At least 400 radicalized students between the ages of thirteen to seventeen held a pre-planned riot at the public high school in Jamaica, Queens. They hunted a Jewish teacher who was able to hide in a locked office. They uploaded the video onto TikTok. The mob of students waved “Palestinian” flags, marauded up and down hallways, vandalized school property, and held the school hostage.
This is not the Hillcrest community’s first rodeo. It has been plagued by violent students who seemingly fear no one and nothing. A week prior to the terrorism, a mob of students viciously pummeled at least one security officer (it’s unclear if anyone else was hurt as the Adams administration has tried to sweep these incidents under the rug). This criminal attack was uploaded onto TikTok, the braintrust for children between the ages of ten to eighteen.
These videos should haunt every parent and taxpayer. Hillcrest students resemble inmates at Rikers Island. Their language and actions are bone-chilling. The fear the hunted female Jewish teacher must have felt cannot be underplayed. On October 7th, we saw what Hamas terrorists did to the Jewish women and children. Now, we see at Hillcrest High School, teenagers standing in solidarity with those that sodomize women, and burn children alive. One would think acolytes of another Democrat movement, #MeToo, would pipe up.
Since both the pummeling of the security agent and attempted caliphate at Hillcrest, some arrests have been made. An eighteen year old was issued a desk appearance. The 15 and 16 year olds were issued juvenile reports.
However, no one has been expelled or fired. The DoE’s school discipline code is a joke. The parents and students know it. Since 2018, the number of suspensions handed out by principals and superintendents has plummeted, teachers and parents say classroom disorder has risen. This seems to be the plan.
As per a NY Post article, “No one gets suspended [and] principals are pressured ‘from above’ not to ‘take any punitive measures at all,’ leaving no accountability for any bad behavior. We have teachers getting kicked at, spit at, cursed at, things thrown at [them], and the kid is back the next day like nothing happened,” an educator told The Post.
Chancellor David Banks has let law-abiding citizens and taxpayers know, it’s back to business as usual. This means disregarding anti-American and antisemitic behavior. How? By continuing on with destructive “social justice” governance and DEI. The former makes certain meaningful punishments are verboten depending on the perpetrators. The latter gaslights the public by having them examine other people’s pain, even when the other people caused the pain.
Banks said, “Organizations will play a crucial role in contributing to the broader mission of de-escalation and creating teachable moments from this challenging situation.” This is code for a restorative justice circle. He continued, “No form of hate, whether it be antisemitism, Islamophobia, or any other form of bigotry will be tolerated in our schools.” There was no attack on Islam in the events caught on video at Hillcrest.
Banks called onto the stage two of the school’s students. They weren’t Jewish or victimized. They were Muslims. This is the equivalent of calling to the podium white people to explain their feelings after blacks are attacked by whites.
One of the students, Muhammad Ghazali, said, “a lot of these students, they didn’t know what they were doing at the moment.” This is not what we see in the video but is a line that Mayor Adams has also stated. Ghazali continued, “[The riot] was meant to be a peaceful protest. But the teenagers lack maturity. They were making this into a fun event.”
Ghazali explained, “[the students] did it for their personal enjoyment and their personal pleasure. These students have the right to go out there and protest. We don’t ever stop anybody in this school community from putting their opinions out. For us to be called terrorists by news channels and for people to call us names because of what we did...wasn’t right.”
Here we have a student expressing Hamas double-talk and cloaking it as a “fun event” before the Chancellor of the NYC DoE, who didn’t blink an eye.
Banks then praised the principal for “maintaining a culture that feels very much like when [he] was [t]here.” He explained, “I’m watching people condemning, but that’s not my nature.”
Let this sink in.
Banks then calls up another “amazing” student, Khadija Ahmed. Wearing a hijab and keffiyeh, smiling, she said, “The event that took place over last week is just a way of [sic] us to show how we feel about ‘Palestine.’” 98 percent of “Palestinians” sa[y] they feel some or great pride in Hamas. Ahmed continues, “The message that we really wanted to get out there is we want Palestine to be free.”
What are these students learning in school? There is no such place as “Palestine.” None of the adults on the stage corrected her, including Banks, who also graduated from Hillcrest.
Banks wraps up the presser by explaining that weeks before the student terrorists hunted the Jewish teacher, she held a sign saying, “I stand with Israel.” Banks said, “What we have come to realize is the young people today, they consume their information through social media. Specifically TikTok. And what they are seeing on a daily basis are children and young people in ‘Palestine,’ ‘Palestinian’ families, being blown up.”
It's inexcusable that he’s right. It’s even more inexcusable that he, along with their actual teachers, are apparently doing nothing about it.
