Indoctrination High: Bringing Anti-Israel Propaganda to High School

In a country where many high school students cannot even correctly identify the century in which the American Civil War was waged, at least students in Andover High School in Massachusetts will be very familiar with the historical term “ethnic cleansing,” and how the world’s singular and most egregious example of its continued practice is, of course, found in the “apartheid Zionist regime” of Israel. Thanks to the efforts of Ron Francis, an Andover High School physics teacher, students were to have the opportunity of listening to the Leftist, anti-American, anti-Israel view of the “Wheels of Justice” organization, apologists for the Palestinian cause who preach a one-sided message to students that the violent, terror-laden effort of self-determination against the “project”—not State—of Israel is the result, singularly, of the woes of the Middle East.

There was some controversy at the end of October when Andover High’s principal, alerted to the actual nature and content of the Wheels of Justice traveling bus tour, temporarily postponed the visit until other speakers, offering a counterbalance to the dialogue, could be found. Tom Meyers, president of the teacher’s union and an outspoken supporter of Mr. Francis and his views, was “shocked, shocked” by the School’s decision to exclude the lecturers and limit someone’s First Amendment rights, although it is not entirely clear exactly whose rights were being denied. The Constitution protects an individual’s right to express their views, no matter how reprehensible, in what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes termed the broad, public “marketplace of ideas,” but nowhere is it incumbent on any institution, and certainly not public schools, to be forced to sponsor, or provide a public platform for, the ravings of any outside individual, merely because that individual has a message he or she is eager to express.

For now, the Wheels of Justice visit has been shelved, and it was decided by school officials, wisely, to only have the group speak at the High School along with other speakers who could offer opposing viewpoints on the Middle East conflict. No word yet on when that open dialogue will take place, but despite their claim of being peace activists looking for an open, unbiased solution, “to speak honestly and openly about Palestine/Israel,” Wheels’ starting premise is that “the Israeli military occupation” caused “the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to make room for the State of Israel,” that “the roots of the conflict remain,” and they are all the fault and responsibility, in their view, of Israel, through its continued “colonization, occupation, displacement, apartheid and the denial of the right of Palestinian refugees.”

There is, of course, no mention in the Wheels’ language of the intractability of the Arabs in never recognizing, even now, the right or reality of Israel’s existence; their homicidal aggression beginning with the founding of the Jewish state; the Hamas charter which vows to wipe Israel off the map and kill every Jew; or their continued assault on Israel with Quassum rockets, suicide bombers, and genocidal teaching of Jew hatred throughout the Arab world.

While it is still not acceptable in civil social circles to publicly express Jew hatred, at least in America, it has become very convenient for anti-Semites that they are able to express what David Frum has termed their “genocidal liberalism” by aiming their crypto-hatreds at Israel, instead, by relentlessly condemning it and calling for its eradication.

They do so, as Mr. Francis has done, by inviting extremist speakers like Wheels of Justice and spearheading an Israel divestment project in his home town of Somerville.

The fundamental flaw of these extremist views, of course, is that in his obsessive reverence for everything Palestinian and the demonizing of Israel—including the demonizing of Israel—Francis does his students a great disservice by indoctrinating them with a worldview that can, and should, be challenged by different perspectives; in fact, it is a view so intractable that it cannot even be considered a reasonable outlook in a world where balance ought to come into discussions before, and in the place of, rabid ideology.

Such groups conveniently describe themselves as “human rights activists,” even though they seem singularly obsessed with the failings and moral lapses of Israel—and only Israel—among all countries in the world, in many of which civil strife, actual genocide, ethnic purging, enslavement, mass murder, and totalitarianism prevail. “Could the singling out of Israel,” Professor Edward Alexander ironically asks, “possibly have anything to do with the fact that it is a Jewish country?” And one of Wheels of Justice’s own stated missions, that of promoting “solidarity with Iraqis and Palestinians under war and occupation” makes it quite clear that their moral, political, and financial support is committed to supporting, not all parties, but solely the enemies of the United States and Israel.

More important in the context of exposing high school students to incendiary issues of current events is the fundamental question about what role teachers should have, if any, in promoting personal ideology, and in exposing students to one-sided, historically-inaccurate, and debatable views of difficult political issues. Why this particular issue to shove down students’ throats among all the incendiary geopolitical situations on earth? Why the linkage of Israel with the U.S.’s alleged “occupation” of Iraq, together with its anti-American sentiment and its nearly seditious fawning over Iraqi insurgents who murder Americans?

The good news, at least, is that at Andover High School, Mr. Francis teaches physics and not history.