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Canadian University Hires Convicted Terrorist Who Bombed Paris Synagogue to Teach ‘Social Justice’
Carleton University in Ontario, Canada is being castigated for hiring convicted terrorist Hassan Diab — who carried out a 1980 bombing of a synagogue in Paris, which killed four Jewish worshippers and injured dozens of others — as a professor.
Diab, 70, is teaching at least one course in Carleton University’s sociology department this fall, according to B’nai Brith Canada, a Jewish civil rights group. He will lecture on “social justice in action.” So far, no high level administrative official has attempted to explain what merited his being hired.
A former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who is currently the subject of an international arrest warrant issued by French law enforcement, Diab was found guilty in 2023 in absentia of detonating a bomb at Rue Copernic synagogue on Oct. 3, 1980, an attack which coincided with Shabbat. The French court last year sentenced him to life in prison and issued a warrant for his arrest.
Decades passed between the incident and Diab’s conviction, owing to his elusiveness and oscillations of a criminal justice system which ordered his extradition on charges of terrorism, dropped them, and then reinstated them when the case reached France’s highest judicial body, the Court of Cassation. Throughout the proceedings, Diab has professed his innocence and even compared himself to Alfred Dreyfus, a French army officer falsely convicted of espionage in a landmark case that sparked antisemitic violence across France.
“Despite being handed a life sentence by a French court, Hassan Diab continues to live freely in Canada, while Carleton University, unconscionably, continues to allow him the privilege of teaching at a Canadian institution,” B’nai Brith Canada said in a statement, which included a link to a petition calling for the termination of Diab’s employment. “The university has ignored B’nai Brith’s formal request to terminate his position, allowing Diab to remain in a position of authority over students.”
It continued, “Carleton’s silence is deeply disturbing. Its decision to continue to employ Diab not only presents a danger to the well-being of its students, but it is an insult to the memory of innocent victims of his heinous crime and an affront to all Canadians who value law and order. This must change! We must act now!”
Carleton University has not responded to The Algemeiner‘s request for comment for this story.
Diab, a Lebanese-Canadian academic, is not the first PFLP terrorist to find refuge in academia. Leila Khaled, who hijacked a Tel Aviv-bound plane in 1969 and attempted another hijacking, this time of an El Al flight, in 1970 — has been invited to speak at San Francisco State University, the University of California, Merced, and New York University. Additionally, Khaled has a strong following among radical activists in the American anti-Zionist movement, in which she is highly praised as “the poster girl of Palestinian militancy.” American lawmakers, however, have described Khaled as “unrepentant” and suggested that inviting her to an American campus violates anti-terrorism laws.
In Diab’s case, Carleton University’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology, in which he is currently employed, has effusively advocated ignoring France’s request for extradition, which would result in Diab’s serving the life sentence to which he was sentenced for his crime.
“Dr. Diab has been caught in a political nightmare in which the existence of accuse has become the foundation for a guilty finding in a trial with no official transcripts and no opportunity for appeal,” the department said in 2023. “While our hearts go out to the victims, families, and communities hurt by this act of antisemitic terror, causing further damage to the life of an innocent man and continued harm to his family will not heal their pain. Canada must refuse to extradite Hassan Diab and end his 15-year long ordeal.”
Jewish civil rights leaders in France, however, support the court’s findings and have demanded Canadian compliance with the two countries’ extradition treaty.
“Forty-three years after the attack on the Rue Copernic synagogue, Hassan Diab is sentenced to life imprisonment,” Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), said following the verdict. “Everything must now be done to enforce the international arrest warrant. CRIF calls on Canada to cooperate with the French justice system. CRIF expresses its solidarity with the families of the victims, who have devoted their lives to ensuring that justice is done.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation
(JTA) — Israel criticized Ukraine Monday after President Volodymyr Zelensky gave full state honors to a Ukrainian nationalist leader who was part of a movement that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.
During a reburial ceremony on Sunday, Zelensky described Andriy Melnyk and his wife, Sofia Fedak-Melnyk, as “iconic Ukrainians of the 20th century who are deeply respected,” according to The New York Times.
Melnyk led one of the factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists during its collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II. Though the Ukrainian organization shared a mutual opposition to Soviet rule with the Nazis, it also promoted antisemitic rhetoric and some of its members participated in the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. Melnyk initially sought cooperation with Nazi Germany but was later detained by the Nazis as relations with Ukrainian nationalist groups deteriorated.
The ceremony marked the latest flashpoint in a longstanding dispute over Ukraine’s commemoration of World War II-era nationalist figures linked to Nazi collaboration. In 2018, the country designated the birthday of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera as a holiday, and in 2017, a statue was unveiled honoring a nationalist leader whose regime killed tens of thousands of Jews in pogroms during the Russian Revolution.
The remains of Melnyk and his wife were exhumed from Luxembourg last week and then transported to Ukraine for reburial at Kyiv’s National Military Memorial, which opened last year for soldiers killed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Glory to every Ukrainian hero! Glory to all our Ukrainian warriors! Glory to our people!,” Zelensky, who is Jewish, wrote in a post on X marking the ceremony, adding that he was “grateful to everyone who has worked to make such returns of great Ukrainian figures possible and to give the Ukrainian People their own pantheon of heroes.”
The reburial was quickly decried by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, which wrote in a post on X that it was “deeply troubled by such national commemorations, which come at the expense of historical truth and the memory of Holocaust victims.”
“Honoring the leader of a movement that supported and collaborated with Nazi Germany during the persecution and murder of millions of Jews undermines the moral integrity essential to Holocaust remembrance,” the post read.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry wrote on X that there is “no place for ignoring historical truth and the memory of the victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”
The post Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump administration again sues UCLA over antisemitism, alleging ‘hostile educational environment’
(JTA) — The U.S. Department of Justice sued the University of California for the second time this year over allegations of an antisemitic campus environment at UCLA, claiming the school “was deliberately indifferent to the suffering of its Jewish and Israeli students” after Oct. 7.
The federal lawsuit, filed Tuesday, claims UCLA violated the students’ civil rights by failing to intervene during pro-Palestinian encampment activity in early 2024. It follows an earlier suit that focused on the university’s treatment of its Jewish and Israeli employees, and comes 10 days after the university unveiled its own “Initiative to Combat Antisemitism.”
“Earlier this year, we sued UCLA for subjecting its Jewish and Israeli employees to an antisemitic hostile work environment,” assistant U.S. attorney general Harmeet Dhillon said in a press release. “Now, the Department of Justice calls UCLA to account for its toleration of the equally appalling hostile educational environment against its Jewish and Israeli students.”
Requests for comment to the Justice Department and UCLA were not immediately returned.
The new suit draws on widely reported accounts of UCLA’s campus environment in spring 2024, when protesters in pro-Palestinian encampments clashed with pro-Israel counter-protesters, sparking violence and turmoil. The failure to protect Jewish students violated their Title VI civil rights, attorneys said.
Citing the report of UCLA’s own task force on antisemitism, published in response to the 2024 campus upheaval, the suit states, “UCLA’s leadership apparently preferred a do-nothing ‘de-escalation strategy’ to protecting their Jewish and Israeli students from an angry mob organized by peers armed with tasers, lumber, and a sword.”
The Justice Department is seeking several redress measures, including the return of all federal grants made to UCLA “during the time of UCLA’s noncompliance with Title VI.” The school had previously resolved several Title VI antisemitism cases under the Biden administration, and also reached a $6.13 million settlement with Jewish groups in a private suit related to the spring 2024 incidents on campus — a case cited in DOJ’s new lawsuit.
The Trump administration has sought to make a particular example of UCLA in its aggressive approach to campus antisemitism. Officials had sought to levy fines in excess of $1 billion against the public university for its alleged failure to protect Jewish and Israeli students, until a federal judge intervened. Several DOJ lawyers have left the department over its UCLA investigation, telling reporters the case was “fraudulent,” a “sham” and driven by pressure to “find” evidence to support further legal action against UCLA.
In addition, some of the most violent clashes on the campuses included perpetrators on both sides of the conflict, leading some members of the UCLA Jewish community to complain that pro-Israel counter-protesters ultimately undercut the Jewish students’ legitimate grievances regarding the harassment they had been facing inside the campus gates.
And the campus environment for Jews remains tense. Last month, the UCLA student senate condemned a campus visit by a freed Israeli hostage, drawing blowback from a university regent.
The post Trump administration again sues UCLA over antisemitism, alleging ‘hostile educational environment’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish leaders say Belgium’s prosecution of circumcision is antisemitic
(JTA) — Dozens of European Jewish leaders, joined by Israeli and American diplomats, decried Antwerp prosecutors who plan to charge two Jewish men with performing illegal circumcisions.
In an open letter on Tuesday to European and Belgian officials, 45 communal and religious Jewish leaders accused the Antwerp Public Prosecutor’s Office of “effectively criminalizing the act of circumcision” and infringing on religious freedom.
Earlier this month, Belgian prosecutors announced their recommendation to refer two mohels, or ritual circumcisers, to the criminal court following investigations into alleged illegal circumcisions.
In Belgium, the law requires all circumcisions to be performed by licensed medical professionals. The two men would be charged with intentional assault or battery against minors and the unlawful practice of medicine.
The European Jewish leaders responded that prosecuting mohels was “antisemitic in nature, reminiscent of efforts taken in Europe against Jewish practice prior to the Second World War.”
They said the potential prosecutions sent a message that “Jews are no longer welcome in Belgium” and “Belgian Jews are now second class citizens with limited rights.” Their appeal was led by the chairman of the European Jewish Association, Rabbi Menachem Margolin.
Israeli and U.S. officials have also accused Belgium of targeting Jews for practicing their faith.
Gideon Saar, Israel’s minister of foreign affairs, called the prosecutors’ decision a “scarlet letter on Belgian society.” He was joined by the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Bill White, who said on X that Belgium “will be thought of now as anti Semitic by world.”
Belgium’s foreign minister fired back that it was “inappropriate to publicly criticize a country and tarnish its image simply because you disagree with judicial proceedings.”
“I recall that the proceedings in question were initiated by representatives of the Jewish community themselves,” said Maxime Prévot. “To portray those as a country’s desire to undermine the religious freedom of Jews is defamatory.”
The mohels were first investigated after complaints lodged by Moshe Aryeh Friedman, an Antwerp rabbi. He alleged in 2023 that six local mohels practiced metzitzah b’peh, in which the circumciser cleans the circumcision wound with oral suction. Over the past two decades, several infants in New York City were infected with herpes as a result of the practice.
The letter from European Jewish leaders did not address Friedman’s claims.
The post Jewish leaders say Belgium’s prosecution of circumcision is antisemitic appeared first on The Forward.