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Dozens of Penn professors spent the week in Israel, following their university president’s antisemitism resignation
(JTA) — After Oct. 7, Michael Kahana joined hundreds of his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania in signing an open letter condemning Hamas and expressing support for Israel and its right to self defense. But the psychology professor wanted to do more.
So Kahana sent an email to the 340 signatories on the letter, which came amid scathing criticism of Penn’s response to Hamas’ attack on Israel, and invited them on a trip.
This week, the 39 Penn professors who took Kahana up on the invitation spent three days traveling in Israel, in the first solidarity visit by faculty members of an Ivy League school since the outbreak of the war on Oct. 7 and the congressional hearing on campus antisemitism that led directly to the resignation of Penn’s president.
Many but not all of the professors on the trip were Jewish, and some were visiting Israel for the first time. During their 66-hour visit, they met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and families of hostages including Rachel Goldberg, the Israeli-American mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin who has emerged as a stalwart voice advocating for the more than 130 people still held by Hamas in Gaza. In what has become a new rite of passage for visitors to Israel, they also visited devastated Gaza border communities where they heard accounts from survivors and first responders, according to a statement released by the mission’s tour operator, Israel Destination.
A significant focus of the mission was meeting with academic colleagues from major Israeli institutions, the statement said, including the Hebrew University, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Tel Aviv University, to allow for “deeper mutual understanding of the challenges posed to academia by war and conflict on one side, and antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiments on the other.” The delegation also met with Penn alumni living in Israel and heard from Israeli officials, including Amir Yaron, the governor of the Bank of Israel who previously was a professor at Penn’s Wharton School of Business, during a banquet at Tel Aviv’s ANU Museum.
“I was truly surprised to see how much our visit meant to our Israeli colleagues and by my own overwhelming emotional response to hearing from Israelis firsthand,” cinema and media studies professor Peter Decherney, who worked with Kahana to organize the trip, said in the statement.
Professors from the University of Pennsylvania, whose president resigned amid criticism of her handling of antisemitism, pose during a visit to the Israeli presidential residence in Jerusalem, January 2024. (GPO)
The delegation took place amid a backdrop of tension at Penn, which was already embroiled in an antisemitism controversy surrounding a Palestinian writers conference on campus when Hamas attacked Israel. President Liz Magill resigned in December shortly after being called to testify before Congress about campus antisemitism — and refraining from saying that calling for the genocide of Jews was a violation of the university’s code of conduct. (Penn’s board president also resigned and has been replaced temporarily by Julie Platt, who also chairs Jewish Federations of North America.)
While the group was in Israel, a second college president who took the same stance during the congressional hearing stepped down. Harvard University’s Claudine Gay also faced allegations of plagiarism that emerged as her critics took aim following the university’s initial response to Hamas’ attack.
Kahana pointed to the global academic community’s failure to express support to Israeli academics after Oct. 7.
“Academic communities are incredibly small, tight-knit families that span the globe,” Kahana said, according to the statement. “When the horrific trauma of October 7 struck the Israeli academic community, people awaited words of comfort from their close colleagues and friends, but for many, those words did not come.”
Kahana and Decherney barely knew each other prior to organizing the trip, even though they have worked on the same campus for years. In fact, many of the Penn professors, from varied disciplines like statistics, film, and orthopedics, had never met before the mission.
Now, the professors are “returning home with a greater understanding of how the U.S. academic community can support their Israeli colleagues during this traumatic time, and with renewed vigor to withstand the antisemitism and anti-Israel feelings prevalent on campus,” the statement said.
Claudine Gay, president of Harvard University, Liz Magill, president of University of Pennsylvania, and Sally Kornbluth, president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, testify before the House Education and Workforce Committee on December 5, 2023, in Washington, DC. The Committee held a hearing to investigate antisemitism on college campuses. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Decherney expressed his hope that the visit would “inspire more university communities to move past divisive cultures and come themselves.”
According to Yair Jablinowitz from Israel Destination, which specializes in educational tourism, since the Penn mission became public, the tour operator has received dozens of inquiries into similar visits from representatives at other universities, including Harvard, Columbia, Yale and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — many of which are, like Penn, facing federal Department of Education investigations over their handling of antisemitism complaints.
“There is definitely now a drive to go on these types of delegations,” he told JTA. “The Penn delegation had an influence not only on the academic world in Israel and the people of Israel that they met, but also on Ivy League schools throughout North America.”
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The post Dozens of Penn professors spent the week in Israel, following their university president’s antisemitism resignation appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Incoming US Senate Majority Leader Threatens ICC With Sanctions Over Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu
An exterior view of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands, March 31, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw
Incoming US Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has threatened to push legislation imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) if it does not halt its efforts to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Thune, who was picked last week to be the next Senate majority leader once the Republicans take control of the legislative chamber in January, wrote Sunday on X/Twitter that he will make it a “top priority” to punish the ICC if it refuses to walk back its arrest warrant application issued against Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The US lawmaker also indicated he would take action if Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the current Senate majority leader, does not do so against the intergovernmental organization.
“If the ICC and its prosecutor do not reverse their outrageous and unlawful actions to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli officials, the Senate should immediately pass sanctions legislation, as the House has already done on a bipartisan basis,” he wrote. “If Majority Leader Schumer does not act, the Senate Republican majority will stand with our key ally Israel and make this — and other supportive legislation ‚ a top priority in the next Congress.”
In May, the ICC chief prosecutor officially requested arrest warrants for the Israeli premier, 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. The three Hamas leaders have since been killed, and Gallant was recently fired as Israel’s defense minister.
US and Israeli officials subsequently 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 massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.
ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan has come under fire for making his surprise demand for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on the same day in May that he suddenly canceled a long-planned visit to both Gaza and Israel to collect evidence of alleged war crimes. The last-second cancellation infuriated US and British leaders, according to Reuters, which reported that the trip would have offered Israeli leaders a first opportunity to present their position and outline any action they were taking to respond to the war crime allegations.
Thune’s Republican colleagues praised his threat to the ICC, suggesting that the Senate should target the international organization.
“Well done Senator Thune. The ICC’s actions against Israel have been outrageous, and an independent review into the prosecutor’s actions is more than called for,” wrote Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). :The Senate should take up the ICC sanctions bill that passed the House in a bipartisan manner. Standing up for Israel today protects America tomorrow.”
“The Senate must immediately pass legislation to sanction the International Criminal Court,” stated Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY.), chair of the Senate Republican Conference. “Senate Republicans stands with Israel.”
“The Senate Foreign Relations Committee can and should act ASAP to pass ICC sanctions legislation. We waited for months for the majority to schedule the vote only to have them postpone it before the election. We will not fail to act when Republicans are in the majority,” wrote Sen. John Risch (R-ID), the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) wrote that the Senate “should immediately consider the bipartisan legislation passed by the House to sanction the ICC.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) added that Thune is “right” and that “Chuck Schumer should do his job” by advancing legislation to sanction the ICC.
The US has said it does not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction and rejects the implied equivalence drawn between Israel and Hamas.
The post Incoming US Senate Majority Leader Threatens ICC With Sanctions Over Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Concordia closes its Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, citing ‘budgetary constraints’
It was announced quietly, wit a small, two-paragraph notice replacing the web page for Concordia University’s Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS), along with an unrelated stock […]
The post Concordia closes its Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, citing ‘budgetary constraints’ appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Jamaal Bowman Continues Diatribes Against Israel, AIPAC; Expresses Pride in Not Condemning Oct. 7 Massacre
US Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) speaks during the National Action Network National Convention in New York City, US, April 7, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
In his final weeks as a US federal lawmaker, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) has continued his persistent condemnation of Israel, accusing the Jewish state of perpetrating “apartheid” against Palestinians, expressing pride in not supporting a resolution condemning Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, and arguing against the funding of Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system.
During a newly released interview with left-wing pundit Rania Khalek, Bowman reflected on his unsuccessful reelection bid earlier this year. The lawmaker blamed the “pro-Israel lobby” for his loss in the Democratic primary, claiming that his outspokenness about the ongoing Israel-Hamas war made him a target for “Zionists.”
Bowman, one of the staunchest critics of Israel in the US Congress, argued that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a prominent pro-Israel lobbying group, overwhelmed his campaign by spending roughly $15 million to aid his opponent, Westchester County Executive George Latimer. He added that his constituents were stunned that a “special interest” group such as AIPAC “can remove a congressman” by submerging a primary race in a torrent of money.
“Now the world has seen AIPAC for who they are,” Bowman stated.
The stated mission of AIPAC is to seek bipartisan support to strengthen the US-Israel relationship.
Bowman admitted that he did not know much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when he initially ran for office, opting to parrot talking points such as Israel “has a right to exist” and a “right to defend itself.”
Bowman said that his opinion on Israel was transformed after he visited the country on a trip sponsored by J Street, a progressive Zionist organization that recently called for the US to impose an arms embargo against the Jewish state. The left-wing firebrand said that the trip — which consisted of a series of discussions with peace activists, scholars, and former Israel Defense Force (IDF) officers — soured his view of the Jewish state, comparing the security checkpoints and barrier wall that separate Israel and the West Bank to protect against terrorism with the Jim Crow laws in the US south segregating black Americans.
Khalek asked Bomwan if his view on Iron Dome has shifted, citing that the missile interception system “shields Israel from the consequences for bombing all of its neighbors, for constantly stealing land.”
The congressman claimed that his view on Israel’s air defense system has changed, arguing that it represents “a weapon to use and continue apartheid, oppression, open-air prison, occupation, and now the genocide” of Palestinians. He said that he regrets voting in favor of Iron Dome funding, and that the missile defense system should only be replenished if the Palestinians are given a fully-funded army on Israel’s borders.
Bowman also criticized a congressional resolution condemning the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, suggesting that AIPAC authored the document. He dismissed the notion that the mass murder, rape, and kidnapping of Israelis on Oct. 7 was “unprovoked,” claiming that Israel initiated the aggression by enacting “apartheid” on Palestinians. He then lambasted American governors, senators, and President Joe Biden for immediately showing empathy to Israelis, saying that legislators were being “dishonest” and not having a “full conversation” about the Jewish state.
In the year following the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, Bowman intensified his rhetoric against Israel and pro-Israel organizations. Over the summer, he condemned AIPAC as a “Zionist regime.” In a desperate attempt to salvage his ill-fated primary effort, he promise the Democratic Socialists of America — a prominent far-left organization that has made anti-Israel activism a top priority — that he would vote against future Iron Dome funding in exchange for financial backing of his campaign. Bowman infamously dismissed the widely reported and corroborated allegations of Hamas terrorists raping Israeli women during the Oct. 7 onslaught as “propaganda” before being forced to walk back his remarks.
In June, Latimer cruised to a commanding victory over Bowman, winning by a margin of 58 percent to 41 percent.
The post Jamaal Bowman Continues Diatribes Against Israel, AIPAC; Expresses Pride in Not Condemning Oct. 7 Massacre first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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