Former San Diego Unified substitute teacher accused of posting antisemitic video about organ thefts
A roughly two-minute-and-20-second video a former San Diego Unified School District substitute teacher posted to social media is being called antisemitic by members of the Jewish community.
It starts off with the former teacher, Nasreen Atassi, talking about how the United States and Israeli airstrikes on Iran are part of a long-term plan.
But the claims of antisemitism stem from the final seconds of the video.
“I believe that Israel is hijacking protests to do the same B.S. they’re always doing, which is stealing from people. And that includes everything from goods and services, all the way down to their livers and kidneys and eyeballs,” Atassi says in the video.
The San Diego native says she’s not antisemitic. “I’m trying to draw attention to the hypocrisy of using Israel as some beacon of human rights. When, in fact, they’re involved in a genocide,” said Atassi.
“This wasn’t a critique about the Israeli government, this was just blatant, blood libel,” Atassi said.
The video was posted within the past month and was brought to the attention of Dar Halevy Feldman, a board member at the House of Israel in Balboa Park and head of the Faces of October 7th. She explained why blood libeling allegations are troubling.
“Jews were accused of using Christian blood for rituals. This is where it comes from. We’re over 300 years later, and we’re still dealing with the same stuff. We’re now being accused of stealing organs instead of stealing blood,” Feldman said.
Dar and others helped bring the video to the attention of Nasreen’s former employer, the San Diego Unified School District, since they had concerns about her influence over what students learned.
A spokesperson for the District said Nasreen was terminated in June of last year, before the video came out this year.
Nasreen said she worked for the district for three years as a substitute and special education teacher in multiple schools, including Roosevelt Middle School.
She said when she was teaching, she never let her personal views seep into the classroom.
“That is against the policy of the San Diego Unified School District,” said Atassi.
The Anti-Defamation League says longstanding accusations of Israeli organ harvesting re-emerged in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
An article they posted says in the 90s, a forensic institute took organs from corpses that included Israeli citizens and Palestinians, without permission from the families.
An Israeli state report found the institute stopped harvesting organs without permission, but stories of what happened continue to this day to be exaggerated.
“My hope is that people seek to uncover the truth instead of being manipulated by our ideologies and political agendas,” said Atassi, who cites the ADL article and others as her proof.
Meanwhile, members of the Jewish community are hoping people understand how damaging blood libeling is.
