Teens dress as KKK members for Purim

A Friday Purim celebration at a Mevasseret Zion high school turned ugly when several teens chose to dress up as members of the Ku Klux Klan, while a number of others bound their hands together and posed as African-Americans.

A picture from the event was uploaded on a student’s Facebook profile and was later picked up by Mizbala.

One of the students who claimed to have taken part in the Purim party said he had “no regrets” over his controversial costume. Another student said that the the incident was of no more consequence than choosing to dress up as Iran’s former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

For the most part, however, the images were met with strong condemnation by many of the students’ friends and others online.

“There is no doubt that this is a shameful provocation that displays insensitivity,” one Facebook user wrote.

“I am ready to make a bet that if this were a picture of Nazis’ instead of KKK members and instead of bound up black people it involved Jewish prisoners, social networks and the media would be much more outraged now,” said another.

The school’s principal said she did not understand what was so wrong with the students’ behavior.

“The costume created an interesting and important discussion,” Rina Even-Tov said, according to Channel 2 News.

“This act essentially created a platform for discussion, it is no different from a Nazi costume,” she concluded.