Surging Antisemitism & Other Current Headlines

Tuesday Digest (04.23.24)

Antisemitism Surges on American Campuses

You’ve no doubt seen the headlines about the chaos and confusion on Ivy League campuses in recent days related to Israel and Palestine. Hundreds of protestors have been arrested.

Protests at Yale are now in their second week of demonstrations calling for the university to divest from manufacturers of military weapons. Most of these protestors are vocally anti-Israel—they created a mock F-16 covered in blood—and students have been chanting slogans like “There is one solution, intifada revolution.” (The word intifada is Arabic for “shaking off,” and a reference to two separate periods of Palestinian uprising against Israel. It is tied to violence and advocacy for a separate Palestinian state.)

Anti-Israel protest encampments have also sprung up at New York University, Tufts, MIT, Rutgers, and the University of Michigan.

At Columbia University in New York City, students have been gathered over the past week for protests against Israel and have been heard shouting Pro-Hamas slogans. One Jewish student told Fox News that he no longer feels “physically safe” on campus. He and other Jewish students gathered on the campus Saturday, the first day of Passover, but were chased off by a mob:

But on the way out, “a pro-Hamas mob started chasing us, calling us—in the middle of campus—calling us inbred, that we have no culture” and stole an Israeli flag from a student, he said. 

“They tried to light his flag on fire,” he said. “After that, on the way out, we were talking to public safety—they started following us on the way out—and public safety just shrugged their shoulders,” Stein added. “They are the ones who are responsible in protecting us.”