Mideast War blowback

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Israel imports more than 50 percent of its coal from Colombia, according to the American Journal for Transportation, and uses much of it to feed its power plants.

According to Colombia’s National Statistics Department, coal exports to Israel were worth more than $320 million in the first eight months of last year. That’s a small fraction of the nation’s overall coal exports, which were worth more than $9 billion in 2023.

If true, would this be an example of blowback?

Colombia will suspend coal exports to Israel over war in Gaza

Colombia says it will halt coal sales to Israel over war in Gaza

This is great news and will hopefully exert much needed pressure on the Israelis to stop their genocidal campaigns.



Meanwhile:

Columbia University has temporarily banned pro-Israel professor Shai Davidai from campus for “repeatedly harassing and intimidating” school employees, according to a university spokesperson.

“Because Assistant Professor Davidai repeatedly harassed and intimidated University employees in violation of University policy, we have temporarily limited his access to campus while he undertakes appropriate training on our policies governing the behavior of our employees,” a university spokesperson said in a statement to CNN.

The university said the ban of Davidai, an assistant professor at the university’s business school since 2019, is related to conduct last week at the time of an October 7 commemoration.

The spokesperson also said the school respects Davidai’s right to free speech. “His freedom of speech has not been limited and is not being limited now. Columbia, however, does not tolerate threats of intimidation, harassment, or other threatening behavior by its employees,” the spokesperson added.

Davidai’s temporary ban was issued about a week after he participated in a memorial service on campus for October 7th in which he posted videos online confronting a university official.

Davidai told CNN he encourages people to watch the videos and assess for themselves whether they think they are harassment.

He took issue with the school’s action. “The only professor that was suspended is the Jewish Israeli professor who called out the support for terrorism on campus,” Davidai said.

Although Davidai is not teaching a class this semester, he cannot go into his office, attend faculty meetings or research seminars and is, “for all intents and purposes removed from university life,” he said.

Professor recorded videos as he confronted campus officials
Davidai told CNN on Wednesday that students and faculty who support Hamas protested the memorial service last week.

Davidai described what he saw the day of the memorial, saying students protested the event with signs with phrases that support Hamas and the armed resistance.

“It’s horrific and unbelievable,” Davidai said. “Imagine protesting the memorial for the Tulsa massacre. That’s what it feels like for Jews when October 7th was protested.”

Davidai however acknowledged the protesting was, “free speech no matter how painful it is.”

At the gathering for the one-year anniversary, Davidai began to record videos of university employees, pressing them on why pro-Palestinian protests were allowed on campus on October 7.

He posted the video to his X account, which has a following of more than 100,000 users, confronting Cas Holloway, the university’s chief operating officer.

“How did you allow this to happen on Oct. 7?” Davidai asked Holloway in the video. “You have to do your job. And I will not let you rest if they won’t let us rest,” he told the university official in the video.

A university official told CNN the access restriction was a direct result of Davidai’s conduct on October 7 in harassing University employees in violation of University Policy. This is not about one isolated incident or any one individual employee, the university official said.

The university official also said Davidai has not been suspended from his university position and nothing in this action affects his status as a faculty member.

Those articles about Columbia cutting off coal were from June. Has the effect been noticeable?

No, because this regional war has always been between Iran and its proxies vs Israel and America.

American Jews are open to censoring political speech on campus and arresting college students demonstrating against Israel, but are divided over when these measures should be used.

Nearly 60% of Jews in the United States support using law enforcement to control campus protests about Israel, according to a new Forward-CHIP50 poll, while 44% endorsed banning at least some forms of speech at such demonstrations.

The Forward-CHIP50 poll is the first to gauge Jewish public opinion on these tactics since college and university administrators across the country announced a series of changes this fall meant to address antisemitism, including limited bans on how students can talk about Zionism and Zionists.

The poll also found that Jews remain highly concerned about antisemitism following a tumultuous year where antisemitic incidents and hostility toward Israel increased throughout society. They are also more worried about Islamophobia and racism than other Americans.

The poll was conducted for the Forward with support from the Knight Election Hub by the Civic Health and Information Project, a consortium of university scholars. More than 900 Jews ages 18 and older were surveyed online from Aug. 30 to Oct. 8, as part of a broader poll of 27,000 people; the Jewish portion has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3%.

Jews divided over campus speech restrictions
The poll found 31% of Jews support “prohibiting certain political speech” on campus, while 47% were opposed. When asked follow-up questions, respondents were evenly divided on a ban against speech that opposes Israel’s existence as Jewish state, with 40% in favor and 40% opposed. Separately, 44% supported banning statements of support for Hamas, the Palestinian group that led the Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel; 36% said pro-Hamas speech should be allowed.

While no major Jewish organizations have called for outright prohibitions on speech related to Israel, Hillel International has encouraged university administrators to impose restrictions on certain “speech activity,” and Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, has suggested he might support limitations on anti-Zionist speech.

New York University made waves in August when it updated its student conduct rules to state that discriminatory speech “directed toward Zionists” could violate school rules. “This is not the ‘weaponization’ of a word,” spokesperson John Beckman said in response to controversy over the announcement. “Nor are we seeking to ‘stifle’ speech.”

More common have been new policies restricting where and when demonstrations can take place on campus, or banning tents, and an increasing willingness to use the police to arrest students who violate those rules.

Support for police intervention on campus
A majority of Jews — 58% — said they “strongly” or “somewhat” support using law enforcement to police campus demonstrations, and nearly 80% said that students should be arrested for committing property damage, like breaking into a campus building, as happened during one of last spring’s demonstrations at Columbia. Dozens of people were arrested in that case.

But most of the campus arrests last spring were for nonviolent offenses like trespassing. The poll found that Jews are more skeptical about these actions: 45% said they support arresting students who refused an order to stop a peaceful demonstration, like occupying a public lawn, 35% were opposed, and the rest were unsure.

Hillel released a guide for university leaders this summer, with support from Jewish groups including Alpha Epsilon Phi and the Conservative movement, that calls for campus law enforcement to “address” conduct that violates school policy on protests. It also suggests that school administrators work with law enforcement agencies in the towns or cities where they are located.

There were some significant partisan differences when it came to policing student protests. Among those who plan to vote for former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, 73% support using police on campus, compared to 52% of the Jewish supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent. And 60% of these Trump supporters said the police should be used to arrest peaceful demonstrators, compared to 40% of those backing Harris.

More broadly, American Jews remain concerned about antisemitism — 56% said it was a very serious problem — and 91% said it was important for elected officials to address.

They were also likely to view Islamophobia as a major problem, with 79% saying that it is somewhat or very important for government leaders to deal with. And 63% of Jews said that the issue of race relations and racism was a significant factor for them in the upcoming presidential election, about 10 percentage points higher than other Americans.

A 23-year-old woman has been arrested after she posted on social media about having gotten away with ripping down Greek flags at a New Jersey restaurant that she believed were Israeli.

The incident at Efi’s Gyro in Montclair, New Jersey, occurred March 11, but it wasn’t until Amber Matthews posted the video to TikTok on Oct. 15 that police were able to identify her. She was arrested on Tuesday and charged with bias intimidation and harassment.

In the video, Matthews, who went by the name “Ambamelia” on her now-removed TikTok account, can be heard berating employees about the “genocide” in Gaza. She posted the video with the text “The time I mistakenly thought the flag for Greek was for Israel and took the restaurants flag down OMG.”

Both Greece and Israel have blue and white flags.

The video received millions of views on TikTok and on X, where it can still be seen.

In the video, Matthews repeatedly says “Free Palestine” and accuses Israel of committing genocide. “There’s genocide, and I don’t stand for Zionism in Montclair,” Matthews says in the clip. “I don’t support it.”

When restaurant employees approach her, she asks them: “There’s a genocide, you know that, right? They’re killing children.”

“There’s nothing against people who are Jewish, but this is not OK,” Matthews says, while the two employees look on, seemingly perplexed by the situation.

When the employees inform Matthews that the flags are in fact the flags of Greece, she responds, “Oh I thought it was Israel, my bad.”

Matthews’ video is the latest in a string of viral incidents where social media posts have documented harassment — often followed by support — at Jewish and Israeli restaurants since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, 2023.

Natali Lee, the owner of Mikki & Al’s Noshery, a kosher deli in Montclair, told the Post that Matthews made herself “look like one of the dumbest people on earth.”

“If you’re going to make that kind of statement, at least know your flag,” Lee said. “I cannot imagine that someone is that uneducated that they don’t know the difference. What she did … you made people believing in their cause look like idiots. It clearly was done for likes, that’s it.”

Sally Rooney, Arundhati Roy and Rachel Kushner are among more than 1,000 writers and publishing professionals who have signed a letter pledging to boycott Israeli cultural institutions that “are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians”.

Signatories to the pledge say they will not work with Israeli publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications that are “complicit in violating Palestinian rights”, including operating “discriminatory policies and practices” or “whitewashing and justifying Israel’s occupation, apartheid or genocide”.

Institutions that have never publicly recognised the “inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law” will also be boycotted.

The campaign was organised by the Palestine festival of literature (also known as PalFest), which runs an annual festival with free public events in cities across Palestine, alongside campaign groups Books Against Genocide, Book Workers for a Free Palestine, Publishers for Palestine, Writers Against the War on Gaza and Fossil Free Books.

“We, as writers, publishers, literary festival workers, and other book workers, publish this letter as we face the most profound moral, political and cultural crisis of the 21st century,” begins the statement, which goes on to say that Israel has killed “at the very least 43,362” Palestinians in Gaza since last October, and that this follows “75 years of displacement, ethnic cleansing and apartheid”.

Culture “has played an integral role in normalising these injustices”, it says. Israeli cultural institutions, “often working directly with the state, have been crucial in obfuscating, disguising and art-washing the dispossession and oppression of millions of Palestinians for decades”.

Industry workers have a “role to play”, states the pledge. “We cannot in good conscience engage with Israeli institutions without interrogating their relationship to apartheid and displacement,” it reads, noting that “countless authors” took the same position against apartheid in South Africa.The letter ends with a call to the signatories’ peers to join the pledge.

In response to the letter, UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), an association of lawyers supporting Israel, has sent its own letter to the Society of Authors, the Publishers Association and the Independent Publishers Guild. “This boycott is plainly discriminatory against Israelis. The authors do not impose similar conditions on publishers, festivals, literary agencies or publications of any other nationality,” the UKLFI alleged, adding that its members believe there are legal risks involved in participating in the boycott.

Omar Robert Hamilton, co-founder and current festival director of PalFest, said he believes the UKLFI’s letter “is only notable for its moral bankruptcy and proves that Israel’s apologists have nothing to say.”

Rooney, the author of Normal People and, most recently, Intermezzo, has long been an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights, and in 2021 refused to sell the Hebrew translation rights of her third novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You, to an Israeli publisher.

Roy and Kushner are also vocal critics of Israel.

Just a week after he was sworn into office, Chicago's Public School Board President the Rev. Mitchell Johnson resigned on Thursday, after a flurry of problematic social media posts surfaced.

Mayor Brandon Johnson, no relation to the Rev. Mitchell Johnson, appointed a new board on Oct. 7, saying he was working to make Chicago's Public School Board more stable after the entire school board resigned at once — reportedly in response to growing pressures from the mayor's office to oust Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez.

The posts, which many deemed as conspiratorial, antisemitic and misogynistic, capped prior calls for the reverend's resignation. Even before his controversial social media posts became public, many critics took issue with the reverend's appointment because they said he was not properly vetted particularly.

The site Jewish Insider initially reported on Tuesday that the reverend shared a litany of posts related to the Israel-Palestine conflict shortly after the Hamas attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. In one December Facebook post, Johnson wrote: "My Jewish colleagues appear drunk with the Israeli power and will live to see their payment."

Shortly after the social media posts were made public, Debra Silverstein, the lone Jewish member of the Chicago City Council, penned a letter Wednesday urging for Johnson's resignation. As of Thursday, the letter was signed by 43 other alderpeople, City Clerk Anna Valencia and City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin.

"The situation is a failure of leadership and judgment on the part of Mayor [Brandon] Johnson and his executive team," Silverstein wrote in the letter. "Earlier this month, Mayor Johnson told reporters his appointees would be thoroughly vetted before they were sworn in. It is clear that did not take place."

The reverend apologized to Jewish communities on Wednesday and called the posts "reactive and insensitive" in a Wednesday interview with Chicago's NPR affiliate, WBEZ, and the Chicago Sun-Times, but he maintained that he would not resign.

That is, until more of his old Facebook posts circulated on Thursday, some of which espoused conspiracy theories that the September 11 terrorist attacks were an inside job and outright misogyny about working women wanting families.

The Rev. Mitchell Johnson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Joining calls from the mass of alders, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said on Thursday that it would be in the best interest of the schools and children for the reverend to resign.

Shortly thereafter, the mayor's office issued the final nail in the reverend's coffin.

"Today, I asked Chicago School Board of Education (BOE) President Reverend Mitchell Johnson for his resignation, and he resigned, effective immediately," the mayor said in a statement. "Reverend Mitchell Johnson's statements were not only hurtful but deeply disturbing. I want to be clear: antisemitic, misogynistic and conspiratorial statements are unacceptable

Some US servicemen have begun seeking conscientious objector status in protest of the United States’s role in the Israel-Hamas war, claiming that the self-immolation of Aaron Bushell was a starting point in their journey to object, the Guardian reported on Friday.

For many of the servicemen interviewed by the British newspaper, the issue of civilian casualties in Gaza became a concern for them after the suicide of US Airman Aaron Bushnell - who set himself on fire in protest of the war in February.

Joy Metzler, a second lieutenant in the US Air Force, told the site that images of the humanitarian situation in Gaza had disturbed her, but it was Bushnell’s death that made her begin actively researching the history of the conflict, she said. This research led her to file for objector status.

“I didn’t know Palestine was a place before October 7th,” Metzler told the Guardian. “All of a sudden it felt like a light clicking on for me.”

“A lot of the things I had been told about the US’s role in the world were wrong”, she said.

“I had come out of the academy glorifying the act of warfare,” she said. “There’s a certain disregard for human life that you just have to have to be a member of the military.”
It was while attending a pro-Palestinian protest at the Georgia Institute of Technology that she learned of the objector status.

“It’s not common knowledge,” said Metzler. “You don’t want to advertise to the people that are working for you that there’s a legal way for you to break your contract if you start to feel weird feelings.”

Larry Hebert, another US senior airman, described his journey to conscientious objector as “excruciatingly long.” He began by staging a hunger strike outside the White House and later tried to end his service as the wait for objector status was too long.

When his attempts to voluntarily leave the military were rejected, Herbert said he began to refuse orders and was subsequently disciplined and is currently awaiting release on administrative grounds.

For Herbert, images he saw on TikTok inspired him to begin the process.

“I had to get out,” he said. “I didn’t want to be a part of any of it.”

Juan Bettancourt, a third US airman who also filed for conscientious objector, told the Guardian “There’s a lot of deep-seated criticism and moral disgust at the complicity of our government in the genocide in Gaza.”

Bettancourt accused the US Military of “brush [dissent] under the rug.”

Are more servicemen objecting now?
The Center on Conscience and War is just one of several organizations established to support military servicemen in seeking objector status. Bill Galvin, a Vietnam-era objector, and director of counseling at the center, claimed that the organization supported the applications of 50-70 servicemen seeking the status per year and added that this year had seen more applications than previously.

“Almost everyone that I’ve talked to has at least cited what’s happening in Gaza as a factor in causing them to rethink what they’re doing,” Galvin said. “Some have actually said, ‘I know that the airplane that I’m doing maintenance on is delivering weaponry to Israel and so I feel complicit.’”

Despite Galvin’s claims of an uptick in objector status seekers, a spokesperson for the US Air Force told the Guardian that applications since 7 October “are on trend with pre-conflict averages.”

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) quietly advised Columbia University's leaders to "keep heads down" and ignore congressional criticism of the school's handling of campus anti-Semitism, telling former university president Minouche Shafik that the school's "political problems are really only among Republicans," according to a new House Committee on Education and the Workforce report.

The committee's 300-page report stems from more than a year of interviews and over 400,000 pages of internal documents produced by elite schools like Columbia, Harvard University, Yale University, Northwestern University, and the University of California, Los Angeles. It demonstrates, by producing the private emails and text messages of university leaders, how they failed to protect Jewish students as anti-Semitic mobs seized their campuses in the wake of Hamas's Oct. 7 terror spree.

It also reveals that Schumer advised Shafik to tune out the criticism she was receiving from House Republicans.

Shafik, who resigned from her post in August amid a series of anti-Semitism scandals that roiled the school, texted board of trustees co-chairs David Greenwald and Claire Shipman in January to inform them that she had met with Schumer. The top Senate Democrat, according to text messages obtained by the committee, "advised Shafik that 'universities political problems are really only among Republicans'" and "recommended the 'best strategy is to keep heads down.'"
"When asked, Schumer and his staff indicated they did not believe it was necessary for the University's leaders to meet with Republicans," the report states. "Greenwald echoed this, writing in response, 'If we are keeping our head down, maybe we shouldn't meet with Republicans.'" In the texts published in the report, Shafik identifies Schumer as "very positive and supportive (and quite the storyteller)."

Schumer's private assessment differed from the public one he offered months later, when anti-Israel students launched the encampment that took over Columbia's Morningside Heights campus and eventually led to the violent storming of a campus building. At that point, in late April, Schumer criticized the protesters' "lawlessness."

The texts from Shafik and her board co-chairs, the committee wrote in its report, show that university leaders "viewed antisemitism as a PR issue rather than a campus problem."

The report underscores what has long been known about the anti-Israel protest movement on college campuses across the country: that it was permitted to operate unabated, in flagrant violation of university policies, culminating in widespread encampments and pro-Hamas demonstrations. But it also shows that university officials were afraid from the drop of offending Muslim and pro-Palestinian students on campus, tailoring their statements in the the wake of Oct. 7.

At Harvard, for example, the university's top administrators and deans excised language from a university statement that would have condemned Hamas's terrorist attack. A draft of the statement ultimately issued by the university and obtained by the committee shows former Harvard University president Claudine Gay's chief of staff, Katie O'Dair, and another senior university administrator, Marc Goodheart, debating the matter. They ultimately decided against it.

In the months that followed, Harvard Corporation senior fellow Penny Pritzker asked the university to address anti-Semitic slogans such as "from the river to the sea," which advocates Israel's destruction. Then-president Claudine Gay—who resigned in disgrace amid outrage over her failure to stem campus hatred and accusations of plagiarism in her academic work—and her successor, Alan Garber, privately urged Pritzker "not to label the phrase antisemitic," according to the report.

"Gay expressed concern that if Harvard recognized the phrase as antisemitic speech, it would raise questions about why the University was not imposing discipline for its use."

The report also shows that alumni wrote to Gay expressing concern in the wake of a Washington Free Beacon report about the assault of an Israeli student during an anti-Israel protest, noting, "Harvard's tolerance of violent hate speech toward Jews versus likely reaction to such behavior directed at other ethnic groups." Harvard never took disciplinary action against the students captured on video accosting their classmate, though the Suffolk County District Attorney's office has slapped two of them with criminal charges—an investigation the university has not cooperated with.

All of the schools investigated by the House committee likely violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which mandates protections for minorities such as Jews, according to the report.

"The Committee's investigation has revealed a total failure by school leadership in holding students accountable for violations of school policy and the law," it concluded. "The Committee collected disciplinary data from eleven schools—six of which failed to suspend a single student despite extensive documentary evidence of antisemitic harassment, unlawful encampments, and other acts of misconduct."

At Northwestern, a cadre of "radical faculty members were put in charge of negotiating with their own ideological allies in that campus' encampment, leading to a stunning capitulation to the encampment leaders' demands." At Rutgers, "protesters faced no consequences for an encampment that disrupted exams for more than 1,000 students." And at UCLA, the "leadership was unwilling to directly confront a violent, antisemitic encampment, even when antisemitic checkpoints denied Jewish students access to areas of campus."

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has directed two rescue planes to be sent to Amsterdam after “a very violent incident” targeting Israeli citizens, his office has said, after attacks linked to a football game were reported.

Israel’s national security ministry urged its citizens in the Dutch city to stay in their hotel rooms, the prime minister’s office said in a second statement.

“Fans who went to see a football game, encountered antisemitism and were attacked with unimaginable cruelty just because of their Jewishness and Israeliness,” Israel’s security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said in a post on X.

Local police said 57 people had been held after the game as pro-Palestine demonstrators had tried to reach the Johan Cruyff stadium, even though the city had forbidden them to protest there.

Police said fans had left the stadium without incidents, but during the night various clashes in the city centre were reported.

The Israeli military said on Friday it was preparing to immediately deploy a rescue mission with the coordination of the Dutch government after the football game, in which Ajax Amsterdam defeated Maccabi Tel Aviv 5-0.

“The mission will be deployed using cargo aircraft and include medical and rescue teams,” the military said.

Video on social media showed crowds running through the streets and a man being beaten. The Guardian has not confirmed the veracity of the videos.

The Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Saar, asked the Dutch government to help Israeli citizens arrive safely at the airport in a phone call with his Dutch counterpart, Caspar Veldkamp, on Friday.

An Israeli football fan has described being attacked by several men in overnight violence that Amsterdam police say involved youths on scooters carrying out "hit-and-run" attacks that were hard to prevent.

Adi Reuben, a 24yr-old Maccabi Tel Aviv fan who was visiting Amsterdam for the club's Europa League match with Ajax, told the BBC he was kicked on the floor by a group of young men who confronted him when he was walking to his hotel.

He said more than 10 men came up to him and his friends and asked them where they were from.
"They shouted 'Jewish, Jewish, IDF, IDF',” Mr Reuben said.

Mr Reuben said he could not see properly for about 30 minutes after the attack. But he said he decided against going to hospital in Amsterdam because he had heard that taxi drivers were involved in the violence.

Instead he said he was flying to Israel on Friday afternoon on a flight organised by the Israeli government and would get medical treatment there.

"This was a specific attack that was organised beforehand,” he added.

Pnina, another Maccabi Tel Aviv supporter, also told Dutch media organisation NOS that the violence against Israelis appeared pre-planned.

Dutch police said Israeli fans had suffered "serious abuses" during "hit-and-run" attacks many of which were carried out by young men on scooters.

Amsterdam police chief Peter Holla said it had proved difficult to prevent such attacks even though police had been present in the city centre in numbers. The force eventually decided to bring Maccabi supporters together and protect them before transporting them out of the area in buses, he said.

Five people were injured but had left hospital and between 20 and 30 more had been lightly hurt, he said.

The attacks overnight into Friday followed some tensions between Maccabi fans and people in Amsterdam over previous days, officials said.

On Wednesday Maccabi fans attacked a taxi and burned a Palestinian flag, police chief Holla said. Taxi drivers then headed towards a location where about 400 Maccabi fans had gathered but police were able to take them out of the area. There were further clashes in Dam Square overnight into Thursday but police were mostly able to keep the groups separate.

On Thursday evening before the match police accompanied pro-Palestinian demonstrators and mostly managed to keep them separate from football fans. The police were then unable to prevent attacks later in the evening.

"We are looking back on 36 hours that really shocked me. Supporters from Israel have been attacked and some abused in a terrible way," Holla said.

"I'm particularly shocked by fact that we’ve had one of largest police actions and we were not able to control or prevent this violence."

Amsterdam's mayor Femke Halsema said the "war in the Middle East has threatened the peace in our city" and there had been a "terrible outburst of antisemitism".

She said Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were not considered to pose a threat of violence and there was no animosity between them and fans of Dutch club Ajax.

Some Maccabi Tel Aviv fans have previously been involved in racist incidents in Israel, including cursing at the team’s Palestinian and Arab players and reportedly applying pressure on the team to oust them.

Fans of the team have also previously attacked protesters demonstrating against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Asked about video footage appearing to show Maccabi fans in Amsterdam chanting offensive slogans, Mayor Halsema said: "What happened last night has nothing to do with protest. There is no excuse for what happened."

Two Jewish students were physically attacked at DePaul University Wednesday afternoon, the university said.

Police have classified the incident as a hate crime and have released a community alert.

DePaul University President Robert L. Manuel said in a letter to the community that the attack occurred around 3:20 p.m. Wednesday in front of the Student Center on the Lincoln Park Campus at 2250 N. Sheffield Ave. Masked attackers punched the students as they "visibly" showed support for Israel, Manuel wrote.

Police said the attackers made antisemitic remarks before striking the students.

It was later learned that the students were a former IDF soldier currently in reserve and one of the executive leaders of the Students Standing with Israel at DePaul.

The Chicago Jewish Alliance said students will often stand outside the student center with a sign that reads, "Come talk about Israel with an IDF soldier." Their goal is to have an open, direct dialogue about what is happening in the Middle East from someone who has been to Gaza and to Israel.

The two students suffered physical injuries but declined medical treatment, Manuel further wrote.

The attackers are both described as men around 20 years old.

Police released surveillance images Thursday night.

Chicago Police say they were called to the Chicago Loop Synagogue, 16 S. Clark St. Members of the Jewish community were gathered there for a speaker, and said dozens of protesters harassed them as they entered the place of worship.

“We heard a horrible commotion and noise, and we went to the front of our building to find the entire front of our building overwhelmed by a big crowd of protestors," said Chicago Loop Synagogue administrator Mary Lynn Pross.

Some protesters even entered and then vandalized the synagogue.

Inside, an event was being held with an Israeli journalist. Outside, attendees were met by dozens of protesters for the Palestinian cause.

On an Instagram reel, protesters said "Palestinian youth and allies" had come to "disrupt" Arab Israeli journalist and advocate for Israel Yoseph Haddad.

Police dispatch audio indicated that the protesters were blocking the entrance to the synagogue and were wielding a megaphone that they were projecting inside.

"They were banging on our windows, screaming," Pross said. "They had bullhorns blaring in our building."

Some protesters even entered and vandalized the synagogue. Chicago Police arrested two people—one for criminal trespass and another for property damage.

These latest incidents come as another high-profile hate crime case was set to go before a judge.

Thursday was supposed to be the detention hearing for the man charged with shooting an Orthodox Jewish man who was walking to synagogue last month in the West Ridge, or West Rogers Park, neighborhood.

But defendant Sidi Muhammad Abdellahi, 22, was injured in a shootout with police, and was still not well enough to attend a court hearing. Thus, specific details of that recent hate crime have not been broken down.