We know in a general sense that the progressive mindset is antisemitic while pretending to be only anti-Zionist, but it is relatively rare that people can point to specific examples of blatant antisemitism from the woke crowd that makes that link explicit.
A lawsuit filed last year against the Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD) by the ADL, AJC and others now includes discovered text messages between members of the district and consultants they hired for create an ethnic studies curriculum leave no doubt whatsoever that these people are antisemitic to the core.
They disparage Jews as Jews. They intentionally schedule meetings on Jewish holidays to keep Jews from knowing what they are doing. They insult, and laugh about insulting, Jews from both the school district and the larger Jewish community.
Here is part of the text of the lawsuit, along with examples of text messages found during discovery:
For four years and counting, the Santa Ana Unified School District (“SAUSD”) has unlawfully worked behind closed doors to create a mandatory ethnic studies program for its students, and has done so with the deliberate goal of avoiding public scrutiny of its work. In June 2020, the SAUSD Board of Education (the “Board”) created an Ethnic Studies Steering Committee (the “Steering Committee” or “Committee”) consisting of two Board members and several SAUSD staff members. The Board created the Steering Committee—a legislative body under California’s open meeting law, the Brown Act—to develop ethnic studies courses it mandated for students. ...[I]t has been dominated by two Board members—along with their personal friend, an ideologue paranoid of dissenting views—who have run it “like a dictator” to push forward their specific vision. As such, the Board rubber-stamped the courses created by the Committee in violation of the Act....Discovery in this case has revealed not only how SAUSD failed to comply with the Brown Act, but also why SAUSD kept the creation of the ethnic studies curricula behind closed doors. SAUSD did not want members of the Jewish community or the public generally to know what was going on. The Steering Committee sought to exclude any voices—especially Jewish ones—that might stray from so-called “liberated” ethnic studies orthodoxy, which classifies Jewish people as “White—regardless of their actual skin color or historical perceptions of Jews as non-white—and the Jewish people as oppressors....Petitioners have uncovered deeply troubling evidence of extreme bias and antisemitism within the Steering Committee. For example:• In text messages, two senior SAUSD officials discussed scheduling ethnic studies course approvals by the full Board on a Jewish holiday so Jews could not attend and comment on the course content. One stated: “on a good note…no public comment on ethnic studies. We may need to use Passover to get all new courses approved.” The other official responded: “that’s actually a good strategy.”• In discussing the removal of the only Jewish member from the Steering Committee, a Committee leader referred to him in a text message as a “colonized Jewish mind” and a “f---ing baby” for expressing concerns over antisemitism on the Steering Committee.• In discussing a potential meeting with the Jewish Federation of Orange County, a Committee leader (and SAUSD curriculum specialist) said “someone has to guide [Committee members] or they will cave in to . . . the racist Zionists.” . Despite using such language to describe Jews who support the State of Israel, this same Committee member refused to call Hamas a terrorist organization even after it perpetrated the horrific terrorist attack of October 7, 2023, arguing that it would be “dehumaniz[ing]” to call Hamas fighters “terrorists.”• Senior members of the Steering Committee reportedly stated, among other things, that “Jews are not a disadvantaged ethnic group in the U.S. because they were never slaves,” that “Jews greatly benefit from white privilege, so they have it better,” and that “we don’t need to give both sides. We only support the oppressed, and Jews are the oppressors.”• When made aware of Jewish community concerns, Committee members wrote in an official agenda of a (private) subcommittee meeting how to “address the Jewish question.”• Without conducting any due diligence or a competitive bidding process, the Steering Committee retained an external consultant to train SAUSD teachers on ethnic studies. SAUSD hired this consultant despite a serious prior domestic violence charge and unhinged social media rantings in which he used antisemitic tropes about “Zionist control,” claimed that “the Zionist Jewish Caucus hijacked Ethnic Studies,” and asked “how TF can anyone support the settler colonial state of Israel?”
Later it adds how this affected Jewish staff members:
The antisemitism was palpable to Jewish staff members at SAUSD. The lone Jewish Committee member texted that he was “sick of [Employee 1]’s thinly veiled antisemitism.” He also expressed dismay when, just days after the October 7 attack, Committee members “ma[de] it sound like Jews never lived in Israel or had any history in the region. Just random Jewish [Z]ionists suddenly deciding to take over Palestine.” . He reported how Committee members spread an antisemitic myth about a former Israeli prime minister commenting on eating Palestinian children. And when he told his colleagues that their comments were “personally offensive and racist,” he was told to “‘check [his] tone’ so as not to ‘ruin the spirit and mood of the room.’”
Scratch an "anti-Zionist," find an antisemite.
