Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine has imposed light disciplinary sanctions on eight students it identified as ringleaders of an unauthorized protest in which the campus group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) took over and occupied an administrative building earlier this month.

On Friday, The Bowdoin Orient reported that the college settled on sentencing the students — who were given the sobriquet “Bowdoin Eight” by their collaborators after the incident — to probation. It also restored their permission to attend class and reside on campus, which they were barred from doing during the processing of their cases while serving interim suspensions

As previously reported, the students, members of the school’s SJP chapter, stormed Smith Union and installed an encampment there in response to US President Donald Trump’s proposing that the US “take over” the Gaza Strip and transform it into a hub for tourism and economic dynamism. The roughly 50 students residing inside the building had vowed not to leave until Bowdoin agreed to adopt the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

Following the action, Bowdoin officials promptly moved to deescalate the situation by counseling the students to mind the “gravity of situation” in which they placed themselves, with senior associate dean Katie Toro-Ferrari warning that their behavior “could put them on the path where they are jeopardizing their ability to remain as Bowdoin students.” However, the Orient said the students continued to flood Smith Union anyway. One student, Olivia Kenney, proclaimed that “Bowdoin does not know how to handle us right now.”

School officials ultimately negotiated an end to the occupation of Smith Union without acceding to any of SJP’s demands for a boycott of Israel, and according to the Orient’s report, remained barred from operating on campus pending the completion of the disciplinary proceedings.

“[A] main goal for our office is to respect students as they navigate the student disciplinary process, while also upholding and respecting the Code of Community Standards, and the Bowdoin community as well,” Bowdoin College associate dean for community standards Jimmy Riley told the campus paper, declining to comment on the specifics of the punishments due to federal privacy laws.

Bowdoin College is one of several institutions to fend off an attempt to mount a prolonged occupation of school property.

In New York City, the anti-Zionist group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) on Wednesday occupied the Milbank Hall administrative building at Barnard College to protest recent disciplinary sanctions imposed on student activists who raided a classroom to spew pro-Hamas propaganda. Posting on Instagram, the group proclaimed that its members were “flooding the building despite Barnard shutting down campus.” Later, they reportedly assaulted a staff member, who, according to a source familiar with the situation, required medical attention in the hospital.

It has since been reported that the architects of that demonstration have also evaded accountability, as the college opted not to discipline them in exchange for their obeying an ultimatum to vacate Milbank the same evening in which they commandeered it.

“Columbia University has become the epicenter of antisemitic hatred in the United States,” StopAntisemitism executive director Liora Rez wrote to the US Department of Justice on Thursday, calling for action by the federal government. “The school, along with New York’s elected officials, should be ashamed for allowing the cesspool of antisemitism to fester in a city where Jewish people are such an integral part of the community.”

Earlier this month, SJP at Swarthmore College invaded the school’s Parrish Hall dressed like Hamas fighters, their faces wrapped with and concealed by keffiyehs. The move came as a surprise. While the group had announced an “emergency rally” scheduled for noon that day, there was little indication that it planned on commandeering the building and remaining inside of it indefinitely.

By the time the college formally warned the students that their behavior would trigger disciplinary measures, they had shouted slogans through bullhorns, attempted to break into offices that had been locked to keep them out, and pounded the doors of others that refused to admit them access.

Meanwhile, SJP collaborators reportedly circumvented security’s lockdown of the building to smuggle food inside. Several students then grew impatient and attempted to end the lockdown themselves by storming the building, and in doing so caused a physical altercation with security, whom they proceeded to pelt with expletives and other imprecations.

Swarthmore has temporarily suspended the group’s permission to operate on the campus while school officials complete an investigation of the incident.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Bowdoin College Lifts Suspensions on Anti-Israel Students After Building Takeover, Places Them on Probation first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

An Israeli delegation in Cairo is negotiating to extend the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire when it expires on Saturday rather than move to the second phase as originally planned and as the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas wants, two Egyptian security sources said on Friday.

The ceasefire agreement reached last month halted 15 months of fighting and paved the way for talks on ending the war, while also leading to the release of 44 Israeli hostages held in Gaza and around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees held by Israel.

However, Israel and Hamas have accused each other of violating the ceasefire, casting doubt over the second phase of the deal meant to include releases of additional hostages and prisoners as well as steps toward a permanent end of the war.

There is no sign of agreement, either among or between Israelis and Palestinians, or between Western and Arab governments, over Gaza’s future. That uncertainty is complicating efforts to negotiate a lasting resolution.

Hamas called on Friday for the international community to press Israel to immediately enter the second phase without delay. It is unclear what will happen if the first phase ends on Saturday without a deal.

A senior official of the Palestinian Authority, State Minister of Foreign Affairs Varsen Aghabekian, also said on Friday that she would like the ceasefire phases to move ahead as originally planned.

“I doubt anyone in Gaza will want to go back to war,” she said in Geneva.

The Cairo talks are being mediated by Egypt and Qatar with US support. US President Donald Trump said on Thursday there were “pretty good talks going on.”

Asked whether the ceasefire deal would move into the second phase, Trump said: “Nobody really knows, but we’ll see what happens.”

The Gaza war is the latest in decades of conflict between Israel and Palestinians.

It began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists invaded southern Israel from neighboring Gaza, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping 251 hostages.

Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in Gaza.

CEASEFIRE

The ceasefire has mostly held during its first six weeks, although both sides have accused each other of breaches, particularly in the treatment of Israeli hostages and Palestinian detainees, and in the handling of releases.

The United Nations has described images of emaciated Israeli hostages as distressing, saying they reflected the dire conditions in which they were held.

Hamas has staged shows of strength during hostage releases, parading them in front of cameras. Israeli authorities have made released detainees wear clothes bearing pro-Israeli slogans.

Many of the Palestinian prisoners being released in exchange for Israeli hostages have been serving lengthy sentences for involvement in terrorist activity.

Israel is now negotiating to extend the first phase of the ceasefire deal by 42 days, according to the Egyptian security sources.

Israeli government officials said earlier this week that Israel would attempt to extend the initial phase with Hamas freeing three hostages a week in return for the release of Palestinian detainees.

Discussions on an end to the war are complicated by the lack of any agreement over basic questions such as how Gaza would be governed, how its security would be managed, how it could be rebuilt, and who would pay for that.

Trump proposed this month that the US should take over Gaza and redevelop it as a “Riviera of the Middle East” with its population displaced into Egypt and Jordan.

Arab countries have rejected that idea but have yet to announce their own plan.

European countries have also rejected the displacement of Palestinians and say they still support a two-state solution to the conflict.

The post Israel and Hamas Diverge Over Ceasefire With First Phase Set to Expire first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

JNS.org – As Tehran continues to make alarming progress on its nuclear program, the United States appears not to have made a firm decision on how to respond. Israel, which has already demonstrated an ability to send its air force to strike in Iran, is bracing for possible military action.

Brig. Gen. (res.) Professor Jacob Nagel, former acting national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and ex-head of Israel’s National Security Council, who is today a senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JNS on Thursday that the situation regarding the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program is alarming for two reasons.

First, he said, are “the Iranian ambitions and behavior,” and second is the unwillingness of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nuclear watchdog and the Europeans to confront Iran over its nuclear progress, while the United States, he assessed, has yet to make a final decision on the matter.

“I very much hope Israel will succeed in clarifying the situation as it truly is,” said Nagel. “The problem is that some in Israel have also not yet internalized the situation, because they have gotten used to it over 20 years.”

Iran has significantly increased its stockpile of near weapons grade uranium, enough to produce six nuclear weapons, according to an IAEA report prepared for next week’s meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors and seen by Reuters.

The agency expressed grave concern over Tehran’s failure to resolve outstanding issues.

“The significantly increased production and accumulation of high-enriched uranium by Iran, the only non-nuclear weapon state to produce such nuclear material, is of serious concern,” the IAEA stated, as reported by Reuters.

In parallel, Iranian regime media quoted an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps general who issued a direct threat, apparently of a conventional missile attack against Israel. “Operation True Promise 3 will be carried out at the right time, with precision, and on a scale sufficient to destroy Israel and raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground,” Maj. Gen. Ebrahim Jabbari said.

Nagel assessed, “In my view, one can see the problem in the IAEA report coming out this week, which will unfortunately likely focus again on enrichment and the number of kilograms of 60% enriched material. The Iranian stockpile is growing, even though in my opinion, this is the least important issue. But this is what everyone has been dealing with for 20 years, and it is difficult for them to understand that something has changed.”

The ‘weapons group’

Nagel recently headed a government-appointed commission on the Israeli security budget and proposals for future priorities.

The Nagel Commission on Evaluating the Security Budget and Force Building Requests Proposals from the Public, to give it its full title, outlined a priority list for dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat, which begins with the “weapons group”—the Iranian scientists and engineers tasked with weaponizing a nuclear device—weakening the regime, the deep underground site currently being built, where the enriched material is stored, and of course, the material itself.

Only in the last place did the commission list the well-known uranium enrichment sites at Qom and Fordow in Iran, as well as the centrifuges and all their components.

Asked whether Iran has activated its weapons group, Nagel said, “Without a doubt, there is a group, not officially called the weapon group, that is working to close technological gaps so that when the leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] gives the order to break forward, much time will be saved. For now, they are still working on things that have a tenuous civilian explanation, to avoid creating a smoking gun.”

Nagel referenced multiple assessments that estimate Iran could produce a crude nuclear device within six months, a timeframe primarily based on the work of nuclear expert David Albright and others.

“There are estimates that it will take six months to produce a crude device, led by Albright, and maybe even less. Not everyone agrees with them, but that is the range, assuming success in development. For a weapon system that can be installed on a missile, the estimate is still 18 to 24 months, although the Iranians are working on closing technological gaps,” said Nagel.

The so-called weapons group has been working in the background, without the official designation as a weapon group, for several years, he said. “It is part of the IRGC strategy, without official approval from the leader, but according to many, he knows exactly what is happening and turns a blind eye.”

According to Nagel, Iran’s ultimate goal has not changed: “It remains the destruction of Israel through conventional means under a nuclear umbrella—not to use it, but to deter.”

He noted that the collapse of Iran’s proxy-based “Ring of Fire” strategy, following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas and Israel’s subsequent military operations to destroy most of the capabilities of Hamas and Hezbollah.

“The collapse of the ‘Ring of Fire’ concept, based on proxies, following 7/10, is very troubling to the Iranians, and I assume they are now looking for ways to overcome this collapse, alongside the effort to rearm the proxies around Israel.

“The most important and central point is that we must not once again, ahead of the IAEA board meeting and afterward, focus on enrichment and the amount of enriched kilograms that Iran has accumulated. That almost doesn’t matter, beyond highlighting the violations,” Nagel said.

“I belong to the camp that believes that even if Natanz and Qom are attacked and destroyed, but it is done without dealing with the weapon system, the already enriched material, and the deep underground site being built—[or without] simultaneously building capabilities to support activities that will destabilize the regime—such an attack could do more harm than good,” he warned.

“Because then, the Iranians will take the enriched material with a few hundred advanced centrifuges, go underground, and that’s it. When they finish the weapon system, they will have a bomb.”

A reliable military option

Speaking to Politico in Brussels, in an interview published on Feb. 26, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar warned that Iran has already enriched enough uranium for “a couple of bombs” and is “playing with ways” to move forward on weaponization.

“So we don’t have much time,” he said. While Israel still prefers a diplomatic solution, he acknowledged that “the chances of such an approach being successful are not huge” and failure to stop Iran’s nuclear program would be a “catastrophe for the security of Israel.”

Sa’ar added, “I think that in order to stop a nuclear Iranian program before it will be weaponized, a reliable military option should be on the table.”

Meanwhile, a report published on Feb. 19 by Andrea Stricker, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, discussed the revelation that a secret team of Iranian scientists has been working to shorten the country’s path to a nuclear weapon.

The report, based on intelligence collected during United States President Joe Biden’s final months in office and relayed to the incoming Trump administration, stated that “Iran likely has the capability and know-how to produce nuclear weapons but lacks confidence in the functionality of certain components.

“To deter a breakout, Washington and Jerusalem must review and, where necessary, enhance joint intelligence operations and capabilities to penetrate and sabotage Iran’s weaponization program and uncover weaponization facilities,” said the report.

“America should also mobilize the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to conduct in-depth inspections of illicit Iranian sites and activities. Concurrently, the United States and Israel must prepare and showcase effective military options and signal to the regime the credible threat of their use.”

The post Iranian Nuclear Progress Goes Much Further than Uranium first appeared on Algemeiner.com.