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Heathrow Airport Has a Palestine Flag Problem; Are Jews and Israelis Secure?
Jewish and Israeli passengers being stopped for a search at Heathrow Airport in London have been shocked to see security staffers wearing Palestine Flag badges. This has happened many times over the past few months.
It is particularly inappropriate for staff to be seen at the Security area supporting one side of the Gaza war, or indeed to display any political affiliations at all.
One passenger told UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI): “This is very scary for anyone who is Jewish in current times, especially when pulled over and someone is displaying such a flag.”
Have Heathrow Airport managers been allowing — and even condoning — this action?
In one case, all five of the security staff at the Fast Track security area were wearing Palestine Flags. This occurred when a planeload of El Al passengers were passing through. Two of the staff were also wearing watermelon badges, which is used as an emblem of Palestinian “solidarity and resistance” — which could be said to support actions of Hamas terrorists.
These badges could not have gone un-noticed by their managers, who should have known that political badges were not allowed.
But it was only when one particularly insistent Israeli passenger complained to the manager, and then to his senior manager, and refused to move until something was actually done about it, that the badges (and the officers) were removed from their positions.
UK Lawyers for Israel wrote to Heathrow Airport and pointed out that the Palestinian Flag badges create an intimidating, hostile, and offensive environment for Jews and Israeli passengers in particular. Creating such an atmosphere constitutes harassment of Jews and Israelis, in breach of the Equalities Act 2010. Jews and Israelis have the “protected characteristics” of race and religion, and are protected from discrimination under UK law.
Heathrow’s Customer Services Director has told UKLFI that unauthorized badges are actually not allowed, and that the Palestine Flag badges are not authorized.
Despite this assurance, it is equally shocking to hear what has been happening when the customers file formal complaints with Heathrow Airport about the Palestine Flags being worn by the security staff.
The Customer Services manager did not apologize for the fact that the member of security staff was wearing a Palestine flag, or promise that there would be any investigation.
On the contrary, he justified the badge being worn, implying that it indicated to passengers that she spoke Arabic. His explanation was that foreign flag badges were worn by airport staff to indicate that they spoke a particular language.
However, these authorized flags are attached to the identity label of the staff, not worn as a separate badge. The Palestine flag badges were just pinned to different areas of the staff’s clothing.
The staffer also tried to gaslight the customer, by saying that they may be confusing the Palestinian flag with similar flags from Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Sudan, Syria, and the UAE. The staffer admitted that they had received multiple complaints from customers who had apparently confused the flags. There was to be no investigation: the passenger was wrong and had merely confused the flag.
And the staffer didn’t just reply to one customer with this excuse — we at UKLFI have seen messages with the identical wording, sent out to several Jewish passengers who made formal complaints to the airport after being upset by seeing the flag badges. Apart from justifying the flag as indicating the wearer spoke Arabic, and blaming the customer for mixing the flag up with other Arab flags, the customer services manager also warned the passengers not to photograph the badge if they saw it again in security areas.
Is Heathrow Airport trying to suppress the truth?
Furthermore, this manager referred to conferring with other managers before penning his reply to the customers.
The horrifying situation is that Heathrow managers at all levels appear to be condoning the wearing of the Palestine Badges, and consequently the intimidation and harassment of Jewish and Israeli passengers.
Any passenger seeing the security staff member wearing a Palestinian Flag would assume that it was there to indicate his or her support for the Palestine people or even for Hamas and its terrible actions on October 7, 2023. It would also indicate his or her antipathy to Jews and Israelis. The last thing anyone would think when seeing the badge, would be that the member of staff could speak Arabic.
As one Israeli passenger commented: “the people responsible for making sure terrorists don’t blow up airplanes were wearing badges that identify with terrorists.”
Heathrow’s Customer Service Director has been placatory and has indicated that she investigated the Palestinian flag wearing by the security staff in our initial complaint. She also said she was investigating the way the manager handled the customer complaints. But it is evident that Heathrow has a major problem.
The security staff are no longer neutral workers but have taken a side — against Jews and Israelis.
Heathrow has questions to answer about how it screens its employees for sensitive security roles at an airport. Why would it employ people who have such strong political feelings that they have to display them during work hours, and intimidate the Jewish and Israeli passengers? This applies not only to the security staff carrying out the bag checks and body checks, but also to all their managers at nearly all levels, who are willing to condone, justify, and defend the wearing of the Palestinian flag.
Caroline Turner is the director of UK Lawyers for Israel.
The post Heathrow Airport Has a Palestine Flag Problem; Are Jews and Israelis Secure? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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A pro-Israel rally at the University of Toronto was headlined by Columbia University professor Shai Davidai
Around 200 people gathered for a pro-Israel demonstration at University of Toronto’s downtown campus at King’s College Circle—which was the site of one of Canada’s largest pro-Palestinian encampments during May […]
The post A pro-Israel rally at the University of Toronto was headlined by Columbia University professor Shai Davidai appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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‘Not Welcome’: New Pro-Hamas Campaign Aims to Abolish Hillel Campus Chapters
A statue of George Washington tied with a Palestinian flag and a keffiyeh inside a pro-Hamas encampment is pictured at George Washington University in Washington, DC, US, May 2, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Craig Hudson
The campus group National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) is waging a campaign to gut Jewish life in academia, calling for the abolition of Hillel International campus chapters, the largest collegiate organization for Jewish students in the world.
“Over the past several decades, Hillel has monopolized for Jewish campus life into a pipeline for pro-Israel indoctrination, genocide-apologia, and material support to the Zionist project and its crimes,” a social media account operating the campaign, titled #DropHillel, said in a manifesto published last week. “Across the country, Hillel chapters have invited Israeli soldiers to their campuses; promoted propaganda trips such as birthright; and organized charity drives for the Israeli military.”
It continued, “Such actions reveal Hillel’s ideological and material investment in Zionism, despite the organization’s facade as being simply a ‘Jewish cultural space.’”
DropHillel claims to be “Jewish-led,” although only a small minority of Jews oppose Zionism, and the group has been linked to and promoted by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters.
Hillel International has provided Jewish students a home away from home during the academic year. However, NSJP says it wants to “weaken” it and “dismantle oppression.”
The idea has already been picked up by pro-Hamas student groups at one college, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, according to The Daily Tar Heel, the school’s official student newspaper. On Oct. 9, it reported, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) unveiled the idea for “no more Hillel” during a rally which, among other things, demanded removing Israel from UNC’s study abroad program and adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Addressing the comments to the paper days later, SJP, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, proclaimed that shuttering Hillel is a coveted goal of the anti-Zionist movement.
“Zionism is a racist supremacist ideology advocating for the creation and sustenance of an ethnostate through the expulsion and annihilation of native people,” the group told the paper. “Therefore, any group that advocates for a supremacist ideology — be it the KKK, the Proud Boys, Hillel, or Heels for Israel — should not be welcome on campus.”
The #DropHillel campaign came amid an unprecedented surge in anti-Israel incidents on college campuses, which, according to a report published last month by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), have reached crisis levels.
Revealing a “staggering” 477 percent increase in anti-Zionist activity involving assault, vandalism, and other phenomena, the report — titled “Anti-Israel Activism on US Campuses, 2023-2024” — painted a bleak picture of America’s higher education system poisoned by political extremism and hate.
“As the year progressed, Jewish students and Jewish groups on campus came under unrelenting scrutiny for any association, actual or perceived, with Israel or Zionism,” the report said. “This often led to the harassment of Jewish members of campus communities and vandalism of Jewish institutions. In some cases, it led to assault. These developments were underpinned by a steady stream of rhetoric from anti-Israel activists expressing explicit support for US-designated terrorists organizations, such as Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and others.”
The report added that 10 campuses accounted for 16 percent of all incidents tracked by ADL researchers, with Columbia University and the University of Michigan combining for 90 anti-Israel incidents — 52 and 38, respectively. Harvard University, the University of California – Los Angeles, Rutgers University New Brunswick, Stanford University, Cornell University, and others filled out the rest of the top 10. Violence, it continued, was most common at universities in the state of California, where anti-Zionist activists punched a Jewish student for filming him at a protest.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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‘Muslim for Trump’ Launches Initiatives in Key Battleground States, Says Candidate Will Bring ‘Peace’ to Gaza
Former US President Donald Trump is seen at a campaign event in South Carolina. Photo: Reuters/Sam Wolfe
The “Muslims for Trump” organization has officially launched initiatives to help elect Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to the White House, arguing that he would be more likely to end the war in Gaza than Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
In a statement released on Monday, the group said it will focus on recruiting Muslim voters in key battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina. The organization both praised Trump for his supposed “peace-focused” approach to ending the war in Gaza and condemned Harris for helping facilitate a so-called “genocide.”
“After meeting with President Trump, it was clear to me he is the right leader for Muslims to get behind,” Rabiul Chowdhury, co-founder of Muslims for Trump and former co-chair of the “Abandon Harris Movement,” said in a statement.
Chowdhury added that during his discussions with Trump, the former president vowed to “ending the escalation of wars and bringing peace to war-torn regions.” In contrast to Trump’s promise to stop the “bloodshed” in Gaza, he claimed, Harris has “recklessly pushed us toward World War III.”
Chowdhury, a self-described “peace advocate,” urged the Muslim community not to fall victim to supposed “misinformation” campaigns by the media and Democrats that paint the former president as hostile to immigrants. He claimed that the former president’s focus is on “ending war, not dividing families through false immigration claims.”
Samra Luqman, chair of the Michigan chapter of Muslims for Trump, underscored the need to punish the Biden administration for what he described as supporting a “genocide” in Gaza.
“The goal of this election is to hold the Biden administration accountable for a genocide. No amount of fear mongering or scare tactics will persuade my community into forgiving the mutilation, live-burning, and genocide of over 200,000 people,” he said.
According to data produced by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, roughly 40,000 people have died in Gaza since the war began last October. Israel has said that its forces have killed about 20,000 Hamas terrorists during its military campaign.
Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication.
On the organization Muslims for Trump’s official website, it claims that the Abraham Accords, a series of historic, Trump administration-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several countries in the Arab world, helped stabilize the Middle East. It also says that had Trump not lost the 2020 presidential race, the so-called “genocide” could have been prevented.
“Under Trump’s leadership, the Abraham Accords were brokered, fostering peaceful relations between Israel and several Arab countries. Supporters might argue that Trump’s diplomacy prioritized peace and stability in the Middle East, reducing the likelihood of large-scale conflicts like genocide,” the group wrote.
Over the course of his campaign, Trump has repeatedly touted his support for the Jewish state during his singular term in office. Trump has boasted about his administration’s work in fostering the Abraham Accords, promising to resume efforts to strengthen them if he were to win November’s US presidential election.
Harsh US sanctions levied on Iran under Trump crippled the Iranian economy and led its foreign exchange reserves to plummet. Trump and his Republican supporters in the US Congress have criticized the Biden administration for renewing billions of dollars in US sanctions waivers, which had the effect of unlocking frozen funds and allowing the country to access previously inaccessible hard currency.
Trump also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria, and also moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as the Jewish state’s capital.
Despite Harris’s repeated efforts to woo Muslim voters, polling data indicates that the demographic has made a dramatic swing away from the Democratic Party. Polling data from the Arab American Institute reveals that Trump slightly edges Harris among Muslim voters by a margin of 42 to 41 percent. A report from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) shows that Green Party candidate Jill Stein leads Harris and Trump with Muslim voters in the key swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona.
The post ‘Muslim for Trump’ Launches Initiatives in Key Battleground States, Says Candidate Will Bring ‘Peace’ to Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.