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‘Serve the Nation, Kill a Jew’ Graffitied on Buenos Aires Monument Just After Oct. 7 Anniversary

Argentina’s President Javier Milei attends a commemoration event ahead of the anniversary of the 1994 bombing attack on the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) community center, marking the 30th anniversary of the attack, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 17, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Martin Cassarini

The antisemitic slogan “Serve the nation, kill a Jew” was graffitied on a prominent monument in Buenos Aires on Wednesday, just two days after the one-year anniversary Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.

The timing of the vandalism was intentional, according to the executive director of Argentina’s Jewish umbrella organization, the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA).

“It is no coincidence that these antisemitic demonstrations appear 48 hours after the first anniversary of the Hamas attack against the State of Israel, because they express the same terrorist ideas: eliminating the Jewish people,” Victor Garelik said in a statement.

Jews in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires marked the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack with an event organized by the DAIA that drew 15,000 attendees, according to the Israeli embassy in Argentina.

Two days later, however, “Serve the nation, kill a Jew” was written onto a column of a monument to Simon Bolivar, historically considered “the Liberator” of South America, in Parque Rivadavia in Buenos Aires. A Jewish star replaced the final word of the slogan, which has a long history in Argentina.

La DAIA manifiesta su preocupación frente a la aparición de una grave pintada antisemita en el monumento a Simón Bolivar, ubicado en el Parque Rivadavia de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires.

La entidad presentó la denuncia en el Ministerio Público Fiscal de la Ciudad con el objetivo de… pic.twitter.com/UxJN6HlE0l

— DAIA (@DAIAArgentina) October 9, 2024

As the Jewish Telegraphic Agency noted in a report on the graffiti, a close variant of the antisemitic phrase was used by the Nationalist Liberation Alliance, a World War II-era Argentine movement affiliated with the Nazis. It was later used by Tacura, a fascist movement that was active in Argentina in the decades following the war.

Then about 10 years ago, residents in the town of General Paz received tax bills with the slogan printed on them. The city official responsible was sentenced to a suspended jail term and ordered to apologize and learn about the Holocaust.

The DAIA, which condemned the “serious antisemitic graffiti,” said it filed an official complaint with the City’s Public Prosecutor’s Office “in order to find those responsible for this anti-Jewish act.” The local government quickly cleaned up the graffiti after it was discovered.

This week’s incident came less than a month after the DAIA presented a report to the Buenos Aires City Legislature showing Argentina experienced a 44 percent increase in reported antisemitic incidents last year, mostly after the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel and amid the ensuing war in Gaza.

According to the report, a total of 598 complaints of antisemitism were registered in 2023, and a staggering 57 percent of all such antisemitic cases occurred in just the three months after the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7.

“There was a significant rise in Judeophobia in universities, and anti-Zionist rhetoric increased by 380 percent compared to 2022, across the country,” the DAIA said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the report found that some 65 percent of antisemitic acts occurred in the “digital space,” while the remaining number of incidents in the “physical space” marked a significant increase from the prior year.

“The [Oct. 7] massacre increased the number of [antisemitic] complaints, far from generating empathy and condemnation,” Garelik said during the presentation, according to Argentine media.

The DAIA report found that visceral hatred of Israel was a major source of the surge in antisemitism, causing 40 percent of last year’s antisemitic incidents in Argentina compared to just 11 percent the prior year.

Twice as many in-person antisemitic cases occurred after Oct. 7 in Argentina last year than during the prior nine full months of 2023. One such incident after the Hamas massacre was a building that hung a sign reading, “Zionists out of Palestine. This did not start on 7/10. Hitler fell short.”

The uptick in anti-Jewish outrages appeared to have continued unabated. According to the DAIA, this week’s graffiti was one of more than 500 antisemitic incidents the organization had recorded this year.

Amid such a surge in anti-Jewish acts of hate, Argentina has become a key player in organizing efforts to combat antisemitism in recent months. In July, for example, more than 30 countries led by the United States adopted “global guidelines for countering antisemitism” during a gathering of special envoys and other representatives from around the globe in Argentina.

The gathering came one day before Argentina’s Jewish community commemorated the 30th anniversary of the 1994 targeted bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. Argentine President Javier Milei, a vocal supporter of the Jewish community, promised to right decades of inaction and inconsistencies in the investigations into the attack.

In April, Argentina’s top criminal court blamed Iran for the attack, saying it was carried out by Hezbollah terrorists responding to “a political and strategic design” by Iran.

Iran is the chief international sponsor of Hamas and Hezbollah, providing the Islamist terrorist group with weapons, funding, and training.

Argentina has a Jewish population of nearly 200,000, the largest in Latin America.

The post ‘Serve the Nation, Kill a Jew’ Graffitied on Buenos Aires Monument Just After Oct. 7 Anniversary first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Syria’s Sharaa Says Talks With Israel Could Yield Results ‘In Coming Days’

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks at the opening ceremony of the 62nd Damascus International Fair, the first edition held since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, in Damascus, Syria, Aug. 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa said on Wednesday that ongoing negotiations with Israel to reach a security pact could lead to results “in the coming days.”

He told reporters in Damascus the security pact was a “necessity” and that it would need to respect Syria’s airspace and territorial unity and be monitored by the United Nations.

Syria and Israel are in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israeli airstrikes and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.

Reuters reported this week that Washington was pressuring Syria to reach a deal before world leaders gather next week for the UN General Assembly in New York.

But Sharaa, in a briefing with journalists including Reuters ahead of his expected trip to New York to attend the meeting, denied the US was putting any pressure on Syria and said instead that it was playing a mediating role.

He said Israel had carried out more than 1,000 strikes on Syria and conducted more than 400 ground incursions since Dec. 8, when the rebel offensive he led toppled former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

Sharaa said Israel’s actions were contradicting the stated American policy of a stable and unified Syria, which he said was “very dangerous.”

He said Damascus was seeking a deal similar to a 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria that created a demilitarized zone between the two countries.

He said Syria sought the withdrawal of Israeli troops but that Israel wanted to remain at strategic locations it seized after Dec. 8, including Mount Hermon. Israeli ministers have publicly said Israel intends to keep control of the sites.

He said if the security pact succeeds, other agreements could be reached. He did not provide details, but said a peace agreement or normalization deal like the US-mediated Abraham Accords, under which several Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel, was not currently on the table.

He also said it was too early to discuss the fate of the Golan Heights because it was “a big deal.”

Reuters reported this week that Israel had ruled out handing back the zone, which Donald Trump unilaterally recognized as Israeli during his first term as US president.

“It’s a difficult case – you have negotiations between a Damascene and a Jew,” Sharaa told reporters, smiling.

SECURITY PACT DERAILED IN JULY

Sharaa also said Syria and Israel had been just “four to five days” away from reaching the basis of a security pact in July, but that developments in the southern province of Sweida had derailed those discussions.

Syrian troops were deployed to Sweida in July to quell fighting between Druze armed factions and Bedouin fighters. But the violence worsened, with Syrian forces accused of execution-style killings and Israel striking southern Syria, the defense ministry in Damascus and near the presidential palace.

Sharaa on Wednesday described the strikes near the presidential palace as “not a message, but a declaration of war,” and said Syria had still refrained from responding militarily to preserve the negotiations.

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Anti-Israel Activists Gear Up to ‘Flood’ UN General Assembly

US Capitol Police and NYPD officers clash with anti-Israel demonstrators, on the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, July 24, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas

Anti-Israel groups are planning a wave of raucous protests in New York City during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) over the next several days, prompting concerns that the demonstrations could descend into antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation.

A coalition of anti-Israel activists is organizing the protests in and around UN headquarters to coincide with speeches from Middle Eastern leaders and appearances by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The demonstrations are expected to draw large crowds and feature prominent pro-Palestinian voices, some of whom have been criticized for trafficking in antisemitic tropes, in addition to calling for the destruction of Israe.

Organizers of the demonstrations have promoted the coordinated events on social media as an opportunity to pressure world leaders to hold Israel accountable for its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, with some messaging framed in sharply hostile terms.

On Sunday, for example, activists shouted at Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.

“Zionism is terrorism. All you guys are terrorists committing ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza and Palestine. Shame on you, Zionist animals,” they shouted.

The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), warned on its website that the scale and tone of the planned demonstrations risk crossing the line from political protest into hate speech, arguing that anti-Israel activists are attempting to hijack the UN gathering to spread antisemitism and delegitimize the Jewish state’s right to exist.

Outside the UN last week, masked protesters belonging to the activist group INDECLINE kicked a realistic replica of Netanyahu’s decapitated head as though it were a soccer ball.

Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a radical anti-Israel activist group, has vowed to “flood” the UNGA on behalf of the pro-Palestine movement.

WOL, one of the most prolific anti-Israel activist groups, came under immense fire after it organized a protest against an exhibition to honor the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre at the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel. During the event, the group chanted “resistance is justified when people are occupied!” and “Israel, go to hell!”

“We will be there to confront them with the truth: Their silence and inaction enable genocide. The world cannot continue as if Gaza does not exist,” WOL said of its planned demonstrations in New York. “This is the time to make our voices impossible to ignore. Come to New York by any means necessary, to stand, to march, to demand the UN act and end the siege.”

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), two other anti-Israel organizations that have helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza, also announced they are planning a march from Times Square to the UN headquarters on Friday.

“The time is now for each and every UN member state to uphold their duty under international law: sanction Israel and end the genocide,” the groups said in a statement.

JVP, an organization that purports to fight for “Palestinian liberation,” has positioned itself as a staunch adversary of the Jewish state. The group argued in a 2021 booklet that Jews should not write Hebrew liturgy because hearing the language would be “deeply traumatizing” to Palestinians. JVP has repeatedly defended the Oct. 7 massacre of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel by Hamas as a justified “resistance.” Chapters of the organization have urged other self-described “progressives” to throw their support behind Hamas and other terrorist groups against Israel

Similarly, PYM, another radical anti-Israel group, has repeatedly defended terrorism and violence against the Jewish state. PYM has organized many anti-Israel protests in the two years following the Oct. 7 attacks in the Jewish state. Recently, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) called for a federal investigation into the organization after Aisha Nizar, one of the group’s leaders, urged supporters to sabotage the US supply chain for the F-35 fighter jet, one of the most advanced US military assets and a critical component of Israel’s defense.

The UN General Assembly has historically been a flashpoint for heated debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Previous gatherings have seen dueling demonstrations outside the Manhattan venue, with pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups both seeking to influence the international spotlight.

While warning about the demonstrations, CAM noted it recently launched a new mobile app, Report It, that allows users worldwide to quickly and securely report antisemitic incidents in real time.

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Nina Davidson Presses Universities to Back Words With Action as Jewish Students Return to Campus Amid Antisemitism Crisis

Nina Davidson on The Algemeiner’s ‘J100’ podcast. Photo: Screenshot

Philanthropist Nina Davidson, who served on the board of Barnard College, has called on universities to pair tough rhetoric on combatting antisemitism with enforcement as Jewish students returned to campuses for the new academic year.

“Years ago, The Algemeiner had published a list ranking the most antisemitic colleges in the country. And number one was Columbia,” Davidson recalled on a recent episode of The Algemeiner‘s “J100” podcast. “As a board member and as someone who was representing the institution, it really upset me … At the board meeting, I brought it up and I said, ‘What are we going to do about this?’”

Host David Cohen, chief executive officer of The Algemeiner, explained he had revisited Davidson’s remarks while she was being honored for her work at The Algemeiner‘s 8th annual J100 gala, held in October 2021, noting their continued relevance.

“It could have been the same speech in 2025,” he said, underscoring how longstanding concerns about campus antisemitism, while having intensified in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, are not new.

Davidson argued that universities already possess the tools to protect students – codes of conduct, time-place-manner rules, and consequences for threats or targeted harassment – but too often fail to apply them evenly. “Statements are not enough,” she said, arguing that institutions need to enforce their rules and set a precedent that there will be consequences for individuals who refuse to follow them.

She also said that stakeholders – alumni, parents, and donors – are reassessing their relationships with schools that, in their view, have not safeguarded Jewish students. While supportive of open debate, Davidson distinguished between protest and intimidation, calling for leadership that protects expression while ensuring campus safety.

The episode surveyed specific pressure points that administrators will face this fall: repeat anti-Israel encampments, disruptions of Jewish programming, and the challenge of distinguishing political speech from conduct that violates university rules. “Unless schools draw those lines now,” Davidson warned, “they’ll be scrambling once the next crisis hits.”

Cohen closed by framing the discussion as a test of institutional credibility, asking whether universities will “turn policy into protection” in real time. Davidson agreed, pointing to students who “need to know the rules aren’t just on paper.”

The full conversation is available on The Algemeiner’s “J100” podcast.

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