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Nevada School District Settles Lawsuit Over Antisemitic Incident
Swastika etched into the skin of a 17-year-old Jewish teenager, who is autistic. Photo: X/Twitter
Clark County School District (CCSD) in Las Vegas, Nevada has settled a discrimination lawsuit which alleged that it failed to protect an autistic Jewish student from a heinous antisemitic incident in which someone scratched a swastika into his skin at school, an injury that was not discovered until he returned home.
The young man, who wears a kippah and is nonverbal, was assaulted in March 2023. In addition to being physically harmed, someone tore up a bag worn by his service dog. Because the school at which the incident took place, Ed W. Clark High School, had not installed surveillance cameras, there remains to this day little information about when and where the incident took place.
“No child should live in fear because of an unsafe educational environment,” Brooke Goldstein — executive director and founder of The Lawfare Project, which, along with Freeman Law Offices and Rogich Law Firm, brought the case — said on Thursday in a statement announcing the settlement. “This abhorrent and disgusting attack on our client should have never happened, and, moving forward, we hope that the Clark County School District will ensure the safety of all their Jewish students.”
According to The Lawfare Project, CCSD has agreed to pay the young man’s family an undisclosed sum of money and provide “educational services” which an announcement of the settlement did not describe in detail. The school district did not respond to The Algemeiner‘s request for comment for this story.
The assault on the student, which occurred during a surge of antisemitic bullying in K-12 schools, prompted widespread outrage when it was first reported. In the following months, the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism (FCAS), a nonprofit founded by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, responded to it by launching a billboard campaign on the Las Vegas strip. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which had just issued data showing a 49 percent increase in antisemitic incidents in K-12 schools in 2022, denounced the assault in strong terms, saying, “Not only was this student targeted for his identifiable faith, but he was particularly vulnerable due to this disability.”
“Today’s agreement is a step in the right direction towards holding CCSD accountable for its failure to ensure a Jewish autistic student’s safety and provide him with the special education he is entitled to under the law,” The Lawfare Project’s director of litigation, Ziporah Reich, said in Thursday’s statement. “Both the monetary compensation and educational services we have secured on behalf of the student will bring some measure of justice to the student and his family.”
Antisemitism in K-12 schools has continued to increase every year, according to the ADL’s latest data. In 2023, antisemitic incidents in US public school 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 US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR).
Earlier this 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 in which a non-Jewish student was 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 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 isn’t 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.
The problem exploded after Hamas’ massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, the suit charged. Since then, BUSD teachers have allegedly used their classrooms to promote antisemitic tropes about Israel, weaponizing disciplines such as art and history to convince unsuspecting minors that Israel is a “settler-colonial” apartheid state committing a genocide of Palestinians. While this took place, high-level BUSD officials allegedly ignored complaints about discrimination and tacitly approved hateful conduct even as it spread throughout the student body.
“The Jewish community was slower than we should have been to grasp the threat posed by antisemitism in higher education. Now we’re in danger of repeating the same problem in elementary and secondary education,” Brandeis Center chairman and former US assistant education secretary Kenneth Marcus told The Algemeiner on June 4. “It is horrifying to acknowledge, but the fact is that the situation in many high schools is starting to replicate some of our most worrisome campuses. Elementary schools are not safe either. One ramification is that college campuses may get even worse, as entering freshmen arrive after having already been indoctrinated while in elementary and secondary schools.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Nevada School District Settles Lawsuit Over Antisemitic Incident first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US House Members Ask Marco Rubio to Bar Turkey From Rejoining F-35 Program
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio attends a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Nathan Howard
A bipartisan coalition of more than 40 US lawmakers is pressing Secretary of State Marco Rubio to prevent Turkey from rejoining the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, citing ongoing national security concerns and violations of US law.
Members of Congress on Thursday warned that lifting existing sanctions or readmitting Turkey to the US F-35 fifth-generation fighter program would “jeopardize the integrity of F-35 systems” and risk exposing sensitive US military technology to Russia. The letter pointed to Ankara’s 2017 purchase of the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system, despite repeated US warnings, as the central reason Turkey was expelled from the multibillion-dollar fighter jet program in 2019.
“The S-400 poses a direct threat to US aircraft, including the F-16 and F-35,” the lawmakers wrote. “If operated alongside these platforms, it risks exposing sensitive military technology to Russian intelligence.”
The group of signatories, spanning both parties, stressed that Turkey still possesses the Russian weapons systems and has shown “no willingness to comply with US law.” They urged Rubio and the Trump administration to uphold the Countering American Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) and maintain Ankara’s exclusion from the F-35 program until the S-400s are fully removed.
The letter comes after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed during a NATO summit in June that Ankara and Washington have begun discussing Turkey’s readmission into the program.
Lawmakers argued that reversing course now would undermine both US credibility and allied confidence in American defense commitments. They also warned it could disrupt development of the next-generation fighter jet announced by the administration earlier this year.
“This is not a partisan issue,” the letter emphasized. “We must continue to hold allies and adversaries alike accountable when their actions threaten US interests.”
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US Lawmakers Urge Treasury to Investigate Whether Irish Bill Targeting Israel Violates Anti-Boycott Law
A pro-Hamas demonstration in Ireland led by nationalist party Sinn Fein. Photo: Reuters/Clodagh Kilcoyne
A group of US lawmakers is calling on the Treasury Department to investigate and potentially penalize Ireland over proposed legislation targeting Israeli goods, warning that the move could trigger sanctions under longstanding US anti-boycott laws.
In a letter sent on Thursday to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, 16 Republican members of Congress expressed “serious concerns” about Ireland’s recent legislative push to ban trade with territories under Israeli administration, including the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.
The letter, spearheaded by Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY), called for the US to “send a clear signal” that any attempts to economically isolate Israel will “carry consequences.”
The Irish measure, introduced by Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Simon Harris, seeks to prohibit the import of goods and services originating from what the legislation refers to as “occupied Palestinian territories,” including Israeli communities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Supporters say the bill aligns with international law and human rights principles, while opponents, including the signatories of the letter, characterize it as a direct extension of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel as a step toward the destruction of the world’s lone Jewish state.
Some US lawmakers have also described the Irish bill as an example of “antisemitic hate” that could risk hurting relations between Dublin and Washington.
“Such policies not only promote economic discrimination but also create legal uncertainty for US companies operating in Ireland,” the lawmakers wrote in this week’s letter, urging Bessent to determine whether Ireland’s actions qualify as participation in an “unsanctioned international boycott” under Section 999 of the Internal Revenue Code, also known as the Ribicoff Amendment.
Under that statute, the Treasury Department is required to maintain a list of countries that pressure companies to comply with international boycotts not sanctioned by the US. Inclusion on the list carries tax-reporting burdens and possible penalties for American firms and individuals doing business in those nations.
“If the criteria are met, Ireland should be added to the boycott list,” the letter said, arguing that such a step would help protect US companies from legal exposure and reaffirm American opposition to economic efforts aimed at isolating Israel.
Legal experts have argued that if the Irish bill becomes law, it could chase American capital out of the country while also hurting companies that do business with Ireland. Under US law, it is illegal for American companies to participate in boycotts of Israel backed by foreign governments. Several US states have also gone beyond federal restrictions to pass separate measures that bar companies from receiving state contracts if they boycott Israel.
Ireland has been one of the fiercest critics of Israel on the international stage since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, amid the ensuing war in Gaza, leading the Jewish state to shutter its embassy in Dublin.
Last year, Ireland officially recognized a Palestinian state, a decision that Israel described as a “reward for terrorism.”
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US Families File Lawsuit Accusing UNRWA of Supporting Hamas, Hezbollah
A truck, marked with United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) logo, crosses into Egypt from Gaza, at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, during a temporary truce between Hamas and Israel, in Rafah, Egypt, Nov. 27, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
American families of victims of Hamas and Hezbollah attacks have filed a lawsuit against the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, accusing the organization of violating US antiterrorism laws by providing material support to the Islamist terror groups behind the deadly assaults.
Last week, more than 200 families filed a lawsuit in a Washington, DC district court accusing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) of violating US antiterrorism laws by providing funding and support to Hamas and Hezbollah, both designated as foreign terrorist organizations.
The lawsuit alleges that UNRWA employs staff with direct ties to the Iran-backed terror group, including individuals allegedly involved in carrying out attacks against the Jewish state.
However, UNRWA has firmly denied the allegations, labeling them as “baseless” and condemning the lawsuit as “meritless, absurd, dangerous, and morally reprehensible.”
According to the organization, the lawsuit is part of a wider campaign of “misinformation and lawfare” targeting its work in the Gaza Strip, where it says Palestinians are enduring “mass, deliberate and forced starvation.”
The UN agency reports that more than 150,000 donors across the United States have supported its programs providing food, medical aid, education, and trauma assistance in the war-torn enclave amid the ongoing conflict.
In a press release, UNRWA USA affirmed that it will continue its humanitarian efforts despite facing legal challenges aimed at undermining its work.
“Starvation does not pause for politics. Neither will we,” the statement read.
Last year, Israeli security documents revealed that of UNRWA’s 13,000 employees in Gaza, 440 were actively involved in Hamas’s military operations, with 2,000 registered as Hamas operatives.
According to these documents, at least nine UNRWA employees took part directly in the terror group’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
Israeli officials also uncovered a large Hamas data center beneath UNRWA headquarters, with cables running through the facility above, and found that Hamas also stored weapons in other UNRWA sites.
The UN agency has also aligned with Hamas in efforts against the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an Israeli and US-backed program that delivers aid directly to Palestinians, blocking Hamas from diverting supplies for terror activities and selling them at inflated prices.
These Israeli intelligence documents also revealed that a senior Hamas leader, killed in an Israeli strike in September 2024, had served as the head of the UNRWA teachers’ union in Lebanon, where Lebanon is based,
UNRWA’s education programs have been found by IMPACT-se, an international organization that monitors global education, to contribute to the radicalization of younger generations of Palestinians.