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US Lawmakers Interrogate Columbia University President Over Response to Surging Campus Antisemitism
Columbia University administrators and faculty, led by President Minouche Shafik, testified before the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce on April 17, 2024. Photo: Jack Gruber/Reuters Connect
Columbia University president Minouche Shafik testified for over three hours before the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce on Wednesday about her administration’s alleged failure to address antisemitism, which has prompted a congressional investigation and prompted widespread backlash against one of America’s most prestigious schools.
“Trying to reconcile the free speech rights of those who wanted to protest and the rights of Jewish students to be in an environment free of discrimination and harassment has been the central challenge on our campus and numerous others across the country,” said Shafik, who admitted she prepped many hours for Wednesday’s hearing. “Regrettably, the events of [Hamas’ invasion of Israel on] Oct. 7 brought to the fore an undercurrent of antisemitism that is a major challenge, and like many other universities Columbia has seen a rise in antisemitic incidents.”
Shafik went on to defend her record, insisting that she and other high-level administrators promptly acknowledged the severity of antisemitism fueled by anti-Israel animus. Columbia’s president argued she took concrete steps to ensure that the rights and safety of Jewish students were protected without qualification, including opening contact with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the New York City Police Department (NYPD). Shafik added that she attended a vigil which commemorated the lives of Israelis who died on Oct. 7 and has spent “most of my time since becoming president on these issues, holding over 200 meetings with group of students, faculty, alumni, donors, parents, some of whom are here.”
Wednesday’s hearing, titled “Crisis at Columbia,” invoked for many observers the infamous testimony of Claudine Gay and Elizabeth Magill, who both appeared before the same congressional committee in December to discuss campus antisemitism and refused to say that calling for the genocide of Jews would constitute a violation of school rules against bullying and harassment. Days later, Magill resigned as the president of the University of Pennsylvania; Gay followed suit at Harvard University about a month after the hearing.
Unlike Gay and Magill, Shafik did not provide the same equivocating answers to direct questions about the treatment of Jewish students in her care. However, she would not say that chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — a popular slogan widely interpreted as a call for the destruction of Israel — was antisemitic, opting instead to say it was “hurtful.” Shafik did say that any student or professor who advocates murdering Jews is in violation of Columbia’s community standards.
Shafik received many questions about the school’s continued employment of professor Joseph Massad, who has a long history of uttering allegedly antisemitic statements in his classroom and said after Oct. 7 that Hamas’ violence was “awesome.” Lawmakers demanded to know whether Massad has been reprimanded by the university, questions to which Shafik did not provide clear answers. She claimed that he has been “spoken to” by the head of his department and removed from a leadership position, but US Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) responded that this change has not yet been reflected on the university’s website.
Another professor, Mohammed Abdou, who was hired after cheering Hamas’ atrocities publicly, has been terminated, Shafik said, adding that he “will never” be invited back.
“Don’t you think it’s a problem when the hiring process of Columbia is hiring someone who makes those statements, hired after he makes those statements?” Stefanik asked.
“I agree with you that I think we need to look at how to toughen up those requirements,” Shafik said. “We do have a requirement, but I think we need to look at how we can make them more effective.”
Stefanik then brought up another controversial Columbia professor.
“Let me ask you about Professor Catherine Frank from the Columbia Law School who said that all Israeli students who have served in the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] are dangerous and shouldn’t be on campus,” Stefanik continued. “What disciplinary actions have been taken against that professor?”
“She has been spoken to by a very senior person in the administration,” Shafik answered, adding that Frank has said she misspoke and that “she will be finding a way to clarify her position.”
Stefanik then denounced what she described as a double standard on college campuses: that antisemitic statements uttered by students and professors about Jews are rarely, if ever, followed by disciplinary measures dictated by the school’s strict anti-discrimination policies. Stefanik argued that antisemitism “is tolerated” at Columbia University and that the school’s response to it has never signaled otherwise. Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT) added that there are no circumstances under which similar treatment of minority groups, such as Black students, would be allowed.
During her testimony, Shafik claimed that over a dozen students have been suspended for antisemitic conduct and holding an unauthorized event, titled “Resistance 101,” to which a member of a terrorist organization was invited. However, committee chair Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), responded that since Oct. 7, only Jewish students have been suspended for allegedly spraying an “odorous” fragrance near anti-Zionist protesters, an incident mentioned by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) to seemingly undermine the verbal and physical abuse to which Jewish students at Columbia have been subjected.
“Only three students were given interim suspensions for antisemitic conduct. All three were lifted or dropped to probation, including a student who repeatedly harassed students screaming, ‘F—k the Jews.’ Of the ten suspensions that came in response to the Resistance 101, five were lifted because Columbia determined they were not involved,” Foxx said during her closing remarks. “The only two Columbia students who remain suspended for incidents related to Oct. 7 that took place before we called Dr. Shafik to testify are the two Jewish students suspended for spraying the odorous substance Representative Omar referred to. Dr. Shafik’s testimony was misleading there, too. Documents Columbia produced to the committee show it was a non-toxic, gag spray. While that was an inappropriate action, for months Jewish students have been vilified with false accusations of a ‘chemical attack,’ and Columbia failed to correct the record.”
She added, “Radical antisemitic faculty remain a huge problem throughout Columbia … while some changes have begun on campus, there is still a significant amount of work to be done.”
Several Jewish civil rights groups have alleged that Columbia allowed antisemitism to explode on campus and endanger the welfare of Jewish students and faculty after Oct. 7.
“F—k the Jews,” “Death to Jews,” “Jews will not defeat us,” and “From water to water, Palestine will be Arab” are among the chants that anti-Zionist students have yelled on campus grounds after Oct. 7, violating the school’s code of conduct and never facing consequences, according to a lawsuit filed in February.
Faculty engaged in similar behavior. On Oct. 8, Massad published in Electronic Intifada an essay cheering Hamas’ atrocities, which included slaughtering children and raping women, as “awesome” and describing men who paraglided into a music festival to kill young people as “the air force of the Palestinian resistance.”
After bullying Jewish students and rubbing their noses in the carnage Hamas wrought on their people, pro-Hamas students were still unsatisfied and resulted to violence, the complaint filed in February alleged. They beat up five Jewish students in Columbia’s Butler Library. Another attacked a Jewish students with a stick, lacerating his head and breaking his finger, after being asked to return missing persons posters she had stolen.
Columbia University remains under investigation by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post US Lawmakers Interrogate Columbia University President Over Response to Surging Campus Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli Military Expert: Doha Strike Was Backed by US and Qatar Coup, Will Bring Hostage Deal Closer
A damaged building, following an Israeli attack on Hamas leaders, according to an Israeli official, in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
Israel’s unprecedented strike on Hamas leaders in Doha this week was not a rogue act of military aggression, but rather the outcome of quiet coordination between Qatar and the US that could bring a hostage deal closer, Israeli intelligence expert Eyal Pinko said on Wednesday.
The strike, which officials have said was planned months ago, came a day after 10 Israelis were killed by Hamas in Gaza and Jerusalem. Four were soldiers who died in an attack on an Israeli tank in northern Gaza. The separate shooting attack in Jerusalem, in which six Israelis were killed and several more wounded, was the “straw that broke the camel’s back,” Pinko, a national security expert who served in Israeli intelligence for more than three decades, said in a press briefing.
Pinko contended that while Qatar publicly condemned the attacks, it also enabled them. “I am sure they were involved and the attack was coordinated with the [Qataris],” Pinko later told The Algemeiner.
The most recent round of negotiations to secure a Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal were nothing more than a “deception” by the US and Israel designed to gather Hamas leaders in one place “in order to set the timing to eliminate them,” he said.
Pinko said the strike should also be seen in light of US President Donald Trump’s impatience with the stalled hostage talks, arguing it showed Trump was on board with assassinations of Hamas leaders despite public declarations that he was “very unhappy” with the attack. He also pointed to Trump’s comments from last month, in which the US president predicted the Gaza conflict would reach a “conclusive ending” within two or three weeks.
Qatar, which has long hosted Hamas’s exiled leadership, benefits strategically from replacing the terrorist group’s leaders loyal to Iran with figures it can trust, Pinko maintained. Doha holds billions of dollars belonging to Hamas officials and has no interest in letting Ankara or Tehran displace it as the group’s patron. The timing of the attack is also significant, Pinko said, coming in the wake of Israel’s strikes against Iran’s nuclear program over the summer. “Iran is in a very bad situation. Qatar can easily overcome Iran,” he said.
Pinko further argued that the strike may serve to bring forward the release of the Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza since Hamas itself was no longer a coherent negotiating partner. The terrorist group operating in Gaza had become fragmented, “divided into five families that are fighting each other” and sometimes giving the impression that “they hate each other more than they hate Israel,” Pinko said. Recent talks proved “there was no longer a decisionmaker in Hamas,” and this disarray had allowed Hamas leaders to drag out the process with unrealistic demands. Removing those figures, he argued, would leave room for Qatar to install leaders who could cut a deal. “This will make the negotiation process much faster,” he said.
Pinko’s assessment stands in stark contrast to the fears of some of the families of the remaining 48 hostages held in Gaza, who said in a statement they had “grave fear” the Doha strike could sabotage the chances of bringing their loved ones home.
He placed the operation in a wider context, linking it to the revival of the Abraham Accords and US efforts to build a trade corridor from India through the Gulf to Israel and Europe as a counterweight to China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road initiative, ending with Gaza as a key trade hub. “Trump is very serious in making the northern part of the Gaza Strip as [having] US autonomy. That will be the end of the American belt and road initiative to compete with the Chinese,” he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday called on Qatar, which “gives safe haven [and] harbors terrorists,” to expel them or bring them to justice, adding that if they don’t, “we will.”
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, for his part said his country would retaliate over the strike, and accused Netanyahu of “wasting” Qatar’s time in negotiations and “leading the Middle East to chaos.”
Pinko called out Doha for its “duplicity” in pretending to be a peacemaker on the one hand, while “fueling Hamas and hatred” in the US and Europe, on the other.
“They are against Israel in their DNA. They don’t want Israel to exist,” he said. “So Gaza and Hamas are a very important asset for them.”
Some critics have denounced the Doha strike as a violation of international law, but international law experts note that Article 51 of the UN Charter recognizes a state’s inherent right to self-defense and that this right is not confined by geography if attacks are directed from outside its borders. The so-called “unwilling or unable” doctrine holds that if a host country does not act against militants on its soil, the victim state may use proportionate force.
The US relied on this doctrine when it killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in a 2011 operation that was widely hailed by Western governments and the UN, whose then secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said at the time that he was “very much relieved by news that justice has been done” and called it “a watershed moment in our common global fight against terrorism.”
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Germany Presses Main Mosque Network to Distance Itself From Erdogan Ally Over Antisemitism
Ali Erbas, president of Diyanet, speaks at a press conference following an August 2025 gathering in Istanbul, where 150 Islamic scholars called for armed resistance and a boycott against Israel. Photo: Screenshot
Amid a rising wave of anti-Jewish hate crimes, the German government is pressing the country’s main mosque association over its close ties to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, urging it to publicly distance itself from his antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric.
According to local reports, German authorities have told the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB) — the country’s largest mosque network — to formally break with Erdogan’s hateful statements or risk losing government support and cooperation.
“We expect the federal government’s cooperation partners to clearly distance themselves from organizations and individuals who spread antisemitic messages or promote Islamist agendas,” a spokesperson for Germany’s Federal Ministry of Interior said in a statement to German media.
For years, the German government has supported DITIB in training imams, as well as helping to foster community programs and religious initiatives.
In 2023, then-Interior Minister Nancy Faeser signed an agreement with the Turkish government’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) and DITIB for a new imam training program.
By sending imams from Turkey and paying their salaries, the Diyanet oversees DITIB and its hundreds of communities across Germany, shaping the ideological direction of more than 900 mosques and influencing the training of their imams.
Under a new program, however, the Diyanet no longer sends imams directly from Turkey. Instead, Turkish students are trained in Germany in cooperation with the German Islam Conference (IKD).
Since March 1 of this year, the Interior Ministry has designated €465,000 in support for the program, according to the German newspaper Die Welt.
With this new agreement, imams live permanently in German communities and have no formal ties to the Turkish government. Still, experts doubt that this alone would curb the Diyanet’s political influence.
In the past, DITIB has faced multiple controversies, with some members making antisemitic remarks and spreading hateful messages.
“The continuation of measures adopted for this purpose, such as the training initiative, will largely depend on DITIB’s conduct and the success of the process,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of Interior said in a statement.
The German government’s latest warning came after a conference in Istanbul last month, where 150 Islamic scholars called for armed resistance against Israel, a boycott against the country, and “global jihad.”
Among those attending was Ali Erbas, president of Diyanet, with whom the German government signed the new agreement in 2023.
Erbas has repeatedly made public antisemitic statements, defended the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct.7, 2023, and called for the mobilization of “all forms of jihad.”
“The Zionist regime is committing outright genocide in Gaza. We believe it is haram, or forbidden, to remain silent in the face of oppression. Therefore, everyone can take action. The boycott of Zionist occupiers’ goods must continue,” Erbas reportedly said during the conference.
“We firmly affirm that the Palestinian people have all legitimate forms of resistance against the Zionist occupation, including armed resistance. We also consider it necessary to mobilize the Ummah [Islamic community] for all forms of jihad in the way of Allah,” he continued.
“Bir avuç azgın topluluk, tüm dünyayı felakete sürüklüyor”https://t.co/ieip8gNvkt pic.twitter.com/jZn5Tgc1Ah
— Diyanet (@diyanetbasin) August 29, 2025
The German government strongly condemned Erbas’s comments, questioning DITIB’s relationship with a public figure whose statements and antisemitic ideology contradict their cooperation agreement.
“These events underscore, once again, the problematic structural and personal links between DITIB and the Turkish religious authority,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of Interior said in a statement.
“Cooperation with DITIB requires a clear commitment to the values of the Basic Law, to international understanding, to Israel’s right to exist, and to a firm opposition to both Islamism and antisemitism,” the statement read.
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EU Targets Israel With Sanctions and Partial Trade Suspension, Von der Leyen Calls for Ceasefire Amid Gaza War
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivers the State of the European Union address to the European Parliament, in Strasbourg, France, Sept. 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
The executive body of the European Union will propose sanctions against certain Israeli ministers and partially suspend the EU’s association agreement with Israel, in one of its latest efforts to pressure Jerusalem over the war in Gaza.
On Wednesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled new measures targeting the 25-year-old pact governing the EU’s political and economic ties with Israel, in one of the latest attempts to curb the Jewish state’s defensive campaign against Hamas.
“What is happening in Gaza has shaken the conscience of the world,” von der Leyen said in a State of the Union speech to the European Parliament in France.
“People killed while begging for food. Mothers holding lifeless babies,” she continued. “Man-made famine can never be a weapon of war. For the sake of the children, for the sake of humanity. This must stop.”
This latest move is part of an increasingly hostile campaign by some European countries against the Jewish state, building on previous efforts to undermine Israel internationally.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar denounced von der Leyen’s comments as “regrettable,” adding that some of her remarks were “tainted by echoing the false propaganda of Hamas and its partners.”
“Israel, the world’s only Jewish state and the only democracy in the Middle East, is fighting a war of existence against extremist enemies working to eliminate it. The international community must back Israel in this struggle,” the top Israeli diplomat wrote in a post on X.
“Once again, Europe conveys the wrong message that strengthens Hamas and the radical axis in the Middle East,” he continued. “Anyone who seeks an end to the war knows very well how to end it: the release of the hostages, the disarmament of Hamas, a new future for Gaza.”
Saar added, “Hurting Israel will not bring this about; on the contrary, it entrenches Hamas and Israel’s enemies in their refusal.”
The President of the European Commission’s comments this morning are regrettable. Some of them are also tainted by echoing the false propaganda of Hamas and its partners.
Once again, Europe conveys the wrong message that strengthens Hamas and the radical axis in the Middle East.…— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) September 10, 2025
Von der Leyen’s announcement came just a day after Jerusalem carried out strikes against Hamas’s political leadership in Qatar, which has supported the Palestinian terrorist group for years.
In her speech, von der Leyen denounced Israel’s actions, accusing the country of causing starvation in the war-torn enclave of Gaza and undermining ceasefire negotiations.
She also condemned the expansion of settlements in parts of the West Bank and denounced comments from some government ministers that she said incite violence.
“All of this points to a clear attempt to undermine the two-state solution, to undermine the vision of a viable Palestinian state. And we must not let this happen,” von der Leyen said.
Israel has vehemently denied any accusations of causing starvation in Gaza, noting that it has provided and facilitated significant humanitarian aid into the enclave throughout much of the war.
Israeli officials have also said much of the aid that flows into Gaza is stolen by Hamas, which uses it for terrorist operations and sells the rest at high prices to Gazan civilians. According to UN data, the vast majority of humanitarian aid entering Gaza is intercepted before reaching its intended civilian recipients.
Jerusalem has also argued it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, despite Hamas’s widely acknowledged military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
Under the new proposed measures, the EU would partially suspend its trade pact with Israel, removing preferential treatment for Israeli goods that make up nearly a third of the country’s total international trade.
Von der Leyen also announced that the EU will suspend its bilateral support for Israel, while maintaining engagement with Israeli civil society and Yad Vashem, the country’s main Holocaust memorial center.
In addition, the European Commission “will propose sanctions on the extremist ministers and on violent settlers” and plans to set up a “Palestine donor group” next month, with a dedicated mechanism to support Gaza’s reconstruction following the war.
At the end of her speech, von der Leyen called for the release of the Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas, the “unrestrained” entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, and “an immediate ceasefire.”
“There can never be any place for Hamas, neither now nor in future because they are terrorists who want to destroy Israel,” the European Commission head said.
“They are also inflicting terror on their own people, keeping their future hostage.”