Columbia High School, Maplewood, New Jersey Photo by Joel Weinberger via Wikipedia

By Camillo Barone March 12, 2024

A New Jersey school district has disavowed an email to staff encouraging them to “contextualize” lessons about Ramadan by explaining how Israel prevents Palestinian Muslims from celebrating the holiday as it “enacts a genocide.” 

It also refers to the U.S. and Israel as “co-conspirators.”

Israel and the U.S. have rejected claims that Israel’s military response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack is genocidal.

“Personally, I am disappointed, angered, and saddened by the communication that occurred,” wrote Kevin F. Gilbert, acting superintendent of the South Orange and Maplewood school district, in an email Monday to parents and the school community.

He described the memo as “politically inflammatory” and wrote that it “mischaracterizes a historically complex problem.”

School district officials did not immediately respond to an inquiry about who sent the email, who approved it and whether there would be any repercussions for anyone involved.

The email was distributed to staff at Columbia High School on Monday, the day after Ramadan began, and offered “9 considerations for your classroom.” It explained the holiday, terms associated with it and how to wish someone a good Ramadan in Arabic.

But one line in particular shocked many at the school, located in Maplewood, a New York City suburb with a sizable Jewish population. “It is imperative to contextualize that the U.S. is a co-conspirator with Israel, preventing Muslim Palestinians from partaking in Ramadan as the Israeli Zionist occupation enacts a genocide against them.” 

The kerfuffle over the email is but one example of how the war in Gaza has heightened tensions far from the conflict. On American college campuses, and at some high schools, Jewish and Israeli students and staff say they are harassed by pro-Palestinian, anti-war demonstrators who charge them with supporting a genocide.

The school retracted the email within hours, after many in the community who had seen it on social media and elsewhere decried it as antisemitic propaganda.

“My first reaction was first, ‘Okay, this looks fairly benign,” said Michael Goldberg, parent of a 2020 graduate of the school and a former member of South Orange’s town council. “But then as you continue to read, you realize how ugly and antisemitic information was embedded in the document.”

“I was disgusted,” he said.

Correction: A previous version of this story mistakenly featured an image of Columbus High School in Columbus, Georgia, instead of Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey.

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