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U. of Vermont agrees to improve antisemitism training, ending federal case and capping a tumultuous year
(JTA) – A year of strained relations between the University of Vermont and its Jewish community has led to the school resolving a federal antisemitism complaint and pledging to do more to protect its Jewish students — including from anti-Zionist rhetoric.
The university and the U.S. Department of Education announced Monday that they had reached a resolution to the complaint, which the department took up last fall after it was filed by students and pro-Israel groups. The complaint alleged that the institution had not properly responded to Jewish students’ allegations of antisemitic discrimination. Investigators determined that the university “received notice, but did not investigate” several claims of antisemitic behavior on campus, and that the steps it ultimately took did not adequately address students’ concerns.
Notably, the department’s office of civil rights determined that one of the ways the university’s Jewish students had been discriminated against was through “national origin harassment on the basis of shared ancestry,” reflecting a controversial argument promoted by pro-Israel groups that anti-Zionist rhetoric is harmful to all Jews because the Jewish people share Israel as an ancestral homeland. The resolution of the complaint also reflects a sharp change in course for the school, which had initially denied wrongdoing and blamed the accusations on an orchestrated external campaign — a response that upset the campus Jewish community.
“This complaint was overwhelmingly dealing with the antisemitism that masks as anti-Zionism, and what the resolution demonstrates is how seriously [the office] is taking that kind of antisemitism,” Alyza Lewin, president of the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency after the ruling. A pro-Israel legal group that often involves itself in campus disputes, the Brandeis Center was one of the organizations that filed the initial complaint on behalf of mostly anonymous students.
The Department of Education responded to a JTA request for comment by pointing to its letter of resolution with the university. Its civil rights office has fielded several challenges to anti-Zionist rhetoric since the Donald Trump administration expanded the department’s mandate around antisemitism in 2019 under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The office of civil rights is fast becoming a favorite tool for pro-Israel activists: It also announced this week it would open an investigation into allegations of a professor’s antisemitic behavior at George Washington University, a week after the university’s own investigation cleared the faculty member of charges brought by another pro-Israel group.
In the agreement, the University of Vermont pledged to revise its policies for reporting discrimination and to train its staff on how to specifically respond to discrimination complaints. The Department of Education will also review the university’s records regarding its response to last year’s allegations of antisemitism. One of the areas in which the university said it would train staff is on how to recognize “the Title VI prohibition against harassment based on national origin, including shared ancestry.”
Among the allegations: cases of unofficial student groups denying admission to “Zionist” students (including a support group for sexual-assault survivors); one graduate teaching assistant who had mused on social media about lowering the grades of Zionist students; and a group of students who’d reportedly thrown an object at the campus Hillel building (the complaint claimed it was a rock; Hillel staff told JTA it was a puffball mushroom). More than 20% of the university’s student body is Jewish, according to Hillel International.
Evan Siegel, a Jewish junior at the University of Vermont, poses in his off-campus housing in Burlington, October 13, 2022. Siegel was initially critical of his school for its handling of a federal antisemitism investigation, but praised its eventual resolution. (Andrew Lapin/Jewish Telegraphic Agency)
The agreement marked a sharp change from how the university first responded when the government announced its intent to investigate the complaint last fall. Back then, the university’s president, Suresh Garimella, issued a combative statement in which he said the university “vigorously denies the false allegation of an insufficient response to complaints of threats and discrimination.” He also issued a point-by-point refutation of the allegations in the complaint.
Garimella further charged that the complaint had been orchestrated by “an anonymous third party” that had “painted our community in a patently false light.” In addition to the Brandeis Center, the complaint was filed on behalf of students by the watchdog group Jewish On Campus, whose antisemitism-tracking methodology has been criticized by other groups.
Garimella’s combativeness at the time was an unusual move for the leader of a university accused of violating Title VI law, which prohibits discriminatory behavior at federally-funded programs or institutions, such as public universities. Groups like the Brandeis Center have increasingly leaned on Title VI in federal complaints to argue that pro-Israel students face discrimination. Title VI cases have become a central component of litigating multiple kinds of Israel discourse on campus, ranging from a pro-Israel student body president being targeted at the University of Southern California to a resolution passed by pro-Palestinian law student groups at the University of California, Berkeley.
In Burlington, where the university is located, some liberal Jews were initially dubious of the complaint. Felicia Kornbluh, a history professor on campus who often teaches American Jewish history, told JTA she was concerned about “playing into the narrative” of a conservative, pro-Israel agenda set by the Brandeis Center, whom she described as “allies of the Trump wing of the Republican party.” (The center’s founder, Kenneth Marcus, served as assistant secretary of education for civil rights under Trump.)
But the complaint also landed in the aftermath of a contentious Burlington city council meeting at which, Kornbluh and others said, pro-Palestinian protesters became hostile to Jews. The meeting featured a council resolution to endorse the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign against Israel, and resulted in a raucous scene where pro-Palestinian groups shouted down Jewish students singing prayers for peace. Kornbluh described the atmosphere there as “really scary,” and “a little like Nuremberg.” Vermonters for Justice in Palestine, a local activist group, held multiple rallies on campus in support of the administration after the antisemitism complaint was publicized.
Against this backdrop, Garimella’s dismissiveness left the university’s Jewish community frustrated and angry. During a Jewish Telegraphic Agency visit to Burlington after the president’s initial statement, Jewish students and faculty said they felt like university administration was not taking their concerns seriously.
“I feel like we’re not being supported here,” Evan Siegel, a Jewish junior who is involved with student government, told JTA while sitting in off-campus housing adorned with Jewish summer camp memorabilia. “And that sucks.”
Employed as a campus tour guide, Siegel wondered, “How am I supposed to give tours and be like, ‘UVM is the best,’ when my president is being an ass?”
Other Jewish students told JTA at the time they had no intention of supporting the university financially or otherwise after they graduated, and wouldn’t advertise the fact that they were alums.
Matt Vogel, executive director of Hillel at the University of Vermont, where one of the alleged antisemitic incidents had taken place, also reluctantly played a role in the drama of the last year, after hoping he would be able to keep his focus on Hillel’s student programming. As the fall semester was starting, he sent an email home to parents reading, “Antisemitism keeps me awake at night.” Throughout the semester, Hillel also became more active in calling out antisemitism on social media.
“Just by default, we’re at the center of it,” Vogel told JTA last fall in the Hillel building, as student volunteers chopped vegetables for that evening’s Shabbat dinner in the next room. “I’ve overheard a student saying, like, a Hillel sticker on their water bottle might turn into a political conversation about Zionism in the first two seconds.”
Matt Vogel, executive director of Hillel at the University of Vermont, prepares for Shabbat in his Burlington office, October 14, 2022. Vogel praised the university for ultimately resolving its federal antisemitism complaint in April 2023 after months of tension. (Andrew Lapin/Jewish Telegraphic Agency)
Soon, Kornbluh decided that the administration’s response to the allegations was unacceptable, and penned a local op-ed opposing it that was later shared by her faculty union in a show of solidarity.
“I was stunned by the tone and content” of Garimella’s letter, Kornbluh wrote in the piece. Accusing the university of “gaslighting,” she added, “I do know that one persistent rhetorical strategy of antisemites in Europe and the United States has been to say that there is no antisemitism.”
Garimella reversed course following weeks of criticism, a strongly worded letter from more than a dozen Jewish groups including the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee and news of several high-profile antisemitic incidents nationally. In October, the university published a website intended to support Jewish students — accompanied by a new statement from Garimella, who now condemned antisemitism unequivocally.
“I have listened to members of our campus community who experience a sense of risk in fully expressing their Jewish identity,” he wrote. ”I want my message to be clear to the entire campus community: antisemitism, in any form, will not be tolerated at UVM.”
This time, Garimella pledged not only to investigate individual reports of antisemitism, but also to work to change the campus community’s approach to the issue. He committed to further anti-bias training and building a streamlined bias reporting system for students, and said the university’s diversity office would work to build and maintain “meaningful actions that ensure our Jewish students and community members feel support and care.”
After Monday’s resolution, Garimella was fully supportive of the findings of the Department of Education’s investigation.
“The resolution reflects an important step in UVM’s engagement with our students, faculty, staff, alumni, and the surrounding community,” he wrote in a message to the campus. “It also reflects numerous conversations we have had with our campus Jewish community and important local and national voices on the consequential and complex issue of antisemitism.”
In response to a JTA request for comment, a university spokesperson sent copies of the letters from the president and provost. (Throughout the year, the president’s office had declined multiple JTA interview requests.)
Jewish groups, including the university Hillel, celebrated the resolution. “The President and senior leadership’s new statements today represent tangible and accountable steps forward,” Vogel told JTA in a statement. “We hope this ensures that no Jewish student or any student at UVM experiences discrimination or harassment because of their identity.”
The Hillel building at the University of Vermont in Burlington, October 14, 2022. Hillel found itself at the center of a federal antisemitism complaint against the university. (Andrew Lapin/Jewish Telegraphic Agency)
Also celebrating the ruling was Jewish on Campus, a subsidiary of the World Jewish Congress and one of the groups that brought the initial complaint. “Today’s announcement is a victory for the safety and security of Jewish students,” Julia Jassey, the group’s CEO and a University of Chicago undergraduate, said in a statement.
Avi Zatz, the only University of Vermont student on the initial complaint who has made their identity public, is himself an employee of Jewish on Campus. Citing antisemitism in Vermont, Zatz recently transferred to the University of Florida — in a state that may soon pass legislation that, critics say, could harm Jewish studies on all its public campuses.
“I can’t have hoped for a better resolution,” Zatz, a junior, told JTA from his new school in Gainesville, Florida. While he said he was still glad to have left Vermont, he added, “I finally feel a sense of closure.”
Kornbluh, for her part, said the resolution was “a start,” but criticized the university for not voicing a stronger commitment to Jewish studies or meeting with Jewish faculty.
Reached by phone from Madrid, where he is studying abroad this semester, Siegel said he was “proud, determined, ready for more” following the university’s agreement.
“This resolution was really, in a respectful way, a slap in the face to the university to do better,” he said. “I, for one, am ready to get back on campus and continue my work as hard as I can.”
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Stop Letting Israel’s Enemies Write the Dictionary
The Western Wall and Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
When people chant “From the river to the sea,” they pair it with familiar phrases: “Palestinian” land, “occupied Palestinian territories,” “indigenous Palestinians,” and “settler-colonial Jews.”
Most people argue about the slogans and maps. Far fewer ask a prior question: Who wrote the dictionary that makes those slogans sound plausible?
For decades, Israel’s enemies have understood something many Jews and Israel-supporters have missed: if you control the language, you control the story. Define the key terms and you can turn an ancient indigenous people into supposed foreign invaders and recast repeated wars of annihilation against Israel as “anti-colonial resistance.”
To say that “Palestinian” is a political brand is not to deny that there are real Arabic-speaking people who today live under that name. The question is how this identity was framed and to what end.
During the latter half of the 20th century, “Palestinian” was carefully positioned as the indigenous victim of Zionist “intruders,” even though the Jewish people’s presence in the Land of Israel predates Islam, Arab nationalism, and the modern state system by millennia.
For centuries, under various empires, Jews and Arabs lived in the broader region that Europeans later (and briefly) called “Palestine.”
There was no sovereign “Palestinian” state and no distinct “Palestinian” nationality in the modern sense. Those constructs were shaped in the mid-20th century as part of a strategy to turn repeated Arab attempts to destroy the Jewish State into a moral story of dispossession.
“Palestinian” was not simply discovered; it was branded, a label that let Arab leaders and their allies invert reality: the side that tried, again and again, to wipe out the Jews of Israel would now be cast as the timeless victim of “foreign” Jews who supposedly have no home there at all.
How “occupied Palestinian territories” rewrites history
The phrase “occupied Palestinian territories” flows off the tongue so easily that people rarely ask what it means.
Before 1967, Judea and Samaria were annexed by Jordan, and the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian control. Neither Arab state created a sovereign “Palestinian” entity there.
Before that, the area was “owned” by the British Mandate, and before that, the Ottoman Empire. There has never been an independent “Palestinian” state whose recognized sovereign territory Israel is supposedly occupying.
Yet by repeating “occupied Palestinian territories,” these activists import a package deal: that there once was a “Palestinian” state; that the land in question is inherently and exclusively “Palestinian,” despite its deep Jewish history; and that Israel’s presence there is automatically illegal, regardless of how it came about or what the real legal debates are.
The phrase “occupied Palestinian territories” is not neutral; it is a weapon. It erases Jewish indigeneity to places whose Hebrew names — Judea and Samaria — tell their own story. It suggests that Jews crossing an invisible line on the western bank of the Jordan River are “settlers,” while Arabs are always “natives,” no matter when their families arrived. On campus and in much of the media, this vocabulary is treated as settled fact. But that’s not truth — it’s narrative.
From the seminar room to the street
Weaponized language does not stay confined to UN resolutions or academic journals. It shapes how ordinary people think and feel. When a student hears, year after year, that Israel is a “settler-colonial” project oppressing “indigenous Palestinians,” he or she is being given a moral script: Jews are the guilty party; Arab violence is an understandable reaction to “occupation”; and terrorism against Jews is justified “resistance.”
So what can be done? We cannot force hostile actors to abandon terms that serve their agenda. But we can stop doing their work for them.
First, we must recognize that words like “Palestinian,” “occupation,” and “settler-colonialism” are not neutral. They come packaged with stories about history, power, and morality. If those stories are false or one-sided, we have a responsibility to say so.
Second, we should speak accurately about the land itself. Instead of reflexively saying “West Bank,” we can talk about Judea and Samaria, or at least about disputed territories captured in a defensive war, rather than “occupied Palestinian territories.” Rather than treating “Palestinian” as a synonym for indigeneity, we can speak of Arab residents of Judea and Samaria and Arab Israelis, alongside Jewish communities with deep roots there. Third, we should unapologetically affirm Jewish indigeneity. Jews are not recent “European imports” into the Middle East. Our ancestral language, scriptures, and rituals are woven into the geography of Israel itself. The burden of proof should not rest on Jews to justify their presence in Jerusalem, Hebron, or Shiloh.
Finally, communal leaders, journalists, and educators must become more intentional about the language they use. It is not pedantic to insist on accurate terminology. It is strategic.
If we care about truth — and about the safety and legitimacy of the Jewish people — we cannot afford to keep speaking in our adversaries’ vocabulary. In every generation, Jews have had to push back against efforts to write us out of our own story. Today, that effort happens with hashtags, slogans, and selective “human rights” language, as much as with bullets and rockets.
We do not have to accept a dictionary written by those who want to annihilate us. We can tell the truth plainly: Jews are indigenous to the Land of Israel, and we will not surrender that reality to anyone’s branding campaign — no matter how sophisticated their propaganda might be.
David E. Firester, Ph.D., is the Founder and CEO of TRAC Intelligence, LLC, and the author of Failure to Adapt: How Strategic Blindness Undermines Intelligence, Warfare, and Perception (2025).
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The Jewish ‘Bubble’ — and Why It Still Matters for Our Future
Muhlenberg College students leaving for a Birthright Israel trip.
Photo: Facebook via Hillel: Taglit-Birthright Israel.
One of the most revealing questions you can ask a Jewish college student today is not what they think about Israel or how they view campus politics. It is whether they ever lived inside a real Jewish world before arriving at school.
Dan Senor‘s three touchstones — Jewish day school, Jewish summer camp, and a meaningful trip to Israel — turn out to be less about nostalgia than about survival. As antisemitism continues to erupt across America’s elite campuses, the students who remain confident, anchored, and unafraid are almost always those who experienced these “Jewish bubbles” long before anyone tried to tell them what being Jewish should mean.
I saw this long before I became a professor embedded in the world of higher education.
In my essay “High School Should Be Upsetting,” I wrote about attending Akiba Hebrew Academy — a pluralistic Jewish day school outside of Philadelphia — where nothing was uniform and everything required thinking. Some classmates kept kosher; others grabbed pizza and burgers freely. Some welcomed Shabbat with reverence; others barely thought about it. These were not superficial differences. They forced us into the daily work of argument, interpretation, and meaning-making. We learned that Jewish identity can withstand disagreement — that disagreement is itself a generative part of Jewish life. That formation did not insulate me from the world. It prepared me for it.
It also gave me something deeper. As I argued recently in “The Lessons We Were Taught and the Ones Being Forgotten,” Jewish classrooms once fused the study of prophets with photographs of Auschwitz, maps of Israel, and the trembling voices of survivors.
We learned early that justice without memory collapses into performance, that Jewish survival is not just historical but moral, and that being a Jew means carrying responsibility, not merely sentiment. These lessons were not designed to make us comfortable. They were designed to make us serious. That seriousness — an identity rooted in obligation rather than performance — is exactly what steadies young Jews today when campus climates turn hostile or morally confused.
Senor’s intuition about the “bubble” is more than anecdotal. It is empirically true. Jewish day school graduates consistently exhibit higher levels of Jewish literacy, deeper ritual practice, and stronger communal commitment, according to decades of Avi Chai Foundation research.
Jewish summer camps extend that formation into adolescence; the Foundation for Jewish Camp has repeatedly shown that alumni maintain Jewish friendships at dramatically higher rates and build Jewish homes of their own with greater confidence and intention. These friendships become ballast — the quiet, steadying presence of peers who share memory and meaning.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks captured the heart of this when he wrote, “Moses and Aaron epitomize the two great roles in Jewish continuity — horim and morim — parents and teachers. A parent hands on the Jewish heritage to their children; a teacher does likewise to their disciples.” That investment — of presence, attention, and seriousness — is exactly what day schools, camps, youth groups, and Israel programs offer when they are at their best. They do not simply transmit heritage; they cultivate character. They shape conscience. They give young Jews a framework sturdy enough to meet the world without losing themselves.
Israel trips add something irreplaceable: narrative consciousness. Research on Birthright and other immersive Israel programs shows that participants return with a firmer sense of peoplehood, greater historical awareness, and a deeper understanding that being Jewish is a source of responsibility rather than defensiveness. Students who have walked the streets of Jerusalem or listened to the wind on the Golan Heights are not easily undone by slogans or distortions. They have seen complexity — and beauty — for themselves.
These experiences form a pipeline. Day schools cultivate literacy. Camps cultivate community. Israel cultivates memory. Together, they produce adults who are not bewildered by the demands of identity but strengthened by them. When students have studied texts, lived in Jewish community, and seen Jewish history with their own eyes, they carry an inner architecture that does not collapse when external pressure rises.
That was the theme running through the 2025 Tikvah Jewish Leadership Conference, where Senor spoke to a standing-room crowd. Again and again, speakers returned to the same truth: Jewish continuity will not be secured through slogans or reactive outrage. It will be secured through communities and institutions that form Jews — thickly, relationally, substantively. The future belongs to those who build Jewish life with depth, not performance.
And yet we find ourselves in a moment when the very infrastructure that sustains Jewish identity is thinning. Too many families treat day school as a luxury, camp as optional, Israel trips as politically fraught, and synagogue life as intermittent. Young Jews arrive on campus with warm feelings but thin foundations — a Judaism made of nostalgia rather than knowledge. Then the pressure comes, from peers and professors alike, and the identity that once felt easy suddenly feels fragile.
The greatest threat to young Jews today is not a lack of passion. It is a lack of preparation. Jewish identity cannot be episodic. It cannot survive on aesthetic appreciation or occasional observance. It flourishes when it is lived — daily, joyfully, rigorously, and in the company of others. If we want Jewish students to stand tall under pressure, then we must give them foundations deep enough to bear the weight.
Senor’s questions are diagnostic. They reveal whether a young Jew has ever inhabited a Jewish world strong enough to carry them through a hostile one. They show whether a student possesses not just ancestry but anchoring, not just identity but backbone.
The “bubble” is not a retreat from reality. It is preparation for reality. It is where young Jews learn who they are before others attempt to define them. And at a moment when antisemitism is rising, institutions are wobbling, and confusion is spreading, we should not apologize for strengthening these bubbles. We should expand them — boldly.
If we want confident, resilient, morally serious Jewish adults, we must give them confident, resilient, morally serious Jewish childhoods. Identity does not appear out of thin air. It is formed — deliberately, lovingly, and over time.
The bubble, it turns out, is not the weakness our critics imagine.
It is the most important thing we still know how to build.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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France Claims Palestinian Authority Wants Peace — Here Is Proof It Continues to Support Terrorism
French President Emmanuel Macron welcomes Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, Nov. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Benoit Tessier
Ever since French President Emmanuel Macron recognized a Palestinian state, claiming that Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas “condemns terrorism,” supports “demilitarization,” and shows a “genuine willingness to move forward,” the PA’s official and controlled media outlets continue to constantly glorify terrorists, praise violence, and present “armed struggle,” i.e., terrorism, as the core of Palestinian identity.
Nothing in the PA’s messaging has changed since France supported a Palestinian state. In fact, the months following Macron’s declaration show the exact opposite.
One of the clearest examples came when official PA TV aired a glowing tribute to poet and Fatah member Salah Al-Din Al-Husseini, the writer of one of the Palestinians’ many iconic terror-promotion songs, My Weapon Has Emerged From My Wounds.
The song, which Palestinian Media Watch has documented being broadcast hundreds of times on PA TV and Fatah’s Awdah TV, is a musical celebration of the gun, bloodshed, and “Martyrdom.”
In the new PA TV report, the song was played over archival footage of weapons training while the narrator proudly highlighted its message.
The lyrics openly endorse the ideology of permanent armed struggle and blood sacrifice, followed by Al-Husseini himself reciting another poem praising the “blood of the Martyr” as “music” and a force that “shakes the enemies”:
From my wounds, my weapon has emerged
Oh, our revolution, my weapon has emerged
There is no force in the world that can remove the weapon from my hand
There is no force in the world that can remove the weapon from my hand
My weapon has emerged
My weapon has emerged
He who offers his blood does not care if his blood flows upon the ground
As the weapon of the revolution is in my hand, so my presence will be forced [upon Israel]
My weapon has emerged
My weapon has emerged
Poet Salah Al-Din Al-Husseini: “The blood of the Martyr — O my song — shines above the peaks, the blood of the Martyr is music, the sacrifice shakes the enemies.”
[Official PA TV, The Story of a Homeland, Nov. 23, 2025]
In addition, senior PA and Fatah leaders, such as Jibril Rajoub and Laila Ghannam, have continued holding mass rallies devoted entirely to honoring convicted terrorist murderers.
These rallies are shown on official PA TV, and the terrorist prisoners are called “national icons,” “a source of pride and glory for all our people,” and authors of “an epic of heroism.”
The PA reporters frame these terrorists as “important leaders” under Israeli “aggression,” further presenting the murderers as victims and heroes simultaneously, which is a classic component of PA terror promotion.
Official PA TV newsreader: “In response to the call of the Fatah Movement… residents and family members of prisoners [i.e. terrorists] participated in several districts in rallies to express support and solidarity with the prisoners… and the prisoner leaders inside the occupation’s prisons, foremost among them leader Marwan Barghouti. In El-Bireh a popular procession took place, attended by several members of the Fatah Central Committee and the [Fatah] Revolutionary Council.”
Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub: “[This is a rally of support] for the prisoners and their family members, as these people are national icons deeply rooted in the consciousness of all the Palestinians.”
Visual:
The poster shows terrorist prisoner Marwan Barghouti making a “V” for “victory.”
Text on poster: “Freedom for heroic prisoner Marwan Barghouti”
Official PA TV reporter: “Participants in this support rally raised banners and pictures of leader symbol Barghouti…z’
Ramallah and El-Bireh District Governor Laila Ghannam: “Marwan is the symbol of the Palestinian prisoner… The Palestinian people supports the prisoners who are a source of pride and glory for all our people …”
Official PA TV reporter: “The occupation regime is taking aggressive steps against the prisoners and their important leaders, who are writing an epic of heroism.” [emphasis added]
Visual:
The posters feature terrorist prisoner Walid Daqqa, who murdered one person and terrorist prisoner Jum’a Adam, who murdered five.
Text on poster on left: “The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club: Freedom for prisoner Walid Nimr Daqqa”
Text on poster on right: “Palestinian Prisoners’ Club: Freedom for prisoner Jum’a Ibrahim Adam”
[Official PA TV News, Aug. 20, 2025]
Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida praised a Jenin rally organized by Fatah, the PLO factions, the Prisoners’ Club, and the Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs — all PA-funded or PA-aligned bodies — and celebrated the terrorist prisoners by calling them “knights” who are “awaiting the breaking of their chains”:
At the entrance to the old market of Jenin … the rally was colored with images of the symbols of the prisoners’ movement, foremost among them Fatah Central Committee member Marwan Barghouti, Fatah Secretary in Jenin Ata Abu Rmeileh, journalist Ali Al-Samoudi, and dozens of knights awaiting the breaking of their chains.
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 1, 2025]
Macron and other Western leaders claimed Abbas condemns terrorism.
The ongoing glorification of terrorist murderers as heroes, icons, symbols, “knights,” and “leaders,” combined with PA TV’s public celebration of armed struggle and “Martyrdom,” shows clearly that the PA has no interest in rejecting terror and has implemented no reforms whatsoever regarding its terror promotion. It is the same terror ideology that the PA has promoted for decades.
Ephraim D. Tepler is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). Itamar Marcus is the Founder and Director of PMW, where a version of this article first appeared.