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A rabbi and an imam called a meeting of Jewish and Muslim students at Queens College. It yielded little common ground.
(New York Jewish Week) – Students crammed into a meeting room on the leafy Queens College campus, some wearing keffiyehs, others kippahs. Kosher and halal food were served on a table at the back of the room, while late arrivals gathered at the door, listening to the rabbi and imam holding court at the center of the gathering.
“There are no two faith communities that have more in common than Islam and Judaism,” Rabbi Marc Schneier said, sitting next to his longtime partner in interfaith work, Imam Shamsi Ali. “We can agree to disagree, without being disagreeable.”
The meeting between the Muslim and Jewish students was meant to build bridges between the two groups amid fallout from the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza that began with Hamas’ massacre of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7. But, in actuality, the gathering further exposed the deep chasms between their two communities, which did disagree — and were often disagreeable.
As the conversation on Thursday descended into shouting, a Jewish student fired across the room, “Oct. 7 is resistance?”
A Muslim student said, “Yes, Oct. 7 is resistance, according to the Geneva Convention.”
“At least someone said it,” the Jewish student said.
The conflict between Israel and Hamas has riven campuses in New York City and elsewhere, sparking heated clashes between student groups, as well as between students and administrators. An Israeli student was assaulted and a swastika was drawn on a bathroom wall at Columbia University, which later suspended two prominent pro-Palestinian groups. At Manhattan’s Cooper Union, Jewish students sheltered in a library as pro-Palestinian activists pounded on the doors and shouted slogans. Campuses across the city, including in the CUNY system, have seen tensions soar between rival pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups.
The Queens College gathering was similarly tense. At times, it devolved into shouting and mutual recriminations, although some individual students did appear to forge ties with classmates from the other side.
The New York Jewish Week was invited to cover the meeting on the condition that its student attendees not be identified by name so they could speak freely.
“Israelis are doing, in my opinion, what the Nazis did to them,” said the opening speaker, a Muslim. “This is how you create Hamas. If you want to know how to create Hamas, just keep bombing Gaza.”
“In my eyes as a Muslim, Palestinian and Israeli life – equal,” he said. “We have to be direct with each other.”
A Jewish student said, “A lot of our pain and suffering has been invalidated since Oct. 7. Right away, there was not a second to mourn. Automatically we had to defend ourselves.”
Citing student organizations on social media that had denied the atrocities, she said, “People were slaughtered. The world doesn’t care.”
She added, “I want to see my pain acknowledged.”
Queens College is part of the sprawling City University of New York system, which has been grappling with allegations of antisemitism for years. Jewish students and faculty have said Israel criticism often spills over into outright antisemitism, while Palestinians and their supporters have decried alleged attacks on free speech.
Around 50 students attended the hourlong meeting, perhaps the first formal gathering between Jewish and Muslim students on a New York City campus since Oct. 7, according to its organizers. Schneier and Ali previously held two meetings for students from several CUNY schools, one with only Muslims, and another with just Jewish students. They plan to hold several more gatherings.
“We are not here to convince you, whatever you have in mind, but we’re here to listen with the hope that we can build a sense of sympathy or empathy for one another,” Ali said.
Schneier is a prominent rabbi involved with outreach between Jews and Gulf countries; his Foundation for Ethnic Understanding focuses on Jewish-Muslim relations. He is also a member of CUNY’s Jewish advisory council. Ali is the leader of the Jamaica Muslim Center in Queens, one of the largest mosques in New York, with 20,000 members.
The students present included members of the campus Hillel and the Muslim Student Association. Muslim students outnumbered Jewish students at the meeting and held the floor for more of the discussion, using the forum to air historical grievances and complaints against the college administration. Jewish students said their pain after the Hamas attack had been dismissed, or even exacerbated, as some student groups denied or endorsed the atrocities.
One Jewish student read out a threat posted online to the group, her hands shaking, saying, “We were terrified.” Both groups also felt that their voices had been stifled.
A Jewish student said that graffiti threatening Jews had been etched around campus and that she hadn’t seen similar hate directed toward pro-Palestinian students. The Muslim students in attendance forcefully disagreed, with one woman saying, “It’s absolutely appalling to disregard all the hate that the Muslims on this campus have been receiving.”
The Jewish speaker said she understood and had not been aware of anti-Muslim incidents.
The rabbi and imam made repeated efforts to guide the conversation toward interfaith relations and the atmosphere on campus, and the students all unequivocally condemned discrimination against Muslims and Jews as well as civilian casualties. At one point, Ali said, “Both communities are victims, but it looks like we are opponents to each other, and that’s what we need — to find a way to make sure that actually we are not enemies to one another.”
Still, the discussion repeatedly turned to the war, with the students unable to agree on its basic facts. Muslim students disputed that Hamas was using civilians as human shields, frustrating the Jews in attendance, or that Hamas had targeted Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, citing a conspiracy theory that the Israeli military was responsible for most civilian casualties.
The Muslim students repeatedly objected to the pro-Israel position, bringing up the Palestinian death toll of 12,000, a figure provided by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry that has not been externally verified and does not make a distinction between civilians and combatants.
In one heated exchange, a Muslim student said she had asked Israel supporters around campus if they condemned Israel. “I have not received a single yes,” she said. Pro-Israel students asked if she condemned Hamas, and she said she condemned the killing of innocent civilians on any side. Both groups said they were not “spokespeople” for the conflict’s combatants.
“What they accuse Hamas of doing today, they did — they’ve been doing for 75 years,” a Muslim student said. “The start date for you guys is Oct. 7,” another student said.
“A people who are occupied have a right to armed resistance. I know you don’t like hearing it but those are the facts,” a Muslim student said.
“People like you think they should lay back and let Israel slaughter them. No, we don’t want two states, we want one solution under pre-1948 borders,” he said, to applause, while one student held up a sign that said, “Bombing hospitals is not self defense.”
“We are trying to move forward as a community. We cannot fix the issues that present themselves in the Middle East,” a Jewish student said.
“It tears my heart hearing his pain, his family’s pain, it’s just awful,” a Jewish student said about the Palestinian speaker. “I think it would be great for us all to understand that there are bad people on both sides and there are great people on both sides.”
Later in the discussion, several Muslim students berated Ali, appearing to oppose his partnership with Schneier.
“Who told you to come here? Which Muslim? How much did they pay you?” one student said. “Say you’re a Zionist. You’re not welcome. Nobody wants you here.” He then led the room in several chants of “Allahu akbar,” an Arabic phrase meaning “God is the greatest.”
The Muslim students also repeatedly criticized the Queens College administration, saying the college had been overly supportive of Israel and that they had not been given a forum to express their grievances. The college president, Frank Wu, opened an investigation earlier this week into the Muslim Student Association after the group posted online that there was no evidence Palestinians had killed women and children, and justified Hamas taking civilians hostage.
The Oct. 7 attack by the terror group killed 1,200 Israelis and other nationals, mostly civilians, and took more than 200 others captive. Wu’s investigation sparked furious protests against the administration. Slogans attacking Wu and Israel were chalked on the sidewalk around campus.
“We’re not here representing CUNY. What do you want from us?” Schneier said.
After the meeting let out, the arguing continued outside the room, although some students seemed to forge connections in individual discussions.
A Muslim student spoke with a Jewish student, saying he had grown up in an environment that was not welcoming to Jews, but that his closest friend, whom he met in school, was Jewish. The two students bonded over the religions’ shared traditions, including fasting on holidays and eschewing pork.
“This is turning into a very Israel and Palestine thing, which it shouldn’t have, because it was an interfaith thing,” the Muslim student said. “It really hurts me a lot hearing terrible things being said about you guys because I for one don’t align with that.”
“I’m really happy that you came here,” the Jewish student said. “Jews, our religion, our values, it’s about a good world, good people, not doing violence. Everyone’s rights matter.”
Nearby, two students engaged in a heated but measured argument about the war, while two others showed each other information on their phones.
“I thought it was a good beginning,” Schneier told the New York Jewish Week after the meeting, pointing out that the complaints surrounding discrimination and stifled voices were mirrored on both sides. He said that an overflow room had been set up in case the two groups needed to be separated, which didn’t happen. “You’re planting a seed here,” he said.
“For some of the students, they grow in terms of their sense of empathy for the other side. It’s important for people to see it’s everyone’s pain,” Schneier said. “These kinds of discussions need to take place.”
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The post A rabbi and an imam called a meeting of Jewish and Muslim students at Queens College. It yielded little common ground. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Meta Boots Anti-Zionist Columbia University Group From Instagram
Pro-Hamas Columbia University students march in front of pro-Israel demonstrators on Oct. 7, 2024, the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel. Photo: Roy De La Cruz via Reuters Connect
Meta Platforms, Inc. has banned the infamous Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) anti-Zionist student group from its platforms, a decision that the company says is irrevocable.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, CUAD is responsible for spreading pro-Hamas propaganda, assaulting Jewish students, and disrupting academic study at Columbia with unauthorized demonstrations and property destruction. Its behavior, among other factors, drove the Trump administration’s cancellation in March of $400 million in federal contracts and grants awarded to Columbia.
CUAD first reported that Meta shuttered its Instagram account on Monday, denouncing the measure as being part of “a long and concerted effort from corporations and imperial powers to erase the Palestinian people.” Meta later justified the decision to Jewish Insider, explaining that CUAD had forced the company’s hand by ceaselessly transgressing the platform’s terms of use of agreement. Meta forbids groups which advocate violence to operate on Instagram, and CUAD has used its account to call for toppling the Israeli and US governments. Additionally, its Instagram account has been essential for promoting unlawful demonstrations CUAD continues to hold at Columbia University and for sharing resources that have helped its collaborators avoid punishment.
Meta told Jewish Insider that the group won’t be allowed back.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, CUAD’s activities have been described as a threat to the civil rights and security of Jewish Columbia University students.
Last April, CUAD members commandeered a section of campus and, after declaring it a “liberated zone,” lit flares and chanted pro-Hamas and anti-American slogans. When the New York City Police Department (NYPD) arrived to disperse the unlawful gathering, hundreds of CUAD members and their affiliates reportedly amassed around them to prevent the restoration of order. During ensuing clashes with law enforcement, one student screamed “Yes, we’re all Hamas, pig!” while others shouted, “Long live Hamas!” and filmed themselves praising the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the US-designated terrorist group.
In September, during the university’s convocation ceremony, the group distributed a pamphlet which called on students to join the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s movement to destroy Israel. Several sections of the document were explicitly Islamist, invoking the name of “Allah, the most gracious” and referring to Hamas as the “Islamic Resistance Movement.” Proclaiming, “Glory to Gaza that gave hope to the oppressed, that humiliated the ‘invincible’ Zionist army,” it said its purpose was to build an army of Muslims worldwide.
In February, CUAD committed infrastructural sabotage by flooding the toilets of the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) with concrete. Numerous reports indicate the attack may have been the premeditated result of planning sessions which took place many months ago at an event held by Alpha Delta Phi (ADP) — a literary society, according to the Washington Free Beacon. During the event, the Free Beacon reported, ADP distributed literature dedicated to “aspiring revolutionaries” who wish to commit seditious acts.
Following two occupations of administrative buildings at Barnard College, Laura Rosenbury, the school’s president, denounced the group as a paranoid hate-organization.
“They [CUAD] operate in the shadows, hiding behind masks and Instagram posts with Molotov cocktails aimed at Barnard buildings, antisemitic tropes about wealth, influence, and ‘Zionist billionaires,’ and calls for violence and disruption at any cost,” Rosenbury wrote in an op-ed published by The Chronicle of Higher Education. “They claim Columbia University’s name, but the truth is, because their members wear masks, no one really knows whose interests they serve.”
Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Meta Boots Anti-Zionist Columbia University Group From Instagram first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Tlaib Set to Headline Terrorist-Connected Palestinian Event in New Jersey
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) speaking at a press conference at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, March 11, 2025. Photo: Michael Brochstein/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) is set to headline a conference that is also hosting a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terrorist organization, according to documents obtained by The Algemeiner.
The Palestinian American Community Center (PACC) in New Jersey will hold its annual conference, titled “Grounded in Action: Exploring the Power of the Palestinian Diaspora,” from Thursday through Sunday. Wisam Rafeedie, a self-admitted member of the PFLP, will address the conference virtually on the 4th day of the event.
According to PACC’s website, the conference “is a call to recommit ourselves to amplifying and supporting the Palestinian voices and advocates who have long been at the forefront of our struggle.” PACC also calls on members of the Palestinian diaspora “to leverage our unique positions and power” to “push for meaningful action.””
Tlaib is scheduled to headline the event’s “Youth Day,” in which she will host a reading and signing for her new children’s book, Mama in Congress, alongside her son Adam Tlaib. According to Harper Collins, the book’s publisher, Mama in Congress will chronicle Tlaib’s journey from Detroit to the halls of the federal government. The book will also detail Tlaib’s supposed efforts in working toward “justice for all” in Congress.
The conference will include several workshops educating attendees on “resistance,” “solidarity,” and “collective struggle.” The event will also feature a session stressing the importance of “centering Palestinian prisoners.”
This is not the first time that Tlaib has come under scrutiny for attending a pro-Palestinian conference tied to terrorists. Last May, Tlaib came under fire for speaking at the “The People’s Conference for Palestine,” which also hosted Rafeedie among other individuals connected to terrorist groups. During that event, Rafeedie praised Hamas, the terrorist group that runs Gaza and murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages on Oct. 7, 2023, as a “resistance” against Israel. He defended and downplayed Hamas’s atrocities, saying that “Zionists lie like they breathe.”
“This is not a struggle between Hamas and Israel. Hamas is part of the resistance of the Palestinian people. The core issue is between the Palestinian people and the project of settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing,” Rafeedie said.
Rafeedie also called for the complete destruction of Israel and the replacement of the Jewish state with a “democratic” Palestine.
“There is no longer a place for the two-state solution for any Palestinian. The only solution is one democratic Palestinian state on all Palestinian land, which will end the Zionist project in Palestine,” Rafeedie continued.
Tlaib, the first Palestinian American woman elected to the US Congress, has positioned herself as a fierce and outspoken critic of Israel. Since entering office, Tlaib has repeatedly accused the Jewish state of implementing an “apartheid” regime in the West Bank and turning Gaza into an “open-air prison.”
In the year following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, Tlaib has sharpened her condemnations of the Jewish state. In the immediate aftermath of the massacre, she hesitated to release an official statement acknowledging the mass slaughter, abductions, and rapes perpetrated by Hamas. Less than two weeks after the invasion, Tlaib introduced a “ceasefire” resolution between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group. In November 2023, the House of Representatives voted to censure Tlaib over her anti-Israel rhetoric.
The progressive firebrand has also condemned Israel’s defensive military operations in Gaza, accusing the Jewish state of committing a full-scale “genocide” against the civilians of the enclave. She has also peddled the unsubstantiated claim that Israel has purposefully inflicted mass starvation against Palestinian civilians and urged the Biden administration when it was in power to impose an arms embargo on Israel. Simmering with anger over the Biden administration’s support for Israel, she refused to endorse former Vice President Kamala Harris’s failed presidential bid.
Tlaib’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
The post Tlaib Set to Headline Terrorist-Connected Palestinian Event in New Jersey first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Driver Charged for Brooklyn Car Crash Killing Jewish Family Has History of Claiming CIA Follows Her
An overturned auto in a car crash flipped on its roof landing on a mother and her three children, killing two children on March 29, 2025, in Brooklyn, New York. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
A Brooklyn woman who was charged for a car crash on Saturday that killed a Jewish woman and her two young daughters has alleged in the past on social media that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is following her, a claim she also made to first responders after the fatal accident.
Miriam Yarimi, 32, is facing multiple charges, including three counts of second-degree manslaughter, three counts of criminal negligent homicide, and four counts of second-degree assault. Yarimi — a Brooklyn resident and wigmaker who is also a Jewish mother herself – was transported to NYU Langone Hospital in Brooklyn in stable condition. She was then moved to the psychiatric ward of Bellevue Hospital, according to reports.
The car crash killed Natasha Saada, 32, and her daughters – 8-year-old Diana and 6-year-old Deborah. Saada’s son Philip, 4, was injured in the crash and hospitalized at Maimonides Medical Center in Borough Park in critical condition. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) arrested Yarimi, a single mother who has a young daughter, and she is awaiting arraignment in connection to the crash that took place Saturday afternoon at an intersection on Ocean Parkway off Quentin Road in Midwood. Police said she was driving with a suspended license at the time of the crash.
“This was a horrific tragedy caused by someone who shouldn’t have been on the road,” said Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch. “A mother and two young children killed, another child fighting for his life, a family and a neighborhood devastated in an instant. The NYPD sends its condolences to the family of the victims.”
Yarimi, who shares custody of her daughter with her ex-husband, reportedly told first responders with the Jewish-led volunteer ambulance service Hatzalah that she was “possessed” and that she believes the CIA was pursing her.
She has made similar claims about the CIA many times on Instagram, a former customer of hers told The Algemeiner on Tuesday. The source, who wishes to remain anonymous, purchased a wig from Yarimi several years ago and has been following her on social media for a number of years. Yarimi has 16,000 followers on Instagram and screenshots of her since-deleted posts, obtained by The Algemeiner, confirm she previously believed that the CIA is tracking her.
“It’s very convenient to plead insanity. But it’s not new. She is actually insane. This is [an] old topic,” the former client told The Algemeiner. “She thinks that she’s been followed by CIA for a long, long time already. She truly believes that CIA is spying on her … But only people who follow her [on social media] and know her for a long time would know this. She’s sick.”
In one since-deleted Instagram post, Yarimi wrote in part about the CIA: “They have control of EVERYONE here in this world BESIDES ME … when I went to Miami, it all clicked … once they knew that I knew, they followed me around the hotel, dressed up as young parents with a doona [stroller] and disco outfits like I was stupid and didn’t know who they were … if anything they stuck out like glue.”
“It was the government, blackjack, and the CIA who manipulated everyone and took control of everyone’s mind but because I was the catalyst and the sacrificial lamb so they did their best to break me,” she wrote in a separate post that has also been deleted. “They experimented (abused) me and that’s when they cloned my daughter and I so when I die, they could reinsert me into the crowd and make me into another person.”
Yarimi previously had a highlight on her Instagram page where she talked about demons and the CIA, but it has since been deleted, her former customer told The Algemeiner. Yarimi also wrote on her Instagram Story once that she believes Hollywood is trying to clone people to look like her.
“Why do you think most of the girls in Hollywood have similar features to me like Rita Ora & Jane the Virgin etc,” Yarimi once wrote on Instagram, as seen in a screenshot shared with The Algemeiner. “Wake up, this is not just happening in Hollywood. This is happening right here in the Jewish community in Brooklyn.”
Not long after she uploaded the Instagram posts, Yarimi was admitted to a psychiatric ward and when she returned to social media, she spoke about the experience, the source told The Algemeiner.
“After the above posts she was locked up for two weeks in a psych ward. She’s very public. She went live when paramedics broke into her house and took her. She came back online two weeks later and spoke about her psych ward experience,” Yarimi’s follower said. “And it was saved in her [Instagram] highlights as well … It was horrible.”
The Algemeiner has seen a copy of Yarimi’s Instagram video that shows police drag her out of bed after she refused their orders to get up by herself. In the clip, three police officers are seen in her bedroom and a fourth is standing by the doorway.
Another longtime Instagram follower of Yamini’s described her as “delusional” when speaking to The Algemeiner, and confirmed that Yamini has spoken online repeatedly in the past about how she believes the CIA is tracking her.
In December 2024, Yarimi won a $2 million settlement from the city of New York after she filed a lawsuit claiming that former NYPD Officer George Mastrokostas repeatedly raped her for several years after falsely arresting her.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams and NYPD Deputy Chief Richie Taylor attended the funeral for Saada and her daughters on Sunday in Brooklyn before their bodies were flown to Israel for burial. Saada is survived by her husband, Sidney Saada, her sons Philip and Jacob, her parents and three siblings. Adams called the crash “a tragic accident of a Shakespearean proportion.”
“A mother going for a simple stroll on a sunny day was struck and killed. As we pray for their families and this entire community, the city mourns this loss,” he added.
Police said Yarimi was driving a blue Audi A3 sedan when she rear-ended a 2023 silver Toyota Camry with TLC plates that was carrying four passengers – a mother and three children. NYPD Commissioner Tisch said the force of the crash caused the Toyota Camry to be pushed aside, while the Audi moved forward, crashing into Saada and her children as they were crossing the street before the car overturned. Saada and her two daughters were pronounced dead at the scene. The driver of the Toyota Camry, a 62-year-old man, was hospitalized in stable condition. The four passengers inside his car sustained minor injuries and were also hospitalized, according to Tisch.
Yarimi’s car had 99 parking and camera violations between August 2023 and March 2025, including 21 speed camera tickets and five red light tickets, Eyewitness News ABC 7 reported, citing a website that tracks vehicle violations using city data. She had nearly $10,500 in fines and a car with the same license plate as Yarimi’s still has $1,345 in unpaid fines, the news outlet also revealed.
The post Driver Charged for Brooklyn Car Crash Killing Jewish Family Has History of Claiming CIA Follows Her first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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