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Anti-Israel Campus Protests Were Filled with Hate; College Teachers Tell You Not to Believe the Truth
Pro-Hamas protesters at Columbia University on April 19, 2024. Photo: Melissa Bender via Reuters Connect
How history will treat the post-October 7 anti-Israel protests on college campuses across America will depend in part on how much longer they last.
As we approach the two-year mark, there seems little room for indifference. Normal people are appalled by the Hamas Hipsters — privileged adolescents at $80,000 per-year schools — calling to “Globalize the Intifada.” But not everyone. Some people, especially some academics, are proud of them.
Danielle K. Brown, a journalism professor at Michigan State University who has devoted “over a decade” to researching protests and media coverage, wrote about the “disconnect” between “outside onlookers” and “those on the ground.”
Whereas the former can’t see past the ugliness of the anti-Israel protests, the latter understand and appreciate “the meticulous planning by advocacy groups and leaders aimed at getting a message out.” She calls it the “protest paradigm” and argues that this divide was particularly noticeable during the Spring 2024 semester of encampments.
Breaking the Protest Paradigm
Brown blames the media for highlighting “the spectacle rather than the substance,” which leaves “audiences uninformed about the nuances of the protests.” She claims that the protest paradigm is only broken “in the work produced by journalists who have engaged deeply and frequently with the advocacy groups” responsible for the protests, especially students.
Student journalists may be more likely to identify with protesters than with university administrations and public officials, but since the Left has adopted the Hamas cause, there are plenty of equally-enthusiastic and more capable “insiders” willing to “control the narrative,” including professional journalists, politicians, and especially professors.
Where outsiders saw antisemitism, violence, and disruption of expensive educations, these academics and other “insiders” uniformly praise the protesting students for their bravery and deny that they are antisemitic. They blame someone else for any violence that occurs, and they minimize harassment of Jewish students, property destruction, and building takeovers. Some even have the audacity to portray the protesters as morally superior to the universities they are protesting.
Aren’t They Beautiful?
Since the primary “advocacy group” behind the post-October 7 protests is Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), it’s not surprising that Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) has been its primary ally on “the inside.” FJP, after all, exists solely to provide public relations services for SJP.
When University of Michigan students attempted to take over a building on the Ann Arbor campus, they were met with force from campus and local police. The university’s FJP chapter described it as “a beautiful display of unity, moral courage and justice.”
Georgetown University’s Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine published an “Open Letter” on May 13, 2024, calling the encampment at George Washington University “a positive, peaceful, respectful protest” and lavishly praising the “students [who] managed to create and sustain an orderly, clean, and lively encampment, with two kitchens, a medical center, and an outdoor classroom where students learned, discussed, sang, prayed, and danced.”
Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC) saw something different with her own eyes: “defacement of buildings, destruction of property [and] threats against Jewish students.”
Definitely Not Antisemitic
Describing the encampments as beautiful was often not enough. It was equally important to assert that, contrary to what anyone could plainly see, they were not antisemitic. Outright denials were common, such as the University of Michigan FSJP’s denunciation of “the repressive actions and demonizing language of President Ono … – in particular, using the mendacious cudgel of anti-semitism.”
But mere denials were not enough for “insiders” defending the encampments at Columbia University and George Washington University, which received the most attention of the 100-plus encampments at schools in the US. They found it important to impart a Jewish character to the protests.
George Mason University’s Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine’s praised the encampment at GWU as “an inclusive space of free education, food security, medical care, and creativity. They organized teach-ins, prayed, made art, held a Shabbat service.”
A Reuters article describing the Columbia encampment as a “living history lesson,” nonchalantly adds that protesters ate “free kidney beans and rice and kosher Passover snacks,” and asserts that “Reuters journalists have seen students peacefully chatting, reading, eating and holding both Jewish and Muslim prayer ceremonies.”
When four of the most far-left members of the New York City Council toured the Columbia encampment, they wrote about what it was “really like.” Taking umbrage with descriptions of “a cesspit of antisemitic hatred and a threat to the safety of all Jewish students and faculty,” they countered that, “Far from a danger zone where Jews should fear to tread, the encampment hosted a large kabbalat shabbat service on Friday evening, followed the next night by an equally well-attended Havdalah service.”
Enlisting anti-Zionist Jews in the cause provides a shield against charges of antisemitism. As Clemens Heni puts it, “Jewish anti-Zionists give hatred of Israel a kind of Kosher stamp.” But it a weak shield based on a false premise.
Curiously, the same Left that portrayed Larry Elder as “the black face of white supremacy” during his candidacy for the 2021 California gubernatorial recall election is quite comfortable implying that Jews can’t be antisemitic.
It’s Someone Else’s Fault
Another common goal of encampment defenders is to absolve the protesters of all violence by deflecting blame onto others, especially university administrations and police departments. Georgetown University’s FSJP blames “Mayor Bowser and the GWU administration [for having] created the very conditions that it had accused the students of fostering: chaos, conflict, and violence.”
Likewise, George Mason University’s FSJP “condemns in the strongest terms possible GW President Ellen Granberg’s decision to call the MPD on students who were demonstrating peacefully and endangering no one.”
The University of Texas FSJP denounced university “President Hartzell’s decision to once again order a military-style invasion of the UT campus.”
Brown herself criticizes Texas Governor Greg Abbot for having “equated protesters [at the University of Texas, Austin] to criminals with antisemitic intentions” and unfairly shaping the narrative by overshadowing “rebuttal from protest participants.”
Protesters Are Better Than Everyone
The most exorbitant white-washing tactics portray student protesters as wiser and better at educating than the universities where they protest.
At the University of San Francisco, where the anti-Israel protesters gave their encampment the grandiose name “The Peoples’ University for Palestine,” the school’s FJP chapter, “Educators for Justice in Palestine,” praised the “peaceful movement that has created a robust learning environment where students have learned to engage in collaborative work and discussion.”
Harvard’s FJP was equally impressed: “With their encampment, our students aim to construct a liberated space for collective education.”
But the most over-the-top, bombastic hyperbole in praise of any post-October 7 protest came from Timothy Kaufman-Osborn, an emeritus professor of politics at Whitman College who wants The Federalist Papers banned from college classes.
In Kaufman-Osborn’s effusive defense of the Columbia encampment for Project MUSE, the university is “an autocratic property corporation,” and the student protesters are “the encampment’s residents.” In language only an academic would write, he explains that the protesters’ “embrace of procedural democracy was subtended by a struggle to meet mundane needs whose satisfaction is a necessary precondition of the possibility of autonomous self-governance.”
Representative Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) saw something different with his own eyes: “Jewish students … being verbally – and even physically – assaulted. Masked protesters … cheering on and actively calling for the genocide of Jews.”
Conclusion
Contrary to what anonymous FJP members, socialist politicians, and others “on the ground” wrote, post-October 7 anti-Israel protesters have created nothing but hostile environments. The encampment students in particular pilfered university resources and disrupted the educations of their peers who want nothing to do with pro-Hamas demonstrations. If any “created food security,” it was on someone else’s dime.
They also weren’t “residents” but trespassers, and they neither saved democracy nor challenged authoritarianism. What will the Fall 2025 semester bring? Will there be more protests and encampments in solidarity with Hamas? Or maybe the Islamic Republic of Iran will be the new cause.
Whatever comes, there will be no shortage of “insiders” to explain why you should not believe your lying eyes.
Chief Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) Political Correspondent A.J. Caschetta is a principal lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a fellow at Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum where he is also a Milstein fellow. A version of this article was originally published by IPT.
The post Anti-Israel Campus Protests Were Filled with Hate; College Teachers Tell You Not to Believe the Truth first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Blowing the Shofar for Mental Health in 5786
The blowing of the shofar, traditionally done on Rosh Hashanah. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
After nearly two years of a multi-front war in Israel, the toll on Israel’s mental health is staggering. Surveys and data show steep and widespread increases in PTSD, anxiety, depression, sleep disruptions, and addiction. Although the government has increased services, it is clear that not nearly enough is being done, with severe shortages of professionals and funding resulting in months-long waits for appointments for mental health care, even when it’s a matter of life and death. The heartbreaking rise in suicides among IDF soldiers, reservists, and first aid providers at Oct 7 attack sites underscores the unprecedented level of crisis.
Yet the sheer size of the challenge has, like never before, acted as a catalyst to force the topic of mental health out into the open. While there is so much darkness around us, this development — the willingness of the public, policymakers, educators, community leaders and military officials, to talk about issues that have for too long remained taboo — gives us a glimmer of light and hope. We must seize this moment and encourage the conversations to continue. We need to wake up to the needs around us.
Let’s make the coming new Jewish year, 5786 the year of mental health, in Israel and across the Jewish world.
Each year the sounds of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah call us to awaken to both personal and community needs. Our sages teach us that the set of shofar blasts during (or in some congregations, before) the silent Amida prayer hearken us to wake up on a personal level; while the later set of shofar blasts, during the chazan’s repetition of the Amida, call to us to wake up as a community.
This year, both sets of blasts should stir us to confront the crisis of mental health, for ourselves and for our people. The need has always been there, but it has increased due to the current difficult times for the Jewish people.
Judaism obligates us to take care of ourselves, including our health. We are permitted to violate Shabbat to help someone with mental health or illness (Shemirat Shabbat Kehilchata 32:26). Our daily prayers for the sick ask for a healing of the “nefesh and guf” — the soul and the body, with the reference to the soul coming first. Our tradition also commands us to care for the others in our midst; “Kol Yisrael arevim ze bah ze,” all of Israel is responsible for each other. This means that all of us, especially community leaders, including educators, rabbis, and Israeli government officials, must take responsibility and ensure mental health is being addressed directly and to a sufficient level.
While there is ample and serious research over the years linking religious practice, spirituality, and community to improved well-being — and Israeli data has also found that Orthodox communities and ultra-Orthodox are experiencing lower levels of stress than secular and traditional people — relying solely on these assumptions is insufficient and potentially dangerous. No one and no community is immune. Jewish leaders’ role now is to help start more conversations about mental health, normalizing the topic, as well as to encourage and help people to access professional help.
Mental health is not just an Israeli issue. Increased antisemitism and division over how Israel is handling the war are causing more stress, anxiety and fear in the Diaspora as well. Places with large and strong Jewish communities that have long felt shielded from antisemitism — places like my previous residence Teaneck, New Jersey — are now facing anti-Israel rallies and open hostility. For those who came of age at a time when outright antisemitism was waning in the United States, this marks their first encounter with overt hatred and violence. Clearly under such circumstances, leaders of synagogues, schools and community organizations must treat mental health with the same importance as security.
In both Israel and the Diaspora, we must expand our view of mental health beyond war-related trauma. It is also time to address depression, anxiety and other conditions in general, which have been very real issues but often not given adequate attention. In fact, even before the mental health situation worsened post-Oct. 7, studies showed that American Jews are at higher risk for mental health and trauma than the general population, a phenomenon that the American Psychiatric Association says is partly related to intergenerational trauma, including second and third generation children of Holocaust survivors. The emerging public conversation around mental health makes confronting these longstanding needs more feasible now.
For example, over the last two academic years, Ohr Torah Stone, the network of 32 educational institutions I oversee in Israel, has made counseling available to all students and staff. This initiative began in reaction to Oct. 7 and the war, which has taken the lives of 62 alumni and first degree relatives of our students and staff, pulled hundreds of our students, teachers and their families into ongoing reserve military duty, and disrupted the sense of safety for many, with regular air-raid sirens and losses in their communities. While many utilized these services to discuss those challenges, many others have sought counseling for unrelated issues, finally feeling safe enough to seek help. (These services remain free of charge, thanks to generous donors).
Dedicating 5786 to mental health will no doubt be uncomfortable and challenging, but it will also be transformative. Real change is what Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are all about; like true repentance, it requires us not just to pay lip service, but to actually behave differently.
The shofar is a stark reminder of this; it is a prayer unshackled by words, composed solely of raw sounds that penetrate our entire essence and being, commanding and inspiring us to change.
This year, let’s answer the shofar’s call by normalizing conversation about mental health in our families, schools, pulpits, and community programs. Let us implement programs to train educators and rabbis in basic mental health awareness, remove the stigma still surrounding these illnesses, and treat mental health with the same urgency as physical illness. In doing so, we have the ability to save lives and strengthen our people.
Rabbi Kenneth Brander is the president of Ohr Torah Stone, an international network of 32 religious educational institutions. He previously served as a vice president at Yeshiva University in New York, and is the rabbi emeritus of the Boca Raton Synagogue in Florida.
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This Year, the World’s Hatred Can Be a Cause for Our Renewal
A Torah scroll. Photo: RabbiSacks.org.
It’s getting harder and harder to keep up with the conspiracy mill. Just when you think you’ve heard the wildest possible accusation against Israel and the Jews, some online influencer manages to take it a step further.
This past week, in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s tragic killing, the internet rumor machine decided to pin the blame on Israel. The theory goes like this: Kirk had supposedly shifted his stance on Israel, and for that crime, the Mossad took him out.
It sounds insane — because it is insane. Tyler Robinson, Kirk’s murderer, has already been caught, turned in by his own law-abiding and horrified family. His confession, shared in real time with friends over messaging apps, has been made public.
The motive couldn’t be clearer: Robinson, who came from a right-leaning family, had been radicalized to the far left through a relationship with a transitioning roommate. The murder wasn’t about Israel at all — it was about Charlie Kirk’s opposition to trans individuals.
But what’s truly disturbing isn’t the lunacy of the “Israel-killed-Charlie-Kirk” theory itself — it’s how quickly it spread, and how confidently it’s being repeated. Within hours of his death, the “story” was bouncing around online forums and social media feeds as if it were an established fact.
Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Green, Alex Jones, and now even Roger Stone — people who have no business being rabid antisemites, but somehow are — have all endorsed or amplified the accusation, lashing out at anyone who dares express doubt. It’s trash agitprop, taken to a whole new level.
And Charlie Kirk’s assassination isn’t the only story feeding the American far-right’s anti-Israel, antisemitic mill. More and more, leading voices on the far right have found it convenient to cast Israel as the villain in their fever dreams.
The “America First” wing of the MAGA coalition — once dismissed as fringe — is now loud, aggressive, and frighteningly influential. Millions of followers hang on their every word and are being conditioned to believe that Israel — which is to say, Jews — is the root of every American problem. It’s utterly bizarre.
What makes it even more bizarre is that Donald Trump — the political figure who mainstreamed this coalition — has been the most supportive president Israel has ever had. The embassy move to Jerusalem, the recognition of the Golan, the Abraham Accords — all happened under Trump in his first term.
And since returning to office in January, his administration has consistently given Israel the backing it needs, militarily and diplomatically, not least in the many international forums where Israel is relentlessly vilified.
Yet within the very movement that cheered him to victory, a dark current of raw Jew-hatred has been steadily gaining ground. It’s a toxic fusion of old-fashioned antisemitism with new-age conspiracy culture — a phenomenon that is as irrational as it is dangerous, and one that is now creeping into the mainstream.
And these conspiracies aren’t confined to the latest headlines. Last year, a twelve-hour so-called “documentary” titled Europa: The Last Battle went viral in far-right circles. It is, quite literally, a pro-Nazi propaganda reel, recycling every antisemitic trope imaginable — from “Jews control communism” to “Jews control capitalism” — and repackaging them as hidden truths that “they” don’t want you to know.
Today, clips from this monstrosity circulate on TikTok and X, and on chat groups, as bite-sized “red pills” for a new generation of extremists who’ve never so much as opened a history book but are utterly convinced that Jews are behind everything sinister and evil in the world.
This is where the so-called “horseshoe effect” becomes painfully apparent. On paper, the far right, the far left, and Islamist extremists should have nothing in common. They clash over economics, religion, culture, and even the very definition of freedom. Yet somehow, they all land in the same place when it comes to Israel and the Jews.
The far-right calls Jews globalist puppet-masters, the far-left brands Israel a colonial oppressor, and Islamists call for jihad until the Jewish state is wiped off the map. The rhetoric may differ, and the justifications may vary — but the target is always the same. Antisemitism and Israel-bashing are the one point of agreement uniting factions that otherwise despise each other.
Meanwhile, the space for sane politics keeps shrinking. Lucid, thoughtful voices — people who want to talk about policy, strategy, or actual facts (yes, facts, not conspiratorial fantasy) — are drowned out by the noise of inflammatory agitators. It’s no longer reasoned debate, it’s a shouting match where the loudest lie wins. And the only message that cuts across the political spectrum is that Jews are guilty.
It’s frightening to see conspiracy theories, old and new, gain traction so quickly, and to realize that for many, these fantasies have become “truth.” The reach and speed of digital antisemitism is unlike anything we’ve ever faced before.
And yet, the irony is that none of this is new. Antisemitism has always been obsessive, irrational, and cyclical. Each wave dresses itself up as “modern” — Jews are the antichrist, the infidel rejectors of Mohammed, anarchists, communists, capitalists, Zionists, globalists — but in the end, it’s the same old prejudice reheated for a new generation.
And paradoxically, as devastating as this hatred is, it almost always has a counterintuitive effect — it sharpens Jewish identity. History shows, time and again, that persecution pushes Jews to remember who they are, their covenant, and why their heritage matters.
We see it even now: since October 7th, Jewish immigration to Israel has risen, and real estate prices in Israel remain buoyant as more and more diaspora Jews purchase homes in the Promised Land. The very pressure meant to break us instead reminds us of where we belong.
This is precisely the message embedded in Parshat Nitzavim (Deut. 30:1-3): “And it shall be, when all these curses come upon you… then God will restore your fortunes and take you back in love. He will bring you together again from among all the peoples where your God has scattered you.”
The medieval commentator Ramban, himself no stranger to the irrational hatred of Jews, famously explains that this is not a conditional promise, but a prophecy of how Jewish history will unfold. There will be exile and persecution, which will involve suffering and arbitrary harassment. But that will inevitably be followed by return — first to God, and then to the Land.
The pattern is clear: first, suffering → then, realization → then, return → and finally: redemption.
Seen through this lens, the curses of hatred and persecution, as absurd and cruel as they are, paradoxically serve as reminders of Jewish identity and destiny.
Antisemites, whether on the right or the left, think they are undermining the Jews. They might even believe that they have the wind in their sails, and that the destruction of Israel and elimination of Jews is within reach — but in reality, they are unwittingly fulfilling the covenant, driving Jews back to their roots, to their people, and to their land.
And that is the great irony of our moment. The digital swamps may churn out new lies every day, and millions may swallow them whole, convinced that Jews lurk behind every evil. But their obsession only proves the point recorded in the Torah. Our covenant endures, the pattern repeats, and the Jewish people remain.
Every wave of hatred that imagines it will finish us off instead becomes the backdrop for renewal — of faith, of peoplehood, and of attachment to our land. That is why Israel stands, why Jewish life flourishes, and why, no matter how loud the agitators shout, redemption is always on the horizon.
The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.
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The PA Is Still Paying Salaries to Terrorists and ‘Martyrs’
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas holds a leadership meeting in Ramallah, in the West Bank, April 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Torokman
On Wednesday, the Palestinian Authority (PA) announced a new system of payments, which was supposed to be based on welfare needs and not as a reward to terrorists:
The Palestinian National Economic Empowerment Institution (PNEEI) announces the payment of financial allowances within the Social Protection and Care Program, starting from Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025, through authorized payment centers.
However, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) has confirmed that payments were made via the PA post offices, as in the past, indicating that the post offices are the aforementioned “authorized payment centers.”
The PA’s post office ATMs are exclusively for paying terror salaries and allowances, as stated in an official announcement last year by the PLO:
Our people, families of the Martyrs and injured in the West Bank … on the subject of the payment of allowances for the families of Martyrs and injured … We call on the recipients of the funds to withdraw the large amounts that have accumulated for them at the post office, including the current allowance …
As we have emphasized before, the post office is not a regular bank like other banks and cannot hold funds, but is only a means of transferring allowances, and the funds cannot be held for a long period in the accounts of the recipients …
We wish mercy for the souls of the martyrs, recovery for the wounded, and freedom for the prisoners. [emphasis added]
[PLO Martyrs’ Families and Injured Care Establishment, Feb, 2024]
The PNEEI announcement above, stating that payments were made “through authorized payment centers,” was possibly its attempt to hide that the payments were made through the post offices, which are exclusively used for paying terrorists.
PMW has confirmed that families of prisoners and “Martyrs” have received payments through post offices as in the past.
Earlier this week, an online news site reported that it had received information from the Palestinian Authority indicating that the PA had stopped rewarding imprisoned terrorists and terrorist Martyrs’ families as in the past, but had moved them to a new welfare-based system, according to The Times of Israel.
The article also claimed that the “Welfare payments, which are now distributed by the extra-governmental PNEEI, have not yet been issued.” These payments, according to the article, would have been the payments to imprisoned terrorists and “Martyrs’” families.
However, the claim that PNEEI payments were not made this month openly contradicts PNEEI’s own announcement on its website that payments were made on Thursday. As stated, PMW has confirmed terror payments were made last Thursday at the post offices.
There were additional inaccuracies as well in the article, including a prominent mistake, defining PNEEI as “extra-governmental.”
Below are pictures and bios of all the PNEEI board members as they appear on its website. As can be seen, 10 of the 11 board members are employed in senior PA government positions, including one minister and six undersecretaries. Only one is an academic. Moreover, PNEEI answers to Mahmoud Abbas.
With senior government officers as board members, the article’s defining PNEEI as “extra-governmental” is another clear example of publishing PA claims without doing the minimal investigation to verify them.
Especially on a politically sensitive topic, such as the PA’s terror rewards, one would expect more careful journalism before publishing the PA’s claim to have reformed.
The author is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.