{"id":7303,"date":"2025-10-18T18:20:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T18:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/7303\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T18:20:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T18:20:16","slug":"lower-merion-students-in-middle-eastern-club-say-parents-wrongly-accused-them-of-antisemitism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/7303\/","title":{"rendered":"Lower Merion students in Middle Eastern club say parents wrongly accused them of antisemitism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Student members of a Middle Eastern club at Harriton High School said Monday that they had been unfairly accused of antisemitism when they invited a Syrian refugee to speak about his experience as a political prisoner.<\/p>\n

The members of the MENASA club, who spoke at a Lower Merion<\/a> school board meeting, said they had invited Omar Alshogre to speak last month solely about his experiences under the Assad regime. But after parents alleged that Alshogre had expressed antisemitic views, school officials moved his talk from a nighttime event open to the public to a daytime speech<\/a>, limited to Harriton students.<\/p>\n

MENASA students disputed that Alshogre was antisemitic \u2014 but also said that, whatever his personal views, he was not at Harriton to discuss Israel, and never brought up the Israel-Hamas war.<\/p>\n

Still, the controversy \u201cseemed to be enough of a reason for parents to dig through everything they could to support a fundamentally false narrative\u201d about MENASA, including that the club had excluded Israeli and Jewish students, said student Pedram Bigdeli.<\/p>\n

The dispute was one of a number of examples cited by Lower Merion students Monday as they argued that parents had been too quick to invoke antisemitism<\/a> \u2014 and Lower Merion too willing to curtail speech in response.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the mere presence of people who disagree with Israel\u2019s current actions in the Middle East is so threatening to our community that we cannot allow any speech on it, then I fear what that means for our educations,\u201d said Sam Donagi, a Lower Merion High School student who helped organize a recent event called \u201cResistance 101\u2033 that drew outcry from some community members, including over the presence of Lower Merion alumni affiliated with pro-Palestinian college campus groups.<\/p>\n

Lower Merion\u2019s response to antisemitism has been a fraught topic in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, with parents contending the district is doing too little to address bullying and to educate students and staff on antisemitism.<\/p>\n

At a school board meeting last month, parents said it was problematic<\/a> for the district to host speakers from groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, which they said was spreading misinformation about Zionism and Israel. They also accused Alshogre of antisemitism and said he should not have a platform in the district regardless of the topic of his speech.<\/p>\n

Donagi said that there was a \u201cculture of silence\u201d in the district around discussing the Middle East, and that students who had tried to organize events had been met with \u201cso much backlash.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two other Lower Merion High School students, meanwhile, said the school had removed pieces of student artwork from a recent show because they were perceived as antisemitic.<\/p>\n

One of the pieces depicted \u201cIsrael\u2019s border over the span of history,\u201d said Caleb Rosenfeld. He said the other, titled \u201cJust Kids,\u201d featured lists of children who had died in Gaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cTaking down art and censoring students without a public explanation is not a solution to any dispute,\u201d said Rosenfeld, who said he did not think the pieces were antisemitic, but were \u201cpolitical commentary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another student, Fiona Yates, said the entire art show was taken down early after complaints about the pieces, which she said \u201csolely criticized Israel\u2019s actions as a state, not the Israeli or Jewish people.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement Tuesday, Superintendent Frank Ranelli said the school board and administration \u201cencourage students and community members to participate in and share their perspectives\u201d at board meetings, and in direct outreach. He declined to comment on specific statements made by students.<\/p>\n

At the start of Monday\u2019s meeting, Ranelli<\/a> \u2014 who took the district\u2019s helm in April \u2014 said that as he had gotten to know the community over the last month, \u201cthe unrest is evident.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ranelli, who did not specify the nature of the unrest, said he was committed to bringing the community together. He said he had spoken to outside groups, as well as parents, and \u201cthe correct steps I need are coming into focus.\u201d Ranelli said he also had meetings planned with students.<\/p>\n

Addressing the school board, MENASA members said their perspectives had been overlooked by parents and community members who complained about them without reaching out to them.<\/p>\n

While some had objected to a watermelon emoji \u2014 often used as a pro-Palestinian symbol \u2014 in one of the club\u2019s Instagram posts, Bigdeli said the symbol was not meant to convey support for Palestine, but to reflect an Iranian holiday the club celebrated.<\/p>\n

And while parents accused the club of excluding Israel from a display of Middle Eastern flags on its account, Bigdeli said the flags chosen simply represented the nationalities of the club\u2019s officers.<\/p>\n

Still, he said, the district responded to the parental criticism by directing the club to either display \u201call 17 flags of the Middle East\u201d or remove the flags entirely, Bigdeli said.<\/p>\n

Miles Baldwin, the club\u2019s vice president, said that like \u201cany human rights activist,\u201d Alshogre had opinions on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and had \u201con occasion mentioned his support for Palestinian human rights.\u201d But at no point during his speech did he mention the issue, Baldwin said.<\/p>\n

He disagreed with the idea that the district should not invite people with \u201ccontroversial opinions\u201d to speak, calling it \u201canti-intellectual.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we as a community restrict a speaker to a smaller audience, we are denying kids, and the community at large, an amazing learning opportunity,\u201d Baldwin said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Student members of a Middle Eastern club at Harriton High School said Monday that they had been unfairly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7304,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[183,185,184,186,6459],"class_list":["post-7303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lower-merion","tag-lower-merion","tag-lower-merion-headlines","tag-lower-merion-news","tag-lower-merion-township","tag-lower-merion-harriton-school-board-antisemitism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}