Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lambasted “an antisemitic surge” in the United States in an English-language video message Wednesday, amid widespread anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses across the US.
Activists angered by Israel’s war on the Hamas terror group in Gaza have engaged in an escalating standoff with university administrations who have sought to dismantle the encampments, with Jewish students and faculty saying the demonstrations include antisemitic harassment and calls for violence against Jews, as well as support for Hamas’s October 7 massacre of Israeli civilians.
“Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities. They call for the annihilation of Israel, they attack Jewish students, they attack Jewish faculty,” Netanyahu charged in his statement, which likened the scenes to those that preceded the Holocaust in Nazi Germany.
“This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s. It’s unconscionable. It has to be stopped. It has to be condemned unequivocally,” the Israeli premier said.
“But that’s not what happened,” he added. “When you listen to them, they say not only ‘Death to Israel’ and ‘Death to the Jews,’ but also ‘Death to America.’” Netanyahu lamented the “antisemitic surge” in the US “as Israel tries to defend itself against genocidal terrorists who hide behind civilians.”
