John Ransom | October 17, 2023
(The Lion) — An Amazon.com teacher of the year has caused an uproar by sharing a branded image of a Hamas paragliding militant.
One such heavily armed group paraglided into an Israeli music festival during the Hamas terrorist attack Oct. 7, resulting in the death of nearly 300 innocent civilians, including teenagers and children, as well as the abduction of others.
The pro-Hamas teacher at Gotham Tech High School in New York, Mohammad Jehad Ahmad, also has taken to X, formerly Twitter, to defend the terror group, saying that he “Stands with Palestine” in the fight against Israel, according to Fox News.
His support for Hamas follows a tweet from July, well prior to the sudden terror attack unleashed Oct. 7, in which Ahmad called Israel a “racist state” and “a genocidal, white-Jewish-supremacist, settler-colonial, terrorist, AND racist European invention.”
He said calling Israel “a racist state” is just the “tip of the iceberg.”
According to articles promoted on his LinkedIn profile, Ahmad was named “Amazon Future Engineer Teacher of the Year, for promoting inclusion in computer science,” in August, 2020, reported ChalkBeat New York.
The award came with a $50,000 cash prize, says ChalkBeat.
The Amazon Future Engineer program is a series of comprehensive childhood-to-career awards aimed at increasing access to computer science education for students from underserved and underrepresented communities, says Amazon.
Calls to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s cell phone by The Lion, inquiring whether that honor would be rescinded by the company in light of Ahmad’s blanket approval of the terrorist acts committed by Hamas in Israel, were referred to Jassy’s corporate communications team.
Brad Glasser from Amazon Strategic Communications responded by email and telephone to The Lion with contact information, but as of publication had not offered a response to The Lion’s questions.
The most vocal opposition to Ahmad’s current social media activity comes from those who are worried that Jewish students will feel threatened by the engineering teacher’s rhetoric.
On Oct. 8, Ahmad said on X that anyone critical of “Palestine resistance, and definitely anything indicating support [for Israel] will instantly get you removed and blacklisted by me.” He added that none of the acts taken by Hamas, including the butchering of innocent children, should be condemned.
“Will Jewish students in your class be instantly ‘removed and blacklisted’ if they indicate support for Israel?” asked one X user.
Added another user, “No educator should ever feel this confident and safe in their job, to spew Genocidal hate publicly in this manner.”
Corey A. DeAngelis, a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children and a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, called on Ahmed to delete his X account.
Ahmad called attempts by the New York Post to draw attention to his social media comments “doxing,” because they link to his public comments on X, which also contain items such as his work history.
“They targeted and DOXed me,” Ahmad tweeted about the Post story. “I am considering legal action against both the writers and the tabloid.”
Last week, Harvard students who signed a letter in support of Hamas were greeted by a mobile billboard on campus, placed by a media watchdog, that contained the names of students who signed the pro-terror letters. At least one brick was thrown at the truck toting the mobile electronic billboard, reports the New York Post.
The Lion’s emails to Ahmad requesting a statement weren’t returned prior to publication.