RSS
Jewish groups confront new questions: What counts as calling for genocide? And how should it be punished?
(JTA) – Just days after the presidents of three elite universities testified before Congress, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul sent a letter to the heads of her state’s public universities over the weekend instructing them that “calling for the genocide of any group of people” should “lead to swift disciplinary action.”
Meanwhile, Stanford University released a statement saying that “calls for the genocide of Jews or any peoples… would clearly violate” the school’s code of conduct.
The letter and statement were both in response to the congressional hearing, in which the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology declined to say outright that calling for the genocide of Jews would violate school rules.
Swift and widespread outrage followed the hearing, leading to the resignation of Penn’s president and placing pressure on the other two leaders.
The hearing had another effect: Nationwide, explicit acknowledgement by public officials and university leadership alike that calling for genocide is, in fact, unacceptable. The question for Jewish and pro-Israel groups — especially those long concerned with antisemitism on campus — is what that means and how it will change their approach to the issue.
What, exactly, counts as a call for genocide? Do popular pro-Palestinian chants that many Jews consider threatening — like calling for “intifada” — run afoul of the rules? And how should students be punished if those rules are broken?
One week after the hearing prompted those questions, some of the leading U.S. campus antisemitism watchdogs appeared reluctant to definitively answer them. They condemned chants such as “intifada” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” but demurred from explicitly calling them genocidal.
Representatives of two groups suggested that students who call for genocide should be suspended. One pro-Israel activist who spoke to JTA said the punishment should depend on “context,” acknowledging that he was using the very phrase that drove much of the backlash to the university presidents. A few others declined to state exactly how such students should be punished.
“Chants like ‘from the river to the sea’ and ‘globalize the intifada’ are deeply offensive and antisemitic and are unquestionably contributing to hostile environments for Jewish and Israeli students on campuses across the country,” a spokesperson for the Anti-Defamation League told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Tuesday.
But the ADL stopped short of defining such chants as de facto calls for Jewish genocide, and its own website’s description of the phrases does not include the term “genocide.” The website does say that “intifada” refers to violence such as that of the second intifada two decades ago, when approximately 1,000 Israelis were killed in terror attacks.
Neither Hochul’s office nor Stanford’s public relations representatives responded to JTA’s questions about whether they considered such phrases to meet the definition of calling for genocide of Jews, nor how they would discipline them.
Julia Jassey, a recent college graduate and the CEO of the campus antisemitism watchdog Jewish on Campus, called those phrases “antisemitic in impact” but would not say whether students who use them should be disciplined.
“Practically, the impact of saying ‘From the river to the sea’ calls into question the existence, the legitimacy, the lives of the folks who are living there who are Jewish,” Jassey said. When asked whether those phrases should be subject to disciplinary measures, Jassey, like other campus antisemitism activists who spoke to JTA, said it was largely up to the universities.
“I think that university administrations have an obligation to be clear,” she said, adding that they should “condemn” such language whether it comes from students or faculty. “It’s really important to prioritize the impact,” she said.
The ADL statement on the phrases further said universities had “clear legal obligations” to “respond” to such language. But beyond noting that the response should include some form of disciplinary action, the ADL did not clarify what such a response should be.
The organization said it does push for universities to suspend any student group “that promotes calls for antisemitic violence.” That may be a reference to Students for Justice in Palestine, which defended Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The ADL and other Jewish groups called on campuses to withdraw recognition and funding from the group, and in recent weeks, several universities have suspended their SJP chapters.
While there have been a small number of reported incidents of swastikas and chants of “Gas the Jews,” along with others referencing Hitler on campuses this year, chants of “from the river to the sea” and “intifada” have been far more common.
Responding to video of a recent event held by the Columbia University chapters of SJP and the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace at which protesters chanted “intifada,” the International Legal Forum, an Israel-based group, called the chant “a direct and unadulterated call for violence and genocide.” The group pushed Columbia to publicly condemn the activists and “ban these hate groups once and for all.” Columbia had suspended both groups for the remainder of the fall semester.
Those who chant those phrases object to the notion that they are calls for genocide. A spokesperson for JVP said that the group does not consider “from the river to the sea” to be antisemitic.
“JVP understands that to be an absolute right for anyone to be free from the river to the sea,” Sonya Meyerson-Knox, the group’s communications manager, told JTA weeks prior to last week’s hearing. “So Palestine will be free, Israeli Jews will be free. One person’s freedom does not take away another person’s freedom. Unless, of course, it’s in a supremacist state, which is what the Israeli government has been doing for 75 years.”
She likewise said after the hearing that the group also does not consider use of the term “intifada” to be equivalent to a call for violence, and does not believe students or university personnel should be penalized for using it. She added that her group does not endorse calls for violence and said, “No one on campuses is calling for the genocide of Jews and there is no evidence of this.” She repeated her group’s repeated accusation in the wake of Oct. 7 that Israel is committing “a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”
Meyerson-Knox said that JVP bases its guidelines on international law. “Resistance ‘by any means necessary,’ not so much. Popular resistance, absolutely,” she said. “There is a big difference there.”
When asked about the pro-Palestinian phrases, the general counsel for Hillel International, the umbrella group for campus Jewish centers, told JTA that students who chant “from the river to the sea” “need to be educated” on the fact that the phrase appears in Hamas’ charter.
“What’s relevant is whether it lands on Jewish students on the campus as an attack, a potentially genocidal attack, on the Jewish people, a plurality of whom now live in Israel,” the counsel, Mark Rotenberg, said.
Rotenberg added that a university “has a responsibility to not allow these kinds of endorsements of violence to be misunderstood,” comparing the chants to a student placing a noose in an area of campus “knowing that Black students will see it.”
He did suggest what administrations might do to a student or staff member who took such an action. “Universities will discipline, suspend and terminate the employment of people in the university community who engage in that kind of speech activity,” he said.
Watchdog groups devoted to the issue of campus antisemitism — some of which have spent years filing federal civil rights complaints that included objecting to the use of of pro-Palestinian language on campus — were somewhat vague as to how schools should discipline students who use them.
“The consequences that would be appropriate would be those provided for by school regulations or by law,” Gerard Filitti, general counsel for the pro-Israel legal group the Lawfare Project, told JTA. The Lawfare Project has filed federal civil rights challenges to college campuses via the Department of Education, including one at Columbia University from 2019 that the department re-opened in the wake of Oct. 7.
Asked what kinds of consequences would be appropriate, Filitti offered a range of options without saying which would best fit the offense.
“Whether that includes suspension, or a mandatory training about antisemitism, including anti-Zionism, or whether that includes expulsion, I think that is, to borrow a phrase that was spoken of last week, context-specific,” he said, referencing the university presidents’ answers to the question of whether calls for genocide of Jews violated their codes. He added that universities should consider “the whole range of remedies available as consequences under the codes of the schools.”
The Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, another pro-Israel legal group active in campus lawsuits, also did not offer thoughts on whether or how universities should discipline students who uttered those exact phrases.
The group’s president Alyza Lewin told JTA in a statement, “The very first step to ending the current harassment and preventing future harassment is for university administrators to understand Jewish identity so they can effectively recognize anti-Semitism.”
And a top figure at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an antisemitism watchdog group that has called for all three presidents who participated in the hearing to resign, suggested that universities should “train the police” to respond to complaints of antisemitism.
When asked if students calling for “intifada” should be arrested, Rabbi Abraham Cooper didn’t rule it out.
“This is private property. Universities set their own rules for campus,” he told JTA. “They have protocols in place. It’s not for me to say right now what those protocols should be … But what it does mean is they’ve got a whole lot of discussing and a whole lot of reflecting to do, because whatever they have in place right now may be working for a lot of people but it’s not working for the Jewish students.”
—
The post Jewish groups confront new questions: What counts as calling for genocide? And how should it be punished? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
ADL Research: 24% of Americans Believe Recent Violence Against Jews Is ‘Understandable’
Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim who were shot and killed as they left an event at the Capital Jewish Museum, pose for a picture at an unknown location, in this handout image released by Embassy of Israel to the US on May 22, 2025. Photo: Embassy of Israel to the USA via X/Handout via REUTERS
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) released a report on Friday revealing American attitudes about antisemitic violence following the targeted attacks earlier this year against Jews in Boulder, Colo., Harrisburg, Pa., and Washington, D.C. The watchdog group found a sizable minority (24 percent) found the attacks “understandable” while 13 percent regarded them as “justified.”
The ADL surveyed a representative sample of 1000 Americans on Thursday, ensuring the group matched accurate proportions of the country’s demography. The findings showed disparate views across age groups and partisan affiliations while also a clear, majority consensus on many questions.
The survey showed that 87 percent of respondents believed the three recent antisemitic attacks to be unjustifiable while 85 percent called them morally wrong and 77 percent assessed them as antisemitic. Eighty-six percent regarded the violence against Jews as hate crimes. However, nearly a quarter of respondents said the attacks were “understandable.”
More Republicans (15 percent) than Democrats (11 percent) regarded the attacks as justified, while more Republicans (79 percent) than Democrats (77 percent) saw the attacks as antisemitic. Partisan differences also manifested in support for increased government action against antisemitism with 74 percent of Republicans in favor compared to 81 percent of Democrats.
In presenting their research findings, the ADL emphasized the broad agreement in American opposition to antisemitic violence and conspiracist tropes before noting the presence of a distinct minority of “millions of people who excuse or endorse violence against Jews—an alarming sign of how anti-Jewish narratives are spreading.” For example, 67 percent of Democrats and 58 percent of Republicans agree that antisemitism is a serious problem.
Smaller numbers among the Democrats (25 percent) and Republicans (23 percent) will acknowledge antisemitism as a concern in their own party. The ADL poll suggests the legitimacy of such suspicions, finding that “28 percent of Republicans and 30 percent of Democrats agreed with tropes such as Jews have too much influence in politics and media.”
Partisan affiliations correlated with where respondents saw the most significant antisemitic threats. Republicans expressed a 3.6 times greater likelihood of worries about left-wing antisemitism compared to Democrats who were 4.4 times as likely to focus on right-wing antisemitism.
The pollsters found that attitudes toward the severity of the antisemitic threat differed according to age.
While 80 percent of silent generation respondents saw antisemitism as a serious problem, that number fell to 65 percent for baby boomers and members of Generation X. The rates dropped again for millennials (52 percent) and Gen-Zers (55 percent).
Perceptions of antisemitism in local communities also differed by generation. While 19 percent of Americans overall report having witnessed antisemitism in their communities, that figure jumps to 33 percent for Gen-Zers and 20 percent for millennials. Among the boomers it drops to 10 percent and for Silent Generation respondents it reaches 17 percent.
Large numbers saw the threat of popular protest slogans “globalize the intifada” and “from the river to the sea” with 68 percent seeing the phrases as potentially fueling violence, a view held even among 54 percent of those who favor protests against Israel.
Researchers also observed a correlation between Israel support and perceiving the seriousness of antisemitism in America. While 74 percent of those favorable to Israel saw domestic antisemitism as significant, only 57 percent of those with negative views of the Jewish state agreed.
Nearly a quarter of those polled—24 percent—expressed the conspiratorial view that some group had staged the attacks to provoke sympathy for Israel. A second report also released by the ADL on Friday showed the rise in discussions of “false flag” attacks on the Reddit website in response to the antisemitic violence.
The ADL warned that “these beliefs are especially dangerous because they justify holding Jewish Americans responsible for the actions of the State of Israel, effectively viewing them as collectively responsible for international politics—making them greater targets.”
The post ADL Research: 24% of Americans Believe Recent Violence Against Jews Is ‘Understandable’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Sen. Bernie Sanders Calls on Democrats to Stop Accepting Money From AIPAC
US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks to the media following a meeting with US President Joe Biden at the White House in Washington, US, July 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), took to X/Twitter on Monday to call on all Democrats to stop accepting political donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the influential pro‑Israel lobbying entity.
In his tweet, Sanders wrote that AIPAC has aided Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in waging an “illegal and immoral war being waged against the Palestinian people.” Sanders continued, claiming that “NO Democrat should accept money from AIPAC” while asserting that the organization helped “deliver the presidency to Donald Trump.”
Sanders’s post came in response to comments by former Obama administration foreign policy advisor Ben Rhodes, in which Rhodes urged Democrats to reject all future donations from AIPAC. Rhodes argued that AIPAC has influenced Democrats to take immoral stances on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
“AIPAC is part of the constellation of forces that has delivered this country into the hands of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller, and you cannot give them a carve out,” Rhodes said on an episode of the podcast Pod Save the World. “We need to have this fight as a party, because these are the wrong people to have under your tent.”
Tommy Vietor, another former Obama administration official and podcast co-host, agreed, accusing AIPAC of “funneling money to front organizations that primary progressive Democrats.”
AIPAC, the foremost pro-Israel lobbying firm in the US, has historically backed pro-Israel candidates from both parties. The organization does not specifically lobby against progressive candidates. AIPAC has aided the campaigns of pro-Israel progressives such as Ritchie Torres.
Sanders has long held an acrimonious relationship with AIPAC. In November 2023, he repudiated the group for supposedly having”supported dozens of GOP extremists who are undermining our democracy,” and urged his fellow Democrats to stand together in the fight for a world of peace, economic and social justice and climate sanity.”
Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser under President Obama, has emerged as a vocal critic of Israeli policy, particularly under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His skepticism is rooted in years of diplomatic frustration during the Obama administration, especially surrounding failed peace negotiations and Israel’s settlement expansions in the West Bank. Rhodes has often framed Israel’s hardline stance as a major obstacle to a two-state solution, and he has been critical of what he sees as unconditional U.S. support that enables right-wing Israeli policies. His stance reflects a broader shift among some American progressives who advocate for a more balanced U.S. approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Sanders has long been a staunch critic of the Jewish state. Sanders has repeatedly accused Israel of committing “collective punishment” and “apartheid” against the Palestinian people. Although the senator initially condemned the Oct. 7 slaughters of roughly 1200 people throughout southern Israel by Hamas, he subsequently pushed for a “ceasefire” between the Jewish state and the terrorist group. Sanders also spearheaded an unsuccessful campaign to implement a partial arms embargo on Israel in 2024.
In the 20 months following the Hamas-led attacks on Israel, relations between the Democratic party and the Jewish state have deteriorated. Democratic lawmakers have grown more vocally critical of Israel’s military conduct in Gaza, sometimes arguing that the Jewish state has recklessly endangered lives of Palestinian civilians. Moreover, polls indicate that Democratic voters have largely turned against Israel, intensifying pressure on liberal lawmakers to shift their tone regarding the war in Gaza.
The post Sen. Bernie Sanders Calls on Democrats to Stop Accepting Money From AIPAC first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Iranian National Charged in Plot to Subvert US Sanctions Against Islamic Republic
Iranians participating in a memorial ceremony for IRGC commanders and nuclear scientists in downtown Tehran, Iran, on July 2, 2025. Photo: Morteza Nikoubazl via Reuters Connect.
Federal law enforcement officials have arrested an Iranian national after uncovering his alleged conspiracy to export US technology to Tehran in violation of a slew of economic sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic, the US Department of Justice announced on Friday.
For May 2018 to July 2025, Bahram Mohammad Ostovari, 66, allegedly amassed “railway signaling and telecommunications systems” for transport to the Iranian government by using “two front companies” located in the United Arab Emirates. After filing fake orders for them with US vendors at Ostovari’s direction, the companies shipped the materials — which included “sophisticated computer processors” — to Tehran, having duped the US businesses into believing that they “were the end users.”
The Justice Department continued, “After he became a lawful permanent resident of the United States in May 2020, Ostovari continued to export, sell, and supply electronics and electrical components to [his company] in Iran,” noting that the technology became components of infrastructure projects commissioned by the Islamic Republic.
Ostovari has been charged with four criminal counts for allegedly violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations (ITSR), under which conducting business with Iran is proscribed due to the country’s human rights abuses, material support for terrorism, and efforts to build a larger-scale nuclear program in violation of international non-proliferation obligations. Each count carries a 20-year maximum sentence in federal prison.
Ostovari is one of several Iranian nationals to become the subject of criminal proceedings involving crimes against the US this year.
In April, a resident of Great Falls, Virginia — Abouzar Rahmati, 42 — pleaded guilty to collecting intelligence on US infrastructure and providing it to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“From at least December 2017 through June 2024, Rahmati worked with Iranian government officials and intelligence operatives to act on their behalf in the United States, including by meeting with Iranian intelligence officers and government officials using a cover story to hide his conduct,” the Justice Department said at the time, noting that Rahmati even infiltrated a contractor for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that possesses “sensitive non-public information about the US aviation sector.”
Throughout the duration of his cover, Rahmati amassed “open-source and non-public materials about the US solar energy industry,” which he delivered to “Iranian intelligence officers.”
The government found that the operation began in August 2017, after Rahmati “offered his services” to a high-ranking Iranian government official who had once been employed by the country’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, according to the Justice Department. Months later, he traveled to Iran, where Iranian agents assigned to him the espionage activity to which he pleaded guilty to perpetrating.
“Rahmati sent additional material relating to solar energy, solar panels, the FAA, US airports, and US air traffic control towers to his brother, who lived in Iran, so that he would provide those files to Iranian intelligence on Rahmati’s behalf,” the Justice Department continued. Rahmati also, it said, delivered 172 gigabytes worth of information related to the National Aerospace System (NAS) — which monitors US airspace, ensuring its safety for aircraft — and NAS Airport Surveillance to Iran during a trip he took there.
Rahmati faces up to 10 years in prison. He will be sentenced in August.
In November, three Iranian intelligence assets were charged with contriving a conspiracy to assassinate critics of the Islamic Republic of Iran, as well as then US President-elect Donald Trump.
According to the Justice Department, Farhad Shakeri, 51; Carlisle Rivera, 49; and Jonathan Loadholt, 36, acted at the direction of and with help from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an internationally designated terrorist organization, to plot to murder a US citizen of Iranian origin in New York. Shakeri, who remains at large and is believed to reside in Iran, was allegedly the principal agent who managed the two other men, both residents of New York City who appeared in court.
Their broader purpose, prosecutors said, was to target nationals of the United States and its allies for attacks, including “assaults, kidnapping, and murder, both to repress and silence critical dissidents” and to exact revenge for the 2020 killing of then-IRGC Quds Force chief Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike in Iraq. Trump was president of the US at the time of the operation.
All three men are now charged with murder-for-hire, conspiracy, and money laundering. Shakeri faces additional charges, including violating sanctions against Iran, providing support to a terrorist organization, and conspiring to violate the International Emergency Powers Act, offenses for which he could serve up to six decades in federal prison.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Iranian National Charged in Plot to Subvert US Sanctions Against Islamic Republic first appeared on Algemeiner.com.