288 Comments

What exactly is the NY Department of Education doing about this? It's a disgrace and it's illegal!

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Stalin would be very happy as would Hitler. Fortunately the IDF uses a real map with real borders that is recognized by the civilized nations of the world.

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Great job! Very grateful you are so vigilant!

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“Nathaniel Styer, the DOE spokesperson, added in his reply that “this is a map of countries that speak Arabic.””

Apparently, the DOE doesn’t understand geography or what languages are spoken in the region. Someone needs to go back to school.

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And this is why NO student in Baltimore public schools can read at their grade lever, NO, ZERO!

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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/19/nyregion/israel-palestine-brooklyn-school-map.html

"The exposure and all the media intrusion had made many people fear for the safety of all children and teachers at 261. There were now police officers and news crews outside. Reporters had staked out Ms. Lahoud’s home, where she was photographed on the sidewalk."

In the name of decency, it is up to the Free Press to acknowledge the odious reponse this article touched off. If we are to have a civilized society, we must do what we can to make social discourse more polite. This includes a statement of disapproval when people cross the line.

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Bari Weiss and the Democratic Party Rehabilitation Project (aka The Free Press) should stop gaslighting their readers by pretending that most of the bullshit they cover does not come from one, overarching political ideology. The Democratic Party is behind nearly every story in the The Free Press and the people who edit this publication are left wondering what the "common thread" might be...

Jesus, I have never seen a group of people cling to their pathetic political identity more ferociously than the people at the Democratic Party Rehabilitation Project (aka The Free Press).

Why not just spend about 3months investigating the "root cause" of all of the shit you people cover?

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Any public school that teaches about the Arab culture should be considered suspect. When Jews came to the United States they didn’t expect to be taught anything but American culture. They embraced it. Why are our schools bowing to a culture and policies that are not about America. The idea is to assimilate and belong and give back NOT to indoctrinate and divide and LIE.

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Obviously not to the NYT, Hulu and the Emmy committee!

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I am shocked and yet not shocked. Deep down I'm shocked because a US publicly funded school, that's what the PS in PS 261 means, or used to, that it is a public school. A public school should not be brainwashing students with Islamic ideology or, as I like to think of it, Islamic wishful thinking. The Islamists in the Middle East would love to see the backside of Israel. They would love to see the land of the Israelites overrun with a misogynistic, homophobic, theocratic band of murderous thugs who they feel should be able to expand on their dreams of building terror tunnels all over the Middle East right into Europe.

The Romans renamed the area Syria Palaestina in 135 C.E. after the second Jewish revolt as an attempt to break the Jewish people's connection to the land; it didn't work, and they are still there over 2000 years later.

Does Qatar think that just because they donate a few million to the NYC public schools and have maps made with no Israel, the Israeli Jews will just pack up and leave? Not likely. The teacher who is brainwashing these young students should be fired. Children at that age believe their teachers. Why would a teacher lie to them, especially about the map of the Middle East? Why? That is what people should be asking. Is the teacher antisemitic or ignorant or just doing as they're told so they don't clog the dirty money coming down the sewer pipe from Qatar...Why?

The part of me that is not shocked has to do with the incessant pro-Palestinian (Hamas) marches that have plagued the West. In a recent interview of the protestors by a brave Jewish bloke in the parade, the majority of the protestors had no idea even where Israel was, or so-called Palestine, or about October 7th, or about Israel's history; it was pathetic and discouraging (as many of them are university students!).

Supporting Israel is an easy decision, and it is the moral and right decision. Hamas is a murderous death cult, and Israel is life, a light in a very dark part of the world. Why some ignorant small-minded identity-identifying morons would want to snuff out that light and live in darkness is beyond me. As Eve Barlow recently published (video), these people are upside down; they have no idea what murder looks like, burned bodies, stabbed bodies, rape, bodies torn apart, abused children (I do with 25 years in the police, and most of them as a detective). They have no idea of the mentality of the Hamas lunatics that are literally running the Gaza Asylum. People who can murder others with such glee and merriment cannot be reasoned with; they cannot be tolerated. Israel cannot live beside them. Imagine having a murderous street gang two blocks from your house and knowing that they could come onto your property at any time and kill you just because they want to. Nobody would put up with that, nor should they. There is right and wrong in this world, and Israel is in the right. It's time decent, law-abiding, democratic-loving people said so. I think many people think that this is a fad or just the latest identity political movement after the BLM riots, but it's not. It's an ongoing transforming living beast that is doing whatever it can to break down our Western values and morals by using our very freedoms against us and pretending to appeal to our sense of justice and fairness. They are playing the long game, and it's working on the people who are not grounded and secure in what is right and wrong (ie young students) That is why this simple map in a classroom is so important and is part of the information war that is being waged by our false friends in Qatar and so far, we're letting them win, one young mind at a time.

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Okay. I got all enraged and incensed about this blatant cancelation of Israel until I got the facts.

And then I changed my mind.

As explained, this is a map of Arabic speaking countries in a class on Arabic culture.. Despite being visible on the map, Greece is not recognized. Italy is not mentioned. Even Turkey is MIA. Yes, some people speak Arabic in Israel but I don’t think the majority of Israeli’s would call themselves “an Arabic country”. The correct answer on Jeopardy would be “what is Hebrew?”

Now my thinking goes to criticism of the author, Francesca Block, for trying to gin up outrage by leaving out a basic fact. Shoddy journalism. It cheapens an otherwise informative article.

There are plenty of outrageous incidence of politicization of children without needing to invent one.

I happen to have written a couple of posts that are tangentially related to education on Israel Hamas.

https://fromtheboulevard.substack.com/p/the-innocent-civilians-of-gaza

https://fromtheboulevard.substack.com/p/name-a-king-of-palestine

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They all look the other way when qatar hands them money same in canada when china hands them money they can overlook anything for cash.

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So they removed it map....but they are still teaching young children to hate Jews.

No real victory here and the Jews of New York should be ashamed of themselves for not speaking out forcefully and frequently.

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Arabic is spoken in Israel, too, and should be included in their anti-Semitic map. Unfortunately, full truth isn’t their MO.

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I fear this type of article, and the Free Press more generally, is devoid of nuance and embracing sensationalism when it comes to anything regarding Israel (and questioning the state of Israel’a actions is not de facto antisemitism). Of course any celebration or justification of Oct 7 is despicable. But the issue is nuanced, like most issues as sensitive as this. Israel has done horrendous things. Israeli’s I know acknowledge the horror of Gaza and Israel’s role in it. And there are war crimes Israel has committed. But Israel may also defend against what Hamas—not Palestinians more broadly—are attempting and inciting.The area/land of Israel was known as Palestine for centuries, even millennia. And Judea/Israel before that. And Cana before that….

All of that to say, I think there are plenty of blatant and concerning signs of anti-semitism. No need to manufacture them from innocuous practices.

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I was inside a public school today, where adults are taught English as a Second Language. The largest banner in the room said "Decolonize Education." The women students, ironically, were from a country where it would be forbidden for them to be in a classroom beyond sixth grade.

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