A nine-year-old Jewish pupil was reportedly forced to change schools after a teacher at a north London state primary school allegedly told him Jews were to blame for the October 7 massacre and referred to Hamas as “freedom fighters.”
In response to the incident, the appalled family requested staff antisemitism training, but school management reportedly rejected the offer by claiming they “can’t force the staff into politics.”
The anonymous father stated that the incident left him feeling “forced” to move his son out of the state system and into a Jewish school.
UK Jewish leadership groups have emphasised that this specific case underscores why the government must urgently implement the recommendations from Sir David Bell’s upcoming Department for Education report on antisemitism in schools.
The boy had already faced antisemitic hostility at the school when he was eight years old, a year before the teacher’s comments, after a fellow pupil shouted “F**k Israel” at him and other children chanted “Free Palestine.”
A year after the initial bullying incidents, the father spoke with his son about the Hamas terrorist attack on festival-goers at the Nova music festival, a conversation that the boy later brought up to his teacher.
According to the son, the teacher responded to his mention of the attack by saying, “Actually, it’s the opposite.”
The father told the JC that his son understood the teacher’s comment to mean Jews had attacked Palestinians, while the teacher denied the criminality of the attack by implying it was deserved because Hamas were “freedom fighters.”
Upon learning of the incident, the father immediately arranged a meeting with the deputy headteacher, who took detailed notes on the allegation and assured him that the matter would be addressed internally with the teacher in question.
The father stated that he has received no further communication from the school administration, despite repeatedly calling the front office for an update and sending a formal follow-up email regarding the investigation.
An email seen by the JC followed up on the concerns raised a week earlier and requested an update on the school’s review and any resulting actions before the end of term.
The father also inquired whether the school administration was considering providing specialised training to help staff better understand contemporary antisemitism and equip them to address it appropriately within the wider school community.
To facilitate the process, the father explicitly offered to suggest reputable external organisations that could support the school leadership in successfully delivering the antisemitism training to their staff.
The father suggested to the deputy head that his son’s teacher visit the Nova exhibition running in London at the time to help her understand the reality of what occurred during the October 7 massacre.
The father recalled the school representative saying, “We can’t force the staff into politics,” to which he firmly replied, “This is not politics; this is an event now marked in history where innocent people have been murdered.”
Published reports do not mention the father escalating the incident to Ofsted, noting instead that he focused his efforts on the school’s leadership before ultimately deciding to withdraw his son from the state system entirely.
Under UK law and Department for Education guidelines, teachers are legally required to maintain strict political impartiality and are expressly prohibited from using their position to promote partisan views or present their personal opinions as facts to pupils.
Advocates and Jewish leadership groups argue that stories like this prove that the government or local authorities must make antisemitism training mandatory for school staff rather than leaving it to the discretion of individual administrations who might dismiss the issue as “politics.”
Public comments and community reactions have expressed widespread outrage, arguing that the school’s failure to act represents a dangerous institutional collapse that normalises classroom bias and alienates vulnerable Jewish pupils from mainstream education.
