NYC teacher targeted in anti-Israel student riot returned to class to show she ‘wasn’t going to run away’

The Queens teacher whose attendance at a pro-Israel rally sparked a nearly two-hour riot at her high school involving hundreds of students has spoken out for the first time about the “frightening and horrible” ordeal — and how she was determined to return to the classroom and show the teens that she “wasn’t going to run away.”

Karen Marder on Tuesday identified herself in a USA Today op-ed published Tuesday as the teacher who was forced to hide in a locked office as the angry mob tried to push its way into her classroom at Hillside High School in Jamaica in November, after many students became enraged to learn she was photographed at a Queens rally two days after Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack.

“I posted a photo on Facebook of myself holding a sign reading, ‘I stand with Israel.’ That act, in the hours after the Hamas assaults, would lead to a devastating response from students I care about deeply,” Marder said in the piece, which was co-authored by Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers.

Despite the terrifying ordeal, the educator made the decision to return to her classroom to teach students about “basic humanity.”

“I had a choice to transfer to a different school. I stayed to use the experience to connect, to listen, learn, debunk misinformation and combat intolerance. The day I returned to school, a Palestinian friend (a fellow teacher) and I met with students,” Marder wrote.

“I answered their questions and shared my feelings. I repeated the hurtful, threatening and untrue things that students had said during the riot and on social media − helping them connect with my humanity, and their own. Many of my students hugged me and apologized for what had occurred.”

The teacher shared how it was “difficult” to go back to work, and said healing from the trauma of being threatened for mourning the “torture, rape and slaughter” of Israelis would be a “long process.”

“What happened to me was frightening and horrible and something that no teacher, staff member or student should have to experience, particularly in a school building,” she said.

During the Nov. 20 riot, some 400 students flooded into hallways and ran amok, chanting, jumping, shouting, and waving Palestinian flags or banners after seeing Marder posing with her pro-Israel sign on Facebook.

Students demanded that the health teacher be fired and ripped a water fountain out in the hallway and shattered tiles in the second-floor boys’ bathroom before dozens of NYPD officers arrived at the school to quell the mob.

Three student organizers of the riot were suspended — the most severe punishment that was doled out in connection with the terrifying incident, a source had told The Post.

The teacher said that she had to earn back the trust of her students by demonstrating “forgiveness, active listening, acknowledging wrongs and sitting with uncomfortable feelings.”

“I had to listen. I had to understand what messages they were absorbing and where they were coming from. I had to answer their questions, address their fears and confusions and simply be there,” Marder wrote.

“Further, I had to show them that I wasn’t going to run away, even though some of them behaved inappropriately. They had to see, through my actions, that I would not give up on them, that I’d keep coming in, again and again.”

The ugly scene at Hillside came after a slew of antisemitic incidents at city schools following the terror attack that killed 1,200 and Israel’s declaration of war against Hamas, which has left more than 30,000 people dead as a humanitarian crisis swelled in Gaza.

Nine days earlier, a Brooklyn parent advisory board had promoted and organized a student walkout at about 100 schools where young participants had been recorded yelling “F–k the Jews!”

The month before, dozens of students marched through Origins HS in Sheepshead Bay waving a Palestinian flag and chanting “Death to Israel!” and “Kill the Jews!”

A Jewish history teacher at the school said that one student called her “a dirty Jew” and said he wished Hitler could have “hit more Jews,” while another student said, “I wish you were killed.”

The hateful teens involved had faced no serious discipline, staffers said at the time.

Last month, the same teacher and others at school received a shockingly violent and hateful email, calling for the eradication of the Jewish people.

“All Jews need to be exterminated. Their doors kicked in in the middle of the night. A bullet put in each of their heads,” it read in part.

Marder said that the hate brewing in the city’s school system must be addressed, even as teachers and students debate the scale of Israel’s war — which has been criticized by the White House, even as the US continued to pour billions of dollars into its ally’s military.

“We can demand the release of Israeli hostages and fight for humanitarian aid for Gazans now starving. We can fight against hate and for free expression. We can embrace security, freedom and self-determination for both peoples,” she wrote.

“What is not up for debate is this: our basic humanity. That goes for students, and for the adults who guide them.”

Weingarten wrote that “Karen’s experience and her response show a way forward” to combat the recent rise in hate crimes against both Jews and Muslims alike