Shockingly — and perhaps refreshingly — it was a quiet week on the antisemitism front at home related to the Israel-Hamas war abroad. Maybe local Hamas supporters respect Christmas.
That said, it has not all been quiet on the western, Philadelphia-based front.
Jason Holtzman of the Jewish Community Relations Council, within the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, talked about a concerning rise in antisemitism in local K-12 schools. And in one of those institutions, Lower Merion High School, a student wrote an op-ed, since taken down, denigrating Israel.
Holtzman
“There’s a lot of stuff happening in school districts all over the place,” Holtzman said.
Antisemitic graffiti was recently found in a bathroom at Lower Moreland High School. Heil Hitler salutes were made by students at Unionville High School in Kennett Square. And, in general, there has been bullying and harassment of Jewish students as well as swastikas being drawn in notebooks and flashed at Jewish kids.
There were also issues in the Downingtown Area School District, the Colonial School District and the Upper Dublin School District, according to Holtzman. A Colonial school board member, Jamina Clay, called the Israel Defense Forces a “terrorist organization” in a Facebook post. She later resigned. An Upper Dublin board member, Tricia Ebarvia, resigned after sharing a webinar on social media that referred to the “ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians,” according to a Philadelphia Inquirer article.
“It’s super-concerning. This is kind of how it starts. This shows the writing on the wall. Where are kids learning these things? Who’s teaching these kids to say Heil Hitler and draw swastikas?” Holtzman said. “Thank God it hasn’t been anything physical. But these microaggression type of incidents do paint a disturbing picture.”
Holtzman has met with multiple school administrators in the area. He has found them amenable to Jewish concerns over these incidents.
“School boards and school administrators are reasonable people who are committed to doing the right thing educationally. We’ll just have to work with them to correct what has gone wrong,” he said. “In conversations I’ve had in the last few months with school administrators, I have felt a great degree of sincerity that people want to do the right thing, want to teach the right thing and that they are just not equipped with the right materials to do that teaching properly. We need to make sure they have the necessary materials and resources to bring these issues to their schools in a wholesome way. We need to make sure students are educated with true information and not false information pushed by activists.”
Lower Merion
The Merionite has been Lower Merion’s student newspaper since 1929, according to themerionite.org. In its Dec. 20 edition before students left for winter break, it published two op-eds related to the Israel-Hamas war.
The first one, on page five, was written by a sophomore. In it, she quoted a United Nations official who said Israel was “on the verge of an ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”
“This is not a war between Israel and Hamas that just recently started on Oct. 7. How is it a war when one side can commit war crime after war crime, turn off electricity, stop food, water and medical supply, attack religious buildings, kill children, shut off all electricity and use tear gas on people trying to pray?” she wrote.
The second one, on page six, was written by a senior. In it, she explains that Jews, Christians and Muslims all lived on the land. She also explains that it’s the Palestinian side that has continuously rejected attempts at a two-state solution.
“The root of this issue lies within the sentiment that guides each actor within this conflict,” she wrote. “Hamas’ goal has always been to exterminate all Jews and destroy Israel. Israel’s goal, from the very beginning, was to establish a Jewish state, find agreement and seek peace with Palestine.”
