Hamas’s Ideology Infects the Public Schools [Updated]

The people who endorsed Hamas’s decapitation of infants, mass murders, gang rapes and so on are scattering like cockroaches when the light goes on. One wonders: how could they possibly have been so stupid? The answer is that they are slaves to an ideology that, while preposterous, is common in institutions of “higher” education and other leftist precincts. And, now, in America’s K-12 public schools.

My colleague Bill Walsh explores the point at AmericanExperiment.org:

Apologists for Hamas are using very specific language in their attempt to shift blame for the heinous acts of terrorism committed against Israeli citizens this week. That same language is littered throughout Tim Walz’s draft social studies standards and benchmarks and embedded into the ethnic studies curriculum he is now forcing into every academic subject from kindergarten through high school.

Bill posts a video of a Hamas supporter in New York who explains why she approves of the mass murder of music festival goers:

“These festival goers are not innocent civilians, they are settlers,” she says. “So they deserved it?” she was asked. “Yes, every settler.”

It is a magic word, echoed by the Democratic Socialists of America to explain their support for mass murder:

We, the Twin Cities chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, are heartbroken after watching 2 million Gazans live in the world’s largest open-air prison, where access to basic necessities like medical care and electricity are frequently denied to them by Israel. After seeing our Palestinian siblings be denied movement outside of the prison walls that encircle Gaza. After all the settler-colonial violence and dispossession. After having to repeat that Muslim worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Masjid in Jerusalem have the right to pray and practice their religion without fear of Israeli police and settler violence, harassment, and intimidation. After watching US politicians on all sides of the political spectrum speak cautiously, or not at all, when Israeli settlers use colonial and apartheid laws of the Israeli state to force Palestinians from their homes and ancestral lands but speak with immense force and certainty about the Israeli state’s right to defend itself against Palestinians. After attempts at false equivalencies — when, since 1917, colonial and zionist settler states, and the world’s largest imperial powers, have used Palestine as a site of experimentation in war crimes and atrocities against Palestians simply seeking to live their lives.

These concepts, the intellectual justification for mass murder in Israel, are deeply embedded in the Social Studies standards for K-12 education that Minnesota’s far-left administration is trying to impose on the public schools:

The similarities in the language of this statement and the language of the social studies benchmarks are eerie in light of recent events. If it sounds like the same people are writing both, it’s because they are! The social studies standards committee appointed by Walz was dominated by people who share this Leftist ideology.

Settler colonialism appears in the standards eight different times in seven different benchmarks:

5.4.21.1 Explain the religious, political and economic reasons for the movement of people from Europe to the Americas and examine the impact of colonization and settler colonialism on Indigenous peoples.

6.4.18.2 Describe the varied and diverse interactions of Indigenous people, European/American traders and settler-colonists in the upper Mississippi River region. Examine how settler colonialism conflicted with Dakota and Anishinaabe ways of life.

9.4.18.9 U.S. History Era 2: Settler Colonialism and Atlantic Slavery. Evaluate European, Indigenous and African diasporic historical narratives about colonialism and slavery.

9.4.19.8 U.S. History Era 2: Settler Colonialism and Atlantic Slavery. Identify how Indigenous people built new coalitions and developed a diverse set of strategies in response to European settler colonialism. Examine how Indigenous perspectives and strategies may have changed over time.

9.4.20.8 U.S. History Era 2: Settler Colonialism and Atlantic Slavery.

It goes on and on. In today’s left-wing lexicon, settler colonialism is the greatest evil in world history. It justifies mass murder and every other crime. And in the scheme of things, Israel is a relatively minor instance of “settler colonialism.” Our own country is the one they are really gunning for. And this is the ideology in which your children are likely being trained, if they attend public schools anywhere in the U.S.

UPDATE: David Strom adds:

Every time you hear “decolonize,” “diversity,” or “systemic whatever,” know that what they are saying is that they support revolutionary violence. That is literally what they mean.

That is right. And those themes are all over public school education, being massively promoted by the teachers’ unions.