‘Stop bombing babies’: Students instructed to write in notes stuck outside Jewish teacher's door

An art teacher in Berkeley, California told her class of second-graders to write "Stop Bombing Babies" on sticky notes to be plastered by the door to a Jewish teacher's classroom, according to a complaint filed by the Brandeis Center and the Anti-Defamation League late last month.

The complaint, which alleges a breach of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act (1964), claims the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) failed to take action to end "nonstop bullying and harassment of Jewish students by peers and teachers" since October 7, when Hamas committed a mass terror attack against Israel and killed some 1,200 people.

The federal action was filed by both the ADL and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law. The action came after a record number of complaints, including a letter signed by 1,370 Berkeley community members to the Berkeley Superintendent and Board of Education.

Berkeley elementary school students were instructed to write "Stop bombing Babies" notes and attach them to the door of the only Jewish teacher at the school. pic.twitter.com/vHyMJ3tZW0

— Michal (@itsmichalll) March 18, 2024

BUSD schools have placed Jewish students in separate classrooms instead of addressing the issue of antisemitism, the ADL claimed.

Antisemitic incidents in BUSD 

The release detailed a number of antisemitic incidents, including mob attacks against Jewish students. The incidents have reportedly forced many Jewish students to remove their Stars of David and cease wearing items associated with Judaism.

Jewish students have been questioned on what “their number is,” a reference to tattooed numbers placed on Holocaust victims in concentration camps.

Other students have heard their peers say “kill the Jews” in the classrooms and hallways of their education facilities.

Teachers have also facilitated the antisemitic incidents, the complaint alleges, as individual teachers reportedly utilized class time to go on antisemitic, pro-Hamas rants. Some teachers have also orchestrated class walkouts, leaving students unattended and off school property without permission from parents.

Condemning the incidents

“The eruption of anti-Semitism in Berkeley’s elementary and high schools is like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” said Kenneth L. Marcus, chairman of the Brandeis Center and the former US Assistant Secretary of Education for the George W. Bush and Donald Trump administrations.

“It is dangerous enough to see faculty fanning the flames of anti-Semitism on college campuses, but to see teachers inciting hate in the youngest of grades while Berkeley administrators sit idly by as it continues to escalate by the day is reprehensible. Where is the accountability? Where are the people who are supposed to protect and educate students?”

“It is beyond deplorable that in a moment of rising anti-Semitism both here in the US and abroad that teachers and administrators at BUSD are falling down in their obligation to protect Jewish students,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL's national director.

“There is no more solemn or basic obligation than protecting our children from the moment when they walk into the doors of their schools, and to fail so monumentally that children feel forced to hide their Jewish identity for fear of reprisal is downright shocking. We must demand more from our educational leaders," said Greenblatt.