Berkeley Unified School District statement on Hamas attack against Israel fails to mention victims who were killed; previous statement after George Floyd’s death condemned “blind hatred of racism”

A professor at the University of Berkeley who has children attending the Berkeley Unified School District posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the district “hasn’t said a word since Saturday” after the Hamas attack on Israel. He added that “my daughters have never heard about the Holocaust at school.” He created the post on October 11, 2023. He shared a letter that he sent the school district regarding the situation.

In the letter, he called out the district for not issuing a statement while the district did issue a statement and passed a resolution in support of the Black Lives Matter movement shortly after the death of George Floyd. He then shared an image of the Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter supporting Hamas with an image of a terrorist paraglider, such as the terrorists who killed innocent people in Israel. He asked the district to “issue a statement condemning this genocide against Jews” and to “retract your 2020 resolution in support of BLM” if the organization does not renounce its statements.

Later in the day, the professor shared that the district’s superintendent finally released a statement. However, he added: “They forgot to mention the intentional and celebrated massacre of Jews.” The superintendent explained in the statement without condemning the attacks against Israel:

I want to acknowledge that there is heartbreaking conflict and tragedy at this moment. We are here-in community-to support our students, families, and staff as we experience the weight of recent events in Israel and Palestine. While we are all processing these events differently, we know that children are especially sensitive to this level of violence and turmoil.

On October 12, 2023, the professor shared a statement the school district released on June 4, 2020, after the death of George Floyd. The district explained that “we will not be silent” and stated: “We deeply feel the injustice of the recent killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor. Their names are joined with the names of far too many other African American citizens whose lives have been stolen by the blind hatred of racism.” The school district then continued in the statement:

African Americans experience oppression in many ways, and justice comes too often from their own advocacy. Every day Black people experience racism in multiple forms, from the signals about social hierarchies to policies and practices that prevent access in areas like jobs, housing, medical care, legal representation, the vote, and healthy food.

The professor stated in the post: “It seems that at @BerkeleyUnified, Jewish lives don’t matter.”