RSS
As School Year Begins, Palestinian Student Groups Get Increasingly Violent, and Colleges Appear to Take Action
Anti-Israel protests continued to escalate throughout August. Pro-Hamas protestors blocked the I-405 freeway in Los Angeles, vandalized AIPAC headquarters in Washington, D.C., vandalized elementary schools in Stamford, CT, and Bethesda, MD, and smashed the windows of a Ralph Lauren store in Manhattan.
Patrons attending a production of Fiddler on the Roof in London were harassed, as were children at a science museum in south London, and Hezbollah and Hamas flags were waved at various demonstrations including those mourning Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Sporadic demonstrations against Israel were also held at the Paris Olympics.
An Israeli owned factory in Britain was again vandalized and a Jewish man in Brooklyn was stabbed by an individual yelling “free Palestine.” The individual was charged with attempted murder and a hate crime.
Thousands of protestors were bused into Chicago for the Democratic National Convention. On the first full day, barriers were torn down, but the number of protestors appeared far below the tens of thousands anticipated. Bomb threats were called in to hotels hosting delegates, American and Israeli flags were burned, the Israeli consulate was picketed, and dozens of arrests were made.
In contrast to other groups, Jewish groups were made to keep their locations secret. A session held by an Orthodox group was nevertheless disrupted by pro-Hamas protestors.
The eliminationist goals espoused by the protestors, along with their fundamental anti-American and anti-Western ideologies, is a threat to all Americans. But press accounts emphasized the minimal turnout and underplayed the seriousness of the messages and the movement.
The situation was markedly worse on college campuses.
In the faculty sphere, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) issued a statement endorsing academic boycotts. Without mentioning Israel the statement claimed:
when faculty members choose to support academic boycotts, they can legitimately seek to protect and advance the academic freedom and fundamental rights of colleagues and students who are living and working under circumstances that violate that freedom and one or more of those rights. In such contexts, academic boycotts are not in themselves violations of academic freedom; rather, they can be considered legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education.
An early indicator of faculty involvement in the semester’s anti-Israel activities was a request on social media for Columbia and Barnard’s faculty to appear at the institutions’ gates to “protect” pro-Hamas protestors, who were disrupting students moving into their dorms.
Threats from New York University’s Faculty for Justice in Palestine to “withhold their labor” represent another level of coercion against the institution, as well as fellow faculty and students.
The most notable college administration related event of August was the sudden and unexpected resignation of Columbia University president Minouche Shafik, who will leave the US and return to Britain for a position in the Labour Party led Foreign Office. Her tenure of 13 months is the shortest in Columbia’s history.
Shafik is the third Ivy League president to resign. Her handling of the post-October 7 campus crisis had been harshly criticized on all sides. For their part, Columbia’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter stated “any future president who does not pay heed to the Columbia student body’s overwhelming demand for divestment will end up exactly as President Shafik did.” Columbia’s Jewish Voice for Peace chapter commented “The students of Columbia will never forget the sheer violence unleashed upon us by Minouche Shafik, and we will not be placated by her removal as the university’s repression of the pro-Palestinian student movement continues.”
Legal action in response to the 2023-2024 school year continues to play out.
In one notable case, a Federal judge issued a ruling that excoriated UCLA for permitting pro-Hamas protestors to shut down portions of campus to Jewish students who identified as Zionists, saying: “In the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, in the City of Los Angeles, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith.”
The university had argued that it bore no responsibility “because the exclusion was engineered by third-party protesters.” The judge instructed the university to present a plan to address the issue, or prepare to shut down operations entirely. Observers suggest that the ruling will motivate other universities to take steps to protect Jewish students from harassment and abuse.
A Massachusetts court also permitted a lawsuit under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against Harvard University to proceed. The suit alleges the university permitted antisemitic harassment against Jewish students to proceed unchecked. A similar suit against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was dismissed by the same judge, who ruled the university at least took steps to restore “civil order and discourse to its campus.”
In another suit, a Federal court ruled Jewish MIT students did not have to pay dues to the graduate student union, which had endorsed BDS. The students had claimed the union’s decision violated their religious beliefs and freedom of association.
Graduate unions, frequently affiliated with the United Auto Workers or United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America, have become a notable target for the BDS movement. Additional lawsuits are pending including at the University of Chicago.
In general, universities have spent the summer revising policies regarding protests, access, encampments, masking, and various “expressive activities” such as signage and departmental statements, to avoid the breakdowns seen in the 2023-2024 school year.
Institutions with specific guidelines and prohibitions include the University of California system, the California State University, and University of Texas systems.
In a particularly specific example, New York University issued new guidelines that mentioned “code words” like “Zionist:”
Using code words, like “Zionist,” does not eliminate the possibility that your speech violates the NDAH Policy. For many Jewish people, Zionism is a part of their Jewish identity. Speech and conduct that would violate the NDAH if targeting Jewish or Israeli people can also violate the NDAH if directed toward Zionists. For example, excluding Zionists from an open event, calling for the death of Zionists, applying a “no Zionist” litmus test for participation in any NYU activity, using or disseminating tropes, stereotypes, and conspiracies about Zionists (e.g., “Zionists control the media”), demanding a person who is or is perceived to be Jewish or Israeli to state a position on Israel or Zionism, minimizing or denying the Holocaust, or invoking Holocaust imagery or symbols to harass or discriminate.
In some cases, such as Columbia, faculty involved in anti-Israel protests are involved in creating new guidelines. The AAUP has also condemned new guidelines, calling them “overly restrictive” and a threat to democracy.
Institutions have also mandated civic dialogue and antisemitism and Islamophobia training programs.
Jewish faculty and students have expressed concerns that the fall semester will repeat or intensify the disruptions of the past year.
Another significant policy change are the increasingly widespread adoption of “institutional neutrality,” in which universities refrain from issuing statements regarding situations that do not directly affect it.
Institutions adopting such policies now include Harvard University, Cornell University, the University of Texas system, the University of South Carolina, the University of Colorado at Boulder, Johns Hopkins University, Emerson College, and Purdue University. The University of Minnesota’s institutional neutrality policy extends to its investments.
Institutions have also quietly announced that divestment from Israel will not be considered. This was made clear in a long statement from the Oberlin College trustees, and a short statement from the head of the University of Pennsylvania trustees, who also condemned the BDS movement.
San Francisco State University, however, announced that it was divesting from four American companies including Lockheed Martin and Caterpillar as part of a deal with protestors. The move was specifically described as a move away from companies involved in “weapons manufacturing” rather than Israel.
At the same time, however, many universities and district attorneys have quietly dropped disciplinary cases against students who disrupted campuses in the previous school year, including at the University of Chicago and Cal State Humboldt. In the latter case, protestors did several million dollars worth of damage to a building. Columbia University students who had been arrested during the May building takeover nearly all remain in good standing, and will return this fall. Suspended students from several universities have filed lawsuits to have punishments lifted.
George Washington University administrators, however, have urged local authorities not to drop charges against students and have barred several from campus, even as they (and the University of Vermont, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Ohio State University, and Rutgers University) have barred SJP from campus for the fall.
In a sign of changing Jewish attitudes towards the Ivy League, a report notes that the Ramaz school in Manhattan will not send any students to Columbia for the first time in its history. Another sign is a sharp rise in new enrollments and transfers at Yeshiva University, Brandeis University, and Touro University.
Over the summer, we learned that pro-Hamas students had participated in training sessions held at various campuses. Reports indicated that the training emphasized organizing tactics, as well as Marxist-Leninist and jihadist ideologies. Evidence also emerged of students conspiring with outsiders and discussing how to fabricate allegations against Jewish faculty members, specifically Shai Davidai of Columbia University.
The tone of pronouncements from various SJP chapters was frank regarding planned disruptions and revolutionary intent.
The University of North Carolina SJP chapter stated its “support for the right to resistance, not only in Palestine, but also here in the imperial core,” and condoned “all forms of principled action, including armed rebellion, necessary to stop Israel’s genocide and apartheid, and to dismantle imperialism and capitalism more broadly.”
Columbia University’s SJP issued a statement claiming that, “We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization” and that “Our intifada is an internationalist one-we are fighting for nothing less than the liberation of all people. We reject every genocidal, eugenicist regime that seeks to undermine the personhood of the colonized.”
The University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University SJPs also issued an Instagram image with red Hamas targeting triangles above President Biden and Vice President Harris.
Jewish organizations on campus have also been targeted by pro-Hamas demonstrators. Protestors outside of the Baruch College Hillel called to “bring the war home,” and carried signs saying “Let the intifada pave the way for people’s war.”
Masked protestors also waved Palestinian flags outside the Temple University Hillel and the Toronto Metropolitan University Hillel.
In response, at the end of the month, the Columbia SJP’s Instagram account was permanently deleted, as was that of the New York University SJP.
A spokesperson for Meta, owner of Instagram, stated that Columbia SJP’s “account was disabled for repeated violations of Meta’s dangerous organizations and individuals policies.”
The use of the encrypted messaging app Telegram by student and Chicago protest organizers pointed to a high level of organization and security. The inclusion of pro-Hamas and pro-Iran Resistance News Network content on various Telegram channels also suggested outside facilitation or sponsorship of pro-Hamas protests.
Early campus disruptions this semester have included Columbia University, where even before the semester began, the Chief Operating Officer’s apartment building was vandalized, while at the beginning of school new students moving in were harassed and the convocation was disrupted.
Student governments will remain a focal point for anti-Israel agitation.
At the University of Michigan and the New School, the pro-Hamas leadership of the student governments voted to freeze all funding of student groups until the administrations gave in to their demands for divestment. These are efforts to leverage student bodies against administrations, even at the risk of backlash against themselves. The move quickly backfired at the New School when the university administration transferred funding responsibility from the student government to itself. The Michigan administration has announced a similar move.
The author is a contributor to SPME, where an extensively different version of this article appeared.
The post As School Year Begins, Palestinian Student Groups Get Increasingly Violent, and Colleges Appear to Take Action first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
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.
RSS
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.
RSS
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.