Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) released a video over the weekend, calling for all American universities to adopt the official International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism.  

In the video, Torres praised New York University (NYU) over their decision to “modernize” their hate speech policies by adding protections for students that identify as Zionist. Torres argued that these changes are necessary “in response to the increasingly complex and ever-evolving reality of campus antisemitism.” He called on university administrators nationwide emulate NYU and bolster protections for Jewish students. 

“NYU’s decision to adopt a fuller understanding of antisemitism sets an example that others in academia should follow for the safety of their Jewish students,” Torres said. 

Torres continued, calling antisemitism “an ancient virus that mutates over time.” He urged universities to be “nimble” in responding to the new iterations of antisemitism arising on their campuses. He asserted that antisemitism can manifest itself in hatred of Jews both “as a religion” and “as a nation.” 

“Anti-Zionism and antisemitism are indeed intersectional, and cannot be so easily compartmentalized in the real world as they can be in academic spaces,” Torres said. 

Torres argued that modern antisemites replace use “Zionist” as a replacement word for “Jew.” He added that discrimination against “Zionists” is indeed antisemitism in both “intent and effect.” 

“Rejecting moral clarity about right and wrong does not weaken the academic enterprise; it strengthens it,” Torres added. 

Torres has repeatedly lambasted universities for fostering a hostile environment for Jewish students in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel. He has called anti-Israel campus activists and academics “pseudo-intellectuals” and condemned them for peddling antisemitism in the name of social justice.

Universities across the country have been roiled by antisemitism controversies in the months following the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. Columbia University student Khymani James, for example, publicly stated that Zionists “don’t deserve to live.” The Ivy League university has not confirmed if James has been permanently expelled from the campus. A mob of pro-Palestinian protesters held a demonstration in front of the City University of New York Hillel on Tuesday, shouting at Jewish students to get “out of the Middle East” and “go back to Brooklyn.”

Torres, a self-described progressive, has established himself as a stalwart ally of the Jewish state, especially in the months following the Hamas slaughter of roughly 1,200 people across southern Israel on Oct. 7. Torres has repeatedly defended Israel from unsubstantiated claims of committing “genocide” in Gaza. He has also consistently supported the continued shipment of American arms to help the Jewish state defend itself from Hamas terrorists. Torres has levied sharp criticism toward university administrators for allowing Jewish students to be threatened on campus without consequence.

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Law enforcement officials are investigating a “Nazi like” assault of a Jewish student allegedly carried out by six people near the University of Michigan late Saturday night.

According to the Ann Arbor Police Department, the beating occurred when the group accosted the 19 year old victim, whose name has not been released, and demanded to know whether he was Jewish. The young man said that he was, after which the suspects slammed him on the concrete, according to police. They then kicked and spit on him before leaving.

The Anti-Defamation League offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrests of the culprits.

“I have communicated with the University of Michigan police staff, and our goal is to discuss safety over the next few weeks,” Ann Arbor Police Department chief Andre C. Anderson said in a statement issued on Sunday. “There is absolutely no place for hate or ethnic intimidation in the City of Ann Arbor. Our department stands against antisemitism and all acts of bias-motivated crimes. We are committed to vigorously investigating this and other hate-motivated incidents and we will work with the county prosecutor’s office to aggressively prosecute those who are responsible.”

Ann Arbor Police have confirmed that the men inflicted “minor injuries” on the victim, who was not hospitalized. Its investigation of the incident is ongoing.

University of Michigan Hillel also commented on the assault, saying, “We are in regular communication with state and federal law enforcement.”

University of Michigan president Santa J. Ono addressed the assault on Monday morning.

“We strongly condemn and denounce this act of violence and all antisemitic acts,” he said in a statement. “Antisemitism is in direct conflict with the university’s deeply held values of safety, respect, and inclusion and has no place within our community. The University of Michigan is a place where all students — regardless of their race, sex, nationality, and religion — deserve to feel safe and protected as they pursue the important work of becoming citizens of the wider world.”

As The Algemeiner has previously reported, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor has long been a hub of anti-Zionist and antisemitic activity, leading to campus disruptions and diminishing quality of life for Jewish students. In Nov. 2022, an unidentified male snatched a female student by the arm while crossing paths with her on campus and made antisemitic statements. In July 2023, someone graffitied swastikas and homophobic slurs on two off-campus a fraternity houses.

Recently, dozens of candidates from the anti-Zionist Shut It Down (SID) party won election to the school’s Central Student Government by running on a platform which promised to sever the University of Michigan’s academic and financial ties to Israel. After assuming power, CSG president Alifa Chowdury (SID) defunded the school’s 1,700 student clubs by vetoing the summer term budget, which had been “unanimously” supported by the CSG Assembly, and vowed to block any spending bill that would fund them in the fall term. The measure was, in SID’s view, strategic. It argued during the campaign that crippling university operations would inexorably lead to a boycott of Israel.

“CSG merely serves as an extension of an institution that has perpetuated systems of oppression by maintaining the current status quo of neocolonial capitalism,” SID said in a manifesto issued in March. “Every dollar coming out of this university is blood money. Student government cannot operate as usual as we witness the systematic murder of Palestinians. Student life cannot continue as normal when our tuition and labor are being used to fund a genocide.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Jewish Student Assaulted Near University of Michigan first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

If you are going to kill someone famous, be prepared to justify your actions.

On July 31, an Israeli airstrike killed Al Jazeera reporter Ismail al-Ghoul along with his cameraman and a 17-year-old bystander. The strike came in broad daylight, and footage of al-Ghoul’s decapitated body began to circulate on social media. A wave of stories reported the death of another journalist in Gaza. The Israeli military had no comment.

The next day, the IDF released a statement on social media asserting that Ghoul was a Hamas military operative and part of the Nukhba force that carried out the October 7 massacre.

Surging global media coverage took note of the Israeli statement, but its emphasis remained on the tragic death of a young reporter who left behind a widow and one-year-old daughter. After two additional days, the IDF returned to social media, posting an image of a captured Hamas spreadsheet from 2021 that identified Ghoul as an operative, along with his rank, specialty, and official ID numbers. But the news cycle had moved on.

If the story ended there, the lesson would be straightforward: The IDF should have a dossier of declassified intelligence ready to publicize the moment it strikes a Hamas terrorist with a high-profile civilian day job.

Yet in the case of Ismail al-Ghoul, it is not classified documents, but his own social media posts that provide much of the relevant information about his attachment to Hamas.

The journalists who covered Ghoul’s demise clearly did not conduct basic due diligence. Yet the IDF shares responsibility; Israeli intelligence should pay close attention to its targets’ social media activity.

The first clue that Ghoul’s social media deserved closer scrutiny was his decision to open a series of new accounts — and delete or suspend the old ones — shortly after he began working for Al Jazeera during the first weeks of the fighting in Gaza. He created a new Instagram account in November, as well as a new Telegram channel. Next came a new Facebook page in December, and a second new page in January. That same month, he launched two new X accounts and one on TikTok. In February, he launched another Telegram channel.

The names of these new accounts incorporated some version of Ghoul’s name along with the number two, suggesting they were successors to an earlier account.

For example, he chose “ismail_gh2” as the handle for both his Instagram account and one of the two on X. The former now has more than 650,000 followers, while the latter has more than 100,000. One of the two Facebook pages has another half million followers while more than 45,000 users follow him on Telegram. If nothing else, this should have made it clear to the IDF that they were dealing with a target whose death could have a major political impact.

Although Ghoul disabled his original account on X, most of its contents remain available thanks to the Internet Archive.

Eitan Fischberger, an Israel army veteran turned media analyst, examined Ghoul’s posts in March. In a post from April 2020, the second month of the Covid-19 pandemic, Ghoul opined that the real disease is “the Israeli entity and every Arab trying to normalize it,” adding the hashtag #COVID48, a reference to the year of Israel’s founding.

In July of that year, Ghoul tweeted a graphic celebrating young Palestinians’ use of “alternative tools” against Israelis: knives, axes, rocks, and Molotov cocktails.

Yet the most important piece of information to glean from Ghoul’s old X account is the fact that he previously worked for two other media outlets — Felesteen and al-Resalah — both aligned with Hamas.

Felesteen debuted in May 2007, becoming Palestinians’ fifth daily newspaper. Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader recently assassinated in Iran, spoke at a pre-launch reception for Felesteen. An interview with Haniyeh was the centerpiece of its first edition. The Associated Press, which covered the publication’s debut, described it as “a 24-page newspaper catering largely to Hamas supporters and seen as an attempt by the Islamic militant group to increase its influence.”

The precise nature of Ghoul’s work at Felesteen and al-Resalah is not clear; his name does not appear on old bylines. Yet both publications lionize Hamas.

In a brief article on August 7, 2024, al-Resalah reported the selection of Yahya Sinwar as Hamas’ new leader while noting the “brave, wise, and open-minded leadership” of Ismail Haniyeh, Sinwar’s late predecessor. During his time at al-Resalah, Ghoul said an Israeli soldier shot him, injuring his hand with shrapnel, while he was covering protests at the Gaza-Israel border in 2018.

Despite Ghoul’s reinvention of his social media presence during the current war, he chose to leave intact his personal Facebook profile, which remains public. The clearest indication of his disposition toward Hamas is a photo he posted in 2021, showing Yahya Sinwar sitting defiantly in the ruins of his Gaza home.

Ghoul said of Sinwar, “May Allah protect you.” Ghoul also left no doubt that he celebrated violence. In September 2023, he reposted another well-known image, this one of Palestinian teenager Basel al-Shawamrah, who stabbed two Israelis outside the Jerusalem Central Bus station. A photographer captured Shawamra grinning contentedly while lying on a stretcher after he was shot. Ghoul captioned the photo “The Smile of Victory.” On numerous occasions, Ghoul shared photos of rocket fire from Gaza, calling the rockets “the pride of local industry.”

According to the IDF, two of Ghoul’s cousins were also Hamas operatives. In February, the IDF announced the death of Ahmed al-Ghoul, commander of the Shati Battalion, “who participated in the massacre on October 7” and later held one of the Israeli hostages, Cpl. Noa Marciano, whose remains were later found near al-Shifa hospital.

In May, a second announcement reported the death of Naim al-Ghoul, a fighter in the Shati Battalion, who also held Marciano before her death. Ismail al-Ghoul posted photos of himself at his cousin’s funeral, shovel in hand, wearing a blue flak jacket displaying the English word “PRESS” in large capital letters. Ghoul described his cousin as “a man of humanity who continued to perform his humanitarian duty sincerely.”

One source of support Ghoul could rely on was his wife, who posted many verses in honor of Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades.

During the clash the IDF calls Operation Protective Edge, she wrote to the Qassam fighters, “May God protect you, make you steadfast and be with you.” Above a photo of a Palestinian fighter she posted, “Fire your guns, don’t be merciful.” Her timeline also includes commemorations of fighters such as Yahya Ayyash, the bombmaker who equipped many suicide operatives in the 1990s.

She also denounced Palestinians who reject Hamas as agents of the Jews. Above a photo of Jews dancing in Jerusalem on the anniversary of the IDF’s reclaiming the city in 1967, Ghoul’s wife lamented, “Is there a more hideous sight than this?”

None of this material on Facebook amounts to evidence that Ghoul was a Hamas military operative. Nor do expressions of support for Hamas, nor even justifications of its violence, render Ghoul a legitimate military target. Yet they show he was an extremist and belie the post-mortem claims by Al Jazeera that Ghoul was a model journalist. The network’s managing editor, Mohamed Moawad, wrote, “Ismail was renowned for his professionalism and dedication, bringing the world’s attention to the suffering and atrocities committed in Gaza.”

Did the network know of Ghoul’s support for Hamas when it hired him? His previous work on behalf of Felesteen and al-Resalah would have made his affinity obvious. A review of Ghoul’s social media would not have required much effort. Had the IDF prepared a suitable dossier with selections from Ghoul’s postings, it might have turned the tables on Al Jazeera, pushing Western journalists to press the network for answers. Instead, Western media uncritically reprinted testimonials to Ghoul from admiring colleagues.

While the news cycle has passed, the IDF should nevertheless commit the manpower necessary to produce a full dossier on Ghoul, including both declassified intelligence and publicly available material. There is a tendency for past incidents to become the subject of intense re-litigation. In January, an Israeli airstrike killed two of Ghoul’s colleagues at Al Jazeera, Hamza Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya. Three days later, the IDF released a screenshot of what it said was a personnel roster from Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Hamas partner, showing that Dahdouh belonged to an electronic engineering unit. Two months later, The Washington Post published a detailed investigation asserting the innocence of Dahdouh and Thuraya, while casting doubt on the document shared by the IDF. In response to inquiries from the Post, the IDF simply responded, “We have nothing to add.”

While the IDF may question the fairness of the Post’s coverage, its non-response amounts to unilateral disarmament. When the re-litigation of Ghoul’s death begins, the IDF should be better prepared. For instance, it should be able to demonstrate the authenticity of the spreadsheet listing Ghoul as a Hamas operative. On its own, the document has shortcomings. For example, there is a column that lists the “Date of military rank” for each of the individuals listed. Yet in the case of Ghoul and many others, this date precedes the “Date of recruitment” by several years.

Other parts of the document hold up better under scrutiny. One column provides a nine-digit ID for each individual. All of these have the correct format for the numbers that the Israeli Ministry of the Interior assigns to Palestinians. Five of the 33 names in the document also appear on the Gaza Health Ministry’s list of the dead. Of those, two reportedly died on October 7, according to a Palestinian NGO that tracks fatalities.

Four of the names on the spreadsheet belong to individuals that Ghoul’s Facebook account lists as friends. One is Samer Balawi, who has not posted on Facebook since May, yet his final post shows him standing side by side with Ghoul, both smiling. It reveals little about their relationship, but underscores the importance of synthesizing information from open source and classified materials.

While the IDF may have lost the battle with Al Jazeera that followed Ghoul’s death, the battle is not the war. The question is whether the IDF will learn from this setback and be better prepared for the next round.

David Adesnik is a senior fellow and director of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies

The post How Israel Lost a Battle to Al Jazeera — and How It Must Do Better Next Time first appeared on Algemeiner.com.