|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The office of the Portugal’s secretary of state for higher education has asked Prosecutor General Amadeu Guerra to open a criminal investigation into an antisemitic campaign at the University of Coimbra that forced Israeli doctoral student Bar Harel to abandon his computer engineering PhD.
The formal request was also sent to Portugal’s Central Department of Criminal Investigation and Prosecution and prosecutors in Coimbra. Possible offenses it listed included discrimination, incitement to hatred and violence, public glorification of a terrorist organization, threats, and bodily harm, spanning several university faculties between July 2024 and May 2026.
The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) first reported on Harel’s case in the summer of 2025, after he documented swastikas, Hezbollah flags, and pro-Hamas imagery across Coimbra.
Stickers read: “The chosen people like to kill babies,” “Zionists should carry a certificate proving they’re humans.” and “Zionism is an evil cult.”
One poster cited by Harel said “Attack your local Zionist” and another portrayed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the architecht of the October 7th massacre, as a hero.
After Harel published his research, he was doxxed and branded a “war criminal.” Flyers said he should not be allowed to buy bread. One message declared, “Your family deserves a second Holocaust.” He said he was later assaulted for carrying a small Israeli flag.
Portugal’s national ombudsman ruled in March 2026 that the university showed “substantial passivity” and failed to prevent, reduce or resolve the situation. It also found that the university infringed Harel’s rights by threatening legal action if he went public.
The university denies mishandling the case, claiming Harel’s complaints were too vague to verify and that it could not locate stickers and posters he described on campus. Harel, however, compiled extensive photographic evidence of the campaign, much of which CAM published.
“We are fighting so that Israeli and Jewish students will no longer be targets of hatred in educational institutions and so that the law will be enforced equally,” Harel said.
Read CAM’s original 2025 report on Harel’s case: From Scholarship to Survival: One Student’s Fight Against Antisemitism in Portugal
Take Action
CAM has launched Report It, a secure app to report antisemitic incidents anonymously and in real time. Don’t stay silent. Download it today on the Apple App Store or Google Play. See it. Report it. Stop it.
