i24 News – Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading U.S. universities, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu charged on Wednesday, responding to the shocking scenes on Columbia and other campuses.

Watch PM Netanyahu’s statement: “What’s happening in America’s college campuses is horrific. Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities.”

– Omer Meron /GPO pic.twitter.com/FUBKpv56FW

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) April 24, 2024

“What’s happening in America’s college campuses is horrific. Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities. They call for the annihilation of Israel. They attack Jewish students. They attack Jewish faculty,” the leader said in a recorded statement.

“This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s. It’s unconscionable. It has to be stopped. It has to be condemned and condemned unequivocally. But that’s not what happened. The response of several university presidents was shameful.”

“We see this exponential rise of antisemitism throughout America and throughout Western societies as Israel tries to defend itself against genocidal terrorists, genocidal terrorists who hide behind civilians. Yet it is Israel that is falsely accused of genocide, Israel that is falsely accused of starvation and all sundry war crimes. It’s all one big libel. But that’s not new. We’ve seen in history that antisemitic attacks were always preceded by vilification and slander, lies that were cast against the Jewish people that are unbelievable yet people believed them.”

The post Netanyahu: ‘Antisemitic Mobs Have Taken Over Leading U.S. Universities’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

i24 News – The United States has opted not to impose sanctions on Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) Netzah Yehuda Battalion, Ynet reported on Wednesday afternoon, citing sources from within Israel.

The decision comes after intense pressure from various segments of the Israeli political spectrum.

Last Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken hinted at potential actions regarding military aid to specific Israeli army units accused of human rights violations in the West Bank before October 7.

Initial reports suggested that Blinken might move forward with sanctions against the Netzah Yehuda Battalion, raising concerns and sparking reactions from Israeli officials.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strongly opposed the possibility of sanctions, vowing to challenge the decision with all available means.

In a statement published on Saturday night, Netanyahu criticized the proposed sanctions as “the height of absurdity and a moral blow.”

Similarly, opposition leader Yair Lapid voiced his disapproval, labeling the potential sanctions as a “mistake” and emphasizing the need for Israel to take action to prevent them from being implemented.

The post U.S. Decides Against Sanctions on IDF’s Netzah Yehuda Battalion first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Israel’s military is poised to evacuate Palestinian civilians from Rafah and assault Hamas hold-outs in the southern Gaza Strip city, a senior Israeli defense official said on Wednesday, despite international warnings of humanitarian catastrophe.

A spokesperson for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government said Israel was “moving ahead” with a ground operation, but gave no timeline.

The defense official said Israel’s Defense Ministry had bought 40,000 tents, each with the capacity for 10 to 12 people, to house Palestinians relocated from Rafah in advance of an assault.

Video circulating online appeared to show rows of square white tents going up in Khan Younis, a city some 3 miles from Rafah. Reuters could not verify the video but reviewed images from satellite company Maxar Technologies which showed tent camps on Khan Younis land that had been vacant weeks ago.

An Israeli government source said Netanyahu’s war cabinet planned to meet in the coming two weeks to authorize civilian evacuations, expected to take around a month.

The defense official, who requested anonymity, told Reuters that the military could go into action immediately but was awaiting a green light from Netanyahu.

Rafah, which abuts the Egyptian border, is sheltering more than a million Palestinians who fled the half-year-old Israeli offensive through the rest of Gaza, and say the prospect of fleeing yet again is terrifying.

“I have to make a decision whether to leave Rafah because my mother and I are afraid an invasion could happen suddenly and we won’t get time to escape,” said Aya, 30, who has been living temporarily in the city with her family in a school.

She said that some families recently moved to a refugee camp in coastal Al-Mawasi, but their tents caught fire when tank shells landed nearby. “Where do we go?”

HITTING HARD

Israel, which launched its war to annihilate Hamas after the Islamist group’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israeli towns, says Rafah is home to four Hamas combat battalions reinforced by thousands of retreating fighters, and it must defeat them to achieve victory.

“Hamas was hit hard in the northern sector. It was also hit hard in the center of the Strip. And soon it will be hit hard in Rafah, too,” Brigadier-General Itzik Cohen, commander of Israel’s 162nd Division operating in Gaza, told Kan public TV.

But Israel’s closest ally Washington has called on it to set aside plans for an assault, and says Israel can combat Hamas fighters there by other means.

“We could not support a Rafah ground operation without an appropriate, credible, executable humanitarian plan precisely because of the complications for delivery of assistance,” David Satterfield, U.S. special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issued, told reporters on Tuesday.

“We continue discussions with Israel on what we believe are alternate ways of addressing a challenge which we recognize, which is Hamas military present in Rafah.”

Egypt says it will not allow Gazans to be pushed across the border onto its territory. Cairo had warned Israel against moving on Rafah, which “would lead to massive human massacres, losses (and) widespread destruction,” its State Information Service said.

Israel has withdrawn most of its ground troops from southern Gaza this month but kept up air strikes and conducted raids into areas its troops abandoned. Efforts by the United States, Egypt and Qatar to broker an extended ceasefire in time to head off an assault on Rafah have so far failed.

Hamas killed 1,200 people and abducted 253 on Oct 7. Of those hostages, 129 remain in Gaza, Israeli officials say. More than 260 Israeli troops have been killed in ground fighting since Oct 20, the military says.

H. A. Hellyer, a senior associate fellow in international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute, said he expected the assault on Rafah “sooner rather than later” because Netanyahu is under pressure to meet his stated objectives of rescuing hostages and killing all the Hamas leaders.

“The invasion of Rafah is unavoidable because of the way he has framed all of this,” he said. But it will not be possible for everyone to leave the city, so “if he sends the military into Rafah, there are going to be a lot of casualties.”

The post Israel Says It Is Poised to Move on Rafah first appeared on Algemeiner.com.