By Alana Goodman, The Washington Free Beacon

The American Federation of Teachers is fundraising for a Gaza aid organization that has been accused of working with Hamas-linked groups.

In a letter last week, AFT president Randi Weingarten asked its members to donate to its “partner organization,” American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA).

ANERA, which says it “provides humanitarian assistance and sustainable development to advance the well-being of refugees and other vulnerable communities in Palestine,” is one of the largest nonprofits operating in Judea and Samaria in Gaza.

It’s also worked with Hamas-run agencies like the Ministry of Social Development, which is led by Hamas leader and U.S.-designated terrorist Ghazi Hamad, prompting criticism from human rights watchdogs.

The U.N. has promoted ANERA’s work with the ministry, but the nonprofit nonetheless says it has a “longstanding ‘no contact’ policy with Hamas.”

AFT’s fundraising for ANERA is fueling criticism that teachers’ unions have become a hub of anti-Israel activism.

Last month, the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, voted to boycott the Anti-Defamation League over the Jewish rights group’s stance against anti-Semitism.

While NEA leadership rejected the vote, they also released a 2025 handbook that omitted Jews from a plan to teach Holocaust remembrance and said they plan to educate the public that Israel was founded through “forced, violent displacement and dispossession,” the Washington Free Beacon reported.

On July 29, Weingarten penned an open letter asking union members to “join with me and other AFT members in donating today to the AFT Disaster Relief Fund for Gaza Humanitarian Aid.”

“Your contribution will go immediately to relief work on the ground by the AFT partner organization American Near East Refugee Aid (known as Anera), a nonprofit charity with decades of experience working in the area,” Weingarten wrote.

“One hundred percent of your donation will go to Anera, because the AFT covers any fees for collecting funds.”

Weingarten’s call has already made an impact, with AFT’s Philadelphia chapter announcing last week that it donated an unspecified amount to the fundraiser, according to the North American Values Institute, an advocacy group that documents anti-Israel and anti-American radicalism in the K-12 education system.

Mika Heller, director of research at the North American Values Institute, told the Free Beacon that Weingarten’s donation request was an “egregious example” of the AFT “putting dedication to ‘social justice unionism’ ahead of responsibilities to union members and even to students.”

“The AFT should answer for whether it was aware of ANERA’s work with organizations tied to Hamas,” Heller said. “Members have a right to know where their money is going and how the AFT determines its partners.”

Weingarten defended the partnership, telling the Free Beacon that ANERA is an “independent entity with great credibility.”

“They are absolutely not connected to Hamas or any terrorist organization, and if they were, we obviously wouldn’t be donating to them,” said Weingarten.

In January, the human rights watchdog group NGO Monitor released a report detailing connections between ANERA and Hamas-linked organizations.

It pointed to a U.N. description of a 2023 building project in Gaza that noted ANERA worked “in coordination with the Ministry of Social Development (MoSD) and the Ministry of Public Works and Housing (MoPWH)” to “finalize and approved [sic] the selection of beneficiaries on the standard shelter cluster criteria.”

According to the NGO Monitor report, Hamas has “exercised effective control over the MoSD in Gaza for several years.”

In 2019, the terrorist group appointed Hamad—who vowed in the wake of Oct. 7 to launch “a second, a third, a fourth” attack—to oversee the MoSD. Last year, the U.S. Department of Treasury added him to its designated terrorist list.

The building project wasn’t the first time ANERA worked with MoSD. In 2021, the aid organization launched a “women’s empowerment program in Gaza” and said it “selects the women according to predefined criteria in coordination with the Ministry of Social Development and local organizations that serve women.”

ANERA called reports about its alleged connections with Hamas “misinformation.” The group said it “has a longstanding ‘no contact’ policy with Hamas” and all of its “partners, employees and vendors are vetted through U.S. OFAC-compliant software” and a U.S. government system. An ANERA spokesman declined to comment but provided a link to a webpage detailing that “policy.”

A separate report the Middle East Forum published last year showed additional partnerships between ANERA and additional Hamas-linked organizations.

These groups include the Bayader Association for Environment and Development and the Islamic Relief, which held a ceremony with Hamas leaders in 2023 to celebrate their coordination on a development project, according to the Middle East Forum.

ANERA, which has received funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, has also worked on projects with the Unlimited Friends Association, a group that has also hosted events with Hamas leaders and benefits for families of “martyrs and prisoners,” the Middle East Forum reported.

Several ANERA staffers have publicly expressed anti-Semitic and pro-terrorist views, according to the report.

The group’s Gaza project coordinator, Ibrahim Najjar, has praised the “brave prisoners” in jail in Israel and posted support for Hamas founder Sheikh Yassin, the Middle East Forum reported.

Mousa Shawwa, an ANERA staffer who was killed in an Israeli strike last year, reportedly endorsed a call on social media for God to “erase the Jews.”

The post American Federation of Teachers fundraises for nonprofit that’s worked with Hamas-run agencies appeared first on World Israel News.

In 2023, antisemitic incidents in US public schools increased 135 percent.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

A coalition of US Jewish groups on Monday denounced the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), one of the largest educators’ unions in the country, for including anti-Israel resolutions in the agenda of its upcoming annual convention.

The resolutions, seven in total, run the gamut of anti-Zionist ideology, calling for the end of US military assistance to Israel while falsely accusing the country of “genocide,” a ceasefire in Gaza that would halt Israel’s mission to clear Hamas from the territory, and divestment from Israel in the form of selling AFT’s Israel bonds.

Another resolution accuses supporters of Israel of “weaponizing” antisemitism to shield Israel from criticism.

On Thursday, StandWithUs, New York City Public School Alliance, Educators Caucus for Israel, and Partners for Equality and Educational Responsibility in K-12 (PeerK12), said the measures “undermine the safety and well being of Jewish students, families, and educators in public schools” and foster a culture of hate.

“Each one of these anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish resolutions is based on propaganda and politically subversive and ideologically driven lies, exposing yet again the deeply unsettling and obvious lack of merit, or even the slightest desire of the AFT to adhere to indisputable facts and historical accuracy that one might expect from a national association,” PeerK12 co-founder Nicole Bernstein said in a press release on Monday.

StandWithUs director of K-12 Educator Outreach David Smokler added, “We call on school boards and school superintendents to make it clear to teachers that they may not bring biased materials into their classrooms. Teachers must teach students how to think, not what to think.”

If passed at AFT’s convention on July 22-25, the resolutions would mark the most severe condemnation of Israel and Zionism passed by a teachers’ union and continue the anti-Zionist movement’s march through K-12 schools, which The Algemeiner has covered extensively.

Antisemitism in K-12 schools has continued to increase every year, according to the ADL’s latest data. In 2023, antisemitic incidents in US public school increased 135 percent, a figure which included a rise in vandalism and assault.

“School-based harassment in 2023 also included one-off incidents such as when a middle school administrator received a note containing antisemitic death threats or when a high school student threatened their Jewish classmates, stating that if they supported Israel, they would beat them up,” the civil rights group said in its Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents 2023.

“Given the insidious nature of bullying, compounded by the fact that many children may not feel empowered to report their experiences, it is likely that the actual number of school-based antisemitic incidents was significantly higher than the data reported in the audit.”

The problem has led to numerous civil rights complaints filed with the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR).

Earlier this month, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law announced that the Community School of Davidson, a charter school located in North Carolina, agreed to settle a civil rights complaint alleging that administrators failed to address a series of disturbing antisemitic incidents in which a non-Jewish student was called a “dirty Jew” and told that “the oven is that way,” and battered with other denigrating comments too vulgar for publication.

The abuse, according to the complaint, began after the child wore an Israeli sports jersey.

As part of a settlement with OCR, the school has agreed, among other things, to issue a statement proclaiming a zero tolerance policy for racist abuse, institute anti-discrimination training for teachers and staff, and “develop or revise” its approach to responding to racial bigotry.

That case was not the first the Brandeis Center pursued on behalf of K-12 students.

In February, it filed a complaint alleging that the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) in California has caused severe psychological trauma to Jewish students as young as eight years old and fostered a hostile learning environment.

The post US Jewish groups condemn anti-Zionist resolutions considered by American Federation of Teachers appeared first on World Israel News.