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US House Committee Announces Investigation Into Antisemitism at Rutgers University

The Endowment Justice Collective, a coalition of organizations at Rutgers University, held a “die in,” Piscataway, New Jersey, March 19, 2024. Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect

Rutgers University in New Jersey has been named as the latest school being investigated by the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce for allegedly ignoring antisemitism for years and allowing an open season on hate toward Jewish students.

“Rutgers stands out for the intensity and pervasiveness of antisemitism on its campuses,” Committee Chairwoman Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) wrote to high-level university officials on Wednesday. “Rutgers senior administrators, faculty, staff, academic departments and centers, and student organizations have contributed to the development of a pervasive climate of antisemitism.”

With the announcement, Rutgers University joined a slew of colleges and universities accused of disregarding complaints of bullying, discrimination, and harassment reported by Jewish students. Foxx, as well as other lawmakers, have scrutinized this alleged pattern of behavior, which persists despite the fact that virtually all higher education institutions in the US impose robust anti-discrimination policies aimed at protecting minority groups from bigotry. Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California, Berkeley are among the other schools currently being investigated by the committee.

In Wednesday’s letter, Foxx recounted numerous incidents as cause for a thorough examination of Rutgers University’s handling of antisemitism, zeroing in on the conduct of its officials employed by the Center for Security, Race, and Rights (CSRR). Foxx noted that after Hamas’ Oct. 7 slaughtering of Israeli civilians, CSRR rationalized the terrorist group’s violence, saying in a public statement that it was the result of “decades of oppression and attempted erasure.”

CSRR also recruits figures accused of antisemitism, Foxx noted. Lara Sheehi, a former George Washington University professor who has been accused of abusing Jewish students and filing phony disciplinary charges against them, is listed as one of its affiliates, and just three days after Oct. 7, CSRR hosted an event featuring Sheehi in which she defended Hamas’ actions as a legitimate response to “Zionist settler colonialism,” which she called “the provocation.”

CSRR’s extremism has infected the student body, according to Foxx. Last month, during an event titled “Gaza, Genocide, and International Law,” anti-Zionist students heckled an Israeli professor and later accused him of stoking “hatred” and endangering their safety. One of them expressed her desire to pelt his “shiny pink head” with a bottled water.

The congressional letter detailed how other academic departments have exuded similar anti-Jewish attitudes. Last month, the program coordinator of the university’s Center for Latino Arts and Culture, Silismar Suriel, “refused to advertise” an event because it was co-organized by Rutgers Hillel. Foxx noted that Suriel was on record saying, “We are a f—king university serving capitalist issues, serving Zionists … do the Zionists own the university?” and “f—k you colonizer … f—k you, Zionist, why don’t you go and read a f—king book?”

As The Algemeiner has previously reported, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) has been a wellspring of antisemitic rhetoric at Rutgers. The group was one of dozens of SJP chapters that cheered Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, an attack that resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths and numerous rapes of Israeli women. As video footage of the terrorist group’s atrocities circled the web, Rutgers SJP shared on its Instagram pages memes that said “Glory to resistance” and “the clock started running when the majority of the Palestinian population was expelled from their land by Zionists during the Nakba.” It added, “You are watching an occupied people rise up against an apartheid nuclear power that has been occupying them and making their life unlivable since 1948.”

A milieu of extreme anti-Zionism at the school has resulted in at least one death threat against the life of a Jewish student since Oct. 7. In November, a local news outlet reported, freshman Matthew Skorny, 19, called for the murder of a fraternity member he identified as an Israeli, saying on the popular social media forum YikYak, “To all the pro-Palestinian ralliers [sic] … Go kill him.”

Similar incidents at Rutgers are not new. In the past few years, the school’s AEPi house has been vandalized three times. In one incident, in April 2022, on the last day of the Jewish holiday of Passover, a caravan of participants from a SJP rally drove there, shouting antisemitic slurs and spitting in the direction of fraternity members. Four days later, before Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel, the house was egged during a 24-hour reading of the names of Holocaust victims.

Foxx has requested from Rutgers “all reports of antisemitic acts or incidents” and “related documents” going back to 2021 that were made to the offices of the president, general counsel, dean of students, police department, human resources, and diversity, equity, and inclusion, among others. She also requested documentation on the school’s funding of Rutgers Students for Justice in Palestine and disciplinary measures taken against students who have been found guilty of antisemitic abuse.

“Congress’ oversight powers are derived from the US Constitution and have been repeatedly affirmed by the United States Supreme Court,” Foxx concluded, explaining the university’s legal obligation to provide the documents she requested. “I expect that this request will be conveyed promptly to all parities who would be reasonably expected to have responsive materials.”

The Algemeiner has reached out to Rutgers University for comment for this story.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post US House Committee Announces Investigation Into Antisemitism at Rutgers University first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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New Orleans Attack Puts Spotlight on Islamic State Comeback Bid

A member of the Emergency Response Division holds an Islamic State militants flag in the Old City of Mosul, Iraq July 10, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani/File Photo.

A US Army veteran who flew a black Islamic State flag on a truck that he rammed into New Year’s revelers in New Orleans shows how the extremist group still retains the ability to inspire violence despite suffering years of losses to a US-led military coalition.

At the height of its power from 2014-2017, the Islamic State “caliphate” imposed death and torture on communities in vast swathes of Iraq and Syria and enjoyed franchises across the Middle East.

Its then-leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, killed in 2019 by US special forces in northwestern Syria, rose from obscurity to lead the ultra-hardline group and declare himself “caliph” of all Muslims.

The caliphate collapsed in 2017 in Iraq, where it once had a base just a 30-minute drive from Baghdad, and in Syria in 2019, after a sustained military campaign by a US-led coalition.

Islamic State responded by scattering in autonomous cells, its leadership is clandestine and its overall size is hard to quantify. The U.N. estimates it at 10,000 in its heartlands.

The US-led coalition, including some 4,000 US troops in Syria and Iraq, has continued hammering the militants with airstrikes and raids that the US military says have seen hundreds of fighters and leaders killed and captured.

Yet Islamic State has managed some major operations while striving to rebuild and it continues to inspire lone wolf attacks such as the one in New Orleans which killed 14 people.

Those assaults include one by gunmen on a Russian music hall in March 2024 that killed at least 143 people, and two explosions targeting an official ceremony in the Iranian city of Kerman in January 2024 that killed nearly 100.

Despite the counterterrorism pressure, ISIS has regrouped, “repaired its media operations, and restarted external plotting,” Acting US Director for the National Counterterrorism Center Brett Holmgren warned in October.

Geopolitical factors have aided Islamic State. Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has caused widespread anger that jihadists use for recruitment. The risks to Syrian Kurds who are holding thousands of Islamic State prisoners could also create an opening for the group.

Islamic State has not claimed responsibility for the New Orleans attack or praised it on its social media sites, although its supporters have, US law enforcement agencies said.

A senior US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there had been growing concern about Islamic State increasing its recruiting efforts and resurging in Syria.

Those worries were heightened after the fall in December of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the potential for the militant group to fill the vacuum.

‘MOMENTS OF PROMISE’

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned that Islamic State will try to use this period of uncertainty to re-establish capabilities in Syria, but said the United States is determined not to let that happen.

“History shows how quickly moments of promise can descend into conflict and violence,” he said.

A U.N. team that monitors Islamic State activities reported to the U.N. Security Council in July a “risk of resurgence” of the group in the Middle East and increased concerns about the ability of its Afghanistan-based affiliate, ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), to mount attacks outside the country.

European governments viewed ISIS-K as “the greatest external terrorist threat to Europe,” it said.

“In addition to the executed attacks, the number of plots disrupted or being tracked through the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Levant, Asia, Europe, and potentially as far as North America is striking,” the team said.

Jim Jeffrey, former US ambassador to Iraq and Turkey, and Special Envoy to the Global Coalition To Defeat Islamic State, said the group has long sought to motivate lone wolf attacks like the one in New Orleans.

Its threat, however, remains efforts by ISIS-K to launch major mass casualty attacks like those seen in Moscow and Iran, and in Europe in 2015 and 2016, he said.

ISIS also has continued to focus on Africa.

This week, it said 12 Islamic State militants using booby-trapped vehicles attacked a military base on Tuesday in Somalia’s northeastern region of Puntland, killing around 22 soldiers and wounding dozens more.

It called the assault “the blow of the year. A complex attack that is first of its kind.”

Security analysts say Islamic State in Somalia has grown in strength because of an influx of foreign fighters and more revenue from extorting local businesses, becoming the group’s “nerve centre” in Africa.

‘PATH TO RADICALIZATION’

Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Texas native and US Army veteran who once served in Afghanistan, acted alone in the New Orleans attack, the FBI said on Thursday.

Jabbar appeared to have made recordings in which he condemned music, drugs and alcohol, restrictions that echo Islamic State’s playbook.

Investigators were looking into Jabbar’s “path to radicalization,” uncertain how he transformed from military veteran, real-estate agent and one-time employee of the major tax and consulting firm Deloitte into someone who was “100 percent inspired by ISIS,” an acronym for Islamic State.

US intelligence and homeland security officials in recent months have warned local law enforcement about the potential for foreign extremist groups, such as ISIS, to target large public gatherings, specifically with vehicle-ramming attacks, according to intelligence bulletins reviewed by Reuters.

US Central Command said in a public statement in June that Islamic State was attempting to “reconstitute following several years of decreased capability.”

CENTCOM said it based its assessment on Islamic State claims of mounting 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria in the first half of 2024, a rate which would put the group “on pace to more than double the number of attacks” claimed the year before.

H.A. Hellyer, an expert in Middle East studies and senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies, said it was unlikely Islamic State would gain considerable territory again.

He said ISIS and other non-state actors continue to pose a danger, but more due to their ability to unleash “random acts of violence” than by being a territorial entity.

“Not in Syria or Iraq, but there are other places in Africa that a limited amount of territorial control might be possible for a time,” Hellyer said, “but I don’t see that as likely, not as the precursor to a serious comeback.”

The post New Orleans Attack Puts Spotlight on Islamic State Comeback Bid first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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US Plans $8 Billion Arms Sale to Israel, US Official Says

US President Joe Biden speaks on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in this White House handout image taken in the Oval Office in Washington, US, April 4, 2024. Photo: The White House/Handout via REUTERS

The administration of President Joe Biden has notified Congress of a proposed $8 billion arms sale to Israel, a US official said on Friday, with Washington maintaining support for its ally.

The deal would need approval from the House of Representatives and Senate committees and includes munitions for fighter jets and attack helicopters as well as artillery shells, Axios reported earlier. The package also includes small-diameter bombs and warheads, according to Axios.

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Protesters have for months demanded an arms embargo against Israel, but US policy has largely remained unchanged. In August, the United States approved the sale of $20 billion in fighter jets and other military equipment to Israel.

The Biden administration says it is helping its ally defend against Iran-backed terrorist groups like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.

The post US Plans $8 Billion Arms Sale to Israel, US Official Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Hamas Releases Proof-of-Life Video of Israeli Hostage Liri Albag

Illustrative. An undated picture of (from left) Liri Albag, Agam Berger, Daniella Gilboa, and Karina Ariev held hostage by Hamas in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, that was made public by their families on July 16, 2024. Photo: Hostages and Missing Families Forum

i24 NewsThe Palestinian terrorists of Hamas on Saturday released a video showing signs of life from Israeli hostage Liri Albag.

Albag’s family requested media not to share the video or images from it, asking journalists to respect their privacy at this moment.

Albag, 20, is a surveillance soldier stationed at the Nahal Oz base, was abducted on October 7 by Palestinian jihadists.

The post Hamas Releases Proof-of-Life Video of Israeli Hostage Liri Albag first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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