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Despite unrest in Indonesia, a Jewish community finds peace among other faith groups

TAIPEI, Taiwan (JTA) — Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza, massive pro-Palestinian demonstrations have taken place in Jakarta and other Indonesian cities.
They have startled Jews like Maryam, who asked to be identified by only her first name to maintain safety and privacy. She said she has heard shouts of “death to Jews” ringing out in the streets.
“Since the war [in] Israel and Gaza, we are really hiding ourselves because there is a big demonstration almost every day,” Maryam, who is in her 70s and lives in Jakarta, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “At Hanukkah, I used to put the menorah in the window. But now I cannot, I have to put it inside.”
Maryam is one of a tiny but unknown total number of practicing Jews in Indonesia, a Muslim-majority country that does not have diplomatic relations with Israel. Besides her small community in Jakarta, where 10 to 20 Jews meet at her house every Shabbat, 50 people from several Indonesian regions gather online regularly for services by Rabbi Benjamin Meijer Verbrugge. Another 30 to 50 Jews attend Rabbi Yaakov Baruch’s congregation in the province of North Sulawesi, a chain of islands northeast of Java.
Today, Baruch’s synagogue, Shaar Hashamayim in the city of Tondano, is the only brick-and-mortar one left standing in Indonesia, which is thought to have been home to about 2,500 Jews in the 1930s.
Since the Israel-Hamas war began, the protests have also frightened Baruch, but he has leaned on his strong relationships with other faith communities in his Christian-majority region to create what he sees as an umbrella of peace. Christians in the area have offered support to his community and a police officer has begun guarding the synagogue during prayer services.
“When I saw what happened in Jakarta and other cities, I felt like I’m not sure that we will still have a good relationship [with other religious communities] after this,” he said. “So I started to contact a lot of religious leaders, talking about positive things, talking about what projects we can do in the future to keep our relations strong.”
Baruch looks at posters with the names and images of Israelis taken hostage by Hamas. (Courtesy of Baruch)
Baruch hung posters of the Israeli hostages on the walls of the synagogue “so the Jews and non-Jews can come to pray there for the safety of all the hostages,” he said. “I brought interfaith Muslim and Christian leaders to pray for the safety of the Israeli and Palestinian people, not Hamas. I just want to show them that we have empathy.”
“When I do interfaith prayer, it’s not only Christian and Muslim leaders, but also Buddhist leaders, Anglicans,” he said. “They’re always asking about me, asking, ‘What are you doing? Are you safe?’”
It’s an example of solidarity in the midst of a conflict that has scared many Jews around the world, including in Indonesia, into hiding.
Across the globe, Jews have expressed what they call an almost unparalleled fear as antisemitic incidents — from vandalism of Jewish sites to shootings, bomb scares and violent attacks — have skyrocketed. Recent antisemitism statistics are not available, but a Pew survey from 2010 found that 74 percent of Indonesians had unfavorable opinions about Jews.
Indonesia has no formal ties with the state of Israel, but it has long called for a two-state solution and maintains some trade, tourism and security links. The country has recognized a Palestinian state since 1988 and has maintained close relations with Palestinian organizations since 1945, when Palestinian leaders expressed support for an independent Indonesia and encouraged other Arab states’ support through the Arab League.
Since the start of the war, Indonesian President Joko Widodo has repeatedly condemned the violence in Gaza and has urged parties to “stop the escalation, to stop the use of violence, to focus on humanitarian issues, and to solve the root of the problem, namely the Israeli occupation of Palestine.” Outside of politics, the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), the country’s top Islamic clerical body, on Nov. 13 issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, mandating that Muslims support the Palestinians’ fight for independence and forbidding support for Israeli “aggression.” The fatwa recommended that Muslims avoid buying any products affiliated with Israel.
Last week, Israeli forces closed in on Indonesia Hospital — reportedly the only hospital still operating in northern Gaza — where health authorities said 12 people were killed in an Israeli strike on Nov. 20. The hospital, opened in 2016, was built with Indonesian funds and is staffed by Palestinians as well as some Indonesian volunteers.
Israel has accused Hamas of hiding its network of command centers and tunnels beneath hospitals in Gaza, including under the Indonesian Hospital, claiming that Hamas “systematically built the Indonesian Hospital to disguise its underground terror infrastructure.” Indonesia’s foreign ministry has denied those accusations, stating that the hospital in Gaza is used “entirely for humanitarian purposes and to serve the medical needs of the Palestinian people in Gaza.”
Indonesia’s foreign ministry strongly condemned Israel’s attack, calling it a “blatant violation of international humanitarian law.”
Thousands of people spread a giant Palestinian flag as they gather in a rally in Jakarta, Nov. 5, 2023. (Azwar Ipank/AFP via Getty Images)
Indonesia’s first Jewish communities date back to the 19th century, when Ashkenazi and Baghdadi Jews immigrated in search of economic opportunities offered through the Dutch colonization of the East Indies. The community peaked at an estimated 2,500 across Java and Sumatra before World War II.
Hostilities toward Jews began to rise after the war, during the founding of a modern independent Indonesia beginning in 1945 and especially after the founding of Israel in 1948. Many Jews subsequently left for Australia, Israel and the United States.
Those Jews who remain in Indonesia today are mostly descendants of those colonists, and many hide their Jewish identity in public or have given it up entirely. Meijer Verbrugge, a native Indonesian and coffee trader, has said that many local Muslims see Indonesian Jews as the offspring of colonial occupiers.
A congregation made up partially of those descendants as well as new Jewish converts across eight areas in Indonesia, led by Meijer Verbrugge, has been growing in recent years. He estimates a total membership of 180 people across eight regions.
In 2015, he said a Christian group beat the cantor at a home synagogue in Ambon, a small island in central Indonesia. But he said local authorities stepped in and began helping the community continue their services safely. Similar support has been offered to his communities since Oct. 7.
“We are very proud of our police department and military who protect our country, and even the police department have regular visits to my place to have talks. They are ready to protect us,” he said.
Meijer Verbrugge has been advocating for national recognition of the Jewish religion for nearly a decade. But Judaism is not one of Indonesia’s six recognized religions today — Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism. Although Jewish religious practice is permitted, this has meant that Baruch, Maryam and other members of the Jewish community have been forced to identify as one of those six religions on their official identity cards. Most choose Christianity.
“It’s not nice, but when Indonesia had their independence [in 1945], my grandmother said we are not leaving because we have a chance here. And she is right,” said Maryam. “But we have to change our religion [on official documents]. So we chose Christian because Jesus is a Jew, that’s what she said. And we went to a Catholic school after that.”
“We cannot use our wedding certificate, ketubah, to have a ceremony in Indonesia,” said Meijer Verbrugge. “We are supposed to use any other recognized religion’s wedding certificate. This is not fair.”
In 2009, a synagogue in Surabaya faced protests after it was designated by the Department of City Culture and Tourism as a cultural landmark. Groups demanded its closure several times until 2013, when the synagogue and its adjoining cemetery were destroyed for unknown reasons by landowners. Today, a high-rise hotel stands in its place.
In 2022, Baruch’s North Sulawesi synagogue was targeted by Muslim groups when he set up a small Holocaust exhibit there. Groups protesting the exhibition, including the MUI, pointed to the exhibition’s ties to Yad Vashem and saw it as part of Israel’s attempts to normalize relations with Indonesia and the occupation of Palestinian territories.
“Indonesians do not always distinguish between Jews and Israelis,” Mun’im Sirry, a professor of world religions at the University of Notre Dame, told JTA in 2022. “They also do not distinguish between the foreign policy of the state and the people of Israel. And that is a problem.”
Baruch told JTA that the issue of the Holocaust exhibition has since been resolved through dialogue with opposing parties. He has since adapted it into a permanent museum with the help of donations of artifacts via connections in Europe.
Maryam is less optimistic about the situation in Indonesia compared to Baruch. She describes connections with other religious organizations as a tax that Jews must pay in exchange for safety. Her own community donates money to local Muslim organizations “for our security,” she said.
“We in the Diaspora, we have no choice. You must trust Hashem,” she said, using a Hebrew term for God. “We have nobody. Who else? Hashem must protect us.”
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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.
The post Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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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.
The post Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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