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Anti-Zionists in University of California Ethnic Studies Department Promoting Hatred of Israel, New Study Finds
Illustrative: Thousands of anti-Israel demonstrators from the Midwest gather in support of Palestinians and hold a rally and march through the Loop in Chicago on Oct. 21, 2023. Photo: Alexandra Buxbaum/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Activist scholars employed by the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) department of the University of California, Santa Cruz are using their classrooms to promote extremist anti-Zionist propaganda, according to a new study by antisemitism watchdog group AMCHA Initiative.
The university’s “CRES department has engaged in anti-Zionist advocacy and activism since at least May 2021, when CRES pledged departmental allegiance to ‘the struggle for Palestinian liberation’ and committed its faculty to bringing the academic boycott of Israel onto campus and into the classrooms,” AMCHA said in a press release on Thursday. “However, according to the study, incidents involving CRES’s anti-Zionist political advocacy and activism have drastically increased in frequency and intensity since Hamas’ massacre of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023.”
AMCHA’s new report cites a litany of what it describes as politically motivated decisions CRES leaders have made both before and after the Oct. 7 onslaught, including the creation of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism (ICSZ), which declares on its website that Zionism is a “colonial racial project” and that Israel is a “settler colonial state.” The organization was co-founded by a professor who said in a podcast interview last year that academics should “tie [Zionism] to this much larger Western supremacy and white supremacy” and “de-link the study of Zionism from Jewish studies.”
Among other incidents, CRES issued a statement rationalizing Hamas’ terrorism on Oct. 7, an act of mass violence in which Palestinian terrorists from Gaza murdered 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 240 others during a rampage across southern Israel. There has also been mounting evidence showing the terrorists committed widespread torture and sexual violence, including mass rapes, against Israeli women and girls.
“What we are witnessing needs to be understood in the context of 75 years of settler colonial displacement, military occupation, and enclosure,” the department said in the statement cited in the AMCHA report. “As in the past, racialized media coverage dehumanizes Palestinians, delegitimizing their aspirations for freedom from militarism, colonial rule, and incarceration.”
Additionally, the department participated on Oct. 20 in a “Call for a Global General Strike,” refusing to work because Israel mounted a military response to Hamas’ atrocities — an action CRES called “Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” On Oct. 24, the department held an event titled, “The Genocide in Gaza in our [sic] Classrooms: A Teaching Palestine Workshop,” in which professors and teaching assistants were trained in how to persuade students that Zionism is a racist and genocidal endeavor.
“CRES’s commitment to anti-Zionist political advocacy and activism, as a department and as a core element of its discipline, can’t help but corrupt the academic mission of the university and violate students’ fundamental right to be educated and not indoctrinated,” AMCHA Initiative director and co-founder Tammi Rossman-Benjamin said on Thursday. “Our research has consistently shown that on campuses where individual faculty and departments use educational spaces for anti-Zionist political advocacy and activism, rates of antisemitic activity — including assaults, threats of harm, vandalism, and bullying — are significantly elevated.”
AMCHA, as well as other civil rights and educational organizations, have previously issued warnings about the allegedly political and even antisemitic motivations of Ethnic Studies departments throughout the University of California system (UC). Last September, about 100 such organizations called on UC to reject a proposal that would require applicants to schools in the UC system to take an ethnic studies course, arguing that anti-Zionist activists are developing and leading the effort to implement the measure.
Some of the leading academics pushing for mandatory ethnics studies courses are anti-Zionists. Christine Hong, chair of CRES at UC Santa Cruz, co-chairs the UC Academic Senate working group developing the admissions proposal. Another co-founder of ICSZ, Hong said on a podcast last August that ethnic studies should teach “the extraordinary violence of Zionism, the settler colonial violence, [and] the militarism that is inflicted on Palestine and Palestinian people.”
Rossman-Benjamin urged the public on Thursday to also focus its attention on CRES’s activities in their children’s school districts. If UC approves the proposal for mandatory ethnic studies, high schools across California would offer such courses based on the criteria developed by CRES faculty and other academics in the field of critical ethnic studies.
“Shockingly, these same professors who are using their university positions and resources to unabashedly promote anti-Zionism and antisemitism are the ones who our state has entrusted with developing what will be taught to every California student about Jews and Israel,” Rossman-Benjamin said.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Anti-Zionists in University of California Ethnic Studies Department Promoting Hatred of Israel, New Study Finds first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Beersheba Resident Arrested on Suspicion of Espionage for Iran
Doron Bokobza, who was indicted after Iran recruited him to collect intelligence Photo: i24/ Social media / 27A
i24 News – An indictment was filed against a resident of Beersheba, Doron Bokobza, who contacted Iranian intelligence and offered to sell them information including secrets to the nuclear research facility in Dimona.
In February, Bokobza was arrested on suspicion of committing security offenses, involving contact with Iranian police intelligence agents and carrying out tasks for them in exchange for money. He claimed to have access and knowledge of the nuclear facility.
According to the indictment filed against him, last December, Bokobza approached an Iranian recruiter via the Telegram app, writing: “I am Israeli, I want to cross over to you.” When asked by the recruiter why he was interested in doing so, the defendant replied that it was due to the government and his difficult financial situation.
Bokobza allegedly photographed military installations and transferred information to the Iranian handlers several days later.
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Captive IDF Soldier Nimrod Cohen Identified from Horn Video Hamas Released
Nimrod Cohen, an IDF soldier who was kidnapped on October 7, 2023, by Gazan terrorists and has been held for more than 500 days. Photo: Hostages and Missing Families Forum
i24 News – The family of the Israeli soldier Nimrod Cohen, held captive in the Gaza Strip, said on Saturday that they had identified their son in the video published the day before by Hamas.
In this recording, Eitan and Iair Horn, Sagui Dekel-Chen, and other hostages whose faces have been blurred can be seen. The Cohen family says they recognized Nimrod, who appears wearing a t-shirt and bearing a characteristic tattoo.
In the video broadcast with the agreement of the Horn family, brothers Eitan and Iair are seen embracing. Iair Horn, freed on the 498th day of the war, declares: “They are making me leave my little brother here, to die,” while his brother Eitan, still in captivity, adds: “It is illogical to separate families in this way.”
“Get everyone out and don’t separate families, don’t destroy our lives,” Eitan said in the video. “Tell mom and dad to continue the protests and for this government to sign phase two to bring us all home.” He addressed the Prime Minister directly: “[Benjamin] Netanyahu, if you have a bit of heart, sign, sign today.”
Father Yehuda Cohen said during a demonstration of hostage families that his “son Nimrod is a soldier who was kidnapped from a burning tank. He is alive and he, like all the hostages, begs us from this hell to save them now. All of them, and all at once.”
“We are addressing President Trump – there are still 59 hostages in Gaza who are living a Holocaust,” he added. “Netanyahu is trying to sabotage your agreement, Mr. President. He is the one creating the current crisis in the negotiations. Don’t let him fail the agreement.”
About two weeks ago, Cohen revealed in an interview with Channel 12 that the family had received a message from Nimrod. “We got news from him last week, from two hostages who spent eight months with him in the tunnels,” the father explained. “I’m doing fine, don’t worry about me. I love you,” Nimrod conveyed to his parents through the former captives.
The post Captive IDF Soldier Nimrod Cohen Identified from Horn Video Hamas Released first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel’s Right-Wing Camp Hails Order to Block Goods from Entering Gaza
Jewish Power party leader Itamar Ben-Gvir speaks following the announcement of exit polls in Israel’s general election, at his party headquarters in Jerusalem November 2, 2022. REUTERS/Corinna Kern
i24 News – Israel’s right wing hailed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision on Sunday to halt goods and supplies from being brought to the Gaza Strip, demanding that hostages continue being released.
“I welcome the decision to halt the humanitarian aid, if it is implemented,” said former national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir. “The decision has finally been made – better late than never. This should be the policy until the last of the hostages is returned. Now is the time to open the gates of hell, to shut off the electricity and water, to return to war, and most importantly, not to settle for just half of the hostages, but to return to President Trump’s ultimatum all the hostages immediately or hell will break loose on Gaza.”
Ben Gvir referred to US President Donald Trump’s warning that “all hell” would break out if all the hostages are not returned, while saying that it was ultimately Israel’s decision.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, another right-wing firebrand, said that “the decision we made tonight to completely halt the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza until Hamas is destroyed or completely surrenders and all our hostages are returned is an important step in the right direction.”
He called for Israel to continue until “complete victory.”
Meanwhile, the far-right Order 9 movement, which opposed the entry of goods including humanitarian assistance into Gaza, said that its activists “reached the Kerem Shalom crossing area and it is indeed closed. We will stand guard that it will indeed remain so until the last of the kidnapped are returned”
“The transfer of aid that has strengthened the murderous terrorist organization Hamas for the past year and a half will stop until all the kidnapped are returned,” the movement said. “For many months, we have fought tooth and nail against the terrible failure to transfer aid to the enemy, which has now become clear that it will strengthen it for many months to come. We are now on the ground and will continue to stand guard well, and to ensure that this severe harm to the kidnapped will stop.”
The post Israel’s Right-Wing Camp Hails Order to Block Goods from Entering Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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