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Antisemitism at Michigan Colleges Has Reached Frightening Levels
In the past six months, violent antisemitic attacks have grown more common in higher education.
Jewish students at Columbia were attacked by individuals “wielding sticks” outside of their library; students at UC Berkeley were berated for attending an on-campus speaker event; and at Tulane, a student’s nose was broken while he was trying to stop protesters from burning an Israeli flag. Universities across the United States have found themselves in a serious predicament, and if they don’t figure out how to stop this blatant Jew hatred on campus, they will soon find their Jewish student populations dwindling.
A study published by the ADL at the end of November 2023, found that of the 700 college campuses and more than 3,000 students surveyed, students from nearly half of these schools reported at least one antisemitic incident on campus — and seven out of every 10 Jewish students had either experienced or witnessed antisemitism since the beginning of the Fall semester. And the numbers have only grown worse since.
This is a dramatic leap from before the atrocities of October 7, but antisemitism had been rising on campus before that. Jewish students feel scared, abandoned, and unwelcome on campus — and the problem is not getting better.
Perhaps no higher education system has been more affected by this problem than public universities in Michigan, a fact recently highlighted on the national television show Dr. Phil, where a senior at the University of Michigan blamed Israel for Hamas’ actions on October 7, and accused Dr. Phil of Islamophobia for asking whether they condemn the mass murder of Jews.
Just this past week, a student leader at Michigan posted to his Instagram story, “Until my last breath, I will utter death to every single individual who supports the Zionist state. Death and more. Death and worse.”
A few days prior to that, anti-Israel protesters brought the annual Honors Convocation ceremony to an unexpected end, and, in the last few months, these protesters have continuously entered university buildings, spewing hate and disrupting classes. None of these actions have elicited meaningful responses from the administration, even though these all clearly violate the University’s code of conduct.
To determine how Jewish students feel, I interviewed multiple high school seniors and college freshmen in Michigan on this topic. These individuals shared one clear message: Jewish students are worried that they will be victimized by antisemitism, and do not feel supported by their peers or universities.
Julia Feber, a senior at Wylie E. Groves High School in Birmingham, stated that she actually “turned down an acceptance from the University of Michigan” because of the “anti-Israel rhetoric on campus.” Instead, she chose to attend Elon University, which is “publicly pro-Israel” and has a large Jewish population. Julia isn’t alone: one in every 15 Jewish college students (7%) has considered transferring schools because of the anti-Israel climate on campus.
My next interviewee, first-year Michigan State University (MSU) student Minaleah Koffron, has felt a dramatic shift on campus in the wake of Hamas’ attack.
“Post-October 7, [there has been a] completely different climate [on campus] … there’s this narrative that Israel is committing heinous acts under the Zionist agenda, and [because] many college students are morally and fundamentally against atrocities like genocide, they turn the conflict in the Middle East into a highly personal issue … thus, the campus culture is divisive, where some promote a hostile environment toward Zionists and, by extension, Jews.”
Minaleah has experienced antisemitism on campus. “The bathroom next to my Hebrew class had the words ‘F*** off Zionists, you genocidal freaks’ and ‘Children’s blood is on your hands’ written on its wall. In that same building, a sticker was put up that equated Zionism with terrorism.”
Minaleah concluded by saying that “students on campus internalize the messages they see. As anti-Israel messages are increasingly shared by my peers and strewn throughout campus, students’ hate for Israel increases. With it, feelings of safety on campus diminish.”
Andrew Klein, another freshman at Michigan State University, has similar feelings about the culture on campus. He states that “after October 7, campus culture has taken a turn for the worse. It has been disheartening to see students who, a few months ago, could not locate Israel on the map become foreign policy experts, putting anti-Zionist legislation through our student government.”
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire: anti-Zionism and antisemitism are two sides of the same coin. Andrew’s friends have had their mezuzot ripped from their doorposts, and are now afraid to wear kippot or their Star of David necklaces openly on campus. “These anti-Israel groups are fueled off of victories, and sadly, right now, they are getting a lot of them.”
There have been countless “victories” for these anti-Zionist individuals on Michigan State’s campus. The Associated Students of Michigan State University (ASMSU) passed two bills, 60-65 and 60-30, riddled with antisemitic rhetoric. The Faculty Senate also passed a resolution calling on the university to divest from Israel. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement inspires antisemitic rhetoric and has no place on campus.
In response to Israel’s defensive war against Hamas, American Jews are being harmed all over the country in the name of “Palestine.” Verbal attacks, forced censorship, and dehumanizing language have evolved into public threats, which have led to assaults. We are seeing this play out every day in front of our eyes. When we say “never again,” it falls on deaf ears. The general public needs to wake up and see that Jews don’t feel safe because they are actually under attack. Something must be done before it is too late.
Laela Saulson is a senior at Michigan State University. She is currently a CAMERA fellow, working to combat anti-Israel misinformation on campus.
The post Antisemitism at Michigan Colleges Has Reached Frightening Levels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
JNS.org – The Israeli airstrikes on Iran last month destroyed a secret nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, 19 miles southeast of Tehran, Axios reported on Friday.
The clandestine site held sophisticated equipment used for testing explosives needed to detonate nuclear devices, the report read, citing three US officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security acquired high-resolution satellite imagery of the facility, which showed that it was completely destroyed in Israel’s Oct. 26 attack.
Israeli and US intelligence agencies began noticing activity in the Taleghan 2 facility in the Parchin military complex in early 2024, which had been largely inactive since 2003, when the Islamic Republic froze its military nuclear program, according to Axios.
One unnamed US official quoted in the report said: “[The Iranians] conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon. It was a top secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t.”
Although President Joe Biden asked Jerusalem not to target Tehran’s nuclear facilities, the site in Parchin was chosen as a target because it was not part of Iran’s declared nuclear program.
This placed the mullah regime in a position where admitting a hit to the site would expose its efforts to resume activity forbidden by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Moreover, “The strike was a not so subtle message that the Israelis have significant insight into the Iranian system even when it comes to things that were kept top secret and known to a very small group of people in the Iranian government,” the report cited a US official as saying.
Last week, Rafael Grossi, the director of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, visited Iran for the first time since May.
He is expected to meet with his agency’s board of governors in Vienna this week for a vote on a resolution to censure Tehran for its lack of cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Speaking about the tensions between Israel and Iran, Grossi said during a news conference in Tehran on Thursday that the Islamic Republic’s “nuclear installations should not be attacked.”
Earlier in the week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz suggested that Iran’s nuclear facilities may be targeted.
Iran is “more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities. We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal—to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel,” Katz said.
Israel’s two assaults against Iran’s air defense system this year have left the country vulnerable to future attacks, with all four of Tehran’s Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries destroyed, according to U.S. media.
On April 19, Israel took out one of the S-300 systems in response to Tehran’s first-ever direct attack against the Jewish state. On Oct. 26, in response to a second Iranian attack, Israel targeted 20 sites in Iran, destroying the remaining three.
“The majority of Iran’s air defense was taken out,” a senior Israeli official told Fox News.
The post Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat
Houthi-mobilized fighters ride atop a car in Sanaa, Yemen, Sept. 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Yemen’s Houthi forces attacked “a vital target” in Israel’s Red Sea port city of Eilat with a number of drones, the Iran-aligned group’s military spokesperson Yahya Saree said on Saturday.
The terrorist group has launched dozens of attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea region since November in solidarity with Hamas.
“These operations will not stop until the aggression stops, the siege on the Gaza Strip is lifted, and the aggression on Lebanon stops,” Saree added in a televised speech.
The Houthi attacks have upended global trade by forcing ship owners to reroute vessels away from the vital Suez Canal shortcut, and drawn retaliatory U.S. and British strikes since February.
The post Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks
US Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, Sept. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
JNS.org – Muslim leaders in the United Stated who called for supporting President-elect Donald Trump at the expense of Democrat runner Kamala Harris are deeply disappointed with the former president’s Cabinet nominees, Reuters reported on Thursday.
“It’s like he’s going on Zionist overdrive,” Abandon Harris campaign co-founder Hassan Abdel Salam, a former professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, said about Trump’s recently announced picks.
“We were always extremely skeptical. … Obviously we’re still waiting to see where the administration will go, but it does look like our community has been played,” Abdel Salam told Reuters.
Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump, was cited as saying: “Trump won because of us and we’re not happy with his secretary of state pick and others.”
Some political strategists believe that the Muslim vote for Trump, or the renunciation of Harris, helped tilt several swing states such as Michigan in the favor of the Republican candidate.
“It seems like this administration has been packed entirely with neoconservatives and extremely pro-Israel, pro-war people, which is a failure on the side of President Trump, to the pro-peace and anti-war movement,” said Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network.
On Wednesday, Trump named Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as his choice to be secretary of state.
Rubio is known for his staunch pro-Israel stance, including calling on Jerusalem earlier this year to destroy “every element” of Hamas and dubbing the Gaza-based terrorist organization as “vicious animals.”
Rubio joins a slew of pro-Israel officials Trump has tapped since he won the U.S. election, including former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) as his U.N. ambassador with a seat in the Cabinet.
Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), told JNS that Trump’s focus so early in the transition process on Israel-related foreign policy picks is a mark of how his second administration will approach the region.
“That, in and of itself, signals that President Trump and his administration are going to take the region, the Middle East, the threats confronting Israel, seriously and take the U.S. friendship with Israel seriously,” Misztal said.
“The people that we’ve seen are known to be tremendously strong friends of Israel, first and foremost, but also very clear-eyed about the threats that the United States and Israel face together in the region.”
Before the election on Nov. 5, Trump promised Arab and Muslim voters he would restore stability in Lebanon and the Middle East, while criticizing the current administration’s regional policies during campaign stops targeting Muslim communities in Michigan.
Trump recently addressed Lebanese Americans, stating, “Your friends and family in Lebanon deserve to live in peace, prosperity and harmony with their neighbors, and this can only happen when there is peace and stability in the Middle East.”
Israel has been at war for more than a year on its southern and northern borders, ever since Hamas led a surprise attack on communities near the Gaza Strip border on Oct. 7, 2023, murdering some 1,200 people and abducting 251 more into the Palestinian enclave. A day later, Hezbollah joined Hamas’s efforts by firing rockets into Israel’s north.
The post Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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