Female student at Florida State University, believed to be graduate student Eden Deckerhoff, who allegedly assaulted male Jewish classmate at gym on campus. Photo: Screenshot/StopAntisemitism

Local law enforcement officials have charged a Florida State University (FSU) graduate student who allegedly assaulted a Jewish classmate at the Leach Student Recreation Center last Thursday with misdemeanor battery, according to a report by The Tallahassee Democrat.

“F—k Israel, Free Palestine. Put it [the video] on Barstool FSU. I really don’t give a f—k,” Eden Deckerhoff said before shoving the Jewish man, according to video taken by the victim. “You’re an ignorant son of a b—h.”

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Deckerhoff, a student at the FSU College of Social Work, allegedly accosted the victim after noticing his wearing apparel issued by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). FSU reportedly employs her mother, Rosalyn Deckerhoff, as a teaching professor in its College of Social Work.

After footage of the incident went viral on social media, the university promptly suspended Deckerhoff and issued a statement condemning antisemitism.

“While this process is underway, the student shown prominently in the video has been prohibited from returning to campus. Our commitment to swiftly and effectively responding to incidents of hate is unwavering. We appreciate the prompt report of this incident, which allowed us to address this instance of antisemitism without delay,” the university said.

It continued, “Florida State University strongly condemns antisemitism in all forms and follows Florida law, which protects Jewish students and employees from discrimination motivated by antisemitism, harassment, intimidation, and violence.”

According to the Democrat, Deckerhoff has denied assaulting the student, telling investigators, “No I did not show him at all; I never put my hands on him.” However, law enforcement described the incident in court documents as seen in the viral footage, acknowledging that Deckerhoff “appears to touch [the man’s] left shoulder.” Despite her denial, the Democrat added, she has offered to apologize.

The Jewish FSU student is not the first victim of violence or harassment motivated by anti-Zionism. In some cases, such incidents have been ftal.

In June, a gunman murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, while they exited an event at the Capital Jewish Museum hosted by the American Jewish Committee. The suspect charged for the double murder, 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, yelled “Free Palestine” while being arrested by police after the shooting, according to video of the incident. The FBI affidavit supporting the criminal charges against Rodriguez stated that he told law enforcement he “did it for Gaza.”

Less than two weeks later, a man firebombed a crowd of people who were participating in a demonstration to raise awareness of the Israeli hostages who remain imprisoned by Hamas in Gaza. A victim of the attack, Karen Diamond, 82, later died, having sustained severe, fatal injuries.

Another antisemitic incident motivated by anti-Zionism occurred in San Francisco, where an assailant identified by law enforcement as Juan Diaz-Rivas and others allegedly beat up a Jewish victim in the middle of the night. Diaz-Rivas and his friends approached the victim while shouting “F—k the Jews, Free Palestine,” according to local prosecutors.

“[O]ne of them punched the victim, who fell to the ground, hit his head and lost consciousness,” the San Francisco district attorney’s office said in a statement. “Allegedly, Mr. Diaz-Rivas and others in the group continued to punch and kick the victim while he was down. A worker at a nearby business heard the altercation and antisemitic language and attempted to intervene. While trying to help the victim, he was kicked and punched.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

Pro-Hamas leader and former Columbia University Mahmoud Khalil marching with followers in New York City on June 22, 2025. Photo: via Reuters Connect.

Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of a pro-Hamas group at Columbia University who has so far avoided being repatriated to his country of origin by the Trump administration, derided concerns about campus antisemitism as “manufactured” during an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday.

Khalil uttered the remark in response to being asked by Times contributor Ezra Klein whether antisemitism poses a significant threat to Jewish students.

“I wouldn’t say there was none,” Khalil told Klein, who is Jewish. “I would say there is manufactured hysteria about antisemitism at Columbia because of the protests.”

Khalil acted as an organizer for a group which called itself “Columbia University Apartheid Divest” (CUAD). Since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, CUAD has perpetrated illegal building occupations and severe infrastructure sabotage. The acts stunned Columbia’s campus, prompting fears of imminent revolutionary-style violence on campus even as Jewish students and faculty received antisemitic hate mail and death threats.

However, Khalil dismissed the notion that pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel activists have been fostering a hostile environment for Jews on campus.

“Because Proud Boys were at the doors of Columbia, the very right-wing group. And there are incidents here and there. But it’s not like antisemitism is happening at Columbia because of the Palestine movement,” he said. “This is why I always push back. I have a strong belief that antisemitism and anti-Palestinian racism rise together because the same groups are perpetrating that in different ways.”

Khalil then went on to assert some of the very claims prompting accusations of antisemitism in the anti-Israel movement, accusing the Jewish state of “genocide” while arguing that the accusation is aimed at making pro- Israel supporters “uncomfortable” and defending the terrorist-led Palestinian intifadas.

“I don’t want to sanitize history,” Khalil continued. “Like I told you, the second intifada involved violent acts, but overwhelmingly, they were peaceful.”

Over 1,000 Israelis were killed in the early 2000s during the second intifada, when Palestinian terrorists ramped up violence targeting Israelis that included suicide bombings, shootings, and stabbings.

For his part, Klein alleged that the public imposes unequal standards of speech on Jews and Palestinians, saying, “I agree with you that there is a broad effort to demand that Palestinians speak perfectly that is not demanded of Jewish people.”

Jewish students have complained on campuses across the US that sharing their beliefs about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict elicits verbal abuse, social alienation, and poor marks from their professors. In one extreme case, anti-Zionists expelled a Jewish student at the State University of New York, New Paltz from a sexual assault survivor’s group after she shared a pro-Israel post on social media.

The interview comes amid new harrowing FBI statistics which reveal the extent to which violent antisemitism has become a pervasive occurrence in American life.

While hate crimes against other demographic groups declined overall, those perpetrated against Jews increased by 5.8 percent in 2024 to 1,938, the largest total recorded in over 30 years of the FBI’s counting them. Jewish American groups noted that this surge, which included 178 assaults, is being experienced by a demographic group which constitutes just 2 percent of the US population. Additionally, a striking 69 percent of all religion-based hate crimes that were reported to the FBI in 2024 targeted Jews, with 2,041 out of 2,942 total such incidents being antisemitic in nature. Muslims were victims in 256 offenses, or about 9 percent of the total.

Following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, colleges across the US erupted with effusions of antisemitic activity, which included calling for the destruction of Israel, cheering Hamas’s sexual assaulting of women as an instrument of war, and several incidents of assault and harassment targeting Jews on campus.

At Khalil’s own school, as previously reported by The Algemeiner, pro-Hamas activists produced several indelible examples of campus antisemitism, including a student who proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself, brutal gang-assaults on Jewish students, and administrative officials who, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting.

Columbia University is taking steps towards moving on from this turbulent era. In July, it agreed to pay over $200 million to settle claims that it exposed Jewish students, faculty, and staff to antisemitic discrimination and harassment — a deal which secured the release of billions of dollars the Trump administration impounded to pressure the institution to address the issue.

As part of the deal, Columbia agreed to restructure its Middle East curriculum to include a wider range of views, “discipline student offenders for severe disruptions of campus operations” and “eliminate race preferences from their hiring and mission practicers, and [diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI] programs that distribute benefits and advantages based on race” — which, if true, could mark the opening of a new era in American higher education.

“Columbia’s reforms are a roadmap for elite universities that wish to retain the confidence of the American public by renting their commitment to truth-seeking, merit, and civil debate,” US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement commenting on the deal. “I believe they will ripple across the higher education sector and change the course of campus culture for years to come.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

Graffiti spray-painted at the home of an IDF veteran in Clayton, Missouri. Photo: Screenshot

Police in Clayton, Missouri, with the help of US federal agents, are investigating an attack at the home of an unnamed US citizen who served in the Israel Defense Force (IDF) as a hate crime.

Law enforcement arrived on the scene at 3 am on Tuesday to discover three burning cars, believed to be set intentionally, and the antisemitic slogan “Death to the IDF” spray-painted on the street. They later released a statement that there did not appear to be “any further threat to the community.”

Leo Terrell, senior counsel at the US Department of Justice and chair of its Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, released a statement about the crimes on X.

“Today the Israeli Embassy alerted me to a horrific antisemitic attack in St. Louis. An American citizen who served in the IDF returned to his family home. Soon after, he and his family were targeted,” Terrell posted. “I reviewed graphic footage of vehicles belonging to the family and their friends. The vehicles were set on fire and destroyed. Hateful graffiti outside the family’s home accused him of being a murderer and called for death to the IDF.”

Terrell said that following learning of the violence he “immediately contacted the FBI, which is engaging the St. Louis team, and alerted Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office. I also spoke directly with the family, so they know that the DOJ Task Force to Combat Antisemitism is on this 24/7. I am outraged. Antisemitic violence has no place in America, not in St. Louis and not anywhere. We will pursue every avenue to bring the perpetrators to justice. If you commit antisemitic hate crimes, you will be caught. And you will be held accountable.”

Police told First Alert 4 that they suspect one individual started the fires but did not know if they had any accomplices.

Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department, wrote on X that “I’ve been briefed about the reported car bombings in St. Louis and alleged antisemitic vandalism.” She said that “our office intends to hold the perpetrators accountable for these violent acts.”

Clayton’s Mayor Bridget McAndrew denounced the crime and said in a statement on Facebook that the city “has dedicated extensive resources and brought in regional law enforcement partners, as well as the FBI, in order to find those responsible for this repulsive act. As always, our police department is committed to protecting the safety of every member of our community. We will not tolerate harassment, intimidation, or violence based on someone’s nationality, race, religion, or ideology. In Clayton, we are committed to fostering a community where every resident feels safe, valued, and welcome.”

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) – St. Louis, Anti-Defamation League (ADL) – Heartland, Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of St. Louis, Jewish Federation of St. Louis, National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) St. Louis, and St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum released a joint statement on Tuesday following the alleged hate crimes.

“As American Jewish organizations and proud St. Louisians, we condemn in the strongest terms the attack on members of our community last night. This is more than vandalism; it is a hateful act of intimidation and only the latest example of what happens when antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric are normalized,” the groups said. “We are a resilient community, and we will not be deterred in our quest to uproot antisemitism and hatred, alone and with our partners. Antisemitism is a social ill that must be rejected by all of society.”

The Missouri attack comes just after the release of data from the FBI showing that antisemitic hate crimes hit a record high of 1,938 last year, an increase of 5.8 percent from 2023 and a total of 69 percent of all religion-based hate crimes.

Jordan Kadosh, the regional director of ADL Heartland, said following the attack that “when you hear somebody say ‘globalize the intifada this is what it looks like. It looks like burned out cars on suburban streets in America. This is not confined. When somebody says they want to take this fight to Jews around the world they mean everywhere.”

Kadosh added, “This is not going to deter us. Our resilience is not going to be pushed down. It is only going to grow stronger. We are not going to go anywhere. We are American Jews. We’re here for the long haul. We are still a part of this country, and we will speak up and use our voice. We are not going to live quietly because other people think we shouldn’t be here.”