Reading, Writing, and … Antisemitism?
It’s hard being a kid. In certain school districts, it’s even harder being a Jewish kid. Though antisemitism on college and university campuses is well documented, it is also encouraged, sanctioned, and even taught in some public school districts.
In February, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the Anti-Defamation League filed a complaint against the Berkeley Unified School District in California. The complaint alleged that the district “knowingly allowed its K-12 schools to become hostile environments for Jewish and Israeli students.”
According to the complaint, “Students from Berkeley High School (‘BHS’) left class on October 18, 2023 [during school hours] without parental permission and walked through the city of Berkeley chanting, ‘Stop bombing Gaza’ and ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ a phrase that calls for the elimination of all Jews from the State of Israel.”
A BHS teacher encouraged students to take part in the walkout, sponsored by the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, by offering them excused absences. The only student in that class who did not join the protest was Jewish. He stayed in class with the teacher, who offered no instruction during the walkout.
Middle school students also attended, encouraged by their teachers. Students shouted such slogans as, “Kill the Jews,” “[Expletive] the Jews,” “[Expletive] Israel,” “KKK,” “Kill Israel,” and “I hate those people.”
While some call for Israel to be wiped off the map, one New York City teacher used a resource that did exactly that. Rita Lahoud, an elementary school teacher, taught children from the Arab Countries World map of the Middle East, which labels Israel as “Palestine” despite the fact that no independent country of Palestine has ever existed.
The class, part of the Arab Culture Arts program at Brooklyn’s PS 261, is funded by Qatar Foundation International, which reportedly paid $513,000 to the New York City Department of Education in 2022.
Tova Plaut, a New York City public school instructional coordinator, told The Free Press, “It’s not just that we’re experiencing Jewish hate in NYC public schools; we’re actually experiencing Jewish erasure. And here is proof of that.”
Siriana Abboud, a pre-K teacher at PS 59 in Manhattan, hung a poster outside her classroom with the heading, “Why do people have different noses?” Beneath the heading were drawings of four noses—one with a ring in it, one with a curved bridge, one with a straight bridge, and one with a noticeably hooked bridge.
The students wrote that they thought noses varied “because of your ancestors” or “where you are from.” Abboud, however, wrote, “I think it’s based on your ethnic identity. In art, we learn that you can often tell ethnicity from the bridge of your nose.”
In a vacuum, Abboud’s statement could be understood as accidental channeling of an antisemitic stereotype. But she is obsessed with targeting Israel and the Jewish people.
She describes her teaching as “centering Arab narratives the way my schooling never did.” On Instagram, she offers parents posts with such titles as “Speaking with your child about Palestine,” “So your child wants to advocate for Palestine: a collective action guide for families,” and “Let’s talk about food sovereignty in Palestine: understanding the violence of Zionist settler colonialism.”
Abboud’s bias makes it difficult not to see her classroom exercise and comment as anything but antisemitic. As one Jewish district educator said, “It’s clearly connected to the ethnic tropes of Jews having big noses. Quite frankly, it reminded me of Nazi comics. I had a visceral reaction to it. It was antisemitic.”
All children deserve better than an education driven by harmful ideologies. If school districts really want to help their students, they should give them an inspiring education, not hate-filled indoctrination.
