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Kids will be kids, donchaknow. Especially when they believe the anti-Israel propaganda on social media. But just because they go after a Jewish teacher does not make them vile Jew-haters! [IsraelTimes] A November 20 demonstration at a Queens high school descended into mayhem with an educator sequestered for her own safety, raising concerns of dangerous levels of antisemitism
Students and city officials are pushing back against accusations of antisemitism at Hillcrest High School in Queens after a Jewish teacher was targeted in a protest, even as local Jewish leaders are demanding accountability after the incident. Video of the unruly protest, which took place November 20 and exploded into public view over the weekend, drew widespread criticism of the school and charges of antisemitism, including from New York City Mayor Eric Adams. But speaking at a press conference at the school on November 27, Schools Chancellor David Banks, Queens Borough President Donovan Richards and student leaders rejected the charges, even as they denounced the incident and said some students would be suspended over it.
“So many of the students who were running or jumping had no idea what was even going on. They were doing what 14- and 15-year-olds do,” Banks said. “The notion that this place is radical, these kids are radicalized and antisemitic, is the height of irresponsibility.”
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Banks said he had sought to understand what triggered the mayhem at the school in conversations with students and found out that social media played a central role.
“Young people today, they’re not watching, with all due respect, New York 1 or NBC or ABC,” Banks said. “They consume their information through social media, specifically TikTok and others, and what they are seeing on a daily basis are children and young people in Palestine, Palestinian families being blown up.”
As a result, “they feel a kindred spirit with the folks in the Palestinian community,” Banks said.
“When they all of a sudden saw this image of the teacher that says, ‘I Stand With Israel,’ the students articulated to me they took that as a message that I’m affirming whatever is happening to the Palestinian family and community,” Banks said. “That made sense to me,” Banks said.
Did it, indeed? As opposed to using the teachable moment to explain the many ways in which the students were wrong — perhaps education is not the right fit for you. After initially tweeting that the incident was a “vile show of antisemitism,” Adams took a softer tone at a press conference at City Hall Tuesday, where he said Banks had done the “right thing” by visiting the school and echoed Banks’s blaming of social media, saying online algorithms were “destroying our children and this is one of the examples.”
The events leading to the incident began several weeks ago, when a Jewish health teacher at Hillcrest changed her Facebook profile photo to herself at a pro-Israel rally carrying a sign in support of the Jewish state. Students at the school noticed the photo online and shared it with classmates, Banks said.
Students planned a protest against the teacher on November 20 that quickly got out of hand as hundreds of students, in the hallway between classes, joined in and ran amok. Videos showed the students running through the hallways, waving Palestinian flags and causing damage to the school’s property. The celebratory videos of the incident included a photo of the teacher at the rally.
“It was meant to be a peaceful protest from the very beginning, but some of these students lack maturity,” said the school’s senior class president, Muhammad Ghazali. “These students have the right to go out there and protest, but it’s just the way they protested was wrong.”
They have no right to protest during school hours, nor to riot through the halls. Around 400 students, out of 2,500 at the school, had “acted disruptively” during the incident, Banks said. He said it was not acceptable and that the education department would take steps to respond to it.
Turning on the sprinkler system to dampen their enthusiasm would have been a quick and easy solution to the fact of one in six students rioting through the halls, led by the senior class president. Banks, himself a graduate of Hillcrest, said the teacher was singled out due to her support for Israel and “Jewish identity” but said that contrary to media reports, she was sequestered safely on a different floor from the students who were protesting against her.
Which makes it ok that the kids were running amok, calling for her to be fired. They were just expressing themselves, and that’s a good thing, right? The teacher was already concerned about social media posts about her and in touch with police, who said they had responded to a 911 call at the school at around 9:30 a.m. on November 20, about a teacher who had “received a threat from an unknown person on social media.”
“There was no one barricaded or protests and/or riots at the location. There have been no arrests, and the investigation remains ongoing,” police said.
Banks said the student body at Hillcrest is around 30% Muslim and the faculty includes both Jewish and Muslim teachers. The chancellor said that in addition to the November 20 protest, a student warned the principal two days later that demonstrations would continue as long as the teacher remained employed, with another rally planned for later that day. The school went into lockdown to head off that protest.
The teacher, who has not commented publicly beyond a statement to the New York Post over the weekend, will return to the school this week, Banks said, adding that the school was concerned about a rally against antisemitism planned outside the school on Thursday by the pro-Israel and Jewish self-defense group Yad Yamin. The group said the rally had been canceled.
The incident has elicited criticism from a range of Jewish leaders and has inspired the formation of a new group, New York City Public School Alliance, which is pressing the city education department to do more to combat antisemitism in schools. The group announced itself during a press conference Tuesday afternoon on the steps of Tweed Courthouse, the education department headquarters.
“Chancellor Banks has failed our students, families and educators. He has failed at building safe and inclusive classrooms and schools for Jewish students, families and employees,” said founder Tova Plaut, an instructional coordinator for District 2 in Manhattan.
The group decried what it said was Banks’s “weak response” to the Hillcrest incident and demanded that he acknowledge the “extent of Jewish hate and anti-Jewish culture” in public schools; adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism; adopt a zero-tolerance policy toward antisemitism; restructure how schools address diversity to include Jews; and include Jewish heritage identity in curriculum and diversity and inclusion goals.
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