The United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), the major teachers’ union in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), passed a resolution last week backing an arms embargo against Israel proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
The resolution, obtained by the Los Angeles Times, calls upon California’s Sens. Alex Padilla and Laphonza Butler, both Democrats, to back Sanders’s resolution in the Senate’s “lame duck” session after the November election.
The Times reported:
Union materials prepared for a board of directors meeting, which were obtained by The Times, state the rationale for taking such a stand: “the arms named have been used in violations of U.S. and international law, indiscriminately killing large numbers of civilians, many of them children.”
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“As educators, we have watched for one year as Israel has decimated the education system for current and future Palestinians, destroying every university in Gaza and forcing children to attend school in refugee camps or not at all,” the document explaining the union’s rationale for the resolution states.Best online courses
The union did not immediately release the vote tally, but it passed easily among those members of the union’s House of Representatives who attended the virtual meeting, sources said. UTLA’s House of Representatives is its official governing body.
UTLA has repeatedly taken radical positions on a variety of issues. In September 2021, it was to have voted on a resolution to demand an end to U.S. aid to Israel, but shelved that vote amid growing public criticism and scrutiny.
Sanders’s statement justifying his resolution makes many false claims about Israel, echoing the propaganda of Hamas terrorists and other extremists, such as accusing Israel of targeting hospitals. The resolution is unlikely to pass.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.