Web Exclusives
By Adam Reshi Azaanta
FOR MORE THAN A YEAR, the Lake Washington School District (LWSD), located just east of Seattle has laid siege on pro-Palestinian students and families by punishing Palestine’s allies, perpetuating disciplinary double standards, and pushing pro-Israel curriculum—a pattern also evident in K-12 schools nationwide since Oct. 7, 2023. Its failure to support opponents of the Gaza genocide exposes a deep-seated racism toward Palestinians.
SUPPRESSION AND DOUBLE STANDARDS
Several schools within the district organized walkouts on April 23, 2024 to express their solidarity with Palestine. LWSD Superintendent Holmen issued a letter directing his “team to follow up with…school leaders to ensure…policies are applied…and appropriate consequences implemented,” which was viewed by many as a threat to silence students. He also requested a police presence to monitor the walkout, continuing a pattern from the board meeting on Nov. 20, 2023, when the district deployed police to surveil Palestinians–viewing them as “potential threats.” This occurred after the wife of an LWSD board member anonymously contacted a pro-Israel parent, claiming Palestinians would speak at the meeting and urging the parent not to come. This was interpreted as a threat from Palestinians, and the parent reported it to the police and the school board. Even though the Redmond police 911 call detail report indicated there was “no specific threat made” hours before the meeting, police were still deployed and the surveillance continued.
The suppression and intimidation have even extended to student journalists.
At Eastlake High School, a student journalist was prevented from reporting on the Gaza war and the impacts it had on peers. The student was told by a teacher that using the term “genocide” in the reporting was “problematic and misleading.” The same teacher berated the student and threatened to pull the news program. In April 2024, the administration censored student coverage of their school’s walkout, claiming footage of Palestinian flags and pro-Palestine images was inappropriate. The principal, who acknowledged the peaceful nature of the walkout, demanded edits, later implementing a “prior review” policy requiring approval before any future content could be published. The administration also threatened to take disciplinary action against students.
Zionist actions receive no such scrutiny, however.
During the Nov. 20 board meeting, the very same meeting where Palestinians were being surveilled by police, pro-Israel attendees mocked and laughed at a grieving Palestinian mother who shared that more than 130 of her family members had been killed by the Israeli army. As attendees exited the board meeting, a Palestinian high school student confronted the Zionists. In response, an Israeli parent made a remark that was interpreted as racist: “You’re in high school now and you’re already doing this…to people. I’m afraid of what you will grow up to be.” Superintendent Holmen witnessed this encounter up close and did not intervene.
At Redmond High, an Israeli student filmed and widely circulated a video on social media using a water gun to mock-shoot and kill peers wearing keffiyehs. The student was suspended, but there was no public condemnation by the district even though community members implored it to take action.
This lack of accountability fueled broader frustrations, which came to a head on Oct. 7, 2024, when students across Washington State organized walkouts to protest one year into the Gaza genocide and Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon. Washington State Superintendent Chris Reykdal launched a statewide crackdown by ordering all protests to occur outside school hours and banned the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” labeling it anti-Semitic. At Redmond High, administrators enforced the order by threatening Muslim students with suspension or expulsion for displaying or chanting the phrase, leading to a sharp decline in walkout attendance from more than 200 to nearly 50.
REPRESSION AT LAKE WASHINGTON HIGH SCHOOL
At LWHS, pro-Palestinian voices have been suppressed. A student working on a project about the Gaza situation was told by a teacher to switch topics because it was “too heated”—an attitude inconsistent with encouraging student research on current events, which schools are expected to do. The same teacher had previously organized a fundraiser titling it “Israel and Occupied Territories”; the omission of Palestine made students feel unsupported and unacknowledged.
This bias extends further back. According to a former student, in 2018, the school purportedly hosted a soldier from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to speak in a class, which provoked frustration from the student and her parent.
In December 2023, student organizers at LWHS asked to hold a walkout. The administration referred the request to the school board, which denied it. In February 2024, a revised request was approved but with strict stipulations that censored the students’ message. School officials worked exclusively with pro-Israel staff, including a local rabbi to determine what students were allowed to say while excluding input from Palestinian or Muslim leaders.
The walkout was met with a smear campaign by Zionist community members. This included LWHS’s Jewish Student Union (JSU), who equated pro-Palestine walkouts with anti-Semitism and warned students to “know what you are walking out for.” Some of the protesters considered this a threat.
A Zionist parent also initiated a misinformation-filled petition, which gained over 600 signatures, urging the school to cancel the walkout, claiming it would “end up as a hate rally,” making organizers along with participants fear for their own lives. Rightwing Zionist figure and local radio host Ari Hoffman further escalated the harassment by labeling it a “pro-Hamas rally.” Since then, Hoffman has targeted pro-Palestine students in the district, referring to them as “Hamasniks.”
The walkout’s purpose was a peaceful vigil honoring Palestinians; organizers explicitly banned hate speech and criticism of any country, group or militia. In response to JSU’s defamatory allegations, they stated, “If you come with hateful intent, it may be better not to join us.”
Meanwhile, administrators required prior approval for all signs used in the walkout and threatened to confiscate signs containing the words “river,” “murder” or “genocide.” The administration accused organizers of “destroying the school community” by using these words and for “redirecting the focus of the walkout.”
Administrators also dismissed fears that Zionist students would record and dox participants with the principal telling a concerned participant that the walkout area was a “bus stop,” implying anything could happen off campus during the protest. The demonstration was peaceful, but pro-Israel students from JSU filmed and photographed attendees, claiming to report for Kang News—a student-run news organization already barred from covering the event. Organizers were dismayed that the administration failed to protect them from the intimidation directed at them from pro-Israel students, organizations and community members.
PRO-ISRAEL TEACHER DEVELOPMENT COURSES
The district’s curriculum reveals a glaring institutional bias, shaped and fueled by pro-Israel hasbara propaganda.
Pro-Israel bias is evident in LWSD’s teacher development courses. The district promoted training on the Israel-Palestine conflict by the Holocaust Center for Humanity (HCH), using content from the pro-Israel Institute for Curriculum Services (ICS). ICS, active in all 50 states, pushes pro-Israel narratives, discourages Palestinian perspectives, and advocates removing terms like “occupation” and “land theft” from textbooks. LWSD offered these courses in March and April, both in-person and online.
The district’s announcement for the course “Navigating the Israel-Hamas Conflict” claimed it aimed to foster “respectful” student conversations on Islamophobia and anti-Semitism but ignored anti-Palestinian racism and the historical suffering of Palestinians.
Muslim parents tried to counter this bias by organizing a teacher’s training workshop titled “Understanding the History and Context of Palestine,” taught by University of Washington professor Dr. Karam Dana, a Palestinian American.
District leadership restricted access to this workshop to a select group of social studies teachers, excluding all 3,200 educators and staff from the Equity and Family Engagement team. Despite efforts from parents, officials continued offering biased ICS-created courses to all employees.
LWSD’S ATTACK ON PALESTINIAN SYMBOLS
Palestinian symbols are scrutinized for anything that might offend Israel’s supporters.
As the 2023-2024 school year wound down, students at Tesla STEM High School requested permission to decorate graduation caps with the Palestinian flag, only to be denied by a staff member who communicated that “the district is saying no to such symbols.”
In November 2024, the district’s attack on Palestinian symbols reignited at a middle school after a student wore a hoodie featuring a watermelon in the shape of the 1946 Palestinian indigenous map. After receiving complaints from Zionist parents who claimed the hoodie “promoted the erasure of Israel” and was harmful to their child, school officials, along with district administrators, summoned the student from class for a meeting.
The students and families’ resilience, and efforts from the Council on American- Islamic Relations (CAIR) Washington, caused the district officials to concede that the student wearing the hoodie was “protected speech.” Though it was a victory for the student, it exposes LWSD’s willingness to target Palestinian symbols.
LWSD’S REPRESSIVE ATTACK On A SINGLE MOTHER
While the district may have shown mercy with the middle school student, it didn’t show much to this Muslim parent.
In December 2023, LWSD revoked a single mother’s volunteer privileges after she wore a “Free Palestine, Free Gaza” shirt at an after-school event at Audubon Elementary, claiming it caused a “substantial disruption to the school’s learning environment.” There was no evidence to support the charge. By contrast, another parent who wore an “I Stand with Israel” shirt at a multicultural night at Lake Washington High School caused discomfort and upset among several attendees but was not censured.
LWSD escalated. The Muslim mother was banned from attending field trips with her daughter—a routine activity she had always participated in. The family’s pediatrician sent notes emphasizing the importance of the mother’s involvement for her daughter’s mental health and the fact that the daughter faced social ostracism from her Israeli classmates, which had escalated to physical bullying. However, LWSD failed to reconsider its position. Exacerbating the issue, LWSD and several Zionists alleged that the mother had posted pro-Palestine signs and stickers in the neighborhood and at Audubon Elementary. This led the district to send three police officers to deliver a trespass notice to her; one of the officers had also surveilled Palestinians at the Nov. 20, 2023, board meeting. Worsening matters, the letter included profiling language, referring to her as having a “well-known political stance on the conflict in the Middle East.”
LWSD’s actions reflect both institutional racism and a pattern of selective silencing. By violating the community’s First Amendment rights, LWSD has positioned itself as an entity that enforces oppression and co-opts the very mechanisms of dissent. This approach stifles independent thought, undermines the development of conscience in young minds, and creates an environment of fear, shame and guilt. It is not just censorship—it is the calculated manufacture of submission to a foreign state, Israel.
Adam Reshi Azaanta, a pseudonym, is a student from the University of Washington.
