November 13, 2024
Dear DPAC Executive,
We are a group of Jewish parents who are members of Independent Jewish Voices, a national volunteer-based grassroots organization with 22 chapters across Canada. We co-wrote a letter on Oct. 18, 2024 with Parents for Palestine expressing our concerns regarding the selection of Project Shema as a provider of an antisemitism workshop for DPAC members. We never received an acknowledgement or a reply.
We attended the workshop and would like to offer our reflections. We would like to invite you once again to respond to our concerns by:
- Meeting with our group to have a more robust discussion on how the district can address antisemitism and anti-Palestinian racism;
- Creating additional opportunities for education and dialogue on antisemitism that address the concerns we’ve raised; and
- Inviting Parents 4 Palestine to present on Anti-Palestinian Racism that Palestinian children and teachers face within Vancouver schools to DPAC.
As we noted in our previous letter, antisemitism education is critical work that needs to take place. As parents of Jewish children in VSB schools, we are acutely invested in addressing antisemitism in schools. We believe this work must be anchored in anti-oppressive analysis and recognize the intertwined experience of Jewish and Palestinian children in VSB schools.
In the workshop, Project Shema emphasized that we need to engage in dialogue and avoid dehumanizing language that vilifies Jewish people in conversations about Israel and Palestine. We agree that antisemitic tropes have no place in our schools or our community work. Yet Project Shema’s messaging reinforces precisely what makes mainstream definitions of antisemitism damaging and dangerous to not only Jewish and Palestinian children, but all kids engaging with this difficult topic in schools:
- Erasure of Palestinian history: Project Shema presented a history of Israel that erases a critical detail: The land which is now occupied by Israel was not empty. As described by the United Nations, Palestinians were murdered and unjustly expelled from their land with the participation of Jewish militias in a war that has resulted in “the permanent displacement of more than half of the Palestinian population.” These borders continue to be illegally violated through violent settler expansion. We are Jewish people and we ask you to consider whether the retelling of a history that erases the murder and mass dispossession of a people from their land would be permissible in any other context. Our children deserve a full and accurate history and it causes harm to all of us when only one obfuscated version of history is shared.
- Conflation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism: The presenter told us that criticizing Israel is not inherently antisemitic. We agree. Yet he stopped short of saying that criticizing the existence of the state of Israel is not inherently antisemitic either. In fact, the presenter said that “when you say Jews shouldn’t have a state, it becomes complicated.” This is an important distinction, given that this Jewish state was created and is maintained through displacement, violence, and ongoing occupation of Palestinian people.
- The notion that Israel is essential to Jewish safety: While not explicit, Project Shema presented a “hidden curriculum.” This is a curriculum that teaches Jewish parents and children that given the historical cycle of antisemitism and the social construction of our race, we will never be safe from antisemitism. Project Shema reinforces the Israeli lobbyist position that Jewish people require their own state in order to be safe from inevitable harm. This curriculum teaches Jewish children that they should not imagine a world where they are truly free of oppression and racism in all its forms, and that they need borders and walls to be safe — even if those walls come at the cost of denying Palestinians their same right to safety and self determination.
We can, and must, model to our children how to engage in accurate and compassionate conversations about historical and present day antisemitism and we believe this can happen without erasing Palestinian history and compounding anti-Palestinian racism. Our children will uncover this history on their own and may learn, through this experience, that they cannot trust their parents or teachers.
As mentioned, we never received a response to our letter, nor were we given the opportunity to engage with the Project Shema presenter directly. We are aware you shared a letter publicly that misrepresents us as a “fringe group” that endorses violence and antisemitism when a journalist asked you to respond to this letter. We were shocked and appalled by this characterization, and perplexed by your decision to share this letter as your response to media.
We are members of the Jewish community, some of us are members of local synagogues , and we have children in Vancouver schools. We have endorsed calls for a ceasefire. We call for the end of a genocide that has killed over 13,000 children and is endangering “nearly the entire population.”
It is imperative to our safety that the distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism be made and that education about antisemitism does not cause further harm. Jewish children whose parents are anti-Zionist are deeply harmed when it is incorrectly assumed that they support Israel. Palestinian children are deeply harmed when speaking about their history is falsely described as antisemitic. All children are harmed when they learn that they cannot criticize Israel — its actions or its existence — without being labeled as antisemitic and cannot trust us to teach them the whole story.
As we wrote above, we would like to invite you to respond to our concerns by:
- Meeting with our group to have a more robust discussion on how the district can address antisemitism and anti-Palestinian racism.
- Creating additional opportunities for education and dialogue on antisemitism that address the concerns we’ve raised.
- Inviting Parents 4 Palestine to present on Anti-Palestinian Racism that Palestinian children and teachers face within Vancouver schools to DPAC.
Sincerely,
The Independent Jewish Voices Parents’ Caucus