A gunman who shot two Jewish men as they exited a synagogue in Los Angeles was sentenced to 35 years in prison on Monday, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced.

In February 2023, Jaime Tran, 30 — an affiliate of the “Goyim Defense League” hate group — went on an antisemitic shooting spree, attempting to murder two Jewish men in the Pico-Robertson section of Los Angeles. Prior to the crimes, Tran called Jews “primitive” and told a former classmate, “Someone is going to kill you, Jew” and “I want you dead, Jew.” According to the Justice Department, he even described himself as a “ticking time bomb,” broadcasting his  murderous ideations to all who knew him.

Opting against fighting the federal government’s case against him, Tran pled guilty in June to four charges the DOJ described as “hate crimes with intent to kill” and “using, carrying, and discharging a firearm” in the commission of an act of violence. His sentencing on Monday ensures that he will not again be free until the year 2059.

“After two years of spewing antisemitic vitriol, the defendant planned and carried out a two-day attack attempting to murder Jews leaving synagogue in Los Angeles,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Monday. “Vile acts of antisemitic hatred endanger the safety of individuals and entire communities, and allowing such crimes to go unchecked endangers the foundation of our democracy itself.”

He continued, “As millions of Jewish Americans to prepare to observe the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Justice Department reaffirms its commitment to aggressively confronting, disrupting, and prosecuting criminal acts motivated by antisemitism, or by hatred of any kind. No Jewish person in America should have to fear that any sign of their identity will make them the victim of a hate crime.”

Los Angeles Police Chief Dominic Choi added, “While this sentencing cannot fully restore the sense of safety stolen from the two victims and the Jewish community, it is a decisive step towards justice and a clear message that such acts of hate and violence will not be tolerated.”

The Tran case is not the first involving an antisemitic hate crime that the Justice Department has resolved this year.

In August, it announced that former Cornell University student Patrick Dai, who threatened to perpetrate heinous crimes against members of the school’s Jewish community after Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison.

Last October, Dai raised the possibility of antisemitic violence at Cornell when he posted several statements calling for murdering Jews and raping Jewish women on a popular social media forum. In addition to threatening the lives of Cornell’s 3,500 Jewish students, who are 22 percent of the school’s student population, the posts threatened an attack on a campus kosher dining hall — named 104West  — affiliated with the Steven K. And Winifred A. Grinspoon Hillel Center.

“Gonna shoot up 104 west… Allahu akbar! from the river to the sea, palestine will be free! glory to hamas! liberation by any means necessary!” one of his posts said. Another read, “If I see a pig male jew i will stab you and slit your throat. if i see another pig female jew i will drag you away and rape you and throw you off a cliff. if i see another pig baby jew i will behead you in front of your parents [sic].”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Shooter Sentenced to 35 Years in Prison for Attempted Murder of Jewish Men Leaving LA Synagogue first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Former US President Donald Trump issued a statement on Tuesday addressing Iran’s decision to launch a barrage of ballistic missiles targeting Israel, accusing the Biden administration of exhibiting a lack of leadership. 

Trump, the Republican nominee for US president, lamented that Iran’s attack on Israel indicated that “the [w]orld is on fire and spiraling out of control.” He argued that neither US President Joe Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent in the 2024 presidential race, were sufficiently defending Israel from Iran or its proxy groups. 

“We have a non-existent President in Joe Biden, and a completely absent Vice President, Kamala Harris, who is too busy fundraising in San Francisco,” Trump wrote on social media.

“When I was president, Iran was in total check. They were starved for cash, fully contained, and desperate to make a deal,” Trump continued. “Kamala flooded them with American cash and, ever since, they’ve been exporting terror all over, and unraveling the Middle East.”

Harsh US sanctions levied on Iran under the Trump administration crippled the Iranian economy and led its foreign exchange reserves to plummet. Trump and his Republican supporters in the US Congress have criticized the Biden administration for renewing billions of dollars in US sanctions waivers, which had the effect of unlocking frozen funds and allowing the country to access previously inaccessible hard currency.

US intelligence agencies have for years labeled Iran as the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism, noting it devotes significant sums of money and weapons each year to supporting proxies across the Middle East such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

Trump warned that under the stewardship of Biden and Harris, “war,or the threat of war, is raging everywhere” and that America stands on “the brink of World War III.”

“You wouldn’t trust Joe or Kamala to run a lemonade stand, let alone lead the Free World,” Trump wrote. “It is no surprise that Iran desperately wants Kamala Harris to be president, because they know as long as she is in power, they can take advantage of America. That is why they have tried to target me.”

Last week, Trump was briefed by US intelligence officials “regarding real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him in an effort to destabilize and sow chaos in the United States,” his campaign said in a statement.

Trump has touted his former administration’s support for Israel as a centerpiece of his 2024 campaign. During his single term in office, Trump recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria. He also moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as the Jewish state’s capital, and the Trump administration helped to broker the Abraham Accords, which normalized Israel’s relations with four Arab countries in 2020.

Trump has made numerous overtures to the Jewish community in recent months, attempting to win over a significant share of the traditionally-liberal voting bloc. He has delivered speeches at various events catered toward the Jewish community, including the Republican Jewish Coalition. The former president also co-hosted an event focusing on antisemitism at his Trump National Golf Club Bedminster alongside prominent Jewish donor Miriam Adelson.

On Tuesday, Iran launched over 180 missiles at Israel in a direct attack as retaliation for Israeli strikes on Iran’s terrorist proxies across the Middle East. Most of the missiles were shot down, and according to reports there was only one casualty from the barrage.

The post Trump Issues Statement on Iranian Attack Against Israel, Blames Biden and Harris for ‘Non-Existent’ Leadership first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Columbia University is being sued for discrimination by a student who it suspended for filming himself proclaim that Zionists should be murdered and are fortunate that he has not begun killing them himself.

The student, Khymani James, has alleged that the suspension — prompted by the incident and other misconduct charges Columbia filed against him for participating in an illegal pro-Hamas encampment — was racist and aimed at “privileging a subset of Jewish people.”

At the time, James’ denigration of Jews received national media coverage and reinforced a perception that anti-Zionist protesters at Columbia University have been motivated by antisemitism. His lawyers said that negative publicity and racial animus, rather than any clear violation of school rules, caused administrators to levy the suspension, noting that it came nearly five months after the precipitating incident.

“First, James as a person of color is squarely within a protected class of black and brown-skinned students who have been the major targets of Columbia’s disciplinary actions arising from pro-Palestinian expression,” said a copy of the suit obtained by The Algemeiner. “Secondly, James has been a victim of Columbia’s anti-Palestinian bias, severely punished, though not himself a Palestinian, as a supporter of the rights of Palestinian people. Third, James has been a victim of reverse discrimination, as Columbia privileges a class of self-described ‘Zionist Jewish’ people over everyone on campus who does not share their views.”

The suit charged twice that Columbia University favored Jews over “nonJews” [sic], continuing James’ pattern of promoting antisemitic tropes, and portrayed him as a victim.

It continued, “The environment at Columbia, which has been rendered hostile for James, is sufficiently severe, pervasive, persistent, and offensive such that it deprives James of equal access to the opportunities and benefits that Columbia provides to other students.”

Earlier this week, James tied the announcement of the lawsuit to a series of bizarre tweets in which he discussed being criticized for “nine month old tea” and accused Columbia of “cowering to billionaire donors and fascists politicians.” In another post, he was photographed riding a water ski and making an obscene hand gesture.

Columbia University, which has declined to publicly comment on James’ suit, has been sued several times within the last year, the consequence of actions it did and did not take during an explosion of antisemitic protests on the campus that followed Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.

In June, it settled a lawsuit in which it was accused by a student of neglecting its obligation to foster a safe learning environment amid riotous pro-Hamas protests that were held at the school throughout the final weeks of the academic year.

The resolution of the case, first reported by Reuters, required that Columbia hire a “Safe Passage Liaison” to monitor protests and “walking escorts” who will accompany Jewish students whose safety is threatened around the campus. Other details of the settlement included “accommodations” for students whose academic lives are disrupted by protests and new security policies for controlling access to school property.

Filed in April, when anti-Zionist students first erected and began living in a pro-Hamas encampment on the campus’ South Lawn, the complaint painted a damning portrait of Columbia’s handling of a situation that quickly set off a conflagration in which Jewish students were physically and verbally assaulted, outsiders infiltrated the campus, and protesters cheered terrorism while destroying school property.

Another suit, filed in the US District Court of Southern New York in February by the StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice (SCLJ), alleged that administrators stood b y while Jewish students endured various forms of abuse after Oct. 7.

“F—k the Jews,” “Death to Jews,” “Jews will not defeat us,” and “From water to water, Palestine will be Arab” were among the chants shouted by students on campus grounds after the tragedy, violating the school’s code of conduct and never facing consequences, the complaint said. Faculty engaged in similar behavior. On Oct. 8, professor Joseph Massad published in Electronic Intifada an essay cheering Hamas’ atrocities, which included slaughtering children and raping women, as “awesome” and describing men who paraglided into a music festival to kill young people as “the air force of the Palestinian resistance.”

The complaint went on to allege that after bullying Jewish students and rubbing their noses in the carnage Hamas wrought on their people, pro-Hamas students were still unsatisfied and resulted to violence. They beat up five Jewish students in Columbia’s Butler Library. Another attacked a Jewish students with a stick, lacerating his head and breaking his finger, after being asked to return missing persons posters she had stolen.

The New York branch of the American Civil Liberties Union is also suing Columbia University because it suspended an anti-Zionist student group, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), whose members allegedly perpetrated numerous antisemitic incidents reported by Jewish students. Filed in March, it described the members of SJP, an organization linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, as peaceful advocates of social justice.

“These student groups were peacefully speaking out on a critical global conflict, only to have Columbia University ignore their own longstanding, existing rules and abruptly suspend the organizations,” Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement announcing the action. “That’s retaliatory, it’s targeted, and it flies in the face of the free speech principles that institutes of higher learning should be defending.”

The succession of scandals, litigation, and congressional investigations led to the resignation of president Minouche Shafik, who directly cited the post-Oct. 7 campus environment as her reason for leaving office.

“This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community,” Shafik said in a statement issued just days away from the beginning of fall term. “Over the summer, I have been able to reflect and have decided that my moving on at this point would best enable Columbia to traverse the challenges ahead. I am making this announcement now so that new leadership can be in place before the new terms begins.”

On Tuesday, a Jewish civil rights advocacy group, Documenting Jewish Hatred (DJH), told The Algemeiner that this latest suit “has no merit.”

“Khymani James was disciplined for repeatedly violating multiple Columbia University Rules of Conduct,” it said.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post ‘Subset of Jewish People’: Columbia University Student Who Called for Death of Zionists Files Lawsuit Against School first appeared on Algemeiner.com.