A group of Jewish parents at Berkeley High School is demanding accountability over a yearbook image they say attempts to justify the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
More than a month after graduation, school administrators have declined to act, citing students’ free speech rights. Now, the parents’ concerns have triggered a formal investigation by Berkeley Unified School District’s office of civil rights.
The yearbook, which was authored by students, independently of school authorities, features a two-page spread dedicated to student activism, under the banner of “social justice.” Among the images is a photo, taken at a student-led demonstration, that parents say crossed a line.
The photo shows a student demonstrator holding up a sign that reads, “Oct. 7 was a response, not an attack. Do your f-ing HW.” The words appear next to a Palestinian flag in the shape of a map of Israel and the West Bank.
“Regardless of one’s views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this message characterizes the October 7, 2023 Palestinian Hamas terrorist attack as something other than an attack and, in doing so, minimizes or rationalizes violence committed against civilians,” the parents wrote in a June 15 letter to school administrators.
Hamas and other groups from Gaza invaded Israel that day, killing around 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals, including 50 children, kidnapping 251 people and ransacking entire communities. Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who lived in Berkeley for the first 3½ years of his life, was among the victims.
Nearly 300 Berkeley High parents, alumni and other community members — most of them Jewish — signed the letter, which argues that even though the yearbook was produced by students, it is an official publication because it is sponsored by the school.
“A yearbook is not a student social media account or an independent publication,” the parents’ letter reads. “It is an official school-sponsored document that represents the school community and is distributed to students and families. As such, it carries a responsibility to uphold standards consistent with the values of inclusion, respect, and student safety.”
Parents contend that the image creates a hostile and exclusionary environment for Jewish students.
“There is something very concerning about an administration that doesn’t have the moral clarity to say this was harmful,” Kate Lauer, a Berkeley High parent and co-author of the letter, said in an interview. “Regardless of what the investigation will say, this harmed people.”
The parents are asking the school to recall the yearbooks, issue a public apology, review the yearbook’s editorial process and establish content guidelines for future yearbooks.
“The goal is to get school acknowledgement of the pain the image has caused,” said Hillary Kilimnik, another Berkeley High parent and co-author of the letter. “We want the school to say that this does not reflect the school’s values. This should be a teachable moment.”
School administrators did not respond to requests for comment. Jasmina Viteskic, the district’s director of civil rights and compliance, declined to comment.
“We do not comment publicly on matters that are the subject of a pending investigation in order to preserve the integrity of the investigative process,” Viteskic said in an email to J.
The investigation by Viteskic’s office is expected to conclude in mid-August, 60 days after the district received the parents’ complaint on June 17, per district policy.
Concern over the yearbook has been brewing since it began arriving at students’ homes in late May and a Berkeley High parent posted about it to a community email list.
Lauer recalled the feelings the image surfaced.
“I just couldn’t get over it,” Lauer said. “To me, it was so egregious and so scary, so, just hard to believe.”
Soon after, a group of parents joined together to request a meeting with Berkeley High School Principal Juan Raygosa. He declined to meet with the parents, but made a vice principal available.
On June 12, a group of parents met with AnnieJae Fischburg, a Berkeley High vice principal, who parents said they know is Jewish. The parents’ account of the meeting has circulated widely among the local Jewish community after it was shared with the Jewish Coalition of Berkeley’s email list. The coalition is a grassroots advocacy group that formed after Oct. 7, 2023.
Fischburg did not respond to an inquiry from J.
During the meeting, the group shared graphic images from Oct. 7 to try to explain why the yearbook photo and its justification of the attack felt so hurtful to the community, the parents wrote in their account.
According to the parents, Fischburg became visibly emotional and said she needed to stop looking at the photos for her “own safety.” She then left the room to collect herself, the parents wrote.
Fischburg told the group she was powerless to act, according to the parents, because she didn’t believe the content violated rules barring discrimination or hostility. She also cited the yearbook’s editorial policy, which states that it is a “designated forum for student expression without prior review by school officials in which students make all final decisions on content.”
The administration’s decision not to intervene contrasts with a previous controversy over Berkeley High’s yearbook, roughly a decade ago. In that case, students and parents complained that a sentence in the yearbook was offensive to Black students.
The sentence suggested that a Berkeley High program known for its high concentration of Black students was preparing graduates to become trash collectors.
The school, which was run at the time by a different set of administrators, issued a formal apology, recalled the yearbook and offered replacements.
The parents brought up this incident in their meeting with Fischburg, according to one parent, who spoke about the meeting on condition of anonymity for fear of blowback.
“She said she didn’t know about it,” the parent said, “that she wasn’t there at the time, and [Raygosa] wasn’t there at the time, that there was no way that they could get the information on it.”