Trump Administration addresses antisemitism, DEI with Executive Orders and taskforces. Universities resist change as antisemitism surges in the medical profession.

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Editor’s Note

The enormous growth of BDS-related antisemitism since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack has required the BDS Monitor to be greatly expanded. Readers are reminded that a shortened version appears in The Algemeiner.

Introduction

The first full month of the Trump Administration has proven consequential for addressing BDS and antisemitism. Universities and corporations continue to adjust their operations to appear in compliance with Executive Orders regarding DEI and discrimination but lawsuits and expressions of defiance are increasing especially from faculty. Growing reports regarding discrimination against Jews within the medical profession have also included open threats of violence. These are matched by increasingly blatant defenses of anti-Israel bias and antisemitism from leaders of teachers unions. Opposition to the administration’s transformational agenda may now include obstinate defense of illegal and immoral beliefs previously regarded as indefensible.

Analysis

Protests and Attacks

Protests and attacks against Jews and Israelis continued in February, even after the return of the Bibas family, who had been kidnapped on October 7th and murdered in captivity. Notable examples included:

Conversely, in an especially bizarre incident in Miami, a Jewish man shot two Israelis he apparently believed were Palestinians.

Politics

As the Trump Administration takes control of the Federal government and international agenda BDS and antisemitism remain high on its list of priorities. The potential dismantling of the Department of Education remains an outstanding question. In confirmation hearings to lead the department Linda McMahon indicated the administration was planning a slower ‘diminishment’ rather than a sudden end. Senate Democrats and others expressed concern that closing the department would hamper investigations of antisemitism allegations against educational institutions.

While the precise meaning of the Executive Order regarding antisemitism remains to be clarified, the administration has quickly taken a variety of actions. The appointment of Kimberly Richey to head the department’s civil rights division suggests the administration intends to pursue antisemitism allegations vigorously. The department also announced investigations of five additional institutions. Unconfirmed reports indicate the Office of Civil Rights has significantly reordered its priorities under the new administration. Some 12,000 cases are apparently under investigation.

Most significantly, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced formation of a multiagency antisemitism task force intended to “root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses.” Task force head Leo Terrell has promised that indictments will be filed in the coming weeks.

Another task force will prosecute October 7 perpetrators and “antisemitic civil rights violations” and “other federal crimes.” Bondi stated that the task force would be aimed at “the ongoing threat posed by Hamas and its affiliates, both domestically and abroad.” This focus, and the confirmation of strong Israel supporter Kash Patel as FBI Director, suggests that the Trump Administration will address Muslim and left wing groups that provide material support for Hamas and possibly their funding structures such as foundations.

Equally significant is a Department of Education “Dear Colleague” letter to all educational institutions stating they must eliminate all DEI programs and programming within 14 days or lose Federal funding. The areas of ‘race-conscious’ activities to be eliminated include “hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life.” The Federal mandate stems from the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling which struck down affirmative action.

Parts of the order were temporarily blocked by a Federal court. Meanwhile close analysis of the Department of Education budget has revealed over $1 billion in dedicated funding for DEI programs from 2021 to the present. These funds went for hiring, programming and trainings on ‘social/emotion learning,’ ‘restorative justice,’ ‘affinity groups,’ ‘culturally responsive pedagogy,’ and similar notions. Local school districts then spent unknown amounts on private consultants including for ‘ethnic studies.’ The $900 million allocated for the ‘Institute for Education Sciences’ that was cut from the Education Department budget was similarly allocated.

University reactions varied from silence to overt expressions of defiance and protests. One especially articulate example was a social media posting from a dean at Portland State University stating the university would defy administration rules regarding DEI. A lawsuit was also filed by the American Federation of Teachers and the America Sociological Association.

The parameters of the mandate are unclear and will be the subject of further litigation. The DEI enterprise has been a key source and sustainer of anti-Israel and antisemitic activities on campus and will be severely impacted by the ruling. Corporations including banks and asset managers such as Blackrock which had begun to end DEI and ‘environmental, social, and governance’ (ESG) policies, have also accelerated scrubbing their public mentions in order to comply with new Federal guidelines.

In contrast, a letter signed by 34 liberal Jewish groups stated that “As Jewish groups that are committed to protecting and advancing the safety and security of our community, we know we have an invaluable tool to leverage: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives.” This invocation of Jewish identity flies in the face of evidence showing that DEI mechanisms and personnel are central to anti-Jewish discrimination and antisemitism on campus and in corporate settings.

Congressional involvement with antisemitism and related subjects also intensified in February:

  • The Senate Judiciary Committee announced hearings on antisemitism for early March. No Senate hearings specifically addressing antisemitism were held during the last Democratic controlled session;
  • Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) announced he will co-chair a Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism;
  • Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) also demanded information from Columbia University regarding anti-Israel and antisemitic incidents;
  • The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform announced an investigation into the Biden Administration’s failure to enforce regulations regarding foreign funding of American universities;
  • The bipartisan Antisemitism Awareness Act was reintroduced in the House of Representatives by Reps. Mike Lawler (R-NY) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ);
  • The House Committee on Education and Workplace advanced a bill lowering the threshold for reporting of foreign funding by educational institutions to $50,000 from $250,000. The threshold for donations from Russia, China, and Iran would be zero. The move came as revelations continued regarding unreported foreign donations totaling at least $1 billion including from China.

In other political news, reports indicate that the non-profit WESPAC, which acts as the financial front for National Students for Justice in Palestine and other anti-Israel organizations, is facing loss of its insurance after the organization was sued for supporting violent demonstrations. The insurer, Westchester Fire Insurance, has filed a declaratory judgment action with a Federal court in New York stating it has no obligation to defend or indemnify WESPAC against class action lawsuits. If the court agrees WESPAC would be responsible for its own legal fees. WESPAC, Jewish Voice for Peace, and other organizations are the subject of a class action lawsuit over their backing of a protest that shut down Washington, D.C. area roads in February 2024.

Finally, the shuttering of USAID and revelations regarding its global network of grant recipients has shown that the US Government has provided significant funding to domestic and foreign groups including a variety supporting terrorism. Many opposed to Israel including a variety of Palestinian organizations also received funding. The new Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Lee Zeldin, also announced termination of a $20 million grant to the Climate Justice Alliance which had awarded funds to pro-Hamas groups.

The Israel Question remained a key problem in local politics in February:

  • New Jersey gubernatorial candidates have taken stances regarding proposed state legislation to codify the IHRA definition. Jersey City mayor Steve Fulop expressed opposition while Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) and Rep. Josh Gottheimer’s (D-NJ) stated their support. The race, which currently includes at least three other candidates, is shaping up to set moderate Democrats against progressives who have allied with Israel opponents;
  • In Michigan Democratic organizer Al Williams, a candidate for Michigan’s Democratic Party chair, came under fire for stating to Arab American Democratic Caucus, that “This is not the Jewish party, this is the Democratic Party. There are more voices than just Zionists in this party. There are more voices than just Jewish Americans within this party. There are more voices than just those anti-Arab American voices within this party;”
  • Michigan Democrats elected for state senator Curtis Hertel as party chair. Hertel then selected DEI consultant Hind Omar and Hamas supporter as corresponding secretary;
  • Israel and Jews remain central as the New York City mayoral race becomes more convoluted. The Trump Administration dropped corruption charges against incumbent mayor Eric Adams, apparently to pressure him to aid Federal efforts to remove illegal migrants and possibly regarding potential indictments of other New York officials. With Adams weakened, a variety of progressive and socialist candidates such as controller Brad Lander and the DSA-backed Zohran Mamdani are poised to make gains, unless former governor Andrew Cuomo enters the race. Among the potential candidates Cuomo is the only strong supporter of Israel;
  • In Illinois Illinois State Representative Abdelnasser Rashid filed a bill to repeal Illinois’ anti-BDS law;
  • The Pittsburgh City Council passed anti-BDS legislation mandating a referendum that would prohibit discrimination and modify the city charter to prohibit “duties or obligations beyond the lawful scope of the city’s authority.” At the same time an anti-Zionist group, ‘Not On Our Dime,’ submitted a petition to local election officials for a referendum item to enact BDS policies and similarly modify the city charter to permit discrimination and foreign policy;
  • A poll by the American Jewish Committee taken in October and November 2024 indicated that 59% of American Jews disapproved of the Democratic Party’s handling of antisemitism. Some 45% supported the Republican Party’s approach to antisemitism. Among Jewish college students 43% reported avoiding talking about Israel with 22% saying they had been excluded from a campus group because of their religion;
  • A Gallup poll noted that support for Israel by political party has diverged enormously, with 33% of Democrats expressing support in contrast to 83% of Republicans. This gap is the highest recorded by any poll. In contrast Democrats recorded far higher levels of support for Mexico and Ukraine than Republicans. Overall the results show a growing partisan gap over Israel and other issues, which may be attributed to both structural changes within the Democratic Party and reflexive opposition to anything associated with President Trump.

In the international sphere the Sydney (AU) city council passed a motion prohibiting it from contracting with or investing in Israeli companies operating in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The city has no such existing contracts or investments. At the same time the Australian Parliament passed new hate crime measures to address what the Attorney General called “the shocking rise in antisemitism over the past year.” The umbrella group Universities Australia also adopted the IHRA definition.

Administrations

University administrations continue to deal with the implications of Trump Administration Executive Orders and other changes. A new rule, for example, by the National Institutes of Health that limits indirect costs universities may charge on Federal research grants to 15%, which currently average between 40-65%, has been decried as an attack on science and medicine. The rule has been temporarily blocked by a Federal judge.

A variety of lawsuits have been filed by universities to block various administration moves, including defunding USAID and Department of Education programs, as well as dismantling DEI at many levels. Universities have also announced new financial oversight, hiring freezes, and other measures.

Universities continue to make it clear that divestment is dead. The latest example was Boston University announcing that it would not consider divesting from Israel. Universities are also being forced to give the appearance of cracking down further on Students for Justice in Palestine chapters. The UCLA chapter was suspended after members vandalized the home of a university trustee and threatened his family. Chapters at McMaster University, the University of Michigan and Rowan University were also suspended with the University of Pittsburgh considering similar sanctions. The Rowan University chapter, however, was quickly reinstated while the Michigan group held a rally off-campus. The SJP at Chapman University was also stripped of its Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Award.

In an unusual move, Barnard College expelled two unidentified students who were involved in disrupting a Columbia class on Israel. ‘Columbia University Apartheid Divest’ responded by demanding more disruption; “Every academic paper, course, interview, or book that legitimizes the zionist entity necessarily cosigns the genocide and occupation of Palestinians and necessitates disruption. They are the grease that keeps the war machine killing.”

Universities continue to revise policies to address pro-Hamas encampments and building takeovers:

  • A report indicates that Cambridge University is exploring legal means to restrict encampment areas in order to limit disruption of operations;
  • UCLA announced that it would be revising its ‘time, place, manner’ regulations to control campus protests;
  • The University of Toronto announced a policy regarding antisemitism and anti-Israel discrimination. Faculty and pro-Palestinian responses were uniformly negative regarding the alleged ‘conflation’ of anti-Zionism with antisemitism.Lawfare and protests against universities by pro-Hamas students and their supporters continued in February:
  • A lawsuit filed against Columbia University by three students who had been suspended accused the university of creating a “racially hostile environment on campus, including by characterizing the plaintiffs and their associates as antisemitic, promoters of terrorism, and disorderly;”
  • At Harvard University 200 students, faculty, and affiliates filed a complaint regarding cancelation of a talk on health in Gaza, alleging the university’s actions had created a “hostile environment;”
  • The ACLU announced it was filing a lawsuit on behalf of five University of Michigan students who had been arrested and banned from campus after participating in pro-Hamas demonstrations;
  • Several SJP lawsuits were also dropped for unknown reasons, including at the University of Texas at Dallas and University of Houston;
  • CAIR declared that Stanford University was a “hostile campus” that had targeted “anti-genocide voices.” The complaint stems from suspensions of students who had engaged in pro-Hamas protests;
  • Pro-Hamas students at UCLA protested the suspension of SJP and Graduate SJP which had resulted from their vandalizing a university trustee’s house. The terms of the suspension prohibited the groups from staging protests on campus;
  • Students who had been suspended at Cornell University similarly complained about the ‘lack of due process’ while Columbia University faculty complained about pro-Hamas students being subjected to unclear disciplinary procedures.

Court cases against student and associated protestors are also proceeding:

  • The trial of eight former CUNY students facing felony charges after being arrested at an encampment was adjourned by New York Supreme Civil Court. Plea deal negotiations continue in advance of a May trial date;
  • A Federal judge has allowed a suit filed by Jewish students against Cooper Union to proceed. The students had been trapped in a library by protestors. The judge commented that “These events took place in 2023—not 1943—and Title VI places responsibility on colleges and universities to protect their Jewish students from harassment, not on those students to hide themselves away in a proverbial attic or attempt to escape from a place they have a right to be;”
  • Eleven students from Case Western Reserve University were indicted for causing over $400,000 damage to university property during a protest;

University capitulations to pro-Hamas protestors continued in February:

  • Columbia University added “anti-Palestinian discrimination” to its list of proscribed behaviors. The terms is typically used in secondary and higher education concerns to mean that questioning any Palestinian narratives such as the ‘Nakba’ is de facto evidence of racist discrimination;
  • The University of Washington announced formation of a “Palestine Studies” committee. The creation of “Palestine Studies” had been a specific demand of pro-Hamas protestors who had vandalized the campus in 2024. A university official claimed the institution “seeks to deepen our tri-campus expertise in the scholarship of Palestine, across the range of existing academic units;”
  • Hunter College announced a search for a “Palestinian Studies” specialist with expertise in “settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid, migration, climate and infrastructure devastation, health, race, gender and sexuality.” The job listing added the “Ideal candidates will also have a record of public engagement and community action.” After news reports New York Governor Kathy Hochul ordered the listing removed and called for “a thorough review of the position to ensure that antisemitic theories are not promoted in the classroom.” Faculty members then complained about the Hunter’s “climate of fear” and Hochul’s “unprecedented overstep in authority;”
  • Reports indicate that Northwestern University mandatory anti-discrimination training for students states antisemitism is a purely ‘right wing’ phenomenon, downplays anti-Zionism, and centers “anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian biases,” using mendacious CAIR data.

Conversely, after a two year investigation the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights found that George Washington University had retaliated against Jewish students who had filed complaints against psychology professor Lara Sheehi. The students had been placed under remediation when they complained about Sheehi’s classroom expressions of hatred for Israel. Sheehi has since moved to an institution in Qatar.

Internationally, an extensive survey of Jewish students at British universities revealed widespread incidents of harassment and intimidation with verbal abuse, assault, and discrimination commonplace. University officials claimed to be ‘deeply troubled’ by the report, as was Education Secretary Bridgit Phillipson.

Faculty

As the policies of the Trump Administration and the larger cultural environment shift decisively against DEI, in favor of Israel, and against higher education, a hard core of faculty members and their unions have redoubled their efforts against Israel.

One significant example was a vote by the City University of New York (CUNY) Professional Staff Congress in support of divesting its pension fund from Israeli companies/ Several days later, however, another vote rescinded the decision. The union has long been a hotbed of anti-Israel activism and antisemitism and has reputedly lost thousands of members as a result of these policies. The move would have contravened New York State law and was immediately condemned by Governor Kathy Hochul.

Efforts to aid pro-Hamas protestors by individual faculty members and organizations continued in February. One example was legal support offered to protestors charged with blocking access roads to O’Hare Airport by Northwestern University’s Community Justice and Civil Rights Clinic. The university’s support for the protestors is now the subject of a lawsuit which alleges the institution is misusing public funds.

Other expressions of faculty defiance regarding Israel and Jews were common in February:

Faculty members and programs continue to promote anti-Israel viewpoints inside and outside the classroom, thereby lending them respectability and worsening campus environments:

A recent study noted that one reason why universities have been increasingly radicalized is that significant numbers of faculty members have been hired through ‘diversity-focused fellow-to-faculty’ models. These effectively bypass departmental and college hiring mechanisms and place ‘scholar-activists’ into tenure track positions as means to rectify alleged race and gender imbalances. ‘Palestine Studies’ is a recent example of an inherently political concept with explicitly political expectations and inevitably negative impacts on students and campus life.

Discriminatory efforts aimed at Israelis, Jews, and supporters of Israel continued in February. A report by Israel’s Association of University Heads indicates some 500 complaints have been filed by Israeli academics since October 7th regarding boycotts and discrimination. Cooperation with Spanish universities has halted completely while Dutch and Belgian universities announced the end of agreements with Israeli counterparts. Severe difficulties in publishing in academic journals and books was also reported, as was receiving funding from overseas sources. The report also suggested that negative faculty reactions to the Trump Administration may spur additional discrimination from American academics.

An institutional boycott of Israel and Israeli scholars was announced by the University of Iceland School of Education. Cancelation of pro-Israel scholars continue, such as the removal of an Israeli researcher from an international astrophysics project. Another example emerged in Finland where talks by a specialist on anti-Zionism in Russia were canceled after protests by pro-Palestinian factions. More positively, the International Studies Association defeated a BDS resolution.

Students

Protests and other actions against Israel and Jews continue to be staged by students:

In response to the Trump Administration’s stated goal of identifying and deporting foreign students expressing support for Hamas and terrorism, reports indicate that more students are scrubbing their social media and other online evidence.

Despite the nearly complete shutdown of divestment by university administrations, BDS resolutions, referendums, and demands for financial disclosure continue to be debated and passed by student governments, including Harvard Law School, Michigan State University, Boston University, Concordia University, and the University of Connecticut. Concordia University launched an investigation of the student vote after allegations of severe irregularities and temporarily suspended the union’s right to reserve university facilities. This prompted the student group to send a ‘cease and desist’ letter to the university threatening a lawsuit if the investigation continued.

The 2024 capitulation by the University of Windsor, which has no investments in Israel, to its pro-Hamas encampment is also now the subject of litigation. Other Canadian universities have rejected BDS proposals but the campaigns have become increasing radical and pro-Hamas. At San Jose State University the student government voted to demand an end its study abroad program at the University of Haifa.

K-12

Efforts to transform secondary education by centering anti-Zionism and thus antisemitism as part of ‘anticolonial’ and ‘ethnic studies’ continue to intensify. Some districts, such as the Shoreline Public School District in King County, Washington, are publicly redoubling their commitment to DEI, ‘ethnic studies,’ and partnerships with organizations such as CAIR.

Teachers unions also continue to be at the forefront of anti-Israel pedagogy. Testimony by the head of the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA), Max Page, before the Massachusetts Special Commission on Combatting Antisemitism, was marked by continual denials of antisemitic content or intent, despite materials being projected during the hearing. Merrie Najimy of the MTA Rank and File for Palestine, accused the commission of “anti-Palestinian racism” during the hearing and claimed a Jewish child would be welcome in Gaza.

After the incident received national attention the MTA agreed to remove materials from its website but Page and Najimy redoubled their complaints about ‘cherrypicked’ materials and calls for educators to ‘teach Palestine.’ The MTA Rank and File for Palestine was also permitted to table at the union’s winter conference.

Teacher training also remains a key area for anti-Israel indoctrination including specifically on antisemitism:

  • The United Teachers Los Angeles union contracted with PARCEO, which has developed a Curriculum on Antisemitism From a Perspective of Collective Liberation. The curriculum, developed by an individual who had previous developed ‘nakba’ materials, focuses exclusively on ‘right wing’ and ‘Christian nationalist’ antisemitism and ignores left wing and Muslim antisemitism. It also specifically states that anti-Zionism cannot be antisemitism;
  • The National Education Association-Educators for Palestine held a webinar on the “A to Z (from apartheid to Zionism”) of “educator activism” and “educators advocating for the liberation of Palestine and other related important topics around justice in education spaces;”
  • The ‘NYC Educators for Palestine’ collective advertised the “The People’s Fair for Gaza”, to raise money for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine linked Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA);
  • A bill introduced into the New Hampshire House of Representatives would require ‘Holocaust education’ including “5 hours of study to include, at minimum, instruction on the United Nations (UN) definition of genocide, the UN resolution on human rights, the Holocaust (and other Nazi committed genocides), the Armenian genocide, the Rwandan genocide, the genocide of indigenous peoples in the United States, and the Palestinian genocide;”

After a length period of litigation the Santa Ana Unified School District reached a settlement and agreed to stop using antisemitic ‘ethnic studies’ materials. The lawsuit had also alleged harassment and bullying of students, and it was revealed that the “Ethnic Studies Steering Committee” had deliberately held meetings on Jewish holidays to limit input and derided concerned Jewish parents as “racists.”

In partial response to the continuing crises over ‘ethnic studies’ in California, state legislators have now introduced a bill to create state-wide standards for teachers, along with provisions for greater transparency.

Despite continued focus on anti-Israel and antisemitic content in secondary education, including increasing attention to sources such as the Qatar Foundation, the negative effects on students appears unabated. Recent polls showing significant increases in antisemitism among younger people demonstrates the impact of education. While other polls suggest that the majority Americans remain opposed to antisemitism, Hamas, and calls for Israel to be exterminated, a growing number regard boycotts as legitimate.

Professions

Among the most disturbing examples of antisemitism in February came in the medical profession. Two Australian nurses of Afghan origin were interviewed online by an Israeli during a video chat and promptly promised that they would refuse to treat or even kill Israeli patients. One was later indicted.

The nurse’s remarks were immediately condemned by Australian authorities and the nurses were removed from their jobs and placed under investigation. The nurses claimed they had been misunderstood while local Muslim groups and left wing politicians immediately claimed the two had been entrapped. Reports also noted that Australian Jewish health care workers had warned the government of rapidly escalating antisemitism in October 2023. The threats came as a leading Australian security official warned about “eroding” social cohesion.

Reports since October 7 have intensified regarding overt expressions of antisemitism from British National Health Service personnel. Over 400 complaints have been lodged with authorities regarding incidents of harassment and intimidation ranging from nurses wearing Palestine pins to verbal threats and expressions of support for Hamas. The unapologetic nature of these threats have revealed the extent to which the British medical profession in particular is saturated with Muslim physicians, both foreign and local, who either belong to or support terrorist organizations.

A similar situation prevails in Canada where Jewish physicians report high levels of harassment and intimidation, to the extent that many are considering emigrating. Numerous pro-Hamas protests have also been held outside Canadian hospitals in part on the grounds that these were founded by Jews. As with all violent protests Canadian authorities have refused to intervene.

Equally insidious are reports from within the American medical profession regarding expressions of antisemitism and pro-Hamas sentiment. A recent report, for example, that the American Academy of Pediatrics has failed to shut down or condemn antisemitic and anti-Israel comments posted by members on messaging boards. Complaints by Jewish physicians have been ignored both by the organization’s leadership and, more troubling, by fellow members. At the same time the organization took a strong stance in support of a Hamas physician detained by Israel in a raid on a Gaza hospital. Reporting on the problem within pediatrics led to the dismissal of a Florida physician, Mobeen Rathor, from the board of a local non-profit. Rathor had called Zionism “the root of all evil” and demanded the end of Israel.

The lack of regard for Jewish concerns points to the growth of antisemitism within the medical profession as a whole. A letter from Jewish professionals associated with the American Psychological Association similarly warned about pro-Hamas antisemitism within that organization.

Demonstrations of how medical education is being systematically taken over by Muslim and left wing hatred of Israel are now widespread:

  • Jewish faculty at UCLA Medical School have released a statement detailing the manner in which the ‘Task Force on Anti-Palestinian, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Muslim Racism’ accused Jews of engaging in harassment, intimidation, and repression to create a ‘toxic environment.’ The false, indeed ludicrous, allegations, represent another effort to center largely non-existent ‘Anti-Palestinian, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Muslim Racism’ as the ultimate form of discrimination, over and against very tangible evidence of antisemitism;
  • A seminar at Emory University’s School of Public Health on ‘decolonial public health’ sponsored by the school, the Student Involvement, Leadership, and Transitions Office and the “Health for Palestine & Collective Liberation” similarly demonstrated how anti-Israel bias is also built into medical education via ‘anti-colonial’ frameworks;
  • Protests were held at the University of Michigan School of Public Health against the appearance of an Israeli physician. More than 200 staff and students signed a statement demanding the seminar with Dr. Nadav Davidovitch be canceled and some 30 protested his talk. Protestors accused the school of “attempting to give intellectual and institutional legitimacy to apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.”

In response to growing complaints regarding antisemitism, the Department of Health and Human Services announced it was launching investigations of leading US medical schools including Harvard, Columbia, Brown, and Johns Hopkins.

The deep embedding of antisemitism in the medical profession has also been revealed by the stream of mendacious article in the journal Lancet alleging Israel was guilty of genocide, starvation and other crimes. The twisting of research outputs, which in turn feed sources like Wikipedia and AI platforms, ensures that antisemitism and falsehoods will be systematically incorporated into future knowledge structures.

Arts/Culture

Revelations regarding the manner in which cyberspace is systematically manipulated against Israel and Jews expanded in February with an important report regarding Reddit. The platform hosts a subreddit called r/Palestine whose 270,000 members promote Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Houthi movement across Reddit, Discord, X/Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Quora, and Wikipedia. In turn these become sources for Google searches and ChatGPT machine learning.

A smaller group of moderators control over 100 subreddits and are “built around overlapping ideologies that include anti-Zionism, anti-capitalism, radical Marxism, Islamism, and anti-Western and pro-Iranian-regime sentiment.” Overall these reach tens of millions of members. The role of the news aggregator Resistance News Network, which appears to pull data from the Telegram stories of terrorist organizations such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Samidoun, feeds propaganda directly into Reddit and then Google and ChatGPT. Reddit leaders have repeatedly failed to take action against the hijacking of the platform by terror supporters.

Coupled with continuing propagandizing from mainstream media, typified by a recent BBC documentary about the lives of Gaza youth which ‘accidentally’ featured the son of a Hamas leader and which systematically mistranslated “Jew” for “Israeli” in order to hide the antisemitism of Hamas and Gazans, the information environment surrounding Israel and antisemitism seems immeasurably contaminated. The BBC documentary was later removed from the online platform.

More direct collaboration between Hamas and US-based groups was alleged in a lawsuit filed in a US court by three rescued hostages, Almog Meir Jan, Andrei Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv. The suit alleges that they were held captive in Gaza by Abdallah Aljamal, a writer for the Palestine Chronicle, a project of the non-profit People Media Project, who stated that “Hamas was in contact and actively coordinating with its affiliates in the media and on college campuses.”

Trump Administration addresses antisemitism, DEI with Executive Orders and taskforces. Universities resist change as antisemitism surges in the medical profession.

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AUTHOR

Alex Joffe

Editor SPME / BDS Monitor

Alexander H. Joffe is an archaeologist and historian specializing in the Middle East and contemporary international affairs. He received a B.A. in History from Cornell University in 1981 and Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Arizona in 1991. From 1980 to 2003 he participated in and directed archaeological research in Israel, Jordan, Greece and the United States. Joffe taught at the Pennsylvania State University and Purchase College, and has been Director of Research for Global Policy Exchange, Ltd., and The David Project, Center for Jewish Leadership.

Joffe's work is uniquely broad. Since 1991 he has published dozens of studies on the archaeology of the Eastern Mediterranean and is a leading figure in contentious debates over the relationship between archaeology and politics in the Middle East. He has also authored numerous works on contemporary issues, including Middle Eastern environmental security threats from pollution and weapons of mass destruction. His work on the problem of dismantling intelligence agencies is widely cited by experts and democratic reformers alike.

In the past decade Joffe has written and spoken on topics as varied as the future of American Jews, the Palestinian refugee problem, and nationalism. During that time as well he has been deeply involved with combating the problems of campus antisemitism, the ‘boycott, divestment and sanctions' movement against Israel, and in educating Jews and others about threats to Israel and the West. His current projects include a biography of a British World War II general and several novels. He and his family reside near New York City.


Read all stories by Alex Joffe

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