Four 11-year-old Jewish students at Manhattan Beach Middle School were told by another student that “Jews should be killed.”
According to an email from the Jewish Community Center obtained by American Faith, the student made other threatening comments to Jewish peers.
The email noted that the student’s father’s social media also displayed antisemitic posts.
The students involved in the incident signed “No Contact Contracts,” an agreement that has been compared to a gag order where students will not contact each other for the remainder of the school year.
A statement released by the Manhattan Beach Unified School District read, “The safety of our students and staff is a priority for us. Anti-Semitism and any other forms of discrimination are unacceptable and will not be tolerated on our campuses. Our schools should be a place where all individuals feel respected and supported.”
Explaining the “No Contact Contract,” the school district said, “At times when there are difficult situations involving 11, 12, and 13-year-old students, MBMS has utilized ‘No Contact Contracts.’ These agreements are commonly used in school districts across the country and even in universities. They ask students to avoid each other and not speak to one another in order to avoid re-igniting situations we are trying to resolve. This allows us to ensure that further interactions occur with adult guidance and not when students are in settings where that might not be available.”
“The goal of these agreements is to help protect all students from any future conflicts with one another. Although the school requested that all students who were directly involved in this incident to enter into its standard ‘No Contact Contract,’ no students involved in this situation were required to sign it, nor was a gag order ever administered,” the statement continued. “Upon review, the District is updating the language of its current ‘No Contact Contract’ in order to eliminate confusion regarding its purpose and intent.”
According to the families of the Jewish girls, another 11-year-old in the classroom said “revenge is beautiful” and “all Israelis and Jews should be killed.”
The event reportedly set off tensions in the South Bay community, with parents expressing their outrage.
“Kids are innocent, and the fact that our 11-year-olds are losing their innocence at that age, it’s such a shame,” Rabbi Joshua Kalev said.
“I have our students coming up to me saying ‘I don’t feel comfortable wearing a Jewish star at school,’ or a T-shirt they got on a trip to Israel. They’ve asked their parents to take down their mezuzah from their door post because they don’t want to be identified as a Jewish family,” he continued.
The incident is the latest antisemitic event to occur in United States schools since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.
Pro-Palestine rallies and protests have been held by student groups at the following universities:
- Harvard University
- Indiana University
- Arizona State University
- California State University, Long Beach
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- University of California, Los Angeles
- Stanford University
- Brown University
- Columbia University
- Yale University
- Cornell University
- University of Pennsylvania
