A Jewish University of Virginia student from Israel has filed suit against the school in federal court, claiming he has been the victim of antisemitism on Grounds and that, further, UVa leaders knew and did nothing to stop it. The wide-ranging suit argues UVa President Jim Ryan and Rector Robert Hardie allowed “virulent antisemitism” to run rampant and accuses students of being “foot soldiers for Hamas,” the Palestinian Islamist terror group that the Jewish nation of Israel has been warring with since Oct. 7 of last year.
“The pro-Hamas UVA students have turned what once was a beautiful bastion of enlightened freethinking and tolerance into a trash-laden wasteland of antisemitic and anti-Israeli hate, and Defendants UVA, Ryan, and Hardie allowed it to happen,” according to a draft of the lawsuit obtained by The Daily Progress. The plaintiff, first-year student Matan Goldstein, is suing Ryan, Hardie and two pro-Palestine organizations on Grounds, both of which his suit alleges act as “sleeper cells” taking orders directly from Hamas. Matan Goldstein, a first-year student at the University of Virginia with family in Israel, wears the Israeli flag on his back at the amphitheater on UVa Grounds during a vigil on Tuesday for the lives lost in the ongoing war.
It should be noted that both of those groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and Faculty for Justice in Palestine, include Jewish members. Legal experts are skeptical about Goldstein’s claims and doubt th.
