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Jewish Professor Threatened by Students for Justice in Palestine at George Washington University
Illustrative: Pro-Hamas students rally at the encampment for Gaza set up at George Washington University, Washington, DC, April 25, 2035. Photo: Allison Bailey via Reuters Connect
The Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at George Washington University on Monday issued an ominous warning to a professor who created a proposal to resettle residents of Gaza outside of the Palestinian enclave and remake it into a hub for tourism and economic dynamism, a policy rolled out by US President Donald Trump earlier this month.
“This notice is to inform you that you are hereby evicted from the premises of the George Washington University,” SJP wrote in a missive it taped to the office door of international affairs professor Joseph Pelzman, who first shared the resettlement plan with Trump’s presidential campaign in July 2024, according to an account of events he described to the podcast “America, Baby!” the following month.
“The reason for the eviction is: your active role in incepting the genocide and planned ethnic cleansing of Gaza,” SJP’s message continued. “Your disgusting plan for the complete destruction and foreign occupation of Gaza and the colonial ‘re-education’ of Palestinians.”
Denouncing Pelzman as the “architect of genocide,” SJP added, “Pelzman’s tenure is only one pernicious symptom of the bloodthirsty Zionism permeating our campus … The proprietors of this eviction notice demand your immediate removal.”
On Tuesday, Pelzman told The Algemeiner in a statement that the university’s police department and its president, Ellen Granberg, have been notified of the letter. He also shared background on his controversial proposal, which was outlined in a paper titled “An Economic Plan for Rebuilding Gaza,” a work published by the Center of Excellence for the Economic Study of the Middle East and North Africa (CEESMENA).
“The flyer, titled ‘Notice of Eviction,’ falsely accuses me of genocide, racism, and other inflammatory claims,” Pelzman said. “While it does not contain an explicit, direct threat, the language used is highly aggressive and appears to incite collective action against me.”
He added, “The SJP complaint refers to a paper that I recently published in an academic journal. Nothing in my formal economics paper suggests anything remotely resembling the SJP complaint. They accuse me of writing the Trump plan. The reality is that my paper was sent to the Trump people in July. It was not written for him, nor was it requested by him. Clearly, these people did not read the paper.”
Pelzman had said during an interview in August that his paper, which was later published in the Global World Journal and put online in October, “went to the Trump people because they were the ones who initially had an interest in it — not the Biden people. I was asked [by Trump’s team] to think outside the box on what do we do after [the Gaza war], as nobody was really talking about it.”
Responding to The Algemeiner‘s request for comment on SJP’s conduct, spokeswoman Julia Garbitt said the university is taking the situation “very seriously” and deplores “any acts that deface university property or threaten any members of our community.” Garbitt also noted that an investigation to identify the culprits, whom she said will be subject to “all applicable local laws and university polices,” is underway.
She continued, “We also want to stress that faculty members are entitled to academic freedom in their teaching and research, even when it is controversial. We also want to be clear that scholarly work produced by faculty does not reflect a university position. These commitments are the hallmark of an academic community that respects differing points of view.”
SJP’s threat to Pelzman, an accomplished academic who has focused heavily on the Middle East region, comes as the group serves probation for breaking a slew of school rules during the 2023-2024 academic year — a term which saw it heap abuse on school officials, visitors to campus representing former US President Joe Biden’s administration, and African Americans.
The university suspended the group over its behavior in Feb. 2024 but is now active again. Recently, SJP announced that it will hold a “teach-in” to commemorate the First Intifada, an outbreak of Palestinian terrorism which began in Dec. 1987 and, lasting for nearly six years, claimed the lives of scores of Israelis.
The group’s targeting of Pelzman came after Trump earlier this month proposed an amalgam of Pelzman’s concepts and his own, which notably involved the US occupying Gaza in perpetuity to oversee its reconstruction and recovery from the Israel-Hamas war prompted by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. As part of the proposal, Trump suggested relocating Gazans in countries such as Jordan and Egypt, which rejected the plan for being unworkable.
“The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” Trump said on Feb. 5 during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site — level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings — level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.”
Pelzman explained his own thinking on the topic in August, noting that the Biden administration was not interested in his counsel.
“You have to destroy the whole place, you have to start from scratch,” he said. “And then you have an economy which actually has three sectors. You have tourism potential, you have agriculture potential, and then you have — because a lot of them are smart — high tech … This is a triangular sector model, but its implementation requires the area to be completely vacated so that the destroyed concrete can be recycled — ensuring that nothing remains of the vertical construction extending deep underground.”
Trump recently somewhat retreated from the idea, saying he would not impose the plan but instead recommend it. Nonetheless, the controversial and seismic proposed policy change has set off a maelstrom of anti-Zionist sentiment at George Washington University.
In Monday’s letter to Pelzman, SJP implied that it is prepared to harm the professor over his role in advancing Trump’s plan for Gaza.
“If you choose to remain on the premises, and if GWU continues to harbor your malignant presence on this campus, every sector of this community will be mobilized against you,” the group said. “The students of GWU will hold you and this university accountable for your crimes.”
Speaking to The Algemeiner on Tuesday, George Washington University senior Sabrina Soffer said SJP’s note to Pelzman violates norms which protect the unfettered exchange of ideas in higher education and constitutes harassment.
“They are targeting Professor Pelzman for doing his job — producing creative scholarship in a field of academia that is littered with mines that explode with the slightest sense of movement or touch,” Soffer said. “SJP’s slandering him as a ‘bloodthirsty Zionist” and threatening to ‘mobilize’ against him amounts not only to a violation of our discrimination policy but also a brazen act of intimidation which discourages academic freedom and the discovery of new knowledge.”
She continued, “The university must enhance their disciplinary policies and hold SJP accountable for its actions by once again suspending its permission to operate on campus.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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UK, France, Germany Urge Gaza Ceasefire, Ask Israel to Restore Humanitarian Access
People walk among destroyed buildings in Gaza, as viewed from the Israel-Gaza border, March 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo
The governments of Germany, France and Britain called for an immediate return to a ceasefire in Gaza in a joint statement on Friday that also called on Israel to restore humanitarian access.
“We call on Israel to restore humanitarian access, including water and electricity, and ensure access to medical care and temporary medical evacuations in accordance with international humanitarian law,” the foreign ministers of the three countries, known as the E3, said in a statement.
The ministers said they were “appalled by the civilian casualties,” and also called on Palestinian Hamas terrorists to release Israeli hostages.
They said the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians could not be resolved through military means, and that a long-lasting ceasefire was the only credible pathway to peace.
The ministers added that they were “deeply shocked” by the incident that affected the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) building in Gaza, and called for an investigation into the incident.
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Israeli Military Says It Intercepted Missile Fired from Yemen; Houthis Claim Responsibility
FILE PHOTO: Houthi military helicopter flies over the Galaxy Leader cargo ship in the Red Sea in this photo released November 20, 2023. Photo: Houthi Military Media/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
The Israeli military said it intercepted a missile fired from Yemen on Friday, one day after shooting down two projectiles launched by Houthi terrorists.
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that it fired a ballistic missile toward Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, the group’s military spokesperson, Yahya Saree, said in a televised statement in the early hours of Saturday.
Saree said the attack against Israel was the group’s third in 48 hours.
He issued a warning to airlines that the Israeli airport was “no longer safe for air travel and would continue to be so until the Israeli aggression against Gaza ends and the blockade is lifted.”
However, the airport’s website seemed to be operating normally and showed a list of scheduled flights.
The group’s military spokesman has also said without providing evidence that the Houthis had launched attacks against the US aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman in the Red Sea.
The group recently vowed to escalate attacks, including those targeting Israel, in response to US strikes earlier this month, which amount to the biggest US military operation in the Middle East since President Donald Trump took office in January. The US attacks have killed at least 50 people.
The Houthis’ fresh attacks come under a pledge to expand their range of targets in Israel in retaliation for renewed Israeli strikes in Gaza that have killed hundreds after weeks of relative calm.
The Houthis have carried out over 100 attacks on shipping since Israel’s war with Hamas began in late 2023, saying they were acting in solidarity with Gaza’s Palestinians.
The attacks have disrupted global commerce and prompted the US military to launch a costly campaign to intercept missiles.
The Houthis are part of what has been dubbed the “Axis of Resistance” – an anti-Israel and anti-Western alliance of regional militias including Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and armed groups in Iraq, all backed by Iran.
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Columbia University Agrees to Some Trump Demands in Attempt to Restore Funding
A pro-Palestine protester holds a sign that reads: “Faculty for justice in Palestine” during a protest urging Columbia University to cut ties with Israel. November 15, 2023 in New York City. Photo: Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Columbia University agreed to some changes demanded by US President Donald Trump’s administration before it can negotiate to regain federal funding that was pulled this month over allegations the school tolerated antisemitism on campus.
The Ivy League university in New York City acquiesced to several demands in a 4,000-word message from its interim president released on Friday. It laid out plans to reform its disciplinary process, hire security officers with arrest powers and appoint a new official with a broad remit to review departments that offer courses on the Middle East.
Columbia’s dramatic concessions to the government’s extraordinary demands, which stem from protests that convulsed the Manhattan campus over the Israel-Gaza war, immediately prompted criticism. The outcome could have broad ramifications as the Trump administration has warned at least 60 other universities of similar action.
What Columbia would do with its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies department was among the biggest questions facing the university as it confronted the cancellation, called unconstitutional by legal and civil groups, of hundreds of millions of dollars in government grants and contracts. The Trump administration had told the school to place the department under academic receivership for at least five years, taking control away from its faculty.
Academic receivership is a rare step taken by a university’s administrators to fix a dysfunctional department by appointing a professor or administrator outside the department to take over.
Columbia did not refer to receivership in Friday’s message. The university said it would appoint a new senior administrator to review leadership and to ensure programs are balanced at MESAAS, the Middle East Institute, the Center for Palestine Studies, the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and other departments with Middle East programs, along with Columbia’s satellite hubs in Tel Aviv and Amman.
‘TERRIBLE PRECEDENT’
Professor Jonathan Zimmerman, a historian of education at the University of Pennsylvania and a “proud” graduate of Columbia, called it a sad day for the university.
“Historically, there is no precedent for this,” Zimmerman said. “The government is using the money as a cudgel to micromanage a university.”
Todd Wolfson, a Rutgers University professor and president of the American Association of University Professors, called the Trump administration’s demands “arguably the greatest incursion into academic freedom, freedom of speech and institutional autonomy that we’ve seen since the McCarthy era.”
“It sets a terrible precedent,” Wolfson said. “I know every academic faculty member in this country is angry about Columbia University’s inability to stand up to a bully.”
In a campus-wide email, Katrina Armstrong, Columbia’s interim president, wrote that the her priorities were “to advance our mission, ensure uninterrupted academic activities, and make every student, faculty, and staff member safe and welcome on our campus.”
Mohammad Hemeida, an undergraduate who chairs Columbia’s Student Governing Board, said the school should have sought more student and faculty input.
“It’s incredibly disappointing Columbia gave in to government pressure instead of standing firm on the commitments to students and to academic freedom, which they emphasized to us in almost daily emails,” he said.
The White House did not respond to Columbia’s memo on Friday. The Trump administration said its demands, laid out in a letter to Armstrong eight days ago, were a precondition before Columbia could enter “formal negotiations” with the government to have federal funding.
ARREST POWERS
Columbia’s response is being watched by other universities that the administration has targeted as it advances its policy objectives in areas ranging from campus protests to transgender sports and diversity initiatives.
Private companies, law firms and other organizations have also faced threatened cuts in government funding and business unless they agree to adhere more closely to Trump’s priorities. Powerful Wall Street law firm Paul Weiss came under heavy criticism on Friday over a deal it struck with the White House to escape an executive order imperiling its business.
Columbia has come under particular scrutiny for the anti-Israel student protest movement that roiled its campus last year, when its lawns filled with tent encampments and noisy rallies against the US government’s support of the Jewish state.
To some of the Trump administration’s demands, such as having “time, place and manner” rules around protests, the school suggested they had already been met.
Columbia said it had already sought to hire peace officers with arrest powers before the Trump administration’s demand last week, saying 36 new officers had nearly completed the lengthy training and certification process under New York law.
The university said no one was allowed to wear face masks on campus if they were doing so intending to break rules or laws. The ban does not apply to face masks worn for medical or religious purposes, and the university did not say it was adopting the Trump administration’s demand that Columbia ID be worn visibly on clothing.
The sudden shutdown of millions of dollars in federal funding to Columbia this month was already disrupting medical and scientific research at the school, researchers said.
Canceled projects included the development of an AI-based tool that helps nurses detect the deterioration of a patient’s health in hospital and research on uterine fibroids, non-cancerous tumors that can cause pain and affect women’s fertility.
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