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‘Lift Your Voices’: New York City Mayor Meets With Jewish Students to Discuss Campus Antisemitism
New York City Mayor Eric Adams and US Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) meeting with Jewish college students to discuss antisemitism at City Hall on Sept. 23, 2024. Photo: Dion J. Pierre/The Algemeiner
New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) and US Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) met with Jewish college students on Monday to discuss campus antisemitism at public and private universities in the five boroughs.
Held at New York City Hall, the “roundtable discussion” saw Jewish students of the City University of New York (CUNY) and other colleges in the area express their concerns about the alleged failure of school administrators to equally enforce rules proscribing ethnic and racial discrimination when they are violated by antisemitic anti-Zionists. As in other states across the country, colleges in New York have seen a rise in extreme pro-Hamas activity, ranging from the promotion of antisemitic conspiracies, hate speech, harassment, and assault. The situation, Jewish students told Adams, must be addressed as a civil rights issue.
Responding to their concerns, Adams condemned the activities of pro-Hamas students and pledged to do what he can to combat campus antisemitism within the bounds the law, citing Jewish support for African American civil rights in the 20th century. He also explained that his power to act is to some extent complicated by the multiculturalism of New York City, where a plethora of groups believe in competing and often mutually exclusive interpretations of history. Recognizing the claims of one group, he noted, could be perceived as denying those of others and squelching free speech.
“Whatever the law allows me to do, I’m going to do to ensure New Yorkers are safe,” he said. “And it’s unfortunate, but some of this speech is protected speech, and we have to be honest, this is the country that we’re in, we’re in a country that’s not like over there, where whatever you say you could be rounded up and arrested because you said it. That is not who we are as Americans. And sometimes that’s a plus. Sometimes, it’s a plus that we’re able to come together and rally in front of the UN and talk about how we felt and the anger of what happened on Oct. 7. And sometimes it’s not a plus when people are able to say they are Hamas.”
He continued, “We may hate that, but that’s protected speech in this country. And we have to find a balance of making sure that we raise our voices to counter the hate that we’re seeing, that is really becoming widespread in this country. And we all see it. And it hurts me, and I’m sure it hurts [Torres], and all of us who are pushing back against this hate, but this is the country we are in … But we should demand from those entities and institutions on our college campuses and ground that they should not be safe havens for those who are violating the policies, those who are being funded with taxpayer dollars, those who are using violence — they should not be able to exist on these campuses.”
Adams also commended Jewish students for speaking out, saying, “I take my hat off to you, because you have not decided to remain silent, and you know what has happened in previous generations when you were silent … you need to continue to lift your voices and build allies with other young people who are being misinformed. Bring them into your fold and educate them.”
Torres, who has been praised by both Democrats and Republicans for condemning antisemitic speech regardless of the speaker’s ideological affiliation, expressed his belief that the student anti-Zionist movement is antisemitic and should be judged as harshly as any white supremacist group.
“If you disagree with politics and practices of the Israeli government, then peacefully protest the Israeli consulate, but if you’re targeting a Jewish institution like Hillel simply for being Jewish, that is antisemitism. And if you’re following Jewish students to a kosher restaurant and blockading the entrance, and slamming the doors, and hurling insults at the Jewish students, that is harassment,” Torres said. “If the KKK were harassing Black students or followers of the Westboro Baptist Church were harassing LGBTQ students, or if white nationalists inspired by the Great Replacement Theory were harassing Latino students, there would be nothing but overwhelming outrage from both the political and the academic establishment. The mayor has spoken out, but there are far too many who are silent. And we should ask why the silence and difference when it comes to the safety of Jewish students.”
Earlier this month, Torres penned a letter to several New York-based universities, asking the higher educational institutions to amend their campus harassment policies to defend Zionist students.
Following the meeting’s conclusion, Jewish students and professors commended Adams’ advocacy of Jewish civil rights.
“I feel that, in the extent of his power, Mayor Adams was very receptive to our concerns and very willing to make change any way that he can,” Liora Gold, a third-year student at The New School, told The Algemeiner. “Since Oct. 7 , antisemitism has risen to the surface, and while it was apparent beforehand, it is now something that’s very public and very accepted. We are both on the board of Hillel, and we’ve had our meetings protested many times. We’ve had many security concerns because of our meetings. Our flyers have been vandalized; we’ve gotten backlash on social media. It’s a very public display of antisemitism masked as anti-Zionism.”
Michael Valdes, a theater major at The New School — where supporters of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement sitting on the student government enacted a spending freeze as an act of protest — said that anti-Zionists were creating a climate of fear and intimidation.
“As someone who is a senator on our student government, it’s been very upsetting to see that they’re supporting divestment,” Valdes said. “Also the SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine chapter] on our campus actually supported Hamas’s logo on their event flyer, and they’re currently on probation for that. The fact that they’re even still allowed to be a club on campus after promoting a US-designated terrorist organization is very upsetting and disheartening to see.”
Many other students in attendance at Monday’s meeting are currently enrolled at the City University of New York (CUNY), which recently settled half a dozen cases of antisemitic discrimination opened by the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). One of the cases, involving Brooklyn College, prompted widespread concern for revealing that Jewish students enrolled in the college’s Mental Health Counseling (MCH) program were repeatedly pressured into saying that Jews are white people who should be excluded from discussions about social justice.
The CUNY system has produced dozens of antisemitic outrages, as The Algemeiner previously reported. In 2023, it hired anti-Israel commentator Marc Lamont Hill as the CUNY Graduate Center’s “presidential professor” of urban education despite his public friendship with Louis Farrakhan. In 2020, administrators allegedly declined to file disciplinary charges against Nerdeen Kiswani, who threatened to set her classmate on fire for wearing an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) hoodie. In 2023, CUNY again came under a shroud of criticism when student Fatima Mohammed alleged that Jewish money influences the university’s Israel policy during a CUNY Law School commencement ceremony. Despite being widely condemned by Jewish groups and local and national lawmakers — including Adams — 40 CUNY Law faculty members issued a statement supporting Mohammed’s remarks, describing them as “heartland First Amendment speech.”
Queens College physics professor Azriel Gunack told The Algemeiner that CUNY chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez is principally responsible for eradicating antisemitism from throughout the university system.
“This is going to have to be a conversation with the chancellor. Mayor Adams can’t come in and run the university. There’s some point to having a hands-off attitude, but things really can spiral out of control,” he said. “CUNY has a chance to be a leader in the country if he takes a stand on things. It’ll take real courage. There would be a lot of backlash, but CUNY could be a great school. We could really bring in students and teach them how to deal with difficult issues. We don’t do that now. We should have some program part of the freshmen year initiative where you have people from both sides and learn to talk and understand where someone’s coming from and try to express yourself in that context. There’s a lot we could be doing to make a difference. That is what democracy is, the exchange of ideas, but that’s not really happening.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post ‘Lift Your Voices’: New York City Mayor Meets With Jewish Students to Discuss Campus Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Blocks Ramallah Meeting with Arab Ministers, Israeli Official Says
A closed Israeli military gate stands near Ramallah in the West Bank, February 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Israel will not allow a planned meeting in the Palestinian administrative capital of Ramallah, in the West Bank, to go ahead, an Israeli official said on Saturday, after Arab ministers planning to attend were stopped from coming.
The move, days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government announced one of the largest expansions of settlements in the West Bank in years, underlined escalating tensions over the issue of international recognition of a future Palestinian state.
Saturday’s meeting comes ahead of an international conference, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, that is due to be held in New York on June 17-20 to discuss the issue of Palestinian statehood, which Israel fiercely opposes.
The delegation of senior Arab officials due to visit Ramallah – including the Jordanian, Egyptian, Saudi Arabian and Bahraini foreign ministers – postponed the visit after “Israel’s obstruction of it,” Jordan’s foreign ministry said in a statement, adding that the block was “a clear breach of Israel’s obligations as an occupying force.”
The ministers required Israeli consent to travel to the West Bank from Jordan.
An Israeli official said the ministers intended to take part in “a provocative meeting” to discuss promoting the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“Such a state would undoubtedly become a terrorist state in the heart of the land of Israel,” the official said. “Israel will not cooperate with such moves aimed at harming it and its security.”
A Saudi source told Reuters that Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud had delayed a planned trip to the West Bank.
Israel has come under increasing pressure from the United Nations and European countries which favour a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, under which an independent Palestinian state would exist alongside Israel.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that recognizing a Palestinian state was not only a “moral duty but a political necessity.”
Palestinians want the West Bank territory, which was seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, as the core of a future state along with Gaza and East Jerusalem.
But the area is now criss-crossed with settlements that have squeezed some 3 million Palestinians into pockets increasingly cut off from each other though a network of military checkpoints.
Defense Minister Israel Katz said the announcement this week of 22 new settlements in the West Bank was an “historic moment” for settlements and “a clear message to Macron.” He said recognition of a Palestinian state would be “thrown into the dustbin of history.”
The post Israel Blocks Ramallah Meeting with Arab Ministers, Israeli Official Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Gaza Aid Supplies Hit by Looting as Hamas Ceasefire Response Awaited
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Armed men hijacked dozens of aid trucks entering the Gaza Strip overnight and hundreds of desperate Palestinians joined in to take supplies, local aid groups said on Saturday as officials waited for Hamas to respond to the latest ceasefire proposals.
The incident was the latest in a series that has underscored the shaky security situation hampering the delivery of aid into Gaza, following the easing of a weeks-long Israeli blockade earlier this month.
US President Donald Trump said on Friday he believed a ceasefire agreement was close but Hamas has said it is still studying the latest proposals from his special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. The White House said on Thursday that Israel had agreed to the proposals.
The proposals would see a 60-day truce and the exchange of 28 of the 58 hostages still held in Gaza for more than 1,200 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, along with the entry of humanitarian aid into the enclave.
On Saturday, the Israeli military, which relaunched its air and ground campaign in March following a two-month truce, said it was continuing to hit targets in Gaza, including sniper posts and had killed what it said was the head of a Hamas weapons manufacturing site.
The campaign has cleared large areas along the boundaries of the Gaza Strip, squeezing the population of more than 2 million into an ever narrower section along the coast and around the southern city of Khan Younis.
Israel imposed a blockade on all supplies entering the enclave at the beginning of March in an effort to weaken Hamas and has found itself under increasing pressure from an international community shocked by the increasingly desperate humanitarian situation the blockade has created.
The United Nations said on Friday the situation in Gaza is the worst since the start of the war began 19 months ago, with the entire population facing the risk of famine despite a resumption of limited aid deliveries earlier this month.
Israel has been allowing a limited number of trucks from the World Food Program and other international groups to bring flour to bakeries in Gaza but deliveries have been hampered by repeated incidents of looting.
At the same time, a separate system, run by a US-backed group called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has been delivering meals and food packages at three designated distribution sites.
However, aid groups have refused to cooperate with the GHF, which they say is not neutral, and say the amount of aid allowed in falls far short of the needs of a population at risk of famine.
“The aid that’s being sent now makes a mockery of the mass tragedy unfolding under our watch,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of the main U.N. relief organization for Palestinians, said in a message on the social media platform X.
NO BREAD IN WEEKS
The World Food Program said it brought 77 trucks carrying flour into Gaza overnight and early on Saturday and all of them were stopped on the way, with food taken by hungry people.
“After nearly 80 days of a total blockade, communities are starving and they are no longer willing to watch food pass them by,” it said in a statement.
Amjad Al-Shawa, head of an umbrella group representing Palestinian aid groups, said the dire situation was being exploited by armed groups which were attacking some of the aid convoys.
He said hundreds more trucks were needed and accused Israel of a “systematic policy of starvation.”
Overnight on Saturday, he said trucks had been stopped by armed groups near Khan Younis as they were headed towards a World Food Programme warehouse in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza and hundreds of desperate people had carried off supplies.
“We could understand that some are driven by hunger and starvation, some may not have eaten bread in several weeks, but we can’t understand armed looting, and it is not acceptable at all,” he said.
Israel says it is facilitating aid deliveries, pointing to its endorsement of the new GHF distribution centers and its consent for other aid trucks to enter Gaza.
Instead it accuses Hamas of stealing supplies intended for civilians and using them to entrench its hold on Gaza, which it had been running since 2007.
The post Gaza Aid Supplies Hit by Looting as Hamas Ceasefire Response Awaited first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Seeks Changes in US Gaza Proposal; Witkoff Calls Response ‘Unacceptable’
US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy-designate Steve Witkoff gives a speech at the inaugural parade inside Capital One Arena on the inauguration day of Trump’s second presidential term, in Washington, DC, Jan. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Hamas said on Saturday it was seeking amendments to a US-backed proposal for a temporary ceasefire with Israel in Gaza, but President Donald Trump’s envoy rejected the group’s response as “totally unacceptable.”
The Palestinian terrorist group said it was willing to release 10 living hostages and hand over the bodies of 18 dead in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. But Hamas reiterated demands for an end to the war and withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, conditions Israel has rejected.
A Hamas official described the group’s response to the proposals from Trump’s special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff as “positive” but said it was seeking some amendments. The official did not elaborate on the changes being sought by the group.
“This response aims to achieve a permanent ceasefire, a complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and to ensure the flow of humanitarian aid to our people in the Strip,” Hamas said in a statement.
The proposals would see a 60-day truce and the exchange of 28 of the 58 hostages still held in Gaza for more than 1,200 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, along with the entry of humanitarian aid into the enclave.
A Palestinian official familiar with the talks told Reuters that among amendments Hamas is seeking is the release of the hostages in three phases over the 60-day truce and more aid distribution in different areas. Hamas also wants guarantees the deal will lead to a permanent ceasefire, the official said.
There was no immediate response from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office to the Hamas statement.
Israel has previously rejected Hamas’ conditions, instead demanding the complete disarmament of the group and its dismantling as a military and governing force, along with the return of all 58 remaining hostages.
Trump said on Friday he believed a ceasefire agreement was close after the latest proposals, and the White House said on Thursday that Israel had agreed to the terms.
Saying he had received Hamas’ response, Witkoff wrote in a posting on X: “It is totally unacceptable and only takes us backward. Hamas should accept the framework proposal we put forward as the basis for proximity talks, which we can begin immediately this coming week.”
On Saturday, the Israeli military said it had killed Mohammad Sinwar, Hamas’ Gaza chief on May 13, confirming what Netanyahu said earlier this week.
Sinwar, the younger brother of Yahya Sinwar, the group’s deceased leader and mastermind of the October 2023 attack on Israel, was the target of an Israeli strike on a hospital in southern Gaza. Hamas has neither confirmed nor denied his death.
The Israeli military, which relaunched its air and ground campaign in March following a two-month truce, said on Saturday it was continuing to hit targets in Gaza, including sniper posts and had killed what it said was the head of a Hamas weapons manufacturing site.
The campaign has cleared large areas along the boundaries of the Gaza Strip, squeezing the population of more than 2 million into an ever narrower section along the coast and around the southern city of Khan Younis.
Israel imposed a blockade on all supplies entering the enclave at the beginning of March in an effort to weaken Hamas and has found itself under increasing pressure from an international community shocked by the desperate humanitarian situation the blockade has created.
On Saturday, aid groups said dozens of World Food Program trucks carrying flour to Gaza bakeries had been hijacked by armed groups and subsequently looted by people desperate for food after weeks of mounting hunger.
“After nearly 80 days of a total blockade, communities are starving and they are no longer willing to watch food pass them by,” the WFP said in a statement.
‘A MOCKERY’
The incident was the latest in a series that has underscored the shaky security situation hampering the delivery of aid into Gaza, following the easing of a weeks-long Israeli blockade earlier this month.
The United Nations said on Friday the situation in Gaza is the worst since the start of the war 19 months ago, with the entire population facing the risk of famine despite a resumption of limited aid deliveries earlier this month.
“The aid that’s being sent now makes a mockery of the mass tragedy unfolding under our watch,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of the main U.N. relief organization for Palestinians, said in a message on X.
Israel has been allowing a limited number of trucks from the World Food Program and other international groups to bring flour to bakeries in Gaza but deliveries have been hampered by repeated incidents of looting.
A separate system, run by a US-backed group called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, has been delivering meals and food packages at three designated distribution sites.
However, aid groups have refused to cooperate with the GHF, which they say is not neutral, and say the amount of aid allowed in falls far short of the needs of a population at risk of famine.
Amjad Al-Shawa, head of an umbrella group representing Palestinian aid groups, said the dire situation was being exploited by armed groups which were attacking some of the aid convoys.
He said hundreds more trucks were needed and accused Israel of a “systematic policy of starvation.”
Israel denies operating a policy of starvation and says it is facilitating aid deliveries, pointing to its endorsement of the new GHF distribution centers and its consent for other aid trucks to enter Gaza.
Instead it accuses Hamas of stealing supplies intended for civilians and using them to entrench its hold on Gaza, which it had been running since 2007.
Hamas denies looting supplies and has executed a number of suspected looters.
The post Hamas Seeks Changes in US Gaza Proposal; Witkoff Calls Response ‘Unacceptable’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.