Johnny can't read, but at least he'll know who the oppressor is, thanks to the Wheels of Justice traveling bus tour.

In a country where many high school students cannot even correctly identify the century in which the American Civil War was waged, at least students in Andover High School in Massachusetts will be very familiar with the historical term “ethnic cleansing,” and how the world’s singular and most egregious example of its continued practice is, of course, found in the “apartheid Zionist regime” of Israel. Thanks to the efforts of perennial hater of America and Israel, Ron Francis, an Andover High School physics teacher, students will be have the opportunity of listening to the Leftist, anti-American, anti-Israel view of the “Wheels of Justice” organization, apologists for the Palestinian cause who preach a one-sided message to students that the violent, terror-laden effort of self-determination against the “project” — not State — of Israel is the result, singularly, of the “colonization, occupation, displacement, apartheid and the denial of the rights of Palestinian refugees.”

There was some controversy at the end of October when Andover High’s principal, alerted to the actual nature and content of the Wheels of Justice traveling bus tour, temporarily postponed the visit until other speakers, offering a counterbalance to the dialogue, could be found. Tom Meyers, president of the teacher’s union and an outspoken supporter of Mr. Francis and his views, was “shocked, shocked” by the School’s decision to exclude the lecturers and limit someone’s First Amendment rights, although it is not entirely clear exactly whose rights were being denied. The Constitution protects an individual’s right to express their views, no matter how reprehensible, in what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes termed the broad, public “marketplace of ideas,” but nowhere is it incumbent on any institution, and certainly not public schools, to be forced to sponsor, or provide a public platform for, the ravings of any outside individual, merely because that individual has a message he or she is eager to express.  

While it is still not acceptable in civil social circles to publicly express Jew hatred, at least in America, it has become very convenient for anti-Semites that they are able to express what David Frum has termed their “genocidal liberalism” by aiming their crypto-hatreds at Israel, instead, by relentlessly condemning it and calling for its eradication.

They do so, as Mr. Francis has done, by inviting extremist speakers like Wheels of Justice and spearheading an Israel divestment project in his home town of Somerville.

The fundamental flaw of these extremist views, of course, is that in his obsessive reverence for everything Palestinian and the demonizing of Israel — including the core belief that Israel will never be recognized — Francis does his students a great disservice by indoctrinating them with a worldview that can, and should, be challenged by different perspectives; in fact, it is a view so extreme and intractable that it cannot even be considered a reasonable outlook in a world where negotiation, geopolitical reality, and truth ought to come into discussions before, and in the place of, rabid ideology.

Mr. Francis, for instance, to paraphrase Professor Edward Alexander’s characterization of Noam Chomsky, is an individual who is rendered nearly speechless if unable to use the word “Zionism” and “ethnic cleansing” in every sentence, accusations that are ‘absurd,’ says Mitchell Bard, Executive Director of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, noting that “in Gaza, for example, the population increased from 731,000 in July 1994 to 1,225,911 in July 2002, an increase of 68 percent.”

The other charge Israel-haters have grown fond of making is that Israel is an “apartheid State” with an “apartheid wall,” no better than the South African government much of the world rallied so hard to dismantle. The accusation is that the Israeli government is based on the “privilege” of one group — the Jews — at the expense of all others, and the intent is to ascribe to Israel and the Jews unbridled, undeserved power and show how it has transformed them from victim into victimizer. This is the core idea of the divestment campaigns, as well as the party line of such groups as Wheels of Justice.

Such groups conveniently describe themselves as “human rights activists,” even though they seem singularly obsessed with the failings and moral lapses of Israel — and only Israel — among all countries in the world, in many of which civil strife, actual genocide, ethnic purging, enslavement, mass murder, and totalitarianism prevail. “Could the singling out of Israel,” Professor Alexander ironically asks, “possibly have anything to do with the fact that it is a Jewish country?”

More important in the context of exposing high school students to incendiary issues is the fundamental question about what role teachers should have, if any, in promoting personal ideology, and in exposing students to one-sided, historically-inaccurate, and debatable views of difficult political issues. Why this particular issue to shove down students’ throats among all the incendiary geopolitical situations on earth? Why the linkage of Israel with the U.S.’s alleged “occupation” of Iraq, together with its anti-American sentiment and its nearly seditious fawning over Iraqi insurgents who murder Americans?  

The good news, at least, is that at Andover High School, Mr. Francis teaches physics and not history.