Kill-the-Jews joke? Social justice jargon is not 'restorative'

Days after someone wrote "JEWS NOT WELCOME" on the Walt Whitman High sign, two debate-team members at the Bethesda, Maryland school joked about killing Jews, according to a student complaint, the Washington Post reported.

Allegedly the two talked about using challah to lure Jews -- they named specific debate team members -- to the Andaman Islands to be burned at the stake to the sound of Kanye West music and "mosque music," reports the school newspaper, the Black and White.

The district responded with a wave of "incomprehensible blather" about "restorative circles," writes columnist Matt Bai, whose children attend the highly regarded school. "You can’t tell students, on one hand, that the words you use matter and have consequences, and then turn around and unleash a meaningless barrage of faux-academic mad-libs to make your case."

The accused students were suspended from debate club for a month, but missed no debates and kept their leadership positions, he writes. "They offered no heartfelt apologies." What was restored?

All debaters were required to attend three "restorative learning" sessions during lunch to remain on the team, which some saw as punishing the victims, the Black and White reports. The "team is owed an apology," one debater told the student newspaper.

Yes, an apology. Why can't these lame jokesters apologize without bringing in the "restorative justice facilitators" and wasting their team member's time?

Here's a bizarre story from Elissa Miolene at the Bay Area News Group: A Hayward (California) high school English teacher was put on leave for teaching anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial, as well as giving Nazi salutes.

Henry Bens told 10th graders at Mt. Eden High they were "willfully blind," said 16-year-old Myldret Vazquez. “He said he was going to help us uncover the other side of the story.”

As first reported by the Jewish News of Northern California, Bens taught Elie Weisel’s Holocaust memoir, Night, alongside photocopies of The Hidden Tyranny, an antisemitic text by Holocaust-denier Benjamin Freedman.

. . . At first, Vazquez was confused: She was being told that a secret organization of Jewish people was controlling the mass media, blackmailing American presidents and instigating war.

She didn't believe it, but senior Ruchita Verma said many of the 10th-graders she tutors concluded "the Holocaust wasn't even real."

A teacher said administrators told her Bens was protected by "academic freedom" -- and the teachers' union. Students documented the assignments and lessons for months before the teacher was suspended.

Bens, who is Black, is a pastor at a Hebrew Israelites church that believes Blacks are the "real Jews" and White Jews are imposters.