Since When Do Public Schools Support Terrorists?

It is a sad state of affairs when a public school in the United States becomes an advocate for a terrorists group. Yet, that is exactly what happened when the The Beacon School, an elite college-prep public high school in Manhattan held a mandatory, school-wide moment of silence to pay tribute to the "Palestinian victims of violence" in Gaza.

The tribute was in response to a Hamas-designed "protest" to charge the Gaza border with Israel - a "protest" designed to "take down the border and tear out their hearts from their bodies," according to Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, referring to Hamas' intentions regarding Israeli civilians.

Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood-linked group in Gaza, was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. in 1997. Armed with maps of Jewish communities - including daycare centers, schools and synagogues -- the terror organization instructed protesters to bring guns and knives to the border.

Israel repeatedly warned protesters not to approach the fence. After a number of "protesters" were killed -- sparking the predictable angst of the Western media regarding "civilian deaths" -- a top Hamas official admitted on Palestinian TV, "In the last rounds of confrontations, if 62 people were martyred, 50 of them were Hamas."

Speaking on Al Jazeera, Hamas co-founder Mahmoud Al-Zahar further said, "When we talk about 'peaceful resistance,' we are deceiving the public."

"I am extremely upset because I did not send my child to a New York City public school to pray for Hamas operatives," said one father, who is Jewish.

Put succinctly by one mother whose child attends the school, "I just don't think any school should be promoting a moment of silence for terrorists. What if it was Islamic terrorists in ISIS. No school would be having that over the loudspeaker."

Terrorist are not victims and they shouldn't be confused as such. To require children to pay tribute to admitted terrorists intending to "tear out the hearts" from the bodies of their victims is a disgusting perversion of a school's mandate to educate.

Originally published at Clarion Project - reposted with permission.