DePaul News: Jewish DePaul students Max Long and Michael Kaminsky speak out after anti-Semitic attack on college campus

CHICAGO (WLS) — Two Jewish DePaul students are still recovering from an alleged hate crime.

The video in the player above is from an earlier report.

Max Long and Michael Kaminsky spoke out Saturday for the first time since they were attacked in broad daylight in the middle of campus Wednesday afternoon, police said.

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One student was jumped from behind and punched, police said, as he and another Jewish student stood outside the Lincoln Park student center.

Long and Kaminsky just got out of the hospital.

“Trying to deal with everything that happened, quite a traumatic experience,” Kaminsky said.

Long has a concussion and Kaminsky suffered a broken wrist after they were attacked on their own college campus.

“I didn’t believe something like this could happen,” Kaminsky said.

Long stood outside the student center, as he does every week, with a sign in hand, pulling the Israeli flag and offering to speak to passersby about the war in Gaza.

He knows the war inside and out.

“I was in Israel on October 7,” Long said. “I was called up with my team.”

As a reservist in the Israeli army, he was deployed by the Israeli army after the attack in 2023. He was part of a counter-explosives unit that collected hostages.

When Sergeant Long moved to Chicago this summer and enrolled at DePaul University, he said sharing his truth became the new focus of his activities.

“I witnessed firsthand the things I heard people say here that were fake and not true,” Long said. “And so it became this mission of, ‘I have to make sure the truth is told.’”

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It has been a fair, peaceful and, above all, constructive undertaking, he said.

“I would say 90% of the conversations were positive,” Long said. “They were students who really wanted to hear more and learn more from someone who was there.”

That was until Wednesday afternoon, when two men wearing balaclavas hit him from behind and pushed his friend down as another Jewish campus leader stood next to him.

“It was quite a beating when I was on the ground,” Long said.

Long had his phone recording in his pocket when he saw the masked man approaching. He is seen on video even shaking his hand.

“He talked to me for a minute and a half or two minutes and we were talking,” Long said.

The video shakes, and at that moment, he said, another person started punching him out of nowhere.

“The lights were out,” Long said. “I was attacked from behind from a defenseless position.”

Kaminsky was also seriously injured. His arm is still bandaged.

“I never imagined that continuing my activist work would have put a target on my back and made someone want to attack me and Max because of our Jewish religion, our national origins, our ethnicity and our identity,” Kaminsky said .

Chicago police are now investigating the attack as a hate crime. release photos of the suspects they are looking for.

Despite the traumatic experience, the two students say they don’t want to shy away from fear and intimidation.

Long said that doesn’t stop him from wanting to have conversations about the war.

“Not at all,” Long said. “I’m sure that was the intention behind the attack. We’ve been there every week, they probably want that to stop, and we can’t allow that.”

The duo plans to continue advocating for open dialogue.

“Yes, they may have tried to physically attack us, they may have hurt us, but our spirits are not broken,” Kaminsky said. “If we don’t have conversations, nothing will be resolved.”

DePaul’s president called the incident outrageous and completely unacceptable. Governor JB Pritzker also asked the Illinois State Police to assist Chicago police in apprehending the suspects and providing any assistance necessary to bring them to justice.