Why is UTLA pondering an anti-Israel resolution?
The union that represents teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District has quite an agenda.
Last year, United Teachers Los Angeles released a report calling for a long list of new government policies and programs, including “Medicare for all,” as a condition for “equitably” reopening the public schools.
This year, the union is going global in its ambitions. UTLA’s leadership is planning to vote in September on a resolution calling on the United States government to cut off all aid to Israel and endorsing the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” effort targeting the Jewish state.
Some of UTLA’s chapter chairs have already voted in support of this resolution, supposedly in response to Israel’s latest effort to defend itself militarily against Hamas rockets raining down on its civilian population, but attacking Israel more generally for what the resolution terms “apartheid and war crimes.”
All sovereign nations have the right to defend themselves militarily, without the permission of any other nation or world body, when they are attacked militarily. There’s no legal or moral obligation to hold back and give the enemy time to reload and attack again.
The teachers’ union may want to inform its members that in August 2005, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon forcibly evacuated Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and bulldozed their homes so Palestinians could have the land. He said it was impossible to watch it without tears in his eyes, but he insisted that the pullout from Gaza would make Israel safer.
Gaza has been governed by Palestinians ever since. In January 2006, Hamas won a surprise victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections and has remained in control without any further elections. Here’s something for UTLA to add to the lesson plan: Hamas has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, the United
Kingdom and the Organization of American States.
OAS Secretary-General Luis Almagro of Uruguay wrote in May, “The recent attacks launched by Hamas against the Israeli civilian population undoubtedly constitute attacks of a terrorist nature.”
According to its own charter, Hamas is committed to the destruction of Israel.
Space limitations do not allow for a full listing of all the wars, both conventional and terrorist, waged against Israel since its founding in 1948, or a full listing of the peace efforts that were rejected by Palestinian leaders including Yasser Arafat, who walked away from the offer of a Palestinian state in a land-for-peace deal brought to the table by thenIsraeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak at the Camp David Summit in 2000.
What is this strange affinity that the teachers’ union feels for Hamas, a terrorist organization that targets Israeli civilians and holds Palestinian civilians as virtual hostages by launching its rockets from civilian areas?
That brings us back to the topic of education in Los Angeles.
UTLA has consistently fought against the reopening of schools and used the pandemic as leverage to achieve contract demands between contracts. It is currently in “negotiations” with the Los Angeles Unified School District over whether and how the public schools will be open in the fall.
The most recent school reopening agreement between the district and the union expires on June 30. The district intends to have most students and staff back in the school buildings for in-person instruction when the fall semester begins. UTLA is holding out. The teachers’ union hasn’t yet agreed to reduce the 6-foot social-distancing protocol to 3 feet or less, a determining factor for whether schools can physically accommodate full in-person instruction or must rely on hybrid learning.
“We are pressing for a new agreement that locks in most of the concrete, enforceable COVID protocols from our current agreement that have proven to keep students, staff and families safe,” said UTLA president Cecily Myart-Cruz during one of her recent weekly updates.
The union has already demanded and received an agreement to hire 3,000 more union members, and UTLA also negotiated a monthly child-care payment of $500 to school employees with young children.
As the state reopens, union bargaining over LAUSD reopening continues, with students and parents as hostages. Perhaps UTLA supports Hamas as a thank you for borrowing a page from its playbook.