Discipline needed after riot

“There are some people calling for us to suspend 500 students,” city Schools

Chancellor David Banks said Monday. “We are not going to do that.” Why not?

Banks was speaking about the anti-Semitic riot that broke out at Hillcrest High School in Jamaica Nov. 20 after students discovered that one of their teachers, who is Jewish, posted on Facebook a photo of herself at a rally with a sign saying that she stands with Israel. Of course she stands with Israel in its war against the terrorists of Hamas. Not only is she Jewish, she is civilized, and all civilized people should oppose the massacres launched against Israel Oct. 7 — the stabbings of babies, the burnings of homes, the machine-gunning of concert-goers, the raping and maiming too.

But there’s a sizable pro-Palestinian segment among our young people, and hundreds ran rampant at Hillcrest. Mayor Adams responded with words like “We are better than this” — apparently we’re not — while teachers union boss Michael Mulgrew cited the need for “a safe environment.”

No kidding. That’s why every student who got out of control should be suspended, whether its 200, 300, 500 or more. Not just the ringleaders — they should be expelled and never allowed back into the building. But Banks isn’t telling us what administrators are doing to discipline the rioting students so much as what they’re not doing. “Violence, hate and disorder have no place in our schools,” he said. Blah, blah, OK. Neither do consequences these days. But they’re the chief answer.

So, whether it’s the Jewish students at Cooper Union or a Jewish teacher in Queens, we have people who never threatened anyone but have been forced to hunker down as out-of-control youth, fueled by TikTok, anger, hormones and misinformation, rage against some machine they don’t understand. They claim there’s a genocide against a people whose population has increased fivefold in 60 years. There isn’t. They claim anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism; this incident again proves them wrong. Sorry, folks, but we need more good oldfashioned teaching and discipline in our schools.