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German Jewish Leader Calls for Exclusion of Students Who Engage in Antisemitic Violence
‘Against All Antisemitism’: A solidarity vigil outside a synagogue in Berlin, Germany, following the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in Israel. Photo: Reuters/Liesa Johannssen
The head of Germany’s Jewish community has called for students who engage in antisemitic violence to be excluded from their universities.
“Anyone who strikes a Jew because they are Jewish has no business being at a German university,” Josef Schuster — president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany — said on Tuesday, in comments reported by the Zeit news outlet.
Schuster was speaking in the wake of a brutal attack on an Israeli student in Berlin over the weekend.
Lahav Shapira, 30, was attacked by his assailant as he left a bar where he had been drinking with his girlfriend. He was rushed to hospital where he underwent surgery for non-life threatening injuries.
Shapira — whose grandfather Amitzur, the head coach of the 1972 Israeli Olympic track and field team in Munich, was among the 11 squad members murdered by Palestinian terrorists — is a student at the Free University in Berlin, where he has emerged as a vocal advocate for Israel in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas pogrom in which over 1,200 were killed and more than 200 seized as hostages. According to his brother, Shapira was recognized by his assailant in the bar, who carried out the attack once the Israeli had left the premises.
Schuster called on the Free University in Berlin, where Shapira is a student, to take urgent measures against antisemitism on campus.
“FU Berlin is responsible for ensuring that there is no room for extremism and antisemitism in its ranks,” he said. “The appeasement tactics and the excuses of the university management must finally come to an end. If the fight against antisemitism is taken seriously, antisemitic crimes must lead to exclusion.”
A letter from the JSUD, Germany’s Jewish student union, to Free University president Günter Ziegler following the attack on Shapira echoed Schuster’s concerns.
Citing several incidents of antisemitic agitation on campus framed around condemnation of Israel, the letter warned that there were students “who not only threaten violence, but also use it. Stop putting things into perspective or denying them. Finally take action against the antisemites!”
Antisemitic incidents in Germany have rocketed since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas pogrom in Israel, cementing an already worrying situation. In recent years, Germany has clocked up approximately 2,000 incidents targeting Jews annually — an average of more than five per day.
The post German Jewish Leader Calls for Exclusion of Students Who Engage in Antisemitic Violence first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.