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Mother Against Campus Antisemitism, a new Facebook group and movement, has 42K members and counting
(JTA) — As Elizabeth Rand watched an unnerving number of incidents pile up this month at colleges where her son was considering applying, she felt she had to do something.
The longtime administrator of a Facebook group for people interested in discussing the Holocaust, Rand knew the power of online community. So the New York City lawyer, who has a son in his senior year of high school, created a new Facebook group for mothers like her.
Within days after its Oct. 26 launch, Mothers Against Campus Antisemitism was exploding with posts from across the country expressing alarm about what was happening at colleges and universities in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s ensuing war in Gaza.
Mothers exhorted each other to share reports from their children’s schools. They uploaded pictures taken by their children of activities and posters they found distressing. Some make pitches for their own children’s schools where, they say, nothing but support for Israel has been expressed. Several have offered to make their own homes available as safe havens for local Jewish college students who feel unsafe on their campuses.
By Friday, the group had more than 42,000 members, all pouring out their own anxieties at a time when even the White House has decried a surge in “grotesque” antisemitic incidents and has vowed to make a plan to curb them.
“I’m just stunned by this, and I have no idea what to do,” Rand told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Wednesday. “I’m getting these messages all day, every day. I have a day job — it’s not like I can just drop what I’m doing and do this.”
Rand has begun taking steps to turn the group’s members into a movement. She recruited a communications manager, appointed a team of administrators and moderators, and scheduled a meeting with members who possess legal and nonprofit know-how. For now, everyone involved is unpaid. Her goal, she said, is to form a legal entity, potentially to represent students who have been harmed by antisemitism on their campuses.
Students from Hunter College in New York City chant and hold up signs during a pro-Palestinian demonstration at the entrance of their campus on Oct. 12, 2023.(Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
If Mothers Against Campus Antisemitism enters the legal sphere, it will have company. The Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the Lawfare Project each use litigation and federal complaints to pressure universities into responding more aggressively to antisemitism on their campuses. They have both announced their intention to sue over incidents that have taken place in the last month. Other pro-Israel advocacy groups have filed similar federal complaints.
“Do we join forces with a group that’s already doing it? Do we become sort of an add-on to them? I don’t know,” Rand said. “You know, I started this less than a week ago, so I don’t have all the answers.”
Multiple organizations already take responsibility for documenting and responding to antisemitism on college campuses. In addition to the legal advocacy groups, the Anti-Defamation League and Hillel International have partnered to catalog incidents, adopting a process that they say differentiates pro-Palestinian sentiment from anti-Zionist or antisemitic activity. On the ground, the Hillel chapters serving Jewish students on 850 campuses have been helping them cope with a challenging climate.
And Jewish on Campus, founded by a college student in the summer of 2020, harnesses student voices in the fight against campus antisemitism. That group bears certain similarities to Mothers Against Campus Antisemitism: It too was founded as a social media presence, was created to meet an anxious moment and did not enlist the backing or expertise of an established organization until later.
Julia Jassey, Jewish on Campus’ founder and CEO, said she understands the rapid emergence of Mothers Against Campus Antisemitism. She has seen the anxiety among parents even in her own family, as her younger sister applies to college this year.
“Parents are concerned for their kids, they’re concerned for their kids applying to college, they’re concerned for their kids in college,” she said. “People don’t know what to do. People want to help, and people feel helpless.”
Messages reading “Glory To Our Martyrs” and “Divestment From Zionist Genocide Now” are projected onto the side of a building on George Washington University’s campus in Washington, D.C., Oct. 24, 2023. (StopAntisemitism via X)
But Jassey cautioned that Jewish students, not their parents, are best equipped to raise awareness about antisemitism on their campuses. She also emphasized that parents making long-term decisions for their children about college enrollment based on what’s happening on a campus right now, as some in the group say they are doing, might not be helpful.
“The last thing that I would ever tell a parent or a student is not to go to a certain school because it’s antisemitic. All that will do is self-select ourselves out of spaces where we want to be able to offer our experience and perspective,” Jassey said. “It’s really more important that when students go to school, they’re educated about what antisemitism is, how to combat it and what to do when they experience it.”
The arrival onto the scene of Mothers Against Campus Antisemitism offers a window into how significantly the current moment, in which campus incidents are radiating into public view at a relentless pace, may have activated a new wave of warriors against antisemitism. While some group members are already affiliated with Jewish groups active on antisemitism issues, many others say they had never realized that antisemitism could be a challenge their college-aged children would encounter.
Rand is one of them. She said that before Oct. 7, when Hamas attacked Israel and kicked off a war along with an international backlash against Israel, she had never been active in efforts to fight antisemitism — though as someone steeped in Holocaust conversations, she was well aware of its potential consequences.
A woman affixes a flier for Israeli hostages at Cooper Union college in New York City, a day after Jewish students there sheltered in a library during a pro-Palestinian protest, Oct. 26, 2023. (Luke Tress)
She said it was the pro-Palestinian messages projected onto the wall of a library at George Washington University, which included “Glory to the Martyrs,” that convinced her she had to do something. The pictures of student protesters carrying signs showing Israeli flags in trash cans that have pushed her to keep going.
“It just seems very simple that you don’t want your child going to a school and seeing the imagery of a Star of David in a garbage can,” Rand said. “And you certainly don’t want to pay for that. You don’t want to give somebody $60- or $80,000 a year and see that. It’s absolutely outrageous.”
For Rand, the whole experience has been dizzying and she says she’s “sort of been making this up as I go along.” She said she takes inspiration from Mothers Against Drunk Driving, formed in 1980 by a mother whose daughter was seriously injured by a drunk driver. (She would later die from her injuries.) The group was instrumental in getting the drinking age in the United States lifted from 18 to 21, and drunk driving deaths fell sharply in the wake of its activism.
“They were just a group of ordinary mothers and they really changed the world,” Rand said. “In addition to changing federal law, they made it completely and totally socially unacceptable to drink and drive. I’m old enough to remember when that was not the case. So I want to make it socially unacceptable to display Jew hatred on college campuses.”
Posts in the group offer a view into how members aim to press for action. Some are posting pictures of their responses to alumni donation requests where they say they won’t give to a school they see as supporting antisemitism — a lower-budget version of the boycotts some prominent donors have announced. Others are exhorting fellow group members to sign petitions and open letters to demand that colleges condemn Hamas and provide additional security for Jewish students. An inchoate effort is underway to create an antisemitism rating system for colleges based on what gets reported inside the group.
Debates among the group members also underscore how quickly longstanding fault lines are being recreated, particularly on the issue of whether peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstrations or vocal criticism of Israel should be tolerated.
One illustrative exchange came on Thursday night. “Princeton had a huge rally calling for an intifada. Who can I contact?” one member wrote. Another answered: “Princeton also had a ProHamas teach-in. But from insiders on campus I’m being told students feel safe and cared for. Did something else happen?”
Emma Law-Oppman, an Indiana mother who trained as an attorney, is one of four administrators hand-picked by Rand to monitor and manage the flurry of activity.
Unlike Rand, Law-Oppman is a member of a synagogue and active in Jewish organizations, including the Indianapolis Jewish community relations council and the Hillel at her alma mater, Butler University. She said had long believed that antisemitism on college campuses was a problem, so she rushed to join the group even though her only child is just 4 years old.
Students from New York University hold an “NYU Funds Genocide in Gaza” sign while protesting the Israel-Hamas war during a rally as students call for a ceasefire in Gaza, on a day of student walkouts across the country. (Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
“They will also be my son’s teachers. They’re building the world that my son is going to live in,” she said about students she has seen on social media calling for the destruction of Israel or rejecting criticism of Hamas. “And that scares me, frankly.”
The administrators have been hammering out rules for the group and trying to harness its energy, each day suggesting a specific action for members to take, such as signing an ADL petition and texting their representatives to support a congressional condemnation of campus antisemitism that passed on Wednesday night. “If 40,000 people call a state governor, or 40,000 people call a school administration, or 40,000 people read an email, or 40,000 people do anything, that’s hard to ignore,” Rand said.
The moderators have also been trying to root out posts that they believe would inappropriately divide group members. “The big thing right now is we’re focused on concrete, positive social action,” Law-Oppman said. “We’ve made it very clear that you don’t tolerate any hatred, bigotry or political infighting. Our sole focus is protecting and supporting our collective children from hatred and ignorance and violence.”
In addition to organizing parents, Law-Oppman said she thought Mothers Against Campus Antisemitism could be a useful complement to the activism that students are already engaged in.
“Kids in college are kind of figuring out their relationship with their parents as adults and where they fit into their adulthood, and sometimes that means that parents aren’t getting information from their kids directly,” she said. “So if this provides a space where parents can know what’s happening on campus without helicoptering that’s also a gift to parents.”
From left to right, Jewish students Eli Shmidman, Noa Fay, Yoni Kurtz and Jessie Brenner speak at a press conference at Columbia University in New York City, Oct. 30, 2023. (Courtesy)
Law-Oppman said she thought the group could ultimately end up connecting students with legal counsel, including through existing groups, or to be a resource for families trying to figure out how to respond with antisemitism at their children’s schools. But she said it’s already fulfilling an essential purpose.
“It’s a place for parents specifically to come and seek the emotional support and community that I think we all need right now,” she said. “I think how quickly it grew is a testament to that fact, right? We’re all seeking that community.”
To keep that community cohesive, Rand is determined that the group not pick a side in longstanding fights over whether antisemitism is a bigger problem on the right or the left, even as she sees them spill over into the posts.
“There’s a lot of politics and I kind of wish it would stop,” she said. “I don’t really want to be political at all. I’m pretty middle of the road. … I don’t really want to go there. I want us to just stay focused on what’s important, which to me is just keeping your kids safe.”
Rand is aware that her group’s acronym bears an unmistakable resemblance to that of another movement that is decidedly political, including about Israel. “It’s been brought up time and again that people here feel the group acronym MACA bears too much resemblance to MAGA,” she wrote in a post late Thursday night.
But she said her group’s name had already caught on – and she hoped it would outlast the current political moment. “Twenty years from now there will be students who have never heard of MAGA,” she wrote. “But with any luck, they’ll hear about us and know that we are there for them always.”
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The post Mother Against Campus Antisemitism, a new Facebook group and movement, has 42K members and counting appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Drexel University Professor Stole Signs From Synagogue, Police Say
Illustrative: People pass a cluster of signs outside a pro-Hamas encampment at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. on April 28, 2024. Photo: Max Herman via Reuters Connect
A Drexel University professor allegedly participated in a mass theft of items from a synagogue in a suburb outside Philadelphia, a local NBC affiliate reported on Tuesday.
Mariana Chilton, 56, a professor of health management and policy at Drexel, has been accused of stealing pro-Israel signs from the Main Line Reform Temple in Lower Merion Township, traveling there from her neighborhood of residency, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. Chilton allegedly drove the getaway car while two other accomplices, Sarah Prickett and Sam Penn — who is from New York — trespassed the synagogue and absconded with the loot.
“We are just taking them because we feel like it is a representative of genocide,” Chilton told law enforcement after being caught in the act, the report stated. She then, after offering to “just put them back,” refused to identify herself and comply with other lawful orders.
Video evidence provided by a local resident placed Chilton and her accomplices at the scene of the crime, and a Main Line Reform Temple official identified the signs recovered from her car as the temple’s property. That was enough for law enforcement to charge her with several offenses, including conspiracy and theft. She is also charged with driving without a license and not registering her vehicle.
Drexel University has not responded to The Algemeiner‘s request for comment for this story.
Experts have told The Algemeiner in the past academic year that while the conduct of anti-Zionist students should be reported on, the role of faculty in fostering and engaging in antisemitic acts should be closely scrutinized. Last semester, anti-Zionist faculty attached themselves to anti-Israel, pro-Hamas demonstrations, sometimes breaking the law by preventing officers from dispersing unauthorized demonstrations and detaining lawbreakers.
At Northeastern University in Boston, professors formed a human barrier around a student encampment to stop its dismantling by officers, and at Columbia University, anti-Zionist faculty at the school, as well its affiliate Barnard College, staged a walkout in support of the demonstrations and demanded the abeyance of disciplinary sanctions against anti-Zionist students — dozens of whom cheered Hamas and threatened more massacres of Jews similar to Oct. 7 — who violated school rules.
Chilton’s case is unlike any other reported in the past year, however. While dozens of professors have been accused of abusing their Jewish students and encouraging their classmates to bully and shame them, none are alleged to have resorted to stealing from a Jewish house of worship to make their point.
Mass participation of faculty in pro-Hamas demonstrations marks an inflection point in American history, Asaf Romirowsky, an expert on the Middle East and executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, told The Algemeiner in April.
Since the 1960s, he explained, far-left “scholar activists” have gradually seized control of the higher education system, tailoring admissions processes and the curricula to foster ideological radicalism and conformity, which students then carry with them into careers in government, law, corporate America, and education. This system, he concluded, must be challenged.
“The cost of trading scholarship for political propagandizing has been a zeal and pride among faculty who esteem and cheer terrorism, a historical development which is quite telling and indicative of the evolution of the Marxist ideology which has been seeping into the academy since the 1960s,” Romirowsky said. “The message is very clear to all of us who are looking on from the outside at this, and institutions have to begin drawing a red line. The protests are not about free speech. They are about supporting terrorism, about calling for a genocide of Jews.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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White House Cites Biden Clash With Netanyahu Over Iran as Proof of President’s Mental Fitness
US President Joe Biden hosts the 2023 Teacher of the Year event at the White House in Washington, US, April 24, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Amid growing concerns over US President Joe Biden’s mental fitness, key White House officials are suggesting his foreign policy discussions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including a clash over how to respond to Iran’s unprecedented military attack on the Israeli homeland earlier this year, serve as evidence that he is still capable of leading from the Oval Office.
Biden and Netanyahu engaged in a heated back-and-forth in the immediate aftermath of Iran launching a massive missile and drone salvo at Israel in April, according to a new report by the New York Times. The US and other allies helped Israel shoot down nearly every drone and missile. The attack caused only one injury.
However, the Times revealed that while Netanyahu initially wanted to respond to Iran in a forceful way, Biden threatened to withhold US support in the event of a major Israeli retaliatory strike, arguing it would risk sparking a regional conflict in the Middle East.
“Aides present in the Situation Room the night that Iran hurled a barrage of missiles and drones at Israel portrayed a president in commanding form, lecturing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone to avoid a retaliatory escalation that would have inflamed the Middle East,” the Times reported. “‘Let me be crystal clear,’ Mr. Biden said. ‘If you launch a big attack on Iran, you’re on your own.’”
“Mr. Netanyahu pushed back hard, citing the need to respond in kind to deter future attacks,” the report continued. “‘You do this,’ Mr. Biden said forcefully, ‘and I’m out.’ Ultimately, the aides noted, Mr. Netanyahu scaled back his response.”
Israel’s military response was small and appeared aimed at minimizing the risk of escalation.
The Times report, headlined “Biden’s Lapses Are Said to Be Increasingly Common and Worrisome,” came on the heels of Biden delivering a widely-panned presidential debate performance last Thursday against former US President Donald Trump. Biden’s performance, which oftentimes appeared incoherent and muddled, set off alarm bells in Democratic circles, sending the president’s allies scrambling to extinguish concerns over his age and mental acuity.
While highlighting rising concerns, the news story also noted instances in which, according to aides, Biden appeared coherent and capable, citing the exchange with Netanyahu and his handling of the Iranian missile attack more broadly as one such example.
However, an anonymous Biden administration official told the Times that they are unsure whether Biden could hold his own against adversarial foreign leaders such as Vladimir Putin of Russia.
On Wednesday, the White House directly attributed quotes to Netanyahu in which the Israeli premier reportedly said he found Biden “very clear and very focused” during his visit to Israel following the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. According to a White House spokesperson, Netanyahu also reportedly cited the “more than a dozen phone conversations, extended conversations with President Biden” as evidence of the commander-in-chief’s vitality.
“Some White House officials adamantly rejected the suggestion of a president not up to handling tough foreign counterparts and told the story of the night Iran attacked Israel in April,” the New York Times reported. “Mr. Biden and his top national security officials were in the Situation Room for hours, bracing for the attack, which came around midnight. Biden was updated in real time as the forces he ordered into the region began shooting down Iranian missiles and drones. He peppered leaders with questions throughout the response.”
During its first direct attack on Israeli territory, Iran in April launched roughly 300 missiles and drones at the Jewish state.
Leading up to the attack, Iranian officials had promised revenge for an airstrike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus, Syria that they attributed to Israel. The strike killed seven members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a widely designated terrorist organization, including two senior commanders. One of the commanders allegedly helped plan the Hamas terrorist group’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the incident.
“After it was over, and almost all of the missiles and drones had been shot down, Mr. Biden called Mr. Netanyahu to persuade him not to escalate. ‘Take the win,’” Mr. Biden told the prime minister, without reading from a script or extensive notes, according to two people in the room. In the end, Mr. Netanyahu opted for a much smaller and proportionate response that effectively ended the hostilities,” the article added.
Days later, Israel responded to the Iranian aggression by launching a modest missile attack on an airbase near Isfahan. The Jewish state sought to show that it could effectively target key strategic locations in Iran while not escalating the conflict any further. Netanyahu insisted on launching a retaliatory attack against Iran, arguing that ignoring the Iranian strikes would incentivize more attacks against the Jewish state.
IRGC Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said that Iran is waiting for “the opportunity” to launch a new round of strikes against Israel, Iranian media reported on Tuesday, potentially boosting Netanyahu’s argument that a smaller response would invite further attacks.
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Journalist at US-Based Nonprofit Promoted Stabbing Israelis, Depicted Rescued Hostage as Pig Drinking Blood: Report
Palestinian terrorists ride an Israeli military vehicle that was seized by gunmen who infiltrated areas of southern Israel, in the northern Gaza Strip, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ahmed Zakot
A journalist at a US-based nonprofit posted tutorials on how to commit stabbing attacks and depicted a rescued Israeli hostage as a pig drinking blood, according to newly surfaced social media posts.
Eitan Fischberger, a communications analyst and former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) staff sergeant who first broke the story on X/Twitter, alleged that Mahmoud Ajjour, a correspondent for The Palestine Chronicle, posted disturbing images and videos to his Instagram page.
Fischberger posted screenshots and screen recordings of the posts.
According to The Chronicle‘s website, Ajjour is a photojournalist and correspondent for the outlet, which is a US-based 501c3, or nonprofit organization.
One of the posted images depicted Noa Argamani — an Israeli who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival during Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel, and then rescued in an IDF special operation last month — as a pig drinking blood from a Coca-Cola bottle.
Here, for example, Ajjour posted a picture of Israeli hostage Noa Argamani, portrayed as a pig drinking the blood of Palestinians.
Noa, as you recall, was freed by Israeli forces in the same rescue operation in which Ajjour’s terrorist colleague was killed pic.twitter.com/oiLCqekxbl
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
In Oct. 2015, Ajjour posted a picture of a masked Palestinian holding up a knife, with the caption, “I declare it a revolution.”
That time — from approximately Sept. 2015 to June 2016 — was referred to as the “knife intifada,” as there was an uptick in Palestinian terrorist attacks, particularly using knives, against Israelis in Jerusalem, along with other parts of Israel and the West Bank.
Ajjour also seems mighty fine endorsing stabbing attacks pic.twitter.com/xi2MnZVddl
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
During that same month, Ajjour also reportedly posted a two-part tutorial on how to carry out stabbings with the caption, “May Allah protect them,” likely referring to those who were engaging in such attacks.
So much, in fact, that he uploaded a two-part instruction video showing off some best practices for stabbing Israelis pic.twitter.com/Z12rVo4Enx
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
Then, in 2023, after the son of a Hamas preacher was killed when a device he was trying to launch at Israel exploded, Ajjour mourned his death on Instagram. “Your father’s legacy is proud of you,” he wrote alongside a picture that included what appeared to be a Hamas flag.
And here, Ajjour mourns the death of Bara’a al-Zard, son of Hamas preacher Wael al-Zard.
Silly Bara’a died in an explosion caused by a device he was trying to launch at Israeli forces near the Gaza security fencehttps://t.co/vZR6IW0shF pic.twitter.com/ipQw55BYd7
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
This is not the first time a journalist from The Palestine Chronicle was alleged to have either supported or partaken in terrorism.
Abdallah Aljamal, who was a correspondent for The Chronicle, allegedly held three Israeli hostages in his home, according to the Israeli government. He was killed during a raid that rescued four hostages, including Argamani. After the allegations came to light, The Chronicle changed Aljamal’s status on its website from a correspondent to a contributor.
The Palestine Chronicle did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Fichberger wrote that he wants the US House Ways and Means Committee to investigate The Chronicle for what seems to have become a pattern.
“If The Chronicle is let off the hook for employing an actual terrorist hostage-taker, it would prove that the American counter-terror legal apparatus really is irreparably broken,” he wrote.
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