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Columbia University Shutters Campus as Jews Fear for Safety, Critics Call for President to Resign
Anti-Zionist protesters at Columbia University on April 18, 2024. Photo: Melissa Bender/Reuters Connect
An explosion of anti-Israel demonstrations at Columbia University in New York City continued throughout the weekend and into Monday, on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Passover, prompting the administration to shutter the campus and institute “virtual” learning.
“To deescalate rancor and give us all a chance to consider next steps, I am announcing that all classes will be held virtually on Monday,” Columbia University president Minouche Shafik said in a statement announcing the measure, the first of its kind since the COVID-19 pandemic. “Faculty and staff who can work remotely should do so; essential personnel should report to work according to university policy. Our preference is that students who do not live on campus will come to campus.”
All weekend, footage of Columbia students — who commandeered a section of campus and named it “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” — chanted in support of the Hamas terrorist group, called for the destruction of Israel, and even threatened to harm members of the Jewish community on campus.
“This unsanctioned mob of students and agitators being permitted to continue to target Jewish students has led to several documented incidents of despicable antisemitic harassment and calls for violence and terrorism,” all 10 New York Republican members of the US House of Representatives said in a letter to Shafik on Monday. “It is time for Columbia University to turn the page on this shameful chapter. This can only be done through the restoration of order and your prompt resignation. We, the undersigned members, urge you to step down immediately so that someone who will take action against this mob can step up to meet the moment this crisis demands.”
Amid the chaos at Columbia, a prominent rabbi at the school urged Jewish students to leave the campus for the sake of their safety.
Some members of the Columbia community expressed regret that their fears of students becoming vocal proponents of terrorism and subversion have been proven true.
“One thing that I’ve been telling people is that the truth is not up for election; its revelation is not dependent on popular vote,” Columbia University professor Shai Davidai, who is under investigation by the school after publicly commenting on the presence of pro-Hamas supporters on campus, told The Algemeiner on Monday. “Right now, we have a pro-Hamas, pro-Islamic Jihad mob still on campus and buried deep in the encampment, and you have pro-Hamas professors, and above all, you have the administration negotiating with them.”
Columbia University exploded into a welter of anti-Israel protests on Wednesday while Shafik was in Washington, DC testifying before the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce about antisemitism on the New York campus, where law enforcement had to be called to pacify the ongoing demonstrations on Thursday.
The situation was so severe that security officials deactivated Davidai’s identification card and temporarily banned him from campus because his safety could not be “guaranteed,” a measure which that could reflect the administration’s suspicion that its students, as well as the non-students they have attracted to campus, may resort to violence to make their point.
“Terrorism is wrong; rape is not a means to an end,” Davidai continued, referring to the atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists during their Oct. 7 invasion of Israel.. “Yes, you have the right to freedom of speech, to shout your hatred for America, but that shows bad character and it’s very sad to see exactly that happening at Columbia.”
Rabbi Erez Sherman of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles told The Algemeiner that the demonstrations at Columbia reflected the degree to which antisemitism has achieved respectability. Over the weekend, he and 200 0ther faith leaders issued an open letter expressing support for Jewish students and faculty.
“As we witness antisemitism and Jewish hate becoming normative, it is powerful to witness the unity of rabbis, pastors, and faith leaders across the theological divides stand together for what is right and what is good,” Sherman said.
Convulsions of anti-Israel activity continued at Columbia throughout Monday. In the afternoon, anti-Zionist faculty at the school, as well its affiliate Barnard College, staged a walkout in support of the pro-Hamas demonstrations. According to an open letter published in the Columbia Spectator, virtually all of them are nontenured.
“We are working to overturn the student suspensions that have been issued and to ensure that administrators are not allowed to summon the NYPD [New York City Police Department] on a whim, when there is self-evidently no danger,” the group said. “Most of all we want you to feel at home here.”
NYPD officers arrested dozens of demonstrators last week for staging a riotous and unauthorized demonstration in which students, as well as non-students, declared solidarity with Hamas and called for the destruction of Israel. Video circulated on social media over the weekend showing some of the demonstrators harassing, intimidating, and threatening Jewish students.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Columbia University Shutters Campus as Jews Fear for Safety, Critics Call for President to Resign first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
JNS.org – The Israeli airstrikes on Iran last month destroyed a secret nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, 19 miles southeast of Tehran, Axios reported on Friday.
The clandestine site held sophisticated equipment used for testing explosives needed to detonate nuclear devices, the report read, citing three US officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security acquired high-resolution satellite imagery of the facility, which showed that it was completely destroyed in Israel’s Oct. 26 attack.
Israeli and US intelligence agencies began noticing activity in the Taleghan 2 facility in the Parchin military complex in early 2024, which had been largely inactive since 2003, when the Islamic Republic froze its military nuclear program, according to Axios.
One unnamed US official quoted in the report said: “[The Iranians] conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon. It was a top secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t.”
Although President Joe Biden asked Jerusalem not to target Tehran’s nuclear facilities, the site in Parchin was chosen as a target because it was not part of Iran’s declared nuclear program.
This placed the mullah regime in a position where admitting a hit to the site would expose its efforts to resume activity forbidden by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Moreover, “The strike was a not so subtle message that the Israelis have significant insight into the Iranian system even when it comes to things that were kept top secret and known to a very small group of people in the Iranian government,” the report cited a US official as saying.
Last week, Rafael Grossi, the director of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, visited Iran for the first time since May.
He is expected to meet with his agency’s board of governors in Vienna this week for a vote on a resolution to censure Tehran for its lack of cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Speaking about the tensions between Israel and Iran, Grossi said during a news conference in Tehran on Thursday that the Islamic Republic’s “nuclear installations should not be attacked.”
Earlier in the week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz suggested that Iran’s nuclear facilities may be targeted.
Iran is “more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities. We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal—to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel,” Katz said.
Israel’s two assaults against Iran’s air defense system this year have left the country vulnerable to future attacks, with all four of Tehran’s Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries destroyed, according to U.S. media.
On April 19, Israel took out one of the S-300 systems in response to Tehran’s first-ever direct attack against the Jewish state. On Oct. 26, in response to a second Iranian attack, Israel targeted 20 sites in Iran, destroying the remaining three.
“The majority of Iran’s air defense was taken out,” a senior Israeli official told Fox News.
The post Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat
Houthi-mobilized fighters ride atop a car in Sanaa, Yemen, Sept. 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Yemen’s Houthi forces attacked “a vital target” in Israel’s Red Sea port city of Eilat with a number of drones, the Iran-aligned group’s military spokesperson Yahya Saree said on Saturday.
The terrorist group has launched dozens of attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea region since November in solidarity with Hamas.
“These operations will not stop until the aggression stops, the siege on the Gaza Strip is lifted, and the aggression on Lebanon stops,” Saree added in a televised speech.
The Houthi attacks have upended global trade by forcing ship owners to reroute vessels away from the vital Suez Canal shortcut, and drawn retaliatory U.S. and British strikes since February.
The post Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks
US Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, Sept. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
JNS.org – Muslim leaders in the United Stated who called for supporting President-elect Donald Trump at the expense of Democrat runner Kamala Harris are deeply disappointed with the former president’s Cabinet nominees, Reuters reported on Thursday.
“It’s like he’s going on Zionist overdrive,” Abandon Harris campaign co-founder Hassan Abdel Salam, a former professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, said about Trump’s recently announced picks.
“We were always extremely skeptical. … Obviously we’re still waiting to see where the administration will go, but it does look like our community has been played,” Abdel Salam told Reuters.
Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump, was cited as saying: “Trump won because of us and we’re not happy with his secretary of state pick and others.”
Some political strategists believe that the Muslim vote for Trump, or the renunciation of Harris, helped tilt several swing states such as Michigan in the favor of the Republican candidate.
“It seems like this administration has been packed entirely with neoconservatives and extremely pro-Israel, pro-war people, which is a failure on the side of President Trump, to the pro-peace and anti-war movement,” said Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network.
On Wednesday, Trump named Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as his choice to be secretary of state.
Rubio is known for his staunch pro-Israel stance, including calling on Jerusalem earlier this year to destroy “every element” of Hamas and dubbing the Gaza-based terrorist organization as “vicious animals.”
Rubio joins a slew of pro-Israel officials Trump has tapped since he won the U.S. election, including former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) as his U.N. ambassador with a seat in the Cabinet.
Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), told JNS that Trump’s focus so early in the transition process on Israel-related foreign policy picks is a mark of how his second administration will approach the region.
“That, in and of itself, signals that President Trump and his administration are going to take the region, the Middle East, the threats confronting Israel, seriously and take the U.S. friendship with Israel seriously,” Misztal said.
“The people that we’ve seen are known to be tremendously strong friends of Israel, first and foremost, but also very clear-eyed about the threats that the United States and Israel face together in the region.”
Before the election on Nov. 5, Trump promised Arab and Muslim voters he would restore stability in Lebanon and the Middle East, while criticizing the current administration’s regional policies during campaign stops targeting Muslim communities in Michigan.
Trump recently addressed Lebanese Americans, stating, “Your friends and family in Lebanon deserve to live in peace, prosperity and harmony with their neighbors, and this can only happen when there is peace and stability in the Middle East.”
Israel has been at war for more than a year on its southern and northern borders, ever since Hamas led a surprise attack on communities near the Gaza Strip border on Oct. 7, 2023, murdering some 1,200 people and abducting 251 more into the Palestinian enclave. A day later, Hezbollah joined Hamas’s efforts by firing rockets into Israel’s north.
The post Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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