Jewish student reprimanded for revealing class Nazi salute
A Jewish high school student said he couldn’t believe what was going on when a history teacher in a wealthy Alabama school system had classmates stand and give a stiff-armed Nazi salute during a lesson on the way symbols change. Once he shared a video and photos of the incident on social media, Ephraim Tytell said, he received a reprimand from school administrators in Mountain Brook, a suburb of Birmingham. “They proceeded to tell me that I’m making Mountain Brook look bad for uploading the video and sharing it and asked me to apologize to my teacher, which I refused to,” he told WIAT-TV. “The day after, he made our class, and our class only, put up our phones, and he moved me from sitting in the back of the class to right next to him.” First reported by the Birmingham-based Southern Jewish Life, the incident last month gained traction on social media. On Tuesday, the school system issued a statement saying the video and photos shared online “are not representative of the lesson,” and no one tried to teach students how to do a Nazi salute. “Understanding the sensitive nature of this subject, Mountain Brook Schools has addressed the instructional strategy used with the teacher and does not condone the modeling of this salute when a picture or video could accurately convey the same message,” the statement said. A system spokesman did not immediately return an email Wednesday seeking additional comment. The point of the lesson, Tytell said, was that something very similar to what’s now widely known as a Nazi salute was used before World War II to salute the U.S. flag. Called the “Bellamy Salute” for decades, it was ditched in 1942 for the now-familiar right-hand-over-the-heart gesture after the United States’ entry into the war. “He explained to us that in America we used to do that before WWII and everything, and then he proceeded to show us, ask us to stand up to salute the flag, and he and everyone else did the Nazi salute,” Ephraim said. “I felt upset, unsure of what’s going on —just kind of shocked.” Mountain Brook Listens, a group that works to promote diversity in the virtually all-white city of 22,000, issued a statement saying the incident showed the need for more resources, education, and training on understanding implicit biases, building empathy, and acting with more compassion. “And our entire community, including our school system, must foster an environment where people feel safe to report behavior that they are concerned about and certainly not create an environment that cultivates any ‘fear of reprisal,’” it said. The controversy comes just months after Mountain Brook’s school system responded to community complaints about a diversity program produced by the Anti-Defamation League, which combats anti-Semitism by dropping the lessons. Schools had begun using the material after anti-Semitic events, including a video of a student with a swastika drawn on his body, but opponents claimed the lessons focused too heavily on race and gender and were produced by a group they considered controversial politically. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
J. Pepper Bryars: School system’s diversity programs created by group that believes only whites can be racists
Socrates is believed to have once said, “The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.” Most people, including the editors of the Merriam-Webster, Oxford, and American Heritage dictionaries, would generally define racism as the belief that one race is superior to another and anything that oppresses or elevates people based on their race. But not the organization that has provided diversity training and programs to teachers and students in the Huntsville City Schools system. The Anti-Defamation League, a once noble organization that has since fallen into partisan decay, had a contract with Huntsville City Schools to deliver anti-bias training to its teachers last year after having already provided its “No Place for Hate” program to the system’s students for more than a decade, according to records. Visit adl.org/racism, and you’ll see the extreme way the organization defines the term: “Racism: The marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.” Ironically, that definition is itself a good example of racism — assigning to one group of people exclusive ownership of a vile trait based solely on the color of their skin. But if that’s too complicated for your second grader to understand, the Anti-Defamation League has an “elementary school version” of the definition: “The disrespect, harm, and mistreatment of people of color based on made-up ideas that white people deserve to be in charge and treated better.” Records of the Huntsville City Schools Board of Education meeting on December 17, 2020, show a contract with the Anti-Defamation League to provide three training sessions in early 2021 from its “World of Difference Institute” program, as part of the system’s overall cultural diversity training effort. “We do have a long-standing relationship with the Anti-Defamation League. This is the organization that sponsors our ‘No Place for Hate’ activities,” a system official said when describing the organization to the board. She added that it’s “a very important partnership that we want to maintain.” Officials later told me that the system has been using the “No Place For Hate” program free-of-charge for more than a decade, though it “is not a curriculum.” “Schools use it as a way to promote a bullying-free environment in the school,” the official explained. Diversity training is a good thing, in principle. We could all learn to treat one another better, with dignity and courtesy, regardless of how we may look or speak or where we came from or how we worship. But how can an organization that defines racism as a characteristic exclusively held by one group of people be the right provider of that training, or programs and content of any kind covering diversity, cultural awareness, or anti-bias to teachers and students? Clearly, they cannot. The specific problem here remains quite clear to me: schools feel a need to provide diversity training to teachers and students, yet the groups who have affordable, off-the-shelf solutions tend to be very political in nature, deeply invested in identity politics, and locked into a far-left view of the issue. It’s reasonable to suspect that their personal political perspectives will seep into whatever training and programs they provide. Part of the lasting solution should clearly be to avoid partnering with organizations that have overt political agendas. School systems, especially those the size of Huntsville City Schools, should create and implement their own, home-grown diversity training programs, created by the experienced educators they have in-house, and reflective of the community in which they serve. History needs to be taught, unvarnished. Current events should be discussed, openly. People should learn to treat one another with the courtesy and dignity everyone deserves. But starting from the definition that one group of Americans, today, is in the right and the other in the wrong is remarkably counterproductive. And it should stop. J. Pepper Bryars is a conservative opinion writer from Mobile who lives in Hunstville. Readers can find him at https://jpepper.substack.com.
Israeli man arrested in Jewish center bomb-threat cases
Israeli police on Thursday arrested a 19-year-old Israeli Jewish man as the primary suspect in a string of bomb threats targeting Jewish community centers and other institutions in the U.S., marking a potential breakthrough in a case that stoked fears across the United States. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld described the suspect as a hacker, but said his motives were still unclear. Israeli media identified him as an American-Israeli dual citizen and said he had been found unfit for compulsory service in the Israeli military. “He’s the guy who was behind the JCC threats,” Rosenfeld said, referring to the dozens of anonymous threats phoned in to Jewish community centers in the U.S. over the past two months. The Anti-Defamation League says there have been more than 120 bomb threats against U.S. Jewish community centers and day schools in the U.S. since Jan. 9. Those threats led to evacuations of the buildings, upset Jewish communities and raised fears of rising anti-Semitism. The threats were accompanied by acts of vandalism on several Jewish cemeteries. The threats led to criticism of the White House for not speaking out fast enough. Last month, the White House denounced the threats and rejected “anti-Semitic and hateful threats in the strongest terms.” Rosenfeld said the suspect allegedly placed dozens of threatening phone calls to public venues, synagogues and community buildings in the U.S., New Zealand and Australia. He also placed a threat to Delta Airlines, causing a flight in February 2015 to make an emergency landing. Rosenfeld said the man, from the south of Israel, used advanced technologies to mask the origin of his calls and communications to synagogues, community buildings and public venues. He said police searched his house Thursday morning and discovered antennas and satellite equipment. “He didn’t use regular phone lines. He used different computer systems so he couldn’t be backtracked,” Rosenfeld said. After an intensive investigation in cooperation with FBI representatives who arrived in Israel, as well as other police organizations from various countries, technology was used to track down the suspect who had made the threats around the world, Rosenfeld said. In Washington, the FBI confirmed the arrest but had no other comment. Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
