In a “scathing” five-page memo, 100 U.S. State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development staffers wrote that U.S. President Joe Biden is “spreading misinformation” about the war between Israel and Hamas and that Israel has committed “war crimes,” Axios reported. The staffers also said that Israel, like Hamas, is holding hostages. (“Biden can’t contain the anti-Israel radicals within his own administration,” quipped Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.)
Less than a week after Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, dodged a question about whether the Biden administration condemns those who tear down posters of hostages in Gaza, John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council of the White House, struck a different tone. In an interview with Jake Tapper, of CNN, Kirby said: “Frankly, they ought to be mourning the loss—the theft—of their own dignity, their own integrity, by doing something like that.”
After repeatedly telling a man, who asked him why he wasn’t supporting a ceasefire, to respect the Amtrak quiet car and to leave him alone, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) voiced his support for Israel against terrorism.
Jew-hatred on campus is a “new oversight priority” for House Republicans, per the Washington Examiner. Two House committees plan to hold hearings on the subject this week.
Antisemitic hate crimes are up 27% in Los Angeles this year between Jan. 1 and Oct. 28, compared to the same period in 2022, per LAPD data.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, plans to increase the state’s counterterrorism capacity amid rising antisemitism.
Detroit police are being “pressured” to explain why it released a suspect in the killing last month of synagogue leader and political consultant Samantha Woll.
The British Labour Party suspended Ebrahim Dockrat after the politician was accused of sharing antisemitic content on social media.
Pushed 15 times to say whether Hamas is a terrorist group in an interview with British TV host Piers Morgan, Jeremy Corbyn, the disgraced former Labour Party leader, declined. “I’ve asked you two questions: Should Hamas stay in power, and are they a terror group? You’re refusing to answer either of them,” Morgan said, pointing at Corbyn. “That is very telling.”
Michael Schill, the president of Northwestern University, announced a “President’s Advisory Committee on Preventing Antisemitism and Hate,” which “will focus not just on stemming the growth of antisemitism, but also hate directed to other groups, such as our students of Palestinian descent.” (Schill added that Hamas flags and “From the river to the sea” banners are verboten.)
“We need to start making people who support Israel actually afraid to go out in public,” wrote James “Fergie” Chambers, who recently inherited “multiple hundreds of millions of dollars” and is using the funds to support anti-Israel activism, the Washington Free Beacon reported. (His father is billionaire James Cox Chambers, co-owner of the Atlanta Hawks, a professional basketball team.)
Stateside
An attorney who took issue in a Medium post with a letter, which firms released telling law-school deans that they had zero tolerance for antisemitism, has been fired. (She reportedly refused to take the post down upon her employer’s direction.)
A Hollywood “super agent” is on a “Jewish listening tour” after accusing Israel of genocide. Maha Dakhil, who represents Tom Cruise and Madonna, “has wiped her Instagram of all her starry photos and has not posted since the debacle,” the New York Post reported.
Tilden Middle School in Rockville, Md., is investigating Sabrina Khan-Williams, a “diversity, equity and inclusion teacher,” following a Daily Wire exposé of her social-media posts, in which she wrote of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks: “Debunked!! No music festival attack. Babies were not burned. Women were not violated.” In another post, she wrote that Palestinians “are being killed and their organs are being sold,” per Daily Wire. (The school is in one of the most Jewish areas in the country.)
Jewish Voice for Peace protesters occupied the federal building in Oakland, Calif., demanding a ceasefire. (The group also demonstrated in Providence.)
Seven people—three of them students—who were arrested at Brandeis University for disorderly conduct, unlawful assembly and assault and battery on a police officer pleaded not-guilty. They were part of a protest following the university’s announced ban of Students for Justice in Palestine.
A Brentwood, Tenn. highway overpass was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti.
In an attempt to explain the difference between antisemitism and criticism of the Israeli government, Tom Morello, formerly of the band Rage Against the Machine, wrote that “the horrific war crimes in Gaza aren’t being done by ‘the Jews’ but rather by a particular murderous right-wing Israeli administration.”
Elsewhere
Jewish-owned businesses in Montreal, where shots have been fired thrice at Jewish schools in the past week, are being targeted with antisemitic vandalism.
A committee member tasked with selecting the next curator of the major art show Documenta resigned in the wake of revelations that he supported boycotting Israel. Ranjit Hoskoté said a “kangaroo court” pushed him “to accept a sweeping and untenable definition of antisemitism that doesn’t differentiate between the Jewish people and the Israeli state, that conflates the Jewish people with the Israeli state; and that, correspondingly, misrepresents any expression of sympathy with the Palestinian people as support for Hamas.” Germany Cultural Minister Claudia Roth said Hoskoté signed a statement that is “clearly antisemitic and loaded with Israel-hostile conspiracy theories.”
In China, antisemitic hate speech has surged on social media.
A protester in New Zealand was arrested for throwing red paint (fake blood) at the U.S. consulate in Auckland. “Ceasefire now” and “Save Gaza free Palestine” were also painted on the building.
Jews are hiding in the “religious closet” in Muslim-majority Indonesia.
“’There’s no way I’m taking a Zionist booking,” the owner of an inflatable-castle rental company posted, denying his wares to a Jewish school in Sydney, Australia. “I don’t want your blood money. Free Palestine.”
