A New York City public school teacher is facing calls for his dismissal after a report revealed he had praised Yahya al-Sinwar, the Hamas leader who masterminded the October 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel, in a group chat with fellow members of a Brooklyn food cooperative.
Damien Neva, 48, wrote “Long live Yahya al-Sinwar” in a November 2024 Signal thread that included other anti-Israel members of the Park Slope Food Coop, according to reporting by the New York Post. The message came roughly a year after Hamas terrorists crossed into Israel from Gaza, killing hundreds and carrying out rapes and kidnappings.
The Post reported that the message surfaced as part of a lawsuit filed by Jewish members of the coop after its board voted to ban the sale of Israeli goods. Neva led the internal campaign to impose that boycott, and in the same group chat he reportedly wrote, “That lot does not have the votes to block our campaign,” a remark the Post reported was a clear reference to Jewish and pro-Israel members of the coop.
From Fashion to the Classroom
Neva did not arrive at teaching through a traditional path. The Post noted he had previously worked as a photographer, videographer, and social-media director at Next Management, a major modeling and talent agency whose roster has included figures such as Jessica Alba, Lana Del Rey, Pharrell Williams, and chef Mario Batali. In a since-deleted social media post, Neva described becoming a teacher only in the past year as the result of what he called an “enforced career change.”
His broader social media history is also drawing scrutiny. According to the Post, one post showed a Star of David superimposed on the Statue of Liberty, which the report characterized as an apparent suggestion that the United States is controlled by Israel. Another depicted a sticker bearing the word Israel being shredded.
The Jewish civil rights group Stop Antisemitism weighed in after Neva was hired, writing in a post that a teacher who reportedly praised “the former Hamas leader and architect of the October 7 massacre” now stood in front of students. The group noted that roughly 157,000 Jewish children live in Brooklyn and asked readers to imagine being one of them in Neva’s classroom.
Calls for Removal
Dov Hikind, a former Brooklyn assemblyman who founded Americans Against Antisemitism, has urged the New York City Department of Education — now under Mayor Zohran Mamdani — to enforce what he framed as another career change, arguing that a man who glorified Sinwar has no place near students, particularly Jewish ones.
“Sinwar designed what happened on Oct. 7 — the massacre, the barbarism, the rapes and cruelty,” Hikind said. “The idea that anyone connected to education — who believes Sinwar is a hero — could be teaching in the classroom is incomprehensible. How would we react if a teacher said Adolf Hitler was a great leader? This teacher needs to lose his job. He needs to be fired — period.”
A Coop Divided
Neva’s push to bar Israeli products at the Park Slope Food Coop initially succeeded, but it quickly drew a legal challenge from Jewish and pro-Israel members. The coop, which emphasizes organic and locally sourced food, describes itself as “committed to diversity and equality” and pledges to “oppose discrimination in any form.”
As the Washington Free Beacon reported, the lawsuit alleges the coop repeatedly violated its own stated mission, citing a pattern of singling out “Zionists,” Jewish members, and people with ties to Israel “for criticism and exclusion.”
In one instance described in the suit, a member working at the coop as part of a membership agreement wore a shirt reading “Peace, Love, and Israel.” Another member, according to the filing, called that person a “racist” and a “genocide supporter.” The member in the pro-Israel shirt was suspended, the lawsuit states, while the person who harassed them faced no discipline.
Tensions kept rising. By September 2025, the Free Beacon reported, the coop’s official publication carried a letter accusing one Jewish member of associating with an “extremist Zionist faction and IDF apologist” and of “intellectual depravity,” being “morally abhorrent,” and “spiritually disfigured.”
The lawsuit contends that anti-Israel members bypassed the coop’s own rules to push their agenda through. “The Boycott was adopted after Defendants disregarded coop’s Governing Documents, altered voting procedures and thresholds without the required bylaw amendments, suppressed debate, and treated an advisory General Meeting vote as binding,” the filing reads.
The dispute now extends well beyond a single Brooklyn grocery store, touching on questions about what speech and activism are acceptable for the city employees entrusted with teaching its children. There has been no public indication from the Department of Education about whether it is reviewing Neva’s employment or the messages attributed to him.
Source: www.dailywire.com — https://www.dailywire.com/news/nyc-teacher-praised-hamas-terrorist-behind-october-7-massacre