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Anti-Israel Coalition at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Issues Threat to Jewish Community
Illustrative: Anti-Israel protesters outside Columbia University in Manhattan, New York City, April 22, 2024. Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect
A coalition of anti-Zionist groups at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) has issued an open threat to Jews who support Israel and Jewish organizations, promising to treat them as “extremist criminals.”
“We will no longer normalize genocidal extremists walking on our campus,” the group, which calls itself UWM Popular University for Palestine, posted on Instagram last week. “Any organization or entity that supports Israel is not welcome at UWM. This includes the local extremist groups such as Hillel, Jewish Federation, etc.”
Reiterating its first point, the group continued, “We refuse to normalize extremists and extremist groups walking around our campus. We are watching Israel’s legitimacy and international recognition fall to pieces on the world stage. Any organization that has not separated themselves from Israel will be treated accordingly as extremist criminals. Stay tuned.”
Photo: Screenshot
The statement has since been deleted, but it alarmed the local Jewish community, which interpreted the post as a declaration of violence to come.
“While we deeply believe in and support freedom of speech and freedom of expression, we believe this post could encourage harassment and violence towards Jewish students on campus as well as towards the staff of Hillel and the Jewish Federation,” said the Milwaukee Jewish Federation said in an email to the local community.
The federation said it alerted UWM police, Hillel leadership, and the FBI of the apparent threat.
The local district attorney, however, argued that UWM Popular University for Palestine’s comments are protected by the First Amendment, according to the federation.
“Our office is currently working with UWM Police to further investigate this matter,” Milwaukee County District Attorney Chief Deputy Kent Lovern told the Wisconsin Law Journal this week.
At the time of publication, the university is the only non-Jewish body that has appeared to denounce the anti-Israel group and condemn hate speech.
“UWM takes this post seriously and recognizes that the language in it, if acted upon, would undermine the safety of the UWM community, especially Jewish individuals and organizations,” the university said in a statement. “Where speech is not protected by the First Amendment, UWM will address it through appropriate processes, which could include student and student organization disciplinary processes. While hateful or intimidating speech is legally protected, it conflicts with the respect and conduct we ask of each member of our community.”
UWM also said it “strongly denounces these statements and denounces any form of antisemitism, and we will be actively monitoring campus as a result.”
However, the school’s responses to antisemitism on the campus have been mixed since the Palestinian terror group Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, emboldening the radical anti-Zionist groups which operate there according to a paper by UWM political science professor Shale Horowitz.
Published earlier this month, the paper — titled, “The Campus War against Israel: The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee — argues that the administration was first to countenance violence and discrimination against Jews when it issued a statement about the Oct. 7 onslaught “without naming Hamas as the aggressor.” Until this week, Horowitz argued, he school had refused to address antisemitism as a stand-alone issue, denouncing both “antisemitism and Islamophobia” despite there having been little evidence of the latter and many instances of the former, including an incident in which an anti-Zionist mob descended on a Hillel event calling for “intifada” and a “free Palestine, from the river to the sea.”
Later, after anti-Zionists commandeered a section of campus, setting up a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on the property, UWM chancellor Mark Mone praised protests against Israel as “history” unfolding “across the nation and the world.” Mone added, “I appreciate that the protests have remained peaceful and have not disrupted daily campus operations. And it is laudable that so many learning opportunities have been incorporated into life inside the encampment. This is a reflection of our campus community as a whole — and I salute the many instances of people coming together, discussing issues of the day, and welcoming the diverse people and opinions on our campus.”
Mone went on to endorse a litany of falsehoods about Israel in a statement announcing an agreement to end the encampment. Accepting the ideological premises of the anti-Zionist movement, he described Israel’s conduct in the war against Hamas as “genocide” and equated Hamas’ kidnapping women, children, and the elderly to Israel’s detaining of Palestinian terrorists, which Horowitz criticized for being a false equivalence and an implicit endorsement of terrorist violence.
“The systemic anti-Israel collusion of extremists and university bosses also has important implications for American Jews,” Horowitz concluded. “In Animal Farm, [George] Orwell explained where far-left ideologies lead. Some people and groups will inevitably be more equal than others, and those monopolizing power will decide which ones. For the far left, Jews are white Westerners, while Palestinian and other Muslims are non-white, non-Westerners, whose more radical segments are part of the anti-Western coalition.”
He added, “It doesn’t matter the the racial elements of this worldview are false and repugnant. The far left long ago classified as enemies Israel and Jews.”
Antisemitism in the US has surged to catastrophic and unprecedented levels, rising a harrowing 140 percent in 2023 — and exponentially so in the months after Oct. 7 — according to the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) annual audit of hate incidents that targeted the Jewish community.
The ADL recorded 8,873 incidents last year — an average of 24 every day across the US, amounting to a year unlike any experienced by the American Jewish community since the organization began tracking such data on antisemitic outrages in 1979. Incidents of harassment, vandalism, and assault all spiked by double and triple digits, with California, New York, New Jersey, Florida, and Massachusetts accounting for nearly half, or 48 percent, of all that occurred.
Breaking down the numbers, the ADL found a dramatic rise in the targeting of Jewish institutions such as synagogues, community centers, and schools, with 1,987 such incidents taking place in 2023 — a 237 percent increase which included over a thousand fake bomb threats, also known as “swattings.”
Other figures were equally staggering, with assaults and vandalism rising by 45 percent and 69 percent, respectively, while harassment soared by 184 percent. Antisemitic incidents on college campuses, which The Algemeiner has continued to cover extensively, rose 321 percent, disrupting the studies of Jewish students and leaving them uncertain about the fate of the American Jewish community.
“Antisemitism is nothing short of a national emergency, a five-alarm fire that is still raging across the country and in our local communities and campuses,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in April. “Jewish Americans are being targeted for who they are at school, at work, on the street, in Jewish institutions, and even at home.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Antisemitic Incidents at Argentina Local Soccer Match Spark Official Investigations, Condemnations
Fans of Argentinian soccer club All Boys marched through the streets before their match against Atlanta soccer club, carrying a coffin draped with an Israeli flag alongside Iranian and Palestinian flags. Photo: Screenshot
Argentinian authorities and soccer officials have launched investigations following antisemitic incidents by Club Atlético All Boys fans during Sunday’s local match against Atlanta.
Atlanta, a soccer team based in the Villa Crespo neighborhood of Buenos Aires, has deep historical ties to Argentina’s Jewish community, which has long been a significant presence in the area.
This latest antisemitic incident took place outside the stadium before the game had even started.
All Boys fans were seen waving Palestinian and Iranian flags, carrying a coffin draped with an Israeli flag, and handing out flyers bearing messages like “Free Palestine” and “Israel and Atlanta are the same crap.”
Before a football match today against the Argentine sports club Atlanta, which is closely associated with the Jewish community, fans of the opposing team, All Boys, waved Islamic Republic and Palestinian flags while parading a coffin draped in an Israeli flag through the streets.… pic.twitter.com/IQs4v6eoFz
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) June 29, 2025
Then, during the match — which ended in a 0-0 draw — a drone carrying a Palestinian flag flew over the stadium, while some fans reportedly chanted anti-Israel slogans.
Local police confirmed they have issued citations to individuals accused of inciting public disorder and related offenses.
On Monday, the Argentine Football Association (AFA) condemned the incidents as “abhorrent” and confirmed the organization has opened a formal inquiry into the events.
“This is not folklore. This is discrimination,” the statement reads.
Argentina’s Security Minister Patricia Bullrich also announced that a criminal complaint has been filed, citing “acts of violence, expressions of racial and religious hatred, and public intimidation.”
In a post on X, the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA), the country’s Jewish umbrella organization, condemned the incidents and called on both local authorities and the soccer officials to “take firm action against these acts of hatred.”
“We urge the authorities to take all necessary actions and apply the full force of the law,” the statement reads. “Violence and discrimination must have no place in our society.”
Repudiamos enérgicamente las expresiones antisemitas ocurridas hoy en las inmediaciones del estadio Malvinas Argentinas.
Exigimos a las autoridades correspondientes, a la AFA y al Club All Boys que actúen con firmeza ante estos hechos de odio.
La violencia y la discriminación no… pic.twitter.com/3AmY7IQscY— DAIA (@DAIAArgentina) June 29, 2025
Since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Argentina has experienced a surge in antisemitic incidents and anti-Jewish hate crimes.
According to a recent report by DAIA, Argentina experienced a 15 percent increase in antisemitic activity last year, with 687 anti-Jewish hate crimes recorded — up from 598 incidents in 2023 — marking a significant rise nationwide.
The study indicates that 66 percent of the antisemitic incidents originated in the digital realm, with a significant rise in Nazi symbols and conspiracy theories, but there was also a 34 percent increase in reported physical assaults, with such hate crimes rising in schools and neighborhoods.
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Iranian nuclear program degraded by up to two years, Pentagon says
A satellite image of Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility. Photo: File.
The Pentagon said on Wednesday that US strikes 10 days ago had degraded Iran’s nuclear program by up to two years, suggesting the U.S. military operation likely achieved its goals despite a far more cautious initial assessment that leaked to the public.
Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesman, offered the figure at a briefing to reporters, adding that the official estimate was “probably closer to two years.” Parnell did not provide evidence to back up his assessment.
“We have degraded their program by one to two years, at least intel assessments inside the Department [of Defense] assess that,” Parnell told a news briefing.
U.S. military bombers carried out strikes against three Iranian nuclear facilities on June 22 using more than a dozen 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs and more than two dozen Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles.
The evolving U.S. intelligence about the impact of the strikes is being closely watched, after President Donald Trump said almost immediately after they took place that Iran’s program had been obliterated, language echoed by Parnell at Wednesday’s briefing.
Such conclusions often take the U.S. intelligence community weeks or more to determine.
“All of the intelligence that we’ve seen [has] led us to believe that Iran’s — those facilities especially, have been completely obliterated,” Parnell said.
Over the weekend, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, said that Iran could be producing enriched uranium in a few months, raising doubts about how effective US strikes to destroy Tehran’s nuclear program have been.
Several experts have also cautioned that Iran likely moved a stockpile of near weapons-grade highly enriched uranium out of the deeply buried Fordow site before the strikes and could be hiding it.
But US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week he was unaware of intelligence suggesting Iran had moved its highly enriched uranium to shield it from US strikes.
A preliminary assessment last week from the Defense Intelligence Agency suggested that the strikes may have only set back Iran’s nuclear program by months. But Trump administration officials said that assessment was low confidence and had been overtaken by intelligence showing Iran’s nuclear program was severely damaged.
According to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, the strikes on the Fordow nuclear site caused severe damage.
“No one exactly knows what has transpired in Fordow. That being said, what we know so far is that the facilities have been seriously and heavily damaged,” Araqchi said in the interview broadcast by CBS News on Tuesday.
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Switzerland Moves to Close Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s Geneva Office Over Legal Irregularities
Palestinians carry aid supplies received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
Switzerland has moved to shut down the Geneva office of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US- and Israeli-backed aid group, citing legal irregularities in its establishment.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza in late May, implementing a new aid delivery model aimed at preventing the diversion of supplies by Hamas, as Israel continues its defensive military campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group.
The initiative has drawn criticism from the UN and international organizations, some of which have claimed that Jerusalem is causing starvation in the war-torn enclave.
Israel has vehemently denied such accusations, noting that, until its recently imposed blockade, it had provided significant humanitarian aid in the enclave throughout the war.
Israeli officials have also said much of the aid that flows into Gaza is stolen by Hamas, which uses it for terrorist operations and sells the rest at high prices to Gazan civilians.
With a subsidiary registered in Geneva, the GHF — headquartered in Delaware — reports having delivered over 56 million meals to Palestinians in just one month.
According to a regulatory announcement published Wednesday in the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce, the Federal Supervisory Authority for Foundations (ESA) may order the dissolution of the GHF if no creditors come forward within the legal 30-day period.
The Trump administration did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the Swiss decision to shut down its Geneva office.
“The GHF confirmed to the ESA that it had never carried out activities in Switzerland … and that it intends to dissolve the Geneva-registered branch,” the ESA said in a statement.
Last week, Geneva authorities gave the GHF a 30-day deadline to address legal shortcomings or risk facing enforcement measures.
Under local laws and regulations, the foundation failed to meet several requirements: it did not appoint a board member authorized to sign documents domiciled in Switzerland, did not have the minimum three board members, lacked a Swiss bank account and valid address, and operated without an auditing body.
The GHF operates independently from UN-backed mechanisms, which Hamas has sought to reinstate, arguing that these vehicles are more neutral.
Israeli and American officials have rejected those calls, saying Hamas previously exploited UN-run systems to siphon aid for its war effort.
The UN has denied those allegations while expressing concerns that the GHF’s approach forces civilians to risk their safety by traveling long distances across active conflict zones to reach food distribution points.
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