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Columbia University Students Organize ‘Tuition Strike’ to Force Divestment From Israel
Anti-Israel students protest at Columbia University in New York City. Photo: Reuters/Jeenah Moon
Anti-Israel students at Columbia University in New York have organized a “strike” to withhold their tuition payments unless the school accedes to their demands, which include purging the campus of investments, trustee members, and academic programs linked to the Jewish state.
“We demand that a referendum be established for students from all schools of Columbia University on the issue of divestment from companies profiting from or otherwise supporting Israeli apartheid and Columbia’s academic ties to Israel,” the students wrote in a document outlining their demands. “This referendum will be binding; if a majority (50% +1) of students vote in favor of divestment, Columbia will immediately divest from all companies profiting from or otherwise supporting Israeli apartheid and end their academic ties to Israel.”
The students also called for Columbia to “immediately remove Board of Trustees members whose personal investments, financial commitments, employment, or other forms of business involvement entail profit from or support for Israeli apartheid.”
The strike for the 2024 spring semester has been organized by the Barnard Columbia Abolitionist Collective, the Young Democratic Socialists of America, and Student-Worker Solidarity organizations.
In a “frequently asked questions” page, the students explained the purpose of their strike. “We want our university to refuse to invest in ethnic cleansing and genocide abroad,” they wrote. “We refuse to accept our university’s silencing of student voices demanding decolonization on our campus. We refuse to allow our tuition dollars to fund apartheid.”
The student strikers did not provide evidence of Israel, the lone democracy in the Middle East, committing genocide, ethnic cleaning, or apartheid. They noted they will call for students to withhold their tuition if they amass 1,000 pledges to strike, claiming 1,000 students would represent about 10 percent of the tuition-paying student body and entail a $20 million loss in revenue for the university
The move came after Columbia suspended Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which normally organizes such anti-Israel initiatives, as an official student group on campus through the end of the fall semester for repeatably violating university policies. It also came a month after after the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition issued a Nov. 14 statement in the campus newspaper demanding the school “immediately divest all economic and academic stakes in Israel” in order to fight “Israeli apartheid” against Palestinians. The coalition falsely accused Israel of “actively committing genocide and ethnic cleansing” and called on Columbia to cancel the opening of its Tel Aviv Global Center and end a dual degree-program the school offers in partnership with Tel Aviv University.
Last week, meanwhile, Columbia Social Workers 4 Palestine planned an event to celebrate Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israeli communities as a “counteroffensive.”
As for the latest anti-Israel initiative, the students noted going on a “tuition strike” could present financial problems to participants.
“If you are on a payment plan, you can cancel it … if you’re on full or substantial financial aid, it’s still possible for you to go on strike by withholding payments,” the organizers wrote. “If your parents are paying your tuition, we encourage you to have a conversation with your parents about the demands for the tuition strike and how we can organize to protect ourselves against retaliation.”
In an explanation of their motivations, the students acknowledged that refusing to pay the university carried risk.
“The only institutional consequences of late tuition payments is an inability to register for classes with outstanding fees exceeding $1,000,” they added. “We don’t anticipate the tuition strike lasting until Fall ’24 class registration, and we will cross that bridge if it comes to that.”
Columbia has become a hub of anti-Israel activism since the Oct. 7 massacre, coming under intense scrutiny for its response to the Hamas onslaught and resultant war between Israel and the Palestinian terror group. Several students and professors have released multiple letters seemingly blaming Israel for the current conflict and rationalizing the Hamas atrocities. One professor, Jospeh Massad, in a column published in Electronic Intifada called the Hamas attacks “innovative” and referred to the terrorists who para-glided into a music festival in Israel to rape and murder the young people there as “the air force of the Palestinian resistance.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Columbia University Students Organize ‘Tuition Strike’ to Force Divestment From Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.