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Arrest made over threats to kill Jews at Cornell as New York State announces new measures to combat antisemitism
(New York Jewish Week) — Police have taken a suspect into custody over threats to kill Jewish students at Cornell University over the weekend, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office said Tuesday as her office announced a series of measures to combat antisemitism on campuses and elsewhere in New York.
New York State police detained the Cornell suspect for questioning on Tuesday after identifying the individual earlier in the day, Hochul said, a day after she visited Jewish students at the university in a show of support.
Anonymous antisemitic threats posted to a Greek life website over the weekend threatened to “shoot up” Cornell’s kosher dining hall and included comments such as “jewish people need to be killed” and “eliminate jewish living from cornell campus.”
“If i see a pig male jew i will stab you and slit your throat,” read a post by a user called “hamas.”
Police were called to the dining hall, and the campus Hillel warned students to avoid the building after the threats.
“When I met with Cornell students yesterday, I promised them we would do everything possible to find the perpetrator,” Hochul said as she announced the suspect was in custody. “Public safety is my top priority and I’m committed to combating hate and bias wherever it rears its ugly head.”
Hochul also announced a series of measures to combat hate crimes and antisemitism in New York.
The governor ordered a third-party review of antisemitism and discrimination policies at New York City’s massive public university system, the City University of New York. The school system has been an antisemitism battleground in recent years, with some Jewish students and faculty alleging discrimination and harassment and demanding action from the administration. Much of strife across the system’s 25 colleges centers on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with Jewish students saying anti-Israel criticism often veers into antisemitism, and pro-Palestinian activists decrying alleged attacks on free speech.
Judge Jonathan Lippman, a former chief judge on the New York Court of Appeals, will lead the review of CUNY antisemitism. The probe will look into the campus environment; policies, procedures and handling of antisemitism complaints; and balancing free speech rights with antisemitism.
Last May, a student speaker at the CUNY School of Law graduation praised the school as a place where students could “speak out against Israeli settler colonialism,” said Israel was “indiscriminately raining bullets and bombs on worshipers,” and blamed “donors” and “investors” for stifling anti-Israel criticism. Two weeks later, CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos Rodríguez and the board of trustees denounced Fatima Mousa Mohammed’s remarks as “hate speech.” The previous year, radical pro-Palestinian activist Nerdeen Kiswani delivered a similar speech at the law school graduation.
“We will take on the antisemitism we have seen on college campuses,” Hochul said during a press conference Tuesday. “The problem didn’t begin with the weeks following the Oct. 7 attacks. It’s been growing on a number of campuses and seen most acutely in the City University of New York.”
CUNY said in response to the announcement, “We will cooperate with Judge Lippman’s review as we work to build on the progress we’ve made combating antisemitism across our campuses.”
“As an institution of higher learning and one of the country’s most diverse universities, CUNY has taken many steps to combat hate, discrimination and intolerance in all forms, important work which we continue every day,” a CUNY spokesperson told the New York Jewish Week.
The U.S. Department of Education is investigating CUNY’s Brooklyn College over alleged antisemitism in a probe announced last year.
In addition to the CUNY review, the state’s division of criminal justice services will distribute $50 million for law enforcement agencies statewide to acquire new technology and equipment to better solve and prevent hate crimes, and $25 million in grants for securing communities against hate crimes, a program to boost protection as nonprofit organizations and other sites.
The state will also expand its social media analysis unit to better monitor violent threats against schools and campuses.
Antisemitic incidents have spiked in New York City and the United States since the start of the war in Israel, according to data collated by the New York Police Department and Jewish security groups. Jews are targeted in hate crimes in the city more than any other group.
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The post Arrest made over threats to kill Jews at Cornell as New York State announces new measures to combat antisemitism appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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DePaul University Enabled Violent Attacks and Brain Injury on Jewish Students
DePaul University Law School. Photo: ajay_suresh/Wikimedia Commons.
My name is Brooke Goldstein. I am the founder and executive director of The Lawfare Project, and the founder of the #EndJewHatred civil rights movement. I have dedicated my career to upholding the legal rights of the Jewish people, a fight that is all the more pressing after the wave of Jew-hatred unleashed in America and around the world following the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023.
In 2021, a few years before October 7, a Jewish student identified a major problem at DePaul University. She went public about “a long history of antisemitism on DePaul’s campus … without DePaul doing anything really substantive to address this situation.”
In a clear call for action, she said that, “DePaul, as an administration and as a university, doesn’t fully understand what is required for Jewish students in particular to feel safe in their campus community.”
The unprecedented wave of hatred launched against Jews and Israelis at DePaul University over the past year is a direct result of the administration’s failure — not just to help its Jewish community feel safe, but to actually keep its Jewish students safe.
Jew-hatred has become systematized in higher education, and we are now seeing the consequences playing out on campuses across the country — including at DePaul University.
Radicalized agitators who openly support foreign terrorist organizations target Jewish students with calls for their genocide.
“From the river to the sea” is a call for genocide.
“Globalize the intifada” is a call for worldwide violent attacks on Jews, like we see in the streets of New York City and Amsterdam, and on campus here at DePaul.
Jews are dehumanized, deprived of the right to openly express their identity, and the civil rights of Jewish students are ignored and violated — their minority status disregarded, and the harm and violence they endure is minimized. All of this is unacceptable.
Max Long emigrated to Israel from Boston in 2015. He served in the Israel Defense Forces, and, when he was released from the reserves, enrolled at DePaul University in March of this year. After seeing the pervasive atmosphere of antisemitism and anti-Israel rhetoric on campus, he was inspired to use his voice and personal experience to empower and educate his classmates about antisemitism, and about the war against Palestinian terrorism in Gaza.
Michael Kaminsky is a junior who came to DePaul from Buffalo Grove, IL. He, too, has been inspired to use his voice and experience to empower and educate the community about antisemitism, and about Jewish identity. He is a founding member of DePaul’s chapter of Students Supporting Israel, a StandWithUs Emerson fellow, and a proud member of AEPi.
Max and Michael are proud and empowered advocates for Jewish civil rights. They are loud voices for the indigenous rights of the Jewish people in their indigenous homeland — Israel.
On November 6, Jew-haters decided to silence their voices. Two masked men violently attacked Max and Michael with such force that Max suffered a brain injury and Michael suffered a fracture and lacerations.
Max and Michael were doing what they have done many times before — exercising their right to peacefully express themselves and their views, and engage with passersby.
This attack happened in the plain sight of a DePaul public safety officer, who did nothing to intervene. The officer had an opportunity to stop the attack, but did nothing to help Max and Michael.
But it gets worse.
The university was well aware of multiple threats against Max and Michael, just as it was aware of the campus climate of hate targeting Jews. But it did nothing. It failed to protect its students, even when a violent attack was unfolding in front of one of its public safety officers. This cannot be tolerated.
We cannot be silent in the face of intolerance and injustice. This is why The Lawfare Project represents Max and Michael — to demand justice, to ensure that their rights are protected, and to make sure that what they experienced is not experienced by any other Jewish student at DePaul University.
Even now, their attackers remain at large. We demand that the Chicago Police Department use every tool at its disposal to arrest those responsible, and that they be prosecuted for the hate crime they committed, to the full extent of the law. We need to impose meaningful consequences on antisemitic hate crimes to deter future attacks, and to send the clear message that our society rejects this extremist hate and violence.
As for the university, our attorneys are reviewing all options, including legal options, to make sure that the school is accountable not just to Max and Michael for this attack, but to all Jewish students who are under daily threat of similar attacks.
We are here to make sure that DePaul does the right thing, and will take whatever action is necessary to do so.
Jew-hatred has no place at DePaul, or on any college campus. We are demanding action from the school — as all decent people should.
Max and Michael are not alone. Our Jewish students on campus are not alone. We are all here for them, and we will make sure that their rights are protected and upheld.
Brooke Goldstein is the founder and executive director of The Lawfare Project and the founder of the End Jew Hatred movement. She is also an author, award-winning, filmmaker, and regular news television commentator.
The post DePaul University Enabled Violent Attacks and Brain Injury on Jewish Students first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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UK Will Arrest Netanyahu With ‘Due Process’ if He Visits, Foreign Secretary Says
Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy leaves Downing Street, following the results of the election, in London, Britain, July 5, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Toby Melville
Britain would follow due process if Benjamin Netanyahu visited the UK, foreign minister David Lammy said on Monday, when asked if London would fulfill the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against the Israeli prime minister.
“We are signatories to the Rome Statute, we have always been committed to our obligations under international law and international humanitarian law,” Lammy told reporters at a G7 meeting in Italy.
“Of course, if there were to be such a visit to the UK, there would be a court process and due process would be followed in relation to those issues.”
The post UK Will Arrest Netanyahu With ‘Due Process’ if He Visits, Foreign Secretary Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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How reality TV got real: A review of Emily Nussbaum’s ‘Cue the Sun!’
There’s a trope on sitcoms where characters think they’re being filmed for a reality television show, when in fact what they’re experiencing is real life. (Real life within the fictional […]
The post How reality TV got real: A review of Emily Nussbaum’s ‘Cue the Sun!’ appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.