Five Jewish students report being attacked last month

A spokesman for the University of Pittsburgh said it “unequivocally condemns anti-Semitism” and will have Jewish students escorted by campus police during the upcoming Jewish holidays.

Following the attack on Goodwin, two Jewish students at the University of Michigan were attacked in separate incidents off campus. And on Friday, a group of six to eight men attacked another Jewish student outside the University of Pittsburgh campus, using anti-Semitic slurs. The FBI has launched an investigation to determine whether the attack constitutes a federal hate crime, NBC News reported.

As the new school year begins across the country, law enforcement officials say they are witnessing anti-Semitic violence as the anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel approaches. At the same time, more radical protest groups are publicly deploring Israel’s recent assassination of Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

“His martyrdom, ideas and legacy will remain a beacon of hope for thousands after him,” Within Our Lifetime, one of New York’s most inflammatory protest organizations, posted on X.

Samidoun, a Canada-based nonprofit group that praises Hamas and Hezbollah and is among the most extreme groups in campus protests, also decried the killing of the Hezbollah leader, whom U.S. officials blame for the killings of hundreds of Americans.

“Death to the enemies and the racist Zionist entity,” wrote Samidoun, whose name means “steadfast” in Arabic. “Victory of the Resistance.”

Charlotte Kates, co-founder of Samidoun, which has also run teach-ins and letter-writing campaigns on campus since at least 2012, said in a wide-ranging interview with NBC News that the demonstrations won’t end anytime soon.

“There are a lot of actions and demonstrations being mobilized,” Kates said, referring to the anniversary of October 7th. “I would expect people to take to the streets.”

Although some people committed violence and attacks on Jewish students, most demonstrations on campus did not result in arrests or injuries. And pro-Palestinian activists have long said that they are not anti-Jewish and that being anti-Israel is not anti-Semitic.

They also argue that they too faced violence, discrimination and intimidation at work and at school. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the country’s largest Muslim civil rights organization, reported this spring that it received 921 complaints related to education, including bullying and discrimination, in 2023, a 219% increase from the previous year .

They said there were numerous violent attacks on Palestinian, pro-Palestinian and visibly Muslim students around the university campus, as well as harassment of visibly Muslim students or students wearing keffiyehs.

The group cited several incidents since Oct. 7, including the stabbing attack on a Palestinian near the University of Texas at Austin in February after he attended a pro-Palestinian protest rally, and an attack on demonstrators in a pro- Palestinian camp at UCLA in May. In New York this month, a Jewish driver drove his car into a protester at an off-campus demonstration attended by Columbia students. CAIR also said there have been incidents of police brutality against students.

“There have been numerous violent attacks,” said Edward Ahmed Mitchell, deputy national director of CAIR.

To curb violence and disruptive protests, dozens of colleges and universities across the country this summer implemented new policies or clarified their existing rules to prevent building takeovers, day-long encampments and property damage that have cost schools millions of dollars.

Earlier this month, a bipartisan group of members of Congress called on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to share information about an “alarming rise in anti-Semitism on college and university campuses.” A commission spokesman said the application is currently being examined.

And Kenneth Marcus, who led the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights under former Presidents Donald Trump and George W. Bush, said more attacks are possible if universities are negligent.

“The real danger of no one enforcing rules is that lawlessness can lead to very serious violence,” he said. “It may be that many of the protesters simply want to express their point of view, but conditions are becoming ripe for serious crime and violence.”