The temporary injunction, from U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi, is one of the most significant legal rulings to follow the spread of pro-Palestinian encampments, which protesters organized on campuses across the country last spring. It comes in response to a handful of Jewish students suing UCLA, alleging that they were briefly barred from entering a campus space that had been occupied this spring by people protesting Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

In his comments, the judge wrote that he was appalled at the state of campus affairs for Jewish students.

“In the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, in the City of Los Angeles, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith,” Scarsi wrote.

“This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom that it bears repeating, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith,” he added, with emphasis.

UCLA’s encampments attracted particular scrutiny in April after campus police failed to promptly intervene when protesters erected physical barricades on campus, preventing pro-Israel students from crossing. School security instead instructed Jewish students to avoid the encampments. Pro-Israel counterprotesters attacked the encampment soon afterward, leading to violent clashes and arrests and to Congressional testimony from the school’s Jewish outgoing chancellor, Gene Block.

The judge said the fact that a public university’s staff was aiding any behavior that excluded Jewish students, instead of stopping it, violated the First Amendment. Without specifying what steps UCLA should take to rectify the problem, he said the school needs to ensure that all campus locations and activities are open to all students.

The ruling was praised by Jewish plaintiff Yitzchok Frankel, a rising third-year UCLA law student, and by Becket, a law firm specializing in religious liberty that sued the school on Frankel’s behalf.

“I am grateful that the court has ordered UCLA to put a stop to this shameful anti-Jewish conduct,” Frankel said in a press release. Attorney Mark Rienzi said in the release, “Today’s ruling says that UCLA’s policy of helping antisemitic activists target Jews is not just morally wrong but a gross constitutional violation.”

A spokesperson for UCLA criticized the ruling to the Los Angeles Times, saying it would “improperly hamstring our ability to respond to events on the ground.” They added that the school is “considering all options moving forward”; the university had previously indicated it could appeal. UCLA’s fall semester for law students begins this month.

Lawyers for the university had argued during a hearing that UCLA wasn’t at fault for the protesters’ behavior, and that the school had sought to non-violently de-escalate the encampments without involving police. Campus police instead took a strategy of enforcing “neutral zones” once the encampments formed, as a way of preventing altercations, the attorneys said. Other schools had faced criticism from some corners for sending in law enforcement to immediately break up encampments and make arrests.

The injunction is “a significant decision, one that has legal consequences,” Michael Helfand, a professor of law and religion at Pepperdine University’s law school and a legal advisor for education matters with the Orthodox Union, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

He noted that, unlike many of the most prominent schools that have dealt with encampments, UCLA is a public university and subject to the First Amendment — including the right to free religious expression. Pro-Palestinian protesters at some other public universities, including Portland State University and Cal Poly Humboldt, took over school buildings and similarly prevented others on campus from accessing them.

As more universities are facing — and settling — lawsuits from Jewish students over their handling of the encampments, Helfand said the UCLA case could have “spillover effects” even at private schools like Harvard (where a judge ruled last week that a lawsuit alleging it failed to protect Jewish students can go to trial).

“The opinion is written in a way that really lays down the gauntlet,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to be a university that says, ‘I’m not abiding by what the judge in the UCLA case said.’”

Scarsi also wrote that he accepted the Jewish students’ claim that “supporting the state of Israel is their sincerely held religious belief,” negating one of the key arguments pro-Palestinian groups have made in favor of the encampments — that protesting the state of Israel is not the same as targeting Jews. Many encampments, including at UCLA, have included anti-Zionist Jews. Helfand said the judge’s views on the question were significant as well.

“It doesn’t matter if there are Jewish students in the encampment or if there are other people who don’t believe these things,” he said. “The only question is, what do the plaintiffs believe?”

Earlier this summer UCLA announced it was appointing Julio Frenk, a descendant of Jewish immigrants who fled to Mexico in the 1930s, as its next permanent chancellor. Frenk, currently president of the University of Miami, was previously a Harvard dean.

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The statue sits in a public park near the famous annex where Frank and her family hid from the Nazis, and where they were later discovered.

Mayor Femke Halsema condemned the graffiti, and police are investigating.

“How can you bring yourself to do such violence to her memory?” Halsema wrote on social media. “Whoever it was, shame on you! There is no excuse for this. No Palestinian is helped by defacing her precious image.”

The graffiti is the latest of a growing number of incidents in which pro-Palestinian activists appear to be associating the war in Gaza with the Holocaust. The Amsterdam statue was not the first Holocaust or Anne Frank memorial in Europe to be defaced since Oct. 7.

In November, a pro-Israel Anne Frank mural in Milan, Italy, depicting the Jewish Holocaust victim holding an Israeli flag, was covered with graffiti reading “Gaza Free.”  Around the same time, a Holocaust memorial boulder in Copenhagen, Denmark, was covered with graffiti and a nearby amphitheater was painted with an image of the Palestinian flag and the words “Free Gaza.”

Some Holocaust sites in the U.S. have also been targets of pro-Palestinian activists. Earlier this month, the phrase “Genocide in Gaza” appeared written in pen on Seattle’s Holocaust museum; police determined the act was not a hate crime.

Many pro-Palestinian activists have charged Israel with committing genocide in Gaza — an accusation that Israel and its supporters vehemently deny. Recently the University of Minnesota hired a scholar who accused Israel of genocide to direct its Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies before rescinding the offer amid backlash.

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“The senseless scapegoating of Jews did not begin or end with the Holocaust. It’s been happening for thousands of years, and while the pretext may change, the antisemitic motivation is the same,” the seven centers said in a joint statement.

The vandalism involved the phrase “Genocide in Gaza” being written over a photograph of a child Holocaust survivor. The vandalism occurred on June 18, according to the Seattle Police Department, which told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that it was classifying the incident as “a non-criminal bias incident motivated by political ideology.”

Police said the message “was written in pen and was wiped off a front window without causing damage or expense.”

The department added, “No explicit threat was made. The motivation for the graffiti was anger over the policy and practice of the Israeli government.” The department declined to elaborate on whether it considered the targeting of Jewish buildings over anger at the Israeli government to be antisemitic.

The incident came as pro-Palestinian activists protesting the Israel-Hamas war are increasingly targeting, and blaming Israel’s actions on, Jewish institutions. An increasing number of synagogues and Jewish centers have been subject to protests and seen outbreaks of violence — including brawls breaking out at dueling protests in front of a Los Angeles synagogue last week and rocks being thrown through the windows of two Toronto-area synagogues over the weekend. Congregations in Seattle have also been targeted with anti-Israel graffiti both before and after Oct. 7.

But activists have rarely targeted Holocaust museums, even as pro-Palestinian groups have sought to draw comparisons between Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip and the Nazis’ genocide of the Jewish people.

The museum leaders did not address the Seattle Police Department’s determination directly, but added in their statement that they “strongly condemn this crime – and we also recognize it as an opportunity to educate. Holding Jews – much less a Holocaust museum – responsible for the wartime actions of a foreign government is unacceptable and straightforwardly antisemitic.”

The statement also obliquely referenced the charges of genocide that activists have leveled against Israel, and that Israel has vehemently denied.

“Our mission to guard the memory of Holocaust Survivors and victims requires clarity on what does and does not constitute genocide, especially where misconceptions lead to hateful acts of antisemitism,” the statement reads.

But the Seattle center’s CEO, Dee Simon, told JTA that despite considering the graffiti antisemitic, the museum agreed with the SPD’s determination that it should not be classified as a hate crime — both because the perpetrator’s motivations were unknown and because the phrase was easily removed.

“What happened to our Center was wrong but it did not meet the threshold of a ‘crime’ in Seattle,” Simon wrote in an email. “According to our sources, the damage could be washed off and is not permanent and the intent of the perpetrator is not clear. Therefore this has been recorded as a bias incident.”

Simon added, “I wish the person who sprayed the graffiti on our building would have taken the time to learn the lessons shared in our museum.”

The six other Holocaust centers that co-signed the statement included the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York; the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg; and major Holocaust centers in L.A., Chicago, Detroit, and Cincinnati.

At least one of those museums, Detroit’s, has been separately caught up in controversy around the war: the museum’s leadership reportedly removed a survivor from its speakers series after he staged a protest outside the center with the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace.

A different planned Seattle-area museum exhibit on antisemitism came under fire last month after workers at the Wing Luke Museum staged a walkout because they believed the material “conveyed Zionist perspectives.”

The Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander heritage museum temporarily shuttered; though leaders initially planned to reopen the exhibit at the end of June, they have since delayed it until later this summer and are exploring “alternative venues” for it owing to safety concerns, according to a statement on the museum’s website.

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The task force was convened by the school’s Jewish interim president, Alan Garber, in January, shortly after the school’s president resigned following criticism of her handling of anti-Israel protests on campus. It released a set of preliminary recommendations on June 26th, making Harvard the second elite college to receive official guidance to address campus antisemitism in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, after Stanford University.

Stanford’s report ran 146 pages and included detailed examples of Jewish students’ anguished experiences on campus. Harvard’s, by contrast, was brief — just six pages, including a page-long appendix listing Jewish holidays — and focused on what the task force said were “short-term actionable items.” The task force released it alongside a parallel report by the school’s task force on anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias. A more detailed report, including a more intensive study of Jewish life on campus, is expected in the fall, but the group said it did not want to wait before sharing its initial findings.

“The situation over the past year has been quite grave, and unless we take significant steps forward by the beginning of the coming academic year, we could be in a position similar to last year, which we want to prevent,” Derek Penslar, co-chair of the antisemitism task force, said in an interview published by Harvard’s newswire.

Despite the report’s brevity, the task force led by Penslar, a historian, and law professor Jared Ellias said its research was thorough. It said it conducted more than 40 listening sessions with more than 500 members of the Harvard community, representatives from the school’s Hillel and Chabad centers among them.

And some of its initial conclusions were blunt.

“The situation of Israeli students at Harvard has been dire,” the report reads. “They have frequently been subject to derision and social exclusion. Discrimination, bullying, or harassment based on an individual’s Israeli nationality is a gross violation of University policy and, beginning immediately, must be both publicly condemned and subject to substantive disciplinary action.”

The report also condemned what it described as “disturbing reports” of Harvard faculty and teaching fellows harassing or discriminating against students “because they are Israeli or have pro-Israel views,” without elaborating on specific incidents. Many Jewish students also said they feared “litmus tests” for their views on Israel when engaging in extracurricular activities with peers.

Its recommendations included better communication around harassment reporting and disciplinary measures when it comes to the school’s handling of claims of antisemitism. Harvard should also more prominently incorporate antisemitism training into its diversity, equity and inclusion practices and establish better norms of civic engagement, the report said.

“Training for instructional staff and at student orientation programs must clarify the difference between a challenging classroom atmosphere, which is healthy and constructive, and a threatening one, which is toxic,” Penslar said in the Harvard interview. “Guidelines for co-curricular organizations and residences should stress the importance of inclusivity, however contentious conversations within them may be.”

More practical recommendations for Jewish students were on the report, too, including increasing kosher dining options and providing more accommodations for observant Jewish students when classes conflict with holidays or Shabbat.

The Muslim inclusion task force, meanwhile, included among its recommendations that the school clarify “ambiguity” on its policies around how it disciplines protests. The report also stated many pro-Palestinian students were afraid of “doxxing” — having their personal information leaked to the public, which several right-wing and pro-Israel groups did last school year to students who had signed an open letter blaming Israel entirely for the Oct. 7 attacks.

In a statement, Garber welcomed the two task forces’ reports without specifically referring to their findings.

“We must strengthen our ties with a sustained commitment to engaging each other with tact, decency, and compassion,” he said. “Our learning cannot be limited to purely academic pursuits if we hope to fulfill our responsibilities to one another and to the institution that is our intellectual home.”

Harvard’s handling of Jewish student concerns came under intense criticism from Jewish circles after Oct. 7. President Claudine Gay resigned following a congressional hearing at which she did not say whether “calls for the genocide of Jews” violated university conduct; the school has also been the site of several Title VI investigations at the U.S. Department of Education. At commencement last month, the Harvard Chabad director publicly confronted an invited speaker over what he believed was an antisemitic comment in her speech.

And the task force itself has been rocky. At least two members, including a co-chair, resigned before the report’s publication, while Penslar, who directs Harvard’s Jewish studies center, weathered criticism from pro-Israel groups who believed his views were too progressive to moderate antisemitism.

In addition, the novelist Dara Horn, who sat on an earlier iteration of the group, has since distanced herself from it and become a vocal critic of Harvard’s handling of antisemitism.

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He called Nate “a great Jewish American war hero,” often just around Memorial Day, Baskind recalled. “He would always use that exact same phrase.”

There’s a family picture of Nate in his mid-twenties, just before shipping off to war, holding Baskind’s father as a toddler. But the family knew nothing of his fate, other than that the U.S. Army had declared him missing in action.

That all changed last year, when a tip arrived in the inbox of Operation Benjamin, a nonprofit that tracks down gravesites of Jewish American servicemen who were mistakenly buried under crosses. The tipster had recently visited a German-maintained grave site for Nazi officers, where the names of the dead were engraved on a plaque.

There, on the plaque, was an unusual and Jewish-seeming name: Nathan Baskind.

So began a yearlong investigation. Operation Benjamin came to determine that Baskind, a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army, had been shot behind enemy lines, died in a German P.O.W. camp, and was buried in a Nazi mass grave, where — despite being positively identified by the German war memorial commission — he went unidentified as an American Jew for eight decades.

With the help of Nathan’s grand-niece Samantha, who became the family’s point person, the group dug up the grave, identified stray bones of Nate’s remains, and worked with the German, French and American authorities to arrange for a Jewish reburial, which will be held in Normandy on June 23, the 80th anniversary of his death. It will fall just a few short weeks after ceremonies this week commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day, which are being attended by living World War II veterans as well as by President Joe Biden.

“It has felt overwhelming at times,” Baskind, an art historian at Cleveland State University who also teaches about the Holocaust, told JTA about spending the last year of her life immersed in her great-uncle’s history. “But it’s also an honor.”

The Baskind case was more intense than Operation Benjamin’s typical fare. Enlisting genealogists and excavators, the group has, to date, identified around 20 Jewish American soldiers whom the U.S. military had mistakenly buried under crosses and worked to give them Jewish burials instead. (Like other Jewish burial groups, Operation Benjamin places an imperative on burying the dead according to Jewish law, in particular with as many of their body parts intact as possible.)

But the group had never before uncovered a Jewish American who had been buried with the very Nazis he was fighting. The reverse, however, has occurred: In 2013, scientists determined that the head of the Nazi Gestapo, Heinrich Muller, had been buried in a Jewish mass grave.

“You can understand very well how meaningful it is for us to be able to bring a soldier buried with Nazis for so long into the bosom of his ancestral faith and his country,” Rabbi Jacob Schacter, president and co-founder of Operation Benjamin, told JTA. (The group’s other founder was real-estate developer Sheldon Lamm.)

Schacter got his first look at the grave holding Baskind during a 2023 trip to Normandy to attend the reburial ceremony of another Jewish soldier. Visiting the German cemetery, he recalled, he indulged in a bit of the theatrical.

“I got up on a little stone fence around the mass grave, and I said to him, ‘Nathan, we’re coming for you. We want to take you away from here. We want to bring you back to your home,’” Schacter said.

When they first contacted Samantha Baskind, she was working on her latest book: a biography of 19th-century Jewish American artist Moses Ezekiel, who fought for the Confederacy. A planned exhibit on Ezekiel’s work, curated by Baskind, was canceled by Princeton University in 2022 following blowback over his Confederate sympathies.

Soon, Uncle Nate’s burial became almost another full-time job to Baskind. She did extensive research into her family lineage and underwent DNA testing in order to determine a positive match. Meanwhile, Operation Benjamin worked with the Volksbund, a German war memorial commission that looks after the graves of officers including Nazis, to disinter the mass grave in search of Nate’s remains. (Schacter said he felt comfortable working with the memorial group, saying that its director “wears his German historical identity with an enormous amount of kindness and sensitivity.”)

Amid the extensive decomposition of the bodies, the excavators were able to identify two of Baskind’s bones. The whole process, including negotiations with the German, French and American governments, took over a year. Shortly before Memorial Day this year, Samantha hopped on a Zoom to plan Nate’s reburial arrangements and was surprised when a military representative who had been dispatched to her house presented her with Nate’s medals, including a Purple Heart. Just like her earlier Memorial Day conversations with her father, here was confirmation that Uncle Nate was a war hero.

The parallels with her academic work, she said, made her emotional.

“I’m doing research simultaneously on both of these men who fought, but for very different reasons,” she said. Part of her research into Ezekiel, she said, “uncovered canards about Jews and the military” held by mainstream society during the time period, including Mark Twain (who later recanted this stereotype and became an ardent champion of the Jews during his life).

“There was a lot of antisemitic conversation about how Jews shirked from their patriotic duties of the countries in which they lived, because they were only loyal to their own people,” she said. Decades later, Jews who fought in both World Wars — including Nate — would disprove these stereotypes by enlisting in large numbers.

Inside the Pentagon, another influential figure was pondering what Nate’s story meant for Jews in the military. Jacob Freedman, the Jewish chief of staff to the U.S. Army secretary, read about the project to grant Baskind a Jewish burial. Freedman realized that he, too, was distantly related to the family: his grandmother was Nate Baskind’s second cousin.

Now, Freedman is working to ensure an Army representative will be present at Baskind’s ceremony, alongside Samantha and Operation Benjamin representatives, who also plan to attend.

“It is very meaningful for me to realize this connection,” Freedman, who was chief of staff to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, told JTA.  “I think it’s a great reminder, particularly in this very fraught moment for the Jewish people, that Jewish Americans are really part of the fabric of the country. We have fought and died for the country and we are serving at all levels and in many different capacities today.”

Samantha’s father died over a decade ago. But after learning of Nate’s fate, she took to showcasing her old photo of him with his uncle in her office. When the Army asked her where she wanted her Uncle Nate to be buried, she considered the family plot in Squirrel Hill, a Jewish neighborhood of Pittsburgh. But ultimately, she said, “I wanted him to be in Normandy” — at the American cemetery for soldiers who died in combat during the invasion, a place she describes as “just cross after cross.”

“He’ll be in the American cemetery with a Star of David, amid all those crosses,” she said. “He’s being buried next to another Jewish soldier who died. He’ll be next to a Star of David.”

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The settlement is a major development in Jewish groups’ efforts to hold universities accountable in light of a reported increase in campus antisemitism since Oct. 7.

As part of the settlement, Columbia has promised to provide walking escorts and safe campus entrances at all hours of the day, as well as accommodations for students who were unable to complete exams owing to campus disruption.

“We are pleased we’ve been able to come to a resolution and remain committed to our number one priority: the safety of our campus so that all of our students can successfully pursue their education and meet their academic goals,” a Columbia spokesperson said in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The suit was brought by an anonymous Jewish student in late April who alleged that the encampments had disrupted their education. The school faced significant disruption as a result of the encampments, with clashes between students and police, hundreds of arrests, a move to hybrid classes, extended campus closures and the eventual cancellation of commencement.

Jay Edelson, an attorney for the plaintiff and head of the law firm Edelson PC, told reporters that the settlement represented “a return to basic, shared principles of safety on campus for all Columbia students.” Edelson’s firm, which did not immediately respond to a request for more details about the settlement, has taken an active role in advocating for Jewish students amid the current campus climate. It announced in December that it would no longer recruit Harvard Law students following controversial congressional testimony on antisemitism by then-Harvard President Claudine Gay.

The Columbia settlement is the first significant legal resolution for Jewish students who have sought campus protections from antisemitism via the court system since Oct. 7. Several other Jewish-led lawsuits against elite universities remain pending, as do more than 100 federal Title VI discrimination investigations at the U.S. Department of Education, which has become a popular mechanism for Jews seeking to hold universities and school districts accountable. Pro-Palestinian groups have also filed both lawsuits and complaints alleging discrimination.

These methods are increasingly overlapping and, in some cases, canceling each other out. While the department’s Office of Civil Rights has yet to resolve any of the Title VI cases filed since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, a spokesperson confirmed to JTA that it has dismissed at least five investigations after lawsuits were filed over the same incidents.

The office promises to open every Title VI complaint it receives for investigation regardless of source or merit, yet also moves to close any active investigation that overlaps with a lawsuit, saying that the same complaint should not be resolved through two different avenues.

The dismissed investigations — at Columbia, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Cooper Union — were all at universities that have been the sites of high-profile antisemitism allegations. Columbia and other schools still have other active complaints filed on other grounds.

The Columbia settlement suggests that lawsuits may result in agreements more quickly than civil rights investigations.

Last week, the civil rights office announced a resolution in an antisemitism-related investigation based on a complaint filed by a Jewish civil rights group last August. The Community School of Davidson, a charter school in North Carolina, agreed to review its anti-discrimination procedures and implement new staff training after students reportedly harassed a non-Jewish student who wore an Israeli Olympic jersey to school.

The complaint was filed prior to Oct. 7 by the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a law firm that frequently files civil rights challenges on behalf of Jewish or pro-Israel clients, and was notable for resting on “perceived,” rather than actual, Jewish ancestry.

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Brothers Daniel and Neriyah Sharabi told news outlets they were held by airport security for two hours after mentioning they had survived Hamas’ massacre at the Nova music festival on Oct. 7. They said one security guard told them, “I don’t want you to do here what you do in Gaza.”

The two had traveled to the United Kingdom at the invitation of a Chabad center and Jewish business council in the Manchester area in order to raise money for other survivors of the attacks.

James Cleverly, the U.K.’s Home Secretary, wrote on the social network X, formerly Twitter, that he had launched an investigation into the incident.

“We do not tolerate antisemitism or any form of discrimination,” Cleverly wrote in response to a request from the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester & Region to look into the claims. “This incident will be handled in line with our disciplinary procedures.”

The brothers, who were flying in from Brussels, were eventually released and allowed to enter the country. In his request to Cleverly for an investigation, the head of the Jewish council, Marc Levy, wrote, “The only reason for their detention and interrogation was because they are Israeli.”

The United Kingdom has seen tensions around the Israel-Hamas war, and the Community Security Trust, a British Jewish group, has reported a spike in antisemitism since Oct. 7. While British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been steadfast in his support for Israel, left-wing parties have gained ground with anti-Zionist rhetoric and some British Jews have been targeted for their connections to Israel.

The Sharabis have been celebrated as heroes in Israel for taking action on Oct. 7 that saved dozens from Hamas fighters. The two reportedly fended off Hamas using spare weapons they found in a tank, while receiving instructions over the phone from their former Israel Defense Forces officer.

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Michael Valentine, owner of Six Sailor Cider and Weathered Waves Bar, also targeted a local Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi and kosher food truck operator who publicly criticized the business owner’s stance.

“As many are, we are horrified by the ongoing genocide in Gaza and are even more horrified to see so many Americans ignore and rationalize ethnic cleansing,” the businesses announced in an Instagram post Monday headlined “No Zionists Allowed.” “That is why we are pleased to announce we are banning all zionists forever from our establishments.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for the Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Services told JTA that it has contacted the Utah Attorney General’s office “so they may conduct an investigation on whether the business is violating discrimination laws.”

The department also said it was reviewing its own options “for responding to discrimination” at its licensed establishments. It is unclear if Zionists would be considered a protected class under discrimination law. The bar claimed it was not banning Jews, a distinction many Jewish groups brush aside, positing that bigots have long used “Zionist” as a stand-in for “Jewish” and pointing to surveys showing that a majority of American Jews express an affinity for Israel.

The dispute in Utah comes as the local City Council passed new restrictions on public comment, shortening the time allotted to it, largely in response to anti-Israel activism that took center stage during a recent council deliberation about a ceasefire resolution. Progressive spaces and activists across North America have targeted Jewish- or Israeli-owned businesses and establishments in protest of the war in Gaza.

In its Instagram post, Six Sailor Cider writes that  “Zionism is hate speech. It is white supremacy and has nothing to do with the beautiful Jewish faith. we forever stand firmly with the people of Gaza and humanity.” The post ended, “We dream of a free and prosperous Palestine. Ceasefire Now.”

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the businesses had just been awarded a liquor license last week. Valentine, a former independent mayoral candidate, told the paper he wrote the post and that he did not believe it was antisemitic. He did not respond to a JTA request for comment Wednesday.

Rabbi Avremi Zippel, whose Yalla Kosher food truck operates about a 15-minute drive from the bar, was not named in the initial post. But he said Jews and supporters throughout the community pressured him to make a statement about it, so he fired off a response on the Yalla Kosher Instagram account.

“It’s been brought to our attention that a local business has shown boundless bravery and formally taken a position that they won’t be serving folks with a certain belief system,” Yalla’s post reads. “Their call. (Probably illegal, but not our problem.)”

The post later continued, “Values aside, we think you’d prefer our shawarma over some cider that sympathizes with sexual violence” — a reference to reports that Hamas terrorists raped and sexually assaulted women during the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel.

On his own account, Valentine named Zippel specifically, challenging him, “If your business is for everyone, is it also for Palestinians? Do you condemn the genocide in Gaza?” He added that his business was still open to “anti-Zionist Jews” and told the rabbi, “You have no moral ground to stand on spreading hate speech in city council meetings.”

“This was something which definitely had a very pointed and direct angle to it from the very beginning,” Zippel, a rabbi at Chabad of Utah, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

It wasn’t Zippel’s first time as a local advocate. He recently spoke during public comment at the City Council meeting opposing a ceasefire resolution backed by pro-Palestinian supporters; the measure wound up failing, with the council instead backing a broader “pro-peace” resolution.

At that meeting, Zippel said he had also attracted the ire of Valentine, who is also a filmmaker and a prominent local pro-Palestinian activist. After Zippel posted that he spoke “amid a sea of masks and keffiyehs and those openly calling for my annihilation,” Valentine accused him of “anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, anti-Muslim rhetoric” and wrote, “It’s amazing a rabbi would make such open and dismissive remarks about an entire race, religion, and culture of people. It speaks volumes of the white supremacy in that room last night.”

Both men have traumatic personal histories. Zippel is a professed survivor of child sexual abuse, and has written a memoir of his experiences while fighting to prosecute his abuser in court. Valentine is a formerly homeless person, and made homelessness a centerpiece of his failed 2023 mayoral campaign; he also at one point chained himself to a local movie theater in order to protest its planned demolition.

Zippel said he doesn’t take Valentine’s attention seriously. “He is neither a well nor a serious person,” the rabbi said. “I don’t intend to go within 100 yards of the store.” He added that he has received a groundswell of support from his customers and allies since the initial post.

The Salt Lake City incident comes as other outwardly Jewish people and institutions have also been targeted by protests. Anti-Israel protesters, some Jewish, picketed a synagogue in Miami Beach last week where pro-Israel lawyer Alan Dershowitz gave a talk, and synagogues that have hosted a real-estate company advertising investments in Israel and the West Bank have been the site of sometimes violent altercations in both the U.S. and Canada in recent days.

A university student union in Vancouver came close to holding a vote to force a Hillel off campus, while the prominent Jewish reggae star Matisyahu has also been targeted by protests while on his current U.S. tour, leading to a few venue cancellations.

Zippel told JTA that some of his supporters have filed civil-rights complaints against Valentine and his business, alleging that refusing to serve Zionists is akin to discrimination. But the rabbi himself is now done fighting the cidery’s owner.

As to why he got involved at all, Zippel replied, “I feel like it’s valuable for the residents of this city and for folks everywhere to see the stark contrast in approach and behavior between our place of business and theirs.”

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The image was posted to Instagram by Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, a recently formed collective, to illustrate the links between pro-Palestinian activism and Civil Rights-era groups. It includes a 1960s-era cartoon of a hand emblazoned with a Star of David and a dollar sign holding Muhammad Ali and Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser in a noose.

“The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee likened Zionism to an imperial project,” read the image caption, referring to the influential 1960s Civil Rights activist group. The cartoon appeared to be a cropped version of a SNCC cartoon that upset Jewish groups at the time.

Harvard denounced the image on Instagram, and announced that its administrative board, an oversight body with disciplinary authority, would review the posts.

“Such despicable messages have no place in the Harvard community,” the university wrote. “We condemn these posts in the strongest possible terms.”

The faculty and staff group subsequently deleted the post and published an apology.

“It has come to our attention that a post featuring antiquated cartoons which used offensive antisemitic tropes was linked to our account,” the group posted on Instagram. “We apologize for the hurt that these images have caused and do not condone them in any way. Harvard FSJP stands against all forms of hate and bigotry, including antisemitism.”

Harvard has been beset by controversy over campus anti-Israel activism since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war. Last week, a congressional committee issued subpoenas to Harvard administrators as part of a broader investigation into antisemitism at the university.

Last month, Claudine Gay, Harvard’s president, resigned under pressure following plagiarism allegations and a congressional hearing in which she declined to say that calling for the genocide of Jews violated campus policy.

Critics pointed to the image as evidence that the school still has an antisemitism problem.

“The cartoon is despicably, inarguably antisemitic. Is there no limit?” Rabbi David Wolpe, a visiting scholar at the school who resigned from its antisemitism advisory committee in December, wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Harvard Hillel, Harvard Chabad and the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which issued the subpoenas against the school, also condemned the post. Jeffrey Flier, a former dean of Harvard Medical School, wrote on X, “No debate about this being anti-Semitic.”

A screenshot of the offending image indicates it was reposted from the accounts of two campus pro-Palestinian student groups. One of them, the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee, was also behind a widely criticized student letter in the days after Hamas’ Oct. 7 invasion of Israel that blamed Israel “entirely” for the attack.

The original cartoon was condemned as antisemitic when SNCC published it in 1967, shortly after Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War widened a growing rift between Black and Jewish activists. The full cartoon depicted the hand with the Star of David as belonging to Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan.

“Zionists conquered the Arab homes and land through terror,” the original caption read. It also referenced an age-old antisemitic conspiracy theory, citing “The famous European Jews, the Rothschilds, who have long controlled the wealth of many European nations.”

The pro-Palestinian faculty group does not publicly post its membership roster and did not respond to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment. According to the Harvard Crimson, it was founded in January by at least 65 Harvard faculty and staff upset with the university over what it claimed were efforts to “methodically censor, surveil, and discipline students, faculty, and staff for teaching and speech that is critical of the state of Israel.”

The pro-Palestinian student groups who originally uploaded the post, including one devoted to “African and African American Resistance,” also deleted the original post and apologized.

“In an earlier version of this post we shared an image that was not reflective of our values as organizations,” they wrote on Instagram, adding, “Our mutual goals for liberation will always include the Jewish community — and we regret inadvertently including an image that played upon antisemitic tropes.”

This week, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government also hosted Jared Kushner, former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and onetime advisor, for an event at which the Harvard alum said recognizing a Palestinian state now would be akin to “supporting an act of terror perpetrated in Israel.” Kushner also praised Harvard even as he, like others upset over its handling of antisemitism, said he thought it had “perhaps maybe lost its way a little bit.”

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“Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s biopic of the Jewish “father of the atomic bomb,” led the year’s nominations with 13, including best picture and director, and is favored by many prognosticators to win the big prize.

The film’s rendition of J. Robert Oppenheimer covers a fair amount of Jewish ground, including his personal animus toward the Nazis; his recruitment of expelled European Jewish scientists to work on the bomb; his relationship with Albert Einstein, and his late-in-life rivalry with Jewish atomic energy bureaucrat Lewis Strauss. Both Cillian Murphy, who plays Oppenheimer, and Robert Downey Jr., who plays Strauss, were nominated for acting Oscars, as was Emily Blunt, who plays Oppenheimer’s wife Kitty.

The movie’s summer release-date companion and partner-in-memes, Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” picked up eight nominations, including best picture. The doll at the center of the musical comedy was created by Jewish inventor Ruth Handler (a minor character in the movie, played by Rhea Perlman). Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz, an executive producer on the film who greenlit Gerwig’s playful take on the property, is Israeli and helped organize a controversial Los Angeles screening of footage of the Hamas attacks that was protested by pro-Palestinian groups.

Also nominated from the film are Gerwig’s partner Noah Baumbach, a credited co-writer, and composer Mark Ronson for best original song. Both are Jewish.

Another Jewish-themed contender this year, Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro,” was the subject of some derision upon its premiere for Cooper’s use of a prosthetic nose to play Jewish composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein. But the biopic, a passion project of Cooper’s, sailed over the objections and picked up seven nominations — including, notably, for best makeup. (It was joined in the latter category by “Golda,” the biopic of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, which starred Helen Mirren.)

“Maestro” was also nominated for best picture, with producer Steven Spielberg among the nominated names, as well as lead actor for Cooper and lead actress for Carey Mulligan as Bernstein’s wife Felicia Montealegre, the actress whose paternal grandfather was Jewish and who in real life converted to Judaism for Bernstein.

Meanwhile, “The Zone of Interest,” a challenging and formally daring cinematic take on the Holocaust, picked up five nominations, including for best picture and best international feature (submitted by the United Kingdom). The film is loosely based on the real-life Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, and is directed by British Jewish filmmaker Jonathan Glazer, who was nominated for best director and best adapted screenplay (he based it loosely on the novel of the same name by Martin Amis, who died last year).

Nolan’s screenplay for Oppenheimer was also nominated; he adapted it from the Pulitzer Prize-winning Oppenheimer biography “American Prometheus,” co-written by Kai Bird, who grew up watching his American diplomat father try to negotiate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and later married a Jewish woman who was the daughter of Holocaust survivors. After his Oppenheimer work, Bird published a 2010 memoir, “Crossing Mandelbaum Gate,” describing his firsthand experiences watching Israeli-Arab diplomatic efforts.

While several actors were nominated for playing Jewish roles, no actual Jews received acting nominations this year — despite what many critics called a career-best performance by Natalie Portman in the Netflix film “May December.” (Downey has Jewish patrilineal ancestry.)

Notable Jews scored some nominations deeper down on the list. “Letter to a Pig,” a short film by Israeli director Tal Kantor about the strange journey of a Holocaust survivor, received a nomination for best animated short.

Diane Warren, the Jewish veteran songwriter, received her 15th nomination for penning “The Fire Inside,” from Hulu’s “Flaming Hot.” Warren has never won an Oscar, but did receive an honorary award in 2022.

And Robbie Robertson, the rock star born to a Native American mother and a Jewish father — and who learned of his Jewish heritage late in life — received a posthumous nomination for best original score for “Killers of the Flower Moon,” about the Osage Nation murders. Robertson, who died last year, was a member of The Band and a regular collaborator with “Flower Moon” director Martin Scorsese.

Not to be outdone, two movies based on works by authors who have made antisemitic comments also received some nominations. “The Color Purple,” the new musical based on the Alice Walker novel (which followed Spielberg’s 1985 movie), was nominated for best supporting actress, while “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” Wes Anderson’s Netflix movie based on the Roald Dahl short story, was nominated for live-action short.

Walker has endorsed antisemitic conspiracy theorists in interviews. Dahl’s family and a museum dedicated to his work have both acknowledged and apologized for his antisemitism in recent years.

The Oscars will air March 10 on ABC.

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