Cornell University is under fire after publishing a professor’s Nazi-themed anti-Israel graphic—an act that critics call “Holocaust inversion”—amid a string of antisemitic scandals and a $1 billion federal funding freeze.
In a scandal that has rocked the Ivy League, Cornell University’s student newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun, has removed a vile antisemitic image attributed to Professor Karim-Aly Kassam after widespread outrage. The graphic, dated 2024, depicted Nazi SS bolts carved inside a bloody Star of David—a grotesque distortion symbolizing Jews as Nazis—set against a keffiyeh-style backdrop and published beside Kassam’s article titled “Thousand and one eyes for an eye.”
The op-ed marked the second anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 massacre but instead of condemning terrorism, Kassam accused Israel of “ruthless destruction and killing”—a narrative shockingly echoed in his accompanying artwork.
Following backlash, Editor-in-Chief Julia Senzon told Fox News that the newspaper removed the image because it “may plausibly cause visceral harm to our readers based on the historical context of the ‘SS’ symbol.” The article was later republished without the image, but the damage was already done.
Cornell Law Professor William Jacobson, a leading campus watchdog on antisemitism, condemned the incident, calling the image “a textbook example of Holocaust inversion—portraying Jews as Nazis.” Speaking to The New York Post, Jacobson said, “It’s a bloody Jewish star with SS bolts—no connection to Israel, no nuance. It’s simply equating Jews with genocidal killers. It’s obscene.”
Cornell, once a symbol of academic excellence, has now become synonymous with moral decay and antisemitic permissiveness. Since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, the campus has seen repeated anti-Jewish incidents—from open threats to murder Jews to faculty glorifying terrorism.
One student, Patrick Dai, was arrested and sentenced to 21 months in prison after posting violent death threats against Jews on Cornell’s online forums, forcing Jewish students to avoid the campus kosher dining hall for fear of attack.
Another faculty member, Professor Russell Rickford, was caught on video at an anti-Israel rally celebrating the Hamas massacre as “exhilarating” and “energizing.” Though briefly suspended, he has since returned to teaching, sparking outrage from alumni and donors.
The Trump administration responded forcefully, freezing over $1 billion in federal funding to Cornell this April over its failure to combat antisemitism and the normalization of Jew-hatred disguised as “academic freedom.”
With the publication of Kassam’s Nazi-inspired image, critics say Cornell has crossed a line from tolerance to institutional complicity in antisemitic propaganda. The university now stands as a chilling symbol of how elite academia has become a breeding ground for modern-day blood libels against Israel and the Jewish people.
