Anti-Jewish Violence Persisted in November: The Scene from Cities and College Campuses

November was marked by escalating attacks on Jews worldwide.

In Amsterdam, Israelis visiting to attend a soccer match were chased and assaulted by gangs of thugs and criminals. These riots were condemned by national politicians, as well as the mayor who later regretted using the word “pogrom” and expressed concern for the marginalized Muslim perpetrators.

A rampage through Montreal also saw Muslim and leftist protestors burn effigies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, burn cars, and smash windows. The Montreal riots came after campus disruptions and walkouts organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) led to one local college being closed.

A coalition of anti-Israel groups also promised “global escalation” and carried out disruptions of Thanksgiving holiday travel and celebrations, including the Macy’s Parade in New York City.

Additional attacks were reported:

• In Chicago, a visibly Jewish man was shot on a Saturday morning by a Muslim assailant who shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he engaged in a gunfight with the police. The Chicago mayor, Brandon Johnson, declined to name the victim or describe the circumstances,
• In the United Arab Emirates, a Chabad rabbi was abducted and murdered. Three Uzbek citizens suspected of working for Iran were later arrested,
• In Berlin, a Jewish youth team was attacked by local Muslims,
• In Sweden, shots were fired at an Israeli owned firm, apparently by local Muslim gang members paid by Iran,
• In Chicago two Israeli students were attacked by local Muslims,
• Pyrotechnics were thrown at Italian policemen at a pro-Hamas protest in Turin,
• In a Jewish neighborhood of Sydney, a car was burned, and a number others were vandalized with the words “F*** Israel,” as was a local restaurant. Mohammed Farhat was arrested in connection with the crimes as he attempted to leave the country.

Other pro-Hamas protests included:

• In London, police allowed protestors to block Parliament Square during Remembrance Day commemorations,
• A march through a Jewish neighborhood of Bergenfield (NJ) to protest an Israeli real estate fair,
• Outside the Jewish National Fund annual conference in Dallas,
• Outside a Toronto synagogue, where an Israeli was to speak,
• A march through a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn,
• At the United Nations climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Other incidents included:

• The home and car of University of Washington president Ana Marie Cauce were vandalized,
• In Los Angeles, Jewish owned businesses were vandalized,
• Tunnels at the University of Rochester were covered with “wanted posters” depicting Jewish faculty. Four students were later arrested for the crimes, but the student government passed a resolution condemning the university’s response,
• Spray painting the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising memorial with red paint,
• In Milan, a mural depicting Italian Holocaust survivors was defaced,
• In Amsterdam, the offices of a pro-Israel Christian group were vandalized. The mayor also banned a march by the same group,
• CNN personality Dana Bash was confronted by a CodePink protestors at a talk inside her synagogue,
• Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský was booed at a talk at University College, London, and had to be removed from the room,
• An Israeli restaurant across the street from Columbia University was vandalized with the words “free Palestine.“

At the University of Manchester, a bust of Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first president and a noted chemist, was “abducted” and then “beheaded” by the domestic terror group Palestine Action, who filmed the entire episode.

The bust of another university faculty member was also stolen and destroyed. The theft was intended to highlight the Balfour Declaration which, as the group put it, “began the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by signing the land away.”

Most seriously, two individuals were arrested in Pittsburgh, including one self-described “Hamas operative,” and charged with vandalizing a local Jewish facility and collecting explosive materials for a mass casualty attack. Mohammad Hamad’s accomplice is Talya Lubit, a Dickinson College graduate in Middle East studies.

University administrations

University administrations appear unsure how to respond to the incoming Trump administration, though many had already acted after the US Congress made it clear that their conduct in the 23-24 academic year was completely unacceptable.

In the meantime, some pushback against obvious student excesses has continued:

• Tufts university suspended its SJP chapter until 2027, citing its promotion and celebration of violence. The SJP chapter then announced its had disaffiliated itself from the university,
• The University of Pennsylvania has suspended a business school fraternity for posters mocking Israeli hostages,
• The University of Michigan has begun disciplinary proceedings against its student anti-Israel coalition, which may result in up to a four-year suspension,
• Harvard Divinity School issued a two week suspension to students who conducted a pray-in in the school’s library,
• The New York State Supreme Court upheld Columbia University’s suspension of its SJP and JVP chapters, ruling the school’s decision was “neither arbitrary or capricious, irrational or in violation of clearly established University policies.”

At the same time, Columbia University has agreed to a $395,000 settlement for two Israeli students who were suspended after being falsely accused of using a “chemical weapon” against pro-Hamas protestors in the spring semester.

Students

The overall volume and intensity of student protests against Israel have been more subdued in the Fall semester, alternately attributed by pro-Palestinian students and faculty to exhaustion and repression.

On other campuses, the protests continue unabated. Several student strike days saw walkouts and building occupations, in part as a response to the National SJP’s “Take a Building Challenge,” including at the University of Arizona and Sarah Lawrence College. A building at Sarah Lawrence remains occupied with little university reaction.

An “International University Day of Action” organized by SJP saw walkouts at the Harvard University, the University of Michigan, and other institutions. Some 85,000 students in Quebec reportedly walked out, including at Concordia University (where a woman was filmed shouting at Jews about a “final solution coming your way”).

Campus Jewish institutions are increasingly frequent targets of protests.

Students at Columbia demanded the university “sever all ties with Hillel.” At Harvard University, the appearance of a former Israeli soldier prompted calls of “Zionists not welcome here,” while at Brooklyn College protestors outside the Hillel chanted “We don’t want no Zionists here” and “You support genocide.”

Pro-Hamas protestors also harassed donors at a fundraising dinner hosted by the Harvard University president.

Walkouts were also held, as unionized students and employees continued to conflate “Palestine” with campus labor issues, for example at UCLA where students rallied for a strike as well as for Gaza. An “anti-Veterans Day” protest was also held at Columbia University by pro-Palestinian students to “honor the martyrs” and reject the “American war machine.”

Despite the almost uniform repudiation of BDS by university administrations and trustees, Trinity College and Macalaster College, student governments continue to pursue these mechanisms, either in earnest or as means to undermine social cohesion on campus. Pro-Hamas students, including at Yale University and Princeton University employ the tactic of aiming divestment at “weapons manufacturers” rather than Israeli companies as a whole.

Efforts by student governments to directly boycott Israel also continue. In an ironic turn of events, however, the University of Michigan student government leaders who held the organization hostage and demanded that it support BDS and Gaza have now been impeached for dereliction of duty, incitement of violence, and seizing control of social media accounts. They will now face trial by a student judiciary panel.

Student governments were also the scene of complaints regarding invitations to outside speakers opposed to Hamas, especially Mosab Hassan Yousef, son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef.

Finally, CAIR and other Islamist organizations continue to file complaints and lawsuits alleging Islamophobia at various universities. A variety of “human rights” groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA, and Human Rights Watch also issued an open letter complaining that some 20 colleges and universities have employed “excess force” against pro-Hamas protestors.

Faculty

In the wake of the Trump electoral victory, the tone of “resistance” regarding Israel continued unabated. This was seen in faculty defenses of students participating in building takeovers, as at the University of Minnesota, protest votes by University of Michigan faculty against trustees who refused to divest from Israel, and in protests to commemorate Palestinian “martyrs,” including at New York University.

In an interview, the president of the American Association of University Professors struck a defiant tone regarding the profession and its involvement with political issues, including boycotting Israel.

At the same time, some faculty recognize that Israel boycotts have compromised academia’s social standing and legal positions. One example of the latter is a decision by the leadership of the Modern Language Association to prevent a boycott resolution from being put forward to the full membership. But individual faculty continue to emphasize the unique evil of Israel in course offerings, which are then defended under the banner of academic freedom.

Medical education continues to be a locus of especially notable antisemitism.

Reports on how the University of California at San Francisco Medical School curriculum has been comprehensively restructured around “social justice” are examples of how institutions continue to embed racism under the rubric of opposing white supremacy and “settler colonialism.”

The author is a contributor to SPME, where a different version of this article appeared. 

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