PINE BUSH – The publication of an article entitled "Swastikas, Slurs and Torment in Town's Schools — Pine Bush NY School District Faces Accusations of Anti-Semitism" in the New York Times last Friday has set off a seismic 21st century media-blast in our readership area, and shook local towns and the sprawling Pine Bush School District.

Almost immediately three threads of discussion and argument arose... along with the discovery that there was nothing new being reported in the Times article. Which ended up making IT the news, causing a number of reverberations of its own accord.

Immediately following the story's publication came a furious dissent. In the streets of Pine Bush, in the supermarket, in the Valley Supreme and on Facebook, people denounced the article and stood up for the school district. Many took to noting specifically how they had passed through Pine Bush schools and never encountered anti-Semitism.

Second came questions as to why this article was published now, and on the front page of the New York Times. Could it be linked to the controversial development in Bloomingburg, now becoming known as Kiryas Yatev Lev, and the developer Shalom Lamm? The developer and his father, Rabbi Norman Lamm, were assumed to have the power to pull strings and order up an article defaming Pine Bush, creating a trial by media that would make it difficult, if not impossible for the school district to possibly bring a lawsuit against the development and the Village of Bloomingburg.

When Governor Andrew Cuomo jumped into the fray Friday afternoon, ordering an investigation of the charges against the school district, conspiracy theorists had their smoking gun... Or so they believed. Was Cuomo simply responding to the powerful pull of a major interest group?

By late afternoon, vans from CBS, ABC and NBC, plus other New York City channels, were driving around Pine Bush. They had come in search of, well, who knows exactly? The article had brought up Pine Bush's past KKK involvement, something that was active in the 1940s and 50s, perhaps, but has long since been forgotten by most. What the TV news people found, however, were active groups from the Pine Bush Concerned Citizens and the Rural Community Coalition who wanted to bring the story of the 396 town home development in Bloomingburg to their attention.

Which hadn't been mentioned by the Times, the governor, or any of the television news teams.

More slowly, a third thread also emerged as some Pine Bush folks acknowledged that in their memories there had been racial issues involving Jews and African Americans. Moreover, it was revealed that as recently as five years ago, "joke" KKK membership cards were being handed around in the high school.

That period, it turns out, was also the time mentioned in the lawsuit.

The big bad days of any organized KKK activity in Pine Bush ended before Elvis went into the army in the late-1950s. Yes, members of that organization had continued to live in the area — and their leader, Earl Schoonmaker, was fired from Eastern Correctional Facility in Napanoch, allegedly for distributing hate literature in the early 1970s. His wife taught in Pine Bush schools. And in the lawsuit, it is alleged that even this year, 2013, a student at Pine Bush High School saw a small group of other students "goose stepping and high-fiving with Nazi salutes in the hallway" while other incidents of anti-Semitic abuse from 2010 and 2011 have been alleged and entered as evidence in the ongoing lawsuit.

Quoted in the New York Times, newly retired PBSD superintendent Philip Steinberg — now a defendant in the lawsuit alleging failure by the district to stop anti-Semitic activities — said in an email entered as evidence in the case, "I have said I will meet with your daughters and I will, but your expectations of changing inbred prejudice may be a bit unrealistic."

Meanwhile a steady drip, drip, drip of revelations about the development in Bloomingburg continued as reports were filed by Steve Israel in the Times Herald-Record concerning possible corruption around the issue of approvals for the water and sewer district created for the development. Online, fresh discoveries were posted up, derived from Jewish media such as the 5 Towns Jewish Times, where the Rabbi Gershon Tannenbaum explicitly referred to the Winterton Road development as Kiryas Yatev Lev and noted how the Satmar Hasidim of Brooklyn are planning to take up the 396 townhomes.

Meanwhile, Orange County officially repudiated the alleged anti-Semitism and backed up the governor's call for an investigation.

On Sunday evening, hundreds of residents came out as the sun set, despite a biting cold wind, and lined up along Route 302 between the high school and Crispell Middle School to protest against the perceived unfair coverage. Naturally, there were plenty of TV trucks on hand, and ABC TV sent a tall, young African American to do their interviews, a choice that spoke to diversity and a challenge in the current situation. While he was doing a good job, and worked the crowd thoroughly, on the whole the TV news channels struggled to make sense of the two stories, either ignoring the Bloomingburg side entirely or conflating it somewhat with the lawsuit against Pine Bush schools in confusing ways.

What are the pertinent new facts as far as we can find them?

First — the New York Times' article's author, Benjamin Weiser, covers federal courts. The lawsuit against the school district was filed in New York Southern District, in White Plains, before a federal judge. Asked about the timing of the publication of his report, Weiser said, "The piece was reported in the early fall. It ran when it was done and there was space for it. My reporting and the article I wrote had nothing to do with anything but the newsworthiness of this story."

The case against the Pine Bush School District, superintendent Steinberg and others — which we first reported in these pages in Spring of 2012 — was joined by Public Justice, a national organization of lawyers that works to battle discrimination and racism, among other things. Last autumn, their co-counsel on the Pine Bush case, Adele P. Kimmel, told the Shawangunk Journal, "Public Justice joined this case because it is a striking example of the failure of school districts across our country to prevent and respond appropriately to bullying."

On Friday, Kimmel was contacted again by the Shawangunk Journal and she gave an update on the situation.

"We have just finished discovery on this case. The next step will be that the school district will file a motion for a summary judgment to dismiss the case, saying that as a matter of law, they were not indifferent to the facts of the case," she said. "We are opposing that, and that will happen in the next couple of months. No trial date has been set as yet."

Added Benjamin Weiser of the New York Times, "We will continue to watch the court case and see how it develops."