A Pennsylvania school district is facing backlash from Jewish parents after a Muslim student club promoting Palestinians passed out keffiyahs to students, featured imagery criticizing Israel, and was more focused on activism than culture, parents say.
"My child came home shaken and unsure of whether it’s even safe to speak up as a Jew at school," Lynn Simon, a Wissahickon School District parent, told Fox News Digital about last Monday’s event at Wissahickon High School, where student clubs were presenting at an annual culture fair stand that had booths representing various cultures, including a booth from Muslim Students of America chapter.
The district’s superintendent, Dr. Mwenyewe Dawan, can be seen in photos on Instagram, along with assistant superintendent Sean Gardiner. The school’s principal, Dr. Lynne Blair, posted photos of the event on her official school social media account, but has since removed some of the photos.
Upset parents say some of the students were displaying slogans like "Jerusalem is ours," offering cash prize contests, encouraging administrators and young students to don keffiyehs, and essentially engaging in pro-Palestinian activism on school grounds.
🚨 BREAKING: Congress has launched a nationwide investigation into antisemitism in 3 major school districts.
— Yehuda Teitelbaum (@chalavyishmael) November 25, 2025
In Philadelphia, teachers are accused of promoting extremist material, threatening Jewish parents online, and partnering with CAIR Philadelphia, whose leaders have… pic.twitter.com/nLoL6rQqNh
Several Jewish parents spoke out against the displays. Steve Rosenberg with the Philadelphia chapter of the North American Values Institute told Fox News Digital that the debacle “is both an embarrassment anda warning sign” and that “school should be a place for critical thinking, not cultural intimidation and performative activism masquerading as diversity.”
The parents of Jewish children at the school sent a letter to the superintendent saying their kids saw displays that “crossed clear educational and ethical boundaries.”
The letter noted that other students who visited the Muslim students’ booth “were encouraged to wear keffiyehs, a symbol that in the current global climate is widely associated not only with cultural heritage but with political movements, hostility toward Israel, and in many contexts open expressions of anti-Jewish sentiment,” Fox News Digital reported.
The parents noted that the Muslim students’ display featured a slogan that read “Jerusalemn is ours,” which is a “political claim that denies Jewish history, identity, and connection to Israel’s capital,” the letter said.
The president of the MSA chapter pushed back, saying the slogans and display were not “inherently antisemitic” and that “Jerusalem is currently a conflict zone in which two parties are actually fighting over it.”
She further stated that the statement “was written in Arabic so none of the Jewish students could actually understand that and take that as antisemitic, so that is actually just something that an individual is saying to tear us down and paint us as antisemitic.”
Debates over antisemitism in K-12 schools and higher education have been raging ever since Hamas launched a surprise attack against Israel on October 7, 2023. Since then, there has been a disturbing rise in antisemitism in the United States and other Western nations.
The Turmp administration has taken various measures to mitigate the impact of anti-Jewish bigotry in the education system. But it appears the antisemitic crowd isn’t going down without a fight.
