Three Arab students last week threw stones at Jewish students from the Rose middle school in Acco who came to the Hilmi Shaf’ai Ort Educational Campus in the city as part of a joint English language project, Ynet reported Wednesday.
The educational meeting became violent when an Arab student suspected that a Jewish visitor said something inappropriate, and decided to wait for him outside the school with two friends and threw stones at him. One female teacher was injured but did not require medical attention.
The mother of the student who was attacked told Ynet that “these meetings are blessed and I hope they continue. The fact that incidents happen does not mean that we should give up. Everyone needs to learn to get along and the educators must chart a path for civil coexistence for both sides.”
Other parents disagreed and appealed to the middle school management demanding to stop the project. “We thought our children would be protected, I will not send my daughter there anymore,” said one of them.
During the May 2021 Guardian of the Walls riots and in the months that followed, four Hilmi Shaf’ai teachers posted pro-violence messages on social media, according to Israel Hayom. One of them, Aadel Rian, who teaches and coordinates social studies and has been on staff at Hilmi Shaf’ai since 2009, wrote on Facebook on October 2, 2021: “May your hands become paralyzed, O Allah. Allah, protect the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”