The Santa Clara Unified School District determined that one of its teachers violated district policy by showing a video to her class in March 2024 that compared Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza to the Holocaust, according to a document that JNS viewed.
The district, which educates about 15,300 students in the San Francisco area, wrote in a July 25 letter to the Bay Area Jewish Coalition Education and Advocacy that the video featured a Holocaust survivor, who said that “Israel is killing children in Gaza” and that she is “ashamed to belong to the tribe that is killing innocent people.”
The survivor also said in the video that she can relate “to the events occurring in Gaza.”
The teacher “failed to exercise good judgment when showing her class a video that promoted a bias toward Jewish students,” the district stated. (JNS sought comment from the district.)
The Jewish group had filed a complaint about the matter to the district on April 3.
StandWithUs mentioned the video in a Title VI complaint that it filed with the Jewish group to the U.S. Department of Education in April. Maya Bronicki, education director at the Bay Area Jewish Coalition Education and Advocacy, told JNS that the department hasn’t said if it is investigating the complaint.
The Santa Clara Unified School District intends to present its findings at an Aug. 14 board meeting.
