Philadelphia educator Heather Mizrachi walked into her city school district office following the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, only to be greeted by a poster with the slogan, “Free Palestine.”
For Mizrachi, who is Jewish and the daughter of an Israeli, the image was jarring, to say the least. She continued to see the poster daily in her job in the central office as a curriculum specialist for middle-school students. Her complaints were ignored, she said.
“Each of those encounters left me in tears, in complete despair, and left me feeling dehumanized and undermined because of my religion and shared national origin,” the New Jersey resident told JNS via Microsoft Teams.
She added that there had always been a few postings from a few people, but after Oct. 7, “it was a flooding of the gates kind of situation.”
Citing the poster and other acts of harassment post-Oct. 7, including social-media posts from fellow school district employees. Mizrachi, who had worked for the Philadelphia city school system since 2017, went to court.
Her lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania, says she “has been forced to endure conditions that, by any objective measure, are grossly offensive, severe, and pervasive, including, among many other things, being forced to look at images that advocate for the violent destruction of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.”
“It made it nearly impossible not to pursue this path,” she said about the lawsuit. She said she felt that her colleagues had a “sense of permission to post these kinds of things. That’s been very troubling for me.”
The school district had no comment. It does not comment on pending litigation,” spokeswoman Christina Clark told JNS in a statement.
The aforementioned poster also included a Palestinian flag and the slogan, “From the river to the sea,” which the Anti-Defamation League says has been used by supporters of Hamas and other terrorist organizations and “is an antisemitic charge denying the Jewish right to self-determination, including through the removal of Jews from their ancestral homeland.”
In addition, her lawsuit said, those social-media accounts called for Israel’s destruction, accused the country of being a “terrorist state” and cheered on Hamas.
The U.S. Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights earlier had investigated the school system over allegations of antisemitic harassment after Oct. 7.
That case was resolved when the school district agreed to take several steps, including distributing an anti-harassment statement; providing annual training to administrations, faculty and staff; describing actions to be taken to respond to harassment, and giving age-appropriate information to students about discrimination based on race, color and national origin.
But the harassment didn’t stop, Mizrachi said.
“It’s like saying you’re trying to wrap your head around how this is OK—and it’s not,” she said. In many cases, it’s that sort of wishing it away, hoping it will pass.”
This latest case has just begun, with the school district not having to respond until late next month.
“I just feel like sometimes people are apprehensive to come forward,” she said. “I know I’m not the only one who has been enduring this. I want people to know they are not alone.”
