[rad-green] Elite New York prep school fires teacher who posted anti-Zionist tweets

*In Defence of The Only Democracy In The Middle East™*


*https://www.jta.org/2020/01/09/united-states/fieldston-school-fires-teacher-who-posted-anti-zionist-tweets
<https://www.jta.org/2020/01/09/united-states/fieldston-school-fires-teacher-who-posted-anti-zionist-tweets>*

*JEWISH TELEGRAPHIC AGENCY          JANUARY 9, 2020*

*Elite NY prep school fires teacher who posted anti-Zionist tweets*

*BY BEN SALES *
[image: A view of the Ethical Culture Fieldston School's neighborhood in
New York City. (Wikimedia Commons)]

*A view of the Ethical Culture Fieldston School's neighborhood in New York
City. (Wikimedia Commons)*

NEW YORK (JTA <http://www.jta.org/>) — The Ethical Culture Fieldston
School, an elite New York City prep school, has fired a teacher who posted
tweets opposing Zionism.

JB Brager, who taught history at Fieldston, was fired Thursday, the Jewish
Telegraphic Agency has learned. The termination comes after Brager, who is
Jewish, posted multiple tweets disparaging Zionism amid a controversy over
anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism at the school.

“ECFS does not comment on personnel matters,” the school said in a
statement to JTA Thursday evening. “We can reaffirm, however, that the
school does not tolerate hurtful, offensive, or exclusionary content or
comments from any member of the community. Students, parents, employees and
other members of our community all face consequences for misbehavior of
this nature.”

JTA reached out to Brager for comment, but did not immediately hear back.

The controversy began in November when a speaker at the school, Kayum
Ahmed, a lecturer at Columbia University Law School and a director at the
Open Society Foundations, said that the Holocaust and Israel are examples
of “victims becoming perpetrators,” according to a video
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDbzct0sFc4&feature=emb_title> obtained by
the Washington Free Beacon. Tablet magazine
<https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/295595/pride-and-prejudice-at-fieldston>
reported
that parents were “shaken and outraged” by the remark.

“Xenophobic attacks are a shameful part of South African history, but in
some ways it reflects the fluidity between those who are victims becoming
perpetrators,” Ahmed said. “I use the same example in talking about the
Holocaust. That Jews who suffered in the Holocaust and established the
State of Israel today — they perpetuate violences against Palestinians that
are unthinkable. So again, the victims of the Holocaust and the violence
have become the perpetrators of injustice against the Palestinians.”

According to Tablet and the Washington Free Beacon, sometime following
Ahmed’s remarks, Brager tweeted, “I refuse to ‘reaffirm the value’ of
ethno-nationalist settler colonialism.”

On Dec. 17, the principal of Fieldston’s upper school, Nigel Furlonge,
wrote in an email obtained by JTA that the school had “engaged in a
meaningful internal dialogue about what the experiences have been, both
historically and currently, for Jewish faculty and students at ECFS.” He
announced that on Jan. 9, two rabbis of large New York City Reform
congregations, Ammiel Hirsch from Stephen Wise Free Synagogue and Joshua
Davidson from Temple Emanu-El, would address a school assembly.

Following Furlonge’s announcement, Brager tweeted, “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
<https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/to-fight-anti-semitism-in-america-we-need-to-understand-its-sources/>
that
the ‘most insidious strain [of American anti-Semitism] is that of
anti-Zionist intersectionality [on the far-left].'” Brager ended the tweet
with three angry-face emojis. JTA has obtained a screenshot of the tweet.

Brager was quoting in the tweet a modified sentence from an op-ed
<https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/to-fight-anti-semitism-in-america-we-need-to-understand-its-sources/>
by
Davidson in The Jewish Week.

Hirsch and Davison spoke at the school on Thursday. In his speech, Hirsch
defended Zionism and challenged the arguments of anti-Zionists.

“Understand what they mean when they say they are not anti-Jewish, just
anti-Zionist,” Hirsch said, regarding anti-Zionist activists. “They mean
that, from their perspective, justice requires extinguishing the one and
only Jewish state — the size of New Jersey — in favor of a 23rd state of
the Arab world that collectively has a greater land mass than the entire
United States.”

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