An English teacher in Virginia who forced her students to complete assignments laced with anti-Israel rhetoric is the daughter of an imam who worked at a mosque that was attended by al-Qaeda terrorists who took part in the 9/11 attacks.
Shayma Al-Hanooti, who works at Washington-Liberty High School in Arlington, gave her students politically charged assignments such as sorting out “logical fallacies” in how Israelis use the “Holocaust to victimize themselves,” new documents reveal.
Family history
She is the daughter of Sheikh Mohammad Al-Hanooti, who was an imam at Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church between 1995 and 1999, a roughly 40-minute drive from the school where she teaches.
The Daily Wire first reported this connection.
Dar Al-Hijrah is the mosque 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Hani Hanjour briefly worshipped before they helped crash American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.
American-born jihadist Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen which was controversial due to his US citizenship status, also once served as an imam at Dar Al-Hijrah.
Al-Hanooti’s father was additionally named an “un-indicted co-conspirator” in the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing plot and the 2008 Holy Land Foundation Hamas Financing Trial, per the Center for Security Policy.
The former imam is also accused of helping raise $6 million for groups with ties to Hamas, according to an FBI memo.
Her father’s bother Muthanna was sentenced to a year and a day in prison in 2011 for violating an embargo on Iraq and serving as an agent of the country under Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime.
Anti-Israel propaganda in the classroom
A fresh batch of documents acquired by Parents Defending Education via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request shed light on the extent to which Al-Hanooti espoused a strong anti-Israel bias in her teachings.
In one assignment that was due back in January of this year, she instructed her class to watch the documentary “Born In Gaza,” a film that looked at the toll the Israel-Palestinian conflict took on Palestinian children, emails reveal.
They were required to write up a “See|think|wonder” report on the documentary in their notebooks. That assignment caught the attention of the school principal, who emailed her noting he was getting peppered with questions about it — presumably from parents.
Many of the internal emails released by Parents Defending Education had disclaimers informing recipients that the communications could be subject to FOIA requests.
Perhaps the most jarring assignment Al-Hanooti gave instructed her IB English students to conduct an “analysis of rhetorical appeal and logical fallacies” related to the “South Africa vs. Israel” court case at the Hague in which Cape Town accused the Jewish state of committing genocide.
Several prompts in the “logical fallacies” assignment appeared heavily skewed against the Jewish state:
- “How do people like Galit Raguan utilize rhetoric and logical fallacies to build the argument that Israel should not be guilty of genocide?”
- “What purpose does the use of the word ‘defend’ or ‘self-defense’ have when used by the Israeli legal team?”
- “How does Israel use the Holocaust to victimize themselves show an example of a logical fallacy?”
In a February assignment, Al-Hanooti had her students read “Gaza Writes Back,” which featured short stories penned by young Gazans.
Feuding with teachers and administrators over Israel
Al-Hanooti’s diatribes against Israel went beyond the classroom and included back-and-forths with both teachers and school administrators.
About 11 days after the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre perpetrated by Hamas, Al-Hanooti blasted out an email to all of the staff at the high school characterizing Israel’s response as a “genocide of over 1 million Palestinians unfolding before our eyes.”
She attached multiple pro-Palestinian resources she recommended teachers read up on, particularly if conversations about the conflict came up with students.
In the same email, she blamed Israel for a hospital explosion that the White House later indicated was the result of a misfired Hamas rocket. Her comment about the hospital drew pushback from some of her colleagues.
The school’s principal, Antonio Hall, later wrote to her asking to meet, noting that some of her colleagues had concerns about her emails.
“Is your concern that you’ve heard from colleagues … or is your concern the genocide of Palestinians? I’m confused,” she replied in an Oct. 18, 2023 email to Hall.
The following month, Al-Hanooti, who served as an adviser to the school’s Muslim Student Association, impressed upon Hall that Muslim students she spoke with were fearful of demonstrating in support for the Palestinians due to potential retribution.
Hall stressed that students who planned on walking out in protest needed to communicate with school leaders irrespective of their concerns about facing repercussions. He also underscored that staffers were prohibited from participating.
“Staff cannot lead or participate in a student led civil demonstration on campus. Shayma, I want to make sure that is understood and clarify that at no time did kids come to you and ask you to lead the civil demonstration, is that correct?”
In another email, Al-Hanooti described the Israel-Hamas war as a “settler colonial genocide.”
On Nov. 6, 2023, she also lashed out at the school board and superintendent in a lengthy email, in which she claimed that Israel is an “apartheid regime” engaged in “active ethnic cleansing” in the West Bank and called for members to be more vocal against Israel.
Students took part in another walkout in December, and Al-Hanooti pressed the school principal and vice principal about why students were not allowed to chant “from the river to the sea,” which references the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and is widely considered a call to eradicate the Jewish state.
“We owe it to our students, staff, families and to the tens of thousands of Palestinians being slaughtered with our tax dollars,” she wrote.
“Is it appropriate for [Vice Principal Timica] Shivers or any other administrator/staff member to tell a student that ‘free Palestine’ or ‘From the river to the sea’ is anti-Israel or antisemitic?”
Shivers contended that there was a misunderstanding and Al-Hanooti explained she was not interested in meeting up to clear the air.
The Post contacted Al-Hanooti for comment.