CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

CA Public Records Expose Israel Lobby Censorship

Sammy Obeid on “The Abortion Joke That Got Me Banned From High School” (Comedy Calculus)

As a long-time anti-Zionist activist and retired teacher, I submitted a Public Records Act (PRA) request to the California Department of Education (CDE) for copies of all formal complaints, filed from October 7, 2023 to May 26, 2026, alleging discrimination, harassment, intimidation and bullying that was so “severe” and “pervasive” as to violate federal or state law in California schools.

If a local education agency (LEA), a school district or county office of education, receives a complaint–a Uniform Complaint Procedure (UCP)–the LEA must, within 60 days, conduct an investigation, interview parties involved, and decide whether to order “corrective action.” Sometimes the UCP ends there. If, however, the complainants are dissatisfied with the LEA ruling, they may appeal to the CDE.

I reviewed the appeals.

The CDE lacks authority to discipline school personnel, and the appeals I reviewed did not recommend teacher discipline. Teachers, however, have been told by their school districts to remove their keffiyehs and steer-clear of stating as fact that Israel exemplifies “settler colonialism.” If an LEA or CDE finds a complaint has merit, it may order school districts to implement teacher training in antisemitism in consultation with a Jewish or Israeli organization. These orders open the door for Zionist organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee to teach teachers that criticism of Israel is antisemitic and discriminates on the basis of national origin.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in employment, education and public accommodations based on someone’s birthplace or ancestry–but does not prohibit criticism of a sovereign state, which is protected speech according to the American Civil Liberties Union. In October 2025, the First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Palestine will Be Free, from the River to the Sea, protest at MIT did not constitute harassment under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

The CDE’s release of files reflects the Department and school districts’ tendency to conflate anti-Zionism (opposition to Israel) with antisemitism (bigotry toward Jews for being Jewish). Under AB 715 (D-Zbur) legislation that establishes an antisemitism coordinator to police instruction and teacher training, this confusion could get a lot worse because AB 715 incorporates the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, which promotes the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition and examples that conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

Teachers and their allies can, however, revolt: march on Sacramento, challenge Zionist teacher training, file their own complaints and collectively teach Palestine across school departments and districts.

The following is a review of some of the CDE’s cases addressing allegations of antisemitism or discrimination against Jews and/or Israelis.

In 2025, the principal of Mountain View Los Altos High School banned popular Lebanese-Palestinian American comedian Sammy Obeid after he cracked jokes about Israel at an after-school on campus event in 2025 hosted by the Muslim Student Association (MSA). The school investigation report (IR) read, “During the event, the comedian made antisemitic remarks: about the Israeli Prime Minister getting cancer, calling the Prime Minister a supervillain, and how Israel does not believe in abortion so it can bomb more Palestinians.”Months earlier, on November 21, 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity in Gaza, including “starvation as a method of warfare, murder, persecution and other inhumane acts.”

Nevertheless, the District concluded–after berating the Muslim students for inviting Obeid–that the comedian’s performance was antisemitic. The CDE agreed and ordered the district to further revise its guest speaker policies to include strict vetting and get-off-the-stage intervention should an administrator believe the speaker’s conduct discriminated against a protected group on the basis of ethnicity, nationality, immigration status, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, and physical or mental disabilities.

Granted, there were reports of a real antisemitic incident related to the same school district–a social media post from an anonymous Nazi student club–but the CDE threw Obeid into the same bucket as student Nazis in ruling that his anti-Israel jokes were discriminatory against Jewish students. The CDE and the school district, thus, took a page out of the IHRA to confuse criticism and jokes about Israel and its wanted war criminals with bigotry toward Jews in general.

P.S. For the record, abortion is legal in Israel as long as women obtain approval from the Israeli Pregnancy Termination Board.

In another example of conflation, the CDE ordered (11/24/25) San Ramon Valley High School to deliver teacher training on antisemitism to all social studies teachers after the department ruled a teacher’s class statements were proof of discriminatory bias against Jewish and Israeli students. The department’s fact finding said the teacher told students that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. Hardly breaking news. Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, Doctors without Borders and the United Nations International Commission of Inquiry had all determined Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

Nonetheless, the CDE said the appeal had merit because the teacher did not cite sources and present an opposing viewpoint. The Department ordered San Ramon Valley High School to provide the CDE with evidence by 1/30/26 that the school had delivered training from someone not affiliated........

© CounterPunch