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An Ideology of Violence
Illustrative: Supporters of Hamas gather for a rally in Melbourne, Australia. Photo: Reuters/Joel Carrett
JNS.org – When all is said and done, antisemitism is fundamentally an ideology of violence. Behind every missive and every barb—whether delivered online, at pro-Hamas rallies or graffitied on the walls of a Jewish communal building—is a message of dehumanization that licenses physical attacks on Jews and their property.
In the nearly five months that have passed since Hamas terrorists orchestrated the horrendous pogrom of Oct. 7 in Israel, antisemitic violence has exploded around the world. There are something like 16 million Jews around the globe, mainly concentrated in Israel and the United States, but with a presence in Europe, Latin America, Africa and Oceania as well. From what I can tell, there isn’t a single Jewish community that hasn’t been scarred by this latest wave of hostility.
Additionally, in the two decades that I’ve been writing about antisemitic violence, there hasn’t been a single episode in which the perpetrator was a public figure or someone with a media profile. I’m not referring here to the antisemitic rhetoric we’ve heard from influencers like the rapper Kanye West, or any number of the prominent elected officials flinging words like “genocide” in Israel’s direction, or asserting that Diaspora Jews who join the Israeli Defense Forces should be locked up on charges of treason and war crimes. I’m talking about the people who have crossed the line into assaults and even murder, which target Jews simply because they are Jews. The names of individuals we would otherwise have never heard of—like Kobili Traoré, who brutally murdered a Jewish woman, Sarah Halimi, in her Paris apartment in 2017; or Stephan Balliet, the German neo-Nazi who attempted to shoot up a synagogue in the city of Halle, Germany, on Yom Kippur in 2019—are seared into our consciousness solely as a result of their bestial actions.
But that’s changing. Last week, police in the Australian city of Melbourne arrested a known pro-Hamas influencer, a woman who has the ear of some of that country’s elected representatives and whose past activities have earned her media coverage, on the charge of having masterminded the kidnapping and torture of a young man whose only offense was that he works for a Jewish employer.
The 28-year-old Lebanese-Australian woman, Laura Allam, is the CEO of the Al Jannah Foundation, which bills itself as an Islamic humanitarian organization. While Allam’s social-media profiles specify that she is still running Al Jannah, an entry on the Australian Register of Companies notes that the foundation ceased operations in July 2023, less than three years after it was formally incorporated. But while her humanitarian organization may be little more than a husk, Allam has made sure to keep her own voice alive within Australia’s internal debate on the war in Gaza—a debate which, like elsewhere, has been stained by antisemitic invective, conspiracy theories and bloodthirsty celebrations of Israeli deaths.
On Feb. 16, Allam’s pro-Hamas activities took an altogether more sinister turn. Along with an accomplice—identified by the blog Israellycool as Muhammad Sharab, a pro-Hamas fanatic whose social-media posts attacking Israel are decorated with images of samurai swords and ninjas—Allam is alleged to have seized her unnamed 31-year-old victim late at night in the Melbourne suburb of St. Albans at gunpoint. Because of the draconian restrictions imposed on reporting the case by the Australian authorities, who have banned the publication of Allam’s name and photograph by local media outlets, the full details of the assault have not been released. What we do know, though, is that the victim was so badly beaten that he required extensive hospital treatment.
Since the incident, Allam has remained silent, save for one final post on her Instagram account before it was shut down. With sickening self-regard, Allam depicted herself as a victim, ignored by unnamed “community leaders” who “turn around and say such abhorrent words like ‘this is not our fight’ while a woman in your community has now endured a lifetime of pain, suffering and trauma.” Such leaders, she went on, had nothing to fear from her, at least for the time being. “I pride myself in my selflessness (sic) and the idea of remaining quiet—for now,” she wrote. “Why? Well, I’d like to hope that you so-called ‘selfless individuals’ realize that if I decide to speak up on what has occurred, it will have the most detrimental effect on our community and every single effort we have put into our movement.”
Allam, it would seem, recognizes that her turn to antisemitic violence would be a setback for the community she claims to represent. Yet there is no apology on her part, merely a tactical decision to “remain quiet.” Quite the pledge from a woman with her record.
Before the news of the attack in Melbourne, Allam had already attracted national attention for her furious messages on social media. “Good riddance,” she declared on learning of the deaths of four IDF soldiers in Gaza. One day after the Oct. 7 pogrom, she announced that she had “woken up to some great news from our beloved Palestine.”
Allam’s rejoicing in the mass killing, rapes and mutilation that defined Oct. 7 were an obvious signal to Australian politicians to avoid any contact with her—but they didn’t. At a pro-Hamas demonstration outside the Australian parliament in Canberra at the beginning of February, Allam stood alongside senators from the left-wing Green Party, drawing a rebuke from TV host Andrew Bolt. “The Greens may not have known of Allam’s past, but this is who they find next to them in their gutter,” he stated, in a reference to the news in December that Allam was using the Al Jannah Foundation to resettle Palestinians from Gaza in Australia, which led opposition politicians to question whether supporters of Hamas were being imported into Australia under the guise of humanitarianism.
By orchestrating an assault on someone whose “offense” was to work for a Jewish employer, Allam ceased being a cheerleader for Hamas and became, in effect, a vehicle to spread its vengeance outside the Middle East. Cheering “resistance” is no longer enough for the pro-Hamas movement cluttering our schools, colleges and streets with their genocidal slogans; they are now duplicating those same “resistance” tactics to intimidate defenseless Jewish communities in their midst.
Allam may be a shocking example of this trend, but sadly, she is not the only one. Last week, Jewish students at the University of California, Berkeley were forced to evacuate a building where they were due to hold a meeting after pro-Hamas agitators gathered outside, banging on the windows and screaming “intifada, intifada.” Two Jewish students ended up being assaulted. If you study the video of that episode, you’ll be struck most of all by the demeanor of the mob, their faces a veritable picture of virtue signaling as they bellow “shame on you” at Jewish kids who were just trying to hold a get-together, but who were, in that moment, the embodiment of the hated Zionist state.
Our elected leaders—in the United States, in Europe and elsewhere—have failed us. Every outburst of antisemitic hatred in history has been directed by a mob, and the present situation is no different. Don’t fool yourselves; the mob is back, and this time it wears a keffiyeh rather than a swastika armband. If the authorities won’t expel these people from our campuses and imprison them when they engage in attacks on Jews, and if we are unwilling or unable to defend ourselves, we will find, sooner rather than later, that the only option we have is to head for the exits.
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French Far-Left Party Calls for Ban on Israeli Pop Star Eyal Golan’s Paris Concert
Eyal Golan. Photo: Screenshot
France’s leading far-left party has called for the cancellation of Israeli pop star Eyal Golan’s upcoming concert in Paris, describing him as “a true mouthpiece for supporters of genocide” in Gaza.
In a statement released on Wednesday, the La France Insoumise party (LFI — “France Unbowed”), led by leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, urged the National Assembly — the lower house of the French Parliament — to ban Golan’s upcoming concert, claiming that he “should not come to sing the praises of genocide in Paris.”
“We call for a broad mobilization to prevent this event from taking place,” LFI lawmakers wrote in the statement, referring to Golan’s concert scheduled for May 20. “We ask the prefect to ban it immediately.”
“No one should come to Paris to sing hymns to the genocide of the Palestinian people,” the statement continued.
According to the party, the 54-year-old singer called for “the extermination of the Palestinian people” in a social media post the day after the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which he wrote, “Leave no soul alive.”
LFI also said that Golan “repeated the statement a week later, before receiving support from far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir,” who serves as Israel’s national security minister.
In their statement, LFI lawmakers claimed that Golan’s concert, expected to gather more than 4,500 people, “constitutes a real voice for genocide supporters.”
“France cannot tolerate such an unnecessary insult to the thousands of Gaza victims and their loved ones,” the statement read.
In response to these accusations, Liam Productions, the event organizer, denounced the push to cancel Golan’s concert as antisemitic and expressed their eagerness to meet the Jewish community in France, promising a “unifying and special evening.”
“On Holocaust Remembrance Day, as we remember the consequences of staying silent in the face of hate, far-left parties in France seek to boycott an Israeli artist simply because he is Israeli,” the statement read.
“This is not freedom of expression — it is antisemitism disguised as morality. The people of Israel will not be silent, will not apologize, and will not stop singing.”
Mélenchon and his party have a long history of pushing anti-Israel policies and, according to Jewish leaders, of making antisemitic comments — such as suggesting that Jews killed Jesus, echoing a false claim that was used to justify antisemitic violence and discrimination throughout the Middle Ages in Europe.
The French diplomat has been criticized by French Jews as a threat to their community, as well as to those who support Israel.
Mélenchon has previously described the French Jewish community as “an arrogant minority that lectures to the rest.” He has also urged the French government to recognize a “Palestinian state.”
In the wake of the Hamas onslaught on Israel, Mélenchon and his party issued a statement calling the attacks “an armed offensive by Palestinian forces” in response to the ongoing Israeli “occupation.”
Last year, Mélenchon openly expressed support for Hezbollah on social media, as the Iran-backed terrorist organization based in Lebanon continued to clash with Israel.
“Mass killing in Lebanon by Netanyahu’s invading army,” Melenchon wrote in a post on X, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The toll is getting worse by the hour. Full support for the national resistance of the Lebanese.”
France has experienced a disturbing surge in antisemitic incidents since the Oct. 7 atrocities, with 1,570 anti-Jewish hate crimes recorded last year.
The total number of antisemitic outrages last year was a slight dip from 2023’s record total of 1,676, but it marked a striking increase from the 436 antisemitic acts recorded in 2022, according to a report by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) — the main representative body of French Jews.
“LFI has given antisemitism a political endorsement,” CRIF president Yonathan Arfi told the French publication Le Point last year. “We observe this toxic porosity between criticism of Israel and the ostracization of French Jews. The Palestinian cause becomes a license to hate.”
In late May and early June, antisemitic acts rose by more than 140 percent in France, far surpassing the weekly average of slightly more than 30 incidents.
The report also found that 65.2 percent of antisemitic acts last year targeted individuals, with more than 10 percent of these offenses involving physical violence.
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Trump Signs Seismic Executive Order on Foreign Funding in Higher Education
US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon shakes hands with Annette Albright next to US President Donald Trump during an event to sign executive orders in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 23, 2025. Photo: Leah Millis via Reuters Connect.
US President Donald Trump has signed a seismic executive order to strengthen federal law which colleges and universities have long circumvented to avoid reporting donations they receive from illiberal foreign governments and individuals.
“Protecting American educational, cultural, and national security interests requires transparency regarding foreign funds flowing to American higher education and research institutions,” Trump said in the order, which was signed in the Oval Office in the presence of the Secretary of Education Linda McMahon on Wednesday. “It is the policy of my administration to end the secrecy surrounding foreign funds in American educational institutions, protect the marketplace of ideas from propaganda sponsored by foreign governments, and safeguard America’s students and research from foreign exploitation.”
The executive order noted that during Trump’s first term in office, the Education Department launched investigations of 19 higher education institutions suspected of concealing foreign donations and any undue influence the immense sums may have gained the country from which they originated — inquiries that led to the disclosure of $6.5 billion worth of unreported gifts. The Biden administration, he said, “undid” that work, “hindering public access to information on foreign gifts and contracts.”
The remainder of the order enumerates enforcement duties delegated to McMahon, which include reversing Biden-era policies which countenanced lax observance of the law — Section 117 of the Higher Education Act (HEA) of 1965 — updating the public on the department’s findings, and impounding federal funds appropriated to institutions that continue to shroud their foreign donations behind a veil of secrecy and corporate spin.
“Unfortunately, in the last four years, the Biden administration undermined the structures the president built to do this critical work, allowing nations like China and Qatar to funnel billions of dollars to US universities with little to no oversight,” McMahon said in a statement. “This financial infiltration enabled foreign governments to steal taxpayer-funded intellectual property and reshape how our elite campuses teach about Israel and the Middle East.”
Foreign money in higher education is an issue to which scholars and nonprofit groups have called attention for years, arguing that it is an instrument of hostile powers that aim to distort US foreign policy by exposing students to propaganda or other ideas which undermine faith in liberal values such as free markets, limited government, and freedom of the press. Some of it is used to rehabilitate the reputations of authoritarian governments, a tactic which, experts argue, effectively converts the openness of American society into a force of its own self-subversion.
For example, according to the 2017 National Association of Scholars (NAS) report “Outsourced to China: Confucius Institutes and Soft Power in American Higher Education,” the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for years planted “Confucius Institutes” at universities across the US, teaching students that Taiwan is Chinese territory while censoring darker moments in the regime’s history, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre that killed thousands of Chinese citizens. The institutes, the report added, came with substantial financial benefits, such as extra funds for the University at Buffalo’s Asian studies department and “opera costumes and materials in the lobby of Binghamton University.”
At other times, the Confucius Institutes were allegedly used as bases from which to conduct espionage and theft of American research and intellectual property.
NAS president Peter Wood told The Algemeiner on Thursday that Trump’s executive order is the right move, but that higher education will “resist” complying with it.
“What is at stake here is not just compliance with a good accounting principle. What is really at stake is the contempt with which many college and university presidents regard America’s national interest,” Wood said. “Allowing our universities to become beholden to the Chinese Community Party endangers Americans. The National Association of Scholars has helped to track the theft of intellectual property, the duplicity of American researchers, and the diversion research programs all under the influence of Chinese funding. China is far from the only source of such subversive funding, but it is by far the largest source.”
He added, “President Trump’s forceful executive order will go a long way towards curing this problem. We can be under no illusion, however, that America’s colleges and universities will cheerfully comply. They have a long record of ignoring lawful requirements for such disclosure and they are now more eager than ever to demonstrate their defiance of America’s laws. In light of other executive orders against [diversity, equity, and inclusion] and other forms of academic malfeasance, dozens of prominent research universities are openly declaring that they intend to resist.”
NAS has recorded copious data on foreign funding of higher education, notably in the Foreign Donor Database it created in 2024 that led to the uncovering of vast sums the Qatari government had pumped into American universities — Cornell University received over $322 million, for example, from the Qatar National Research Fund between 2015 and 2018 — to promote pro-Hamas propaganda.
Alex Joffe, anthropologist and editor of BDS Monitor for Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), told The Algemeiner that Qatar has “given billions to universities, including to share their Middle East studies program which then in turn develop and disseminate K-12 curriculums which are dramatically anti-Israel, antisemitic, and pro-Islamist.”
The donation of billions of unreported dollars to US institutions of higher education is strongly correlated with an erosion of liberal democratic norms and increased antisemitism on college campuses, according to a 2023 report by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) titled, “The Corruption of the American Mind.”
From 2015-2020, the report noted, schools that accepted money from Middle Eastern donors had, on average, 300 percent more antisemitic incidents than schools that did not accept such donations. The largest donor it named is Qatar, which former US President Joe Biden described in 2022 as a “major non-NATO ally.” From 2014-2019, Qatar gave American universities a striking $2.7 billion in undocumented funds.
Additionally, students attending universities that received foreign funding witnessed antisemitism “significantly more often” than those attending schools that did not.
“A lack of transparency in funding reporting occurred in tandem with antidemocratic norms and antisemitism across American institutions of higher education,” the report said. “A massive influx of foreign, concealed donations to American institutions of higher learning, much of it from authoritarian regimes with notable support from Middle Eastern sources, reflects or supports heightened levels of intolerance towards Jews, open inquiry, and free expression.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Antisemitic Incidents in the Netherlands Surge to Record Levels, New Report Finds
March 29, 2025, Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands: A pro-Palestinian demonstrator burns a hand-fashioned Israeli flag. Photo: James Petermeier/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Antisemitism in the Netherlands surged to alarming levels last year, according to a new report, which found that anti-Jewish incidents across the country reached a “worrying record” last year even after a historic spike following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
The Center for Information and Documentation on Israel (CIDI) — a Dutch Jewish human rights organization that monitors antisemitism — on Thursday released its annual report on antisemitic incidents for 2024, showing an 11 percent increase over the previous all-time high recorded in 2023.
Last year, CIDI recorded 421 antisemitic incidents, a sharp increase from the average of 138 incidents per year the country had experienced from 2012 to 2022, prior to the Hamas-led onslaught on Israel and the ensuing Gaza war.
“This is the highest number since CIDI started keeping track of reports 40 years ago,” Naomi Mestrum, the organization’s director, said in a statement, adding that preliminary data from the first quarter of 2025 “suggests that the trend is continuing.”
In 2024 heeft het aantal antisemitische incidenten in Nederland een zorgwekkend record bereikt. Er werden 421 meldingen bij CIDI gedaan, een stijging van 11% t.o.v. 2023, dat al een historisch hoog aantal incidenten liet zien.https://t.co/IbOL4YHxnW pic.twitter.com/ffvJ5tTv1w
— CIDI
(@CIDI_nieuws) April 24, 2025
In the last two years, the number of antisemitic incidents in the Netherlands has surged by 305 percent compared to its average from 2012 to 2022, prompting local Jewish community leaders to call on authorities to take stronger action against the rising wave of antisemitic harassment following the Hamas atrocities in Israel.
According to the study, the Hamas-Israel war is often used as a justification for antisemitism. The report also observed a rise in antisemitic hate crimes in public settings, where visibly identifiable Jews were more frequently subjected to insults, threats, and intimidation.
“The most dramatic increases were seen in public spaces, where antisemitic incidents surged by 45 percent,” CIDI said in a statement. “Visibly Jewish individuals were increasingly subjected to verbal abuse, threats and harassment.”
Last year, Israeli soccer fans were violently attacked in Amsterdam after watching the Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer team compete against the Dutch club Ajax in a European League match. At the time, Femke Halsema, the city’s mayor, called the attackers “antisemitic hit-and-run squads” who went “Jew hunting.”
The 117-page document by CIDI also recorded a 44 percent increase in vandalism targeting Jewish property.
In several universities across the Netherlands, there has been a rise in anti-Israel protests where antisemitic slogans are frequently chanted. As a result of ongoing threats and intimidation, the report said Jewish students are increasingly avoiding classes.
According to the study, antisemitism has also spread across social media and other online platforms, with hateful messages and antisemitic stereotypes becoming more widespread and normalized.
“Social media algorithms play a major role in strengthening and spreading antisemitic ideas more quickly,” Mestrum said.
However, CIDI noted that its figures did not include social media activity, which it is investigating separately.
Regarding the 421 incidents recorded last year, the Dutch group said it received about 1,700 reports in total but only counted those it assessed as being “indisputably antisemitic.”
In light of its findings, CIDI urged for a “strong and consistent government response” to combat rising antisemitism and ensure the safety of the Jewish community.
“That means investing in education, but also a firm and visible approach to antisemitism in schools and social media, stopping subsidies to cultural institutions that exclude Jewish artists, banning terrorist and extremist groups that spread hatred, and implementing a zero-tolerance policy in the criminal prosecution of anti-Semitic crimes,” the statement read.
The Dutch government’s National Coordinator for Combating Antisemitism, Eddo Verdoner, called CIDI’s findings “shameful,” stating that antisemitic expressions are becoming increasingly common.
“I hear heartbreaking stories from children, students, and adults who are harassed and mocked because of their Jewish identity,” Verdoner wrote in a post on X. “They hide a Star of David necklace, don’t dare to wear a kippah, or conceal their Jewish background out of fear.”
The Netherlands, which saw the highest percentage of Jewish victims in Western Europe during World War II, with at least 75 percent of its Jewish population being murdered, is now home to approximately 40,000 Jews.
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