Portland Teachers Union Promotes Curriculum of Radical Anti-Israel Activism

In one of the most shocking examples of left-wing brainwashing seen in the American education system to date, the Portland Association of Teachers, an affiliate of an Oregon teachers’ union that has 4,500 members, was just exposed for creating a blatantly anti-Israel and anti-American guidebook for kids as young as four.

The curriculum, which is publicly available online, is entitled “Teach Palestine! Resources for Educators in Portland Public Schools.” Among other grotesque propaganda and glaring falsehoods, it includes lesson plans for kids in grades K-12 that teach students that Israel is a “settler-colonialist” nation and that antisemitism “originat[ed] in European Christianity.”

Notably, the worksheets and reading guides for the curriculum attempt to delineate between “Jews” and “Zionists” – essentially a distinction without a difference given that more than half of the world’s Jewish population currently resides in Israel, and the vast majority of Jews outside Israel support the Jewish state and its war against Hamas.

In the curriculum’s “Pre-K” section, the teacher’s union provides educational material that introduces Palestinians as “innocent” and Zionists as “bullies.” It also provides a “sensory guide” for attending Palestinian protests, workbooks from the “Palestinian feminist collective,” and several stories in which “Zionist bullies” steal from innocent Palestinian children.

A suggested reading for kids aged Pre-K through second grade is “Let’s Go To Palestine.” In that picture book, kids are told that “Palestine is currently under a brutal occupation by Israel,” and that “we pray for a truly free Palestine so that all the Palestinians can prosper and we can all visit freely.” Another lesson plan teaches students that “Palestinians have been working to be safe and free in their homes for a long time, even when Israel makes unfair, unsafe, and hurtful rules.”

One of the book suggestions for elementary-aged students is “A Child’s View from Gaza: Art and the Fight Against Censorship.” The book features images of villains wearing Jewish stars violently attacking and dropping bombs on houses and buildings full of innocent people. One of the drawings shows a bomb with American and Jewish flags on it landing in front of a young boy and his father on a field of blood.

Notably, a significant amount of the curriculum appears to be adapted from the organization “Woke Kindergarten.” This group achieved infamy earlier this year when it was revealed that San Francisco had spent $500,000 implementing Woke Kindergarten teachings in classrooms only to see academic performance plummet.

While the Portland Association of Teachers attempted to bury the reference material for their anti-Israel curriculum, the reading lists offered in the Portland curriculum and on Woke Kindergarten’s “Teach Palestine” web page are virtually identical. The Portland school district’s “sensory guide for kids” how-to on attending an anti-Israel protest is also lifted almost directly from Woke Kindergarten’s library of content.

For older students, the Portland curriculum recommends that teachers share “keffiyehs, flags, and protest signs” with the children to support “Palestinian liberation.” High school teachers are instructed to lead their classrooms in clearly antisemitic chants, including “We salute all our martyrs! mothers, fathers, sons and daughters”; “There is only one solution: Intifada! Revolution”; “Resistance is justified when people are occupied”; and “Biden, Harris you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!”

Just in time for pride month, the curriculum also includes a lesson for high schoolers on “Queer Voices From The Fight For Palestine Liberation.” Never mind the fact that being gay is punishable by death in Palestine.

For students of all ages, the curriculum includes lessons comparing the supposed oppression of Palestinians in Israel to the treatment of Native Americans in the United States. For kindergartners, teachers are supposed to put up a map of Palestine in which areas “where Palestinian land was taken away to make Israel” are shaded in black and a map of the United States with “Indigenous land” colored in as well. The five- and six-year-olds are supposed to compare the two maps and say what “looks same-same.”

Following immediate and intense public backlash after several news outlets reported on the curriculum, the teacher’s union pulled the lesson plans from their website last week. However, union head Angela Bonilla told OregonLive that a guide for teachers entitled “Know Your Rights! Teaching & Organizing for Palestine within Portland Public Schools” will remain up on the site. The union has also claimed that the district has been “actively censoring teachers,” and has in response published a legal guide for how teachers can keep using the curriculum.

Thus far, the Portland Public School District itself has lived up to its reputation as one of the most left-wing districts in America by failing to condemn the curriculum or reassure students and parents that it is not being taught in classrooms.

For Americans wondering how the students who occupied college campuses this spring became so deluded and radicalized, Portland is providing a real-world glimpse into the left’s indoctrination machine.

Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.