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Faces of Israel’s fallen: Soldiers, a peace activist, a family of 5 and more

(JTA) — This week, after a deadly attack by Hamas that has so far claimed the lives of over 900 Israelis, the Jewish world has joined to share in the grief of the mourners and lament the lives cut brutally short. Below are just a fraction of the men and women who were killed since Saturday — some are soldiers, most are civilians, and all helped make up the rich tapestry of the Jewish state.
A peace activist cut down in his prime
Hayim Katsman received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington Jackson School of International Studies in 2021, dedicating his scholarship to understanding the interrelations of religion and politics in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Back home in Israel, he opposed the occupation and refused to cross the Green Line into the West Bank. Recently he ran a student volunteer program to develop a community garden for mothers and children in the Bedouin town of Rahat.
On Saturday, he was murdered by Hamas terrorists in his home in Kibbutz Holit. His sister, Noy, told a Seattle TV station that terrorists had invaded his home, sparing a female neighbor but killing him.
Katsman celebrated his 32nd birthday on Oct. 3. His parents, Daniel and Hannah Katsman, moved to Israel from New York City in 1990. Hayim’s late grandfather was Ben Zion Wacholder, a Dead Sea Scrolls scholar at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
While getting his master’s degree at Ben-Gurion University, Hayim headed the adjunct professors’ union. He taught Hebrew school at a synagogue while living in Seattle.
After working as a car mechanic for many years, he became the gardener of the kibbutz, his mother told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. For a while, he opened a bar on the kibbutz. “He was a vegan and cooked and baked. At the beginning of the pandemic, when making sourdough became popular, he asked me how it felt to have started a trend,” Hannah Katsman said.
Hayim played the bass guitar and held performances as a DJ with a mix of Jewish and Palestinian music.
“He was good-natured, a supportive son, a friend to me and many others,” said his mother, the resource development coordinator at the Center for Women’s Justice. “He lent me his ancient, cherished car during his recent trip to India, although it looked like a wreck it ran smoothly. Once when I was outside replacing the oil, someone drove by and handed me his card, offering to buy it. I didn’t get a chance to tell Hayim. I believe all the cars in the kibbutz were destroyed by the Hamas terrorists.”
A family gone in an instant of brutality
Tamar Kedem Siman Tov, her husband Johnny (Yonatan) Siman Tov and their three children. (Facebook)
In an instant of brutality, an entire family was gone: Tamar Kedem Siman Tov, her husband Johnny (Yonatan) Siman Tov and their three children, 6-year-old twins Shahar and Arbel and their 4-year-old son Omer, were murdered Saturday in Kibbutz Nir Oz on the Gaza border. The family were in their home “safe room” during a barrage of Hamas rockets and texted friends that they were safe, but Hamas gunmen broke in and slaughtered the family.
A community leader who was running to become head of the Eshkol Regional Council, Tamar served as an advisor to the ministry of the interior on regional issues and was the former director of the Bikurim Youth Village for Excellence in Art and Music, a boarding school for at-risk youth. “We create equal opportunities and enable youth with very little background in art or music, and with academic difficulties, to excel in these areas,” she once told an interviewer. “Those who have the desire and the basic potential are given an opportunity – with the help of the special educational team – to break through the glass ceiling.”
According to Tamar’s Facebook page, she grew up in Jerusalem and received her master’s in management and public policy at Ben-Gurion University. Johnny was an operations manager and wheat farmer on the kibbutz.
“Love Sukkot!” Tamar wrote on Facebook on Thursday, in the middle of the harvest holiday. “I enjoy the campaigning and am moved by the support and sympathy of the people I meet.”
A soldier who sprinted toward danger
Yoav Malayev, 19, with his mother Maya Cohen-Malayev and father Alex Malayev (Courtesy Yonatan Cohen)
Yoav Malayev, 19, was killed in a battle with Hamas terrorists at the Zikim Army base during the opening hours of the war. On Saturday morning, when his emergency squad was called up, he rushed to reinforce the front gate, which he knew was being guarded by just one soldier. According to one account, he encountered 10 terrorists and engaged in “face-to-face” battle. Four of them were killed before he fell.
Yoav lived in Kiryat Ono, with his mother Maya Cohen-Malayev, father Alex Malayev and siblings Talya, Avner and Harel. “My sister, his mother, grew up in both Israel and Canada,” Rabbi Yonatan Cohen of Congregation Beth Israel in Berkeley, California, told JTA. “She returned to Israel in her early 20s and is a professor of educational psychology at Bar-Ilan University. His father is a retired colonel from the IDF and said to be the highest-ranking Bucharian Jew in in Israel.”
“Maya raised Yoav, their eldest, with utmost pride,” Rabbi Benjamin Lau, the former senior rabbi of the Ramban Synagogue in Jerusalem, wrote in a Facebook post. “He finished AP studies in both psychology and physics. A precise, sensitive, compassionate, and mission-driven individual, brimming with a sense of calling, he completed his officer training with honors and was posted to an armored brigade. Israelis are raising the next generation in this place with lots of faith and hope and with a profound understanding of the long, long road ahead.”
Shielding their son in their final moments
Debbie Shachar Troen Matias and Shlomo Matias (Facebook)
Debbie Shachar Troen Matias, 50, and Shlomo Matias were killed during the attack on Kibbutz Holit. According to their family, the couple were lying on top of and shielding their teenage son, Rotem, who was shot in the abdomen but survived. Debbie was the daughter of Prof. Ilan Troen, emeritus professor of Israel studies at Brandeis and Ben-Gurion Universities.
“My daughter and son-in-law were killed today, but, in their dying, saved [my teenage grandson’s] life,” Ilan Troen, who had recently returned to Israel upon his retirement from Brandeis, told NPR. “They were all together in the secure room. And they covered his body, and he was saved.”
Debbie attended the Berkeley College of Music in Boston and the Rimon School of Music in Tel Aviv, where she met her husband.
“[Deborah and Shlomi] loved music, life, each other, their kids. I would ask [Rotem] to think of the joy that they sought and had in their lives rather than the focus on that day,” Troen told WBZ-TV in Boston.
A father and son, committed to education
Moshe Ohayon and Eliad Ohayon (Facebook)
Moshe Ohayon, 51, above left, of the southern municipality of Ofakim, grew up in Yad Rambam, a moshav in central Israel. As an educator, he was dedicated to bringing Israelis on the economic periphery “into the center of social and economic life in Israel — as a right, not a form of charity — by creating new initiatives to lead the way and helping future social entrepreneurs,” he once said. Ohayon was a graduate of the Mandel School for Educational Leadership and was director of the 929 Project, an effort to encourage people to read the entire Hebrew Bible over a four-year cycle. He was also board chairman of the Shaharit Institute, a nonpartisan think tank working to bridge social and political divides in Israel.
He and his son Eliad Ohayon, above right, a teacher thought to be in his 20s, were listed among those killed in the weekend attacks; Moshe’s wife and Eliad’s mother, Sarit, is among their survivors. There were no further details available.
“Roey was loved by everyone who met him”
Reoy Weiser (Facebook)
Roey Weiser, 21, a first sergeant in the Golani Brigade, died trying to repel the first wave of infiltrators at or near Kerem Shalom, a kibbutz on the border with Gaza. Weiser was the son of Yisrael and Naomi Weiser of Efrat, who both immigrated to Israel from the United States with their families as children. A soldier who took part in Saturday’s firefight told the family that Roey “went out to fight the enemy almost all on his own and managed to repel the attack, but suffered a direct hit. Because of his bravery, 12 soldiers were saved.”
Roey “always had a smile on his face, a joke or a funny comment,” his uncle, Ashley Perry, a former advisor to Israel’s minister of foreign affairs, said on Facebook. “It is said very often and easily, but Roey was loved by everyone who met him and all wanted to be his friend and hang out with him.”
A star soccer player
Lior Asulin (Via X)
Lior Asulin, 43, who over 15 seasons with various teams established himself as one of the top strikers in Israel’s domestic soccer league, was among the more than 250 festival-goers gunned down at a desert rave in southern Israel after Hamas militants opened fire and looked to take many hostage. A native of Ra’anana, Asulin grew up in the youth system of the Maccabi Herzliya soccer club and was signed to a long-term contract with Herzliya after the 2001-2002 season. He also played with Apollon Limassol FC, a Cypriot sports club. Asulin had found peace working on a horse farm after serving nearly a year in prison in 2021 for selling marijuana. “The Hapoel Tel Aviv club bows its head and sends condolences and strength to Lior’s family at this difficult time,” one of his former clubs said in a statement.
A senior officer and father of six
Lt. Col. Jonathan Steinberg, the commander of the Nahal Brigade, in an undated photo (Israel Defense Forces)
Lt. Col. Jonathan Steinberg, the commander of Israel’s elite Nahal Brigade, was killed Saturday during a confrontation with a terrorist near Kerem Shalom. Steinberg, of Kibbutz Shomria, was one of the most senior officers to have been killed in combat in recent memory, Times of Israel reported. Steinberg studied at Horev High School and Ma’ale Eliyahu Yeshiva in Tel Aviv. He enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces in 2000 and rose through the ranks, becoming commander of the brigade in May. He is survived by his wife and six children.
A daughter of soccer royalty
May Naim and her grandfather, Shlomo Sharaf (Courtesy)
Mai Naim, 22, the granddaughter of one of Israel’s most successful soccer coaches, was also among the more than 250 people killed by Hamas gunmen while attending the music festival near Kibbutz Reim. Friends said Naim decided only at the last minute to attend the festival; when gunmen overran the concert area, shooting into the crowd and grabbing as many hostages as they could, she sought shelter in nearby Kibbutz Be’eri but was pursued and gunned down. Her grandfather Shlomo Sharaf coached Maccabi Haifa to three championships and was manager of Israel’s national soccer team from 1992-1999.
Israel’s national Football Association issued a statement: “In these sad, painful days, moments that the mind and soul find difficult to contain, we wish to offer our condolences to the families of those killed, wish the injured a speedy recovery and emphasize the commitment of the Football Association to take an active and central part in any assistance required and in any way possible to bring comfort to a wounded and pain-filled country.”
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Union Antisemitism Running Rampant on College Campuses, Experts and Student Tell US Congress

Illustrative: Rutgers University students holding an anti-Zionist demonstration on March 19, 2024. Photo: USA Today Network via Reuters Connect
Experts told the US Congress on Tuesday that antisemitism runs rampant in campus labor unions, trapping Jews in exploitative and nonconsensual relationships with union bosses who spend their compulsory membership dues on political activities which promote hatred of their identity and the destruction of the Jewish homeland.
Testifying at a hearing titled “Unmasking Union Antisemitism” held by the House Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions, the witnesses described a series of issues facing Jewish graduate students represented against their will by the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE) union.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTW), which was represented among the expert witnesses, has spoken publicly before about a litany of alleged injustices to which UE officials subject Jewish student-employees in the US’s most prestigious institutions of higher education, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to Cornell University.
At MIT, the group said in August, “union officers” aided a riotous mob which illegally occupied a section of campus with a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” participating in the demonstration and even denying access to campus buildings. UE members at Stanford University, meanwhile, allegedly denied religious accommodations to Jewish students who requested exemption from union dues over that branch’s supporting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. And Cornell University UE was accused of denying religious exemptions in several cases as well and followed up the rejection with an intrusive “questionnaire” which probed Jewish students for “legally-irrelevant information.”
During an interview with The Algemeiner after the hearing, Glenn Taubman, staff attorney for NRTW, said union antisemitism highlights the issues inherent in compulsory union representation, which he says quells freedom of speech and association. He pointed to the case of Cornell University PhD candidate David Rubinstein, who testified before the subcommittee on Tuesday about his own tribulations and a climate of hatred which evades being redressed because the ringleaders fostering it hold left-wing viewpoints.
“The only reason that David is forced to be represented by UE and is theoretically forced to pay them dues is because federal labor law allows that and in many cases requires it,” Taubman explained. “What I told the committee is that ending the union abuse of graduate students and people like David requires amending federal law so that unions are not the forced representatives of people who don’t want such representation.”
He added, “Unions have a special privilege that no other private organization in America has, and that is the power to impose their representation on people who don’t want it and then mandate that they pay dues because they quote-un-quote represent you. That is the most un-American thing that I can imagine.”
Rubinstein told The Algemeiner that he is a Democrat who supports many of the causes for which unions advocate but that what he described as UE’s support for Hamas leaves him no choice but to seek every avenue for disassociating with it.
“As a Jew, I cannot support an organization which spends its time not advocating for wages and health care but rather for ‘intifada revolution,’” he said. “The union antisemitism is empowered by the Cornell administration’s persistent weakness and consistent reneging on its promises to defend the rights of Jewish students.”
Rubinstein added that Cornell University president Michael Kotlikoff came close to exempting students from paying UE dues but abandoned the policy change after its members threatened to strike and thereby disrupt university operations.
“The threat of being terminated, the demands for money, and the constant harassment that others and I have experienced from UE would have never been possible had it not been for the weakness of Cornell leadership,” he added.
Campus antisemitism has drawn NRTW into an alliance with Jewish faculty and students across the US.
In 2024, it represented a group of six City University of New York (CUNY) professors, five of whom are Jewish, who sued to be “freed” from CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) over its passing a resolution during Israel’s May 2021 war with Hamas which declared solidarity with Palestinians and accused the Jewish state of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and crimes against humanity. The group contested New York State’s “Taylor Law,” which it said chained the professors to the union’s “bargaining unit” and denied their right to freedom of speech and association by forcing them to be represented in negotiations by an organization they claim holds antisemitic views.
That same year, NRTW prevailed in a discrimination suit filed to exempt another cohort of Jewish MIT students from paying dues to the Graduate Student Union (GSU). The students had attempted to resist financially supporting GSU’s anti-Zionism, but the union bosses attempted to coerce their compliance, telling them that “no principles, teachings, or tenets of Judaism prohibit membership in or the payment of dues or fees” to the union.
“All Americans should have a right to protect their money from going to union bosses they don’t support, whether those objections are based on religion, politics, or any other reason,” NRTW said at the time.
Kyle Koeppel Mann, senior staff attorney at the New York Legal Assistance Group, and Joseph McCartin, professor and executive director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University, also testified at Tuesday’s hearing.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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German Police Arrest 5 Anti-Israel Activists After Break-In, Vandalism Targeting Elbit Systems

Demonstrators attend the “Lift the Ban” rally organized by Defend Our Juries, challenging the British government’s proscription of “Palestine Action” under anti-terrorism laws, in Parliament Square, in London, Britain, Sept. 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Jasso
Authorities in Germany on Monday arrested five activists linked to the anti-Israel network Palestine Action after the group broke into an Elbit Systems building in the southern city of Ulm, vandalizing the facility with red paint, smoke bombs, graffiti, and smashed windows before occupying an upper floor in an effort to oppose the Jewish state’s war to dismantle the terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.
The officers who responded surrounded the building and apprehended the suspects. The state’s Security and Counterterrorism Center then took over the investigation.
Video posted by Palestine Action showed masked figures hurling paint, breaking through doors, and damaging equipment inside the facility owned by the Israeli defense contractor, which the activist group and recently proscribed terrorist organization has regularly targeted. The vandals claimed they had sought “to dismantle the tools used to commit genocide in Gaza.”
Elbit released a statement condemning the crime.
“Elbit Systems Deutschland GmbH is a German company and has been a reliable partner of the Bundeswehr for many years in protecting democracy and freedom in the Federal Republic of Germany. In this regard, we condemn in the strongest possible terms the illegal acts of destruction and vandalism committed at our site over the weekend,” the defense firm stated. “It is unacceptable that violent groups, presumably under the influence of foreign agitators, are repeatedly attempting to disrupt production processes in Ulm, seeking to endanger employees and to instill fear.”
The company added that “we have been an attractive employer and a driver of technical innovation in the Ulm region for decades, and we trust in the support of the authorities in quickly solving the latest crimes and restoring the status quo. The company is working that production of systems for the German Armed Forces at the Ulm plant will resume shortly.”
Israel’s ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, labeled the attack on Elbit an act of terrorism.
“In Ulm, the branch of an Israeli company was attacked by masked perpetrators — presumably motivated by left-extremist, Israel-hostile intent,” he wrote on X. “While Hamas supporters smash windows here, terrorists in Jerusalem murder 6 civilians in a brutal attack on a bus. Anyone who attacks Israel — whether with words, deeds, or weapons — simultaneously assaults our shared security and our values. Antisemitism and terror must have no place in Germany. These attacks are terrorist acts — they must be clearly named and harshly punished.”
Prosor was referring to a terrorist attack in Jerusalem on Monday in which Hamas terrorists opened fire on a bus, murdering six Israelis and injuring several more.
The break-in is the latest in a concerted campaign of vandalism and intimidation carried out by Palestine Action across Europe. Founded in the UK in 2020, the group has specialized in spectacular stunts and property destruction aimed at shutting down Elbit facilities and other companies the group regards as complicit in an alleged genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. Its activists have smashed factory windows, chained themselves to gates, poured red paint over equipment, and even attacked military planes at a Royal Air Force base.
The UK regards Palestine Action as a terrorist organization. On Sunday, police announced the arrests of almost 900 at a demonstration organized in support of the group. Charges included 857 alleged to support a banned extremist entity and 17 alleged assaults.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Claire Smart said of the event that “the violence we encountered during the operation was coordinated and carried out by a group of people … intent on creating as much disorder as possible.”
James “Fergie” Chambers, an American heir to the Cox Enterprises fortune, pays the legal fees of arrested Palestine Action members. He once wrote online, “I chant death to America every day” and that “No faction of the Palestinian resistance, Hamas or other, has done *anything* wrong.”
Richard Barnard, a co-founder of the UK-designated terrorist group, is scheduled to face trial next year on “one count of inviting support for a proscribed organization, namely Hamas, under section 12(1A) of the Terrorism Act and two counts of encouraging ‘criminal damage’ against Israeli weapons factories under s44 of the Serious Crime Act.”
Barnard stated in a June 2024 interview that he had previously broken into US Air Force bases in Germany. In October 2023, he said that “when we hear the resistance, the Al-Aqsa flood [Hamas’s name for the Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel], we must turn that flood into a tsunami of the whole world.”
Huda Ammori, another co-founder of Palestine Action, also expressed her enthusiasm for the mass slaughter of Jews on Oct. 7, 2023.
“Zionists spend 75 years stealing Palestinian land but fails [sic] to take away the Palestinian determination for liberation. Palestine will be free!” Ammori wrote on the day of the attack. “If armed thugs stormed your home, forced you and your family to live in the garage, routinely beat you and starved you. Would you fight back? #FreePalestine.”
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‘End Hate’: Major New Campaign Targets Antisemitism in K-12 Schools

Pro-Hamas activists calling themselves the United Front for Liberation lead march through Valley Plaza Mall. The ‘Ceasefire’ rally began at Wilson Park in Bakersfield, California, on Dec. 16, 2023. Photo: Jacob Lee Green via REUTERS CONNECT
EndJewHatred (EJH), a Jewish civil rights nonprofit group based in New York City, declared war on K-12 antisemitism on Tuesday, launching its new “End Hate in Education” initiative in the US and beginning preparations for a push into the Canadian media market.
“For too long, classrooms have been used as platforms for pushing divisive ideologies that undermine our core values,” EJH founder Brooke Goldstein said in a statement on Tuesday. “Across the United States, K-12 schools and college campuses have become incubators of extremist ideology, including pro-terror and radical Islamist agendas. The End Hate in Education campaign is about reclaiming our schools, defending civil liberties, and ensuring that every child — regardless of background — can learn in an environment grounded in truth, respect, and constitutional values.”
In press materials, EJH outlined six objectives for the campaign — “curriculum transparency,” “rejecting political indoctrination,” “accountability through funding,” “examination of the rule of foreign funding,” “strategic legal action,” and “grassroots mobilization” — all of which serve its larger, ambitious goal of eradicating from public schools not just antisemitism but all forms of “hate and harassment.”
Creeping antisemitism in public education is a growing problem, as The Algemeiner has reported previously. In June, for example, the North American Values Institute (NAVI) raised alarms when the Wissahickon School District (WSD) in Ambler, Pennsylvania presented as fact an anti-Zionist account of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to its K-12 students by using it as the basis for courses taken by honors students.
The material, provided by virtual learning platform Edgenuity, implied that Israel is a settler-colonial state — a false assertion promoted by neo-Nazis and jihadist terror groups — while referring to the founding of Israel as the “nakba,” the Arabic term for “catastrophe” used by Palestinians and anti-Israel activists. Based on documents obtained by The Algemeiner, the material does not seemingly detail the varied reasons for Palestinian Arabs leaving the nascent State of Israel at the time, including that they were encouraged by Arab leaders to flee their homes to make way for the invading Arab armies. Nor does it appear to explain that some 850,000 Jews were forced to flee or expelled from Middle Eastern and North African countries in the 20th century, especially in the aftermath of Israel’s declaring independence.
Another module reviewed by The Algemeiner contains a question based on a May 15, 1948, statement from The Arab League — a group of countries which adamantly opposed Jewish immigration to the region in the years leading up to the establishment of the State of Israel and refused to condemn antisemitic violence Arabs perpetrated against Jewish refugees — after Israel declared its independence. The passage denies that Jews faced antisemitic indignities when the land was administered by the Ottoman Empire, a notion that is inconsistent with the historical record, and asserts that “Arab inhabitants” are “the lawful owners of the country.”
Following the passage, students are asked to agree with its content as a prerequisite for proceeding to the next module. That means selecting as the correct answer the choice which says “the creation of Israel failed to consider Arab interests.”
Speaking to The Algemeiner during an interview on Tuesday, Gerard Filitti, senior counsel of EJH and The Lawfare Project, a partner organization, said the Wissahickon case highlights the degree to which antisemitism and anti-Israel bias has planted itself in public schools.
“What we’re seeing in colleges and universities is just the tip of the iceberg. The radicalization in schooling, in reality, starts much earlier,” Filitti said. “We’re seeing lesson plans which push the idea that Israel is a genocidal state, or that it is an illegitimate state. We see faculty and administrators who do not support Zionist identity and reject that it can be the basis of discriminatory hate.”
“College campus antisemitism has gotten a lot of attention because we see the effects, the protests, the barricades, and encampments,” he added. “In K-12, it’s not as flagrant. It’s educational material that’s talked about in the classroom and which parents may not be aware of unless they talk with their children about what’s happening in school. So this has essentially been a secret issue because the American people are not aware of what children are learning in schools or how schools have been handling antisemitism in school.”
Antisemitism in K-12 schools has increased every year of this decade, according to data compiled by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). In 2023, antisemitic incidents in US public schools increased 135 percent, a figure which included a rise in vandalism and assault.
The problem has led to civil rights complaints and lawsuits.
In September 2023, for example, some of America’s most prominent Jewish and civil rights groups sued the Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD) in California for concealing from the public its adoption of ethnic studies curricula containing antisemitic and anti-Zionist themes. Then in February, the school district paused implementation of the program to settle the lawsuit.
One month later, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, StandWithUs, and the ADL filed a civil rights complaint accusing the Etiwanda School District in San Bernardino County, California, of doing nothing after a 12-year-old Jewish girl was assaulted, having been beaten with stick, on school grounds and teased with jokes about Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
The problem has taken hold in private schools as well, according to a recent Anti-Defamation Leage (ADL) survey.
Among surveyed school parents, 25.2 percent said their children had experienced or witnessed antisemitic symbols in school since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, the data showed. Perhaps more striking, 45.3 percent of surveyed parents reported that their children had experienced or witnessed some form of antisemitism since the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, and 31.7 percent said their children had “experienced or witnessed problematic school curricula or classroom content related to Jews or Israel.”
Parents are displeased with schools’ handling of the issue, the ADL said. Focus groups told its experts that schools decline to denounce antisemitism or resort to denying altogether that it is fostering a negative learning environment which causes student discomfort and precipitous declines in academic performance. In a poll, over a third of parents have said their local school’s response “was either somewhat or very inadequate.”
Moreover, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, which were purportedly meant to improve race relations, abstain from recognizing antisemitism as a form of hatred meriting a focused response from administrators. The Algemeiner has previously reported that many of those programs also ignore antisemitism because they actively contribute to spreading it. Due to this, schools often lack authority figures who understand antisemitism, its subtle and overt variations, leaving Jewish students with no recourse when they become victims of hate.
“These independent schools are failing to support Jewish families. By tolerating — or in some cases, propagating — antisemitism in their classrooms, too many independent schools in cities across the country are sending a message that Jewish students are not welcome. It’s wrong. It’s hateful. And it must stop,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement at the time. “ADL is partnering with parents to demand change.”
ADL vice president of advocacy, Shira Goodman, added: “School administrators and faculty have a duty to ensure safe, inclusive environments for all. ADL will fully invest in bolstering the families who are demanding that their schools meet this obligation.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.