NORTHAMPTON — The Massachusetts Teachers Association is removing links to potentially offensive images from a members-only section of its website, as well as any materials posted there that don’t aid students and teachers in better understanding the conflict in the Middle East.

MTA President Max Page and Vice President Deb McCarthy issued a statement Wednesday announcing the change to how resources about the war between Israel and Hamas will be made available to union members, nine days after a contentious legislative Special Commission on Combating Antisemitism hearing in which members of the panel displayed educational materials available from the MTA’s website that were described as both antisemitic and one-sided.

“As trusted educators, MTA members would never want to have antisemitic materials on the MTA website, and the MTA does not promote materials that direct hate at any group,” Page and McCarthy said. “We will remove any materials that do not further the cause of promoting understanding.”

Page, as the head of the largest union in the state, was subject to a lengthy presentation by Commission Co-Chairman Rep. Simon Cataldo, D-Concord, who used the hearing to show more than 20 exhibits culled from the MTA website, such as a dollar bill folded up into a star of David and bestiality imagery that taps into Nazi-era stereotypes, while Sen. John Velis, D-Westfield, who also co-chairs the panel, criticized the lack of diversity in the materials.

The MTA leaders, though, had noted that the images displayed at the Feb. 10 hearing are not posted on the MTA’s website, but rather on outside websites that are linked from the members-only resources page. Those links to sites hosting the images will now be removed.

Cataldo, in a statement shared with the Statehouse News Service on Wednesday, said the commission called the Feb. 10 hearing after MTA members, including both Jewish and non-Jewish public school teachers, reached out to lawmakers’ offices with concerns “about outrageously one-sided and offensive materials” that the union was circulating “to ‘aid pedagogy.’”

“That the MTA is only just now beginning to ‘review’ the resources would be laughable if the subject matter wasn’t so gravely serious,” Cataldo said.

Gov. Maura Healey weighed in on Thursday, saying that images on the MTA website were “antisemitic, offensive and never should have been shared in the first place.”

In an email addressed to lawmakers sent Wednesday and shared with the News Service, Page said, “We had already begun a review of those resources, and our staff will identify any links that inadvertently have not lived up to our ethical standards and will be removed.”

“I would never want to have antisemitic materials on the MTA website,” Page saidd. “I would not promote materials that direct hate at any group.”

But Robert Leikind, director of American Jewish Committee New England and a member of the commission, told the Gazette on Thursday that his organization issued a report in December alleging an MTA “campaign” to push an anti-Israel agenda on its members and provide a “mono-narrative” that poses what he said is a real risk of politicizing classrooms and distorting how the Israel-Gaza war may be presented.

“We’re glad to see MTA has indicated some willingness to evaluate these resources,” Leikind said.

In his statement, Cataldo said he and Velis have heard from MTA teachers across the state over the past week who are grateful to the commission for addressing the issue in public. “The teachers’ outreach adds to the chorus of parents who are appalled that these materials were introduced to teachers for the purpose of ‘educating’ teachers and students about these complex issues,” Cataldo said.

“It’s deeply concerning that the MTA’s leadership not only ignored the pleas of its own members to revisit these materials, but gaslit Jewish teachers and others who formally petitioned the MTA’s board to have the materials taken down or revised. Only after over a week of intense public pressure following the February 10 public hearing is the MTA conceding that a ‘review’ is necessary and questioning its own actions. Apparently, the advocacy of the MTA’s own Jewish and non-Jewish members proved insufficient to dislodge the MTA from its position.”

Velis said in a statement that “today’s acknowledgment [by the MTA] is long overdue” after teachers’ concerns had been falling “on deaf ears.”

The Senate chair added that removing the materials from the MTA’s website is “only one step of correcting this grave injustice and the education malpractice.”

“Additionally, and as importantly, adding additional resources to reflect the nuance and balance of this incredibly complex subject is absolutely paramount,” said Velis, who noted on Thursday that the links to the materials in question have yet to be removed from the union’s website.

He added that the situation shows how “vitally important” the commission’s work is.

‘Political grandstanding’

But even though MTA is taking this step, the union’s leaders are calling out the legislative actions that led to it.

“While we make this necessary correction, our union remains deeply disappointed that in conversations with the House co-chair, prior to the Feb. 10 hearing, we had been led to believe that the commission hearing would provide the opportunity for a thoughtful discussion about how to teach this very difficult conflict with our students. Instead, the co-chair used this hearing as an opportunity to engage in political grandstanding that was disturbing to many.”

“The way these resources were manipulated in such a fashion, so as to label the state’s largest union of educators as promoters of antisemitism, remains one of the more deplorable displays witnessed at the State House,” Page and McCarthy said.

The MTA leaders said they recognize that it is the union’s responsibility to provide its members with materials that are accurate, diverse and balanced, and that members and the staff involved in developing the resulting web page of resources saw the work as fluid, curating items from various educational and media sources. As part of this process, it was understood that links to materials would be added and deleted, they said.

“The members-only page has numerous resources on how to teach about this and other conflicts, and includes materials from the Anti-Defamation League, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Facing History and Ourselves, the New York Times, the NEA, and many other respected sources.”

They continued, “The Massachusetts Teachers Association vigorously defends the right of all students and teachers to feel supported and included in our classrooms and unequivocally condemns antisemitism and Islamophobia and all other forms of hatred and discrimination.

“We recognize that the conflict in the Middle East is complex and nuanced with longstanding historical, political, economic and cultural roots. We strive to help our members foster critical conversations and understanding with each other and with their students as they wrestle with the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.”

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.