Netanyahu Calls U.S. Student Protests Antisemitic and Says They Must Be Quelled

“What’s happening in America’s college campuses is horrific,” the Israeli prime minister said in a televised statement. “Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Wednesday that protests at U.S. universities against Israel’s war in Gaza were “horrific” and should be stopped, using his first public comments on the subject to castigate the student demonstrators and portray them as antisemitic.

Mr. Netanyahu’s comments could harden division over the demonstrations. They could also give ammunition to Republican leaders who have criticized the protesters and accused university administrators and Democrats of failing to protect Jewish students from attack.

“What’s happening in America’s college campuses is horrific,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities. They call for the annihilation of Israel. They attack Jewish students. They attack Jewish faculty.”

It was not immediately possible to solicit a response from the students, who are not organized into a single group.

A relatively small number of students have staged protests for months at universities in different parts of the country to protest Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, which began after Hamas led an attack on Israel on Oct. 7 in which around 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 others were taken hostage. Since then, the authorities in Gaza say, more than 34,000 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes and fighting, a majority of them women and children.

The protesters’ main policy demand is that the U.S. government stop sending military aid to Israel. Some students have also called on universities to stop investing in weapons manufacturers and to sell, or divest, holdings in funds and businesses they say profit from Israel’s invasion of Gaza and the occupation of Palestinian lands.

Organizers of many of the campus groups leading protests around the country have said that they denounce violence and antisemitism. But some demonstrators have used anti-Jewish and anti-Israel slurs and other threatening language, and some Jewish students have said they feel unsafe. Some protesters have also expressed sympathy for Hamas, which controlled Gaza before the war and has vowed to destroy Israel.