Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – The nationwide effort by far-right forces to quash academic freedom in the US, and legally declare any criticism of Israeli policy to be sanctionable anti-Semitism has reached a crisis point. In California of all places! Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 715 into law on October 7, 2025, with a signing statement that expressed reservations and inferred objections. (It’s easy to imagine that the Governor, who is likely running for president, was threatened with the “anti-Semitic” tag if he vetoed it.) The bill amends the California Education Code to declare any critique of Israeli policy as an act of anti-Semitism, and went into effect on January 1. On December 17, US District Judge Noel Wise declined to issue a preliminary injunction against the law as requested by the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) attorney Jenin Younes on December 31, 2025, on behalf of Berkeley Middle School Teacher Andrea Prichett and other plaintiffs. She will still preside over a full trial on the merits of the law later this month. ADC has appealed his denial of an injunction against the law to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
California AB 715 was introduced by Assembly Members Rick Chavez Zbur and Dawn Addis to create “a safer learning environment” for California’s Jewish students (K-12-College-Grad School). The intent is to “protect” them from ideas and concepts that conflict with the Zionist narrative of Temple Sunday School Myths. That school of thoughts seeks to whitewash the story of Israel’s founding, and deny the reality of the Nakba or catastrophic expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948. It also protects those who prefer to deny the realities of the genocide in Gaza and West Bank pogroms, initiated by Israeli settlers against native Palestinians. The main flaw of the bill is that the definition of anti-Semitism comes from the deeply biased guidelines of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IRHA), which were accepted by the Joe Biden Administration. That expressly forbids, “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.” This conflates any criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, and is the heart of the bill. It amounts to a violation of the First Amendment right of students to learn about different perspectives on Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East; and sets a dangerous precedent for other forms of censorship in education.
Judge Wise set a hearing date for January 27 “to determine the next steps,” and entertain preliminary trial motions in San Jose; while the injunction to reject is being appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. AB 715 is supported by the usual suspects of mainstream Jewish organizations, including the American Jewish Committee (AJC), and the Jewish Public Affairs Committee (JPAC), which is one of the bill sponsors. Objections have been filed by the ACLU, California Faculty Association (CFA), and the non-partisan Cal Matters.
The Council or American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) points out that the bill “criminalizes honest discussions on Palestine and other global human rights issues.” They cogently argue that AB 715 intimidates teachers to avoid speaking candidly about the realities of Palestine and Israel, politicizes complaints against teachers and students; and most importantly, blurs the line between legitimate intellectual discussion and discrimination against Jews. AB 715 declares critiques of Israel to be anti-Semitic acts that harass and discriminate against Jews. Teachers who expose their students to ideas, information, and instructional materials that may be considered critical of the State of Israel and the philosophy of Zionism, are subjected to harsh criminal sanctions, as illustrated by the ADC Injunction request filed in San Jose District court. This bill supports convicted felon Donald Trump’s efforts to criminalize DEI, and any life form not devoted to supporting him.
Informed Comment has discussed the dynamics and objections to AB 715 in two prior commentaries. Previously we stated that AB 715 does no more to effectively address anti-Semitism, “than convicted felon Donald Trump’s Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, to which many mainstream Jews object. Rather, it demonizes and criminalizes teachers who dare to be candid about the realities of Israel and Palestine.” AB 715 is opposed by teachers’ unions, civil rights groups, and education advocates, as its effect is to silence “marginalized voices in California public schools by shielding a foreign government—Israel—from legitimate criticism and criminalizes honest discussions on Palestine and other global human rights issues.”
The CFA and other objectors all agree that anti-Semitism is a serious problem in education that must be addressed. Their assessment argues, “AB 715 will not address antisemitism—at least not in the way its authors may have intended. It will instead offer a legitimate means to surveil and censor educators in the very institutions founded on the principles of free speech and academic freedom.” They point out that, “Teacher discourse on Palestine or the genocide in Gaza will be policed, misrepresented, and reported to the Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator. Today, it’s Palestine, but tomorrow it could be your ‘rainbow flag,’ your ‘Black Lives Matter poster,’ or your ‘ICE out of LA’ t-shirt.’”
Most chilling is that AB 715 empowers anyone to file an anonymous complaint, alleging that any particular teaching is anti-Semitic. It appoints an “Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator,” empowered to dismiss teachers for refusing to teach what it claims to be “factually accurate,” but is really Zionist-comforting fictions, from the Temple Sunday School myths. What is “factually accurate” has never been more confusing and subjective under Trump. His concept of “truthiness” selectively chooses information to fit a prescribed narrative. This fuels the ADC objection that AB 715 violates the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment because its vague nature invites arbitrary enforcement.
The ACLU statement notes that, “We all agree that antisemitism and all forms of discrimination must be addressed in schools. But AB 715 goes far beyond protecting students from harassment or violence. Instead, it polices what can be said in classrooms, subjects legitimate academic frameworks to overly broad censorship, and risks undermining conversations about history, identity, and human rights. If signed, this bill would chill free expression and critical inquiry in California schools, opening the door for political censorship of curriculum and undermining educators’ ability to teach with integrity.”
Lost in this discussion is that many American Jews reject Trump’s phony use of anti-Semitism as a tool to quash academic freedom. Even the venerable
Jewish Council on Public Affairs (JCPA) issued an eloquent statement stating their objections to, “the false choice between confronting antisemitism and upholding democracy.” It boils down to this: Judaism is a religion with 3000 years of intellectual and spiritual history, embraced by many as a timelessly relevant narrative. Zionism is a political ideology, which began as a secular, agrarian movement in the late 19th century to help Jews find safe haven from the European pogroms. The original concept had no pretense of Biblical prophecy. Zionism of today no more represents Judaism today, than does Hamas represent Islam. As Zionism has become increasingly perverted from its original ideals under PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud government, it has behaved in a manner that grossly conflicts with teachings from the Torah, Talmud and Midrash. This is why many Jews have divorced their practice of Judaism from Zionism, and why it is a bizarre stretch of logic to declare critiques of Israel to be anti-Semitic.
And no, Jews who reject Zionism are not “self-haters.” This has become a very tiresome bromide. That label, however, may be applied to Trump’s “useful Jews,” who have enabled the parallel rises of Fascism in the US and Israel, under Netanyahu. American political dynamics has wrought a compulsion to characterize spiritual advocacy as “political.” In his book, One G-d Clapping – The Spiritual Path of a Zen Rabbi, author Alan Lew says of Martin Luther King on p. 37, “His voice was a clear clarion call to justice. The vision that launched him on his crusade for civil rights was Ezekiel’s vision. King was a prophet, a pure religious voice, mistaken by almost everyone for a political one. Like all the great Hebrew prophets, he was completely misunderstood.” In his 2025 Yom Kippur speech, Rabbi Emeritus David Cooper of Kehilla Community Synagogue in Piedmont, CA, noted that almost all of the great Hebrew prophets died impoverished, with a sense of failure. King was alternatively revered and reviled in his short life. His teachings and sacrifices encapsulate everything that Trump finds threatening to his agenda. So consider that resistance to the Trump agenda is a collective expression of evolved spirituality. AB 715 aims to quash that spirituality in California classrooms, and give comfort to those sympathetic the MAGA; agenda and uber-Zionist adherents, wedded to the old Temple Sunday School myths. It also aims to punish teachers for teaching candidly not only about Israel-Palestine, but other historical narratives with timely current relevance.
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