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Trump Supports Students Through Plan to Dismantle Department of Education

US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon smiles during the signing event for an executive order to shut down the Department of Education next to US President Donald Trump, in the East Room at the White House in Washington, DC, US, March 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria

My parents were born in the Soviet Union, where antisemitism was not only tolerated — it was enforced.

They grew up in a system that erased Jewish identity, restricted Jewish education, and shut Jews out of opportunities. My father didn’t even know he was Jewish until he was seven years old, because acknowledging that fact could have endangered his family.

When my parents immigrated to the United States, they had no money, spoke no English, and had no connections. What they did have was hope — hope that in America, their children would be free to live as Jews without fear. They believed this country would offer what the USSR never could: freedom of religion, opportunity through education, and protection under the law. That promise now feels under threat.

As a Jewish student preparing for college, I see antisemitism growing in plain sight — particularly on college campuses. And the very institutions that are supposed to keep students safe, inclusive, and informed are failing. Among them is the US Department of Education. With over 4,000 employees and an annual budget exceeding $80 billion, it has proven largely unable — or unwilling — to address the rising hatred directed at Jewish students.

President Trump’s decision to eliminate the Department of Education is not simply justified — it is needed. The Department has become a bloated bureaucracy that fails to serve students, wastes public resources, and actively promotes policies that marginalize people like me.

A major part of the Department’s role under the Biden administration was enforcing and promoting DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) frameworks. While these programs claim to protect vulnerable groups, they have frequently excluded Jews.

A 2023 Anti-Defamation League (ADL) survey found that 55% of Jewish students felt DEI policies ignored or diminished their concerns. Jews are too often viewed as “privileged” and therefore excluded from the very protections afforded to others. This is not inclusion — it is erasure.

Until last year, these DEI-driven admissions policies even worked against Jewish applicants. Colleges, under the disguise of achieving “equity,” could penalize students for their ethnic and religious background. It took a Supreme Court ruling to stop this. The Department of Education, meanwhile, allowed it to happen for years.

President Trump’s current efforts to dismantle DEI programs are necessary, but as long as the Department of Education exists, these policies could be revived under future administrations. Eliminating the Department altogether is the only way to end the cycle and protect Jewish students long-term.

The Department has also failed in one of its most basic responsibilities — protecting students from discrimination. Since the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks, antisemitism on college campuses has surged by over 700%, according to the ADL. Jewish students have been harassed, threatened, and physically assaulted. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits such discrimination in federally funded institutions. Yet the Department of Education has done little more than issue vague statements. No meaningful enforcement and no consequences.

President Trump, in contrast, has acted. His administration withdrew $2.2 billion in Federal funding from Harvard and $400 million from Columbia University due to their failure to protect Jewish students. These measures had immediate impact — protests that had turned hostile and violent were shut down, and schools implemented stronger safety policies.

This is not the first time President Trump has taken meaningful action to protect Jewish students. In his first term, Trump expanded Title VI to include antisemitism as a protected class under Federal civil rights law. That was a historic move — one the Department should have made long ago. Instead, it remained inactive while anti-Jewish hate festered.

Beyond civil rights, the Department has proven ineffective in advancing education itself. A 2024 Government Accountability Office report found that only 10% of its staff contribute to direct classroom support. The remaining 90% are engaged in regulatory compliance and administrative functions — layers of bureaucracy that cost billions and deliver little.

One area where this failure is especially dangerous is Holocaust education. Only 18 states require it in public schools, and even where it is required, the instruction is often shallow or optional. A 2020 Claims Conference survey revealed that 63% of young Americans did not know six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, and over one-third believed the death toll was exaggerated. This ignorance enables dangerous ideas to spread, and the Department of Education has done little to correct it.

Eliminating the Department of Education would free states to design education systems that meet the real needs of their students — systems with meaningful education, fair admissions, and real protections for Jewish students.

Gregory Lyakhov is the youngest nationally syndicated columnist in the United States. He is a columnist for both Townhall Media and Newsmax, where his bold commentary has earned national recognition. His writing regularly appears in major publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, and several prominent Jewish outlets.

The post Trump Supports Students Through Plan to Dismantle Department of Education first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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New Research Links South Africa’s Genocide Case Against Israel to Growing Ties With Iran

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in Chatsworth, South Africa, May 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Rogan Ward

Newly released research links South Africa’s expanding ties with Iran to its contentious genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), raising questions about the motives behind Pretoria’s legal battle.

Last month, the Middle East Africa Research Institute (MEARI) unveiled a report exploring the South African government’s relationship with Iran and the ways in which this partnership has shaped the country’s foreign policy.

The report — “Ties to Tehran: South Africa’s Democracy and Its Relationship With Iran: — argues that deepening ties with Tehran has led South Africa to compromise its democratic foundations and constitutional principles, aligning itself with a regime internationally condemned for terrorism, repression, and human rights abuses.

While Iran maintains support for South Africa’s coalition government in part due to a shared revolutionary, liberation ideology, Pretoria has frequently defended Tehran at the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) by voting against sanctions or choosing to abstain, the report says.

In doing so, the study claims that the South African government has both undermined its democratic values and bolstered Iran’s regional ambitions by defending its nuclear program and downplaying its human rights abuses.

Adam Charnas, an analyst at the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD), condemned the government’s long-standing ties with Iran and other regimes with questionable human rights records, calling them deeply troubling.

“This relationship was notably underscored when, shortly after Oct. 7, then-Minister of International Relations, Naledi Pandor, visited Iran for a two-week period to meet with [then-Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi],” Charnas told The Algemeiner.

“South Africa’s foreign policy appears to be more concerned with enhancing relations with rogue states,” he continued. “This narrow and party-led strategy jeopardizes its relationship with key trading partners rather than with addressing domestic challenges or advancing the welfare of its citizens.”

MEARI’s report also questions whether South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ, the UN’s top court, was genuinely rooted in constitutional principles — or driven by outside political pressure.

According to the study, South Africa’s open hostility toward Israel and its biased approach in filing the case — failing to acknowledge Hamas’s role in launching the war with its Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel — undermines the government’s credibility.

At the time of the ICJ filing, senior South African officials were holding high-level meetings in Tehran.

The study explains that shortly afterward, the ruling African National Congress (ANC), struggling with financial difficulties, unexpectedly paid off a multi-million-rand debt, fueling speculation about possible covert support from Iran.

“The evidence for such a claim is entirely circumstantial, but bears relating. In early December 2023, the ANC, South Africa’s ruling party, faced imminent liquidation. It allegedly owed R102 million to a service provider, which it could not pay,” the report says.

In prior years, the ANC has on several occasions been unable to pay staff salaries. But just days after the South African government filed its case against Israel at the ICJ, which MEARI drescribes as “an undertaking involving a phalanx of lawyers of international stature that could cost as much as R1.5 billion [about $84.35 million] in taxpayer money,” the ANC announced that it had reached an out-of-court settlement with its creditor to settle its debt and turned its finances around.

However, since the party’s finances were not available to the public, a fact-check by a leading South African newspaper could not find evidence to prove that the ANC had received funding from any particular source, Iran or otherwise.

Although the ANC claimed it complies with South African law requiring the of donor funding exceeding R100,000, the law is “weakly enforced,” MEARI notes.

“It could be pure coincidence that Hamas thanked South Africa for bringing a genocide case against Israel at the ICJ, and that this case aligns perfectly with the ‘mutual bilateral interests’ of South Africa and Iran,” the report says, with a not-so-subtle bit of sarcasm. “It could be pure coincidence that within days of taking this grave step, South Africa’s the ruling party, the ANC, managed to pull back from the brink of bankruptcy by settling a substantial debt out of court after having ignored multiple court orders and left staff unpaid.”

Since December 2023, South Africa has been pursuing its case accusing Israel of committing “state-led genocide” in its defensive war against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.

Both Iran and Hamas have publicly praised the South African government’s legal action.

For its part, Israeli leaders have condemned the case as an “obscene exploitation” of the Genocide Convention, noting that the Jewish state is targeting terrorists who use civilians as human shields in its military campaign.

Meanwhile, South Africa’s Jewish community has lambasted the case as “grandstanding” rather than actual concern for those killed in the Middle Eastern conflict.

Last year, the ICJ ruled there was “plausibility” to South Africa’s claims that Palestinians had a right to be protected from genocide.

However, the top UN court did not make a determination on the merits of South Africa’s allegations, nor did it call for Israel to halt its military campaign. Instead, the ICJ issued a more general directive that Israel must make sure it prevents acts of genocide.

The ruling also called for the release of the hostages kidnapped by Hamas during the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 rampage.

“It could be that South Africa simply did not have the resources to respond in international courts to the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the war crimes committed by the latter in the pursuit of that war of aggression,” the MEARI report says. “It could be that it didn’t feel there was sufficient historical solidarity to oblige it to speak out about genocides of Uyghurs in China, or Rohingya in Myanmar, but Israel just went a step too far.”

Since the start of the war in Gaza, the South African government has been one of the fiercest critics of Israel’s military campaign, which seeks to free the hostages kidnapped by the terrorists and dismantle Hamas’s military and administrative control in Gaza.

Beyond its open hostility toward Israel, South Africa has actively supported Iran’s terrorist proxy by hosting two Hamas officials at a state-backed conference expressing solidarity with the Palestinians in December 2023.

In one instance, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa led the crowd at an election rally in a chant of “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” — a popular slogan among anti-Israel activists that has been widely interpreted as a genocidal call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

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German Media Investigation Reveals Gaza Photographer Staged Images of Despair, Prompting Agencies to Cut Ties

Palestinians carry aid supplies that entered Gaza through Israel, in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, July 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas

Two leading German newspapers have released a joint investigation accusing Gaza-based photojournalists of staging images of hungry and despairing civilians, sparking fresh controversy over how the Israel-Hamas war is portrayed in international media coverage.

The report, published by BILD and Süddeutsche Zeitung, followed a recent controversy over a widely circulated image of a Gazan youth portrayed as starving — a photo later revealed to depict a boy with a genetic disorder, prompting outlets such as The New York Times to issue clarifications.

The German investigation focused on Palestinian photographer Anas Zayed Fteiha, a freelancer for the Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency, who allegedly staged images to dramatize civilian suffering and depict it as the result of Israeli actions.

Fteiha’s work has been published by major international outlets including CNN, Reuters, and the BBC, despite what the report described as openly biased photojournalism.

According to the German outlets, Fteiha has openly expressed anti-Israel views on social media, sharing inflammatory and antisemitic content.

The report further noted that, by working for a state-run Turkish news outlet whose government maintains longstanding ties to Hamas and a well-known hostile stance toward Israel, his work functions more as propaganda than as objective journalism.

On Tuesday, Israel’s Foreign Ministry praised the German investigation, saying it “reveals how Hamas uses ‘Pallywood,’ staged or selectively framed media, to manipulate global opinion.”

“With Hamas controlling nearly all media in Gaza, these photographers aren’t reporting, they’re producing propaganda,” the statement said.

“This investigation underscores how Pallywood has gone mainstream with staged images and ideological bias shaping international coverage, while the suffering of Israeli hostages and Hamas atrocities are pushed out of frame,” it continued.

“Pallywood” is a term used to describe the alleged practice by Palestinians of staging fake injuries, deaths, or scenes of devastation to elicit international sympathy and fuel hostility toward Israel.

According to the investigation, Fteiha selectively shares images that reinforce an anti-Israel narrative. For example, one of his widely circulated photos depicts desperate Gazan women and children holding pots and pans outside a food distribution site.

However, other photos taken at the same scene — showing mostly adult men calmly waiting in line and receiving aid — were not distributed by Fteiha and have gone largely unnoticed.

Gerhard Paul, emeritus professor of history and a leading expert on visual propaganda, told Süddeutsche Zeitung that these types of images serve a specific function by shaping narratives and influencing public opinion.

“They are intended to overwrite the brutal images of the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023. Many people don’t even remember these pictures,” Paul said. “Hamas is a master at staging images.”

He also explained that journalists and photographers in Gaza face significant risks and, because of their close proximity to Hamas terrorists, are unable to operate independently.

According to the German newspapers, part of the problem is that Israel restricts access to the Gaza Strip for independent journalists, allowing Hamas-controlled propaganda to dominate the coverage.

Shortly after the investigation was published, the German Press Agency and Agence France-Presse announced they would no longer work with Fteiha and would apply more rigorous scrutiny to photos from other photographers.

For its part, Reuters said Fteiha’s photos “meet the standards of accuracy, independence, and impartiality.”

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Florida State University Grad Student Charged With Battery After Harassment of Jewish Peer Caught on Video

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.

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