NYC public school students brandish antisemitic signs, call for Israel to be eradicated
A group of New York City public school students ditched class with a teacher Wednesday to take part in a pro-Palestinian rally — where the youngsters waved deeply antisemitic signs suggesting the world needs to be “clean” of Jews.
Several high school girls from Brooklyn’s Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women brandished unsettling signs reading “Please Keep the World Clean” above an illustration showing the blue Star of David in a garbage can.
The group of about 20 students, who participated in a pro-Palestine student walkout with their teacher in Manhattan’s Washington Square Park, were also heard by a Post reporter chanting for the eradication of Israel.
A 16-year-old girl in the group told The Post they had walked out of class to protest Israel’s “genocide.”
“Everyone is scared of Israel and their hate crimes. [President Joe] Biden is supporting a genocide,” she said.
A Department of Education spokesman said the district “condemn[s] any behavior that demonstrates discrimination or spreads hate.
“This antisemitic statement, made at a non-school sanctioned, off-campus event, epitomizes why there is a need for continued discussion and education surrounding the complicated conflict in the Middle East and the legacy of antisemitism in America and abroad,” Press Secretary Nathaniel Styer told The Post.
“This message is antithetical to the culture and environment that we strive to foster for our city’s children.”
Meanwhile, hundreds of NYU students held their own separate pro-Palestinian rally in the park, which was also part of a nationwide walkout over the war in Israel in the wake of the Hamas terror attack that killed some 1,400.
Students first gathered at Henry Kaufman Management Center before walking to the Greenwich Village, Manhattan park, most of them clad in masks so they couldn’t be doxxed.
“Everybody mask up. Hide your identity. Not because you’re not proud of what you’re doing, but because these assholes are doxxing us,” one organizer who was wearing a black and white scarf tied over his whole head and sunglasses told the crowd
Organizers also encouraged demonstrating students not to talk to any reporters and to “stick together.”
“If there is some escalation we do not scatter,” the organizer said.
About 300 people then walked to the park, chanting, “Justice is our demand, no peace on stolen land” and “Settlers settlers go back home, Palestine is ours alone.”
A 20-year-old junior walked out of an open arts dance class because she was unhappy that NYU had made statements in support of Israel.
“It makes me feel sick knowing that not only my tax dollars but my tuition are funding something that is the antithesis of what I study and hope to contribute to the world,” said the student, who declined to share her name.
“If you follow the stages of genocidal progression, Israel has engaged in all of them from dehumanization to mobilization,” she said.
The student, who said she studies anthropogenic climate change, journalism and politics was wearing a mask so as not to be identified by a police drone.
“I don’t think they care about the safety of pro-Palestinian protectors, so I don’t think it will be used in a just manner and I don’t really support anything that perpetuates the surveillance state we live under,” she said.
“It’s fascist. It’s the police operating as they are intended to. They serve the bourgeois and protect private property and they’ll do that at any cost” student said.
About a dozen pro-Israel students showed up to counter-protest, putting their arms around each other while singing songs in Hebrew about 20 feet from the pro-Palestine group, which started chanting louder to drown out the song.
The event came after the president of the university’s law school’s student bar association lost a cushy law job offer after cheering Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack in the school’s newsletter.
