A New York City public school is facing allegations of “Jewish erasure” due to a map displayed in one of its classrooms that excludes Israel from the Middle East countries, instead labeling it as “Palestine.”

The Free Press said it was given access to a photograph of this map, which was found in the art classroom of PS 261, a public elementary school located in Brooklyn. The classroom is used by Rita Lahoud to provide lessons to pre-K and elementary students as part of the “Arab Culture Arts” program, funded by Qatar Foundation International (QFI). QFI is the American arm of the Qatar Foundation, a nonprofit organization associated with the ruling family of Qatar, which has ties to the terrorist group Hamas.

Tova Plaut, an instructional coordinator for pre-K through fifth grade classrooms in New York City public schools, expressed her concern about the map, telling TFP, “It’s not just that we’re experiencing Jewish hate in NYC public schools, we’re actually experiencing Jewish erasure, and here is proof of that.”

Rita Lahoud did not respond to a request for comment from TFP, and the principal of PS 261 referred inquiries to the Department of Education. When The Free Press questioned whether the map remained in the classroom after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, a Department of Education spokesperson replied, “Why would it not be?”

Nathaniel Styer, a DOE spokesperson, further said that the map represents countries where Arabic is spoken, conveniently ignoring the fact that two million people in Israel are Arab, comprising just over 20 percent of the country’s population, and many of them speak Arabic.

The map controversy comes in the wake of a Free Press investigation that revealed a growing trend of educators in American public schools teaching students to harbor negative sentiments towards Jews. One such curriculum, the Brown University Choices Program, which portrays Israel as an “apartheid state” and “a military occupier,” has been distributed to one million public school students nationwide, courtesy of QFI.

QFI initially posted a photo of the map at PS 261 on social media in April 2023, celebrating it as “Arabic classroom decorations.” The map, produced by the Arab education company Ruman, purportedly displays all the countries of northern Africa and the Middle East, complete with photos of landmarks from each nation.

At PS 261, the map is labeled “Arab World,” with hand-drawn labels for each nation. However, the space where Israel is situated, between Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt, is marked as “Palestine,” despite the absence of an internationally recognized Palestinian state. Ruman’s Instagram account contains posts condemning Israel’s actions in “Palestine.”

Tova Plaut, who is also the founder of the New York City Public Schools Alliance, a group formed to combat antisemitism and other forms of hate in NYC public schools after the October 7 incident, expressed her concern, said, “The fact that there is a map out there that does not represent what the world actually looks like is troubling. We’re giving children misinformation.”

Shortly after The Free Press contacted the NYC Department of Education for comment, QFI’s post featuring the map at PS 261 was removed from social media. Meanwhile, it was discovered that QFI had donated over $1 million to the NYC Department of Education between 2019 and 2022.

QFI began its donations to the NYC Department of Education in 2015, as per public disclosure records. In 2019 and 2020, QFI allocated over $241,000 to support dual language Arabic programs at PS 261 and PS 30, a K–8 school in Brooklyn. In 2021, QFI contributed more than $275,000 to the NYC Department of Education, with the amount increasing to over $513,000 in 2022. However, the forms for these last two years do not specify how the funds were utilized, and records for 2023 are not yet publicly available.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)