Heavily Jewish Boston area high school teaching 'Palestinian' propaganda
It's not the first time that this sort of thing has happened at Newton South High School, which is in a middle class Boston suburban area. And given that the area has an extreme Left liberal bent (this is the district that keeps sending Barney Frank to Congress), it probably won't be the last time either. Tony Pagliuso told the Newton TAB his daughter, a Newton South High School student, was given material defaming Israeli defense forces.A cop out: Blame the prior administration.
Pagliuso said World History teacher Jessica Engel distributed a chapter on women from the Arab World Notebook to students earlier this week.
“It’s pure propaganda and pure defamation that Israeli occupation forces and citizen soldiers are imprisoning, torturing and murdering Arab women,” he said.
The section, of the third of five pages, reads as follows: “Over the past four decades, women have been active in the Palestinian resistance movement. Several hundred have been imprisoned, tortured, and killed by Israeli occupation forces since the latest uprising, “Intifada,” in the Israeli occupied territories.”
Pagliuso said his daughter was troubled by the reading.
“My family - we’re all Israeli and American citizens and have a lot of family in this area. [My daughter] said ‘is this true? Is this what Israeli soldiers do?’ knowing full well we have 25 family members in the Israel Defense Forces,” he said.
Pagliuso said he spoke to Engel, Department Head Jennifer Morrill, Principal Joel Stembridge, central administrators and Mayor Setti Warren.
Superintendant David Fleishman said Stembridge, Morrill and Engel are meeting with Pagliuso on Tuesday.
“Jen Morrill is in her first month of the job. She took a look at it and agreed it’s something that needs to be reviewed… I took a look at it and agree it needs to be reviewed,” Fleishman said.
He said they’ll examine the particular passage to see is it fits with the goal of the class-learning about Islam and women in the Middle East.
He said the previous department head was involved in the curriculum choice, and that administrators will determine if it deviates from the class’ goal.
“We value lots of input and free speech, and we agreed with the parent it's worth reviewing,” he said.
Of course the real question is where are Israel's representatives in the Boston area and why aren't they countering this type of propaganda? Silly me. Why even ask that question?
By the way, there was a four-hour break in the middle of this post. Yours truly is not feeling well (I sent my young sons to tonight's Simchat Beit HaShoeva celebrations with someone else). God willing, this too will pass.
Labels: Barney Frank, Newton South High School, Noam Chomsky, Palestinian propaganda
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:47 PM
1 Comments:
This is not unusual. In the heavily Jewish area of Westchester Country NY, Nicholas Kristof is a regular speaker at my local high school and last year they had a representative from Mondoweiss come and speak about Israel and the Palestinians. Never has a pro-Israel speaker been invited to the high school. In fact the NY State history book, is replete with anti-Israel propaganda, including teaching students that Israel was only ever called Canaan and Palestine and that the Jews were only there for a short period; and that Jews enjoyed a golden age under Islamic rule. If you contact the NY State Board of Regents they don't even answer your emails about the subject.
JStreet is regularly represented at the synagogues (rabbis are board members) and several of the reform rabbis actively work against Israel.
The problem is that most of the Jews in this country have no idea about Judaism, or Israel. They think because they at bagels and lox on Sunday morning,spend a small fortune on a bar mitzvah party and always vote Democratic they are good Jews.
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