Dozens of California teachers are under fire for staging a “sit-in” that taught pro-Palestine lesson plans amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
This week, the liberal city of Oakland held an unauthorized anti-Israel course, claiming the curriculum is a "corrective" to pro-Israel educational material.
While it is unclear what the lesson plans included, the event clearly supported Palestinian territory.
According to the Daily Mail, students were given coloring books that featured a Palestinian person who said: "A group of bullies called Zionists wanted our land, so they stole it by force and hurt many people."
It also referred to Israel as an "apartheid state."
The lesson plans included sympathy for Hamas, saying the teachers were not taking a position on the terrorist group.
“Hamas is complicated; it was started in part by the state of Israel, and there has been no election since Hamas was voted in in 2006," according to the document.
An estimated 75 to 100 K-12 teachers involved in the sit-in told ABC News they felt previous classroom materials were too one-sided, leaning too pro-Israel.
“It did not include the Palestinian struggle for freedom and liberation," one teacher told the outlet.
Another said the district-sponsored curriculum was "presented in a very, very one-sided pro-Israeli way."
In addition, students were encouraged to chant at an upcoming pro-Palestine protest. Teachers also said they felt it is essential for young kids to recognize the “genocide" of Palestinians in Gaza.
Megan Bacigalupi, a parent within the school district, expressed her anger with what her kids were taught in the classroom.
“This was not an attempt to provide a balanced viewpoint on the current conflict in Israel and Gaza to enable students to be critical thinkers," she said. "How could it be when no panelist or the moderator mentioned the Oct. 7 attacks or Hamas once? It was an attempt to indoctrinate Oakland kids to hate the state of Israel and, by association, Jewish students."
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