Jewish Agency chair tells Diaspora Jewish students who feel unsafe: Complete your studies in Israel

Cnaan Lidor is The Times of Israel's Jewish World reporter

Doron Almog speaks at a press conference in Budapest on May 5, 2024. (Canaan Lidor/Times of Israel)
Doron Almog speaks at a press conference in Budapest on May 5, 2024. (Canaan Lidor/Times of Israel)

BUDAPEST, Hungary — At a Holocaust museum in Budapest, the chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel calls on Jewish students to move to Israel and complete their studies there if they feel unsafe.

“If you feel the earth shaking under your feet, if you feel unsafe, if you feel like you need to hide your Jewish identity on your campus, come to Israel right away to complete your studies,” Almog says in response to a question by The Times of Israel at the Glass House museum for Holocaust-era rescuers in the Hungarian capital.

Almog is among dozens of dignitaries from Israel and beyond attending the March of Living events this year in Budapest, which is observing the 80th anniversary of the Holocaust in Hungary, and the annual March of the Living event at the Auschwitz Holocaust museum in Poland.

The marches coincide with Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Almog is referencing an ongoing crisis in campuses in the United States, France, the United Kingdom and beyond.

Pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protests that began there following Hamas’s deadly onslaught on October 7 feature antisemitic harassment that Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the ADL, calls in a report released today the “most alarming” aspect of a global surge in antisemitism after October 7.

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