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Feds to investigate Teaneck, NJ, school district where students held pro-Palestinian walkout
(JTA) – The U.S. Department of Education has opened an investigation into a New Jersey school district that has come under fire for what Jewish parents allege is an antisemitic climate since Oct. 7.
The case at Teaneck Public Schools, a diverse district in a heavily Jewish suburb of New York City, adds to a growing slate of federal Title VI civil rights investigations involving alleged discrimination of Jewish or Arab students in the months since Hamas attacked Israel. Other investigations have been opened at universities and K-12 school districts across the country.
The education department does not say why it has opened an investigation, and the district superintendent’s office did not return Jewish Telegraphic Agency requests for comment.
Teaneck, which has significant Jewish and Muslim populations living in unusually close proximity, has been divided since Oct. 7. “I have been here for 35 years, and I have never seen this type of tension,” Noam Sokolow, the proprietor of a local kosher deli, told the Washington Post in November, shortly after debate over a resolution condemning Hamas divided the town’s governance committee, spurred skirmishes and and led to the resignation of most members of a municipal inclusion committee.
The tensions rippled through the local school district starting with the superintendent’s response to Hamas’ attack on Israel, continuing with a contentious board meeting at which Jewish speakers say they were unfairly silenced, and culminating in a pro-Palestinian student walkout that administrators sent mixed communications about.
“I think that the superintendent’s actions, the first letter that he wrote, and the fact that he allowed this walkout where there was hate speech on school grounds, it shows a complete lack of understanding about what antisemitism is,” Hillary Kessler-Godin, a Jewish parent who filed a Title VI complaint against the district, told JTA.
Local Jewish leaders, including rabbis and officials at the Jewish federation, encouraged parents to file the complaints with the federal education department’s Office of Civil Rights.
Naomi Knopf, chief impact officer at the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey, told JTA that she didn’t know which complaint the department took up in its investigation. But she said the federation was heartened that an inquiry had been opened.
“Jewish Federation is very pleased that the Department of Education is taking these incidents seriously,” Knopf said. “The rights of Jewish students matter just as much as everyone else’s, and it‘s our job and the federal government’s job to make sure that all students have access to a safe educational environment.”
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on criteria including “shared ancestry.” The department, which does not comment on active investigations, focuses its inquiries on whether the school should have done more to protect students. It has said that opening an investigation does not mean the complaint has merit.
Days after the Oct. 7 attack, Teaneck Superintendent Andre Spencer emailed out a message of support that did not include mention of Israel, Hamas or terrorism, instead employing phrases such as “unfortunate situation” that Jewish parents felt did not match the severity of the moment.
At a subsequent school board meeting, Jewish parents and community members who attempted to describe the barbarity of the Hamas attacks were shut down, with the school board informing them that there were children present. The same board did not stop speakers who used in some cases identical language to describe Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, prompting a complaint by the free-speech group FIRE.
Tensions came to a head in November, when the superintendent appeared to at first endorse a planned student “walkout for Palestine.”
“It is essential to recognize that our scholars have the First Amendment right to express themselves,” Spencer wrote in an initial communication about the walkout.
Local Orthodox rabbis, responding to the walkout organizers’ allegation that Israel was committing “genocide” in Gaza, issued a statement opposing the demonstration, calling it “grotesque and overt antisemitism” and a “blood libel.” Hundreds of local Jews — including several Orthodox community leaders with no children in the district — organized a pro-Israel rally the night before the walkout. (Most local Jewish parents send their children to Jewish day schools.)
Following the criticism, Spencer issued a second statement condemning antisemitism and noting that any students who participated would be given zeros for the classes they missed. About 100 students ultimately walked out.
Another Title VI civil rights investigation was announced this week at Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District in Orange County, California. A district representative did not disclose details of the investigation to JTA, citing student privacy concerns, but said in a statement, “Unequivocally, our school district condemns all forms of discrimination and does not tolerate this kind of behavior on our school campuses.”
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Mississauga vigil for Hamas leader was called off, but the Jewish community says the mayor should apologize for defending it
The group said members were going to be volunteering on an urgent food security issue instead.
The post Mississauga vigil for Hamas leader was called off, but the Jewish community says the mayor should apologize for defending it appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Amsterdam Police Identify 45 Suspects Linked to Violent, Antisemitic Attack Targeting Israeli Soccer Fans
Israeli Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters are guarded by police after violence targeting Israeli football fans broke out in Amsterdam overnight, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, November 8, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ami Shooman/Israel Hayom
Dutch police said on Sunday that they have identified and are investigating 45 suspects of whom they have images in connection to the violent attacks targeting Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam earlier this month.
“Because of the seriousness of the crimes, but also because of the social impact, we immediately scaled up to a special investigation team,” Dutch police chief Janny Knol said in a statement.
All 45 suspects are being probed for serious violent crimes, according to Dutch media. Nine of them have been arrested so far and remain in police custody, authorities said on Sunday, including a suspect who reported to police on Saturday night after his unblurred photo was released to the public.
On Friday, police said they were investigating 29 more suspects, including two who ultimately turned themselves in and have been arrested. Unblurred photos of the some of the other suspects have been online since Friday night and more images of suspects will be released soon, according to a police spokesperson cited by the NL Times.
Following a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and the Dutch team Ajax in Amsterdam on Nov. 7, anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian gangs violently attacked Israelis who attended the soccer game. The premeditated and coordinated attack took place in various parts of the city late that night and into the early hours of Nov. 8. Israeli fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv were chased, run over by cars, assaulted, and taunted with anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian slogans such as “Free Palestine.” Five people were reportedly hospitalized for injuries.
Police are “looking at all crimes committed in the run-up to the game and in its aftermath,” Knol said after the violence erupted in the Dutch capital.
A Dutch court last week arraigned eight suspects, including minors, who were arrested in connection to the violent attack in Amsterdam, the NL Times reported. Those suspects include a 21-year-old man from Almelo, a city in eastern Netherlands; a 37-year-old man from Amsterdam suspected of pulling someone off his bicycle; two men, ages 19 and 21, who were arrested over the weekend; and two 26-year-old men, one from Amsterdam and one from Utrecht, who are suspected of publishing posts on social media that incited violence against the Israeli soccer fans.
The post Amsterdam Police Identify 45 Suspects Linked to Violent, Antisemitic Attack Targeting Israeli Soccer Fans first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Tufts University Suspends Students for Justice in Palestine Until 2027
A statue of the school’s mascot, “Jumbo,” stands on the campus of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, US, Nov. 27, 2017. Photo: Brian Snyder via Reuters Connect
Tufts University in Massachusetts has extended a suspension of its Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter until January 2027, a school spokesman confirmed with The Algemeiner on Monday.
Tufts first temporarily deactivated the group in October, citing “multiple violations of university policies,” including SJP’s promoting violence and calling on peers to participate. According to a disciplinary letter shared by SJP, days ahead of a celebratory demonstration it planned for the anniversary of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, the group posted a picture of “individuals with assault rifles, instructing students to ‘Join the Student Intifada’ and to ‘escalate’” during its event. The inciting content left school officials “no choice but to impose interim suspension,” the university said in the letter.
SJP has said that the university’s adding 27 months to its initial suspension represents “an attempt to fracture the strength of our movement” and accused it of “bankrolling” conflicts in the Middle East. Additionally, in a gesture which aimed, unsuccessfully, to turn the tables on Tufts, SJP proclaimed its “formal break and disaffiliation from tufts university [sic].”
It continued, “As the zionist [sic] genocide of Palestine and Lebanon has escalated over the past year, tufts [sic] in turn has sought to repress our solidarity movement,” the group charged. “The administration has threatened to suspend individuals over Instagram posts and vigils …We are done justifying our action against this university’s role in the genocide of the Palestinian people. We will not apologize.”
Tufts University spokesman Patrick Collins defended the school’s decision in a lengthy statement shared with The Algemeiner. It explained that SJP has violated nearly a dozen prohibitions on gambling, communicating violent threats, and unauthorized assembly.
“The complaint is now resolved, resulting in a disciplinary suspension that takes into account the group’s actions, their impact on other community members, the group’s repeated refusal to cooperate with university policies and expectations, and its refusal to follow through on sanctions arising from previous conduct policy violations,” Collins wrote. “The suspension also follows multiple attempts over the last year by the university’s student life staff and other administrators to work and communicate with SJP and its leaders, who have rejected these efforts.”
Collins noted that SJP can apply for re-recognition by the university, pending its compliance with certain “terms,” which include observing its suspension, something it has failed to do so far. If it is reinstated by the university, SJP will be placed on a “one-year probationary period,” during which school officials will determine if it has truly reformed. He added that what SJP is experiencing is not, as the group has maintained, personal or ideological.
“The Student Code of Conduct for the Schools of Arts & Sciences and Engineering considers and addresses student and student organization behavior regardless of their viewpoints,” he continued. “Individuals and groups that violate university policies face a range of disciplinary actions, up to and including suspension or expulsion from the university for individuals, and suspension or permanent revocation of university recognition for student organizations.”
SJP’s suspension comes amid concern that it and similar pro-Hamas organizations are using college campuses as recruiting grounds for domestic terrorist operations.
“The movement contains militant elements pushing it toward a wider, more severe campaign focused on property destruction and violence properly described as domestic terrorism,” Capital Research Center researcher Ryan Mauro wrote in a groundbreaking report, titled “Marching Toward Violence: The Domestic Anti-Israeli Protest Movement,” which was published last week. “It demands the ‘dismantlement’ of America’s ‘colonialist,’ ‘imperialist,’ or ‘capitalist,’ system, often calling for the US to be abolished as a country.”
Drawing on statements issued and actions taken by SJP and its collaborators, Mauro made the case that toolkits published by SJP herald Hamas for perpetrating mass casualties of civilians; SJP has endorsed Iran’s attacks on Israel as well as its stated intention to overturn the US-led world order; and other groups under its umbrella have called on followers to “Bring the Intifada Home.” Such activities, the report explained, accelerated after Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, which pro-Hamas groups perceived as an inflection point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and an opportunity. By flooding the internet and college campuses with agitprop and staging events — protests or vandalisms — they hope to manufacture a critical mass of youth support for their ideas, thus creating an army of revolutionaries willing to adopt Hamas’s aims as their own.
“Groups in the pro-terrorism, anti-Israel movement co-exist as our concentric circles of increasing malevolence,” Mauro explained. “Groups in the outermost circle avoid risks as they recruit new protest members and seek to integrate as many political causes as possible under the anti-Israel umbrella … Some militants aspire to incorporate the campaign into a broader wear on law enforcement if not an insurgency.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Tufts University Suspends Students for Justice in Palestine Until 2027 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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