The Minneapolis teachers’ union’s pro-Palestinian affinity group is bringing a speaker who called Jews “enemy number one” and called for bombing Israelis to talk to its members on Friday afternoon.
Taher Herzallah, the Associate Director of Outreach & Community Organizing for American Muslims for Palestine, is the featured guest speaker at a MFT Educators for Palestine event Friday at 5 p.m., according to a flyer that is posted in the teacher’s lounge one of the Minneapolis Public Schools. The event is being held at the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers Local 59 office at 67 8th Avenue NE.
On Oct. 17, 2023, Herzallah said: “Anybody who has any relationship or any support or identifies themselves as a Jewish person or as a Christian Zionist, then we shall not be their friend. I will tell you that they are enemy number one and our community needs to recognize that as such.”
An attempt to reach Herzallah at the number on his website from his recent Anoka County Commissioner campaign was met by obscenity from someone who said they were not Herzallah but were “an anti-Zionist Jew.”
Flyer in a Minneapolis Public School teacher’s lounge advertising a MFT Educators for Palestine event.
The flyer for the event, titled “Being an educator in a time of war and genocide,” says breakout topics include: Zionism and anti-Zionism; how to talk to co-workers about Palestine; teaching Palestine in the classroom; and State Board of Investment and divestment.
In a statement, Minneapolis Public Schools said: “This event is not a Minneapolis Public Schools sponsored event. Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) is composed of Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) educators, but is a separate entity from the district. Minneapolis Public Schools is committed to providing a safe and welcoming learning environment for all students.”
MFT President Marcia Howard did not respond to emails seeking comment.
One Jewish teacher in Minneapolis Public Schools, who was granted anonymity due to concerns of retribution, said this is outside of what the union should be doing.
“Our mission is to ensure the safety and education of students. Political statements shouldn’t be part of the union unless it has to do with district business,” the teacher said. “I don’t want any of the teachers bringing this up and teaching my Jewish kids this. It feels like a misuse of power and authority.”
The teacher took down the flyer – which she said was her right as a dues-paying member – and may file a complaint with the MPS office of equity and civil rights.
“He says if you’re Jewish you are the enemy; I don’t feel it’s a safe space,” they said. “I use the lounge to make copies, not run into this poster. I pay union dues for insurance and representation. That’s the main reason people pay, not because we agree with all that it does.”
Herzallah was one of 12 individuals and seven organizations named in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court, Middle District of Florida, by a group of individuals seeking damages under the Federal anti-terrorism act on behalf of American citizens killed or injured by Hamas in the Iranian-backed terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel that killed more than 1,200 with another 250 taken hostage; around 100 are still being held hostage in Gaza.
Ethan Roberts, the deputy executive director of of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakota, said it was “horrifying” that the MFT would give Herzallah a platform.
“Platitudes about being against antisemitism ring extremely hollow,” he said. “It should not be up for the Jewish community [and] Jewish teachers to be calling out antisemitism. Antisemitism is not a Jewish problem. It is a problem. As long as good people stay quiet, it will not get better.”
Roberts said the onus was on MFT leadership as well as Education Minnesota’s leadership – the state teacher’s union – to speak out against the event.
“It’s incumbent upon not just MFT’s, but Education Minnesota’s leadership to do something,” he said. “To make it clear to the kids, to the families, to the teachers, to the staff, to the entire district, that somebody who says that Jews are their ‘number one enemy’ and that glorifies Hamas and glorifies what happened on Oct. 7 does not speak for them.”
An Education Minnesota spokesperson directed all questions to MFT President Howard.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said that he was going to reach out to Howard to discuss the event. Frey, who is Jewish and was a board member at the JCRC, said that Herzallah’s words were exceedingly clear.
“I do not want a known Jew-hater teaching the teachers that teach our kids, and I know I’m not alone,” Frey said. “The beautiful thing about kids is they want to be friends with everybody, and guiding them or advocating for them to dislike certain groups as enemies is a slap in the face to those Jewish students, a slap in the face to their families, and a slap in the face to a whole lot of teachers.
“We need to be rebuilding trust in our institutions, rebuilding trust in our school system, and that rhetoric does nothing positive and certainly creates distrust where we’re trying to build it.”
Herzallah, who is a graduate student and teaching assistant at the University of Minnesota, ran for Anoka County Commissioner earlier this month in a non-partisan race, losing to incumbent Mandy Meisner 75% to 25%. He is a member of the Columbia Heights Parks and Recreation Commission; Parks and Recreation Director Kevin Windschitl said that he doesn’t appoint commission members – the City Council does – but added that Herzallah had been “professional in upholding his duties as a commission member.”
History of antisemitic rhetoric
In May 2024 at the People’s Conference for Palestine in Detroit, Herzallah said that “the Palestinian diaspora in North America has committed its martyrs for this cause.”
“There are people among us today who might not be with us next year at this conference. And this is a reality, because the liberation struggle requires sacrifice, and I know everyone here is prepared to make that sacrifice,” he said.
“The long tentacles of Zionism have always reached deep into the American heartland like no other place in the world. Zionism has penetrated the depths of American society, economics and politics for decades. At its core, the Zionist settler colonial project is based on the white European settler colonial project of North America.”
While speaking at a San Diego mosque in December 2023, he said that his organization is clear about their objective of a free Palestine “from the river to the sea,” which is a statement the American Jewish Committee and others say is antisemitic.
“Don’t let anybody make you feel uncomfortable about saying that, because we don’t follow their moral authority,” he said. “But when we rule Palestine, we go by a different moral code, and so therefore it’s incumbent upon us to rule Palestine again. We’re Muslims. We believe in Allah. We will enforce…we will bring the rules that Allah gave us to this earth because that’s what we were sent for.”
In 2014, when he was the national campus coordinator for AMP, he told the organization’s national conference that “The State of Israel is a lie.” He ended his remarks at the conference calling for violence against Israel.
“Israelis have to be bombed, they are a threat to the legitimacy of Palestine, and it is wrong to maintain the State of Israel,” he said. “It is an illegitimate creation born from colonialism and racism.”
Roberts said that Herzallah is recruiting for Hamas and terrorist groups.
“He’s glorifying martyrdom,” he said. “He is basically tiptoeing up to the line of speech which is legally permissible. That’s not the kind of person you want speaking to teachers. It’s not the kind of person that union dues should be paying to support a program.
“We’ve long learned that any anti-Israel activist, page one in the playbook is to plan your talk during a Jewish holiday. They’ll murder us on Simchat Torah and they’ll talk about glorifying murdering us on Shabbat. It’s all very consistent.”
