At one time, in late 20th-century America, antisemitism may have frequently been confined to graffiti, the occasional neo-Nazi or Klan march or the unknown weirdos who circulated antisemitic literature. That was decades before antisemitism made a massive resurgence on college campuses and across the globe in the wake of October 7. Since then, it has been making comebacks in what one would think is the unlikeliest of places.
In March of this year, the Nysmith School for the Gifted in Herndon, Va., expelled three Jewish students. The reason? The children’s parents, Brian Vazquez and Ashok Roy, lodged a complaint about the school not taking action when their 11-year-old daughter was subjected to antisemitic harassment.
In one incident, a social studies class drew a picture showing the “attributes of a strong leader.” You can see the photo on the first page of the complaint filed by the Brandeis Center.
If that isn’t Adolf Hitler, I’m a member of Parliament.
The complaint states that the parents contacted owner and headmaster Kenneth R. Nysmith about their daughter being bullied and harassed following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack because she is Jewish. According to the complaint, some of the taunts involved references to the attacks. Nysmith said he would address the problem, but never did.
However, the complaint states that a few weeks later, he did take the time to hang a Palestinian flag in the gymnasium, which only encouraged more harassment. When this problem was brought to Nysmith’s attention, he instructed the parents to tell the children to “toughen up.” The girl, who had been called an Israeli, was told by other students that the Jews were baby killers, and that the entire school hated her, often pointing to the pro-Palestinian stickers on their laptops.
They also stated that they were glad her uncle died in the October 7 attacks, even though he had died four years earlier. The complaint states that after the flag went up, “Classmates cited it as evidence that ‘everyone hates Jews,’ taunting her that ‘we won’ and that the flag was proof that ‘nobody likes you.’”
The complaint adds:
Two days later, on March 13, 2025, Mr. Nysmith retaliated – notifying Complainants in an email that all three children were expelled effective immediately, days before their mid-semester report cards and long after the application periods for other local schools had passed.
The complaint also alleges that Nyquist canceled the school’s annual Holocaust program so as not to “inflame emotions.”
Again, you can access the complaint here.
A little over two years ago, I wrote a piece about Michigan’s latest hate speech laws. You can read it here, but I told a story about picking up extra work with a catering company that served the local synagogues. The upshot of the story was this: We had to wear yarmulkes to work in the synagogue, so we wore “loaners.” On a few occasions, I returned home only to realize that I had inadvertently walked off wearing a yarmulke:
I decided that returning them was the right thing to do. But I wasn’t sure which yarmulke went to which synagogue. But there was one a few blocks from me, so I decided to take my ill-gotten yarmulkes there and let them sort it out. But when I got to the synagogue, I just kept driving. Someone had been there before me with black paint. The front doors and columns had been defaced with swastikas. I was sickened by it and ashamed. And I was afraid that if I went to the door, they might think I was one of the perpetrators who had come to finish the job.
I don’t have many regrets, but the fact that I didn’t man up and return the yarmulkes because some lower primates discovered how to use spray cans has always been a regret.
It’s very easy to ignore these kinds of things when they happen to someone else. As long as the madness is not at our front door, it’s tempting to dismiss the people behind these kinds of actions as “crazy people.” If no one is holding a riot in our town, we are content to try and live as normal a life as possible for as long as we can. But eventually, the riots, the threats, and the people behind them find us all.
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