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Cleveland rabbi sentenced to 10 days in jail for stealing university group’s Palestinian banner
(JTA) — An Orthodox rabbi in the Cleveland area was sentenced to 10 days in jail and 18 months of probation for stealing a pro-Palestinian banner from a student group at a local university.
The sentence, delivered on Wednesday, caps a charged saga in which students had alleged that the rabbi and pro-Israel activist, Alexander Popivker, had harassed them.
Popivker, a handyman and resident of the suburb of Cleveland Heights, was charged with theft in January for taking the banner from Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights, a student group at Cleveland State University.
Popivker’s jail time will be suspended, which generally means he won’t have to serve it until after his probationary period is over, and may see it removed with good behavior. He is also required to attend anger management classes. The university has also barred him from campus for his behavior.
The case represents a rare instance, in the annals of campus debates over Israel, in which legal action has been taken against a pro-Israel activist for aggressive conduct toward pro-Palestinian students. Pro-Israel groups have filed a series of federal complaints alleging that campus groups have fostered a hostile atmosphere for Jews at campuses across the country, and pro-Palestinian students on multiple campuses have faced charges for their activism.
Popivker’s pro-Israel demonstrations at Cleveland State, carried outover the course of months before his ban, at times curdled into standoffs with students. He has frequently compared Palestinians to Nazis, and some students have accused him of targeting visibly Muslim people with harassment, which he denies. He also contacted a law student’s school and employers over her pro-Palestinian views, and made social media posts targeting her — an incident that led the student to file, with the support of a prominent Jewish dean at the university, an order of protection against Popivker.
Cleveland State, whose police force had made the initial arrest of Popivker, declined to comment on the sentence. A university spokesperson had previously told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Popivker “was not banned for the content of his speech, but how he chose to exercise it.”
The pro-Palestinian student group had previously celebrated the school’s decision to ban Popivker from campus, issuing a statement via the local Council on American-Islamic Relations chapter in February. “We are still deeply disturbed by the events of harassment against the Arab, Muslim, and specifically Palestinian community, but are relieved to know that our students and communities are safe on campus for now,” the group’s board said at the time.
On Wednesday, Popivker told JTA that the sentence was “severe and unreasonable” and was “prompted by false claims by the university that I targeted Muslims for harassment and am Islamophobic.” He added that the ruling against him was a curtailing of his “First Amendment right to advocate at a public university.”
Popivker freely admits to stealing the banner, classifying it as an act of civil disobedience because the flag “erased Israel from the map.” But he otherwise blames his poor campus reputation on “Palestinian organizations, professors and students,” whom he says “are brainwashed with demonizing slander against the state of Israel.”
Local Jewish groups have been slow to comment on Popivker’s case, though after he was charged with the theft of the banner, The Lawfare Project, a pro-Israel legal group, called him “a Jewish civil rights activist.” A spokesperson for The Lawfare Project did not respond to a request for comment on his sentencing.
Popivker used the occasion of his sentencing hearing to attempt to stage a rally pushing the university to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, a document that has spurred controversy for saying certain types of criticism of Israel are antisemitic. Around a dozen people showed up at the courthouse to hand out Israeli flags, mostly friends and family, he said.
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The post Cleveland rabbi sentenced to 10 days in jail for stealing university group’s Palestinian banner appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land
This 1 V. postage revenue stamp from West Refaim was postmarked in Virikoso in South Giantsland 100 years ago. Problem is—none of these places ever existed. There is a second […]
The post Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant during a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct. 28, 2023. Photo: ABIR SULTAN POOL/Pool via REUTERS
Israel has informed the International Criminal Court that it will contest arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant over their conduct of the Gaza war, Netanyahu’s office said on Wednesday.
The office also said that US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham had updated Netanyahu “on a series of measures he is promoting in the US Congress against the International Criminal Court and against countries that would cooperate with it.”
The ICC issued arrest warrants last Thursday for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri, known as Mohammed Deif, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
The move comes after the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced on May 20 that he was seeking arrest warrants for alleged crimes connected to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas and the Israeli military response in Gaza.
Israel has rejected the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court and denies war crimes in Gaza.
“Israel today submitted a notice to the International Criminal Court of its intention to appeal to the court, along with a demand to delay the execution of the arrest warrants,” Netanyahu’s office said.
Court spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah told journalists that if requests for an appeal were submitted it would be up to the judges to decide
The court’s rules allow for the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution that would pause or defer an investigation or a prosecution for a year, with the possibility of renewing that annually.
After a warrant is issued the country involved or a person named in an arrest warrant can also issue a challenge to the jurisdiction of the court or the admissibility of the case.
The post Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage
Shomrim officers at the scene of a hate crime in London in which Jewish girls were struck with glass bottles. Photo: Shomrim Stamford Hill/Screenshot
A group of young Jewish girls were the victims of an “abhorrent hate crime” when a man hurled glass bottles at them from a balcony as they were walking through the Stamford Hill section of London on Monday evening.
One of the girls was struck in the head and rushed to the hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries, according to local law enforcement.
A spokesperson for London’s Metropolitan Police said officers were called to the Woodberry Down Estate in the city’s borough of Hackney following reports of an assault on Monday evening at 7:44 pm local time.
“A group of schoolgirls had been walking through the estate when a bottle was thrown from the upper floor of a building,” the spokesperson said. “A 16-year-old girl was struck on the head and was taken to hospital. Her injuries have since been assessed as non-life changing.”
Police noted they were unable to locate the suspect and an investigation is ongoing before adding, “The incident is being treated as a potential antisemitic hate crime.”
Following the incident, Shomrim, a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and serves as a neighborhood watch group, reported that the girls were en route to a rehearsal for an upcoming event. The community, the group added, was “shocked” by the attack on “innocent young Jewish girls,” calling it an “abhorrent hate crime.”
14-year-old girl rushed to Hospital with head & facial injuries following an attack in #StamfordHill.
Young Jewish girls on their way to a rehearsal were pelted with glass bottles by a male on a balcony at Woodberry Down Estate N4.
This… pic.twitter.com/MzHPHusgyX
— Shomrim (London North & East) (@Shomrim) November 26, 2024
Since then, another Jewish girl, age 14, has reported being pelted with a hard object which caused her to be “knocked unconscious, and left feeling dizzy and with a bump on her head,” according to Shomrim.
Monday’s crime was one among many which have targeted London Jews in recent years, an issue The Algemeiner has reported on extensively.
Last December, an Orthodox Jewish man was assaulted by a man riding a bicycle on the sidewalk, two attackers brutally mauled a Jewish woman, and a group of Jewish children was berated by a woman who screamed “I’ll kill all of you Jews. You are murderers!” A similar incident occurred when a man confronted a Jewish shopper and shouted, “You f—king Jew, I will kill you!”
Months prior, a perpetrator stalked and assaulted an Orthodox Jewish woman. He followed her, shouting “dirty Jew” before snatching her shopping bag and “spilling her shopping onto the pavement whilst laughing.” That incident followed a woman wielding a wooden stick approaching a Jewish woman near the Seven Sisters area and declaring “I am doing it because you are Jew,” while striking her over the head and pouring liquid on her. The next day, the same woman — described by an eyewitness as a “serial racist” — chased a mother and her baby with a wooden stick after spraying liquid on the baby. That same week, three people accosted a Jewish teenager and knocked his hat off his head while yelling “f—king Jew.”
According to an Algemeiner review of Metropolitan Police Service data, 2,383 antisemitic hate crimes occurred in London between October 2023 and October 2024, eclipsing the full-year totals of 550 in 2022 and 845 in 2021. The problem is so serious that city officials created a new bus route to help Jewish residents “feel safe” when they travel.
“Jewish Londoners have felt scared to leave their homes,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan told The Jewish Chronicle in a statement about the policy decision earlier this year. “So, this direct bus link between these two significant communities [Stamford Hill in Hackney and Golders Green in Barnet, areas with two of the biggest Jewish communities in London] means you can travel on the 310, not need to change, and be safe and feel safer. I hope that will lead to more Londoners from these communities using public transport safely.”
Khan added that the route “connects communities, connects congregations” and would reassure Jewish Londoners they would be “safe when they travel between these two communities.”
However, it doesn’t solve the problem at hand — an explosion of antisemitism unlike anything seen in the Western world since World War II. Just this week, according to a story by GB News, an unknown group scattered leaflets across the streets of London which threatened that “every Zionist needs to leave Britain or be slaughtered.”
Responding to this latest incident, the director of the Jewish civil rights group StandWithUs UK Isaaz Zarfati told GB News that the comments should be taken “seriously.”
“We are witnessing a troubling trend of red lines being repeatedly crossed,” he said. “This is not just another wave that will pass if we remain passive. We must take those threats and statement seriously because they will one day turn into actions, and decisive steps are needed to combat this alarming phenomenon.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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