Rubbing salt in the wound, a high school removed a student from an academic program for reporting antisemitic harassment.

Now the student is fighting back.

Eden Horwitz, a senior at San Leandro High School in the San Francisco Bay Area, alleged that she faced harassment while enrolled in the school’s social justice academic program. Fighting on her behalf are The Deborah Project and the law firm Ropes & Gray.

Elana Stern, an associate at the law firm, explained the lawsuit to JNS. She said that the program, which began in the 10th grade, had “promised intersectional education, solidarity, inclusion, and it really proved to be the opposite of that for Eden.” The high school senior was called “Zionist” as a slur by her classmates, who also accused her of genocide. The program also taught that support for Israel or Zionism is by its nature immoral, Stern alleged.

The lawyer also said that the program did not include Holocaust education and that Eden had stopped wearing her Star of David out of fear. At events, students chanted “from the river to the sea,” and when Eden’s mother, Montana Horwitz, explained to the school that the chant is antisemitic because it calls for the destruction of Israel, the school dismissed her complaints.

The school “permitted these activities without offering countervailing perspectives or taking any measures to protect the security and well-being of Jewish students,” Stern said. Worse yet, the high school senior was “chastised for refusing to participate in such chants and such school-sanctioned activities,”

Worst of all, according to the complaint, Erica Viray Santos, the academy’s lead teacher, asked Eden a very snide question: Do the students dislike you because you’re “Jewish, or just unlikable?”

The program also stripped her of special accommodations due to her disability, removed her from the program before her time to comply had expired, and humiliated her by publicly announcing her removal to her schoolmates.

So add discrimination on the basis of disability to the list of violations.

The mother and daughter suffered emotional distress, which might be easy to prove in court: “Severe anxiety and depression” caused Eden’s grades to plunge, and her mother suffered a “cardiac episode” from the stress, according to Stern.

Stern said she hopes the lawsuit will help effect real and lasting change in the school system.

“No student and no family should have to experience what Eden and Montana Horwitz have had to experience over the last several years,” she declared.