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We Are Jewish Students Suing UC Berkeley for Antisemitism; Will Next Semester Get Better?
We are Jewish students at UC Berkeley. On November 28, we sued Berkeley for antisemitism.
Protecting free speech and addressing antisemitism is not a zero sum issue. Left alone, hostility towards Jews leads to discrimination and violence against others. Free speech can’t survive in this environment. Therefore, tackling antisemitism is the first step in restoring free speech.
UC Berkeley’s antisemitism is rooted in a rigid ideology: Jews are oppressors.
At our school, Jew-hate is green-washed as social justice. To belong, Jews must renounce their identity or else be shunned.
In October, Jewish students at Berkeley were told that there was no threat to their safety, but that they should “avoid becoming targets.”
In another email, our antisemitism concerns were questioned, given that Berkeley has a Jewish “provost, at least one other Jewish cabinet member, at least five Jewish deans, and hundreds of Jewish faculty.” Under this logic, Berkeley cannot have sexism. We have a female chancellor, female police chief, and multiple female deans and department heads.
As the semester went on, our fears only intensified.
Two Jewish students were physically assaulted on campus, one week apart. Berkeley has kept both cases “active,” yet refuses to investigate them as hate. The university suggested we seek counseling and make academic flexibility requests. They also sympathized for anything that happened which may have been “offensive.”
Even when we were told to “f*ck off” by classmates, the university stayed silent. When we feared grading retaliation and the pressure to hide our Jewish identity, the university offered no recourse. And when Jewish teachers received e-mails calling for their gassing, the administration was — you guessed it — nowhere to be found.
In December, a Jewish student was robbed and left the note: “F*ck Jews. Free Palestine. From the river to the sea.” Berkeley failed to call this anti-Jewish hate. Previously, Berkeley had no qualms about specifying anti-trans and anti-Asian American hate.
Berkeley is not equipped for the intimidation that Jewish students encounter in the wild. During a protest this semester, students walked through a river to get to class.
The university must know that this is out of control. Perhaps that is why we are sent to Jewish spaces for belonging: to offset the Jewish-free zones on campus.
Berkeley is home to Jewish institutes and museums, Hillel and Chabad, and the Antisemitism Education Initiative. Recently, administrators have joined Jewish students for Shabbat and Hanukkah. This is where we are safe to be Jewish.
How is this different from a Jewish ghetto? Instead of dealing directly with antisemites, Berkeley has manufactured Jewish pockets on campus.
To break the harassment, Berkeley must stop excusing raw antisemitism as “anti-Zionism.”
Berkeley must recognize that for many Jews, Israel and shared Jewish ancestry is inherent to identity. Just as the police investigated an anti-kosher incident as hate, the same goes for Israel. Otherwise, we must hide our identity when anti-Jew hate is ignored. This contradicts Berkeley’s “free exchange of ideas” principle.
Long-term fixes will require Berkeley to re-evaluate its governance and culture.
Berkeley’s decentralized governance model means that the Academic Senate has more power than deans. As a result, a minority dominates decision rights, stifling pluralism and discouraging dissent. Checks and balances are necessary to counter this polarization, as no structures currently offset this lopsidedness. Administrative decisions are made in silos. Consistent procedures and accountability expectations are inhibited when each situation is treated differently.
For example, in a lecture, engineering students were indoctrinated by their teacher’s 18-minute diatribe on the linkage between their student struggles and Palestinians’. Nevermind that Berkeley previously sent multiple rounds of forceful communication discouraging classroom political indoctrination.
Students were told “[Berkeley] is looking further into this.” These words are cheap. Weeks later, the teacher hosted a teach-in focused on technology and Israeli apartheid. Evidently, behavior continues, guised as peace. Berkeley must take disciplinary action to hold staff accountable.
Repairing Berkeley’s culture comes next. The university’s diversity, equity, inclusion and justice efforts lack pluralism.
Berkeley’s Antisemitism Education Initiative should be included in initiatives that already include anti-Black racism and Islamophobia. Furthermore, centers formed for inclusion should not exclude people.
When Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute blamed “power structures” for the Israel-Gaza War, they conveniently omitted Islamism. The institute’s website also spotlights Islamophobia, but not antisemitism too. This double standard is glaring.
Only by addressing broken governance and campus culture can students’ education be unburdened by discrimination.
Hannah Schlacter is a second year MBA at UC Berkeley. Danielle Sobkin is the daughter of Soviet refugees and a first-gen student. Both are members of Jewish Americans For Fairness in Education (JAFE), a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed against UC Berkeley for antisemitism.
The post We Are Jewish Students Suing UC Berkeley for Antisemitism; Will Next Semester Get Better? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Family of Colorado Fire-Bomb Suspect Taken Into ICE Custody as Authorities Probe Antisemitic Attack
Police officers gather on Pearl Street in front of the Boulder County Courthouse, the scene of an attack that injured multiple people, in Boulder, Colorado, US, June 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mark Makela
The family of the Egyptian national charged with tossing gasoline bombs at a pro-Israeli rally in Colorado was taken into federal custody on Tuesday and could be quickly deported, officials said.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a social media video post that ICE had taken into custody the family of Mohamed Sabry Soliman, who lived in Colorado Springs and who federal officials have said was in the US illegally, having overstayed a tourist visa and an expired work permit.
Noem said while Soliman will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, federal agents were also “investigating to what extent his family knew about this horrific attack – if they had any knowledge of it or if they provided any support for it.”
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for more details about the detention of Soliman’s family.
According to local media reports, Soliman’s family included two teenagers and three younger children. FBI and police officials had said on Monday that the family has cooperated with investigators. The suspect told investigators he acted alone.
The White House, in a social media post, said Soliman’s family was in ICE‘s custody for “expedited removal” and that they “could be deported as early as tonight.”
Department of Homeland Security officials said Soliman entered the United States in August 2022 on a tourist visa, filed for asylum the following month, and remained in the country after his visa expired in February 2023.
The Sunday attack in Boulder, Colorado, injured a dozen people, many of them elderly. The attack targeted people taking part in an event organized by Run for Their Lives, an organization devoted to drawing attention to the hostages seized during Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Soliman, 45, told investigators that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people” but had delayed committing the attack until after his daughter graduated from high school, according to state and federal court documents charging him with attempted murder, assault, and a federal hate crime.
Police and FBI affidavits quoted the suspect as saying he took firearms training to obtain a concealed-carry permit but ended up using Molotov cocktails because his noncitizen status blocked him from buying guns. Soliman told investigators that he had learned how to make the firebombs from YouTube.
A police affidavit filed in support of Soliman’s arrest warrant said he was born in Egypt, lived in Kuwait for 17 years, and moved three years ago to Colorado Springs, about 100 miles (161 km) south of Boulder, where he lived with his wife and five children.
Federal and local authorities said at a Monday news conference in Boulder that Soliman had done nothing to draw law enforcement attention before Sunday’s attack. He was believed to have acted alone, they said.
An affidavit said the suspect “threw two lit Molotov cocktails at individuals participating in the pro-Israel gathering,” yelling, “Free Palestine” as they ignited in the crowd.
The attack was the latest act of violence aimed at Jewish Americans linked to outrage over Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza. It followed the fatal shooting of two Israeli Embassy aides that took place outside Washington’s Capital Jewish Museum last month.
The post Family of Colorado Fire-Bomb Suspect Taken Into ICE Custody as Authorities Probe Antisemitic Attack first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Turkey Backing Syria’s Military and Has No Immediate Withdrawal Plans, Defense Minister Says
Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler takes part in a NATO Defense Ministers’ meeting at the Alliance’s headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Oct. 12, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Johanna Geron
Turkey is training and advising Syria’s armed forces and helping improve its defenses, and has no immediate plans for the withdrawal or relocation of its troops stationed there, Defense Minister Yasar Guler told Reuters.
Turkey has emerged as a key foreign ally of Syria’s new government since rebels – some of them backed for years by Ankara – ousted former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December to end his family’s five-decade rule.
It has promised to help rebuild neighboring Syria and facilitate the return of millions of Syrian civil war refugees, and played a key role last month getting US and European sanctions on Syria lifted.
The newfound Turkish influence in Damascus has raised Israeli concerns and risked a standoff or worse in Syria between the regional powers.
In written answers to questions from Reuters, Guler said Turkey and Israel – which carried out its latest airstrikes on southern Syria late on Tuesday – are continuing de-confliction talks to avoid military accidents in the country.
Turkey‘s overall priority in Syria is preserving its territorial integrity and unity, and ridding it of terrorism, he said, adding Ankara was supporting Damascus in these efforts.
“We have started providing military training and consultancy services, while taking steps to increase Syria’s defense capacity,” Guler said, without elaborating on those steps.
Named to the post by President Tayyip Erdogan two years ago, Guler said it was too early to discuss possible withdrawal or relocation of the more than 20,000 Turkish troops in Syria.
Ankara controlled swathes of northern Syria and established dozens of bases there after several cross-border operations in recent years against Kurdish militants it deems terrorists.
This can “only be re-evaluated when Syria achieves peace and stability, when the threat of terrorism in the region is fully removed, when our border security is fully ensured, and when the honorable return of people who had to flee is done,” he said.
NATO member Turkey has accused Israel of undermining Syrian peace and rebuilding with its military operations there in recent months and, since late 2023, has also fiercely criticized Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
But the two regional powers have been quietly working to establish a de-confliction mechanism in Syria.
Guler described the talks as “technical level meetings to establish a de-confliction mechanism to prevent unwanted events” or direct conflict, as well as “a communication and coordination structure.”
“Our efforts to form this line and make it fully operational continue. Yet it should not be forgotten that the de-confliction mechanism is not a normalization,” he told Reuters.
The post Turkey Backing Syria’s Military and Has No Immediate Withdrawal Plans, Defense Minister Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Norway Lawmakers Oppose Blanket Ban by Wealth Fund on Companies in Gaza, West Bank
A view of new buildings around the Israeli settlement Talmon B near the Palestinian town of Mazraa Al-Qibleyeh near Ramallah, in the West Bank, Nov. 20, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Torokman
Norway‘s parliament on Wednesday rejected a proposal to have the country’s $1.9 trillion sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, divest from all companies with activities in the Palestinian territories.
The minority Labour government has for months been resisting pressure from anti-Israel campaigners to instruct the fund to divest from all firms with ties to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and parliament had been expected to vote against.
“We have an established ethical regime for the fund,” Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg told the chamber earlier in the day, during a debate on several aspects of the way the fund is run.
“We divest from the companies that contribute to Israel’s breach of international law, but we do not divest from all companies that are present on the ground.”
Lawmaker Ingrid Fiskaa from the small Socialist Left opposition party told the chamber: “Without Norwegian oil fund money, it would be more difficult for Israeli authorities to demolish the homes of Palestinian families.”
The United Nations’ special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, wrote to Stoltenberg to alert him to what she called the “structural entanglement of Israeli corporations … in the machinery of the occupation both in the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, and the violence that sustains it.”
“International corporations benefiting from [the Norwegian fund‘s] investments are critical components of the infrastructure sustaining the economy of the occupation,” she wrote, in a letter dated May 20.
Stoltenberg replied that the government was “confident that the investments do not violate Norway‘s obligations under international law.”
He noted that the fund follows ethical guidelines set by parliament, and that compliance is monitored by a separate body.
That watchdog has over the past year recommended divestments from Israeli petrol station chain Paz and telecoms company Bezeq and is looking at more potential divestments in Israel.
The post Norway Lawmakers Oppose Blanket Ban by Wealth Fund on Companies in Gaza, West Bank first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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