NYC High School Students Terrorize Jewish Teacher

AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu

I can’t imagine what it must be like to know that many of your neighbors think you should be dead, but since 10/7 we have learned that antisemitism in certain communities is common and can bubble to the surface rapidly.

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What is striking about this 21st-century outbreak is how concentrated it is in the young. We might expect that people who immigrated from regions where hostility between Jews and Muslims is common would feel freer to express their disdain for Jews, but the vicious outbreaks of hate on college campuses and in grade schools are truly shocking.

Last week a video of what can only be described as a riot began circulating, and it is truly disturbing. In it, students from Hillcrest High School in New York City rampaged through the halls screaming for the head of a Jewish teacher who supported Israel. She had to hide in a locked room while students screamed for her expulsion from the school.

Every day we seem to be getting closer to a pogrom happening right here in the United States, not because antisemitism is rampant in the population as a whole, or even because some radicalized Muslims might get it into their head to go after Jews.

No, it is the youth of America who have been taught history through the lens of Critical Theory who have been unleashed to vent their hate on Jews, whom they see as among the ultimate oppressors. They have been taught that Jews are “settler colonialists” who secretly control the government here and who commit genocide with abandon.

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What happened in Queens is among the more dramatic examples of acting out hate we have seen in recent weeks, but I fear it won’t be the most violent mob action. More will be coming, I am afraid, because the young have been taught a Manichean version of reality in which the “oppressed” are good and are justified in any action, and the “oppressors” (a very malleable term these days) deserve every evil that can be done to them.

Hundreds of “radicalized” kids rampaged through the halls of a Queens high school this week for nearly two hours after they discovered a teacher had attended a pro-Israel rally — forcing the terrified educator to hide in a locked office as the teen mob tried to push its way into her classroom, The Post has learned.

The mayhem at Hillcrest High School in Jamaica unfolded shortly after 11 a.m. Monday in what students called a pre-planned protest over the teacher’s Facebook profile photo showing her at a pro-Israel rally on Queens Oct. 9 holding a poster saying, “I stand with Israel.”

“The teacher was seen holding a sign of Israel, like supporting it,” a senior told The Post this week.

“A bunch of kids decided to make a group chat, expose her, talk about it, and then talk about starting a riot.”

Hundreds of kids flooded into hallways and ran amok, chanting, jumping, shouting, and waving Palestinian flags or banners.

Many tried to barge into the teacher’s classroom despite school staffers blocking their entry.

“Everyone was yelling ‘Free Palestine!’” a senior said.

“Everyone was screaming ‘(The teacher) needs to go!’” a ninth-grader said.

School administrators and the NYPD, which responded to the school at about 11:20 am, got wind of their plans just in time to rush the teacher into an office and lock the door, another educator said.

Students recorded the commotion, posting multiple videos, some set to pulsing Arabian music, on TikTok.

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Mob action, broadcast on TikTok is the new hotness. And they say Twitter is the real problem because of course the powers that be are always wrong.

Hillcrest is apparently a cesspool of hate on a good day. After this video surfaced another was leaked to the Councilwoman from Queens, who expressed her outrage and demanded that the school be torn down to the rafters (metaphorically) to root out the rot that allows violence to happen. Students apparently swarmed a School Resource Officer (a policeman) and assaulted him.

The police apparently are going after the perpetrators, although in NYC it is unlikely that anything serious will happen to the students who committed these crimes.

Councilwoman Vickie Paladino was enraged by the events at Hillcrest. From the tweet posted above:

The scene at Hillcrest HS was beyond unacceptable — it was terrorism, plain and simple. Terrorism is violence against civilians to achieve a political goal. And that’s what we saw in one of our public schools, against a teacher whose only offense was being Jewish and peacefully expressing her support for Israel on her own time.

These terrorist students stalked her online, organized in chat rooms, then sparked a riot and hunted her down. She had to be barricaded in a locker room as the rioters raged in the hallway and attempted to gain access to her.

Question: What would have happened to her if they actually managed to get their hands on her? Do you think she’d have survived unscathed? I think we all know the answer to that question, and it’s horrifying.

We’ve seen a lot of platitudes from elected officials thus far. A lot of condemnations, and a lot of talk about how ‘this isn’t who we are’.

Well, I’ve got news for you — clearly, this is who we’re becoming. Quickly.

For students in a New York City public school to feel empowered to riot and hunt down a Jewish teacher, something has gone severely wrong, and it’s gone wrong for a very long time. And if it’s allowed to continue, ‘who we are’ is going to be a raving mob of children who’ve been brainwashed into a poisonous hateful political ideology, forever.

Let’s be clear — New York will cease to exist as the tolerant, productive, relevant city we all recognize if we’re producing students who think and act this way.

That’s why platitudes and condemnations aren’t enough now. Not even close. If we are at all serious about stopping the hate and violence gripping our young people, it’s going to take MUCH more. This shameful event didn’t happen in a vacuum, and it didn’t happen overnight.

Which is why I’m calling for serious consideration of the following:

– The immediate suspension of all faculty at Hillcrest High School, pending a thorough investigation into the culture and curriculum they’re cultivating.

– Firing of any faculty found to have contributed in any way to this riot, either materially or otherwise.

– The immediate suspension of every student at Hillcrest High School who participated in the riot.

– Immediate expulsion of the organizers and those who broadcast the riot on social media, with referrals to criminal prosecution as necessary.

– A systemwide audit of DOE personnel, including social media accounts, activism, and bias.

– An audit of DOE curriculum at every grade level, to root out critical theory, gender theory, anti-Western bias, antisemitism, and other ideological poisons which are clearly destroying the integrity of our education system and leading our students down a dark path.

– Possible independent monitors in schools found to have bias issues.

If we are not prepared to at least discuss these necessary steps in the wake of a truly horrific event such as this — one which could have been MUCH worse — then we are simply not serious about saving our children.

Time to face facts, as though it hasn’t been obvious for a while now — modern progressivism has failed. It’s failed here and it’s failed everywhere it’s been attempted. The only question now is whether we’re going to do something about it, or if we’re going to allow it to lead to the horrors we all know are coming.

Condemnations aren’t enough, it’s time for action.

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Yes!

Schools are all about encouraging student activism, essentially creating shock troops for the Left. Teachers fill the kids with propaganda, wind them up, and then aim them at whatever target the Left hates at any moment. It is no surprise that students trained to act out in aggressive ways and revel in “activism” can explode like a powder keg whenever they feel like it.

Parents and teachers have been organizing students to engage in protests over the Israel-Gaza war, so we shouldn’t be surprised at this outburst. It was an inevitable and in some sense desired consequence of the months of emotional venting by radicals.

Lest you think this is a problem limited to problem schools, it is not that different than what happened to Riley Gaines in San Francisco earlier in the year. In that case, Gaines was held hostage for hours in a locked room, and after she escaped the administration applauded the students for their protest.

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Kids are being taught to hate, both online and in our schools, and then pointed at the preferred targets of the radical Left. And as the hysteria builds, violence erupts.

I don’t see what will stop this in the short term. The institutional mechanisms that would normally be used to strangle the movement have instead been captured by people who are seeking violent confrontations.

They may not want to provoke deadly violence, but they sure are inciting and applauding it.

 

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David Strom 3:30 PM | December 05, 2024
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