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Rising Antisemitism on Campus Demands a Strong Legal Offense
The surge in anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment in response to Hamas’ October 7 massacre is cause for serious alarm. This is particularly the case on college campuses, where Jewish, Israeli, and Zionist students across the nation face incidents of ostracism, harassment, discrimination, threats, and violence in unprecedented numbers.
Of course, antisemitism and its glorification are not new phenomena. In 1939, for example, the freshman class at Princeton University voted Adolf Hitler the “greatest living person.” The following year’s freshman class repeated the vote with the same results, as did students at Georgetown University.
But we have two key advantages over our 1930s and 1940s counterparts. First, we know what happened the last time we hoped and waited for the antisemitic rhetoric at universities to subside. Instead of being eradicated, it merely laid low for a few decades, before exploding beyond any level we’ve previously experienced. It has consequently become our duty to ensure that university administrators are on clear notice about their legal obligation to protect their Jewish and Israeli students from the pervasively hostile environment that such antisemitism has created on many campuses. And if they deliberately ignore our warnings and efforts to assist them in this regard, it is our duty to hold them accountable.
This is where our second advantage comes into play. We now have a powerful legal tool in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI). A cornerstone of American anti-discrimination law, Title VI prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in programs receiving Federal financial assistance. Recipients who fail to comply with their responsibilities under Title VI risk the loss of their Federal funding. While there is no confusion that the “national origin” category of Title VI covers Israeli students, the US Department of Education has repeatedly affirmed that its protections also extend to groups based on real or perceived shared ethnicity or ancestry, including Jewish students.
This means that administrators must acknowledge what is, for most Jews, a very real connection between Jewish identity and the Jewish ancestral homeland of Israel, and take concrete steps to ensure that Jewish students are not subjected to a hostile campus climate based on this component of their identity.
In accordance with the lessons of history, the rampant antisemitism threatening to overtake many campuses since October 7 — and our commitment to supporting students in the face of anti-Jewish bias and bigotry — the StandWithUs Center for Combating Antisemitism and the StandWithUs Saidoff Legal Department are heavily focused on ensuring that administrators across the nation are aware of and complying with their legal duties to Jewish and Israeli students. Toward that end, we have identified specific actions they should take to align their institutions with the requirements of Title VI and other civil rights laws. In addition to the low-hanging fruit of even-handedly enforcing existing campus policies (e.g., imposing appropriate sanctions against those who threaten Jews, individually or collectively), such actions include the following:
(1) While students generally have the right to express their views on campus, administrators must prevent academic departments, student government bodies, and registered student groups, from misusing university resources — such as official school social media accounts and access to email listservs — to propagate hatred or incite violence. Such actions run afoul of professional standards, violate university policies, and create a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students.
(2) Universities have the responsibility to ensure that hateful speech does not escalate to harassment, discrimination, or criminal conduct on campus. If and when it does, it is not protected by academic freedom or freedom of speech, and the university administration is obligated to take the necessary steps — including punitive measures — to remedy the harm caused and deter such conduct from recurring.
(3) It should be self-evident that Hamas’ massacre, dismemberment, rape, beheadings, and kidnapping against anyone, let alone children, babies, the disabled, and the elderly, can never be justified. Yet moral clarity on these matters appears to be lacking within higher education institutions. University administrators should set the tone on their universities by using their voices to unequivocally condemn such acts of terror — which in no way undermines their ability to offer legitimate criticism of other conduct.
(4) University administrators must ensure that faculty are unable to misuse their class time (including cancelling classes) for political indoctrination, especially when it may serve to marginalize Jewish students and support or promote terrorism or other forms of violence.
(5) While the right to protest is generally protected under the First Amendment, allowing outside community members who may harbor antisemitic intentions to participate in student protests on university grounds is not always warranted or advisable. Administrators should do everything in their power to limit non-student access to student events, check for valid student identification, and address unlawful behavior — including by having the police make arrests where appropriate — to help protect the safety of all students.
(6) To the extent permissible under applicable law, universities should prohibit the wearing of masks during demonstrations. They should also ensure robust enforcement of laws prohibiting the wearing of a mask to conceal one’s identity during the commission of a crime. These actions can help prevent violence and harassment on campus, and protect all members of the campus community.
Universities today once again find themselves torn between asserting their inclusive values and acting on them. This time, we have the benefit of hindsight and the legal tools to protect students facing mounting antisemitism. It is the obligation of college and university administrators to apply both. And it is our mission — at StandWithUs and across the nation — to ensure that they do.
Carly Gammill is the director of the StandWithUs Center for Combating Antisemitism. StandWithUs is an international nonpartisan education organization that supports Israel and fights antisemitism.
The post Rising Antisemitism on Campus Demands a Strong Legal Offense first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
The post Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
The post Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
The post US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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