NYC Teacher Faces Backlash Over Antisemitic Messi Post
Left 50%
Center 0%
Right 50%
1 left · 0 center · 1 right
What happened
On July 19, Maysa Jarara, a math teacher at Park Slope Collegiate in Brooklyn, shared a Facebook post from an account named “Maysa” depicting Argentine soccer player Lionel Messi with a distorted face, an enlarged nose, and a Jewish skullcap, crying and rubbing his hands, and wrote, “The look on his face is priceless.” The New York Post identified similarities between that drawing and the “Happy Merchant” meme, which uses an exaggerated Jewish figure to promote stereotypes about dishonesty and financial manipulation. Moshe Spern, president of United Jewish Teachers, said Jarara had “crossed a major line by trafficking in classic antisemitic tropes that cast Jews as greedy and scheming,” and Karen Feldman, who heads the New York City Public Schools Alliance, called it “deeply disturbing” that a teacher “entrusted with educating children” was “publicly sharing inflammatory, biased, and historically misleading posts about Israel and the Jewish people.” Jarara’s social media also included an image of an Israeli flag marked with blood and an Instagram post on October 7 showing a man in a keffiyeh and a woman in a hijab dancing near a fire, captioned, “And we love life, and we can live it in a way.” A public payroll listing put her 2025 wages at $140,016; the provided accounts describe criticism from Jewish education advocates and online commenters but do not report a disciplinary outcome.
Sourcing check · Fully on the record · 2 articles
1 of 1 article cites a named source for the story. It was on the record from the first report.
What these terms mean and how they're counted
- On the record · names a source 1 of 1
- On the record means the article cites a source by name for the story's main claim: a person, or an institution speaking officially, such as a company statement or a named agency's spokesperson. The opposite is an unnamed source. The count is how many of the counted articles cite at least one such source; the names are everyone named across them, each once however the articles spell it. Here: Maysa Jarara, Moshe Spern and Karen Feldman
- Primary evidence · cites a document or data 0 of 1
- Primary evidence means the article cites a record you could check yourself: a court filing or ruling, a dataset or report, a recording or transcript, an official statement or press release, market data. A quote is not a document. The count is how many articles cite one. Here: None cited.
- Credits another outlet 0 of 1
- The article says the story comes from another outlet's reporting (“first reported by Reuters”). Those articles relay the story; they are not independent confirmation. Here: Each article presents its own reporting.
- Unnamed sources 0 of 1
- The main claim is attributed to people who are not identified: “people familiar with the matter”, “officials said”. The count is how many articles do this.
- How it developed
- When the first report landed and whether it named anyone; when the first named source and the first document appeared. Here: First report Oct 20, 00:40 UTC by Breitbart, naming its source.
- Not counted 1
- Opinion, analysis and video pieces, and articles too short to assess. Every count above is out of the counted articles. An article republished under a new headline is one article.
This is about who is cited, not whether the story is true. Each source below says what it names. How we count
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Left-leaning coverage never names the teacher or the Messi caricature and instead treats the story as a high school fight over an "intifada" post. Right-leaning coverage identifies Maysa Jarara as a math teacher at Park Slope Collegiate and describes a drawing of Messi wearing a Jewish skullcap. Without those details, a reader of Politico's headline cannot tell that a public employee was accused of posting a classic antisemitic image.
Right-leaning coverage leads with a teacher who "crossed a major line," putting the employee's post and antisemitic tropes first. Left-leaning coverage leads with a high school under backlash and leaves the educator unnamed. One account is a personnel story. The other is an institutional slogan fight.
Did the city investigate Jarara, and is she still in the classroom?
Bottom line
Politico never names Maysa Jarara or Messi. Breitbart never uses the word intifada, so the two audiences are not even arguing about the same alleged post.
The receipts — 5 facts one side's coverage lacks
- Maysa Jarara, a math teacher at Park Slope Collegiate in Brooklyn, shared a picture of Messi with a distorted face, Jewish skullcap, enlarged nose, and rubbing hands
- Headline frames the episode as an NYC high school facing backlash over an intifada post
- Jarara's 2025 annual wages totaled $140,016
- The picture was identified as similar to the Happy Merchant meme, an exaggerated Jewish figure used to promote stereotypes about dishonesty and financial manipulation
- Moshe Spern, president of United Jewish Teachers, said Jarara trafficked in tropes that cast Jews as greedy and scheming
The Left View
Politico frames the episode as an institutional controversy, presenting an “NYC high school” as facing “backlash over [an] ‘intifada’ post,” which locates the dispute at the school level and describes the contested material as intifada-related political speech rather than as a named teacher’s antisemitic caricature of Lionel Messi.
The Right View
Breitbart presents Jarara as a public-school teacher who “crossed a major line” by circulating an antisemitic Messi image aligned with the Happy Merchant meme’s stereotypes of Jewish greed and scheming. It foregrounds Spern’s charge of “classic antisemitic tropes that cast Jews as greedy and scheming” and Feldman’s statement that an educator was sharing “inflammatory, biased, and historically misleading posts about Israel and the Jewish people,” and it notes her other Israel-related posts, her six-figure salary, and commenters who asked whether she should be teaching and what example she sets for students.
Our Take (balanced)
The right-leaning account’s strongest argument is that the Messi image reproduced recognizable antisemitic visual codes—an enlarged nose, skullcap, and hand-rubbing associated with the Happy Merchant meme—supported by Spern’s on-the-record claim that Jarara trafficked in “classic antisemitic tropes that cast Jews as greedy and scheming” and by Feldman’s description of the posts as “inflammatory, biased, and historically misleading.” The left-leaning source’s strongest available framing is that the story is backlash against a high school over an “intifada” post, placing the dispute in political speech and an institution rather than in an individual teacher’s antisemitic caricature. The central unresolved tension is whether the episode is defined by a teacher’s use of antisemitic caricature, as the right-leaning coverage documents in detail, or by backlash against a school over intifada-related political speech, as the left-leaning headline frames it.
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