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Harvard Student Group Attends Frenzied Pro-Hamas Protest at White House
An anti-Israel protester burns an Israeli flag in front of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, on June 8, 2024. Photo: Aashish Kiphayet/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
Members of a prominent Harvard University student group attended a virulently anti-Israel protest in Washington, DC that converged on the White House over the weekend.
Harvard’s African and African American Resistance Organization (AFRO) sent a cohort of members to attend a Saturday demonstration outside the White House to protest Israel’s military operations against the Hamas terror group in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. The group claimed it attended the mass protest to demand an end to what it called a “genocide” of Palestinians.
“AFRO participated in another national mobilization of over 100,000 people against the genocide of the Palestinian people. The Biden administration’s red line was a fiction, and Israel continues to lay siege on Rafah,” the group wrote on Instagram.
“If the White House will not drawn a red line, the people will continue to draw their’s [sic] until the complete and total liberation of Palestine,” AFRO continued.
Saturday’s anti-Israel protest in the US capital drew roughly 100,000 people from cities across the country. The protest, organized by the terrorist-connected Palestinian Youth Movement, attracted many demonstrators who explicitly expressed support for violence against Israel and the United States.
Warning: The below tweet contains explicit language.
Protester holding a “Stand with Hamas” outside the White House @FreeBeacon pic.twitter.com/Vqpb7gFexH
— Tanner Nau (@tannernau15) June 8, 2024
Several attendants hoisted signs urging Americans to support Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that launched the ongoing war in Gaza by slaughtering roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel on Oct. 7. Other protesters called for Hezbollah, a Shia Muslim terrorist group based in Lebanon, to “kill another Zionist.”
A protester named Michael from Colorado praised the Oct. 7th terrorist attacks as a “brilliant raid” and referred to Hamas as “armed resistance.”
“I support by any means necessary what Hamas can do to resist the genocide that Israel and the Jews who do it. Yeah, the Jews,” Michael said.
Harvard AFRO, a self-described “militant” activist group which advocates on behalf of black students, has faced an onslaught of allegations of antisemitism since the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. Three days after the massacre, AFRO signed onto a letter condemning Israel and holding the Jewish state “entirely responsible for all the unfolding violence.” AFRO has helped spearhead many of the anti-Israel campus protests at Harvard in the eight months following the terrorist attacks on Israel. The group has also demanded that the university divest from companies tied to Israel and terminate partnerships with Israeli academic institutions. In an interview with Hamas-supporting journalist Rania Khalek, leaders of the group dismissed criticism of their conduct as “racist” and “anti-black.”
Harvard University has received widespread criticism over its soft-handed approach to antisemitic incidents on campus. Critics skewered the administration for allowing students to repeat chants calling for the elimination of the Jewish state. University donors, some of whom are Jewish, vowed to stop giving money to the school in response. The controversy over the university’s campus climate intensified when former Harvard President Claudine Gay told a US congressional committee that calling for a genocide of Jews living in Israel would only violate school rules “depending on the context.” Gay was subsequently removed from the presidency after conservative news outlets surfaced her long history of repeated plagiarism.
Alan Garber took the helm from Gay and assembled an antisemitism task force in January to address the concerns of Jewish students and alumni. One of the task force co-chairs Derek Penslar, signed a letter accusing Israel of being an apartheid state. Another co-chair, business school professor Raffaella Sadun, immediately resigned for undisclosed reasons a month later.
The post Harvard Student Group Attends Frenzied Pro-Hamas Protest at White House first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd
Magdeburg Christmas market, December 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Mang
i24 News – A suspected terrorist plowed a vehicle into a crowd at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, west of the capital Berlin, killing at least five and injuring dozens more.
Local police confirmed that the suspect was a Saudi national born in 1974 and acting alone.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed his concern about the incident, saying that “reports from Magdeburg suggest something bad. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.”
Police declined to give casualty numbers, confirming only a large-scale operation at the market, where people had gathered to celebrate in the days leading up to the Christmas holidays.
The post Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister
A person waves a flag adopted by the new Syrian rulers, as people gather during a celebration called by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) near the Umayyad Mosque, after the ousting of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria, Photo: December 20, 2024. REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo
Syria’s new rulers have appointed Murhaf Abu Qasra, a leading figure in the insurgency which toppled Bashar al-Assad, as defense minister in the interim government, an official source said on Saturday.
Abu Qasra, who is also known by the nom de guerre Abu Hassan 600, is a senior figure in the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group which led the campaign that ousted Assad this month. He led numerous military operations during Syria’s revolution, the source said.
Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa discussed “the form of the military institution in the new Syria” during a meeting with armed factions on Saturday, state news agency SANA reported.
Abu Qasra during the meeting sat next to Sharaa, also known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, photos published by SANA showed.
Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir said this week that the defense ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from Assad’s army.
Bashir, who formerly led an HTS-affiliated administration in the northwestern province of Idlib, has said he will lead a three-month transitional government. The new administration has not declared plans for what will happen after that.
Earlier on Saturday, the ruling General Command named Asaad Hassan al-Shibani as foreign minister, SANA said. A source in the new administration told Reuters that this step “comes in response to the aspirations of the Syrian people to establish international relations that bring peace and stability.”
Shibani, a 37-year-old graduate of Damascus University, previously led the political department of the rebels’ Idlib government, the General Command said.
Sharaa’s group was part of al Qaeda until he broke ties in 2016. It had been confined to Idlib for years until going on the offensive in late November, sweeping through the cities of western Syria and into Damascus as the army melted away.
Sharaa has met with a number of international envoys this week. He has said his primary focus is on reconstruction and achieving economic development and that he is not interested in engaging in any new conflicts.
Syrian rebels seized control of Damascus on Dec. 8, forcing Assad to flee after more than 13 years of civil war and ending his family’s decades-long rule.
Washington designated Sharaa a terrorist in 2013, saying al Qaeda in Iraq had tasked him with overthrowing Assad’s rule and establishing Islamic sharia law in Syria. US officials said on Friday that Washington would remove a $10 million bounty on his head.
The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused one of the biggest refugee crises of modern times and left cities bombed to rubble and the economy hollowed out by global sanctions.
The post Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
The post Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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