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I Am a UK College Student; Antisemitism Is Surging All Around Me
Since the October 7th massacre committed by Hamas, antisemitic hate crimes in the UK have recorded the highest increases in modern history.
The radicalism of pro-Palestinian rhetoric has created a dangerous environment on college campuses. These groups are “crybullys,” who claim to champion academic freedom and “moral” virtue, while silencing and targeting Jewish students.
When hundreds of thousands of Muslims were murdered en masse in countries like Syria, Yemen, and Myanmar, campuses across London were empty. Yet, radical student groups in the UK are now protesting against Israel’s response to Hamas terrorism.
There is only one explanation for this: antisemitism.
Even university administrators have displayed anti-Israel bias. Two months after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, my school’s administration (the University of Exeter) has not published a single statement acknowledging the suffering of their Jewish or Zionist students, or a gesture of solidarity for the pain of the Jewish community, let alone a statement that condemns Hamas for its brutality.
Considering that Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organization in the UK, this shouldn’t have been difficult to do.
Instead, Exeter has allowed antisemitic students to spread social media posts openly supporting the murder, rape, and butchery of Israeli civilians. This is not surprising, given that a professor at the university can openly state that he doesn’t think Hamas is a terrorist organization without any consequence.
As Jewish students witness calls for a global “intifada” — and explicit calls for an exclusionary Arab ethno-state in place of the world’s only Jewish state — academics across the political spectrum are suggesting that Hamas is not a terrorist organization, and that its atrocities against Jews were justified and legitimate.
On top of this complete administrative failure to protect Jewish students from direct and indirect threats of violence, they have allowed academics across the UK to publicly debate whether Israel’s attempt to stop future massacres is itself permissible. This is outrageous.
My friends and I are scared to express our beliefs in fear of being attacked. Our bigoted and ignorant peers have been allowed to freely chant blood libels and death threats at Jewish students. There have been physical attacks on Jews on college campuses in the US.
While Exeter has promised its Jewish students that they will increase protection and monitoring on campus, the need for such initiatives in 2023 is absolutely sickening.
Recently, I was denied the so-called “equal” opportunity to write in my campus paper, the Exeposé. Apparently, publishing pro-Israel content conflicts with their desire to appear “neutral.” However, letters calling for a ceasefire and articles that uncritically quote Al Jazeera — the Qatari state-owned, pro-Hamas media organization — are perfectly acceptable.
It seems that equality is only a right upheld for those who do not hold pro-Israel views.
One way that these immoral beliefs have gained credibility is through the prejudicial act of tokenism, where anti-Israel students use fringe Jewish groups to justify their views.
However, groups that claim to represent Jews, like Independent Jewish Voices (UK), US based Jewish Voice for Peace, and extremists Neturei Karta, can in fact be antisemitic.
Ultimately, the Jewish community knows that those who take to the streets every Saturday in the UK are not the majority in this country — but in the words of Elie Wiesel, neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Unfortunately, it seems as though a significant portion of Britain has chosen to do exactly that.
Rojin-Sena Cantay is a student at the University of Exeter, and a CAMERA Fellow for the 2023-2024 academic year.
The post I Am a UK College Student; Antisemitism Is Surging All Around Me first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.