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Sarah Lawrence Has Allowed and Encouraged Antisemitism; I Would Not Send My Own Children There
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) members inside the Westlands administrative building at Sarah Lawrence College. Photo: Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)/Screenshot
On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists invaded southern Israel and perpetrated the biggest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
On that same day — while these atrocities were occurring — Sarah Lawrence College (SLC) professor Suzanne Gardinier made 17 social media posts with the hashtag “#freepalestine.” In one of the posts, Gardinier appeared to celebrate the attack.
On Oct. 8, 2023, Emmaia Gelman — Sarah Lawrence professor and Director of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism — made an Instagram post featuring a photo of Hamas invading Israel by breaking through a barrier fence with the accompanying comment, “Solidarity with those who break prison walls.”
A reader responded, “The romanticization of an event whose sole purpose was to murder innocent civilians is a bewildering level of delusion.” Another reader replied, “This is by far the most fu**ed up thing I have seen on social media.”
A Sarah Lawrence student at the time, Sammy Tweedy, responded, “#youshouldbefired.”
Later that school year, Tweedy — son of the singer Jeff Tweedy of Wilco fame — made news for publicly addressing antisemitism at Sarah Lawrence.
Sammy Tweedy told the politically progressive Forward that he was “excommunicated” on campus “for just going to Israel.” Tweedy shared, “If you’re Jewish and you have an identity where Israel is a part of it, you are dehumanized. People called me a Nazi. People called me genocidal.”
According to this 2023 Forward report, Tweedy “said he has filed bias incident reports with the school along with more than 100 screenshots of online harassment, including students identified by name saying ‘they want me to die,’ but the school has taken no action.”
In a column published just this week, Sarah Lawrence professor Samuel J. Abrams discussed a current student who is fearful to be on campus:
As a Jewish Zionist, the student — like others — has faced threats and harassment. The college experience has been anything but normal. No real campus life. No security. No peace. Sarah Lawrence has let this happen. It has become a place where students like this one, and professors like me, are targeted for our faith, heritage, and belief in Israel’s right to exist.
As a professor and a Zionist, I find it heartbreaking. No student should fear their own campus. No student should have to choose between safety and an education.
On Oct. 9, 2023, the SLC chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) celebrated Hamas’s pogrom on social media, referring to the rapes, massacre, and hostage-taking of Israelis as “the uprising in Palestine.” Interestingly, the SLC-SJP post used the same photograph of a Hamas bulldozer breaking into Israel that Gelman used a day earlier. In March, SLC-SJP featured Gelman at an event, referring to her as a “fantastic” speaker.
According to a report by The Algemeiner, “No sooner had the [Oct. 7] tragedy occurred than Briana Martin — SLC director of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) — called on students to ignore Jewish suffering by attending on Oct. 9 an ‘Hour of Solidarity with Palestine,’ an event co-sponsored by SJP.”
On Feb. 6 of this year, Gardinier shared someone else’s post on X which stated, “Palestinians did not commit a crime on Oct. 7.”
The next day, Gardinier shared two posts on X blaming Israel — not Hamas — for most of the Oct. 7 murders and denying Hamas’s use of mass rape against Israeli women and girls. One post read, “Most of the people killed on Oct. 7 were actually killed by Israel.” The other stated, “israel [sic] killed most of its own people on oct 7 and there was no mass rape, it was all atrocity propaganda.”
Even the United Nations — an organization viewed by many as notoriously anti-Israel — is clear: “On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups killed approximately 1,200 persons in Israel.” And The New York Times — a publication often accused of being biased against Israel — published a widely read, in-depth investigation titled, “How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7.”
On Nov. 24, Gardinier wrote on social media that it was “an honor” to stand with others at the SLC encampment. She did not mention the prominent support of terrorism on display at the encampment as clearly encapsulated by a large banner promoting Samidoun. Samidoun was designated by the US Department of the Treasury under President Biden as a “sham charity that serves as an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization.”
As reported by the ADL, the banner also included “the image of convicted terrorist Georges Abdallah, formerly with the PFLP, who was sentenced to life in prison in France for the 1982 murders in Paris of an Israeli diplomat and an American military attaché.”
In a 2024 zine written by “Anonymous Sarah Lawrence Students,” the authors state that they answered Hamas’s call for “escalation” by occupying a building on campus.
Considering that student groups have promoted fundraisers for Gaza and considering the student support for Hamas and Samidoun, the college — as well as local and federal authorities — should investigate the possibility that funds may have been provided to organizations that support terrorism.
In November of 2024, Abrams published a column about the now dismantled SLC encampment, titled “Sarah Lawrence Has Fallen,” explaining the anti-Israel fervor on campus:
In the dead of night on Nov. 21, a group of students linked to Sarah Lawrence College’s (SLC) Divestment Coalition stormed Westlands, the school’s main administrative building, and announced their occupation through social media. This was no quiet protest. Hiding their identities behind masks, the group decorated the building with signs, barricaded doors, and blocked windows with plywood, effectively shutting down the school’s operations. Dozens of students living in the dormitory above were trapped and access to key school offices were blocked. Outside, an encampment took shape, turning the scene into a spectacle broadcast across social media for the world to witness.
Abrams, a Jewish professor, added that SLC students “issued demands not for dialogue but for destruction. They called for harm against Zionists, the eradication of Israel, and displayed deeply inflammatory slogans such as ‘Long live the intifada!’”
In the end, students failed in their efforts to have Sarah Lawrence divest from Israel, and the encampment was dismantled.
Recently, anti-Israel students at SLC have encouraged fellow students to boycott Abrams’ classes. Abrams explained that the boycott is because he supports “Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself” and because he is a “Zionist Jew.”
This week, on a Sarah Lawrence alumni social media page, a graduate of the college wrote, “May no Zionist, be they Christian, Jewish, or atheist (because all of these exist) be safe from harassment just as white men who espouse white supremacy should not be safe from harassment either.”
In early 2025, the US Department of Education opened a Title VI antisemitism investigation into Sarah Lawrence in response to a complaint filed by Hillel accusing the college of fostering a hostile environment towards Jewish students.
I received a rigorous education at Sarah Lawrence and am proud of it. For decades, I recommended Sarah Lawrence to anyone who asked. Now, I would not send my own children to Sarah Lawrence.
Peter Reitzes writes about issues related to antisemitism and Israel.
The post Sarah Lawrence Has Allowed and Encouraged Antisemitism; I Would Not Send My Own Children There first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US State Department Revokes Visas of UK Punk Rap Act Bob Vylan Amid Outrage Over Duo’s Chants of ‘Death to the IDF’
Bob Vylan music duo performance at Glastonbury Festival (Source: FLIKR)
The US State Department has revoked the visas for the English punk rap duo Bob Vylan amid ongoing outrage over their weekend performance at the Glastonbury Festival, in which the pair chanted “Death to the IDF.”
The State Department’s decision to cancel their visas would preclude a planned fall concert tour of the US by the British rappers.
“The [US State Department] has revoked the US visas for the members of the Bob Vylan band in light of their hateful tirade at Glastonbury, including leading the crowd in death chants. Foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country,” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau wrote on X/Twitter on Monday.
During a June 28 set at Glastonbury Festival, Bob Vylan’s Pascal Robinson-Foster ignited a firestorm by leading the crowd in chants of “Death, death, to the IDF,” referring to the Israel Defense Forces. He also complained about working for a “f—ing Zionist” during the set.
The video of the performance went viral, sparking outrage across the globe.
The BBC, which streamed the performance live, issued an on‑screen warning but continued its broadcast, prompting criticism by government officials for failing to cut the feed.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer and festival organizers condemned the IDF chant as hate speech and incitement to violence. The Israeli Embassy in London denounced the language as “inflammatory and hateful.”
“Millions of people tuned in to enjoy Glastonbury this weekend across the BBC’s output but one performance within our livestreams included comments that were deeply offensive,” the BBC said in a statement following the event.
“These abhorrent chants, which included calls for the death of members of the Israeli Defense Forces … have no place in any civil society,” Leo Terrell, Chair of the US Department of Justice Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, declared Sunday in a statement posted on X.
Citing the act’s US tour plans, Terrell said his task force would be “reaching out to the U.S. Department of State on Monday to determine what measures are available to address the situation and to prevent the promotion of violent antisemitic rhetoric in the United States.”
British authorities, meanwhile, have launched a formal investigation into Bob Vylan’s controversial appearance at Glastonbury. Avon and Somerset Police confirmed they are reviewing footage and working with the Crown Prosecution Service to determine whether the performance constitutes a hate crime or incitement to violence.
United Talent Agency (UTA), one of the premier entertainment talent agencies, dropped the duo, claming “antisemitic sentiments expressed by the group were utterly unacceptable.”
The band defended their performance on social media as necessary protest, stating that “teaching our children to speak up for the change they want and need is the only way that we make this world a better place.”
The post US State Department Revokes Visas of UK Punk Rap Act Bob Vylan Amid Outrage Over Duo’s Chants of ‘Death to the IDF’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Dem House Leader Hakeem Jeffries Urges Mamdani to ‘Aggressively Address’ Antisemitism in NYC if Elected Mayor
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY). Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
US House Democratic leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (NY) urged Democratic nominee for mayor of New York Zohran Mamdani to “aggressively address the rise in antisemitism” if he wins the general election in November.
“‘Globalizing the intifada’ by way of example is not an acceptable phrasing,” Jeffries said Sunday on ABC’s This Week. “He’s going to have to clarify his position on that as he moves forward.”
“With respect to the Jewish communities that I represent, I think our nominee is going to have to convince folks that he is prepared to aggressively address the rise in antisemitism in the city of New York, which has been an unacceptable development,” he added.
Jeffries’s comments come as Mamdani has been receiving an onslaught of criticism for defending the controversial phrase “globalize the intifada.”
Mamdani first defended the phrase during an appearance on the popular Bulwark Podcast. The progressive firebrand stated that he feels “less comfortable with the banning of certain words.” He invoked the US Holocaust Museum in his defense, saying that the museum used the word intifada “when translating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising into Arabic, because it’s a word that means ‘struggle.’”
The Holocaust Museum repudiated Mamdani in a statement, calling his comments “offensive.”
Mamdani has continued to defend the slogan despite ongoing criticism, arguing that pro-Palestine advocates perceive it as a call for “universal human rights.”
Mamdani, the 33‑year‑old state assembly member and proud democratic socialist, defeated former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other candidates in a lopsided first‑round win in the city’s Democratic primary for mayor, notching approximately 43.5 percent of first‑choice votes compared to Cuomo’s 36.4 percent.
The election results have alarmed members of the local Jewish community, who expressed deep concern over his past criticism of Israel and defense of antisemitic rhetoric.
“Mamdani’s election is the greatest existential threat to a metropolitan Jewish population since the election of the notorious antisemite Karl Lueger in Vienna,” Rabbi Marc Schneier, one of the most prominent Jewish leaders in New York City, said in a statement. “Jewish leaders must come together as a united force to prevent a mass Jewish Exodus from New York City.”
Some key Democratic leaders in New York, such as US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Gov. Kathy Hochul, have congratulated and complimented Mamdani, but have not yet issued an explicit endorsement. Each official has signaled interest in meeting with Mamdani prior to making a decision on a formal endorsement.
The post Dem House Leader Hakeem Jeffries Urges Mamdani to ‘Aggressively Address’ Antisemitism in NYC if Elected Mayor first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Eyes Ties With Syria and Lebanon After Iran War
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar attends a press conference with German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul (not pictured) in Berlin, Germany, June 5, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Mang
Israel is interested in establishing formal diplomatic relations with long-standing adversaries Syria and Lebanon, but the status of the Golan Heights is non-negotiable, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Monday.
Israeli leaders argue that with its rival Iran weakened by this month’s 12-day war, other countries in the region have an opportunity to forge ties with Israel.
The Middle East has been upended by nearly two years of war in Gaza, during which Israel also carried out airstrikes and ground operations in Lebanon targeting Iran-backed Hezbollah, and by the overthrow of former Syrian leader and Iran ally Bashar al-Assad.
In 2020, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco became the first Arab states to establish ties with Israel since Jordan in 1994 and Egypt in 1979. The normalization agreements with Israel were deeply unpopular in the Arab world.
“We have an interest in adding countries such as Syria and Lebanon, our neighbors, to the circle of peace and normalization, while safeguarding Israel‘s essential and security interests,” Saar said at a press conference in Jerusalem.
“The Golan will remain part of the State of Israel,” he said.
Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1981 after capturing the territory from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War. While much of the international community regards the Golan as occupied Syrian land, US President Donald Trump recognized Israeli sovereignty over it during his first term in office.
Following Assad’s ousting, Israeli forces moved further into Syrian territory.
A senior Syrian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Syria would never give up the Golan Heights, describing it as an integral part of Syrian territory.
The official also said that normalization efforts with Israel must be part of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative and not carried out through a separate track.
A spokesperson for Syria‘s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The 2002 initiative proposed Arab normalization with Israel in exchange for its withdrawal from territories including the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and Gaza. It also called for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Throughout the war in Gaza, regional power Saudi Arabia has repeatedly said that establishing ties with Israel was conditional on the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
Israel‘s Saar said it was “not constructive” for other states to condition normalization on Palestinian statehood.
“Our view is that a Palestinian state will threaten the security of the State of Israel,” he said.
In May, Reuters reported that Israel and Syria‘s new Islamist rulers had established direct contact and held face-to-face meetings aimed at de-escalating tensions and preventing renewed conflict along their shared border.
The same month, US President Donald Trump announced the US would lift sanctions on Syria and met Syria‘s new president, urging him to normalize ties with Israel.
The post Israel Eyes Ties With Syria and Lebanon After Iran War first appeared on Algemeiner.com.