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‘Compulsory Measures’: Columbia University Served Subpoena for Antisemitism Documents
A student protester parades a Palestinian flag outside the entrance to Hamilton Hall on the campus of Columbia University, in New York, US, April 30, 2024. Photo: Mary Altaffer/Pool via REUTERS
The US House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce on Wednesday subpoenaed Columbia University to submit documents related to its handling of antisemitic incidents during the 2023-2024 academic year.
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the chairwoman of the committee who has much publicized her impatience for bureaucratic dallying, first threatened the action earlier this month, insisting that the materials the university has been already asked to provide voluntarily are “critical” to the committee’s investigation of its response to a burst of antisemitic incidents which occurred on campus following Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.
“Columbia should be a partner in our efforts to ensure Jewish students have a safe learning environment on its campus, but instead, university administrators have slow rolled the investigation, repeatedly failing to turn over necessary documents,” Foxx said in a statement announcing the subpoena. “The information we have obtained points to a continued pattern of negligence towards antisemitism and refusal to stand up to the radical students and faculty responsible for it.”
She added, “The goal of this investigation has always been to protect Jewish students and faculty, and if compulsory measures are necessary to obtain the documents the committee requires, so be it.”
Columbia University may have reason to delay compliance with the education committee’s request, which demands of it the sharing of internal communications and other correspondence. Such documents caused an explosive scandal earlier this summer, revealing that four administrators participated in a group-chat in which, according to former Columbia president Minouche Shafik, text messages that “touched disturbingly on ancient antisemitic tropes” were exchanged. A leak of the correspondence touched off a public relations conflagration which ultimately ended with a series of resignations, most notably Shafik’s.
The compulsory measure followed Foxx’s committee reporting on Monday that Columbia University punished few of the students who were involved in occupying the Hamilton Hall administrative building and staging a riot which prompted the university, fearing an outbreak of racial violence, to revoke a Jewish professor’s access to campus. According to documents it shared, 18 of the 22 students slapped with disciplinary charges for their role in the incident remain in “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” remain in good standing too.
Columbia is in the process of installing new leadership to lead it through what is perhaps the most challenging chapter of its history since 1968. It selected Katrina Armstrong, MD, as its interim president following the collapse of Shafik’s administration, which was prompted by what many observers perceived as a refusal to protect Jewish students from antisemitic discrimination, harassment, and assault.
Shafik, who took office in 2023, had managed to survive a grating US congressional hearing earlier this year in which Republican lawmakers accused her of capitulating to riotous pro-Hamas demonstrators, who, following Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, flagrantly broke rules proscribing hate speech and unauthorized protests. Pledging to correct her alleged failures, Shafik seemed poised to continue leading Columbia University with the full support of its trustees and most of its faculty. However, the out of court settlement and text message scandal crumbled the little credibility she had with the public.
“I have tried to navigate a path that upholds academic principles and treats everyone with fairness and compassion,” she said in ending what is reportedly the shortest presidential tenure at Columbia since the 19th century. “It has been distressing — for the community, for me as president, and on a personal level — to find myself, colleagues, and students the subject of threats and abuse. As President Lincoln said, ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand’ — we must do all we can to resist the forces of polarization in our community. I remain optimistic that differences can be overcome through the honest exchange of views, truly listening — and always — by treating each other with dignity and respect. Again, Columbia’s core mission to create and acquire knowledge, with our values as foundation, will lead us there.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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IDF Finds Terror Tunnel Next to Hospital in Samaria
Israeli troops during counterterrorism activity in Tulkarem, northwestern Samaria, September 2024. Photo: IDF.
JNS.org – Israeli forces discovered a tunnel during a counterterror operation in the Tulkarem camp in the West Bank, the IDF said on Friday.
According to the Israeli military, the underground complex was located adjacent to a hospital in the camp, situated north of the city of the same name, and contained an entrance but no exit, as it was still under construction.
“The forces are continuing to investigate the complex and will dismantle it,” the IDF added.
While Hamas built a vast terror tunnel network in the Gaza Strip over many years that the Israeli army has been working to dismantle since war started on Oct. 7, these types of tunnels are rare in the West Bank, where the IDF regularly operates to locate and destroy terrorist infrastructure.
The tunnel was found as the IDF restarted its major operation in the West Bank and the Jordan Valley on Sept. 10, which has been dubbed “Summer Camps” and was initially launched on Aug. 28.
Since the operation resumed, the IDF has killed more than 10 armed terrorists in ground and aerial attacks, including four in the areas of Tulkarem and Nur Shams, the army said. Three of the latter terrorists were killed in an aerial strike on Sept. 11, and the fourth in close-quarters combat.
One of the three killed in the aerial strike was named by the IDF as Muhammad Abu Ataya. He was suspected of killing Master Sgt. (res.) Maxim Rizkov, 30, from Beersheva, of the Israel Border Police’s Yamas undercover unit, on Oct. 18, 2023.
In addition, the IDF said that it hit another 15 terrorists during the operation, without specifying whether they were wounded or killed or how they were attacked.
During a 48-hour counterterrorism operation in the areas of Tubas, Tamun and Far’ar, Israeli forces killed a terrorist throwing explosive devices during exchanges of fire. The forces also located a vehicle rigged with explosives. Inside, they found explosive devices and a long-range detonation system that was dismantled.
In all the areas of activity, Israeli forces seized large amounts of weapons, including sniper rifles, two M-16s, handguns and additional weaponry.
In Tulkarem, forces located and dismantled four bomb manufacturing laboratories and four operational communications centers equipped with cameras. Additionally, a machine used to manufacture weapons, within which weapon parts were found, and many IEDs in the area were dismantled.
Furthermore, five armed terrorists were killed by an aircraft in Tubas.
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France: Antisemitic Tag at Memorial for Murdered Jewish Women
A postcard campaign calling for justice for Sarah Halimi addressed to French President Emmanuel Macron. Photo: courtesy of Israelite Consistoire of Haut-Rhin
JNS.org – A memorial garden in Nogent-sur-Marne, France, dedicated to two victims of gruesome antisemitic murders in Paris in 2017 and 2018, respectively, was defaced with a swastika.
The city mayor, Jacques Martin, strongly condemned the act, describing it as “vandalism” and stating that “hatred has no place in Nogent.”
The municipality quickly removed the antisemitic tag and made available to investigators CCTV recordings of the area.
The garden, inaugurated in November 2022, is of particular importance to the community.
Sarah Halimi, born in Nogent-sur-Marne in November 1951, spent some 30 years of her life there as a nursery director before her tragic murder in Paris.
The mayor stressed that, until now, Nogent-sur-Marne had been spared by the upsurge in antisemitism seen nationwide in recent months.
He said he is determined not to let such behavior take root in his city, declaring that ignorance and hatred would not be tolerated. He affirmed the town’s determination to preserve the memory of Sarah Halimi and Mireille Knoll, refusing to see them “murdered a second time.”
In April 2021, the French Supreme Court ruled that Halimi’s murderer was criminally irresponsible. Twenty-five thousand people gathered across France on April 25, 2021, at the call of citizens’ groups and representatives of the Jewish community, to protest the lack of a trial following the murder.
Halimi, 65, was beaten to death in her Paris apartment before being defenestrated by her 27-year-old neighbor, to cries of “Allah Akbar” (“God is the greatest” in Arabic).
Mireille Knoll, who had fled Paris in 1942 to escape the Vel d’Hiv roundup, was stabbed 11 times and her body burned.
Her two killers were convicted in 2021—one was acquitted of murder but sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment for theft, and the other was sentenced to life imprisonment with a 22-year security period for murder, with the aggravating circumstance that the victim belonged to the Jewish community.
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Man Who Set Himself Afire in Boston Reportedly Was Anti-Israel Protester
Members of UMass Boston’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine surround, shove and hurl epithets at CAMERA researcher Dexter Van Zile outside the ADL office in the city. June 24, 2021. Source: X
JNS.org – A man set himself ablaze in downtown Boston, not far from the Boylston Street entrance to the Public Garden shortly after 8 p.m. on Wednesday.
It wasn’t clear what the man’s motives were, but the incident occurred at 19 Columbus Avenue, according to a report that the Boston Police Department provided to JNS. That address is in the vicinity of the Consulate General of Israel to New England.
The man was transported to Massachusetts General Hospital with “severe burn wounds,” per the police report. The report stated that the incident wasn’t a suspected hate crime.
Video that circulated on social media purported to be from the man. In the video, a man who identified himself as Matt Nelson said that he would engage in “an extreme act of protest,” and that “we are all culpable in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
The man also spoke in the video of everyone being “slaves to capitalism and the military industrial complex,” and said that Washington must stop supporting the Jewish state and must back the (proposed) International Criminal Court indictment against Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Free Palestine,” the man in the video added. (JNS sought comment from the Israeli consulate.)
A Boston Globe staffer with the same name as the man in the video posted that some had mistaken him for the man in the video.
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