Spurilous anti-Israel resolution defeated at the National Education Association Conference

With over 3 million members, The National Education Association (NEA)is the nation's largest professional employee organization. The NEA is  committed to advancing the cause of public education,  from pre-school to university graduate programs. 

The National Education Association Representative Assembly is the highest decision-making body within the  NEA. With over 8,000 delegates, the RA is also the world’s largest democratic deliberative body.  

This year, the RA met in Houston to discuss issues vital to the health of the nations public education system, and to set policy for the year ahead.

And of course, they had to discuss Israel. 

A horribly biased and one-sided anti-Israel resolution was introduced at this years conference.

Business Item #26 from this week's conference: 

NEA will use existing digital communication to develop and publish resources to educate members and the general public on the apartheid, atrocities, and gross violations of human rights of Palestinian children and families by the State of Israel, funded directly by the United States.

NEA will publish an article in the NEA Today on the work that is being done by our members and organizations fighting for the rights of Palestinian children and families, such as but not limited to: Parents Against Child Detention, HaMoked-Center for the Defense of the Individual, Defense for Children International-Palestine, American Friends Service Committee, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Jews Against Anti-Muslim Racism, and Jewish Voice for Peace.

NEA will partner with the No Way to Treat Child Campaign to pressure the Israeli government to end the detention and abuse of Palestinian children.

Rationale/Background

The NEA must oppose the detainment, incarceration, torture, family separation, and murder of children or their families at the hands of the United States, domestically as well as globally.

Contact

Erika Strauss Chavarria - MD

Ultimately, the one-sided resolution was defeated- it was estimated that the proposal would cost an additional $54,000 and could not be accomplished with current NEA staff and resources available in the 2019 budget.

Expect more of this.  With 27 states (and counting) taking a legal stand against BDS, expect new and even more underhanded ways to push an anti-Israel agenda through our community organizations.

UPDATE
The Elder of Ziyon reminds us that this is the second time an anti-Israel resolution has been brought to the NEA:

Israel haters try to weaponize National Education Association convention; conference materials refer to Israel as guilty of "apartheid" (@NEAToday)

...The proposed 2019 item is far worse, and insidious even in its defeat. supposes that Israel is an apartheid state, and this lie was published in conference materials and at the NEA website as fact. The existence of the business item itself is offensive; akin to a business item denouncing black people for being lazy - even though such an item would soundly defeated, its very existence and being allowed as a business agenda item is a means of mainstreaming lies.

No doubt the bylaws of the NEA do not force fact checking on agenda items, because no one envisioned attempts by special interest groups to use the NEA as a means to mainstream hate. However, teachers themselves should be cognizant of how the very existence of such an item, read by millions of interested union members, is effective anti-Israel propaganda and it makes it easier for next year's anti-Israel resolutions.

These lies, published as fact in an education convention, must be called out and the procedures that allow such lies to be published in official assembly materials must be modified to stop the NEA from unwittingly being a vehicle to push hate.