According to a report in the New York Daily News, a federal judge this week shot down a last-minute attempt by the former principal of a Brooklyn Arabic-language school to keep the city from selecting her successor.

Debbie Almontaser wanted the judge to delay the selection of a new principal for the Khalil Gibran International Academy, and order someone other than Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to oversee the process. Almontaser, who was forced to resign after a concerted campaign to denigrate her and tie her to terrorism, re-applied for the job in October, but was not among the four finalists.

Debbie Almontaser

In August, a story in the New York Post suggested Almontaser sided with a Muslim girls’ group distributing T-shirts that read “Intifada NYC.” In tearful testimony this week, Almontaser said she was trying to make a teaching point about the meaning of intifada when she explained to the reporter that its root translation was “shaking off oppression.” “She didn’t talk about T-shirts,” said Almontaser’s lawyer, Alan Levine, quoted in the Daily News story. “She was asked the definition of intifada.” Almontaser’s lawyers will ask a federal appeals court to overturn Judge Sidney Stein’s decision. Stein ruled that Almontaser’s free-speech rights could not have been violated since she was speaking as a school employee — not a private citizen — when she gave the interview. He also said she should have realized that her comments would be widely reported because there was a great deal of media interest in the school controversy.