In 2023, antisemitic incidents in US public schools increased by 135 percent, a figure that included a rise in vandalism and assault.
The Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD) in California allows Jewish students to be subjected to unconscionable levels of antisemitic bullying in and outside of the classroom, a new civil rights complaint filed by StandWithUs and the Bay Area Jewish Coalition, both Jewish advocacy groups, alleges.
The 27-page complaint, filed with the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), describes a slew of incidents that allegedly fostered a hostile environment for Jewish students after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel set off a wave of anti-Jewish hatred across the US.
SCUSD students, it says, graffitied antisemitic hate speech in the bathrooms, vandalized Jewish-themed posters displayed in schools, and distributed stickers which said, “F—k Zionism.”