Dozens of Chicago City Council members are calling on the newly-appointed president of the Chicago Public School Board, Reverend Mitchell Ikenna Johnson, to resign after overtly antisemitic social media posts were disclosed. 

“We are deeply troubled by antisemitic and pro-Hamas comments made by Rev. Mitchell Ikenna Johnson, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s newly appointed school board president,” 26 aldermen — more than half of the council’s members — wrote in a joint letter on Wednesday. “We call on Rev. Johnson to apologize and step down from his position immediately,” they added. 

“Since October 7, 2023, Rev. Johnson has posted frequently on social media about the conflict between Israel and Hamas,” the aldermen continued. “His comments have crossed major red lines into overt antisemitism, both in his explicit support for Hamas and his insistence on collectively blaming all Jews for Israel’s military actions.”

Soon after Reverend Johnson was elevated to president, an article published in Jewish Insider detailing his antisemitic offenses went viral online. The damning article draws evidence from posts on Reverend Johnson’s own Facebook account, which includes him comparing Zionists to Nazis and praising Hamas. 

“The Nazi Germans’ ideology has been adopted by the Zionist Jews,” he wrote in February. In March: “I have been saying this since October 2023. People have an absolute right to attack their oppressors by any means necessary.” 

He even appeared to threaten his Jewish colleagues in a post he made in December, which read: “My Jewish colleagues appear drunk with the Israeli power and will live to see their payment. It will not be nice and I care not how and what you call me.” Numerous other antisemitic comments are listed in the Jewish Insider article. 

“Rev. Johnson’s social media posts are antisemitic, offensive and dangerous,” the midwest regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, David Goldenberg, told Jewish Insider on Wednesday. “Does Mayor Johnson think Jewish families will feel safe sending their kids to a CPS school whose Board Chair openly expresses hate and contempt toward the Jewish community?”

Reverend Johnson was brought into the Chicago Board of Education after seven members resigned in early October over budgeting disagreements with the mayor, Brandon Johnson. 

The mayor has already found himself in hot water with Chicago’s Jewish community over his various actions regarding Israel’s war in Gaza, including his decision in January to cast a tie-breaking vote in a city-wide ceasefire resolution. Then, in August, he referred to the war against Hamas as “genocidal.” The only Jewish alderman at Chicago, Debra Silverstein, said back in April, “I do not feel that the Jewish community feels that he’s got our back.” 

The mayor became further embroiled in controversy on Tuesday after he released a statement offering “thoughts and prayers” to the victim of a city shooting, without mentioning that the victim was an orthodox Jew walking to a synagogue. In contrast, after the murder of a 6-year-old Palestinian American in 2023 at Chicago, he was quick to denounce the attack as a “despicable hate crime.” 

Reverend Johnson’s appointment, Mr. Goldenberg told Jewish Insider, marks “the latest example of the mayor elevating and surrounding himself with individuals with a history of enabling antisemitism and expressing views out of touch with the mainstream Jewish community. Troubling is an understatement.”

Reverend Johnson has not yet released a statement addressing the letter.