The Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA), the state’s largest teachers’ union, is empowered to grant recertification credits to teachers—a responsibility that requires objectivity and adherence to educational standards.
When it comes to teaching the Israel-Hamas war, however, the MTA has betrayed that responsibility and lost our trust by pursuing a one-sided and biased approach to the subject.
The MTA’s conduct isn’t unique. Teachers’ unions across the country have taken extreme positions on a variety of topics, which may be why just 30% of parents trust them to deliver an unbiased education, according to a recent nationwide THINC Foundation survey of nearly 1,500 parents.
Just two months after Hamas’s brutal terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023, the union adopted a motion calling for a ceasefire that would have left Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, in control of Gaza.
The motion further urged the National Education Association, America’s largest teachers’ union, to pressure then-President Joe Biden to halt support for Israel’s defense, which it characterized as a “genocidal war on the Palestinian people.”
These claims aren’t just factually incorrect; they’re inflammatory. Israel is holding Hamas accountable for the most devastating terrorist attack in the nation’s history. Far from targeting Palestinians as a population, Israel has taken unprecedented measures to avoid civilian casualties, which military experts say have proven effective. The MTA’s claim of genocide is a lie that insults victims of actual genocides and misleads students who are trying to evaluate international conflicts.
The MTA’s problematic approach extends into its professional development programs. In a March 2024 “anti-racism” webinar, speakers known for their anti-Israel views spread falsehoods about the Israel-Hamas conflict, misrepresented Zionism and accused Jewish organizations of propaganda while conspicuously omitting any mention of Hamas’s terrorist status or its atrocities.
Likewise, a June 2024 MTA webinar on antisemitism ignored the continuous Jewish presence in Israel spanning thousands of years, falsely portrayed Palestinian national identity as dating back centuries rather than emerging in the 1960s, and omitted historical Arab violence against the Jewish minority in dozens of nations while depicting Jews as the sole aggressors.
Rather than addressing these concerns, the MTA, which teachers can opt out of whenever they want, has doubled down, tasking an individual with known anti-Israel inclinations to create curricular materials that present revisionist history that erases the complexities of the conflict.
Perhaps most troubling is the MTA’s endorsement of children’s books such as A Kids Book About Israel and Palestine and Sitti’s Bird: A Gaza Story as educational resources. These books simplify and distort historical events, indoctrinating impressionable young students with a one-sided narrative before they are equipped to critically engage with complex geopolitical issues.
The issue isn’t just that the MTA misrepresents a polarizing conflict in the Middle East. It’s also that those charged with turning our children into open-minded, informed adults are doing the opposite by narrowing their minds in a way that fosters bigotry and prejudice.
In a recent letter to union presidents, an MTA subgroup called “MTA Rank & File for Palestine” (founded by former MTA president Merrie Najimy) asserted that “Seeking a balance in perspectives on this situation is a flawed premise. … There is no balance to 76 years of ethnic cleansing, occupation, apartheid and genocide.”
That statement betrays the danger of their approach. They assume the truth of their false claims and will brook no dissent, an affront to academic integrity and free inquiry.
The Special Commission on Combating Antisemitism exposed the MTA’s political agenda in its February 2025 hearings, but more action is needed. If any other professional development provider were found promoting similarly distorted narratives on a different issue or against a different minority group, there would be widespread condemnation.
While the MTA did remove a handful of bigoted sources after being publicly challenged, this superficial response is insufficient. The union has demonstrated that it cannot be trusted to provide impartial, fact-based educational content, forfeiting the trust of the Jewish community and their allies.
The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education must revoke the MTA’s training privileges. Every day they wait undermines Massachusetts’s reputation for excellence in public education.
The time for action is now. Our teachers deserve unbiased, accurate and apolitical training, which, it is clear, the MTA won’t provide.