Support After Tweet About Israel Grows For School Board Member

MERRIFIELD, VA — Fairfax County residents are rallying around a school board member who has received threats and calls for her resignation after she tweeted a statement of support for Palestinians.

More than 100 people showed up Thursday night at a Fairfax County School Board meeting to express their support for Member-at-Large Abrar Omeish, who on March 13 tweeted her opposition to the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians.

In the March 13 tweet celebrating Eid, Omeish wrote: “Hurts my heart to celebrate while Israel kills Palestinians & desecrates the Holy Land right now. Apartheid & colonization were wrong yesterday and will be today, here and there. May justice + truth prevail.”

At Thursday’s school board meeting, Omeish emphasized that criticism of Israeli government policies is not antisemitism. People should fight antisemitism and the oppression of Palestinians at the same time, she said.

During the public comment period, though, Fairfax County resident Jennifer Katz said Omeish “must resign or be censured as a member of the Fairfax County School Board based on her social media posting.”

Outside Luther Jackson Middle School in Merrifield, where the school board meeting was held, Mariam Abou-Ghazala spoke out against efforts by some Fairfax County residents to force Omeish to resign from the school board.

Abou-Ghazala, who is Palestinian, said supporters of Palestinians are discouraged from speaking out in communities across the country. “This community has tried to silence Abrar, and they continue to police our beliefs,” Abou-Ghazala told Patch. “She should not back down from her tweet because she said absolutely nothing wrong.”

Abou-Ghazala, who worked on Omeish's school board campaign in 2019, said the attacks on Omeish began long before she tweeted her support for Palestinians. When she announced her candidacy for the school board, Omeish started receiving death threats and harassment from anti-Muslim hate groups, according to Abou-Ghazala.

With the latest campaign by Israel to remove Palestinians from their homes in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank and its bombing campaign in Gaza, a larger number of U.S. politicians are publicly condemning Israel’s actions compared to previous conflicts in the region.

As of Thursday, Israel’s military had killed more than 250 Palestinians and injured thousands in Gaza and the West Bank over the previous week and a half. Twelve people in Israel had been killed and hundreds of residents had been injured over the same period.

In a statement Wednesday, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington characterized Omeish’s tweet as a “one-sided, inaccurate, and hateful statement that smeared Israel, defamed Israelis, and disenfranchised the thousands of Jewish families in her district.”

The group, which canceled its decision to honor Omeish for her work championing equity among all faiths, also accused Omeish of making statements that “target and marginalize Jewish students and their families.”

Omeish’s tweet did not mention Jewish people or Jewish Americans. Some of the strongest critics of Israeli government policies against Palestinians are American Jews, including many who live in Fairfax County.

On Thursday, Jewish Voice for Peace Action tweeted: “We’ve had it with the GOP trying to smear progressive Muslim women in elected office.”

“We want to say it very clearly: speaking out for Palestinian rights is NOT antisemitic,” the group said.

Josh Ruebner, a Fairfax County resident and former executive director of Jews for Peace in Palestine and Israel, on Wednesday tweeted his support for Omeish.

“This Jewish resident of Fairfax County w/ a rising kindergartener in @fcpsnews agrees w/ your sentiments,” Ruebner wrote. “Israeli settler colonialism & apartheid must end. Don’t let the self-appointed spokespeople of the community fool you. They speak only for themselves.”