‘Wanted posters’ featuring Netanyahu’s brother, Jewish staff hung at NY campus
Flyers accuse Iddo Netanyahu of war crimes during Yom Kippur War, other faculty members of ties to Israel and hate speech over opposition to anti-Israel protests
Michael Horovitz is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel
Wanted posters featuring pictures of Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother and other Jewish faculty members were hung across the campus of the University of Rochester in New York State on Monday, making various accusations of links to Israel and opposition to anti-Israel protests that have swept university campuses since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel.
One of the posters said Iddo Netanyahu, a physician, is employed by the university at its St. James Hospital, and accused him of “committing war crimes in the special forces unit of the ‘Israeli’ occupation force for the 1973 military ‘conflict’ that killed over 800,000 people in Palestine and surrounding Arab nations.”
Iddo Netanyahu halted his studies at Cornell University to serve in the Israel Defense Forces during the October 1973 Yom Kippur War, which began when a coalition of Arab countries launched an attack on Israel. Official tolls point to some 2,500 Israeli soldiers killed and around 15,000 Arab troops killed during the conflict.
In another example, history professor Gregory Hayworth was accused of “hate speech and inflammatory language” for calling anti-Israel protesters “Nazis” and allegedly threatening to “dox” those who attended.
No group claimed responsibility for the action, according to a local newspaper, the Rochester Beacon.
University president Sarah Mangelsdorf said in a statement Tuesday that the campus’s security department was probing the incident, adding that “several of those depicted appear to have been targeted because they are members of our Jewish community.”
השנאה בקמפוסים – ועכשיו נגד אחיו של נתניהו: כרזות שמאשימות את עדו נתניהו, אחיו של ראש הממשלה, בכיבוש וטיהור אתני עם הכיתוב "מבוקש" נתלו באוניברסיטת רוצ'סטר במדינת יו יורק. בקמפוס נתלו אתמול עשרות פוסטרים של מרצים וחברי סגל יהודים ושל ראשי ארגון הלל בקמפוס ועליהם נכתב "מבוקש". pic.twitter.com/WXxCwyllXT
— Dikla Aharon (@diklaaharon) November 12, 2024
“We view this as antisemitism, which will not be tolerated at our University. This isn’t who we are. This goes against everything we stand for and we have an obligation to reject it,” she said. “This act is disturbing, divisive and intimidating and runs counter to our values as a university.”
Joy Getnick, the executive director of the campus’s Hillel chapter who was targeted by one of the posters, said in a statement to members and their families that the chapter was coordinating with other Jewish groups to determine follow-up action.
Images are emerging from the University of Rochester of "Wanted" posters being plastered on the walls.
The wanted individuals? The University's Jewish faculty.
So, what are students meant to do when they find the people on these signs? pic.twitter.com/7HRGzvC9nh
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) November 12, 2024
She expressed hope that the university probe would find those responsible.
“They disproportionately singled out Jewish faculty and staff, and used language that spreads harmful, antisemitic ideas about Jewish people and Jewish indigeneity,” she wrote.
The Rochester chapter of the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace group said it did not know who was responsible for the posters, but praised them as “an attempt to shed light on administrators and professors’ support for the Israeli military’s destruction of Gaza.”
“The administration’s hasty jump to attribute these posters to antisemitism, without any proper investigation, comes across as an attempt to censor any discussion of the University of Rochester’s complicity in the Israeli army’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. Antisemitism is bigotry or hatred against Jewish people on the basis of their identity and we unequivocally oppose it, and work to dismantle it along with all forms of oppression. It is not, however, antisemitic to criticize the Israeli government and military that is committing war crimes,” it said in a statement.
The nationwide campus protests began in response to Israel’s offensive in Gaza, and activists have repeatedly been accused of antisemitic behavior. War erupted on October 7 last year when the Palestinian terror group Hamas led a massive cross-border attack on Israel that killed close to 1,200 people and saw 251 abducted to Gaza.
