Let's ban parent-driven "Multiculturalism Nights"

Especially if they elevate Palestinian culture

Did you hear about the incredible presentation on Croatian architecture, culture, and food at your local school’s multicultural night?

No?

How about the one put together about the musical contributions given to the world by the people of Ghana?

Probably not.

How Mexico gave the world the gift of chocolate?

Not even a mention.

That is because all over the country, during Arab American Heritage Month, observed in April, the Palestinian cause repeatedly disrupted multicultural celebrations in public and private school settings from Texas to Vermont to Georgia.

And what happened at the end of April in the village of Beverly Hills, Michigan at Beverly Elementary was only one example of a coordinated effort to push the Palestinian agenda while using our K12 schools as a launching pad.

Since the widely reported incident, where stickers with the words “Fuck Zionists” “Free Palestine” and others brandishing an assault weapon were found, the Michigan Antidefamation League and the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit have been in dialogue with the school district.

According to the organization Stop Antisemitism, Lilia Balboul, a local registered nurse and licensed realtor, on her Instagram Account said that she was excited to “rep” Palestinian culture in the Middle Eastern Room of her child’s school’s multicultural night. Before the event, she posted on her account, “Running around prepping for diversity night at the kid’s school,” “of course we repping the Middle East with a strong emphasis on Palestine,” “cue the olives, zaatar and the hummus.”

Now that the word got out, including to her place of work, The Arab American News reported that she and other Palestinian American families in the district are feeling persecuted. She is upset that her places of work have been exposed. But it does not take much investigation to learn of a person’s workplace, especially if you are selling real estate in such a desirable and high-end market such as Birmingham.

In the article, Balboul said she purchased a “family-friendly” sticker packet that supported Palestinian rights, but had no idea the offending stickers were included in the packet.

Personally, I find it difficult to believe that a woman who holds such professionalism in nursing and real estate, professions that command attention to detail, thoroughness and, well, professionalism, could have committed such an oversight to not see that some of the stickers in a “family friendly” packet contained hateful curses towards one group of people and an image of an assault rifle.

In my own investigations, I looked at some “pro-Palestine” sticker packets that are on the market right now. They are so easily available and accessible on websites like Etsy, which you can check out in this link.

None of the stickers had any messages of co-existence.

None of the messages had any messages of peace.

None of the stickers had maps in the shapes of “contested” territory, such as Gaza, Judea and Samaria, renamed the West Bank when Jordan illegally took over the territory when it waged war on Israel in 1948.

Instead, every single sticker packet contains the shape of Palestine in the shape of the entirety of Israel.

Even the term “Free Palestine” is not appropriate in any taxpayer-funded educational setting knowing that those very words were uttered by murderers and assassins who killed Jews and Israeli ambassadors last May in Washington, D.C. and Boulder. Colo.

In a statement released to Birmingham families and the media, Superintendent Embekka Roberson said that the offensive stickers were immediately removed and that the district does not tolerate hatred or bullying of any kind:

“At Birmingham Public Schools, we welcome and celebrate all cultures and backgrounds to foster a learning environment where every student is respected and valued. We do not tolerate intimidation, bullying, threats, discrimination, or antisemitism in our schools.

….As soon as the situation was brought to the attention of the school administration, we took prompt, thoughtful steps to address it and keep the Beverly school community informed. We are handling this matter carefully and in line with our district policies.

We recognize that incidents like this are hurtful, and we are sorry for the impact on our community. It is not what we want for our students or our families. We remain committed to ensuring that our schools are places where all feel safe, respected, and supported.

We are also reviewing our processes and planning to strengthen safeguards for future events. Our goal is to continue providing opportunities for our community to come together in ways that reflect care, respect, and a commitment to one another.”

Ultimately, the incident is not being considered a hate crime.

“The Beverly Hills Department of Public Safety school resource officer has been investigating the incident that occurred at Beverly elementary his investigation has revealed that the actions do not meet the criteria of a hate crime, ethnic intimidation or harassment. Additionally, he conferred with the Oakland County prosecutor’s office, who confirmed that no crimes have been committed while the two stickers are distasteful, their placement, either purposefully or inadvertently, are protected as free speech. The Department takes the safety of all students, residents and visitors of the village as a priority number one, and we will continue to investigate.”

Throughout the entire reading of this article, please keep in mind that two months have passed since a successful Hezbollah terrorist attack targeted the house of worship where many Jews in this school district attend.

Parents, primarily Jewish parents, are not satisfied with these statements.

An Israeli in the community said they don’t care which side people fall on regarding the war between Hamas, Lebanon or Israel, but no child entering a public school in America should see imagery that contains guns that is connected to hatred of Jews.

Others have sent the district’s administration a letter with specific demands.

The letter states: “A parent used a school-sponsored event to distribute materials containing violent imagery, explicit language, and messaging widely understood as antisemitic and politically inflammatory. This was not an oversight. It was a deliberate act, introduced after review, inside an elementary school, in front of children.”

They are demanding a clear response that includes the following:

1. Immediate consequences: The parent(s) responsible should no longer have access to district property. School access was used to introduce targeted, hostile content into a children’s environment.
2. Full transparency: The district must provide a clear account of how these materials were introduced after the principal’s walkthrough. What failed, and who is accountable? Additionally, what was present during the walkthrough, and what standards were applied in approving it?
3. Defined safeguards for parents and events: General statements about “strengthening safeguards” are not sufficient. The district must implement and communicate clear policies governing parent participation in multicultural nights and similar events. These should establish firm boundaries between cultural representation and political messaging. Political content, violent imagery, and antisemitic material have no place in these settings.
4. Clear naming of antisemitism: Antisemitism must be identified directly and without euphemism.
5. Mandatory training: The district should implement antisemitism training for staff so that modern forms of antisemitism are recognized and addressed proactively.

Joe Leibson is a middle school teacher at Covington School in the same district. A few weeks before the Beverly event, the school had a similar multicultural night that went off without a hitch and included displays for Arabic nations as well as one for Israel.

Joe Leibson remains optimistic. He has been involved with diversity and interfaith dialogue in the district and at the county level as an educator long before the term Diversity, Equity and Inclusion was trending. These meetings were held informally with no agenda except to allow other voices, often marginalized, to come through. They were first held the first time Donald Trump was elected to the presidency, when both Jewish and Muslim demographics in the district were feeling targeted. Eventually, he said the element of antizionism crept into these conversations, and made him feel uncomfortable. Still, he said, because of the area’s history and collaborative nature between Jewish and Muslim residents in Birmingham, Leibson said is a believer in restorative practices and dialogue.

“I’d like to give Balboul a way out,” Leibson said. “Clearly, just like Jews are, she is hurting because of the war. Clearly, she is seeking attention, so why not welcome her in and have a dialogue? Give her a chance to make her case.”

“I come from a place of talking about things and having hard conversations,” Leibson continued. “I think our district’s discipline policy is all about restorative practices. If we go after her too hard, it is going to backfire. There’s a lot of confirmation bias potential here. The Palestinians in our community say the Jews want to silence them and don’t want them to speak. So why don’t we invite her in? Then, the ball is in her court. Then she has to decide what to do, and if they don’t take up the offer to talk, they will be the ones who come across as disingenuous. The point is that we all have to live in this community together.”

Still, Leibson affirms that what Balboul allegedly did – distribute stickers with curse words, assault weapons and threatening words towards “Zionists” which easily can be swapped for most Jews, is completely wrong.

“There should be boundaries within school settings to say what is wrong and what is right. But I firmly believe that only through talking to each other and starting a dialog is that possible. And I think we have that opportunity because unlike the Israelis and those living in Gaza, we are not living in a war zone.”

In other calls to action, some parents will be working with the ADL to host classes of dialogue between students of different faiths. Let’s hope that comes to fruition and there can exist more talking and less alienation here in our corner of the planet but I have guarded optimism.

Let’s face it.

It’s May.

None of this dialogue is going to happen before the school year ends.

I’ve seen it before in Bloomfield Hills Schools in 2023.

Propose all the interfaith discussions you want, or at least plan it, but don’t expect there to be participation on the other side.

The Palestinian movement is showing us, for now three years, exactly who they are and what they want.

They do not want peace.

They do not want co-existence.

They may not even want their own statehood or liberation because history shows they could have achieved this seven times over by now.

What they want is to dominate.

If your culture is the inspiration of intimidating and killing Jews all over the world, it should not be celebrated as a valid culture in an American taxpayer funded public school.

If your culture inspires marches of intimidation through predominantly Jewish neighborhoods, as we saw last night in Brooklyn, where pro-Hamas agitators clogged streets and forced Jews to stay on their doorsteps and not go outside as we saw yesterday, your culture should not be welcomed in a public school paid by local taxes.

After witnessing this posturing from school officials since March of 2023, and the fallout of another diversity program, I am so sick of the bullshit.

I am so sick of the virtuous statements, almost three years into this global intifada war on Jews, that the words “hatred has no place in our schools” can be paired with the words: “we welcome and celebrate all cultures and backgrounds.”

You cannot declare that hatred has no place at a school but then welcome and celebrate all cultures.

Sorry to spell out the obvious.

It is time to acknowledge that these two things cannot be true at the same time.

Should all cultures be celebrated in American public schools?

It sounds like a noble, virtuous ideal.

But not all cultures and backgrounds fit into our Western values and ideals, things that are supposed to be upheld and taught in tax-funded American public schools.

According to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies founder and president Clifford May, multiculturalism seemed like a fairly harmless attempt to encourage appreciation of varying styles of art, dress and cuisine by pretending that all are of equal merit. Only later did May come to realize that multiculturalism is an ideology with far-reaching – and damaging — consequences.

Should all cultures be equally valued, especially those that subjugate women?

The cultures that make women increasingly hide their bodies behind ever more stringent garb, rendering them nearly invisible to the point that only their eyes are visible?

You don’t have to go far to see this.

I only had to go to my local Costco, where members must scan their membership photo id card to enter.

Yet, there I was in the parking lot, where two women emerged from their car, completely covered by a chador, only their eyes showing, going in, no questions asked.

The parent in question, Laila Balboul, is a free woman who shows her hair, lives in the West and is not one to shy away from being in the spotlight.

Back in March of 2025, while Hamas still held hostages, WXYZ, the local ABC affiliate interviewed Balboul as she sat in her home, a keffiyeh draped over her shoulders, to discuss the war. She told local correspondent Faraz Javed that she attended weekly “ceasefire now” rallies. Throughout the segment, she easily interchanged terms like apartheid, human rights and genocide, and equated convicted terrorists held in Israeli prisons to the Israeli hostages taken from their homes and the Nova music festival.

The reporter Javed did not push back, did not bring up the notion that Hamas had rejected all calls for a ceasefire, and that the misery of Palestinian civilians could come to an end if Hamas surrendered and released the hostages.

Over the last two and a half years, Balboul, who supposedly is interested in multiculturalism, has had ample opportunities to listen and learn the hard truths about the war Hamas waged on Israel.

The hard truth that Israel is not an apartheid state, as she told major media.

The hard truth that people who hold others hostage are not victims.

The hard truth that not a single Palestinian during the nearly two years that Israeli hostages were held offered any assistance to their well-being, or took up an offer from the Israeli government of five million dollars, safe passage out of Gaza and the opportunity to begin a dignified life if they could divulge the whereabouts and information on any of the hostages.

And now, this nurse, someone who serves in a profession to heal and do no harm, holds up the cause for a people who systematically raped and sexually assaulted their captors, sometimes forcing members of the same family is crying victim for something she allegedly did and many who are not speaking out know rightly what she did, and what she did was attempt to bend a night to celebrate a multitude of cultures to the Palestinian agenda.

Balboul should also face the hard truth, as evidenced by decades of footage of what goes on in UNRWA schools, including kindergarten graduations in Gaza with children dressed in full military gear, wearing Hamas headbands and demonstrating their skill at army crawls as they then march with toy assault weapons, to the applause and cheers of their adoring parents and relatives, we know that this is the reality on the ground of what Palestinian culture looks like.

And it is not a culture that should be coddled, upheld or celebrated in an American public school funded with local taxes.

Birmingham Public Schools, in initial reports, stated they are continuing to conduct their investigation into what happened that night.

Here is what I hope they ask and decipher:

Will the alleged person who distributed these stickers face any consequences?

It is probably unconstitutional to ban a family that pays taxes from a public school district. But will the school district continue to allow this parent to be things like participate in PTO leadership roles, be a room parent, chaperone a trip, attend sporting events, concerts and plays in the school district?

What was really on display in the room about the Middle East?

Was there anything to represent Arab culture and nationalities besides watermelons, keffiyahs and other symbols of “resistance?” Because that is not something that a culture or a nation can legitimately be built upon.

Was it only focused on Palestine, which is not a country?

How much information in the Middle East room that the children entered could be classified as appropriate educational material, and how much of it could be classified as anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda?

If there is education that teaches about Arab culture, will students, as they advance to higher grades, learn about the region’s history of colonialism, spreading Islam forcibly, and maintaining a black slave trade that exists to this day?

Will schoolchildren learn that the colors of the Palestinian flag represent three separate caliphates over the centuries, where Jews and other non-believers of Islam were subverted into a second-class status, had to pay a special tax just to be allowed to live?

And while we are discussing Arab history, will there be a section in AP Global or U.S. History that covers the Nazi-Arab alliance?

Something that also must be examined is the impeccable timing of the incident and the alleged grievances of the Palestinian families just in time for the 13^th annual Gala of the Arab American Civil Rights League AACRL, scheduled for May 29^th in Dearborn.

WXYZ Reporter Javed will be the emcee. Awardees will include former Congresswoman Cori Bush and former Congressman Jamaal Bowman. Both are members of the Democratic Socialists of America. Both repeatedly declared in Congress that Israel was an apartheid genocidal state. Both voted against funding any military aid to Israel, including the Iron Dome, and were in favor of nationalizing a boycott against Israel. Both say lost their seats in Congress to more moderate Democrats, thanks to the work of AIPAC.

The Arab American Civil Rights League (AACRL) gave support in 2022 to a Dearborn man with an untreated mental illness Hassan Chokr who drove into the parking lot in December 2022 to Temple Beth El while families were dropping off their children at preschool and yelled Fuck Zionists – the same message on that sticker sprinkled around at the multicultural night - at them. He was stopped by police, and he told them that he was going to purchase a gun and be on his way to another synagogue. He did go to a gunshop, falsified information on his application, and was arrested. During court hearings, where he was brought up on federal and state charges including ethnic intimidation, he mooned the judge. The AACR defended Chokr and declared that he was mentally ill and unfit to stand trial. Making him the victim, they said that he was being persecuted for his mental illness. Chokr in 2025 was sentenced to 34 months in federal prison for illegal possession of firearms, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The AACRL is also suing the U.S. government over airstrikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.

I wonder if Balboul and her family will get a seat of honor, and her harrowing story be made a major highlight of the evening.

In the end, this is not a slam on all the 1.5 billion Muslims on earth.

And there are some incredible and courageous Arab, Muslim and Palestinian voices that have come down on the side of reason at the risk of their own safety and security.

But in the end, Palestinian culture, as it stands today, is not something to be celebrated in public schools.

It is Palestinian culture that for a decade weaponized and indoctrinated every single child in the Gaza strip to believe that killing Jews and martyrdom are the highest achievement one can attain on this earth.

It is Palestinian culture that ultimately indoctrinated and militarized the mind of a Gazan young man, most likely a product of one of those UNRWA schools, who on October 7^th, called his mother and father, bragging on a cell phone he stole from his victims, “Mom, Dad, I just killed 10 Jews with my bare hands.” And the parents sending him blessings of praise.

That is not a culture that deserves or warrants celebrating or upholding in an American public school funded with local taxes.