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Anti-Jewish Violence Persisted in November: The Scene from Cities and College Campuses

Pro-Hamas Columbia University students march in front of pro-Israel demonstrators on Oct. 7, 2024, the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel. Photo: Roy De La Cruz via Reuters Connect
November was marked by escalating attacks on Jews worldwide.
In Amsterdam, Israelis visiting to attend a soccer match were chased and assaulted by gangs of thugs and criminals. These riots were condemned by national politicians, as well as the mayor who later regretted using the word “pogrom” and expressed concern for the marginalized Muslim perpetrators.
A rampage through Montreal also saw Muslim and leftist protestors burn effigies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, burn cars, and smash windows. The Montreal riots came after campus disruptions and walkouts organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) led to one local college being closed.
A coalition of anti-Israel groups also promised “global escalation” and carried out disruptions of Thanksgiving holiday travel and celebrations, including the Macy’s Parade in New York City.
Additional attacks were reported:
- In Chicago, a visibly Jewish man was shot on a Saturday morning by a Muslim assailant who shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he engaged in a gunfight with the police. The Chicago mayor, Brandon Johnson, declined to name the victim or describe the circumstances,
- In the United Arab Emirates, a Chabad rabbi was abducted and murdered. Three Uzbek citizens suspected of working for Iran were later arrested,
- In Berlin, a Jewish youth team was attacked by local Muslims,
- In Sweden, shots were fired at an Israeli owned firm, apparently by local Muslim gang members paid by Iran,
- In Chicago two Israeli students were attacked by local Muslims,
- Pyrotechnics were thrown at Italian policemen at a pro-Hamas protest in Turin,
- In a Jewish neighborhood of Sydney, a car was burned, and a number others were vandalized with the words “F*** Israel,” as was a local restaurant. Mohammed Farhat was arrested in connection with the crimes as he attempted to leave the country.
Other pro-Hamas protests included:
- In London, police allowed protestors to block Parliament Square during Remembrance Day commemorations,
- A march through a Jewish neighborhood of Bergenfield (NJ) to protest an Israeli real estate fair,
- Outside the Jewish National Fund annual conference in Dallas,
- Outside a Toronto synagogue, where an Israeli was to speak,
- A march through a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn,
- At the United Nations climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Other incidents included:
- The home and car of University of Washington president Ana Marie Cauce were vandalized,
- In Los Angeles, Jewish owned businesses were vandalized,
- Tunnels at the University of Rochester were covered with “wanted posters” depicting Jewish faculty. Four students were later arrested for the crimes, but the student government passed a resolution condemning the university’s response,
- Spray painting the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising memorial with red paint,
- In Milan, a mural depicting Italian Holocaust survivors was defaced,
- In Amsterdam, the offices of a pro-Israel Christian group were vandalized. The mayor also banned a march by the same group,
- CNN personality Dana Bash was confronted by a CodePink protestors at a talk inside her synagogue,
- Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský was booed at a talk at University College, London, and had to be removed from the room,
- An Israeli restaurant across the street from Columbia University was vandalized with the words “free Palestine.“
At the University of Manchester, a bust of Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first president and a noted chemist, was “abducted” and then “beheaded” by the domestic terror group Palestine Action, who filmed the entire episode.
The bust of another university faculty member was also stolen and destroyed. The theft was intended to highlight the Balfour Declaration which, as the group put it, “began the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by signing the land away.”
Most seriously, two individuals were arrested in Pittsburgh, including one self-described “Hamas operative,” and charged with vandalizing a local Jewish facility and collecting explosive materials for a mass casualty attack. Mohammad Hamad’s accomplice is Talya Lubit, a Dickinson College graduate in Middle East studies.
University administrations
University administrations appear unsure how to respond to the incoming Trump administration, though many had already acted after the US Congress made it clear that their conduct in the 23-24 academic year was completely unacceptable.
In the meantime, some pushback against obvious student excesses has continued:
- Tufts university suspended its SJP chapter until 2027, citing its promotion and celebration of violence. The SJP chapter then announced its had disaffiliated itself from the university,
- The University of Pennsylvania has suspended a business school fraternity for posters mocking Israeli hostages,
- The University of Michigan has begun disciplinary proceedings against its student anti-Israel coalition, which may result in up to a four-year suspension,
- Harvard Divinity School issued a two week suspension to students who conducted a pray-in in the school’s library,
- The New York State Supreme Court upheld Columbia University’s suspension of its SJP and JVP chapters, ruling the school’s decision was “neither arbitrary or capricious, irrational or in violation of clearly established University policies.”
At the same time, Columbia University has agreed to a $395,000 settlement for two Israeli students who were suspended after being falsely accused of using a “chemical weapon” against pro-Hamas protestors in the spring semester.
Students
The overall volume and intensity of student protests against Israel have been more subdued in the Fall semester, alternately attributed by pro-Palestinian students and faculty to exhaustion and repression.
On other campuses, the protests continue unabated. Several student strike days saw walkouts and building occupations, in part as a response to the National SJP’s ‘Take a Building Challenge,’ including at the University of Arizona and Sarah Lawrence College. A building at Sarah Lawrence remains occupied with little university reaction.
An ‘International University Day of Action’ organized by SJP saw walkouts at the Harvard University, the University of Michigan, and other institutions. Some 85,000 students in Quebec reportedly walked out, including at Concordia University (where a woman was filmed shouting at Jews about a “final solution coming your way”).
Campus Jewish institutions are increasingly frequent targets of protests.
Students at Columbia demanded the university “sever all ties with Hillel,” At Harvard University, the appearance of a former Israeli soldier prompted calls of “Zionists not welcome here,” while at Brooklyn College protestors outside the Hillel chanted “We don’t want no Zionists here” and “You support genocide.”
Pro-Hamas protestors also harassed donors at a fundraising dinner hosted by the Harvard University president.
Walkouts were also held, as unionized students and employees continued to conflate “Palestine” with campus labor issues, for example at UCLA where students rallied for a strike as well as for Gaza. An “anti-Veterans Day” protest was also held at Columbia University by pro-Palestinian students to “honor the martyrs’ and reject the ‘American war machine.”
Despite the almost uniform repudiation of BDS by university administrations and trustees, Trinity College and Macalaster College, student governments continue to pursue these mechanisms, either in earnest or as means to undermine social cohesion on campus. Pro-Hamas students, including at Yale University and Princeton University employ the tactic of aiming divestment at “weapons manufacturers” rather than Israeli companies as a whole.
Efforts by student governments to directly boycott Israel also continue. In an ironic turn of events, however, the University of Michigan student government leaders who held the organization hostage and demanded that it support BDS and Gaza have now been impeached for dereliction of duty, incitement of violence, and seizing control of social media accounts. They will now face trial by a student judiciary panel.
Student governments were also the scene of complaints regarding invitations to outside speakers opposed to Hamas, especially Mosab Hassan Yousef, son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef.
Finally, CAIR and other Islamist organizations continue to file complaints and lawsuits alleging Islamophobia of various universities. A variety of “human rights” groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA, and Human Rights Watch also issued an open letter complaining that some 20 colleges and universities have employed “excess force” against pro-Hamas protestors.
Faculty
In the wake of the Trump electoral victory, the tone of “resistance” regarding Israel continued unabated. This was seen in faculty defenses of students participating in building takeovers, as at the University of Minnesota, protest votes by University of Michigan faculty against trustees who refused to divest from Israel, and in protests to commemorate Palestinian “martyrs,” including at New York University.
In an interview, the president of the American Association of University Professors struck a defiant tone regarding the profession and its involvement with political issues, including boycotting Israel.
At the same time, some faculty recognize that Israel boycotts have compromised academia’s social standing and legal positions. One example of the latter is a decision by the leadership of the Modern Language Association to prevent a boycott resolution from being put forward to the full membership. But individual faculty continue to emphasize the unique evil of Israel in course offerings, which are then defended under the banner of academic freedom.
Medical education continues to be a locus of especially notable antisemitism.
Reports on how the University of California at San Francisco Medical School curriculum has been comprehensively restructured around “social justice” are examples of how institutions continue to embed racism under the rubric of opposing white supremacy and “settler colonialism.”
The author is a contributor to SPME, where a different version of this article appeared.
The post Anti-Jewish Violence Persisted in November: The Scene from Cities and College Campuses first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote

Demonstrators holding a “Stand Up for Internationals” rally on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, California, US, April 17, 2025. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.
The University of California (UC) Faculty Assembly has rejected a proposal to establish passing ethnic studies in high school as a requirement for admission to its 10 taxpayer-funded schools for undergraduates.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the campaign for the measure — defeated overwhelmingly 29-12 with 12 abstaining — was spearheaded by Christine Hong, chair of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department at UC Santa Cruz. Hong believes that Zionism is a “colonial racial project” and that Israel is a “settler colonial state.” Moreover, she holds that anti-Zionism is “part and parcel” of the ethnic studies discipline.
Ethnic studies activists like Hong throughout the University of California system coveted the admissions requirement because it would have facilitated their aligning ethnic studies curricula at the K-12 level with “liberated ethnic studies,” an extreme revolutionary project that was rejected by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023. Had the proposal been successful, school officials of both public and private schools would have been forced to comply with their standard of what constitutes ethnic studies to qualify their students for admission to UC.
Being indoctrinated into anti-Zionism and “hating Jews” would essentially have become a prerequisite for becoming a UC student had the Faculty Assembly approved the measure, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, executive director of antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative, told The Algemeiner on Friday. AMCHA Initiative first raised the alarm about the proposal in 2023, calling it “a deeply frightening prospect.”
“Ethnic studies never intended to be like any other discipline or subject. It was always intended to be a political project for fomenting revolution according to the dictates of however the activists behind the subject defined it,” Rossman-Benjamin explained. “And anti-Zionism has been at the core of the field, and this became especially clear after Oct. 7. Most of the anti-Zionist mania on campuses that day — the support for the encampments, the Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapters — it was a project of Ethnic Studies. At UC Santa Cruz, 60 percent of Faculty for Justice in Palestine members were pulled from the ethnic studies department.”
Founded in the 1960s to provide an alternative curriculum for beneficiaries of racial preferences whose retention rates lagged behind traditional college students, ethnic studies is based on anti-capitalist, anti-liberal, and anti-Western ideologies found in the writings of, among others, Franz Fanon, Huey Newton, Simone de Beauvoir, and Karl Marx. Its principal ideological target in the 20th century was the remains of European imperialism in Africa and the Middle East, but overtime it identified new “systems of oppression,” most notably the emergent superpower that was the US after World War II and the nation that became its closest ally in the Middle East: Israel.
UC Santa Cruz’s Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) department is a case study in how the ideology leads inexorably to anti-Zionist antisemitism, AMCHA Initiative argued in a 2024 study.
Following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, CRES issued a statement rationalizing the terrorist group’s atrocities as political resistance. Additionally, the department days later participated in a “Call for a Global General Strike,” refusing to work because Israel mounted a military response to Hamas’s atrocities — an action CRES called “Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” Later, the department held an event titled, “The Genocide in Gaza in our [sic] Classrooms: A Teaching Palestine Workshop,” in which professors and teaching assistants were trained in how to persuade students that Zionism is a racist and genocidal endeavor.
Imposing such noxious views on all California students would have been catastrophic, Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner.
“The goal of admissions requirements is to make sure that students are adequately prepared for college,” she noted. “Their goal was to use their power to force students to take the kind of Critical Ethnic Studies that is taught at the university, with the goal of revolutionizing society. The idea should have been dead on arrival, being rejected on the grounds that there is no evidence that it is a worthwhile subject that should be required for admission to the University of California.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations

Paraguayan President Santiago Peña praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Dec. 12, 2024. Photo: The Western Wall Heritage Foundation
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar praised Paraguay’s decision to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, and to broaden the country’s previous designation to include all factions of Hamas and Hezbollah.
The top Israeli diplomat congratulated the South American country and described President Santiago Peña’s decision as a “landmark move” in addressing security challenges and fostering international peace.
“Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens regional stability and global peace,” Sa’ar wrote in a post on X. “More countries should follow suit and join the fight against Iranian aggression and terrorism.”
I commend Paraguay and @SantiPenap for the landmark decision to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hamas, and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations.
Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens… https://t.co/OzWACbWcno— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) April 24, 2025
On Thursday, Peña issued an executive order designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization “for its systematic violations of peace, human rights, and the security of the international community.”
The executive order also expanded Paraguay’s 2019 proscription of the armed wings of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades, and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group in Lebanon, to encompass the entirety of both organizations, including their political wings.
“With this decision, Paraguay reaffirms its unwavering commitment to peace, international security, and the unconditional respect for human rights, solidifying its position within the international community as a country firmly opposed to all forms of terrorism and strengthening its relations with allied nations in this fight,” Peña wrote in a post on X, emphasizing the country’s strategic relationship with the United States and Israel.
Iran is the chief international backer of Hamas and Hezbollah, providing the Islamist terror groups with weapons, funding, and training. According to media reports based on documents seized by the Israeli military in Gaza last year, Iran had been informed about Hamas’s plan to launch the Oct. 7 attack months in advance.
Last year, Peña reopened Paraguay’s embassy in Jerusalem, making it the sixth nation — after the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea — to establish its embassy in the Israeli capital. During the same visit, he condemned the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, calling the perpetrators “criminals” in a speech at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
The Trump administration also praised Paraguay’s decision to officially label the IRGC as a terrorist organization, describing it as a major blow to Iran’s terror network in the Western Hemisphere.
“Iran remains the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world and has financed and directed numerous terrorist attacks and activities globally, through its IRGC-Qods Force and proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas,” US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.
The US official said Paraguay’s action will help disrupt Iran’s ability to finance terrorism and operate in Latin America — particularly in the Tri-Border Area, where Paraguay borders Argentina and Brazil, a region long regarded as a financial hub for Hezbollah-linked operatives.
“The important steps Paraguay has taken will help cut off the ability of the Iranian regime and its proxies to plot terrorist attacks and raise money for its malignant and destabilizing activity,” the statement read.
“The United States will continue to work with partners such as Paraguay to confront global security threats,” Bruce added. “We call on all countries to hold the Iranian regime accountable and prevent its operatives, recruiters, financiers, and proxies from operating in their territories.”
During his first administration, Trump designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), citing the Iranian regime’s use of the IRGC to “engage in terrorist activities since its inception 40 years ago.”
At the time, Trump said this designation “recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a state sponsor of terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft.”
“The IRGC is the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign,” he continued.
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Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’

Yale University students at the corner of Grove and College Streets in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S., April 22, 2024. Photo: Melanie Stengel via Reuters Connect.
As darkness fell over Yale University on Wednesday evening, Jewish students faced intimidation that echoed history’s darkest chapters. The following day, as the sun rose on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the world solemnly reflected on the devastating consequences of unchecked hatred.
Yet, disturbingly, at Yale, the shadows of that same hatred linger once again.
For several nights now, radical anti-Israel activists, primarily organized by “Yalies for Palestine,” an anti-Israel hate group, have targeted Jewish students at Yale — in many cases, based solely on their outwardly Jewish appearance.
On Wednesday, protestors blocked walkways, physically intimidated Jewish students, and hurled bottles and sprayed liquids at them — all while campus police stood by and did nothing.
One Jewish student described her chilling encounter with the protesters the night before, on Tuesday: “When I tried to get through, they blocked me, ignored my requests to pass, and handed out masks to those obstructing me. Yale security told me they couldn’t help.”
The immediate trigger for this harassment is the invitation extended by Shabtai, a Yale Jewish society, to Itamar Ben-Gvir, an Israeli government minister. Whether one supports or opposes Ben-Gvir’s politics is beside the point. Notably, Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister, was also protested and disrupted during a separate campus event in February, underscoring a broader trend of hostility toward Israeli speakers regardless of their political affiliation.
These events signal more than isolated protests; they constitute a redux of hatred that historically escalates when met with institutional silence or indifference.
Yale’s administration, under President Maurie McInnis and Dean Pericles Lewis, has failed to adequately respond. Though Yale revoked official recognition from Yalies for Palestine, its tepid actions have not halted the dangerous slide toward overt hostility. The silence — from both the university and the Slifka Center, Yale’s center for Jewish life — is deafening.
This isn’t the first troubling instance at Yale. A year ago, similar demonstrators disrupted campus life with vitriolic anti-Israel rhetoric, silencing dialogue and fostering an atmosphere hostile to Jewish students.
Earlier this year, CAMERA on Campus documented Yale’s Slifka Center pressuring students to erase evidence of anti-Jewish harassment during a pro-Israel event, effectively whitewashing antisemitism and emboldening extremists.
As CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander has powerfully documented, the rhetoric of anti-Zionism today often revives the antisemitic patterns of the past, particularly those propagated by the Nazi regime in the 1930s. These tactics, she explains, echo Nazi-era propaganda that portrayed Jews as subhuman, sinister, and uniquely malevolent — a narrative used to justify marginalization and, ultimately, genocide.
These dynamics — scapegoating, dehumanizing, and ostracizing Jews under the guise of “anti-Zionism” — are not relics of history. They are alive and active across elite American campuses. And now, unmistakably, they have taken root at Yale.
McInnis must break the silence and condemn the open harassment and assault of Jewish students. She must also hold the perpetrators of the heinous actions and those responsible for the safety of students accountable for their inaction.
This week has revealed a grave failure of moral and institutional duty on many fronts. When law enforcement stands by as Jewish students face intimidation and assault, it sends a chilling message: their safety matters less.
We must demand a full investigation and real accountability. Condemnations of antisemitism are not enough. Policies must be changed to ensure Jewish students and organizations can freely exercise their right to free expression without being subject to harassment and assault. Anything less would betray Yale’s stated values — and the promise of “never again.”
Douglas Sandoval is the Managing Director for CAMERA on Campus.
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