Critical race theory has been gaining momentum since 1996 when Johnnie Cochran used it to free O.J. Simpson. The corrosive idea that American culture and institutions are systemically racist and oppressive has invaded universities and workplaces and even public schools. There was a brief respite when President Donald Trump stopped companies from holding training on “white privilege.” States began to ban critical race theory. Parents fought it in their local schools.

The proponents of critical race theory, however, are determined to indoctrinate America’s youth in their ideology. In California, critical race theory has been rechristened “ethnic studies” and has broadened its line of attack. In addition to white people, ethnic studies have added Jewish people and the Jewish homeland of Israel to the list of racist and oppressive entities. The anti-Israel and anti-Jewish curriculum includes strong support for Palestinians, including classroom decorations such as a Palestinian flag and a drive to honor “Palestinian mothers with children in Israeli jails.”

Image: Anti-Israel protest in California. YouTube screen grab.

The most rudimentary research on “Palestine” uncovers the fact that there never was a country of Palestine. It was a designation Romans used for Judea. Then, after World War II, British Christians drew a map based on their perceptions of the Bible and set borders for the state of Palestine. Now, Islamists demand all Jews depart from the land that they consider a trust that Allah gave to the Muslim people.

Seeking a compromise, Israel has proposed two-state solutions to the Palestinians. The Palestinians have always rejected the very idea of sharing the land with the Jews, the people who have been in that land for over 5,000 years and whose Bible—the oldest religious text still in use and the basis for the Koran—identifies as the people to whom God decreed the land of Israel rightfully belongs.

Under California’s mandated ethnic studies, in addition to learning reading, writing, and arithmetic, schools will instruct children to pity Palestinians and hate Jews. The greatest irony of this misbegotten ideology is how it avoids the basic truth that, if Palestinians wanted peace with Israel, there would be peace, and if Israel really didn’t want to share the land with the Palestinians, they could have wiped out all the Palestinians long ago.

Pandra Selivanov is the author of The Pardon, a story of forgiveness based on the thief on the cross in the Bible.