California Teachers Pushed Anti-Israel Views In Classrooms After Oct. 7, Docs Show

California teachers union pushed their views on the Israel-Hamas war on students, posing questions such as “What does Palestinian freedom mean to you?” and “How are you engaged with the Palestinian freedom struggle?” documents shared with The Daily Wire show.

Documents obtained by by Parents Defending Education through a public records request show a sustained effort by California teachers to push anti-Israel views in public schools, particularly after October 7. On October 25, just weeks after Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel, a teacher emailed her students to tell them that she would be speaking before the school board to call “for an end to the invasion and attack on Gaza,” and that “If you’d like to speak out on this important issue you can sign up.”

The following month, Tania Kappner, a teacher and leader of the By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) faction of the National Education Association (NEA), offered extra credit to students who agreed to “use this slide deck to learn more about the current war in Gaza and write a paragraph.” Kappner is a longtime Israel critic who in February communicated with the Revolutionary Community Party, documents show.

“This is yet another data point exposing how the hate we are seeing on college campuses is being taught in K-12 classrooms,” Michele Exner, Senior Advisor at Parents Defending Education, told The Daily Wire. “These radical teachers are using school resources to fuel a disturbing cycle of propaganda and hate that is creating a generation of students filled with antisemitism and anti-America sentiments.”

Kappner is a longtime crusader against Israel, introducing a union resolution in 2021 that said Israel was committing “ethnic cleaning” and calling on the United States to stop “arming and supporting” Israel. Kappner said she was inspired when the longshoremen’s union refused to unload cargo from an Israeli-owned ship in Oakland, which Vice President Kamala Harris considers her hometown.

In February 2024, a representative of the Revolutionary Community Party emailed Kappner — who in 2021 introduced a union resolution that said Israel was committing “ethnic cleaning” — to ask whether the communist group “could visit one of your classes with an overall topic of what a rare time we are facing in the year 2024… from Gaza to the elections.”  Kappner responded, “Just marched in SF today! I no longer work at the high school level and now work online. Glad you are organizing for Gaza, but I don’t have a classroom available.”

Kappner has repeatedly run for the NEA’s executive committee. In 2022, her campaign flier said she wanted “mandatory masking” and to “Defeat the Right-wing Trump movement.” A 2023 flier said she was running for NEA vice president as part of a slate “committed to building integrated, militant, mass action,” and that “Our labor, student, civil rights, and immigrant rights movement must build mass unified action and strike to win.”

Kappner did not respond to questions from The Daily Wire, including a request to view the “slide deck.” Oakland Unified School District spokesman John Sasaki did not respond to questions about how the school district ensures that teachers do not push personal views on students.

Kappner is not the only California teacher found to have pushed anti-Israel views in the classroom. On April 30, Nicoletta Karam — an Oakland teacher who was written books about “The 9/11 Backlash” and “A Cross-Dressing Burlesque Farce”— wrote to colleagues to share “May 1st Day of Solidarity with Palestine Curriculum Materials” for “anyone wanting to give students a May 1st update about Gaza.” The resources included a “Palestine loss of land map,” “college protest and divestment demands,” and a link to Arab news source Al Jazeera about calls to arrest Israel leadership.

Karam and her colleagues worked at Sojourner Truth Independent Study, a K-12 program where Oakland students don’t have to attend school in person at all, and only 12% are proficient in math. Mark Airgood, who ran for NEA president on the BAMN slate, thanked her, and Adarene Hoag, who ran for NEA treasurer on the BAMN slate and worked as Resource Specialist at the school, distributed the materials to teachers.

Hoag also shared a document titled “Educational Resources on Palestine Gathered & Created by Members of the Oakland Education Association” that aims to push views on Palestine with books such as “P is for Palestine” for children just learning to read, “Colonialism, in Regards to Palestine” for middle schoolers, and a “Settler Colonialism Worksheet” for high schoolers, in addition to views such as “Gaza Fights for Freedom,” “Why is Israel called an apartheid state?” and “Abolition Means No More War.”

On December 6, the OEA for Palestine caucus, another faction within the teachers union, held an online “teach-in” for students and staff, followed by “Q&A from students.” It noted that participants must be signed in to their official school online accounts in order to access the materials. A document for students watching the webinar had them write down “What does Palestinian freedom mean to you? How are you engaged with the Palestinian freedom struggle?”