While the University of Coimbra is publicly condemned for shielding antisemitism, it rolls out the red carpet for the Palestinian ambassador – and city authorities look the other way as terrorist-glorifying posters plaster the streets.

In a striking display of institutional double standards, Portugal’s oldest university – founded in 1290 and long regarded as a beacon of learning – has been formally rebuked by the country’s Provedor de Justiça (Ombudsman) for its “fundamental passivity” in the face of a sustained campaign of antisemitic harassment against a Jewish-Israeli doctoral student. The landmark ruling, finalised in early 2026, found that the University of Coimbra violated fundamental rights and administrative law by failing to protect Bar Harel, a software-engineering PhD candidate, after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel triggered an explosion of hatred on campus.

Graffiti and stickers proliferated with swastikas, slogans such as “Zionists should carry a certificate to prove they’re human”, “Beware of Zionists”, “Yahya Sinwar was a hero” and explicit calls for a new intifada. Harel himself became a target: he received death threats declaring that “your family deserves a second Holocaust”, was........

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