A travesty of justice has taken place in Brooklyn. Debbie Almontaser, the woman who created the vision of a dual-language Arabic-English school in Brooklyn has been forced to resign from her position as the principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA) as a result of a smear campaign carried out by an organization known as “Stop the Madrassa Coalition” (SMC) with a great deal of support by the New York Post and a surprising dearth of support by the Department of Education. Debbie is a woman who personifies peace and interfaith connections, yet articles in the Post and statements by the Stop the Madrassa group have portrayed her as supporting violence and wanting to create an Islamic school. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The story starts in September of 2001 when my daughter entered kindergarten at P.S. 261 in the Boerum Hill section of Brooklyn. I chose this school for my daughter to attend because of its diversity (racial, ethnic, religious, and class). What I loved most about the school was that as soon as you walked in the door, you could feel a sense of family and community. I was horrified then to hear that after the horrible tragedy of September 11, Arab-Americans were being attacked right near my daughter’s school in Brooklyn. As members of the P.S. 261 community, other parents and I wanted to reach out to these members of the P.S. 216 community. Despite the horror of this tragedy, I hoped it could be an opportunity to build bridges to the Arab-American community in Brooklyn. That’s when I met Debbie Almontaser. I approached her to ask if she was in touch with the Arab-American families and, if so, if she tell them that other parents wanted to support them in any way we could. Debbie told me stories about Arab-American women who had been cursed at, spit on, and worse. She said most of the women were afraid to leave their homes. I was ashamed this was happening in my community. Debbie and I talked more and we developed an immediate connection . Soon after that, the District 15 Superintendent recruited Debbie to help the school district cope with the many repercussions of September 11th. Debbie’s work involved designing and facilitating diversity workshops to counteract the prejudice and bigotry that followed September 11. Debbie and I stayed in touch and became friends. She invited me to various inter-faith events (I am Jewish) and dinner at her home during Ramadan. I invited Debbie and her husband to dinner and we met regularly for lunch. During one of those lunch meetings last summer, she told me about a dream of hers – to create a school in Brooklyn a dual language Arabic-English school that would provide a diverse group of students with a chance to study Arabic and learn about Middle Eastern history and culture. New Visions for Public Schools had asked Debbie to submit a proposal for the creation of an Arabic-English dual language school for submission to the Department of Education. Debbie explained that the idea behind this school was to help students develop relationships with each other and learn to appreciate each other’s cultures. This was particularly important in a post-September 11 New York City. Arab-American children were facing horrendous situations – being taunted, humiliated and made to feel ashamed of their culture despite the fact that the terrorists who brought down the Twin Towers were radical fundamentalists, not representatives of the vast majority of Arabs or Arab-Americans. Brooklyn needed a school like this. It sounded like the perfect way to create cross-cultural bridges in Brooklyn. I told Debbie I wanted to help and she invited me to join the Design Team, a group of community members (parents, teachers, administrators, and others) who worked together to create a proposal for the creation of the new school that is then submitted to the Department of Education. I enthusiastically agreed. I work in the area of transformative change so I offered to facilitate a Design Team meeting to help the Team to develop a consensus on the school’s mission. I facilitated two of these meetings. I was amazed by the commitment, energy and passion of the Design Team members. They talked about wanting the School to:

• create “ambassadors of peace”
• give students an excellent education that surpassed state standards
• provide students with multiple perspectives
• build bridges between Arab-American students and others
• create an increased understanding of Arab culture, community, history
• create a sense of community for the students and their families
• create global thinkers

Neither religion nor politics were ever a part of the conversation about the School’s mission. We spent months and endless hours and many late nights working to draft and re-draft the proposal and other documents that we needed to submit to the Department of Education. I had a hand in writing every piece of that proposal so I was completely baffled by a report on the Stop the Madrassa website that states:

“Charges leveled against KGIA by these writers - that it will in essence function as a madrassa, a center for indoctrination not education - are proven by the school’s own executive summary, a document recently released under threat of a lawsuit by the Stop The Madrassa Coalition. The summary is actually a manual for creating an Islamist vocational school, one in which every activity is planned around creating social activists with an Arab supremacist mindset, in the mold of KGIA’s activist/principal Dhabah Almontaser.”

They go on to accuse Debbie of wanting to “use the Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA) as a vehicle for promoting her radical ideological agenda” and claim that examples of that agenda are contained in the Executive Summary that describes KGIA. What agenda is this? The mission in the final proposal (which includes the Executive Summary) we submitted to the Department of Education is to:

“graduate life-long learners who have a deep understanding of different cultural perspectives, a love of learning and a desire for excellence with integrity [and] prepare students of diverse backgrounds for success in an increasingly global and interdependent society.”

The proposal also states that the school is designed to:

“provid[e] a diverse, supportive and collaborative learning environment in which students can reach their full potential and grow into knowledgeable and socially responsible global leaders. … foster the critical thinking, problem solving, and communication skills necessary for our students to become ambassadors of peace and hope, who are able to create bridges of understanding across cultural and other differences.”

I am having a difficult time trying to understand why SMC has selected Debbie and the KGIA School as targets for an attack. They seem to believe that KGIA was created to provide an Islamic religious education but that is simply not the case. As a Jewish woman living in a predominantly Christian country, I am well aware of the dangers of allowing a public school to provide religious education and would never support a public school designed to do that. Members of that organization also seem to believe that KGIA’s curriculum will be designed to provide an “Islamic” history of the Middle East. Again, the truth is the complete opposite. What KGIA strives to do is provide multiple perspectives on history rather than just one. All histories are one-sided. It is just usually the history of whoever is in power that is considered to be legitimate. KGIA aims to provide its students with multiple perspectives rather than just one. This will be done through books written by authors from different cultures and backgrounds rather than simply those written by white American men. On their web site, the SMC group claims KGIA was opened “without going through the usual and proper procedures for review.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. The Design Team went through every hoop required by Department of Education policy and procedures. In fact, we went through the additional hoops required by New Visions for the schools it is supporting. Just as I can’t understand why SMC has singled out Debbie and KGIA, I can’t understand why the New York Post has been engaging in a smear campaign focused on Debbie and the KGIA School. An August 10, 2007 article in the Post written by Chuck Bennett is an example. It starts out criticizing KGIA because it has attracted only a small number of Arabic speaking students, has not attracted a diverse population, and has not reached its capacity of 60 students. That’s only part of the story. The article doesn’t say how many of the students are Arab-American but don’t speak Arabic and want to learn it. It doesn’t mention that KGIA was not approved by the Department of Education until months after elementary school students submit their applications for middle school. Thus, KGIA had to recruit students without having been able to attend Middle School Fairs or been included in the Middle School Handbook given to all fifth grade students that contains information about all middle schools in Brooklyn. KGIA had to recruit students after most fifth graders had already selected their middle schools. The fact that KGIA was able to recruit as many students as it did is quite a feat. No brand new school should be compared to an established school that’s had the benefit of experience and visibility. The article also criticizes the school because 75% of the student population is Black. I wonder what the writers would say about the Sunset Park Prep Academy in Brooklyn whose population is about 75% Latino, or the Shuang Wen School in Manhattan (a dual language Chinese-English School) whose population is about 85% Asian-American. Another article in the Post published on August 7, 2007 by Andrea Peyser is even more disturbing. The article opens as follows:

“How many ways can you define ‘suicidal’? The school hasn't even opened yet. But the hijab-wearing principal of a taxpayer-funded school founded especially for Arab students has issued a fatwa against the kids of New York. She said there is nothing wrong with intifada.”

It is hard to imagine a more inflammatory statement. I can’t understand why Ms. Peyser felt a need to specify that Debbie wears a hijab. I wonder if she thinks a woman wearing a hijab is the same as a woman wearing a nun’s habit. In case any readers don’t know, this is not the case. A woman wearing a hijab is the same as a man wearing a yarmulke. I wonder if she would have opened an article with the words, “a yarmulke-wearing man”? Similarly, I can’t understand why she would say that Debbie has “issued a fatwa against the kids of New York.” A fatwa is an Islamic opinion about a legal or religious issue. How would that pertain to anything that has been said about Debbie? She goes on to write that Debbie said “there was nothing wrong with ‘intifada.’” This is a cruel and distorted accusation. It seems to have originated in an August 6, 2007 article in the Post co-written by Chuck Bennett and Jana Winter. This accusation came about because of some T-shirts an organization called Arab Women Active in Art and Media (AWAAM) was selling at a Fair in Prospect Park. The T-shirts had “Intifada NYC” written on them. Without even talking with the organization responsible for the T-shirts to find out from the source what their intended meaning was, these writers made assumptions about what the words meant and acted on them. The meaning that they chose to attribute to the word “intifada” was that it was meant as a “glorification of Palestinian violence” and a “call for a Gaza-style uprising in the Big Apple.” In fact, the word intifada has a number of meanings depended on its intended use. While many around the world may characterize the intifada as “riots,” many Palestinians may characterize them as actions taken in response to Israel’s occupation. To many Israelis and Jews, the word intifada may bring up images of violence against Israelis by Palestinians. To many Palestinians, however, the word may bring up images of young boys throwing stones at Israeli soldiers holding machine guns. Which image is correct? Who determines which definition will stand? Rather than going to the source and asking AWAAM members what the T-shirts were supposed to mean, a Post reporter insisted that Debbie explain her association with this organization based on her membership on the board of another organization that is allowing AWAAM to use it’s space for their summer youth program, She said that the reporter would need to talk with AWAAM to find out what they meant. The reporter then said something like, “for my personal understanding, I’m just curious about what the word intifada means?” Debbie explained that the meaning of the word in Arabic comes from the root word “to shake off”. Debbie followed up stating that because the word has developed a negative connotation based on the Palestinian and Israeli conflict in which thousands of people died such a shirt is not appropriate. When pushed about whether she thought the group was advocating violence, Debbie said she did not believe that was the organization’s intent and emphasized she would never associate herself with an organization or individual that condones or insights violence. I can’t understand how these statements can be taken to signify Debbie’s support of or failure to condemn the T-shirts. Despite these statements, the Post has portrayed Debbie as having approved of T-shirts that glorify Palestinian terror. As it turns out, “shake off” is exactly the meaning that AWAAM intended when it created those T-shirts. The organization’s website states:

“Intifada is a word that literally means “shaking off.” As AWAAM provides young women with opportunities to become active as community organizers and media producers, ‘Intifada NYC’ is a call for empowerment, service, civic participation and critical thinking in our communities: a ‘shaking off’ of discrimination and prejudice and an embracing of our roles as producers rather than simply objects of the mass media and public discourse.”

The recent articles in the Post are a prime example of Arab-Americans being the “objects of mass media and public discourse.” As the AWAAM website goes on to say:

“As the present controversy makes clear, we are either portrayed as religious fanatics or, at the other extreme, we are viewed as voiceless women,’ said AWAAM founding director, Mona Eldahry. ‘Who should have the right to define our words and tell us that our call for community empowerment is actually a call for terrorism?”

I wish these reporters had provided more accurate reports about Debbie instead of writing such inflammatory articles. I also wish that the City leaders including UFT President Randi Weingarten, Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., and Assemblyman Dov Hikind who have spoken out against and vilified Debbie would have taken the time to pick up the phone and speak with her directly rather than take as truth the statements written in the Post articles. Finally, I wish the Department of Education had provided Debbie and KGIA with the support needed to make this school a success. It was clear to the Department of Education that in a post-September 11 world, KGIA would be followed by controversy. Knowing this, the Department should have engaged in a media campaign to ensure that the public was aware of what the school was about rather than allowing media smear campaigns to provide the public with it’s first introduction to the School. The Department not only failed to engage is this essential upfront work but once the smear campaign started, they did not pursue other media outlets to carry counter stories that would be fair and balanced. If Debbie has done anything wrong, it is to lack political savvy and put too much trust in the Department of Education. What is so sad is that what could have been an opportunity for dialogue was turned instead into a demonizing of a wonderful woman who values peace not violence. What would have made better journalism would have been an article that provided the reader with a deeper understanding of the different connotations that the word “intifada” evokes for different people and cultures by telling the stories behind the word. Rather than intensifying divisions that already exist, it might have served to enhance mutual understanding. No one has clean hands in the Middle East. Peace will not come by continuing to vilify and demonize the “other.” It can only come when both sides are able to listen to each other’s stories of pain and hurt so as to build mutual understanding instead of fuel antagonism. Firing Debbie is a tragedy – she should be reinstated.