University faculty have been joining pro-Hamas demonstrators in taking over US campuses over the past week, fueling concerns that higher education institutions have become hatcheries of dangerous, anti-Western political ideologies that foster hatred for Israel and could hasten a new age of antisemitism.

A wave of anti-Israel demonstrations has erupted on university campuses across the US over the past week, beginning at Columbia University in New York City.

Since last week, college students have been amassing in the hundreds at a growing number of schools, taking over sections of campuses by setting up “Gaza Solidarity Encampments” and refusing to leave unless administrators condemn and boycott Israel. Footage of the protests has shown demonstrators chanting in support of Hamas, calling for the destruction of Israel, and even threatening to harm members of the Jewish community on campus. In many cases, activists have also lambasted the US and Western civilization more broadly.

On many campuses — including George Washington University in Washington, DC, New York University, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Michigan, and the University of Southern California, among others — members of the faculty have attached themselves to the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas demonstrations.

In some instances, faculty attempted to prevent police from dispersing unauthorized demonstrations and detaining lawbreakers, resulting in their arrest. That happened, for example, on Thursday at Emory University in Atlanta, where economics professor Caroline Fohlin intervened to stop the arrest of a student. In response, officers tackled her to the ground while she said repeatedly, “I’m a professor!”

At Northeastern University in Boston, professors formed a human barrier around a student encampment to stop its dismantling by officers, and at the University of Texas at Austin, members of the group Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine have openly called for the resignation of their president, Jay Hartzell, because he requested police assistance in restoring order.

At Columbia University, anti-Zionist faculty at the school, as well its affiliate Barnard College, staged a walkout in support of the demonstrations and demanded the abeyance of disciplinary sanctions against anti-Zionist students — dozens of whom cheered Hamas and threatened more massacres of Jews similar to Oct. 7 — who have violated school rules.

“We are working to overturn the student suspensions that have been issued and to ensure that administrators are not allowed to summon the NYPD [New York City Police Department] on a whim, when there is self-evidently no danger,” the faculty said. “Most of all we want you to feel at home here.”

Mass participation of faculty in pro-Hamas demonstrations marks an inflection point in American history, according to Asaf Romirowsky, an expert on the Middle East and executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.

Since the 1960s, he told The Algemeiner on Friday, far-left “scholar activists” have gradually seized control of the higher education system, tailoring admissions processes and the curricula to foster ideological radicalism and conformity, which students then carry with them into careers in government, law, corporate America, and education. This system, he concluded, must be challenged.

“The cost of trading scholarship for political propagandizing has been a zeal and pride among faculty who esteem and cheer terrorism, a historical development which is quite telling and indicative of the evolution of the Marxist ideology which has been seeping into the academy since the 1960s,” Romirowsky said. “The message is very clear to all of us who are looking on from the outside at this, and institutions have to begin drawing a red line. The protests are not about free speech. They are about supporting terrorism, about calling for a genocide of Jews.”

Romirowsky pointed to Columbia University temporarily banning Shai Davidai, an outspoken Jewish professor, from campus as a portent of the gradual embrace among progressives of anti-Jewish attitudes not seen in higher education since Nazis took over German universities in the 1930s. What the country is witnessing, he continued, is a synthesis of Marxism and fascism which cannot tolerate a liberal-democratic state in which Jews have an active role in public life nor the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East.

“This is 1984,” he continued, alluding to George Orwell’s classic novel about a dystopian state. “As we can see, these rallies are not peaceful as their supporters have insisted. They are violent, verbally and physically. People are ending up in the hospital with injuries. This is analogous to Nazi Germany, and that should be a wake-up call to the American people. If these are the institutions that should be the vanguard of American democracy and Western values and this is what they are producing, we should be seriously questioning the functionality of higher education as a whole.”

Information about the beliefs of the organizers of the pro-Hamas demonstrations have circulated on social media all week. On Thursday, it was revealed that a principal organizer of protests at Columbia University, Khymani James, filmed himself proclaiming that Zionists, a category that includes a vast majority of Jews around the world, should be murdered and that they are fortunate that he has not begun killing them himself.

“I think that taking someone’s life in certain case scenarios is necessary and better for the overall world,” James said. “Be glad, be grateful, that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists … they don’t deserve to live comfortably, let alone, Zionists don’t deserve to live … they shouldn’t live in this world … so yes, I feel very comfortable calling for those people to die.”

On Friday, US Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and her daughter — Isra Hirsi, who was recently suspended and arrested for trespassing — were filmed greeting and hugging James while someone nearby said, “We are family, we are family.”

It has been widely reported that Columbia officials are negotiating with James personally to reach a compromise that could end in the university adopting aspects of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel in exchange for the end of the demonstration there. Those discussions are ongoing.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post ‘This Is 1984’: Faculty Participation in Pro-Hamas Demonstrations a ‘Wake-Up Call’ for Americans, Professor Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

The former president of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) clarified on Thursday that the court did not rule it was “plausible” that Israel was committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.

Joan Donoghue, who was president of the ICJ when the preliminary ruling was made, was asked on the BBC if the key point in the January ruling was that it was plausible Israel was committing genocide against the Palestinians.

“It did not decide, and this is something where I’m correcting something that’s often said in the media,” she responded. “It did not decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.”

Rather, she explained, the court ruled on two things pertaining to the question of genocide. First, “the Palestinians had a plausible right to be protected from genocide,” and second, that “South Africa had a right to present that in the court.” 

In other words, they were answering procedural questions rather than substantive ones.

Joan O’Donoghue, President of Int’l Court of Justice when it made its Provisional Measures Order in SA’s case v. Israel alleging genocide, has confirmed it did not decide that SA’s claim of genocide was plausible: pic.twitter.com/MCNDw0yloS

— UK Lawyers For Israel (@UKLFI) April 25, 2024

Donoghue’s correction may have been necessary because, after the preliminary ruling, many observers began claiming the ICJ found Israel was “plausibly” committing genocide. An NPR article in late January, for example, was titled “A top UN court says Gaza genocide is ‘plausible’ but does not order cease-fire.”

Francesca Albanese, the UN’a special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, claimed the ICJ “just recognized that the horror in Gaza plausibly constitutes genocide.”

The statement from Donoghue appeared to stand in stark contrast to what was claimed.

Still, others have said her new statement did not actually debunk that interpretation. Kenneth Roth, former executive director at Human Rights Watch, wrote on X/Twitter that Donoghue said “everyone has a right to be protected from genocide” and that “the court found it plausible that Palestinians’ right was in jeopardy.” Therefore, he argued, “that means it’s plausible that Israel is committing genocide.”

However, Donoghue’s statement was relatively clear. She added at the end: “The shorthand that often appears — that there’s a plausible case of genocide — isn’t what the court decided.”

Seemingly responding to that claim, Roth argued that, either way, “Donoghue isn’t on the court anymore, so her revisionist reinterpretation of the Gaza judgment doesn’t matter.”

Prior to the preliminary decision being handed down, 210 members of the US House of Representatives signed a letter arguing, “South Africa’s accusation of genocide against Israel exposes how far Israel’s enemies will go in their attempts to demonize the Jewish state.”

“While barely acknowledging the Hamas terrorists who gleefully massacred, mutilated, raped, and kidnapped innocent civilians on Oct. 7, South Africa makes grossly unfounded and defamatory charges against Israel on the world stage, abusing the judicial process in order to delegitimize the democratic State of Israel,” the letter argued.

Many Jews, including those in South Africa, welcomed the ICJ ruling because it did not impose a unilateral ceasefire in Gaza — which would have been an unprecedented step — and, more importantly, called for the release of the hundreds of hostages taken by the Hamas terrorist organization during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

“The court’s call for the hostages to be freed is a fundamental requirement for the end of the conflict,” the South African Jewish Board of Deputies said at the time. “It is regrettable that the South African government did not put pressure on Hamas to release the hostages from the outset, which would have averted such terrible loss of life.”

In December, South Africa hosted two Hamas officials who attended a government-sponsored conference in solidarity with the Palestinians. One of the officials had been sanctioned by the US government for his role with the terrorist organization.

The post Former ICJ President Says World Court Did Not Rule Genocide Claim Against Israel Is ‘Plausible’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

China will host Palestinian unity talks between Islamist terror group Hamas and its rivals Fatah, the two groups and a Beijing-based diplomat said on Friday, a notable Chinese foray into Palestinian diplomacy amid the war in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas, which controls Gaza, is the group whose fighters stormed into Israeli towns on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and capturing 253 hostages. Israel has responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and incapacitating Hamas to the point that it can no longer pose a major threat to the Israeli people from Gaza.

Fatah is the movement of Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank.

The two rival Palestinian factions have failed to heal their political disputes since Hamas fighters expelled Fatah from Gaza in a short war in 2007. Washington is wary of moves to reconcile the two groups, as it supports the PA but has banned Hamas as terrorists.

A Fatah official told Reuters a delegation, led by the group’s senior official Azzam Al-Ahmed, had left for China. A Hamas official said the faction’s team for the talks, led by senior Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk, would be flying there later on Friday.

“We support strengthening the authority of the Palestinian National Authority, and support all Palestinian factions in achieving reconciliation and increasing solidarity through dialogue and consultation,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin at a regular briefing on Friday, without confirming the meeting.

The visit will be the first time a Hamas delegation is publicly known to have gone to China since the start of the war in Gaza. A Chinese diplomat, Wang Kejian, met Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Qatar last month, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.

The Beijing-based diplomat, who had been briefed on the matter, said the talks aimed to support efforts to reconcile the two Palestinian rival groups.

China has lately demonstrated growing diplomatic influence in the Middle East, where it enjoys strong ties with Arab nations and Iran. Last year, Beijing brokered a breakthrough peace deal between longstanding regional foes Saudi Arabia and Iran.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he discussed with Chinese President Xi Jinping and other officials in Beijing on Friday how China can play a constructive role in global crises, including the Middle East.

Chinese officials have ramped up advocacy for the Palestinians in international forums in recent months, calling for a larger-scale Israeli-Palestinian peace conference and a specific timetable to implement a two-state solution.

In February, Beijing urged the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to give its opinion on Israel’s role in the Palestinian territories, which it said was illegal.

More recently, China has been pushing for “Palestine” to join the United Nations, which Beijing’s top diplomat Wang Yi said last week would “rectify a prolonged historical injustice.”

The post China to Host Hamas, Fatah for Palestinian Unity Talks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.