Rhode Island state elected officials, religious leaders, and Jewish groups have condemned an antisemitic hazing incident that took place at a local high school as well as what they described as the school’s lack of leadership in its handling of the situation.

The Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island and the Sandra Bornstein Holocaust Education Center hosted a press conference on Thursday after criticizing the decision by Smithfield High School administrators to reinstate five senior football players who had been punished for abusing a Jewish freshman student.

The group of football players allegedly locked a Jewish student, a fellow football player, in a bathroom and sprayed Lysol at him through a grate in the door while yelling antisemitic slurs. The family of the victim filed a police report over the incident with the Smithfield Police Department.

On Oct. 11, Smithfield Schools Superintendent Dawn Bartz said that “several” student athletes on the football team had been barred from participating for the rest of the season after an investigation into an incident involving “hazing and antisemitic remarks” confirmed “inappropriate conduct.”

“The school district maintains a zero-tolerance policy for hazing, bullying, and harassment of any form,” Bartz added.

However, on Oct. 22, the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island and the Sandra Bornstein Holocaust Education Center discovered that the football players were back on the team and at practice. The high school gave no public explanation for why the football players were reinstated before the end of the season.

“For the last week, we’ve been left with only questions and no answers,” Adam Greenman, president of the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island, said at Thursday’s press conference. “That’s not how these situations should be handled. Our Jewish community here in Rhode Island has been left on edge and feeling isolated, trying to understand how and why a school district would confirm that this incident occurred, put in place approbate discipline, and then quietly backtrack on everything.”

State Rep. Mia Ackerman, a Rhode Island resident and the senior Jewish member in the General Assembly, also spoke at Thursday’s event and was accompanied by other state representatives and senators. She called the antisemitic hazing incident “deeply disturbing” and “a total shanda,” which is a Yiddish word that means shame, disgrace, and embarrassment.

“The actions of the students were shameful and disgraceful, and the reaction of a few of the adult leaders in the Smithfield school system was an embarrassment,” she added. “To me it wasn’t hazing – it was hatred. Their ugly racial and religious slurs will haunt this student for many years to come … This is not a harmless prank. This is deeply upsetting to me and all members of the Rhode Island Jewish community. Making it worse is the subsequent actions – or should I say, non-actions — of the school administration. They clearly did not understand the severity of this offense. School officials who are supposed to be leaders and role models instead sent a clear message to the students involved that this horrible attack was acceptable.”

Ackerman called on the Smithfield High School administration to “follow through with the commitments they initially made both to discipline the students involved” and to partner with the Jewish Alliance to provide antisemitic training and education to these students. Ackerman added that she plans to introduce legislation into the state House to help prevent similar antisemitic incidents from happening again in Rhode Island schools.

The press conference took place the same day that the office of Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha received a complaint from a parent of the victim, who accused the Smithfield school district of not responding appropriately to the antisemitic hazing incident, according to the Boston Globe. The parent alleged that several students “assaulted and harassed the student based on his Jewish ancestry/ethnicity and religion in the locker room before football team practice” on Sept. 30, according to a letter Neronha’s office wrote to school district attorney Sean Clough on Thursday. The parent claimed the district failed to “take steps reasonably calculated to eliminate any hostile environment and its effects and prevent harassment from recurring.” The attorney general’s office is requesting that the school district provide information about the incident no later than Nov. 13.

Others who condemned the incident at Thursday’s press conference, as well as the school’s handling of the situation, included US Rep. Gabe Amo (D-RI) and Jeremy Langill, executive minister of the Rhode Island State Council of Churches. “Real harm was caused but true accountability … has not happened,” said Langill, who was accompanied on stage by clergy and board members of the council. There was a statement read on behalf of Bishop Bruce Lewandowski, of the Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island, who further denounced the incident.

“What would have happened if this had been a robbery?” asked Joe Reddish, chairman of the Rhode Island Commission on Prejudice and Bias. “Would we have just suspended them and then made it go away? Well, this was a robbery in a sense because it robbed somebody of the value of who they are and what they stand for. We cannot allow robberies of our beliefs, what we look like and who we are.”

Smithfield Town Council President John Tassoni, whose daughter went to Smithfield High School, said he received thousands of emails from people all over the country expressing concerns about the incident. He began by apologizing to the Jewish community for the attack taking place in his town. “This is not Smithfield,” he insisted. “We have a few individuals who did the wrong thing at the wrong time to this young boy.” He noted that the Smithfield Town Council has no jurisdiction to take action against public school committees but if he could, he would fire Bartz, as well as the high school’s football coach Kyle Purvis and athletic director Glenn Castiglia, “because they all knew what happened and it was all shoved under the Oriental rug.”

“We need answers. We need accountability. Enough is enough,” he concluded.

Bartz said in a statement emailed to NBC 10 News on Thursday that the school district “has taken this matter seriously and acted in accordance with our policies.” The school committee is scheduled to meet on Monday at the high school and will discuss the issue.

The Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island and the Sandra Bornstein Holocaust Education Center denounced the handling of the incident in a joint statement last week. Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee and Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green issued a joint statement earlier this week also condemning the incident. Responding to the criticism, Bartz said that “the disciplinary process has concluded, and we will not be discussing details involving students.”

Smithfield’s Town Manager Robert Seltzer noted in a statement that although the incident occurred within the Smithfield public school system, which operates independently under the supervision of the superintendent and the school committee, “we want to make it clear that the town of Smithfield does not condone such behavior in any form.”

Greenman said 30 antisemitic incidents in Rhode Island have been reported to the Jewish Alliance so far this year.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams gave a virtual address from City Hall on Thursday in which he condemned an anti-Israel art installation on Governors Island last Sunday.

The installation featured a “Hamas Lover” poster, a fake street sign for “F–k Israel Ln” and artwork that said it is “beyond the pale” for Israel to exist, as seen in images shared online by the initiative EndJewHatred. Another painting featured the colors and emblem of the Hezbollah flag along with a message that said “Liberate! The Resistance is Justified.” Hamas and Hezbollah are both US-designated terrorist organizations.

A separate painting said “F–k Israel” while another featured an image of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a message that equated Zionism with Nazism and Fascism. A Star of David was also depicted on a Ku Klux Klan hood.

The “hate-filled art” displayed in the “vile, antisemitic exhibit” was “unsanctioned by Governor’s Island” and removed within a few hours after it was installed, Adams said on Thursday.

“This incident disturbs me, and it should disturb anyone with a conscience,” Adams said. “I’ve talked a lot about how we’ve seen these incidents erode the fabric of cities across the globe, but in New York City, we must never tolerate this type of prejudice. We cannot pretend this exhibit is a normal expression of artistic freedom, because art is not an excuse for hate. Activism is not an excuse for antisemitism or hate.”

“I want to be clear that disagreeing with the policies of Israel’s government does not make someone antisemitic, but to openly praise Hamas at an exhibit in a government facility sends a message of institutionalizing hatred,” he added. “History shows us how hatred begins on the fringes. It starts small, with a few artists trying to make a statement, with a few exhibits that go unnoticed by our leaders and institutions, with a few institutions that accept the hate and embed it into our culture.”

The art installation was housed in Building 11, a space owned by the Trust for Governors Island that is occupied by Swale, a food-forest nonprofit, according to the New York Post. Swale is part of the Trust of Governor Island’s in-residence program, which invites artists to feature their art on the grounds. The Post revealed that the artist behind the anti-Israel installation is Rebecca Goyette.

The Trust for Governors Island called the installation “completely unacceptable.” In a post on Instagram, Swale said it was “devastated that someone would use a restorative project for their own personal platform for sowing discord.” Swale claimed Goyette was “not part of our programming and not an artist-in-residence.”

“The unapproved artist was invited into an empty back studio by a current artist-in-residence during seasonal wind-down without authorization to display work. We view this as a deliberate and malicious act by the artist,” said the nonprofit. “Like many visitors, members of our team also encountered this display and were personally affected by its content and conduct. We share the community’s distress and stand with those who were harmed.”

Goyette and the artist-in-residence who invited her have been banned from the space and “neither will be invited back,” Swale said. Sarah Olson, who was the artist-in-residence, told the Post she was duped by Goyette and unaware that the artist would display such offensive material.

Adams dropped out of the New York City mayoral race late last month and recently endorsed pro-Israel former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ahead of Tuesday’s election. Adams has often spoken out against antisemitism and taken a number of steps to combat Jew-hatred in the city, including signing an executive order to adopt the widely accepted IHRA definition of antisemitism and creating the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism.

During Thursday’s address, he denounced how antisemitism has become “mainstream” and institutionalized in New York City, and said it is spreading “like a cancer across our city and our country.”

“Before we know it, hate moves to the mainstream, and once it is in the mainstream, it becomes much harder to mobilize against,” he said. “We saw that with Apartheid. We saw that with the Holocaust. And I would be lying if I said I didn’t see seeds of it planted within our own city government.” He also seemingly took a dig at State Assemblyman and mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee who has a history of anti-Israel rhetoric.

“We will never surrender our city to hate, or to those who want to say they want to ‘globalize the intifada,’ or to choose and believe and not refuse to condemn it, because it is literally a phrase that means death to Jews all over the world,” Adams said.

Mamdani has refused to explicitly denounce the “globalize the intifada” slogan and instead said he will “discourage” its use. The phrase has been used to call for violence against Jewish and Israeli civilians.

New York City has experienced a surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, amid the ensuing war in Gaza. Adams said that Jews are targeted in 57 percent of all hate crimes in the city.

Fighters riding camels rounded up a couple of hundred men near the Sudanese city of al-Fashir at the weekend and brought them to a reservoir, shouting racial slurs before starting to shoot, according to a man who said he was among them.

One of the captors recognized him from his school days and let him flee, the man, Alkheir Ismail, said in a video interview conducted by a local journalist known to Reuters in the nearby town of Tawila in the country’s western Darfur region.

“He told them, ‘Don’t kill him,’” Ismail said. “Even after they killed everyone else – my friends and everyone else.”

He said he had been bringing food to relatives still in the city when it was captured by the Rapid Support Forces on Sunday – and, like the other detainees, was unarmed. Reuters could not immediately verify his account due to the conflict but has verified earlier material obtained from the journalist.

Ismail was one of four such witnesses and six aid workers interviewed by Reuters who also said people fleeing al-Fashir had been gathered in nearby villages and men separated from women and removed. In an earlier account, one of the witnesses said gunshots then rang out.

Activists and analysts have long warned of revenge killings based on ethnicity by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) if they seized al-Fashir – the last stronghold of the Sudanese military in Darfur.

The UN human rights office shared other accounts on Friday, estimating hundreds of civilians and unarmed fighters may have been executed. Such killings are considered war crimes.

The RSF, whose victory in al-Fashir marks a milestone in Sudan’s two-and-a-half-year civil war, has denied such abuses – saying the accounts have been manufactured by its enemies and making counter-accusations against them.

RSF SAYS MEN REMOVED FOR INTERROGATION

Reuters has verified at least three videos posted on social media showing men in RSF uniforms shooting unarmed captives and a dozen more showing clusters of bodies after apparent shootings.

A high-level RSF commander called the accounts “media exaggeration” by the army and its allied fighters “to cover up for their defeat and loss of al-Fashir.”

The RSF’s leadership had ordered investigations into any violations by RSF individuals and several had been arrested, he said, adding that the RSF had helped people leave the city and called on aid organizations to assist those who remained.

He said soldiers and fighters pretending to be civilians had been taken away for interrogation. “There were no killings as has been claimed,” the commander told Reuters in response to a request for comment.

The RSF’s capture of al-Fashir entrenches the geographical division of a country already reduced by the independence of South Sudan in 2011 after decades of civil war.

In a speech on Wednesday night, RSF head Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo called on his fighters to protect civilians and said violations will be prosecuted. He appeared to acknowledge reports of detentions by ordering the release of detainees.

Most of the fighters holding back the RSF advance in al-Fashir came from the Zaghawa ethnic group whose enmity with the largely Arab RSF fighters dates from the early 2000s, when, as the Janjaweed militias, they were accused of atrocities in Darfur.

Alex de Waal, a genocide expert and specialist on Darfur, said the reported RSF acts in al-Fashir looked “very similar to what they did in Geneina and elsewhere,” referring to another Darfur city the RSF took during the latest war’s early stages as well as the early 2000s conflict.

The US said the RSF had committed genocide in Geneina and the attack is under investigation by the International Criminal Court. The Sudanese army and others accuse the United Arab Emirates of supporting the RSF, charges the Gulf state denies.

‘WE CAN’T SAY THEY ARE ALIVE’

Mary Brace, a protection adviser at Nonviolent Peaceforce, an NGO working in Tawila, said those arriving “are women, children, and older men generally,” adding that trucks organized by the RSF have taken some people from Garney to Tawila while others have been taken elsewhere.

The RSF on Thursday posted a video it said showed the provision of food and medical aid to people displaced in Garney. Aid workers said the force may also be trying to keep people in towns it controls to attract foreign aid.

Some 260,000 people were still in al-Fashir around the time of the attack, but only 62,000 have been counted elsewhere, and only several thousand of them in Tawila, which is controlled by a neutral force.

In another of the testimonies obtained and verified by Reuters, Tahani Hassan, a former hospital cleaner, said she fled to Tawila early on Sunday after her brother-in-law and uncle were killed by stray bullets.

On the way, she and her family were apprehended by three men in RSF uniforms who searched them, beat them and insulted them, she said.

“They hit us hard. They threw our clothes on the ground. Even I, as a woman, was searched,” she said, adding that their food and water was also spilled on the ground.

They eventually made it to Garney where the fighters separated women and children from the men, most of whom they did not see again, including her brother and a second brother-in-law.

“We can’t say they are alive, because of how they treated us,” Hassan said. “If they don’t kill you, the hunger will kill you, the thirst will kill you.”