Saturday, 4 May 2024

Fieldston School teacher fired for anti-Israel posts, explicit gestures at rabbis

The famously liberal Ethical Culture Fieldston School is mired in controversy once more after officials fired a teacher for anti-Israel social media posts and making an explicit gesture at guest speakers during an assembly.

The latest scandal that cost history teacher JB Brager — who is Jewish — her job traces back to a November appearance at the Bronx academy by a Columbia University Law School adjunct, who told Fieldston students that Israelis were victims-turned-oppressors.

“That Jews who suffered in the Holocaust and established the State of Israel today — they perpetuate violence against Palestinians that [is] unthinkable,” the professor, Kayum Ahmed, told students at a November 21 assembly.

Some Jewish parents furiously protested Ahmed’s remarks, leading school officials to invite two pro-Zionist rabbis to address the school.

Brager publicly attacked her employer in a series of tweets over the move, saying that Israel is an exemplar of “ethno-nationalist settler colonialism.”

“For a school assembly on anti-Semitism, SURE GO AHEAD and invite two white men who run Reform congregations, both of whom are Zionists, one that wrote that the ‘most insidious strain [of American anti-Semitism] is that of anti-Zionist intersectionality [on the far-left],” she said.

Brager also tweeted that Zionists weren’t welcome at her birthday party and ripped America as a “violent fiction” because the country’s founding fathers brutalized the country’s indigenous population.

Additionally, she posted on the social media site that she was considering quitting.

School officials obliged after she was caught flipping the bird at the two invited rabbis during the Thursday assembly.

“ECFS does not comment on personnel matters,” the school said in a statement. “We can reaffirm, however, that the school does not tolerate hurtful, offensive, or exclusionary content or comments from any member of the community.”

The school added: “Students, parents, employees, and other members of our community all face consequences for misbehavior of this nature.”

Parents at the $53,000-a-year school split over the decision to fire Brager.

“Voices from inside the school have made it clear that the administration fired JB in response to pressure from a small set of conservative parents, who in turn were supported by smear attacks on JB in the right-wing press,” claimed a letter sent by alumni to the school’s board Thursday night.

The statement argues that there is a deepening divide between conservative and progressive Jews and goes on to excoriate Fieldston for aligning with the wrong faction in firing Brager.

“It is despicable that Fieldston has lent its strength to the side of this intra-community battle that supports Trump policies, endless wars, Islamophobia, and anti-black racism,” the letter states in calling for Brager’s reinstatement.

Sources told the Post school officials were bracing for protests stemming from Brager’s termination.

This week’s firestorm is the latest controversy to roil Fieldston, which is one of the city’s top private schools.

Students occupied a school building for several days last year to protest the emergence of a video showing students using racist language during an off campus party.

The action ended after administrators accepted a list of demands to address racism on campus.

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