The city education department inexplicably hired a group led by the former principal of the notorious “Intifada High School” to lead a workshop for school staff on dealing with the Israel-Hamas war in the classroom, outraged teachers told The Post.
Debbie Almontazer now has hundreds of thousands of dollars in city contracts through her consulting firm, Bridging Cultures Group, and on June 6, the group conducted professional development training sessions in at least 10 city schools, teachers said.
In a workshop titled “Facilitating Courageous Dialogue,” two facilitators, one Jewish and one Muslim, discussed lesson plans on how to teach students and lead discussions about the ongoing war, but Jewish teachers were outraged by the training materials, which they said were biased against Israel.
Sharon Malkin, an art teacher at Horace Greeley IS10Q in Astoria, Queens, said one of the presentation’s slides described the Oct. 7 attack on the Jewish state and the eight-month bombing of Gaza as “psychologically traumatic,” but made no mention of the 251 hostages kidnapped by Hamas or the missile attacks on Israel by Iran and terrorist organizations.
At the second workshop, a Jewish instructor who posted a photo to Facebook with a Palestinian flag sticker chuckled before providing the group with data on 1,200 Jewish deaths on Oct. 7 and more than 37,000 Palestinian deaths over the past eight months, according to Malkin and a recording of the training.
“I wonder what people, especially those who don’t know the facts, will think about this,” Malkin said, adding that her school’s principal apologized and canceled a Bridging Culture workshop scheduled for the following day.
The department’s decision to hire Bridging Cultures to provide workshops on how to teach about 9/11 and religious diversity in the classroom has puzzled Jewish teachers, especially given Almontazard’s notorious history on the subject.
In a 2007 interview with The Washington Post, Almontaser endorsed T-shirts that read “Intifada NYC” and were made and sold by a group of Arab women activists.
The phrase has long been used to refer to violent protests against Israel, including Palestinian terror attacks from the late 1980s to the early 2000s, but Almontaser insisted it did not foreshadow the bloody riots in the city.
Her comments sparked outrage and widespread media coverage, with the embattled educator appearing on newspaper covers days after resigning as president of the city’s newly established Khalil Gibran International Academy.
“Should that person be designing a curriculum that teaches about anti-Semitism? I would argue absolutely not,” said one Jewish public school teacher.
City records show Bridging Cultures has received at least $235,000 in taxpayer-funded DOE contracts and purchases since fiscal year 2021. The group’s website lists several $2,000-a-time workshops, including “Building Caring Learning Communities through Culturally Responsive Education.”
Almontazard’s company said the DOEMeet the momentA plan to combat anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in the city’s schools.
In recent years, Almontaser has been involved with groups that openly support anti-Israel protests, including the Muslim Community Network, of which he is chairman.
At the height of anti-Israel university protests this year, MCN offered “safety training” seminars to protesters, posted advice on social media detailing how to refuse police searches and “not be fooled” by “‘good cop/bad cop’ techniques.”
Almontaser has posted on social media in support of anti-Israel protests and called for an unconditional ceasefire in Gaza, and appears to have close ties with Schools Superintendent David Banks.
Energy Department spokesman Nathaniel Steyer said the department is prioritizing the use of workshops and other training opportunities for staff to learn how to handle difficult conversations about current events in the classroom as part of a plan to “respond to the current situation.”
“To do this work, we collaborated with a variety of highly qualified and respected partners to ensure a balanced representation of perspectives across the NYCPS community, with the ultimate goal of fostering understanding and empathy,” he said.
Bridging Cultures did not respond to a request for comment.
Additional reporting by Deirdre Bardolph and Susan Edelman
