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You Should Know About These Anti-Israel Developments on College Campuses and at K-12 Schools
Harvard University campus on May 24, 2025, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Photo: Zhu Ziyu/VCG via Reuters Connect
Despite notable holdouts, in particular Harvard University, university administrations continue to quietly settle Federal lawsuits regarding their treatment of Jewish students and faculty, and to limit the ability of pro-Hamas groups to harass and intimidate others.
University action against extremist faculty members also expanded in December:
- The University of California at Berkeley suspended a physics lecturer who had made anti-Israel comments during a class, which was completely unrelated to the subject matter;
- A tenured faculty member at San Jose State University was fired on the basis of her participation in a 2024 pro-Hamas encampment and involvement in a physical altercation between faculty and students;
- A lecturer at the University of Sydney, Rose Nakad, was arrested and indicted after an October incident where she called Jewish students and staff “parasites” and “depraved,” spat at them, and stated a “Zionist is the lowest form of rubbish.” The university terminated Nakad, stating, “Hate speech, antisemitism, and harassment have no place at our university and when our codes of conduct are breached we do not hesitate to take disciplinary action.” Nakad’s firing came only after the Bondi Beach massacre;
- At the University of Arkansas, Shirin Saeidi was removed as head of the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies after it was discovered she had used official letterhead to appeal for the release of an Iranian regime figure jailed in Sweden for mass murder in Iran. Saeidi had also repeatedly praised the Iranian regime and condemned Israel. A subsequent report indicated that she was also reportedly under investigation for plagiarism. The Middle East Studies Association defended Saeidi and complained about her dismissal.
In an unusual response to Columbia University’s crackdown on pro-Hamas protestors, five United Nations “special rapporteurs” warned about the university’s “human rights violations.” Their letter to the administration complained about “alleged arbitrary arrest and physical assault” and “surveillance, detention and attempted removal of noncitizen students and scholars.”
The letter also complained about the university’s adoption of the IHRA working definition of antisemitism and stated that while they “strongly denounce anti-Semitism,” they are “disturbed by the vague and overly broad use of the term ‘antisemitism’ to label, denounce and repress peaceful protests and other legitimate forms of expression of solidarity with Palestinian victims, calls for a ceasefire in Gaza or the legitimate criticisms of the Government of Israel’s policies and practices, including its conduct of the conflict in Gaza and allegations of genocide.”
Despite various lawsuits and settlements, anti-Israel bias continues to be deeply rooted within university hiring and appointment practices. Harvard recently hired a graduate who had been convicted of assaulting an Israeli student, according to National Review, during a 2023 protest, but had not been expelled. A Federal judge also dismissed the lawsuit by the Israeli student against the university. Another example is Northwestern’s appointment of a faculty member who supported the pro-Hamas encampment to the presidential search committee.
University complaints regarding the Trump administration’s continued, if slowed, crackdown on research funding also continued through the media. In one case, allegations were made that the Department of Justice had illegally pressured legal staff to find evidence of antisemitism at UCLA, where an encampment had disrupted campus and restricted the movement of Jewish students. Universities also complained that the Federal government’s expanded travel ban on 39 countries and the Palestinian Authority would constrict the flow of foreign students.
Overall it appears that universities are prepared to wait out the Trump administration by negotiating financial settlements when demanded in order to restore research funding and instituting minimal procedural changes to maintain campus stability. Changes in ideology, which can only be implemented in the longer term by creating balance in faculty through hiring and retention practices, such as those recommended in the fourth and final report on antisemitism at Columbia, remain difficult to conceive and are not being considered.
Policies regarding Jewish students appear designed to contain and minimize mistreatment without addressing fundamental structures, especially student and faculty demographics.
Faculty and Students
Reports continue to show that Israeli academics are being boycotted by European and American colleagues. While European Union funding remains available, opportunities for collaboration and publication continue to be withdrawn.
Ritualized abuse of Israeli and Jewish faculty has also continued. One example was the demand made of an Israeli mental health researcher that she read a prepared condemnation of Israel and “genocide” as a condition of her participation in an international conference in South Africa.
Individual boycotts also continue to expand. In one case, the University of East Anglia is investigating a faculty member who refused to facilitate the visit of an Israeli-Arab academic to campus. The justification given was that “Palestinian colleagues asked staff not to work with Israeli institutions.”
In another case, California State University, Los Angeles faculty member and BLM activist Melina Abdullah is being investigated after video emerged of her coaching students in her “Race, Activism and Emotions” class to oppose legislation that would mandate antisemitism instruction in California schools. She was also recorded making a litany of horrific anti-Israel comments.
Faculty use of university imprimatur to support the Palestinian cause was also displayed at New York University, at a conference entitled, “The Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement and Transcultural Solidarity,” which celebrated Hamas and other terrorists imprisoned by Israel. Participants, including at least one associated with the Palestinian Youth Movement, had defended the Hamas massacres of October 7..
A recent interview with Columbia professor Mahmoud Mamdani, father of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, typified individual faculty members. Mamdani alleged that pro-Palestinian students were “terrified” and “terrorized” by the university’s crackdown on pro-Hamas protests, and that his son’s election was an indication that American attitudes towards Israel were changing and were a key electoral issue.
Despite the apparent downswing in large-scale pro-Hamas protests and takeovers, Jewish students continue to report low level harassment and intimidation. Jewish students at schools with large Jewish populations, such as Rutgers and the University of Pennsylvania, have reported increases in antisemitic incidents.
K-12
Reports also continue to show that teachers unions are directly supporting anti-American and anti-Zionist groups with contributions and participation in interlocking boards. The Massachusetts branch of the American Federation of Teachers, for example, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to National Students for Justice in Palestine, Palestinian Youth Movement, and Within Our Lifetime though Resist Inc., which is the fiscal sponsor of the Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance.
Similarly, the presidents of the Chicago Teachers Union, the Illinois Federation of Teachers, the Massachusetts Teachers Association, and the United Teachers of Los Angeles are all members of the Action Center on Race and the Economy’s (ACRE) activist arm,
New reports have noted the presence of CAIR members on school boards as well as a national strategy by the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) to identify opportunities to place candidates on school boards. The goal is to center “Arab history” from the kindergarten level onward and to teach”Palestine,” with the goal of “a better informed electorate that’s more likely to support and advocate for human rights of Arabs in and outside of the U.S.”
The strategy specifically recommends inserting “Palestine” into the English curriculum where it will avoid scrutiny.
A similarly subversive strategy is evident in “antisemitism training” conducted by PARCEO, whose curriculum, “Antisemitism from a framework of Collective Liberation,” is deliberately designed to detach Israel from Judaism and antisemitism by showing how “antisemitism is misused to serve an anti-liberatory political agenda” and denying Jews the right to sovereignty.
Overall teachers and unions continue direct organizing in schools, such as through student walkouts. And politics like that should have no place in the classroom.
The author is a contributor to SPME, where a different version of this article appeared.
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UK threatens sanctions after Israel opens bids for E1 settler homes
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – The United Kingdom threatened to sanction Israelis involved in West Bank settlement expansion after the Jewish state’s Lands Authority opened bids for 1,234 homes in the largely underdeveloped E1 section of the West Bank settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim.
Construction in E1 “would cut across the heart of Palestine and risks separating the West Bank from East Jerusalem, which would endanger the viability of a two-state solution,” the British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said in a special statement he posted on X on Thursday.
Targeted sanctions, Miliband wrote, would be part of a series of measures his government would take. His office also summoned Israel’s charge d’Affaires Thursday to demand a closure of the bidding process, which first opened on Tuesday, and a withdrawal of the construction project altogether.
“Britain will not stand back and accept the destruction of the two-state solution,” he wrote. Miliband has held his position for a month and is part of the new leadership Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham appointed when he took office in July.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar attacked Miliband on X, stating that Britain’s “decision to damage the relationship between our countries is deeply unfortunate.”
He said that the U.K. government’s “systematic policy of blaming only Israel while ignoring Palestinian extremism has already contributed to a massive wave of antisemitic hatred and attacks against the British Jewish community.”
The Jewish people have the same right to “live throughout the Land of Israel” just as the British people have a right to live anywhere in the U.K., Sa’ar wrote.
Plans to expand the built-up area of Ma’aleh Adumim settlement by constructing some 3,400 housing units on a largely underdeveloped hilltop within the city’s boundaries have been in place since 1994 when Yitzhak Rabin was prime minister.
Israel mostly froze those plans under pressure from the international community, including the U.S., with many countries warning that building homes in E1 would harm their diplomatic ties with Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began to advance the project in earnest in 2012 to protest the United Nations General Assembly decision to grant the Palestinians the status of a non-member state and has since pushed the project forward in spurts, particularly during election seasons.
The publication of the bidding process for the homes was first announced on Tuesday and is set to close on Oct. 19, one week shy of the Israeli elections on Oct. 27. Opening the bids is a move that plays well with Netanyahu’s right-wing voter base, which opposes Palestinian statehood and believes that settlements like Ma’aleh Adumim and the E1 area should be annexed into sovereign Israel.
But the move reverberated globally, with the U.K. signing onto a joint condemnation by France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, in which they warned that settlement building in E1 distanced peace and undermined the country’s international standing.
They also reminded businesses who might bid for E1 construction that they could face legal or reputational consequences, given that such companies could be in breach of international law.
Palestinian Authority Vice President Hussein Al-Sheikh said he welcomed the condemnation, explaining on X that such a position “reflects the importance of the international role in confronting settlement activity and safeguarding the two-state solution.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post UK threatens sanctions after Israel opens bids for E1 settler homes appeared first on The Forward.
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Argentina removes federal judge over antisemitic remarks in historic first
(JTA) — An Argentine federal judge was removed from office Tuesday for a series of antisemitic posts on his social media accounts that constituted misconduct incompatible with his role, an impeachment panel ruled.
Alfredo Eugenio López, who headed Federal Court No. 4 in the coastal city of Mar del Plata, was removed by Argentina’s Jury of Impeachment, a special panel composed of judges, lawmakers and lawyers.
It is the first time in Argentina’s history that a judge has been removed over antisemitic remarks.
In López’s social media posts, the judge referred to the Jewish people as “a brood of vipers,” Israel as a “fictitious state” and Argentinian Jews as “foreigners.” He has also used such terms as “Zionist” and “gay” as insults.
According to the panel, the judge committed acts of “discrimination and the denial of equal rights against the Argentine Jewish community. For the purposes of these proceedings, it is particularly significant that, by acting in this manner, he shattered public confidence in his continued fitness to administer justice impartially.”The case reached the panel through Argentina’s Council of the Magistracy, based in Buenos Aires, the constitutional body responsible for the selection and discipline of federal judges.
The first complaint against López was filed in February 2025 by the Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas, which is the umbrella organization representing Argentina’s Jewish community. One month later, the Argentine Forum Against Antisemitism also filed a complaint. In July 2025, attorney Yamil Santoro from Apolo Foundation added another one.
In his defense, López argued that his messages were “ subjective and decontextualized interpretations of exchanges on social media, which in no way affect the administration of justice or his impartiality” as a judge. He added that his remarks were unrelated to any pending case and that he had never been recused or removed from any judicial case.
Neither Lopez nor his attorney were immediately available for further comment.
“He was removed because he simply would not stop engaging in hate speech,” jury member Alberto Maques said during a live interview Tuesday on the A24 news channel. “It is absolutely disgraceful for a federal judge to engage in this kind of conduct.”
Maques said there were 15 social media posts that he acknowledged, but more than 50 posts in which he said “outrageous things that are not worth repeating because they truly constituted hate speech.”
“This is not merely an issue of hate speech against the Jewish community. This is someone who lacks common sense,” he added, interviewed by A24 news channel.
Prosecutors in the impeachment proceedings argued that the messages were not isolated political comments but reflected a pattern of hostility toward Jews, Zionism, and the State of Israel.
“No position of authority can shield hatred. This is not a matter of punishing an opinion. It is about sanctioning repeated conduct involving antisemitism, hostility and dehumanization, conduct incompatible with the impartiality, dignity and public trust required of the judiciary,” DAIA said Tuesday in a statement.
“This case sets a precedent: for the first time in more than a century, DAIA initiated proceedings of this nature against a judge. No office is above democracy.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Argentina removes federal judge over antisemitic remarks in historic first appeared first on The Forward.
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California progressive Wahab defeats AIPAC-backed Hernandez in close race
(JTA) — California progressive Aisha Wahab defeated AIPAC-backed moderate Melissa Hernandez in a congressional runoff this week, capping off a contest that had become unexpectedly tight after the pro-Israel lobby entered the fray.
The Associated Press called the race between the Democrats — who were vying to replace a disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell — a full two days after polls closed, when Wahab secured 53.1% of votes to Hernandez’s 46.9%, with 95% of ballots tallied. The gap between them grew by four percentage points from Tuesday evening, when Wahab had held a narrow 51% lead to Hernandez’s 49%.
“We stayed focused on the people, and I will fight for this district that raised me,” Wahab said in a Thursday statement, noting her journey “from foster care to Congress” in her East Bay community.
Although Wahab ended up victorious, the narrow initial margin on Tuesday shocked California’s 14th District, given that she had secured a double-digit lead in preliminary races two months ago.
But in the past few weeks, an unforeseen variable appeared to influence the trajectories of the two campaigns: a massive spending push from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee aimed at turning the tides for Hernandez.
Since the beginning of August alone, AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project, and other affiliated groups spent more than $2.5 million on both boosting Hernandez and denigrating Wahab with negative ads and mailers, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
“This was not a landslide for Wahab by any means,” local Democratic strategist Noah Finneburgh, who is not affiliated with either candidate, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“They narrowed the gap for sure,” Finneburgh added, referring to AIPAC. “They spent millions of dollars attacking Wahab very aggressively.”
These attacks, he explained, did not involve Israel and instead focused on divisive issues for the Bay Area, such as public safety and protecting kids.
“Negative advertising with a persuasive message can be very effective,” Finneburgh said.
In her Thursday night statement, Wahab declared that her “district cannot be bought,” describing the race as “one of the ugliest, most expensive elections we’ve ever seen.”
Prior to this influx of cash and related ads, neither AIPAC nor Israel had played a significant role in this short-lived race — which began in April following Swalwell’s resignation over allegations of sexual assault.
When the district held a special primary to seek Swalwell’s replacement on June 16, Wahab and Hernandez finished as the top-two candidates and moved on to this week’s special general runoff election.
California primaries are “nonpartisan” or “top-two” races, in which the two highest ranking candidates move on to the general election, irrespective of their parties. The top-two in this case were both Democrats, like Swalwell, in a district that the Cook Political Report deems solidly blue.
Even though Wahab will now finish the remainder of Swalwell’s term, she will have to compete with Hernandez again in the November general election for a full term that begins on January 3, 2027.
In a June 16 special primary that preceded this week’s runoff, there was still a massive gap between the two candidates, with Wahab accruing 42.8% of the votes, compared to Hernandez’s 16.8%. A separate primary for the November race, which occurred two weeks earlier, placed Wahab at 38.3% and Hernandez at 17.2%.
Wahab, who will be the first Afghan American in Congress, has focused on affordability, civil rights, education and climate change. Her campaign calls for an end to wars and “prolonged occupations” but only specifically calls out U.S. military activity in “Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, and elsewhere.”
Though Wahab has been critical of Israel and its operations in Gaza, she has not been as vocal about the issue as many other progressive colleagues nationwide. She responded “yes” when asked if Israel was committing genocide in a primary debate, but she didn’t include Israel or Gaza in her campaign priorities.
During a recent appearance on far-right influencer Hasan Piker’s livestream, Wahab acknowledged that “it’s not a zero-sum game in the Middle East,” adding that “we can care for all people.” She also referenced a resolution she introduced last year in the California legislature, pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza but also condemning Hamas and demanding the release of the hostages.
“We talk about both Palestinians and the Israeli victims there,” Wahab told Piker. “We talk about holding the perpetrators accountable from both sides.”
Asked if she was in favor of “ending all U.S. aid to Israel,” she responded “yes,” while stressing that “humanitarian aid is important to me, too.”
Wahab has earned the backing of multiple labor unions, the California Democratic Party and Our Revolution, the group formed by Sen. Bernie Sanders to advance the progressive movement. The liberal pro-Israel group J Street also recently invested $108,000 in her campaign, according to the FEC. American Priorities, a pro-Palestinian PAC, also spent at least $200,000 on supporting her.
Hernandez has received endorsements from several police and fire unions, as well as Democratic Jewish Reps. Lois Frankel of Florida and Brad Schneider of Illinois.
Come November, Hernandez will gain one additional asset. Due to statewide redistricting, the 14th District will gain about 26,000 new voters from Dublin, where Hernandez previously served as mayor, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
But Finneburgh said he believes that Hernandez has only a minimal chance of winning that race, especially because Wahab will be heading into that election as an incumbent.
He also suggested that if “she plays her card right,” Wahab could even take some endorsements away from Hernandez.
“There’s going to be people who are going to probably move over from the Hernandez camp and back her,” Finneburgh added. “It’s going to be hard to unseat her.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post California progressive Wahab defeats AIPAC-backed Hernandez in close race appeared first on The Forward.
