Jewish parents and a state senator are calling on the Oakland Unified School District to investigate a middle-school social worker after social media posts linked to her described Zionists as “monsters” and “hateful heartless beings” and suggested they have horns.
At least a dozen parents have filed complaints this week with the Oakland Unified School District, according to Stephanie Mamane, whose son transferred out of the district this year but has followed the issue closely. One parent wrote in their complaint, “I honestly think she should not be around our youth,” referring to the social worker.
The incident comes as a growing number of parents with Jewish children in the school district report feeling uncomfortable and worried, as the conflict abroad reverberates at home in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and amid the ongoing war in Gaza.
“We’re starting to feel more and more isolated,” said Ben Siegel, a lawyer with three children in the district who said some of his friends have decided to transfer their children out of Oakland public schools. “Personally, my kids are staying. They’re not going anywhere for now. But two of my friends have kids that are leaving. As of January, they will be gone.”
A series of posts linked to the Oakland staff member, Nida Khalil — who also goes by Nida Liftawiya on Facebook, X and Instagram — shows a range of views related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Israel-Hamas war. Some posts feature general pro-Palestinian content, such as images of large-scale anti-Israel protests or the suffering after Israeli bombings in Gaza. But accounts linked to Khalil have also posted extreme opinions that reflect intense hatred for Zionists, likening them to supernatural forces of evil.
Some of the posts also falsely accuse an openly gay Jewish state senator of being a “pedophile” and a Zionist “spy.”
Khalil’s social media presence recently came to the attention of a group of Jewish OUSD parents in a WhatsApp group chat with 162 participants. Parents formed the group after the Oakland teachers union published what in the parents’ view was a deeply biased statement about the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 and the ensuing war. The union’s statement mourned the loss of life on both sides, while also condemning Israel as an “apartheid state” and describing its founding 75 years ago as an “illegal military occupation.”
I would not feel safe with my child in a school with this individual.
Khalil, who is a Palestinian American, works as a community schools manager at Bret Harte Middle School in east Oakland’s Dimond District, coordinating with families to work toward “student success and wellness,” according to the district website. Khalil is listed as part of Bret Harte’s leadership team, along with its principal and assistant principals. A community schools manager would not be a member of the teachers union. In a video published on YouTube the speaker says, “I am Nida Khalil. I am Nida Liftawiya. I am Palestinian.”
Khalil has worked for the Oakland Unified School District for close to eight years, according to her LinkedIn profile. She did not respond to multiple Facebook messages from J. seeking comment.
A spokesperson for OUSD did not respond to a list of questions from J. about the social media content, which went far beyond criticism of Israel into what one local Jewish community organization called “outrageously antisemitic posts.”
“People have a right to a difference of opinion, and I can be totally OK with that,” said a Jewish parent, who requested anonymity to speak candidly because she is also employed by OUSD and worries about professional repercussions. “But the language and rhetoric have, in my mind, really slipped so far from what’s appropriate for educators in a public school district into what feels very clearly unsafe for my Jewish children.”
The post that first grabbed the attention of members of the WhatsApp group was initially published Tuesday. The post, from the Nida Liftawiya Facebook account, calls Zionists “hateful heartless beings, who thrive on the death and destruction of Black and Brown bodies.” The post falsely and ahistorically describes Zionists as “the people that captured the slaves and sold them,” “took family portraits at Black lynchings,” “gave the native Americans diseased blankets” and “spit on Black students integrating into schools.”
Mamane, a member of the WhatsApp parents group whose son used to attend OUSD schools before switching to a private school, described the post as “vitriolically aggressive.” Mamane summarized the mood in the WhatsApp group: “Folks are kind of freaked out by her right now,” she said, adding they are concerned that “these comments are being made publicly by a member of our community.”
Mike Hutchinson, an Oakland school board member who is Black and Jewish and who faced attacks from the Liftawiya account on Facebook earlier this month, defended the school district in a phone call with J. on Friday and said he is “uncomfortable with the way one individual has been targeted” in this case. He said it was unlikely that Khalil would face disciplinary action.
“You don’t give us your constitutional rights when you enter the school doors,” he said.
Hutchinson criticized the October teachers union statement, which he called “awful.” He also criticized a Dec. 6 pro-Palestinian teach-in, when the teachers union planned a day of learning about the plight of Palestinians. The event, which was not authorized by the school district, drew accusations of one-sidedness and discriminatory content.
If teachers “think they can just teach their own curriculum, they won’t be working in our schools very long,” Hutchinson said. But he is worried about the negative press that the school district has been receiving recently and said, in his view, such stories don’t reflect the majority of teachers or district leadership.
On Dec. 13, the Liftawiya account responded to a Facebook post from Hutchinson announcing that a school board meeting had been rescheduled due to threats. In a reply, the account called that decision “cowardly” and blamed it on Zionist influence.
“Mike — if you ever wondered what you would do during the holocaust or slavery — you are doing it right now! Shame,” the Liftawiya account said.
Hutchinson replied on Facebook that as a descendant of African slaves and Eastern European Jews “who fled the Pogroms, this is vile and offensive.”
Hutchinson added, speaking to J., “I understand, especially because of my background, the fears that statements like that trigger,” reiterating that in his view, they did not reflect a broader problem in the school district.
On Dec. 8, the Liftawiya X account showing Khalil’s photo replied to a post from state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco, the gay Jewish lawmaker who often defends Israel in public statements. In his post, Wiener criticized the pro-Palestinian teach-in, which in his view taught students that “Israel should be eliminated.”
“You are a DOUBLE AGENT SPY!” the Liftawiya account replied. “The Israeli Zionist apartheid lobby pays our pedophile senator.” In other posts the same account called Wiener a “freak” and asked “did you touch anyone?” in response to a post about Wiener riding in a crowded train.
Wiener described the posts as “unhinged” and called on OUSD to take them “very seriously.”
“There are a lot of Jewish families in Oakland, and in other districts, who are wondering if it’s safe to keep their children in public school,” Wiener told J. on Friday. “The idea that this person is saying antisemitic things, in addition to all these unhinged things — and is helping to educate people’s children — I wouldn’t feel safe. I don’t have children, but if I did, I would not feel safe with my child in a school with this individual.”
Also on Dec. 8, the Liftawiya account replied to an X post sharing clips from an Oakland City Council meeting that garnered widespread criticism after some public speakers defended Hamas and shared conspiracy theories about the Oct. 7 attack.
“These people literally spoke TRUTH: IOF murdered their own people,” the Liftawiya account posted, echoing a false conspiracy theory that the Israel Defense Forces killed most of the 1,200 people who died on Oct. 7.
Four days earlier, the X account responded to a joke from Katya Sedgwick, a Jewish Bay Area writer, who was weighing in on the Dec. 6 pro-Palestinian teach-in in Oakland. Sedgwick wondered, jokingly, whether Zionists have horns.
“They definitely have horns!” the Liftawiya account replied.
They definitely have horns!
— Nida Liftawiya (@NidaLiftawiya) December 4, 2023
The Jewish student population at Bret Harte appears to be negligible; the vast majority of students are Black and Latino. None of the parents on the WhatsApp group chat told J. they send their children to the school. Still, parents said they worry about Khalil sharing her views with students.
A mid-December poll of registered U.S. voters suggests parents have a reason to worry about the spread of antisemitism among younger generations. Conducted in collaboration with Harvard’s Center for American Political Studies, the poll showed that two-thirds of respondents between ages 18 and 24 see Jews “as a class are oppressors.”
More than half in the same age bracket said they believe the best solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is for “Israel to be ended and given to Hamas and the Palestinians.”
“We need to call out hate when we see it. Period,” said a second Jewish mother of two OUSD students who also asked for anonymity because as a business owner she fears becoming a “target of hate,” particularly online. “This one person is just an example of all the hate on social media, and in this city.”
She continued: “To me it felt like this person was feeling rage, and found a target of Jewish people, or Zionists. As a Jewish person in this city, it’s interesting to try to understand where this hate is coming from. But I look back to the history of my people, and I have a better understanding of how humanity, in general, acts towards Jews.”
The OUSD employee and parent who J. spoke with said she felt that what happens at other Oakland schools impacts her family, too. On the weekends her kids play soccer at Bret Harte, she said.
“Knowing that she is employed by the district in a role that is very student-community-parent facing, I just could not stay silent anymore. I was shocked and enraged,” she said. “I’ve never traveled in circles where I’ve thought that kind of language would exist anywhere near me.”
Siegel, the father of three OUSD students, added that in his view, the posts were not in a gray area. They were bigoted, and the district should take action.
“What if someone in your town, who’s off work, on their social media was basically an unapologetic member of the Nazi party or of the KKK?” he said. “You don’t want someone who is spreading information that Zionists and Jews are to blame for giving diseased blankets to the Native Americans, are responsible for slavery, and so on, working for the district. This is vile hate, and is clearly antisemitic.”
On Thursday, the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area said in a statement it had reached out to OUSD about Khalil and was awaiting a response. JCRC called some of the posts “outrageously antisemitic” and a resurfacing of “age-old myths and stereotypes about Jewish power and control.”
Other posts, JCRC said, “viciously and repeatedly” attack an “LGBTQ+ Jewish member of the State legislature using antisemitic and homophobic tropes similar to those used by white nationalists. We question whether someone who holds these views can be entrusted with the well-being and emotional safety of Jewish, LGBTQ+ and other children.”
Karen Stiller, a senior director at the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area, said in an interview that notwithstanding the free speech rights of school staff, the district has a responsibility to protect students from hate.
“Certainly district employees have First Amendment rights like everybody else does,” she said. “But it’s also the school’s responsibility to make sure this kind of hateful speech, directed at a particular community, is not making its way into the school or into the classroom.”
