Beverly Hills school board narrowly votes to fly Israeli flags in effort to combat antisemitism

After drawing criticism including from local anti-Israel activists, they later revised the wording to say that the flag was meant to show support for the “Jewish community” rather than the “Jewish state.”

By Grace Gilson, JTA

The Beverly Hills Unified School District will display the Israeli flag in all of its facilities during Jewish Heritage Month starting next year, in an unusual move that split the school board in the ritzy and heavily Jewish enclave within Los Angeles.

School board president Rachelle Marcus voted against the resolution that passed on Tuesday, citing fears that the flag could cause schools to become targets.

Another board member, Amanda Stern, also voted no, arguing that “partisan material,” including national flags, is not appropriate in public school resolutions. “I love Israel, but I don’t think it belongs here,” she said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

But three board members voted yes on the resolution, which included other measures meant to combat antisemitism in local schools.

“This is a time right now that Jews are being killed and slaughtered on the street, and threats are happening,” said one of them, Sigalie Sabag, according to CBS News.

The resolution represents an aggressive response to concerns about antisemitism in Beverly Hills, which is home to celebrities as well as an epicenter of Los Angeles’ Iranian Jewish community.

It drew support from Beverly Hills’ Jewish mayor, Sharona Nazarian, and its vice mayor, John Mirisch, who also serves as the chief policy officer for the Israeli-American Civic Action Network.

“This should be a no-brainer for a school district that represents one of the only Jewish-majority communities outside of Israel,” Mirisch said at Tuesday’s meeting.

In addition to displaying the flag in its schools, the resolution also compels Beverly Hills to begin commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day, designate Oct. 7 as a “Day of Remembrance,” train educators to respond to antisemitism and adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism.

The definition has drawn challenges because it characterizes some forms of Israel criticism as antisemitic.

The resolution comes as California has faced heightened scrutiny over antisemitism in public schools.

Many of the challenges have centered around an ethnic studies requirement, recently suspended, that critics said opened the door to antisemitic and anti-Israel instruction.

Lawmakers considering legislation meant to fight antisemitism in schools, which some critics have decried as overly broad, held a press conference on Wednesday.

In Beverly Hills, all five members of the board initially supported the antisemitism resolution during an Aug. 5 meeting.

After drawing criticism including from local anti-Israel activists, they later revised the wording to say that the flag was meant to show support for the “Jewish community” rather than the “Jewish state,” the L.A. Times reported.

During the meeting on Tuesday, several community members expressed disapproval. One public speaker, Daniel Lifschitz, argued that the language of the resolution eliminated “any distinction between anti-Jewish and anti-Israel sentiment.”

In response, board member Russell Stuart said, “In the end, our job is not to solve geopolitics,” adding that the board’s job “is to make sure that our students in our school district come to school and feel safe.”

Andrea Grossman, a mother of three children who attended Beverly Hills schools, said at the Aug. 5 meeting that she feared the resolution would “ignite rather than discourage antisemitism.”

“Beverly Hills is a public school district in a diverse city with more than one religion, with more than one ethnic group,” Grossman said. “Your resolution would be appropriate in a Jewish day school, in a private school, not funded by taxpayer dollars.”