Rabbi who was attacked outside Israeli Embassy slams DC's handling of antisemitism
Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld went to the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., on March 21, 2024, to pray for the safe return of the hostages. While he was there, Herzfeld was harassed by protesters who were accused of deafening him with megaphone sirens.
The rabbi was then falsely accused of stalking and was later vindicated, with the accusers being ordered to pay for his $182,000 legal bills. Despite this, Herzfeld views the D.C. leadership's response to antisemitism as "insufficient," especially in light of the murders of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim.
"There's a pattern here of the D.C. government not doing enough to protect the Jewish community. And I said that to Mayor Bowser, and I think that enough is enough," Herzfeld told Fox News Digital.
Herzfeld said he has known D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser personally "for many years" and that he believes she is "a good person, a genuine person." However, the rabbi still holds Bowser responsible for allowing an "antisemitic environment" to grow in D.C. to the point where Jewish residents feel unsafe — something the rabbi said he has heard from many Jews, including his own daughter. He told Fox News Digital that he holds the mayor responsible for "tolerating" antisemitism since Oct. 7.
Elias Rodriguez, who was charged with the murders of Lischinsky and Milgrim, was heard shouting "free, free Palestine" as he was arrested. According to court documents, he told D.C. police, "I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza, I am unarmed."
After the reported statements by Rodriguez, and what he was heard shouting in a viral video, Herzfeld told Fox News Digital that it gives D.C. Jews "even more reason to be scared."
"So, nobody's talking about taking away the rights to free speech. Everybody has the right to speak in a way that's part of society, in a way that does not endanger and threaten people. And now we know that those people who were at the at these rallies, which were being done in a frenzy, a threatening, intimidating manner, there's a reason why people are scared, because some people who associate with them are violent, and this person who went and killed, murdered."
"On the streets of D.C. to people who supported Israel, this person was associated with that group. He shouted free Palestine. And so now we have even more reason to be scared as these free Palestine protesters are giving carte blanche on the street of D.C."
In response to a Fox News Digital request for comment, Bowser's office referred to the mayor's remarks at a news conference on May 22 following the shooting.
"We are here to echo what the U.S. attorney has said, that this crime will not be tolerated in our city," Bowser said. She also lamented that D.C. has had "practice standing together as a community to fight antisemitism both in hate speech and hateful acts."
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, who also spoke at the press conference, said she would not tolerate violent crimes such as the deadly shooting in front of the Jewish museum.
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Four days after the Hamas attack on Israel, the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee released a statement that students 'hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence'. It was co-signed by 33 student groups. Protests have flared at Harvard and fellow Ivy League giant Yale ever since. In April this year at Yale, some 200 keffiyeh-wearing protesters chanted, 'We will honour all our martyrs.' With the protests have come complaints by Jewish students that they have been made to feel unsafe and intimidated by rising anti-Semitism. This pattern of radical protest by students at elite universities is mirrored in Britain. One of the Just Stop Oil activists accused of defacing Stonehenge last April, Niamh Lynch, 22, was an Oxford student. Lynch denies the charges against her and, at a hearing in January, asked for her trial not to clash with her university exams this summer. It has been set for October. In 2023, Daniel Knorr, a 21-year-old biochemistry undergraduate, allegedly sprayed the Radcliffe Camera Building in Oxford with orange paint in protest at the university's links with fossil fuel companies. He has pleaded not guilty and his trial will take place in August. Chiara Sarti, a PhD student at King's College, Cambridge, sprayed her own college building with orange paint in 2023 and in March last year, an unidentified member of Palestine Action (it's still not known whether they attended the university) knifed and defaced a painting of Lord Balfour in Trinity College, Cambridge, for his part in the creation of the state of Israel. In January, members of Oxford Action for Palestine seized the Radcliffe Camera Building. The group said it had renamed it the Khalida Jarrar Library, after the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a proscribed terror group. Meanwhile, Phoebe Plummer – who was convicted of defacing Van Gogh's Sunflowers at the National Gallery in 2022 – studied at Manchester University having attended a £50,000-a-year boarding school in Ascot. Douglas Headley, a professor of philosophy of religion, has worked at Cambridge's divinity faculty for almost three decades, since 1996. In that time, the university has seen protests ranging from large-scale demonstrations on the Iraq War and student fees, to the recent acts of vandalism by Just Stop Oil and pro-Palestinian activists. In March, the High Court granted Cambridge an injunction preventing protesters from disrupting graduation events. On Friday Trinity and St John's Colleges sought fresh injunctions against pro-Palestinian demonstrators as a result of an encampment set up on their land over the previous weekend. 'For young people, a cocktail of radicalism within a secure environment is unbelievably attractive,' says Hedley. 'The ideologically driven self-hatred and hatred of the country is the core of this problem.' Is it possible that the privilege actually increases the students' urge to be more radical? What motivates their keenness to rubbish the heritage from which they have benefitted more than anyone, and where does their moral certainty come from? 'Some privileged young people understand they have had access to things that others do not,' explains Paul Glynn, clinical director at Klearminds therapy group, who has worked with students on issues of privilege. 'The key emotions are guilt and shame. Guilt is an activating emotion – it's about making amends or a correction. Shame can be isolating. A student can often deny or avoid exposing their privilege to others.' 'Privilege can result in 'overcompensation', where students experiencing guilt align themselves with causes that make them feel like they have a less privileged identity,' adds Glynn. When students chant 'Globalise the Intifada' on campus, it's an expression of an overtly binary view of the world, an expression that can be linked to their privilege. 'Certainty is attractive,' says Glynn. 'Most of these issues are complex, but we don't like that so let's make it good or evil.' 'What strikes me is the lack of knowledge among students,' says Abulafia. 'With the Gaza/Israel example there is a complete ignorance about the historical context. They don't really seem to be interested.' The anti-Vietnam marches of the 1960s were an attempt to stop a war which had direct consequences for American students, with a chance that you, your friends or family members could be drafted to fight and die on the other side of the world. The current protests have grown in a hothouse of identity politics – in which protesters' views on Gaza are part of a broader world view that tends to encompass critical race theory, extreme trans rights and anti-capitalist activism. Through this lens, Israel is perceived to be a white colonising state and therefore bears the sins of all colonialists, with its associations of racism, apartheid and exploitation. As Abulafia highlights, in many cases, the students appear to be rejecting the world that got them to such colleges in the first place. If they are told the system is bad, they must be bad too. Assumptions about colonialism in higher education that sprang from Edward Said's 1978 book Orientalism and the influence of French intellectuals such as Michel Foucault have contributed to the notion of a hierarchy of oppression, from which students can judge who and what deserves the most sympathy. Katharine Birbalsingh, a leading headteacher who advocates for freedom of speech, suggests that the problem starts at school – specifically private school classrooms – where the connection between privilege and guilt is first made. 'It seems obvious there is a relationship between what you might call 'woke' culture and privilege,' says Birbalsingh. 'By that I include mainly white, middle-class people. Woke ideas like 'decolonisation' and criticism of Western values are everywhere in the most exclusive private school classrooms and that feeds into universities. 'One example is outside speakers who come into private schools and imply that there is something wrong with being privileged and they point towards absolving themselves by embracing Black Lives Matter or the trans movement.' Birbalsingh recently claimed that transgender children are more likely to be 'white and privileged' and that many were searching for 'victimhood narratives', which are 'admired' in modern society. A key part of the dynamic between privilege and protest is how some students react to their less socially advantaged peers. Psychologists suggest students who are perceived to be 'marginalised' are more likely to be listened to, especially when it comes to theories around race and history. 'We have found that students from less privileged backgrounds are deferred to by more privileged ones, because the privileged students believe that the opinions and beliefs of others must be more authentic,' says Dr Helena Bunn, a member of the British Psychological Society and a director of a doctorate programme that explores social justice, oppression and privilege with students at the University of East London. 'The privileged students feel compelled to become advocates for a cause they have little personal connection to. If there is guilt about privilege, that can lead to less critical thinking. 'There can also be a sense of 'I feel I have to do something' so they follow the opinions of others who are seen to be less privileged. It can be as simple as just thinking 'something is wrong here' like a war for example, but the emotional priority is to belong to the cause.' Perhaps the most infamous example of student entitlement was recorded during the Columbia tent encampment, with the appearance of Johannah King-Slutzky as its spokesperson. King-Slutzky, a PhD English student and the daughter of psychologists, warned that students illegally occupying university property could 'die of dehydration and starvation' if they were not given supplies. The protests have raised the ire of the Trump administration, which sees the demonstrations as evidence that universities such as Columbia and Harvard are gripped by a 'woke' elite complicit in the radicalisation of their students. The US president threatened to redirect $3 billion in Harvard research grants last week, following a decision to suspend foreign students from enrolling. 'Harvard is treating our country with great disrespect,' he said. 'Globalise the Intifada' may be cosplay rebellion for some privileged students and a way of expiating guilt for others, but sceptics argue the increasing prevalence of the chant has real-world consequences. The former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss pointed to recent attacks on Jews in New York and Colorado, saying: 'It was dismissed as a metaphor and not what it always was: a demand for open season on Jewish people worldwide.' 'The elite institutions have been ideologically captured,' says Hedley. 'When I worked in the US, I noticed the universities you would assume to be the best weren't because their departments and academics were taken over by a gender and race ideology. Once you turn a university into an ideological arena, it encourages the students to express their outrage and their virtue in ways the average person outside is not going to be very impressed with.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. 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