RSS
Jewish groups confront new questions: What counts as calling for genocide? And how should it be punished?
(JTA) – Just days after the presidents of three elite universities testified before Congress, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul sent a letter to the heads of her state’s public universities over the weekend instructing them that “calling for the genocide of any group of people” should “lead to swift disciplinary action.”
Meanwhile, Stanford University released a statement saying that “calls for the genocide of Jews or any peoples… would clearly violate” the school’s code of conduct.
The letter and statement were both in response to the congressional hearing, in which the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology declined to say outright that calling for the genocide of Jews would violate school rules.
Swift and widespread outrage followed the hearing, leading to the resignation of Penn’s president and placing pressure on the other two leaders.
The hearing had another effect: Nationwide, explicit acknowledgement by public officials and university leadership alike that calling for genocide is, in fact, unacceptable. The question for Jewish and pro-Israel groups — especially those long concerned with antisemitism on campus — is what that means and how it will change their approach to the issue.
What, exactly, counts as a call for genocide? Do popular pro-Palestinian chants that many Jews consider threatening — like calling for “intifada” — run afoul of the rules? And how should students be punished if those rules are broken?
One week after the hearing prompted those questions, some of the leading U.S. campus antisemitism watchdogs appeared reluctant to definitively answer them. They condemned chants such as “intifada” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” but demurred from explicitly calling them genocidal.
Representatives of two groups suggested that students who call for genocide should be suspended. One pro-Israel activist who spoke to JTA said the punishment should depend on “context,” acknowledging that he was using the very phrase that drove much of the backlash to the university presidents. A few others declined to state exactly how such students should be punished.
“Chants like ‘from the river to the sea’ and ‘globalize the intifada’ are deeply offensive and antisemitic and are unquestionably contributing to hostile environments for Jewish and Israeli students on campuses across the country,” a spokesperson for the Anti-Defamation League told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Tuesday.
But the ADL stopped short of defining such chants as de facto calls for Jewish genocide, and its own website’s description of the phrases does not include the term “genocide.” The website does say that “intifada” refers to violence such as that of the second intifada two decades ago, when approximately 1,000 Israelis were killed in terror attacks.
Neither Hochul’s office nor Stanford’s public relations representatives responded to JTA’s questions about whether they considered such phrases to meet the definition of calling for genocide of Jews, nor how they would discipline them.
Julia Jassey, a recent college graduate and the CEO of the campus antisemitism watchdog Jewish on Campus, called those phrases “antisemitic in impact” but would not say whether students who use them should be disciplined.
“Practically, the impact of saying ‘From the river to the sea’ calls into question the existence, the legitimacy, the lives of the folks who are living there who are Jewish,” Jassey said. When asked whether those phrases should be subject to disciplinary measures, Jassey, like other campus antisemitism activists who spoke to JTA, said it was largely up to the universities.
“I think that university administrations have an obligation to be clear,” she said, adding that they should “condemn” such language whether it comes from students or faculty. “It’s really important to prioritize the impact,” she said.
The ADL statement on the phrases further said universities had “clear legal obligations” to “respond” to such language. But beyond noting that the response should include some form of disciplinary action, the ADL did not clarify what such a response should be.
The organization said it does push for universities to suspend any student group “that promotes calls for antisemitic violence.” That may be a reference to Students for Justice in Palestine, which defended Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The ADL and other Jewish groups called on campuses to withdraw recognition and funding from the group, and in recent weeks, several universities have suspended their SJP chapters.
While there have been a small number of reported incidents of swastikas and chants of “Gas the Jews,” along with others referencing Hitler on campuses this year, chants of “from the river to the sea” and “intifada” have been far more common.
Responding to video of a recent event held by the Columbia University chapters of SJP and the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace at which protesters chanted “intifada,” the International Legal Forum, an Israel-based group, called the chant “a direct and unadulterated call for violence and genocide.” The group pushed Columbia to publicly condemn the activists and “ban these hate groups once and for all.” Columbia had suspended both groups for the remainder of the fall semester.
Those who chant those phrases object to the notion that they are calls for genocide. A spokesperson for JVP said that the group does not consider “from the river to the sea” to be antisemitic.
“JVP understands that to be an absolute right for anyone to be free from the river to the sea,” Sonya Meyerson-Knox, the group’s communications manager, told JTA weeks prior to last week’s hearing. “So Palestine will be free, Israeli Jews will be free. One person’s freedom does not take away another person’s freedom. Unless, of course, it’s in a supremacist state, which is what the Israeli government has been doing for 75 years.”
She likewise said after the hearing that the group also does not consider use of the term “intifada” to be equivalent to a call for violence, and does not believe students or university personnel should be penalized for using it. She added that her group does not endorse calls for violence and said, “No one on campuses is calling for the genocide of Jews and there is no evidence of this.” She repeated her group’s repeated accusation in the wake of Oct. 7 that Israel is committing “a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”
Meyerson-Knox said that JVP bases its guidelines on international law. “Resistance ‘by any means necessary,’ not so much. Popular resistance, absolutely,” she said. “There is a big difference there.”
When asked about the pro-Palestinian phrases, the general counsel for Hillel International, the umbrella group for campus Jewish centers, told JTA that students who chant “from the river to the sea” “need to be educated” on the fact that the phrase appears in Hamas’ charter.
“What’s relevant is whether it lands on Jewish students on the campus as an attack, a potentially genocidal attack, on the Jewish people, a plurality of whom now live in Israel,” the counsel, Mark Rotenberg, said.
Rotenberg added that a university “has a responsibility to not allow these kinds of endorsements of violence to be misunderstood,” comparing the chants to a student placing a noose in an area of campus “knowing that Black students will see it.”
He did suggest what administrations might do to a student or staff member who took such an action. “Universities will discipline, suspend and terminate the employment of people in the university community who engage in that kind of speech activity,” he said.
Watchdog groups devoted to the issue of campus antisemitism — some of which have spent years filing federal civil rights complaints that included objecting to the use of of pro-Palestinian language on campus — were somewhat vague as to how schools should discipline students who use them.
“The consequences that would be appropriate would be those provided for by school regulations or by law,” Gerard Filitti, general counsel for the pro-Israel legal group the Lawfare Project, told JTA. The Lawfare Project has filed federal civil rights challenges to college campuses via the Department of Education, including one at Columbia University from 2019 that the department re-opened in the wake of Oct. 7.
Asked what kinds of consequences would be appropriate, Filitti offered a range of options without saying which would best fit the offense.
“Whether that includes suspension, or a mandatory training about antisemitism, including anti-Zionism, or whether that includes expulsion, I think that is, to borrow a phrase that was spoken of last week, context-specific,” he said, referencing the university presidents’ answers to the question of whether calls for genocide of Jews violated their codes. He added that universities should consider “the whole range of remedies available as consequences under the codes of the schools.”
The Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, another pro-Israel legal group active in campus lawsuits, also did not offer thoughts on whether or how universities should discipline students who uttered those exact phrases.
The group’s president Alyza Lewin told JTA in a statement, “The very first step to ending the current harassment and preventing future harassment is for university administrators to understand Jewish identity so they can effectively recognize anti-Semitism.”
And a top figure at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an antisemitism watchdog group that has called for all three presidents who participated in the hearing to resign, suggested that universities should “train the police” to respond to complaints of antisemitism.
When asked if students calling for “intifada” should be arrested, Rabbi Abraham Cooper didn’t rule it out.
“This is private property. Universities set their own rules for campus,” he told JTA. “They have protocols in place. It’s not for me to say right now what those protocols should be … But what it does mean is they’ve got a whole lot of discussing and a whole lot of reflecting to do, because whatever they have in place right now may be working for a lot of people but it’s not working for the Jewish students.”
—
The post Jewish groups confront new questions: What counts as calling for genocide? And how should it be punished? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
US Clamps Sanctions on Israel-bashing UN Rights Monitor Albanese
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
The Trump administration has imposed sweeping sanctions against Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, citing the UN official’s lengthy record of singling out Israel for condemnation.
In a post on X, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions under a February executive order targeting those who “prompt International Criminal Court (ICC) action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.” He accused Albanese of waging “political and economic warfare” against both nations and asserted that “such efforts will no longer be tolerated.”
“Today I am imposing sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt [International Criminal Court] action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives,” Rubio announced on X/Twitter.
“Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated,” declared the Trump administration’s top foreign affairs official. “We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense.”
Rubio concluded: “The United States will continue to take whatever actions we deem necessary to respond to lawfare and protect our sovereignty and that of our allies.”
The decision to impose sanctions on Albanese marks an escalation in the ongoing feud between the White House and the United Nations over Israel. The Trump administration has repeatedly accused the UN and Albanese of unfairly targeting Israel and mischaracterizing the Jewish state’s conduct in Gaza.
Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has held the position of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories since 2022. The position authorizes her to monitor and report on alleged “human rights violations” by Israel against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Last week, Albanese issued a scathing report accusing companies of helping Israel maintain a so-called “genocide economy.” She called on the companies to cut off economic ties with Israel and warned that they might be guilty of “complicity” in the so-called “genocide” in Gaza.
Critics of Albanese have long accused her of exhibiting an excessive anti-Israel bias, calling into question her fairness and neutrality.
Albanese has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize Hamas’ attacks on the Jewish state.
In the months following the Palestinian terrorist group’s atrocities across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Albanese accused the Jewish state of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people had been killed in the Gaza war as a result of Israeli actions.
The action comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington, where he has received a warm reception from the Trump administration. Netanyahu has been meeting with US officials to discuss next steps in the ongoing Gaza military operation.
Gideon Sa’ar, Minister of Foreign Affairs for Israel, commended the Rubio announcement with his own post on X/Twitter, exclaiming: “A clear message. Time for the UN to pay attention!”
The post US Clamps Sanctions on Israel-bashing UN Rights Monitor Albanese first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Hardball: Trump Administration Reports Harvard to Accreditor Over Antisemitism Allegations
US President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. Photo: Kevin Lamarque via Reuters Connect.
The Trump administration escalated its showdown against Harvard University on Wednesday, reporting the institution to its accreditor for alleged civil rights violations resulting from its weak response to reports of antisemitic bullying, discrimination, and harassment following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 massacre across southern Israel.
The US Department of Education (DOE) announced the action on Wednesday. Citing Harvard’s admitted failure to treat antisemitism as seriously as it treated others forms of hatred in the past, the DOE called on the New England Commission of Higher Education to review and, potentially, revoke its accreditation — a designation which qualifies Harvard for federal funding and attests to the quality of the educational services its provides.
“Accrediting bodies play a significant role in preserving academic integrity and a campus culture conducive to truth seeking and learning,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Part of that is ensuring students are safe on campus and abiding by federal laws that guarantee educational opportunities to all students. By allowing anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination to persist unchecked on its campus, Harvard University has failed in its obligation to students, educators, and American taxpayers.”
The DOE, McMahon added, “expects the New England Commission of Higher Education to enforce its policies and practices, and to keep the Department fully informed of its efforts to ensure that Harvard is in compliance with federal law and accreditor standards.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism has acknowledged that the university administration’s handling of campus antisemitism fell well below its obligations under both Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its own nondiscrimination policies.
In a 300-plus-page report, the task force compiled a comprehensive record of antisemitic incidents on Harvard’s campus in recent years — from the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee’s endorsement of the Oct. 7 terrorist atrocities to an anti-Zionist faculty group’s sharing an antisemitic cartoon depicting Jews as murderers of people of color. The report identified Harvard’s past refusal to afford Jews the same protections against discrimination enjoyed by other minority groups as a key source of its problem.
Coming several weeks after President Donald Trump ordered the freeze of $2.26 billion in federal research grants and contracts for Harvard, the task force report found it was “clear” that antisemitism and anti-Israel bias have been fomented, practiced, and tolerated not only at Harvard but also within academia more widely.”
The university is now suing the federal government over the funding halt.
President Trump has spoken scathingly of Harvard, calling it, for example, an “Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institute … with students being accepted from all over the world that want to rip our Country apart” in an April post to his Truth Social platform.
In recent weeks, however, both Trump and McMahon had commended Harvard’s constructive response in negotiations over reforms the administration has asked it to implement as a precondition for restoring federal funds. The requested reforms include hiring more conservative faculty, shuttering diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI] programs, and slashing the size of administrative offices tangential to the university’s central educational mission.
The administration has since changed its tone in the wake of a report by The Harvard Crimson that interim Harvard President Alan Garber has said “behind closed doors” that he has no intention of doing anything that would make Harvard more palatable to conservatives.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism issued Harvard a formal “notice of violation” of civil rights law. Charging that Harvard willfully exposed Jewish students to a flood of racist and antisemitic abuse both in and outside of the classroom, it threatened to strip whatever remains of Harvard’s federal funding.
“Failure to institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources and continue to affect Harvard’s relationship with the federal government,” wrote the federal officials comprising the multiagency Task Force. “Harvard may of course continue to operate free of federal privileges, and perhaps such an opportunity will spur a commitment to excellence that will help Harvard thrive once again.”
In Wednesday’s announcement, US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Harvard’s conduct “forfeits the legitimacy that accreditation is designed to uphold.”
“HHS and Department of Education will actively hold Harvard accountable through sustained oversight until it restores public trust and ensures a campus free of discrimination,” he said.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Hardball: Trump Administration Reports Harvard to Accreditor Over Antisemitism Allegations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
IDF Strikes Hezbollah Sites in South Lebanon as Terror Group Pushes to Rebuild Amid US Disarmament Talks
IDF operating in southern Lebanon. Photo: IDF Spokesperson
Israeli forces uncovered and destroyed Hezbollah weapons caches in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, as a new report indicated that despite ongoing U.S.-led efforts to secure a disarmament deal, the Iran-backed group is making repeated, largely concealed attempts to rebuild its military presence in the area.
Troops carried out several operations targeting Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon on Wednesday morning, destroying weapons depots, explosives and multibarrel launchers concealed in forested terrain, the IDF said, in violation of the November ceasefire, which requires Hezbollah to withdraw its forces 20 miles from the Israeli border.
A new report released this week by the Alma Research and Education Center found that Hezbollah is focused on rebuilding in three areas: operational deployment, weapons acquisition, and financial recovery.
“Hezbollah didn’t give up its resistance narrative and motivation,” Alma’s director, Lt. Col. (Res.) Sarit Zehavi, told The Algemeiner.
“It wants to rebuild its capabilities and infrastructures, whether it’s the villages that will be used as human shields or the military infrastructure in South Lebanon and in Lebanon in general.”
According to Zehavi, Hezbollah is attempting to return Radwan fighters to positions south of the Litani River as part of a wider plan to restore its elite forces to operational readiness. The IDF on Monday killed Radwan commander Ali Abd al-Hassan Haidar in a targeted strike. The action came hours after US Special Envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack met with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in Beirut to discuss a long-term deal that would include an Israeli withdrawal and complete disarmament of Hezbollah.
Barrack described the Lebanese response to the proposal as positive. Later, he issued a blunt warning to Hezbollah in response to a vow by the terror group’s leader, Naim Qassem, not to lay down its arms. “If they mess with us anywhere in the world, they will have a serious problem with us,” Barrack said in an interview with Lebanese news network LBCI. “They don’t want that.”
Zehavi said it was premature to predict the outcome of the diplomatic efforts. She warned that the challenge of disarming Hezbollah remains enormous and emphasized that the Lebanese Armed Forces have not demonstrated the capability or willingness to confront the group.
“It’s too soon to be optimistic or pessimistic,” she said, noting that no firm commitments have emerged from the Beirut talks.
Hezbollah’s efforts to smuggle and manufacture weapons have been complicated by both Israeli strikes and the regional realignment over recent months. While Israeli strikes have disrupted many supply routes, according to Zehavi, Syrian authorities have intercepted far more Hezbollah-bound weapons than the Lebanese Army, which claims to have uncovered 500 arms caches but has provided no evidence.
The financial front marks the third aspect of Hezbollah’s rebuilding effort. Last week, the group halted cash payments to Shiite civilians whose homes were damaged in the war, citing liquidity problems. Zehavi attributed the shortfall to disruptions in Iran’s funding networks — an outcome of the 12-day war against the regime in Tehran — and said the constraints would likely hamper Hezbollah’s ability to compensate its base and sustain operations.
“I hope they will continue to have problems with the cash flow, that way it will be very difficult for them to recover,” she said.
The post IDF Strikes Hezbollah Sites in South Lebanon as Terror Group Pushes to Rebuild Amid US Disarmament Talks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.