A map without Israel plunges a primary school into a political firestorm

A cherished tradition at Public School 261 in Boerum Hill, the heart of gentrifying Brooklyn, is the annual march to Borough Hall in honor of Martin Luther King’s birthday. Children prepare for weeks, making signs denouncing racism, homophobia, climate change and other manifestations of social and environmental pox. So disappointment was ubiquitous this year, when the march was canceled and replaced by a meeting in the cafeteria.

The catalyst for the change was the uproar that occurred after a nine-month-old social media post from Qatar Foundation International resurfaced with a photo of a PS 261 classroom displaying a colorful resource map of North Africa and the Middle East . It was pinned to the wall beneath a handwritten sign that read: “Arab World.”

Last week an article in The Free Press, a media site that has positioned itself against what it considers the enemies of free speech, drew attention to what was missing in this geography. Algeria, Yemen and Sudan were among the countries that appeared on the poster. Israel did not. Instead, the region was called Palestine.

The map was used for twelve years in a lesson about Arabic art and culture. But in this tinderbox of a historical moment, the fact of it came into focus largely through The New York Post, which an article published with the headline “Brooklyn Public School Leaves Israel Out of Qatar-Funded Classroom Map and Calls It Palestine.”

a continued in The Post later that day focused on the outrage of local officials. Dan Goldman, the Democratic congressman whose district includes Boerum Hill, said he was “deeply concerned.” The politicians wanted to know how the city’s Ministry of Education had signed off on a demonstration that reduced Israel to non-existence.

DOE headquarters has neither the time nor necessarily the dedication to investigate everything that happens in every classroom in a system that serves nearly a million children. Some wish this were so. Tova Plaut, an education coordinator for the department, has been especially vocal about what happened at PS 261, seeing the issue as a symptom of a broader problem of “Jewish hatred and erasure” in city schools, “not a one-time thing,” she told me.

“This specific example makes clear why there needs to be system-wide training on how to recognize anti-Semitism,” she said. The definition she prefers is the robust definition that comes from the International Alliance for the Remembrance of the Holocaustwhich has been adopted or endorsed by 43 countries.

On Tuesday, County Supervisor Rafael T. Alvarez sent a letter to the community announcing that the map had been removed and that the Peace Institute of New York, a conflict resolution consultancy, had been contacted to help ‘find a way forward’. He highlighted how long the card was believed to have been in use without incident, but apologized for the effect it had. District 15 wanted to “ensure our students feel safe and supported at all times,” he wrote, perhaps somewhat ambitiously. To achieve that goal, the district would review programming to ensure it aligned with its “core values.”

Parents who wanted assurance that the Arabic art lesson would not be removed from the curriculum were left with a sense of anxiety. “It would be devastating if the program were to end,” said Lauren Katzman, the mother of a 261-year-old first-grader. Last week, a broad group of parents, teachers and staff members released a statement calling for the protection of a program that honors the “diversity and Arab heritage of the Boerum Hill neighborhood.” More than 240 people had signed it.

Ms. Katzman was one of 16 Jewish parents who drafted a separate letter in a similar vein a few days later, condemning “the recent brutal doxxing and intimidation campaign against our teacher Ms. Rita Lahoud and her Arabic arts program.” The fame and all the media interference had left many people fearful for the safety of all the children and teachers on 261. There were now police officers and news crews outside. Reporters had mapped out Ms. Lahoud’s home, where she was photographed on the sidewalk.

More than most New York public schools, PS 261 represents the “beautiful mosaic” of David Dinkins’ famous construction, where children from Jewish, Christian and Muslim families walk to school from public housing and $5 million brownstones. Much of Brooklyn’s Arab community has shifted south toward Bay Ridge, but remains present in Boerum Hill, especially along Atlantic Avenue.

Ms. Lahoud’s goal — almost everyone at school calls her Ms. Rita — was to bring some of that world into the classroom. Towards the end of a given year, she has taken her students to the Metropolitan Museum to look at Arabic artplaced temporary henna tattoos, taught them to count and write their names in Arabic, introduced them to pita bread and showed them how to depict olive trees in watercolor.

Years of budget cuts within the school system have made interdisciplinary classes like this—bringing together art, architecture and history in a region, something routinely offered at private schools—uncommon. PS 261 was able to offer the program thanks to funding from the non-profit Qatar Foundation, another aspect of the story that has come under fire in the press. Founded by members of Qatar’s royal family, the foundation works with a range of institutions in the United States, including Georgetown and Northwestern Universities, as well as the public school system in New Haven, Conn.

“Part of what drew us to 261 is that the director would be creative and find ways to bring joy and culture into our children’s lives,” said Sarah Eisenstein, another parent. “It would be great to live in a world where schools didn’t have to write grants to get art or choose between things.”

Was it inevitable that the resentment that rocked college campuses would find its way to a Brooklyn elementary school? In a place as diverse as PS 261, ideological conflicts are not entirely surprising. But Ms. Eisenstein was unprepared for the intensity of the disagreement.

“In the past, we have always been able to discuss and resolve differences as a community,” she says. “This time it appears that someone from outside our community really wants to fuel division in our larger society. But parents are really coming together to say, ‘That doesn’t happen here.’