Wiesenthal Center Demands LA Unified School District To End “Anti-Israel Mideast Workshop For Teachers”

October 24, 2017

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is calling on the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to end workshops on the Middle East that are being jointly sponsored by the district and the teachers union, UTLA, as part of a professional development program for teachers and administrators. 

In a protest to Dr. Michelle King, the LAUSD Superintendent, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Wiesenthal Center and Director of its Global Social Action Agenda and Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, the Center’s Director of Interfaith Affairs, charged that the workshops held the last two weekends, were led by the United States Fellowship of Reconciliation (FORUS), a group they say advocates for the anti-Semitic and anti-peace Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns against the State of Israel and that FORUS is closely aligned with CAIR, a US-based organization that has been linked to Hamas terrorist group.

The SWC officials say that a handout from the workshop was “hopelessly biased and fraught”, making outrageous allegations that Israel’s defensive victory in the Six Day War of 1967 was part of a plan to expand its territory and that Israel treats non-violent opposition as a threat to its security. The handout also failed to include years of terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens—Jewish, Muslim, and Christian--by the PLO and Hamas.

Rabbis Cooper and Adlerstein concluded by demanding that the school district, “suspend this program immediately, reevaluate its content and drop the LAUSD’s involvement with it permanently,”

For more information, please contact the Center's Communications Department, 310-553-9036. Join the Center on Facebook, www.facebook.com/simonwiesenthalcenter, or follow @simonwiesenthal for news updates sent direct to your Twitter feed.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).

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