Almontaser was forced by the Department of Education and the Mayor of the City of New York to resign after a controversy arose over a T-shirt created by "Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media", an organization that ran its youth program from office space at Saba: The Association of Yemeni Americans, of which Almontaser is a board member. The T-shirt had the words, "Intifada NYC" on it, which, according to the "New York Post", was "apparently a call for a Gaza-style uprising in the Big Apple".