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U.S. Education Department to investigate antisemitism complaint filed in Virginia school district
(JTA) – The U.S. Education Department says it will investigate allegations of antisemitism within a Northern Virginia public school district brought by the Zionist Organization of America, in a case the ZOA has pursued for more than a year.
The federal department’s Office of Civil Rights wrote in a Nov. 3 letter to ZOA that it would investigate whether Fairfax County Public Schools, in the Washington, D.C. suburbs, failed to act on alleged incidents of harassment including students making “Heil Hitler” salutes and Holocaust jokes. The department said the opening of the investigation does not mean that ZOA’s claim has merit, only that they determined that it fell within their purview.
The department also declined to investigate a key allegation made by ZOA: that a school board member’s tweets about Israel in 2021 fell under the rubric of antisemitic discrimination. The department said this was because too much time had passed since the tweets, but the decision was a notable loss for pro-Israel legal groups, who have successfully used Department of Education civil rights complaints as a way to challenge what they describe as anti-Israel speech in schools and universities.
ZOA leaders still celebrated the opening of the investigation. The group’s President Morton Klein said in a statement: “We are pleased that OCR is investigating FCPS for failing to respond effectively to longstanding problems of antisemitism in the district.”
The conservative group’s past activities in Fairfax hinted that it had planned to make the board member’s Israel tweets a central component of its legal strategy. ZOA had been beating the drum about a Muslim Fairfax board member’s tweet about Israel for more than a year, sending letters to the district’s superintendent and school board accusing board member Abrar Omeish of antisemitism. Omeish had tweeted in May 2021 in support of Palestinians during Israel’s deadly conflict with Hamas, wishing her followers a happy Eid while adding: “Hurts my heart to celebrate while Israel kills Palestinians & desecrates the Holy Land right now. Apartheid & colonization were wrong yesterday and will be today, here and there.”
After criticism, Omeish later followed it up with a message pledging “robust and empathetic engagement with Jewish leaders,” as some speakers at a Fairfax school board meeting called for her resignation. At that same meeting, the board read out a statement acknowledging both antisemitism and Islamophobia, and standing “against any acts of violence and hatred committed against any person or group within our community.”
A month later, Fairfax County board members were targeted with antisemitic flyers that appeared to originate from a white supremacist group, calling the board “Jew-inspired, communist, queer-loving sex fiends.” The flyers, which would not have fallen under the Department of Education’s purview, were not mentioned in the civil rights complaint, and did not appear to have any connection to the Israel controversy.
The details of the other parts of the complaint were nearly identical to a Washington Post op-ed by Anna Stolley Persky, a Jewish parent of three Fairfax students. Persky, a former staffer at the Pozez Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia, wrote that “it is ridiculously hard to raise a Jewish child in Fairfax County Public Schools,” detailing alleged incidents of student Nazi salutes and the district’s scheduling of tests and other events on the High Holidays.
Persky’s Washington Post piece was published in March 2021, pre-dating Israel’s outbreak of violence and Omeish’s tweets.
The Department of Education also rejected a third allegation in the complaint, saying it would not investigate the district’s alleged scheduling of events on Jewish holidays because such an incident fell outside the department’s civil rights purview. The local Jewish community had allied with Omeish in an effort to add Jewish, Muslim and Hindu holidays to the school year, and Jewish officials said at the time of her tweet that her words were especially painful because of the alliance. The local Jewish Community Relations Council rescinded an honor it planned to confer on Omeish.
The Fairfax case echoes a previous one in which an Arizona school district was found to have failed to respond to multiple instances of alleged antisemitic harassment of a student. The district reached an agreement with the office of civil rights to update its harassment reporting policies, require discrimination and investigation training for its staff, post a district-wide anti-harassment statement, and conduct further audits of its harassment handling procedures.
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French Jewish Girl Assaulted Near Paris, Adolescents Arrested for Antisemitic Attack
Sign reading “+1000% of Antisemitic Acts: These Are Not Just Numbers” during a march against antisemitism, in Lyon, France, June 25, 2024. Photo: Romain Costaseca / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
Three teenage boys assaulted a 14-year-old Jewish girl and threatened to kill her in the Parisian suburb of Sarcelles on Friday, police said, resulting in a trip to the hospital for the victim and arrests for two of the 12-year-old suspects.
The incident began when three younger boys approached an older teenage girl to ask why she failed to observe Ramadan, according to local media reports. After she disclosed her Jewish identity, the three reportedly began calling her a “dirty Jew” and one threatened, “I’ll kill you on the Koran.” They then allegedly beat her, especially on her face.
The assault required a trip to the emergency room, where hospital staff described her as in a state of shock.
Paris law enforcement arrested two suspects that evening and seek to identify the third.
Another suburb of Paris also saw an antisemitic incident on Sunday when vandals hit a Kosher restaurant in Levallois-Perret, spray-painting “dirty Jew” in red across the building’s windows.
A kosher restaurant in Levallois-Perret, near Paris vandalized with antisemitic graffiti reading “Dirty Jew.” Photo: Screenshot
Antisemitic vandals hit Kokoriko, another Kosher restaurant in Paris, just two weeks earlier. Investigators say the criminals sprayed acid on tables, walls, and the floor, rendering silverware and plates unusable.
That attack came just days after the French Interior Ministry last month released its annual report on anti-religious acts, revealing a troubling rise in antisemitic incidents documented in a joint dataset compiled with the Jewish Community Protection Service.
Antisemitism in France remained at alarmingly high levels last year, with 1,320 incidents recorded nationwide, as Jews and Israelis faced several targeted attacks, according to the data.
Although the total number of antisemitic outrages in 2025 fell by 16 percent compared to 2024’s second highest ever total of 1,570 cases, the newly released report warned that antisemitism remained “historically high,” with more than 3.5 attacks occurring every day.
Even though Jews make up less than 1 percent of France’s population, they accounted for 53 percent of all religiously motivated crimes last year.
Between 2022 and 2025, antisemitic attacks across France quadrupled.
The most recent figure of total antisemitic incidents represents a 21 percent decline from 2023’s record high of 1,676 incidents, but a 203 percent increase from the 436 antisemitic acts recorded in 2022, before the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
The surge in antisemitism appears to have carried into this year. Last month, a 13-year-old boy on his way to synagogue in Paris was brutally beaten by a knife-wielding assailant.
“How do you find the words to explain to a 13-year-old child that he is being attacked because he is Jewish? Who will be able to restore his confidence in the future tomorrow?” Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF), said of the incident.
One-third of last year’s antisemitic incidents in France explicitly referencing Palestine or the war in Gaza, indicting that anti-Israel rhetoric is fueling antisemitism.
The prominence of anti-Zionist forms of antisemitism has prompted French leaders to propose legislation combating this type of hate, as announced by French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu last month at CRIF’s annual gathering,
“To define oneself as anti-Zionist is to question Israel’s right to exist. It’s a call for the destruction of an entire people under the guise of ideology,” Lecornu said, announcing that the government would introduce a bill to criminalize anti-Zionism. “There is a difference between legitimate criticism of the Israeli government and rejecting the very existence of the Jewish state. This ‘blurring’ must stop.”
Lecornu declared that “hatred of Jews is hatred of the Republic and a stain on France.”
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Belgian Synagogue Damaged in Blast Considered Antisemitic Attack
Police secure the site of a synagogue damaged by an explosion early on Monday, in Liege, Belgium, March 9, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
An explosion hit a synagogue in the Belgian city of Liege early on Monday in what authorities said was an antisemitic attack that caused damage but no injuries.
The explosion, which happened around 4 am (0300 GMT), blew out the windows of the synagogue, as well as those of a building on the opposite side of the road, public broadcaster RTBF said.
The cause was not clear, but prosecutors said the case had been passed to federal authorities, which normally investigate incidents linked to terrorism or organized crime.
Belgian Interior Minister Bernard Quintin called the explosion “a despicable antisemitic act that directly targeted the Jewish community of Belgium.”
He said security measures around similar sites will continue to be reinforced.
Eitan Bergman, Vice-President of the Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organizations in Belgium (CCOJB), said the targeting of the synagogue was deeply shocking.
“Liege is home to a very small but vibrant Jewish community where I personally grew up. Today, the feelings among our community members are a mixture of sadness, worry and profound shock,” he told Reuters.
Police have cordoned off the largely residential street on the bank of the river Meuse opposite Liege city center.
Federal prosecutors declined to give further details of the incident.
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Much of Iran’s Near-Bomb-Grade Uranium Likely to Be in Isfahan, IAEA’s Grossi Says
A satellite image shows a closer view of the destroyed tunnel entrances at Isfahan missile complex after reported airstrikes, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Isfahan, Isfahan Province, Iran, March 8, 2026. Photo: Vantor/Handout via REUTERS
Almost half of Iran’s uranium enriched to up to 60% purity, a short step from weapons-grade, was stored in a tunnel complex at Isfahan and is probably still there, UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said on Monday.
The tunnel complex is the only target that appears not to have been badly damaged in attacks last June by Israel and the US on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Diplomats have long said Isfahan has been used to store 60% uranium, which the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in a report to member states last month, without saying how much was there.
IRAN STILL HAS HIGHLY ENRICHED URANIUM STOCKS
The IAEA estimates that when Israel launched its first attacks in June, Iran had 440.9 kg of 60% uranium. If enriched further, that would provide the explosive needed for 10 nuclear weapons, according to an IAEA yardstick.
“What we believe is that Isfahan had until our last inspection a bit more than 200 kg, maybe a little bit more than that, of 60% uranium,” IAEA chief Rafael Grossi told reporters in Paris.
He said the stock was “mainly” at Isfahan, and some held elsewhere may have been destroyed.
“The widespread assumption is that the material is still there. So, we haven’t seen – and not only us, I think in general all those observing the facility through satellite imagery and other means to see what’s going on there – movement indicating that the material could have been transferred,” Grossi said.
Iran has not informed the IAEA of the status or whereabouts of its highly enriched uranium since the June attacks, nor has it let IAEA inspectors return to its bombed facilities.
Iran’s nuclear program is one reason Israel and the US have given for their current attacks on Iran, arguing that it was getting too close to being able to produce a bomb, despite Trump saying in June that US strikes had obliterated the program. The IAEA has said it has no credible indication of a coordinated nuclear weapons program.
All three Iranian uranium-enrichment plants known to have been operating – two at Natanz and one at Fordow – were destroyed or badly damaged in June.
“There is an amount [of 60% uranium] in Natanz also, which we believe is still there,” Grossi said.