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18 | MARCH 30 • 2023 

was born Catholic. I defend people who 
are Jewish and Arabic. I am a liberal, but 
I find myself being excluded from pro-
gressive causes because of my supportive 
views about Israel. I have my daughter 
here who is also stridently pro-Israel.” 
He continued addressing the board: 
“We are not going to solve the Israeli-
Arab or Israeli-Palestinian conflict here, 
and I don’t know how we are going to put 
the toothpaste back in the tube. I hope 
you can find a way to heal this room 
because, obviously, it’s not happening yet.” 

STUDENT COMMITTEE REACTS 
Addressing the board, members of the 
student DEI committee said they stood by 
their decision to include Arraf in the pre-
sentation and rejected the apologetic tone 
of the two emails the district sent out with-

out their permission or consultation. They 
stated that students deserved to hear of her 
experiences in Israel, a region that during 
her presentations she only described as 
Palestine. 
The committee members, none of whom 
were Jewish, took turns reading from 
their statement. It read: “There has been 
an immense amount of discourse about 
what the prompt was. The actual prompt 
for the panelists read: What oppression or 
discrimination did you face, and how did 
the people around you help to make it bet-
ter, and if applicable, how did racism and 
ignorance affect you in high school?
“In the planning process, we thought it 
would be important to have a Palestinian 
on the panel, and a large group of students 
appreciated her presence.”
The student committee statement stated 

that at no time did Arraf say that Jewish 
people killed Palestinians, which was met 
with applause. However, the JN has record-
ings of the assemblies where Arraf said 
Israel was committing genocide against 
the Palestinians and was blocking essential 
medical care in the Gaza Strip. As to why 
there were no Jewish panelists, the com-
mittee stated that last year’s diversity day 
presentation featured local rabbis. 
“We understand that people in our 
community are hurt, and this was never 
our intention. It deeply saddens us that 
this is a result of an assembly that was 
created in order to bring people together. 
We apologize to all communities for the 
hate that’s taking place and for the flaws 
in our assembly, but we will not apologize 
for having a Palestinian speaker and giving 
Arab and Muslim students representation.” 

OUR COMMUNITY

Jay Kozlowski takes his turn 
addressing the audience.

optiquedetroit.com

Happy Passover!

