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American campuses aren’t the only ones erupting over Gaza. Welcome to Haifa University.
HAIFA (JTA) — In the days leading up to her university’s long-delayed first semester, Yael Granot-Bein brought a group of Arab and Jewish students together.
Granot-Bein, who works in the University of Haifa’s dean of students office, had envisioned working with the students to come up with a way to demonstrate solidarity during a war that was testing bonds at the school, which enrolls the highest proportion of Arabs of any Israeli university.
“I said, ‘Let’s think together about a catchphrase that we can put on T-shirts and bracelets.’ In my mind, I had something like, ‘Let’s keep a diverse campus safe,’” Granot-Bein recalled. “They looked at me and were very honest and said, ‘Listen, that is not appropriate. We are not on the same page at all.”
It was a dramatic and disappointing conversation at an institution that has been a rare oasis of shared society in a country whose roughly 7 million Jewish citizens and 2 million Arab ones live in largely separate spheres. Except in a handful of cases, Jewish and Arab children are educated in separate schools until reaching university, and are generally more comfortable communicating in different languages.
At Haifa University, which resumed classes on Dec. 31 alongside the rest of Israel’s universities, Israeli Arabs make up half of the 17,000-person student body. In a typical year, Jewish and Arab students from Muslim, Christian and Druze backgrounds choose to study at Haifa in part for its reputation as Israel’s most diverse campus environment. In addition, Haifa is a cultural center for Arab Israelis and is known for a history of largely peaceful coexistence between its Jewish and Arab residents.
Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, however, the atmosphere on and around campus has felt different. In the weeks after Hamas’ invasion of Israel, the university took the unprecedented step of suspending eight Arab-Israeli students for posts on social media and WhatsApp groups that were deemed to be supporting terror.
This month, those students were allowed back on campus while their cases undergo a mediation process — sparking calls by some Jewish student leaders for a “day of disruption” in protest of that decision.
“We demand that they stay off campus until the process is completed,” Elad Asis, the student government president, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency as he led a rally of dozens of students holding signs at the campus entrance at the start the second week of classes on Jan. 9. “It is not possible that students who supported terrorism will sit next to students whose family members were murdered on Oct. 7.”
According to Adalah, an Arab-Israeli legal rights nonprofit, more than 100 Arab students have faced disciplinary proceedings over social media posts related to the war, at least eight of whom were expelled.
The university administration handed out materials with the slogan “Continuing to study together” in order to cool tensions. (Eliyahu Freedman)
The suspensions have had a sweeping impact at Haifa, where several campus community members had family members killed on Oct. 7 and one student’s parents were kidnapped by Hamas. A campus exhibition illuminates one candle for each of the dozens of graduates killed in action in Gaza.
“I understand their feelings,” Ron Robin, the university’s president, told JTA after meeting with the protesting students on the street. But he said he did not think there was a significant problem on the campus, adding, “I think that if there’s anybody in the university who has sympathy for Hamas I can count on one hand.”
About 1,500 Haifa students were called up to reserve duty as the Israeli army mounted its largest-ever mobilization in the days after the attack. Some of them have now returned to campus, carrying their guns per military policy as they navigate the new tensions. The university is recording classes for the time being, in part so soldiers on active duty can stay caught up; it is also awarding scholarships worth about $530 to all students called up to the army. Annual tuition is approximately $3,000.
“Someone told me that it felt good for her seeing me with my weapon and that it made her feel safe, and someone else saw my weapon and it allowed her to feel comfortable to talk about her difficulties during the war,” said Avinoam, 27, a reservist who is scheduled to alternate weeks between campus and serving on one of Israel’s borders with his army unit. (Per military policy, he shared his first name only.)
The sight of armed students across campus is less comforting for Annabell Sharma, an Arab political science student. Sharma said she was alarmed by the anger on campus about the nine students who had been suspended.
“It is possible that I will be assaulted, not necessarily physically, on the basis of nine students,” she said. She added, “Why bring a weapon to campus, when that is supposed to be the job of campus security? If someone wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and decides to fire upon all of us, then what?”
The tensions at Haifa are far from unique. According to a November survey of Arab and Jewish Israeli students commissioned by the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation, most Jewish and Arab students fear the other, with around 20% of each feeling that fear to a high degree. The survey also found that nearly half of Arab students were considering not returning to campus.
The survey was taken weeks after Arab students were evacuated from the dorms at Netanya Academic College in late October after Jewish residents rioted outside, calling for “Death to Arabs.”
At Haifa, Sharma said she blamed the tensions felt by Arab students at Haifa on a small group of Jewish extremists who have in some cases doxxed and harassed Arab students for writing posts on social media and Whatsapp that they feel are disloyal to Israel. Sharma called the group of Jewish extremists “an obstacle,” and added, “fanatics on both sides need to be restrained without favoritism.”
Granot-Bein said that after the initial tension during her slogan-brainstorming session with students, she was able to resume her original plan by pressing the students to name things they all had in common.
“They said, ‘We want to study, we want to graduate and we want to move on with our lives,’” she recalled.
A boiled-down version of their message — “Continuing to study together” — can now be seen on staff T-shirts and thousands of orange bracelets worn by students across campus that were handed out by professors and volunteers during class breaks at the start of the semester.
Maya Negev, a professor of public health who was handing out bracelets near the main library, emphasized that all members of Israeli society reflected in Haifa’s population have stepped up during the war, from Druze soldiers to Arab Israeli nurses.
“Everyone in the [Department of Public Health] is helping a lot. A lot of Arab medical staff have been covering for Jewish colleagues who are out on reserve duty,” she said.
Medicine has long been one of the most integrated sectors of Israeli society. Hamada, a Muslim student in her final year of nursing school who declined to share her last name, said her medical training had prepared her to return to a wartime campus.
“I am not so afraid because I am used to working with a diverse group of people as a hospital worker, but I know that other students are afraid,” she said. “There is no tension for me here.”
She said an Arab-Jewish leadership course she took last year offered an example of how to build relationships. Once the students got to know each other, she said, “we were able to speak openly about everything from religion to politics to racism.”
Mona Maron, a neuroscientist and vice president for research and development who is one of the university’s most senior Arab-Israeli academics, said that even in the best of times, it can take time to break the ice between Arab and Jewish students on campus.
She was optimistic that the tensions of recent months would soon dissipate now that classes had begun.
“The first meeting of many of the Arab and Israeli students takes place on campus,” she said. “It’s true now that you see groups of Arab and Jewish students sitting separately.”
She added, “Come back in a few weeks and you will see them sitting together.”
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The post American campuses aren’t the only ones erupting over Gaza. Welcome to Haifa University. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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New Jersey Man Inspired by Hamas’s Oct. 7 Attack Pleads Guilty to Assisting Al Shabaab Terror Group
Palestinian terrorists ride an Israeli military vehicle that was seized by gunmen who infiltrated areas of southern Israel, in the northern Gaza Strip, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ahmed Zakot
Karrem Nasr, a 24 year-old man from New Jersey, has pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material support to al Shabaab, a US-designated terror group, with federal prosecutors noting that he was inspired by Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 to become a jihadist terrorist.
“Karrem Nasr devoted himself to waging violent jihad against America and its allies,” Danielle Sassoon, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement announcing the plea on Monday. “Inspired by the evil terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, Nasr, a US citizen, traveled from Egypt to Kenya in an effort to join al Shabaab so that he could execute his jihadist mission of creating death and destruction.”
The Palestinian terror group Hamas murdered 1,200 people, wounded thousands more, kidnapped 251 hostages, and started the Gaza war with its Oct. 7 onslaught, which also included widespread sexual violence against the Israeli people.
“Now, instead of perpetrating a deadly attack in the name of a foreign terrorist group, Nasr resides in federal prison,” Sassoon added. “I thank the career prosecutors of my office and our law enforcement partners for their extraordinary work in disrupting this plan and bringing a terrorist to justice.”
In the US, attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Nasr is scheduled to be sentenced by a judge on June 30.
Nasr relocated from his home in New Jersey to Egypt around July 2023, according to the US Justice Department. In November of that year, he began repeatedly expressing his desire and plans to join al Shabaab, which is based in Somalia, including in communications with an undercover FBI informant pretending to be a recruiter for terrorist groups.
Further detailing his beliefs, Nasr explained to the informant that he hoped to receive training from al Shabaab, kill innocent people, and ultimately die on behalf of the organization’s jihadist goals.
“I would like to become a martyr in the sake of Allah … I think in coming years, inshallah we are going to see here big events in Egypt and the other Arab countries. Inshallah if this happens; I will come back to Egypt, inshallah to help the Muslims in Egypt in their struggle to establish here in Egypt,” he said in one communication, according to the Justice Department.
Al Shabaab has a history of calling for violence against Jews and Israel. In 2014, Sheikh Ali Dhere, a spokesperson for the group, publicly repudiated “the Americans who stood by the Jews in their aggression against the Muslims in Gaza.”
“Muslims must attack the Jews and their properties in every place, and they must pray for their brothers in Gaza,” he said at the time.
In both his discussions with the FBI and his online postings, Nasr communicated that he was particularly motivated to engage in terrorism by the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attacks in Israel.
During his discussions, Nasr rebuked the United States as “evil” and lambasted the country as the “head of the snake.” He also warned that jihadist violence would “soon” happen across the US.
Experts have warned of a rising global terror threat in the wake of Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel, explaining to The Algemeiner that “lone wolf” terrorists inspired by Islamist groups could carry out attacks on US soil, motivated by the Oct. 7 attack and war in Gaza.
The post New Jersey Man Inspired by Hamas’s Oct. 7 Attack Pleads Guilty to Assisting Al Shabaab Terror Group first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Judenrein’: CUNY Professors Blast Faculty Union for Passing ‘Antisemitic’ BDS Resolution
CUNY pro-Hamas students and supporters setup encampment at the school’s campus in New York City on April 25, 2024. Photo: Steve Sanchez via Reuters Connect
Jewish faculty at the City University of New York (CUNY) are denouncing their public sector union’s passing of a resolution which called for the adoption of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
The Professional Staff Congress (PSC) union, which represents over 30,000 CUNY staff and faculty, passed the measure on Jan. 23 by a razor thin margin of just three votes. It falsely accused Israel of war crimes and other affronts to humanity, including “genocide” and “apartheid,” and called for the union to divest its pension plan of holdings linked to “Israeli companies and Israeli government bonds no later than the end of January 2025.”
This is not the first controversial resolution passed by the CUNY faculty union. In 2021, during a previous conflict between Israel and Hamas, it voted to approve a defaming statement which accused Israel of “ongoing settler colonial violence” and demanded the the university “divest from all companies that aid in Israeli colonization, occupation, and war crimes.” Doing so set off a cascade of events, including a mass resignation of faculty from the union, the founding of new campus Jewish civil rights groups, and a major — ultimately unsuccessful — lawsuit which aimed to abolish compulsory public sector union membership.
History is repeating itself, Jewish faculty said following what has been described as the union’s latest outrage against the Jewish community.
“Since the mass exodus of Jews from the union after its antisemitic pro-BDS resolution in 2021, its delegate leadership is virtually Judenrein,” Jeffrey Lax, a Kingsborough Community College professor and founder of the advocacy group Students, Alumni, and Faculty for Equality (SAFE), told The Algemeiner on Wednesday in a statement. “This is a welcome development for the antisemitic, Marxist leaders who have been lying in wait to adopt a full BDS divestment policy, which they have now done, with few Jews still around to oppose it.”
Taking aim at PSC president James Davis, Lax continued, “Senior leaders like President James will pretend that they were against the vote as it ‘divides’ the union. No kidding. But the truth is, it’s no secret that Davis is a proud BDS supporter. We exposed video of him voting for BDS at the American Studies Association. And this is our union today: a corrupt, opaque, Jew-expunging entity that has just signed its own death knell by so blatantly breaking the law.”
Lax’s group, SAFE, is mounting an effort to thwart the resolution’s objectives, and filed on Tuesday a complaint with the New York State Division of Human Rights (DHR) alleging discrimination against Zionism, a central component of Jewish identity, and the “blatant violation” of a state executive order, EO 157, which explicitly proscribes boycotts of Israel. The letter also requested that DHR open a formal investigation of PSC CUNY to uncover any further acts of alleged antisemitism.
“It is no coincidence that hundreds — perhaps thousands — of Jewish faculty members have left the PSC union,” the complaint says. “The PSC-CUNY’s BDS boycott policy and singular divestment from Israel makes clear that Zionist Jewish and Israeli faculty members are not welcome to work with the union, will not receive the same benefits or protections, and will not receive any assistance of values from the union related or connected in any way to their protected nationality or ethnicity.”
Davis maintained in a statement issued on Wednesday that the union will continue to serve the interests of its members.
“We were elected to protect PSC members’ rights, to improve their pay and working conditions and working conditions, and to strengthen their union,” Davis said. “Keeping focus on these primary responsibilities while engaging in wider struggles for justice and peace is important, especially in this politically tumultuous movement. The PSC recently ratified a new contract and is intent on enforcing that contract and improving the working conditions of all members.”
CUNY faculty such as Queens College professor Azriel Genack, continue to be suspicious of the union’s intentions, however, and argue that its recent conduct is unbecoming of any institution which counts academics as members.
“This new PSC Resolution does not mention Hamas or its unspeakably brutal attack [in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023]: the torture, rape, mutilation, kidnapping, and massacre of entire families that broke the ceasefire that has been in place since the previous war. Now the PSC has two resolutions condemning Israel and not a single resolution condemning any other country; not Russia, Iran, China, or North Korea,” Gunack wrote in an open letter shared with The Algemeiner. “The resolution does not speak truth to power; it hides and distorts the truth in order to find soulless solidarity that disgraces CUNY by seeking to demonize a people that faces an enemy that is sworn to annihilate it, even if this entails destroying the hopes of its own people for a better life.”
The City University of New York’s campuses have been lambasted by critics as some of the most antisemitic institutions of higher education in the country.
Last year, the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) resolved half a dozen investigations of antisemitism on CUNY campuses, a consortium of undergraduate colleges located throughout New York City’s five boroughs.
The inquiries, which reviewed incidents that happened as far back as 2020, were aimed at determining whether school officials neglected to prevent and respond to antisemitic discrimination, bullying, and harassment. Hunter College and CUNY Law combined for three resolutions in total, representing half of all the antisemitism cases settled by OCR. Baruch College, Brooklyn College, and CUNY’s Central Office were the subjects of three other investigations.
One of the cases which OCR resolved, involving Brooklyn College, prompted widespread concern when it was announced in 2022. According to witness testimony provided by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law — which filed the complaint prompting the investigation — Jewish students enrolled in the college’s Mental Health Counseling (MCH) program were repeatedly pressured into saying that Jews are white people who should be excluded from discussions about social justice.
The badgering of Jewish students, the students said at the time, became so severe that one student said in a WhatsApp group chat that she wanted to “strangle” a Jewish classmate.
“Some of the harassment on CUNY campuses has become so commonplace as to almost be normalized,” the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) once alleged in July 2022. “Attacking, denigrating, and threatening ‘Zionists’ has become the norm, with the crystal-clear understanding that ‘Zionist’ is now merely an epithet for ‘Jew’ the same way ‘banker,’ ‘cabal,’ ‘globalist,’ ‘cosmopolitan,’ ‘Christ killer,’ and numerous other such dog-whistles have been used over the centuries to target, demonize, and incite against Jews.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post ‘Judenrein’: CUNY Professors Blast Faculty Union for Passing ‘Antisemitic’ BDS Resolution first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Australian Police Foil Antisemitic Attack After Finding Explosives, List of Jewish Targets
Car in New South Wales, Australia graffitied with antisemitic message. Photo: Screenshot
Australian police announced on Wednesday that they foiled a potential mass-casualty antisemitic terrorist attack after discovering a caravan in a suburb of Sydney filled with explosives and material containing details about Jewish targets.
The announcement came amid a wave of antisemitic incidents, including arson and graffiti, in Australia recent months that has alarmed the country’s Jewish community.
Law enforcement officials said police discovered a list of Jewish targets and a cache of Powergel, a mining explosive, in a trailer located in the outer suburb of Dural on Jan. 19.
According to New South Wales state Deputy Police Commissioner David Hudson, there were enough explosives to create a bomb with a blast zone of around 40 meters, or 130 feet.
“This is certainly an escalation,” Hudson said in a press conference, commenting on the recent spate of antisemitic crimes in the greater Sydney area, where businesses and vehicles have been torched and buildings vandalized with graffiti.
“The use of explosives … have the potential to cause a great deal of damage,” he added.
Hudson also confirmed that several suspects unrelated to the explosives had been arrested and that the Jewish community would be informed about the potential targets.
Chris Minns, the premier of New South Wales, referred to the incident as “terrorism,” while confirming that counterterrorism authorities are also investigating the discovery of the explosives.
“This is the discovery of a potential mass casualty event,” he said. “This would strike terror into the community, particularly the Jewish community, and it must be met with the full resources of the government.”
Antisemitism spiked to record levels in Australia — especially in Sydney and Melbourne, which are home to some 85 percent of the country’s Jewish population — following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s bloody invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, amid the ensuing war in Gaza.
In the past two months alone, at least half a dozen incidents were reported in Sydney.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar condemned the latest plot as “intolerable” in a post on the X social media platform.
“The epidemic of antisemitism is spreading in Australia almost unchecked,” he said. “We expect the Australian government to do more to stop this disease!”
The attempted antisemitic terror attack at a synagogue in Sydney is intolerable. This joins a long list of antisemitic attacks in Australia, including setting fire to a childcare center in Sydney, firebombing a synagogue in Melbourne, and many other antisemitic attacks.
The…— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) January 29, 2025
Last week, a child care center in Sydney was set alight and antisemitic graffiti was sprayed on the wall. Located near a Jewish school and synagogue in the city’s eastern section, the center suffered extensive damage, though no injuries were reported.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described the attack as “a vicious crime.”
That incident followed several recent cases of antisemitic vandalism targeting cars, homes, and synagogues.
Amid upcoming national elections to be held by mid-May, antisemitism has become a key issue, with Albanese facing criticism from the opposition for being “weak” in addressing hate crimes against Jews.
Last month, arsonists set fire to a synagogue in Melbourne, injuring one person and causing significant damage to the building.
According to a report from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), the country’s Jewish community experienced over 2,000 antisemitic incidents between October 2023 and September 2024, a significant increase from 495 in the prior 12 months.
Following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, the number of antisemitic physical assaults in Australia rose from 11 in 2023 to 65 in 2024. The level of antisemitism for the past year was six times the average of the preceding 10 years.
Amid the onslaught, law enforcement in Australia has started an investigation into the origins behind the spree of recent antisemitic crimes, announcing they suspect individuals outside the country have coordinated the campaign of hate.
The post Australian Police Foil Antisemitic Attack After Finding Explosives, List of Jewish Targets first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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