Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris has reiterated his government’s intention to formally recognize a Palestinian state by the end of the month.

Ireland will “recognize the state of Palestine this month,” Harris told members of the Irish parliament this week without specifying a date. “We obviously hope to do so with some other countries.”

The comments came after Harris made a similar promise on Sunday during Ireland’s annual National Famine Commemoration.

“What I can tell you is that it is absolutely our intention to recognize the state of Palestine this month and there is not that long left in this month,” he said.

“The specific date will be decided in the coming days,” Harris added, explaining that “there is important sequencing that our country and other countries have to carry out. I mean political processes that have to be followed, and they differ slightly from country to country.”

Harris’s remarks over the weekend followed a tense phone exchange with Israeli President Isaac Herzog over the weekend.

“I had a good conversation with the president of Israel. We had a firm and respectful conversation,” Harris said. “It is my job as the Taoiseach [prime minister] of this country to speak up for the Irish position and speak out on behalf of the people of Ireland and the Irish position in relation to the Middle East, to Gaza, and to Israel.”

When asked about the prospect of Ireland and Israel breaking diplomatic relations, Harris responded, “Certainly Ireland doesn’t wish to sever diplomatic relations. You can strongly disagree with a country; you can differentiate between the government of a country and the people of a country.”

The Irish premier echoed that point while speaking to lawmakers this week.

“Ireland has decided to maintain diplomatic links with Israel,” he said. “We maintain diplomatic links with countries even if we abhor their actions.”

Harris was responding to outcry among members of Ireland’s parliament who objected to the presence of Israel’s ambassador to Ireland, Dana Erlich, at the famine commemoration.

Harris defended Erlich’s presence but attacked the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “I abhor the actions of the Netanyahu government regarding what is happening in the Middle East,” he said in an apparent reference to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

Harris’s comments came after Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin similarly said last week that Ireland will recognize a Palestinian state before the end of this month.

“We will be recognizing the state of Palestine before the end of the month,” Martin told Newstalk radio. “The specific date is still fluid because we’re still in discussions with some countries in respect of a joint recognition.”

Some European leaders, especially in Spain and Ireland, have been calling for countries to recognize a Palestinian state, arguing doing so would help foster a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which, they argue, would lead to lasting peace in the region.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Friday teased his plans to recognize a Palestinian state.

Specifically, Sanchez said in an interview with TV channel La Sexta that on Wednesday he would announce the date on which Madrid, along with other countries, will recognize a “State of Palestine.”

Similar to his Irish counterpart, Sanchez said he would only recognize a Palestinian state in a joint action with other countries and denied reports that the recognition would occur on May 21.

Israel has warned European countries that unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip would effectively amount to a “reward for terrorism” that would reduce the chances of a negotiated resolution to the conflict — a point echoed by Netanyahu last week.

“We will not reward the terrible massacre of Oct. 7, which 80 percent of the Palestinians support, both in Gaza and the West Bank,” Netanyahu said in a statement, referencing Palestinian polling that has shown widespread support for Hamas’ atrocities. “We will not allow them to establish a terrorist state from which they will be able to vigorously attack us.”

He added, “Nobody will prevent us, prevent Israel, from realizing our basic right to self-defense — not the UN General Assembly or any other body. We will stand together with our head held high to defend our country.”

Netanyahu’s comments came after the Israeli cabinet unanimously approved a proposal to oppose a UN resolution promoting recognition of a Palestinian state.

Spain and Ireland have been among the most vocal critics of Israel since Oct. 7, when the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas invaded the Jewish state from neighboring Gaza. The terrorists murdered 1,200 people and abducted over 250 others as hostages in their rampage, the deadliest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Israel responded with an ongoing military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and destroying Hamas, which rules Gaza.

Antisemitism in Ireland has become “blatant and obvious” in the wake of the Hamas onslaught, according to Alan Shatter, a former member of parliament who served in the Irish cabinet between 2011 and 2014 as Minister for Justice, Equality and Defense.

Shatter told The Algemeiner in an interview earlier this year that Ireland has “evolved into the most hostile state towards Israel in the entire EU.”

The post Irish PM Reiterates Intention to Recognize Palestinian State This Month, Says He ‘Abhors’ Israeli Actions in Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, has agreed on terms for ending a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on campus that Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) had lived in for nearly a month, the school’s president, Michael Roth, announced.

According to details of the agreement shared by SJP, no one will be punished for violating school rules to hold the protest, a condition on which the group insisted in its original list of demands. Wesleyan has also agreed to create scholarships for “displaced” Palestinian students, form a working group comprising anti-Zionists which will “review” the possibility of an academic boycott of Israeli institutions, disclose its investments in what SJP called the “military industrial complex” and Israeli companies — a provision of the deal the school has already satisfied —and consider investment recommendations by an anti-Zionist group of students and faculty.

“Later this month, representatives from the pro-Palestinian protest will meet members of the Investment Committee,” Roth said in a statement issued on Friday. “In the fall, the Committee for Investor Responsibility (CIR) — a standing representative body of students, faculty, alumni, and staff — will be able to propose changes to the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) framework for investment/divestment for consideration by the board at its fall meeting.”

SJP openly disputed Roth’s account of the agreement on Tuesday, denying that it stipulated their abstaining from staging protests at the school’s upcoming commencement ceremonies. Roth said, “The protesters agreed not to disrupt reunion and commencement events. Individuals who refuse to comply will be suspended and face legal action,” to which SJP responded by accusing him of communicating threats.

“Wesleyan President Michael Roth wrote that we agreed to not [sic] disrupt reunion and commencement,” SJP wrote on social media. “This is a lie. There is no language in our agreement preventing protesting this weekend, and we would never compromise our right to protest Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.”

The end of the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Wesleyan came several weeks after Roth chastised the protesters for vandalizing school property and threatened the perpetrators with “suspension, expulsion, and legal charges.” He did not, in Friday’s statement, disclose the status of the university’s investigations into those acts.

Wesleyan is not the first school to accede to key demands put forward by anti-Zionist protesters. Indeed, campus antisemitism expert and founder of antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative Tammi Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner on Tuesday that the role of faculty in forcing similar outcomes at other colleges needs to be scrutinized.

“These developments are not organic,” Rossman-Benjamin explained, noting that a highly esteemed Wesleyan professor — J. Kēhaulani Kauanui — is an active proponent of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. In 2013, Kauanui was the “architect” of an American Studies Association resolution to adopt BDS, which ultimately passed, and she is the principal founder of Wesleyan University’s Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapter.

“In fact, she was teaching a course this semester on Anarchy in America and ‘shared her expertise’ with the encampment students a couple of weeks ago,” Rossman-Benjamin continued. “In addition, two Wesleyan faculty leaders — chair of Wesleyan’s Educational Policy Committee (EPC) Joseph Weiss and committee member Margot Weiss — are also founding members of the school’s FJP chapter, which has committed itself to endorsing and promoting academic BDS. Not surprisingly, according to the agreement with student protesters, the EPC gets to nominate three faculty to a working group which will determine the fate of Wesleyan’s study abroad programs in Israel.”

Rossman-Benjamin warned that these professors proclaim their anti-Zionist views in the classroom, radicalizing students while introducing them to antisemitic ideologies and others which trample academic freedom.

“It undoubtedly took lots of faculty clout to ‘convince’ Roth — who has been a vocal opponent of academic BDS, calling it a ‘repugnant attack on academic freedom’ — to cave to student demands, demands that directly harm and violate the rights of Jewish students, not Israeli students or Israeli faculty, but US students,” she said. “Not only is this faculty behavior wholly and shamefully unprofessional and antithetical to the educational and scholarly mission of the university, it is breathtaking in its hypocrisy. These same faculty who cry free speech and academic freedom every chance they get have dedicated themselves to shutting down the free speech and academic freedom of their students and colleagues who want to study in or about Israel, or who identify with the Jewish state. This abuse must be exposed and stopped.”

Earlier this month, Northwestern University in Illinois agreed to establish a new scholarship for Palestinian undergraduates, contact potential employers of students who caused recent campus disruptions to insist on their being hired, and create a segregated dormitory hall that will be occupied exclusively by Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) and Muslim students. It also agreed to form a new investment committee in which anti-Zionists students and faculty may wield an outsized voice.

Days later, Brown University in Rhode Island announced that it will hold a vote on divesting from companies linked to Israel in exchange for the students disassembling their encampment and abstaining from holding more protests until the school’s commencement on May 26, according to the Brown Daily Herald. The student newspaper added, however, that the university will not “at this time” drop criminal charges filed against 41 students who illegally occupied an administrative building in December.

At least one school president, Mike Lee of Sonoma State University, has been disciplined for agreeing to boycott and divest from Israel. After announcing his committing to subject “all” the university’s financial endeavors to SJP’s scrutiny, implement a full academic boycott of Israel — including shutting down study abroad programs in the Jewish state — create a “Palestinian” curriculum within the department of ethnic studies, and issue a statement calling for a “permanent cease-fire in Gaza,” the California State University (CSU) system, of which Sonoma State University is a member, said the next day that Lee was placed on administrative leave.

CSU chancellor Mildred García described his actions as “insubordination.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Wesleyan University Brokers Deal to End Anti-Israel Encampment, Conceding to Key Demands first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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.