By H. Applebaum
SAN DIEGO — In Pine Bush, New York, a school district just 90 miles from New York City, students were subjected to Hitler salutes, Holocaust jokes, and swastikas for many years. In one horrific incident, a girl was shoved to the ground and money was stuffed in her mouth. Complaints to the school were of no avail and many Jewish students were forced to leave school and be home-schooled or to move away.
Finally, in 2012, with no aid from any major Jewish organization, a group of five families sued the school district. It was alleged that physical and verbal assaults, sometimes right in front of school personnel were ignored, as were complaints from students and parents. The school district violated the students’ rights to an education free from national origin and/or religious discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
School officials denied they were oblivious to anti-Semitic intimidation and pointed to anti-bullying assemblies and disciplinary measures they took — though the most serious was a less than a week suspension. Finally, in 2015, as the case was about to go to trial, the school district paid $4.5 million dollars to settle it. In addition to compensating the victims, the school was required to institute a program to address anti-Semitism.
The district did not have to admit fault in the settlement. However, it posted a statement on its website saying that it would “never condone anti-Semitic slurs or graffiti, Holocaust jokes or physical violence.”
Lawsuits against schools which ignore or even support anti-Semitism are now cropping up all over the country.
In June, 2017, a group of students, aided by The Lawfare Project, filed a suit against the California State University system alleging a half-century of anti-Semitism at San Francisco State University, and focusing on the campus shout-down of Jerusalem Mayor, Nir Barkat. The suit was settled for $200,000, with no compensation for the students, but California State University recognized that Zionism is an integral part of Jewish identity — a major victory for Jewish students not only at SFSU, but those across the country who understand the connection between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.
In March, 2019, in Newton Massachusetts, a group of parents and residents filed a lawsuit against the Newton School Committee, alleging an anti-Semitic curriculum. Complaints, meetings, and controversy went on for years until Charles Jacobs, the head of Americans for Peace and Tolerance and C.A.M.E.R.A provided the necessary material for the lawsuit which is ongoing.
The days when anti-Semitism at school could be fixed by a call or letter from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) are long gone. Indeed, even with the current alarming proliferation of anti-Semitism, major Jewish organizations we once relied on are little or no help. Sometimes they even side with the school, citing “freedom of speech.”
Rather than fight for those within their own community who need protection, Jewish organizations have spread themselves thin, focusing on universal issues like bullying and human rights, despite the fact that hundreds of other organizations do the same work. Newer, smaller organizations have risen to fill the gap though, like Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT,) The Canary Mission, C.A.M.E.R.A, and The Lawfare Project.
Part of the Pine Bush settlement was that a school survey be made public; in that survey, four years after the settlement, 60% of the students reported seeing instances of anti-Semitism in school.
“There’s still hundreds of students who are witnessing anti-Semitic conduct …….” says Ilaan Maazel, an attorney on the original case in Pine Bush. “The work that we’re doing is important work and its work that we’ll always have to do,” he says. “We’ll never be done with this.”
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Applebaum is a freelance writer based in San Diego.