The National Council of Young Israel (NCYI) on Thursday criticized a New York City Department of Education spokesperson for his comments in response to a moment of silence at The Beacon School in Manhattan for Palestinian victims associated with the protests at the border fence separating Gaza from Israel.

In a statement supporting the moment of silence that was reported in several media outlets, Doug Cohen, the Deputy Press Secretary at the NYC Department of Education, said “We support civic engagement and advocacy amongst students, and encourage schools to provide inclusive environments where students are able to respectfully discuss current events.”

“Equating honoring terrorists with ‘civic engagement and advocacy’ is outrageous, and the fact that the NYC Department of Education’s spokesperson made this ridiculous assertion raises questions about the department’s policies and procedures relative to activism in NYC public schools,” said NCYI President Farley Weiss.

The NCYI, which recently sent a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza urging them to take action in the wake of the school’s tribute to terrorists, questioned the city’s apparent lack of guidelines governing protests in its schools.

“Moving forward, the NYC Department of Education needs a well-defined and clearly articulated protocol for school-sanctioned protests,” Weiss said. “The absence of such a policy lends itself to bad decisions and arbitrary determinations such as the one that permitted terrorists to be honored, which forced students to engage in blatant anti-Israel bigotry.”

“What if students wanted to honor the terrorists who murdered Taylor Force, a young American who was stabbed in a terrorist attack in Jaffa in 2016?” added Weiss. “Suppose students requested to mimic the moment of silence that was held by the Jordanian Parliament in 2014 for the terrorists who slaughtered four Jewish worshipers and a policeman in a Jerusalem synagogue, or to praise the terrorists who killed two Israeli policemen on the Temple Mount in 2017, as the Jordanian Parliament did? What if students asked to take a page out of the Palestinian Authority’s playbook and glorify terrorists who murder innocent people? At what point would the NYC Department of Education refuse to honor a student request to protest in a school?”

“Honoring members of Hamas, which has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, crosses the line and is indefensible,” Weiss said. “Condoning such a heinous protest and branding it as ‘civic engagement and advocacy’ is inexcusable and inexplicable, and it behooves the Mayor and Schools Chancellor to duly address Mr. Cohen’s comments on behalf of the Education Department and explain how paying to tribute to terrorists is deemed acceptable in New York City schools.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)