Sign reading “+1000% of Antisemitic Acts: These Are Not Just Numbers” during a march against antisemitism, in Lyon, France, June 25, 2024. Photo: Romain Costaseca / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect

A Jewish teenager was threatened at knifepoint and called a “dirty Jew” in an antisemitic attack in France — the latest in a growing wave of hate crimes targeting the country’s Jewish community.

Last week, a 15-year-old boy was violently attacked in Colomiers, southwestern France, after attending a meetup arranged with a girl over social media, French media reported.

When the boy arrived at the meeting point, two men were waiting for him at the entrance to a basement. They held him at knifepoint, humiliated him, and shared the assault on social media.

One of the attackers, armed with a knife, forced him to remove his shirt and dance, then grabbed him by the neck and forced him to kneel.

Then, the attacker reportedly told him to “beg and pray,” repeatedly calling him a “dirty Jew” because he attended a private Jewish school. He also threatened to kill him if he tried to contact the police.

The following day, the teenager found out that the assault had been filmed and circulated on social media. Using the attackers’ TikTok accounts, the victim was able to file a formal complaint.

On Friday, local police arrested one of the suspects who posted the video, according to the French broadcaster Europe 1. He was taken into custody on charges of aggravated assault motivated by religious hatred.

As of this week, the investigation is ongoing, with authorities actively searching for the remaining suspects.

The brutal assault is the latest antisemitic incident amid a troubling surge in anti-Jewish violence sweeping the country since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Antisemitism in France continued to surge to alarming levels across the country last year, with 1,570 incidents recorded, according to a report by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) – the main representative body of French Jews.

The total number of antisemitic outrages in 2024 was a slight dip from 2023’s record total of 1,676, but it marked a striking increase from the 436 antisemitic acts recorded in 2022.

In late May and early June, antisemitic acts rose by more than 140 percent, far surpassing the weekly average of slightly more than 30 incidents.

The report also found that 65.2 percent of antisemitic acts last year targeted individuals, with more than 10 percent of these offenses involving physical violence.

The post Jewish Teen Threatened at Knifepoint in France Amid Surge in Antisemitic Attacks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) speaks during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, March 11, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Julia Nikhinson

US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) mocked recent arguments against the US intervening in Iran promoted by populist-nationalist podcaster Tucker Carlson during a closed-door meeting with legislative colleagues this week, according to a new report.

On Tuesday at the Senate Republican lunch closed to reporters, Cotton provoked laughter among attendees when he listed a number of Carlson’s predictions about the Iran-Israel conflict which had thus far failed to materialize, Axios reported.

The Arkansas politician reportedly insisted that fellow Senate Republicans should marginalize the former Fox News host. He also encouraged them to ignore online advocates of isolationism — going so far as to compare them to the left-wing opinion hosts of the cable news network MSNBC — while pointing to polling demonstrating solid Republican support for the US bombings of Iranian nuclear facilities.

Cotton did not identify Carlson by name; however he did reportedly read items from a 768-word X post the podcaster shared on June 4 and which has now received 7.8 million views.

“So why is [conservative media personality] Mark Levin once again hyperventilating about weapons of mass destruction? To distract you from the real goal, which is regime change — young Americans heading back to the Middle East to topple yet another government,” Carlson wrote earlier this month. “Virtually no one will say this out loud. America’s record of overthrowing foreign leaders is so embarrassingly counterproductive that regime change has become a synonym for disaster.”

Carlson proclaimed that “it goes without saying that there are very few Trump voters who’d support a regime change war in Iran. Donald Trump has argued loudly against reckless lunacy like this.”

A CNN poll released on Tuesday showed that 56 percent of respondents disapproved of the Iran strikes while 44 percent did; likewise, 60 percent feared the attacks would increase the Iranian threat to Americans, while 27 percent believed the opposite. On the broader question of deploying ground troops into Iran, only 9 percent favored such a move, with 68 percent opposing and 23 percent unsure.

Partisan divides also appeared in approval of US President Donald Trump’s decision, with 60 percent of independents and 88 percent of Democrats disapproving while 82 percent of Republicans backed the president. Differences in ages among Republicans also signaled greater skepticism for the strikes with only 20 percent of under-45 Republicans strongly approving compared to 53 percent of older Republicans. The younger cohorts of the GOP also believed more that the bombings increased the Iranian threat to America, and they doubted Trump’s military judgment in the conflict.

Carlson also predicted a US strike on Iran would lead to a third world war.

“The first week of a war with Iran could easily kill thousands of Americans,” he wrote earlier this month. “It could also collapse our economy, as surging oil prices trigger unmanageable inflation. Consider the effects of $30 gasoline. But the second week of the war could be even worse.”

Trump announced a ceasefire between Iran and Israel less than 48 hours after the US military bombed three of Iran’s key nuclear facilities. The war between the two Middle Eastern adversaries had lasted for 12 days, with Israel decimating much of Iran’s nuclear program, military leadership, and ballistic-missile capabilities.

On Monday, Cotton appeared on Fox News to defend Trump’s decision to attack Iran.

“Iran did not become a terrorist state because Donald Trump bombed their nuclear bunkers,” Cotton wrote on X. “Donald Trump bombed their nuclear bunkers because they are a terrorist state, and they cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons.”

The Algemeiner contacted Cotton’s office for comment and did not receive a response at press time.

On Tuesday, reports emerged of an early intelligence assessment suggesting that the three US strikes may not have completely destroyed the Iranian nuclear program, only delaying development of a nuclear weapon back a few months.

The White House pushed back, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt telling CNN that “this alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community. The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program. Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a criminal investigation to uncover the identity of the leaker of the intelligence assessment.

Trump said of his attack on Iran that “it was very severe. It was obliteration.”

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained to Politico that “the bottom line is, they are much further away from a nuclear weapon today than they were before the president took this bold action.”

“That’s the most important thing to understand — significant, very significant, substantial damage was done to a variety of different components, and we’re just learning more about it,” Rubio emphasized.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) told CNN that “I’ve been briefed on this plan in the past, and it was never meant to completely destroy the nuclear facilities, but rather cause significant damage.”

He added, “It was always known to be a temporary setback.”

The post US Sen. Tom Cotton Calls Out Failed Iran Predictions of Isolationist Online Influencers: Report first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Spring 2024. Photo: Vincent Ricci via Reuters Connect.

An explosive lawsuit was filed on Wednesday by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law on behalf of two Massachusetts Institute of Technology affiliates, including a former doctoral candidate, who allege that the university’s administration failed to address rampant antisemitic discrimination in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

According to court documents shared with The Algemeiner, plaintiffs Lior Alon and William Sussman alleged that MIT became inhospitable to Jewish students after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, as pro-Hamas activists there issued calls to “globalize the intifada,” interrupted lessons with “speeches, chants, and screams,” and discharged their bodily fluids on campus properties administered by Jews. Jewish institutions at MIT came under further attack when a pro-Hamas group circulated a “terror-map” on campus which highlighted buildings associated with Jews and Israelis and declared, “resistance is justified when people are colonized.”

All the while, MIT’s administration allegedly refused to correct the hostile environment.

“This is a textbook example of neglect and indifference. Not only were several antisemitic incidents conducted at the hands of a professor, but MIT’s administration refused to take action on every single occasion,” Brandeis Center chairman Kenneth Marcus said in a statement announcing the suit. “The very people who are tasked with protecting students are not only failing them, but are the ones attacking them. In order to eradicate hate from campuses, we must hold faculty and the university administration responsible for their participation in — and in this case, their proliferation of — antisemitism and abuse.”

The suit added that Alon — who lived through both intifadas, or periods of sustained Palestinian terrorism against Jews and Israels, as a citizen of Israel and lost his childhood friend to the Hamas Oct. 7 massacre — has personally been victimized by campus antisemites. During anti-Israel encampment protests in spring term 2024, Alon was prohibited from entering the Kresge Lawn section of campus, through which he needed to pass to access his office. The edict allegedly came down from pro-Hamas activists and was enforced by an MIT police officer, who became an accessory to the group’s usurpation of school property.

Later, Alon was allegedly harassed by Michel DeGraff, a tenured linguistics professor. According to the suit, DeGraff posted videos of Alon on social media, replete with his “personal information, including details of his Israeli military services,” as well as spurious accounts of his life which portrayed him as sinister. The productions inspired misfits to approach him in the streets, as they showed up at “the grocery store and his child’s daycare.”

The suit continued, “DeGraff also maligned Alon in an essay he published in the Le Monde diplomatique, a prominent, international periodical that is available in twenty-four languages and has a circulation of approximately 2.4 million copies worldwide. In a propaganda piece published online on May 24, 2024, Professor DeGraff continued his smear campaign against Alon, falsely accusing Alon of stating that ‘[Scientist Against Genocide Encampment’s] students’ pleas to halt the genocide of Palestinians are ‘pro-Hamas’ and advocate the killing of Jews. Alon made no such statement.”

The suit also said that DeGraff relentlessly pursued Sussman, who was forced to leave MIT in 2024 and walk away from work he had started in 2017.

“Professor DeGraff posted a message targeting Sussman by name on his X platform of over 10,000 followers, and another message,” court documents say. “Not a single administrator … intervened to stop the harassment or condemn the targeting of both a Jewish student and an Israeli professor in such a vicious and public way.”

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, MIT has allegedly ignored dozens of complaints of antisemitic discrimination. Discrimination there has been described in harrowing testimony provided by students at hearings called by the US Congress, in social media posts, and in comments to this publication. Only last year, MIT student Talia Khan told members of Congress that attending the institution “traumatized” her, charging that it has “become overrun by terrorist supporters that directly threaten the lives of Jews on our campus.”

Khan went on to recount MIT’s efforts to suppress expressions of solidarity with Israel after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, which included ordering Jewish students to remove Israeli flags from public display while allowing Palestinian flags to fly across campus. She described the double standard as a “scandal” alienating Jewish students, staff, and faculty, many of whom resigned from an allegedly farcical committee on antisemitism. Staff were ignored, Khan said, after expressing fear that their lives were at risk, following an incident in which a mob of anti-Zionists amassed in front of the MIT Israel Internship office and attempted to infiltrate it, banging on its doors while “screaming” that Jews are committing genocide.

The Brandeis Center stressed on Wednesday that MIT must disrupt and prevent antisemitic discrimination but repeatedly eschews doing so.

“These incidents are emblematic of a larger problem on the MIT campus, where antisemitism was permitted to fester in the absence of leadership and accountability,” the group said. “As a recipient of federal funding, MIT is obligated to provide a safe learning environment for all of its students, including Jewish and Israeli students, pursuant to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Explosive MIT Antisemitism Lawsuit Says University Ignored Blatant Hate Incidents first appeared on Algemeiner.com.