Our local high school is named Jackson-Reed High School. Until 2022, it was Woodrow Wilson High School, but the name was changed because of the tarnished legacy of Wilson who was a segregationist (in addition to being a pretty good president in all other ways). Jackson was the first Black teacher at the school, and Reed the first Black principal. Whether this was a good name change is for another day. There were those who thought they could rename the school for playwright August Wilson and save money on new signage, but that’s for another day.

The student body is very diverse, racially, ethnically, religiously, nationally, in all ways. I read that about 30% of the student body comes from outside of Ward 3, the neighborhood for the school, and 70% from within the Ward.

There was an “International Night” the other night at the school, a tradition of many schools here, where people from various parts of the world cook foods indigenous to their homelands. Apparently, this year there were a number of attendees who were unhappy about the Israeli booth and said so in words that were unpleasant, intolerant, and uncalled for. The Israeli and Jewish students felt very uncomfortable, I am told, and the entire evening became very unpleasant. I have also read that there have been similar instances of anti-Israel, turning into antisemitic, at the school, but I don’t know anything about them.

The Jewish Community Relations Council for Greater Washington put out a statement basically telling the school that it better get its act together to protect the Jewish kids at the school. I read it last night on Facebook. I saw that there were many comments posted regarding the statement, and I decided to look at them. That was my first mistake. The comments outraged me. No, not that there were anti-semites commenting on the JCRC website. That wasn’t the problem. The problem were the commentators (a good portion of them) who blamed the situation not on the school’s failure to protect the students, but on Joe Biden (in particular) and the Democrats (as a group).

You see, it turns out that the reason that all this came to a head at Jackson-Reed was, in the opinion of some, that Joe Biden hadn’t stood up strongly enough for Israel, but gave into those in the Democratic Party who were more interested in a ceasefire than a continuing one-sided war. And there were others who didn’t seem to blame Biden personally, but who blamed “The Squad”, who – in case you did not know – were hand-in-hand allies of Hamas. And they topped their comments by concluding that only the re-entry of Trump into the presidency would clear up all the problems at Jackson-Reed. OK, they didn’t exactly say that, but…..only Trump can fix it. That, they did say.

That’s when I made my second mistake. I violated a cardinal principle of mine. I commented. I said: “Of course, this is Joe Biden’s fault. Why did I have to read all these comments to know that? I must have been blind. And remind me: who was the guy who said there were good people on both sides?”

Well, yes, I have received quite a few “likes”. But I have also spawned my own nasty comments: “The Squad open supports Hamas and Biden is afraid to stand up to them….[someone needs to] take back the DNC from a minority of ultra left-wing radical fascists.” “[Biden does not] have the brain [to do so].” “There were good people on both sides in Charlottesville…….stop spewing the MSM [sic] crap, you’re embarrassing yourself.” “It’s not just Biden’s fault; it’s all the Democrats.” “When has Donald Trump ever said anything antisemitic? You’re ignorance is showing”.

By the way, other posts (not directed back at me) are also interesting:

“DC govt and MPD have been antisemitic since the days of the mayor for life, Marion Barry.” [This one surprised me actually – nothing can be less factual than this comment. Never heard anyone say this before.]

“Democrats and their radical Islamic allies need to be taken out of political positions as they are no better than Nazis.”

“These places are just petri dishes of hate that should be defunded….” [That one got 21 likes, so far]

And many more.

I must get back to my core principles.