Illustrative: Pro-Hamas protesters setting up an encampment at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois, United States, on May 5, 2024. Photo: Kyle Mazza via Reuters Connect

A Chicago-area man has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor battery charge he incurred last year for beating up Jewish pro-Israel students participating in a demonstration at DePaul University.

On Nov. 6, 2024, Adam Erkan, 20, approached Max Long and Michael Kaminsky in a ski mask while shouting antisemitic epithets and statements. He then attacked both students, fracturing Kaminsky’s wrist and inflicting a brain injury on Long, whom he pummeled into an unconscious state.

Law enforcement identified Erkan, who absconded to another location in a car, after his father came forward to confirm that it was his visage which surveillance cameras captured near the scene of the crime. According to multiple reports, the assailant avoided severer criminal penalties by agreeing to plead guilty to lesser offenses than the felony hate crime counts with which he was originally charged.

His accomplice, described as a man in his age group, remains at large.

“One attacker has now admitted guilt for brutally assaulting two Jewish students at DePaul University. That is a step toward justice, but it is nowhere near enough,” The Lawfare Project, a Jewish civil rights advocacy group which represented the Jewish students throughout the criminal proceedings, said in a statement responding to the plea deal. “The second attacker remains at large, and Max and Michael continue to experience ongoing threats. We demand — and fully expect — his swift arrest and prosecution to ensure justice for these students and for the Jewish community harmed by this antisemitic hate crime.”

Antisemitic incidents on US college campuses have exploded nationwide since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.

Just last month, members of Toronto Metropolitan University’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter spilled blood and caused the hospitalization of at least one Jewish student after forcibly breaching a venue in which the advocacy group Students Supporting Israel had convened for an event featuring veterans of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

The former soldiers agreed to meet Students Supporting Israel (SSI) to discuss their experiences at a “private space” on campus which had to be reserved because the university denied the group a room reservation and, therefore, security personnel that would have been afforded to it. However, someone leaked the event location, leading to one of the most violent incidents of campus antisemitism in recent memory.

By the time the attack ended, three people had been rushed to a local medical facility for treatment of injuries caused by a protester’s shattering the glazing of the venue’s door with a drill bit, a witness, student Ethan Elharrar, told The Algemeiner during an interview.

“One of the individuals had a weapon he used, a drill bit. He used it to break and shatter the door,” Elharrar said. “Two individuals were transported to the hospital because of this. One was really badly cut all his arms and legs, and he had to get stitches. Another is afraid to publicly disclose her injuries because she doesn’t want anything to happen to her.”

The previous month, masked pro-Hamas activists nearly raided an event held on the campus of Pomona College, based in Claremont, California, to commemorate the victims of the Oct. 7. massacre.

Footage of the act which circulated on social media showed the group attempting to force its way into 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.

Pomona College, working with its sister institutions in the Claremont consortium of liberal arts colleges in California (5C), later identified and disciplined some of the perpetrators and banned them from its campus.

In Ann Arbor, Michigan, law enforcement personnel were searching for a man who trespassed the grounds of the Jewish Resource Center and kicked its door while howling antisemitic statements.

“F—k Israel, f—k the Jewish people,” the man — whom multiple reports describe as white, “college-age,” and possibly named “Jake” or “Jay” — screamed before running away. He did not damage the property, and he may have been accompanied by as many as two other people, one of whom shouted “no!” when he ran up to the building.

Around the same time, at Ohio State University, an unknown person or group tacked neo-Nazi posters across the campus which warned, “We are everywhere.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

Protesters gather to walk across the Sydney Harbor Bridge during the Palestine Action Group’s March for Humanity in Sydney, Australia, Aug. 3, 2025. Photo: AAP/Dean Lewins via REUTERS

Antisemitic incidents in Australia remained at “unprecedentedly high levels” over the past year, as the country’s Jewish community faced a relentless wave of hostility and targeted attacks, according to a new report released on Tuesday

The report, published by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), said the country recorded 1,654 antisemitic incidents during the 12-month period from Oct. 1, 2024, to Sept. 30, 2025.

Even though this figure marked a 20-percent drop from the previous year, it still represented about five times the annual average recorded in the decade before the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Across the country, Jews and Israelis have reported a surge of anti-Jewish hatred and antisemitic incidents — from defaced murals and vandalized businesses to physical assaults and death threats. 

Community leaders have warned that the wave of attacks has shown no signs of abating, fueled by rising tensions over the war in Gaza and what they described as the Australian government’s mounting hostility toward Israel.

Over the past year, the local Jewish community has suffered firebombings of synagogues, schools, and homes; threats from two nurses who allegedly planned to kill Jewish patients; and the discovery of a trailer packed with explosives, reportedly intended for a mass-casualty attack on a Sydney synagogue.

This fraught environment has only worsened following Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in September, further straining relations with the country’s Jewish community.

In one of the most recent controversies, the Stonnington City Council in Melbourne’s southeast delayed approval for a public menorah on Thursday, just days before Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, prompting outrage from Jewish leaders and local residents.

During a heated council debate, members voted to defer a motion to install a large public menorah — meaning it will not be set up in time for the Jewish holiday, which begins on Dec. 14 — sparking accusations of antisemitism and claims that the delay was a “ploy to shut it down.”

Following ECAJ’s newly released report, members of the J7 Large Communities’ Task Force Against Antisemitism decried the surge in antisemitic incidents, saying it reflects a global pattern that threatens Jewish communities worldwide. 

The task force, which brings together major Jewish organizations from Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, coordinates responses to rising anti‑Jewish hate.

For the first time ever, Jewish leaders from the world’s seven largest diaspora communities traveled to Sydney on Wednesday for the J7 Task Force Summit in Australia, coming together to address the rising tide of antisemitism in the country.

“What is happening in Australia is not an exception; it should be a wake-up call to communities worldwide,” Marina Rosenberg, senior vice president for International Affairs at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), said in a statement. 

“Across North America, Europe and Latin America, Jewish communities are reporting the same pattern of unprecedented harassment, threats and incitement,” she continued. “When synagogues can be firebombed in Melbourne and Jews threatened and attacked in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Buenos Aires and Toronto, this is a threat not only to Jewish safety but to democratic stability itself.”

Among all J7 countries, Australia saw the sharpest rise in antisemitic incidents between 2021 and 2024, with the most serious attacks — including arson targeting synagogues, preschools, and other Jewish institutions — reaching record levels.

ECAJ’s report also warned of a dangerous convergence of ideological extremes, noting an “increasing ideological alignment” between neo-Nazis, the anti-Israel left, and Islamists in their “shared hatred of Jews and Zionists.”

According to the report, these groups are “more active, more emboldened” than ever in seeking to obstruct any initiative that challenges their antisemitism.

“We are now at a stage where anti-Jewish racism has left the fringes of society, where it is normalized and allowed to fester and spread, gaining ground at universities, in arts and culture spaces, in the health sector, in the workplace and elsewhere,” ECAJ President Daniel Aghion said in a statement.