The coddling of Jew haters in our public schools has reached a new low. A Boston-area middle school principal sought to address growing antisemitism in the community by hosting a lesson on the Holocaust. But when Arab students were offended by the lesson about the historic Jewish genocide, he wrote a lengthy apology expressing contrition that they felt “left out or erased.”
“The email message from William Diamond Middle School Principal Dr. Johnny Cole, of Lexington, Massachusetts, was sent to families following a presentation that connected Holocaust education to contemporary antisemitism — at a time when hatred of Jews has reached unprecedented levels in the U.S.” writes Kevin Deutsch for his Substack “After October 7.”
The email from Dr. Cole makes clear exactly who was offended by the mandatory history lesson—and why.
“A few weeks ago, your class participated in a session about antisemitism connecting the learning you had done in Social Studies class about the Holocaust to the modern world,” Cole wrote. “The goal was an important one: to help you recognize hate, understand where it comes from, and encourage you to speak up against it.”
The principal continued: “We have learned from speaking to some of your families that the experience did not feel that way to some of you. Some of you felt unseen. Some of you felt like your own history, your identity, or your community was left out or erased. Some of you left that session feeling less safe, not more. We have heard this from families and we believe you.”
“We are sorry,” Cole stated. “We are sorry because every one of you deserves to walk into this school and feel that who you are matters—Arab students; Jewish students; Muslim students; Palestinian students—every student. And in this case, we missed the mark and did not achieve what we hoped to do.”
Public reaction to the apology from the Jewish and pro-Israel community was swift and condemnatory.
“Since when is teaching historical fact something that requires an apology? And why is a school principal validating outrage over Holocaust education instead of defending it?” the X account StopAntisemitism posted in response.
“This is insane,” stated Elchanan Poupko, host of The Jewish World Podcast and editor-in-chief of Wingate News. “The Holocaust was the systematic murder of six million Jews. Teaching that history should not require an apology. What kind of lesson does this apology send students???”
“Absolutely sickening,” declared author Karen Hunt, a Christian Zionist and author of the forthcoming book The Seduction of Islam. “The Holocaust is about 6 million JEWS being murdered, along with others such as Christians who protected Jews, homosexuals and the mentally ill murdered along with them. Only several dozen Muslims were killed in the death camps and most were Russian prisoners of war. Their deaths had nothing to do with being Muslim. But Islam requires that EVERYTHING be about them and their point of view. And their point of view, based on the Quran, is that Jews SHOULD be killed. Islam glories in the death of Jews! Here’s an idea: If Muslims want to be included in history lessons about the Holocaust, they should learn about the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem plotting with Hitler to kill the Jews!”
Principal Cole’s apology also reflects the ‘both sides’-ism that is now the constant accompaniment to any mention of antisemitism from left-leaning politicians and institutions. It is an unwritten rule that antisemitism cannot be mentioned or condemned without in the same breath calling out “Islamophobia”—despite federal hate crime statistics that reveal hate crimes against Jews outnumber those against Muslims by a factor of 8-to-1.
Nor is this the first occasion on which Principal Cole has acted to appease Muslim students’ discomfort with any mention of Jew hatred.
This past spring, Dr. Cole stopped student Teagan Murtagh in the hallway and told her that she wasn’t in trouble, but he needed to speak with her.
In a letter printed in The Lexington Observer, she describes what happened next:
What he meant was that I wasn’t in trouble as long as I did what he wanted. What he wanted was that I not wear my sweatshirt to school anymore. The shirt causing this commotion is a simple black sweatshirt, with a four line poem in pastel, bubbly font:
Save the bees.
Plant more trees.
Clean the seas.
Punch Nazis.
Dr. Cole told me not to wear the shirt to school again because he ‘had received some student complaints’ from students who ‘felt threatened.’ I was floored. I wanted to ask how anyone (other than a Nazi or someone with a bee related anaphylactic allergy) could feel threatened by the shirt. I had a feeling it didn’t have to do with the bees.
Teagan then describes how she wore the sweatshirt in tribute to her great grandmother who was “imprisoned in a German concentration camp along with her mom and her younger brother.”
“My shirt getting banned did not occur in a vacuum,” Teagan explains. “This is a school where students drew neo-Nazi symbols on the bathroom walls in December and the only schoolwide response was a statement on the announcements telling us to be kind… By stopping wearing my shirt and giving in to my principal’s demands, it would appear that I was agreeing with an administration who is uncomfortable with that message against anti-Semitism. And that will never happen.”
It is a sad day when an eighth-grade student must provide lessons in moral courage to her school principal. That is the unfortunate situation that befalls the students at William Diamond Middle School.