FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A private school in South Florida fired a math tutor on Nov. 19 over her personal social media posts about the conflict in Gaza. Officials then expelled her child from the school.
The Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale fired Maha Almasri Abuhamda, a Palestinian-American woman who had been a math tutor with the school until she put up a series of posts on her personal Instagram account that the school deemed “hateful and incendiary,” a charge Almasri denied.
Almasri told local media outlets that her posts weren't meant to offend anyone, but merely to "shed light on the humanitarian crisis happening in Gaza."
"While the former employee has attempted to diminish the nature of her posts in recent media appearances, her actions violated Pine Crest’s employment policies and our expectations for parents, as articulated in the School’s Employee Handbook, Student Handbook, and enrollment agreement," the school said in a series of statements, arguing that the situation empowered the school to "take the action that it deems necessary to address the situation."
This action included expelling Almasri's child from the school, a move that Pine Crest claimed it had done before to students due to their parents' behavior. The school also said it had communicated with Almasri multiple times asking her to take the offending posts down and offering suggestions for "mitigating the disruption," but it said she continued making "inflammatory" posts.
10 Tampa Bay does not have access to Almasri's social media posts.
According to local media, one of her posts argued that the war in Gaza did not start with the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 but in 1948 with the Arab–Israeli War, an international conflict that began with Israel declaring itself an independent state and ended with it gaining considerable territory and displacing some 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland.
The school claimed that Almasri's posts included "an image of a soldier pointing a machine gun at an infant inside of an incubator and an image with commentary suggesting that some wanted to roast babies in an oven," posts they say threatened to disrupt the school's learning environment, incite violence and jeopardize safety on campus.
At least 17,487 Palestinians have been killed since the Oct. 7 attack, according to figures provided by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry. Israeli figures estimate 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas attack on Israel.
