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FORMER PRINCIPAL OF ARABIC SCHOOL WANTS JOB BACK   By YOAV GONEN and TATIANA DELIGIANNAKIS   October 16, 2007 --The former principal of the city's controversial Arabic academy launched an 11th-hour effort yesterday to get her old job back - and then slapped her would-be employer with a free speech lawsuit. MORE: How The Post Reported The StoryDebbie Almontaser submitted paperwork to be reinstated as principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy, which she founded, in Brooklyn minutes before the application deadline expired. She then announced she is suing the Department of Education over what she called her "forced"...

Supporters of a controversial new Brooklyn academy focused on Arab culture and language said yesterday that the public school's former principal is considering legal action in the wake of her resignation under pressure last month. At a rally in lower Manhattan yesterday, politicians and advocates called for the reinstatement of Debbie Almontaser, who resigned as head of the Khalil Gibran International Academy. Almontaser stepped down four days after The Post ran an article in which she defended T-shirts bearing the imprint "Intifada NYC." "She is not speaking publicly about her resignation, but she is consulting with an experienced civil-rights lawyer,"...

HERE we go again. As stu dents filed nervously into Brooklyn's Khalil Gibran International Academy yesterday, a key adviser to the school was defining the meaning of the loaded term jihad. "Struggle," Imam Al-Hajj Talib Abdur-Rashid, of the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood in Harlem, told me. Say what? To most New Yorkers, including me, jihad means only one thing - holy war. "And that's not my definition," the imam insisted. "That's a common definition - struggle on various levels." What on earth are they teaching at this school? One thing they don't seem to be teaching at Gibran Academy -...

CNN, in their day-long reporting on Monday about the opening day for a controversial publicly-funded Arabic-language school in New York City, sympathized with the school and its supporters, and helped denigrate its opponents. On "American Morning" and throughout the day on Monday on their "Newsroom" program, CNN aired a report from correspondent Richard Roth on the Khalil Gibran International Academy, whose curriculum will focus on teaching "Arabic language and culture" (as detailed in a CNSNews.com report last week). The report focused on Carmen Colon, a mother and "community activist" in Brooklyn (a detail not mentioned in Roth’s report) who pulled...

NEW YORK (CNN) -- A public school in New York that will teach Arabic language and culture opened Tuesday amid accusations that it will impose a radical Islamist agenda in its classrooms. About a dozen security guards and police officers were on patrol Tuesday when the Brooklyn school opened, mainly to shepherd the throngs of reporters covering the event. Much of the criticism was directed at the school's Arab-American founding principal, Debbie Almontaser. Two local tabloids reported claims she had ties to Islamic extremist organizations. The controversy reached a fever pitch when Almontaser was quoted defending the use of the...

The Culture Wars: Former Christians Running AwayPosted Aug. 28, 2007 4:25 PM || by Dr. Jeff Mirus || category Commentary The Thomas More Law Center gets involved in a lot of striking cases. Yesterday the non-profit legal group announced that it will represent citizens opposed to the opening of an Islamic academy by the New York City Department of Education. The Khalil Gibran International Academy is slated to open with public funds on September 4th for the purpose of immersing students in Islamic culture. The Academy’s Board of Advisors includes fundamentalist Islamist imams and other members with ties to militant...

Ann Arbor, Aug 28, 2007 / 09:13 am (CNA).- The New York City Department of Education approved a proposal to open a publicly funded Muslim school. The decision, however, is not going by unchallenged.The Thomas More Law Center announced yesterday that it will represent a group of citizens opposed to the Sept. 4 opening of Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA). The Law Center will act as co-counsel with attorney David Yerushalmi, who filed a Freedom of Information Act request on July 23, asking for more details about KGIA. Yerushalmi’s requests have gone unanswered to date.The Law Center claims the school...

Homeland Security: Oops, New York officials hired a pro-jihad radical to run a controversial new Arabic academy. The principal quit after critics outed her. What else don't officials know? Protesters last week picketed outside the public school, demanding the city abandon plans to open it next month. Local assemblymen have fired off angry letters to the New York City education department to protest the school's opening. But it hasn't deterred PC officials, who say they're "confident" the Khalil Gibran International Academy will not become the Islamic "madrassa" that critics fear. Their confidence is curious. Just this month, they saw the...

NEW YORK - Supporters of an Arabic-themed academy are calling for the reinstatement of the public school's founding principal, who resigned amid a frenzy of negative publicity after she defended the word "intifada" on T-shirts. About 200 people demonstrated in support of the Khalil Gibran International Academy on Monday night... They carried signs that read "NYC needs multi-cultural education" and "The Torah and the Koran both teach peace." Many were Muslims themselves, while others were Jewish. They shared outrage over the political flaying that led Deborah Almontaser, the founding principal, to resign earlier this month. "I thought this was not...

A planned Arabic-themed public school in Brooklyn has prompted polarized reactions. Critics warned Monday that students could be "indoctrinated" with radical Islamic beliefs and supporters called such statements "racist." The Khalil Gibran International Academy has generated controversy almost from the start... The schools first principal resigned after criticism over her affiliation with a group that sells tee-shirts with the word "intifada" on them. Debbie Almontaser called it quits after she failed to condemn the use of the highly charged word, an Arabic term for the Palestinian uprising against Israel... New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn)said the school's children could be...

The Department of Education "spit" in the face of Arabs with the appointment of a Jewish woman as principal of the city's new Arabic-themed school, a Muslim activist said yesterday. (snip) "It's like somebody spit in our face as Arabs," said Rimawi, a founder of the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and an organizer with the Arab Muslim American Federation. (snip) "This is no respect to our community. Where is the respect?" he asked. Salzberg is an Orthodox Jew who had worked to develop the curriculum at the Khalil Gibran International Academy. Her predecessor, Debbie Almontaser, a devout Muslim...

When Dhabah ("Debbie") Almontaser resigned on August 10 as principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy, her action culminated a remarkable grass-roots campaign in which concerned citizens successfully criticized the New York City establishment. But the fight continues. The next step is to get the academy itself canceled. The five-month effort to get Almontaser removed began in March with analyses (including one by this writer) pointing out the inherent political and religious problems in an Arabic-language school. By June, a concerned group of New York City residents coalesced with specialists (including my colleague, R. John Matthies) to create the "Stop...

Now that Dhabah aka Debbie Almontaser has resigned as the principal-designate of the Khalil Gibran International Academy and has been replaced by a Jewish woman, Danielle Salzberg, some assume the opposition to the school itself is over. That supposition would be false. The demand for information from the Department of Education continues. The big question is why isn't the ACLU involved in this issue? The last I heard, this legal civil liberty organization was seeking removal of a cross in a Louisiana courtroom and threatening a lawsuit in Connecticut because a public school was using a cathedral for its commencement...

The story of the public school in Brooklyn that is poised to become a taxpayer-underwritten, Islamist recruitment and indoctrination center took a dramatic turn last week. The principal-designate of the so-called Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA), Dhabah "Debbie" Almontaser, was forced to resign after she defended a T-shirt emblazoned with the words "Intifada NYC" — making clear her radical ideology and proclivity for dissembling. The question is no longer whether Ms. Almontaser was... determined to use the KGIA to advance her theo-political agenda. Her claim ... was so preposterous — not to say alarming — that her supporters, notably Mayor...

Foes of a new publicly funded Arabic-themed school in New York worry it will draw students from a radical mosque tied to terrorism and become an incubator for young jihadists. The Khalil Gibran International Academy, scheduled to open next month in Brooklyn, is located three blocks from the Masjid al-Farooq mosque frequented by one of the terrorists involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The Boerum Hill mosque counts among past imams: Blind Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, who is serving a federal prison sentence for conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks. Fawaz Abu Damra, who has preached...

The embattled principal of an Arabic-themed public school in New York resigned Friday after coming under fire for failing to condemn the use of the highly charged word "intifada" on T-shirts. Debbie Almontaser was supposed to oversee the Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn. The city's Department of Education says it remains committed to launching the school in September. Almontaser's departure comes on the heels of an editorial flaying in the New York Post and an article this week that connected Almontaser to Arab Women Active in Art and Media. That group is selling shirts imprinted with the words "Intifada...

The controversial Khalil Gibran International Academy scheduled to open next month has attracted only a handful of Arabic-speaking students, The Post has learned. Just six Arabic speakers and one English-language learner out of 44 registered students have enrolled at the Brooklyn public academy that critics fear will become a city-funded Islamic school. "We didn't anticipate a full 50-50 split," said Department of Education spokeswoman Melody Meyer. The English-Arabic school was envisioned by Principal Debbie Almontaser as a multicultural institution serving grades 6-12 for native Arabic speakers and students wanting to learn the language. Students would become fluent in both languages...

NYC Principal at Center of 'Intifada' T-Shirt Controversy Resigns Friday , August 10, 2007 NEW YORK — A New York City principal who came under fire for controversial comments about an "intifada" T-shirt that seemed to condone terrorism has resigned. On Friday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg accepted the resignation of Debbie Almontaser, principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy, an English-Arabic school set to open next month in Brooklyn, N.Y. Almontaser had come under fire for comments she made to the New York Post about an "Intifada NYC" T-shirt that is sold by an activist group that shares an office with...

A Muslim school is opening in Brooklyn next month and guess who's paying for it. Well, that didn't take you very long, did it? You're right. The taxpayers. The very people whom so many radical Muslims want to kill are going to pay for a nice little Muslim school in New York. Try that with a Christian school and see how far you get. Wait! There's more! It seems that the principal (taxpayer paid, or course) of the Khalil Gibran International Academy, Dhabah "Debbie" Almontaser, is under more heat ... as if she wasn't already. A group called Arab Women...

The principal of an Arabic-language public school due to open next month is under fire for taking what several Jewish groups are condemning as a soft stance on the violent Palestinian Arab uprising known as the intifada. The principal, Debbie Almontaser, was quoted yesterday interpreting T-shirts that say "Intifada NYC" as not an endorsement of violence but rather "an opportunity for girls to express that they are part of New York City society ... and shaking off oppression." She followed the word's literal Arabic meaning, which is "struggle" or "uprising." In a statement late yesterday afternoon, Ms. Almontaser backed away...