The program begins at 12:00 PM US EDT; 18:00 Europe;19:00 Palestine Time.
Please join us for a conversation with Nora Lester Murad and Alice Rothchild about their recently published Toolkit to Defend K-12 Educators and Librarians Against False Accusations of Antisemitism.
“t took nearly two years for Alice Rothchild and I to finish this toolkit . It is written for K-12 teachers and librarians and the people tasked with supporting them, like administrators and unions. It is based on many interviews with experts about the weaponization of antisemitism and with a range of educators who have experienced these attacks.,” Nora Lester Murad.
False accusations of antisemitism can take many forms
A patron may complain to a library saying that a display is antisemitic for including information about Israeli occupation. An interest group may present a petition to a school board accusing a student group of antisemitism for an article in the school newspaper about Islamophobia. The target may be an educator, a parent volunteer, or a book. The complaint may relate to something that happened in the classroom, or something "extra" like how a teacher dresses. Or the complaint may be about something that happened outside of school, like a librarian who was seen at a protest with a sign about apartheid that somebody deemed hateful. Or a random person may fling outrageous accusations on social media. Or there may be an actual lawsuit complaining about a district-wide hostile environment for Jews. Or a report may be called into the police suggesting that Arabs are dangerous. All of these efforts to silence Palestinians and their narratives are intended to create fear so that people won't talk about Palestine, can’t learn about Palestine, and won’t be informed enough to formulate their own opinions.
Nora Lester Murad
About Nora Lester Murad
Nora Lester Murad is a writer, educator, and activist. She co-authored Rest in My Shade: A Poem About Roots, and edited I Found Myself in Palestine: Stories of Love and Renewal From Around the Globe. From a Jewish American family, Nora married a Palestinian Muslim and raised three daughters in the West Bank. She posts her writing at on her blog, “The View From My Window in Palestine.“
Alice Rothchild
About Alice Rothchild
Alice Rothchild was born in Boston in 1948 and grew up in Sharon, Massachusetts, moving to Brookline, Massachusetts for her last year of high school. The town of Sharon featured a history dating back to the revolutionary war, a spring-fed lake that attracted decades of summer visitors, and a rapidly growing Jewish population in the 1950s and 1960s. Alice’s family joined the local conservative synagogue, Temple Israel, where she attended Hebrew School and participated in an early version of a Bat Mitzvah. Her mother was very involved in teaching and writing about Jewish issues and the family made frequent pilgrimages to Brooklyn, New York, to visit family and observe Jewish holidays with her Orthodox grandparents.