On Saturday evening Israel faced an unprecedented attack from Iran, which launched hundreds of drones and missiles. Jointly, Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom, and regional leaders including Jordan and Saudi Arabia collaborated to intercept the missiles, which they did successfully. CAM stands with the State of Israel in the face of these acts of aggression, yet around the world some celebrated this attempted mass murder of Israelis. Celebrations were held across the Middle East, such as in Yemen, Pakistan, Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip. This is especially true in Iran itself, where the Iranian parliament celebrated the attempted attack and in the cities of Tehran and Qom. These celebrations were not exclusive to the region, however, as anti-Israel activists celebrated the news of the indiscriminate attacks in Chicago and Toronto.

In the United States, multiple synagogues and Jewish centers were vandalized with antisemitic, anti-Israel rhetoric. In East Meadow, New York, a man spray-painted “Free Palestine, Zionism is Nazism” on Jewish homes and on the wall of the local Jewish center. In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, two lights belonging to a historic synagogue were smashed, which the synagogue said in a statement was a “deliberate desecration of our sacred space and a bigoted attack on our faith community.” In Bangor, Maine, “Nazi Israel 30k+ Murdered” was vandalized on a stop sign outside the local synagogue.

In the United Kingdom, Palestinian mobs continued to attempt to intimate elected officials and bureaucrats. Labour Party leader Keir Starmer’s wife was forced out of her house to avoid security threats posed by protesters who have remained there for weeks. Walls outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in London were defaced with fake blood that was thrown on them. In Ireland, protesters attempt to block the Shannon Airport to “keep Ireland genocide free.” 

Across college campuses, pro-Palestinian students continued to inhibit learning, disturb classes, and promote their radical agenda. At the University of Berkeley a law school dinner at the dean’s home was disrupted by a pro-Hamas student. Class at the University of Michigan was interrupted by protesting students, and accepted students touring Northwestern University were shouted at and handed flyers calling for the defunding of Hillel, “the Zionist foundation for Jewish life.” At George Washington University a pro-Hamas organization on campus called the US Ambassador the the UN a “Zionist puppet,” invoking the age-old antisemitic trope of Jewish global conspiracy.

Responding to the surge of antisemitism in the United States, a bipartisan group of senators this week reintroduced the Antisemitism Awareness Act. This piece of legislation would codify the 2019 Executive Order, which instructed the Department of Education to utilize the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism when investigating accusations of Title VI violations. Such action has allowed the Department of Education to open investigations into universities such as Harvard and MIT, and the passage of the  Antisemitism Awareness Act would be a positive step towards protecting Jews on American college campuses.

This week’s Global Antisemitism Report highlights 88 new incidents, categorized as follows: 62 (74.7%) as anti-Israel or anti-Zionist manifestations of antisemitism, 12 (14.5%) as Islamist,  7 (8.4%) as classical antisemitism,  2 (2.4%) as unattributable, and 0 (0%) as Holocaust minimization and distortion,.