Katrina Plotz is a Minnesota-based substitute public school teacher and writer with a passion for attempting to delegitimize Israel.
Plotz has affiliations with the Palestine Solidarity Group, and to appearances agrees with it that Israel has no right to exist. Admittedly, what I know about the specifics of her views, I have gleaned through media reports. Still, Plotz does appear to be associated with groups that reject Israel's right to exist. Furthermore, among all the existing competing narratives regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Plotz, to judge by the organizations with which she is associated, agrees that there is no reason, ever, to discuss the circumstances of the U.N. Partition Plan of 1947.
The Partition Plan was a two-state solution that envisioned Jerusalem as an international protectorate with no favor given to any one religious group. The Jews accepted it; the Arabs rejected it. And, the Arabs then mounted a war against Israel, with the aim of destroying it. Leaders of the fledgling Israel included the following in their Declaration of Independence: WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions."
Some weight of evidence suggests they were sincere in that offer (though war nonetheless was waged against them by many of the people to whom that was directed). The Israeli-Arab Salim Joubran has a permanent appointment to the Israeli Supreme Court, for example. There are mosques in Israel, but no Jewish temples in the Palestinian-controlled areas (to say nothing of Jordan, once part of the British Mandate for Palestine, where today, no Jew may be a citizen or buy land).
Even in the face of possible anti-mosque terrorism -- as when an Israeli mosque appeared to have been attacked by an arsonist -- Israeli Jews, and Jews from other places, deplore the attack and convey their solidarity to that Israeli mosque's Imam.
In the context of documentable reality, therefore, there is something suspect about Katrina Plotz's apparent total delegitimizing of Israel, and her apparent willingness to assign all blame to it while giving a pass on everything to its enemies. Moreover, whereas Plotz and her associates appear not even to acknowledge the legitimacy of the 1947 Partition Plan, Palestinian Authority President Abbas says that rejecting the Partition Plan was "an Arab mistake."
Plotz has attempted to travel into the Middle East and then has been surprised and outraged when Israel has called her a "security threat" and deported her. Whatever the facts surrounding that deportation, it is not a stretch to conclude that Plotz might have sincerely good intentions, but that her head nonetheless is not screwed on quite right. And, that combination of circumstances could be detracting from the efficacy of her efforts to achieve justice for certain persons, including eventual gay persons in Gaza, the West Bank (to the extent that she has ever expressed an interest in LGBTers in those places) and the Anoka-Hennepin School District in Minnesota. Anoka-Hennepin is notorious for having a school board that enables gay bashers in the district.
Plotz substitute teaches in the Anoka-Hennepin Schools. She is part of the Anoka-Hennepin Gay Equity Team. She sent a scolding private Facebook message to this reporter, saying that her group does not agree with this petition pertaining to the district Superintendent Dennis Carlson. She claimed aspects of the petition are "inaccurate," though they were had from direct communications with certain minority members of the district alleging harm done to them there. She appeared to express the idea that this reporter should never report on anything about Anoka-Hennepin without her prior approval of the contents of the published reports.
Plotz's scolding extended to disagreement with this reporter over the quality of the Southern Poverty Law Center's involvement in Anoka-Hennepin matters. The SPLC filed this lawsuit in a federal court on July 21, 2011, but instead of going ahead to trial with it, started holding tea parties with school officials. Even as the SPLC is putting advertisements of its involvement in Anoka-Hennepin on its website next to "Donate Now" buttons, the student's who are alleging victimization in the suit are not any closer to having the demanded compensatory and punitive damages. And meanwhile, after months and months of SPLC-Anoka-Hennepin tea parties, the school actually proposed instituting a "Controversial Topics" policy that would have stigmatized LGBT students as "controversial" simply because they are members of sexual minorities. Plotz is scolding me for my criticism of the SPLC, and insinuating that I should make no further criticisms of it, even though I am pointing out that the alleged victims remain uncompensated while the school continues pumping out ridiculous gay-bashing policy proposals like the "Controversial Topics" policy.
Plotz appears to be a person who stakes out a position and then clings to it, no matter what other evidence might be at hand. It is possible that that characteristic informs her views of the Middle East and of such matters as the Southern Poverty Law Center's involvement in the Anoka-Hennepin School District. The SPLC provides many laudable information-gathering and public communications services. It has won court cases against racist hate groups. But for whatever reasons, it has yet to build up a record of suing gay-bashers in ways that significantly deter other gay bashers from inflicting harm on innocent people. Plotz noted that she feels the SPLC have been "amazing advocates for LGBT students and families in our community."
She is entitled to express that thought, but not to tell me that I have to filter all my article copy about Anoka-Hennepin through her for approval. If the SPLC have been such "amazing advocates," where are the compensatory and punitive damages the victims named in the lawsuit are due, and why do gay-bashers still feel emboldened there to suggest such insulting nonsense as the "Controversial Topics" policy?
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