The SA Board of Jewish Education distanced itself from an online petition calling for the removal of King David Victory Park’s deputy head boy for wearing a keffiyeh.
The board, which runs the school, today said decisions at the school or interactions with students should not be made from pressure received from an “online storm”.
“We are trying to keep ourselves above that, even though the rhetoric is harmful to the school and the students,” said general director Rabbi Craig Kacev.
“We cannot make decisions based on that.”
The school’s deputy head boy, Joshua Broomberg, was tagged last week in a photo on Facebook wearing the keffiyeh, recognised as a Palestinian symbol, and Palestinian badges.
Broomberg, in Thailand for the World Schools Debating Championship, is pictured with two others wearing the same attire.
The picture’s caption read: “Team South Africa wearing Palestinian badges and Keffiyehs to show our opposition to human rights violations carried out against the people of Palestine. #WSDC2014”.
The online petition was launched soon thereafter, calling for Broomberg’s removal as deputy head boy and as a member of the school’s student representative council, since he had brought the school into “disrepute”.
