By Alex Koifman, RJCF President

Last week, on Wednesday, December 6th, 2017, Newton selectman heard the case whether to allow transparency in the HS history curriculum: Yes or No. It's hard to believe, that many people, including the school administrators and teachers, are against it!

I attended along with many other members of our community and spoke before the committee - below is my speech draft. There were about 200 people in the audience. I think more people were For transparency. No transparency speeches were mostly saying how good the school is and how nice the teachers are. Sadly, these students, who were asked to come by their teachers, are really not educated, they are activists. They think that history is not objective but rather a description of some narrative – ideology. "And who are we to say that our side is right?". One girl was upset that I called suicide bombers "creatures" instead of human beings. I corrected myself and said that I should not insult creatures by comparing them to suicide bombers. They have no idea about what is happening to children under Palestinian leadership (that kids are taught to become suicide bombers and terrorists are getting paid salaries by American taxpayers). The Newton student activists were misinformed about what this meeting was about – they said to me that we are against teaching Islam in Newton schools.

Here is my speech:

Good Evening, my name is Alex Koifman, I am a long-time Newton resident, and my son went to Newton North HS. I am president of the RJCF. I grew up in the Soviet Union where I was taught lies about Israel. Many people in this great hall agree with what I experienced. When Soviet propaganda attacked Israel, everyone – Jews and non-Jews – understood that it was against Jews. How many time I heard from non-Jews: Jews go to your Israel. Anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism are two sides of the same coin. It is happening here, attacks on Israel are really attacks on Jews. We see it on college campuses. FBI stats indicate that Jewish students are harassed more than any other ethnic group, hate crimes against Jews constitute over 50 %(!) of all ethnic hate crimes. This is not a new phenomenon, not in the last year; it has been going on for years. A great deal of hate comes from education or lack of it.

Newton, a home to a large Jewish community. In our history curriculum students are given:
* A photoshopped Hamas charter that replaces kill “Jews” with “Israelis”, PLO maps showing Israeli “occupation” with telling students that these are the PLO propaganda maps. The list is well documented and it is long.
* It is not just what you tell students but what you do not tell them. You do not teach students the truth about the Palestinian Authority that indoctrinates kids to hate all Jews not just Israelis. PLO Educational system glorifies suicide bombers and names schools after them. It teaches kids to become suicide bombers and to kill Israelis. This is the worst case of the state sponsored child abuse today. Our teachers do not tell our kids that the Palestinian Authority pays salaries to terrorists & their families, and a lot of this funding comes from the US taxpayer’s money.

Moving forward. I propose the following three steps to take the bias out of our school:
1. Make the history curriculum public (available on the Internet)
2. Fire school superintendent Fleishman. Besides being a plagiarist, he has been unable/unwilling to clean up the school history curriculum and make it public.
3. Appoint volunteer citizen representatives to look over the school curriculum.

You owe it to citizens of Newton but most importantly to the children of our city. If you do not do this, you will fail your duties, and we will continue to press for objectivity in our kids’ curriculum.