Mideast War blowback

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A group of Northern California residents has filed a class-action lawsuit against their congressional representatives, Democrats Mike Thompson and Jared Huffman, accusing them of causing harm to local communities and to Palestinians in Gaza by voting to send billions in US military aid to Israel.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in San Francisco federal court, claims the lawmakers caused “moral and emotional/psychic injury” to taxpayers by voting for aid that, the plaintiffs allege, contributes to genocide in Gaza. Both Israel and the Biden administration reject that Israel is committing genocide in its war against Hamas in Gaza.

The Bay Area case seeks to bar Thompson and Huffman from approving future military aid to Israel and demands damages for the emotional distress caused by war, including “uncontrollable weeping, inability to sleep, distractions from work, despair for the future of their children and humanity.”

At a press conference outside the courthouse where the lawsuit was filed, Linda Helland, a Mendocino County resident and plaintiff, said the representatives’ votes make her and other constituents “complicit” in the violence. Another plaintiff, Palestinian American Tarik Kanaana of Sonoma County, said Thompson’s actions amounted to aiding in “the killing of my own people.”

Nearly two dozen plaintiffs so far
Twenty one plaintiffs are named in the lawsuit but organizers are aiming to add as many as 1,000 participants if the court allows the lawsuit to proceed. A lawyer for the plaintiffs said the lawsuit, with its focus on the rights of taxpayers, was designed differently than the one that was tossed out.

“We’re not asking the court to tell Congress to make policy,” attorney Dean Royer told the Chronicle. “We’re asking the court to say taxpayer dollars cannot be used to fund genocide.”

The positions of Thompson and Huffman reflect those of many Democratic lawmakers who back Israel’s right to defend itself from Hamas, but have called for minimizing civilian casualties. In April, they voted in favor of a $26.4 billion military aid package for Israel. Thompson and Huffman have also expressed support for a ceasefire and long-term solutions, including a two-state framework that would see a Palestinian state established alongside Israel.

A group of Northern California residents has filed a class-action lawsuit against their congressional representatives, Democrats Mike Thompson and Jared Huffman, accusing them of causing harm to local communities and to Palestinians in Gaza by voting to send billions in US military aid to Israel.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in San Francisco federal court, claims the lawmakers caused “moral and emotional/psychic injury” to taxpayers by voting for aid that, the plaintiffs allege, contributes to genocide in Gaza. Both Israel and the Biden administration reject that Israel is committing genocide in its war against Hamas in Gaza.

The Bay Area case seeks to bar Thompson and Huffman from approving future military aid to Israel and demands damages for the emotional distress caused by war, including “uncontrollable weeping, inability to sleep, distractions from work, despair for the future of their children and humanity.”

At a press conference outside the courthouse where the lawsuit was filed, Linda Helland, a Mendocino County resident and plaintiff, said the representatives’ votes make her and other constituents “complicit” in the violence. Another plaintiff, Palestinian American Tarik Kanaana of Sonoma County, said Thompson’s actions amounted to aiding in “the killing of my own people.”

Nearly two dozen plaintiffs so far
Twenty one plaintiffs are named in the lawsuit but organizers are aiming to add as many as 1,000 participants if the court allows the lawsuit to proceed. A lawyer for the plaintiffs said the lawsuit, with its focus on the rights of taxpayers, was designed differently than the one that was tossed out.

“We’re not asking the court to tell Congress to make policy,” attorney Dean Royer told the Chronicle. “We’re asking the court to say taxpayer dollars cannot be used to fund genocide.”

The positions of Thompson and Huffman reflect those of many Democratic lawmakers who back Israel’s right to defend itself from Hamas, but have called for minimizing civilian casualties. In April, they voted in favor of a $26.4 billion military aid package for Israel. Thompson and Huffman have also expressed support for a ceasefire and long-term solutions, including a two-state framework that would see a Palestinian state established alongside Israel.

A Toronto synagogue on Friday morning was vandalized for the eighth time since the October 7 massacre, the institution’s administration told The Jerusalem Post, amid a spate of attacks on Jewish sites in the Canadian city.

Two signs in front of the Kehillat Shaarei Torah – one of which called for the return of Israeli hostages held by Hamas – were defaced, Michael Gilmore, the synagogue’s executive director, said on Sunday.

Graffiti was sprayed over the slogan in such a way that the “Bring them home now” sign read: “Take their [sic] homes now” instead.

A sticker was placed over the word “standing” on the second sign so that it instead read: “Genocide with Israelis, it’s what we do."

This was the second time that the signs in front of the synagogue had been vandalized this month, with similar “genocide” decals being placed on the Jewish National Fund and the United Jewish Appeal (UJA) Federation of Greater Toronto signs on December 1.

Kehillat Shaarei Torah’s windows and doors were smashed with hammers on April 19 and May 17. On June 30, a motorcyclist threw rocks through the synagogue’s windows. Its signs were vandalized, and then on July 31, they were set ablaze, Gilmore previously detailed to the Post.
Following this, a dead raccoon had been placed on the synagogue’s groun

This house of worship was not the only Jewish site targeted on Friday in the Toronto area. The Bais Chaya Mushka Elementary School was damaged in a drive-by shooting on Friday, according to the police and the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto.

There were no injuries because the school was not occupied at the time. This was the third instance since October 7 that the school had been shot at, previously having been subjected to gunfire in October and May.

Palestinians affected by the Israel-Hamas War have initiated legal action against British oil giant BP, alleging its involvement in supplying crude oil to Israel facilitates human rights abuses.

The claimants submitted a legal notice accusing the company of violating international human rights laws and its own corporate policies, the Guardian reported on Monday.

At the heart of the dispute is the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, operated by BP, which carries oil from Azerbaijan through Georgia and Turkey to Israel. It reportedly supplies 28 percent of Israel's crude oil, a critical resource for its military operations.

According to the claim, oil refined from the pipeline is being used to fuel jets, tanks, and bulldozers.

"Israel relies heavily on crude oil and refined petroleum imports to run its large fleet of fighter jets, tanks, and other military vehicles and operations, as well as the bulldozers implicated in clearing Palestinian homes and olive groves to make way for unlawful Israeli settlements," the notice claimed.

Case alleges BP complicity
"Some fuel from refineries goes directly to the armed forces, while much of the rest appears to go to ordinary gas stations where military personnel can refuel their vehicles under a government contract."

The claimants want to take the case to a British court, citing BP's UK headquarters and the claimants' British ties.

The legal action argues that BP's operations breach the UN's Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which require companies to avoid contributing to human rights violations.
It also accuses BP of complicity in alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, drawing attention to claims by a UN commission that Israel has committed war crimes during the conflict in Gaza.

The lead claimants include Palestinians who have suffered devastating personal losses during the war, including a British citizen who has lost 16 family members in airstrikes. Others face dire humanitarian conditions, displacement and lack of access to essential medical care.

After a Jewish-American professional video game player was banned from tournaments and group chat servers, allegedly due to his Zionist beliefs, a federal lawsuit was filed on his behalf to the New York Southern District Court last Monday by the National Jewish Advocacy Center.

Competitive Super Smash Brothers Ultimate player Felix “T Pot” Hasson was banned from three tournaments and two Discord servers dedicated to the popular Nintendo fighting game, after anti-Israel players were angered by a series of social media posts by Hasson in which he supported the IDF, Israel, and a response to the October 7 massacre.

The filing alleged that fellow Smash player Jonathan Mendez called on organizers for Luminosity Gaming’s Luminosity Makes Big Moves (LMBM) New York City tournament to ban Hasson.

‘Why is this racist Zionist weasel allowed at your event?” Mendez reportedly queried last December under the X alias Antifa Caramel.

“How is any Palestinian supposed to feel safe at your major when people who relish in and cheer for the complete extermination of their friends and family are allowed in the same space?”

Call to action
NJAC said that Mendez shared five of Hasson’s posts with his call to action, most of which were made before October 7. One praised the IDF as “based” and another joked that it would be humorous if Smash players from terrorist-ruled Gaza played the game using characters that utilized bombs in their move sets. In response to the Hamas-led October 7 pogrom, Hasson said “Gaza got something big coming their way for sure.”

Player and event organizer Geoffrey “Aerodusk” Tirrell responded to the account the filing identified with Mendez, confirming last December 21 that Hasson had been banned from LMBM.

Waypoint had stated that Hasson was banned in part due to some gang signs he reportedly signaled, but Hasson said that Chandler shared that this was not a factor in the decision. The New York City gaming cafe said on December 29 that Hasson had been banned because he incited hate and violence.

“T Pot [Hasson] made tweets laughing at the deaths of civilians, and in recent weeks he was throwing up gang signs in our venue. These actions concerned multiple members of our community and our staff, resulting in his ban,” Waypoint said on X. “Our venue is not for anyone who makes it unsafe for others.”

Hasson’s father responded to Waypoint on social media, calling their accusation slander, and explained that “He laughed at the irony of someone celebrating the murder and rape of Jewish women and children and getting their karma due.”

Chandler also reportedly told Hasson that all of the tournament organizers in the tri-state area had decided to ban Hasson. The filing listed tri-state area tournament organizer House of 3000 and head administrator Jeffrey Franco as supposedly responsible for this multi-state ban.

Banned from tournament
Around December 26, 2023, Hasson was allegedly banned from the Discord server Smash Crew Server when he attempted to play a January SCS-organized tournament. Hasson was reportedly banned from the server for supposed hate speech on X. Hasson was also reportedly banned from the Ryugacord server in December.

NJAC ARGUED that the tournaments and servers engaged in double standards in banning Hasson while not enacting measures against players engaged in racism and violent incitement. Hasson’s father noted on social media that the X account that started the alleged ban campaign against Hasson was “still celebrating Hamas today” and “still plays.

A Jewish radio host was fired after she refused to support Hamas and ‘pro-Palestinian’ views, Australian Jewish News\reported on Tuesday.

Nicole, a Jewish Australian with Mexican and Israeli heritage, hosted a Latin American radio show on Radio Skid Row, a community radio station in Sydney, Australia.

Originally reported by Sky News Australia on Monday, Nicole explained that in a meeting with Radio Skid Row, she was told that if she was unable to support the October 7 attacks as ‘resistance and as something positive’ and if she refused to agree with the hostages being kept in Gaza, then she does not align with the station's values, and she could no longer work there.

Nicole told AJNin an interview that the situation began when she had covered up a ‘free Palestine’ sticker before interviewing guests on her show.

“There was nothing political at all. We talked about kids and marriage, anecdotes and stuff like that,” said Nicole to AJN.

She then explained how the station’s management noticed her covering the sticker and called her into a meeting on Friday.

They expected me to support the Palestinian resistance. I asked them what that means because I didn’t want to make assumptions,” she said to AJN.

Asked to change her opinion
According to Nicole, this is when she was told to change her public opinion on October 7 and Hamas and that she could no longer be openly supportive of freeing the hostages still held captive in Gaza.

Nicole told AJN that she refused to deny her beliefs and even attempted to explain the impact of antisemitism that has affected the Jewish community following the attacks by Hamas terrorists.

While I was telling them how this movement, what it’s done to the Jewish community, how it’s reminiscent of the Holocaust, how it’s been really uncomfortable, and we’re scared… they were laughing at me,” she said.

Following the meeting, AJN reported via email that Radio Skid Row<fired Nicole from her position.

Anti-Israel activists and anti-Zionist Jews protested a Little Rock Hanukkah candle lighting attended by ex-Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee on Wednesday night, according to Chabad Lubavitch and activist groups.

Progressive Jewish group Taste of Olam Haba and Little Rock Peace for Palestine, according to their Instagram accounts, disrupted the lighting of a Lubavitch of Arkansas public Hanukah because of the involvement of Huckabee, who is set to become US ambassador to Israel.

The activists carried poles with candles on the end, and chanted slogans throughout the lighting event. According to photographs published by the groups, some wore sweaters calling for "ceasefire now" in Gaza.

Chabad said on X that the traditional Hannukah liturgy Maoz Tzur drowned out “antisemitic protestors” as Huckabee kindled the Hanukkiah’s flames.

“Light in the face of darkness,” Chabad described the scene
Lubavitch of Arkansas on Facebook thanked Huckabee, the city, local politicians, and local businesses for joining and supporting them.

“What a beautiful first night of Hanukkah it was,” Arkansas Lubavitch said Thursday. “Thank you all for coming out to celebrate with us and show your Jewish pride.”

Huckabee issued a statement on social media on Wednesday wishing “a very merry Christmas to my fellow Christian believers and a happy Hanukkah to my Jewish friends.”

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8XKYs08pL3Y

Several hundred demonstrators called for an intifada on Wednesday at an anti-Israel protest in New York City’s Times Square to mark New Year’s Day.

Attendees chanted “Resistance is glorious — we will be victorious,” “We will honor all our martyrs,” and “Gaza, you make us proud.” They carried signs that said “Zionism is cancer,” “No war on Iran,” and “End all US aid to Israel.”

“There is only one solution — Intifada revolution,” they chanted, using a common refrain at anti-Israel rallies in the US. “Intifada,” Arabic for “uprising,” is associated with the Second Intifada, a period of terror attacks in Israel in the early 2000s marked by suicide bombings.

Speakers at the Wednesday rally urged attendees to recommit to anti-Israel activism in the new year.

“2024 was a year of struggle against the crime of Zionism,” a speaker told the crowd. “We will be here every single year for generation after generation until total liberation and return.”

A handful of pro-Israel counter-protesters showed up to wave Israeli and American flags on the sidelines of the demonstration, while heckling the anti-Israel activists. A Jewish retiree led chants of “Get a job” directed at the protesters.

Arguments broke out between the two sides situated on opposite sides of a metal barrier. One anti-Israel protester shouted “Hamas,” “Go back to Europe” and “You’re all white people” at the pro-Israel demonstrators, and hurled racist slurs at a Black member of the pro-Israel group.

Police separated the two sides when the arguments got heated. Some more measured conversations between the two groups also took place.

The Times Square protest was organized by socialist and anti-Israel groups including the Palestinian Youth Movement, the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the People’s Forum. The New York City chapter of the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace and the fringe anti-Zionist, ultra-Orthodox Naturei Karta sect also attended.

Hanukkah celebrations in Chile met opposition this year, with politicians decrying the hanukkiah as an icon of genocide, a public hanukkiah being vandalized, and protesters threatening to shut down a candle lighting ceremony in a series of events that raised concerns with local Jewish community leaders.

Los Lagos Senator Iván Moreira and Los Lagos parliamentarian Jaime Sáez Quiroz decried the installation of a public hanukkiah in Puerto Montt by the local Council of Evangelical Pastors on December lambasting the traditional

Hanukkah candelabra for its ostensible connection to a supposed genocide in Gaza.
“The candelabra is the symbol of death,” Moreira said on social media.

Sáez, on X/Twitter, demanded the justification for installing “such a sensitive symbol” in the context of a “genocide of civilians in Palestine.”

Los Lagos parliamentarian Mauro González Villarroel defended the Puerto Montt hanukkiah installment, urging Moreira on social media, “Respect each other.” Moreira responded that the matter was not one of freedom of worship and dismissed Villarroel as a defender of genocide.

Moreira later deleted his X post, issued a retraction, and assured the Jewish community that he was not an antisemite but was against the legitimization of the State of Israel’s actions.

The Puerto Montt hanukkiah was vandalized on December 25, according to Pastor Marco Melo Hernandez and the Combat Antisemitism Movement, and splattered with red paint and letters pasted onto the main pole spelling out “assassins.”
Melo and Artzyeli blamed Moreira’s comments for leading to the vandalism.
“Words of incitement, hatred, and antisemitism lead to actions, and the lack of condemnation legitimizes them. The first step was toward a symbol, this morning against the hanukkiah on the seafront of Puerto Montt. Then they will go after the Jews,” Artzyeli said on X.
“Let no one say that he did not know, that he did not see, or that he did not hear. The incitement and displays of contempt against Israel and the Jewish community have reached a dangerous point.”

Moreira shot back on X on December 26 that Artzyeli and the Israeli government were responsible, claiming, “You brought war to Chile” and “You provoked us all.”
That day, Sáez wrote on X that he rejected the vandalism of the Hanukkah installation as inappropriate in a democracy, insisting that it was separate from legitimate criticism of the situation in the Middle East.“Hate speech has no place in Chilean society,” said Sáez

In San Antonio, a December 30 Hanukkah celebration event hosted by Mayor Omar Vera in collaboration with the Israeli embassy was canceled on December 29 as several anti-Israel groups threatened large protests.

The San Antonio Coordinator for Palestine said holding the event with the Israeli embassy was a violent act, which the anti-Israel group accused of supporting genocide. The protest groups included Unión Árabe Quinta Región, San Antonio Coordinator for Palestine, Sentir Palestino, and Palestina Resiste, according to the Diaspora Ministry.“Free Palestine! End the genocide! San Antonio will not be an accomplice!” said the anti-Israel group.

Vera announced that the city had suspended the Hanukkah event in a December 29 statement, explaining it had done so to manage the city based on “dialogue, understanding, and respect for peaceful coexistence” and in view of international events.
Unión Árabe Quinta Region welcomed the move, thanking all those who drew awareness to the infiltration of institutions by “the tentacles of Zionism.”

Rutgers University likely failed to properly protect Jewish, Israeli, and pro-Palestinian students from a hostile environment after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack that launched the war in Gaza, according to a new Title VI resolution agreement reached between the school and the U.S. Department of Education.

The agreement says that schools must review their anti-discrimination policies.

The agreement is the latest in a flurry of such deals to be reached with schools involving allegations of antisemitic harassment in the waning weeks of the Biden administration. The administration spent the better part of the last year immersed in dozens of antisemitism-related Title VI campus cases.

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to shutter the Department of Education but has also promised a tougher line against universities for fostering antisemitism. If the department is closed, responsibility for enforcement of Title VI, which prohibits discrimination at federally-funded institutions, would move elsewhere, possibly to the Justice Department.

The Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights announced in its report on Rutgers that “the university likely operated a hostile environment based on national origin/shared ancestry in university programs or activities without redress,” adding that the school “subjected some students to discriminatory different treatment based on national origin.

At Rutgers, federal investigators reviewed more than 400 reported cases of hostile environments for students during the 2023-24 academic year, 293 of which involved allegations of antisemitic or anti-Israel behavior.

These included social media threats made by students against members of AEPi, a Jewish fraternity, culminating in the fraternity’s members being egged; a professor allegedly supporting Hamas on social media; and Jewish students fleeing from a meeting with the school president after protesters broke out in anti-Zionist chants.

Allegations of anti-Palestinian harassment included reports of a Jewish law student group doxxing pro-Palestinian students and of university staff removing a Palestinian memorial on campus. (The Department of Education boiled all of the complaints, both antisemitic and anti-Palestinian allegations, down to three overarching Title VI investigations, all of which it lumped into its resolution agreement Thursday.)

Across four different New Jersey campuses, Rutgers leadership “appear not to have evaluated whether reported or investigated harassment created a hostile environment for such students,” investigators wrote. They added that university administrators “appear not to have taken effective action in response to the existence of a likely hostile environment” and faulted the school for addressing the reported incidents individually instead of examining their cumulative effect on campus.

Rutgers’ New Brunswick campus has the second-highest population of Jewish students of any public university in the country, according to Hillel International, which estimates its Jewish student body at more than 6,400 out of 36,357 total undergrads.

Rutgers President plans to resign
Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway, who testified before Congress about his handling of campus antisemitism, has said he plans to step down at the end of this academic year. Congress has also launched a probe into the school’s handling of antisemitism.

As part of its agreement, the school agreed to similar steps as others before it: additional Title VI training for staff and campus police, a thorough review of all student conduct violations from the previous academic year, and a promise to “conduct listening sessions” and develop a campus climate assessment. This summer, Rutgers tried to incorporate the handling of protests into its new student orientation sessions, but those sessions were targeted by pro-Palestinian protests.

For the proposed listening sessions, the agreement names Rutgers Hillel and the school’s Jewish law student association — the same one pro-Palestinian students accused of doxing them — as relevant “affinity groups” to the campus Jewish community.

Rutgers currently participates in Hillel-led antisemitism training seminars; the school also previously announced an internal antisemitism task force, but unlike other universities, it has yet to release a report.

In December 2023, the school became one of a long list of universities to suspend its chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine; it re-upped the group’s suspension in Augus

A memorial to Jews deported from the Warsaw Ghetto was defaced with graffiti appearing to equate the Holocaust with the war in Gaza.

The graffiti makes Warsaw’s Umschlagplatz memorial the latest of a string of Holocaust monuments to be vandalized with anti-Israel messages.

The marble structure commemorates the spot where hundreds of thousands of Jews were assembled before being deported to concentration camps in 1942 and 1943. The red graffiti says “Warsaw 1943 = Gaza 2025,” and was written beneath a quote from the biblical book of Job in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Polish reading, “Earth, do not cover my blood; let there be no resting place for my outcry.”

Since Hamas launched the war with its attack on October 7, 2023, Holocaust memorials or museums in Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere have been defaced with graffiti protesting Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

The federal Department of Education is opening a Title VI antisemitism investigation into Sarah Lawrence College in response to a complaint from the campus Hillel chapter that the school fostered a hostile environment for Jewish students.

The private liberal arts college in Westchester, New York, failed to properly respond to harassment of Jewish students in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel, Hillels of Westchester alleged in its formal complaint, which a lawyer for the group filed in March 2024.

In a December 23, 2024, letter viewed by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the department’s Office of Civil Rights, which oversees Title VI investigations, confirmed it would investigate “whether the College failed to respond to alleged harassment of students on the basis of national origin (shared Jewish ancestry) in a manner consistent with the requirements of Title VI.”

After this story’s publication, a representative for the college told JTA, “We are in the process of reviewing OCR’s request for data in connection with its investigation, and the College remains committed to fostering an inclusive and respectful campus community.” They added that they considered Hillels of Westchester to be “an outside organization not affiliated with the College.”

While there have been dozens of Title VI investigations into allegations of post-October 7 campus antisemitism, it is rare for a Hillel chapter to have filed the instigating complaint. Title VI antisemitism complaints have typically originated from students, community members, Jewish organizations, or activists unconnected to the university.

But Hillels of Westchester, which also serves five other campuses in the area, has long been outspoken about what the group sees as an unsafe environment for Sarah Lawrence’s Jewish students. In November 2023, weeks after the Oct. 7 attacks, the Forward reported that the Hillel organization sent a letter to Sarah Lawrence’s president saying that “Jewish students are harassed, intimidated, bullied, and ‘canceled’ for simply expressing themselves as Jews, or discussing or identifying with Israel.”

Among the incidents detailed in the complaint in the days after Oct. 7 were an instance when a Jewish student was allegedly harassed with violent and threatening text messages and another when the school’s diversity, equity, and inclusion office promoted an “Hour of Solidarity with Palestine” without mentioning Jewish students. Hillel also said the school had harmed Jewish students by recognizing its Students for Justice in Palestine chapter with a “group excellence award” in the spring, even as the student group had, months prior to Oct. 7, honored what it said was a Palestinian “martyr” who had murdered worshippers at a Jerusalem synagogue.

Sarah Lawrence College, historically a women’s college, today has an estimated 300 Jewish undergraduates, around 20% of the total student population, according to Hillel International estimates. One of those Jewish students was Sammy Tweedy, son of rock musician Jeff Tweedy, who became outspoken about what he described as a toxic campus environment for Jews after the Oct. 7 attacks.

Hillels of Westchester says the campus environment for Jews has only gotten worse in the months since it filed its initial complaint, citing a days-long activist takeover of a campus building in November 2024 at which students pushed the college to divest from Israel. (The campus chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, the anti-Zionist group, was among the protesters.) In its letter confirming the investigation, OCR declined to pursue every complaint, saying an allegation that the college had denied Jewish students’ requests for religious accommodations fell outside its purview.

OCR's recent resolution of major Title VI antisemitism investigations
OCR has also resolved several major Title VI antisemitism investigations in recent weeks. On Tuesday, it announced a resolution at Johns Hopkins University, finding that the school had failed to properly investigate cases of Jewish and pro-Palestinian students being threatened. As part of its resolution agreement, Johns Hopkins agreed to more intensive staff and student discrimination training and reporting requirements, regular campus climate assessments, and a thorough review of previously reported instances of antisemitic and anti-Arab harassment.

The department has also recently resolved Title VI antisemitism cases at various University of California campuses and at Rutgers University.

Among recently opened Title VI cases are new ones investigating alleged anti-Palestinian bias at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, both filed by chapters of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Four weeks before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes power, all his rhetoric and appointments are indicating that his campaign's vow to crack down on pro-Palestinian sentiment in America will be a defining factor of his administration's early days.

Throughout the campaign, both Trump and the Republican Party insisted that such a clampdown would be quick and complete. After Trump's speedy cabinet appointments and ahead of a Congress ruled by a GOP majority, the fight against the pro-Palestinian movement might be one of the only things that has a clear path across the government.

Once Trump's picks for the top diplomatic positions are in place, such as Marco Rubio as secretary of state and Elise Stefanik as UN ambassador, the harshest step – the deporting of pro-Palestinian protesters who have student visas – could be the first move. Both Rubio and Stefanik are well-known proponents of such a step, one of Trump and the GOP's few solid policy commitments on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the campaign.

In October, Rubio wrote to the current secretary of state, Antony Blinken, urging him to "immediately perform a full review and coordination effort to revoke the visas of those who have endorsed or espoused Hamas' terrorist activity."

Stefanik, meanwhile, has doubled down on her star-making turn as university-president interrogator by calling for students' deportation. She told Fox News in May that these students "are pro-Hamas members of a mob who are calling for the eradication of Israel. They are calling for genocide against Jews around the world and in America. It is unthinkable that we are allowing this to happen at U.S. universities."

The blueprint is there
Other nominees more focused on domestic matters have also suggested that the pro-Palestinian protest movement will be a key issue. Among them is Pam Bondi, Trump's second attempt at a nominee for attorney general. The former Florida attorney general has called for a revocation of visas and condemned the campus protests.

"The thing that's really the most troubling to me [are] these students in universities in our country, whether they're here as Americans or if they're here on student visas, and they're out there saying 'I support Hamas,'" she told Newsmax last year.

Bondi added: "Frankly they need to be taken out of our country or the FBI needs to be interviewing them right away."

Trump's choice to lead the FBI is controversial loyalist Kash Patel. While the former federal prosecutor doesn't have much of a record on campus protests, he is most notorious for his desire to remove any of Trump's critics and doubters from the national security apparatus.

Further, Patel's experience as the National Security Council's senior director of counterterrorism during Trump's first term positions him to crack down on pro-Palestinian sympathizers. A blueprint for this is detailed in Project Esther, a plan to combat antisemitism unveiled by the Heritage Foundation, which is behind Project 2025, the 922-page paper outlining conservatives' plans to fundamentally alter the government.

The underlying thesis of Project Esther – a more tractable 33 pages – is that "America's virulently anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-American 'pro-Palestinian movement' is part of a global Hamas Support Network (HSN)."

The task force's mission statement calls for a coalition to "dismantle the infrastructure" that purportedly sustains the alleged network. This would take one to two years. "Supported by activists and funders dedicated to destroying capitalism and democracy, the HSN benefits from the support and training of America's overseas enemies," the document states.

It adds that this network "seeks to achieve its goals by taking advantage of our open society, corrupting our education system, leveraging the American media, coopting the federal government, and relying on the American Jewish community's complacency."

The document suggests how a potential Trump administration would crack down on protesters, something he has promised. It also calls for the deporting of protesters in the United States on student visas and the targeting of universities' tax-exempt status. It notes laws that might "exploit [the network's] vulnerabilities," require representatives of foreign entities to disclose their connections, and target organized crime and racketeering.

Hardliner Harmeet Dhillon
One bill that will not be in the law books anytime soon is the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which is aimed at combating campus antisemitism. It also requires the Education Department to take the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism into account when determining if an action or practice that violates Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was motivated by antisemitism.

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the act earlier this year, despite concerns on the left that criticism of Israel would be conflated with antisemitism and on the right that the bill had dramatic implications on freedom of speech. There were also tropes from far-right Republicans that the bill would state that Jews killed Jesus.

Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has kept the bill off the Senate floor for a vote by attaching it to various other packages that he hopes to push through.

Amid this stalemate, another notable opponent has emerged: Harmeet Dhillon, Trump's choice to lead the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, which will play a major role in enforcing federal action combating antisemitism.

Dhillon, one of Trump's top legal minds behind his efforts to challenge the 2020 election results, slammed the Antisemitism Awareness Act upon its House passage. "I have been a First Amendment and religious liberties lawyer for minority and majority faith communities for decades and this bill is knee-jerk anti-constitutional dreck," she wrote on X.

She added: "Do better, think harder, and be smarter, Congress. 'Hate speech' laws are a liberal concept." But Dhillon has joined her new colleagues in being a vocal advocate for cracking down on the campus protest movement.

"Sue Yale," she wrote on X in April. "Sue every university that refuses to keep students safe based on their religion. Make them regret their choices. Deplete their endowments. Sue each and every violent protester and organizers. Drain their bank accounts. Sow salt in their career plans."

Dhillon followed that post by laying into a protest at UCLA: "I defend the right of these jackass terrorist apologists to protest, but they do NOT have the right to block access to other students or prevent them from going to class. My tax dollars are subsidizing UCLA and the Regents need to get their act together ASAP or be sued!"

Linda McMahon, Trump's education secretary nominee, has also publicly committed to prioritizing the issue, even if the incoming president has vowed to dismantle her department.

"Certainly. I don't think we should have any kind of discrimination anywhere, and I absolutely abhor any kind of violence that we have seen on campus. It should not be allowed," she told Jewish Insider without specifying what plan she supports. "We have lots of priorities that I'm going to be dealing with, and certainly anything that is against the safety and welfare of any of our students will be a priority."

The proposed defunding of the Education Department is perhaps the plank in Project 2025 that most concerns the American-Jewish community. The Office of Civil Rights, which is responsible for investigating and adjudicating allegations of antisemitism, is part of this department and has opened at least 145 investigations into such complaints.

Hardliner Brian Mast
This past summer, a rare coalition of nearly two dozen Jewish organizations across the political and denominational spectrum urged Congress to "provide the highest possible funding" for the Office of Civil Rights, despite the deep disagreements regarding antisemitism on Capitol Hill and in the Jewish world.

House Republicans, though they deemed the office's funding insufficient, voted to cut $10 million more after accusing it of failing to prioritize antisemitism. Several Trump-allied Republicans have also highlighted the office's role in culture war issues like Title IX and what they call "forcing women to compete against males in sports."

Holding a razor-thin majority and already plagued by infighting, the House GOP might find that advancing legislation relating to the Palestinians is the only influential work it can get done in the next session of Congress.

In a surprise development, Rep. Brian Mast has been slated to chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee after Trump advocated on his behalf. The Florida congressman has long been considered the U.S. lawmaker most hostile to the Palestinians. He has decried efforts to bolster humanitarian aid for Gaza and dismissed the notion of innocent Palestinian civilians.

"I don't think we would so lightly throw around the term 'innocent Nazi civilians' during World War II. It is not a far stretch to say there are very few innocent Palestinian civilians," he said in remarks that led to an unsuccessful effort in the House to formally rebuke him.

Mast, an evangelical Christian, once volunteered with the Israeli military, and he wore his uniform in Congress in the days after the October 7 attack. That was a way to protest Rep. Rashida Tlaib's placing of a Palestinian flag outside her office.

Mast has also condemned the concept of a two-state solution while spearheading legislation to permanently cut U.S. funding for the UNRWA refugee agency, among other hostile bills. He has also slammed U.S. efforts to secure a cease-fire in Gaza and advocated for expedited and expanded weapons sales to Israel.

Zechariah Mehler wanted to see the swastika for himself.

It was September, and Milwaukee was abuzz over a mural that had gone up on the side of a commercial building in the city’s sixth district. Painted on slabs of vinyl affixed to the brick, the mural — a large rectangle about the size of the building’s ground floor — featured a background that appeared to depict mass graves, weeping mothers, drones and other scenes of carnage in Gaza.

At the center: a Jewish star with a swastika inside it, along with the words, “The irony of becoming what you once hated.”

The city council had passed a resolution condemning the mural, and local Jewish leaders had called to remove it. But the building’s owner, a Palestinian real estate businessman named Ihsan Atta, said he was making a principled stand against Israel’s war in Gaza. When a local mother splashed black paint on the mural and confronted him on camera, yelling, “What are you promoting for our kids to see?” Atta yelled back and had it repainted by the next day.

Any doubts that Mehler had about whether the mural was antisemitic were erased when he visited the site and, he said, saw anti-Zionist protesters harassing Orthodox Jewish teenagers.

“You had the Free Palestine group just screaming at these kids, you know, ‘baby murderers and Zionist pigs,’” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “It was aggressive, it was intimidating.”

So Mehler — a 42-year-old dreadlocked former tech worker known as “Zee” who used to work as a kosher caterer and run a blog about kosher food — said he decided to take matters into his own hands.

On the night of Sept. 14, he recruited his 74-year-old father Peter, a retired rabbi who is in poor health, to accompany him to the site of the mural. They brought an ax, a sledgehammer and a pry bar and went to work. Moving quickly, the two struck the mural and pulled the vinyl plates off the wall, in full view of Atta’s security cameras. Zechariah turned to one and flipped it off: “Double middle fingers,” the police report would later read.

The pair were derailed — and the incident nearly veered into violence — when a bystander who supported the mural tried to intervene. So Zechariah Mehler returned the following day to finish the job, prying the remaining panels from the wall.

Two weeks later, shortly before Rosh Hashanah, police came to his home. He and his father were arrested and charged with criminal damage to property, which in Wisconsin carries up to nine months of jail time.

Mehler says he knows that what he and his father did was illegal — in fact, he expected to get caught. But he’s convinced they did the morally correct thing, the only option that didn’t require them to ignore or shrink from a threat.

“It is certainly destruction of private property,” he said in an interview. “The question becomes whether or not [the mural] posed a tangible threat to the Jewish community. That’s our argument.”

Peter Mehler says that he, too, has no regrets. He lives with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare neurological disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks its own nerves.

“The last 10 years, I’ve been a shut-in, basically,” he said. “But this was an opportunity for me to have a last chance to be active about this message. We cannot allow Jews to be converted into Nazis.”

Now, the Mehlers are hoping to make their case in court. A preliminary hearing is set for Tuesday, though it’s unclear how the case will progress. At a previous court appearance, Zechariah Mehler called Atta profane names and, he said, tried to take a selfie with the mural’s owner to post on social media. Since then, a new district attorney has been sworn in to prosecute cases in Milwaukee, and he hasn’t yet commented publicly on this one.

The case has become a major flashpoint in Milwaukee, where Golda Meir grew up and first became active in the Labor Zionist movement, and where some vocal pro-Palestinian activists have brought a level of hostility to local affairs never before seen by the city’s Jewish community.

Over the summer, the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, whose main campus library is named after Meir, enraged some local Jewish groups by making a deal with his campus’ pro-Palestinian encampment; he wound up apologizing. A progressive Jewish member of Milwaukee’s city council, who’d co-signed a joint resolution condemning the mural, recently died by suicide, an act some of his friends say was motivated by anti-Zionist bullying.

The Mehlers’ case is also capturing attention beyond the city, where the question of how to respond to anti-Israel displays has flummoxed and sometimes divided Jews.

The leader of a group called Betar US, which advocates for Jews to be more forceful, even physical, in confronting the threats they see, invited the father and son to represent the organization in Milwaukee. The group also helped raise nearly $20,000 toward their legal fees.

Betar US is a reboot of a century-old paramilitary group originally founded by early 20th-century Revisionist Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky. Betar members have been involved in several altercations with pro-Palestinian demonstrators over the last year, and it has even gone after other Jews at times. The group is also collecting information about international students who participate in U.S. pro-Palestinian protests in an effort to get the students deported.

“My politics and Betar’s politics are very different. I’m not a right-wing guy,” Zechariah Mehler said. But he said the group’s president, the Jewish public relations executive Ronn Torossian, assured him, “This is more about, do you believe that Israel has a right to exist, that Jews have a right to live in peace?” Of utmost importance, he said, was that Jews should stop “just being meek and allowing ourselves to be threatened and walked over. So I said, sure.”

Torossian has called the Mehlers “heroes.” He said in an interview that their actions perfectly fit the nonprofit’s vision of seeing Jews publicly fighting back against perceived threats to themselves or Israel.

“The Mehler family is a big reason why we restarted Betar,” said Torossian, who said he grew up in earlier iterations of the movement. “It’s a shame that this man has to stand up and act alone. It’s a shame that this man is facing a criminal trial and the entire Jewish community is silent. That won’t continue. I can assure you, we’re going to get him more support.”

It does not appear that any of the support will come from local Jewish institutions and organizations, whom Zechariah Mehler derided as “deer in headlights” when it comes to the problems presented by anti-Israel activism.

A representative for the Milwaukee Jewish Federation and Jewish Community Relations Council reiterated the federation’s denunciation of the mural as “antisemitic for many reasons,” including that it promotes Holocaust denial and dehumanizes survivors and victims of the Holocaust. But the groups declined to comment further on the Mehlers’ case or on the mural’s actual removal.

The groups have in the past discouraged Jewish vigilantism: In May, amid intense activity at the UWM encampment, the JCRC advised local Jews not to counter-protest, saying that it could escalate a risky situation.

When the Mehlers sought to purchase an advertisement in the local Jewish newspaper, which is owned by the federation, they were rebuffed. “You come with an ongoing backstory that could present content and/or reputation challenges for a Jewish publication,” a federation executive wrote to Zechariah Mehler, in an email that JTA obtained. The official added that the federation “can’t put ourselves in a position where folks can even get the sense that we endorsed any actions of your past.”

Some in the city are sympathetic to the Mehlers. Matt Stolzenberg, a tattoo artist whose parlor had been located in the same building as the mural, has been outspoken about his distaste for it. Following its installation, Stolzenberg — who says he is not Jewish but has Jewish family — said he and his business partners moved his shop’s location at considerable expense, “specifically to avoid vandalism and other issues that a giant swastika will bring to a business.”

Some of his customers interpreted his move as “an anti-Palestine thing, which I’m not at all,” Stolzenberg said. “But I’m also just not anti-Jew, nor pro-swastika.”

Asked his views on the Mehlers’ case, he added, “I think that if I were Jewish, there would be no other option than to tear down the giant swastika mural.”

Atta installed the mural in place of a previous one erected in memory of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman shot by police in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2020 who became a symbol of nationwide racial justice protests that year.

After the first vandalism of the mural, by a local woman, Milwaukee’s city council issued a statement condemning the image as “hurtful and divisive” and saying that it “is not welcome in our community.”

“Some people look for any excuse to wave a swastika,” the council members wrote in their Sept. 14 statement. “It has long been a symbol of intolerance and hatred, designed to psychologically injure and oppress those who are different.” The council member who represents the district where the mural was located did not return a request for comment.

Atta also did not respond to requests for comment made through an intermediary. But he has consistently defended his mural, including at a press conference he held at the site shortly after the Mehlers tore it down. The conference was called by the Wisconsin Coalition for Justice in Palestine, whose co-chair is Atta’s sister.

“It was an artistic way of expressing the current genocide that is being perpetrated against the Palestinian people by Israel and which is being supported by our government and funded with our tax dollars,” Atta said of the mural at the event. He said the Star of David on the mural was not a Jewish symbol but instead pulled from the flag “of an apartheid regime” as a political symbol.

Adopting language popularized in large part by Meir Kahane, the far-right Jewish extremist, as a response to the Holocaust, he added, “It is a statement to say that ‘never again’ means never again for anyone.”

Several of his supporters wore black T-shirts emblazoned with the mural’s swastika design at the event, which was also attended by local members of the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace.

Yet even JVP, which tends to back Palestinian-led protests that many other Jews find offensive and even antisemitic, acknowledged the mural’s provocations.

“We understand why it’s polarizing,” the Milwaukee chapter, which is a member of the pro-Palestinian coalition, wrote in a lengthy Instagram statement posted just prior to the mural’s destruction. “There is a legitimate critique that can be made about it, particularly concerning the language of the mural implying that Jews, whom the Nazis persecuted and exterminated during the Holocaust, have become oppressors not unlike the Nazis in regards to Zionism and Palestine.”

The statement, which the chapter’s co-founder, Rachel Ida Buff, read at the press conference, added, “It should be made abundantly clear that Judaism and Zionism are two different things, but it understandable how someone might read the mural as conflating the two.”

But the statement went on to conclude that Israel’s behavior was “far more reprehensible and antisemitic” than the mural, and that “it is not our or anyone else’s place to police Palestinians as they express their pain through creative means.”

Local JVP chapter co-founder Rachel Ida Buff, a history professor at UWM who is Jewish, told JTA she personally believed the mural “was meant to generate conversation, which it succeeded in doing.”

Buff added, “If seeing the image of a swastika in River West upsets people more than the images of murdered children coming out of Gaza, that is a moral problem.”

What upset Peter Mehler most when he saw the mural, he said, was thinking about his former congregants, many of them Holocaust survivors, at the synagogues he led in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and Northbrook, Illinois.

“I was really outraged,” he said. “For them, this would have been extremely traumatic. And it was traumatic for me, too, to watch this guy take the Star of David and make it into a swastika.”

He rejected any comparisons between the Gaza war and the Holocaust.

Both men said their activism had almost taken a dangerous turn when the bystander accosted them while they were ripping down the mural. The man “said to me, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know what genocide is. Describe genocide to me,’” Peter Mehler recalled.

The exchange triggered him, and he said he considered hitting the man with his hammer. But Zechariah said he “explained to my father that our methodology was not one that was intended to be aggressive.”

The bystander, Michael Gauthier, shared a similar account of the encounter during the Wisconsin Coalition for Justice in Palestine press conference. “I stood here on this curb and there was an angry man screaming in my face, waving a hammer, saying he was going to hit me with it,” he recalled. “Thank God that didn’t happen. Thank God his partner in crime talked him down a little bit.”

Family members tried to discourage Peter from joining his son in the first place, citing his health, both Mehlers said. But he insisted.

“It’s the responsibility of a rabbi to be the symbol of true north for the Jewish community,” Peter Mehler said. “We’ve got a symbol of antisemitism hung on a wall, and not anybody will speak out about it.”

Both father and son say they’re prepared to go to jail over their actions. Peter insisted things wouldn’t come to that and vowed to appeal any penalty. Zechariah, meanwhile, said he would relish the attention such a sentence would bring.

“You know what’ll happen if they put me in jail for this? Oh my God, then every Jewish organization would be on it,” he said. “Alan Dershowitz would be here. They don’t want that.”

Scotland Yard has banned a pro-Palestine march from gathering outside the BBC’s London headquarters next week, owing to its proximity to a synagogue.

Protesters were planning to gather outside Broadcasting House in Portland Place on Saturday before marching to Whitehall. On Thursday evening, police said they had imposed the Public Order Act to prevent the rally from gathering in the area as it risked causing “serious disruption” to a nearby synagogue on the Jewish holy day, as congregants attend Shabbat services.

The Metropolitan police said they had “reflected on the views of local community and business representatives”, including congregation members at a synagogue a “very short distance” from the proposed rally meet-up point, before reaching its decision.

Earlier this week, the force told the protest organisers, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, to alter their plans in order to avoid disruption to worshippers at the synagogue and had threatened to impose the conditions to stop the rally.

In response to the Met’s demand, the PSC said on Wednesday it “utterly condemned” the use of “repressive powers”.

“The Palestine coalition rejects the implication that our marches are somehow hostile to or a threat to Jewish people,” the group had said in a previous statement. “The Met police have acknowledged there has not been a single incident of any threat to a synagogue attached to any of the marches.”

The Central Synagogue on Great Portland Street is a few hundred yards from Broadcasting House on Portland Place.

Thirteen Holocaust survivors and survivor descendants have signed a joint letter to oppose the Met’s decision to prevent the march from gathering outside the BBC.

“We are writing as Jewish Holocaust survivors, and descendants of survivors, to protest against this clear attempt to dissuade people from opposing the Gaza genocide,” the letter reads. “Along with thousands of other openly Jewish protesters, we have attended numerous Palestine demos in London and have received nothing but support and warmth from our fellow demonstrators.”

Commander Adam Slonecki, who is leading the policing operation in London that weekend, said the PSC had refused to change their plans and were “continuing to encourage protesters to form up in Portland Place”, giving the force “no choice but to use the powers available to us”.

He said police had taken into account the “cumulative impact of this prolonged period of protest”, with events often taking place on Saturdays and near synagogues.

“We know this has been a cause of increased concern for many Jewish Londoners who have altered their plans, avoided parts of central London and reduced attendance at religious services,” he said.

The PSC had planned to assemble outside the corporation’s London headquarters for a march to Whitehall in protest against what organisers had described as the “pro-Israel bias” of the BBC’s coverage.