RSS
Is the Government of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Celebrating Anti-Israel ‘Resistance’?
An anti-Israel banner hanging outside a court building in Chapel Hill, NC. Photo: provided.
Chapel Hill Community Arts & Culture — a division of the town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina — has proudly announced a new banner that praises student-led and often violent campus protests against Israel.
The banner is on display at the Peace & Justice Plaza, which sits in the heart of the downtown shopping district, in front of the local courthouse, just steps away from the campus of the University of North Carolina (UNC). The banner features a pro-Palestinian UNC protestor wearing a keffiyeh with the message “#GOODTROUBLE.”
The keffiyeh has become a controversial symbol, particularly since the terrorist attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, that slaughtered more than 1,200 people in Israel, including 46 Americans, the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Reuters has referred to the keffiyeh as “an emblem of solidarity with the Palestinian cause.” While the keffiyeh is viewed as a sign of Palestinian nationalism by many Palestinians, it is also viewed by Jews worldwide as an incitement to violence and a symbol of backing mass bloodshed against Israel.
When a protester at UNC yelled, “All of us Hamas,” she was surrounded by fellow protestors wearing keffiyehs, a clear message of intimidation to those in the community who might have different views.
According to their website, Chapel Hill Community Arts & Culture promotes inclusiveness and respect as their top values. Yet, in their announcement of the “artistic banners,” they abandoned any semblance of neutrality by ignoring Hamas’ pogrom and the more than 100 hostages that have remained in captivity or been murdered over the past 13 months.
In the town’s announcement, the artist of the banners is quoted as saying that the banners “evoke the essence of the ongoing struggle for racial justice … they echo the timeless words of the late John Lewis, urging us to stir up ‘Good Trouble’ in pursuit of a more equitable world.”
Chapel Hill wrote, “We invite you to visit the plaza to see this new art and recognize the ongoing fight for justice.”
In a recent letter to Chapel Hill officials, former Raleigh City Council member Stefanie Mendell wrote:
It is appalling to think that anyone would consider that “good trouble” would celebrate the murder, rape, and kidnapping of thousands of innocent Israelis, especially when two of the kidnap victims are Chapel Hill residents, one of whom remains in captivity after more than a year.
The Jewish community around the world, and right here in the “enlightened” Triangle is experiencing an unprecedented increase in anti-semitism. This banner does nothing to unite or heal the community; quite the opposite.
This issue is being widely discussed across local social media, with many outraged community members — both Jewish and non-Jewish — contacting local officials.
On Instagram, one user wrote, “This does little more than make me feel that Chapel Hill is not a safe space for the Jewish people.”
Deborah R. Gerhardt, Distinguished Professor of Law at UNC, wrote to town officials:
I just saw that a banner with a keffiyeh wearing student indicating “good trouble” is hanging on Franklin street. What message are you trying to send? That it is good to make trouble against fellow Jewish citizens? That it is good to make them feel unwelcome? That John Lewis would have supported this kind of divisiveness? A Chapel Hill native is currently being held hostage by Palestinians. Does that mean nothing to you? We have no control of Israel policy, but we can certainly show compassion for our Jewish community.
Chapel Hill Jewish resident Kathy Kaufman wrote to town officials:
The protestors chanted slogans such as “Globalize the Intifada”, “From the River to the Sea”, and “By Any Means Necessary”. These chants signify erasure of Jewish identity, ethnicity, and history. The student protestors have explicitly endorsed violence against Jews, including, in particular, the October 7 massacre, and also continuing antisemitic violence (such as currently in Amsterdam and Paris).
This banner, supporting the student protests, is essentially equating Good Trouble with support for Hamas terrorists going on a murderous rampage, torturing, gang raping, and murdering men, women, and children in their homes in grisly fashion. And then taking more of them hostage to torture them in their terror tunnels – still, to this day.
One of those hostages, Keith Siegel, grew up in Chapel Hill. It is now 400+ days that he and 100 others are still being held in Hamas terror tunnels. Keith still has family in the Chapel Hill area, including his sister. What does this banner say to them?
The new keffiyeh banner, hanging above the front doors of the Chapel Hill courthouse, honors and glorifies the very activists who are now appearing before the local courts.
This gives the appearance that the Chapel Hill government endorses or is complicit in attempts to influence or intimidate public officials on matters before the court. Whether intentional or not, promoting this banner by the town is a chilling overreach of local government on issues of law, justice, neutrality, and community safety.
This banner was hung at the same courthouse that was recently scheduled to hear charges against members of the UNC chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The UNC-SJP chapter was suspended by the university along with some of its student activists for repeated issues such as vandalism on campus and substituting the Palestinian flag in place of the US flag.
Jews in Chapel Hill feel disregarded, mistreated, unseen, and unsafe. The message being sent to the courts and to the community is clear — local government has chosen the side of the Palestinian activists and anti-Israel inciters, and has thus dismissed the safety and well being of the Jewish community.
Chapel Hill residents are furious and frustrated after contacting the Chapel Hill Community Arts & Culture with heartfelt, anguished letters, only to receive form letter responses.
One local resident wrote on a WhatsApp group, “I don’t think anyone is reading our letters … It seems to me they simply don’t care.”
You know very well what a keffiyeh means to many if not most Jews in the United States. You know very well how this symbol has been used to marginalize and intimidate Jewish students and staff on the UNC campus. You know very well that a Jewish citizen of Chapel Hill is being held captive in the terror dungeons of Hamas.
Is this poster what you really want “welcoming“ visitors to Chapel Hill?
I contacted Chapel Hill mayor Jessica Anderson, the Town Council, and Chapel Hill Community Arts & Culture for comment. At the time of publication, no responses were received.
Peter Reitzes writes about issues related to antisemitism and Israel.
The post Is the Government of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Celebrating Anti-Israel ‘Resistance’? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Mississauga vigil for Hamas leader was called off, but the Jewish community says the mayor should apologize for defending it
The group said members were going to be volunteering on an urgent food security issue instead.
The post Mississauga vigil for Hamas leader was called off, but the Jewish community says the mayor should apologize for defending it appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
RSS
Amsterdam Police Identify 45 Suspects Linked to Violent, Antisemitic Attack Targeting Israeli Soccer Fans
Israeli Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters are guarded by police after violence targeting Israeli football fans broke out in Amsterdam overnight, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, November 8, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ami Shooman/Israel Hayom
Dutch police said on Sunday that they have identified and are investigating 45 suspects of whom they have images in connection to the violent attacks targeting Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam earlier this month.
“Because of the seriousness of the crimes, but also because of the social impact, we immediately scaled up to a special investigation team,” Dutch police chief Janny Knol said in a statement.
All 45 suspects are being probed for serious violent crimes, according to Dutch media. Nine of them have been arrested so far and remain in police custody, authorities said on Sunday, including a suspect who reported to police on Saturday night after his unblurred photo was released to the public.
On Friday, police said they were investigating 29 more suspects, including two who ultimately turned themselves in and have been arrested. Unblurred photos of the some of the other suspects have been online since Friday night and more images of suspects will be released soon, according to a police spokesperson cited by the NL Times.
Following a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and the Dutch team Ajax in Amsterdam on Nov. 7, anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian gangs violently attacked Israelis who attended the soccer game. The premeditated and coordinated attack took place in various parts of the city late that night and into the early hours of Nov. 8. Israeli fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv were chased, run over by cars, assaulted, and taunted with anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian slogans such as “Free Palestine.” Five people were reportedly hospitalized for injuries.
Police are “looking at all crimes committed in the run-up to the game and in its aftermath,” Knol said after the violence erupted in the Dutch capital.
A Dutch court last week arraigned eight suspects, including minors, who were arrested in connection to the violent attack in Amsterdam, the NL Times reported. Those suspects include a 21-year-old man from Almelo, a city in eastern Netherlands; a 37-year-old man from Amsterdam suspected of pulling someone off his bicycle; two men, ages 19 and 21, who were arrested over the weekend; and two 26-year-old men, one from Amsterdam and one from Utrecht, who are suspected of publishing posts on social media that incited violence against the Israeli soccer fans.
The post Amsterdam Police Identify 45 Suspects Linked to Violent, Antisemitic Attack Targeting Israeli Soccer Fans first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Tufts University Suspends Students for Justice in Palestine Until 2027
A statue of the school’s mascot, “Jumbo,” stands on the campus of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, US, Nov. 27, 2017. Photo: Brian Snyder via Reuters Connect
Tufts University in Massachusetts has extended a suspension of its Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter until January 2027, a school spokesman confirmed with The Algemeiner on Monday.
Tufts first temporarily deactivated the group in October, citing “multiple violations of university policies,” including SJP’s promoting violence and calling on peers to participate. According to a disciplinary letter shared by SJP, days ahead of a celebratory demonstration it planned for the anniversary of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, the group posted a picture of “individuals with assault rifles, instructing students to ‘Join the Student Intifada’ and to ‘escalate’” during its event. The inciting content left school officials “no choice but to impose interim suspension,” the university said in the letter.
SJP has said that the university’s adding 27 months to its initial suspension represents “an attempt to fracture the strength of our movement” and accused it of “bankrolling” conflicts in the Middle East. Additionally, in a gesture which aimed, unsuccessfully, to turn the tables on Tufts, SJP proclaimed its “formal break and disaffiliation from tufts university [sic].”
It continued, “As the zionist [sic] genocide of Palestine and Lebanon has escalated over the past year, tufts [sic] in turn has sought to repress our solidarity movement,” the group charged. “The administration has threatened to suspend individuals over Instagram posts and vigils …We are done justifying our action against this university’s role in the genocide of the Palestinian people. We will not apologize.”
Tufts University spokesman Patrick Collins defended the school’s decision in a lengthy statement shared with The Algemeiner. It explained that SJP has violated nearly a dozen prohibitions on gambling, communicating violent threats, and unauthorized assembly.
“The complaint is now resolved, resulting in a disciplinary suspension that takes into account the group’s actions, their impact on other community members, the group’s repeated refusal to cooperate with university policies and expectations, and its refusal to follow through on sanctions arising from previous conduct policy violations,” Collins wrote. “The suspension also follows multiple attempts over the last year by the university’s student life staff and other administrators to work and communicate with SJP and its leaders, who have rejected these efforts.”
Collins noted that SJP can apply for re-recognition by the university, pending its compliance with certain “terms,” which include observing its suspension, something it has failed to do so far. If it is reinstated by the university, SJP will be placed on a “one-year probationary period,” during which school officials will determine if it has truly reformed. He added that what SJP is experiencing is not, as the group has maintained, personal or ideological.
“The Student Code of Conduct for the Schools of Arts & Sciences and Engineering considers and addresses student and student organization behavior regardless of their viewpoints,” he continued. “Individuals and groups that violate university policies face a range of disciplinary actions, up to and including suspension or expulsion from the university for individuals, and suspension or permanent revocation of university recognition for student organizations.”
SJP’s suspension comes amid concern that it and similar pro-Hamas organizations are using college campuses as recruiting grounds for domestic terrorist operations.
“The movement contains militant elements pushing it toward a wider, more severe campaign focused on property destruction and violence properly described as domestic terrorism,” Capital Research Center researcher Ryan Mauro wrote in a groundbreaking report, titled “Marching Toward Violence: The Domestic Anti-Israeli Protest Movement,” which was published last week. “It demands the ‘dismantlement’ of America’s ‘colonialist,’ ‘imperialist,’ or ‘capitalist,’ system, often calling for the US to be abolished as a country.”
Drawing on statements issued and actions taken by SJP and its collaborators, Mauro made the case that toolkits published by SJP herald Hamas for perpetrating mass casualties of civilians; SJP has endorsed Iran’s attacks on Israel as well as its stated intention to overturn the US-led world order; and other groups under its umbrella have called on followers to “Bring the Intifada Home.” Such activities, the report explained, accelerated after Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, which pro-Hamas groups perceived as an inflection point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and an opportunity. By flooding the internet and college campuses with agitprop and staging events — protests or vandalisms — they hope to manufacture a critical mass of youth support for their ideas, thus creating an army of revolutionaries willing to adopt Hamas’s aims as their own.
“Groups in the pro-terrorism, anti-Israel movement co-exist as our concentric circles of increasing malevolence,” Mauro explained. “Groups in the outermost circle avoid risks as they recruit new protest members and seek to integrate as many political causes as possible under the anti-Israel umbrella … Some militants aspire to incorporate the campaign into a broader wear on law enforcement if not an insurgency.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Tufts University Suspends Students for Justice in Palestine Until 2027 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.