A group of Jewish teachers have resigned from Scotland's largest teaching union after what they consider to be anti-Semitic behaviour amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
The Jewish Teachers Network (Scotland) says its members have begun cancelling their membership of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), after raising concern over tweets being posted by Glasgow chair Aisling Gallagher.
The group says members raised a post expressing solidarity with Palestine with EIS president Paula McEwan and general secretary Andrea Bradley, on the day after a Hamas incursion into Israel left several hundred civilians dead, with the Jewish Teachers Network (Scotland) having felt it was "incredibly offensive and insensitive towards the Jewish community" and that her posts "felt anti-semitic in nature".
The group felt that their concerns were not adequately addressed, and allege that the content of Ms Gallagher's social media posts was determined not to be anti-semitic without engaging the EIS’s Jewish members.
Jewish Teachers Network (Scotland) further expressed its concern over the EIS releasing a statement calling for a ceasefire which focused on the impact of the conflict on educators in Gaza but not in Israel, and the attendance of a pro-Palestine demo by senior members of the union when "members have not been consulted on their presence at this protest".
The group also expressed concern about the language used in a resource on Israel and Palestine released by the union, stating that it "fails to show that Judaism shares some of the characteristics of a nation, an ethnicity, a religion, and a culture" and that a section which states "Palestinians have lived on the land for thousands of years. There has been a Jewish presence in Palestine for thousands of years" is "biased in approach".
Kimberley Vallance and John Naples-Campbell, Co-Chairs of the network said "We are hugely concerned by the bias shown by our largest teaching union and the impact that this is having on our Jewish educators throughout Scotland.
