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Bridging Hatred: How Two Forms of Antisemitism Converge on College Campuses
City, University Of London. Photo: Wiki Commons.
Another morning, another flood of emails. Lately, my university inbox has become more than just a stream of class updates and administrative notices — now even this simplest of tasks has been hijacked by antisemitism.
Statements from the Student Union condemning Israel’s “Genocide,” “Educide,” “Domicide,” and a list of other bogus terms pile up on my inbox screen — one after another.
And even though I delete the emails, antisemitism follows me in every hallway (filled with anti-Israel posters) and cubicles filled with antisemitic stickers. It is completely inescapable.
This phenomenon reminds me of something Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks once said, when he compared antisemitism to a “virus” that has “survived over time by mutating.”
Beyond that, antisemitism has permeated groups you’d never expect to withstand being in the same room, let alone aligned in a common cause, with each other. The surprising nature of the spread of antisemitism between the far left and Islamist groups, has been called the “Red-Green Alliance.”
This alliance is simply proof that sometimes the enemy of my enemy is — still just an enemy. However, the current resurgence of the latest variant of antisemitism — created in the wake of October 7th — has clearly found fertile ground in Western schools and academic institutions.
According to CAMERA, an organization set up to fight anti-Israel narratives and disinformation, the roots of this deranged ideology begin in a very expected place: Nazi Germany, which spent an enormous amount of resources into spreading antisemitism internationally.
With the eventual disappearance of the Nazi regime in Germany, the mantle of exporting antisemitism has now been picked up by (among others) authoritarian regimes globally. The Soviet Union, for instance, worked closely through Uganda’s Idi Amin to encourage Palestinian terrorist Yasser Arafat to rephrase his endless waves of terrorism against Israeli civilians as acts of heroism, part of a necessary “liberation movement.”
In time, these propagandistic slogans developed intellectual roots as revolutionaries in Iran, notably Ali Shirati, pioneered a synthesis, combining Marxism’s oppressor/oppressed paradigm with a political interpretation of Shiite Islam. This positioned Islam as uniquely responsible for championing the marginalized.
Unsurprisingly, Iran has developed into one of the most major exporters of this “New Antisemitism” — funding a web of initiatives aimed to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist and dehumanize its people.
The influence of these Islamic regimes extends across Europe and North America, deeply embedding itself within Western academic institutions. This phenomenon has received far less attention compared to the coverage of China’s Confucius Institutes on campuses, despite Qatari and Iranian interests exerting a much greater financial and ideological impact.
A groundbreaking 2008 report revealed the scale of this influence, when research uncovered that Islamist regimes had injected $462 million into just eight leading UK institutions, including prestigious universities like Oxford and Cambridge. Subsequent investigations have painted an even more alarming picture, with reports suggesting that Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood have secretly channeled over $13 billion into American universities between 2001 and 2021.
The consequences of this influence is not so surprising. British academics have increasingly demonstrated a lack of moral clarity on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Some of this their Marxist roots, where other efforts could be attributed to foreign funding. And when they support terrorist groups on college campuses, they often go without consequences. Their “oppressor vs. oppressed” ideology makes them sympathetic to terrorism.
Many students have followed the lead of these teachers, with anti-Israel protests on UK universities becoming a near daily occurrence — costing UK universities at least £1 million in management already, and spreading hate to new generations of students and the general population.
And sadly, the impact of this rise of a new antisemitism has resulted in Jewish students fearful of expressing their Jewish identity on campus, with figures showing as many as 70% of Jewish students actively concealing their Jewish identity in UK universities.
As for me and the flood of hate in my email inbox, my problem won’t be resolved until we start to tackle antisemitism within our universities, and our media institutions seriously and denormalize this spreading hatred.
Isaac Grand is Masters Student in Law at City, University of London, and a CAMERA on Campus Fellow.
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US Condemns UN for Extending Mandate of Anti-Israel Official Francesca Albanese
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 States has “strongly denounced” the United Nations for extending the tenure of controversial UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, repudiating the decision as an example of “antisemitic hatred” within the international organization.
“The Human Rights Council’s (HRC) support for Ms. Albanese offers yet another example of why President Trump ordered the United States to cease all participation in the HRC,” the US Mission to the UN said in a statement on Tuesday. “Ms. Albanese’s actions also make clear the United Nations tolerates antisemitic hatred, bias against Israel, and the legitimization of terrorism.”
Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has held the position of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories since 2022. The position authorizes her to monitor and report on alleged “human rights violations” that Israel supposedly commits against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Earlier this month, the UN Human Rights Council renewed the mandate of Albanese, despite widespread calls from several countries and NGOs urging UN members to oppose her reappointment due to her controversial remarks and alleged pro-Hamas stance.
Critics of Albanese have long accused her of exhibiting an excessive anti-Israel bias, calling into question her fairness and neutrality.
Albanese has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s attacks on the Jewish state.
In the months following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, atrocities across southern Israel, Albanese accused the Jewish state of enacting a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people had been killed in the Gaza war as a result of Israeli actions.
The United Nations launched a probe into Albanese last summer for allegedly accepting a trip to Australia funded by pro-Hamas organizations. She has also celebrated the anti-Israel protesters rampaging across US college campuses, saying they represent a “revolution” and give her “hope.”
While speaking at a Washington, DC bookstore in October, Albanese also accused Israel of weaponizing the fallout of the Oct. 7 slaughters to justify the continued “colonization” of Gaza.
“The 7th of October is a tragic date for the Israelis, but this is what also triggered the opportunity for Israel to complete and channel the project of colonial erasure. Israel seized the opportunity to complete that plan of realizing Jewish sovereignty only in the land of Palestine,” Albanese said at the time.
The UN official has also decried Israelis as “foreign” Jews who expelled “indigenous” Palestinians from their land for the purpose of creating an exclusionary ethnostate, erasing the millennia-long presence of Jewish people within the land of Israel. She has also repeatedly condemned Israel as a “colonial” enterprise, comparing the Jewish state to British India or French Algeria.
“They used to say, let us colonize Palestine as the Brits have colonized India, as the French have colonized Algeria, because up to 70 years ago, colonialism was totally acceptable. Today, it’s not and so the narrative has changed,” Albanese said.
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Award-Winning French Actress Mélanie Laurent Joins ‘Fauda’ Season 5 Cast in Lead Role
French actress Mélanie Laurent. Photo: yes Studios.
Multi-award-winning French actress Mélanie Laurent will take on a lead role in the fifth season of the popular Israeli television series “Fauda,” Israel’s yes Studios announced this week.
Laurent’s film credits include “Inglorious Basterds” (2009), “Now You See Me” (2013), and “Operation Finale” (2018). She has two César Awards and a Lumières Award. Her most recent work includes last year’s “The Flood,” a French-Italian film where she played Marie-Antionette, and the French-language film “Freedom,” which she wrote and directed.
Laurent will be featured in seven of the nine episodes in season five of “Fauda,” according to yes Studios. Details about her character and role in the Hebrew-language show have not been revealed, but she will star alongside “Fauda” co-creator and lead star Lior Raz, with whom she previously worked on the 2019 Netflix film “6 Underground.”
Season five of “Fauda” is expected to premiere on yes TV in Israel in early 2026 and will later stream worldwide on Netflix, where the first four seasons of the award-winning show are already streaming. Yes Studios announced in March that filming for “Fauda” season five will begin in late April.
The upcoming season will be filmed in Israel and overseas, following the “Fauda” team on a private mission. Details about the plot for the new season have been kept under wraps. The fifth season will mark 10 years of “Fauda” airing in Israel and around the world on Netflix.
Israeli actor Idan Amedi said in February he will not return for the fifth season of “Fauda” because of his music career and ongoing rehabilitation from injuries he sustained while fighting with the Israel Defense Forces in the Gaza Strip during the Israel-Hamas war that began in 2023. Amedi starred in the show as undercover agent Sagi Tzur, who is the husband of intelligence officer Nurit (Rona-Lee Shimon), who will still be featured in the show’s next season. It remains unclear how “Fauda” will address the exit of Amedi’s character.
As Israel’s longest running action series, “Fauda” follows a team of elite Israeli undercover agents as they hunt down and apprehend terrorists. The show is based on the real-life experiences of its creators, Raz and journalist Avi Issacharoff. The new season is being led by season 4 director Omri Givon (“Hostages”) and written by Omri Shenhar (“Tehran”). “Fauda” is produced by yes TV and L. Benasuly Productions for yes TV.
“Fauda” crew member Matan Meir was killed in action in November 2023 while fighting in Gaza as an IDF reservist.
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Israel Will Keep Gaza Buffer Zone, Minister Says, as Truce Bid Stalls
Smoke rises from Gaza after an explosion, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, April 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
Israeli troops will remain in the buffer zones they have created in Gaza even after any settlement to end the war, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday, as efforts to revive a ceasefire agreement faltered.
Since resuming military operations last month, Israeli forces have carved out a broad “security zone” extending deep into Gaza and squeezing some 2 million Palestinians into ever smaller areas in the south and along the coastline.
“Unlike in the past, the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is not evacuating areas that have been cleared and seized,” Katz said in a statement following a meeting with military commanders.
“The IDF will remain in the security zones as a buffer between the enemy and the communities in any temporary or permanent situation in Gaza — as in Lebanon and Syria.”
In a summary of its operations over the past month, the Israeli military said it now controls 30 percent of the Palestinian enclave.
In southern Gaza alone, Israeli forces have seized the border city of Rafah and pushed inland up to the so-called “Morag corridor” that runs from the eastern edge of Gaza to the Mediterranean Sea, between Rafah and the city of Khan Younis.
It already held a wide corridor across the central Netzarim area and has extended a buffer zone all around the frontier hundreds of meters (yards) inland, including the Shejaia area just to the east of Gaza City in the north.
Israel says its forces have killed hundreds of Hamas fighters, including many senior commanders of the Palestinian terrorist group, since March 18 but the operation has alarmed the United Nations and European countries.
More than 400,000 Palestinians have been displaced since hostilities resumed on March 18 after two months of relative calm, according to UN humanitarian agency OCHA.
Katz said Israel, which has blocked the delivery of relief supplies into the territory since early March, was creating infrastructure to allow distribution through civilian companies at a later date, but the blockade on aid would remain in place. Israeli officials have noted that Hamas often seizes humanitarian aid heading into Gaza for its own use and will sell the rest to Gazan civilians at high prices, using the money to fund its terrorism operations.
He said Israel would pursue a plan to allow Gazans who wished to leave the enclave to do so, although it remains unclear which countries would be willing to accept large numbers of Palestinians.
RED LINES
The comments from Katz, repeating Israel‘s demand on Hamas to disarm, underscore how far away the two sides remain from any ceasefire agreement, despite efforts by Egyptian mediators to revive efforts to reach a deal.
Hamas has repeatedly described calls to disarm as a red line it will not cross and has said Israeli troops must withdraw from Gaza under any permanent ceasefire.
“Any truce lacking real guarantees for halting the war, achieving full withdrawal, lifting the blockade, and beginning reconstruction will be a political trap,” Hamas said in a statement on Wednesday.
Two Israeli officials said this week there had been no progress in the talks despite media reports of a possible truce to allow the exchange of some of the 59 hostages still held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners.
Israeli officials have said the increased military pressure will force Hamas to release the hostages but the government has faced large demonstrations by Israeli protesters demanding a deal to stop the fighting and get them back.
Israel launched its war in Gaza in response to the October 2023 attack by Hamas on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage.
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