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Harvard Excludes Rather Than Includes the Jews
Supporters of the Palestine Solidarity Committee at Harvard University. Photo: Harvard PSC
JNS.org – As the nation saw during a recent Dec. 5 House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing, the leadership of Harvard University, which claims to be one of the world’s most elite institutions, struggles with common sense when it comes to antisemitism. Harvard president Claudine Gay was unable or unwilling to state the obvious: Calls for the genocide of Jews should not be welcome on college campuses. Fortunately for Gay, the Harvard Corporation fellows turned out to be equally incapable of leadership and her job was saved.
The day after the Harvard Corporation said it stood behind Gay, news emerged that the university had instructed Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi to pack up and hide the group’s menorah after the Hanukkah lighting “because there will be criminal activity [they] fear and it won’t look good.” In case it isn’t clear, Harvard is afraid antisemites on campus will vandalize the menorah, and that wouldn’t be a good look for the university.
All this took place at a university where, according to one analysis that said its figure was likely a dramatic undercounting, at least 98 staff are assigned to various diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices. The average annual wage in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Harvard is located, is $153,504 according to city officials. Assuming the 98 staff reflect the average, that’s more than $15 million spent just on DEI salaries.
Yet despite hiring so many presumably brilliant minds and sinking millions into addressing the issue of diversity, equity and inclusion, the best answer to antisemitism the university could come up with was “hide the Jews.”
Put simply, the university prioritized maintaining a false image of inclusivity by deciding to exclude from campus a display of Jewish life. It chose not to practice actual inclusivity by promoting and protecting the right of students and staff to be openly Jewish. Rather than stand up to the bigots who have created the climate of antisemitism on campus, the university chose to become the antisemites’ enforcement arm.
Here’s a commonsense solution to the problem: Fire whoever’s idea it was to hide the menorah and use the money saved to hire a security guard. For the salary range advertised on a LinkedIn job posting for “Associate Director, Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging” at the Harvard Kennedy School, the university could hire three security guards to protect the menorah and any other displays of Jewish life on campus. The three guards would accomplish far more for “diversity, equity and inclusion” at Harvard than all the 98-plus DEI staff members combined and for approximately one one-hundredth of the cost.
The post Harvard Excludes Rather Than Includes the Jews first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.