Jersey City school board to vote on censuring rant against Jews

JERSEY CITY — The president of the Jersey City Board of Education said he will introduce a resolution calling for member Joan Terrell-Paige to be censured and asking her to resign over her Facebook comments in which she called Jews “brutes" following a massacre that killed three victims at a kosher shop as well as a police officer and a cab driver.

The post by Terrell-Paige, who is black, brought up the practice of "blockbusting," in which residents are aggressively and unscrupulously encouraged by salesmen to sell their homes.

“Where was all this faith and hope when black homeowners were threatened, intimidated and harassed by I WANT TO BUY YOUR HOUSE brutes of the Jewish community,” Terrell-Paige wrote in a post that is no longer publicly available.

Terrell-Paige wrote about the aggressive manner in which black residents are being intimidated and the "assault on the black communities of America."

Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop and Gov. Phil Murphy both called for Terrell-Paige to resign over the comments. Terrell-Paige told Politico New Jersey that she did not remove the post and did not apologize for it.

Jersey City Board of Education President Sudhan Thomas said in an email to the Associated Press that he will introduce a resolution at Thursday's meeting censuring Terrell-Paige over her comments. He said he will also request her resignation at the meeting.

After kosher store massacre, NJ official calls Jews 'brutes'

"I have come to this conclusion after a lot of review ... but importantly in the continuum of the strong sentiments expressed by the elected political leadership across Jersey City, Hudson County and the State of New Jersey," Thomas said.

The meeting was originally scheduled for Wednesday night but was moved to Thursday night.

Terrell-Paige also wrote, without elaborating, that "we learned 6 rabbis were accused of selling body parts," a statement that seems to allude to a persistent falsehood employed by anti-Semites to smear Jewish people or organizations as secret organ harvesters.

She wrote the post days after Douglas Rodriguez, Leah Minda Ferencz and Moshe Hersh Deutch were killed in a shooting at the JC Kosher Supermarket on Dec. 10. Jersey City police officer Joseph Seals was shot dead at a cemetery moments earlier.

Councilman James Solomon shared an open letter to Terrell-Paige saying he found her post to be "hurtful" because it "traffics in anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and conflates the actions of a few Jewish people with the actions of all Jewish people."

Solomon invited Terrell-Paige to have a conversation about the problems of anti-Semitism and "serious injustice and inequity on the South Side of Jersey City" where the Greenville section is located.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.

Contact reporter Dan Alexander at Dan.Alexander@townsquaremedia.com or via Twitter @DanAlexanderNJ