Lawmakers say the measure is needed to prevent future anti-Israel radicalization.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A law barring teachers trained at Palestinian Authority (PA) institutions from teaching or leading schools in Israel passed its final readings Wednesday in the Knesset.

The bill’s explanatory notes state that academic training in the PA “takes place in an environment that fosters incitement against the State of Israel” and is incompatible with the values underpinning Israel’s education system.

Allowing such educators into Israeli schools, the law warns, “could have a harmful impact on students.”

One of the bill’s co-authors, Likud MK Amit Halevi, spoke more bluntly on the subject.

“The situation before the law was passed was a real disaster,” he said. “With our own hands, the Israeli education system [was] nurturing a generation of terrorists.”

He argued that Arab Israeli students are already exposed to anti-Israel messaging through media, social networks, social organizations and mosques, and that PA-trained teachers were reinforcing this indoctrination inside Israeli classrooms.

Co-author MK Avihai Boaron cited figures showing that roughly 4,000 of the approximately 6,700 teachers in eastern Jerusalem graduated from PA institutions, which he described as “the same authority that funds terrorism, educates for terrorism, and encourages terrorism.”

“This is a ticking time bomb that, thank God, we are dismantling today,” he added. “This law is crucial to prevent the next October 7, and this is not an exaggeration.”

The amendment to the State Education Law stipulates that a bachelor’s degree earned at a PA institution will no longer meet the academic requirements for teaching in Israel.

However, the law is not retroactive, and teachers and principals already employed by the Education Ministry will not be dismissed.

In addition, those in the middle of their degrees in the PA, as well as graduates, may still enter the Israeli school system if they complete an Israeli teacher-training certificate within two years.

According to the Knesset Research and Information Center, 30,339 new teachers have entered the Arab Israeli educational system over the past decade.

About 11% hold academic degrees from PA institutions, a figure the center said is rising.

While the majority teach in the capital, 29% teach Bedouin in the Negev, and the remaining 9% are in the Galilee and other districts.

Those who objected to the bill during discussions in the Knesset Education Committee prior to its second and third readings included Youssef Atauna (Hadash-Ta’al), who condemned it as “racist and offensive legislation,” arguing that it violates freedom of occupation and has little to do with educational standards.

Halevi rejected that criticism, saying, “Freedom of occupation has nothing to do with this law, which deals solely with suitability.”

The post Knesset bars PA-trained teachers from Israeli schools appeared first on World Israel News.

The bipartisan supported bill was headed by Esther Panich, the only Jewish member of the Georgia State Senate.

By JNS

The Georgia state Senate voted 44-6 on Thursday to pass a bill that uses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism to define Jew-hatred in state law.

The legislation, which now heads to the desk of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, had passed the state House 129-5.

Kemp, who visited Israel for the first time last year, has said he will sign the bill because it “builds on our commitment to protect Georgians from criminal acts, including those based on hate.”

Georgia state representatives Esther Panitch, a Democrat, and John Carson, a Republican, led the legislation, which calls on state agencies to define Jew-hatred “as provided for in the working definition of antisemitism and the contemporary examples of antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.”

“I am overwhelmed with gratitude to my colleagues and leaders, who listened to the Jewish community about what we were being subjected to with antisemitism and took action,” Panitch, the only Jewish member of the Georgia state legislature, told JNS.

Chris Carr, the attorney general of Georgia, wrote that HB30 is important amid rising antisemitism. “In Georgia, we continue to push back against these acts of evil and in support of our Jewish friends and neighbors,” he stated. “We’re thankful to our General Assembly for sending a message that antisemitism has no place in our state.”

Rabbi Ari Weisenfeld, associate national director of state relations for Agudah Israel of America, encouraged other states to follow suit.

“Agudath Israel is especially grateful to Representatives Panich and Carson for championing the bill last year and for continuing to advocate for it this year,” he stated. “We also thank Senate President Pro Tempore John Kennedy for sponsoring the bill in the Senate.”

Jordan Cope, policy education director at StandWithUs, attended the vote.

“With antisemitism having exploded worldwide post-Oct. 7, the IHRA definition remains a tool of paramount importance for helping identify and quell the mounting tide of antisemitism,” he stated. “Georgia’s moral clarity on this matter sets a clear example from which other states ought to draw inspiration as Jews around the world desperately seek assurances of their own safety.”

The post Georgia legislation defining antisemitism moves to final stage appeared first on World Israel News.

The new law defines anti-Semitism as hatred of Jews, including attacks, false or hateful statements and denying the mass extermination of Ukrainian Jewry during the Holocaust.

By Damian Pachter, JNS.org

Ukraine’s parliament passed a law Wednesday defining and banning anti-Semitism. The bill was approved by 283 votes, pending approval by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to enter into force.

“The lack of a clear definition of anti-Semitism in the Ukrainian legislation does not allow for the proper classification of crimes committed on its basis,” said the lawmakers who authored the bill.

The law defines anti-Semitism as hatred of Jews, including attacks on the minority, making false or hateful statements about them or denying the mass extermination of Ukrainian Jewry during the Holocaust. Damaging buildings and religious institutions also falls under the definition.

World Zionist Organization chief Yaakov Hagoel praised the move.

“I commend the Ukrainian parliament on the precedent-setting step. This is an important milestone in the long international struggle” against anti-Semitism, he said, expressing hope that Zelensky—who is Jewish—will sign the law, making it “a model for parliaments around the world.”

Fewer than 1 percent of Ukraine’s 40 million citizens are Jewish. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre, where over 30,000 Jews were killed over the course of just two days in a ravine outside Kiev.

_____

This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.

The post Ukraine outlaws anti-Semitism appeared first on World Israel News.