HOLD U. RESPONSIBLE

Jewish students to pols on campus hate

Jewish students implored lawmakers in a Thursday hearing on Capitol Hill to hold more universities accountable for enabling an alarming uptick in antisemitism — with one participant revealing he contacted administrators about 40 separate instances but heard nothing back.

Nine undergraduates from elite US colleges shared harrowing personal stories of harassment, intimidation and assault amid widespread antisemitic demonstrations on campus — and ripped administrators for still ignoring the outpouring of hate nearly five months after Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack against Israel.

Harvard Divinity School student Alexander “Shabbos” Kestenbaum told members of the House Education

and Workforce Committee at a bipartisan roundtable that he has written to his university’s antisemitism task force more than 40 times regarding discrimination.

He has yet to receive a response — despite lodging one complaint last month against a Harvard employee who challenged him to a debate in a secluded area over “whether Jews orchestrated 9/11,” an incident reported by the Jewish News Syndicate.

“That same Harvard employee posted a video on his social media with a machete and a picture of my face saying he wants to fight and has a plan,” Kestenbaum recounted. “For three days I had private armed security outside my house. I had armed security follow me to Shabbat prayer services for my own protection.

“While I immediately flagged this issue to Harvard and to the police, this individual is still employed by Harvard,” he said. “This is the reality of being a Jew at Harvard in 2024.”

Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC), a Harvard alumna and co-chair of the House Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism, said the testimonies were “incredibly horrifying.”

“I cannot help but wonder: Is this 1932 Germany all over again? Is this Russia in 1903, when my grandparents fled the deadly pogroms and came to this country seeking refuge from antisemites?” Manning asked. “Every one of us in Congress should be asking ourselves: How did we get here, and what can we do to stop this?”

Other students shared instances of being spit upon, maligned as “dirty Jews,” “colonizers” or “murderers” and facing down antisemitic mobs — that sometimes included their own professors — chanting “resistance is justified” and “globalize the Intifada,” a phrase widely understood as a call for the genocide of Jews.

Cooper Union student Jacob Khalili — one of a dozen Jewish students who barricaded themselves in a campus library last October to protect themselves from an antisemitic demonstration — said his school had “taken no disciplinary action” since.

Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres (D) told The Post after the roundtable that he is pushing for the creation of third-party monitors over each institution, appointed through the Department of Education.

“I think it has become indisputable that these institutions are systemically antisemitic,” he said. “They cannot be trusted to police themselves.”