Washington middle school teacher compares Jews fleeing Holocaust to Muslim discrimination after 9/11

Video obtained by The Ari Hoffman Show on Talk Radio 570 KVI shows the lesson taking place at Islander Middle School in Mercer Island, Washington. The teacher was discussing “push factors,” circumstances that can cause people to leave their homes, communities, or countries.

A classroom slide shown in the video states, “People are forced to leave when they face religious or political persecution.” Alongside the text is an image of a German sign from approximately 1936 declaring that Jews were unwanted.

The teacher then connected the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust to the treatment of Muslims in the United States following 9/11.

“People are also forced to leave when they face religious or political persecution, and so we will talk more about this when we talk about the Holocaust in January or in the winter,” the teacher told students.

“But many Jewish people during the Holocaust were forced to leave their homes and cities and even countries because they were facing religious persecution or discrimination, and the same thing just recently or not recently, but what we just talked about earlier this week is 9/11. So many Muslims in the United States faced mass discrimination after the 9/11 events, even though they were not responsible for the attacks that happened, and so that could force people to leave a city or a state because they don’t feel comfortable or safe to live there,” the teacher said.

Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered six million Jews during the Holocaust. Millions of Jews were also subjected to persecution, dispossession, forced displacement, confinement in ghettos and concentration camps, deportation, forced labor, and other atrocities. The teacher’s comments about Muslims leaving communities following 9/11, meanwhile, were framed as something discrimination “could” cause rather than citing a specific example of American Muslims being forced to flee a city or state.

StopAntisemitism, a national watchdog organization, posted the classroom footage on X and criticized the comparison. “Teaching about anti-Muslim bigotry is legitimate. Equating it with the systematic extermination of six million Jews is not. This false equivalence trivializes genocide, distorts history, and teaches children that facts can be manipulated to fit a political narrative,” the organization wrote.

Washington state has also established standards for Holocaust instruction in public schools. Public middle and high schools are strongly encouraged to teach the Holocaust. State law defines the Holocaust as the “systematic, German state-sponsored persecution and murder of Jews and other innocent victims by the Nazi regime and its collaborators between the years 1933 and 1945.”

The law states that, beginning with the 2020-21 school year, middle schools, junior high schools, and high schools that offer Holocaust instruction “must follow the best practices and guidelines” developed by the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction in collaboration with an organization possessing expertise in Holocaust education. The Seattle-based Holocaust Center for Humanity works with OSPI on Holocaust education resources and guidelines for Washington educators.

The controversy comes less than two years after Islander Middle School itself was targeted with antisemitic and racist vandalism.

On New Year’s Day 2025, vandals covered the school’s exterior walls and windows with antisemitic and racist graffiti. Mercer Island Police later identified two 16-year-old suspects and referred charges in the case. The case was ultimately resolved through a court diversion program. The Mercer Island School District said it recommended that the two juveniles receive education about antisemitism and the Holocaust as part of the resolution. Following the vandalism, Mercer Island community leaders and school officials condemned the incident, calling it an “abhorrent act of hate.”

The Ari Hoffman Show contacted Islander Middle School and the Mercer Island School District for comment, including asking whether the lesson was part of an approved curriculum and whether district officials believed the comparison between Jews fleeing Nazi persecution during the Holocaust and discrimination against American Muslims following 9/11 was consistent with Washington’s Holocaust education requirements and guidelines.

Neither the school nor the district responded to the requests for comment before publication.