The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York told a federal court in White Plains that evidence in the lawsuit by three Jewish families against the Pine Bush, New York school district “could support a conclusion” that beyond disciplining individual students, the school district’s efforts to stop anti-Semitic bullying of the Jewish students “ignored multiple signals that greater, more directed action was needed.”
US Attorney Files Statement Supporting Jewish Pine Bush Students
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York told a federal court in White Plains that evidence in the lawsuit by three Jewish families against the Pine Bush, New York school district “could support a conclusion” that beyond disciplining individual students, the school district’s efforts to stop anti-Semitic bullying of the Jewish students “ignored multiple signals that greater, more directed action was needed,” the New York Times reported.
That claim is found in a memo filed by the US Attorney to make clear the federal government’s position in the civil suit against the school district.
It reportedly says the district’s leaders did not seem to have “engaged the school board or the faculty in any substantial discussion” regarding anti-Semitic harassment. It also reportedly claims the district “failed to ensure that school administrators were aware of the scope and nature of the problem across the district’s schools.”
The US Attorney’s memo reportedly also says the evidence from the lawsuit “is sufficient for a jury to find that the district failed to respond to pervasive anti-Semitic harassment in its schools” and violated federal civil rights law.
Jewish students have found swastikas drawn on school walls, desks, and lockers. Some students on a district school bus allegedly chanted “white power” and made Nazi salutes with their arms. And a Jewish middle school student says he was beaten by other students on a school-sponsored ski trip after he was asked if he was Jewish and responded yes.
The school district denies its response to the anti-Semitism has been insufficient or that it in any way condoned anti-Semitism and asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit against it, prompting the statement of interest memo from the government.
The Pine Bush district is the home of Bloomingburg, a tiny 420 person village where Satmar hasidim and developer Shalom Lamm have allegedly used deception and even bribes to build a controversial Satmar-only 396-unit townhouse development illegally advertised in Satmar Yiddish language newspapers as a new Satmar hasidic village.