Nick Bernardini
Overview
Nick Bernardini [Nicholaus Bernardini] is a Philadelphia high school teacher who has expressed support for Hamas terrorism, demonized Israel and engaged in anti-Israel activism in his role as a teacher. His activism and social media posts were in the wake of the October 7, 2023 attacks which left approximately 1,200 Israelis dead.As of August 2024, Bernardini was listed on the website of Samuel Fels High School as the “Social Studies/STC [school technology coordinator]/PFT [Philadelphia Federation of Teachers] Building Representative.” Samuel Fels High School is part of the School District of Philadelphia (SDP).
In November 2023, after Hamas terrorists murdered nearly 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, SDP offered teachers an anti-Israel professional development course. The curriculum claimed that Israel was carrying out the “colonization of Palestine” and that Israel’s war against Hamas was a “genocide in Gaza and the West Bank.”
The course was titled: “Decolonizing the Curriculum: Brief History of Palestine and the Creation of Israel: Contextualizing the Current Conflict and Genocide.” A summary on the SDP portal said teachers would be “better equipped to have conversations and facilitate lessons with their students” about Israel. After local news sites publicized the course, SDP removed it from the portal.
SDP continued to come under pressure from activist groups to teach anti-Israel material in K-12 classrooms, including groups representing teachers and parents. Two such groups were the Racial Justice Organizing Committee (RJOC) and the Philadelphia Educators for Palestine (PEFP), led by SDP high school teacher Keziah Ridgeway.
RJOC organized anti-Israel “teach-ins” in late 2023 and throughout 2024. RJOC also provided “Educator Lesson Plans” for teachers, listing as a resource the Teach Palestine Project, a pro-terror and anti-Israel teaching resource. In May 2024, PEFP called on SDP to meet six demands. Among them were: “to unequivocally condemn the ongoing genocide waged on the Palestinian people” and “to release a ceasefire resolution [with regard to Israel’s war against Hamas terrorists].”
The course was titled: “Decolonizing the Curriculum: Brief History of Palestine and the Creation of Israel: Contextualizing the Current Conflict and Genocide.” A summary on the SDP portal said teachers would be “better equipped to have conversations and facilitate lessons with their students” about Israel. After local news sites publicized the course, SDP removed it from the portal.
SDP continued to come under pressure from activist groups to teach anti-Israel material in K-12 classrooms, including groups representing teachers and parents. Two such groups were the Racial Justice Organizing Committee (RJOC) and the Philadelphia Educators for Palestine (PEFP), led by SDP high school teacher Keziah Ridgeway.
RJOC organized anti-Israel “teach-ins” in late 2023 and throughout 2024. RJOC also provided “Educator Lesson Plans” for teachers, listing as a resource the Teach Palestine Project, a pro-terror and anti-Israel teaching resource. In May 2024, PEFP called on SDP to meet six demands. Among them were: “to unequivocally condemn the ongoing genocide waged on the Palestinian people” and “to release a ceasefire resolution [with regard to Israel’s war against Hamas terrorists].”
SDP had been under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights since April 2024, after a group of over 200 parents filed a complaint against the district. The complaint alleged there was “persistent harassment and bullying of Jewish students” and “inflammatory anti-Jewish and anti-Israel messages on social media and even in the classroom” by teachers and administrators at schools across Philadelphia.
In June 2024, Bernardini expressed support on Facebook for SDP’s director of social studies curriculum Ismael Jimenez, who has expressed support for Hamas terrorism, denied Hamas war crimes and spread hatred of Israel and America. Bernardini wrote: “I’ve never met a person more dedicated to seeking justice in my whole life…I’ll stand with this man through any battle, he leads with a focus on humanity.”
As of September 2024, Bernardini’s Facebook bio said he was located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Support for Hamas Terrorism
On August 9, 2024, during Israel’s war against Hamas, Bernardini shared on Facebook a video of a speaker on a television talk show who said: “...Hamas are the ones who are willing to fight and willing to attack and willing to kill people to make their point.”On Saturday, October 7, 2023, approximately 2,900 heavily armed Hamas terrorists breached Israel’s border with Gaza. They executed numerous war crimes on civilians, including mass murder, beheadings of children, rape of men and women, torture, kidnappings and mutilation.
Hamas broadcast videos of their butchery on social media, often to victims’ accounts for families to see. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.” As of November 10, 2023, approximately 1,200 Israelis, the vast majority of them civilians, were murdered during the attacks. Hamas kidnapped 242 Israelis, including at least 30 children. At least 3,500 people were wounded, many severely.
A terrorist detained by Israel admitted he raped an Israeli woman when he broke into a kibbutz house during the October 7, 2023 attack. In March 2024, a former hostage of Hamas publicly stated she was sexually abused and tortured while in captivity.
For more information on the October 7, 2023 terror attacks, see the Canary Mission page on Hamas.
On December 7, 2023, Bernardini posted to Facebook a graphic that said: “You watched The Hunger Games, and sided with the resistance. / You watched Divergent, and sided with the resistance. / You read about history, and sided with the resistance. / When it’s fiction, you understand oppression. Why do you refuse to see it when it’s reality?”
Anti-Israel activists use the term “resistance” to refer to violence and terror perpetrated against Israeli civilians and their allies. It is used to glorify and encourage anti-Israel and anti-Semitic violence. Anti-Israel activists chant slogans such as: “Resistance by any means necessary!” and “Resistance is justified when people are occupied!” in response to terror attacks.
Demonizing Israel
On October 10, 2023, three days after Hamas terrorists committed their atrocities against Israelis, Bernardini shared on Facebook a series of maps popular among anti-Israel activists.The maps claim that lands once controlled by Britain, Egypt and Jordan as autonomous “Palestinian land” were purportedly stolen by Israel. In February 2016, publisher McGraw-Hill Education recalled copies of a college textbook containing the fraudulent maps. In October 2015, American cable news network MSNBC apologized for airing a similar series of maps and retracted them.
Anti-Israel Activism as a Teacher
As of August 2024, Bernardini expressed support for the Racial Justice Organizing Committee (RJOC), a group of activists and teachers whose goals include pushing an anti-Israel agenda in Philadelphia public schools.To promote their anti-Israel curriculum to “K-12 teachers and education professionals,” RJOC organized “teach-ins” in late 2023 and throughout 2024. RJOC also provided “Educator Lesson Plans” for teachers, listing as a resource the Teach Palestine Project, a pro-terror and anti-Israel teaching resource.
As of August 2024, Bernardini was also a member of the anti-Israel Philadelphia Educators for Palestine (PEFP), “a collective comprised of educators, parents, and community stakeholders from Philly.”
Accusing Israel [slide 2] of “genocide and continued land theft,” PEFP called on [slide 1] SDP to meet six demands. One demand [slide 5] was for the district to “condemn the ongoing genocide waged on the Palestinian people…” Another [slide 9] was that the district “allow for the facilitation of honest, critical pursuit of history…including the history of Palestine.”
Social Media and Weblinks
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/nick.bernardini.7
- Status:
- Professional
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- Last Modified:
- 06/23/2025
Photos & Screenshots
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