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By Chris B.
BEACON HILL, MA – In 2024, as Israel escalated its genocide in Gaza and the political establishment ran cover, State Senator John Velis (D – Westfield) led Massachusetts legislators to authorize a state-level Special Commission on Combating Antisemitism. The Commission was charged with holding public hearings, reporting its findings, and recommending how to combat antisemitism to the Legislature by the end of November 2025.
The amendment passed in a political environment where hate crimes and violence against minority groups, including antisemitism, are rising. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), often seen as an authority on antisemitism, claims 2024 as a high-water mark for antisemitic incidents recorded in a year. But that statistic is misleading. The ADL, a pro-Israel organization so explicitly Zionist and outwardly political that Wikipedia no longer considers it a reliable source for citations, equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism. But while antisemitism is form of white supremacist hatred against Jews historically tied with the political Right (e.g., Hitler’s Third Reich or auto tycoon Henry Ford), critics of Zionism look to a settler colonial history in the government in Israel, which violently enforces what it sees as a divine right to a religiously segregated ethnostate, wherein the indigenous (Palestinian) people are annihilated.
The Massachusetts Teachers Union (MTA), Massachusetts’ largest union by membership, is no stranger to ire from the ruling elite, Republican and Democrat. Back-to-back victorious state ballot campaigns spearheaded by the MTA – the Fair Share Amendment in 2022, and removing the MCAS graduation requirement in 2024 – have cemented public educators as a powerful force for the Commonwealth’s working class. When the Globe routinely cites Boston-based “free market” think tank Pioneer Institute against teachers’ unions and public education, and Democratic Governor Maura Healey union busts striking local educators desperate for student resources, the ideological overlap of the settler-colonial (“Pioneer”) project and the anti-union project, both of the bipartisan ruling class, reveals itself.
Special Commission on a Zionist Mission
From its very inception, it was clear that the Special Commission was, in reality, a Zionist political project cloaked in virtuous language. Activists were quick to criticize the Special Commission for being a Trojan horse for anti-Palestinian repression during its founding. Sixty-four organizations, including Jewish Voice for Peace, the Boston Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), UAW Local 2322, and 1,100 individuals, signed onto a June 2024 letter to the legislature requesting that the budget amendment authorizing the Special Commission not pass.
Written signatories also cited a lack of public input, the Special Commission failing to incorporate antisemitism into a generally anti-racist framework, and its adoption of the controversial, ADL-aligned International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition, which considers some criticisms of the state of Israel as a form of anti-Jewish hate, has far-reaching implications on education policy, civil rights protections, and the expansion of Massachusetts’ hate crimes statute.
Concerns about Israel’s influence over the Special Commission are well-founded. A June 2024 webinar on antisemitism in Mass. public schools, hosted by the Israeli-American Civil Action Network (ICAN) where Sen. Velis was a panelist, was sponsored by extreme Zionist groups such as StandWithUs, the Consulate General of Israel to New England, CAMERA Education Institute, and Christians and Jews United for Israel.
The webinar was exclusively focused on the alleged antisemitism of the Massachusetts Teachers’ Association (MTA). The presentation came from a group of Zionist rank-and-file MTA members calling themselves Massachusetts Educators Against Antisemitism (MEAA) who have worked to stomp out advocacy for Palestinians in Massachusetts and their union.
Sen. Velis has been on no fewer than three trips to Israel paid for by Israel-affiliated organizations. He emphasizes that these trips do not influence his credibility as Commission co-chair, since he claims to have also spoken to Palestinians on these trips. Still, in an October 2024 panel hosted by ICAN, Velis expressed doubt about well-documented Israeli apartheid and human rights violations. He then waxed about his experience on a tour of an Israeli air missile battery during his latest trip, commenting on the attractiveness of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) soldiers: “I’m thinking it’s gonna be a bunch of U.S. service members coming out, in my mind what U.S. service members look like…and please don’t take this the wrong way…but five of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in my life walk out…and I couldn’t tell you the first thing about the Iron Dome, because you know.”
Working Mass applauds Senator Velis for his even-keeled assessment of the situation in Palestine.
Special Commission vs. The MTA
Sen. Velis’s amendment, passed last spring, also instructs the Mass. Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) to create antisemitism educational curricula for Massachusetts public schools. Under this pretense, the Commission summoned MTA President Max Page and Lexington High teacher Jessica Antoline to testify on February 10th, 2025.
It quickly became clear that the hearing was a setup. Almost immediately, the testimony became an interrogation. What was advertised to MTA leadership as a good-faith dialogue regarding the resource page turned into a McCarthyist inquisition of the MTA, aiming to corner Page and Antoline into “gotcha” soundbites over any good-faith discussion.
The Special Commission’s interrogation focused on the MTA’s internal list of resources for educators to use to teach a balanced approach to Israel/Palestine with respect to Palestinians’ self-determination. A democratic and popular MTA resolution led to the creation of the list. Sources in MTA tell Working Mass that over 1000 rank-and-file members and the MTA’s Board of Directors supported the resolution. Retired librarian and MTA member Sue Doherty said that since “most teachers are terrified to teach about this topic,” the resource list was broadly welcomed.
The Special Commission’s co-chair presented a list of images retrieved from secondary links embedded within the resource list and repeatedly demanded that President Page denounce them as antisemitic. He repeatedly ignored Ms. Antoline’s request to present her testimony, pushing it after the one-hour mark. Images selected included an image of Joe Biden with “serial killer” superimposed over him and another image saying “Zionists Fuck Off.” These images were not explicitly provided to teachers or students, but were found uploaded to some of the websites on the resource list. The individual images were presented to demonstrate an “anti-Israel” bias within the MTA, and to create an impression that the MTA is encouraging Massachusetts teachers to indoctrinate their students with antisemitic beliefs.
A graphic published by the pro-Palestine rank-and-file caucus of MTA members demonstrates the Commission’s cherry picking. Image source: MTA Rank & File for Palestine
The Special Commission’s hearing was not expected, but not surprising, as rank-and-file MTA members have self-organized a powerful pro-Palestine caucus within the union, culminating in a successful resolution to divest their pension fund from military contractors. A simple Google search of ‘MTA antisemitism’ reveals countless articles demonstrating a concerted effort by Zionist organizations to punish the MTA for its pro-Palestine advocacy. The Free Press, an outfit of the Israel hawk Bari Weiss, summed it up in an article titled “Hamassachusetts”.
In the wake of the Special Commission’s interrogation, reactionary forces have capitalized on the MTA’s public flogging to attack public-sector unions writ large. These anti-labor efforts align with Trump’s attacks on federal workers, as well as long-standing warfare against teachers through efforts to privatize public education and kneecap the strongest union in the Commonwealth. The Special Commission is providing them with ammunition to make their case.
Organized Educators Push Back
The attack was, of course, trumped up. Left out of the inquisition were critical facts, like how most of the resources presented were never actually shared with students in the classroom. The resource page includes a plethora of optional – not mandated – resources to utilize to help instructors learn and teach about Palestine. One of these resources was the organization Artists Against Apartheid, without any specific images attached, only a link to the website. The Commission combed through this website and others from the list, found the images it defined as the most antisemitic, and cited them as holistically indicative of the type of resources the MTA provided to its membership.
The Commission cited an infographic about Elbit Systems, an Israeli weapons manufacturer with offices in MA, to attack the MTA. However, the infographic was never included in the MTA’s list of resources, nor could it be directly navigated to from the list. This did not prevent the Special Commission’s co-chair, Rep. Simon Cataldo (D – Concord), from attempting to conflate criticism of an Israeli corporation with antisemitism.
As members of MTA Rank and File for Palestine documented in an exhaustive report they submitted to the Special Commission in response to the February 10th hearing, the co-chairs’ cherry-picked “exhibits” may have criticized Israel and/or Zionism, but they were not antisemitic. The report also analyzes how the line of questioning and many of the images shown promoted anti-Palestinian racism. Merrie Najimy, former MTA president and organizer with MTA Rank and File for Palestine, also testified:
As an Arab-American educator, I bring to my teaching my own experience with racism, that very racism that I just experienced here. My watch went off, telling me my heart rate was elevated to 122.
Deep connections between Jewish labor and the MTA challenge the Special Commission’s incredulous charge of antisemitism to attack the union. Page himself is the child of two Massachusetts public educators, one of which was a Jewish refugee from WW2-era Nazi terror. And three different MTA locals were recently honored at the New England Jewish Labor Committee’s 2025 Labor Seder.
Image source: Union of Gloucester Educators Instagram
These facts complicate the Special Commission’s politically motivated smear campaign and highlight the absurdity of lecturing the child of Jewish refugees about antisemitism. As President Page continuously reiterated, teachers have the critical thinking skills to understand that a poster saying ‘Zionists Fuck Off’ is not relevant to the classroom. The labor leader argued:
Our highly educated teachers and other education professionals – creative individuals who have dedicated their lives to building a culture of learning for young people – are not robots who would somehow be brainwashed by a single set of resources.
Leaders of Jewish communities have also stepped up against the politically weaponized overreach of the Special Commission. On March 31st, 90 local rabbis and Jewish community leaders wrote arguing that the Special Commission’s activity was contributing to President Trump’s free speech crackdown under the pretense of combating antisemitism.
Elsa Auerbach, a professor emeritus at UMass Boston, MTA member, Boston Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) member, and one of the signatories of the letter, added that the trajectory of the Commission seems like a giant missed opportunity:
I will not project the intent of the Commission. But, Massachusetts has the opportunity to be the model to fight antisemitism in the current historical moment … clearly framed as a Commission which stands against white supremacy… After the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia, I read that some rabbis were saying the suffering of Jews was being co-opted for an antisemitic agenda. That is the framing I’d like to see the commission looking at.
In Defense of Union Democracy and Public Education
Educators are fighting not only to keep the democratic will of their union’s membership respected in the face of the Special Commission’s attack, but also to teach facts. The death count in Gaza is estimated to be over 200,000, more than one in every two buildings is destroyed, and its entire living population is currently on a trajectory to starve to death. Constantly, Palestinians are told to put their lived experience as secondary to narratives mandated by polite society, when the reality is depravity that can never be truly articulated or taught. During a genocide facilitated by our United States government, and with our taxpayer money, it’s no surprise that organized educators are determined to teach the truth. Doherty summed it up:
Silencing the truth about the history of Israel and Palestine and marginalizing the experiences of Palestinian students and their families doesn’t do a thing to help fight antisemitism or make Jewish students safe.
Chris B is a DSA member, public sector union member and contributor to Working Mass.
The post How A Mass. Special Commission Became a Trojan Horse to Crush A Powerful Statewide Educators Union appeared first on Working Mass.
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