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Arrest made over threats to kill Jews at Cornell as New York State announces new measures to combat antisemitism
(New York Jewish Week) — Police have taken a suspect into custody over threats to kill Jewish students at Cornell University over the weekend, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office said Tuesday as her office announced a series of measures to combat antisemitism on campuses and elsewhere in New York.
New York State police detained the Cornell suspect for questioning on Tuesday after identifying the individual earlier in the day, Hochul said, a day after she visited Jewish students at the university in a show of support.
Anonymous antisemitic threats posted to a Greek life website over the weekend threatened to “shoot up” Cornell’s kosher dining hall and included comments such as “jewish people need to be killed” and “eliminate jewish living from cornell campus.”
“If i see a pig male jew i will stab you and slit your throat,” read a post by a user called “hamas.”
Police were called to the dining hall, and the campus Hillel warned students to avoid the building after the threats.
“When I met with Cornell students yesterday, I promised them we would do everything possible to find the perpetrator,” Hochul said as she announced the suspect was in custody. “Public safety is my top priority and I’m committed to combating hate and bias wherever it rears its ugly head.”
Hochul also announced a series of measures to combat hate crimes and antisemitism in New York.
The governor ordered a third-party review of antisemitism and discrimination policies at New York City’s massive public university system, the City University of New York. The school system has been an antisemitism battleground in recent years, with some Jewish students and faculty alleging discrimination and harassment and demanding action from the administration. Much of strife across the system’s 25 colleges centers on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with Jewish students saying anti-Israel criticism often veers into antisemitism, and pro-Palestinian activists decrying alleged attacks on free speech.
Judge Jonathan Lippman, a former chief judge on the New York Court of Appeals, will lead the review of CUNY antisemitism. The probe will look into the campus environment; policies, procedures and handling of antisemitism complaints; and balancing free speech rights with antisemitism.
Last May, a student speaker at the CUNY School of Law graduation praised the school as a place where students could “speak out against Israeli settler colonialism,” said Israel was “indiscriminately raining bullets and bombs on worshipers,” and blamed “donors” and “investors” for stifling anti-Israel criticism. Two weeks later, CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos Rodríguez and the board of trustees denounced Fatima Mousa Mohammed’s remarks as “hate speech.” The previous year, radical pro-Palestinian activist Nerdeen Kiswani delivered a similar speech at the law school graduation.
“We will take on the antisemitism we have seen on college campuses,” Hochul said during a press conference Tuesday. “The problem didn’t begin with the weeks following the Oct. 7 attacks. It’s been growing on a number of campuses and seen most acutely in the City University of New York.”
CUNY said in response to the announcement, “We will cooperate with Judge Lippman’s review as we work to build on the progress we’ve made combating antisemitism across our campuses.”
“As an institution of higher learning and one of the country’s most diverse universities, CUNY has taken many steps to combat hate, discrimination and intolerance in all forms, important work which we continue every day,” a CUNY spokesperson told the New York Jewish Week.
The U.S. Department of Education is investigating CUNY’s Brooklyn College over alleged antisemitism in a probe announced last year.
In addition to the CUNY review, the state’s division of criminal justice services will distribute $50 million for law enforcement agencies statewide to acquire new technology and equipment to better solve and prevent hate crimes, and $25 million in grants for securing communities against hate crimes, a program to boost protection as nonprofit organizations and other sites.
The state will also expand its social media analysis unit to better monitor violent threats against schools and campuses.
Antisemitic incidents have spiked in New York City and the United States since the start of the war in Israel, according to data collated by the New York Police Department and Jewish security groups. Jews are targeted in hate crimes in the city more than any other group.
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The post Arrest made over threats to kill Jews at Cornell as New York State announces new measures to combat antisemitism appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.