Maryland, My Maryland

Maryland School District Suspends Teachers Union Rep over Anti-Semitic List of Jews. The headline is from Hat Hair, the story from Da Wire:

A Maryland teacher is on leave while the school system investigates her for a string of anti-Semitic social media posts that included creating a list of wealthy Jews in her county, claiming they horde wealth while contributing nothing to society, and calling for “class war.”

Angela Wolf is head of the English Language Development department, which caters to immigrant children, at Takoma Park Middle School, in the most leftist enclave of liberal Montgomery County. Though she was temporarily removed from school, she remains a board member of the Montgomery County Education Association, one of the largest teachers union locals in the country representing 14,000 staff.

Her Facebook posts included a drawing of an Israeli tank pointing a tank’s gun at babies in a hospital NICU, and saying “enemy in sight!” As the war wages against the Hamas terrorists who murdered over 1,200 Israelis on October 7, she has posted frequently against Israel. On November 16, she commended “bus operators at Dulles who refused to transport Zionists to the pro Israel rally,” adding that “their solidarity with the victims of Israeli genocide should be commended.”

On October 28, she shared a post saying, “It is not a war — it is a slaughter. Israel determined to make Gaza uninhabitable.”

In December 2020, well before the conflict in Israel, she wrote:

 

Four of the five of the billionaires she named are Jewish except Saul, who happens to have a common Jewish name.

In response to criticism, she claimed — referring the the group of people with names like Rubenstein — that she had “no idea these billionaires are Jewish or that my word choice had an [sic] historic significance for the Jewish community. The diatribe against these two words has turned the discussion into a fallacious attack … People are angry at teachers or a particular politician or the poor. I have read no attacks on the 1% … who have NOT ‘earned’ ‘their wealth.’”

She said “they use their accumulated wealth to further their own interests” and blamed their hoarding for students falling behind while teachers unions refused to work because of COVID. “There should be little question that staying home should NOT equal mental health crises for kids and communities angry because school staff also need to be home,” she wrote.

When someone else criticized her for her anti-Semitic posts, she responded by calling former President Donald Trump a “scumbag” and said, “Fear is leading to censorship. I hope this person gets anti-imperialism and joins us in the struggle … No war but class war!”

Don't give her a paid vacation. Fire her! At Da Signal, Democrats Shouldn’t Be Surprised by Their Left Flank’s Radicalism

Trouble is brewing in the deep-blue state of Maryland, where Democratic state senators are discovering that—gasp!—an “immigrant advocacy” group they have coddled for decades is really full of Hamas supporters who compare Palestinian terrorists to the experience of Hispanics in the Old Line State.

The group is CASA de Maryland. State lawmakers have been forcing weary taxpayers to underwrite this far-left group since it was first incorporated in Maryland’s radical chic neighborhood of Takoma Park in 1985.

The Washington Post reported as far back as 2011 that “nearly half of CASA’s $6 million budget comes from local, state, and federal appropriations.” A reason for that is, as the Post put it, it successfully sells itself as an “immigrants’ rights” lobbying group.

That the people CASA de Maryland represents are mostly not immigrants at all, but illegal aliens who have willfully broken the law didn’t bother reliably lefty voters in tony Montgomery County, where many of the denizens of the federal permanent bureaucracy and the nation’s media and academic elite sleep, play, and more importantly, vote.

But just as CASA has moved out of its original modest Takoma Park church basement and is now headquartered in multimillion-dollar Langley Mansion, a former plantation restored to the tune of $13.8 million in nearby Langley Park (a rehab that the Post reported was partly footed by taxpayers), the organization’s political reach has expanded.

It is now, according to its website, a nationwide community organizing giant. “With over 155,000 lifetime members across 46 U.S. states, CASA is a national powerhouse organization building power and improving the quality of life in working-class: Black, Latino/a/e, Afro-descendent, Indigenous, and Immigrant communities.”

Things were going swimmingly well until this comfy status quo was shattered, as many things have been in America, by Hamas’ massacre of Israeli civilians and the gang-rape of Jewish women on Oct. 7. The fascination that the “woke” Left has shown for the terrorists (a Cornell professor said he was “exhilarated” by the killing spree) has shocked old-fashioned liberals. They are now suddenly finding it hard to overlook some tough realities.

Enter CASA, which chose to make clear on which side it belongs when its longtime executive director, Gustavo Torres, stated in a since-deleted post on X that “CASA stands in resolute and steadfast solidarity with the people of Palestine in their relentless fight for freedom. We stand shoulder to shoulder with countless Black and brown freedom activists from around the world. We specifically condemn the utilization of U.S. tax dollars to promote the ongoing violence.”

“We deeply acknowledge the interconnectedness of the struggle for the liberation of the Palestinian people and Black and brown communities in the United States,” Torres added.

That set off all nine state senators from Montgomery County, who issued a letter that did not mince words. The statements by CASA and Torres, the senators’ letter said, “are hurtful, divisive, and antisemitic. It reflects a complete lack of understanding of the complex geopolitics of the Middle East, the indigenous roots of the Jewish people, and the long and painful history of antisemitism in its myriad forms.”

More to the point, the senators reminded Torres, “We have provided CASA with millions of taxpayer dollars intended to support our new Americans and help provide them with necessities and shelter.”

Then came the kicker: “We cannot and will not allow taxpayer money to subsidize hate speech. In light of CASA’s recent postings and statements, this might be an appropriate time to reevaluate the state’s mechanism for providing financial aid and support to our immigrant community.”