The Oakland high school that flew a Palestinian flag for four weeks at the start of the Israel-Hamas war did not violate district policies, according to the results of an investigation released last week by the Oakland Unified School District.
The Palestinian flag flew in a courtyard outside Fremont High School from Oct. 18 until Nov. 15, 2023, the investigation found. It was raised 11 days after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel and amid Israel’s deadly retaliatory campaign against Hamas. At the time, Hamas held 251 hostages, mostly civilians, in Gaza.
The flag came down a day after a photo of it — flying at full staff against a deep blue sky in a plaza near a mural of the school’s mascot — went viral online.
The Nov. 14 post on X of the flag drew public expressions of support and a flood of angry messages and phone calls to the school. It quickly raised questions from critics about why the school had replaced the American flag with one of a territory at war with a U.S. ally and whether the flag represented the school’s official support for the Palestinians in their ongoing conflict with Israel. Meanwhile, supporters lauded what they considered a bold and righteous display of solidarity with Palestinians.
“God I love Oakland,” one commenter on X wrote.
“I wonder what happens to a kid if he shows up with the Israeli flag in this Hamas outpost,” another wrote.
Marleen Sacks, an Oakland attorney representing a local activist group called the Oakland Jewish Alliance, filed a discrimination complaint on Nov. 18, 2023, with the district about the flag.
Sacks, who is also representing the Oakland Jewish Alliance in a lawsuit against the school district in Alameda County Superior Court detailing a litany of incidents of bias (“dozens,” she said), asserted that the flag-raising was illegal and represented an attempt to indoctrinate students and others on campus. It “tacitly and directly encourages students and staff to take one side in a very complicated geopolitical situation,” she wrote in a letter to the district seen by J.
The investigation, however, found that the school did not violate district policy pertaining to instruction on “controversial issues” nor any other policy. The controversial issues rule, which states that teachers may not inject their personal political opinions on controversial subjects, refers to classroom discussions.
“The students’ decision to raise the Palestinian flag on the courtyard flagpole was not a topic of classroom discussion,” the district report on the investigation stated.
The Oakland Unified School District did not respond to J.’s request for comment.
The flag incident was one in a flurry during the 2023-2024 school year that worried Jewish, Israeli and pro-Israel groups in Oakland, who saw incidents of what they considered anti-Israel bias from teachers, administrators and activists sweep across the school district.
In October, during the first month of the war, the teachers union released a statement condemning Israel’s so-called “75 year long illegal military occupation of Palestine,” referring to the country’s founding, and its “genocidal rhetoric and policies.” The statement did not condemn Hamas nor mention the Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel.
On Dec. 6, 2023, teachers across the district held a “teach-in on Palestine” to instruct students about the conflict from the Palestinian perspective, using anti-Zionist materials not vetted by district leadership. The Department of Education opened a civil rights investigation into the district after the incident. An OUSD investigation released earlier this month determined that the teach-in did not warrant discipline for the teachers involved.
Citing pervasive anti-Israel animosity bleeding into outright antisemitism, a number of Jewish families quickly scrambled to transfer out of the district during the 2023-2024 school year, many heading to nearby Piedmont. Meanwhile, anti-Zionists in the district have rejected accusations of antisemitism and have voiced support for what is often described as “teaching about Palestine.”
The flag-raising inquiry, conducted by a third-party investigator with the law firm Van Dermyden Makus, focused extensively on whether the flag-raising was initiated by students or spurred by staff.
The investigator determined that students were behind the flag-raising and cited circumstantial evidence and the timing of the flag’s appearance. The flag was raised around the time of a student walk-out to protest the war in Gaza, the investigation found.
“Documentary evidence confirmed there was a student-led Walkout on October 18, 2023 regarding the Israel-Palestine Conflict,” the report stated. “While two witnesses interviewed in this investigation did not see the students raise the Palestinian flag, the witnesses credibly recalled that they either noticed the flag after the Walkout or heard from others that the flag was raised at the Walkout.”
The report does not include interviews with students or witnesses who saw students raise the flag, but stated that the walkout was led by students and that students “had an interest in the Palestinian flag on the courtyard flagpole.”
The school has a large Yemeni population, staff members wrote in emails obtained by Sacks during the investigation and seen by J.
Supporters of the flag-raising viewed it as a show of solidarity with Arab people generally and Palestinian people specifically, amid an ongoing war impacting Palestinian civilians.
The internal emails showed some adult staff at the high school in vocal support of the flag-raising and firmly opposed to the school’s decision in November to remove it.
“Having a Palestinian flag raised was a powerful way of showing our students that we care about them and issues that affect them and Arab and Muslim people more broadly,” said a Nov. 26, 2023 email from Josh Cadji, a Fremont High history teacher. “While I understand perfectly that there are laws that prohibit non American flags flying at schools, the district taking the flag down still sends a hurtful message.”
Cadji, who teaches world history, is also a political organizer with the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, an anti-Zionist group that supports a global boycott of Israel and helped facilitate school walk-outs across the Bay Area after Oct. 7. Sometimes using the first name “Yahya,” Cadji “has been organizing around issues affecting Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim communities for over a decade,” according to a short biography on the website Oakland Voices.
Emails between Cadji, other teachers and administrators indicate that staff members met with students to explain why the district removed the flag and discussed an “art project” for students as a next step. Cadji wrote to Fremont High Principal Niday Baez on Nov. 29, “I am happy to support students in this process and to continue to help them develop their ideas in how they show support for Palestine.”
California law requires all schools to fly the U.S. and California flags at their entrance during operating hours. The law is not addressed directly in the report, which notes that in the past, the school has flown non-U.S. flags including those of Latin American countries and of Yemen.
The school administration was aware of the Palestinian flag and did not remove it, the investigation found, but not “for any improper purpose.” The report does not recommend any discipline for staff or students but advises the district to provide training “regarding the display of flags at schools.”
Sacks plans to appeal the district’s decision. She said she was particularly confounded by the investigation’s failure to mention the state’s requirement that schools display the U.S. and California flags at their entrances.
The report “makes absolutely no mention of the fact that these laws were violated,” she said. “The findings say that no disciplinary action is going to be taken against anybody, which is completely outrageous, because obviously the law was being violated here, board policy was being violated here.”
“The administration knew that the flags were flying,” she added. “At a minimum, disciplinary action should be warranted on those grounds alone.”
There are other laws and board policies that were violated such as those “prohibiting creating a hostile environment for any member of a protected class,” she said. “Most Jewish and Israeli individuals would find it to be a hostile environment if the Palestinian flag was flying over their school.”