Delaware student who went on 'antisemitic tirade,' spit on Holocaust memorial charged with hate crime: warrant
A University of Delaware student who allegedly went on "an antisemitic tirade" while screaming "f--- Jews" and destroying a symbolic memorial on campus now faces a hate crime charge, according to the arrest warrant.
Jenna Kandeel, 23, spit on and destroyed the memorial's color-coded flags, each representing 10,000 people from different groups who lost their lives during the Holocaust, the arrest warrant obtained by Fox News Digital alleges.
She allegedly shouted other vulgar profanities, including "Jewish people are nasty. Free Palestine," the warrant says. A witness told investigators that she yelled, "The Holocaust should have happened. Free Palestine," a spokesperson for the Delaware Attorney General's Office told Fox News Digital.
Kandeel has since been arrested, banned from campus and criminally charged with three misdemeanors – hate crime, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct – the Delaware Attorney General's Office announced Monday.
"We have a proud history of protecting free speech in this country, including and especially political dissent," Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings said. "But we need to be lucid enough to recognize the daylight – miles of it, in this case – between protest and hate."
The memorial consists of rows of 1,100 flags, and each colored flag represents 10,000 people who died during the Holocaust.
The colors represent different groups, including Jews, Soviet POWs, non-Jewish Polish citizens, among several other targeted groups of people.
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"The Holocaust is not ancient history," Jennings said. "Eighty years later, the world’s Jewish population still has not recovered; its survivors are still with us; and I fear that we still have not learned its lessons."
"Seeing this ignorance on display, particularly in an increasingly antisemitic climate, should be a wake-up call," she said. "We still have work to do."
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The university said in a statement that "such abhorrent incidents have no place on our campus."
"Any acts of discrimination, racism, violence or destructive behavior that are directed at any group and threaten the well-being of our community will be addressed immediately," the university leadership said in a statement. "You have often heard us express our pride in the University of Delaware community for consistently demonstrating respect and civility, even when we have differences of opinion and viewpoint."
The arrest is just one example of anti-Israel campus demonstrations that crossed the line into criminality.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said in an early January report that there was a 361% increase in antisemitic attacks between Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people, to Jan. 7.
In 2023, there were a record-high 8,873 antisemitic incidents across the U.S., rising 140% from the year prior, according to the ADL. Antisemitic incidents on college campuses specifically jumped 321% from 2022, with 922 occurrences.