School Retaliates Against Student For Parent’s Pro-Israel Stance
Received via email earlier today:
1-29-15
A state education department found that a school district and
School Committee Chair retaliated against a student because of her parent’s
complaint about inaccurate and biased materials.
The decision by the Massachusetts
agency found that the Newton Public Schools (NPS) and School
Committee Chair
Matthew Hills
sent confidential information about the student and her family to local media,
which published it. The media entities - a newspaper and a blog - also
published false claims that the parent was associated with anti-Muslim groups.
The student’s family said that both the newspaper and blog
knew that the family had previously been stalked and that publishing the false
allegations put them in danger. They also stated they suffered emotional
distress and other harm due to the district’s actions.
Parents and education groups have accused the school of
distributing inaccurate and anti-Israel material, resulting in the removal of
several widely used resources. One resource, the Arab World Studies Notebook,
has been been subject to intense criticism by education groups and removed from
other school districts. The district also removed a website and whited out a
textbook’s claim that the Catholic church was “reconsidering polygamy as a
Christian option”.
Parents’ complaint are supported by organizations including
the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA),
Scholars for Peace in the Middle East,
StandWithUs, and Zionist Organization of America.
Last September, the education research organization Verity
Educate issued a report on materials used in NPS history classes. The report
found numerous inaccurate and deceptive material, including altered primary source
documents. It also found substantial anti-Israel bias, including material
described as ‘neutral’ which had been prepared by anti-Israel activists.
The district denies that any bias or inaccuracies exist.
Officials also told parents that they would ‘never’ read the report issued by
Verity Educate or any other organization and that parents upset about deceptive
or racist class material “should find another school for their children”.
“The retaliation by school officials against a child because
of a parent’s legitimate complaints about biased and deceptive class materials
is outrageous”, said Evan Jacobi, president of the group Parents for Excellence
in Newton Schools (PENS). “Their goal is to further intimidate parents who object to their children being
told that biased and grossly inaccurate material is true.”
Hills was also found to have violated state Open Meeting law
several times in 2014 in an attempt to cover up a plagarized speech given by
Newton Superintendent David Fleishman, and advised Fleishman and others to
violate state and federal law by withholding documents from responses to public
records requests. No sanctions have been imposed on Hills for these violations.
In December 2009 Therumpus.net published an interview with Michal
Zak, “a forty-nine year old Jewish resident of Neve Shalom, a village
with a population mandated at exactly 50% Palestinian Arab/Israeli Jew.”
A facilitator at the “school for peace,” she was asked by Jesse Nathan
whether “Palestinian resistance” also includes suicide bombers. Zak
responded that they are “in a category of violence against civilians -
as opposed to violence against soldiers which is the most legitimate,
and violence against settlers, which is second on my list.” Zak claimed
that bombing civilians “just makes me see how desperate they are.”
The interview is emblematic of what "coexistence" often really means in the Israeli-Palestinian context:
the “Israeli” side adopts the Palestinian narrative and supports,
almost wholeheartedly, Palestinians. The Palestinian side embraces the
“Israeli” view - insofar as the Israeli view is the Palestinian view in
this coexistence situation. They "coexist" as Pro-Palestinian
Palestinians and Pro-Palestinian Israelis. Palestinians who are killed
in “martyrdom operations” are martyrs, Israeli soldiers are killers,
Palestinians always have a “right to resist,” while Israeli rights to do
much of anything are diminished. Palestinian nationalism is good
nationalism, Israeli nationalism is chauvinist and fascistic and
unacceptable.
...
For coexistence to ever be meaningful, it would have to build several
real bridges. First, it would have to not only be a case of Israelis
supporting Palestinian nationalism and Palestinians supporting
Palestinian nationalism. It would have to really challenge Palestinians
and hold them to the same accountability as Israeli society in terms of
encouraging progressive and liberal values – to say nothing of
recognizing the legitimacy of Jewish nationalism in the Land of Israel,
not just "sorrow for the Holocaust". Second, it would have to appeal to
not only secular Jews on the left and Palestinians who are
nationalists. Third, it would need to have indigenous Palestinian
support and funding from Palestinian backers and Palestinians playing an
integral part in running the organizations.
If Palestinians aren’t stepping forward to start “Dabka for Peace” or
“embroidery for peace,” the situation isn’t going to improve.
Coexistence work should not be a cover for radical anti-Israel views,
such as one “coexistence” activist who compared the hardship of waiting
at a checkpoint in a Palestinian bus to the mass murder of Israeli
civilians on a bus, in an essay now removed from online called “a tale
of two buses.” Blowing people up, shooting them, sniper fire,
“resistance” and tunnels; none of that has anything to do with
coexistence.
In the long run, as many of the Palestinians who said they don’t go
to coexistence groups precisely because they enjoy the authentic
friendships they have with Jews “as people first, not ethnicities,” the
real coexistence comes when these kinds of artificial frameworks
disappear. “I can coexist at a bar over some drinks,” one woman told
me. Indeed.
This has been precisely the problem with the 'peace process' from Day One. In the aftermath of Oslo, Israeli kids were given an 'education for peace,' which meant learning to see the narrative from the viewpoint of the 'other.' The 'Palestinians' were only taught the 'Palestinian' narrative. Israel has for 30 years or more had groups like 'Peace Now' and 'Tush Shalom.' No such group has ever existed among the 'Palestinians' (and the 'Palestinian Authority' or Hamas would likely kill - literally - any such group if it ever came into existence).
What's worse is that seeing a narrative from the viewpoint of the 'other' weakens one's belief in one's own narrative. There's a huge difference between seeing one's own narrative as the only legitimate one, and between seeing two conflicting yet somehow equally valid narratives. Israelis have been taught to critically question the narrative they have been taught while 'Palestinians' have had their own narrative more and more deeply ensconced in their minds.The result is that Israelis' belief in their own narrative - particularly among the young - has been weakened (although there has been some walking back of that weakening since the second intifadeh) - while 'Palestinians' belief in their narrative has been strengthened.
The teacher, according to the student, tried to convince students to
dodge the IDF draft. As a result, the Education Ministry is seeking to
fire him.
The student wrote a letter on the matter to Education Minister Shai
Piron. Piron called the teacher in for a meeting in the wake of the
student's complaint.
The student wrote that she was very confused because of the teacher.
“I am supposed to join the army in less than a year, and my teacher is
telling me that the army is immoral, and that anyone who joins it is
forced to do cruel things,” the letter said, Channel Two reported.
Speaking to Channel Two, the student said that the teacher's comments “made me very angry. I see this as anti-army incitement.”
In addition to railing against the army, the teacher, according to
the student, told students that he was a radical leftist, “and according
to him the state did not belong to the Jews at all but to the Arabs,
and as fast as he was concerned, the Jews had no business being in
Israel at all.”
The teacher, said the student, said that he had voted for Hadash, the Israel Communist Party.
Teachers on the state payroll are supposed to keep their politics out of the classroom. BWAHAHAHAAHA!
Boston Jewish leadership's credibility attacked in Newton school text dispute
I've discussed the curriculum in the Newton, Massachusetts public high schools several times, most recently here. As some of you might recall, I grew up in Newton, although I did not attend the Newton public schools.
The New English Review reports that the integrity of several Boston Jewish communal organizations has come under attack for their refusal to condemn the use in Newton's high school of two texts deemed anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.
Questions on the integrity of Boston Jewish communal groups, the regional office of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP) and its affiliate, the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) were raised in a Boston Jewish newspaper report released this week. The investigation was prompted by a raging dispute with Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT) over the Newton, Massachusetts School Board use of controversial anti-Israel and Muslim proselytizing high school texts.
The Boston Jewish Advocate (The Advocate), the
weekly Jewish community newspaper of record, has published an
investigation of this latest development in an 18 month battle brought
to the community’s attention by Dr. Charles Jacobs and his team at
Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT), “ADL, CJP Newton reaction raises questions of integrity”. We posted on The Iconoclast
about this simmering dispute in late October 2013, when Jacobs and APT
took out ads in several local and regional newspapers. These were about
the troubling world history course texts used by the Newton School
Board in 9th and 10th grades; “The Arab World Studies Notebook” and “A Muslim Primer”.
The Advocate’s expose was triggered by a November 15, 2013
letter signed by the heads of the regional ADL, the CJP and its
affiliate, the JCRC, published in the newspaper, alleging that they had
conducted their own investigation on the troubling Newton school board
texts. This letter was prompted by another ad by the APT pointing out
the lack of attention by the local Jewish defense and Federation groups
to anti-Israel maps from the controversial texts similar to those that
ran on bus kiosks and in subways of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation
Authority (MBTA). The Advocate expose noted:
Controversy continues to swirl over a
statement released by the ADL, CJP and JCRC claiming that charges by APT
President Charles Jacobs of anti-Israel material in the Newton Public
Schools were groundless.
Following that statement and ambiguity over whether a referenced ADL report
even existed, the JCRC stated that it has also conducted an inquiry into
alleged anti-Israel materials taught in 9th- and 10th-grade history classes
in the Newton Public Schools that is separate from that of the Anti-
Defamation League (ADL).
However, the JCRC – like the ADL before it – declined to share the details
of their review with the public, prompting some in the community –
including an instructor at Brandeis University in Waltham – to raise the
question of transparency in local Jewish organizations.
We have reported in New English Review articles, interviews and Iconoclast
posts on the local Boston regional and national investigations by the
APT. In particular we have drawn attention to the nearly decade long
battle to uncover the support and indoctrination in terrorism by the
Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center (ISBCC) controlled by an
affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Muslim American Society.. The
ISBCC figured prominently in the incitement of the Boston Marathon jihad bombers, the refugee Tsarneav brothers.
...
Once again, Jacobs and the APT team as well as independent
investigators have caught the Boston Jewish community leaders in a web
of deception abetting anti-Israelism in both the local schools and in
the public debate. This does not come as a surprise to us, nor is it an
isolated case. For example, we can point to our investigations of the
controversial Olive Tree Initiative at UCAL Irvine funded by an affiliate of the local Orange County, California Jewish Federation.
How can we trust the Boston Jewish leaders to defend both Israel and the Jewish people?
It should be noted that the American Jewish Congress (AJC) has urged schools across the United States not to use the Arab World Studies Notebook.
As you might imagine, Newton's schools are very heavily Jewish....
Finally: No more free college for terrorists (who haven't started yet)
Yes, I realize that the title of this post probably sounds absurd to anyone who has not been reading this blog for a while. But yes, 'Palestinian' terrorists serving time in Israeli jails were entitled to free university education (at the expense of Israeli taxpayers). Until now. Finally, the Supreme Court has decided that the terrorists are different from other prisoners.
The High Court ruled Tuesday that terrorist security prisoners were
not eligible for free university education in Israeli schools. The
permission and assistance extended to prisoners convicted of criminal
activities that supplies them with free courses and degree programs at
Israel's Open University does not apply to prisoners convicted of terror
activities, the court ruled.
The ruling came in response to a lawsuit
by three terrorist prisoners who claimed they were being discriminated
against because prison authorities refused to enroll them in an Open
University program and pay their tuition. The Open University offers
extensive distance-learning programs, enabling students to do coursework
via the Internet, with scheduled meetings with mentors.
The court said that discrimination was
not an issue in the case. “The court has ruled in the past and continues
to rule that the differences in treatment of criminal and terrorist
prisoners is not due to discrimination. We believe the same applies to
education,” said the three judges who heard the case.
But the court still expects the prisons service to be kind and considerate to the terrorists.
With that, the court said that the prison system should be “considerate”
in deciding what to do with terrorists who are already in the midst of
academic programs. “We think it would be worthy to consider those in the
midst or close to the end of an academic program separately from those
who have not yet begun a course of study,” the court said. “If the
prisons decide not to continue funding the education of those prisoners,
they will be free to file petitions with district courts on the
matter.”
Terrorists have a right to a free college education at the expense of the Israeli taxpayer. How absurd!
The problem with this type of simplistic analysis as part a history curriculum, of course, is that it presents a one-sided, highly-biased view of the facts on the ground in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza, completing ignoring some critical aspects of the conflict, namely, that “resistance” is a euphemism for terrorism, and that when Palestinian women are detained and arrested by Israeli defense forces it is a result of their actions, often successful, to murder Jews as part of the campaign to extirpate Israel.
In fact, the Arab World Notebook, the teaching tool used by Ms. Engel for this class, has already been discredited as a legitimate part of any history curriculum, precisely because its primary purpose is to whitewash the negative aspects of Arab and Muslim history while simultaneously assigning blame for the region’s pathologies on the colonialism, imperialism, the West, and Israel specifically.
A 2005 report on the Arab World Studies Notebook written by the American Jewish Committee, for example, “Propaganda, Proselytizing, and Public Education,” found that while the purported intent of the publication was to create “sympathetic views of the Arabs and Muslim religion in the American classroom,” the end product of the guide was to present “historical distortion as well as uncritical praise, whitewashing, and practically proselytizing.”
More relevant to the recent incident in Newton, the skewed view of the history and present-day politics of the Middle East as outlined in the guide “appears largely designed to advance the anti-Israel and propagandistic views of the Notebook’s sponsors, the Middle East Policy Council . . . and Arab World and Islamic Resources . . . .”
“While the Notebook pays lips service to presenting “different points of view,” the report concluded, “it provides only an Arab perspective . . . on Jerusalem, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the conflict between Western and traditional Muslim values.”
Teaching history with a political or ideological agenda, of course, does not make for true education, precisely because it does not put issues into context, distorts movements and ideologies, and uses events and facts selectively to insure that one interpretation of history, and only one, is taught to impressionable students.
Preparing for peace: 'Palestinian Authority' Television promotes anti-Semitic stereotypes
This is how the 'Palestinian Authority' is preparing its 'people' for 'peace.'
The program Personal Encounter featured an interview with Abd Al-Rahman Abu Al-Qassam, a Palestinian actor living in Syria. He described the PLO's discovery that "the pen and the stage" can be effective weapons, and says his enemies are the Zionists "who were taken by World Zionism, and were transformed from the old Jew into the Zionist Jew, full of fascism." [PA TV, Jan. 23, 2011, rebroadcast Feb. 27, 2011]
He conceded that early Palestinian theatrical portrayals of the Jews as bent-nosed, weak and cowardly were not accurate, but insisted that the other early stereotype connecting Jews with money was indeed true:
"Of course, he [the Jew] is interested in accumulating money - the Jews throughout history, and in the religions, and the Quran tells us about the Jews and their worry over money."
His Antisemitic statements were not challenged by the PA TV host. PA TV is controlled by the office of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
'Israeli-Arab' schools to teach: Israel's creation a 'catastrophe'
Our moonbat 'education minister' Yuli Tamir is back in the news this morning. When we last heard from her, the Knesset Education Committee rejected Tamir's attempt to teach Israeli school children that Israel's borders are the 1949 armistice lines, as if the Six Day War never happened. Having given up (hopefully) on brainwashing Jewish children, Tamir has turned her efforts to the Arab sector.
The Ministry of Education has approved new textbooks for the 'Israeli-Arab' schools that will ensure that the next generation of 'Israeli-Arab' children is even more irredentist than the last one. The new textbooks will teach the 'Palestinian' version of Israel's independence: that the creation of the Jewish state was a 'naqba' - a catastrophe.
MK Zevulun Orlev (NU/NRP) [a former Education Minister. CiJ] called on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to fire Education Minister Yuli Tamir, saying that by allowing the Palestinian version of events into school books, she was erasing Jewish history and granting the Arabs legitimacy in refusing to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
MK Alex Miller (Israel Beiteinu), meanwhile, said that Tamir had failed her calling and approved an anti-Zionist book.
Former education minister Limor Livnat (Likud) also warned that including the Arab version of events could lead students to think they should work against Israel.
According to the report, the ministry authorized a third-grade text book which says, among other things, that some of the Arab residents of Palestine were evicted from their homes and became refugees, and that Israel expropriated a great deal of Arab land.
However, the book also mentions that it was the Arabs who refused the UN resolution on dividing the country, and that the Jews agreed to it.
My third son, sixth child is going into third grade this year. He's a very bright boy, but I guarantee you that if you told him that the Jews were expelled from their homes in country x he would understand it, but that if you told him that they refused a UN resolution that would have let them stay in part of the country, he would have no idea what that means.
Now take into account that most of the teachers (if not all) in the 'Israeli Arab' schools are Arabs. What lesson do you think they will emphasize?
Tamir said of the decision that it was important to grant expression to the widespread perception in the Arab community that the 1948 war was a tragedy for the Palestinians.
The picture at the top of this post shows 'Palestinian' children at a 'naqba' rally claiming the entire state of Israel. The second picture is the new book. Tamir's new 'education' will ensure that 'Israeli-Arab' children won't forget to join them for generations to come. I'm sure that Aliza Olmert and her moonbat children are pleased.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
