shame.
bigots indeed.

This caused New-York style fireworks with Jewish groups demonstrating and condemning the opening of the new “Madrassah”

Only Jewish people? I’m not Jewish, and I oppose the opening of this school.

The school’s initially appointed principal Debbie Almontaser was sacked because she failed to condemn the use of the word “intifada” in one of her side projects.

Her side project, the one that involved selling t-shirts that say “Intifada NYC” on them, you mean? :O

She also doesn’t believe HAMAS and Hezbollah are terrorist groups. That may be OK in the middle east. It’s not OK in the United States. It’s especially not OK for an Arab principal of an Arab school, in the United States. And a publicly funded government run school, at that.

“Madrassah” (a derogative word that refers to Pakistan’s terror breading religious schools).

If the NYC public school system didn’t want people to think they were trying to open a Madrassa in NYC the they shouldn’t have hired somebody who supports Palestinian terrorism as the Principal, don’t you think? Would that be too much to ask?

Whoever decided to open an Arab public school in NYC should be fired. Whoever decided to hire a Palestinian activist to be the Principal, should be shot. Can you imagine somebody like Um Khalil teaching American kids about Arabic culture? Why not just shoot those kids now, and get it over with. Why wait until they grow up and start murdering people?

bigots indeed.

Yes, I suppose so. We’re all bigots here. I suggest this school be relocated to someplace in Europe. They like multi-Culturalism here. This is America. We do assimilation.

I wouldn’t have objected to this school at all if there wasn’t such an obvious political agenda behind it. But, there is. And there’s no getting around that.

Ah yes, the “Assimilation”; that gets you pasteurized processed cheese with little taste and a lot of fat. Variety is not that bad. You should try it.

The fact that all pile on the school means that the concept has some validity to start with. Then again, I am not sure modern Arabs and Jews have much in common with Gebran…

The dead armadillos in middle of that road should have dissuaded the NY school board for embarking on that crossing.

The project is a senseless mess. Fix existing school and integrate students instead of these silly themed schools (arab, green, gay/transgendered, PC crap…)

As to the name Gibran, non-Lebanese Arabs should back off. It’s just a sham and a way to sell the school and more hypocrisy.

Reminds me of Palestinians and Syrians I went to school with. The confused idiots mocked the Lebs and said Syria had a right to rule Leb etc…

Then when asked by westerners (girls especially) where are you from? Answer: we are Lebanese.

Jeha,

1) The rest of us will be “assimilated” by the frigging schools system by FORCE while the special little funky PC groups get their own little niches at tax payer expense??

2) People like me left “over there” to get away from a sick (political but also general) culture and its known catastrophic consequences.

The Mofos who founded this school are my enemies. Why? Because they keep following me and insist on replicating their sick culture here (intifada etc…) with the help of the local useful idiots.

I came to the US to escape the Middle East. These freaks want to export it to the US. Want the culture? Stay where the fuck you are. (I don’t mean “you” Jeha. And when I want my kids to learn Arabic, they will go to after school).

[...] Beirut Spring writes about an uproar surrounding a newly established public school in Brooklyn (NY), that is named after the Lebanese/Arab writer and poet Gibran Khalil Gibran. The school teaches many of its material in Arabic and has some courses on “Arab Culture”. Jewish groups demonstrated and condemned the opening of what they termed a “Madrassah”. A group called “Friends Of Gibran Council” released a press statement claiming that Gibran was Lebanese but not an Arab! Share This [...]

[...] The Beirut Spring writes about controversy over a public school named after a Lebanese poet. This is a great example of an issue where students can take/argue sides and then also look at how both sides are spewing inaccuracies. Local connections immediately come to mind, curriculum connections are a-plenty. [...]

Thanks for the reporting Mustapha, you inspired me to write an article about the subject, keep up the good work of this kind

I wish the Lebanese can forget about Gibran. He was less than mediocre. “Your children are not your children, they are the children of life….” ….yawn…..This is the stuff worthy of the cheap greeting cards at your local drug store. He is famous for two reasons. 1/ Corny sound-bites sell in America. 2/ Lebanese love famous Lebanese, no matter what they are famous for.

Khalil Gibran is in fact an interesting read & I suggest Ideal for anyone’s school. I’m a Jew,= midrash, from the same root as madrassa, means to study. Once we become a shapelessMASS & a book of rules, we then may conceive of a jumping off point w/our neighbors rather than spew self-loathing–egotistic impulses of the lack of inner attention these opposition groups assuage… Harmony/hate isn’t characterized individually (I can’t accept the anthropomorphic!)–but is ephemeral & shared - and is what we may learn from when seen objectively.

hi