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Pro-Hamas Encampment at University of Pennsylvania Grows Larger
Pro-Hamas encampment at University of Pennsylvania on May 5, 2024. Photo: Robyn Stevens Brody via Reuters Connect
Masses of new people have joined a pro-Hamas “encampment” at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) following an impasse in negotiations between the administration, students, and faculty over whether the school will divest from Israel and grant amnesty for those who have violated the school’s code of conduct — a key demand the protesters have put forward in exchange for ending the nearly three-week-long demonstration.
A crush of people on Wednesday “expanded” the encampment to cover more school property after conversations with the administration stalled, according to The Daily Pennsylvanian, a campus newspaper. Local police equipped with riot gear prepared to clear them from the area, but ultimately stood down for reasons that remained unclear.
Following this escalation, Penn increased security in other areas of campus and has, for now, declined to ask police for help in quelling the demonstration. In the interim, Van Pelt Library’s main entrance has been made inaccessible to students and no one, including Jewish students and staff, is allowed to enter the Penn Hillel building, the campus newspaper reported.
“Penn continues to focus on the safety of our campus, including expanding security presence in response to the expansion of the encampment, despite our efforts to resolve this situation,” the university said in a statement issued on Wednesday night.
The development came just a day after Penn’s interim president, Larry Jameson, suggested that the demonstrators have exhausted the school’s tolerance for a situation that Jameson described as dangerous and disruptive of university business. He cited that in addition to being a safety hazard, the pro-Hamas mob has committed acts of vandalism, defacing a statue of Benjamin Franklin, one of the United States’ Founding Fathers, and “The Button,” a sculpture built in the early 1980s.
Right now @penn three individuals deface the Ben Franklin statue while putting up the Hamas upside triangle. This triangle is Hamas’s symbol for who they murder.
They also put up “avenge Hind” in reference to Columbia. How is @penn allowing this? pic.twitter.com/4N0J1beTBc
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) May 9, 2024
“The encampment should end. It is in violation of our policies, it is disrupting campus operations and events, and it causing fear for many in our large, diverse community, especially among our Jewish students,” Jameson said in a statement. “But any response to the encampment must balance possible escalation of the current situation with the need to protect the safety and rights of everyone.”
Jameson then expressed fear about what would happen during a clash between police and protesters, explaining that Penn is “an open campus in a large city.” However, he added, “I am distressed and disappointed by the actions of the protesters, which violate our rules and goals.”
The administration has been negotiating with students and faculty leading the protest for several days, The Daily Pennsylvanian reported earlier this week. In addition to divestment from Israel, leaders of the anti-Zionist camp are demanding that the university vacate a suspension of Penn Students Against the Occupation of Palestine, which the school shut down after multiple rules violations. While the paper did not state which conditions the university has refused to accept, it reported earlier in the week that Penn has filed disciplinary charges against nine students — an action the protesters have deemed unacceptable.
“Due to the administration’s continued bad-faith negotiations in our meeting this afternoon, the Gaza Solidarity encampment expands!” Penn Against the Occupation, which is operating in defiance of its suspension, said in a social media post on Wednesday. “We need you on College Green now!”
On Thursday, Neetu Arnold — a research fellow at the National Association of Scholars and author of Hijacked: The Capture of America’s Middle East Studies Centers — told The Algemeiner that Penn administrators narrowed their options by choosing not to clear the encampment sooner. Arnold has visited it several times herself and watched conditions there deteriorate in real time.
“Penn administrators should have addressed the encampments in its early days when the situation was still relatively tame,” Arnold said. “There were already signs that things would escalate. When I visited campus on the second day of the demonstration, protesters had already vandalized the Ben Franklin statue in front of College Hall. The university could have taken action then. Instead, they issued empty threats, and now the protesters aren’t taking them seriously.”
The University of Pennsylvania is one of many schools where students have taken over sections of campuses and refused to leave unless administrators condemn and boycott Israel. Footage of the protests has shown demonstrators chanting in support of Hamas, calling for the destruction of Israel, and even threatening to harm members of the Jewish community on campus. In many cases, activists have also lambasted the US and Western civilization more broadly.
Antisemitism fueled by anti-Zionism exploded at the university long before Hamas’ massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7. In September, it hosted “The Palestine Writes Literature Festival,” which included speakers such as Palestinian researcher Salman Abu Sitta, who once promoted antisemitic tropes, saying in an interview, “Jews were hated in Europe because they played a role in the destruction of the economy in some of the countries, so they would hate them.” Another controversial figure invited to the event was former Pink Floyd vocalist Roger Waters, whose long record of anti-Jewish snipes was the subject of a documentary released last year.
Penn’s hosting of “Palestine Writes” festival took place, an unidentified male walked into the university’s Hillel building behind a staffer and shouted “F—k the Jews” and “Jesus Christ is king!” before overturning tables, podium stands, and chairs, according to students and school officials who spoke with The Algemeiner. Days earlier, just before the Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashanah, a giant swastika was graffitied in the basement of the university’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design.
One day before the event took place, an unidentified male walked into the university’s Hillel building behind a staffer and shouted “F—k the Jews” and “Jesus Christ is king!” before overturning tables, podium stands, and chairs, according to students and school officials who spoke with The Algemeiner. Days earlier, just before the Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashanah, a giant swastika was graffitied in the basement of the university’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design.
Former Penn president Elizabeth Magill, who refused to stop the university from hosting the festival, resigned from her post in December, ending a 17-month tenure marked by controversy over what critics described as an insufficient response to surging antisemitism on campus.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Pro-Hamas Encampment at University of Pennsylvania Grows Larger first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Vancouver police raid a home linked to the director of Samidoun—which is now a terrorist entity in Canada
Vancouver police arrested and released one person at the home of Charlotte Kates, director of the terror group Samidoun, in a dramatic raid on Nov. 14. The raid was conducted […]
The post Vancouver police raid a home linked to the director of Samidoun—which is now a terrorist entity in Canada appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Trump Won A Majority of Votes In Heavily-Jewish New York City Precincts, Election Data Claims
Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Forum River Center in Rome, Georgia, US, March 9, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Alyssa Pointer
President-elect Donald Trump won an overwhelming majority of the votes in New York City (NYC) precincts that were at least a quarter Jewish, according to a data analysis by the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), a prominent Washington DC-based political group.
RJC presented data on Friday affirming the notion that Trump won a higher proportion of the NYC Jewish vote than in previous elections, potentially signaling an ideological shift in the traditionally-liberal voting bloc. According to RJC data, Trump received the “overwhelming” majority of votes in precincts with a Jewish population of at least 25%.
Trump’s 2024 performance among Jews in NYC seems to mark a substantial improvement over the 2020 and 2016 elections, contests in which the president-elect struggled to make inroads among Jewish voters.
Voting data from the 2024 election also indicate that there was a significant shift among Jewish voters in Pennsylvania. President-elect Trump also enjoyed greater success in heavily-Jewish enclaves of deep-blue cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles, according to data compiled by the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners and the Los Angeles Times, respectively.
Trump’s increased success among Jewish voters in the Big Apple comes amid simmering anger over surging antisemitism across the country.
In the year following the Hamas slaughter of roughly 1200 people throughout southern Israel, college campuses have become embroiled in an unrelenting onslaught of protests opposing the Jewish state. Moreover, many Jews have expressed dissatisfaction with the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, suggesting that the president has not been a firm ally of the Jewish state.
Over the past year, NYC has been ravaged with raucous, often-violent anti-Israel demonstrations and an unrelenting spate of antisemitic hate crimes.
Columbia University, one of the most prestigious higher education institutions in the world, became a poster-child for the anti-Israel campus movement, erecting encampments and holding protests calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. Many NYC public schools came embroiled in scandal after teachers presented students with lesson plans that accused Israel of committing “apartheid” and “genocide” against the Palestinians.
Though most national Democrats continue to express support for Israel’s right to defend itself from Hamas terrorists, some figures in the party have, over the past year, adopted a more adversarial posture toward the Jewish state, often citing the humanitarian situation in Gaza as a key reason.
High-profile Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA) have suggested that Israel has perpetrated a “genocide” against Palestinians in Hamas-ruled Gaza, where Israel has been waging a military campaign targeting terrorists since the Oct. 7 atrocities. Earlier this year, a group of dozens of Democratic lawmakers, including former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), sent a letter to US President Joe Biden, urging him to “reconsider” approving offensive arms shipments to Israel.
Over the course of his campaign, Trump repeatedly touted his support for the Jewish state during his singular term in office. While courting Jewish voters, Trump has boasted about his administration’s work in fostering the Abraham Accords, promising to resume efforts to strengthen them once he retains office in January.
Trump also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria, and also moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as the Jewish state’s capital.
The post Trump Won A Majority of Votes In Heavily-Jewish New York City Precincts, Election Data Claims first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Attempted Robbery of Jewish Man in Brooklyn Puts Orthodox Community on Edge
Screenshot of masked men who attempted to rob Jewish man in Crown Heights, Brooklyn on Thursday. Photo: Screenshot
The Jewish community in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York was the target of another attack on Thursday evening, as three men attempted to rob a Hasidic man after stalking him through the neighborhood.
Footage of the incident was shared on X/Twitter by Yaacov Behrman, liaison of Chabad Headquarters and founder of the Jewish Future Alliance (JFA) nonprofit. It shows the men, whose faces were concealed by hoods and ski masks, chasing the man into the street and through the neighborhood after attempting to accost him.
No arrests have been made.
“He doesn’t give in easily, and I don’t think they got anything,” Behrman tweeted. “The Jewish Future Alliance is deeply concerned not only about the increase in crime but also the fact that, once again, the perpetrators were wearing masks. We need to reinstate mask laws.”
The explosion of an antisemitic hate crime spree in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn has set the Orthodox Jewish community on edge in recent weeks.
Last Tuesday, two men beat a middle-aged Hasidic man after he refused to surrender his cell phone in compliance with what appears to have been an attempted robbery. According to multiple accounts, the assailants were two Black teenagers.
That incident was the third time in eight days that an Orthodox resident of Crown Heights was targeted for violence and humiliation. Before then, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily neighborhood, which is heavily Jewish, and less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face.
Most recently, a masked man was caught on video approaching a visibly Jewish father walking with his two sons and grabbing one of the children in broad daylight. He was unable to secure possession of the child, whose father fought back immediately and did not let go of his son. Police later identified the man as Stephan Stowe, 28 — a suspect gang member with an extensive criminal history which includes 33 prior arrests — and charged arrested him attempted kidnapping and endangering the welfare of a child.
In each case, the suspect was allegedly a Black male, a pattern of conduct which continues to strain Black-Jewish relations across the Five Boroughs.
Black-on-Jewish crime is a social issue which has been studied before. In 2022, a report published by Americans Against Antisemitism (AAA) showed that Orthodox Jews were the minority group most victimized by hate crimes in New York City and that 69 percent of their assailants were African American. Seventy-seven percent of the incidents took place taking in predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Of all assaults that prompted criminal proceedings, just two resulted in convictions.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” AAA founder and former New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D) told The Algemeiner. “Shouldn’t there be a plan for how we’re going to deal with it? What’s the answer? Education? We’ve been educating everybody forever for God’s sake, and things are just getting worse.”
The problem has become acute 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.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Attempted Robbery of Jewish Man in Brooklyn Puts Orthodox Community on Edge first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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