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A Holocaust survivor and her family saw ‘Leopoldstadt.’ The Broadway play told their story.
(New York Jewish Week) — On a Wednesday evening last month, three generations of a Jewish family made their way to their seats at the Longacre Theater to see “Leopoldstadt,” Tom Stoppard’s epic Broadway play about the tragedies that befall an extended Jewish family in the first half of the 20th century in Vienna.
The date of the family gathering was a significant one: Nov. 9, the 84th anniversary of the Nazi pogroms known as Kristallnacht. And in the audience was Fini Konstat, 96, who lived in the once thriving Jewish neighborhood after which the play is named, and witnessed the horrors it portrays first-hand. Alongside her were her daughter and her son-in-law, Renee and James Akers, and her oldest great-grandchild, Lexi Levin, 23.
When Konstat was a child, she lived in a “nice apartment” in Leopoldstadt. But exactly 84 years to the day of their theater date, “I was running with my father, seeing all the Jewish stores with all their windows broken,” she told Levin in a short video her great-granddaughter filmed before the curtain rose.
“It’s such a blessing for me to be here with you,” Levin said to her great-grandmother in response. “Ninety-six years old, survived a pandemic, at a Broadway show in New York City.”
Left: Fini as a child on the balcony of her apartment in Leopoldstadt. Right: Fini with her three children in front of the very same building, pictured in 2015. (Courtesy)
Since the beginning of its Broadway run in mid-September, “Leopoldstadt,” with its depiction of a prosperous Viennese family on the brink of destruction, has moved audiences to tears and inspired deep reflections on the Holocaust. Based on the celebrated playwright’s own family history — of which he was barely aware while growing up in England — it has provided a stark counterpoint to news about rising antisemitism and the celebrities who have been purveying it.
But for Konstat, the play was much more personal. “When I heard the word ‘Leopoldstadt,’ this alone gave me lots of thrills and memories,” Konstat, who is known in her family as Mimi, told the New York Jewish Week in accented English. She recalled how Levin, who recently moved to the city, invited her to fly to New York to see one of Broadway’s hottest tickets.
“Leopoldstadt,” she repeated, her voice breaking. “The second district. That’s where we lived.”
At the end of Stoppard’s five-act play, audiences learn that most of the Jewish characters had perished under the Nazis — of the four generations in the show, just three cousins survive to carry on the family’s legacy.
For Konstat too, she and her parents were among the very few in their extended family to survive the Holocaust. “Almost all of them went to Auschwitz or other camps,” Konstat said. “My mother was a twin and only the twins remained alive. [My mother’s] five other siblings and my grandmother perished.”
L-R: Renee Akers, James Akers, Lexi Levin and Fini Konstat at the Longacre Theater to see Tom Stoppard’s ‘Leopoldstadt on Broadway,’ Nov. 9, 2022. (Courtesy)
In a Zoom conversation held over Thanksgiving weekend, Konstat, surrounded by two of her daughters, two of her granddaughters and three of her great-granddaughters, shared what the play meant to her — and how her family has restored what she lost.
In the months after Kristallnacht in 1938, Konstat and her parents hid in a neighbor’s apartment; Konstat recalls hiding under the duvet when German soldiers showed up. Eventually the family fled to Turkey, and then to India, before settling down in Mexico City. There, the teenage Fini met her husband David, also a survivor who escaped Poland. The two of them began to write the rest of their story — starting with the birth of the first of their three children in 1948.
Unlike many Holocaust survivors, Fini and David Konstat were open about their experiences during the war, instilling a sense of pride and duty to remember in their children — something that eventually extended to their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
“They were proud to speak about how they survived this,” said the Konstats’ middle child, Renee Konstat Akers. “Their life was an odyssey. They had the courage to do things that you would never think were possible. We grew up grateful knowing how our family survived in that incredible way.”
Each child moved to different places as they grew up and got married. Manuel, the oldest, stayed in Mexico. Renee married an American and moved to the Midwest, and Denise, the youngest, to Houston. Each became deeply involved in their Jewish communities, sending their children (Konstat’s grandchildren) to Jewish day schools, celebrating Jewish holidays and participating in synagogue life.
“The word ‘miracle’ really does not feel like an understatement in this scenario,” said Sherry Levin, one of Konstat’s grandchildren. “When we think about what it took for my grandmother and grandfather to survive and how they were able to intersect in Mexico, and such an amazing multi-generational family has come to fruition, it feels miraculous.”
Pictured here on their 40th anniversary, Fini and her husband David met in Mexico City after both had fled Europe. They were married 54 years before David died in 2001. (Courtesy)
Reviews of the show have ranged from rhapsodic to resistant, with some critics suggesting the play is simplistic and obvious in its story-telling or that it is less a well-crafted play than a well-meaning lesson on the Holocaust.
But just as the Merz family clashes and argues about everything from antisemitism to intermarriage to socialism in “Leopoldstadt,” each generation of the Konstat family that saw “Leopoldstadt” that night came away with something different — a reaction influenced by their age, their Jewish identity, their nationality and their relationship with their family.
For Konstat, the arc of “Leopoldstadt” was so familiar that it hardly stirred her. “It was just very happy watching it and enjoying it and enjoying my children with me, “ she told the New York Jewish Week. “I didn’t think about anybody else.”
Akers, too, felt an intense familiarity with the story, and, perhaps toughened by her own family history, didn’t experience an intense emotional reaction. Her own parents’ lives gave Akers a sense of purpose in her life — for example, in the 1990s, she was passionate about helping resettle Jews fleeing the former Soviet Union. With her own children, she instilled in them a strong sense of Jewish purpose in their work, their education and their family.
“I was a sandwich in between seeing my mother and my granddaughter,” she said of her “Leopoldstadt” experience. “I was emotional thinking of my mom who went through it, but I was more emotional about seeing my granddaughter be so moved. It really hit her at her core.”
Indeed, it was the youngest member of the family present that night who was most shaken by the play.
“It really felt like a gift to my family and to me, specifically, to be able to see what Mimi’s life looked like before the war,” Lexi Levin said, surmising that, as a fourth-generation survivor, she is among the first in her family to be able to start processing the loss on a grander scale.
“For the first time in my life, I really felt the magnitude of her loss,” she added. “I’ve known her story and I’ve been inspired by her story to be involved with my own Jewish causes, but I have never been able to access and truly empathize with her grief and what it meant that she lost the entire family she had before this one that she created.”
Turning to her great-grandmother, as if trying to make her understand the exact precision of the show, Levin explained, “It’s a play about generations and the family was large and then it was small.”
“You made it large again,” she said, referring to the generations of family that had assembled — in the Broadway theater and again over Thanksgiving weekend. “Look at this room.”
Pictured on her 90th birthday in 2017, Fini Konstat now has three children, ten grandchildren and twenty great-grandchildren. (Courtesy)
There was a coda for the family after the curtain went down. The day after the show, the family wanted to see the 1907 “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I,” one of Gustav Klimt’s most famous paintings, which currently hangs at the Neue Galerie on the Upper East Side. A version of the portrait’s true story — how a painting of a socialite from a prominent Viennese Jewish family was looted by the Nazis and the family’s efforts to get it back — features in the plot of “Leopoldstadt.”
The gallery, however, was closed on the only day the family could visit. After a call to the management at the gallery, which showcases the German and Austrian art collections of Jewish philanthropist Ronald S. Lauder, the gallery’s director arranged a private tour.
“It felt like we were in a puzzle and everything was finally coming together,” said Akers. “It was an emotional, emotional time.”
When the week was over and the emotions were spent, Konstat and the Akers returned home with a reignited passion for their family story. But there was yet another twist: In addition to the whirlwind trip Levin planned for her grandparents and for Mimi, she had been undergoing the laborious process of applying for Austrian citizenship. Six members in Konstat’s large family have undertaken the process over the last two years.
“Part of the motivation was knowing Mimi’s story, and knowing that she survived because her mother had citizenship in Turkey,” Levin said. “That story was just inspirational to me, knowing that dual citizenship was what saved our family.” She convinced her brother and mother to apply for Austrian citizenship as well.
The day after her grandmother and great-grandmother left New York, Levin called them with news from her small apartment in Manhattan: An Austrian passport had arrived in the mail. The curtain was rising on another act.
Konstat was surprised at how interested her family was in getting Austrian citizenship. “I feel very good,” she said. “I’m very happy.”
“Does it make you emotional?” Levin asked her during the Zoom call with the New York Jewish Week.
“It does — of course it does. I used to love Austria,” she said. “I was sad to leave. I was disappointed. We never thought of coming back. I was happy to be able to escape. Thank God we made it out of hell.”
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Columbia University Reaches Confidential Settlement in Antisemitism Lawsuit
Students walk on campus at Columbia University during the first day of the fall semester in New York City, US, Sept. 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ryan Murphy
Columbia University has settled a lawsuit in which Jewish students accused the institution of ignoring campus antisemitism even as incidents of anti-Jewish bigotry escalated in severity and anti-Israel students acted with impunity.
Announced last week by the StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice, the Jewish advocacy group which filed the complaint in partnership with Kasowitz LLP, the terms of the resolution remain strictly confidential, with the parties involved declining to disclose whether the university paid an exorbitant cash amount to avoid a trial to prevent further public embarrassment. What has been shared with the public disclosed Columbia’s agreeing to appoint an official who specializes in matters relevant to federal civil rights laws, offer educational programs on antisemitism, create new scholarships related to Israel, and “consider” adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.
According to the definition, antisemitism “is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere. Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.
The definition is widely accepted by Jewish groups and lawmakers across the political spectrum, and it is used by hundreds of governing institutions, including the US State Department, European Union, and United Nations.
“This settlement represents an important step toward ensuring that Jewish and Israeli students at Columbia can learn in an environment free from discrimination and hostility,” Oleg Ivanov, executive director of the Center for Legal Justice, said in a press release. “We thank our attorneys for their dedication, and we are hopeful that the commitments made in this agreement will lead to meaningful and systemic change for Jewish students on campus.”
Marc Kasowitz of Kasowitz LLP commended the university’s “commitment and approach to implementing effective long-term changes and meaningful actions to combat antisemitism” while calling on “other colleges and universities to do the right thing” and “follow Columbia’s lead.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the plaintiffs in the case accused Columbia University of violating their contract, to which it is bound upon receiving payment for their tuition, and contravening Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. They sought monetary damages as well as injunctive relief.
The complaint says that students chanted “F— the Jews,” “Death to Jews, “Jews will not defeat us,” and “From water to water, Palestine will be Arab” on campus grounds after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, allegedly violating the school’s code of conduct and never facing consequences.
Faculty engaged in similar behavior. On Oct. 8, 2023, professor Joseph Massad published in Electronic Intifada an essay cheering Hamas’s 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.”
Three hundred faculty signed a letter proclaiming “unwavering solidarity” with Massad, and in the following days, Students for Justice in Palestine defended Hamas’s actions as “rooted in international law.” In response, former Columbia University president Minouche Shafik, opting not to address their rhetoric directly, issued a statement mentioning “violence that is affecting so many people” but not, the complaint noted, explicitly condemning Hamas, terrorism, and antisemitism. Nine days later, Shafik rejected an invitation to participate in a viewing of footage of the Oct. 7 attacks captured by CCTV cameras.
The complaint goes on to allege that after bullying Jewish students and rubbing their noses in the carnage Hamas wrought on their people, pro-Hamas students were still unsatisfied and resorted to violence. 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.
Following the incidents, pleas for help allegedly went unanswered and administrators told Jewish students they could not guarantee their safety while Students for Justice in Palestine held its demonstrations. The school’s powerlessness to prevent anti-Jewish violence was cited as the reason why Students Supporting Israel (SSI), a recognized school club, was denied permission to hold an event on self-defense. Events with “buzzwords” such as “Israel” and “Palestine” were forbidden, administrators allegedly said, but SJP continued to host events while no one explained the inconsistency.
Columbia University, which recently paid $200 million to terminate a federal investigation of antisemitism at the institution, settled another campus antisemitism lawsuit in June that was brought by a Jewish student at the School of Social Work who accused faculty of unrelenting antisemitic bullying and harassment.
According to court documents, Mackenzie “Macky” Forrest was abused by the faculty, one of whom callously denied her accommodations for sabbath observance and then held out the possibility of her attending class virtually during pro-Hamas protests which made the campus unsafe for Jewish students. Her Jewishness and requests for arrangements which would allow her to complete her assignments created what the Lawfare Project described as a “pretext” for targeting Forrest and conspiring to expel her from the program, a plan that involved fabricating stories with the aim of smearing her as insubordinate.
Spurious accusations were allegedly made by one professor, Andre Ivanoff, who, according to the suit, was the first to tell Forrest that her sabbath observance was a “problem.” Ivanoff implied that she had failed to meet standards of “behavioral performance” while administrators spread rumors that she had declined to take on key assignments, according to court documents. This snowballed into a threat: Forrest was allegedly told that she could either take an “F” in the field placement or drop out, the only action that would prevent sullying her transcript with her failing grade.
The terms of that settlement are also buried under a confidentiality agreement.
“We brought this lawsuit to hold Columbia accountable for what we alleged was a deeply troubling failure to protect a Jewish student from antisemitic discrimination and retaliation,” Lawfare Project litigation director Ziporah Reich, whose organization represented Forrest, said after the case was resolved. “When Jewish students report harassment and seek accommodations, their concerns must be taken seriously. The civil rights of Jewish students are simply not negotiable.”
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Iran Has One-Third of Its Missile Launchers Left, IDF Assesses
Smoke rises following an explosion, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 7, 2026. Picture taken with a mobile phone. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
After less than two weeks of fighting, Iran has lost roughly two‑thirds of its ballistic missile launchers, according to a new Israeli military assessment, as Israeli and US strikes intensify across the country and target Tehran’s strategic missile capabilities.
On Wednesday, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir said a new battlefield assessment revealed that a sweeping campaign against Iran’s missile infrastructure has destroyed roughly two-thirds of its launchers, leaving only about one-third still operational, Hebrew media reported.
Working with the US military, Israeli officials said sustained airstrikes, coordinated by Israeli military intelligence, crippled Iran’s missile capacity — destroying about one-third of its launchers and damaging another third enough to render them unusable, sharply limiting Tehran’s ability to conduct large-scale operations.
Out of an estimated 500 mobile and stationary ballistic missile launchers previously in Iran’s arsenal, the Islamist regime is now believed to have about 160 operational launchers remaining.
According to IDF data, Iran still possesses roughly 1,500 ballistic missiles of various ranges.
However, Israel estimates that more than 80 percent of Iran’s launching capabilities aimed at Israeli territory have already been destroyed, with officials expecting the figure could rise to as high as 95 percent within days, dramatically reducing the scale of future attacks.
In an interview with Israeli news outlet N12 on Wednesday, US President Donald Trump said the war with Iran could end “soon,” though he declined to provide a specific timetable.
“There’s almost nothing left [to attack Iran]. A little bit here and there … Any time I want it to end, it will end,” Trump said.
During a press conference, Trump also said the United States had inflicted unprecedented damage on Iran’s military and strategic infrastructure.
“We have hit them harder than virtually any country in history has been hit, and we’re not finished yet,” he said.
“We’re leaving certain things that if we take them out, or we could take them out by this afternoon, in fact, within an hour, they literally would never be able to build that country back again,” he continued.
While Trump has publicly suggested that the war has achieved most of its objectives and could end soon, senior Israeli and American officials say there is still no indication of when the conflict might end.
This week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the campaign would continue “without any time limit” until Israel achieves all of its war objectives.
“The Iranian leadership that survived is a bunch of cowards who prey on women, children, and the elderly in the streets, specializing in massacres and killing civilians — and they are already threatening to murder and slaughter anyone who protests,” the Israeli official said.
“We will continue to act relentlessly, striking day after day, target after target, to crush the regime and dismantle its strategic goals in Tehran and across Iran,” Katz added. “We will continue these efforts to give the Iranian people the opportunity to rise up and overthrow the regime. Ultimately, that outcome depends on them.”
As the war continues to escalate, US officials said Tuesday that American intelligence detected Iranian preparations to lay naval mines in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical and narrow waterway through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil passes. Sources told Reuters on Wednesday that the Iranians have deployed about a dozen mines so far, although the exact number is unclear.
Trump told N12 that recent US strikes — during which 16 Iranian mine-laying boats were destroyed — disrupted Tehran’s plans to threaten the shipping route.
“The war is going great. We are well ahead of schedule. We have caused more damage than we thought possible, even within the original six-week period,” Trump said.
“They’re paying for 47 years of death and destruction that they caused,” he continued, referring to the time that Iran’s Islamist regime has been in power. “This is retribution. They’re not going to get away with it.”
Iran on Wednesday said the world should be ready for oil at $200 a barrel as its forces hit merchant ships. Oil prices skyrocketed earlier in the week to nearly $120 a barrel before settling back to around $90 due to fears about supply disruption.
Almost two weeks into the war, the Israeli Air Force has intensified strikes across Iran and expanded operations farther south into areas where US forces are also active, signaling a broadening campaign against Iranian targets.
In the latest boost for US forces, Romanian President Nicusor Dan said on Wednesday is country will host American refueling planes, surveillance, and satellite communications gear for Washington’s operations against Tehran. However, he added, the equipment is “defensive” and carries no munitions.
Despite the military gains, Israeli officials acknowledge there is still no certainty that the campaign will lead to the overthrow of Iran’s ruling regime.
While Israeli officials have declared their desire to overthrow the Iranian regime, Trump has sent mixed signals about whether he seeks regime change or would be content with destroying Iran’s military capabilities and apparatus for internal repression.
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New ADL Campus Antisemitism Report Card Shows Some Improvement on Addressing Hostile Climate
Protesters gather at the gates of Columbia University, in support of student protesters who barricaded themselves in Hamilton Hall, in New York City, US, April 30, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/David Dee Delgado
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has released a new annual “Campus Antisemitism Report Card,” in which its researchers assigned grades to major US colleges and universities based on how the institutions responded to the issue in accordance with civil rights laws and their own professed values.
Released on Monday, the report rewarded some elite colleges previously accused of ignoring antisemitism with letter grades considerably above what they earned in past academic years. Most notably, no Ivy League institution merited an “F” this year, while Columbia University, Princeton University, and Yale University all improved on last year’s close to failing “D” grade by earning a “C.”
A “C” grade, a mark again given to Harvard University and Cornell University in this year’s report, indicates lingering areas of inertia in performance. Pomona College, Northwestern University, Swarthmore College, and the University of Chicago were assigned a “C” too, indicating that elite higher education across the country remains a problematic space for Jewish youth.
Meanwhile, four colleges, including Evergreen State College, Scripps College, California State University, Los Angeles, and The New School in New York City received an “F,” the only institutions in the cohort to fail the ADL’s assessment.
“The data confirms what we’ve said from the start: maintaining a safe campus climate is a matter of will,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “Universities that have taken a comprehensive approach — reviewing policies, clarifying expectations, and strengthening enforcement — are seeing meaningful progress. Some of the strongest gains are coming from institutions that have engaged deeply with our recommendations and translated them into lasting institutional practice, rather than symbolic commitments.”
The 2025-2026 academic year has seen a continuation of the barrage of antisemitic incidents that led Jewish community advocates to describe the issue as a “problem,” with anti-Zionist activists continuing to disrupt events, harass Jewish students, and stage demonstrations related to how Israel conducts its foreign policy and manages its conflict with the Palestinians.
In October, for example, masked pro-Hamas activists breached an event held at Pomona College in California to commemorate the victims of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in which Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists raped, murdered, and abducted women, children, and men during their rampage across southern Israel.
Footage of the act circulated on social media showed the group attempting to raid the room while screaming expletives and pro-Hamas dogma. They ultimately failed due to the prompt response of the Claremont Colleges Jewish chaplain and other attendees who formed a barrier in front of the door to repel them, a defense they mounted on their own as campus security personnel did nothing to stop the disturbance, according to video of the incident and witnesses who spoke to The Claremont Independent.
Following the incident, an anonymous group claimed credit for storming the event in a disturbing open letter.
“Satan dared not look us in the eyes,” said the note, which the group released on social media, while attacking event guests and Oct. 7 survivor Yoni Viloga. Appearing to threaten murder, the group added, “We let that coward know he and his fascists settler ideology are not welcome here nor anywhere. zionism is a death cult that must be dealt with accordingly [sic].”
In January, a sophomore and right-wing social media influencer at the University of Miami verbally attacked a Jewish student group, leading the school to defend free speech while saying that “lines can be crossed” in response.
“Christianity, which says love everyone, meanwhile your Bible says eating someone who is a non-Jew is like eating with an animal. That’s what the Talmud says,” Kaylee Mahony yelled at members of Students Supporting Israel (SSI) who had a table at a campus fair. She added, “They think that if you are not a Jew you are an animal. That’s the Talmud. That’s the Talmud.”
In December, an unidentified perpetrator twice vandalized the Chabad Jewish Center at Michigan State University (MSU) during the Hanukkah holiday. According to local reports, the vandal hurled rocks at and defaced the building’s entrance, shattering its glazing. Video footage of the suspect’s second trip to the Chabad center shows the vandal graffitiing the swastika, the emblem of Nazi Germany, next to which he spray-painted a message that said, “He’s back.”
That was not the first antisemitic incident to target a Jewish cultural center in the state of Michigan this academic year. In October, a man trespassed the grounds of the Jewish Resource Center, which serves University of Michigan students, and kicked its door while howling antisemitic statements.
The campus antisemitism crisis has changed the college experience for American Jewish students, affecting how they live, socialize, and perceive themselves as Jews, according to survey results released in February by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in partnership with Hillel International.
A striking 42 percent of Jewish students reported experiencing antisemitism during their time on campus, and of that group, 55 percent said they felt that being Jewish at a campus event threatened their safety. The survey also found that 34 percent of Jewish students avoid being detected as Jews, hiding their Jewish identity due to fear of antisemitism. Meanwhile, 38 percent of Jewish students said they decline to utter pro-Israel viewpoints on campus, including in class, for fear of being targeted by anti-Zionists. The rate of self-censorship is significantly higher for Jewish students who have already been subjected to antisemitism, registering at 68 percent.
Higher education institutions have an added incentive to address antisemitism, as the reelection of US President Donald Trump brought to Washington, DC a chief executive who went on to fulfill his promise to tax the endowments of those that do not.
Shortly after taking office, Trump issued an executive order which directed the federal government to employ “all appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise … hold to account perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.” Additionally, the order initiated a full review of the explosion of campus antisemitism on US colleges across the country after Oct. 7, 2023, a convulsive moment in American history to which the Biden administration struggled to respond during the final year and a half of its tenure.
“This failure is unacceptable,” Trump said. “It shall be the policy of the United States to combat antisemitism vigorously, using all appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.