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Bridging Hatred: How Two Forms of Antisemitism Converge on College Campuses
City, University Of London. Photo: Wiki Commons.
Another morning, another flood of emails. Lately, my university inbox has become more than just a stream of class updates and administrative notices — now even this simplest of tasks has been hijacked by antisemitism.
Statements from the Student Union condemning Israel’s “Genocide,” “Educide,” “Domicide,” and a list of other bogus terms pile up on my inbox screen — one after another.
And even though I delete the emails, antisemitism follows me in every hallway (filled with anti-Israel posters) and cubicles filled with antisemitic stickers. It is completely inescapable.
This phenomenon reminds me of something Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks once said, when he compared antisemitism to a “virus” that has “survived over time by mutating.”
Beyond that, antisemitism has permeated groups you’d never expect to withstand being in the same room, let alone aligned in a common cause, with each other. The surprising nature of the spread of antisemitism between the far left and Islamist groups, has been called the “Red-Green Alliance.”
This alliance is simply proof that sometimes the enemy of my enemy is — still just an enemy. However, the current resurgence of the latest variant of antisemitism — created in the wake of October 7th — has clearly found fertile ground in Western schools and academic institutions.
According to CAMERA, an organization set up to fight anti-Israel narratives and disinformation, the roots of this deranged ideology begin in a very expected place: Nazi Germany, which spent an enormous amount of resources into spreading antisemitism internationally.
With the eventual disappearance of the Nazi regime in Germany, the mantle of exporting antisemitism has now been picked up by (among others) authoritarian regimes globally. The Soviet Union, for instance, worked closely through Uganda’s Idi Amin to encourage Palestinian terrorist Yasser Arafat to rephrase his endless waves of terrorism against Israeli civilians as acts of heroism, part of a necessary “liberation movement.”
In time, these propagandistic slogans developed intellectual roots as revolutionaries in Iran, notably Ali Shirati, pioneered a synthesis, combining Marxism’s oppressor/oppressed paradigm with a political interpretation of Shiite Islam. This positioned Islam as uniquely responsible for championing the marginalized.
Unsurprisingly, Iran has developed into one of the most major exporters of this “New Antisemitism” — funding a web of initiatives aimed to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist and dehumanize its people.
The influence of these Islamic regimes extends across Europe and North America, deeply embedding itself within Western academic institutions. This phenomenon has received far less attention compared to the coverage of China’s Confucius Institutes on campuses, despite Qatari and Iranian interests exerting a much greater financial and ideological impact.
A groundbreaking 2008 report revealed the scale of this influence, when research uncovered that Islamist regimes had injected $462 million into just eight leading UK institutions, including prestigious universities like Oxford and Cambridge. Subsequent investigations have painted an even more alarming picture, with reports suggesting that Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood have secretly channeled over $13 billion into American universities between 2001 and 2021.
The consequences of this influence is not so surprising. British academics have increasingly demonstrated a lack of moral clarity on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Some of this their Marxist roots, where other efforts could be attributed to foreign funding. And when they support terrorist groups on college campuses, they often go without consequences. Their “oppressor vs. oppressed” ideology makes them sympathetic to terrorism.
Many students have followed the lead of these teachers, with anti-Israel protests on UK universities becoming a near daily occurrence — costing UK universities at least £1 million in management already, and spreading hate to new generations of students and the general population.
And sadly, the impact of this rise of a new antisemitism has resulted in Jewish students fearful of expressing their Jewish identity on campus, with figures showing as many as 70% of Jewish students actively concealing their Jewish identity in UK universities.
As for me and the flood of hate in my email inbox, my problem won’t be resolved until we start to tackle antisemitism within our universities, and our media institutions seriously and denormalize this spreading hatred.
Isaac Grand is Masters Student in Law at City, University of London, and a CAMERA on Campus Fellow.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
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