By Michael E. Ginsberg, reprinted from fairfaxtimes.com, May 30, 2025

Two Israeli Embassy staff were killed on May 21 at an American Jewish Committee interfaith event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC.

The shooter, a far-left progressive, was wearing a keffiyeh and shouting “Free, free Palestine”.

It’s the same chant we’ve heard and the same keffiyeh we’ve seen on university campuses and American streets since Oct. 8, 2023—one day after the worst single day of violence against Jews since the Holocaust.

UVA and George Mason are two of those universities.

No credible observer can deny that the institutionalized threat to Jewish students and community members at UVA and other Virginia and American universities comes from the far left progressives of the Democratic Party.  It is far left progressives on campus screaming to “globalize the intifada”, interrupting classes, vandalizing property, and raising money for organizations complicit in terror.  It is far-left progressives, like the so-called “Squad” of House Democratic progressives, like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar who have encouraged and supported these campus radicals.  

Here in Fairfax County, as the Fairfax Times reported back in December 2024, authorities arrested two leaders of the George Mason Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter who had been stockpiling weapons along with Hamas and Hezbollah flags in preparation for attacks.

It was only a matter of time before one of these radicals killed Jews.

Which is why voters and the media must ask Abigail Spanberger, the Democrat running for governor of Virginia, what she will do about this.

Mealy-mouthed condemnations of violence and ritual incantations about “antisemitism and Islamophobia” will not do.

Virginians must demand that Spanberger answer specific questions, including:

•Will you support and cooperate with federal efforts to cancel student visas and deport foreign students who are creating a hostile learning environment on campus for Jewish students?

•Will you aggressively investigate the sources of funding for radical campus organizations such as SJP and American Muslims for Palestine?

•Will law enforcement and Commonwealth Attorney’s offices vigorously enforce time, place, and manner restrictions on protests to ensure Jewish students can move about campuses, take classes, and study in campus facilities without being threatened?

•Will you use the governor’s bully pulpit to demand that universities not host speakers with demonstrated ties to terror organizations?

Virginia Republicans, including Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears, and Republicans in the General Assembly, have aggressively fought antisemitism, establishing a Commission to Combat Antisemitism, adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism, and incorporating Jewish history into Virginia’s standards of learning (SOLs). Attorney General Jason Miyares has led efforts to investigate the funding of campus radical groups and enforce civil rights laws on campuses.

Spanberger, by contrast, deserves no benefit of the doubt.  She quietly served in the same House Democratic caucus as Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and the rest of the Israel-demonizing “Squad”, who wore the same keffiyeh as last week’s murderer during the 2024 State of the Union speech. Spanberger rushed to denounce Israel after the accidental bombing of World Central Kitchen aid workers in April 2024 before giving Israel even a chance to investigate, adding a small brick to the wall of blood libels progressives have hurled against the Jewish State that culminated in the May 21 murders.

And antisemitism is rampant on Virginia campuses.  On Oct. 12, 2023, five days after Hamas invaded Israel, student protesters at George Mason University chanted “Long Live Palestine!”. They carried pictures celebrating the hang gliders used to invade Israel and butcher Israeli civilians.  

In February 2024, UVA students overwhelmingly voted to demand UVA divest from Israel as part of the Israel-demonizing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.  

In January 2025, Virginia Democrats rejected the nomination of Ken Marcus, the founder of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and an expert on antisemitism, to the George Mason University Board of Visitors.

In February, UVA’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter held “An Evening for Gaza” to benefit UNRWA. Hani Almadhoun, UNRWA’s Senior Director of Philanthropy, was a guest speaker. UNRWA employees participated in the Oct. 7 attacks, and the Trump Administration has cut off all funding to UNRWA.

After the Capital Jewish Museum murders, Virginians and all Americans must get serious about combating antisemitism on campus and casual smearing of Jews and Israel. People are getting killed. And there can be no more gaslighting over the source of the violence: the progressive Democratic far left.

We need to know, with specificity, how Virginia Democrats, including Abigail Spanberger, will specifically and directly respond to the overwhelming antisemitism engulfing Virginia universities.  The media must ask, and Abigail Spanberger must answer.