A demonstration of the group Europe Palestine to demand the boycott of Israel, in Paris, France on May 15, 2022. Photo: Xose Bouzas / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect

While foreign activist groups drive much of the global push to isolate Israeli universities, some of the movement’s legitimacy is supplied from within.

A segment of Israeli academics actively support or collaborate with boycott campaigns — either out of genuine conviction that Israel is committing crimes in Gaza, or from a calculated belief that distancing the academy from the government will shield it from international sanctions.

Both approaches risk backfiring by handing boycott advocates the very moral and political ammunition they need to target Israel’s academic community.

A recent report documented 500 cases of academic boycotts, ranging from restricted access to funding to demands that Israeli scholars condemn their own country before being allowed to participate in conferences. One of the most high-profile incidents occurred in August 2024, when the International Federation of Medical Student Associations (IFMSA) suspended the Federation of Israel Medical Students (FIMS) over the war in Gaza.

According to Federation chairwoman Miri Schwimmer, hostility toward the Israeli delegation had already been on display months earlier at the European District Conference in Malta.

The hostility escalated at the IFMSA international conference in Finland, when the IFMSA decided to vote to suspend Israel. Before Schwimmer could speak against the suspension, attendees were warned that they could leave if they did not want to hear the position of the Israeli representative. Nearly half the room, including most of the executive committee and the federation’s president, walked out. They returned only after her remarks and voted without hearing Israel’s position.

Working with Israel’s Health and Foreign Affairs ministries, allied medical students, and groups such as the World Medical Association and the American Jewish Medical Association, Schwimmer participated in months of direct talks with IFMSA leadership. In March 2025, the federation overturned its decision.

But the threat is not limited to medicine. In June 2024, the World Society of Sociology suspended the Israeli Association for refusing to condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza. Troublingly, a growing number of Israeli academics and student groups have been supporting boycotts of their own universities, along with anti-Israel activists.

An activist organization called Academy for Equality hosted a webinar with UN Special Rapporteur and anti-Israel ideologue, Francesca Albanese, where an Israeli participant asked whether there were “ways that Academy for Equality and our students in Israel can strategize with students in Europe who are fighting to cut ties with Israel.”

There are also Israeli academics who sign petitions accusing the Jewish State of war crimes, including the deliberate starvation of civilians.

Professor Emmanuel Dalla Torre of Bar-Ilan University, a member of its committee against academic boycotts, sees three main motivations.

Israeli academics who sign these sorts of petitions consist of either those who genuinely believe the allegations, those who fear of being ostracized by their international peers, and those who think that they are actually protecting Israeli academia by trying to distance themselves from the actions of their government.

Dalla Torre refers to the academics in the third category as taking “a naive approach,” warning that “letters like this simply bring weapons to those who want to boycott the State of Israel. They don’t make the distinction between the academy, the Israeli economy, and the government.”

His view is echoed by Professor Alessandra Veronese of the University of Pisa in Italy, who fought her university’s decision to cut ties with Reichman University and the Hebrew University. Veronese insists that such letters and petitions are useless because “these [Italian] professors don’t know anything about Israel … what they think is that in Israel, the entire population is happy about the war.”

Further, Professor Veronese explained that the level of antisemitism in Italian academia as “very very dangerous” and described her university’s animosity as hypocritical. This heavily suggests that all efforts to appease these anti-Israel professors and societies are made in vain.

Israeli academia is clearly under serious threat of isolation. While antisemitism and the war in Gaza are key drivers, internal actors, born of either conviction or strategic calculation, are emboldening those who seek to delegitimize and exclude Israel from the global academic community.

And therein lies the irony: the very voices within Israel that believe they are shielding the academy from harm may be among the forces making it more vulnerable.

In the hands of boycott advocates, their statements against the Jewish State become proof that the academy itself accepts the accusations against Israel, erasing the intended distinction between Israeli scholarship and Israeli policy, and helping to justify the case for its isolation.

Shahar Grufy is a member of CAMERA’s Israel office.

Charlie Kirk speaking at the inauguration of Donald Trump in January 2025. Photo: Brian Snyder via Reuters Connect

The assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk sent shockwaves across the world. Tributes poured in from world leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump, and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Kirk was gunned down at a campus event in Utah — a chilling reminder of the growing threat of political violence in America. His death has already sparked debates about the state of free speech, the dangers facing polarizing figures, and the country’s ongoing battle over gun rights.

Those discussions may feel inevitable in the wake of such a murder. But there is one aspect of Kirk’s legacy that deserves special recognition — especially from those who care about Israel and the Jewish people.

For years, Kirk stood on the front lines of America’s campus culture wars, fearlessly challenging lies about the Jewish State. He didn’t shy away from hostile rooms. He didn’t dilute his message. He made Israel’s case where it most needed to be heard — in classrooms, lecture halls, and student auditoriums where anti-Israel narratives are too often allowed to flourish unchallenged.

Kirk’s political views divided many. But his unwavering defense of Israel, his refusal to allow falsehoods to go unopposed, and his willingness to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Jewish students under fire are something that deserves appreciation. He was, in every sense, a friend of the Jewish State.

And yet, in the hours since his murder, tributes have emerged from some of the very voices who bear responsibility for poisoning the public sphere with anti-Israel hatred.

Figures who once called to “globalize the intifada” — rhetoric that glorifies violence against Jews and Israelis — now strike a mournful tone over Kirk’s death. Journalists, activists, and politicians who have trafficked in antisemitic tropes or winked at violence against Zionists are suddenly against political violence when it takes the life of a man they spent years vilifying.

Take, for example, Democratic nominee for New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. He has infamously refused to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada” — a phrase that openly romanticizes violent uprising against Jews and Israelis. Only after fierce backlash did Mamdani claim he would avoid the phrase in the future. Yet in the immediate hours after Kirk’s murder, Mamdani rushed to X to declare himself “horrified,” insisting that “political violence has no place in our country.”

I’m horrified by the shooting of Charlie Kirk at a college event in Utah.

Political violence has no place in our country.

— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@ZohranKMamdani) September 10, 2025

Similarly, Democrat Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) — who has smeared Jewish students as “pro-genocide” and repeatedly trafficked in antisemitic tropes — joined the chorus. “Political violence is absolutely unacceptable and indefensible,” she wrote, urging Americans to “pray for no more lives being lost to gun violence.” The same politician who has vilified Jewish students for their Zionism now demands the moral high ground on political violence.

And then there is former MSNBC commentator Mehdi Hasan. He used Kirk’s death not to reflect on his own rhetoric, but to settle personal scores — pointing out that Kirk had once called him “a lunatic” and “a prostitute,” and had demanded his deportation. Hasan sought to appear magnanimous: “Nothing, nothing, justifies killing him, or robbing his kids of their dad.”

But this is the same Hasan who has defended the chants for an “intifada,” insisted it is merely “an uprising,” and said Israelis are supportive of genocide. Earlier this year, he was accused of mocking the September 11 terror attacks with a tweet reading: “Make American Planes Crash Again.”

Other tributes were posted and reposted by Democrat former Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-MO), creative director and activist Alana Hadid, and others — all figures with long records of demonizing those who disagree with them politically.

Charlie Kirk was *murdered* by a sniper. He did not simply “die.”

Like Israeli and Jewish victims of terror, add Kirk to the list of murder victims @nytimes cannot sympathize with, therefore treating their deaths with passive headlines. pic.twitter.com/GzTSWWzcRj

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 11, 2025

On the other end of the political spectrum, Candace Owens considered herself to be a friend of Kirk’s. Owens, however, is a serial spreader of antisemitic and anti-Israel incitement. In a series of short, heartbroken tweets, Owens begged her followers to “pray” for Kirk and his family. But while she may be emphasizing her utter shock, Owens fails to recognize that her own brand of hateful and conspiratorial rhetoric about the pro-Israel community and Jewish people is a net contributor to an atmosphere of encouraging political violence, irrespective of whether it comes from the left or the right.

The hypocrisy is staggering. You cannot spend years mainstreaming rhetoric that endorses violence against Jews, Zionists, and pro-Israel voices — and then act shocked when that same rhetoric metastasizes into real bloodshed.

Violent language toward Jews and Israel has become disturbingly normalized in American discourse. Now, some of its loudest promoters want to draw neat moral lines when it suits them. But their sudden appeals to civility ring hollow.

This commentary on Charlie Kirk’s murder is not about speculating on motive. It is about the danger of legitimizing rhetoric that dehumanizes opponents and flirts with violence. Words have consequences. And those who excuse or glorify violence against Israel cannot wash their hands when that culture of hostility inevitably corrodes the wider political sphere.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Emir of Qatar, attends the emergency Arab-Islamic leaders’ summit in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 15, 2025. Photo: Hassan Bargash Al Menhali / UAE Presidential Court/Handout via REUTERS

Iran has criticized the final statement of the Arab-Islamic Summit held in Doha on Monday as insufficient, in the wake of last week’s Israeli attack targeting the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Qatar.

In a statement released shortly after the summit, Iran reaffirmed its “unwavering support for the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination,” while arguing that a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot adequately address the Palestinian issue.

According to the Iranian delegation, “the only real and lasting solution is the establishment of a single democratic state across all of Palestine, through a referendum involving all Palestinians inside and outside the occupied territories.”

On Monday, Qatar held a summit of Arab and Islamic nations in the aftermath of last week’s Israeli strike on Hamas, with leaders gathering to express support and discuss regional responses.

The Sept. 9 strike targeting leaders of the Palestinian terrorist group in Doha marked a significant escalation of Israeli military operations, reflecting Jerusalem’s broader efforts to dismantle the terrorist group amid the ongoing war in Gaza.

Expressing solidarity with Qatar, summit leaders condemned Israel’s strike, labeling it “cowardly, illegal, and a threat to collective regional security.”

In the final statement, the heads of state declared that “an assault on a state acting as a neutral mediator in the Gaza crisis is not only a hostile act against Qatar but also a direct blow to international peace-building efforts.”

Alongside the United States and other regional powers, Qatar has served as a ceasefire mediator during the nearly two-year Gaza conflict, facilitating indirect negotiations between the Jewish state and Hamas.

However, Doha has also backed the Palestinian terrorist group for years, providing Hamas with money and diplomatic support while hosting and sheltering its top leadership.

During the summit, Arab and Muslim leaders called for a review of diplomatic and economic relations with Israel while firmly opposing any attempts to displace Palestinians.

In the final statement, the heads of state also emphasized resisting Israel’s efforts to “impose new realities on the ground,” urged enforcement of International Criminal Court (ICC) warrants for Israeli leaders over war crime allegations adamantly denied by Jerusalem, and coordinated actions to suspend Israel’s UN membership.

Although Iran participated in the summit and endorsed the declaration, its delegation issued a separate statement shortly afterward clarifying that doing so “must in no way be interpreted, explicitly or implicitly, as recognition of the Israeli regime,” reaffirming its rejection of the Jewish state’s right to exist.

Iranian leaders regularly declare their intention to destroy Israel, the world’s lone Jewish state.

The statement also stressed that the Palestinian people have the right to employ “all necessary means to achieve their inalienable right to self-determination,” emphasizing that backing this cause is “a shared duty of the international community.”

As the heads of Arab and Islamic states convened for a summit on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned he did not rule out further strikes on Hamas leaders “wherever they are.”

During a diplomatic visit to Israel, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed strong support for Israel’s position, even as Washington previously voiced concerns over the strike in Qatar, a US ally.

Speaking alongside Netanyahu, Rubio said the only way to end the war in Gaza would be for Hamas to free all hostages and surrender. While the US wants a diplomatic end to the war, “we have to be prepared for the possibility that’s not going to happen,” he said.