WESTFIELD — Sahar Aziz, the vice president of the Westfield Board of Education (BOE), is seeking punitive damages and a dismissal in response to an amended complaint filed against her with the state School Ethics Commission last month. The complaint, filed by The Deborah Project on behalf of resident Stephanie Siegel, alleges that Ms. Aziz has, while serving as an elected representative of the board, utilized her personal social media to perpetuate anti-Semitic sentiments and ideologies.
The amended complaint states that Ms. Aziz violated the Code of Ethics for School Board Members by frequently tweeting and re-tweeting content pertaining to Islam, Palestine and the Jewish community without differentiating her own opinions from those of the BOE as a whole. The complaint alleges, “over and over again, this board of education member has spoken publicly — not on her private Facebook page, but using her bully pulpit while a New Jersey education official — to attack the Jewish people, advancing vituperation utilizing Nazi terminology, invoking the Jewish commitment to Zion as proof that Jews believe themselves to be the master race.”
