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ZOA AROUND THE COUNTRY 1 ZOA Booth at the Celebrate Israel Festival in Los Angeles 2 ZOA hosts Edwin Black (second from left) at the home of Nina and Mario Pellegrini to unveil his plan to defund and replace the UN 3 ZOA hosts Uri Ariel (center), Israel’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, for a tour of San Francisco Jewish landmarks called Israel Apartheid Week at UC Berkeley and at Cal State Northridge’s annual Israel festival for Yom Ha’atzmaut. For the second year in a row, Mr. Kadosh instructed members of Club Z, a local Bay Area Zionist youth group, on the fundamentals of safe firearm handling with a practical shooting course. Zionist high-school students and their families were taught the principles of Zionism that seek internal responsibility for the collective Jewish defense and learned responsible techniques to better defend themselves and their community. COMBATTING ANTI-SEMITISM ZOA’s West Coast chapter was contacted by parents of students attending Alameda High School, who had suffered through a year of anti- Semitic harassment and intimidation. Upon further investigation and speaking with other families, it became apparent that the problem was district-wide, even in the elementary and middle schools. Parents had raised their concerns with school officials and provided them with evidence of threats to Jewish students and district-wide anti Semitic vandalism. Yet school officials never took sufficient action against the perpetrators, never publicly condemned these actions as anti- Semitic, and never educated students about anti- 46 Semitism and the harm it causes. Some of the anti-Semitic bullying took place in the presence of teachers who typically failed to intervene as is their duty under the law. The ZOA Center for Law and Justice, led by Susan Tuchman, was called upon to address the grave, systemic problem of anti-Semitism facing Jewish students throughout the district. With support from parents, the ZOA described the problems in detail to district officials and recommended reasonable and doable solutions, including (1) punishing the anti-Semitic bullies; (2) educating students with age-appropriate programs on the dangers of anti-Semitism, including when it is expressed as anti-Israelism; (3) training for teachers, staff, and administrators to recognize and respond to anti-Semitic incidents when they occur; (4) creating programs to educate parents about anti-Semitism; (5) issuing strong statements identifying and condemning anti-Semitic incidents in the district; (6) hosting educational programs during Jewish American History Month; and (7) sponsoring age-appropriate programs for Holocaust Remembrance Day. ZOA West Coast and the Center for Law and Justice are maintaining pressure on district officials to ensure that they afford to Jewish students the same protections they afford to other minorities. ZOA is the organization the community can count on to defend Jewish pride and Jewish lives. ZOA is the organization the community can count on to defend Jewish pride and Jewish lives. 1 2 3


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