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Republican Lawmakers Chastise Harvard University for ‘Weak’ Proposal Addressing Antisemitism
Demonstrators take their “Emergency Rally: Stand with Palestinians Under Siege in Gaza” out of Harvard University and onto the streets of Harvard Square, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, Oct.14, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
A group of US Republican lawmakers, led by Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Tim Walberg (R-MI), implored interim Harvard University president Alan Garber to implement policies on antisemitism that have teeth, arguing in a letter sent on Monday that those proposed recently by a faculty committee are insufficient.
Last month, Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism issued a report comprising “preliminary recommendations” for addressing antisemitism on the campus. Harvard has been ravaged by numerous pro-Hamas demonstrators, some of whom have, according to reports, bullied and harassed Jewish supporters of Israel and stormed the campus calling for a genocide of Jews in Israel.
The report was denounced by Jewish community leaders as incomprehensive and flaccid for not including concrete proposals for protecting Jewish students, as well as faculty, from bigotry.
“The preliminary recommendations reaffirm what has been known for months,” said the lawmakers’ letter to Garber, which was first shared by Jewish Insider. “Harvard has a serious problem with antisemitism on its campus, including ‘derision and exclusion’ of Israeli students, discrimination and harassment of students by faculty and teaching fellows, and political litmus tests in extracurricular student life. While the preliminary recommendations rightly call for substantive discipline and public condemnation in response to this hateful conduct, they fail to offer real solutions for doing so.”
The letter added that Harvard has already received recommendations for combating antisemitism from a previously formed Antisemitism Advisory Group (AAG), a group of faculty whose efforts were allegedly hindered by administrators who cared more about what its convening did for the Harvard’s public relations than any good it could accomplish for Jewish students or the university at large.
“Prominent members of Harvard’s Jewish community have expressed criticism and dissatisfaction with the recommendations, which are weaker, less detailed, and less comprehensive than the meaningful recommendations presented by Harvard’s [AAG] in December 2023 despite having more than six months to build upon them. Harvard should recognize the insufficiency of its efforts to date, publicly adopt the AAG’s existing recommendations, and announce concrete steps to implement them in advance of the fall semester.”
The lawmakers argued that “instead of offering a tangible plan to address antisemitism at Harvard, the task force’s most specific and actionable recommendations are to organize public talks on respectful dialogue and religious relations, increase the availability of hot kosher meals, and to circulate guidance about accommodating Jewish religious observance and a calendar of Jewish holidays.”
The letter came amid suspicion that Harvard has resolved to change nothing about the culture that led to its being beset by numerous scandals — including the outing of its first Black president as a serial plagiarist — which have sullied its reputation and, in addition to prompting a slew of lawsuits and federal investigations, raised concerns about the state of all of elite higher education.
Earlier this month, The Harvard Crimson reported that Harvard downgraded “disciplinary sanctions” it levied against several pro-Hamas protesters it punished for illegally occupying Harvard Yard for nearly five weeks, erasing the good will it had regained from the public by appearing to embrace an approach to discipline that would deter future unruly behavior as well as anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hate incidents.
Per the Crimson, “The most severe probation charge will last for just one semester, a remarkable change from the initial punishments which required at least one student to withdraw from the college for three semesters. Some students who were initially placed on probation in late May also had the length of their probations reduced.”
For a time Harvard University talked tough about its intention to dismantle a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” — a collection of tents in which demonstrators lived and from which they refused to leave unless Harvard agreed to boycott and divest from Israel — that protesters had set up on campus, creating an impression that no one would go unpunished.
In a public statement, Garber denounced their actions for forcing the rescheduling of exams and disrupting the academics of students who continued doing their homework and studying for final exams, responsibilities the protesters seemingly abdicated. However, Harvard, as well as the organization responsible for the encampment, Harvard out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP), always maintained that some protesters would be allowed to appeal their punishments, per an agreement the two parties reached to end the demonstration, but it was not clear that the end result would amount to a victory for the protesters.
Unrepentant, HOOP celebrated the revocation of the suspensions on social media and, in addition to suggesting that they will disrupt the campus again, called their movement an “intifada,” alluding to two prolonged periods of Palestinian terrorism during which hundreds of Israeli Jews were murdered.
“Harvard walks back on probations and reverses suspensions of pro-Palestine students after massive pressure,” the group said. “After sustained student and faculty organizing, 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.”
In some quarters, Harvard’s alleged indifference to the civil rights abuses to which Jewish students have been subjected is viewed as reflecting the attitudes of the campus leaders’ far-left politics.
On Wednesday, Harvard graduate Shabbos Kestenbaum, who is suing Harvard for the actions it allegedly failed to take to protect Jewish students, spoke at the Republican National Convention, which convened this week in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to confirm — for the third time in eight years — the nomination of Donald Trump as its candidate for President of the United States.
“I came to Harvard to study religion, the foundation of Western Civilization. What I found was not theology but contempt for it,” Kestenbaum said. “My problem with Harvard is not its liberalism but its illiberalism. Too often, students at Harvard are taught not how to think but what to think. I found myself immersed in a culture that is anti-Western, that is anti-American, and that is antisemitic.”
He continued, “Although I once voted for Bernie Sanders, I now recognize that the far left has not only abandoned the Jewish people but the American people. The Democratic Party, the party I registered to vote for the day I turned 18, has become ideologically poisoned, and it is this poison, it is this corruption, that is affecting far too many young American students. Let’s be clear: the far left’s antisemitic extremism has no virtue, and the radicalism on our campus and our streets has no moral legitimacy.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
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