RSS
A Fake Genocide Meets a Real One
Students accusing Israel of genocide at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, Nov. 16, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
JNS.org – For more than a year, Jews inside and outside the State of Israel have been besieged by false claims of the “genocide” of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The rhetoric of the pro-Hamas mob—“We don’t want no Zionists here,” “Go back to Poland” and so on—has been ugly enough to make Nazi Germany proud. The real-world impact—arson and gun attacks on synagogues and other Jewish institutions from Canada to Australia, a pogrom in Amsterdam, physical and sexual assaults on those wearing identifiably Jewish symbols, creeping discrimination against “Zionists” in the worlds of art and medicine and academia, and too many other such episodes to comprehensively list here—is all too reminiscent of Nazi thuggery.
There is no longer any doubt that Jewish communities are facing the worst upsurge of antisemitism since World War II. At the root of the current onslaught is what my JNS colleague Melanie Phillips calls “Palestinianism,” which, she argues, “seeks to write the Jews out of their country, their history and the world.” That explains the fixation with affixing the label “genocide” to Israel’s military response to the atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023, which were themselves an act of genocide, intentionally targeting Jews because they are Jews living in their historic homeland. Yet in public relations terms, we have to concede that this has been a blood libel with legs, embraced not just by the keffiyeh-clad automatons but by governments from Ireland to South Africa, as well as by the United Nations, whose secretary-general, António Guterres, opined last September to his eternal shame that he had “never seen such a level of death and destruction as we are seeing in Gaza in the last few months.”
It’s important to recognize that the trauma Jews have experienced since Oct. 7 has also impacted non-Jews. I don’t mean our immediate neighbors in Europe and North America who, apart from a courageous and vocal minority, have followed in the ignoble tradition of their forebears by looking the other way. I am referring to those minorities and stateless nations around the world whose fate at the hands of repressive regimes and their proxy militias has been drowned out by the noise of the pro-Hamas mob and its enablers. Silence and indifference have greeted the Turkish regime’s bloodthirsty pledge to “eliminate” the Kurdish-led, U.S.-backed resistance forces in Syria in the wake of the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s vile dictatorship. The same U.N. Human Rights Council that lambastes Israel last month co-hosted a “human rights” conference with the same Chinese Communist Party that is waging a genocide in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.
It’s the ongoing slaughter in Sudan, however, that really exposes the moral rot at the heart of “Palestinianism.” For the first time since the term “genocide” was given legal standing with the 1948 adoption of the U.N. Genocide Convention, the world’s attention has been gripped by a fake genocide while a real one has been raging at the same time. Hamas propaganda preying on the minds of the stupid and the gullible in our own societies is largely to thank for this sordid outcome, which leaves an indelible stain on Western civilization.
Since the outbreak of Sudan’s latest civil war in 2023, the Biden administration has placed the issue at the bottom of its foreign-policy pile. But one of the last acts of outgoing Secretary of State Antony Blinken was to issue a Jan. 7 statement concluding that “members of the RSF and allied militias have committed genocide in Sudan.” Too little, too late, certainly, but not wholly useless.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are an outgrowth of the feared Janjaweed paramilitaries that carried out a genocide in the western region of Darfur 20 years ago. The latest fighting followed the decision of RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as “Hemedti,” to split with the military government that took power in a 2021 coup in Khartoum. As Blinken correctly pointed out, both the military regime and the RSF “bear responsibility for the violence and suffering in Sudan and lack the legitimacy to govern a future peaceful Sudan.” But the RSF and its allies have, to quote Blinken again, “systematically murdered men and boys, even infants, on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence.”
The overall humanitarian cost is staggering. More than 11 million human beings have been internally displaced, and another 3.1 million have fled across Sudan’s borders—about 30% of the country’s population. Nearly 640,000 are suffering from one of the worst famines in Sudan’s history. More than 30 million people are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. The number of dead lies in the tens of thousands. The number of demonstrations, rallies and performative protests stands at zero.
Included in the raft of sanctions that accompanied Blinken’s announcement are seven companies based in the United Arab Emirates—a U.S. ally and partner in the broader Middle East peace process—that have helped the RSF purchase weapons and smuggle gold from Sudan’s lucrative mines through Dubai. The UAE operates an embassy and three consulates here in the United States, whose addresses are easily available with a quick online search. A demonstration outside one of these, under the slogan “UAE: Stop Funding Genocide in Sudan,” would be perfectly feasible and eminently laudable. But those organizations that might be in the position to organize one—like Black Lives Matter, a sentiment that clearly doesn’t apply to Black Lives in Africa when Arabs are doing the killing—are absent.
This brings me back to the point I made earlier about the impact of this present surge of antisemitism. I’ve never been a fan of the oft-made assertion that Jews are the canary in the coal mine and that what starts with them won’t end there, because it assumes a much greater degree of overlap between antisemitism and other forms of bigotry than is actually the case.
However, a more salient point is that the obsession with Jews and Israel diverts column inches and airtime away from those humanitarian crises that are far more dire than Gaza and far more intractable, given that the war in the Strip would be over as soon as Hamas releases the remaining hostages it kidnapped on Oct. 7 and lays down its weapons, as growing numbers of Palestinians—as distinct from their Western cheerleaders—are exhaustedly urging.
As long as the outside world continues to indulge the Palestinian strategy of being the only victims worth the name, we are abetting the genocides that don’t get talked about.
The post A Fake Genocide Meets a Real One first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Trump Says He Expects Gaza War to Reach ‘Conclusive Ending’ in 2-3 Weeks
US President Donald Trump speaks during a swearing-in ceremony of Special Envoy Steve Witkoff in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, US, May 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kent Nishimura
US President Donald Trump said on Monday he expects the ongoing war in Gaza to reach a “conclusive” end within the next two to three weeks, even as ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas remain unresolved.
Speaking alongside South Korean President Lee Jae Myung at the White House, Trump told reporters he believed a resolution was close. “I think within the next two to three weeks, you’re going to have a pretty good, conclusive ending,” he said.
Trump also urged Americans not to forget the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust that started the war in Gaza.
“It has to end, but people can’t forget Oct. 7,” Trump said.
Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages while perpetrating rampant sexual violence during their onslaught, which led Israel to wage a military campaign aimed at freeing those who were abducted and dismantling Hamas’s rule in neighboring Gaza.
The comments came as Israel continued to deliberate over a ceasefire proposal agreed to by Hamas last week. Though Israel has not given an official answer, Israeli Prime Minister Benjmain Netanyahu said he commenced negotiations to secure an end to the war and a return of the remaining hostages.
The proposal, brokered by the US, Egypt, and Qatar, calls for a 60-day truce during which Hamas would free 10 living hostages along with the deceased bodies of 18 others. In return, Israel would release significantly more Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza, and partially pull back its forces in Gaza.
RSS
Cornell University Takes Cleaver to Budget Amid Trump Crackdown
Illustrative: Cornell’s anti-Israel divestment protests on May 25, 2024. Photo: USA Today Network via Reuters Connect.
Cornell University is taking a cleaver to its budget amid what it described as a “contraction” in government funding caused by the Trump administration’s impounding $1 billion previously awarded to it via research grants and federal contracts as punishment for its alleged nonresponse to campus antisemitism.
“Urgent action is necessary, both to reduce costs immediately and to correct our course over time — achieving an institutional structure that enables us to balance our budgets over the long term,” Cornell president Michael Kotlikoff wrote in a letter to the campus community. “Our work toward this goal will progress in several phases, beginning with immediate budget reductions already underway for the current fiscal year across our Ithaca, Cornell AgriTech, Weill Cornell Medicine, and Cornell Tech campuses.”
He continued, “Hiring on all campuses remains restricted indefinitely, with rare exceptions from campus-based position control committees.”
Cornell announced the cuts even as it inches closer toward a reported $100 million settlement with the federal government to restore the confiscated funds. It has already resorted to borrowing, having placed over $1 billion in bonds on the market since April — according to Bloomberg — and refused to publicly discuss the decision.
Cornell University has seen a series of disturbing antisemitic incidents since the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre perpetrated by Hamas across southern Israel.
Three weeks after the atrocities which ravaged Israeli communities, now-former student Patrick Dai threatened to commit heinous crimes against members of the school’s Jewish community, including mass murder and rape. He was later sentenced to 21 months in federal prison.
Cornell students also occupied an administrative building and held a “mock trial” in which they convicted then-school president Martha Pollack of complicity in “apartheid” and “genocide against Palestinian civilians.” Meanwhile, history professor Russell Rickford called Hamas’s barbarity on Oct. 7 “exhilarating” and “energizing” at a pro-Palestinian rally held on campus.
Cornell University and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) sparred all of last academic year, with SJP pushing the limits of what constitutes appropriate conduct on campus. In September, school officials suspended over a dozen SJP affiliated students who disrupted a career fair, an action which saw them “physically” breach the area by “[pushing] police out of the way.” In February, the university amnestied some of the protesters, granting them “alternate resolutions” which terminated their suspensions, according to The Cornell Daily Sun.
In January, anti-Zionist agitators at Cornell kicked off the spring semester with an act of vandalism which attacked Israel as an “occupier” and practitioner of “apartheid.” The students drew a blistering response from Kotlikoff, who said that “acts of violence, extended occupations of buildings, or destruction of property (including graffiti), will not be tolerated and will be subject to immediate public safety response,” but the university has declined to say how it will deal with the matter since identifying at least one of the culprits in February.
Other elite colleges may soon face the same hard choices as Cornell.
Just last week, the US Department of Education began investigating Haverford College over alleged violations of civil rights laws stemming from inadequate responses to antisemitism.
“Like many other institutions of higher education, Haverford College is alleged to have ignored antisemitic harassment on its campus, contravening federal civil rights laws and its own anti-discrimination policies,” acting civil rights secretary Craig Trainor said in a statement. “The Trump administration will not allow Jewish life to be pushed into the shadows because college leaders are too craven to respond appropriately to unlawful antisemitic incidents on campus.”
Earlier this month, a coalition of leading Jewish civil rights groups called on the higher education establishment to prioritize fighting campus antisemitism during the upcoming academic year, citing an unrelenting wave of anti-Jewish hate that has swept the US in recent years.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Jewish Federations of North America, Hillel International, and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations issued a joint statement, putting forth a policy framework that they say will quell antisemitism if applied sincerely and consistently. It included “enhanced communication and policy enforcement,” “dedicated administration oversight,” and “faculty accountability” — an issue of rising importance given the number of faculty accused of inciting discrimination.
“These recommendations aren’t just suggestions; they’re essential steps universities need to take to ensure Jewish students can learn without fear,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “Jewish students are being forced to hide who they are, and that’s unacceptable — we need more administrators to step up.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, colleges campus across the US erupted with effusions of antisemitic activity following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, an uprising which included calling for the destruction of Israel, cheering Hamas’s sexual assaulting of women as an instrument of war, and dozens of incidents of assault and harassment targeting Jewish students, faculty, and activists.
At the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), anti-Zionist protesters chanted “Itbah El Yahud” at Bruin Plaza, which means “slaughter the Jews” in Arabic. At Columbia University, Jews were gang-assaulted, a student proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself, and administrative officials, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting. At Harvard University, an October 2023 anti-Israel demonstration degenerated into chaos when Ibrahim Bharmal, former editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review, and Elom Tettey-Tamaklo encircled a Jewish student with a mob that screamed “Shame! Shame! Shame!” at him while he desperately attempted to free himself from the mass of bodies.
More recently, Eden Deckerhoff — a female student at Florida State University — allegedly assaulted a Jewish male classmate at the Leach Student Recreation Center after noticing his wearing apparel issued by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
“F—k Israel, Free Palestine. Put it [the video] on Barstool FSU. I really don’t give a f—k,” the woman said before shoving the man, according to video taken by the victim. “You’re an ignorant son of a b—h.” Deckerhoff has since been charged with misdemeanor battery.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
RSS
Trump Admin Reviewing Visa Applications of ‘Terrorist Sympathizers’ Set to Appear at Pro-Palestinian Conference
Marco Rubio speaks after he is sworn in as Secretary of State by US Vice President JD Vance at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC, Jan. 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
The US State Department is actively reviewing the records of foreign speakers at the upcoming People’s Conference for Palestine in Detroit for potential ties to terrorism, The Algemeiner has learned.
A spokesperson for the State Department told The Algemeiner that officials have “noted” the conference, which is set to take place from Aug 29-31, and will also watch out for visa applications for invited international speakers, citing a preponderance of “terrorist sympathizers” on the program’s lineup.
“Given the public invite lists seems to include a number of terrorist sympathizers, we are going through and ensuring all international speakers slated to attend the conference are being placed on a ‘look out’ status for visa applications, so we are alerted if a request is submitted and can ensure they are appropriately processed,” the spokesperson said.
“In every case, we will take the time necessary to ensure an applicant does not pose a risk to the safety and security of the United States and that he or she has credibly established his or her eligibility for the visa sought, including that the applicant intends to engage in activities consistent with the terms of admission,” the spokesperson added.
The People’s Conference for Palestine will feature dozens of anti-Zionist activists, academics, artists, and political organizers, including US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).
Tlaib’s appearance at last year’s iteration of the conference sparked intense backlash, with critics pointing out the event’s connections to Wisam Rafeedie and Salah Salah, members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terrorist organization.
The conference is convened by a coalition that includes the Palestinian Youth Movement, Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, and the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, among others. Several of these groups have maintained ties with PFLP, openly supported boycott efforts against Israel, and called for an arms embargo in the wake of Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza. The programming highlights sessions on “Documenting Genocide” and “Breaking the Siege,” rhetoric that critics argue mischaracterizes Israel’s actions as it seeks to defend itself against terrorist attacks following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
The Detroit gathering is expected to attract thousands of attendees, with dozens of speakers and activists scheduled to participate. Among the roster are well-known anti-Israel figures such as Linda Sarsour, Miko Peled, and Chris Smalls.
The planned presence of several alleged “foreign terror sympathizers” has sparked outrage among observers.
Abed Abubaker, a self-described “reporter” from Gaza, is expected to make a physical appearance at the Detroit conference later this month. Abubaker has repeatedly praised the Hamas terrorist group as “resistance fighters” on social media and won a “journalist of the year” award from Iran’s state-controlled media outlet PressTV. In a January 2025 social media post, he showered praise on long-time Hamas leader and Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar, saying that the terrorist’s “love of resistance and land is seen very clearly.” In a March 2025 post, Abubaker argued that international supporters of the Palestinian cause should “attack your governments.” He also defended Hamas’s murdering of dissidents, saying that the victims were “collaborating” with Israel.
Since returning to the White House earlier this year, the Trump administration has launched a major overhaul of the US visa system, part of what officials have described as an effort to root out individuals sympathetic to terrorism or those espousing antisemitic views. The sweeping measures include expanded social media vetting for new applicants, continuous monitoring of the 55 million current visa holders, and the revocation of thousands of student visas.
The Trump administration’s sweeping visa crackdown has ensnared high-profile foreign academics and students, fueling outrage among pro-Palestinian activists. Rasha Alawieh, a Lebanese professor at Brown University, was deported after officials flagged content on her phone as sympathetic to Hezbollah, a US-designated terrorist group. Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and green-card holder, was arrested and assigned criminal charges for alleged ties to Hamas before he was released. At Tufts University, Turkish student Rümeysa Öztürk was detained after co-authoring an opinion piece on Gaza.