In June 2025, the National Education Association (NEA) quietly published its 2025 Handbook (source:Wayback Machine)—an internal policy document reflecting the resolutions adopted at its previous year’s Representative Assembly. By early July, the handbook had been pulled from the NEA’s website without explanation.
The reason? A handful of New Business Items (NBIs) in the document included language that critics say rewrites Holocaust history, falsely accuses Israel of genocide, and reframes antisemitism in ways that many educators and historians find troubling. The NEA has since issued a statement defending its record on Holocaust education—but it has not addressed the wording in its own handbook, nor explained why the PDF was removed from public access.
The 12 Million Rewrite
The most explosive passage appears in NBI 83 – Holocaust Remembrance Day, which reads:
“NEA shall promote the celebration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day… to recognize the more than 12 million victims of the Holocaust from different faiths, ethnicities, races, political beliefs, genders, and gender identification, abilities/disabilities, and other targeted characteristics.”
The term Holocaust has long been defined by scholars and institutions—including the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem, and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)—as the state-sponsored, targeted extermination of six million Jews by Nazi Germany. While historians acknowledge that millions of others were also killed under Nazi policies (Roma, the disabled, political prisoners, etc.), those deaths are typically referred to as victims of Nazi persecution, not “the Holocaust” per se.
Palestinian Nakba Education
That prior New Business isn’t the only source of concern. The NEA’s 2025 handbook includes another item that lean into politicized narratives of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, prompting critics to question the union’s objectivity in presenting complex historical issues.
NBI 6 (Referred to the Board) – Palestinian Nakba Education calls for the NEA to use its media platforms to “educate members and the general public about the Nakba”—a term meaning “catastrophe”. The language frames this event as one of “forced, violent displacement and dispossession” and highlights the “ongoing trauma” for Palestinian American students. While the item encourages teaching the Nakba to promote empathy and critical thinking but does not reference or include any Israeli, Jewish mainstream, or historically balanced perspectives—such as the surrounding geopolitical context or the reasons for Israel’s founding..
Historical Context
The term Nakba refers to the displacement of roughly 750,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. However, this war followed the United Nations’ 1947 Partition Plan, which called for separate Jewish and Arab states. Jewish leaders accepted the plan; Arab states and Palestinian leaders rejected it. When Israel declared independence in May 1948, five neighboring Arab nations invaded.
In the ensuing conflict, both Arab and Jewish populations were displaced—over 850,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries around the same time. Many historians argue that while Palestinian displacement was tragic, it occurred within the broader context of a war initiated by Arab states against the newly declared Jewish state.
Vermont-NEA’s Silence
While this controversy swirled nationally, the Vermont-NEA, which is a state affiliate of the national NEA, has said nothing.
Vermont-NEA is active on social media, frequently posting about political events in Montpelier, education budgets, and even a case involving a Vermont school administrator detained by U.S. Border Patrol. They’ve commented on Trump, Biden, climate change, and healthcare.
But not one word about:
- The altered Holocaust language,
- The “genocide in Gaza” claim,
- Or the now-scrubbed handbook that had their organization’s name on it.
Silence on a local zoning law is one thing. Silence on a national education union potentially redefining the Holocaust? That’s another.
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What Teachers Were Actually Learning in Vermont
Contrast the NEA handbook with what was happening in Vermont just a few months earlier.
On March 19, 2025, about 50 Vermont teachers gathered in Montpelier for the 6th Annual Educators Holocaust Workshop, hosted by the Vermont Holocaust Memorial. The event used materials from Echoes & Reflections, is a joint program of ADL, USC Shoah Foundation and Yad Vashem.
Their curriculum didn’t mention 12 million victims. It centered on the 6 million Jews, on antisemitism, and on the Final Solution.
In short, actual Vermont educators were teaching the historical record—while their union’s national leadership was busy diluting it.
The NEA’s Response
The NEA eventually issued a response to media inquiries, stating:
“This document is not a handbook for use in the classroom, but a compilation of the more than 100 new business items adopted by NEA last year…”
The NEA has stated its continued commitment to Holocaust education and antisemitism awareness but has issued no correction, clarification, or update to the controversial language, even after removing the document from its website.
Why This Matters
Education shapes memory. When the largest teachers’ union in America revises Holocaust language to downplay Jewish identity, reframes antisemitism as a branch of white supremacy, and promotes one-sided narratives of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the issue isn’t political correctness—it’s historical revisionism.
To be fair, the NEA handbook does include statements opposing antisemitism and affirming Holocaust education. But these coexist alongside newer language that quietly rewrites who the victims were, what the Holocaust was, and how history should be taught.
More troubling still is the silence—from NEA leadership to state affiliates like Vermont’s. If educators don’t speak up when the facts are blurred, who will?
Dave Soulia | FYIVT
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