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Georgetown University Postpones Passover BDS Vote Following Outcry
In Washington, DC, on March 23, 2025, a group of Georgetown University students and community leaders protest. Photo: Andrew Thomas via Reuters Connect.
Georgetown University’s student government has rescheduled an anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) referendum that it initially scheduled to take place during the Passover holiday following outcry from Jewish students, who argued the original timing effectively disenfranchised them by depriving them of a chance to express opposition to the measure at the ballot box.
As previously reported, the Georgetown University Student Association’s (GUSA) senators voted via secret ballot for a resolution to hold the referendum — which will ask students to decide whether they “support … divesting from companies arming Israel and ending university partnerships with Israeli institutions” — on April 14-16. The move outraged Jewish students, as well as GUSA senators who deplored the body’s passing the measure by allegedly illicit means.
“This referendum, cloaked in the language of human rights, represents not only a troubling overstep into Georgetown’s academic and fiduciary independence but also a campaign rooted in the discriminatory logic of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement,” said a letter the university’s chapter of Students Supporting Israel (SSI) sent to university president Robert Groves. “The passage of this measure would not occur in isolation. It would embolden future efforts to marginalize Jewish and Israeli students, deepen campus polarization, and risk fueling the disturbing rise in antisemitism seen at other institutions. Universities that have permitted such one-sided campaigns are now facing not only fractured communities and repetitional harm but growing federal scrutiny — including potential impacts to public funding.”
GUSA said on Monday that it moved the referendum date, issuing a statement which acknowledged concerns raised by SSI, as well as Chabad Georgetown, Georgetown Israel Alliance, and the Jewish Student Association.
“We made this decision after hearing concerns about the placement of the election during a religious holiday,” the governing body said in a statement posted on Instagram. “Although the election has been rescheduled, formal campaigners may continue to campaign for the referendum until the end of the campaigning period. Individuals may continue to register as formal campaigners until the end of the campaigning period.”
The referendum must still be contested for other reasons, SSI told The Algemeiner on Tuesday.
“We commend the decision to move the vote past Passover but are still intent on combating the procedural irregularities surrounding the referendum,” the group said, referring to the fact that the resolution only passed because GUSA senators, the campus newspaper reported, “voted to break rules” which require referenda to be evaluated by the Policy and Advocacy Committee (PAC), a period of deliberation which establishes their merit, or lack thereof, for consideration by the senate.
Georgetown is one of 60 colleges and universities being investigated by the federal government due to being deemed by the Trump administration as soft on antisemitism and excessively “woke.” Such inquiries have led to the scorching of several billion dollars’ worth of federal contracts and grants awarded to America’s most prestigious institutions of higher education.
On Monday, the administration impounded more than $2 billion in federal funding previously awarded to Harvard University over the institution’s refusal to agree to a wishlist of reforms that Republican lawmakers have long argued will make higher education more meritocratic and less welcoming to anti-Zionists and far-left extremists.
In March, it canceled $400 million in federal contracts and grants for Columbia University, a measure that secured the school’s acceding to a slew of demands the administration put forth as preconditions for restoring the money. Princeton University saw $210 million of its federal grants and funding suspended too, prompting its president, Christopher Eisgruber to say the institution is “committed to fighting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination.” Brown University’s federal funding is also reportedly at risk due to its alleged failing to mount a satisfactory response to the campus antisemitism crisis, as well as its alignment with the DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] movement.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Jordanian Minister Says Israel May Have Planned Murder of Embassy Employees
FILE PHOTO: A man, with an Israeli flag with a cross in the center, looks on next to police officers working at the site where, according to the U.S. Homeland Security Secretary, two Israeli embassy staff were shot dead near the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., U.S. May 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo
In the latest horrific libel against Jews and Israel, a former Jordanian Minister of Interior claimed that Israel may have planned the murder of two Israeli embassy staff in Washington “to lessen the Western-American pressure.”
This was posted on the Facebook of Mazen Turki El-Qadi’s Communications Office, just hours after Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim were murdered outside the Jewish Museum in Washington.
The post follows the similar recent libel by Mahmoud Abbas’ senior advisor who claimed that the Oct. 7 Hamas atrocities was led by Israel:
Perhaps it [Israel] prepared the conditions and led Hamas to this issue, because it had a plan that it wanted to carry out in the Gaza Strip using what happened on Oct. 7 as an excuse.
[Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, YouTube channel, April 21, 2025]
These libels are consistent with Palestinian Authority ideology that Jews are evil, scheming menaces responsible for all the troubles faced by humanity everywhere in the world.
Accordingly, when 1,200 Jews are murdered on Oct. 7 and when Israeli embassy staff are murdered in Washington, Jews must be behind it.
The person responsible for this latest libel, Mazen Turki El-Qadi, in addition to being Jordan’s former Minister of Interior, is also a former Director of Jordanian Public Security and former member of Jordanian Parliament.
The author is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.
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Colombia Appoints First Ambassador to ‘State of Palestine’ Amid Deepening Rift With Israel
Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro speaks during the inauguration of the International Book Fair (FilBo) in Bogota, Colombia, April 17, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Luisa Gonzalez
Colombia has appointed its first ambassador to the Palestinian Authority, marking a significant diplomatic shift a year after severing ties with Israel and pledging to open an embassy in Ramallah.
On Monday, Colombian President Gustavo Petro officially appointed Jorge Iván Ospina — former mayor of Cali, Colombia’s third most populous city — as the country’s first ambassador to the “State of Palestine.”
A close ally of Petro, Ospina is well known for his outspoken hostility toward Israel following the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
He has previously sparked controversy by comparing the Israel Defense Forces’ campaign in Gaza against the Palestinian terrorist group to the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime during World War II.
In a post on X, Ospina publicly confirmed his appointment, expressing solidarity with the “heroic Palestinian people.” He also pledged to “denounce the ongoing genocide that the Palestinian people are suffering today” and to dedicate himself to advancing their freedom and dignity.
Infinita gratitud al Sr Pdte de la República @petrogustavo y a la Sra Canciller @laurisarabia por designarme como Embajador de nuestra Nación ante el heroico pueblo Palestino, la solidaridad, la denuncia al genocidio que hoy sufren, la libertad de quienes hoy no están, los retos pic.twitter.com/5u3JuyYkcx
— Jorge Ivan Ospina (@JorgeIvanOspina) May 26, 2025
The Colombian diplomat indicated that it is still uncertain whether he will carry out his duties from Ramallah in the West Bank or operate from a neighboring country.
“We will need to discuss with Israel and determine the necessary steps to enable the establishment of the Colombian embassy in Ramallah,” Ospina told AFP. “We recognize that the Palestinian state and the State of Israel must coexist.”
This latest move builds on Colombia’s 2018 official recognition of “Palestine.” According to Ospina, the new embassy will prioritize securing the release of Colombian-Israeli citizen Elkana Bohbot, supporting humanitarian aid for Palestinians, and advancing the recognition of a two-state solution.
Despite decades of close diplomatic and military ties — with Jerusalem supplying Colombia with warplanes, surveillance technology, and assault rifles since the 1990s — Petro severed relations with the Jewish state last year.
On Monday, the Colombian president called on the United States to help stop what he described as “the genocide in Gaza,” while condemning Israel’s defensive campaign in the enclave.
“In the fight for their lives, there are girls trying to survive the bombing of a school by Netanyahu, the genocidal man,” Petro said in a post on X, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “There is a decisive complicity in producing this horror in the US and the EU. What we see is produced by Nazis.”
En la lucha por la vida. Niñas tratando de sobrevivir el bombardeo hecho por Netanyahu, el genocida, a una escuela. Hay una complicidad determinante para producir este horror en EEUU y la Unión Europea.
Lo que vemos lo producen Nazis pic.twitter.com/gTr8dYbMLR— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) May 26, 2025
Colombia has been one of the most outspoken critics of Israel’s actions, with Petro backing the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against Netanyahu over alleged war crimes in Gaza. Israel adamantly rejects the allegations.
The Latin American country has also joined South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing the Jewish state of committing “state-led genocide” in its defensive war against Hamas in Gaza.
Israeli leaders have condemned the case as an “obscene exploitation” of the Genocide Convention, noting that the Jewish state is targeting terrorists who use civilians as human shields in its military campaign.
Last year, the ICJ ruled there was “plausibility” to South Africa’s claims that Palestinians had a right to be protected from genocide. However, the top UN court did not make a determination on the merits of South Africa’s allegations, nor did it call for Israel to halt its military campaign.
Instead, the ICJ issued a more general directive that Israel must make sure it prevents acts of genocide. The ruling also called for the release of the hostages kidnapped by Hamas during the terrorist group’s invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
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Jewish Children Attacked in London, Harassed in New York Amid Rising Antisemitism
A Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) car. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
The growing wave of antisemitism across the globe continued to crash down on Jewish teens and children with incidents Monday in the United Kingdom and Friday in New York.
A Jewish teen required hospitalization after a group of approximately seven men used a knife to attack him and two other Jewish boys at northwest London’s Hampstead Underground Station on Monday evening. Police have opened an investigation into the assault and robbery as racially motivated. Hampstead is one of the country’s largest Jewish communities, with a 2021 Jewish population of 8,851.
Jewish security agency Shomrim stated on X that it was “appealing for any witnesses to the incident which took place or anyone with information to come forward … Shomrim is supporting the victims, and we encourage anyone who has been affected or who has experienced any form of antisemitism to get in touch. Shomrim specializes in reporting and supporting victims of antisemitic crime.”
Shomrim NW London responded yesterday, 26th May at 8:30pm, to reports of a #racially motivated assault and threats with a #knife on three #Jewish boys at #Hampstead Underground Station.
Suspects are believed to be a group of 6-7 males. One of the victims was admitted to hospital… pic.twitter.com/EORK4Sumdl
— Shomrim North West London (@shomrimlondon) May 27, 2025
London saw a previous antisemitic attack against adolescents in London on Nov. 25, 2024, when a man threw glass bottles from a high-rise balcony, targeting Jewish girls, one of whom required hospitalization from a head injury.
In February, the Community Security Trust (CST), a nonprofit charity that advises Britain’s Jewish community on security matters, said that 2024 included 3,528 recorded antisemitic incidents across the UK, the second worst year in the country’s history, following 2023. This included 260 cases at schools, 223 at synagogues or with congregants as victims, and 1,240 taking place on the internet.
Mark Gardner, the CST’s chief executive, praised “the defiance and pride that our community has shown, despite everything it has been through” and described how “those who are complicit in this antisemitism range from social media giants to the Islamist and far left extremists who celebrated the Hamas terror attacks.”
Students in Brooklyn also experienced antisemitism, when they reported their charter school’s bus driver pulled the vehicle over to the side of the road in order to evangelize his religious beliefs, including the claim of collective Jewish guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. This resulted in one Jewish pupil crying and the students arriving 30 minutes late to class at Brooklyn Prospect International Elementary Charter School, the New York Post reported.
The driver reportedly said, “The only one who can deliver you isn’t religion, it’s Jesus.”
In response to a student’s question about Jesus and Judaism, the driver said, “Yes, he was a Jew and basically Jews — his own kind — killed him.” He added, “They basically killed him because he said he was the son of God … These were religious leaders who killed him.” Some students texted their parents in real time during the driver’s antisemitic sermonizing. At one point he distributed white hats with black crosses and asked students to pray with him.
One parent told the New York Post that the driver “definitely held the kids captive.”
The school has since suspended the as-yet unnamed driver, sent a note to parents informing them of the incident, filed a complaint with the service who provided him, and requested a new person to fill the role.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) 2024 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents recorded 860 incidents (9 percent of the total nationwide) in K-12 schools in the US, a decrease of 26 percent from 2023. The most prominent of these antisemitic acts was swastika vandalism.
The Brooklyn school bus incident took place just two days before a protest outside the Chabad-Lubavitch World Headquarters in Brooklyn, which resulted in police officers removing the demonstrators. The activists seemed intent on disrupting members of the global Hasidic movement within Orthodox Judaism as they were conducting a Torah ceremony.
According to the ADL’s audit, New York — the state with the largest Jewish population in the US — led the country in antisemitic incidents, with 15 percent of the total. The incidents included 912 cases of harassment (second highest nationally), 443 acts of vandalism (highest nationally), and 82 assaults (highest nationally). Comparable to the country as a whole, 58 percent of the state’s incidents included anti-Israel sentiment. New York’s colleges also experienced more incidents than those of any other state.
Sixty-eight percent of incidents occurred in New York City. The ADL reported that “the targeting of Orthodox Jews has become particularly concerning, with Brooklyn alone — home to numerous Orthodox Jewish communities — accounting for 39 percent of all assaults in the state. This reflects a dangerous pattern of escalating violence against visibly Jewish individuals.”
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