Illustrative: Pro-Hamas students rally at the encampment for Gaza set up at George Washington University students. Washington, DC, April 25, 2024. Photo: Allison Bailey via Reuters Connect

Jewish civil rights advocates, faith leaders, and academics appeared as witnesses for a US Senate committee hearing on Thursday to discuss the ongoing campus antisemitism crisis and the Trump administration’s recent crackdown on anti-Zionist activity, a subject that has sparked a hotly contested debate on civil liberties and the limits of academic freedom.

Held by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, the hearing came on the heels of a policy offensive in which the Trump administration has canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants to Ivy League schools accused of ignoring antisemitic discrimination, created a federal inter-agency task force on antisemitism, and ordered the deportation of anti-Zionist students and faculty who are accused of providing material support to Hamas and participating in other seditious activities.

“Educational institutions are not public streets or sidewalks, and students need not be permitted to engage in expressive activity wherever, whenever, and however they wish — for example, including by wearing masks to conceal their identities — especially when such allowances ultimately contribute to the creation of hostile educational environments,” Carly Gammill, legal policy director at StandWithUs, told the committee, making the case for regulating utterances of campus speech and assembly which undermine Jewish students’ civil rights to a college education free from discrimination.

Other speakers included Rabbi Levi Shemtov of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad), Rabbi David Saperstein of Religious Action Center of Reform, and Kenneth S. Stern, director of Bard College’s Center for the Study of Hate.

“Antisemitism is not just an age-old prejudice, it is a contemporary crisis manifesting on campuses across the nation,” Shemtov said. “As my father once taught me, it is not enough for people, especially for public figures, to not be antisemitic, we must be anti-antisemitic. We must demand the same of our universities and governmental institutions.”

Representing a civil libertarian viewpoint, Stern argued against codifying the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism into law and imposing punitive measures on college students and faculty accused of promoting antisemitism.

“Students, including Jewish students, have a right not to be victims of true threats, harassment, intimidation, bullying, discrimination, let alone assault. However, they should expect to hear ideas that cut them to their core,” Stern told the committee. “If we bludgeon the campus into submission, we risk destroying an institution that has made America the envy of the world.”

He continued, “I am more worried now that the campus tensions over [the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] threaten higher education, as each side tries to silence the other. Pro-Palestinian activists sometimes use a heckler’s veto to promote academic boycotts and sometimes exclude Zionists from social spaces, which is almost always McCarthy-like and sometimes clearly antisemitic. But I’m more worried about the use of the law to silence pro-Palestinian speech.”

Stern also criticized US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) high-profile arrest and detainment of Mahmoud Khalil — a Columbia University alumnus who was an architect of the Hamilton Hall building takeover and other disturbances in the New York City area this semester — as “McCarthyism,” prompting a rebuke from HELP committee member Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO).

“As you very well know, United States law says that a noncitizen is inadmissible for entry into this country if they, and I quote, ‘endorse or espouse terrorist activity or persuade others to do the same.’ That same law provides you can be removed for the same reasons,” Hawley responded. “That is what Mr. Khalil has been accused of. He has further been accused of, by the United States government, lying on his visa application. That on its own would be sufficient to remove him from this country.”

Hawley added that Khalil is named as a defendant in a new lawsuit which accuses him of “terrorizing and assaulting Jewish students, unlawfully taking over and damaging public university property, and assaulting Columbia University employees.” He then asked Stern, “You’re telling me that it’s McCarthyism to remove this individual?”

Republican lawmakers have called for holding higher education accountable since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel set off an explosion of antisemitic sentiment on college campuses, causing a succession of conflagrations which still are still burning hot at schools such as Columbia University.

In December, the Republican-led US House Committee on Education and the Workforce issued a report which said that nothing short of a revolution of the current habits and ideas which constitute the current higher education regime can prevent similar episodes of unrest from occurring in the future. Colleges, it continued, need equal enforcement of civil rights laws to protect Jewish students from discrimination and “viewpoint diversity” to prevent the establishment of ideological echo chambers.

The report also said that “academic rigor,” undermined by years of dissolving educational standards for political purposes, would guard against the reduction of complex social issues into the sloganeering of “scholar activism,” in which faculty turn the classroom into a soapbox and reward students who mimic them.

Earlier this month, US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) proposed two new bills which would impose legal sanctions on purveyors of pro-terror ideologies on university campuses and the higher education institutions that harbor them.

The “No Student Loans for Campus Criminals Act” would prevent any campus protestor convicted of a crime from receiving federal student loans or student loan relief, and the “Woke Endowment Security Tax Act (WEST)” would levy a 6 percent excise tax on the endowments of 11 American universities, using the proceeds to pay down the national debt and secure the southern border shared with Mexico. According to Cotton’s office, the bill would generate $16.6 billion in revenue.

“The American people should not be on the hook for the tuition of Little Gaza inhabitants,” Cotton wrote on social media. “Second, our elite universities need to know the cost of pushing anti-American and pro-terrorist agendas.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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Commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force, Esmail Qaani speaks in Tehran, Dec. 20, 2022. Photo: Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect

The head of Iran’s elite military force responsible for overseeing Iranian proxies and terrorist operations abroad praised the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel in new remarks, reaffirming Tehran’s “unwavering support for the resistance front” in a speech marking “Quds Day.”

Iranian Brigadier General Esmail Qaani, who leads the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an internationally designated terrorist organization, on Wednesday commended the Oct. 7 onslaught as “a combination of battlefield and popular resistance,” Iranian state media reported.

During his speech, the Quds Force commander said Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel, in which Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages while perpetrating mass atrocities including rape, “introduced a new phenomenon of unity among resistance fronts,” demonstrating the “strength and solidarity of resistance forces.”

Qaani also reiterated Iran’s “unwavering support for the resistance front,” stressing that it will “continue until the ultimate goal of liberating Al-Quds [the Arabic name for Jerusalem] is achieved.”

On Wednesday, leaders from the so-called “Axis of Resistance” — an Iran-led network of anti-Israel, anti-West militias across the Middle East — delivered pre-recorded speeches in preparation for Quds Day on Friday, broadcast alongside images of three figures killed in the past year: former Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, former Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh and former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

Sponsored by the Iranian regime, the annual Quds Day commemorations event is held in Tehran and several other cities, where Iran and its allies organize marches in support of the Palestinians and call for Israel’s annihilation.

In his remarks, Qaani emphasized that Iran remains committed to supporting the “Palestinian cause” through both direct backing for “resistance forces” and military operations such as “The True Promise” — the regime’s name for its ballistic-missile attack against Israel in October last year.

Iran is the chief international backer of Hamas, providing the Palestinian terrorist group with weapons, funding, and training. According to media reports based on documents seized by the Israeli military in Gaza last year, Iran had been informed about Hamas’s plan to launch the Oct. 7 attack months in advance.

Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya also delivered a speech praising “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” the terrorist group’s name for the Oct. 7 massacre, as an “unprecedented phase in the history of Palestine,” saying it “reshaped the fight for Palestinian liberation.”

During his speech, the terrorist group leader asserted that the attack demonstrated their ability to take the initiative and launch attacks, “exposing the Zionist entity’s security and military failures.”

“Despite months of relentless killing, terrorism, and destruction, backed by Washington’s full support, the occupation has failed to break the will of the Palestinian people,” al-Hayya said. “The ongoing struggle has forged a new regional power dynamic, uniting fighters from Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran in a common front against the occupation.”

In another pre-recorded speech, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem accused the United States of attempting to “dismantle the Palestinian cause” through Israel.

The leader of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group in Lebanon, said Israel has “occupied Palestine for over 75 years” but failed to erase the “Palestinian identity.”

“Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was carried out to change the equation,” Qassem said. “The light of the Palestinian cause shines as a beacon of truth in the world, not to be extinguished.”

“The Zionist regime is grappling with an existential crisis and cannot secure its presence through occupation,” he continued.

Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi also delivered a speech saying that Israel’s “continued aggression, supported by the United States, is aimed at dismantling the Palestinian cause.”

“The Israeli enemy’s actions, mass killings, destruction of infrastructure, starvation, and thirst clearly reveal their attempt to forcibly displace the Palestinian people,” al-Houthi said.

He called on Arab nations to take a “bold, historic stand” to prevent the “displacement of the Palestinians and resist normalization with Israel.”

“If the Israeli enemy succeeds in displacing the Palestinian people, the next target will be Palestine’s neighboring countries and the wider Arab world,” the Iran-backed terrorist group leader said.

“Despite the US attacks, Yemen will not back down and will continue its operations in support of the Palestinian people.”

The post Iran’s Quds Force Chief Praises Hamas’s Oct. 7 Attack, Vows Continued Support for ‘Resistance Front’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Kat Abughazaleh launches US congressional campaign. Photo: Screenshot

Kat Abughazaleh, a popular social media influencer with over 220,000 TikTok followers and an extensive track-record of anti-Israel rhetoric, has launched a campaign to be elected to the US Congress. 

Abughazaleh, the daughter of a Palestinian immigrant and Texas native, announced that she would be launching a campaign to become the representative for the 9th Congressional District in Illinois. Jan Schakowsky, a Jewish American and strident supporter of the US-Israel alliance, currently represents the district. 

In a video posted to X/Twitter on Monday, Abughazaleh blasted the Democratic Party for failing to provide “real leadership” and for continuing to “work from an outdated playbook.” She repudiated the Democrats for supposedly “shrinking away” from conflict with the Republican Party and “cowering to [US President Donald] Trump” and the “authoritarians” within his administration. The progressive social media personality vowed to fight for “human rights and financial freedom” for all Americans. 

Though Abughazaleh did not specifically mention the ongoing war in Gaza during her campaign launch video, a keffiyeh—a traditional Arab headdress that has been repurposed to signal support for the Palestinian cause and opposition to Israel — was spotted in the background. 

In a fundraising text message following the official launch of her campaign, Abughazaleh further repudiated the close relationship between the United States and Israel, writing that “Democratic leadership should do something to stand up for Palestinians.” She also condemned her primary opponent for voting to “send billions to Israel.”

On Instagram, Abughazaleh posted a painting depicting a woman wearing a keffiyeh wrapped around her head, captioned: “Collective liberation includes palestinian liberation. freedom for all means freedom for palestinians [sic].” She has also posted another photo of herself standing next to street art reading “Free Palestine” and wrote a caption saying “from the river to the sea” — 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.

In the 17 months following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of 1,200 people and kidnapping of 251 hostages throughout southern Israel, Abughazaleh has launched numerous tirades condemning the Jewish state. She has slammed Israel’s war efforts in Gaza on X/Twitter, condemning Jerusalem for supposedly practicing “far-right militant ethnonationalism.” She has praised journalists in Gaza for “documenting their own genocide.”

In 2022, Abughazaleh rebuked Israel as a “genocidal apartheid regime” and accused the Jewish state of practicing “ethnic cleansing” against Palestinians. That same year, she also wrote that “pretending Israel is anything but an apartheid state is a lie people tell themselves to ease their own conscience” and that Israel “has no qualms with killing Palestinian children.”

In her online posts, the social media personality has generally not mentioned actions taken by the Israeli military to try and avoid civilian casualties, or Hamas’s widely recognized military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.

Abughazaleh previously worked as a staffer for the progressive watchdog group Media Matters.

Schakowsky has not said whether she plans to run for reelection in her district next year.

The post Anti-Israel Gen Z Social Media Personality Launches US Congressional Campaign first appeared on Algemeiner.com.