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A public school in Brooklyn is using a map that shows all the countries in the Middle East — except for Israel. What’s alarming is that PS 261 isn’t alone — public schools across the United States are not only doctoring maps, they’re also teaching antisemitism in the classroom.
A map called “The Arab World” currently hangs in 261’s art class, where teacher Rita Lahoud instructs her Pre-K to elementary charges in the “Arab Culture Arts” program. Where Israel should be, the map indicates the area as “Palestine.”
A close-up of the “Arab World” map at PS 261. Screenshot: @bariweiss/X
One instructional coordinator for the NYC public schools found the map to be “concerning.” Tova Plaut told Francesca Block at The Free Press:
It’s not just that we’re experiencing Jewish hate in NYC public schools, we’re actually experiencing Jewish erasure. And here is proof of that.
Plaut pointed out that the ersatz map is also giving young children incorrect information:
The fact that there is a map out there that does not represent what the world actually looks like is troubling. We’re giving children misinformation.
The Free Press reached out to Rita Lahoud through email, but received no reply. They also emailed the Department of Education to ask if the map still hung in the art class, even after October 7. The DOE spokesperson flippantly responded with “Why would it not be?” and then explained that “this is a map of countries that speak Arabic.”
Except that just over 20 percent of the people who live in Israel are Arab, and many also speak Arabic.
It should come as no surprise that the Arab Culture Arts program receives its funding from Qatari Foundation International. Qatar, as you will recall, harbors leaders of Hamas. The Free Press also reached out to QFI for comment, and received none in return.
It’s also no surprise that the map is manufactured by Ruman, an Arab education company. Ruman’s Instagram account features anti-Israeli content.
The art class at PS 261 isn’t the only classroom infiltrating students’ minds with antisemitism. High school students in the San Francisco Unified School District receive doses of antisemitism from their teachers, as ordered by district administrators. They’re using an educational resource that asserts “Israeli terrorism has been significantly worse than that of the Palestinians,” according to a memo obtained by a parental watchdog group.
The teachers resource also includes the following:
While all terrorism is morally wrong, it is still possible and perhaps necessary to make some distinctions. There can be degrees of moral wrong; we commonly make such distinctions and consider mitigating circumstances, especially between moral wrongs committed in pursuit of just causes and the double moral wrong of injustices done for unjust causes. For several reasons, Israeli terrorism has been morally worse than that of the Palestinians.
The indoctrination in San Fran appears to be bearing fruit. In November, school officials discovered a swastika at one of the high schools.
In Midtown Manhattan last fall, a teacher named Siriana Abboud put up a poster in her classroom that would instruct her four- and five-year-old students about the human body. The poster, oddly, focused on noses. One nose had a nose ring, two were small, and one was a hooked nose. The headline read: Why do people have different noses?
The kids gave their answers, then Abboud wrote her own answer:
I think it’s based on your ethnic identity. In art, we can often tell ethnicity from the bridge of your nose.
Where have we seen this sort of ugly propaganda before?
1920’s German propaganda poster. Adam Jones, Ph.D/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0.
However, the Department of Education in NYC didn’t discipline Abboud. Instead, she won the Big Apple Award in December for being a “liberation-inspired educator.” So, indoctrinate very young children in antisemtism, you can get an award in New York City.
There are many more examples of antisemitic indoctrination in public schools. In the Santa Ana Unified School District in California, 10th grade students learn that Israel is an “extremist illegal Jewish settler population” which commits “ethnic cleansing.” In Oakland, CA, on December 6, 70 teachers conducted a “teach-in” with materials they obtained from the National Students for Justice in Palestine.
Finally, at Hillcrest High School in Queens, a riot broke out when students learned that a Jewish teacher supported Israel.
Violent riot (!) at Hillcrest High School in Queens as a Jewish teacher hid in her locked office for hours while students demanded she be fired for attending a pro-Israel rally.
America is so finished.
The Jews suffer first, from here it's downhill.…— Ella Travels (Ella Kenan) (@EllaTravelsLove) November 25, 2023
Plus, over 1 million secondary students in public schools are learning about the Middle East from a curriculum called the Brown University Choices Program. Students are taught that Israel is a “Zionist enterprise in Palestine,” as well as an “apartheid state,” and a “military occupier.”
Not only is the Brown program filtering its way through secondary public schools in all 50 states, the Qatari Foundation International has also purchased some of the Brown materials. They distributed them to 75 American teachers. The QFI also sponsored teacher training in, of all places, Wyoming.
Never in my years did I expect that prominent voices in academia would become raging antisemites. But here we are, reliving the abominable sights and attitudes of Nazi-era Germany.
This is yet another reason for parents to abandon public schools. Get your kids into a good religious institution, where they can learn not only educational basics (and excel at them too), but also how to treat their fellow citizens with respect. Even if the school is not Christian, they should still learn to live by the words of Jesus: Love thy neighbor as thyself.
If not a parochial school, then home-school. By all means, do not subject your precious children to the poison of public schools.
Featured image: Myfuture.com/flickr/CC BY-ND 2.0. Cropped.
Hate_me says: No doubt there may be ulterior motives connected to Ms. Lahoud’s intentions, but the actual map (if you look at the larger picture of it in context) is one of الوطن العربي – the Arab World (literally, “the Arabic Homeland”). This doesn’t, in and of itself, illustrate anything but the currently recognized Arabic-speaking World.
In a program teaching “Arab culture arts,” it’s not unexpected to see Israel excluded (despite there being both Arabs and Muslims living in Israel, Arabic is not an official language and, though recognized, is far from the majority language) just as Turkey, Iran, and Indonesia are not shown. When I was going through the DLIFLC Modern-Standard Arabic course, our maps of the Arab World looked similar.
I’m no friend to Hamas and fully support Israeli efforts to remove Hamas from the globe. Personally, I’d love to see them revoke Gaza’s entire existence as an autonomous exclave, so long as they treat the non-Hamas citizens humanely. I cannot argue with the other examples of modern-day antisemitism in the article.
However, the DOE response wasn’t wrong. The map is not antisemitic.
GWB says: This doesn’t, in and of itself, illustrate anything but the currently recognized Arabic-speaking World.
Bullcarp. It shows “Palestine” and no Israel. “Palestine” is NOT a country, and Israel is.
it’s not unexpected to see Israel excluded
Well, yeah, because they want “their” land to be Jew-free. The map sure as heck IS anti-semitic (if you mean anti-Jew, and not anti-descendant-of-Abraham).
Hate_me says: Palestine is not a recognized country by the U.S., but it is a state in which Arabic is the official and primary language.
Most of the Arab World nations have never recognized Israeli sovereignty. A map depicting the Arab World, from the perspective of that Arab World definitely isn’t pro-Israel, but it’s not anti-Israel or anti-Jew in and of itself. Just as not including other Muslim nations like Iran and Turkey doesn’t mean it’s anti-Persian or anti-Anatolian.
*I agree that the term “anti-Semitic” is troublesome when both Arabs and Jews are Semitic peoples.
Kim Hirsch says: It doesn’t matter whether or not Israel is recognized by “Arab World.” Nor does it matter that this map indicates their geopolitical beliefs.
This is the United States. These are very young American children who are being presented this map by an authority figure — the art teacher — as being a truthful indication of the nations in the Middle East. It is not. It lies to children.
That is the point. Adults can bicker over the authenticity of this “Arab World” map, but to present it to young children is sheer pro-Arab, anti-Israel propaganda.
Hate_me says: Fair point that the subject matter is not appropriate for an audience that can’t handle geopolitical subject matter – that, certainly, speaks to ulterior motives.
The map, in and of itself, however, is still not anti-Jew.
draigh says: A High School in the Seattle School District has an avowed Communist teaching “World History.” He is also teaching that being “straight” is offensive and should not be used to describe one’s self or others.
NTSOG says: Perhaps the map is being used to depict the future Lebensraum of the Arabs when the hoped for Endlösung of all Jews has occurred?
GWB says: Get your kids into a good religious institution
I note the word “good” in there, because if they’re in public schools, they are already in a religious institution: a PROGRESSIVE one. This is what you’re seeing the fruits of – the takeover of our culture (not just all levels of academia) by Progressivism. Progressivism is intent on destroying Christianity and its progenitor, Judaism, because they stand in the way of the hedonist, transhumanist utopia.
Rita Lahoud
Siriana Abboud
Not an exhaustive list, but maybe we shouldn’t let Muslims or Arabs instruct our children? Their culture and religion are incompatible with American values. (Of course, so is progressivism.)
But, really, the biggest problem is the parents. Why are they not absolutely up in arms? Why aren’t they vetting their kids’ homework and school materials?
The biggest value of homeschooling is not that homeschool moms and dads are so much smarter. It’s that they are vested in their kids’ education/upbringing – moral, academic, and social. And they provide it in accord with their values. The folks who outsource that to “experts” are finally starting to discover the “experts” are not the people they would choose. But our society gradually taught parents (as part of Progressivism) they are too stupid to raise their kids, and it required “experts” – so they hand them off every morning and pick them up every afternoon, trusting that they are being raised “properly”. (And, then, often hand them off to other people for another several hours. And wonder why they don’t understand their kid.)
There’s a reason for this in Deuteronomy (TWICE!):
These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Deuteronomy 6:6-9 (and repeated in Deut 11:18-21)
The things you believe will NOT be transmitted via osmosis or mere proximity to your children. If you truly count something valuable, TEACH THAT to your children. No matter how many experts tell you otherwise. If you believe it PASS IT ON. Otherwise those aren’t your children, but the “expert”‘s.
GWB says: BTW, in reference to those Deuteronomy passages:
Note the Progressives DO that “write them on your doorposts” bit with their “In this house we believe” yard signs. Because they do believe those things and want you to believe them, too.
SFC D says: “We’re giving children misinformation.”
Negative. You’re lying to them. Indoctrinating them. Teaching them to be good little jihadists, hate the Jews, blame the evils of the world on them. Creating obedient little nazis.
Royalidiot says: I read the other day that a school in NYC was being converted to an immigration camp and the parents were uberly pissed off about it……At first, I too, was outraged…….Now, however, it seems like the best thing that could have happened for the children……The irony of all this is so thick that it drips off the ceiling….
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