TERROR HIGH? Republicans Slam Spanberger’s History Teaching at ‘Saudi-Funded School Tied to Terrorism,’ Hamas

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Republicans are again condemning Virginia Democrat gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger for her history teaching at an Islamic school funded by Saudi Arabia and tied to Hamas, which graduated students who went on to commit acts of terror.

“Abigail Spanberger can’t be trusted,” Peyton Vogel, press secretary for Spanberger’s Republican opponent Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, told The Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday. “While Winsome Earle-Sears wore the uniform to defend America, Spanberger worked for a Saudi-funded school tied to terrorism. Virginians deserve a governor who stands with our country and our Commonwealth.”

Earle-Sears served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1983 to 1986. Spanberger worked at the CIA from 2006 to 2014. She taught at the Islamic Saudi Academy as a substitute English teacher for two semesters in 2002-2003, while undergoing a background check for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, where she worked before joining the CIA.

The Republican Party of Virginia tied Spanberger’s brief teaching career to her stance on Jay Jones, the Democrat candidate for attorney general, who sent text messages fantasizing about shooting the Republican speaker of the House of Delegates. While Jones apologized for the remarks and Spanberger condemned the texts, she has stopped short of demanding that he drop out of the race, which many Republicans have demanded.

“Fake Moderate Abigail Spanberger’s failure to denounce the policies and activities of the Islamic Saudi Academy where she taught—what some have called ‘Terror High’—is yet more evidence of her unwillingness to take accountability for the radical company that she keeps,” the party told The Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday.

“We have seen this lack of moral character again in recent days as Spanberger has failed to call on Democrat Attorney General nominee Jay Jones to drop out of the race following text messages showing that he wished death on his political opponents and their children, as well as reporting that he hoped police officers would be killed,” the party added. “Virginians simply cannot trust Abigail Spanberger to make sound judgements and keep them safe.” 

Jay Greene, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation‘s Center for Education Policy, expressed concerns about Spanberger’s history.

“I think her being a teacher at a radical Islamic school is quite alarming,” Greene told The Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday. “She would have to have known the extremist views being taught. And she did this job as an adult while waiting for clearance to start work at the CIA.”

“If she was mature enough to be entrusted with protecting our country, this participation in extremist indoctrination cannot be dismissed as a youthful indiscretion,” Greene added.

‘Terror High’

As Jerry Dunleavy reported at Just The News, news outlets had reported the Islamic Saudi Academy’s terrorism ties and concerning textbook passages about Jews before Spanberger took a job there.

In March 1997, The Washington Post reported that Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook, the first chairman of Hamas’ political bureau, had sent his kids to the academy. The State Department designated Hamas a foreign terrorist group later that year.

In October 1998, the Post reported that Ismail Selim Elbarasse worked as a comptroller for the academy before he got arrested for refusing to appear before a grand jury investigating money laundering. Agents were reviewing the funds Elbarasse handled, including bank accounts he shared with Marzook. A search of Elbarasse’s northern Virginia home in 2004 provided evidence in the terrorism financing Holy Land Foundation case.

In March 2002, CNN, The Washington Post, and others reported that Israel had denied entry to Mohammed Osman Idris and Mohammed el-Yacoubi, both former academy students, in December 2001. The Israeli government suspected they were planning a suicide attack in Jerusalem. While the men did not ultimately face charges for any such attack, their story might have given Spanberger pause when she considered teaching at the school.

In February 2002, The Washington Post reported that the academy’s textbooks tell students that “the Day of Judgment can’t come until Jesus Christ returns to Earth, breaks the cross and converts everyone to Islam, and until Muslims start attacking Jews.” An 11th grade textbook reportedly stated that one sign of the Day of Judgment will be that Jews will hide behind trees, and the trees will say, “Oh Muslim, Oh servant of God, here is a Jew hiding behind me. Come here and kill him.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if some teachers are sometimes anti-American or anti-Semitic,” one student’s mother told The Post. “But I don’t want it to be that way.”

Multiple students told the Post that teachers instruct them to “shun and even to dislike Christians, Jews and Shiite Muslims.”

The Washington Post reported in 2008 that the academy used textbooks “that compared Jews and Christians to apes and pigs” as recently as 2006.

The terrorism ties would continue after Spanberger’s teaching stint.

In 2005, a jury convicted the school’s 1998 valedictorian, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, of plotting with Al Qaeda operatives to kill President George W. Bush and hijack airplanes. In 2009, authorities arrested 2003 graduate Raed Abdul-Rahman Alsaif for trying to board a plane in Tampa with a concealed butcher knife.

Spanberger’s campaign did not respond to The Daily Signal’s repeated requests for comment about how much she knew about the school before teaching there and whether she would condemn the school’s terror ties now.

How Spanberger’s History Came Out

The Virginia Republican Party first published Spanberger’s connection to the Saudi academy in 2018 after the Republican opposition research firm America Rising obtained it in a job application Spanberger submitted to the Postal Service. The Postal Service later admitted it should not have turned over Spanberger’s application in response to America Rising’s Freedom of Information Act request, The Washington Post reported.

“I am proud of my background and my service, and not ashamed of the information I submitted,” Spanberger wrote in a cease-and-desist letter that year. “I have nothing to hide in my background,” she added, but noted that she was concerned about her privacy, particularly about the potential disclosure of her Social Security Number.

The Islamic Saudi Academy closed in 2016, and the King Abdullah Academy that replaced it closed earlier this year. The Daily Signal reached out to the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington, D.C., which funded both academies, for comment.

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