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‘Offensive’: Harvard President Criticizes Student Group’s Pro-Hamas Oct 7 Statement
Harvard University president Alan Garber appeared to denounce a pro-Hamas student group which marked the anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre by praising it as an act of revolutionary justice that should be repeated until the State of Israel is destroyed.
On Monday, the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) issued a statement awash in antisemitic insinuations, saying, for example that, “Zionism seeks the complete erasure of anyone who dares to stand in the way of its colonial rampage” and referring to Israel numerous times as the “Zionist entity,” a demonizing phrase frequently used by Islamist terrorists to dehumanize Israeli civilians and justify mass casualty events.
Calling itself the “student intifada,” a clear reference to terrorism, it added that “Now is the time to escalate…As the people of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen persevere in the face of the genocidal Israeli state, we must learn from them. Resistance will ultimately break the shackles of the Zionist entity.”
Speaking to The Harvard Crimson earlier this week, Alan Garber hit back at the group, saying, “I would remind everyone that they speak for themselves.” However, he cut the idea short, noting that while “there are aspects of [the statement] I find personally offensive — I am not about to make university statements about matters of public affair that are not part of the core of the university.”
Garber’s explanation for not commenting further alluded to Harvard University’s recently adopted institutional neutrality, which ostensibly means it will no longer take sides in polarizing political debates. The idea was the final recommendation of a report issued by a faculty group which Garber, serving then as “interim” president, convened to study whether Harvard “should use its official voice to address matters of social and political significance.” The committee agreed that it should not, explaining that Harvard’s “integrity and credibility” are “compromised” when it privileges one point of view over another and that doing so sometimes offends groups it aims to “comfort.” Moreover, it stressed that Harvard’s business is education, not politics.
Monday’s momentary abeyance of the policy reflects its frailty as a guardrail against the proliferation and increasing intellectual respectability of antisemitism, an issue experts such as Peter Wood of the National Association of Scholars (NAS) have discussed with The Algemeiner before.
“These institutional neutrality policies sound wholesome in the abstract, but I fear they are often just attempts to by college administrators to avoid taking a stand against antisemites, communists, and other radicals who attempt to hijack the university’s credibility to advance their own agendas,” Wood, the author of several books and hundreds of articles on higher education, said during an interview in August. “The ideal has proved delusional, and as a weapon it is easily used against reform as for it… Hamas’ massacre of Israelis [on Oct. 7] has stripped us of many illusions … We must say forthrightly what virtues we wish our universities to champion. And if we wish our universities to fight once more on the side of the angels, the swiftest way to that goal is to teach them how to speak with courage by speaking so ourselves.”
Even what Garber did say is wanting in principle and consistency, former Harvard president Larry Summers told The Harvard Crimson the following day. Summers, who has publicly criticized Harvard’s alleged indifference to pro-terror and antisemitic sentiment on campus, noted that Garber previously proclaimed that “antisemitism will not be tolerated at Harvard.”
“I am confused about how the PSC is a recognized university organization with access to university listservs, with potential funding through university fees,” Summers continued. “That seems like more than tolerating.”
Garber, however, has said more than former Harvard president Claudine Gay did when the same group praised the Oct. 7 massacre last academic year. Gay declined to denounce them, setting off a series of events which ultimately led to her being outed as a serial plagiarist and resigning from office. Despite this, his administration’s handling of campus antisemites has been ambiguous and described even by students who benefited from its being so as “caving in.”
During summer, The Harvard Crimson reported that Harvard downgraded “disciplinary sanctions” it levied against several pro-Hamas protesters it suspended for illegally occupying Harvard Yard for nearly five weeks, a reversal of policy which defied the university’s previous statements regarding the matter. Unrepentant, the students, members of the group Harvard out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP), celebrated the revocation of the punishments on social media and promised to disrupt the campus again.
“Harvard walks back on probations and reverses suspensions of pro-Palestine students after massive pressure,” the group said. “Harvard has caved in, showing that the student intifada will always prevail … This reversal is a bare minimum. We call on our community to demand no less than Palestinian liberation from the river to the sea. Grounded in the rights of return and resistance. We will not rest until divestment from the Israeli regime is met.”
Now, anti-Zionists and pro-Zionists at Harvard are demanding complete details of the university’s institutional neutrality policy, according to the Crimson. Garber has said that they are forthcoming, the paper added.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post ‘Offensive’: Harvard President Criticizes Student Group’s Pro-Hamas Oct 7 Statement first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Treasure Trove salutes the Jewish-Canadian woman who made the first Remembrance Day poppies
The poppies that we wear at this time of year are our visual pledge to remember the brave Canadian soldiers who served and sacrificed to preserve and defend our democracy. […]
The post Treasure Trove salutes the Jewish-Canadian woman who made the first Remembrance Day poppies appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Hasidic Man Attacked in Third Antisemitic Assault in Brooklyn in Eight Days
An antisemitic hate crime spree in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York struck its latest victim on Wednesday, wreaking an “excruciating” beating on a middle-aged Hasidic man.
According to Yaacov Behrman, a liaison for Chabad Headquarters — the main New York base of the Hasidic movement — the victim was accosted by two assailants, one masked, who “chased and beat him” after he refused to surrender his cell phone in compliance with what appears to have been an attempted robbery.
“The victim is in excruciating pain and is currently in the emergency room,” Behrman tweeted. “The police are investigating the incident.”
A Chasidic man was beaten in Crown Heights tonight near Utica and President at approximately 7:30pm. The assailants, one was wearing a mask, demanded the victim’s phone, but when he refused, they chased him and beat him. The victim is in excruciating pain and is currently in the… pic.twitter.com/s4mn1K6HtV
— Yaacov Behrman (@ChabadLubavitch) November 7, 2024
The perpetrators were two Black teenagers, according to COLlive.com, an Orthodox Jewish news outlet.
Tuesday’s attack was the third time in eight days that an Orthodox resident of Crown Heights was targeted for violence and humiliation. In each case, the assailant was allegedly a Black male, a pattern of conduct which continues to strain Black-Jewish relations across the Five Boroughs.
On Monday morning, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily Jewish Crown Heights neighborhood
Less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face as he was walking in Brooklyn.
Numerous antisemitic hate crimes have occurred in Crown Heights in recent years. In July 2023, for example, a 22-year-old Israeli Yeshiva student, who was identifiably Orthodox and visiting New York City for the summer holiday, was stabbed with a screwdriver by one of two men who attacked him after asking whether he was Jewish and had any money. The other punched him in the face. Earlier that year, 10- and 12-year-olds were attacked on Albany Avenue by four African American teens.
According to a report issued in August by New York state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, antisemitic incidents accounted for a striking 65 percent of all felony hate crimes in New York City last year. The report added that throughout the state, nearly 44 percent of all recorded hate crime incidents and 88 percent of religious-based hate crimes targeted Jewish victims.
Meanwhile, according to a recent Algemeiner review of New York City Police Department (NYPD) hate crimes data, 385 antisemitic hate crimes have struck the New York City Jewish community since last October, when the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas perpetrated its Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, unleashing a wave of anti-Jewish hatred unlike any seen in the post-World War II era.
Beyond New York, anti-Jewish hate crimes in the US spiked to a record high last year, and American Jews were the most targeted of any religious group in the country, according to a report published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in September.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Hasidic Man Attacked in Third Antisemitic Assault in Brooklyn in Eight Days first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Huge Victory’: Netanyahu Calls Trump to Congratulate Him on Election Win
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called US President-elect Donald Trump to congratulate him on his victory in the US presidential election earlier this week.
“Netanyahu spoke to President-elect Donald Trump and was among the first to call to congratulate him for his victory,” the Prime Minister’s office said on Wednesday. “The conversation was warm and cordial, and the two agreed to work together for Israel’s security and discussed the Iranian threat.”
During Trump’s first term, his administration had a “maximum pressure” policy with regard to Iran, aimed at making it more difficult for the country to make a nuclear weapon and fund its terror proxies — such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis — across the Middle East.
However, some observers are concerned the incoming US administration will not be as strong on the Iranian threat as it was in its first term. Late last month, US Vice President-elect JD Vance said on a podcast that the US and Israel can at times have conflicting interests and warned that Washington should seek to avoid a war with Iran, the Jewish state’s chief adversary in the Middle East.
“Israel has the right to defend itself, but America’s interest is sometimes going to be distinct — like sometimes we’re going to have overlapping interests and sometimes we’re going to have distinct interests. And our interest, I think, very much is in not going to war with Iran,” Vance said.
He then argued that a war with Iran “would be [a] huge distraction of resources; it would be massively expensive to our country.”
In addition to the phone call, Netanyahu’s office will also reportedly announce “the appointment of a new ambassador to Washington who will work with the new Trump administration” within the next 24 hours, according to Axios reporter Barack Ravid.
Netanyahu was the first world leader to congratulate Trump on his victory.
“Congratulations on history’s greatest comeback!” he wrote on X/Twitter. “Your historic return to the White House offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America.”
He added, “This is a huge victory!”
During Trump’s first term, he and Netanyahu were close allies, working together to sign the Abraham Accords and move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. However, their relationship reportedly strained when Netanyahu congratulated then-US President-elect Joe Biden on his victory against Trump while Trump was still actively disputing the results of the election.
“The first person that congratulated [Biden] was Bibi Netanyahu, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with,” Trump reportedly said at the time. “Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake.”
“I liked Bibi. I still like Bibi. But I also like loyalty,” he added. “The first person to congratulate Biden was Bibi. And not only did he congratulate him, he did it on tape.”
Heading into Trump’s second term, there have not been indications that this tension still lingers.
The post ‘Huge Victory’: Netanyahu Calls Trump to Congratulate Him on Election Win first appeared on Algemeiner.com.