RSS
Columbia University Threatens to Expel Protesters Occupying Building
A student protester parades a Palestinian flag outside the entrance to Hamilton Hall on the campus of Columbia University, in New York, U.S., April 30, 2024. Photo: Mary Altaffer/Pool via REUTERS
Columbia University officials threatened to expel activists on Tuesday after they seized and occupied an academic building as the standoff between administrators and student protesters intensified.
Shortly after midnight on Tuesday, protesters broke windows and entered Hamilton Hall, where they unfurled a banner reading “Hind’s Hall,” symbolically renaming the building for a six-year-old Palestinian child killed in Gaza by the Israeli military.
Outside the academic building – the site of various student occupations dating back to the 1960s – protesters blocked the entrance with tables, linked arms to form a barricade and chanted anti-Israel slogans.
A university spokesperson said protesters had chosen to escalate an “untenable situation” and that the school’s top priority is the safety and order on campus.
“The work of the university cannot be endlessly interrupted by protesters who violate the rules. Continuing to do so will be met with clear consequences,” school spokesperson Ben Chang said in a statement.
Chang said students occupying the building face expulsion.
One of the lead negotiators for the coalition of student protest groups said Columbia officials contacted him through mediators to ascertain the demands of the activists occupying Hamilton Hall.
“Once they decide to come back to the table we can talk about demands,” said Mahmoud Khalil, who said he was off-campus. “These students felt hurt and abandoned by the administration because it did not listen to their demands, so they had to do things differently.”
On Monday, Columbia University began suspending anti-Israel student activists, including Khalil, for refusing to dismantle the protest camp on the campus after the Ivy League school declared a stalemate in talks seeking to end the demonstration.
University President Nemat Minouche Shafik said in a statement that days of negotiations between student organizers and academic leaders had failed to persuade demonstrators to remove the dozens of tents set up to express opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza.
Protesters on the Manhattan campus are demanding that Columbia meets three demands: divestment from companies that support Israel’s government, transparency in university finances, and amnesty for students and faculty disciplined for their part in the protests.
Shafik this week said Columbia would not divest from finances in Israel. Instead, she offered to invest in health and education in Gaza and make Columbia’s direct investment holdings more transparent.
After students entered the Columbia building, the school sent out a notice saying access to the campus had been limited to students residing in residential buildings on campus and employees providing essential services.
New York City police officers arrived outside the school gates in unmarked cars moments after the protesters entered the building, the Columbia Spectator newspaper reported. Police told the paper they would only enter school grounds if someone was injured.
MORE PROTESTS, MORE ARRESTS
The building occupation at Columbia is at the center of Gaza-related protests roiling university campuses across the U.S. in recent weeks.
Students at dozens of campuses from California to New England have set up similar tent encampments to demonstrate their anger over the Israeli operation in Gaza.
The anti-Israel rallies have sparked intense campus debate over where school officials should draw the line between freedom of expression and hate speech.
At Cal Poly Humboldt University, police early on Tuesday swarmed the campus, where students were occupying a school building, and starting detaining people, local media reported.
Police late on Monday had declared the protest an unlawful assembly and warned people they faced arrest if they did not disperse.
The campus was earlier closed to all people except students and faculty because of the ongoing protest. Information was not immediately available on how many people may have been detained.
Civil rights groups have criticized law enforcement tactics on some campuses where police have clashed with protesters and have used chemical irritants to disperse crowds.
Arrests continued at a number of schools across the country.
Police detained about 30 protesters at their encampment at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill early on Tuesday after the university gave them until 6 a.m. local time to disperse, according to a statement from the school, noting that students had trespassed into classroom buildings overnight.
At the University of Texas at Austin, police arrested dozens of students whom they doused with pepper spray at a pro-Palestinian rally on Monday.
Protesters also squared off with police at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Police used chemical irritants on the crowd and detained numerous people. The protesters had set up a “liberation zone” of tents surrounded by barriers.
“After repeated warnings and refusal to disperse, law enforcement must protect Virginians,” Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, wrote on social media after the incident.
The post Columbia University Threatens to Expel Protesters Occupying Building first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Trump Courts Arab American Leaders in Swing States Amid Growing Displeasure With Biden
Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, US, April 2, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Rebecca Cook
Former US President Donald Trump is making an effort to court Arab American leaders amid their growing frustration with incumbent President Joe Biden over several issues, including his policy regarding the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
This week, Trump’s former ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, organized a dinner for Arab American leaders in Michigan to try and get them not just to abstain from voting for Biden — but actually to endorse and vote for Trump, according to The Washington Post.
Grenell is not formally a part of the Trump campaign, but he was recently referred to as “my envoy” by the former president.
There has been a measurable shift regarding who Arab Americans plan to vote for in November’s presidential election compared to who they voted for in 2020. A New York Times-Siena College poll released last week found that 57 percent of Arab and Muslim voters in five key battleground states said they planned to vote for Trump, compared to just 25 percent who said they would back Biden.
In contrast, the Post noted, those who said they voted in 2020 reported they had supported Biden 56-35 at the time.
The shift raises questions over how potential endorsements from Arab American leaders in swing states could affect Trump’s rhetoric regarding the Israel-Hamas war.
At times, Trump has called for Israel to quickly finish the war and demurred when asked whether he stood with the Jewish state “100 percent.” However, at other times, he has blasted Biden for being what he described as insufficiently pro-Israel.
But key Arab American endorsements are unlikely to cause a major shift in Trump’s rhetoric. A number of the people invited to the dinner organized by Grenell did not specifically name the war in Gaza as the root of their displeasure with Biden. Some object to his enforcement of sanctions on Syria, while others argue he has not taken any explicit steps to benefit the American Muslim community, according to the Post.
Additionally, recent polling has shown the American people at large support Israel’s war effort against the Hamas terror group in Gaza.
The Harvard CAPS Harris poll for May found that 79 percent of Americans support Israel more in the war than Hamas, 70 percent believe Israel is taking steps to avoid civilian casualties, and two-thirds do not believe a ceasefire should happen until all the Israeli hostages seized by Hamas are returned and the terrorist group is removed from power.
A majority of Americans have a favorable attitude toward Israel and believe that Biden not providing certain weapons to Israel would “embolden Hamas and [its] backers.”
Meanwhile, 74 percent of Americans believe Israel should move forward with a military operation in Rafah, and 69 percent — including majorities in both parties and independents — say Hamas is mostly to blame for the current crisis in Gaza.
The post Trump Courts Arab American Leaders in Swing States Amid Growing Displeasure With Biden first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Blinken Blasts ICC Request for Netanyahu’s Arrest, Says He’ll Work With Congress on Response to ‘Shameful’ Move
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Photo: Screenshot
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday lambasted the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor’s office for demanding arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense chief, saying he would work with lawmakers “to find an appropriate response” to the move.
The ICC’s chief prosecutor on Monday officially requested arrest warrants for the Israeli premier, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas terrorist leaders — Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Al-Masri, and Ismail Haniyeh — accusing all five men of “bearing criminal responsibility” for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Israel or the Gaza Strip.
US and Israeli officials issued blistering condemnations of the ICC move, decrying the court for drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s democratically elected leaders and the heads of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that launched the ongoing war in Gaza with its Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.
Appearing before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee the next day, Blinken was pressed on whether he would support imposing sanctions on the ICC in response to its decision.
“As you know, within the last administration, the Trump people did an executive order to do sanctions on certain members of the ICC who are investigating us for things that happened in Afghanistan,” Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), the ranking member of the committee, said to Blinken. “President Biden’s administration came in and dissolved that executive order, as you know.”
Risch then grilled Blinken on whether he would back a “legislative approach” to prevent the ICC from “sticking its nose in the business of countries that have an independent, legitimate, democratic judicial system.”
“Can you support this?” Risch continued. “Obviously, the devil’s in the details in the legislation. But, do you think you could support a legislative approach to this?”
Blinken stated that he would be willing to work with both Republicans and Democrats on a “bipartisan basis to find an appropriate response” to the ICC targeting Israeli leaders.
Blinken added that the Biden administration originally lifted sanctions and visa restrictions on the ICC shortly after US President Joe Biden took office in 2021 with the goal of protecting American military personnel who served in Afghanistan. The top US diplomat claimed that the administration succeeded in its original goal but suggested that Monday’s actions by the ICC could lead policymakers in Washington to reverse course.
“Given the events of yesterday, I think we have to look at the appropriate steps to take to deal with, again, what is a profoundly wrong-headed decision,” Blinken said.
Republican leaders in the US Congress have threatened to push legislation that would impose sanctions on the ICC in response to its decision to seek arrest warrants for Israeli leaders.
On Monday, Blinken released a statement condemning the ICC for its decision to target Israel over its handling of the war against Hamas in Gaza.
Blinken said the US “fundamentally rejects” the ICC’s announcement.
“Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization that carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and is still holding dozens of innocent people hostage, including Americans,” he added. “We reject the prosecutor’s equivalence of Israel with Hamas. It is shameful.”
Blinken said that the ICC had “no jurisdiction over this matter,” noting that both Israel and the US are not parties of the Rome Statute, the international treaty that established the court.
The ICC claims it has jurisdiction over Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank since Palestinian leaders agreed in 2015 to be bound by the court’s founding principles.
Regardless, Blinken said, the court’s treatment of Israel had undermined its “legitimacy and credibility.”
A panel of ICC judges will now consider the prosecutor’s application for the arrest warrants and whether there is sufficient evidence to issue them.
The post Blinken Blasts ICC Request for Netanyahu’s Arrest, Says He’ll Work With Congress on Response to ‘Shameful’ Move first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Cate Blanchett Appears to Show Palestinian Solidarity With Gown on Cannes Film Festival Red Carpet
Cate Blanchett poses on the red carpet during arrivals for the screening of the film “The Apprentice” in competition at the 77th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France, May 20, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne
Australian actress Cate Blanchett attended the premiere of “The Apprentice” at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival on Monday wearing a gown that, according to some observers, appeared to be a show of solidarity with Palestinians amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
The Oscar winner, 55, wore a custom color-blocked gown by Colombian-French designer Haider Ackermann for Jean Paul Gaultier from the Spring 2023 Haute Couture collection, which was released after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel. Blanchett’s dress had a blush pink silk satin back and emerald silk satin lining. She added a necklace made from repurposed pearls and diamonds while attending the premiere of her film at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, France. While posing on the red carpet, the actress lifted the back of the dress to draw attention to the emerald green lining.
The original dress that walked the runway in January was shorter and had a lime green back and purple satin lining. Blanchett changed the colors of the gown for the Cannes Film Festival on Monday and, against the backdrop of the red carpet, some people claimed it looked similar to the black, white, and green Palestinian flag — especially since the blush pink part of her gown photographed as white.
Several social media users suggested that the actress “coordinated her outfit to look like the flag of #Palestine” while others called it a “Palestine-inspired dress.” One social media user who shared a photo of Blanchett in the Jean Paul Gaultier gown said the actress was “using one’s influence for a good cause [and] reminding where good humans stand: for liberation, against genocidal occupation.”
THIS WOMAN
Cate Blanchett aka Galadriel from the Lord of the Rings knew that the carpet at Cannes Film Festival would be red, so she designed her outfit in Black White & Green, so that when she stands on red carpet, it looks like the flag of Palestine pic.twitter.com/mXvDkzn9zz
— Waseem ವಸೀಮ್ وسیم (@WazBLR) May 21, 2024
Cate Blanchett aka Queen Hela showing solidarity with Palestine at Cannes Film Festival. We stan. pic.twitter.com/Zw7hzfnltB
— Ikhwan (@JatIkhwan) May 21, 2024
Vogue Arabia‘s Editor Livia Giuggioli Firth also seemed to think Blanchett’s gown was a nod to Palestinians. She posted on Instagram a picture of Blanchett wearing the gown on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival and wrote in the caption, “I LOVE U CATE cannes #cannesfilmfestival when the carpet has meaning.”
In October, after the Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel, Blanchett joined other celebrities in signing a letter addressed to US President Joe Biden that urged him to call for a ceasefire in Israel and Gaza. The following month, Blanchett — who is a goodwill ambassador of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) — called for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip while addressing the European Parliament Plenary Session.
“I am not Syrian. I am not Ukrainian. I am not Yemeni. I am not Afghani. I am not from South Sudan. I am not from Israel or Palestine. I am not a politician. I am not even a pundit. But I am a witness,” she said. “And having witnessed the human cost of war, violence and persecution visiting refugees from across the globe, I cannot look away.”
Blanchett and Ackermann have not commented on the dress and if it was intentionally made to resemble the Palestinian flag.
The post Cate Blanchett Appears to Show Palestinian Solidarity With Gown on Cannes Film Festival Red Carpet first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login