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ADL Civil Rights Complaint Alleges Firestorm of Antisemitism in Philadelphia School District
Swastika graffiti at George Washington High School in Philadelphia. Photo: Screenshot
A civil rights complaint accusing the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) of standing down while its Jewish students were subjected to a slew of antisemitic abuses throughout the school year was filed by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Tuesday.
The 49-page complaint, filed with the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR), recounts dozens of incidents that have occurred at SDP since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel. Teachers allegedly propagandized in the classroom, students chanted “kill the Jews,” and swastika graffiti emerged across the district, the complaint says, adding that parents’ concerns have gone unheeded and that Jewish teachers, beleaguered by acts of retaliation, are retiring in droves.
“Since the Oct. 7 attack, the Philadelphia Schools have fostered a toxic environment that has allowed antisemitism against Jewish students to metastasize and fester without repercussions,” ADL senior director of litigation James Pasch said on Tuesday in a statement announcing the action. “What’s worse, the district has encouraged a rampant culture of retaliation and fear that has prevented Jewish parents and students from coming forward.”
The ADL argues it is time for the OCR to intervene and compel the district to observe Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which explicitly prohibits public schools from failing to respond to, as well as perpetrating, acts of discrimination and intimidation animated by religious and ethnic bias.
The facts necessitate OCR’s involvement, the ADL contends. Antisemitic bullying at SDP is so severe that one Jewish student, after being told “f—k you and free Palestine” as well as “Praise Hitler,” left the school district entirely, according to the complaint. In another incident, an anti-Zionist student used the Halloween holiday to appear at school costumed as a terrorist and attempted to “drape a Palestinian flag over a Jewish student.” Their principal later allegedly “praised the costume.”
Discriminatory behavior has continued in the classroom, where, presumably, a teacher is always present to prevent bullying and other disruptions which hinder learning. However, the ADL charges, at SDP, teachers contribute to intimidation and shaming, using their power and monopoly on class discussions to denounce Israel as “exterminators” and stream videos accusing the Jewish state of “making Palestinians homeless.”
One teacher’s alleged behavior was so egregious that the ADL redacted her name from the complaint to protect the witnesses of her conduct. According to the complaint, she proclaimed to students that Judaism originated in Ethiopia, and, when an Ashkenazi Jewish student rebutted her claim, she said that “Ashkenazi Jews are people from Europe who were forced to convert so that Jews could stay in power.” On another occasion she reportedly told her class that “getting angry at the Houthis for attacking Israel is like getting angry at a lynched man for struggling at the noose.”
The slogan of the Houthis, an internationally designated terrorist organization and rebel movement in Yemen, is “death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory to Islam.”
“Philadelphia schools have a long history of providing a safe and welcoming environment for students of all identities. However, in the recent past — and especially in the aftermath of Oct. 7 — we’ve seen a stark rise in incidents and attitudes that alienate Jewish students, faculty, and families,” ADL Philadelphia regional director Andrew Goretsky said on Tuesday. “Jewish students face a shameful and pervasive litany of antisemitic harassment from their peers, and teachers and administrators, the professionals tasked with our children’s education. This pattern is dangerous, completely unacceptable, and needs to stop now.”
Parents served by SDP have no recourse because school administrators ignore them, the ADL argues in its complaint. Instead of disciplining discriminatory conduct, administrators have allegedly punished students, transferring them out of the courses of problematic instructors. At other times, they blamed parents for expressing concern, and one principal denounced one such parent at a school assembly which the entire student body attended. Instead of being transparent about its alleged failures, SDP has not formally addressed the allegations lodged against it, the ADL says, adding such behavior signals to the district’s Jewish community its indifference to the problem.
“SDP’s silence has been thunderous; absent intervention from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, the message to Jewish students in the SDP — one of the nation’s largest and most storied public school systems — is that they are on their own and will not be protected from this climate of hostility and retaliation,” the complaint says. “Several SDP teachers have created a toxic environment within SDP that has allowed hate against Jewish students to metastasize and fester. Indeed, harassment by teachers is particularly harmful due to the power imbalance and resulting loss of trust in their teachers and in the school’s ability to keep them safe.”
Antisemitism in K-12 schools has increased every year of this decade, according to the ADL’s latest data. In 2023, antisemitic incidents in US public schools increased 135 percent, a figure which included a rise in vandalism and assault.
“School-based harassment in 2023 also included one-off incidents such as when a middle school administrator received a note containing antisemitic death threats or when a high school student threatened their Jewish classmates, stating that if they supported Israel, they would beat them up,” the civil rights group said in its Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents 2023. “Given the insidious nature of bullying, compounded by the fact that many children may not feel empowered to report their experiences, it is likely that the actual number of school-based antisemitic incidents was significantly higher than the data reported in the audit.”
The problem has led to numerous civil rights complaints filed with the OCR.
Last month, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law announced that the Community School of Davidson, a charter school located in North Carolina, agreed to settle a civil rights complaint alleging that administrators failed to address a series of disturbing antisemitic incidents. A non-Jewish student was allegedly called a “dirty Jew,” told that “the oven is that way,” and battered with other denigrating comments too vulgar for publication. The abuse, according to the complaint, began after the child wore an Israeli sports jersey.
As part of a settlement with the OCR, the school has agreed, among other things, to issue a statement proclaiming a zero tolerance policy for racist abuse, institute anti-discrimination training for teachers and staff, and “develop or revise” its approach to responding to racial bigotry.
That case was not the first the Brandeis Center pursued on behalf of K-12 students. In February, it filed a complaint alleging that the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) in California has caused severe psychological trauma to Jewish students as young as eight years old and fostered a hostile learning environment.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
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