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Documented Proof: Outrages Happening on College Campuses Against Israel

Eaton Hall at Tufts University. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

In March, anti-Israel activities on college campuses were characterized by the rapid revival of resolutions or referendums, which frequently accused Israel of genocide:

The Tufts University student government approved a Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) resolution that demanded divestment from Israel, the end of study abroad programs in Israel, boycott of specific products on campus, and university acknowledgement of the Palestinian “genocide.” Jewish students report having been spat on and verbally abused during the debate, which was not conducted according to established procedure. The university rejected the call for BDS, and claimed it would investigate abuse of Jewish students.
The University of California at Santa Cruz student government approved a boycott resolution calling on the university system to divest from Israel and companies working in Israel.
The Barnard College student government approved a motion to present a BDS referendum to the student body. The referendum calls for “1. Divesting all stocks, funds, and endowment and refrain from further investment in companies profiting from or engaging in Israeli apartheid; 2. Canceling the opening of the Tel Aviv Global Center; 3. Ceasing the Dual Degree Program between Columbia University and Tel Aviv University.”
Union Theological Seminary’s student government passed a resolution demanding divestment, and calling to “End all promotion of Israeli Settler-colonialism via academic ties through including but not limited to Fulbright Israel as well as hosting any Zionist speakers amplifying settler-colonial propaganda.”
Vanderbilt University administrators canceled a student government vote on a BDS resolution after warning the measure would contravene state law regarding divestment from Israel. In response, protestors occupied an administration building for 22 hours where they reported “inhumane” treatment by police, including denial of bathroom access. Twenty-five students were arrested and 16 were suspended.

Protests demanding divestment were held at other campuses including a disruption of the annual Honors Convocation at the University of Michigan, the University of California at Santa Barbara, UCLA, Edinburgh University (where a building was occupied overnight), University College London (where a room was occupied, and demands for divestment were issued), and at Emerson College, where 13 students were arrested protesting the inauguration of the new president.

Pro-Israel speakers were harassed and canceled at a number of campuses:

At the University of Kentucky, protestors disrupted a speech by pundit Ian Haworth, causing the police to clear the building, after which protestors pulled a fire alarm. No arrests were made. One protestor was quoted as saying “Wow, okay, we disrupted it successfully.’ That was our whole thing, we don’t want this individual to even have space to speak at our institution.”
At the University of California at Irvine, the Jewish Studies program head stated that he could no longer hold public events related to Israel due to persistent harassment by pro-Hamas protestors, and that even talks on Yiddish and the Holocaust had been disrupted. No disciplinary measures have been taken by the university.
A talk at Indiana University by former Hamas member Mosab Hassan Yousef was also canceled after the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter accused him of “Islamophobia,” resulting in threats from the local Muslim community.
A talk at Georgetown University Law School by an Israeli reservist was disrupted by pro-Hamas protestors, who warned the speaker’s “proximity to these crimes make it likely that he contributed to the war crimes and genocide in Gaza.”

The Muslim Student Association at Concordia University demanded the institution ban “Islamophobic language,” and also provided a long list of terms that would result in a group being banned. These included “jihadist,” “Hamas supporter,” “rape apologist,” “Islamist,” “Shariah,” and many more.

Harassment of Jewish and Israeli students also continued on campuses:

At Concordia University, members of the Supporting Palestinian Human Rights club trapped Jewish students gathered in a Chabad room, banging on walls and screaming at them until campus security arrived. The pro-Hamas students were not sanctioned.
Pro-Hamas students continue a blockade of a main gate at the University of California at Berkeley, with reports indicating Jewish students are avoiding the area after incidents of harassment. The university later agreed to “post observers who can monitor and report on the situation” at the site.
At Exeter University, Jewish students manning a CAMERA on Campus booth in a student union were surrounded by a mob of more than 100 people, and forced to flee. Exeter had been previously known for faculty and student celebrations of the October 7 massacre and denialism regarding sexual abuse by Hamas.

University facilities vandalized by pro-Hamas protestors include a computing laboratory at Cambridge University and inside a student union at Manchester University, where “kikes out” and “up Hamas” were scrawled. Jewish institutions on campus also continued to be vandalized, including the Queens College Hillel (which also received threatening messages), the University of Texas at Austin’s Hillel building, along with buildings associated with Zionists — including the Golda Meir Library at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, which was vandalized with “Free Palestine.

One new study shows that Jewish students are hiding their identities, and pay a social penalty for supporting Israel. Another study indicates that very liberal students know they are expected to not be friends with Israel supporters but at the same time know they are not supposed to discriminate. Overall, the conformist culture of elite schools in particular helps amplify anti-Israel attitudes.

Faculty members continue to take aggressive stances attacking Israel and in defense of Palestinians and Hamas. Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapters dedicated to supporting SJP chapters continue to spread to “raise awareness about settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, genocidal policies and actions, and everyday violence against Palestinians,” and are invariably accompanied by claims that “pro-Palestine speech” is being “silenced.”

Faculty are also at the forefront of normalizing pro-Hamas viewpoints. One example at Barnard College is a session called “Resistance 101” hosted by the Barnard Center for Research on Women which featured Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) leader Khaled Barakat. Upon questioning, Columbia University canceled what it called an unsanctioned event, which was then moved to a private space on campus. Observers argued that the event constituted material support for terrorism since the PFLP is a designated terrorist organization.

Faculty members have taken the lead in demanding their universities terminate relationships with Israel. University of Turin faculty members voted to end a research agreement with Israeli universities. The University of Montreal’s SGPPUM faculty union also voted to demand the university cut off relations with Israeli universities as well as demand an arms embargo and a ceasefire.

The US Department of Education continues to open investigations of antisemitism at colleges and universities, as well as public schools, and the House Committee on Education and the Workforce expanded its own investigation to include UC Berkeley. Committee chair Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) noted that Harvard’s failure to comply with a subpoena for documents could result in a cutoff of some $625 million in Federal funding.

Anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda from K-12 teachers remained a focal point in March. Elementary school indoctrination was one focus, as was targeting Jewish teachers:

The Stanford University Arboretum Children’s Center for children of university employees was decorated with Palestinian flags and watermelon symbols.
Berkeley (CA) elementary school students were directed to write “stop bombing babies” on notes, and attach them to the door of the school’s only Jewish teacher.
The Maplewood (NJ) school district distributed an email encouraging teachers to discuss Ramadan in the context of the “Israeli genocide” against Palestinians.

The systemic nature of antisemitism at the K-12 levels, and the manner in which teachers’ unions have been co-opted by anti-Israel activism, was demonstrated in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Teachers Association hosted a webinar, developed with the help of Jewish Voice for Peace, entitled “The Struggle Against Anti-Palestinian Racism,” which was described as an exploration of questions including “What is anti-Palestinian discrimination? How does Palestine fit into the larger framework of colonialism and imperialism? What are Zionism and anti-Zionism, and what are their histories? Why is anti-Zionism not antisemitism?”

Mass public protests aimed at disrupting transportation and commercial activities also continued in March. Protestors demanding a “ceasefire” blocked the San Francisco Airport, the New York Times and New York Post printing plant, London’s Liverpool Station, and the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the British Museum. Britain’s leading counter-extremism official warned that pro-Palestinian protests were making London a no-go zone for Jews and that radicalization was spreading throughout British society.

Protestors repeatedly vandalized locations associated with Israel, such as Effy’s Cafe on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and Nanas Kitchen in Narberth (PA). Protestors also disrupted the San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council gala, the opening of the Amsterdam Holocaust museum, which was attended by Israeli president Isaac Herzog, and an Israeli speaker at the Los Angeles Holocaust Museum.

Private dwellings were attacked, including a rock thrown through a window of a home and mutilation of hostage posters displayed outside a home in Newton (MA). A protest at a real estate fair in Teaneck (NJ) synagogue, which allegedly advertised homes in the West Bank, was protested by Palestinian-Americans who drove from nearby Paterson. Several bottles were thrown at attendees and at police. A similar real event in Brooklyn was canceled due to security concerns.

The result of continued protests, harassment and vandalism targeting Jewish individuals and institutions is a growing need for security measures including physical protection and secrecy regarding venues.

It’s a troubling time to be Jewish in America — especially on campus.

The author is a contributor to SPME, where a different version of this article originally appeared.

The post Documented Proof: Outrages Happening on College Campuses Against Israel 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.orgThe 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.orgMuslim 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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