Jewish Upper School students meet with pro-Palestinian propaganda.
by Stacy Gittleman
Jewish students and parents of the Upper School of Roeper said that there have been rising tensions in the months following the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, culminating with the appearance of posters with pro-Palestinian messages calling for a ceasefire and accusing Israel of committing genocide on the week of Feb. 12 just before the private school’s scheduled winter break.
Some students requesting anonymity are saying that the climate has become inhospitable to Jewish students, with a few feeling socially ostracized for expressing pro-Israel views and others concerned that this ostracization may hurt their academic standings and their scheduled trajectory toward graduation during the final years of high school. One student said they were verbally bullied in the hallway after the appearance of the posters.
Days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, the Jewish Student Union (JSU) released a statement to the student body informing them how Israelis were attacked and killed from air, land and sea. To gain approval from the administration, the JSU had to amend the statement to include the death of Palestinians as well.
Discussions Quelled
As the months went on, members of the JSU were divided about the idea of bringing Metro Detroit’s Shinshinim Israeli delegates into the school to offer an Israeli perspective of the events before and after Oct. 7. However, some JSU students did not want to have Israelis in the building, and the JSU was told by the administration that if the Shinshinim were to speak to the organization as invited guests, they were not allowed to talk about Oct. 7 or the ensuing war. After some debate, the JSU decided they were no longer going to discuss Oct. 7 or its ramifications because it was too polarizing, and one Jewish student decided they wanted to create chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine at school, according to the student.
Still, this student felt the decision to quell the discussion of Oct. 7 in a Jewish group was unfair because objections to this discussion mainly came from one student who then went onto form SJP.
“Because the founder of (SJP) is Jewish, I believe that the administration believes that nothing that is happening now is antisemitic or hateful toward Jews,” said the student. “But this is simply not true.”
Two weeks following this discussion, the pro-Palestinian posters went up urging students from all backgrounds to join newly forming organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace. After pro-Palestinian posters went up, some Jewish students said they were verbally harassed by others in the hallway within earshot of faculty members who they say did not respond or react.
The JN obtained a message sent on Feb. 12 on TikTok by the president of the Black Student Union, who describes himself as a supporter of “the justice for Palestinian people.”
In the message, the student urged all other student groups to form a coalition to create actionable steps to help people affected by the conflict and call for the United States government to end monetary and military aid to Israel.