Education Is Our First Line of Defense Against Hate

by Michelle Lubin Terris, originally published on Israel365news.com on March 6, 2026.  Michelle Lubin Terris is the Founder and President of JEXIT.

Why does it matter what our kids learn in school?

Because what we’re seeing in education right now should worry us all.

Across the country, history is being minimized, rewritten, softened, or quietly left out.

Sometimes it’s subtle.

A lesson that used to take two periods now gets a quick pass-over.

A teacher skips a topic because it’s “too sensitive.”

A student learns that something “bad” happened, but never learns what, why, or how.

This isn’t accidental. It’s shaped by policy and curriculum.

Take California, for example. Assembly Bill AB101 influences what’s emphasized, how history is framed, and which narratives students are taught to adopt.

When ideology drives education, truth becomes flexible, and that’s where distortion begins.

I’ll use the Holocaust as an example, because this is personal to me. In 2019, at Boca Raton’s Spanish River Community High School, then-principal William Latson was removed and later fired after emails surfaced in which he refused to confirm the Holocaust as a factual historical event.

The Holocaust is one of the most documented events in human history. Nazis meticulously recorded their own crimes. Yet today, it’s increasingly treated as optional, softened, or controversial.

Instead of teaching that Jews were murdered, gassed, tortured, we hear “Jews died.”

Instead of Jewish genocide, it becomes “World War II atrocities,” without teaching who was targeted, why, or how systematic the killing was.

Instead of clarity, it becomes vague. Lines blur.

And we know what happens when language is softened. The truth weakens, and denial takes root.

Avoiding the Holocaust to escape controversy isn’t neutrality. It teaches students that truth is flexible, facts depend on comfort, and silence is acceptable in the face of injustice.

Education is our first line of defense against hatred. If students aren’t taught where antisemitism leads, they’re more vulnerable when it reappears, often with new language, new chants, new justifications.

Here’s the historical pattern.

In ancient Egypt, Jews were portrayed as threatening during times of famine to justify enslavement and brutality.

In the Greco-Roman world, Jews were falsely associated with disease and corruption.

In the Middle Ages, Jews were blamed for the bubonic plague, and entire communities were massacred.

Every time, the same cycle: panic, distortion, blame, violence.

The Holocaust didn’t begin with gas chambers. It began with lies, with scapegoating, with rewriting history.

Jews and Christians must stand together. We don’t need to agree on theology to agree on truth. We don’t need to be Jewish to reject Holocaust denial. We don’t need to be Christian to insist on moral clarity.

Our children deserve an education rooted in honesty. They deserve teachers who are empowered, not silenced, to teach history accurately. They deserve a curriculum that confronts hatred rather than avoids it. And they deserve adults willing to speak up when something essential is being lost.

That’s why what happens in schools today matters so deeply. If our children don’t learn the truth clearly, they won’t recognize hate when it comes back again.

THIS IS NOT ONLY A JEWISH ISSUE.

For Jews, memory is sacred. “Remember” is a commandment, not a suggestion. For Christians, truth matters too. Rejecting false witness, standing with the oppressed, loving your neighbor, all require moral clarity and historical honesty.

So today, I’m asking three things.

1. Pay attention. What is being taught? And what is being left out?

2️. Speak up. Silence has never protected anyone.

3️. Stand together. When Jews and Christians defend truth, memory, and human dignity together, we stop the cycle before it grows.

May we be worthy of the memory we inherit, and faithful to the future we are shaping.