Anti-Semitic ‘Divest from Israel’ Flyers Illegally Distributed in NYC Public Schools Amid Union Elections, Prompting Outrage

By: Fern Sidman

A deeply controversial flyer calling on New York City teachers to back union candidates who support divesting pension funds from Israel was improperly distributed in at least four public schools, The New York Post has learned. The inflammatory document, which many Jewish educators have described as anti-Semitic, circulated just hours after a terrorist gunned down two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., intensifying concerns over escalating anti-Israel and anti-Jewish rhetoric in city schools.

The flyer, which was reportedly passed out by individuals claiming to be United Federation of Teachers (UFT) representatives, urged educators to vote in the ongoing union elections with “divestment in mind.” Its blunt message read:

“This UFT election season, vote for candidates who divest our pension from genocide. Sign the petition to show UFT candidates that you will be voting with divestment in mind during the election.”

According to the information provided in The New York Post report, the handout was distributed in at least three Manhattan schools — the New York City Lab School for Collaborative Studies, the Museum School (both in the same West 17th Street building), and Mosaic Preparatory Academy in East Harlem — and in at least one Bronx school. The timing of the distribution, occurring the day after the brutal killing of Israeli Americans Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim outside the Capital Jewish Museum, has made the flyer’s content even more incendiary.

Teachers who spoke with The New York Post expressed horror at the flyer’s circulation inside school buildings. One staffer at the 17th Street school said the materials were handed out by an educator from another institution — a breach of both trust and protocol.

“I was definitely shocked. It violated the trust in the building. It came from a teacher from another school,” the staffer said. “These are blood libels. They don’t belong in the education space.”

Another teacher, requesting anonymity due to fear of retaliation, added: “As a Jewish educator, I was deeply troubled when receiving this letter with clear anti-Semitic undertones — especially in the wake of the tragic killing of two civilians targeted for being Jewish. This act of hate is unacceptable.”

The flyers, critics say, amount to political propaganda wrapped in the veneer of union advocacy — and dangerously blur the lines between professional discourse and bigoted activism.

Both the United Federation of Teachers and the New York City Department of Education (DOE) have condemned the distribution of the flyers. The UFT clarified to The New York Post that internal campaign rules strictly prohibit the distribution of political content unrelated to union officer races.

“The flyer is a political document,” a UFT spokesperson and union president Mike Mulgrew said in a statement. “No one should be handing out political materials under the guise that it is campaign material in the union’s internal election. It is not.”

City Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos responded swiftly, ordering that the flyers be removed from schools and reiterating the DOE’s stance against inflammatory or discriminatory material.

“New York City Public Schools has the right and responsibility to prohibit the distribution of materials that can be perceived as disruptive and offensive to staff and students,” a DOE representative told The New York Post. “These flyers, which were not created by New York City Public Schools, are clearly disruptive, and we are taking appropriate action to remove them.”

Jewish civil rights groups, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), have repeatedly labeled the BDS movement anti-Semitic, noting its stated aim to undermine and delegitimize the world’s only Jewish state. Karen Feldman, co-founder of the New York City Public School Alliance, blasted the flyers as a dangerous injection of anti-Jewish animus into educational spaces.

“It is unacceptable to use school channels to distribute political and anti-Semitic propaganda, especially during a union election,” Feldman told The New York Post. “The materials were filled with false claims of genocide and hate-filled rhetoric that incites violence — just like the horrific murder of two Israeli Americans in DC just last night.”

Indeed, the flyers’ inflammatory claims about Israel’s military — alleging “genocide” and the slaughter of “tens of thousands of civilians and children” — were drawn directly from anti-Israel propaganda outlets such as Al-Jazeera, with no mention of Hamas’s October 7 massacre, in which terrorists murdered 1,200 Israelis and took hundreds hostage.

The flyer’s central demand — divestment from Israel by the New York City Teachers’ Retirement System — centers around the claim that $135 million in pension funds are currently tied up in Israeli-linked holdings. While the figure has not been independently verified by the DOE or UFT, anti-Israel activists have seized on it as part of a broader push to institutionalize BDS within union structures and public pension systems.

The New York Post has previously reported on similar BDS-driven campaigns in other public sectors, where ideologically motivated activists seek to leverage union platforms for international political objectives. Jewish teachers argue that these efforts cross a line into ethnic targeting and politicized discrimination.

The flyer controversy comes on the heels of another alarming incident, also reported by The New York Post, in which an internal Department of Education newsletter was sent to hundreds of teachers, falsely accusing Israel of committing “genocide in Gaza.” The backlash was so severe that Chancellor Aviles-Ramos suspended all mass communications within the department unless personally approved.

For many Jewish educators, these events point to a larger, more troubling trend of anti-Semitism being normalized within the city’s public education system — often under the guise of “social justice.”

As the BDS movement continues to infiltrate spaces traditionally reserved for education and civic engagement, concerns are mounting that schools are being used as platforms for divisive, polarizing, and at times, bigoted agendas.

In the wake of the flyer’s circulation, Jewish educators and allies are calling for stronger safeguards to prevent public schools from being hijacked by extremist rhetoric.

The New York Post will continue to track this story as both the Department of Education and UFT work to determine who was behind the flyer’s unauthorized distribution — and whether further disciplinary or legal action may follow.

In the words of one Manhattan teacher: “Public schools are supposed to be places of inclusion and growth. When hate walks through the door in a union flyer, it’s time to wake up.”