About 50 Berkeley High School students walked out of their classes to participate in a pro-Palestinian “teach-out” at a park near campus Tuesday morning. The walkout, which fell on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, drew criticism from some Jewish parents at BHS who found the timing of the event “troubling.”
The students gathered at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park for the protest, which lasted about an hour. Between speeches, organizers led students in chants, including “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
During the protest, students heard from several speakers, including BHS alumni, who criticized AB 715, the new state law intended to address antisemitism in K-12 schools. Posters placed around the school ahead of the event advertised an opportunity to “walkout and learn.” One poster read, “Let teachers teach about Palestine!”
AB 715 was approved overwhelmingly in the state Legislature last year with the backing of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus and went into effect on Jan. 1. Teachers unions, including the more than 300,000-member California Teachers Association, oppose the law, arguing it infringes on teachers’ free speech rights.
“The ramifications of this bill, beyond the expulsion of Palestine from K-12 education, is clear,” said one speaker, a college student. “It censors our students and our teachers, and it encourages harassment against them.”
The new law bolsters tools to report discriminatory content and adds rules and regulations for instructional materials, including that they must be “factually accurate.” The law does not prohibit instruction about Palestinians or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A Jewish BHS freshman who showed up near the end of the protest told J. that he supports Israel and came mostly out of curiosity. Alec, who requested to use only his first name, told J. that he initially had reservations about AB 715 when it was introduced in the legislature. But after researching the bill through Hevrah, a justice and leadership session at Santa Rosa’s Camp Newman, and contacting legislators who seemed open to suggestions for improving the bill, he decided to lobby in support of it.
“I think it is very necessary to have this bill,” Alec said. Antisemitism “has been affecting people. My friends have been affected by it.”
Since he started at BHS in the fall, Alec said he’s seen pro-Palestinian signs as well as teachers wearing pro-Palestinian pins.
“I try not to react to it in a way that’s visible to others and keep my own thoughts to myself, unless someone is being violently harassed,” he said. “But just wearing a pin with the flag, there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Some of his friends are pro-Palestinian activists, he added.
Prior to the walkout, a grassroots Jewish activist group concerned about a rise in antisemitism in Bay Area public schools urged the school district to cancel it.
On Friday, the Jewish Coalition of Berkeley, which formed after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre in Israel and the spike in antisemitism that followed, sent a letter in collaboration with ActNowK12 to Berkeley Unified School District Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel and other district officials. ActNowK12, a Jewish education and advocacy project affiliated with the Anti-Defamation League, tracks antisemitic incidents at K-12 schools throughout the state.
“Holding a one-sided, politically charged event focused on Israel and Palestine on this day is deeply offensive and cannot be viewed as coincidental,” the Jan. 23 letter read, adding that “proceeding with this event constitutes impermissible political advocacy during class time” and “violates California law governing neutrality and nondiscrimination.”
Selim Yasavul, a Jewish parent in the district who advocates with the Jewish Coalition of Berkeley, told J. that holding the event on a day designated to commemorate the Holocaust was an “ugly tactic.”
“It’s concerning because it can dilute efforts around teaching about the Holocaust by introducing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the Gaza war, as another Holocaust,” he said.
“All wars are ugly and tragic,” he added. “But diluting Holocaust education with initiatives like this is scary. And it shouldn’t be something that the school district and school officials are supporting.”
The California Department of Education “encourages” schools to recognize Jan. 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day each year.
One student who spoke at and helped organize the “teach-out” told J. that the choice to schedule the protest on Jan. 27 was “not an intentional decision.”
The student, Hannah, a Jewish junior at BHS who requested J. use only her first name, helped plan the protest as part of Jackets for Palestine, a student group that formed shortly after BHS students participated in a pro-Palestinian walkout in mid-October 2023. Jackets is a reference to the school’s mascot, a yellowjacket.
“Palestinian and Jewish safety are intrinsically tied together,” Hannah said Tuesday in an email to J. “My connection to this movement has been disregarded as ‘misinformed’ by people that I know, and my identity labeled as ‘self hating’ by Jewish public figures.… I will not allow myself to be aligned with a government that commits genocide in my name.”
Regardless of the intention behind the protest’s date, other speakers did compare Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and the war in Gaza to Nazi Germany’s mass murder of 6 million Jews and referenced what they called the “weaponization of antisemitism” to silence criticism of Israel.
A young woman who identified herself to the crowd as Emma and as a Jewish BHS alum called the timing of the protest a “good opportunity.”
“My ancestors were killed in the Holocaust, so I’m speaking here today to honor their memory,” Emma said. “Because there’s another Holocaust happening right now in Gaza.”
Stationed around the protest group were adults wearing bright yellow vests, who identified themselves as members of Berkeley Families for Collective Liberation.
The walkout happened two months after the U.S. House Committee on Education and Workforce announced an investigation into the Berkeley Unified School District centered around antisemitic discrimination, focusing, in part, on “walkouts and demonstrations” allegedly facilitated and encouraged by district teachers.
No one at the protest identified themselves as a teacher.
In an email to parents on Monday, BHS Principal Juan Raygosa emphasized that the walkout was not a “district or school sanctioned event” but added that the school’s “Governing Board recognizes and respects the first amendment rights of our students to peacefully advocate for causes that are important to them.”
He added, “Our safety and administrative team are prepared to monitor our students to make sure this is a safe, respectful, and peaceful gathering…. We have reminded our students about student conduct and behavioral expectations and we are confident in our students’ ability to interact and engage respectfully.”