Connect with us

RSS

At Stanford, a committee to address antisemitism is roiled by Jewish infighting

(JTA) – Ari Kelman spent the entire Hanukkah party looking over his shoulder.

A professor of Jewish studies at Stanford University, Kelman attended this year’s Stanford Hillel party traumatized by what he’d experienced the past few days on campus. People he didn’t know had declared themselves to be his enemy and had just successfully pushed him to resign from his role co-chairing the school’s committee to fight antisemitism — a committee he himself had lobbied the school’s president to form. 

“I spent the night looking around the room, feeling suspicious of the people who are in the room — the people in the Jewish community of Stanford, that I am a member of, and have been a member of for more than a decade,” he recalled. “That was a bad feeling.”

That suspicion was born of attacks on Kelman from a range of voices to his right, including a Jerusalem Post columnist, anonymous students quoted in another publication and a group of alumni co-chaired by Kfir Gavrieli, a three-time Stanford alumnus and footwear CEO who advocated ousting Kelman from the committee’s leadership. Both Kelman and Gavrieli are Jewish, both care about Jewish life at Stanford and both say there’s an imperative need to fight antisemitism on campus amid the Israel-Hamas war. 

But for Gavrieli and the sizable bloc of the Stanford Jewish community he says he speaks for, elements of Kelman’s past activism led him to believe that Kelman wouldn’t be an effective steward of the fight against antisemitism. At a moment when so many of the antisemitism allegations concerned debate over Israel, Gavrieli zoomed in on Kelman’s past links to non- or anti-Zionist groups. “There was a rich history of very concerning indicators,” he said he concluded.

The episode underscores how — even at a moment when polls show that the vast majority of American Jews are concerned about reports of rising antisemitism — differences in worldview and strategy have impeded efforts to combat it. Stanford is one of several elite schools that have aimed to address hostility toward Jewish students by forming an advisory committee on antisemitism. But now the committees themselves, and their members, have come under increasing scrutiny from activists who fear they will succumb to the same university culture that allowed antisemitism to fester on campuses in the first place.

“I was experiencing panic attacks trying to represent a community that did not want me to represent them,” Kelman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “So I stepped down.” In a university release Friday announcing his departure from the committee, Kelman chalked it up to “pockets of Stanford’s Jewish community that strongly opposed my leadership on the committee.”

The committees have been formed after students, faculty, donors and other stakeholders of universities accused campus administrators of doing too little to safeguard their Jewish students in the face of antisemitism following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Administrators hope such committees — generally made up of a mix of faculty, alumni and students — can help coordinate productive responses to the challenge of antisemitism on campus. 

But committees at Stanford and other schools have since faced a challenging landscape. In mid-November, University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill announced an antisemitism committee at her school “to better understand how antisemitism is experienced on campus.” Weeks later, she resigned after a congressional hearing where she and the presidents of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology declined to say that calls for the genocide of Jews constituted harassment. 

Rabbi David Wolpe also stepped down from Harvard’s antisemitism committee after the hearing. Wolpe said the body was ill-equipped to address “the task of educating a generation, and also a vast unlearning.”

By contrast, Kelman believes he was forced out of a committee he himself had pushed for, and whose mission he believed in. After Oct. 7, Stanford was the site of several widely reported incidents of antisemitic behavior in conjunction with the war: A professor reportedly forced Jews and Israelis to stand in a corner of class; “Long Live the Intifada” was scrawled in sidewalk chalk near the site of a pro-Israel vigil; and students unfurled banners calling for Israel’s destruction. A campus sit-in that seeks to pressure the university to divest from Israel has continued for over a month. Its organizers recently met with the president and provost.

“After the 7th, you saw on our campus what you saw on lots of other campuses, which was people on the political left saying things, chanting things, tweeting things, supporting things that were calling for the destruction of the State of Israel, that were actively antisemitic, that were sort of violent, that were callous,” Kelman said. He specifically cited instances of students chanting “From the river to the sea,” a phrase associated with Palestinian liberation that many Jews have interpreted as a call for genocide.

A general view of the buildings of the main quadrangle and Hoover Tower on the campus of Stanford University, Oct. 2, 2021. (David Madison/Getty Images)

This wasn’t Kelman’s first rodeo with antisemitism at Stanford. In 2021, he’d led a task force investigating claims that the school discriminated against Jewish applicants in the 1950s, prompting the university to issue an apology. Afterward, Kelman joined the school’s newly formed Jewish Advisory Committee, whose mandate was, at first, broader than simply fighting antisemitism. One of its issues, he said, was “how do we get it so that Orthodox Jewish kids can get into their dorms on Shabbat without using electronic key cards?” 

On Nov. 13, Stanford announced that its Jewish Advisory Committee would have a new subcommittee focused on ways “to combat antisemitism at Stanford, to enhance safety and support, and to build community.” It would include the Stanford Hillel director and a Jewish chaplain at Stanford, several current and emeritus professors — including Kelman — and Jewish undergraduate and graduate student representatives. 

The committee — created alongside one for Muslim, Arab and Palestinian communities on campus — has already planned out around 30 listening sessions with Jewish and Israeli members of campus. There are currently no Israelis on the committee, though the school says it is working to recruit them.

Kelman soon faced backlash. An anonymous email, a version of which was forwarded to JTA, circulated among Stanford Jews detailing several issues with Kelman. Referencing the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and a leading anti-Zionist organization, the email declares that “Ari has a long history of alignment with BDS and Jewish Voice for Peace positions and activists.”

Soon prominent alums began attacking him in social media posts, and on Dec. 11, an article in Jewish Insider quoted anonymous student critics of his. 

Kfir Gavrieli speaks at the press conference for a shipment of 3,000 L.A. produced face shields at LA County + USC Medical Center on April 14, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. (Presley Ann/Getty Images for Emergency Supply Donor Group)

Outside of the article, one of the most vocal critics was Gavrieli, the founder and CEO of the ballet footwear company Tieks. He earned a bachelor’s and two master’s degrees at Stanford and had been waging a parallel fight against antisemitism at the school in the wake of Oct. 7. Following the Hamas attack, he co-founded Stanford Against Hate, a group of Jewish and Israeli Stanford business school alums who circulated an open letter calling on the university to take concrete action against antisemitism. 

The group also includes executives at LinkedIn and Google. Its letter makes eight demands of the university, including that it adopt a definition of antisemitism composed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance that includes some criticism of Israel. The group also demanded that the campus ban rallies “that celebrate, glorify, or condone terrorist attacks or the destruction of Israel or that promote antisemitism.” And it called on the administration to meet with Jewish and Israeli students on a regular basis.

Kelman shares some of the group’s stated goals, but Gavrieli and others in his camp decided that a Kelman-led committee would exacerbate their concerns over antisemitism rather than alleviate them. In particular, Kelman opposes the IHRA antisemitism definition, which critics have accused of chilling pro-Palestinian campus activism.

In addition, Kelman co-authored a 2017 paper finding that Jewish college students at the time reported “low levels of antisemitism” and generally felt safe on their campuses. And he previously served as a faculty advisor for Open Hillel, a now-inactive organization that pushed Hillel International to relax its policies forbidding partnerships with groups that endorse boycotting Israel. In 2017, a member of the anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace served as counsel for an amicus brief that Kelman signed onto.

On Dec. 11, Gavrieli linked to the Jewish Insider article in a tweet lambasting his alma mater — and Kelman.

“You’ve done even less than Harvard and Penn to protect Jewish students, and your Antisemitism Committee is chaired by Ari Kelman who’s aligned with JVP and antisemitic groups and is opposed to the IHRA definition of antisemitism,” Gavrieli posted on X, formerly Twitter, tagging Stanford’s account. 

Gavrieli added, in all caps, “HE DOES NOT REPRESENT US.” 

“We know that ideologically we’re not aligned with him,” Gavrieli told JTA. “I know people who we’re comfortable with, and I know who we’re not comfortable with.”

Kelman rejects the idea that he doesn’t take campus antisemitism seriously. 

“It’s a total waste and a distraction,” he said. “I wrote papers in 2017 — like, really? You’re going to spend all week, you’re going to spend all this kind of energy doing that? How about actually saying, ‘Hey, there’s real problems. Let’s try to figure out ways to solve them,’” he said. “So stupid, right? Call me an antisemite, call me an anti-Zionist, call me a turncoat, it’s such a waste — so stupid. I feel like I’m 5 years old.”

He said he has never been affiliated with JVP, adding, “If I was, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about, but I’m not and haven’t been.”

The antisemitism committee members don’t appear to share Gavrieli’s discomfort. Rabbi Jessica Kirschner, the director of Stanford Hillel, called the concerns about Open Hillel a “red herring.”

“The heart of the matter is something else altogether,” Kirschner wrote in an email to JTA, without offering details. She added, “I think the work of the committee is incredibly important, and I am sorry that Ari stepped down.”

Gavrieli was one of a number of public critics to take aim at Kelman. The conservative Jerusalem Post writer Caroline Glick called Kelman “a self-hating Jew” and the online watchdog group StopAntisemitism posted, “Exactly WHY every University should adopt the IHRA working definition of antisemitism. When you can define what you’re fighting, people like Ari Kelman can’t sidestep or deny it’s actually happening.”

Kelman claims that no critic of his ever approached him directly about their concerns. But Gavrieli said there had indeed been attempts from his camp to talk to him — and added that the fact that Kelman was unaware of the level of animosity toward him was further evidence he should not be chairing the committee. 

In the end, Gavrieli decided that nothing Kelman could say — not even his past work pushing Stanford to respond to antisemitism — could make up for his past stances on Israel. 

Last week, Kelman told the committee he would be stepping down. Not even a direct appeal from the school’s interim president, Richard Saller, could convince him to stay. Saller said in a statement that Kelman had “the full confidence of the president, provost, and committee membership.”

Kelman will remain an advisor on the committee and told JTA he still corresponds regularly with its members.

“I want them to succeed,” he said. “I hope they don’t enter the headwinds that I did.” 

As for Gavrieli, he commended Kelman for recognizing he could not do the job anymore but said his group still has concerns about other members who remain. (Multiple committee members told JTA its lineup has not yet been finalized.) He said that his group would continue to pressure the university to instead appoint members who more closely align with their views. 

“The composition of the committee speaks volumes about the root of the problem here. And we can’t have people on them who share the ideologies that created the problem in the first place,” Gavrieli said. “I don’t want to suggest that these people share antisemitic ideologies. It’s that they share ideologies with an institution that allowed things to get this bad.”


The post At Stanford, a committee to address antisemitism is roiled by Jewish infighting appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Continue Reading

RSS

Hamas Says No Interim Hostage Deal Possible Without Work Toward Permanent Ceasefire

Explosions send smoke into the air in Gaza, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, July 17, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen

The spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing said on Friday that while the Palestinian terrorist group favors reaching an interim truce in the Gaza war, if such an agreement is not reached in current negotiations it could revert to insisting on a full package deal to end the conflict.

Hamas has previously offered to release all the hostages held in Gaza and conclude a permanent ceasefire agreement, and Israel has refused, Abu Ubaida added in a televised speech.

Arab mediators Qatar and Egypt, backed by the United States, have hosted more than 10 days of talks on a US-backed proposal for a 60-day truce in the war.

Israeli officials were not immediately available for comment on the eve of the Jewish Sabbath.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on a call he had with Pope Leo on Friday that Israel‘s efforts to secure a hostage release deal and 60-day ceasefire “have so far not been reciprocated by Hamas.”

As part of the potential deal, 10 hostages held in Gaza would be returned along with the bodies of 18 others, spread out over 60 days. In exchange, Israel would release a number of detained Palestinians.

“If the enemy remains obstinate and evades this round as it has done every time before, we cannot guarantee a return to partial deals or the proposal of the 10 captives,” said Abu Ubaida.

Disputes remain over maps of Israeli army withdrawals, aid delivery mechanisms into Gaza, and guarantees that any eventual truce would lead to ending the war, said two Hamas officials who spoke to Reuters on Friday.

The officials said the talks have not reached a breakthrough on the issues under discussion.

Hamas says any agreement must lead to ending the war, while Netanyahu says the war will only end once Hamas is disarmed and its leaders expelled from Gaza.

Almost 1,650 Israelis and foreign nationals have been killed as a result of the conflict, including 1,200 killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on southern Israel, according to Israeli tallies. Over 250 hostages were kidnapped during Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught.

Israel responded with an ongoing military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.

The post Hamas Says No Interim Hostage Deal Possible Without Work Toward Permanent Ceasefire first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

RSS

Iran Marks 31st Anniversary of AMIA Bombing by Slamming Argentina’s ‘Baseless’ Accusations, Blaming Israel

People hold images of the victims of the 1994 bombing attack on the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) community center, marking the 30th anniversary of the attack, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Irina Dambrauskas

Iran on Friday marked the 31st anniversary of the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires by slamming Argentina for what it called “baseless” accusations over Tehran’s alleged role in the terrorist attack and accusing Israel of politicizing the atrocity to influence the investigation and judicial process.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on the anniversary of Argentina’s deadliest terrorist attack, which killed 85 people and wounded more than 300.

“While completely rejecting the accusations against Iranian citizens, the Islamic Republic of Iran condemns attempts by certain Argentine factions to pressure the judiciary into issuing baseless charges and politically motivated rulings,” the statement read.

“Reaffirming that the charges against its citizens are unfounded, the Islamic Republic of Iran insists on restoring their reputation and calls for an end to this staged legal proceeding,” it continued.

Last month, a federal judge in Argentina ordered the trial in absentia of 10 Iranian and Lebanese nationals suspected of orchestrating the attack in Buenos Aires.

The ten suspects set to stand trial include former Iranian and Lebanese ministers and diplomats, all of whom are subject to international arrest warrants issued by Argentina for their alleged roles in the terrorist attack.

In its statement on Friday, Iran also accused Israel of influencing the investigation to advance a political campaign against the Islamist regime in Tehran, claiming the case has been used to serve Israeli interests and hinder efforts to uncover the truth.

“From the outset, elements and entities linked to the Zionist regime [Israel] exploited this suspicious explosion, pushing the investigation down a false and misleading path, among whose consequences was to disrupt the long‑standing relations between the people of Iran and Argentina,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry said.

“Clear, undeniable evidence now shows the Zionist regime and its affiliates exerting influence on the Argentine judiciary to frame Iranian nationals,” the statement continued.

In April, lead prosecutor Sebastián Basso — who took over the case after the 2015 murder of his predecessor, Alberto Nisman — requested that federal Judge Daniel Rafecas issue national and international arrest warrants for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over his alleged involvement in the attack.

Since 2006, Argentine authorities have sought the arrest of eight Iranians — including former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who died in 2017 — yet more than three decades after the deadly bombing, all suspects remain still at large.

In a post on X, the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA), the country’s Jewish umbrella organization, released a statement commemorating the 31st anniversary of the bombing.

“It was a brutal attack on Argentina, its democracy, and its rule of law,” the group said. “At DAIA, we continue to demand truth and justice — because impunity is painful, and memory is a commitment to both the present and the future.”

Despite Argentina’s longstanding belief that Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah terrorist group carried out the devastating attack at Iran’s request, the 1994 bombing has never been claimed or officially solved.

Meanwhile, Tehran has consistently denied any involvement and refused to arrest or extradite any suspects.

To this day, the decades-long investigation into the terrorist attack has been plagued by allegations of witness tampering, evidence manipulation, cover-ups, and annulled trials.

In 2006, former prosecutor Nisman formally charged Iran for orchestrating the attack and Hezbollah for carrying it out.

Nine years later, he accused former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner — currently under house arrest on corruption charges — of attempting to cover up the crime and block efforts to extradite the suspects behind the AMIA atrocity in return for Iranian oil.

Nisman was killed later that year, and to this day, both his case and murder remain unresolved and under ongoing investigation.

The alleged cover-up was reportedly formalized through the memorandum of understanding signed in 2013 between Kirchner’s government and Iranian authorities, with the stated goal of cooperating to investigate the AMIA bombing.

The post Iran Marks 31st Anniversary of AMIA Bombing by Slamming Argentina’s ‘Baseless’ Accusations, Blaming Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

RSS

Jordan Reveals Muslim Brotherhood Operating Vast Illegal Funding Network Tied to Gaza Donations, Political Campaigns

Murad Adailah, the head of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood, attends an interview with Reuters in Amman, Jordan, Sept. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Jehad Shelbak

The Muslim Brotherhood, one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist movements, has been implicated in a wide-ranging network of illegal financial activities in Jordan and abroad, according to a new investigative report.

Investigations conducted by Jordanian authorities — along with evidence gathered from seized materials — revealed that the Muslim Brotherhood raised tens of millions of Jordanian dinars through various illegal activities, the Jordan news agency (Petra) reported this week.

With operations intensifying over the past eight years, the report showed that the group’s complex financial network was funded through various sources, including illegal donations, profits from investments in Jordan and abroad, and monthly fees paid by members inside and outside the country.

The report also indicated that the Muslim Brotherhood has taken advantage of the war in Gaza to raise donations illegally.

Out of all donations meant for Gaza, the group provided no information on where the funds came from, how much was collected, or how they were distributed, and failed to work with any international or relief organizations to manage the transfers properly.

Rather, the investigations revealed that the Islamist network used illicit financial mechanisms to transfer funds abroad.

According to Jordanian authorities, the group gathered more than JD 30 million (around $42 million) over recent years.

With funds transferred to several Arab, regional, and foreign countries, part of the money was allegedly used to finance domestic political campaigns in 2024, as well as illegal activities and cells.

In April, Jordan outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s most vocal opposition group, and confiscated its assets after members of the Islamist movement were found to be linked to a sabotage plot.

The movement’s political arm in Jordan, the Islamic Action Front, became the largest political grouping in parliament after elections last September, although most seats are still held by supporters of the government.

Opponents of the group, which is banned in most Arab countries, label it a terrorist organization. However, the movement claims it renounced violence decades ago and now promotes its Islamist agenda through peaceful means.

The post Jordan Reveals Muslim Brotherhood Operating Vast Illegal Funding Network Tied to Gaza Donations, Political Campaigns first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

Copyright © 2017 - 2023 Jewish Post & News