Two Jewish students participating in a pro-Israel demonstration at DePaul University in Chicago on Wednesday were “brutally” assaulted by two ruffians who concealed their identities with masks.

“We are outraged that this occurred on our campus. It is completely unacceptable and a violation of DePaul’s values to uphold and care for the dignity of every individual,” DePaul president Robert Manuel said on Wednesday in a statement addressing the issue.

Manuel described how “masked attackers punched our students,” who were injured but declined medical treatment.

“We will continue to do everything possible to ensure DePaul is a safe and welcoming space for every member of our diverse university community. We recognize that for a significant portion of our Jewish community, Israel is a core part of their Jewish identity. Those students — and every student — should feel safe on our university campus. Our shared expectations and guiding principles make it clear that DePaul will not tolerate any acts of hatred or violence.”

Manuel confirmed that DePaul officials are working with the Chicago Police Department to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Jewish Alliance (CJA), a local nonprofit which promotes the welfare and civil rights of the city’s Jewish community, vowed to be advocates of the victims and continue raising awareness of antisemitism in the US.

“We are deeply saddened and outraged to report that two Jewish students were brutally assaulted at DePaul University today. This shocking act of violence is a stark reminder of the growing intolerance and antisemitism that cannot be tolerated in our society,” the group wrote on X/Twitter. “This is not just an isolated incident; it is a call to action for all of us. We must united to create a safe space for our Jewish community and stand against prejudice. This will not be the last you hear from us regarding this critical issue.”

Several antisemitic hate crimes have struck major American cities in just the past couple weeks. On Monday morning, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the Crown Heights section of New York City. Days earlier, a Jewish man in the same neighborhood was stabbed in the face.

According to date complied by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), these attacks are part of a larger disturbing trend spreading across the nation, and it started in the weeks and months which followed Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel. A punishing wave of over 10,000 antisemitic incidents has hit the American Jewish community since that day, the ADL said, a 200 percent increase from the previous year. At least 1,200 of the outrages took place on college campuses, and 30 percent of all incidents happened during anti-Israel protests. Another 20 percent targeted Jewish institutions, including nonprofit organizations and houses of worship. Of these, 50 percent were bomb threats.

In recent months, pro-Hamas activists have directed followers to carry out violence aimed at forcing the US to sunder its alliance with Israel and pressuring higher education institutions to sever academic and financial links to it. Just recently, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reportedly banished one such activist from campus, a student who penned an article arguing that violence is a legitimate method of effecting political change, and, moreover, advancing the pro-Palestinian movement.

Titled “On Pacifism,” the article — published in the MIT student publication Written Revolution and flanked by images of members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terrorist group — argued that activists have failed to achieve their objectives because of “our own decision to embrace nonviolence as our primary vehicle of change.”

The author, PhD candidate Prahlad Iyengar, continued, “One year into a horrific genocide, it is time for the movement to begin wreaking havoc, or else, as we’ve seen, business will indeed go on as usual … As people of conscience in the world, we have a duty to Palestine and to all the globally oppressed. We have a mandate to exact a cost from the institutions that have contributed to the growth and proliferation of colonialism, racism, and all oppressive systems. We have a duty to escalate for Palestine, and as I hope I’ve argued, the traditional pacifist strategies aren’t working because they are ‘designed into’ the system we fight against.”

Pro-Hamas activists in academia have already demonstrated that they are willing to hurt people to make their point.

Last year, in California, an elderly Jewish man was killed when an anti-Zionist professor employed by a local community college allegedly pushed him during an argument. At Cornell University in upstate New York, a student threatened to rape and kill Jewish female students and “shoot up” the campus’ Hillel center. Violence was most common at universities in the state of California, where an anti-Zionist activist punched a Jewish student for filming him at a protest.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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