Jewish family flees Pa. county after being blamed for Christmas play cancellation
PHILADELPHIA _ A Jewish family has fled Lancaster County, Pa., after the cancellation of a fifth-grade production of "A Christmas Carol" was partially blamed on them by conservative news outlets.
The Hempfield School District said the extra time the non-curricular event required and not complaints about the line "God bless us, every one!" prompted cancellation, according to a story on PennLive.
The play has been a holiday tradition at the Centerville Elementary School for more than three decades. In September, the Jewish parents asked if their child could be excused from the play, and were told yes. After the decision to cancel the play in November, their child was harassed at school, according to a story on LancasterOnline.
When news stories, which portray the school's move as part of a "war on Christmas," broke on Fox and Breitbart News Network, the school received more than 200 complaints.
When the parents saw the reader comments to the Breitbart story suggesting their address should be published, they pulled their child from school and temporarily left the area, according to the LancasterOnline story.
"There's no way we're going to take a chance after the pizza incident," they told the website.
On Dec. 5, Edgar M. Welch of Salisbury, N.C., was arrested after he fired an assault rifle in a pizza restaurant in northwest Washington, D.C., after reading a fake news story that said suggested Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring out of the location.
Deputy Managing Editor Ezra Dulis of Breitbart News stated that nothing the website "reported or linked to gave any information to lead readers to discover the identity of this family."
_The Philadelphia Inquirer
