Australian writer Randa Abdel-Fattah. Photo: Screenshot

Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia has launched an investigation into a prominent academic and award-winning author who has regularly used social media to call for the destruction of Israel and Zionism, with Jewish leaders calling for her to be fired.

The university confirmed with The Daily Telegraph, an Australian newspaper, that it was investigating the online conduct of Randa Abdel-Fattah, a Future Fellow in the school’s Department of Sociology and one of Australia’s most prominent anti-Israel activists.

“The university is aware of comments made on social media by a member of its staff that have caused concern and distress among some members of the community,” the university told the Telegraph in a statement.

Citing its duty to address the concerns of “distressed” students and the university community more broadly, Macquarie said it has “policies and procedures in place to balance its commitments both to providing a safe and welcoming environment for all and to lawful free speech and academic freedom. Where there is found to be a breach of policy, the university will act to address the matter under its policies and procedures.”

Abdel-Fattah, 45, caused an uproar last week when she called for Israel’s destruction in what was apparently meant to be a message of hope and optimism for the new year.

“May 2025 be the end of Israel. May it be the end of the US-Israeli imperial scourge on humanity. May we see the abolishment of the death cult of Zionism and the end of US empire and finally a world where the slaughter, annihilation, and torture of Palestinians is no longer daily routine,” Abdel-Fattah posted on X/Twitter.

“And to achieve that,” she continued, “is to snowball collective liberation because the tentacles of Western imperialism oppress and dehumanize us all. May every baby slaughtered in Zionism’s genocide haunt you who openly support or acquiesce through your gutless silence.”

The academic has also used social media to accuse “Israeli Zionists” of “murdering torturing, and, raping with zero restraint” and Israel, “the people of a Holocaust,” of “committing a holocaust” in the ongoing war against Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

“Daily, hourly slaughter. Zionism is a Palestinian slaughter house and still there are people supporting this abomination of a regime and ideology. To hell with you all. Every last Zionist,” Abdel-Fattah posted on X last week. “May you never know a second’s peace in your sadistic miserable lives.”

Australian Jewish community leaders told the Telegraph that Abdel-Fattah, who receives an $802,000 taxpayer-funded grant for her research, that she should be fired over her online postings.

“There needs to be an end to future public grants to Ms. Abdel-Fattah and an immediate review [by Macquarie University] of her fitness to be an educator,” Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin told the paper. “She has created an unacceptable risk for the welfare and health of Jews and Israelis at the university. It is intolerable that our taxes are propping this up.”

Australian Jewish Association CEO Robert Gregory expressed similar sentiments.

“Antisemitism is surging on Australian university campuses; it’s imperative that Macquarie University disassociate itself from Randa Abdel-Fattah and the hatred she spreads,” he said to the Telegraph. “This is just the latest incident involving Randa Abdel Fattah. Macquarie University should terminate her employment.”

This is not the first time that Abdel-Fattah came under fire for her anti-Israel activity.

As The Algemeiner has previously reported, in October, the New South Wales Police Force posted on social media saying it would not tolerate flags of the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah or portraits of its leaders at anti-Israel protests. The message was displayed in blue and white, coincidentally the colors of the Israeli flag — a point noted by Abdel-Fattah.

“Brought to you in the colors of Israel’s flag,” the writer responded, appearing to insinuate without evidence that the Australian police force was acting on behalf of the Jewish state.

That same month, Abdel-Fattah penned an op-ed in which she accused Israel of “industrialized genocide, domicide, scholasticide, infanticide, femicide, medicide, and ecocide” in Gaza and described the Israeli state as “stolen land.” The writer also falsely accused Israel of seeking to expand its territory into Lebanon and Syria and posted messages from group chats that she was part of expressing excitement during Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.

The academic in April led a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” for “all ages” at Sydney University to “inspire” children to “stand up for justice and solidarity.”

Footage showed Abdel-Fattah clapping and encouraging children as they chanted slogans including “intifada,” “Israel is a terrorist,” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — a popular slogan among anti-Israel activists that has been widely interpreted as a call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Abdel-Fattah’s activism has come amid a surge in antisemitism across Australia since Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, amid the ensuing war in Gaza.

Earlier this month, for example, the home of Lesli Berger, former president of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, was vandalized with a swastika and the misspelt German words “Jewish Gate.”

Around the same time, arsonists heavily damaged a synagogue in Melbourne in what the country’s prime minister called an antisemitic attack.

The attack followed the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) releasing a report showing that antisemitism in Australia quadrupled to record levels over the past year, with Australian Jews experiencing more than 2,000 antisemitic incidents between October 2023 and September 2024.

The data included dozens of assaults and hundreds of incidents of property destruction and hate speech. Physical assaults recorded by the group jumped from 11 in 2023 to 65 in 2024. The level of antisemitism for the past year was six times the average of the preceding 10 years.

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Former US President Jimmy Carter attends an interview with Reuters in Cairo, Egypt, January 12, 2012. Photo: REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh

Jimmy Carter, the Georgia peanut farmer who as US president struggled with a bad economy and the Iran hostage crisis but brokered peace between Israel and Egypt and later received the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work, died at his home in Plains, Georgia, on Sunday. He was 100.

US President Joe Biden directed that Jan. 9 will be a national day of mourning throughout the United States for Carter, the White House said in a statement.

“I call on the American people to assemble on that day in their respective places of worship, there to pay homage to the memory of President James Earl Carter,” Biden said.

Carter, a Democrat, became president in January 1977 after defeating incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford in the 1976 election. His one-term presidency was marked by the highs of the 1978 Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt, bringing some stability to the Middle East.

But it was also dogged by an economic recession, persistent unpopularity, and the Iran hostage crisis that consumed his final 444 days in office. Carter ran for re-election in 1980 but was swept from office in a landslide as voters embraced Republican challenger Ronald Reagan, the former actor and California governor.

Carter lived longer than any US president and, after leaving the White House, earned a reputation as a committed humanitarian. He was widely seen as a better former president than he was a president — a status he readily acknowledged.

World leaders and former US presidents paid tribute to a man they praised as compassionate, humble, and committed to peace in the Middle East.

“His significant role in achieving the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel will remain etched in the annals of history,” said Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in a post on X.

The Carter Center said there will be public observances in Atlanta and Washington. These events will be followed by a private interment in Plains, it said.

Final arrangements for the former president’s state funeral are still pending, according to the center.

In recent years, Carter had experienced several health issues including melanoma that spread to his liver and brain. Carter decided to receive hospice care in February 2023 instead of undergoing additional medical intervention. His wife, Rosalynn Carter, died on Nov. 19, 2023, at age 96. He looked frail when he attended her memorial service and funeral in a wheelchair.

Carter left office profoundly unpopular but worked energetically for decades on humanitarian causes. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 in recognition of his “untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”

On Monday, the body awarding the Nobel Peace Prize repeated its praise for Carter’s work.

“Earlier this fall, the Committee had the pleasure of congratulating him on his 100th anniversary, stating that his work in favor of peace, democracy, and human rights will be remembered for another 100 years or more,” it said.

Carter had been a centrist as governor of Georgia with populist tendencies when he moved into the White House as the 39th US president. He was a Washington outsider at a time when America was still reeling from the Watergate scandal that led Republican Richard Nixon to resign as president in 1974 and elevated Ford from vice president.

“I’m Jimmy Carter and I’m running for president. I will never lie to you,” Carter promised with an ear-to-ear smile.

Asked to assess his presidency, Carter said in a 1991 documentary: “The biggest failure we had was a political failure. I never was able to convince the American people that I was a forceful and strong leader.”

Despite his difficulties in office, Carter gained global acclaim after his presidency as a tireless human rights advocate, a voice for the disenfranchised, and a leader in the fight against hunger and poverty, winning the respect that eluded him in the White House.

Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his efforts to promote human rights and resolve conflicts around the world, from Ethiopia and Eritrea to Bosnia and Haiti. His Carter Center in Atlanta sent international election-monitoring delegations to polls around the world.

A Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher since his teens, Carter brought a strong sense of morality to the presidency, speaking openly about his religious faith. He also sought to take some pomp out of an increasingly imperial presidency — walking, rather than riding in a limousine, in his 1977 inauguration parade.

The Middle East was the focus of Carter’s foreign policy. The 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, based on the 1978 Camp David accords, ended a state of war between the two neighbors.

Carter brought Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland for talks. Later, as the accords seemed to be unraveling, Carter saved the day by flying to Cairo and Jerusalem for personal shuttle diplomacy.

The treaty provided for Israeli withdrawal from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and establishment of diplomatic relations. Begin and Sadat each won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1978.

By the 1980 election, the overriding issues were double-digit inflation, interest rates that exceeded 20 percent, and soaring gas prices, as well as the Iran hostage crisis that brought humiliation to America. These issues marred Carter’s presidency and undermined his chances of winning a second term.

HOSTAGE CRISIS

On Nov. 4, 1979, revolutionaries devoted to Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had stormed the US Embassy in Tehran, seized the Americans present, and demanded the return of the ousted shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was backed by the United States and was being treated in a US hospital.

The American public initially rallied behind Carter. But his support faded in April 1980 when a commando raid failed to rescue the hostages, with eight US soldiers killed in an aircraft accident in the Iranian desert.

Carter’s final ignominy was that Iran held the 52 hostages until minutes after Reagan took his oath of office on Jan. 20, 1981, to replace Carter, then released the planes carrying them to freedom.

In another crisis, Carter protested the former Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by boycotting the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. He also asked the US Senate to defer consideration of a major nuclear arms accord with Moscow.

Unswayed, the Soviets remained in Afghanistan for a decade.

Carter won narrow Senate approval in 1978 of a treaty to transfer the Panama Canal to the control of Panama despite critics who argued the waterway was vital to American security. He also completed negotiations on full US ties with China.

Carter created two new US Cabinet departments — education and energy. Amid high gas prices, he said America’s “energy crisis” was “the moral equivalent of war” and urged the country to embrace conservation. “Ours is the most wasteful nation on earth,” he told Americans in 1977.

In 1979, Carter delivered what became known as his “malaise” speech to the nation, although he never used that word.

“After listening to the American people I have been reminded again that all the legislation in the world can’t fix what’s wrong with America,” he said in his televised address.

“The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.”

As president, the strait-laced Carter was embarrassed by the behavior of his hard-drinking younger brother, Billy Carter, who had boasted: “I got a red neck, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer.”

‘THERE YOU GO AGAIN’

Jimmy Carter withstood a challenge from Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination but was politically diminished heading into his general election battle against a vigorous Republican adversary.

Reagan, the conservative who projected an image of strength, kept Carter off balance during their debates before the November 1980 election.

Reagan dismissively told Carter, “There you go again,” when the Republican challenger felt the president had misrepresented Reagan’s views during one debate.

Carter lost the 1980 election to Reagan, who won 44 of the 50 states and amassed an Electoral College landslide.

James Earl Carter Jr. was born on Oct. 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia, one of four children of a farmer and shopkeeper. He graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1946, served in the nuclear submarine program and left to manage the family peanut farming business.

He married his wife, Rosalynn, in 1946, a union he called “the most important thing in my life.” They had three sons and a daughter.

Carter became a millionaire, a Georgia state legislator, and Georgia’s governor from 1971 to 1975. He mounted an underdog bid for the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination, and out-hustled his rivals for the right to face Ford in the general election.

With Walter Mondale as his vice presidential running mate, Carter was given a boost by a major Ford gaffe during one of their debates. Ford said that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration,” despite decades of just such domination.

Carter edged Ford in the election, even though Ford actually won more states — 27 to Carter’s 23.

Not all of Carter’s post-presidential work was appreciated. Former President George W. Bush and his father, former President George H.W. Bush, both Republicans, were said to have been displeased by Carter’s freelance diplomacy in Iraq and elsewhere.

In 2004, Carter called the Iraq war launched in 2003 by the younger Bush one of the most “gross and damaging mistakes our nation ever made.” He called George W. Bush’s administration “the worst in history” and said Vice President Dick Cheney was “a disaster for our country.”

In 2019, Carter questioned Republican Donald Trump’s legitimacy as president, saying “he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.” Trump responded by calling Carter “a terrible president.”

Carter also made trips to communist North Korea. A 1994 visit defused a nuclear crisis, as President Kim Il Sung agreed to freeze his nuclear program in exchange for resumed dialogue with the United States. That led to a deal in which North Korea, in return for aid, promised not to restart its nuclear reactor or reprocess the plant’s spent fuel.

But Carter irked Democratic President Bill Clinton’s administration by announcing the deal with North Korea’s leader without first checking with Washington.

In 2010, Carter won the release of an American sentenced to eight years hard labor for illegally entering North Korea.

Carter wrote more than two dozen books, ranging from a presidential memoir to a children’s book and poetry, as well as works about religious faith and diplomacy. His book Faith: A Journey for All was published in 2018.

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Hamas terrorists kidnapping Israeli women at the Nahal Oz base near the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: Screenshot

Israeli hostages held by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip were subjected to unspeakable abuse, including sexual torture in which teenagers were forced to perform sex acts on one another, starvation, beatings, burnings, and severe medical neglect, according to a new report that will be submitted by Israel to the United Nations this week.

Children were branded with heated objects and beaten, while women and girls endured sexual assault and psychological humiliation, the report said. Male hostages described being left in isolation, denied food and water, and forced to defecate on themselves, as well as beatings and burnings with irons.

Based on extensive interviews and medical evaluations conducted by Israeli health and welfare teams for more than 100 hostages, the report will be submitted later this week to Alice Edwards, the UN’s special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

The hostages, who were mostly released at the end of November 2023 as part of a week-long ceasefire deal with Hamas, were among the 251 individuals snatched by the terrorist group in southern Israel during its invasion and brutal assault on Oct. 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were murdered. Some of the hostages were freed in rescue operations by Israeli forces. Approximately 100 hostages remain in captivity.

Children and other hostages were forced to watch footage from the Oct. 7 attack.

They also “witnessed the killing of other captives, further deepening their sense of helplessness and hopelessness,” the report said.

“In captivity, the hostages were often subjected to solitary confinement, poor sanitation, severe medical neglect, lack of sleep, starvation, sexual abuse, violence, threats, and brainwashing through media designed to break their spirit and make them submissive,” it continued.

One child, according to the report, was tied to a chair for extended periods and beaten if they cried. Another survivor recounted how captors extinguished cigarettes on their arms and legs as a form of punishment.

The report highlighted the experiences of women hostages, who faced some of the most egregious abuses. One survivor described being tied to a bed and left for hours, while guards watched her distress for their own amusement. Some were forced to perform humiliating acts under the threat of violence. Others were sexually assaulted by their captors.

Among the elderly hostages, medical neglect was particularly severe. Diabetics were denied insulin, while others with chronic conditions like hypertension or heart disease were left without necessary medications. Some were given food that exacerbated their illnesses or were denied adequate hydration, leaving them weak and unable to stand.

According to the report, in the days leading up to last year’s ceasefire agreement, the captors made noticeable efforts to improve the hostages’ living conditions. They increased food rations and distributed clean clothing, actions that appeared intended to mask the harsh realities of their captivity and give the impression of humane treatment.

In addition to detailing the abuse, the report also criticized the international community for what it described as insufficient action to secure the hostages’ release. To date, the International Red Cross has not accessed the hostages.

The report is “a harrowing testimony to the brutal experiences suffered by the hostages in Hamas captivity,” Israeli health minister Uriel Busso said in a statement released alongside the report. “The horrors the hostages endured reveals to the world the brutality of the enemy with whom Israel is engaged.”

Israeli President Isaac Herzog said the UN was “morally obliged” to bring the remaining hostages home.

“These are the testimonies of those who have been released and rescued. But still, for 450 days 100 innocent men, women, and children, babies and the elderly, have been held hostage in Gaza. With the winter upon us, their lives are in imminent danger,” he said.

Torture. Physical and psychological torture. Starvation. Sexual abuse. Beatings. Branding.

Just some of the horrific words that jump of the pages of the Ministry of Health’s submission to the UN on the horrific ordeal endured by the hostages at the hands of Hamas terrorist…

— יצחק הרצוג Isaac Herzog (@Isaac_Herzog) December 29, 2024

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum called on global leaders to act urgently to secure the release of all hostages in Gaza, warning that |every hostage faces mortal danger each day they remain in captivity.”

“To the world, its leaders, and humanitarian organizations: How can you watch this torture continue? How can you remain silent?” a statement released by the forum said.

Urging the United States and mediating parties to prioritize a comprehensive ceasefire deal for the release of all hostages, the forum stated, “The time to act is now. Lives hang in the balance.”

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