RSS
Columbia University Bans Pro-Hamas Classroom Agitators From Campus
A pro-Hamas demonstrator uses a megaphone at Columbia University, on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, in New York City, US, Oct. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mike Segar
Columbia University has banned from its campus multiple masked individuals who disrupted an active class last week and proceeded to utter pro-Hamas statements while distributing antisemitic literature.
“The university has identified two additional participants who are not Columbia students but are from an unaffiliated institution,” Columbia’s public affairs office said in a statement issued on Monday. “These participants have been barred from Columbia’s campus and referred to their home institution for further investigation and discipline.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the agitators stormed into Professor Avi Shilon’s course, titled “History of Modern Israel,” on the first day of classes of the new semester last Tuesday. Clad in keffiyehs, which were wrapped on their faces to conceal their identities, they read prepared remarks which described the course as “Zionist and imperialist” and a “normalization of genocide.”As part of their performance, which they appeared to film, they dropped flyers, one of which contained an illustration of a lifted boot preparing to trample a Star of David. Next to the drawing was a message that said, “Crush Zionism.”
The incident set off an explosion of responses on social media. The US House Committee on Education and the Workforce — now chaired by Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) — warned that such behavior “will no longer be tolerated in the Trump administration,” while Columbia University professor and activist Shai Davidai demanded “strong action.” Later, Shilon said in an op-ed published by the Israeli publication Ynetnews that Columbia needs to “reevaluate” its safety policies, noting that students should not be able to “walk around wearing masks.”
Wrote Shilon, “Since I had arrived in New York just a few days before the course began, and I was convinced that the protests from last year had already subsided, the moment I saw the masked men my first instinct was to think they were terrorists. After a second, I regained my composure and stood up toward them. I looked at the students in the classroom: they all continued to sit, perhaps frightened, perhaps disturbed.”
Following the incident, Columbia suspended one of the students involved in it, quelling concerns that school officials would do nothing to hold the agitators accountable. Additionally, interim university president Katrina Armstrong has since said that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) may be asked to help preserve law and order on school grounds.
“Unfortunately, recent events have shown that our community continues to a face a significant risk of disruption on the Morningside campus, including from outside demonstrators, threatening our community members’ sense of safety, and creating the potential need to bring the NYPD on campus,” Armstrong said in a statement issued on Jan. 25. “We have a duty to ensure that everyone in our community is safe, feels welcome, and can fully participate in our academic mission.”
Columbia University has allegedly refused to levy disciplinary sanctions against anti-Zionist agitators in the past.
In August, the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce denounced university officials for punishing only a few of the anti-Zionist activists who last spring occupied an administrative building and staged a riot which prompted the university to advise Jews to refrain from coming to campus. According to documents shared by the committee, 18 of the 22 students who were given disciplinary charges for their role in the incident were later upgraded to “good standing” despite the university’s earlier pledge to expel them. Another 31 of 35 who were suspended for illegally occupying the campus with a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” were restored to good standing as well.
Amnestying those students was “disgraceful and unacceptable,” former education committee chairwoman Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said at the time.
She added, “By allowing its own disciplinary process to be thwarted by radical students and faculty, Columbia has waved the white flag in surrender while offering up a get-out-of-jail-free card to those who participated in these unlawful actions.”
Columbia University’s handling of campus antisemitism and political extremism will continue to be scrutinized, as it is now legally bound, via a civil settlement, to protect the civil rights of Jewish students. In June 2024, it settled a lawsuit in which it was accused by a student of neglecting its obligation to foster a safe learning environment amid riotous pro-Hamas protests that were held at the school throughout the final weeks of the academic year.
The resolution of the case called for Columbia to hire a “Safe Passage Liaison” who will monitor protests and “walking escorts” who will accompany students whose safety is threatened around the campus. Other details of the settlement include “accommodations” for students whose academic lives are disrupted by protests and new security policies for controlling access to school property.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Columbia University Bans Pro-Hamas Classroom Agitators From Campus first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
New Jersey Man Inspired by Hamas’s Oct. 7 Attack Pleads Guilty to Assisting Al Shabaab Terror Group
Palestinian terrorists ride an Israeli military vehicle that was seized by gunmen who infiltrated areas of southern Israel, in the northern Gaza Strip, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ahmed Zakot
Karrem Nasr, a 24 year-old man from New Jersey, has pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material support to al Shabaab, a US-designated terror group, with federal prosecutors noting that he was inspired by Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 to become a jihadist terrorist.
“Karrem Nasr devoted himself to waging violent jihad against America and its allies,” Danielle Sassoon, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement announcing the plea on Monday. “Inspired by the evil terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, Nasr, a US citizen, traveled from Egypt to Kenya in an effort to join al Shabaab so that he could execute his jihadist mission of creating death and destruction.”
The Palestinian terror group Hamas murdered 1,200 people, wounded thousands more, kidnapped 251 hostages, and started the Gaza war with its Oct. 7 onslaught, which also included widespread sexual violence against the Israeli people.
“Now, instead of perpetrating a deadly attack in the name of a foreign terrorist group, Nasr resides in federal prison,” Sassoon added. “I thank the career prosecutors of my office and our law enforcement partners for their extraordinary work in disrupting this plan and bringing a terrorist to justice.”
In the US, attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Nasr is scheduled to be sentenced by a judge on June 30.
Nasr relocated from his home in New Jersey to Egypt around July 2023, according to the US Justice Department. In November of that year, he began repeatedly expressing his desire and plans to join al Shabaab, which is based in Somalia, including in communications with an undercover FBI informant pretending to be a recruiter for terrorist groups.
Further detailing his beliefs, Nasr explained to the informant that he hoped to receive training from al Shabaab, kill innocent people, and ultimately die on behalf of the organization’s jihadist goals.
“I would like to become a martyr in the sake of Allah … I think in coming years, inshallah we are going to see here big events in Egypt and the other Arab countries. Inshallah if this happens; I will come back to Egypt, inshallah to help the Muslims in Egypt in their struggle to establish here in Egypt,” he said in one communication, according to the Justice Department.
Al Shabaab has a history of calling for violence against Jews and Israel. In 2014, Sheikh Ali Dhere, a spokesperson for the group, publicly repudiated “the Americans who stood by the Jews in their aggression against the Muslims in Gaza.”
“Muslims must attack the Jews and their properties in every place, and they must pray for their brothers in Gaza,” he said at the time.
In both his discussions with the FBI and his online postings, Nasr communicated that he was particularly motivated to engage in terrorism by the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attacks in Israel.
During his discussions, Nasr rebuked the United States as “evil” and lambasted the country as the “head of the snake.” He also warned that jihadist violence would “soon” happen across the US.
Experts have warned of a rising global terror threat in the wake of Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel, explaining to The Algemeiner that “lone wolf” terrorists inspired by Islamist groups could carry out attacks on US soil, motivated by the Oct. 7 attack and war in Gaza.
The post New Jersey Man Inspired by Hamas’s Oct. 7 Attack Pleads Guilty to Assisting Al Shabaab Terror Group first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
‘Judenrein’: CUNY Professors Blast Faculty Union for Passing ‘Antisemitic’ BDS Resolution
CUNY pro-Hamas students and supporters setup encampment at the school’s campus in New York City on April 25, 2024. Photo: Steve Sanchez via Reuters Connect
Jewish faculty at the City University of New York (CUNY) are denouncing their public sector union’s passing of a resolution which called for the adoption of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
The Professional Staff Congress (PSC) union, which represents over 30,000 CUNY staff and faculty, passed the measure on Jan. 23 by a razor thin margin of just three votes. It falsely accused Israel of war crimes and other affronts to humanity, including “genocide” and “apartheid,” and called for the union to divest its pension plan of holdings linked to “Israeli companies and Israeli government bonds no later than the end of January 2025.”
This is not the first controversial resolution passed by the CUNY faculty union. In 2021, during a previous conflict between Israel and Hamas, it voted to approve a defaming statement which accused Israel of “ongoing settler colonial violence” and demanded the the university “divest from all companies that aid in Israeli colonization, occupation, and war crimes.” Doing so set off a cascade of events, including a mass resignation of faculty from the union, the founding of new campus Jewish civil rights groups, and a major — ultimately unsuccessful — lawsuit which aimed to abolish compulsory public sector union membership.
History is repeating itself, Jewish faculty said following what has been described as the union’s latest outrage against the Jewish community.
“Since the mass exodus of Jews from the union after its antisemitic pro-BDS resolution in 2021, its delegate leadership is virtually Judenrein,” Jeffrey Lax, a Kingsborough Community College professor and founder of the advocacy group Students, Alumni, and Faculty for Equality (SAFE), told The Algemeiner on Wednesday in a statement. “This is a welcome development for the antisemitic, Marxist leaders who have been lying in wait to adopt a full BDS divestment policy, which they have now done, with few Jews still around to oppose it.”
Taking aim at PSC president James Davis, Lax continued, “Senior leaders like President James will pretend that they were against the vote as it ‘divides’ the union. No kidding. But the truth is, it’s no secret that Davis is a proud BDS supporter. We exposed video of him voting for BDS at the American Studies Association. And this is our union today: a corrupt, opaque, Jew-expunging entity that has just signed its own death knell by so blatantly breaking the law.”
Lax’s group, SAFE, is mounting an effort to thwart the resolution’s objectives, and filed on Tuesday a complaint with the New York State Division of Human Rights (DHR) alleging discrimination against Zionism, a central component of Jewish identity, and the “blatant violation” of a state executive order, EO 157, which explicitly proscribes boycotts of Israel. The letter also requested that DHR open a formal investigation of PSC CUNY to uncover any further acts of alleged antisemitism.
“It is no coincidence that hundreds — perhaps thousands — of Jewish faculty members have left the PSC union,” the complaint says. “The PSC-CUNY’s BDS boycott policy and singular divestment from Israel makes clear that Zionist Jewish and Israeli faculty members are not welcome to work with the union, will not receive the same benefits or protections, and will not receive any assistance of values from the union related or connected in any way to their protected nationality or ethnicity.”
Davis maintained in a statement issued on Wednesday that the union will continue to serve the interests of its members.
“We were elected to protect PSC members’ rights, to improve their pay and working conditions and working conditions, and to strengthen their union,” Davis said. “Keeping focus on these primary responsibilities while engaging in wider struggles for justice and peace is important, especially in this politically tumultuous movement. The PSC recently ratified a new contract and is intent on enforcing that contract and improving the working conditions of all members.”
CUNY faculty such as Queens College professor Azriel Genack, continue to be suspicious of the union’s intentions, however, and argue that its recent conduct is unbecoming of any institution which counts academics as members.
“This new PSC Resolution does not mention Hamas or its unspeakably brutal attack [in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023]: the torture, rape, mutilation, kidnapping, and massacre of entire families that broke the ceasefire that has been in place since the previous war. Now the PSC has two resolutions condemning Israel and not a single resolution condemning any other country; not Russia, Iran, China, or North Korea,” Gunack wrote in an open letter shared with The Algemeiner. “The resolution does not speak truth to power; it hides and distorts the truth in order to find soulless solidarity that disgraces CUNY by seeking to demonize a people that faces an enemy that is sworn to annihilate it, even if this entails destroying the hopes of its own people for a better life.”
The City University of New York’s campuses have been lambasted by critics as some of the most antisemitic institutions of higher education in the country.
Last year, the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) resolved half a dozen investigations of antisemitism on CUNY campuses, a consortium of undergraduate colleges located throughout New York City’s five boroughs.
The inquiries, which reviewed incidents that happened as far back as 2020, were aimed at determining whether school officials neglected to prevent and respond to antisemitic discrimination, bullying, and harassment. Hunter College and CUNY Law combined for three resolutions in total, representing half of all the antisemitism cases settled by OCR. Baruch College, Brooklyn College, and CUNY’s Central Office were the subjects of three other investigations.
One of the cases which OCR resolved, involving Brooklyn College, prompted widespread concern when it was announced in 2022. According to witness testimony provided by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law — which filed the complaint prompting the investigation — Jewish students enrolled in the college’s Mental Health Counseling (MCH) program were repeatedly pressured into saying that Jews are white people who should be excluded from discussions about social justice.
The badgering of Jewish students, the students said at the time, became so severe that one student said in a WhatsApp group chat that she wanted to “strangle” a Jewish classmate.
“Some of the harassment on CUNY campuses has become so commonplace as to almost be normalized,” the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) once alleged in July 2022. “Attacking, denigrating, and threatening ‘Zionists’ has become the norm, with the crystal-clear understanding that ‘Zionist’ is now merely an epithet for ‘Jew’ the same way ‘banker,’ ‘cabal,’ ‘globalist,’ ‘cosmopolitan,’ ‘Christ killer,’ and numerous other such dog-whistles have been used over the centuries to target, demonize, and incite against Jews.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post ‘Judenrein’: CUNY Professors Blast Faculty Union for Passing ‘Antisemitic’ BDS Resolution first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Australian Police Foil Antisemitic Attack After Finding Explosives, List of Jewish Targets
Car in New South Wales, Australia graffitied with antisemitic message. Photo: Screenshot
Australian police announced on Wednesday that they foiled a potential mass-casualty antisemitic terrorist attack after discovering a caravan in a suburb of Sydney filled with explosives and material containing details about Jewish targets.
The announcement came amid a wave of antisemitic incidents, including arson and graffiti, in Australia recent months that has alarmed the country’s Jewish community.
Law enforcement officials said police discovered a list of Jewish targets and a cache of Powergel, a mining explosive, in a trailer located in the outer suburb of Dural on Jan. 19.
According to New South Wales state Deputy Police Commissioner David Hudson, there were enough explosives to create a bomb with a blast zone of around 40 meters, or 130 feet.
“This is certainly an escalation,” Hudson said in a press conference, commenting on the recent spate of antisemitic crimes in the greater Sydney area, where businesses and vehicles have been torched and buildings vandalized with graffiti.
“The use of explosives … have the potential to cause a great deal of damage,” he added.
Hudson also confirmed that several suspects unrelated to the explosives had been arrested and that the Jewish community would be informed about the potential targets.
Chris Minns, the premier of New South Wales, referred to the incident as “terrorism,” while confirming that counterterrorism authorities are also investigating the discovery of the explosives.
“This is the discovery of a potential mass casualty event,” he said. “This would strike terror into the community, particularly the Jewish community, and it must be met with the full resources of the government.”
Antisemitism spiked to record levels in Australia — especially in Sydney and Melbourne, which are home to some 85 percent of the country’s Jewish population — following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s bloody invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, amid the ensuing war in Gaza.
In the past two months alone, at least half a dozen incidents were reported in Sydney.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar condemned the latest plot as “intolerable” in a post on the X social media platform.
“The epidemic of antisemitism is spreading in Australia almost unchecked,” he said. “We expect the Australian government to do more to stop this disease!”
The attempted antisemitic terror attack at a synagogue in Sydney is intolerable. This joins a long list of antisemitic attacks in Australia, including setting fire to a childcare center in Sydney, firebombing a synagogue in Melbourne, and many other antisemitic attacks.
The…— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) January 29, 2025
Last week, a child care center in Sydney was set alight and antisemitic graffiti was sprayed on the wall. Located near a Jewish school and synagogue in the city’s eastern section, the center suffered extensive damage, though no injuries were reported.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described the attack as “a vicious crime.”
That incident followed several recent cases of antisemitic vandalism targeting cars, homes, and synagogues.
Amid upcoming national elections to be held by mid-May, antisemitism has become a key issue, with Albanese facing criticism from the opposition for being “weak” in addressing hate crimes against Jews.
Last month, arsonists set fire to a synagogue in Melbourne, injuring one person and causing significant damage to the building.
According to a report from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), the country’s Jewish community experienced over 2,000 antisemitic incidents between October 2023 and September 2024, a significant increase from 495 in the prior 12 months.
Following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, the number of antisemitic physical assaults in Australia rose from 11 in 2023 to 65 in 2024. The level of antisemitism for the past year was six times the average of the preceding 10 years.
Amid the onslaught, law enforcement in Australia has started an investigation into the origins behind the spree of recent antisemitic crimes, announcing they suspect individuals outside the country have coordinated the campaign of hate.
The post Australian Police Foil Antisemitic Attack After Finding Explosives, List of Jewish Targets first appeared on Algemeiner.com.