German Chancellor Friedrich Merz attends a cabinet meeting at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Aug. 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Liesa Johannssen

Germany announced it was halting exports of arms and other military equipment to Israel for use in Gaza, shortly after the Israeli security cabinet approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to expand operations in northern Gaza.

“The federal government will, until further notice, withhold approval for the export of any military equipment that could be used in the Gaza Strip,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in a statement on Friday.

Merz argued that Israel’s decision to escalate its military campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas “makes it increasingly difficult” for Berlin to pursue its “highest priorities” of securing the release of the remaining Israeli hostages and achieving a ceasefire in Gaza.

“Israel has every right to defend itself against Hamas terrorism,” the German leader said. “Disarming Hamas is essential — there can be no place for Hamas in Gaza’s future.”

However, Merz warned that Israel’s new offensive “bears an even greater responsibility for ensuring the population’s needs are met.” He also expressed “deep concern about the continuing suffering of the civilian population in Gaza.”

Israel hat das Recht, sich gegen den Terror der Hamas zu verteidigen. Die Freilassung der Geiseln und Verhandlungen über einen Waffenstillstand haben für uns oberste Priorität. Die Entwaffnung der Hamas ist unerlässlich – die Hamas darf zukünftig in Gaza keine Rolle spielen. 1/5

— Bundeskanzler Friedrich Merz (@bundeskanzler) August 8, 2025

On Friday, the Israeli security cabinet overwhelmingly approved Netanyahu’s plan to defeat Hamas, which includes taking control of Gaza City.

In a press release, the Prime Minister’s Office announced that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will prepare to “take control of Gaza City, while distributing humanitarian assistance to the civilian population outside the combat zones.”

Shortly after the announcement, Merz also called on Israel to take “comprehensive and sustainable measures” to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, while urging the country to avoid any steps toward annexing the West Bank.

According to a report by Politico, Germany’s decision to freeze arms exports that could potentially be used in Gaza would not apply to defense systems like missile defense or naval equipment and may only affect new contracts, leaving deliveries from previous agreements unaffected.

Netanyahu vehemently condemned Germany’s decision, stressing that Israel’s objective is not to occupy Gaza but to free it from Hamas and pave the way for a peaceful and stable Arab government.

“Instead of supporting Israel’s just war against Hamas, which carried out the most horrific attack against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, Germany is rewarding Hamas terrorism by embargoing arms to Israel,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.

The local Jewish community in Germany has also sharply criticized the government’s decision to halt military equipment shipments to Israel.

“The German government’s decision represents a victory for Hamas in the global propaganda war,” Volker Beck, [resident of the German-Israeli Society (DIG), said in a statement.

“Hamas still retains military capabilities,” he continued. “How does the German government plan to disarm Hamas without resorting to force?”

Remko Leemhuis, director of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in Berlin, also condemned the government’s decision.

“Rather than withholding essential materials from Israel, the German government should employ all available economic and political tools to intensify pressure on Hamas and its main supporters, including Iran,” he said.

Iran has long provided arms, funding, and training to Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades after Israel withdrew from the enclave in 2005.

Illustrative: Signs cover the fence at a pro-Palestinian encampment on April 28, 2024. Photo: Max Herman via Reuters Connect.

Adelphi University in Long Island, New York has placed its Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter on probation for a year, citing the group’s social media activity as promoting a degree of hatred that would make any Jewish person feel “targeted” and “unsafe.”

The group’s troubling online activity — which included calling for Israel to “burn” and keeping “these Zionists off our campus” — was first reported by an Adelphi University professor, Tuval Foguel, who filed a complaint through the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law. Adelphi administrators saw the situation as he did.

“The number and content of the social media posts over a protracted period of time was found to be subjectively and objectively offensive and so severe or pervasive to constitute a hostile environment towards those who identified of Jewish,” the university said in a letter to Foguel. “When looking at this from a reasonable person standard, it would be reasonable to infer that if someone who is Jewish viewed these posts, they may feel targeted, or unsafe, in their educational program or activity and may decline to participate or change their participation as a result.”

Adelphi University is not the first college to suspend its SJP chapter.

In May, George Washington University (GW) suspended SJP until spring 2026, punishing the group for a series of unauthorized demonstrations it held on school property.

The move marked one of the severest disciplinary sanctions SJP has provoked from the GW administration since it began violating rules on peaceful expression and assembly, as well as targeting school officials for harassment, following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. Until the suspension is complete, SJP is barred from advertising and may only convene to “complete sanctions or consult with their adviser,” according to report by the campus newspaper.

Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania suspended SJP in February, following the group’s surprise but unsuccessful attempt to take over an administrative building.

SJP had raided the college’s Parrish Hall dressed like Hamas fighters, their faces wrapped with and concealed by keffiyehs. By the time the college formally warned the students that their behavior would trigger disciplinary measures, they had shouted slogans through bullhorns, attempted to break into offices that had been locked to keep them out, and pounded the doors of others that refused to admit them access.

“Adelphi’s decision that its SJP chapter, like SJP chapters at colleges across the country, has created a hostile environment for Jews is an important victory for Adelphi’s beleaguered Jewish community,” the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law said in a statement on Thursday, commenting on the latest action taken against SJP. “Hopefully, this is the beginning of a real effort on Adelphi’s part to redress the antisemitism that SJP and, sadly, some of its faculty allies, have fomented on campus.”

It added, “SJP statements that Adelphi correctly describes as ‘calling fro the harm of Jewish community members, dehumanizing Jewish individuals, and inciting violence/aggression toward Jewish individuals’ have no place on a college campuses, or anywhere else for that matter.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, speaks during a press conference following a meeting between organizers of the 2023 March on Washington. Photo: Allison Bailey via Reuters Connect

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Friday launched the Jewish Policy Index (JPI), a “first interactive tool of its kind” for evaluating the efficacy of policies that US states have adopted to combat antisemitism.

“ADL has long been calling for a whole-of-government approach to fighting antisemitism, and the Jewish Policy Index fills a critical gap by providing a clear roadmap for states to support their Jewish communities,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement announcing the initiative. “With antisemitic incidents at record highs nationwide, we need more than rhetoric — we need real, measurable policy action.”

He added, “This tool offers us a comprehensive picture of where states are and what steps they can take to do better. We urge state lawmakers to take swift and decisive action to enact strong policies and laws that protect their Jewish communities.”

According to the ADL, JPI has already identified both positive and negative trends. Nine states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New York, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia — have all passed legislation to address a surge of antisemitic discrimination and violence across the country, earning a JPI designation as “Leading States.” But, the ADL noted, 41 other states failed to merit the distinction.

The distribution of the first JPI ratings forms a bell curve, with most states, 29, clustered in the middle, having been classified as “Progressing States” which have adopted “some key pieces of the policy agenda” the ADL recommends. Twelve received the poorest mark, “Limited Action States,” for showing “little systematic effort to address antisemitism through policy.”

The ADL and its partners say the JPI can facilitate democratic action which “empowers residents” to challenge their states to fight antisemitism with vigor.

“Jewish communities know that if we are to flourish through difficult times, we must mobilize to fight antisemitism,” Eric Fingerhut, chief executive officer of the Jewish Federations of North America, said in a statement. “The most important responsibility of government is keeping its citizens safe. The Jewish Policy Index is an important tool to help inform and advance how state governments respond to antisemitism and protect their Jewish communities.”

The advent of JPI comes on the heels of harrowing new FBI statistics which reveal the extent to which violent antisemitism has become a pervasive occurrence in American life.

While hate crimes against other demographic groups declined overall last year, those perpetrated against Jews increased by 5.8 percent in 2024 to 1,938, the largest total recorded in over 30 years of the FBI’s counting them. Jewish American groups noted that this surge, which included 178 assaults, is being experienced by a demographic group which constitutes just 2 percent of the US population.

Additionally, a striking 69 percent of all religion-based hate crimes that were reported to the FBI in 2024 targeted Jews, with 2,041 out of 2,942 total such incidents being antisemitic in nature. Muslims, the second most targeted religious group, were victims in 256 offenses, or about 9 percent of the total.

Antisemitic hate crimes kept federal and local law enforcement agents busy throughout 2024, as previously reported by The Algemeiner.

In November, for example, the US Department of Justice secured the conviction of a Massachusetts man, John Reardon, 59, who threatened to perpetrate mass killings of Jews. Over several months, Reardon called Jewish institutions across Massachusetts, proclaiming that he would kill Jewish men, women, and children in their houses of worship. His terroristic menacing included promises to plant bombs in synagogues in the cities of Sharon and Attleboro, as well as making 98 calls to the Israeli Consulate in Boston, a behavior which began on Oct. 7, 2023, and ended just days before his apprehension by law enforcement in January.

In New York City, meanwhile, the Jewish community in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn endured a violent series of robberies and other attacks. In one instance, three masked men attempted to rob a Hasidic man after stalking him through the neighborhood. Before then, two men beat a middle-aged Hasidic man after he refused to surrender his cell phone in compliance with what appears to have been an attempted robbery. Additionally, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily Jewish neighborhood, and less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face.

The wave of hatred has not relented in 2025.

In June, a gunman murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, while they exited an event at the Capital Jewish Museum hosted by the American Jewish Committee. The suspect charged for the double murder, 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, yelled “Free Palestine” while being arrested by police after the shooting, according to video of the incident. The FBI affidavit supporting the criminal charges against Rodriguez stated that he told law enforcement he “did it for Gaza.”

Less than two weeks later, a man firebombed a crowd of people who were participating in a demonstration to raise awareness of the Israeli hostages who remain imprisoned by Hamas in Gaza. A victim of the attack, Karen Diamond, 82, later died, having sustained severe, fatal injuries.

“Leaders of every kind — teachers, law enforcement officers, government officials, business owners, university presidents — must confront antisemitism head-on,” Ted Deutch, chief executive officer of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), said in a statement responding to the FBI data. “Jews are being targeted not just out of hate, but because some wrongly believe that violence or intimidation is justified by global events.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.