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The United Nations Is Against Peace
Delegates react to the results during the United Nations General Assembly vote on a draft resolution that would recognize the Palestinians as qualified to become a full UN member, in New York City, US, May 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
The UN decision on May 10, 2024, to upgrade the status of the Palestinian state is not surprising. It is a direct continuation of previous UN decisions, most notably that of November 29, 2012, which granted the Palestinian Authority the status of non-member observer state.
Since the 1970s, there has been an almost automatic majority for anti-Israel resolutions in the UN. This majority includes Muslim countries and countries that define themselves as part of the “Global South,” such as African countries and some South American countries, all of which are known for their invariably critical approach towards Israel.
The UN’s recognition of the Palestinian Authority grants the Palestinians an independent state without a negotiated peace process or clearly defined and agreed upon borders between it and Israel. This is precisely the situation the PLO has been striving for since 1974. The establishment of a Palestinian state without peace with Israel is a sure recipe for instability and perpetual war in the Middle East, and those negative consequences are being deliberately fomented by the UN.
In June 1974, the Palestine Liberation Organization approved a ten-point plan known as the Phased Plan. The plan was presented at the time as a considerable moderation of the PLO, which at the time was considered Israel’s most bitter enemy. The 1970s were full of bloody terrorist incidents committed by Palestinian organizations, including airplane hijackings. The leading terrorist organizations at that time were the Fatah organization headed by Yasser Arafat, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) organization headed by George Habash, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) organization headed since its inception by Nayef Hawatmeh.
The reason why the PLO’s ten-point plan was considered a political advancement was that for the first time since the adoption of the revised Palestinian treaty of 1968, the activists of the Palestinian organizations seemed to have agreed to an incomplete “liberation” of Palestine. A careful reading of the plan, however, shows that its goal remained the destruction of the entire State of Israel – “from the river to the sea.”
The second section of the plan says: “The PLO will fight by all means, primarily the armed struggle, to liberate the Palestinian land and establish an independent national government over any part of the Palestinian territory that will be liberated.” This clause was allegedly fulfilled – not through armed struggle but mainly through diplomacy via the Oslo Accords of the 1990s.
Another section of the phased plan defines the establishment of self-government on part of the territory as only one step on the way to the total “liberation” of the entire land of Palestine. According to the phased plan, the establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip was a temporary solution that was never meant to stop the war between the two national movements. The phased plan was designed to promote a continuation of the fight for the other “rights” the Palestinians demand, such as the complete “liberation” of, and purported right of return to, the entire land of Israel.
Despite lengthy negotiations between Israel and the PLO on the permanent agreement, the parties were unable to reach a satisfactory settlement. The most intense attempts were in July 2000 at Camp David with the mediation of President Bill Clinton, and in 2008 with the mediation of President George Bush, Jr.
The Palestinian state that was supposed to be established was meant to include most of the territories of Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip (over 90% of the territory); provide safe passage between the Gaza Strip and Judea and Samaria; and make agreed-upon special arrangements regarding Jerusalem and the refugees. Almost all the details were settled, but Israel asked for something the PLO was not willing to give. Israel requested that in exchange for a comprehensive agreement, representatives of the PLO, as the recognized representatives of the Palestinian people, would sign a document stating “the end of claims between Israel and the Palestinians” – i.e., a contractual obligation to make peace with Israel. No Palestinian representative has ever been willing to sign such a document because peace with Israel has never been their goal.
Because of this, negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority have been stuck for decades, with neither side possessing the ability to reach a binding permanent settlement. The Palestinians cannot force Israel to withdraw militarily from the territories of Judea and Samaria without a political agreement, and Israel cannot force a political agreement on the Palestinians that would include recognition of Israel and a final end to the national-religious conflict between the parties.
At this stage, the Palestinians turned to the United Nations to try to upgrade the status of the Palestinian Authority to that of a sovereign independent state. The Palestinian attempt to establish a state unilaterally was not new. On October 1, 1948, shortly after the establishment of the State of Israel, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip announced the establishment of the All-Palestine Government. The president of the independent state of Palestine, which declared its sovereignty in all of Mandatory Palestine, was Nazi sympathizer and virulent antisemite Haj Muhammad Amin al-Husseini; the prime minister was Ahmed Hilmi Abd al-Baqi. This government lasted for about a decade, ruling the Gaza Strip under Egyptian auspices. After its dissolution by the Egyptians, Prime Minister Hilmi continued to serve as Palestine’s representative in the Arab League until his death in 1963.
The Palestinians flatly denied the existence of the State of Israel. The Palestinian Declaration of Independence states:
On the basis of the Palestinian people’s natural and historical right to freedom and independence, a sacred right for which he shed blood and made sacrifices, and for which he fought against the imperial forces and the Zionists who conspired against him, we, the members of the Palestinian National Council who gathered in Gaza, the city of Hashim (the Prophet’s grandfather), declare this today… October 1, 1948, on the independence of Palestine as a whole within its borders: in northern Lebanon and Syria, in eastern Syria and across the Jordan, in the western Mediterranean and in southern Egypt. This independence is full independence and within its framework a free, democratic and sovereign state will be established, and its citizens will enjoy freedom.
The next time the Palestinians declared a state was on November 15, 1988, at the conference of the Palestinian National Council in Algiers. In the declaration of Palestinian independence drafted by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, it was stated, among other things, that the declaration was based on Partition Resolution 181 of November 29, 1947. The Palestinians recognized the right of the countries of the region to live in peace, but conspicuously did not mention Israel. In addition, they declared the continuation of the struggle until the end of the “occupation,” without clarifying whether the term referred to the territories of 1967 or beyond.
The announcement led the UN to invite Yasser Arafat to address the UN General Assembly (UN General Assembly Resolution 43/177). Unsurprisingly, 104 countries voted in favor of the resolution recognizing the Palestinian state unilaterally declared by Yasser Arafat. Only two countries voted against this recognition – the US and Israel.
The Palestinians understood that in order to have a basis for this type of decision, some sort of fact on the ground was required. The Oslo Accords of the 1990s gave them political-autonomous status for the first time in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip. The Oslo Accords were defined from the beginning as temporary interim agreements that were intended to lead to a permanent settlement of the two political entities living side by side in peace, security and prosperity.
After the peace talks with Israel at Camp David 2000, the Palestinians ignited a bloody intifada. After the failure of the negotiations in Annapolis in 2008 between Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the Palestinians realized they had exhausted all the Israeli concessions they could obtain via regular negotiations. This was the reason for their appeal to the UN Assembly and their request to upgrade their status to a state on November 29, 2012.
Their request was approved due to the automatic majority that exists in anti-Israel resolutions at the UN. For the first time, a UN observer body that does not have either effective control over territory or defined borders was granted the status of a state (in this case, that of an observer state). One hundred thirty-eight countries voted in favor this time, with nine opposed and the rest abstaining. This step was directly contrary to the principles of negotiations the parties had signed in the Oslo Accords.
The vote on May 10, 2024 was the most recent step in the Palestinian journey towards an independent state without a binding border agreement with Israel. The vote was intended to grant the Palestinians various rights reserved for sovereign states recognized by the UN, even though the Palestinian Authority is still defined as an observer state. This time, 143 countries voted in favor, with nine voting against and the rest abstaining.
The role of the UN is supposedly to maintain peace and world order. Upgrading the status of the Palestinian Authority to a state despite its having neither effective control over territory nor clear borders – and in the process empowering a political entity whose majority population openly supports a terrorist organization, Hamas, that rapes women and murders children – will not add to world peace and stability, but will only deepen the war between Israel and the Palestinians. Nor will it create an incentive for the moderate elements in Palestinian society to strive for true peace with Israel.
Dr. (Lt. Col.) Shaul Bartal is a senior researcher at the BESA Center and a research fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Lisbon. During his military service, he served in various roles in the West Bank. He has also taught in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies and the Department of Political Science at Bar-Ilan University. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
The post The United Nations Is Against Peace first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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A pro-Israel rally at the University of Toronto was headlined by Columbia University professor Shai Davidai
Around 200 people gathered for a pro-Israel demonstration at University of Toronto’s downtown campus at King’s College Circle—which was the site of one of Canada’s largest pro-Palestinian encampments during May […]
The post A pro-Israel rally at the University of Toronto was headlined by Columbia University professor Shai Davidai appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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‘Not Welcome’: New Pro-Hamas Campaign Aims to Abolish Hillel Campus Chapters
A statue of George Washington tied with a Palestinian flag and a keffiyeh inside a pro-Hamas encampment is pictured at George Washington University in Washington, DC, US, May 2, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Craig Hudson
The campus group National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) is waging a campaign to gut Jewish life in academia, calling for the abolition of Hillel International campus chapters, the largest collegiate organization for Jewish students in the world.
“Over the past several decades, Hillel has monopolized for Jewish campus life into a pipeline for pro-Israel indoctrination, genocide-apologia, and material support to the Zionist project and its crimes,” a social media account operating the campaign, titled #DropHillel, said in a manifesto published last week. “Across the country, Hillel chapters have invited Israeli soldiers to their campuses; promoted propaganda trips such as birthright; and organized charity drives for the Israeli military.”
It continued, “Such actions reveal Hillel’s ideological and material investment in Zionism, despite the organization’s facade as being simply a ‘Jewish cultural space.’”
DropHillel claims to be “Jewish-led,” although only a small minority of Jews oppose Zionism, and the group has been linked to and promoted by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters.
Hillel International has provided Jewish students a home away from home during the academic year. However, NSJP says it wants to “weaken” it and “dismantle oppression.”
The idea has already been picked up by pro-Hamas student groups at one college, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, according to The Daily Tar Heel, the school’s official student newspaper. On Oct. 9, it reported, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) unveiled the idea for “no more Hillel” during a rally which, among other things, demanded removing Israel from UNC’s study abroad program and adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Addressing the comments to the paper days later, SJP, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, proclaimed that shuttering Hillel is a coveted goal of the anti-Zionist movement.
“Zionism is a racist supremacist ideology advocating for the creation and sustenance of an ethnostate through the expulsion and annihilation of native people,” the group told the paper. “Therefore, any group that advocates for a supremacist ideology — be it the KKK, the Proud Boys, Hillel, or Heels for Israel — should not be welcome on campus.”
The #DropHillel campaign came amid an unprecedented surge in anti-Israel incidents on college campuses, which, according to a report published last month by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), have reached crisis levels.
Revealing a “staggering” 477 percent increase in anti-Zionist activity involving assault, vandalism, and other phenomena, the report — titled “Anti-Israel Activism on US Campuses, 2023-2024” — painted a bleak picture of America’s higher education system poisoned by political extremism and hate.
“As the year progressed, Jewish students and Jewish groups on campus came under unrelenting scrutiny for any association, actual or perceived, with Israel or Zionism,” the report said. “This often led to the harassment of Jewish members of campus communities and vandalism of Jewish institutions. In some cases, it led to assault. These developments were underpinned by a steady stream of rhetoric from anti-Israel activists expressing explicit support for US-designated terrorists organizations, such as Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and others.”
The report added that 10 campuses accounted for 16 percent of all incidents tracked by ADL researchers, with Columbia University and the University of Michigan combining for 90 anti-Israel incidents — 52 and 38, respectively. Harvard University, the University of California – Los Angeles, Rutgers University New Brunswick, Stanford University, Cornell University, and others filled out the rest of the top 10. Violence, it continued, was most common at universities in the state of California, where anti-Zionist activists punched a Jewish student for filming him at a protest.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post ‘Not Welcome’: New Pro-Hamas Campaign Aims to Abolish Hillel Campus Chapters first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Muslim for Trump’ Launches Initiatives in Key Battleground States, Says Candidate Will Bring ‘Peace’ to Gaza
Former US President Donald Trump is seen at a campaign event in South Carolina. Photo: Reuters/Sam Wolfe
The “Muslims for Trump” organization has officially launched initiatives to help elect Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to the White House, arguing that he would be more likely to end the war in Gaza than Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
In a statement released on Monday, the group said it will focus on recruiting Muslim voters in key battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina. The organization both praised Trump for his supposed “peace-focused” approach to ending the war in Gaza and condemned Harris for helping facilitate a so-called “genocide.”
“After meeting with President Trump, it was clear to me he is the right leader for Muslims to get behind,” Rabiul Chowdhury, co-founder of Muslims for Trump and former co-chair of the “Abandon Harris Movement,” said in a statement.
Chowdhury added that during his discussions with Trump, the former president vowed to “ending the escalation of wars and bringing peace to war-torn regions.” In contrast to Trump’s promise to stop the “bloodshed” in Gaza, he claimed, Harris has “recklessly pushed us toward World War III.”
Chowdhury, a self-described “peace advocate,” urged the Muslim community not to fall victim to supposed “misinformation” campaigns by the media and Democrats that paint the former president as hostile to immigrants. He claimed that the former president’s focus is on “ending war, not dividing families through false immigration claims.”
Samra Luqman, chair of the Michigan chapter of Muslims for Trump, underscored the need to punish the Biden administration for what he described as supporting a “genocide” in Gaza.
“The goal of this election is to hold the Biden administration accountable for a genocide. No amount of fear mongering or scare tactics will persuade my community into forgiving the mutilation, live-burning, and genocide of over 200,000 people,” he said.
According to data produced by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, roughly 40,000 people have died in Gaza since the war began last October. Israel has said that its forces have killed about 20,000 Hamas terrorists during its military campaign.
Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication.
On the organization Muslims for Trump’s official website, it claims that the Abraham Accords, a series of historic, Trump administration-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several countries in the Arab world, helped stabilize the Middle East. It also says that had Trump not lost the 2020 presidential race, the so-called “genocide” could have been prevented.
“Under Trump’s leadership, the Abraham Accords were brokered, fostering peaceful relations between Israel and several Arab countries. Supporters might argue that Trump’s diplomacy prioritized peace and stability in the Middle East, reducing the likelihood of large-scale conflicts like genocide,” the group wrote.
Over the course of his campaign, Trump has repeatedly touted his support for the Jewish state during his singular term in office. Trump has boasted about his administration’s work in fostering the Abraham Accords, promising to resume efforts to strengthen them if he were to win November’s US presidential election.
Harsh US sanctions levied on Iran under Trump crippled the Iranian economy and led its foreign exchange reserves to plummet. Trump and his Republican supporters in the US Congress have criticized the Biden administration for renewing billions of dollars in US sanctions waivers, which had the effect of unlocking frozen funds and allowing the country to access previously inaccessible hard currency.
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.
Despite Harris’s repeated efforts to woo Muslim voters, polling data indicates that the demographic has made a dramatic swing away from the Democratic Party. Polling data from the Arab American Institute reveals that Trump slightly edges Harris among Muslim voters by a margin of 42 to 41 percent. A report from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) shows that Green Party candidate Jill Stein leads Harris and Trump with Muslim voters in the key swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona.
The post ‘Muslim for Trump’ Launches Initiatives in Key Battleground States, Says Candidate Will Bring ‘Peace’ to Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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The United Nations Is Against Peace
Delegates react to the results during the United Nations General Assembly vote on a draft resolution that would recognize the Palestinians as qualified to become a full UN member, in New York City, US, May 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
The UN decision on May 10, 2024, to upgrade the status of the Palestinian state is not surprising. It is a direct continuation of previous UN decisions, most notably that of November 29, 2012, which granted the Palestinian Authority the status of non-member observer state.
Since the 1970s, there has been an almost automatic majority for anti-Israel resolutions in the UN. This majority includes Muslim countries and countries that define themselves as part of the “Global South,” such as African countries and some South American countries, all of which are known for their invariably critical approach towards Israel.
The UN’s recognition of the Palestinian Authority grants the Palestinians an independent state without a negotiated peace process or clearly defined and agreed upon borders between it and Israel. This is precisely the situation the PLO has been striving for since 1974. The establishment of a Palestinian state without peace with Israel is a sure recipe for instability and perpetual war in the Middle East, and those negative consequences are being deliberately fomented by the UN.
In June 1974, the Palestine Liberation Organization approved a ten-point plan known as the Phased Plan. The plan was presented at the time as a considerable moderation of the PLO, which at the time was considered Israel’s most bitter enemy. The 1970s were full of bloody terrorist incidents committed by Palestinian organizations, including airplane hijackings. The leading terrorist organizations at that time were the Fatah organization headed by Yasser Arafat, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) organization headed by George Habash, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) organization headed since its inception by Nayef Hawatmeh.
The reason why the PLO’s ten-point plan was considered a political advancement was that for the first time since the adoption of the revised Palestinian treaty of 1968, the activists of the Palestinian organizations seemed to have agreed to an incomplete “liberation” of Palestine. A careful reading of the plan, however, shows that its goal remained the destruction of the entire State of Israel – “from the river to the sea.”
The second section of the plan says: “The PLO will fight by all means, primarily the armed struggle, to liberate the Palestinian land and establish an independent national government over any part of the Palestinian territory that will be liberated.” This clause was allegedly fulfilled – not through armed struggle but mainly through diplomacy via the Oslo Accords of the 1990s.
Another section of the phased plan defines the establishment of self-government on part of the territory as only one step on the way to the total “liberation” of the entire land of Palestine. According to the phased plan, the establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip was a temporary solution that was never meant to stop the war between the two national movements. The phased plan was designed to promote a continuation of the fight for the other “rights” the Palestinians demand, such as the complete “liberation” of, and purported right of return to, the entire land of Israel.
Despite lengthy negotiations between Israel and the PLO on the permanent agreement, the parties were unable to reach a satisfactory settlement. The most intense attempts were in July 2000 at Camp David with the mediation of President Bill Clinton, and in 2008 with the mediation of President George Bush, Jr.
The Palestinian state that was supposed to be established was meant to include most of the territories of Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip (over 90% of the territory); provide safe passage between the Gaza Strip and Judea and Samaria; and make agreed-upon special arrangements regarding Jerusalem and the refugees. Almost all the details were settled, but Israel asked for something the PLO was not willing to give. Israel requested that in exchange for a comprehensive agreement, representatives of the PLO, as the recognized representatives of the Palestinian people, would sign a document stating “the end of claims between Israel and the Palestinians” – i.e., a contractual obligation to make peace with Israel. No Palestinian representative has ever been willing to sign such a document because peace with Israel has never been their goal.
Because of this, negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority have been stuck for decades, with neither side possessing the ability to reach a binding permanent settlement. The Palestinians cannot force Israel to withdraw militarily from the territories of Judea and Samaria without a political agreement, and Israel cannot force a political agreement on the Palestinians that would include recognition of Israel and a final end to the national-religious conflict between the parties.
At this stage, the Palestinians turned to the United Nations to try to upgrade the status of the Palestinian Authority to that of a sovereign independent state. The Palestinian attempt to establish a state unilaterally was not new. On October 1, 1948, shortly after the establishment of the State of Israel, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip announced the establishment of the All-Palestine Government. The president of the independent state of Palestine, which declared its sovereignty in all of Mandatory Palestine, was Nazi sympathizer and virulent antisemite Haj Muhammad Amin al-Husseini; the prime minister was Ahmed Hilmi Abd al-Baqi. This government lasted for about a decade, ruling the Gaza Strip under Egyptian auspices. After its dissolution by the Egyptians, Prime Minister Hilmi continued to serve as Palestine’s representative in the Arab League until his death in 1963.
The Palestinians flatly denied the existence of the State of Israel. The Palestinian Declaration of Independence states:
On the basis of the Palestinian people’s natural and historical right to freedom and independence, a sacred right for which he shed blood and made sacrifices, and for which he fought against the imperial forces and the Zionists who conspired against him, we, the members of the Palestinian National Council who gathered in Gaza, the city of Hashim (the Prophet’s grandfather), declare this today… October 1, 1948, on the independence of Palestine as a whole within its borders: in northern Lebanon and Syria, in eastern Syria and across the Jordan, in the western Mediterranean and in southern Egypt. This independence is full independence and within its framework a free, democratic and sovereign state will be established, and its citizens will enjoy freedom.
The next time the Palestinians declared a state was on November 15, 1988, at the conference of the Palestinian National Council in Algiers. In the declaration of Palestinian independence drafted by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, it was stated, among other things, that the declaration was based on Partition Resolution 181 of November 29, 1947. The Palestinians recognized the right of the countries of the region to live in peace, but conspicuously did not mention Israel. In addition, they declared the continuation of the struggle until the end of the “occupation,” without clarifying whether the term referred to the territories of 1967 or beyond.
The announcement led the UN to invite Yasser Arafat to address the UN General Assembly (UN General Assembly Resolution 43/177). Unsurprisingly, 104 countries voted in favor of the resolution recognizing the Palestinian state unilaterally declared by Yasser Arafat. Only two countries voted against this recognition – the US and Israel.
The Palestinians understood that in order to have a basis for this type of decision, some sort of fact on the ground was required. The Oslo Accords of the 1990s gave them political-autonomous status for the first time in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip. The Oslo Accords were defined from the beginning as temporary interim agreements that were intended to lead to a permanent settlement of the two political entities living side by side in peace, security and prosperity.
After the peace talks with Israel at Camp David 2000, the Palestinians ignited a bloody intifada. After the failure of the negotiations in Annapolis in 2008 between Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the Palestinians realized they had exhausted all the Israeli concessions they could obtain via regular negotiations. This was the reason for their appeal to the UN Assembly and their request to upgrade their status to a state on November 29, 2012.
Their request was approved due to the automatic majority that exists in anti-Israel resolutions at the UN. For the first time, a UN observer body that does not have either effective control over territory or defined borders was granted the status of a state (in this case, that of an observer state). One hundred thirty-eight countries voted in favor this time, with nine opposed and the rest abstaining. This step was directly contrary to the principles of negotiations the parties had signed in the Oslo Accords.
The vote on May 10, 2024 was the most recent step in the Palestinian journey towards an independent state without a binding border agreement with Israel. The vote was intended to grant the Palestinians various rights reserved for sovereign states recognized by the UN, even though the Palestinian Authority is still defined as an observer state. This time, 143 countries voted in favor, with nine voting against and the rest abstaining.
The role of the UN is supposedly to maintain peace and world order. Upgrading the status of the Palestinian Authority to a state despite its having neither effective control over territory nor clear borders – and in the process empowering a political entity whose majority population openly supports a terrorist organization, Hamas, that rapes women and murders children – will not add to world peace and stability, but will only deepen the war between Israel and the Palestinians. Nor will it create an incentive for the moderate elements in Palestinian society to strive for true peace with Israel.
Dr. (Lt. Col.) Shaul Bartal is a senior researcher at the BESA Center and a research fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Lisbon. During his military service, he served in various roles in the West Bank. He has also taught in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies and the Department of Political Science at Bar-Ilan University. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
The post The United Nations Is Against Peace first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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A pro-Israel rally at the University of Toronto was headlined by Columbia University professor Shai Davidai
Around 200 people gathered for a pro-Israel demonstration at University of Toronto’s downtown campus at King’s College Circle—which was the site of one of Canada’s largest pro-Palestinian encampments during May […]
The post A pro-Israel rally at the University of Toronto was headlined by Columbia University professor Shai Davidai appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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‘Not Welcome’: New Pro-Hamas Campaign Aims to Abolish Hillel Campus Chapters
A statue of George Washington tied with a Palestinian flag and a keffiyeh inside a pro-Hamas encampment is pictured at George Washington University in Washington, DC, US, May 2, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Craig Hudson
The campus group National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) is waging a campaign to gut Jewish life in academia, calling for the abolition of Hillel International campus chapters, the largest collegiate organization for Jewish students in the world.
“Over the past several decades, Hillel has monopolized for Jewish campus life into a pipeline for pro-Israel indoctrination, genocide-apologia, and material support to the Zionist project and its crimes,” a social media account operating the campaign, titled #DropHillel, said in a manifesto published last week. “Across the country, Hillel chapters have invited Israeli soldiers to their campuses; promoted propaganda trips such as birthright; and organized charity drives for the Israeli military.”
It continued, “Such actions reveal Hillel’s ideological and material investment in Zionism, despite the organization’s facade as being simply a ‘Jewish cultural space.’”
DropHillel claims to be “Jewish-led,” although only a small minority of Jews oppose Zionism, and the group has been linked to and promoted by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters.
Hillel International has provided Jewish students a home away from home during the academic year. However, NSJP says it wants to “weaken” it and “dismantle oppression.”
The idea has already been picked up by pro-Hamas student groups at one college, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, according to The Daily Tar Heel, the school’s official student newspaper. On Oct. 9, it reported, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) unveiled the idea for “no more Hillel” during a rally which, among other things, demanded removing Israel from UNC’s study abroad program and adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Addressing the comments to the paper days later, SJP, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, proclaimed that shuttering Hillel is a coveted goal of the anti-Zionist movement.
“Zionism is a racist supremacist ideology advocating for the creation and sustenance of an ethnostate through the expulsion and annihilation of native people,” the group told the paper. “Therefore, any group that advocates for a supremacist ideology — be it the KKK, the Proud Boys, Hillel, or Heels for Israel — should not be welcome on campus.”
The #DropHillel campaign came amid an unprecedented surge in anti-Israel incidents on college campuses, which, according to a report published last month by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), have reached crisis levels.
Revealing a “staggering” 477 percent increase in anti-Zionist activity involving assault, vandalism, and other phenomena, the report — titled “Anti-Israel Activism on US Campuses, 2023-2024” — painted a bleak picture of America’s higher education system poisoned by political extremism and hate.
“As the year progressed, Jewish students and Jewish groups on campus came under unrelenting scrutiny for any association, actual or perceived, with Israel or Zionism,” the report said. “This often led to the harassment of Jewish members of campus communities and vandalism of Jewish institutions. In some cases, it led to assault. These developments were underpinned by a steady stream of rhetoric from anti-Israel activists expressing explicit support for US-designated terrorists organizations, such as Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and others.”
The report added that 10 campuses accounted for 16 percent of all incidents tracked by ADL researchers, with Columbia University and the University of Michigan combining for 90 anti-Israel incidents — 52 and 38, respectively. Harvard University, the University of California – Los Angeles, Rutgers University New Brunswick, Stanford University, Cornell University, and others filled out the rest of the top 10. Violence, it continued, was most common at universities in the state of California, where anti-Zionist activists punched a Jewish student for filming him at a protest.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post ‘Not Welcome’: New Pro-Hamas Campaign Aims to Abolish Hillel Campus Chapters first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Muslim for Trump’ Launches Initiatives in Key Battleground States, Says Candidate Will Bring ‘Peace’ to Gaza
Former US President Donald Trump is seen at a campaign event in South Carolina. Photo: Reuters/Sam Wolfe
The “Muslims for Trump” organization has officially launched initiatives to help elect Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to the White House, arguing that he would be more likely to end the war in Gaza than Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
In a statement released on Monday, the group said it will focus on recruiting Muslim voters in key battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina. The organization both praised Trump for his supposed “peace-focused” approach to ending the war in Gaza and condemned Harris for helping facilitate a so-called “genocide.”
“After meeting with President Trump, it was clear to me he is the right leader for Muslims to get behind,” Rabiul Chowdhury, co-founder of Muslims for Trump and former co-chair of the “Abandon Harris Movement,” said in a statement.
Chowdhury added that during his discussions with Trump, the former president vowed to “ending the escalation of wars and bringing peace to war-torn regions.” In contrast to Trump’s promise to stop the “bloodshed” in Gaza, he claimed, Harris has “recklessly pushed us toward World War III.”
Chowdhury, a self-described “peace advocate,” urged the Muslim community not to fall victim to supposed “misinformation” campaigns by the media and Democrats that paint the former president as hostile to immigrants. He claimed that the former president’s focus is on “ending war, not dividing families through false immigration claims.”
Samra Luqman, chair of the Michigan chapter of Muslims for Trump, underscored the need to punish the Biden administration for what he described as supporting a “genocide” in Gaza.
“The goal of this election is to hold the Biden administration accountable for a genocide. No amount of fear mongering or scare tactics will persuade my community into forgiving the mutilation, live-burning, and genocide of over 200,000 people,” he said.
According to data produced by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, roughly 40,000 people have died in Gaza since the war began last October. Israel has said that its forces have killed about 20,000 Hamas terrorists during its military campaign.
Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication.
On the organization Muslims for Trump’s official website, it claims that the Abraham Accords, a series of historic, Trump administration-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several countries in the Arab world, helped stabilize the Middle East. It also says that had Trump not lost the 2020 presidential race, the so-called “genocide” could have been prevented.
“Under Trump’s leadership, the Abraham Accords were brokered, fostering peaceful relations between Israel and several Arab countries. Supporters might argue that Trump’s diplomacy prioritized peace and stability in the Middle East, reducing the likelihood of large-scale conflicts like genocide,” the group wrote.
Over the course of his campaign, Trump has repeatedly touted his support for the Jewish state during his singular term in office. Trump has boasted about his administration’s work in fostering the Abraham Accords, promising to resume efforts to strengthen them if he were to win November’s US presidential election.
Harsh US sanctions levied on Iran under Trump crippled the Iranian economy and led its foreign exchange reserves to plummet. Trump and his Republican supporters in the US Congress have criticized the Biden administration for renewing billions of dollars in US sanctions waivers, which had the effect of unlocking frozen funds and allowing the country to access previously inaccessible hard currency.
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.
Despite Harris’s repeated efforts to woo Muslim voters, polling data indicates that the demographic has made a dramatic swing away from the Democratic Party. Polling data from the Arab American Institute reveals that Trump slightly edges Harris among Muslim voters by a margin of 42 to 41 percent. A report from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) shows that Green Party candidate Jill Stein leads Harris and Trump with Muslim voters in the key swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona.
The post ‘Muslim for Trump’ Launches Initiatives in Key Battleground States, Says Candidate Will Bring ‘Peace’ to Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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