RSS
‘Persecution of Jews is educationally significant’: How a school district put a contested Bernard Malamud classic back on the shelves
(JTA) — Even before Joanna Sargent had read “The Fixer,” she knew about it.
A middle-school librarian in South Carolina, Sargent first heard of Bernard Malamud’s novel about antisemitism during her professional training. Budding librarians often study Island Trees School District v. Pico, the only U.S. Supreme Court case to address the holdings of school libraries. The 1982 case pitted a high school student against his school board, which had removed several books from the school library — among them “The Fixer.”
Last year, Sargent felt she was seeing history repeating itself when the book showed up on her own district’s list of challenged materials and was temporarily removed from library shelves. “The Fixer” was one of 96 books challenged by a local parent affiliated with the conservative activist group Moms For Liberty and a local business owner who doesn’t have a child in the district.
When the Beaufort County School District convened a committee to review the challenged books and appointed Sargent to join it, she finally got a chance to read “The Fixer” herself.
“I was blown away,” Sargent recalled to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The novel, based on the real-life case of Mendel Beilis, a Jewish day laborer in Kyiv accused of murdering Christian children to make matzah in 1913, reminded her of the Biblical story of Job. “I was just like, ‘Oh, this poor man! Is anything going to go right for him?’”
Sargent and the six other members of the review committee got together to discuss the book and several others that had been challenged as inappropriate for students. The experience, she said, didn’t feel like a politically charged debate on censorship. Instead, it felt like a book club.
“We were all fascinated and captivated by the book,” Sargent said of the committee’s reaction. “It was about a man who had so many things going on for him, and the antisemitism was just so heartbreaking to me. I think I was in tears reading that book. I was just like, ‘How can we not let this voice be heard?’”
Sargent’s experience, along with the notes recorded by her fellow committee members and obtained by JTA, sheds light on an oft-unseen battlefield of the culture war over books currently playing out in states and school districts around the country. Parents’ challenges against books tend to make headlines, and so do districts’ decisions to ban books in response — but there’s frequently a review process behind closed doors that does not. That process, which in many districts requires staff and others to read books their own challengers may not have read, can be key to whether children continue to have access to contested literature.
In Beaufort County, the school district convened a rotating committee of seven people to review the challenged books, making their way through about seven a month starting with titles used in classroom instruction. For each book, committee members had to complete a checklist with their assessment of the book’s quality and content, its value in an educational setting, how thoroughly it avoids “pervasive vulgarity” and, in an echo of language frequently used by book challengers, its “appropriateness.”
The district signaled from early on that it was not very sympathetic to the charges leveled by a handful of parents that it was making explicit and inappropriate books available to children. A district spokeswoman said the books were removed from public access, despite not being contested according to the district’s regular process, only because of concerns about the safety of educators and officials in a heated environment. Over the course of the school year, the committee had returned all but four of the titles it reviewed to school library shelves.
When it came time to review “The Fixer,” Sargent was tapped alongside three other district employees, including a middle-school language arts teacher; a parent; a member of a school improvement council and a “community member.” The committee is meant to represent different constituencies in the district community, according to the district’s own guidelines for dealing with book challenges.
None of the members, to Sargent’s knowledge, were Jewish; the district, which has relatively few Jewish students, said it does not always achieve representation from the groups whose stories are being contested.
“The district could have done a better job with that,” Sargent said. “As librarians, we want to try to make our libraries inclusive and diverse.”
A review of the committee’s notes on the novel, obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, shows that every member endorsed keeping the book available in schools, with one participant specifying it should only be accessible at the high school level. (The book had previously only been stocked in high schools, according to Sargent, who estimated it had been a part of the school library’s collection for more than 25 years without any controversy.)
In their notes, the committee members said they thought “The Fixer” had the power to offer students a valuable perspective on bigotry — and on Judaism.
“History of the time period and persecution of Jews is educationally significant,” one reviewer wrote.
“Something I really like about ‘The Fixer’ is that it introduces an education of Judaism to the reader,” another reviewer noted. Despite saying that they personally “don’t think it holds up as a timeless novel of literary quality,” the reviewer said the book “helps to expand the world of many Lowcountry students,” referring to the coastal region of the state where the district is located.
Another reviewer included a list of vocabulary in the book that could be of educational value, including terms like “Torah,” “pogrom,” “shtetl” and “goyim.”
A few panelists took things a step further, declaring that the story, about the persecution of Yakov Bok by antisemitic Russians, had echoes in the book’s very placement on the banned list.
“The same individuals banning these books follow the views of the Tsarist persecutors in this novel,” one wrote.
Another alluded to the review of “The Fixer” on BookLooks, a ratings site started by a former Moms For Liberty member cited by the local parent who challenged the books. BookLooks gave the novel a “minor restricted” rating in part because of the use of an antisemitic slur directed at the Jewish protagonist.
The site’s administrator told JTA the rating was not meant to encourage schools to remove the book altogether.
“Banning any book because of the term ‘Jew noses’ is doing exactly what the antagonists in the novel are doing,” the reviewer wrote.
The committee’s final decision was unanimous: The book should be returned to shelves.
Mike Covert, a Republican former Beaufort County council member in South Carolina, challenged Bernard Malamud’s “The Fixer” in his district and appealed a committee’s decision to return the book to schools on Aug. 9, 2023. (Screenshot via YouTube)
The ruling drew at least one formal appeal: from Mike Covert, a former Republican county council member who frequently attacks the school board on a conservative internet stream. Covert, a local business owner whose children no longer attend school in the district, worked with Ivie Szalai, the parent affiliated with Moms For Liberty, to file nearly identical challenges within minutes of each other last year. Covert added one more book, bringing the total of challenges to 97. He has appealed the review committee’s rulings regularly, without success.
In the appeal form, obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, Covert referenced “The Fixer” by name and wrote that it and the other six books the committee returned to shelves during its most recent session are “lewd and vulgar. Period.” On recent video streams, Covert has taken his rhetoric a step further, telling his followers that “these books have no education value to anyone under the age of 18,” and declaring, “For those that think it is perfectly OK for your kid to read that s–t — and that’s all it is — there is something seriously wrong with you.”
Reached by phone, Covert told JTA he had read “The Fixer” — unlike Szalai, who said she had not read the books she challenged. He said the book had landed on his and Szalai’s radar because it was featured on conservative-run websites listing objectionable texts. He said he had appealed the board’s decision to restore it to shelves because he believed “it would be challenging my credibility if I didn’t.”
Covert also said he didn’t know the book was based on a true story or that it described a real episode of antisemitism in Russian history. His objections, he said, had largely been based on the incorrect idea that it was “completely fictional.”
“I like to think of myself as a pretty learned individual, and if somebody had said, ‘Would you bet that this was real?’ I would have taken that bet and said, ‘No, of course not,’” Covert said. “I would have had a different opinion right off the bat knowing that it’s true.”
Covert allowed that older grades could get some use out of “The Fixer” but also echoed the thinking of the Island Trees school board in 1982 in suggesting that reading the book could encourage antisemitism, rather than educate about it.
“The last thing we need is more kids going out there thinking, ‘Well, you know, maybe I should go shoot up a synagogue,’” he said. “Let them be kids. Let them mature physically as well as mentally, and then understand why were the Jews persecuted so disgustingly by the Russians. I mean, what was the reason? This book doesn’t go into the reason.”
At the same time, Covert said he could understand why Jews would be concerned with the specter of Jewish books being removed from schools. In addition to “The Fixer,” other books with Jewish content that have been challenged multiple times in various places include Art Spiegelman’s “Maus” and a new graphic adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary.
“If I was you all, I would be on guard as well,” Covert said. “Anne Frank and the whole litany of material with that is absolutely, completely educational, in my opinion.”
Other than Covert’s appeal, the review committee’s restoration of “The Fixer” to the Beaufort County School District hasn’t yet elicited any particular response, Sargent said. The committee still has dozens of titles to wade through, under different configurations. Having rotated off, Sargent has her own thoughts about the sort of people who bothered to challenge the novel nearly 60 years after its publication.
“I don’t think they’re seeing the significance of them,” she said of the parents who challenged “The Fixer” and others in the first place. “It just seems like, ‘Jump on the bandwagon, and here’s a list of books. Let’s just try to get all of these out of as many places as we can.’”
—
The post ‘Persecution of Jews is educationally significant’: How a school district put a contested Bernard Malamud classic back on the shelves appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
Documents Reveal Hamas Uses Gaza Hospitals for Military Purposes, International NGOs Complicit in Operations
Israeli soldiers inspect the Al Shifa hospital complex, amid their ground operation against Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, in Gaza City, Nov. 15, 2023 in this handout image. Photo: Israel Defense Forces/Handout via REUTERS
Internal documents from Hamas’s Ministry of Interior and National Security dating back to 2020 reveal the Palestinian terrorist group has long used Gaza’s medical facilities for military purposes, according to a new report.
On Wednesday, NGO Monitor — an independent, Jerusalem-based research institute that tracks anti-Israel bias among nongovernmental organizations — released two documents declassified by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), revealing how Hamas has weaponized Gaza’s hospitals for years to shelter its operatives and leaders.
Translated from Arabic, the documents also reveal that international organizations — including the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders — are aware of Hamas’s presence in Gaza’s medical facilities, even as they publicly deny or downplay it.
“While repeatedly echoing Hamas allegations and condemning Israel’s operations to end the exploitation of hospitals for terror, these groups clearly knew that Hamas exploited these facilities and chose to remain silent,” Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor, said in a statement.
BREAKING: Leaked docs show Hamas admits to using Gaza hospitals as terror infrastructure, in files authored by its Interior Security Mechanism and obtained by NGO Monitor. Hospitals served as command hubs while NGOs went along under Hamas rules.
Here’s what they reveal
pic.twitter.com/HXI6hULYTG
— NGO Monitor (@NGOmonitor) September 10, 2025
Since the start of the war in Gaza, Hamas’s exploitation of hospitals has drawn heightened attention, with Israel facing international criticism for its operations near medical facilities as it seeks to crack down on the terrorist group.
According to NGO Monitor, the internal Hamas documents show a deliberate strategy of “embedding its military infrastructure, fighters, and leadership within hospitals and medical facilities in Gaza … thereby violating international law and endangering civilian lives.”
The documents also show that foreign NGOs have not only been aware of Hamas’s presence in Gaza’s medical facilities but also have sometimes worked alongside them.
For example, one internal memo notes that the Red Cross occupied a wing in the Al-Shifa medical complex directly adjacent to offices used by Hamas.
Despite international claims to the contrary, the documents show that the Palestinian terrorist group views medical facilities not as neutral spaces but as integral parts of its infrastructure.
“These facilities are considered to be of interest to hostile security parties and an important source for intelligence gathering, especially in times of war, since these health facilities are a place of gathering for the wounded during times of escalation, and these wounded cases hold sensitive positions in the resistance,” one of the internal memos reads.
“Furthermore, these health facilities are a place of gathering for numerous leaders of the movement and the government during times of escalation,” it continues.
The documents also reveal how Hamas closely monitors and controls foreign NGOs working in hospitals due to fears that they might serve as channels for Israeli intelligence.
“Do not let these associations have their own locations to work inside health facilities. When a location is allocated for these associations, it shall be outside the main building of the clinic or hospital, and far away from movement locations, and following security authorization,” one of the internal memos reads.
“Medical members from the Gaza Strip must join incoming delegations, whether the delegations work in hospitals or their own locations,” it adds.
Under this structured oversight, NGO Monitor explains that foreign organizations had to operate according to Hamas’s rules, “making them complicit in a system” that exploits medical centers for terrorist purposes.
“The internal Hamas documents reviewed in this report expose a systematic Hamas strategy to militarize Gaza’s health-care system, using hospitals and medical facilities as extensions of its military and security apparatus,” NGO Monitor says.
“This arrangement is fundamentally inconsistent with the principle of medical neutrality in Gaza, transforming humanitarian spaces into dual-use facilities that serve both medical and military purposes,” it continues.
RSS
Mamdani Maintains Comfortable Lead in New York City Mayoral Race, Despite Jewish Opposition
Candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Democratic New York City mayoral primary debate, June 4, 2025, in New York, US. Photo: Yuki Iwamura/Pool via REUTERS
Zohran Mamdani maintains a substantial lead in New York City’s mayoral contest, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released on Tuesday, as discontent with City Hall continues to rattle the electorate.
The survey of likely voters found Mamdani, a democratic socialist from Queens, taking 45 percent in a four-way matchup, well ahead of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo at 23 percent, Republican activist Curtis Sliwa at 15 percent, and embattled incumbent Eric Adams at just 12 percent.
If Adams were to exit the race, Mamdani’s margin would narrow, with 46 percent support compared to Cuomo’s 30 percent. Sliwa would hold 17 percent of the electorate.
The poll underscores Adams’s strong standing among certain demographics, particularly Jewish voters, who make up a crucial bloc in several boroughs. Among Jewish voters, Adams receives 42 percent support, while Mamdani and Cuomo are tied at 21 percent each. Moreover, 75 percent of Jewish voters view Mamdani unfavorably, according to the poll, highlighting a key vulnerability for the progressive candidate.
The results came days after another poll showed similar results.
Mamdani holds a commanding 22-point advantage over his chief rival in the mayoral race, Cuomo, 46 percent to 24 percent, according to the poll by the New York Times and Siena College. Sliwa polled at 15 percent, and incumbent Adams polled at 9 percent among likely New York City voters.
Perhaps most striking, the survey found that Mamdani would still beat Cuomo in November’s election, 48 percent to 44 percent, if the other candidates dropped out and it was a one-on-one matchup.
Adams and Cuomo are both running as independents.
A little-known politician before this year’s Democratic primary campaign, Mamdani is an outspoken supporter of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination.
Mamdani has also repeatedly refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, falsely suggesting the country does not offer “equal rights” for all its citizens, and promised to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York.
Mamdani also initially defended the phrase “globalize the intifada”— which references previous periods of sustained Palestinian terrorism against Jews and Israels and has been widely interpreted as a call to expand political violence — by invoking the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during World War II. However, Mamdani has since backpedaled on his support for the phrase, saying that he would discourage his supporters from using the slogan.
Mamdani’s overall strength appears to rest not only on name recognition among progressives but also on enthusiasm. Approximately 91 percent of his supporters say they’re enthusiastic about their choice, far outpacing backers of other candidates, the Quinnipiac data found. Cuomo, despite his experience and political legacy, is hurt by a 56 percent unfavorable rating.
Voters rank crime — 30 percent — and affordable housing — 21 percent — as the most pressing concerns, with inflation a distant third.
Moreover, Mamdani’s adversarial and combative rhetoric aimed at President Donald Trump seems to help him in the race.
“The name not on the ballot but seen having influence on this race is President Trump. And likely voters in New York City make it clear they want the next occupant of Gracie Mansion to stand up to Trump when it comes to issues inside New York City,” said Quinnipiac University Poll Assistant Director Mary Snow.
The findings paint a picture of a fractured electorate, with Mamdani consolidating left-leaning voters while Adams maintains strongholds among more moderate constituencies, including Jewish neighborhoods, and Cuomo tries to galvanize support among voters as various scandals loom over his campaign. Sliwa remains in the mid-teens but could play spoiler if the race tightens.
Mamdani has also sought to distance himself from some of the most radical policies he previously advocated for, such as defunding the police. Mamdani’s attempt to strike a more moderate tone seems to be paying dividends thus far. Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY), a Democrat from a swing district, endorsed Mamdani on Wednesday.
“@ZohranKMamdani fights for the PEOPLE. Andrew Cuomo is a selfish POS who only fights for himself and other corrupt elites. I know whose side I’m on. I’m with the people. I’m with Zohran,” Ryan posted on social media.
RSS
‘Pro-Hamas Terror Ties’: US Sen. Tom Cotton Warns of CAIR’s Push Into Philadelphia Schools
CAIR officials give press conference on the Israel-Hamas war. Photo: Kyle Mazza / SOPA Images/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) has warned in a letter to the Department of Education that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a nonprofit advocacy group long accused of having ties to terrorist organizations including Hamas, is seeking to infiltrate the city of Philadelphia’s public education system.
The letter was dated Tuesday, about two weeks after the Philadelphia chapter of CAIR announced that it was partnering with local schools.
“CAIR-Philadelphia is partnering with schools this year to make sure every student feels seen, safe, and supported,” the group said in an Instagram post. “Invite the CAIR Philly staff for a training to educators and staff on cultural competency, anti-bullying, and inclusive practices.”
“The CAIR Philadelphia staff works not only with staff and administration, but also directly with students!” the post continued. “We can visit classrooms as guest facilitators to lead student-centered discussions.”
Given CAIR’s controversial history, the federal government should act to prevent such a program from becoming reality, according to Cotton.
“It is well documented that CAIR has deep ties to pro-Hamas terrorist organizations and publicly supports Hamas’s terrorist activities,” Cotton wrote in the letter to US Education Secretary Linda McMahon. “As I noted in a previous letter, the Department of Justice listed CAIR as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee in the largest terrorism-financing case in US history. Further, CAIR-Philadelphia’s executive director, Ahmet Selim Tekelioglu, stated that Israeli ‘occupation’ was the reason for the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack by Hamas in Israel.”
Cotton’s letter cited materials which CAIR distributes across the city and promotes in its programming — notably its “American Jews and Political Power” course — and other attempts to revise the history of Sharia law, which severely restricts the rights of women and is opposed to other core features of liberal societies.
One of CAIR’s most controversial documents demands that teachers omit key facts about the 9/11 terrorist attacks which, in addition to destroying the World Trade Centers and severely damaging the Pentagon, claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 Americans.
“Avoid using language that validates the claims of the 9/11 attackers by associating their acts of mass murder with Islam and Muslims,” CAIR insists in the material. “For example, avoid using inaccurate and inflammatory terms such as ‘Islamic terrorists,’ ‘jihadists,’ or ‘radical Islamic terrorists.’”
Additionally, since the Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, CAIR-Philadelphia has lobbied the state government to enact anti-Israel policies and accused Gov. Josh Shapiro of ignoring the plight of Palestinians.
In a 2023 speech following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, CAIR’s national executive director, Nihad Awad, said he was “happy to see” Palestinians “breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land.”
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “some of CAIR’s current leadership had early connections with organizations that are or were affiliated with Hamas.” CAIR has disputed the accuracy of the ADL’s claim, despite government trial exhibits indicating its founders participated in meetings with Hamas supporters in Philadelphia. The organization has asserted that it “unequivocally condemn[s] all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group designated by the US Department of State as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization.’”
“Such an organization should never have access to our nation’s children,” Cotton wrote in his letter, urging the Education Department to “ensure” that CAIR is not able to push its ideology on American schoolchildren.
“Sen. Cotton’s comments bring much needed scrutiny to the alarming trend of unchecked outside groups influencing public school curricula. CAIR, with their ties to Hamas, should have no involvement with the Philadelphia School District,” said Steve Rosenberg, Philadelphia Regional Director for the North American Values Institute (NAVI). “This raises serious concerns about balance, transparency, and educational integrity, not to mention basic decision making. Parents and taxpayers deserve assurance that their children aren’t being exposed to ideologically driven lessons — especially from groups with dangerous political affiliations.”
CAIR’s pushing into K-12 education comes at a time of rising antisemitism in public schools.
In August, for example, the Education Department promptly opened an investigation into allegations of antisemitism in Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPS) following the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) filing a complaint regarding the matter.
Jewish students allegedly experienced relentless bullying in BCPS, where students pantomimed Nazi salutes, treated campuses as a canvas for Nazi-inspired and antisemitic graffiti, and sent text messages threatening that the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas will be summoned to kill Jewish students the bullies do not like, the ADL complaint said, noting that teachers behaved even worse than students. At Bard High School, an English teacher allegedly performed the Nazi salute three times and later admitted to administrative officials that he did so intentionally to harm “the sole Jewish student” enrolled in his class. Following the incident, he suggested that the student unregister for his class because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be discussed in it.
“The allegations that Baltimore City Public Schools tolerate virulent Nazi-inspired antisemitic harassment of its Jewish students is at once appalling and infuriating. When a teacher allegedly directs a Nazi salute toward a Jewish student, or non-Jewish students harass their Jewish contemporaries by saying ‘all Jews should die,’ we are not simply talking about contemptible bullying; we are talking about a shocking abdication of educator responsibility that constitutes unlawful antisemitic harassment under Title VI,” Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.
Last month, The Algemeiner reported that the Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD) in California, which stands accused of refusing to address antisemitism, ruled that a teacher who allegedly showed her students antisemitic, discriminatory, and biased content violated policy when she screened an offensive video about the Holocaust in her classroom.
The move came without the prompting of the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, with which two Jewish civil rights groups, StandWithUs (SWU) and the Bay Area Jewish Coalition (BAJC), filed a complaint against the district in April.
Among other things, SWU and BAJC alleged that an SCUSD employee, Wilcox High School teacher Kauser Adenwala, screened a documentary produced in Turkey which compared the war in Gaza to the Holocaust. The graphic film at one point “displays a picture of a young Jewish child who was branded with a number by the Nazis during World War II and then suddenly shows an untraceable image of children with Arabic writing on their arms,” according to the complaint, which alleged the teacher’s conduct violated numerous district policies and potentially state law.
She remains employed by the district to this day.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.