

Aguilar claimed he witnessed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) shoot a child — Abdul Rahim Muhammad Hamdene, known as Abboud — as the GHF was distributing humanitarian aid on May 28. The GHF is an Israeli and US-backed program that delivers aid directly to Palestinians, blocking Hamas from diverting supplies for terrorist activities and selling them at inflated prices.

After Aguilar made his claim, the former US Army Green Beret rapidly rose to prominence, presenting himself as a whistleblower exposing supposed Israeli war crimes. His story gained traction internationally, going viral on social media. He subsequently embarked on an extensive media tour, in which he accused Israel of indiscriminately killing Palestinian civilians as part of an attempt to “annihilate” and “disappear” the civilian population in Gaza. 

However, Aguilar, who erroneously labeled the boy in question as “Amir,” gave inconsistent accounts of the alleged incident in separate interviews to different media outlets, calling into question the veracity of his narrative.

Nonetheless, his claims were cited widely by critics of Israel such as Tucker Carlson, Ryan Grim, and Glenn Greenwald as supposed proof of war crimes.

The GHF launched its own investigation at the end of July, ultimately locating Abboud alive with his mother at an aid distribution site on Aug. 23. The organization confirmed his identity using facial recognition software and biometric testing.

Abboud was escorted in disguise to an undisclosed safe location by the GHF team for his safety, according to The Daily Wire, which noted that the spreading of Aguilar’s false tale put the boy’s life in danger, as his alleged death was a powerful piece of propaganda for Hamas.

Fox News Digital reported that Abboud and his mother were safely extracted from the Gaza Strip earlier this month.

In footage obtained by both news outlets, the boy can be seen playfully interacting with a GHF representative and appearing excited ahead of their planned extraction.

During the summer, as Aguilar’s claims were receiving widespread media attention, the GHF released a chain of text messages showing that Aguilar was terminated for his conduct. It also held a press conference to present evidence showing that Aguilar “falsified documents” and “presented misleading videos to push his false narrative.”

Meanwhile, CAIR has long been a controversial organization. In the 2000s, it was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case. Politico noted in 2010 that US District Court Judge Jorge Solis “found that the government presented ‘ample evidence to establish the association’” of CAIR with Hamas.

According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “some of CAIR’s current leadership had early connections with organizations that are or were affiliated with Hamas.” CAIR has disputed the accuracy of the ADL’s claim and asserted that CAIR “unequivocally condemn[s] all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group designated by the US Department of State as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization.’”

Moreover, several high-ranking members of CAIR publicly celebrated Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel. During what ended up becoming the deadliest single day for Jews since the Holocaust, Palestinian terrorist murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages while rampaging through Israeli communities.

In a 2023 speech following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, for example, CAIR’s national executive director, Nihad Awad, said he was “happy to see” Palestinians “breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land.”

US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) recently requested that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) launch an investigation into CAIR claiming the group has ties to Hamas and other terrorist organizations.

CAIR has come under recent scrutiny after the organization’s Philadelphia chapter announced that it was partnering with local schools.

In a letter to the US Education Department warning about this partnership, Cotton cited materials which CAIR distributes across the city and promotes in its programming — notably its “American Jews and Political Power” course — and other attempts to revise the history of Sharia, or Islamic, law, which severely restricts the rights of women and is opposed to other core features of liberal societies.

One of CAIR’s most controversial documents demands that teachers omit key facts about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on US soil.

“Avoid using language that validates the claims of the 9/11 attackers by associating their acts of mass murder with Islam and Muslims,” CAIR says in the material. “For example, avoid using inaccurate and inflammatory terms such as ‘Islamic terrorists,’ ‘jihadists,’ or ‘radical Islamic terrorists.’”

College students hold dueling demonstrations amid Israel’s war with Hamas in April 2024. Photo: Vincent Ricci via Reuters Connect

The vast majority of Jewish students around the world resort to hiding their Jewishness and support for Israel on university campuses to avoid becoming victims of antisemitism, according to a new survey conducted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS).

A striking 78 percent of Jewish students have opted to “conceal” their religious affiliation “at least once” over the past year, the study found, with Jewish women being more likely than men to do so. Meanwhile, 81 percent of those surveyed hid their support for Zionism, a movement which promotes Jewish self-determination and the existence of the State of Israel, at least once over the past year.

Among all students, Orthodox Jews reported the highest rates of “different treatment,” with 41 percent saying that their peers employ alternative social norms in dealing with them.

“This survey exposes a devastating reality: Jewish students across the globe are being forced to hide fundamental aspects of their identity just to feel safe on campus,” ADL senior vice president of international affairs Marina Rosenberg said in a statement. “When over three-quarters of Jewish students feel they must conceal their religious and Zionist identity for their own safety, the situation is nothing short of dire. As the academic year begins, the data provides essential insights to guide university leadership in addressing this campus crisis head on.”

The survey said additionally that 34 percent of Jewish students reported knowing a Jewish peer whom someone “physically threatened on campus,” while 29 percent reported difficulties in attaining religious accommodations from their professors, confirming months of reports that Jewish students face both social and institutional discrimination at universities.

Tuesday’s survey comes amid a flood of data illustrating the severity of the campus antisemitism crisis.

Earlier this month, another survey commissioned by the ADL and the Academic Engagement Network (AEN) found that 73 percent of Jewish faculty witnessed their colleagues engaging in antisemitic activity, and a significant percentage named the Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP) group as the force driving it.

Of those aware of an FSJP chapter on their campus, the vast majority of respondents reported that the chapter engaged in anti-Israel programming (77.2 percent), organized anti-Israel protests and demonstrations (79.4 percent), and endorsed anti-Israel divestment campaigns (84.8 percent).

Additionally, 50 percent of respondents said that anti-Zionist faculty have established de facto, or “shadow,” boycotts of Israel on campus even in the absence of formal declaration or recognition of one by the administration. Among those who reported the presence of such a boycott, 55 percent noted that departments avoid co-sponsoring events with Jewish or pro-Israel groups and 29.5 percent said this policy is also subtly enacted by sabotaging negotiations for partnerships with Israeli institutions. All the while, such faculty fostered an environment in which Jewish professors were “maligned, professionally isolated, and in severe cases, doxxed or harassed” as they assumed the right to determine for their Jewish colleagues what constitutes antisemitism.

Administrative officials responded inconsistently to antisemitic hatred, affording additional rationale to the downstream of hatred. More than half (53.1 percent) of respondents described their university’s response to incidents involving antisemitism or anti-Israel bias as “very” or “somewhat” unhelpful, and a striking 77.3 percent thought the same of their professional academic associations.

In total, alleged faculty misconduct and administrative dereliction combined to degrade the professional experiences of Jewish professors, as many reported “worsening mental and physical health, increased self-censorship, fear for personal safety,” and a sense that the destruction of their careers and reputations was imminent.

Higher education institutions in the US are showing some signs of recognizing the problem.

This week, administrators from across the US will amass in Washington, DC for a three-day symposium on combating campus antisemitism. Organized by AEN, which promotes academic freedom unfettered by boycotts and ideology, the event will be attended by administrators representing dozens of institutions such as Harvard University, Barnard College, and George Washington University, all of which have drawn scrutiny for responding to campus antisemitism in ways that critics — including Jewish community leaders and senior US officials — have described as insufficient if not dismissive.

Dozens of conversations and seminars will be held over the three-day event, with many being led by AEN faculty, as well as staff from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and experts from the Jewish Federations of North America and the American Jewish Committee.

“College administrators are the ones tasked with recognizing and addressing antisemitism on campus, as well as setting the tone for behavioral expectations and campus culture,” Miriam Elman, executive director of AEN, said in a statement. “Today’s antisemitism, though, often takes forms that can be less familiar or harder to identify, making it all the more important to provide campus leaders with the tools, training, and support they need to recognize and respond effectively.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.