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George Washington U students project anti-Israel messages on campus building
(JTA) – Students, administrators and the Hillel director at George Washington University say they are concerned after anti-Israel messages were projected onto the exterior of a campus building on Tuesday night.
The messages — including “Glory To Our Martyrs,” “Divestment From Zionist Genocide Now,” and “Free Palestine From The River To The Sea” — appeared on the side of a library building for two hours, drawing a crowd of counter-protesters to an adjacent plaza where some sang the Hebrew song “Oseh Shalom.”
The display comes at a moment of rising tensions on college campuses following a major attack by the Palestinian terror group Hamas against Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel’s retaliation in Gaza, which Hamas controls.
Photos shared by the student newspaper and the watchdog group StopAntisemitism showed that the messages spanned several floors and could be read clearly at a distance. Video appeared to show masked students projecting the images from the street, arguing with university police over whether their actions were in violation of campus rules, before being ticketed.
The campus newspaper, GW Hatchet, reported that four student demonstrators associated with Students for Justice in Palestine were responsible for the display. Other phrases that were projected, according to the newspaper: “End the siege on Gaza,” “GW the blood of Palestine is on your hands,” “GW is complicit in genocide in Gaza,” “Your tuition is funding genocide in Gaza,” “2,000 Palestinian children were murdered by ‘Israel’ in the last two weeks” (with “Israel” in quotation marks) and “President Granberg is complicit in genocide in Gaza.”
The last refers to GWU president Ellen Granberg, who joined the university this summer and has published two statements about the war, including one condemning “the celebration of terrorism” that followed a different SJP demonstration.
GW Hillel director Adena Kirstein, who is hosting a survivor of the Hamas-led massacre from an Israeli music festival on campus next week, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency the phrases broadcast on the library were “absolutely” antisemitic.
“‘From the river to the sea,’ when you call for the erasure of the Jewish space, yes,” she said. “When you put ‘Israel’ in quotation marks, deeply troubling. And by the way, it’s not helping the cause.”
Jewish students on campus, Kirstein said, are “navigating a really, really difficult climate and they feel really isolated and alone.”
In a statement Wednesday, the university acknowledged the projections, which it said were “unauthorized” and “violated university policy.”
“The statements made by these individuals in no way reflect the views of the university,” the statement said, adding, “We recognize the distress, hurt, and pain this has caused for many members of our community.” It also promised further communication from Granberg.
Granberg’s most recent statement about Israel, published Oct. 11, specifically condemned “the celebration of terrorism and attempts to perpetuate rhetoric or imagery that glorifies acts of violence” and came after SJP students reportedly harassed a pro-Israel vigil for the victims of Hamas attacks and published an Instagram statement praising Hamas for “breaking free, tearing down the prison walls, and making it known to the world: We will be caged no longer.” The statement also noted that the SJP chapter does not distinguish between combatants and civilians on either side of the Israeli-Palestinian divide.
College campuses across the country have struggled with how to respond to the Israel-Hamas war. Student groups and faculty at prominent universities have come under fire for statements and comments almost entirely blaming Israel for Hamas’ attacks, or even supporting the attacks themselves. University donors have also pulled support from schools including Harvard over administrators’ perceived reluctance to take a pro-Israel stance on the conflict. Even the student government at Brandeis University, which was founded after the Holocaust by the American Jewish community, this week voted down a resolution to condemn Hamas.
The GWU building where the messages were projected, the Gelman Library on the Washington, DC campus, is named after prominent Jewish philanthropists Melvin and Estelle Gelman, the former of whom endowed a chair of Judaic studies at the university. (It was also the same building where Israeli-American sociologist Amitai Etzioni, an influential proponent of “communitarianism” who died earlier this year, kept an office.)
GWU has played host to a series of antisemitism-related controversies in recent years, including when a Jewish fraternity’s miniature Torah was damaged and a bench at the campus Hillel was vandalized. Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Education opened a federal civil rights investigation into the university’s handling of complaints directed at a psychology professor over comments she had reportedly directed at Israeli students; the university’s own investigation of the matter determined she had not done anything antisemitic.
Kirstein told JTA that “the university gets a bad rap most of the time” when it comes to Jewish life. Except for the past two weeks, she said, “it’s a vibrant Jewish community. We have a beautiful building, we have kosher food, we have great support from the university.”
Minutes before the messages, Kirstein had posted on her blog about feeling “extra lonely” as “a Jew on a college campus” amid the Israel-Hamas war.
“I am angry — at a world where it seems critical thinking is in short supply,” Kirstein wrote. “I am scared – that some days, my heart is hardening. I am bitter – that my students have to constantly qualify their opinions, proving to others that their souls are always in the right place. I am sad – for what the future might hold.”
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The post George Washington U students project anti-Israel messages on campus building appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says
Atomic symbol and USA and Iranian flags are seen in this illustration taken, September 8, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Iran and the United States agreed on Saturday to task experts to start drawing up a framework for a potential nuclear deal, Iran’s foreign minister said, after a second round of talks following President Donald Trump’s threat of military action.
At their second indirect meeting in a week, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi negotiated for almost four hours in Rome with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, through an Omani official who shuttled messages between them.
Trump, who abandoned a 2015 nuclear pact between Tehran and world powers during his first term in 2018, has threatened to attack Iran unless it reaches a new deal swiftly that would prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, says it is willing to discuss limited curbs to its atomic work in return for lifting international sanctions.
Speaking on state TV after the talks, Araqchi described them as useful and conducted in a constructive atmosphere.
“We were able to make some progress on a number of principles and goals, and ultimately reached a better understanding,” he said.
“It was agreed that negotiations will continue and move into the next phase, in which expert-level meetings will begin on Wednesday in Oman. The experts will have the opportunity to start designing a framework for an agreement.”
The top negotiators would meet again in Oman next Saturday to “review the experts’ work and assess how closely it aligns with the principles of a potential agreement,” he added.
Echoing cautious comments last week from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he added: “We cannot say for certain that we are optimistic. We are acting very cautiously. There is no reason either to be overly pessimistic.”
There was no immediate comment from the US side following the talks. Trump told reporters on Friday: “I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”
Washington’s ally Israel, which opposed the 2015 agreement with Iran that Trump abandoned in 2018, has not ruled out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months, according to an Israeli official and two other people familiar with the matter.
Since 2019, Iran has breached and far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on its uranium enrichment, producing stocks far above what the West says is necessary for a civilian energy program.
A senior Iranian official, who described Iran’s negotiating position on condition of anonymity on Friday, listed its red lines as never agreeing to dismantle its uranium enriching centrifuges, halt enrichment altogether or reduce its enriched uranium stockpile below levels agreed in the 2015 deal.
The post Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Says Fate of US-Israeli Hostage Unknown After Guard Killed in Israel Strike
Varda Ben Baruch, the grandmother of Edan Alexander, 19, an Israeli army volunteer kidnapped by Hamas, attends a special Kabbalat Shabbat ceremony with families of other hostages, in Herzliya, Israel October 27, 2023 REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki
Hamas said on Saturday the fate of an Israeli dual national soldier believed to be the last US citizen held alive in Gaza was unknown, after the body of one of the guards who had been holding him was found killed by an Israeli strike.
A month after Israel abandoned the ceasefire with the resumption of intensive strikes across the breadth of Gaza, Israel was intensifying its attacks.
President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff said in March that freeing Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old New Jersey native who was serving in the Israeli army when he was captured during the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks that precipitated the war, was a “top priority.” His release was at the center of talks held between Hamas leaders and US negotiator Adam Boehler last month.
Hamas had said on Tuesday that it had lost contact with the militants holding Alexander after their location was hit in an Israeli attack. On Saturday it said the body of one of the guards had been recovered.
“The fate of the prisoner and the rest of the captors remains unknown,” said Hamas armed wing Al-Qassam Brigades’ spokesperson Abu Ubaida.
“We are trying to protect all the hostages and preserve their lives … but their lives are in danger because of the criminal bombings by the enemy’s army,” Abu Ubaida said.
The Israeli military did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Hamas released 38 hostages under the ceasefire that began on January 19. Fifty-nine are still believed to be held in Gaza, fewer than half of them still alive.
Israel put Gaza under a total blockade in March and restarted its assault on March 18 after talks failed to extend the ceasefire. Hamas says it will free remaining hostages only under an agreement that permanently ends the war; Israel says it will agree only to a temporary pause.
On Friday, the Israeli military said it hit about 40 targets across the enclave over the past day. The military on Saturday announced that a 35-year-old soldier had died in combat in Gaza.
NETANYAHU STATEMENT
Late on Thursday Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas’ Gaza chief, said the movement was willing to swap all remaining 59 hostages for Palestinians jailed in Israel in return for an end to the war and reconstruction of Gaza.
He dismissed an Israeli offer, which includes a demand that Hamas lay down its arms, as imposing “impossible conditions.”
Israel has not responded formally to Al-Hayya’s comments, but ministers have said repeatedly that Hamas must be disarmed completely and can play no role in the future governance of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to give a statement later on Saturday.
Hamas on Saturday also released an undated and edited video of Israeli hostage Elkana Bohbot. Hamas has released several videos over the course of the war of hostages begging to be released. Israeli officials have dismissed past videos as propaganda.
After the video was released, Bohbot’s family said in a statement that they were “deeply shocked and devastated,” and expressed concern for his mental and physical condition.
“How much longer will he be expected to wait and ‘stay strong’?” the family asked, urging for all of the 59 hostages who are still held in Gaza to be brought home.
The post Hamas Says Fate of US-Israeli Hostage Unknown After Guard Killed in Israel Strike first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks
FILE PHOTO: Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said gives a speech after being sworn in before the royal family council in Muscat, Oman January 11, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Sultan Al Hasani/File Photo
Oman’s Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said is set to visit Moscow on Monday, days after the start of a round of Muscat-mediated nuclear talks between the US and Iran.
The sultan will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, the Kremlin said.
Iran and the US started a new round of nuclear talks in Rome on Saturday to resolve their decades-long standoff over Tehran’s atomic aims, under the shadow of President Donald Trump’s threat to unleash military action if diplomacy fails.
Ahead of Saturday’s talks, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. Following the meeting, Lavrov said Russia was “ready to assist, mediate and play any role that will be beneficial to Iran and the USA.”
Moscow has played a role in Iran’s nuclear negotiations in the past as a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member and signatory to an earlier deal that Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
The sultan’s meetings in Moscow visit will focus on cooperation on regional and global issues, the Omani state news agency and the Kremlin said, without providing further detail.
The two leaders are also expected to discuss trade and economic ties, the Kremlin added.
The post Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.