After student pushback, Palo Alto school board condemns antisemitism, Islamophobia

In a move that many students and parents wished had been made sooner, the Palo Alto Unified School District approved on Friday morning a pair of resolutions that condemn the Oct. 7 terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel and denounce antisemitism and Islamophobia.

The board’s 4-0 vote, with board member Todd Collins absent, came days after about 20 students attended a Board of Education meeting to express their anguish and disappointment at the school officials for not going far enough to condemn hate in the aftermath of the attack.

While some urged the board on Oct. 24 to adopt a position condemning the Hamas attack, which resulted in about 1,400 residents being killed in Israel and more than 200 kidnappings, others asked for support from the district at a time when both antisemitism and Islamophobia are on the rise.

Some returned for the Oct. 27 meeting to reiterate their concerns about the district’s failure to act. Ori Cohen, a Palo Alto High student who addressed the school board earlier this week was among them. He told the board on Oct. 27 that he believes the district is “three weeks too late on this.”

“Why is your bureaucracy limiting something so fundamentally simple?” asked Cohen, who said he is still being targeted on campus for being Jewish.

Zack Bodner, CEO of the Oshman Family Jewish Community Center, told the board that many Jewish people in the community feel attacked. Some children on campuses are now hiding their Jewish stars, he said.

“The greatest tragedy is somehow that Israel is being blamed for the massacre — but not just Israel and Israelis, but all Jews everywhere,” Bodner said. “Every Jew is being blamed. So now, anti-Zionism, anti-Israelism has become antisemitism and ‘Death to Israel!’ becomes ‘Death to the Jews!’ chants and now our kids are not feeling safe.”

Not everyone was thrilled about the district’s actions — or lack thereof — to date. While some speakers supported the “unity” resolution denouncing all former of bigotry, others criticized the board for diluting its pro-Israel and anti-terrorism message. In comments that were at time punctuated by applause, residents of various backgrounds spoke in emotional terms about the discrimination they had faced since the Oct. 7 terrorist attack.

Numerous speakers noted that Muslim and Middle Eastern and North African families also felt scared and excluded after the Hamas attack and supported the board’s call for unity. One speaker, Ahmed, thanked the board for its call for unity.

“Our pain is not greater than our neighbors’ pain,” he said. “This resolution condemns antisemitism, Islamophobia and anti-MENA hate equally.”

Board President Jennifer DiBrienza acknowledged that resolutions will not in and of themselves fix things, and told the attendees that the formal statements represent “the beginning of the work, not the end of the work.”

“I hope that us clearly condemning antisemitism and all forms of hate will start to help our students and our community members and our staff feel better, feel safer, know that we care about this. But I don’t think anyone in this room will think that us voting yes today will make everything ok. It’s clearly not.”

The first of the board’s two resolutions cites a 400% increase in anti-Semitic attacks and threats against Jews locally and regionally in the past two weeks and notes that anti-Semitic attacks comprise 62% of all religions-based crimes. It also states that anti-Semitic acts on Palo Alto school campuses “have left students, staff and community members voicing their fear and distress.”

The resolution also cites the Oct. 16 meeting of the City Council, which was disrupted by anti-Semitic comments in what appeared to be a coordinated “Zoom bombing” campaign. The school district reacted to this incident by temporarily suspending the public’s ability to address the board by Zoom.

The resolution strongly condemns the terrorist attacks by Hamas and expresses the board’s “unwavering denunciation of antisemitism in all its forms and commits to creating a physically and emotionally safe and inclusive environment for Jewish students, staff, and community members.” It calls on students to adhere to district principles and values, which condemn all forms of discrimination and underscore “the importance of standing together for a more just and inclusive society.”

It also encourages all members of the school community to “to embrace compassion and unity, and steadfastly oppose injustice and hatred in all its manifestations.”

The second resolution also condemns terrorism and reiterates the district’s opposition to antisemitism but is more explicit in supporting the district’s Muslim, Palestinian and Middle Eastern/North African students and families. It states that their “cultural self-expression and very identity are routinely conflated with terrorism” and that they “are feeling targeted, and report experiencing hatred, silencing, intimidation and exclusionary behaviors in our elementary, middle and high schools.”

The resolution from the school board urges the district to “prioritize educational initiatives that challenge hate and promote the safety and full participation of all students.”

While Board Vice President Jesse Ladomirak supported the resolutions, she expressed significant reservations about having the school district wade into international events and geopolitics. She noted that the school district almost never weighs in on global conflicts and pointed to recent calls from Ukrainian families to condemn the Russia invasion, which the board opted not to do.

“With these resolutions we are opening ourselves up, I believe, to legitimate criticism in the future that we pick and choose which people to care about and whose lives to value,” Ladomirak said.

Ladomirak also thanked all the families that stepped in to work with the district on crafting the resolutions. While she acknowledged that the board’s actions aren’t perfect, she said the district is doing very best to support all of the district’s children.

“We are doing our very best to support them all. I ask that you show us all some grace. I ask that we all show each other some grace so that we can leave here today ready to forgive and heal and come together as one community, united in our commitment to our students, our children and the right to live in a world that is free of hate, violence and injustice.”

Board member Shana Segal acknowledged at the beginning of the meeting the “pain and suffering that is present in the room and our community.”

“I also want to acknowledge the good-faith attempts to reach a cooperative understanding about the language of these resolutions,” she said. “We have endeavored to do our best after receiving input from many in our community. This is hard.”