This article was originally published in LA Progressive on June 6, 2025. See LA Progressive for a video interview with me about the topic. You can listen to the article below here.
Erasure and censorship of Palestinians and Palestinian narratives is a denial of Palestinian humanity.
There is a veritable battle in US schools over if and how to teach about the Middle East. But the disagreement isn’t between people who want to teach a pro-Palestinian view and those who want to teach a pro-Israeli view. It is between those who want to teach the truth and those who want to silence it.
“Teach Truth” is a phrase and movement that emerged in response to right-wing efforts to silence teaching about racism in the United States. The driving idea is that if students know the truth about historical structural inequality, they will understand that it doesn’t serve their interests, no matter who they are, and they will be motivated to change it. In a society that peddles falsehoods to perpetuate the status quo, the truth is disruptive, even dangerous, to those who benefit from inequality.
More than half of all K-12 students in the United States already study in schools where law restricts the teaching of the truth. In Florida, for example, there are five books that if mentioned by a teacher constitute a felony violation punishable by up to five years in prison. When Palestine comes up in the classroom, teachers may be smeared by false accusations of antisemitism, causing severe disruption to their careers and lives. And given recent abductions and deportations of students and teachers by the Trump administration, it seems sure that attacks on teaching and learning will increase.
The purpose of this censorship is to prevent students from accessing materials and inquiry that would support their critical thinking. Looked at this way, censorship of Black history clearly doesn’t harm only Black students, it harms all students, and the same dynamic can be seen in the fight over the teaching of current events in Palestine/Israel.
Erasure and censorship of Palestinians and Palestinian narratives is a denial of Palestinian humanity. Palestinian students and teachers who are dehumanized in K-12 schools are harmed, and their dehumanization leads to more harm, including the active and passive support of U.S. taxpayers in the 19-month-long slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Moreover, students who do not learn Palestinian history, who do not respect the humanity of Palestinians, and who cannot engage respectfully with Palestinian narratives cannot be effective U.S. or global citizens. But too many teachers still think that teaching about Palestinians is somehow anti-Jewish, as if legitimacy is a fixed resource and any inclusion of Palestinians comes at the expense of Jews.
