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French Cops Prevent Students From Mounting Pro-Palestinian Demonstration at Elite Paris University
French police block pro-Palestinian students at the Sciences Po university in Paris from staging a demonstration. Photo: Reuters/Noemie Coissac
French police on Thursday prevented pro-Palestinian students at the Sciences Po university in Paris from staging a demonstration, deepening the conflict over antisemitism and free speech that has engulfed the elite institution.
Students arriving for the evening protest at the main campus on rue Saint-Guillaume were confronted by a cordon of police officers who blocked them from access. About 20 students gathered for a simultaneous protest at another campus building a few blocks away, chanting “Free Palestine” and “This isn’t a war, it’s a genocide” before being dispersed by police.
Concern over the impact of the conflict in Gaza on student life at the Sciences Po — formally known as the Paris Institute of Political Studies, a public research university — came into sharp focus earlier this week when a group of pro-Hamas students blockaded a lecture hall, allegedly preventing Jewish students from accessing the space.
The Union of Jewish Students in France (UEJF), whose members were confronted at the protest, said in a statement that “UEJF students are attacked as Jews and Zionists. We call for the immediate lifting of the blockade and exemplary sanctions against these students.” One Jewish student said she was regaled with cries of “she’s a Zionist, don’t let her in.”
The spectacle drew strong condemnation from leading French politicians, among them President Emmanuel Macron. Addressing the Council of Ministers on Wednesday, Macron denounced the protest as “unspeakable and completely intolerable.”
Other cabinet ministers echoed the president. “What happened has a name: Antisemitism,” Equality Minister Aurora Berge declared in a post on X/Twitter, while Higher Education Minister Sylvie Retailleau asserted that at French universities, “[I]t is intolerable and shocking to suffer the slightest discrimination, the slightest incitement to hatred.”
The condemnation continued throughout the week, with Prime Minister Gabriel Attal warning on Thursday that “an active minority wants to impose a dominant form of thought within this institution.” Separately, French Senate President Gérard Larcher told an interviewer from the France 2 broadcaster that “Sciences Po cannot become an Islamo-leftist bunker.”
Far left parliamentarians rose to the defense of the students — who gathered under the banner of Urgence Palestine, a pro-Hamas collective — echoing their claim that the allegations of antisemitism and discrimination had been fabricated.
“No, the incident was not trivial. Better: it did not take place!” Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of La France Insoumise (LFI), stated, while his colleague Aymeric Caron described the students as the “victims of a cabal.”
Following the Hamas pogrom in southern Israel on Oct. 7, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin attempted to impose an outright ban on pro-Palestinian demonstrations, citing fears over public disorder. That order was subsequently modified by the Council of State, which ruled that demonstrations could be banned by the police on a case-by-case basis.
In his remarks on Thursday, Attal pronounced France as “lucky at this stage to be relatively spared by a movement that we have seen develop in a certain number of countries, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world. I do not want Sciences Po or any other university to become the entry point for the arrival of this thought.”
Speaking to the Turkish state broadcaster TRT at Thursday’s aborted protest, several students angrily disputed the UEJF’s account of Tuesday’s pro-Palestinian sit-in at the Sciences Po.
“Our comrades have been wrongly accused and defamed of having made antisemitic remarks, while this is absolutely not the case,” said one student, who gave her name as Lea. Another student, who gave his name as Hugo, insisted that the morning’s events had been orderly, with lectures on the topic of the Palestinians, with a protest mounted at lunchtime that ended after half-an-hour. Hugo argued that the reaction to the protest was the result of a “media frenzy,” adding that he had participated in order to obtain “a clear political reaction, including from Sciences Po, to demand a ceasefire in Gaza.”
In a statement on Thursday, the French Jewish communal organization Crif called for a parliamentary commission into antisemitism in higher education.
“The antisemitic atmosphere at some universities must be fought firmly or our democracy will suffocate,” Crif stated.
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Palestinian Detained after West Bank Terror Ramming
Illustrative: Israeli police at the scene of a car-ramming terrorist attack near a market in Jerusalem on Monday, April 24, 2023. Photograph: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters.
JNS.org – A Palestinian rammed his vehicle into a cop car in the West Bank on Saturday in what the military was investigating as a terror attack.
The incident occurred at the Eli gas station, the scene of repeated acts of terrorism against Israelis.
“A Palestinian vehicle accelerated towards a police car and collided with it, there were no casualties,” according to the Israel Defense Forces.
“Troops caught the terrorist and transferred him to security forces for further investigation,” added the statement.
On Sunday, three Israeli police officers were killed in a drive-by shooting near the Tarqumiya checkpoint, some 7.5 miles northwest of Hebron in Judea.
They were named as Chief Inspector Arik Ben Eliyahu, 37, of Kiryat Gat, who is survived by his wife and three children; Command Sgt. Maj. Hadas Branch, 53, of Sde Moshe, who is survived by her husband, three children and granddaughter; and 1st Sgt. Roni Shakuri, 61, of Sderot, who is survived by his wife, daughter and granddaughter.
Shakuri’s other daughter, 1st Sgt. Mor Shakuri, 29, was killed on Oct. 7 while battling an attempt by Hamas terrorists to take control of the police station in Sderot, in southern Israel near the border with Gaza.
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Ukraine Concerned at Reports of Iranian Ballistic Missiles to Russia
A missile unveiled by Iran is launched in an unknown location in Iran in this picture received by Reuters on August 20, 2020. WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said on Saturday it was deeply concerned by reports about a possible impending transfer of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia.
In a statement emailed to reporters, the ministry said the deepening military cooperation between Tehran and Moscow was a threat to Ukraine, Europe and the Middle East, and called on the international community to increase pressure on Iran and Russia.
CNN and The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Iran had transferred short-range ballistic missiles to Russia, citing unidentified sources.
Reuters reported in August that Russia was expecting the imminent delivery of hundreds of Fath-360 close-range ballistic missiles from Iran and that dozens of Russian military personnel were being trained in Iran on the satellite-guided weapons for eventual use in the war in Ukraine.
On Friday, the United States, a key ally of Ukraine, also voiced concern about the potential transfer of missiles.
“Any transfer of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia would represent a dramatic escalation in Iran’s support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine,” White House National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett said.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York said on Friday that Tehran’s position on the Ukraine conflict was unchanged.
“Iran considers the provision of military assistance to the parties engaged in the conflict – which leads to increased human casualties, destruction of infrastructure, and a distancing from ceasefire negotiations – to be inhumane,” it said.
“Thus, not only does Iran abstain from engaging in such actions itself, but it also calls upon other countries to cease the supply of weapons to the sides involved in the conflict.”
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Pakistani Man Charged with Planning Terror Attack Against NY Jews on Oct. 7 or Yom Kippur
The flag of the ISIS terrorist group. Image: Reuters/Alaa Al-Marjani/File Photo.
JNS.org – A Pakistani national, whom Canadian authorities arrested on Wednesday, planned to carry out an ISIS-styled, mass shooting terror attack against Jews in New York, the U.S. Justice Department alleged on Friday.
Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, 20, who also answers to Shahzeb Jadoon, “attempted to travel from Canada to New York City, where he intended to use automatic and semi-automatic weapons to carry out a mass shooting in support of ISIS at a Jewish center in Brooklyn, N.Y.,” per the complaint.
Khan allegedly distributed ISIS videos and literature and expressed support for ISIS on social media and via encrypted messages. Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham is a U.S.-designated terror organization.
The defendant allegedly wrote that he wanted to target “Israeli Jewish Chabads … scattered all around,” per the 19-page complaint.
The Justice Department alleges that Khan “conveyed that he hoped to carry out this attack on or around Oct. 7, 2024—which Khan recognized as the one year anniversary of the brutal terrorist attacks in Israel by Hamas, a designated foreign terror organization, which, on Oct. 7, 2023, launched a wave of violent, large-scale terrorist attacks in Israel that resulted in the deaths and hostage taking of hundreds of civilians, including American citizens.”
Khan allegedly told undercover officers that he wanted to “go for Oct. 7 or Oct 11, Yom Kippur, a major festival for the Jews,” per the complaint. “Khan emphasized that ‘Oct. 7 and Oct. 11 are the best days for targeting the Jews,’ because ‘Oct. 7 they will surely have some protests and Oct. 11 is Yom Kippur,’ and ‘they don’t have any other major festival then till next summer.’”
“In selecting New York City as his target location, Khan told the undercover law enforcement officers that ‘New York is perfect to target Jews’ because it has the ‘largest Jewish population In America,’ and, as such, ‘even if we don’t attack a event, we could rack up easily a lot of Jews,” the complaint adds.
The defendant told the undercover officers that “he intended to kill as many Jewish civilians as possible, proclaiming that ‘we are going to New York City to slaughter them,’” per the complaint, which added that Khan allegedly sent a photograph “of the specific area” where he planned to attack to the undercover officers.
Per the complaint, Khan also allegedly told the undercover officers not to wear beards, so they wouldn’t attract attention, and that “you guys will even have to attend some synagogue or Chabad sessions” to “check the insides of the buildings.” He told them it was necessary to identify emergency exits in buildings, “so we can trap them and kill them inside,” per the complaint.
“In addition, Khan also explained that they should not record their ISIS allegiance video, or ‘bayah,’ until later because it would run the risk of them being caught by law enforcement prior to the planned attack,” the complaint alleges.
One of several cities that Khan flagged had “more relaxed” gun laws, he allegedly told the undercover officers.
“What’s the point of living till you’re 70 and dying on a hospital bed when we can attain shahadah in our youths, Inshalah,” he said, per the complaint. (The complaint defines the first term as a declaration of faith and the second as God willing.)
“The defendant is alleged to have planned a terrorist attack in New York City around Oct. 7 of this year with the stated goal of slaughtering, in the name of ISIS, as many Jewish people as possible,” stated Merrick Garland, the U.S. attorney general.
“Thanks to the investigative work of the FBI, and the quick action of our Canadian law enforcement partners, the defendant was taken into custody,” Garland said. “Jewish communities—like all communities in this country—should not have to fear that they will be targeted by a hate-fueled terrorist attack.”
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