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UN Rapporteur With History of Anti-Israel Animus Supports Pro-Hamas Protests on College Campuses
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
The United Nations’ special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories has praised the anti-Israel demonstrations that have erupted on university campuses across the US over the last week.
“Hope comes from the ‘Watermelon Revolution’ (if its brave souls allow me to call it such),” Francesca Albanese wrote on Monday, hours before the start of the Jewish holiday of Passover, on X/Twitter, referring to the ongoing college campus protests against Israel.
The nationwide protests erupted last week with an ongoing wave of anti-Israel demonstrations at Columbia University in New York City, where school officials were forced to shutter the campus. Footage of Columbia students — who commandeered a section of campus and named it “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” — showed them chanting in support of the Hamas terrorist group, calling for the destruction of Israel, and even threatening to harm members of the Jewish community on campus. Amid the chaos at Columbia, a prominent rabbi at the school urged Jewish students to leave the campus for the sake of their safety.
Beyond opposing and supporting Hamas, many demonstrators also uttered death threats directly at Jews.
The anti-Israel protests quickly spread to other campuses such as Yale University in Connecticut and continued into this week.
On Wednesday, state highway patrol troopers in riot gear and police on horseback broke up a demonstration at the University of Texas in Austin. According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, 34 people had been arrested.
At the University of Southern California, meanwhile, officials declared its campus closed and asked the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) to clear a demonstration. The LAPD said that 93 people were arrested for trespassing and one for assault with a deadly weapon. No injuries were reported.
Anti-Israel activists have also demonstrated at several other campuses across the country. Police officers had arrested dozens of demonstrators at Yale and Columbia for staging riotous, unauthorized demonstrations.
Despite the chaos, Albanese sided with the protesters while falsely accusing Israel of genocide and apartheid against Palestinians.
“Recently: Columbia arrested students for protesting against Israel’s #GenocideinGaza and the university’s investments in Israeli apartheid. Universities in Europe are increasing their securitization and repression against students expressing solidarity with Palestine,” she wrote. “Simultaneously, support from states, corporations and institutions for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza has continued … What lessons are Western universities and governments imparting to their young citizens and students when they attack the very values and rights that are said to be foundational to Western societies?”
Albanese argued that “this sustained, global Palestinian-driven mobilization is a bold new phase in an ongoing wave of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle against Israel’s decades-old system of occupation, apartheid, and settler-colonialism and for the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to justice, freedom, dignity.”
She then claimed that “Palestinian emancipation” has become “the center of the global struggle for justice, including climate justice, and for human rights and dignity for all, not just a privileged few.”
Such rhetoric has become routine for Albanese, who has used her role at the UN to campaign against the world’s lone Jewish state and the only democracy in the Middle East.
Earlier this month, for example, Albanese accused Israel of destroying Gaza and committing genocide in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian enclave, from which the terrorist group launched the current war by invading the Jewish state on Oct. 7, massacring 1,200 people, and kidnapping 253 others as hostages. At a public hearing at the European Parliament on April 9, the UN rapporteur devoted much of her time to accusing Israel — but not Hamas — of lying about its conduct in Gaza.
That hearing came about two weeks after Albanese released a report accusing Israel of carrying out “genocide” in Gaza, continuing a pattern of the UN official singling out the Jewish state for particularly harsh condemnation.
“By analyzing the patterns of violence and Israel’s policies in its onslaught on Gaza,” one can conclude “that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met,” read the report, titled “Anatomy of a Genocide.”
Albanese cited Hamas statistics that claim over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel, of which 70 percent are civilians.
However, independent analyses have concluded those statistics systematically undercount the number of men and Hamas terrorists killed. Israel claims it has killed more than 13,000 Hamas fighters, who embed themselves in the civilian population and use civilian sites, such as hospitals, to house their terror operation centers.
Albanese’s report did not mention any details about Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel. Israeli officials lambasted her findings, arguing they were misleading and excused terrorism.
Last month was not the first time that Albanese was accused of being ideologically driven.
In February, she claimed Israelis were “colonialists” who had “fake identities.” Previously, she defended Palestinians’ “right to resist” Israeli “occupation” at a time when over 1,100 rockets were fired by Gaza militants at Israel. Last year, US lawmakers called for the firing of Albanese for what they described as her “outrageous” antisemitic statements, including a 2014 letter in which she claimed America was “subjugated by the Jewish lobby.”
Albanese’s anti-Israel comments have earned her the praise of Hamas officials in the past.
Additionally, in response to French President Emmanuel Macron calling the Oct. 7 attack the “largest antisemitic massacre of the 21st century,” Albanese said, “No, Mr. Macron. The victims of Oct. 7 were not killed because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel’s oppression.”
However, Hamas’ founding charter, in a section about the “universality” of its cause, reads: “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”
Video footage of the Oct. 7 onslaught showed Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas celebrating the fact that they were murdering Jews.
Nevertheless, Albanese has argued that Israel should make peace with Hamas, saying that it “needs to make peace with Hamas in order to not be threatened by Hamas.”
The post UN Rapporteur With History of Anti-Israel Animus Supports Pro-Hamas Protests on College Campuses first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Picks New US Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism
US President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office, on the day he signs executive orders, at the White House in Washington, DC, March 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
US President Donald Trump on Thursday tapped Yehuda Kaploun, an Orthodox Jewish businessman and rabbi, to serve as his administration’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism.
Kaploun helped spearhead and orchestrate the 2024 Trump campaign’s efforts to make inroads with the Jewish American community. He said that rising antisemitism across the US inspired him to assist the Trump campaign.
“Just a year ago, no one would have believed that Jews would be afraid to be openly Jewish in the United States,” Kaploun told Mishpacha magazine. “The fact that Jews are afraid in progressive universities shows that the United States is going down a dark path.”
In an announcement on Truth Social, Trump touted Kaploun as a “successful businessman, and staunch advocate for the Jewish Faith and the Rights of his people to live and worship free from persecution.”
“With Anti-Semitism dangerously on the rise, Yehuda will be the strongest Representative for Americans and Jews across the Globe, and promote PEACE. Congratulations Yehuda!” Trump added.
Trump and Kaploun forged a personal relationship in New York decades ago after being introduced to each other by Ed Russo, Trump’s business partner. Kaploun served as a key Trump surrogate and fundraiser during his successful 2024 presidential campaign. He accompanied Trump during an event in Florida commemorating the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas.
The US special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism will be tasked with helping the administration craft and advance foreign and domestic policy regarding antisemitism. The position will be within the State Department and must be confirmed by the US Senate.
Touting Trump as an unwavering ally of the Jewish community, the rabbi pointed to his strident support of Israel and willingness to directly combat radical Islamic ideologies.
“Democrats are afraid to even say the words ‘radical Islamic terror’ while Trump says it openly,” Kaploun told Mishpacha. “He speaks fearlessly about the threat of Iran and makes clear that its goal is to destroy the United States. This when Democrats refuse to even recognize the butchers of women and kidnappers of children as terrorists. How can you go along with that?”
Kaploun also lauded Trump’s recognition during his first presidential term of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria. In addition, during his first term, Trump also moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, acknowledging the city as the Jewish state’s capital.
“He’s a businessman who keeps his word. He declared that he would recognize the Golan, that he would move the embassy, that he would stand by Israel — and he did exactly that,” Kaploun said.
During his initial months in the White House, Trump has issued a series of directives aimed at reining in antisemitic conduct. The White House has withheld federal funds from universities that it claims have failed to protect Jewish students from discrimination. In addition, the White House has moved to deport non-citizens who have participated in anti-Israel demonstrations or spread antisemitic rhetoric.
Thus far, Trump’s crackdown on antisemitism has enjoyed broad support from the public, with nearly 70 percent of Americans indicating they support the deportation of non-citizens who express support for terrorist groups like Hamas, according to a March poll by Harvard-Harris.
The post Trump Picks New US Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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White House Says ‘All Hell to Pay’ Should Iran Develop Nuclear Weapon
US President Donald speaking in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, DC on March 3, 2025. Photo: Leah Millis via Reuters Connect
President Donald Trump wants Iran to know that there will be “all hell to pay” if it does not abandon its nuclear program, his press secretary told reporters on Friday ahead of talks on Saturday between US and Iranian delegations.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump’s “ultimate objective is to ensure that Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon” and that Trump believes in diplomacy, but that “all options are on the table” if diplomatic efforts fail.
“But he’s made it very clear to the Iranians, and his national security team will as well, that all options are on the table, and Iran has a choice to make. You can agree to President Trump’s demand, or there will be all hell to pay, and that’s how the president feels. He feels very strongly about it,” Leavitt said.
US special envoy Steve Witkoff is set for talks on Saturday with an Iranian delegation in Oman. Iranian state media said Iran would be represented by Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, with Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi as intermediary.
Trump in February restored his “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran, which includes efforts to drive its oil exports down to zero, in order to stop Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. He said earlier this week that if the talks are unsuccessful, “Iran is going to be in great danger.”
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This Passover at Georgetown, an Anti-Israel Referendum in the Spirit of Pharaoh
The Rafik B. Hariri Building at Georgetown University in Washington, DC was vandalized with pro-Hamas graffiti on Oct. 16, 2024. Photo: Screenshot
“Mah nishtanah halilah hazeh?” Why is this night different from all other nights? Jews around the world read these words in the Haggadah, the ancient Passover guide that tells the story of Pharaoh’s oppression of the Jewish people in Egypt. While the first night of Passover may be different from all other nights, the insistence of the Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA) to hold an anti-Israel campus wide referendum over the Passover holiday is sadly more of the same antisemitism that has overtaken the campus. Once again, Jews are being singled out for unequal treatment at Georgetown.
GUSA’s scheduling of the referendum during Passover is no oversight. GUSA broke its own rules to advance the referendum without the approval of the Senate’s Policy and Advocacy Committee (PAC), which typically determines whether to send legislation to the full Senate. According to one GUSA senator, John DiPierri, “Every single rule related to our procedure was broken.” Another, senator Saahil Rao, complained that this directly impacted the referendum that was advanced: “There’s obviously a lot of controversial language within this referendum, and I thought we should have debated as a senate on how to present this issue to the student body in the most objective way possible.”
By rushing the resolution, GUSA has organized a Passover crisis for Georgetown’s Jewish community. While haste is nothing new for people who still eat unleavened bread for eight days to commemorate the Exodus from Egypt, the spiraling antisemitism that has seized college campuses since Hamas’s brutal attack on Oct. 7, 2023, is something else entirely.
Seventy-three percent of American Jewish college students surveyed in the wake of the Oct. 7 massacre said they have personally experienced or witnessed some form of antisemitism. In particular, 87 percent of Jewish college students are concerned that anti-Israel protests and petitions to boycott the State of Israel lead to hate crimes and violence against Jewish students, according to February 2025 polling.
Unfortunately, Georgetown already has a poor track record of protecting its Jewish students. A series of protests chanting for the destruction of Israel escalated on Sept. 20, 2024, to a vandalism incident where the John Carroll statue outside Healy Hall was spray-painted with an inverted red triangle, a symbol used to indicate planned retribution against primarily Jewish individuals. Students have reported a series of antisemitic incidents at Georgetown, and the Chabad rabbi was struck several times by a Lyft driver.
Worse yet, the permeation of anti-Jewish ideas into the Georgetown ethos is not just random; it’s institutional. Georgetown previously hired Nader Hashemi as the director of its Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) after he had publicly presented a conspiracy theory that the man who attacked Salman Rushdie in an attempt to fulfill Iran’s fatwa to assassinate the author of The Satanic Verses was being secretly orchestrated by Israel’s Mossad. Jonathan Brown, chair of the university’s Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies and son-in-law of convicted Palestinian Islamic Jihad member Sami Al-Arian, has repeatedly made comments like: “Israeli security forces are lunatics. Israel is insanely racist.”
Even Georgetown’s medical school is infected with the plague of antisemitism. Multiple medical students posted disturbing content on social media, mocking the Oct. 7 massacre and invoking classic antisemitic tropes — from accusing Jews of global control to justifying terror as “resistance.” Jewish medical students, a small minority at Georgetown, described a climate of fear, harassment, and professional retaliation, with messages like “Free Palestine” sent privately during Zoom classes. Perhaps Georgetown’s policies are partially compromised by its close relationship with Qatar, a major Hamas financier. Georgetown’s campus in Doha hosted a panel in 2024 titled “Israel’s war on Palestinians.”
Georgetown has also platformed figures like Mohammed El-Kurd, who publicly praised Hamas’s atrocities as “resistance” and plays into ancient blood libel tropes by accusing Israelis of harvesting Palestinian organs and “a thirst for blood.” These actions have placed Georgetown under federal scrutiny — and raise urgent questions about whether its institutional culture protects bigotry under the guise of free speech.
The Hebrew word Haggadah means “telling” in English. On account of the Passover referendum targeting Georgetown’s small Jewish community, we must take stock of what Georgetown — a university that espouses Jesuit values such as “respect for each person’s individual needs and talents” — is telling the world. When Jewish students are cornered, intimidated, and treated as pariahs during the very holiday that celebrates their emancipation, it is not just reprehensible. It is also symbolic.
Let us be clear: Jewish students do not ask for special treatment. They ask for equal treatment. And just as in every generation, we are commanded to see ourselves as if we, too, were taken out of Egypt. Freedom and safety for Jews are not relics of an ancient story. They are also urgent demands for today.
Hen Mazzig is an Israeli writer, speaker, and Senior Fellow at the Tel Aviv Institute. He’s appeared as an expert on Israel, antisemitism, and social media in the BBC, NBC News, LA Times, Newsweek, and more. Follow him on: @henmazzig
The post This Passover at Georgetown, an Anti-Israel Referendum in the Spirit of Pharaoh first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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