Lawsuit filed in Newton, Mass., over anti-Semitic school materials used in classrooms

(August 20, 2018 / JNS) In the midst of condemnation over public schools in the heavily Jewish populated town of Newton, Mass., allegedly ignoring requests from parents and taxpayers about the use of anti-Israel educational materials funded by the Saudi oil company ARAMCO and the government of Qatar, a lawsuit was filed last week seeking some answers.

A community group called Education Without Indoctrination (EWI) filed a lawsuit on behalf of three Newton taxpayers against the Newton School Committee in Massachusetts Superior Court, claiming numerous violations of the Massachusetts Open Meeting Law “stemming from the school committee’s handling of a burgeoning scandal over anti-Semitic lessons and the promotion of Islamic religious beliefs as objective facts in the public school district’s history classes,” according to a statement from the Boston-based organization Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT).

At a Newton Public School board meeting in June, residents expressed outrage over the anti-Israel classroom materials, calling for the firing of the school superintendent.

Despite the school system removing its lessons from the “Arab World Studies Notebook,” which, according to APT, consists of an “overt bias and unabashed propagandizing,” such as demonizing Israel in wars throughout its short history and praising Muslim soldiers for their “gentle treatment of civilian populations,” it then replaced the materials with ones that are “pro-Arab, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.”

“The Newton School Committee and the district’s superintendent, David Fleishman, have been stonewalling parents since 2011,” said EWI’s Tanya Gorlin. “And the classroom bias just keeps getting worse every year.”

“All that secrecy has now crossed into illegality,” said Karen Hurvitz, a member of EWI and counsel for the Newton taxpayers in this lawsuit against the Newton School Committee.

“For months now, dozens of Newton citizens have come before the school committee to complain about the non-objective, anti-Jewish and Islamic religious lessons, as well as about Superintendent David Fleishman, who has refused to stop it being taught,” she continued. “Yet the names of all these citizens and summaries of what they said were deliberately omitted from the school committee meeting minutes month after month.”

ARAMCO’s history includes support for attacking Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. The Saudi Arabian Petroleum Minister Ahmed Yamani at the time said that Syria and Egypt could “handle” Israel.

Meanwhile, Qatar is a major supporter of Iran, as are Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which are classified as terror organizations by the United States and Israel.