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By Eve Glover
(SEPTEMBER 7, 2022 / JEWISH PRESS) On May 20, 2021 during a monthly Clifton, NJ school board Zoom meeting where topics such as social distancing and lunch pricing were discussed, Clifton Board of Education commissioners Feras Awwad and Fahim Abedrabbo used their platforms to engage in vitriolic speech against Israel. A war in Gaza had broken out 10 days before, and Jewish people were being violently assaulted in cities around the world.
Awwad began his tirade by stating that Israel is being funded with U.S. taxpayer money to “oppress” Palestinian people. He called Gaza “the biggest open-air prison,” and accused the Israeli military of “controlling the water – the Mediterranean, pointing missiles at them, building apartheid style walls…giving them such short notice to leave their homes before they get bombed…” He emphasized, “Colonialism will never win, apartheid will disappear, as it did in South Africa.”
When Abedrabbo spoke at the meeting, he said he was going to “reciprocate Mr. Awwad’s sentiments” and that his prayers “are with people across the world, particularly in the Middle East; for all people to be treated equal, without duress and occupation.” He added, “Children should be able to attend schools without worrying whether their homes will be destroyed or their neighborhoods being ethnically cleansed by groups of people… Children should be taught the truths of the world, and not one-sided history.”
On September 15, 2021, Elisabeth Schwartz, former elected official of the Englewood Board of Education, filed a complaint with the New Jersey School Ethics Commission regarding Abedrabbo and Awwad’s anti-Israel rhetoric, which, according to her research, violates the New Jersey School Ethics Act. After the Commission dismissed her complaint without a hearing, Schwartz appealed. She is represented in the appeal by Susan Tuchman, Director of the Zionist Organization of America’s Center for Law and Justice, and Jeffrey Schreiber, a member of the firm of Meister Seelig & Fein LLP.
Two months prior to dismissing Schwartz’s case, this same ethics commission held Toms River, New Jersey board of Education member, Daniel Leonard, to a completely different standard for posting what they considered to be “anti-Muslim” content on social media. “What a dramatic difference in the way the Commission responded to our case as compared to the Leonard case,” Tuchman explained, “In our case, the Commission simply dismissed the complaint. It didn’t even hold a hearing to determine whether the board members violated the law and should be punished for using their official podiums to deliver what the Commission recognized were speeches hurtful and offensive to the Jewish community, having nothing to do with board business.” However, when Leonard posted comments deemed offensive to Muslims on his personal, private Facebook page, “the Commission concluded that he violated the law and should be censured, even though he was no longer even a board member,” Tuchman observed.
It should be noted that in a May 12, 2021 Facebook post, Awwad called Israel a “terroristic state.”
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