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As a New Semester Begins, December Was Filled with Anti-Israel College Events

A student protester parades a Palestinian flag outside the entrance to Hamilton Hall on the campus of Columbia University, in New York, US, April 30, 2024. Photo: Mary Altaffer/Pool via REUTERS

Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) activities in December was characterized by a continuing high number of protests and attacks against Jews and Israelis in the US and globally. Notable incidents included: 

Protests and attacks against property included:

The escalating number of antisemitic attacks and violence is also reflected in various statistics: 

The huge escalation of violence in Canada and Australia in particular, attributed in part to large scale Muslim immigration and official hostility towards Israel following October 7, have caused serious alarm including among local politicians. 

On campuses the number of protests and arrests dropped dramatically compared to the 2023-2024 academic year. This may be attributed to a loss of momentum by the pro-Palestinian movement and to university restrictions put in place as a result of last year’s violence.

The appearance of greater calm, however, might be misleading. The arrest of two George Mason University students and SJP leaders, Palestinian-American sisters Jena and Noor Chanaa, suspected of vandalizing university property, revealed a cache of guns and ammunition as well as Hezbollah and Hamas materials. A third George Mason University student, Egyptian national Abdullah Ezzeldin Taha Mohamed Hassan, was arrested on charges of planning a terror attack on the Israeli consulate in New York City. 

Virginian Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin stated further that SJP “pose[s] a clear and present threat to Jewish students and the Jewish community in Virginia.” Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares launched an investigation of SJP’s supporting organization, American Muslims for Palestine, shortly after October 7th. The prospect of terrorist attacks by students gives further urgency to calls to detain and deport hostile foreign nationals. 

 Administrations

 The sustaining relationship between diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and ideology and campus antisemitism continues to be highlighted. One recent study documented how DEI training increases psychological harm, hostility, and the propensity to agree with extremist language and punitive behaviors.

The situation was demonstrated in a case at the University of Michigan, where a leading DEI administrator was fired for stating at a conference that Jews have “no genetic DNA that would connect them to the land of Israel,” the university was “controlled by wealthy Jews,” and reportedly stating that “Jewish students are all rich. They don’t need us.” She denied making the remarks and plans to sue the university. The firing comes as the university ended the use of diversity statements in faculty hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions and considered ending all its DEI programs. 

Both the University of Cincinnati and the University of California resolved cases regarding anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim discrimination with the US Department of Education. The resolutions involved changes to staff training and reporting procedures rather than fundamental changes to campus culture.

Pro-Hamas protestors continue to be disciplined by universities. The University of Georgia and George Mason University suspended their SJP chapters, while the University of Minnesota suspended a number of SJP members and demanded financial restitution for damages they caused during a building takeover. New York University Law School also warned protestors that they may be subject to unspecified disciplinary action.

Students

Fallout from the past year’s anti-Israel protests continues to be felt. Despite a lower number of protests, Hillel International reported approximately the same number of campus incidents in 2024 as in 2023. These included several violent assaults. The prospect of future violence also remains strong. 

At the University of Michigan, saga of the activists elected on the platform of shutting down student government in order to support ‘Gaza’ has come to a close. After shutting down funding to all student clubs only to have the administration provide independent funding, the president and vice president of the student government have now been impeached and removed from office. Pro-Palestinian students admit that the officers “look like extremists” and have damaged the cause on campus 

The extent to which anti-Israel hate has damaged various aspects of campus life is becoming clear:

Faculty

Faculty continue to be at the forefront of campus antisemitism and support for Hamas. A new study has shown again that institutions with the most active anti-Israel faculty are those with the most incidents directed against Jewish students.

Faculty anti-Israel activity is also now fully bound up with unionized labor. At Rutgers University, a majority of faculty union members associated with two unions, the American Association of University Professors and American Federation of Teachers, voted in favor of a BDS resolution and called for the university to ends its relationship with Tel Aviv University.

By following unionized graduate students in making anti-Israel politics a labor issue, faculty unions attempt to leverage public support for organized labor and minimize the overt bias involved in anti-Israel resolutions. 

These efforts mesh with continued efforts to characterize anti-Israel course content and classroom behavior as part of ‘academic freedom.’ Criticism of such content, such as planned course at Cornell University called “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance” to be taught by a notable anti-Israel faculty member, including comments by the university president, were characterized as a threat to academic freedom. In another recent example of this subterfuge, it emerged that Columbia University’s most notorious anti-Israel faculty member, Joseph Massad, will be teaching a course on Zionism. 

A lawsuit brought against Carnegie Mellon University by an Israeli student provides an inside look at how individual faculty abuse students in the classroom. The suit, which a Federal court has allowed to proceed, alleges that a faculty member described the student’s architectural project “model looked like the wall Israelis use to barricade Palestinians out of Israel,” and that the student’s time “would have been better spent if [she] had instead explored ‘what Jews do to make themselves such a hated group.’” 

K-12

After October 7, 2023, the K-12 sphere was revealed as a key environment for anti-Israel bias. Replacing the emphasis on transgender issues with anti-Israel bias appears to be part of the sector’s adaptive strategy to maintain its relevance. Teachers’ unions are central to the process. For example, the Massachusetts Teachers Association declared that Israel was committing ‘genocide’ in December 2023 and has proceeded to undertake training sessions and to provide materials demonizing Israel.

The trend of teachers testifying to one another that Israel is a satanic entity has expanded. At a recent educator’s conference, Massachusetts teachers emphasized Israeli ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid’ with one participant calling for ‘two perspectives’ regarding the Holocaust. Similarly, at the recent National Association of Independent Schools conference, which represents more than 2,000 private schools, several speakers described Israel as racist and genocidal. Jewish participants reported hostility from other attendees, with many vowing not to return. The association’s president apologized, a move which was condemned by anti-Israel speakers.

The pervasive bias shown by teachers has been institutionalized in classrooms and administrations. Responding to a complaint from Jewish parents, the US Department of Education found that the Philadelphia School District did not adequately address cases of “harassment based on shared ancestry.” The resolution calls for staff training and revised policies. The Department also found that the school district refused to produced requested information.

The author is a contributor to SPME, where a significantly different version of this article first appeared.

The post As a New Semester Begins, December Was Filled with Anti-Israel College Events first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Jews, Israelis Targeted in Austria Amid Surge in Antisemitic Incidents; Local Jewish Community Calls for Action

Illustrative: Pro-Palestinian protesters shout slogans and hold flags during a demonstration against Israel’s military action in the Gaza strip, in Vienna, July 20, 2014. Photo: REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger

Austria is facing a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents and anti-Israel rhetoric, prompting outrage from the country’s Jewish community and urgent calls for authorities to take swift action against growing anti-Jewish hatred.

On Saturday, a group of pro-Palestinian activists burst into the opening of the Salzburg Festival — one of the world’s premier events for opera, music, and drama — waving Palestinian flags and shouting antisemitic slogans.

As Austrian Vice-Chancellor Andreas Babler began his opening speech at the event, six individuals stormed the stage, aggressively waving Palestinian flags and shouting “Blood on your hands!” along with other antisemitic slurs.

The incident raised alarming questions about the event’s security, as the six protesters gained easy access while wearing fake, misspelled staff IDs with fictitious names, revealing a clear failure in background checks.

According to festival director Lukas Crepaz, security measures and control checks have been significantly strengthened. The six activists were arrested, and authorities continue to investigate the incident.

Elie Rosen, president of the Jewish Community (IKG) of Salzburg, Styria, and Carinthia, condemned the incident, calling the disruption of the Salzburg Festival’s opening a “targeted political provocation, carried by openly anti-Israel rhetoric.”

“Jewish life in Austria must not become the collateral damage of political agitation,” Rosen said in a statement. “We often hear powerful statements at commemorative events condemning antisemitism.”

“But where are Israel’s outspoken supporters when real solidarity is needed? Antisemitism takes many forms and frequently starts with the silence of the majority,” she continued. “Hatred toward Israel is not a legitimate form of protest.”

In a separate incident last week, an Israeli couple was denied access to a campsite in Ehrwald, a village in western Austria, after attempting to make a reservation to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary.

According to local media, the couple attempted to register at the campsite, but after revealing their Israeli passports, they were denied entry and asked to leave, forcing them to find alternative accommodations.

“We have no place for Jews here,” the campsite operator reportedly told them.

When asked for comment, the campsite operators told the German newspaper Jüdische Allgemeine, “These people should much rather take care of the many children in Gaza. Otherwise, there is nothing to say.”

In another incident last week, a group of well-known Israeli classical musicians reported being refused service at a pizzeria in Vienna after staff overheard them speaking Hebrew.

One of the musicians recounted that while they were ordering their food, the waiter asked them which language they were speaking. When they replied Hebrew, the waiter allegedly told them, “In that case, leave. I’m not serving you food.”

“The initial shock and humiliation were profound. But what struck us even more deeply was what came next – or rather what didn’t. The people around us were clearly startled, some offered sympathetic glances … and then, quietly, they went back to their dinners, their conversations, their wine – as though nothing had happened,” one of the musicians wrote in a post on X.

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‘All of Our Strength’: Over 1,000 Pro-Israel Activists Gather in DC for Solidarity Conference

2025 Israel on Campus Coalition National Leadership Summit. Photo: ICC.

Over 1,000 Jewish students, faculty, and activists amassed in Washington, DC on July 27-29 to attend the Israel on Campus Coalition’s annual National Leadership Summit (NLS), an electric event which achieved creating the atmosphere of both a festival of Jewish elation and an academic conference.

Founded in 2002, the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC) is a nonprofit organization that describes its mission as inspiring college students to defend and hold pride in the state of Israel. One of its major initiatives is the “microgrants” program, which helps pro-Israel campus groups organize events about Israeli culture and society. Another, the ICC Community Impact Fellowship, awards college students a $1,000 stipend for completing a leadership seminar in which they are trained in civic engagement, coalition building, and rapidly responding to antisemitic and anti-Israel events on their campuses.

Demand for a spot at this year’s 2025 conference exceeded the nonprofit’s capacity to host the thousands of students who signed up to be a conferee at what is recognized as the largest gathering of pro-Israel students in the country. Hundreds were waitlisted and encouraged to reapply next year. Those whom ICC did select were flown out to DC and billeted at the Capital Hilton, all expenses paid. They were joined – for the first time ever – by a delegation of faculty from the Academic Engagement Network (AEN) and staff from most major Jewish organization in the US, from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to StandWithUs (SWU).

“We just ultimately believe that we’re better when we use all of our strength as a movement,” ICC chief executive Jacob Baime told The Algemeiner on Monday during an interview. “And we’re not the only ones who feel that way. The other side does as well, having mounted a highly professionalized coalition, well-funded, well-coordinated effort with many groups involved. We need our partners and the different perspectives they hold too.”

When The Algemeiner last attended NLS, the world was not yet one year removed from Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, the deadliest day in modern Jewish history since the Holocaust. Jewish students and ICC staff, many of whom have family members and friends who were affected by the atrocities or were later drafted into the war it precipitated, were still laboring to comprehend what had become a new and unprecedented world – one in which classic antisemitic tropes had resurfaced to corrupt public debate, anti-Jewish violence occurred daily across the world, and anti-Zionist groups were taking over college campuses and converting them into outposts of antisemitic hate.

As such the event aimed to inspire Jewish students “take back the campus,” an effort advanced by an infantry of social media influencers.

This year’s NLS leaned more heavily into supplying students with information, facts, and statistics curated and presented by the most accomplished Middle East scholars, government leaders, and nonprofit executives in the global pro-Israel community. Social media influencers and celebrities took the stage as well, showcasing their strengths as spirited advocates who remind students why the issues under discussion relate to their contemporary experiences as young people and consumers.

Speakers included Alyza Lewin, president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law; Col. Miri Eisin of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Jonathan Schanzer, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute; Miriam Elman of the Academic Engagement Network; and Dr. Ayal Feinberg, director of the Center for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights. On offer as giveaways were Douglas Murray’s recently published polemic On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization and Dina Powell McCormick and David McCormick’s co-authored book, titled Who Believed in You?: How Purposeful Mentorship Changes the World.

“We wanted students to engage with ideas that touch on the entirety of the campus ecosystem and the subjects they may be asked to comment on,” Baime explained to The Algemeiner. “Oct. 7, the war, and its aftermath have changed the American pro-Israel movement forever.”

The obverse side of the conference’s educational objectives was wholesome fun for the 800 college aged conferees in attendance. They were treated to a buoyant concert in the Hilton’s Presidential Ballroom featuring the jazz-pop fusion act “All of the Above” and the rapper Duvbear, an 18-year-old who is emblematic of what Generation-Z calls “rizz.” Celebrities such as former NBA player Meta World Peace, former NFL linebacker Emmanuel Acho, and professional boxer George Foreman III afforded the students quick meet and greets and selfies. Capital Hilton staff carted out pounds of food – Latin, Asian, and Kosher – from its kitchens every several hours, fostering opportunities for socializing and being photographed on an ICC-themed “red carpet.”

University of California, Davis rising junior Toby Jacob told The Algemeiner that the nonprofit’s strength is its staff.

“The staff here is so knowledgeable and so capable,” Jacob said. “It can feel really scary when you’re dealing with these like large scale issues in your student government, with your administration – and to have people who have the resources to walk you through it is vital.”

Tessa Veksler, an NLS 2025 moderator who became the most recognizable pro-Israel activist of Generation-Z after being elected the first Shabbat-observant president of the University of California, Santa Barbara’s student government, agreed.

“When I was on campus going through the worst of the worst, I knew that ICC had my back and that I could count on the staff and the organization to be there at a moment’s notice,” Veksler said. “They exceptionally equip students with the tools to be able to lead themselves, and so there is an expectation that if you are an ICC fellow that you take the tools ICC gives and put in the work to go and become involved in student government and be the person to make the impact.”

She continued, “It’s a remarkable thing, and there’s a reason why I have stayed as involved as I am.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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‘Devastated’: Wesley LePatner, Killed in Manhattan Mass Shooting, Was a Jewish Communal, Philanthropic Leader

A man holding a rifle walks into an office building at 345 Park Avenue shortly before a shooting that killed several people, in the Midtown Manhattan district of New York City, US, July 28, 2025, in a still image taken from surveillance video. Photo: Surveillance Camera/Handout via REUTERS

Wesley LePatner, an executive at Blackstone and a Jewish communal leader, was one of the victims of the mass shooting in Midtown Manhattan on Monday that killed four people and wounded a fifth in addition to the shooter, who died by suicide.

LePatner, 43, was an active member of the Jewish community and served on the UJA Federation of New York’s board of directors, which said it is “devastated by the tragic loss.”

“Wesley was extraordinary in every way — personally, professionally, and philanthropically,” the federation wrote in a statement on Tuesday. “An exceptional leader in the financial world, she brought thoughtfulness, vision, and compassion to everything she did. In 2023, we honored her with the Alan C. Greenberg Young Leadership Award at our Wall Street Dinner, recognizing her commitment to our community and her remarkable achievements, all the more notable as a woman in a traditionally male-dominated field.”

In her acceptance speech, LePatner said, “Never in my wildest imagination could I have believed that I would be up on this stage two decades later [after attending her first UJA Wall Street dinner]. UJA has many super-powers, but its most important in my view is its power to create a sense of community and belonging, and that ability to create a sense of community and belonging matters now more than ever.”

She also explained that “UJA stepped in early and fixed my feeling out of place by connecting me with senior Goldman Sachs women who were further along in their careers and personal lives, but equally committed to their Jewish community and identity.”

“I was an American,” she said, “but I was first and foremost Jewish.”

LePatner was also a supporter of Israel, leading a solidarity mission with UJA after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.

“In the wake of Oct. 7, Wesley led a solidarity mission with UJA to Israel, demonstrating her enduring commitment in Israel’s moment of heartache,” the UJA Federation of New York said in its statement. “She lived with courage and conviction, instilling in her two children a deep love for Judaism and the Jewish people.”

In addition to serving on the board of directors of the New York UJA, she was also on the board of trustees at The Abraham Joshua Heschel School — a pluralistic Jewish day school in New York. The Forward reported that school representatives wrote in an email that “there are no right words for this unfathomable moment of pain and loss.”

“It was a rare z’chut, a rare privilege, to know Wesley and to learn from her. She was a uniquely brilliant and modest leader and parent, filled with wisdom, empathy, vision, and appreciation,” they continued.

David Greenfield, CEO of the Met Council, posted on X that “Wesley was an amazing person who was also tremendously talented leader. She volunteered with her kids [at the Met Council] to feed those in need.”

LePatner graduated from Yale summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and met her husband on the first day of school in 1999.

She is survived by her husband and two children.

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