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U of Minnesota, Temple, Brown among latest federal campus antisemitism investigations
(JTA) – Complaints about anti-Israel protests at Temple and Brown filed by a Jewish right-wing activist who attends neither university are among the latest round of antisemitism investigations opened by the U.S. Department of Education.
The department’s civil rights office is also looking into a series of University of Minnesota faculty statements condemning Israel, following a complaint by a prominent Republican on the law school faculty.
In addition, as of this week the civil rights office has opened investigations at the two largest Bay Area public school districts, where some families have cited antisemitism concerns in applying to transfer out. And it is scrutinizing a private college where a Jewish anti-Zionist professor has publicly supported Hamas.
The investigations are among a new batch announced Wednesday as the department hastens to use its leverage to get universities and school districts to tackle antisemitism on their campuses.
With this latest round, the department’s Office of Civil Rights has now opened more than 50 Title VI “shared ancestry” investigations in the months since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel triggered a wave of campus anti-Israel activism. The department does not comment on its ongoing investigations, which range from the most prestigious Ivy League schools to tiny rural K-12 districts, but says that opening a probe does not mean the case necessarily has merit.
“I think it’s about time,” Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota who filed the antisemitism complaint that triggered the school’s Title VI investigation, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Universities all over America are dealing with this.”
Painter, a former George W. Bush administration official, filed his complaint in December alongside Michael Hsu, a former regent; the department opened its investigation Tuesday. The complaint alleges that the university should have done more to rebut three different liberal-arts faculty groups that published statements condemning Israel after the Oct. 7 attacks.
In a statement, the university said, “The University stands firmly in support of speech and actions that provide an atmosphere of mutual respect, free from any form of prejudice and intolerance, as our Board of Regents policies state.”
Previously, upon news of Painter and Hsu’s initial Title VI filing, the school had told local media, “The letter’s broad characterizations of the University are inaccurate and are fundamentally contrary to our mission and values.”
One such faculty statement, by members of the department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, reads in part, “We assert that Israel’s response is not self-defense but the continuation of a genocidal war against Gaza and against Palestinian freedom, self-determination, and life.”
This statement was especially galling, Painter felt, because a department with a focus on women, gender and sexuality didn’t mention the sexual assaults committed by Hamas during its attacks. His efforts to have the college’s dean intervene have been unsuccessful, he said. (The other statements he objected to came from professors in the American Indian studies and Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature departments.)
“Henry Ford was putting this kind of crap in newspapers back in the ’30s,” Painter said, referring to the auto mogul’s antisemitic newspaper The Dearborn Independent.
Neither Painter nor Hsu are Jewish, and Hsu, while he was a regent in 2019, opposed university efforts to rename campus buildings named after antisemites. (Painter’s wife Karen, who is not Jewish, is an academic who studies the antisemitism of Nazi-era music.) But Painter said he still sees the fight against campus antisemitism as one he can lead.
“This is a critical issue not just for the Jewish community, but for our democracy,” he said. And he believes his efforts at the university have already borne fruit: After a candidate to lead the school’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office recently hedged in an interview on whether Hamas had assaulted Israeli women during its attack, he and other like-minded critics mobilized against the potential hire. Following the resulting bad press, the person is no longer a candidate for the job.
“We did win,” Painter said about the DEI fight. “That went all over.”
Two other new antisemitism investigations, at Temple University and Brown University, both stem from one complainant: Zachary Marschall, a professor at the University of Kentucky and editor-in-chief of the right-wing college advocacy site Campus Reform.
Marschall is Jewish but has no connection to either school. He told JTA he independently filed those complaints, and 18 others, after interviewing “Jewish and pro-Israel students across the country who are too afraid to speak out.”
On Campus Reform, he published partial copies of letters from the Department of Education confirming that it had opened the investigations based on his complaints; a statement from a Brown representative also noted that the investigation stemmed “from beyond Brown’s campus” and named Marschall’s publication as its source.
Marschall said his Temple complaint was related to recent reports of pro-Palestinian protesters in Philadelphia targeting an Israeli-owned falafel shop, as well as “From the river to the sea” chants at rallies by the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. The department opened its Temple investigation on Tuesday.
In a statement about the investigation, a Temple spokesperson said, “Temple University unequivocally condemns hate and discrimination against any person and will always strive to ensure that all of our students, faculty, and staff feel welcomed and safe in our community and throughout our campus.”
Marschall’s Brown complaint was also tied to that university’s SJP chapter, which released a statement shortly after the Oct. 7 attacks holding “the Israeli regime and its allies unequivocally responsible for all suffering and loss of life, Palestinian or Israeli.” His complaint also quotes from campus vigils held by the chapter in the days after the attacks, at which students reportedly chanted “Glory to our martyrs.” The department opened its Brown investigation Jan. 9; universities elsewhere have banned or suspended their SJP chapters since the war began.
Information on the reasons for the other new Title VI investigations was not immediately available, but several of the schools in question have made headlines recently for antisemitism-related reasons.
Two large Bay Area public school districts, San Francisco Unified School District and Oakland Unified School District, are the sites of two of the remaining investigations. Oakland’s was opened on Tuesday and San Francisco’s was opened on Jan. 12.
Both districts have experienced a rash of controversy over Israel in recent months: Jewish parents in Oakland have begun pulling their students out of public schools after incidents including the local teachers union voting on a measure calling for an end to U.S. aid to Israel, while San Francisco’s district recently reviewed a contract with a local anti-Zionist group that had organized a walkout for Palestinians and another protest.
The San Francisco teachers union also passed a resolution in November calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, which prompted the head of the local Jewish Community Relations Council to label the union “bigoted.”
In response to queries, a representative for Oakland’s district said it does not comment on pending legal matters but added, “OUSD is a sanctuary district, inside Oakland, a sanctuary city, inside California, a sanctuary state, which means we support all students, families and staff, regardless of religion, heritage, ethnicity, where they came from, or how they got here. We protect all students, and harassment of anyone is never acceptable.
“In this time of heightened tensions because of what’s happening in the Middle East, we are regularly communicating to our community, reminding them of our core values of love and support, so it should be clear that everyone is welcome and valued in our schools,” the statement continued.
Representatives for the San Francisco district and both teachers unions did not return requests for comment.
In response to a query about an investigation at Ohio State University opened Tuesday, a spokesperson for the school did not say what the investigation concerned. “Ohio State has never – and will never – tolerate discrimination or harassment of anyone based on their religious beliefs, nationality or identity,” the spokesperson wrote.
OSU had recently been the site of two reported incidents at which Jewish students and buildings were targeted: one in which two Jewish students were punched in the face after a “verbal altercation” outside a bar, and another in which trespassers to the campus Hillel stole Israeli flags and yelled insults at staff. Although the pro-Israel advocacy group StandWithUs, which is active in campus antisemitism matters, had sent a stern letter to university leadership the same day the investigation opened, a representative for the group told JTA it was a “crazy coincidence” and that it wasn’t behind the investigation.
Meanwhile, Jewish alumni at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, told JTA that multiple Title VI antisemitism complaints had been filed against the school in recent weeks. More than 7,700 people have signed an online petition urging administrators to remove a Jewish anti-Zionist anthropology professor who has published opinion pieces supporting Hamas and questioning whether it can be blamed for the violence on Oct. 7. The Department of Education opened an investigation into the college on Tuesday, but the specific trigger for the investigation could not be verified.
In a statement, a Muhlenberg spokesperson said, “We do not tolerate antisemitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia or any other form of harassment, bigotry or abuse nor any incitement to violence or calls for genocide. If/when there are accusations of conduct violations, these are thoroughly investigated with appropriate actions taken based on the findings.”
Finally, the Department of Education announced a new investigation at the University of Illinois Chicago on Jan. 10, which it listed as the second such investigation at the university in the past month. The first concerned a complaint brought by Palestine Legal, a pro-Palestinian legal group that alleged the university had discriminated against Arab and Palestinian students by kicking them out of a 2021 webinar about the Israeli healthcare system.
But it was possible the second investigation might in fact be a correction of the first investigation. A spokesperson for Palestine Legal told JTA that the education department told the organization on the same day that it had revised the discrimination claim in its initial investigation from “shared Muslim ancestry” to “shared Palestinian ancestry,” as one of the complainants is Christian. UIC representatives and the Department of Education did not return requests for comment.
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The post U of Minnesota, Temple, Brown among latest federal campus antisemitism investigations appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Haaretz Claim That IDF Was Ordered to Fire on Unarmed Gazans Refuted by Translation Discrepancies, Contradictions, and Eyewitness Accounts
Gazans receiving humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip. Photo: Col. Richard Kemp
A recent Haaretz exposé accusing the Israeli military of ordering troops to fire at unarmed civilians near food aid sites in Gaza relied on mistranslation, selective quotes, factual omissions, and contradictions to construct a narrative of unprovoked Israeli violence, according to independent observers interviewed by The Algemeiner.
Debunking the claim of indiscriminate fire by the IDF, the experts instead described widespread fear of Hamas, not the Israeli military.
The Haaretz report quickly gained traction in international media. Titled “’It’s a Killing Field’: IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid,” it was cited by outlets such as NPR, CNN, and Reuters, .
British military analyst Andrew Fox criticized the article for its framing and language. One of the discrepancies he pointed to was the shift in the English version of the story from soldiers firing “towards” civilians, as stated in the Hebrew original, to “at” them. The original Hebrew subheader also specified that soldiers were told to fire “towards” crowds “to distance them” from the aid sites, suggesting the shooting took place as a means of crowd control.
“It’s a matter of intent,” Fox told The Algemeiner. The phrase “‘at civilians’ means they are trying to kill them. It’s misleading because they’re firing warnings to avoid harm rather than shooting to cause harm.”
“Warning shots are something all armies do — we did in Afghanistan — but when you pull the trigger there’s always a risk of harm, and that’s not great,” explained Fox, a think tank researcher and former British Army officer. “Still, there’s a huge difference between that and deliberately targeting civilians.”
Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, said that “shooting towards,” as in the original Hebrew, was “quite reasonable as a means to exercise crowd control in a war zone.”
“It is highly unlikely the IDF would be ordered to shoot at unarmed civilians unless they directly endangered them,” Kemp told The Algemeiner, citing Israel’s interest in the success of US-backed humanitarian relief efforts in Gaza. “The IDF rigidly follows laws of war. It makes no sense for the IDF to want to damage aid efforts. They cooperate with and facilitate [the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation] and want it to succeed. The ones who want it to fail are Hamas because it deprives them of control and funds. If anyone has been doing this shooting, it would be Hamas. They have the motive the IDF do not.”
There were other discrepancies in the original headline and its translation. Whereas the Hebrew version reads “Soldiers testify: IDF deliberately shoots towards Gazans near aid collection points,” the English version not only omitted any reference to mediating testimony or attribution, but also framed the event as an empirical fact: “IDF soldiers ordered to shoot deliberately at unarmed Gazans waiting for humanitarian aid.” Further, the phrase “waiting for humanitarian aid” may carry specific legal implications under international law, suggesting heightened vulnerability, whereas the Hebrew version referred more vaguely to crowds “near aid collection points.”
The subheader — which claimed soldiers were ordered to fire at unarmed civilians “even when no threat was present” — conflicted with the body of the text, which acknowledged that Israeli soldiers were wounded near the aid distribution zones. One sentence, appearing for the first time in the 21st paragraph, stood out: “There were also fatalities and injuries among IDF soldiers in these incidents.” The piece offered no explanation for how such casualties could occur if, as the article claims, no one else present was armed.
Elsewhere in the article, a soldier is quoted describing the IDF creating a “killing field,” supposedly involving heavy machine guns, mortars, and grenade launchers. But if such weapons were used with lethal intent, as Fox pointed out in a Substack post, the casualty rate would be far higher than the one to five reported per day. “That’s not a massacre,” he wrote, going on to quip that the only massacre to take place was one of “journalistic standards by Haaretz.”
“Could some soldiers accidentally miss and hit someone?” Fox wrote. “Yes. That is tragic and warrants investigation. However, the article itself acknowledges that the IDF is already examining those incidents. To jump from that to ‘deliberate killing fields’ is not responsible reporting. It is narrative laundering.”
The lack of video footage of the alleged mass shootings near GHF sites raises questions, given the large volume of media typically produced from Gaza, according to Fox, who noted that Hamas has repeatedly circulated images and clips for propaganda purposes.
“Every Gazan has a mobile phone, and numerous videos of other events have been released,” he wrote. “Why is there a total absence of any credible footage of these supposed IDF combined arms assaults on queuing civilians?”
Kemp, who visited two of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s distribution sites in the days following the report’s publication, described hearing distant gunfire but reported that the aid operation proceeded mostly without disruption.
Col. Richard Kemp at humanitarian aid site with Gazans. Photo: Provided
“None of the Gazans there showed any concerns [about the IDF] whatsoever,” he said. Many of the civilians identified Hamas, not the IDF, as the main threat to the aid effort — a dynamic not acknowledged in the Haaretz report — telling Kemp they could not return home for fear of being recognized and targeted by Hamas.
“I must have spoken to at least 50 Gazans at each site,” he said. “Many told me they feared Hamas and Hamas threatened them if they used the sites.”
Kemp added that the atmosphere was chaotic but manageable, with GHF workers — most of them local Gazans — interfacing directly with the crowds. He described people smiling, holding up food packages, and expressing gratitude for the aid.
“The overwhelming impression was how grateful they were to be getting free aid for once, as opposed to buying aid looted by Hamas and sold at a premium,” he told The Algemeiner.
Many Gazans at the GHF sites who spoke to Kemp voiced hatred for Hamas and praised the US-backed aid effort, with some chanting “kill Hamas” while others said “I love America” or expressed admiration for President Donald Trump. The alignment between Hamas and UN criticism of the food program was “shocking,” Kemp added, particularly given the visible gratitude expressed by many recipients.
“They associate this aid program with the US,” he said. “They seem to like it, whereas Hamas and the UN seem to be its greatest enemies.”
The post Haaretz Claim That IDF Was Ordered to Fire on Unarmed Gazans Refuted by Translation Discrepancies, Contradictions, and Eyewitness Accounts first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Former Australian Nurses Charged Over Threatening Viral Video Banned from NDIS
Illustrative: Supporters of Hamas gather for a rally in Melbourne, Australia. Photo: Reuters/Joel Carrett
Two former Australian nurses who were charged over a viral video in which they allegedly threatened to kill Israeli patients have been banned from working under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), four months after being suspended from their jobs at Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital in Sydney.
Earlier this year, Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh, both 27, gained international attention after they were seen in an online video posing as doctors and making inflammatory statements during a night shift conversation with Israeli influencer Max Veifer.
The widely circulated footage, which sparked international outrage and condemnation, showed Abu Lebdeh declaring she would refuse to treat Israeli patients and instead kill them, while Nadir made a throat-slitting gesture and claimed he had already killed many.
Following the incident, New South Wales authorities suspended their nursing registrations and banned them from working as nurses nationwide. They are now also prohibited from working with or providing any services — paid or unpaid — to NDIS participants for two years.
This latest ban, which took effect on May 9, applies nationwide and prohibits Nadir and Abu Lebdeh from working with NDIS participants or performing any role for or on behalf of NDIS providers in any Australian state or territory.
Abu Lebdeh was charged with federal offenses, including threatening violence against a group and using a carriage service to threaten, menace, and harass. If convicted, she faces up to 22 years in prison.
Nadir was charged with federal offenses, including using a carriage service to menace, harass, or cause offense, as well as possession of a prohibited drug.
Currently, both of them remain free on bail and have not yet entered any pleas, with a court appearance scheduled for July 29. They’ve been prohibited from leaving Australia or using social media while their cases proceed.
According to Nadir’s lawyer, the video was captured “without the consent and knowledge” of his client, and he intends to argue for its exclusion from court.
“We will be challenging the admissibility of the video recording because it was a private conversation which was recorded by the person overseas without my client’s consent and without his knowledge,” Nadir’s lawyer said. “That video recording was made secretly overseas and was unlawfully obtained.”
This incident, which drew international attention, occurred amid a surge of antisemitic acts across Australia since the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza began in October 2023, with Jewish institutions targeted in arson attacks and businesses defaced.
Antisemitism spiked to record levels in Australia — especially in Sydney and Melbourne, which are home to some 85 percent of the country’s Jewish population — following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, with the escalation continuing amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran.
According to a report from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), the country’s Jewish community experienced over 2,000 antisemitic incidents between October 2023 and September 2024, more than quadrupling from 495 in the prior 12 months.
The number of antisemitic physical assaults in Australia rose from 11 in 2023 to 65 in 2024. The level of antisemitism for the past year was six times the average of the preceding 10 years.
The post Former Australian Nurses Charged Over Threatening Viral Video Banned from NDIS first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Boulder Firebomber Charged With Murder Following Death of Victim
Boulder attack suspect Mohamed Sabry Soliman poses for a jail booking photograph after his arrest in Boulder, Colorado, June 2, 2025. Photo: Boulder Police Department/Handout via REUTERS
A victim of the antisemitic Boulder, Colorado firebombing died on Monday, prompting local law enforcement to charge suspect Mohamed Soliman with murder in the first degree.
“Severe injuries” caused the death of Karen Diamond, 82, the Boulder County District Attorney’s Office (BCDA) said on Monday in a statement. She was one of 13 people injured when Soliman hurled Molotov cocktails into a crowd of Jewish people who were participating in a demonstration to raise awareness of the hostages who remain imprisoned by Hamas in Gaza. Her death adds five new charges to the over 200 federal and state criminal charges which could lock Soliman away for over 600 years.
“These additional charges, including the counts of First Degree Murder, are being filed after consultation with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Boulder Police Department,” said the DA’s office, adding that it “continues to work closely with federal, state, and local partners in the strong response to this attack. We stand united against acts of antisemitism and hate.”
“This horrific attack has now claimed the life of an innocent person who was beloved by her family and friends,” said Michal Dougherty, district attorney of Boulder County. “Our hearts are with the Diamond family during this incredibly difficult time. Our office will fight for justice for the victims, their loved ones, and the community. Part of what makes Colorado special is that people come together in response to a tragedy; I know that the community will continue to unite in supporting the Diamond family and all the victims of this attack.”
Prosecutors said in May that Soliman yelled “Free Palestine” during the attack, and, according to court documents, told investigators that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people.”
That incident came less than two weeks after a gunman murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, while they were leaving 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, also 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.”
In Garret Park, Maryland, a middle-aged man, Clift A. Seferlis, was recently arrested by federal authorities for sending a series of threatening messages to Jewish organizations in Philadelphia. Seferlis referenced the war in Gaza in his communications.
“The Victim Jewish Institution 1 received numerous additional messages since April 1, 2024, which contained a threat to physically destroy the institution,” the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania said in a statement. “Prior to the receipt of the May 7, 2025, mailing, Victim Jewish Institution 1 and its employees had received very similar-looking letters, believed to have been sent by Seferlis, which referenced Victim Jewish Institution 1’s ‘many big open windows,’ ‘Kristallnacht,’ ‘anger and rage,’ and a future need to ‘rebuild’ the institution following its destruction.”
Another antisemitic incident motivated by anti-Zionism occurred in San Francisco, where Juan Diaz-Rivas, Alejandro Flores-Lamas, and others law enforcement is working to identify, allegedly beat up a Jewish victim in the middle of the night. Diaz-Rivas and Flores-Lamas, along with their associates, approached the victim while shouting “F—ck the Jews, Free Palestine,” according to the office of the San Francis district attorney.
“[O]ne of them punched the victim, who fell to the ground, hit his head and lost consciousness,” the 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.”
According to data released by the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) latest Audit of Antisemitic Incidents in April, antisemitism in the US is surging to break “all previous annual records.”
In 2024 alone, the ADL recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents — an average of 25.6 a day — across the US, an eruption of hatred not recorded in the nearly thirty years since the organization began tracking such data in 1979. Incidents of harassment, vandalism, and assault all increased by double digits, and for the first time ever a majority of outrages — 58 percent — were related to the existence of Israel as the world’s only Jewish state.
The Algemeiner parsed the ADL data, finding dramatic rises in incidents on college campuses, which saw the largest growth in 2024. The 1,694 incidents tallied by the ADL amounted to an 84 percent increase over the previous year. Additionally, antisemites were emboldened to commit more offenses in public in 2024 than they did in 2023, perpetrating 19 percent more attacks on Jewish people, pro-Israel demonstrators, and businesses perceived as being Jewish-owned or affiliated with Jews.
“In 2024, hatred toward Israel was a driving force behind antisemitism across the US, with more than half of all antisemitic incidents referencing Israel or Zionism,” Oren Segal, ADL senior vice president for counter-extremism and intelligence, said when the report was released. “These incidents, along with all those documented in the audit, serve as a clear reminder that silence is not an option. Good people must stand up, push back, and confront antisemitism wherever it appears. And that starts with understanding what fuels it and learning to recognize it in all its forms.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Boulder Firebomber Charged With Murder Following Death of Victim first appeared on Algemeiner.com.