California Legislation Designed to Protect Israeli Apartheid and Genocide

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 30 Jun 2025

Rick Sterling and Marcy Winograd – TRANSCEND Media Service

28 Jun 2025 – Pro-Israel California legislators are taking a page out of Trump’s playbook to prevent K-12 educators from presenting a realistic history and accurate portrayal of contemporary Israel/Palestine. Their proposed legislation, AB 715, a would-be model for other states, threatens to censor educational materials and instruction, punish educators who deviate from the Israel lobby’s version of events, and invite Israel flag wavers to file complaints that burden school superintendents with needless investigations of teachers.

It’s all about “Discrimination”

Despite the author’s claims that AB 715  will strengthen protections against discrimination, including antisemitism, in K12 education, protections are already embedded in the California Education Code to prohibit discrimination on the basis of nationality, religion, ethnicity, race, gender and more.

What then is the point?

The answer lies in the language of the bill that both saddles administrators with policing lessons on Israel/Palestine, and redefines nationality to include “actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics or residency in a country with a dominant religious or distinct religious identity.” A Jewish student who perceives their identity as wrapped up in the nation state of Israel may take offense at discussion of history and current events that debates the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish ethno-nationalist state.

In addition, AB 715 will require educators to “ensure a safe and supportive school climate,” though the meaning of the words “safe” and “supportive” depends on one’s point of view. While anti-Zionist Jews critical of Israel may interpret safety as disassociation from Israel’s destruction of 90% of Gaza’s schools, pro-Israel students might complain they feel unsafe” hearing criticism of Israel’s post October 7th decimation of Gaza.

Palestinians live in an area destroyed by Israeli airstrike in Rafah, Gaza Strip.  © 2025 UNRWA Photo by Ashraf Amra

Dropping the hammer on school administrators

Current law prohibits the California Department of Education (CDE) from adopting textbooks and supplemental materials deemed unlawfully discriminatory. AB 715 goes one giant step further to prohibit school districts, school board members and teacher trainers from allowing any educational materials that would subject a pupil to unlawful discrimination.

“If AB 715 becomes law, fearful school administrators will micromanage the classroom,” said Seth Morrison, board member of Jewish Voice for Peace-Action. “Principals will crack down on teachers who discuss decolonization movements from Hawaii to Puerto Rico to Palestine.” Morrison added, “AB 715 echoes the agenda of MAGA extremists who share the goal of suppressing discussion on race history and global justice.”

Antisemitism Coordinator

Should AB 715’s “intent” section be realized in future legislation, a California “Antisemitism Coordinator” would oversee compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, forcing school districts to exhaust resources defending themselves before the California Department of Education and the federal Department of Education. Pro-Israel lobby groups such as the Anti-Defamation League have already filed Civil Rights Act antisemitism complaints against Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD),  School District of Philadelphia, California State Polytechnic and Etiwanda School District and Santa Ana Public Schools, among others.

AB 715 would add fuel to ADL fire, encouraging a nationally-boycotted organization that backed Trump’s abduction of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, to file even more complaints. Moreover, AB 715 would exceptionalize Jewish safety over the safety of Muslims, Blacks, Latinos, Indigenous and others. “It does not make Jews safer to have a special process; it separates and divides us from other vulnerable communities, further endangering us,” said Liz Jackson, a Jewish parent involved in Berkeley Parents for Collective Liberation.

Seth Morrison from JVP at Calif Assembly Hearing

Opponents and supporters of AB 715

Opponents of the bill in the state senate include CODEPINK-Central Coast, Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace (ICUJP) and the California Palestine Solidarity Coalition, an umbrella for Jewish Voice for Peace-Action, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Arab Resource Organizing Committee (AROC) and LIberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum.

AB 715 backers, from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to the Jewish Federation, argue the legislation will curb the rising tide of antisemitic incidents in schools, though the ADL plays fast and loose with the term antisemitic, conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism to smear peace activists as enemies of the state. Chants such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” are categorized as antisemitic rather than liberatory.

Senator Scott Wiener (D-SF) and Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino), co-chairs of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus and chairs of the legislature’s budget committees, joined Rick Chavez-Zbur (D-Santa Monica) and Dawn Addis (D-Morro Bay) to co-author AB 715 after abandoning the unpopular AB 1468, a bill to dumb down ethnic studies. Wiener, Gabriel and Zbur are cheerleaders for the Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California (JPAC-CA), a lobby organization outnumbered almost two to one this spring when AB 715 opponents (140) and supporters (74)  testified before the assembly education committee prior to the bill’s passage on the assembly floor.

Chairs of the legislature’s Black, AAPI and Latino caucuses have also lent their names as AB 715 co-authors, perhaps in hopes of securing funding for the still-unfunded ethnic studies discipline that, contingent on funding, was to become a high school graduation requirement by 2030.

The Reality that cannot be told

If the legislature passes AB715, fearful school board members and administrators may choose to prohibit lessons on the ethnic cleansing and genocide in Palestine, even though international human rights organizations and judicial bodies have documented Israel’s crimes of apartheid, occupation and genocide.

Here are  examples of such documentation:

* Amnesty International investigation concludes Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. (Dec., 2024)

* Human Rights Watch: Israel’s Crime of Extermination, Acts of Genocide. (Dec., 2024)

* Amnesty International: “Apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity.”   (Feb., 2022)

* Human Rights Watch: “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes.” (April, 2021)

* B’Tselem (leading Israeli human rights group): “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. (Jan., 2021)

These independent reports all document a reality that would make a pro-Israel student uncomfortable, though discomfort is not a justification for censorship.

“Repackaging censorship under the guise of combating antisemitism does a disservice to the very real fight against hate,” said Hussam Ayloush, CEO of the California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The Genocide that cannot be mentioned

If AB715 passes, discussion of Israel’s 76-year old occupation and current genocide in Gaza will be off-limits for educators concerned about becoming the target of a complaint that could cost them their job.

It will not matter that Israeli leaders have been explicit about their intentions to kill, starve and eliminate Palestinian civilians. On October 9, 2023, the Israeli Minister of Defense stated, “No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”

For over 18 months Israel has relentlessly bombed the tiny Gaza Strip, preventing food, drinking water, medicines and other essentials from entering the occupied territory or, more recently, killing unarmed Gaza civilians in line to receive flour for their family. “It’s a killing field,” Israeli soldiers told Haaretz in June, adding the killings were part of “Operation Salted Fish–the Israeli version of Red Light, Green Light. “We shoot, they run, we shoot again.”

As of June 26, 2025, Israel’s genocide in Gaza has led to at least 56,259 deaths and 132,458 injuries, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

In the past two years Israel has also seized land in Lebanon and Syria and launched a war with Iran. To deny California students an opportunity to hear, discuss, and debate Israel’s militarism, which the US subsidizes with billions of dollars, would rob students of the education they deserve and are entitled to under State of California social science standards that set goals for teaching and learning.

JPAC-CA, the chief lobbyist for AB 715, prides itself on previously tapping the state budget to secure $465 million for an agenda that includes countering antisemitism and expanding Holocaust education. What good is Holocaust education, however, if state lawmakers suppress lessons on the current genocide to stifle dissent and normalize the horror? How useful are lessons on antisemitism as a form of racism if discussion of US-Israel racism against Palestinians is taboo?

California lawmakers promoting AB 715 could use a few lessons themselves.

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Hearings on AB 715 are scheduled for Wednesday, July 9, 2025, in the Senate Education Committee and Tuesday, July 15, 2025, in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

To send a letter to the CA Senate Education Committee in opposition to AB 715, click on the CODEPINK action. 

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Rick Sterling is a member of the TRANSCEND Network and an investigative journalist who lives in the SF Bay Area, California. He can be contacted at rsterling1@gmail.com or rsterling1@protonmail.com

Marcy Winograd is a retired high school teacher and a member of the legislative team for Jewish Voice for Peace-Action. Marcy@Codepink.org

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 30 Jun 2025.

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