ZOA chief Morton Klein
ZOA chief Morton KleinHezki Baruch

The Honorable Merrick Garland
Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice

The Honorable Kristin Clarke
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights
U.S. Department of Justice

The Honorable Christopher Wray
Director
Federal Bureau of Investigation

Re: Request for Urgent, Immediate Investigation, Arrest and Prosecution of Organized Hate Groups, Leaders, Funders and Actors Inciting and Perpetrating Nationwide Violence and Hatred Against Jewish Students on College Campuses

Dear Attorney General Garland, Assistant Attorney General Clarke, and FBI Director Wray:

We are writing to request your urgent, immediate action – including investigating, monitoring, arresting and prosecuting the blatantly antisemitic organized groups, leaders, funders and actors who are unlawfully openly supporting designated terrorist organizations Hamas and the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), and intimidating, threatening, inciting and perpetrating violence and hatred against Jewish students on college campuses across the nation.

The campus professionals at our organization (the Zionist Organization of America - ZOA) estimate that over 90% of universities in which antisemitic activities are taking place now have failed to comply with their obligations to provide a safe learning environment for Jewish students and faculty. Some universities, such as Northwestern and Brown, have even entered into or contemplated dangerous concession agreements with the demonstrators that will make antisemitism on their campuses worse.

Thus, we request that you assure strict compliance with universities’ obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to provide a safe, harassment-free, violence-free learning environment for Jewish and pro-Israel students, and assure strict compliance with universities’ Title VII obligations to provide a non-hostile work environment for Jewish and pro-Israel faculty.

We request that wherever necessary, you send in federal law enforcement, and defund and take other legal action against universities that fail to comply. We further request that you enforce the federal criminal statute prohibiting “providing material support or resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations” against entities and individuals providing material support to Hamas, the PFLP and their front groups on campuses.

Throughout the past 18 years, the ZOA and some other Jewish organizations initiated numerous Title VI complaints regarding glaring antisemitic activities at specific schools. Some of our complaints were resolved – but others lingered at the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights for years despite our repeated requests for prompt action. Meanwhile, antisemitism on American campuses festered and grew exponentially. The antisemitic violence and intimidation is so out-of-hand now that this issue can no longer wait. At this point, there is no need to wait for time-consuming individual complaints.

We urge you to act immediately, with the full-scale force of the law, on a nationwide basis.

It is intolerable that so many Jewish students are in fear for their lives, are prevented from attending classes that they paid tuition for, are barred from studying in libraries that they also paid tuition for, and are unable to establish Jewish organizational tables or participate in Jewish events without antisemitic mobs perpetrating nonstop harassment, interference or worse.

It is unconscionable that Jewish students are being subjected to antisemitic “no go” zones illegally taken over by mobs that establish their own laws; “checkpoints” manned by Hamas-supporters that block Jews from walking across the quad; lines of radical faculty members who link arms to exclude Jewish students from illegal pro-Hamas encampment areas; shrines honoring convicted murderers of Jews; nonstop antisemitic blood libels; mobs vandalizing Jewish centers and ripping off and burning mezuzahs (Jewish religious symbols) on Jewish students’ doors; and days-long drumbeats of threats and chants calling for Jews’ and Israelis’ murder and exclusion.

And it is frightening that Jewish students are being subjected to calls to “globalize the Intifada,” repeat October 7 every day, and make American Jewish students the next victims of multiple October 7ths.

“Intifadas” are the terror wars against Jews. In Israel, Palestinian Arab terrorists murdered or maimed approximately 10,000 innocent Jews in Intifadas, by bombing civilian buses, pizza parlors full of children, Passover Seders full of Holocaust survivors and elsewhere; and with car ramming, knifing and shooting attacks.

The violence and hatred directed at Jewish students on college campuses did not spring up organically. The look-alike tents, encampments, signs, PFLP and Hamas terrorist “honorees,” chants and tactics on campuses throughout the country are coordinated with bigger players. Campuses throughout the nation use similar terminology (e.g., “Flood New York City,” “Flood the Encampments”), which reflects Hamas’ title for its heinous anti-Israel atrocities (“Al Aqsa Flood”). None of this is coincidental. Radical and terror-allied national and international organizations and funders are coordinating campus antisemitism, tactics, violence and riots. Local students collaborate with these national groups and professional outside agitators. They all must be stopped to address the crisis on our campuses.

Accordingly, we request that you also investigate and take all available legal actions against the organizers, funders, students and outside agitators involved in antisemitic campus violence. There must be consequences for all who have turned our campuses into hate-fests.

For your convenience, this letter also includes a list of some of the organizations fomenting the antisemitic demonstrations and violence. Incidentally, in June 2022, we wrote to you requesting that you investigate and take action against organizations behind the dangerous “Mapping Project” that targets and promotes violence against American Jews, schools, synagogues and other Jewish institutions. Those organizations are also among the groups promoting violence on college campuses today. Organized antisemitic violence and intimidation will continue to metastasize until strong action is taken to shut it down.

Jewish and pro-Israel students are not the only ones affected by the current situation. Out-of-control campus antisemitism and riots, campus shut-downs and canceled classes and exams are disrupting virtually all students’ ability to learn and develop the knowledge base, moral compass and critical thinking skills that they will need to lead healthy, productive lives and contribute to the well-being of our nation and the world.

Graduations that are canceled due to campus antisemitism (e.g., at Columbia University and University of Southern California) or disrupted (including by a student wearing fake blood and an “NEU kills” t-shirt at Northeastern and other incidents) mar or deprive virtually all students and their friends and families of a celebratory event that they worked for and looked forward to for years.

We were personally informed that during campus riots in the late 1960s, the FBI came onto campus, took photographs, and reported to college administrators that riot participants included outside agitators from the PFLP terror organization. Such monitoring and investigation is also needed today, especially when flags of designated terror organizations PFLP and Hezbollah are displayed in encampments and encampment participants openly identify themselves as terror organization Hamas (e.g., yelling “we are all Hamas” at Columbia University). We are concerned by Director Wray’s recent interview response that the FBI does not monitor the current demonstrations – although at least it shares intelligence about threats. We urge the FBI to do much more.

Examples of Antisemitic Campus Activities:

The anti-Jewish violence and hatred at American campuses is now at shocking crisis levels, and is still escalating. Here are examples of what is occurring at universities across the nation:

Yale University:

• A mob of hundreds of pro-Hamas, pro-PFLP demonstrators surrounded, blockaded, taunted, repeatedly pushed and prevented the passage of two Jewish students. One of the Jewish students, Sara Tartak, is editor-in-chief of the Yale Free Press and was attempting to report on the antisemitic Yale encampment. Antisemitic demonstrators waved flashlights, keffiyehs and Palestinian flags in Ms. Tartak’s face. (Ms. Tartak later noted that these tactics of encircling, blockading and waiving objects in Jewish students faces are nationwide.) Then a Palestinian Arab demonstrator stabbed Jewish Ms. Tartak in the eye with a Palestinian flagpole. Ms. Tartak received a blunt force injury and needed emergency medical care at the hospital. When Ms. Tartak urged police to disband the encampment, they merely responded that they needed authorization. The Connecticut division of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) boasted that they succeeded because no arrests were made over the April 20-21, 2024 weekend.

• A huge mural, signs and a shrine at Yale honored PFLP terrorist commander Walid Daqqa, who was convicted of kidnapping, severely torturing and murdering a 19-year-old Israeli, Moshe Tamam in 1984. The PFLP terrorists commanded by Daqqa castrated and gouged out Moshe Tamam’s eyes before shooting him in the head.

• Antisemitic anti-Israel demonstrations have been taking place at Yale since October 7. Their “Occupy Beinecke” demonstration (illegally occupying Yale’s Beinecke Plaza) held pro-Hamas “teach-ins” at which they honored PFLP terrorist Walid Daqqa and Hamas propagandist Refaat Alareer. In a BBC interview, Alareer called Hamas’ and fellow Gazans’ October 7 atrocities “legitimate and moral” and “exactly like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising”; and repeatedly wrote on X the canard that: “ALL the rape/sexual violence allegations are lies. Israel uses them as smokescreens to justify the Gaza genocide.”

• After police finally dismantled the illegal “Occupy Beinecke” encampment and made dozens of arrests commencing April 22, 2024, anti-Israel demonstrators (both Yale students and outside agitators) then attempted to re-start their demonstrations by marching on the Yale president’s house and police department.

UCLA (University of California – Los Angeles):

• On April 30, 2024, five violent antisemitic demonstrators kicked in the head, stomped on, and knocked unconscious a young Jewish girl, Eleanor [last name withheld] when she bent over to try to pick up an Israeli flag. The Jewish victim suffered a concussion, repeated flashbacks and trauma. The demonstrators also stomped on the Israeli flag. A prominent Jewish journalist posted: “UCLA, where beating Jewish girls unconscious is free speech.”

• On April 29, 2024, violent antisemitic demonstrators attacked a pro-Israel counter-protester, yanked off the counter-protester’s hat, ripped away the sign that the counter-protester was holding, and threatened and tried to use a taser on the pro-Israel counter-protester. Campus security standing nearby failed to intervene.

• On May 1, 2024 and other times, keffiyeh-clad antisemitic, pro-Hamas demonstrators set up metal and human barricades and prevented peaceful Jewish students from walking to class on their regular route through the main UCLA campus.

• On April 30, 2024, antisemitic, screaming, keffiyeh-clad demonstrators holding plywood blockaded a Jewish student from entering the library. The antisemitic demonstrators then hunted down, chased, surrounded and prevented the Jewish student from escaping.

• On April 25, 2024, pro-Hamas students and others set up a huge, continuing illegal encampment on Royce Quad, blocked the main area of the campus, determined who would go in and out of the area, and surrounded their illegal encampment with metal and plywood barriers. After days of the pro-Hamas encampment participants attacking, blocking and mistreating Jewish students, without any action or response from the college administration, Jews from the Los Angeles community had enough, and came to campus to remove the illegal encampment barriers. Their aim was to encourage the police to finally take down the barriers and end the encampment. Pro-Israel protesters cheered and played the American national anthem when the police finally arrived.

University of Wisconsin – Madison:

• After establishing an illegal tent encampment on the UW-Madison campus, pro-Hamas demonstrators made “Heil Hitler” salutes at Jewish students, and ominously chanted “There is only one solution, Intifada, revolution” – a clear call for Jews to be murdered.

• Pro-Hamas demonstrators violently clashed with police when the police removed the illegal tents, while screaming the anti-Jewish genocidal chant, “Free, free Palestine.” The pro-Hamas demonstrators pushed back police, and surrounded a tent to prevent the police from removing it.

• Immediately after police removed the illegal pro-Hamas tent encampment on May 1, 2024, an even larger tent encampment was constructed. Instead of holding the pro-Hamas students accountable for their offenses, the chancellor appeased them by agreeing to meet with the pro-Hamas students and to not bring in more police before then. Meanwhile, the pro-Hamas demonstrators cheered for a speaker yelling on a bullhorn: “We won’t stop until Palestine is free” (meaning, until Israel is destroyed); and pro-Hamas trucks flashed antisemitic blood libels accusing Israelis (Jews) of perpetrating genocide. The Milwaukee Hillel Executive Director reported that Jewish students felt unsafe and that the university needed to do more to protect Jewish students.

MIT:

• On May 1, 2024, a few steps away from MIT’s Hillel [Jewish activities] building, pro-terror demonstrators cheered when a speaker praised and defended the Muslim Brotherhood and designated terrorist organizations Hamas and the PFLP, and declared, “We’re on the side of the fighters [Hamas, etc.]! We’re on the side of those that fight the enemy [Israel].” The Muslim Brotherhood is the parent organization of Hamas, al Qaeda and other terror groups; preaches hatred and violence towards Jews and Israel’s destruction; bombs Coptic Christian churches; and its leader issued a fatwa calling for the murder of American troops.

• On November 9-10, 2023 (the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht – the “night of broken glass” nationwide pogroms in which Nazis and Hitler Youth destroyed hundreds of synagogues, looted 7,000 businesses and arrested and sent to Dachau thousands of German Jews), an antisemitic, anti-Israel, pro-Hamas group called “Coalition Against Apartheid” (CAA) physically obstructed Jewish students from attending classes, and invited more protestors to join CAA in calling for a violent Intifada in MIT’s main lobby after the administration told students to leave the lobby. Jewish students were fearful of leaving their rooms.

• CAA also harassed MIT staff members in their offices for being Jewish and interrupted classes for weeks. In addition, on social media and posters during their blockade, CAA threatened “you can’t hide” with MIT’s Jewish president’s name painted in a depiction of blood, and singled out Jewish professors by name.

• On October 7, 2023, CAA posted on social media, and on October 8, 2023, CAA sent emails to all MIT dorms supporting, justifying, and glorifying Hamas’ atrocities (“Victory is ours”; “Affirming the right of all occupied peoples to resist”; etc.) and blaming Israel for the violence perpetrated on her citizens.

• On October 19, 2023, CAA held a rally outside the MIT Student Center calling for violence and murder of Jews, with chants including “One Solution: Intifada Revolution” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Some demonstrators directly harassed Israeli students. One attendee allegedly tried to run an Israeli student over with his bike and said “Your ancestors [referring to Holocaust victims] didn’t die to kill more people.”

• On November 2, 2023, MIT’s pro-Hamas CAA stormed the MIT Israel internship offices, harassed staff, accused staff of associating with genocide, and chanted “From the river to the sea,” etc.

• On December 6, 2023, CAA hosted a speaker, who was theoretically under non-academic suspension. The speaker called for targeting Hillel.

• At a demonstration on December 14, 2023, crowds cheered for “armed resistance” [violence] and to “hold a knife to their throats.” There were also calls for “no peace.”

• MIT’s Graduate Student Union (GSU) engages in antisemitic boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and other antisemitic activities, and refused to give Jewish graduate students religious exemptions (required under Title VII), forcing the Jewish students to file federal discrimination charges with the EEOC in March 2024.

Columbia University:

• On October 8, 2023, Columbia’s SJP chapter wrote an open letter that celebrated Hamas’ October 7 atrocities as a “historic moment for the Palestinians”; condemned campus officials who showed sympathy for Jews or decried Hamas’ atrocities; justified and defended Hamas and Gazans – claiming that they were resisting oppressors and were not engaging in terrorism; and demanded divestment from Israel. Columbia Professor Shai Davidai noted that this demonstrated that SJP’s actions were “always about support for Hamas.”

• Demonstrators who hid their faces with keffiyehs at Columbia demonstrations were cheered by fellow antisemitic demonstrators while openly shouting “We are Hamas, we are all Hamas.” They also threatened American Jewish students with many more October 7th massacres, saying “Remember the 7th of October! That will happen not one more time, not five more times, not 10 more times, not 100 more times, not 1000 more times, but 10,000 times!” and “Never forget the 7th of October. Are you ready? 7th of October is about to be every day. Every day. 7th of October is going to be every day for you.” Another demonstrator declared that October 7 was one of the greatest days of his life.

• The pro-Hamas demonstrators also called Jewish women “f---ing b---ches” and told them “get the f--- out of here.”

• A November 15, 2024 protest featured huge banners to “Free Palestine” “By any means necessary” (meaning by violence) “Within Our Lifetime.” In case anyone doubted what “Free Palestine” meant, the banners showed a Palestinian Arab flag entirely covering a map of Israel.

• On March 24, 2024, a two-hour “Resistance 101” zoom event for Columbia and Barnard students featured terror organization PFLP senior member Khalid Barakat and his wife, Charlotte Kates, the international coordinator of PFLP front group Samidoun. “Within Our Lifetime” and a divest group that grew out of SJP organized the “Resistance 101” zoom session, which was sponsored by Barnard’s Center for Research on Women. Barakat told students that Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the PFLP in Gaza are emboldened by what they're seeing at Columbia. Kates told the students that they should keep demonstrating because it was important to the resistance, that they should openly embrace armed resistance and Hamas, that October 7th was necessary, and there was “nothing wrong with being a Hamas fighter.”

• On April 17, 2024, pro-Hamas demonstrators set up a hostile, antisemitic “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” while Columbia’s president was testifying before Congress about campus antisemitism. Antisemitic Columbia faculty locked arms in human chains to help the pro-Hamas demonstrators prevent Jewish students and press outlets (e.g., ABC and Fox News) from entering or walking on the campus lawn occupied by the encampment. Keffiyeh-wearers and Qatari-financed pro-Hamas propaganda outlet Al Jazeera were allowed to freely enter the encampment.

• A Jewish neighbor living across the street from the Columbia campus stated that for the past seven months, Columbia’s demonstrators have caused an extreme hostile anti-Jewish antisemitic atmosphere. For instance, while she was standing in her kitchen preparing for Passover, she heard the demonstrators screaming: “Say it loud and say it clear, We don’t want no Zionists [Jews] here.”

• On Saturday night April 20, 2024, Jewish students who were waving American and Israeli flags and singing peace songs on the Columbia campus were subjected to physical assaults and intimidation. Masked keffiyeh-wearers threw water in the Jewish students’ faces and chanted, “Fuck Israel, Israel’s a bitch!”; “You guys are all inbred”; “We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground.”; “Hamas, we love you. We support your rockets, too.” A keffiyeh-masked demonstrator held up a sign with an arrow pointing toward towards the Jewish students that read: “Al-Qassam’s Next Targets.” Al-Qassam is the military wing of Hamas. Pro-Hamas demonstrators chased the Jewish students towards the campus gates and the Jewish students needed to flee for their safety.

• After pro-Hamas demonstrators chased Jewish students to Columbia’s only open gate on April 20, they found that Within Our Lifetime—a group openly committed to Israel’s destruction—was leading a mass protest blocking the gate. A keffiyeh-wearing demonstrator berated the Jewish students, and a different keffiyeh-wearing demonstrator grabbed a Jewish student’s Israeli flags, brought them back to the pro-Hamas mob inside the gates and attempted to set fire to the Israeli flags. The Jewish student followed and rescued his flags from the fire, while pro-Hamas demonstrators shoved the Jewish student and threw solid objects at the Jewish student’s face and chest. The pro-Hamas demonstrators chased the Jewish students out from the campus again, where another pro-Hamas demonstrator yelled at the Jewish students: “Go back to Poland!” (The Nazis murdered 95% of Polish Jews in the Holocaust.)

• On April 21, 2024, Rabbi Elie Buechler, a rabbi associated with Columbia University’s Orthodox Union Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus, sent a WhatsApp message to about 300 mostly Orthodox Jewish students that recent events at the university “have made it clear that Columbia University’s Public Safety and the NYPD cannot guarantee Jewish students’ safety in the face of extreme antisemitism and anarchy.” Rabbi Buechler advised: “It deeply pains me to say that I would strongly recommend you return home as soon as possible and remain home until the reality in and around campus has dramatically improved.”

• A class action subsequently filed against Columbia for not providing a safe environment for Jewish students noted that: “There are straight-out calls for the genocide of Jews. This has happened because of complacency and appeasement by our academic institutions,” and “Since its formation, the encampment has been the center of round-the-clock harassment of Jewish students, who have been punched, shoved, spat upon, blocked from attending classes and moving freely about campus, and targeted by pro-terrorist hate speech –– both verbal and in written form on massive banners and signs –– with statements such as: ‘Death to the Jews’; ‘Long live Hamas’; ‘Globalize the Intifada.'”

• Longstanding antisemitism at Columbia is reflected in previous lawsuits, filed prior to the class action suit related to the antisemitic pro-Hamas encampment. On February 21, 2024, 5 Jewish students and two Jewish organizations sued Columbia for severe and pervasive antisemitism. Their lawsuit documented that:

“Columbia faculty and students have openly lauded Hamas’s October 7 atrocities as ‘astounding,’ ‘awesome,’ and ‘great feats.’ Mobs of pro-Hamas students and faculty have marched by the hundreds through Columbia’s campus, shouting vile antisemitic slogans, including calls for genocide, such as: ‘Jews will not defeat us’; ‘There is only one solution, Intifada revolution’; ‘We will honor our martyrs’; ‘Resistance is justified’; ‘By any means necessary’; and, in Arabic, ‘From water to water, Palestine will be Arab.’ Those mobs have occupied buildings, promoted violence against Jews, and harassed and assaulted Jews on campus. Jewish and Israeli students have been spat at, physically assaulted, threatened, and targeted on campus and social media with epithets such as ‘fuck the Jews,’ and ‘death to Jews.’ Columbia faculty have promulgated antisemitism in their courses and dismissed and intimidated students who object. What is most striking about all of this is Columbia’s abject failure and deliberate refusal to lift a finger to stop and deter this outrageous antisemitic conduct and discipline the students and faculty who perpetrate it. Columbia’s antisemitism manifests itself in a double standard invidious to Jews and Israelis. Columbia selectively enforces its policies to avoid protecting Jewish and Israeli students from harassment, hires professors who support anti-Jewish violence and spread antisemitic propaganda, and ignores Jewish and Israeli students’ pleas for protection.”

• On April 22, 2024, after Jewish Columbia professor Shai Davidai emailed Columbia officials that he planned to simply sit in the illegal encampment and needed security protection to do so, Columbia deactivated Davidai’s ID card so that he could not enter the campus. Meanwhile, a bigger pro-Hamas illegal tent encampment sprang up on the Columbia campus.

• On April 30, 2024, instead of abiding by the deadline to remove their tent encampment, over 200 demonstrators violently took over and occupied Columbia’s Hamilton Hall administration building. The demonstrators locked arms in front of the building, smashed windows, vandalized the building, threatened a facilities worker, forced public safety workers out of the building, hung an intifada banner out the window, and placed metal tables and furniture in front of the building as a barricade. The demonstrators declared that they would stay in the building until Columbia agreed to their antisemitic, anti-Israel divestment demands and amnesty demands, and said that the university would have blood on its hands if the university tried to remove them by force. In response, President Biden noted that forcibly taking over building is wrong. About 12 hours after the demonstrators took over the building, police crawled through windows, arrested demonstrators and cleared the building.

Cornell University:

• At a rally in October 2023, Professor Russell Rickford praised the October 7 massacre of Jews, saying “It was exhilarating. It was exhilarating, it was energizing. You would not be human” not to feel the same. “I was exhilarated!” Although Rickford was then suspended, Rickford was back on campus in April 2024, egging on protesters and leading antisemitic chants.

• A Cornell student was arrested in November 2023 for threatening to kill and harm Cornell’s Jewish students. Classes were cancelled on November 2, 2023 as a result of stress cause by these threats.

• Cornell pro-Hamas demonstrators set up an illegal encampment in Cornell’s Arts Quad in solidarity with the Columbia University pro-Hamas demonstrators, and chanted “There is only one solution: Intifada revolution” which calls for the death of the Jewish people. Jewish students also felt that the Cornell encampment itself was an endorsement of the antisemitism at Columbia, and wondered whether it was safe to continue attending Cornell.

• Talia Dror ’24, a vice president of Cornellians for Israel explained that “Jewish students at this campus are not accepted unless they renounce a key part of their identity — being Zionists.”

• Alums for Campus Fairness sent a brochure to New York City metro high schools urging Jewish students not to apply to Cornell because Cornell “is no longer a safe place for Jewish students.”

Cooper Union:

• On October 26, 2023, Jewish students had to shelter in the library while pro-Hamas demonstrators banged on the library doors and windows, screaming chants for Israel’s annihilation (e.g., “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.”).

Northwestern University:

• During a five-day Northwestern University pro-Hamas encampment (illegal occupation) at Northwestern University’s Deering Meadow, pro-Hamas demonstrators:

•• Called for the murder of Jews, chanting: “Intifada, Intifada, long live the Intifada.

•• Confronted and surrounded Jewish or pro-Israel individuals; and “escorted them” off the lawn, while chanting: “Shame on you,” “Settlers, settlers go back home” and “We don’t want no Zionists here.”

•• Formed threatening lines in front of pro-Israel counter-protesters.

•• Justified and called for “resistance” (a well-known euphemism for terrorism) against Jews, chanting “Resistance is justified, when people are occupied.”

•• Displayed a “no Jewssign (a circle and “no” slash across a Jewish star).

•• Confronted security guards hired by Northwestern.

•• Called for Israel’s elimination, chanting “Free, free Palestine,” “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” and defaced Northwestern’s Jacobs Center by spray-painting “Free Palestine” and “Death 2 Israel” on the building.

•• Established a memorial table to Hamas propagandist Refaat Alareer, who called Hamas’ and fellow Gazans’ October 7 atrocities “legitimate and moral’ and "exactly like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising" in a BBC interview; and repeatedly wrote on X: “ALL the rape/sexual violence allegations are lies. Israel uses them as smokescreens to justify the Gaza genocide.”

• Shamefully, Northwestern’s president, provost and student affairs vice president made an agreement appeasing and rewarding the pro-Hamas demonstrators/trespassers, with full ride Palestinian Arab scholarships; new Palestinian Arab faculty posts; a renovated building for Muslim MENA (Middle East and North African) students; disclosure of holdings (which assists pro-Hamas demonstrators’ antisemitic divestment efforts); a student conduit to the Board of Trustees Investment Committee (which also assists antisemitic divestment efforts); input into campus dining services and residential and retail vendors which will enable antisemitic groups to harass and try to remove Jewish and pro-Israel vendors and services; and university efforts to prevent the demonstrators from facing the employment consequences of their antisemitic activities. This appeasement (aside from its immorality) will result in even more terror at Northwestern and on other American campuses in the future.

University of Pennsylvania:

• Two weeks prior to October 7, U Penn hosted an antisemitic, anti-Israel “Palestine Writes” (hate) festival, with organizers and speakers who spread anti-Jewish libels and hate; support, honor, incite and celebrate terrorists and the Intifada terror wars against Jews; and defend, praise and even assist designated terrorist organizations, including Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), IHH, the Fatah/PLO Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, and other Palestinian Authority terror groups. At least one “Palestine Writes” speaker was a convicted terrorist. This hate festival escalated anti-Jewish hatred even before October 7, and was accompanied by the vandalization (twice) of U Penn’s Hillel center.

• On April 25, 2024, U Penn, Temple University and Drexel University students set up an illegal “Gaza Solidarity” encampment near U Penn. The encampment flew flags of designated terror organization PFLP, and cheered praises for Hamas’ military wing the Al Qassam brigades. On April 26, U Penn’s interim president ordered the encampment to disband immediately due to university violations, and harassment and intimidation – but the pro-Hamas demonstrators ignored the order.

• Two thousand concerned U Penn students signed a petition calling for U Penn’s interim president to follow through on his call to disband the encampment.

Tulane University:

• On October 27, 2023 (less than three weeks after October 7), three Jewish students were assaulted at a violent anti-Israel demonstration organized by the Tulane SJP chapter in front of the main gate of Tulane. Two antisemitic men drove through the demonstration in a pickup truck, waving a Palestine flag, and then attempted to set an Israeli flag on fire. When a Jewish student tried to prevent the Israeli flag from burning, a masked antisemite hit the Jewish student in the head with a flagpole. Another anti-Israel demonstrator punched and hit another Jewish student in the head with a megaphone, breaking the Jewish student’s nose. Jewish students no longer feel safe at Tulane.

University of California Berkeley:

• On May 2, 2024, a group of violent anti-Israel demonstrators approached a Jewish girl standing with an Israeli flag, and refused to back off when the Jewish girl said they were too close. The anti-Israel demonstrators then grabbed the Jewish girl’s Israeli flag. When Jews tried to prevent the anti-Israel demonstrators from grabbing the Israeli flag, the anti-Israel demonstrators punched the Jewish president of Students Supporting Israel, Ilan Sinelnikov, in the head three times.

• On Feb. 26, 2024, Bears for Palestine posted a “call for action” to incite a riot to stop a planned international law event by Israeli attorney Ran Bar-Yoshafat from going forward. An antisemitic mob of 200 rioters then banged on windows, prevented students from entering the event, broke two windows and a door of the auditorium, chanted “Intifada” and “Free Palestine,” and yelled “Jew, Jew, Jew” and spat in the face of Jewish students attempting to enter the auditorium. The speech did not take place, and the speaker and Jewish students had to be evacuated for their personal safety. In a subsequent letter, Berkeley’s Chancelor and Executive VP wrote that it was not possible to both keep students safe and let the event go forward, “given the size of the crowd and the threat of violence.” The Wall Street Journal noted that the fault lies as much with the school officials who fail to punish and expel the offenders.

• In April 2024, after Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and his wife, a professor at Berkeley Law, invited students to celebratory graduation dinners in their home, Berkeley Law SJP placed posters throughout the school targeting Chemerinsky, apparently because Chemerinsky is Jewish. The SJP posters contained a Nazi-blood-libel-style cartoon depicting Chemerinsky with bloody lips holding bloody utensils, along with the statement: “No dinner with Zionist Chem while Gaza starves.” The Berkeley Law SJP president, who also works for CAIR, came to Chemerinsky’s first dinner with mics and 10 collaborators, disrupted the dinner, and refused the dean and his wife’s requests to leave their home. Fifteen demonstrators came to the dean’s home, chanted offensively and banged drums to disrupt the third dinner.

• In October 2022 (a year prior to Hamas’ October 7 atrocities) nine Berkeley Law School student associations, led by SJP, adopted antisemitic bylaws banning any speaker who supports Zionism or Israel from speaking on any subject at the law school.

University of Minnesota:

• Anti-Israel protestors proudly waved designated terrorist organization PFLP’s flag and yelled at Jews to “go back to Europe!

George Washington University (GWU):

• On October 24, 2023, GWU’s SJP chapter projected statements supporting Hamas in huge capital letters onto the Gelman Library building, including “GLORY TO OUR MARTYRS” and “FREE PALESTINE FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA.”

• On April 25, 2024, at a protest organized by SJP, an anti-Israel demonstrator carrying a Palestinian flag also held a sign calling for the “final solution” – the Nazi plan to exterminate all Jews.

• Demonstrators established an illegal pro-Hamas encampment in University Yard reaching a peak of about 500 persons on April 25, including demonstrators from Georgetown University. The encampment decreased in size, but demonstrators refused to disband after the university warned that students could face temporary suspension or be administratively barred for refusing to relocate after a 7 p.m. deadline on April 25, 2024. On Friday morning April 26, the D.C. police refused university officials’ pleas to clear the encampment. Police did however put metal barricades around the encampment, to prevent others from joining it.

• The pro-Hamas encampment demonstrators chanted “Free, free Palestine” and “Zionism will fall.” These chants called for the annihilation of Israel and for the destruction of an identity of almost all Jews.

• During the continuing encampment, pro-Hamas demonstrators hoisted a Palestinian flag; wrote “Zionism is terrorism” on the street; wrapped a Palestinian flag and keffiyeh onto a statue of George Washington; encircled an anti-abortion protestor, covered his face with keffiyehs and chanted “Justice is our demand, no peace on stolen land” (a call for nonstop violence against Israel, despite the fact that Jews did not “steal” their own land); chanted “Glory to the martyrs” [“martyrs” refers to Palestinian Arab terrorists]; hosted a speaker who said that Blacks and anti-Israel groups “have the same enemy - similar apartheid regimes in Israel and South Africa”; planted a garden with flags of South Africa, “Palestine” and Yemen; chanted “IOF [Israel “Occupation” Forces], KKK, MPD, they’re all the same”; chanted after again hoisting a Palestinian flag, while banging on drums and metal pots: “Who got the flag up? We got the flag up. Who got the campus? We got the campus. Are you leaving? We’re not leaving. Who’s winning? We’re winning.”; later chanted “[GWU President] Granberg in your ivory tower we the students have the power” and “Say it clear and say it loud, Gaza you make us proud”; hosted a speaker who declared: “We will not rest until we bring President Granberg and the Board of Trustees to their f*cking knees”; later chanted to more drumbeats: “Free, free Palestine,” and “We will honor all our martyrs,” and “From the sea to the river, Palestine will live forever”; and reiterated that they would stay in the encampment until the university dropped charges against pro-Hamas demonstrators and divested from companies that supply Israel.

• On May 3, 2024, the GWU “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” held a “People’s Tribunal,” in which they charged, found guilty and called for beheading GWU’s president, provost and trustees. The demonstrators chanted “Guillotine! Guillotine! Guillotine!

• On May 4, 2024, SJP renamed GWU’s University Yard “Shahada Square” (Martyr’s Square) “for the resistance” and “in honor of our martyrs.” The demonstrators cheered and chanted “Free, free Palestine.”

• On May 2, 2024, the GWU provost announced that final exams scheduled to take place in four buildings near the pro-Hamas encampment would be relocated so that students could take the tests in quiet, without disruptions. In addition, on April 25, 2024, the GWU Law School dean sent a video to law students that their final exams would be moved to undisclosed locations to protect their safety.

• The pro-Hamas demonstrators also posted antisemitic signs saying: “Students will leave [the encampment] when Israelis leave” and “Students will go back home when Israelis go back to Europe, US, etc. (their real homes).”

Unfortunately, the actions described at the above universities are typical of the horrors that Jewish students are enduring at numerous campuses across the country. These actions are reminiscent of the Nazi brown shirts at German universities in the 1930s.

Organizers, Funders, etc. of Antisemitism on Campus
Must Be Investigated and Held Accountable

Some of the major groups reported to be organizing, funding and instigating violence and threats harming Jewish students include:

• “Students for Justice in Palestine” (SJP) a.k.a “Palestine Solidarity Committee” (PSC) a.k.a “Students Against Israeli Apartheid” (SAIA)

• “Educators for Justice in Palestine” (a faculty support group for SJP)

• American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), which funds and helps train SJP

• “Jewish Voice for Peace” (JVP)

• Muslim Student Association (MSA)

• General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS)

• Muslim Association for Social Change (MASC)

• Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)

• IfNotNow (INN)

• “Divestment Coalitions” consisting of coalitions of many of the groups listed here.

• Code Pink

• “Within Our Lifetime” (WOL) (which calls for destroying Israel “by any means necessary.”

• WOL’s “Globalize the Intifada”

• The Tides Foundation

• Rockefeller Bros. Fund

• Open Societies Foundations (George Soros)

• A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition

• Al-Awdah (Palestinian Right of Return Coalition)

• Samidoun (a front group for designated terrorist group PFLP)

• US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR)

• WESPAC (Westchester Peace Action Committee Foundation)

• CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations)

• The People's Forum, bankrolled by Chinese propagandist & tech mogul Neville Roy Singham

• Arabella Advisors

• Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Palestine Legal

• Qatar

For more information, please see, for instance, “The NGO Network Orchestrating Antisemitic Incitement on American Campuses,” NGO Monitor, Apr. 25, 2014 ; and Canary Mission’s documentation about hatred and violence that these and similar groups and their leaders are inciting.

Combating Jew-Hatred on Campuses
Needs to Be a Top Law Enforcement Priority

The situation described herein is frightening and intolerable and must be addressed. College campuses are meant to be shining citadels that educate our youth with lifelong skills and a love for learning. Our nation cannot afford to have our universities descend into mob-run war zones that foment the oldest and most despicable hatred – antisemitism. Jewish students and faculty in this country should not have to continue enduring violence, threats, disruption, fear and interference with their studies. Non-Jewish studies are likewise victims of the disruptions of their classes, schedules, events and campuses.

We urge you to make combating Jew-hatred a top priority. Please thoroughly investigate the antisemitic activities, groups and their leaders identified in this letter, who are openly targeting, and promoting and inciting violence against Jews on our campuses. Prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law as supported by the evidence. Monitor these groups and their leaders closely and shut these groups down. Please also produce a full and transparent report on your findings and activities. And use all the tools at your disposal to ensure that American Jewish students and faculty can exist and thrive at our colleges and universities without risk of being targeted for harassment, intimidation or violence.

Thank you for your diligent work. Please consider us a resource; we are here to help.

Respectfully,

Morton A. Klein, National President of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA)

Elizabeth Berney, Esq., ZOA Director of Research and Special Projects

Susan Tuchman, Esq., Director of the ZOA Center for Law and Justice

Jonathan Ginsburg, Managing Director of ZOA Campus Department