Christian Smith
(NewsNation) – Lawmakers in the House should hear from school districts in New York City, California and Maryland about what they are doing about multiple reports of anti-Semitism on their campuses, many of them occurring in recent months.
“Anti-Semitic incidents exploded in middle and high schools following the horrific Hamas attack on October 7th. Jewish teachers, students, and faculty have been denied a safe learning environment and forced to confront anti-Semitic agitators due to the inaction of district leaders,” said Florida Republican Rep. Andrew Bean, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood Education, Primary and Secondary. he said in a statement. “This widespread and extreme anti-Semitism in middle and high schools is not only alarming – it is absolutely unacceptable.”
School district leaders in New York City; Berkeley, California; and Montgomery County, Maryland will appear before the GOP-led subcommittee on Wednesday at 10:15 a.m. ET, Wall Street Journal reported.
While lawmakers say Wednesday’s hearing is necessary to protect Jewish students and school employees, others say it’s just an opportunity for “political grandstanding,” The Wall Street Journal wrote. They quoted New York City Public Schools Chancellor David Banks, who said that truly resolving anti-Semitism does not mean doing so “through cheap political theater and cheap soundbites.”
The Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education is part of the Education and Workforce Committee, which also held meetings on anti-Semitism at colleges and universities. Harvard President Claudine Gay and University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned after receiving widespread backlash for their testimony, with critics saying they were not doing enough for Jewish students.
Antisemitism and Islamophobia increase after October 7
Organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League say there has been a rise in anti-Semitic incidents since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages. Israel has declared war, with its military offensive in Gaza killing some 34,500 people, according to local health officials, and spreading widespread devastation.
The ADL said in a recent report that 2023 saw an increase of “tens of percentage points” in the number of anti-Semitic incidents occurring in Western countries compared to 2022.
In the US alone, there were 7,523 in 2023, almost double the 3,697 registered in 2022, said the ADL.
At the same time, there has also been an increase in Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian acts, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations. CAIR received 8,061 complaints nationwide in 2023, the highest number the organization has seen in the three decades since it was created. This represents 56% compared to 2022, CAIR said.
NewsNation reached out to Bean’s office to see if there would be hearings to address Islamophobia in U.S. schools as well.
What happened in school districts?
Berkeley, California
Two organizations, the Anti-Defamation League and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Legal Human Rightsfiled a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against the Berkeley Unified School District, alleging that administrators failed to take steps to stop the “uninterrupted bullying and harassment of Jewish students by peers and teachers.”
The incidents cited by the ADL include calls to “kill the Jews” and “eliminate Israel.” Jewish students in the district, the ADL said, were asked what “your number is,” referring to Nazi concentration camps, ridiculed for their physical appearance and told that “I don’t like your people” and “of course It was the Jews.” This report was expanded in March to include more instances, including one in which “Kill Jews” was scrawled in a high school bathroom.
“During an unauthorized teacher strike for Palestine, not a single teacher intervened as students shouted, ‘Kill the Jews,’ ‘KKK,’ ‘Kill Israel,’ and ‘“’From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.’ “, said the ADL. Although the ADL has categorized the last phrase as anti-Semitic, many Palestinian activists say it is a call for peace and equality after 75 years of Israeli statehood and decades of open Israeli military rule over millions of people. according to the Associated Press.
“BUSD’s blatant disregard for this continued harassment, intimidation and anti-Semitic rhetoric is inexcusable,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “Jewish students are hiding their identities and are afraid to go to school – this is outrageous, unacceptable and should not happen in 2024.
However, the Los Angeles Times writes that pro-Palestinian parents in the district, including a Jewish group called “Berkeley Unified School District Jewish Parents for Collective Liberation,” said some of the complaints conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.
Jewish Parents for Collective Liberation of the Berkeley Unified School District wrote in a statement that Jewish children are “safe and thriving” in the city’s schools.
“As Berkeley Jewish parents, we reject the notion that there is rampant anti-Semitism in our schools; It’s simply not true,” the statement to the LA Times said. “A handful of parents painted a false picture of our city in the national media, fueling the right-wing’s national attack on education.”
A Berkeley schools spokeswoman told the newspaper that the district “celebrates our diversity and stands against all forms of hate and otherness, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.”
Montgomery County, Maryland
The WSJ wrote that Montgomery County Public Schools currently has an interim superintendent, so the district school board president is expected to speak.
There have been numerous anti-Semitic acts committed in the county’s schools, according to local magazine MoCo360like some students drawing swastikas on tables and school property in December and others being seen giving a anti-Semitic “greeting”” last September.
Since Oct. 7, the district has also found anti-Semitic graffiti in bathrooms at several schools.
A spokeswoman told the WSJ that the school board president is eager to share how the district “responds to incidents rooted in anti-Semitism and promotes a culture of tolerance and respect.”
The district has also been criticized for TO FALL, who filed a complaint against the Montgomery County Board of Education and BOE officials after three teachers were placed on administrative leave because of speeches supporting Palestine. One of the teachers posted a photo on her personal Instagram account of an Israeli government missile just minutes from killing a Palestinian child, according to the complaint, with the caption: “Shame on the world.”
CAIR lawyers said this was published as a “criticism of the human rights abuses the Israeli government has committed and continues to commit against Palestinians in Gaza and other occupied territories in Palestine.”
Another teacher added, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” to her email signature, which the lawyers called “a call for everyone to have the right to exist and move freely in the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea”. ”For Palestinians and Israelis. It was particularly significant, the suit claims, since the teacher has loved ones in Palestine and recently learned that her childhood friend was killed following Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.
“The actions of the Board and MCPS staff were thinly veiled attempts to fulfill a mission: to remove from the classroom teachers who express support for the Palestinian people,” CAIR attorney Rawda Fawaz said in a statement.
MoCo360 reported in April that the three teachers and a fourth who were suspended but not involved in the litigation have been reinstated.
New York City
The city’s Department of Education is currently being investigated by the US Department of Education for its response to incidents of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, Chalkbeat New York he wrote.
In November, at Queen’s Hillcrest High School, students protested after a teacher posted a photo of herself on social media holding a sign saying she supports Israel. NewsNation Partner The hill wrote that the NYPD said school security officers at Hillcrest “requested response from the school sergeant regarding a disorderly group of students within the premises,” after which they “dispersed.”
Chalkbeat wrote that New York City Public Schools Chancellor Banks condemned the protests, saying that several students were disciplined for participating in them, although he also emphasized that many teenagers at the school felt anger and sadness upon seeing images on social media of “children and young people in Palestine…being blown up.” Even so, he ended up dismissing the director.
Additionally, staff members at Origins High School say Jewish teachers and students were bullied, with one student saying a classmate called her a “dirty Jew” and said she wished Hitler could have “beat up more Jews,” including her . The New York Post reported. One teacher who is suing told the Post in March that she “lives in fear of going to work every day.” CBS New York wrote that there was also Islamophobia, with a Muslim teacher being called a “terrorist” by a student.
Speaking to CBS New York the day before the hearing, Banks said, “Anti-Semitism is a vile scourge that cannot exist in our public schools,” but acknowledged that his district still has work to do to combat it.
“We have to continue to educate, and some of the biggest challenges that we really face are the biases that we find in our own adults, in some of our teachers, in some of our administrators, who are bringing some of their own political views into the debate. . in schools and in the classroom,” Banks said. “You cannot tolerate this. We have to provide a classroom environment that is fair and balanced.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
