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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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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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