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( JTA ) — The president of Chicago’s public school board resigned Thursday after only a week on the job following two days of backlash over his history of antisemitic social media posts.
Rev. Mitchell Ikenna Johnson had defied calls to resign just a day before, even as a growing share of the city council and Illinois’ Jewish Democratic governor J.B. Pritzker called for him to do so. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (no relation) had initially expressed support for Johnson before announcing Thursday that the president had left at his own request.
The mayor called Johnson’s posts “not only hurtful but deeply disturbing.”
Jewish Insider first reported Tuesday on Johnson’s posts , which included referring to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel as “resistance against oppression.” He also wrote, “The Nazi Germans’ ideology has been adopted by the Zionist Jews,” and accused pro-Israel Jews of joining “with the alt-right community.”