Mideast War blowback

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Anti-Israel protesters raised Nazi and terrorist salutes at a Pro-Palestinian march and Pro-Israel counter-protest in London, according to statements by Stop The Hate UK and the Metropolitan Police.
The Met appealed to the public on Sunday for their aid in the identification of an elderly man “in connection with an alleged public order offense,” confirming to STH on social media that the investigation was related to a video of the suspect raising his arm in a Nazi salute in the direction of counter-protesters.

STH on Sunday published footage on X/Twitter of another anti-Israel marcher who appeared to shout “Heil Hitler” and raise a Nazi salute and then a middle finger in the direction of pro-Israel counter-protesters.

“When we tell you these are hate marches, when we tell you that British Jews are frightened to enter central London when they come to town – this is why,” STH wrote on social media on Saturday. “A Nazi salute in full view of officers and directed at Jews. How many more instances like this do Jewish Londoners have to endure before you do something to stop these hate marches?”

The Met issues warnings
STH also condemned the presence of red inverted triangles in protest materials and the hand gesture counterparts raised by activists. The NGO charged that the Met understood the meaning of the inverted red triangle, a terrorist symbol used in Hamas propaganda videos to indicate the targeting of their enemies, but had ignored their use at the protest.

The PSC said on Instagram that tens of thousands had participated in the national demonstration aimed at ending what they see as complicity by the British government, businesses, and institutions with a supposed genocide in Gaza.

“End the genocide, hands off Lebanon, don’t attack Iran, stop arming Israel,” proclaimed promotional material for the demonstration.

Trade unionist Andrew Murray spoke to attendees, according to co-organizer Stop the War Coalition, calling for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be held responsible for the deaths of Gazan civilians.

“Whether it is tomorrow, next week, next year, or ten years’ time, Netanyahu and his gang of criminals will be held to account for this slaughter!” said Murray.

An American student was beaten in a Dublin nightclub at the beginning of the month, targeted because he was Jewish, according to Irish Chief Rabbi Yoni Wieder and Jewish Representative Council of Ireland chair Maurice Cohen.

The November 9 incident, which gained international attention after the victim spoke to The Irish Times on Saturday, is being investigated by the Gardai, the national police.

Cohen said in a November 12 statement that the victim had been asked if he was Jewish before he was assaulted. The student told the Times that he had been wearing a Star of David necklace at the time of the encounter. Wieder told The Jerusalem Post that three men assaulted the Jewish student when he was alone in the club’s bathroom

The student suffered a concussion from the assault, according to the Times, and when the Gardai were speaking to witnesses, a person who was not a party to the attack declared that “the Jews in Amsterdam – they got what they deserved.” On

The Gardai said they were investigating the “hate-related motivation” and assigned a diversity liaison officer to the victim.

A Holocaust memorial was graffitied in the Polish town of Bilgoraj, according to the municipality, the second act of vandalism against the town’s Holocaust monuments in November.

“This year, Jews murdered 44,000 women and children” was improperly written in Polish on a memorial at the Konopnicka Street cemetery early Wednesday or late Tuesday. Polish social media users were quick to notify that spelling mistakes likely denoted that the vandals were not native Polish speakers.

Photographs published by the municipality showed an improperly drawn Star of David with an equals sign and a Nazi swastika. Memorial plaques were crossed out, and “Stop” was written in English alongside the Polish message

Bilgoraj once had a strong Jewish community presence, but in 2018, The Jerusalem Post reported that the last Jewish resident died almost 21 years ago. Many of the Jews were killed during the Holocaust after they were deported to the Auschwitz, Belzec, and Treblinka death camps. The municipality supported several programs to maintain Jewish memorials and restore historical sites.

Almost one hundred anti-Zionist Jewish activists and at least two politicians occupied the Parliament Hill's Confederation building in Ottawa on Tuesday in a protest demanding the establishment of an arms embargo against the State of Israel, according to law enforcement, activist organizers, and local politicians.

Jews Say No To Genocide coalition activists sat in the building singing and raising banners calling for a "two-way arms embargo" -- to cease the purchase and sale of military equipment between Canada and Israel.

New Democratic Party Parliament members Matthew Green and Heather McPherson joined the protesters during their sit-in, according to their Instagram accounts.
Fourteen activists were arrested and provided with trespass notices for Parliament Hill when Canadian law enforcement responded to the incident, according to the Parliamentary Protective Service, but were later released without charges.

Activist Judy Rebick addressed the protesters in a video published on social media by Jews Say No To Genocide, explaining that she wanted to devote herself to helping others, which to her was the "heart of Judaism."

"I'm a secular Jew -- and the trolls say 'oh she's not really Jewish' -- but I am Jewish, and I was born and raised to know that Jews believe in supporting oppressed people -- They don't oppress them," said Rebick.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs condemned the coalition as a fringe group that had tried to "invade" MPs' offices, and argued that they did not represent the broader Jewish community. The sentiment was echoed by Hampstead Mayor Jeremy Levi, who noted that there were 400,000 Jews in the country and the coalition represented an extreme minority.

"Your attempt to distort the voice of the Jewish community will not go unchallenged," said Levi. "We stand united, unwavering, and resolute in our support of Israel."

Albanese praises activists
United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese praised the activist coalition, contending that anti-Zionist Jews and Israelis were rekindling interfaith and communal bonds "that existed in the Arab world before 1948."

In March, the Liberal Party-led government passed a non-binding motion calling for a halt to arms exports during the war. Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly later confirmed that an arms embargo would become Canadian policy.

I don't care what their motives or justifications are, doing Nazi salutes is shameful and only makes the anti-Israeli protesters look bad.

Jewish parents in Maryland’s Montgomery County have no clue how their school district’s antisemitism investigation is proceeding.

It’s been more than nine months since the US Department of Education opened its Title VI civil rights probe into reports of antisemitic bullying, including at pro-Palestinian student protests, in the suburban Maryland district. The case was one of more than 100 investigations the department’s Office of Civil Rights has opened at colleges and K-12 districts — part of the Biden administration’s highly publicized efforts to combat rising campus antisemitism and Islamophobia since the Gaza war began with Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 last year in which it murdered some 1,200 people, and took 251 hostages.

Yet currently, according to department records, the vast majority of those cases have yet to be resolved, including one relating to Montgomery County Public Schools. And the parent activists who initially sounded the alarm in the district say they haven’t heard anything.

“If there is an investigation, it certainly doesn’t seem to be causing much concern,” Margery Smelkinson, one of the Jewish parents, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last week. “The process is completely opaque, and it’s hard not to conclude that nothing is actually being done.”

Smelkinson’s group, the Maryland Jewish Alliance, tried submitting its own Title VI complaint, in partnership with the right-wing Zionist Organization of America. The initial complaint was filed by a conservative activist with no connection to the district and without the group’s knowledge, based on an op-ed Smelkinson and another parent had written. By contrast, the complaint from the parents who actually lived there, she felt, was “far more detailed.”

How is Trump planning to curb campus protests?
Critics of the OCR’s handling of antisemitism complaints are hoping that will change during a second term for incoming US president Donald Trump, who has proposed a radical overhaul of United States education policy, including shuttering the DOE altogether. He also wants to use the long arm of the law against pro-Palestinian, non-citizen campus protesters, having threatened to deport them.

If Trump were to follow through on closing the Department of Education, the Department of Justice would be a likely new home for campus civil rights issues including Title VI. Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Pam Bondi, has taken a hardline approach against campus pro-Palestinian protesters.

Other campaign promises, including threats to hold university endowments and accreditations hostage unless they curb what Trump calls “Marxist maniacs and lunatics,” have set off alarm bells among many education insiders and proponents of academic freedom. They worry about his nominee for education secretary, Linda McMahon, who has very little education experience, and note that Trump-friendly states like Texas and Oklahoma are more openly embracing a push to get Bible-tinged curriculum into public schools.

But some Jewish parents, if they’re not exactly welcoming all of these changes, see an opportunity in Trump’s education agenda. It was under his first administration, they point out, that the department expanded some Title VI protections for Jews, as outlined in a 2019 executive order on antisemitism.

“One can only assume this issue will be taken more seriously under his administration,” Smelkinson said.

Through a spokesperson, the Department of Education declined to comment for this story. But its top officials, including current Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and Catherine Lhamon, who oversees the Office of Civil Rights, have in the past year told JTA they place a high priority on fighting campus antisemitism in their department through Title

Major Jewish groups wield Title VI to fight antisemitism
Major Jewish groups have taken this cue and seized on the statute. The American Jewish Committee has hosted webinars with Lhamon, and the Anti-Defamation League and others signed on to some civil rights complaints. Even more politically conservative Jews and Jewish groups, including ZOA, former Trump administration officials and Orthodox student-focused organizations, put stock in Biden’s intent to fight campus antisemitism and encouraged their networks to flood the department with Title VI complaints.

By some metrics, things are already better for Jews on campus. A new study from Harvard University found that the number of pro-Palestinian campus protests — a common breeding ground for accusations of antisemitism — so far this semester has plummeted to less than one-third of last semester’s total. In part, that is due to stricter enforcement of protests by schools that now must weigh the possibility of a federal investigation or a lawsuit much more heavily than they were in the immediate months after October 7.

But when it comes to Title VI, despite a flurry of open investigations at major educational institutions, few of the cases opened during Biden’s term have been completed.

A small number of Israel-related investigations opened since October 7 have concluded with formal resolution agreements, or pledges from the schools to take specific steps to better address antisemitism. Those include the University of Michigan and the City University of New York, which both agreed to improve their antisemitism training; Brown University, which said it would rethink how it handles campus protests; and Muhlenberg College, which promised to take action against a tenured Jewish anti-Zionist professor who had been accused of harassing Jewish and pro-Israel students. (Muhlenberg’s agreement was reached days after the professor in question announced she had been fired over her advocacy.)

Some schools, as part of their resolution agreements, have hired Title VI coordinators to more effectively respond to future complaints. Such positions could soon become required by law, as in Maryland, where a legislator last week introduced a bill to require all colleges in the state to have such a staff role.

One of those schools to voluntarily create such a role, New York University, also instituted a bold change to its harassment policy by declaring that targeting “Zionists” could violate it. Such changes have drawn criticism from progressives, who argue that Title VI has prompted a chilling effect on pro-Palestinian campus speech and courses.

Last week, the ADL and the Jewish legal group Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law announced another resolution, this one involving Occidental College in Los Angeles — where, the April complaint alleged, Jewish and Israeli students were accosted by protesters on campus who sometimes uttered antisemitic slurs. The complaint also accused the college of not protecting Jewish students by agreeing to some demands of pro-Palestinian protesters who, shortly after October 7, had occupied a building on campus.

IHRA definition of antisemitism
In response, the school agreed to “consider” the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s controversial definition of antisemitism, which progressive critics say chills legitimate criticism of Israel. (The resolution agreement includes a caveat that IHRA will be utilized “only where useful as ‘evidence of discriminatory intent.’”) The college also said it would incorporate some attacks on Zionists (including “applying a ‘no Zionist’ litmus test for participation in any Occidental activity”) into its bias and harassment training.

Other agreements include appointing a director of Jewish student life (and one for Muslim student life), and agreeing to host lectures and workshops about “the connections between Jewish identity, Israel and Zionism.”

Agreements like the one reached at Occidental could be seen as a win for many pro-Israel Jewish groups that have been pushing the IHRA definition for years (it was included in Trump’s 2019 executive order), as well as a sign of how Title VI enforcement appears to be aligning more and more closely with their longstanding goals for policing discussions of Israel on campuses.

But for every resolution, there are many more in the department’s backlog. Many Title VI cases at high-profile schools remain active, including three at Columbia University; one at Harvard; two at Cornell; and others at major public school districts in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Oakland. The department has also continued to open new cases on a weekly basis, though at a slower clip than its height this past winter.

For Kenneth Marcus, the founder of the Brandeis Center and a former Trump official, the president-elect’s plans for education — even his hopes of dismantling the department — should be welcomed by Jews.

“It’s not entirely clear that creating the Department of Education was so good for education, and so it’s not any more clear that closing it would be bad,” Marcus, who headed the department’s civil rights office in Trump’s first term, told JTA. He added that Trump has demonstrated a particular interest in campus antisemitism, including by vowing to deport pro-Palestinian campus protesters, and that his first administration’s track record should comfort Jews: “No president during our lifetimes has done more to address campus antisemitism from a policy perspective than President Trump did.”

Other major Jewish players in the Title VI space said they still believed in the law’s effectiveness in addressing campus antisemitism.

Not all conservative campus antisemitism activists are upset with the Biden administration’s handling of the issue.

“I have nothing but respect for the Office for Civil Rights’ handling of my Title VI complaints,” said Zachary Marschall, the editor of the conservative college-focused site Campus Reform and a frequent filer of Title VI antisemitism complaints. “The staff remain communicative and committed to doing their jobs.”

Marschall has filed dozens of complaints at campuses across the country, sometimes based on social media reports; Jews and officials at several of these campuses have criticized his approach as meddling. But, he said, federal investigators have taken them seriously. Brown’s resolution stemmed from his own complaint, and another one of his, at Temple University, is also negotiating a resolution, he said.

Without commenting on what Trump could do to the campus antisemitism fight, Marschall said the problem “is now a bottom-up process that primarily involves college administrators, law enforcement, and prosecutors,” rather than the federal government.

To Marcus, the possibility that Title VI enforcement could move to the Justice Department is a positive development: A Justice mandate to fight campus antisemitism, he says, would likely bring more federal lawsuits against schools. Since he left the Trump administration, the Brandeis Center has filed both lawsuits and Title VI complaints against schools for alleged antisemitism, in some cases partnering with the ADL.

(Lawsuits, if they progress to a trial or a settlement, can be more powerful tools for holding institutions accountable than agreements reached by the Department of Education, which can only dangle federal funding as leverage. But lawsuits are also more expensive and time-consuming than filing a Title VI complaint, making them less realistic for individuals unconnected to groups like the Brandeis Center.)

While other Jews have been frustrated by Title VI, in Marcus’s view, they should keep filing complaints.

“This would be the worst time to stop filing OCR complaints,” he said. “We certainly won’t stop filing OCR complaints anytime

Senator Tom Cotton (R- Arkansas) introduced legislation to eliminate federal use of the term 'West Bank,' according to a statement his office released on Thursday.

"Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) today introduced the Retiring the Egregious Confusion Over the Genuine Name of Israel’s Zone of Influence by Necessitating Government-use of Judea and Samaria (RECOGNIZING Judea and Samaria) Act, legislation to require all official US documents and materials to use the historically accurate term 'Judea and Samaria' instead of the 'West Bank," the statement read.

“The Jewish people’s legal and historic rights to Judea and Samaria go back thousands of years. The US should stop using the politically charged term West Bank to refer to the biblical heartland of Israel,” Cotton added.

Cornell University’s Jewish interim president is facing growing blowback from higher education groups over emails published by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last month, in which he raised objections to an upcoming class on Gaza.

Michael Kotlikoff’s remarks, which JTA reported on Nov. 11, were a violation of academic freedom, say representatives of the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association. The episode is the latest instance of campus scrutiny over Israel shifting from protests to the classroom, more than a year removed from the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks that launched the war in Gaza.

In the email, Kotlikoff expressed his objections to a new course entitled “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance,” scheduled to be taught next term by Jewish professor Eric Cheyfitz, a pro-Palestinian activist who teaches in the school’s American Indian and Indigenous Studies program. Writing to a different Jewish professor, Kotlikoff said he was “extremely disappointed” with “the course’s apparent lack of openness and objectivity,” and promised to work with other departments to offer alternative courses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The email, which Kotlikoff says was never meant to be publicized, has prompted anger over the past week as the story gained traction in the Cornell Daily Sun, the student newspaper.

Kotlikoff’s remarks are an egregious threat to bedrock principles of academic freedom, as well as Cornell’s commitment to ‘any person, any study.’ They raise the specter of administrative interference in faculty control over curricular decisions and course instruction,” Risa Lieberwitz, the Jewish president of the university’s AAUP chapter, wrote in an open letter.

Like other universities, the Ivy League school has faced numerous controversies over Israel politics and antisemitism since Oct. 7, 2023, with leaders and faculty frequently clashing over the limits of acceptable response. A student was arrested for threatening Jewish students; a professor was placed on leave for commenting that he felt “exhilarated” by the attacks; and administrators were recorded promising broader surveillance of pro-Palestinian faculty during a meeting with Hillel parents.

Academic freedom
All this has led to deeper concerns that schools like Cornell could meaningfully curtail academic freedom in the name of protecting Jewish students, especially under a second Trump administration, as the president-elect has sworn to crack down on universities for “turning our students into communists and terrorists.”

While Kotlikoff vowed not to interfere with the class itself, his critics say his comments were a form of inappropriate scrutiny over faculty. Cheyfitz and his allies also said the professor has received hate mail as a result of his course being publicized.

Lieberwitz’s letter added that the president’s comments “suggest that, despite repeated disavowals, the leadership of the University not only intends to scrutinize the in-class activities of Cornell faculty but is actively doing so where it is deemed politically desirable.”

Earlier this year, amid the Gaza war and calls for the boycott of Israel, AAUP dropped its longstanding opposition to academic boycotts. The Middle East Studies Association, an international group for academics focused on the region that itself endorsed a boycott of Israel in 2022 and has accused it of “genocidal violence,” also accused Kotlikoff of infringing on academic freedom.

Both organizations pressed Kotlikoff — who replaced Cornell’s previous Jewish president Martha Pollack earlier this year after Pollack stepped down, citing stress over campus tensions around Israel and Gaza — to apologize to Cheyfitz.

Meanwhile, the Jewish professor who prompted the row by sharing Kotlikoff’s email with JTA says he has no regrets.

“If a course such as the one on Gaza being offered by Professor Cheyfitz cannot withstand criticism, perhaps it’s its underlying premise, not the criticism, that should be scrutinized,” Menachem Rosensaft, an adjunct professor in the law school who first raised his concerns about the class with the school president, wrote to JTA on Thursday.

In Rosensaft’s view, his objections to the course have nothing to do with academic freedom. Instead, he believes the Gaza course — which promises to frame the conflict through a settler-colonial lens, one that Israel’s defenders insist does not apply to the region’s history — is analogous to classes promoting slavery, misogyny, or other values that would not be tolerated at a modern university. He wrote that the course would promote a narrative that “constitutes antisemitism on steroids.”

Speaking to Inside Higher Ed, Kotlikoff defended his right to share his personal opinions on a course. “I would not publicly comment on the decision of a curriculum committee or a colleague’s choice of course material,” he said, while adding, “if there are antisemitic, racist, other incidents that are directly related to Cornell, I certainly reserve the right to comment on those and reassure the community around those issues.”

Cheyfitz, for his part, still plans to teach the course, and says criticisms of it were based only on a brief course description. Citing a just-released report from Amnesty International, the human rights NGO, accusing Israel of genocide — a charge that Israel and its defenders reject as spurious — he told JTA that his critics would be judged harshly: “History will mark scholars like Rosensaft for what are: apologists for genocide,” he said.

Pretty obvious this Senator from Arkansa s needs to be recalled, like yesterday or many 1000 yrs ago? given the
bs , he is spouting. if this were the case , The Egyptians should repossess all Israelis and put them back to work as Slaves ..! So none of this would have ever come up as a problem..! Using Senator Cottons thinking .
As this stuff goes on and on my opinion of the Nation of Israel and its citizenry are causing my opinion to deteriorate
regarding those peoples issues . Including whether they has food or Water. or Shelter, After having deprived so many
others of those same basic rights . Do if the Israelis think the only good Palestinian is a dead Palestinian.
Then how is it that they might expect anyone associated with them..to be considered , even in a tiny bit more sympathetic light . When it comes to the administration of Justice. .Btw , while they are killing Palestinians , and all those supporting Israel,dont even consider that jesus was a Palestinian. So why are any Christians rallying behind Israel
??? Qoute from a old song : regarding these folk ..." It must of been People Like you , whom cruxified Christ ."
Almost makes you wonder if the Israelis had already infiltrsted Rome ? hmm...wait ,, where did Moses start out from ?

The Supreme Court agreed Friday to settle a years-long legal dispute over whether Palestinian authorities can be sued in US courts by Americans killed or wounded in terrorism attacks in the Middle East.

The federal appeals court in New York has repeatedly ruled in favor of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority, despite Congress’ efforts to allow the victims’ lawsuits to be heard.

That court’s latest decision, last year, struck down a law enacted in 2019 specifically to allow the lawsuits to move forward. The Supreme Court typically takes on cases in which lower courts have invalidated federal laws.

The question for the justices is whether the 2019 law is unconstitutional, as the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals found, because it denies fair legal process to the PLO and PA. The case probably will be argued in the spring.

Both the victims and the Biden administration had urged the high court to step in.

The victims had sued under the Anti-Terrorism Act, signed into law in 1992. The law was passed to open US courts to victims of international terrorism, spurred by the killing of American Leon Klinghoffer during a 1985 Palestinian terrorist attack aboard the Achille Lauro cruise ship.

The jury found the PLO and Palestinian Authority liable for six attacks and awarded $218 million in damages. The award was automatically tripled under the law.

After the Supreme Court rejected the victims’ appeal in 2018, Congress again amended the law to make clear it did not want to close the courthouse door to the victims.

The United States Federal Maritime Commission is investigating three incidents in which Spain refused port entry to ships reportedly carrying arms to Israel, two of which were US-flagged, the commission and media reported on Thursday.

“The commission is concerned that this apparent policy of denying entry to certain vessels will create conditions unfavorable to shipping in the foreign trade,” it said Thursday in a notice published in the Federal Register.

Spain could be subjected to millions in fines if it has been found to have interfered with commerce. The maximum fine is $2.3 million per voyage. Spanish ships may also be barred from entering US ports in response.

The commission said it had been made aware on November 19 that ships, including those enrolled in the US-run Maritime Security Program, had been denied entry. The Washington Times named two of the ships as he Maersk Denver and Maersk Seletar.

A Maersk spokesman denied that the ships were carrying weapons for Israel in November, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Spanish officials admit to rejected Israel-bound ships
Two of the ships rejected in November were from the Danish shipping giant Maersk and a third was rejected in May.

While Spanish authorities have yet to comment on the US's investigation, Spanish Transport Minister Oscar Puente admitted in May that the the Danish-flagged ship Marianne Danica was denied port entry for "carrying weapons to Israel," according to the Associated Press.

“We are not going to contribute to any more arms reaching the Middle East,” he said. “The Middle East needs peace. That is why that this first denial of authorization will start a policy for any boat carrying arms to Israel that wants to dock at a Spanish port.”

Dovi Shapero no longer introduces himself by his given name. Today, the young Brisbane chef chooses to go by "David" instead to avoid the inevitable questions that might expose his Jewish identity.

Since the October 7 Hamas attack and subsequent Israel-Gaza war, he says, three women he had been dating cut ties after discovering he was Jewish.

"One of them kind of ghosted me after our last date and eventually texted me to say, 'I don't think I can see you if you support genocide,'" he recounts. "Another sent me this long message saying she can't continue seeing me because I follow the Israel Defense Forces and State of Israel on Instagram."

Zac Morris, a university student from Sydney and vice president of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students, has also seen his social life upended since October 7, 2023. He no longer feels comfortable with the views of "a lot" of his non-Jewish friends, he says, who have expressed support for Hamas.

"Some have just gung-ho started adopting pretty extreme positions on things – I'm talking about actual support for Hamas and Hezbollah as the resistance," says Morris, who describes himself as progressive.

Andrew Markus, a prominent authority on Australian Jewry, describes the 110,000-strong community as traumatized.

"Australia's Jewish community doubled in size after 1945 with the influx of Jewish Holocaust survivors, so it is very much a post-Holocaust community with a strong network of communal institutions and orientation to Israel," says Markus, a professor emeritus at Melbourne's Monash University. "This meant that there were these communal structures in place when people felt the need to turn inward after the Hamas attack."

'The pain gushed out'
Since October 7, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry has tracked a 316-percent increase in incidents of antisemitism in the country.

"The Hamas attack triggered a deep experience of reliving the most traumatic episodes of our history – the Crusades and the pogroms and everything we've imbibed as a people," says its CEO, Alex Ryvchin. "All that pain, everything we've kept inside, gushed out on October 7."

This unprecedented wave of antisemitism in Australia began as early as just two days after the Hamas massacre, when pro-Palestinian protesters at the Sydney Opera House were heard chanting "f**k the Jews," among other antisemitic slogans.

Shapero, like many Australian Jews, was extremely shaken up by this blatant display of Jew hatred. "It really made me rethink my personal identity as an Aussie," he says.

At the weekly anti-Israel protests that have been held since then, demonstrators have been known to glorify the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which are designated as terror groups by the Australian government.

In February, hundreds of Jewish Australians – members of a private WhatsApp group of academics and artists – were targeted in a doxxing scandal when pro-Palestinian activists leaked their personal information, subjecting them to a wave of online harassment and threats. The incident ultimately prompted the Australian government to pass anti-doxxing legislation.

Lee Kofman, an Australian-Israeli author and the founder of this WhatsApp group, has since felt the need to display her Jewishness proudly. She now wears her chai pendant – which she has owned for 30 years but never previously put on – as an act of defiance.

"I really feel like I want people to know I'm Jewish now," she says. "I've also started taking more pride in my heritage, educating myself on different Jewish achievements – like reading about the Nobel Prize-winning writers who were Jewish."

Friendships ended
Like many progressive Jews, Michael Gawenda, a prominent Australian journalist and former editor-in-chief of leading daily The Age, felt shocked by the October 7 responses from many of his associates on the left.

”Friendships ended for me that week," he recalls.

He found himself seeking community and comfort among his Jewish friends and began speaking at events hosted by Jewish organizations he says he had little connection to before.

Despite his newfound embrace by the Jewish community, Gawenda urges his co-religionists not to cut themselves off from society at large – or even from the progressive left, which still has segments, he believes, that support Israel's right to exist.

"Don't retreat into some kind of ghetto where you feel that all you are is surrounded by enemies," he advises.

Rabbi Ralph Genende, chief rabbi to the Australian Defense Force and interfaith relations liaison to the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, concurs.

"We've got to be careful that it doesn't end there and that rather, it will allow us to come back into society with a stronger and clearer voice," he says, referring to the fact so many Australian Jews have retreated into their own Jewish bubbles since October 7.

Ryvchin, who recently had a Star of David tattooed onto his wrist as an expression of Jewish pride, believes it is only natural for Australian Jews to be turning inward these days.

Not all Jewish community professionals share his assessment, however. Michael Chaitow, director of the Australian branch of the New Israel Fund – an organization that funds progressive causes in Israel – says that his ties to the non-Jewish community have actually strengthened since October 7.

"I've been quite fortunate in being able to build bridges and able to work with people across divides," he says. "I'm pretty regularly greeted with people who are eager to delve into the detail."

Student leader Morris has also experienced an outpouring of support from many non-Jewish peers following the Hamas attack. "The one phrase I've heard more than any other hasn't involved the river or the sea – it's been 'How can I help?'"

’No Zionists allowed'
During the recent student elections at the University of New South Wales, Morris says he was targeted because of his Jewish identity.

"Deals were being cut between student factions based on the understanding that 'no Zionists' would be allowed to run," he recounts. "When one faction inquired what Zionists they imagined would run, mine was the only name that came up. I'm the only Jew active in that space."

Such experiences are apparently not unique. The preliminary findings from a survey carried out by Markus after October 7 reveal that only one third of Jewish students feel safe on Australian campuses, and that around 20 percent have stopped attending classes at a substantial rate.

"Seeing how university administrations have failed to deal effectively with the antisemitism crisis, plus the experience of being rejected by peers – I think that is going to have a generational impact on young people," he says.

Australia's Jewish community is known for its especially strong attachment to Israel. Seventy-seven percent of Australian Jews identify as Zionist, according to surveys conducted by Markus, with 92 percent having visited the country at least once in their lifetime. Two out of three have close family in the country.

Gawenda says he feels even more connected to Israel since October 7 and has been checking in regularly on his relatives there to see if they are safe and well – something he rarely did before.

He has also shifted the focus of his opinion writing to what he believes is the most pressing issue for Jews today: the unprecedented hostility they're facing.

"I've always spoken up about what an appalling prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is, how the occupation of the West Bank is inevitably brutal," he says. "But much of the left now isn't protesting Netanyahu or the occupation, but instead is calling for Israel's elimination. So as a person on the left, that has been my focus, alongside the explosion of hostility to Jews."

Some Australian Jews, like Genende, are also concerned about Israel's devastating response to the Hamas attack. "I really worry that a year later, the revenge theme is still so strong in Israel," he says.

He now looks for inspiration to the parents of murdered American-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin and others like them who have served as voices of moderation in Israel.

"I don't want to see compassion lost for the ordinary people who are caught up in this heartbreaking war and in the awful destruction that is happening in Gaza," says the Orthodox rabbi.

Kofman, too, feels conflicted. Being targeted by prominent Australian progressives, she says, has made her less inclined to criticize Israel publicly, even though she opposes the occupation and the settlement movement.

"I'm left wing, I believe in the two-state solution and I'm very anti-settlement," she says. "That's why it really hurt me to be labeled a 'genocidal Zionist.' It was a really shocking experience."

Shapero's connection to Israel was not very strong before the war. The events of October 7 have changed that dramatically: The 22-year-old chef is now planning to move to Israel and join the Israel Defense Forces.

"I don't really see a place for myself in Australia anymore," he says. "I don't want my kids growing up having to hide who they are."

An improvised explosive device was thrown at a Jewish community center in South Africa at 10:30 local time on Friday morning, the Cape South Africa Jewish Board of Deputies announced on Friday.

The explosive reportedly failed to detonate, and no one was wounded.

Anti-Israel activists were suspended for protests and vandalism that caused damage at George Mason University (GMU) and The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (UMN) in recent weeks, according to activist groups.

The coalition for Students for Justice in Palestine chapters in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV SJP) announced on Tuesday that the GMU SJP had been received an interim suspension on November 8 and two of its student leaders were given trespass notices barring them from campus for four years.

The day before SJP had been suspended, the student leaders were "raided" by a contingent of Fairfax County and GMU police officers in relation to incidents of property damage on the GMU Fairfax campus.

GMU Police have been investigating a vandalism incident that occurred on the Fairfax campus on August 28. GMU police offered a $2,000 reward for information about several black-clad students who spray painted messages on the ground.

DMV SJP and GMU Faculty for Justice in Palestine issued demands for the GMU administration, calling for the revocation of the trespass orders, the reinstatement of the GMU SJP chapter, and an investigation into the events leading to police action.

Last Tuesday seven students were disciplined at UMN for their role in the October 21 occupation of GMU's Morrill Hall, in which extensive damage was caused to the property.

Disciplinary Action
All seven students were ordered to pay over $5,500 each in restitution, according to a UMN Students for a Democratic Society Instagram Post. One student was suspended for five semesters, three for three semesters, two for two semesters, and one for one semester. If they wish to readmitted after the suspensions the students will have to do 20 hours of community service and write an essay on the "difference between vandalism and protest”.

UMN SDS urged supporters to contact the administration demanding for all charges to be dropped.

During the Morrill Hall protest, protesters spray painted security cameras, broke windows, and barricaded the entrances. Employees inside the hall were unable to leave in what UMN President Rebecca Cunningham said in an October 22 statement was a "terrifying experience."

Australia’s government defended its record on curbing antisemitism on Saturday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed the arson attack on Melbourne’s Adass Israel synagogue on what he described as Canberra’s “extreme anti-Israel position.”

The statement by Australian Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Murray Watt came amid growing calls for Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to declare the arson a terrorist act, even as local police have said they could not yet establish the arsonists’ motive.

Police said on Saturday they were still looking for two people suspected of starting the pre-dawn fire that injured one congregant and caused widespread damage to the Orthodox synagogue in Melbourne’s southeast suburb of Ripponlea, home to a large Jewish community. The arsonists were said to have donned masks during the attack and spread an accelerant in the synagogue’s interior.

Watt pushed back on Netanyahu’s comment, saying that the Albanese government has “taken a range of strong actions to stand against antisemitism and to stamp it out from our community.”

Since taking office in May 2022, the center-left Labor government has taken action against hate speech, banned the Nazi salute, and provided $25 million to Jewish organizations to upgrade security and safety at Jewish sites, including schools, Watt said.

Meanwhile, at a joint press conference on Saturday, former Australian treasurer Josh Frydenberg, of the opposition conservative Liberal Party, and former Senator Nova Peris, a pro-Israel Aboriginal activist from Albanese’s own Labor Party, called on the Australian premier to declare the arson a terrorist act.

“There was a firebombing of a place of worship with people inside who have been injured as a result,” said Frydenberg, who is Jewish.

“The legislation is very clear,” he added. “It is a terrorist attack, and it needs to be declared as such.”

On Saturday, The Australian reported that Albanese held a closed-door meeting with some 100 Jewish community members at a synagogue in Perth.

The report said the community had invited Albanese, and that the premier would hold a press conference on the firebombing on Sunday.

The statement came a day after Netanyahu wrote on X that the Melbourne synagogue arson was “impossible to separate” from Australia’s vote on Sunday in favor of a UN motion calling on Israel to end its “unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

Netanyahu also singled out the Albanese government’s denial of entry visa to former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked in October over her anti-Palestinian statements.

“Anti-Israel sentiment is antisemitism,” said Netanyahu.

The Australian Jewish Association and Australian Opposition Leader Petter Dutton had similarly linked the arson to what they described as the Albanese government’s failure to stand with Israel.

Jewish community members also heckled Victoria Premier Jacinta Allan as she spoke outside Adass Israel on Friday, accusing her of losing control of the state and letting threats against Jews proliferate. Allan was forced to cut her press conference short due to the heckling.

All charges have been dismissed against a Manhattan rabbi and real estate developer who had been accused of ramming his vehicle into pro-Palestinian protesters in May.

Charges were also dropped against two protesters who were arrested at the scene.

Reuven Kahane had been arrested and accused of assault after the altercation with the demonstrators, who were protesting outside the Upper East Side home of a Columbia University trustee.

The protesters were affiliated with Columbia University Apartheid Divest, an alliance of anti-Israel student groups that had characterized the incident in a press release as “Zionist driver runs down peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstration.”

Police said at the time that an argument had broken out between Kahane and the protesters as the protesters were leaving the scene, and that Kahane had “tapped” one of the demonstrators with his car. Kahane said he had shouted at protesters banging on his car.

Police arrived a few minutes later and arrested Kahane and two of the activists, Maryellen Novak, 55, and John Rozendaal, 63, for criminal mischief.

Now, the case against Kahane has been dismissed. The New York State Unified Court System confirmed that the case had been dismissed last month pursuant to speedy trial limitations that stipulate a trial must take place within a certain amount of time after the incident. The case no longer appears in court records.

Kahane says that the charges against him were baseless.

“Nothing whatsoever that they accused me of happened,” he said in an interview on Wednesday, saying that the case had been “completely dismissed and sealed.”

Novak and Rozendaal also had their charges dropped. Following the May arrest, a fundraiser for Novak, identifying her as a “safety marshal” for protesters, raised more than $11,000.

Rozendaal had previously been arrested in March for disrupting an Easter service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral as part of a pro-Palestinian protest. None of the student protesters on the scene were charged.

Kahane, an ordained rabbi who heads a real estate firm, believes that the May altercation and his arrest drew widespread attention because he shares a name with his second cousin, the late extremist rabbi Meir Kahane. He said he met Meir Kahane “numerous times” while the two were living in New York but that he is “not a Kahanist.” While in New York, Meir Kahane led the Jewish Defense League, a far-right group, and his political party was later barred from the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, for racism. He was assassinated in New York City in 1990.

“I think if my name was Joe Smith, I don’t think anybody would have picked this up,” Reuven Kahane said.

I don't care what their motives or justifications are, doing Nazi salutes is shameful and only makes the anti-Israeli protesters look bad.

Since the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, an inverted red triangle has been used by pro-Palestinian protesters.[1] The red triangle as a Palestinian symbol dates back to the Arab Revolt, after which it was also used in the Palestinian flag. More recently, combat footage published by Hamas uses an inverted red triangle as an arrow to indicate Israeli military targets, such as tanks, just before they are struck.

Antisemitic incidents at British universities reached record levels over the last school year, a new study has found.

The report by Community Security Trust (CST), a non-profit that helps secure British Jews from antisemitism, found that there were 272 antisemitic incidents recorded during the 2023-2024 school year, more than five times as many as the previous year, as anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hate surged under the shadow of Israel’s war in Gaza sparked by Hamas’s October 7 terror massacre.

Over 85 incidents were recorded during October 2023 alone, according to the report. The previous monthly high was 55, during the 2021 Israel-Gaza conflict.

The report included online and offline cases of verbal abuse, threats, assaults, and desecration of Jewish property relating to people’s roles within the university. It did not include incidents of campaigns with extreme, sometimes violent, rhetoric toward Israel, calls for “Zionists” to be excluded, or implicit support for terrorism.

Nine instances of assault were recorded during the year, including an incident where eggs were thrown at a group of visibly Jewish students in St. Andrews after an event with the chief rabbi.

There were 17 incidents of property damage, including the vandalism of the Leeds Hillel House with graffiti stating “IDF off campus” and “Free Palestine.”

CST recorded 23 threats made to Jewish students during the year and two cases of mass-produced antisemitic literature distributed. The remaining 221 incidents were categorized as abusive behavior, including all forms of verbal and written antisemitism both online and offline.

The report included a litany of examples of incidents endured over the school year.

In one of the most extreme cases, the University of Leeds Jewish chaplain, Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch, received death threats, including threats to rape and kill his wife and murder his children, after he returned from carrying out IDF reservist duty in February.

In January, a PhD candidate at a university in Wales shared a video on X titled “Humanity united against AshkeNAZI” which included extreme antisemitic conspiracy theories.

In March, someone scratched “Kikes Out” onto a toilet cubicle wall in a student union building in the North of England.

In March, students on a bar crawl wrote “I [heart] Hitler” and drew a caricatured Jewish face on the back of a known Jewish student’s T-shirt.

In April, a university Jewish Society received a bomb threat via email reading, “I placed multiple explosives inside of the Synagogues. The explosives are well hidden and they will go off in the morning. Everyone inside will die in a pool of blood.” The threat was checked and ultimately found to be a hoax.

Also that month, swastikas were graffitied on toilets at the National Union of Students (NUS) conference in Blackpool.

In May, a visibly Jewish student was told to leave the street across from the campus’s pro-Palestine student encampment because he was wearing a yarmulka.

In June 2024, the wall of a Chabad house in the Midlands was graffitied with the message “FREE PALASTIAN [sic].”

During April and May, 36 pro-Palestinian student encampments were established on campuses, inspired by student protests across the United States at the same time. Notably, these lacked any of the violent clashes or disorderly conduct that characterized many of those in the US, the report said.

The report noted that a recent survey of 497 Jewish staff and students by the Intra-Communal Professorial Group found that only about 22 percent felt comfortable being open about their Jewish identity on campus after October 7, while 70% said they felt “somewhat” or “very” uncomfortable. Generally speaking, 60% said they felt unsafe on campus.

British universities have suffered for decades with antisemitism, but these latest figures are worse than ever before,” noted CST CEO Mark Gardner.