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Hate Exploded Across College Campuses Surrounding the October 7 Anniversary
The “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Columbia University, located in the Manhattan borough of New York City, on April 25, 2024. Photo: Reuters Connect
October’s anti-Israel protests were focused on the tragic anniversary of Hamas’ October 7 massacres, and the Israeli response that began the now year-long war. Campus protests included student walkouts, building takeovers, and vandalism at numerous universities including Columbia University, Pomona College, Tufts University, the University of Virginia, and Princeton University.
At Concordia University, demonstrators were dispersed with tear gas after breaking windows of university buildings.
The homes of the University of Michigan president and Chief Information Office were also vandalized, as was the office of the Detroit Jewish Federation. McGill University canceled classes for October 7, apparently for fear of widespread celebrations of the Hamas massacre. In New York City a Jewish counterprotestor was assaulted as pro-Hamas protests spread across Manhattan.
Other October protests included the attempted blockade of the New York Stock Exchange by 200 Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) protestors, which resulted in arrests, the vandalizing of offices across Britain belonging to the asset management firm Allianz, as well as a factory making parts for F-35 jets.
Bomb threats were called into New York area synagogues on Rosh Hashanah, while antisemitic materials were distributed across the Detroit area. Protestors outside a Jewish cultural center in London chanted “Palestine Is Not Your Home” and accused participants in an October 7th event sponsored by Haaretz featuring both left wing Israeli and Palestinian speakers of being “genocide supporters.”
Attacks on Jews and Jewish sites were common in October. These included the vandalizing of a Chabad sukkah in Pittsburgh by two Muslims males who were then indicted by the US Justice Department. More serious were a New York City car ramming attack aimed at a visibly identifiable Jew on Yom Kippur and a Chicago area shooting of a Jewish male on Simchat Torah, also by Muslim males.
The campus and other protests have been underpinned by a variety of funding and organizing groups. One key group is Samidoun, which was sanctioned as a “sham charity” and front for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) by the US Treasury Department in October. Canada jointly announced similar sanctions on the Vancouver-based organization.
Samidoun has provided training to and jointly sponsored campus and other protests with Within Our Lifetime, Palestine Youth Movement, Jewish Voice for Peace, and other anti-Israel and pro-Hamas organizations.
In addition to the aforementioned college protests, pro-Hamas vandalism was also noted at American University, Georgetown University, Bryn Mawr College, and the University of Pennsylvania, where signs were defaced with the words “Sinwar lives,” and where protestors later broke into a board of trustees meeting to shout their demands.
Anti-Israel protestors also disrupted a talk by George Washington University’s president during alumni weekend.
More ominous were statements from a variety of student groups in support of violence. A statement from Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and Columbia Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) said that they “support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance.”
The school’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter quoted dead Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s objectives “that Operation al-Aqsa Flood was launched with the objective to liberate Palestinian prisoners, the holy sites, and land of Palestine that has been occupied by the Zionist entity since 1948, in the context of the escalation of imperialist violence against Palestinians in scale and brutality over the past few years.”
The University of Michigan’s JVP chapter stated similarly that “Death to Israel is a moral imperative.” That posting was condemned by the university president, and was removed by Instagram.
A number of SJP chapters also mourned Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, while over 100 Columbia University clubs released a statement mourning Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
Similar praise for Sinwar as a “leader, fighter, and martyr” was offered by other SJP chapters in the US, such as at John Jay College, which lauded Sinwar’s “life of honor,” as well as in Britain by numerous Arab and Muslim student groups.
A new target for anti-Israel protests in October were job fairs. Protestors at a variety of schools including Cornell University, Tufts University, Case Western University, and the University of Massachusetts attempted to take over job fairs on the grounds that companies represented included “weapons manufacturers.” Protestors were removed from these and other events including at Temple University, where the Islamist group CAIR later alleged that police had removed a student’s hijab.
Despite the widespread failure to convince administrations or trustees to boycott Israel, student governments continue to support the concept of divestment.
The Rice University student government passed several referenda demanding divestment and condemning Israel. The University of Massachusetts student government passed a resolution reaffirming its support for divestment, as did a resolution by the University of California at Berkeley student government, and a student referendum at American University. Anti-Israel activists were also also permitted to make presentations to trustees at McMaster College.
Divestment was also supported by the Northwestern University graduate student union, and a poll of Columbia University engineering students. The City University of New York Graduate Center’s student government also passed a resolution barring purchase of any product “that support or benefit from the US-backed Israeli occupation of Palestine” including Starbucks and Israeli-produce. In contrast, the student government at Binghamton University overturned a BDS resolution that was adopted in 2023.
At the University of Michigan the student government had been taken over by BDS supporters who refused to fund any student clubs until the university divested from Israel. The university then funded clubs directly, which forced a petition to the student government which ended the crisis. The student government was then unsuccessfully petitioned to send its budget to Gaza universities. This move failed as well, and resulted in insults and death threats against opponents.
Strikes by graduate student unions as a means to protest university policies on Israel continue to emerge. A series of strikes by University of California graduate student unions were cut short by a court injunction for violating the terms of the union contract with the state.
Attacking Jewish organizations has become a formal strategy of pro-Hamas groups on and off campuses. The CAIR-backed Drop Hillel campaign, which claims to be Jewish run but which is fronted by National Students for Justice in Palestine and Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapters, demands that Hillels be banned from campuses over their support for Israel.
The campaign has received attention at a variety of campuses including Duke University, claims that “Over the past several decades, Hillel has monopolized for Jewish campus life into a pipeline for pro-Israel indoctrination, genocide-apologia, and material support to the Zionist project and its crimes.” It claims further that Hillel is a lynchpin in campus harassment of anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian students and in Israel’s “racist and settler colonialist practices.”
A report by UCLA’s antisemitism task force has detailed the antisemitic harassment and violence that emerged after October 7th, which culminated in the spring encampment and subsequent riots. The report noted that Jewish students were harassed and then prohibited from entering parts of campus. Some 100 physical assaults were also recorded.
Finally, in an especially grotesque turn, anti-Zionist students erected a number of “Liberation Sukkahs” at a variety of universities including Columbia. Similar unauthorized installations at the University of California, Berkeley, Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Northwestern University were dismantled by authorities, who were then accused of “antisemitism” by protestors.
The Hillel sukkah at Simmons University was vandalized with the words “Gaza Liberation Sukkah,” while the JVP chapter posted a note on social media stating,“This is not antisemitism. Drop Hillel.”
Faculty support for explicitly anti-Israel viewpoints is reflected in speaking invitations to pro-Hamas UN rapporteur and antisemite Francesca Albanese at Princeton University, Brown University, Barnard College, Georgetown University, and elsewhere. A talk on the October 7th massacre by Palestinian Christian theological Sari Ateek at Virginia Theological Seminary is another example of an invitation to a known Hamas supporter.
“Faculty for Justice in Palestine” chapters also have taken the lead in organizing campus protests. October examples include Columbia/Barnard calling for the boycott of local Harlem businesses, and the University of Pennsylvania’s joining an Indigenous Person’s Day protest and calling for the university to break ties with a local high tech firm.
Faculty leadership is also represented by efforts from the “International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network” to associate Zionism with ‘white supremacy.” These faculty are in turn members of various “critical studies” programs working to created anti-Israel and antisemitic K-12 curriculum.
In one example of an organized disruption, Harvard University faculty staged a silent demonstration in a university library in violation of new rules and in support of students who had similarly disrupted a library study area. In response, some two dozen faculty members had their library access temporarily restricted. Teaching staff at Simon Fraser University are voting on an Israel boycott resolution.
University responses to faculty provocations have been sporadic. In an extreme example, Muhlenberg College has fired a faculty member, Maura Finkelstein, who expressed support for Hamas and attacked “Zionists” on social media. One of the posts in question stated: “Do not cower to Zionists … Shame them. Do not welcome them in your spaces. Do not make them feel comfortable. Why should those genocide-loving fascists be treated any different than any other flat-out racist. Don’t normalize Zionism. Don’t normalize Zionists taking up space.”
While the terms of her firing have not been made fully clear by the college or by Finkelstein herself, her implicit threat to “Zionists,” which created a hostile teaching environment, may have played a role.
Elementary and secondary school teachers and their unions continue to be at the forefront of anti-Israel activism. In Seattle, a controversy emerged after it was revealed that the “Northwest Teaching for Social Justice Conference” included a number of anti-Israel presentations, including one by a well-known BDS supporter on “Incorporating K-12 Literature About Palestine — Preparing for False Allegations of AntiSemitism.”
Similar “social justice” teacher training was reported in Chicago, where a group offered sessions to promote “informed discussions on global issues, particularly settler colonialism, and we believe that addressing the complexities and misconceptions surrounding the Palestinian cause can contribute to promoting anti-racism and dismantling systems of oppression.”
The impact of pro-Hamas teacher training was evident even in the immediate aftermath of October 7, 2023 — when California teachers began to ask students, “What does Palestinian freedom mean to you?” and “How are you engaged with the Palestinian freedom struggle?”
The background of the immense anti-Israel bias that has been built into K-12 curriculum and teacher activities was partially explained by a new report that noted how the New York City Department of Education has allowed unions and foreign supported activist organizations to provide curriculum materials and teacher trainings.
Foreign entities including the American branch of the Qatar Foundation and local entities such as the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which is supported by Communist Chinese Party entities, are among those discussed.
In Los Angeles, Jewish teachers have filed a suit against the United Teachers Los Angeles union over dues that support anti-Israel activities. Since the union is the sole bargaining representative, union dues are automatically deducted from teachers’ salaries.
The suit details the pervasive anti-Israel activities undertaken under the union’s aegis before and after October 7, 2023, including advocacy for the racist Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum. The union has now also voted to call for an arms embargo against Israel.
Jewish schools also continue to be targets for vandalism and other attacks. In Canada, shots were fired for the second time at a Jewish school.
The author is a contributor to SPME, where a significantly different version of this article first appeared.
The post Hate Exploded Across College Campuses Surrounding the October 7 Anniversary first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Accused of Targeting Jews at Home and Abroad as 14 Nations Condemn Assassination Plots
People walk near a mural of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, amid the Iran-Israel conflict, in Tehran, Iran, June 23, 2025. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Britain, the United States, France, and 11 other allies issued a joint statement on Thursday condemning a rise in Iranian assassination and kidnapping plots in the West, as a new report warned Tehran has been intensifying efforts to target Jewish communities abroad.
On Tuesday, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released a report detailing Iran’s systematic violations of religious freedom, both domestically and through operations targeting individuals abroad.
Within Iran, despite officially recognizing Judaism, the Islamist government also “publicly demonizes Jews as enemies of Islam, denies and distorts the history of the Holocaust, [and] surveils Jewish houses of worship,” the report said.
By promoting such antisemitic views and permitting assaults on Jewish sacred sites throughout the country, “authorities have nurtured a hostile environment in which Iranian Jews feel increasingly threatened.”
According to the report, Iran is also “directly engaging criminal networks abroad to carry out attacks against Jewish targets and make Jews in Europe unsafe,” especially in the aftermath of the recent 12-day war with Israel.
The study revealed that the Iranian regime continues to promote and incite antisemitism abroad — through criminal networks, social media, and online platforms — and has actively recruited gangs across Europe “to carry out attacks on Israeli embassies and Jewish sites, including houses of worship, memorial centers, restaurants, and community centers.”
On Thursday, Western allies condemned a surge in assassination, kidnapping, and harassment plots by Iranian intelligence services targeting individuals across Western countries, urging Iranian authorities to immediately halt these illegal activities.
“We are united in our opposition to the attempts of Iranian intelligence services to kill, kidnap, and harass people in Europe and North America in clear violation of our sovereignty,” the joint statement read.
The new report and joint statement came as Iran continued to defy international demands regarding its nuclear program, facing mounting pressure and new US economic sanctions aimed at compelling a return to nuclear talks.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned that “the road to negotiation is narrow” in the wake of the recent conflict with Israel and the United States.
Araghchi also insisted that Washington must agree to compensate Iran for the losses suffered during last month’s conflict if it hopes to bring Tehran back to the negotiating table.
“They should explain why they attacked us in the middle of … negotiations, and they have to ensure that they are not going to repeat that [during future talks],” the top Iranian diplomat said. “And they have to compensate [Iran for] the damage that they have done.”
However, Araghchi also reaffirmed that a deal would be off the table as long as US President Donald Trump continued to demand that Iran commit to zero uranium enrichment.
“We can negotiate, they can present their argument, and we will present our own argument,” Araghchi said. “But with zero enrichment, we don’t have a thing.”
On Wednesday, the United States announced a new round of economic sanctions targeting Iran and entities tied to its oil trade, as part of continued pressure on the Islamic Republic “until Tehran agrees to a deal that promotes regional peace and stability, and abandons all aspirations for nuclear weapons.”
As for negotiations with Europe, Araghchi said during the interview that Tehran would walk away from the talks if European powers continued on their current course, accusing them of failing to honor their obligations under the 2015 nuclear agreement.
“With the Europeans, there is no reason right now to negotiate because they cannot lift sanctions, they cannot do anything,” the Iranian diplomat said. “If they do snapback, that means that this is the end of the road for them.”
Under the terms of the UN Security Council resolution enshrining the 2015 accord — which imposed temporary restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for large-scale sanctions relief —international sanctions could be reimposed on Iran, restoring all previous UN economic penalties including those targeting Iran’s oil, banking, and defense sectors, through a “snapback” mechanism that would take about 30 days. France, Britain, and Germany have warned they would reinstate UN sanctions on Tehran if no new agreement is reached by the end of August.
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ADL Files Civil Rights Complaint Against Baltimore City Public Schools, Alleging Rampant Antisemitism
Baltimore City Hall is seen in Baltimore, Maryland, US, May 10, 2019. Photo: Stephanie Keith via Reuters Connect
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has filed a Title VI civil rights complaint against Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPS), alleging that officials refused to respond to allegations of antisemitism in a manner consistent with US federal law.
“All schools have a fundamental obligation to maintain a learning environment that protect students from discrimination,” ADL vice president of litigation James Pasch said in a statement announcing the action. “On this essential measure of keeping its Jewish students safe from harassment and intimidation, Baltimore City Public Schools have failed.”
Jewish students allegedly experienced relentless bullying in BCPS, where students pantomimed Nazi salutes, treated campuses as a canvas for Nazi-inspired and antisemitic graffiti, and sent text messages threatening that the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas will be summoned to kill Jewish students the bullies do not like. Teachers behaved even worse than students, the complaint said. At Bard High School, an English teacher performed the Nazi salute three times and later admitted to administrative officials that he did so intentionally to harm “the sole Jewish student” enrolled in his class. Following the incident, he suggested that the student unregister for his class because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be discussed in it.
In every case, according to the complaint, BCPS officials “slow-walked” investigations, deflecting parents’ inquiries into their status with bureaucratic spin even as they denied Jewish students justice. Moreover, the ADL continued, BCPS was first notified of an antisemitism problem on its campuses over a year before Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel stoked anti-Jewish hatred. The ADL alleged that the school system’s refusing to take action constituted a textbook example of a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids public schools receiving federal funding to treat students unfairly on the basis of race, ethnicity, or shared ancestry.
“Parents of Jewish students in Baltimore have pleaded repeatedly with BCPPS to take decisive action to stop the harassment of and discrimination against their Jewish children. Their pleas have been ignored,” the complaint said. “Jewish students and parents have filed more than a dozen reports with BCPS. In each case, the schools have labeled these weighty allegations as ‘inconclusive’ and appear to have taken action against the perpetrators.”
The ADL is calling on the school system to take imminent, remedial steps to address antisemitism, including adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, requiring BCPS officials to undergo trainings on the history of antisemitism and how to fight it, and additions to school curricula which educate students about the history of anti-Jewish bigotry and its harms.
Antisemitism in K-12 schools is receiving increased attention, notably in California, after years of falling under the radar.
In April, a civil rights complaint filed by StandWithUs and the Bay Area Jewish Coalition alleged that the Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD) in California allows Jewish students to be subjected to unconscionable levels of antisemitic bullying in and outside of the classroom.
The 27-page complaint, filed with the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), described a slew of incidents that allegedly fostered a hostile environment for Jewish students after Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities set off a wave of anti-Jewish hatred across the US. SCUSD students, the compaint said, graffitied antisemitic hate speech in the bathrooms, vandalized Jewish-themed posters displayed in schools, and distributed stickers which said, “F—k Zionism.” All the while, district officials enabled the behavior by refusing to investigate it and blaming victims who came forward to report their experiences, according to the complaint.
“SCUSD has allowed an egregiously hostile environment to fester for its Jewish and Israeli students in violation of its federal obligations and ethical responsibility to create a safe educational space for all students,” Jenna Statfeld Harris, senior counsel and K-12 specialist at StandWithUs Saidoff Legal, said in a statement at the time. “SCUSD leadership repeatedly disregards the rights of their Jewish and Israeli students. We implore the Office for Civil Rights to step in and uphold the right of these students to an inclusive education free from hostility toward their protected identity.”
In March, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed a civil rights complaint which recounted the experience of a 12-year-old Jewish girl who was allegedly assaulted on the grounds of the Etiwanda School District in San Bernardino, California — being beaten with a stick, told to “shut your Jewish ass up,” and teased with jokes about Hitler. According to the court filings, one student admitted that the behavior was motivated by the victim’s being Jewish. Despite receiving several complaints about the treatment, a substantial amount of which occurred in the classroom, school officials allegedly declined to punish her tormentors.
“While an increasing number of schools recognize that their Jewish students are being targeted both for their religious beliefs and due to their ancestral connection to Israel, and are taking necessary steps to address both classic and contemporary forms of antisemitism, some shamefully continue to turn a blind eye,” Brandeis Center founder and chairman Kenneth Marcus said in a statement at the time of the filing.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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France, Spain Locked in Diplomatic Dispute Over Removal of French Jewish Teenagers From Flight
A Vueling aircraft approaches landing at Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport, as Vueling employees prepare for strike, in Barcelona, Spain, Nov. 2, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Nacho Doce
The forced removal of French Jewish teenagers from a flight in Spain has triggered political outrage in France, after their group leader was handcuffed by Spanish police and a government minister insulted the teens as “Israeli brats.”
French ministers Aurore Bergé and Benjamin Haddad have sharply criticized Spanish Transport Minister Óscar Puente’s comments and denounced the Spanish government’s overall response to the incident.
Earlier this week, Puente referred to the group of teenagers as “Israeli brats” in a post on X, which he quickly deleted after it went viral and sparked widespread condemnation.
The French ministers issued a strong rebuke of the remarks for “equating French children who were Jewish with Israeli citizens, as if this in any way justified the treatment they were subjected to.”
“At a time when antisemitic acts have been on the rise across Europe since the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, in Israel, we call on Vueling [the airline of the flight in question] and the Spanish authorities to fully investigate and clarify the events,” Bergé and Haddad said in a statement.
“We will never accept the normalization of antisemitism. We will always stand with our fellow citizens who suffer from antisemitic hatred, and we will never compromise,” the French officials continued.
Last week, a group of 50 French Jewish students was forcibly removed from a plane in Valencia — reportedly for singing in Hebrew — an incident that resulted in the arrest of their summer camp director, who has accused Spanish law enforcement officers of using excessive force against her.
According to her lawyer, she was left with bruises on her legs, arms, and body after being harshly handcuffed and placed in an arm lock.
“No action justified the disembarkation or the excessive and brutal use of force by the Civil Guard against the young woman, who has just been notified of 15 days of total incapacity to work,” Bergé and Haddad said in a statement.
The Spanish low-cost airline Vueling denied the allegations, insisting the incident was not related to religion but rather that the group was causing a disruption.
In a statement, the airline asserted that the group was removed because of its members’ “highly combative attitude that was putting the safety of the flight at risk.”
After meeting with the group’s counselor on Tuesday, Bergé and Haddad said she denied the official version of events, emphasizing that the crew was hostile from the beginning and that the group’s removal and the Civil Guard’s response were unjustified.
The children, aged 10 to 15, are members of the Kineret Club — a summer camp for Jewish families run by the Matana charitable association — which had just concluded their trip in the coastal resort town of Sant Carles de la Ràpita, between Valencia and Barcelona.
According to local reports, the children were singing in Hebrew while boarding the plane to return home, which prompted a hostile response from the crew.
Witnesses reported that the group stopped singing at the crew’s request and complied quietly with boarding instructions, yet airport police still intervened and ordered them to disembark.
Other passengers on the plane who witnessed the incident reported that staff made antisemitic remarks toward the group, including one employee who allegedly referred to Israel as a “terrorist state.”
Last week, amid an ongoing investigation into the incident, French authorities reached out to the CEO of Vueling and the Spanish ambassador to France to assess whether the group was subjected to religious discrimination.