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UCLA Anti-Zionist Groups Rally to Protest Suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine
Illustrative: Dueling pro-Zionist and anti-Zionist demonstrations at the University of California, Los Angles on April 26, 2024. Photo: Alberto Sibaja via Reuters Connect.
Anti-Zionist groups at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on Tuesday rallied to protest a suspension imposed on Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) earlier this month over its vandalism of a Jewish UC board member’s home, deploying legions of activists to the campus for a demonstration at Dickinson Plaza.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, on Feb. 5 some 50 members of SJP and the allied campus group Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine amassed on the property of Jay Sures — a Jewish member of the Board of Regents, the governing body for the University of California (UC) system — and threatened that he must “divest now or pay.” As part of the demonstration, the students imprinted their hands, which had been submerged in red paint to symbolize the spilling of blood, all over Sures’ garage door and cordoned the area with caution tape.
The behavior crossed the line, UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk said in an email sent to the entire student body, and he suspended both groups while commissioning the school’s Office of Student Conduct to complete a thorough investigation into the incident.
“There should never be room for is violence,” Frenk said. “No one should ever fear for their safety. Without the basic feeling of safety, humans cannot learn, teach, work, and live — much less thrive and flourish. This is true no matter what group you are a member of — or which identities you hold.”
Following the disciplinary action, rumors circulated that SJP intended to flout its suspension by holding a demonstration to call for a “future free of Zionism.”
“SJP may be suspended, but you can rally in our name,” the group posted on Instagram on Monday.
The next day, an estimated 150 people — including members of Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP), among other anti-Israel groups — marched through the campus demanding that SJP’s punishment be repealed while arguing it is they and not Sures who are victims of racist maltreatment.
“If you look at who actually experienced violence, it’s overwhelming our own students, and that was the fault of our university administration” Michael Chwe, a professor of political science and member of FJP, was quoted by The Daily Bruin as saying. “For them to be claiming that our students are violent is completely backward.”
UCLA issued a statement describing the gathering as unauthorized, but it did not order law enforcement to disrupt it.
“Any student organization under interim suspension is not permitted to sponsor or participate as an official student group in campus events,” the university’s media relations office told the Bruin. “We are actively monitoring today’s event with the safety and well-being of our community, while upholding UCLA’s Time, Place, and Manner (TPM) policies.”
More anti-Zionist demonstrations on US college campuses — which have caused hate crimes, property destruction, and the proliferation of hate speech — are forthcoming.
On Feb. 24, Students for Justice in Palestine at Wesleyan University (WesSJP) and other allied anti-Zionist groups will hold a “Mass Action” demonstration across the entire northeast region of the US to call for alienating and destroying the State of Israel.
According to an announcement published on Tuesday in the school’s student newspaper, The Wesleyan Argus, the so-called Mass Action could take place at as many as 15 universities simultaneously on Feb. 24, drawing an army of students, non-students, faculty, and staff who will suspend normal business to participate in it. Wesleyan’s version of the event will take place at the Usdan University Center and the North College academic department.
As part of the demonstration, the groups will issue a slew of demands calling for policies which fulfill the requirements of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. They include terminating foreign aid to Israel, severing Wesleyan University’s relationship with the aerospace company Pratt & Whitney, and ending “all university partnerships and programs with Israeli academic institutions due to their direct contribution to the Zionist state’s goals of colonization.”
According to SJP member and “Mass Action” organizer June Labourdette, these demands, and others, were authored by the group known as the February Action Committee, a splinter group of National Students for Justice for Palestine (NSJP) by way of its affiliation with Connecticut Students for Palestine.
NSJP, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, has publicly discussed its grand strategy of using the anti-Zionist student movement as a weapon for destroying the US.
“Divestment is not an incrementalist goal. True divestment necessitates nothing short of the total collapse of the university structure and American empire itself,” it said in Sept. 2024 in a now-deleted tweet. “It is not possible for imperial spoils to remain so heavily concentrated in the metropole and its high-cultural repositories without the continuous suppression of populations that resist the empire’s expansion; to divest from this is to undermine and eradicate America as we know it.”
The group’s statement followed a series of revelations of SJP’s revolutionary goals and its apparent plans to amass armies of students and young people for a long campaign of subversion against US institutions, including the economy, military, and higher education. Like past anti-American movements, NSJP is also fixated on the presence and prominence of Jews in American life and the US’s alliance with Israel, the world’s only Jewish state.
Achieving its goals has involved causing havoc on college campuses across the US and enlisting groups such as WesSJP to publicly proclaim its support for Hamas, a jihadist terrorist group.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post UCLA Anti-Zionist Groups Rally to Protest Suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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UK, France, Germany Urge Gaza Ceasefire, Ask Israel to Restore Humanitarian Access
People walk among destroyed buildings in Gaza, as viewed from the Israel-Gaza border, March 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo
The governments of Germany, France and Britain called for an immediate return to a ceasefire in Gaza in a joint statement on Friday that also called on Israel to restore humanitarian access.
“We call on Israel to restore humanitarian access, including water and electricity, and ensure access to medical care and temporary medical evacuations in accordance with international humanitarian law,” the foreign ministers of the three countries, known as the E3, said in a statement.
The ministers said they were “appalled by the civilian casualties,” and also called on Palestinian Hamas terrorists to release Israeli hostages.
They said the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians could not be resolved through military means, and that a long-lasting ceasefire was the only credible pathway to peace.
The ministers added that they were “deeply shocked” by the incident that affected the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) building in Gaza, and called for an investigation into the incident.
The post UK, France, Germany Urge Gaza Ceasefire, Ask Israel to Restore Humanitarian Access first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli Military Says It Intercepted Missile Fired from Yemen; Houthis Claim Responsibility
FILE PHOTO: Houthi military helicopter flies over the Galaxy Leader cargo ship in the Red Sea in this photo released November 20, 2023. Photo: Houthi Military Media/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
The Israeli military said it intercepted a missile fired from Yemen on Friday, one day after shooting down two projectiles launched by Houthi terrorists.
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that it fired a ballistic missile toward Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, the group’s military spokesperson, Yahya Saree, said in a televised statement in the early hours of Saturday.
Saree said the attack against Israel was the group’s third in 48 hours.
He issued a warning to airlines that the Israeli airport was “no longer safe for air travel and would continue to be so until the Israeli aggression against Gaza ends and the blockade is lifted.”
However, the airport’s website seemed to be operating normally and showed a list of scheduled flights.
The group’s military spokesman has also said without providing evidence that the Houthis had launched attacks against the US aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman in the Red Sea.
The group recently vowed to escalate attacks, including those targeting Israel, in response to US strikes earlier this month, which amount to the biggest US military operation in the Middle East since President Donald Trump took office in January. The US attacks have killed at least 50 people.
The Houthis’ fresh attacks come under a pledge to expand their range of targets in Israel in retaliation for renewed Israeli strikes in Gaza that have killed hundreds after weeks of relative calm.
The Houthis have carried out over 100 attacks on shipping since Israel’s war with Hamas began in late 2023, saying they were acting in solidarity with Gaza’s Palestinians.
The attacks have disrupted global commerce and prompted the US military to launch a costly campaign to intercept missiles.
The Houthis are part of what has been dubbed the “Axis of Resistance” – an anti-Israel and anti-Western alliance of regional militias including Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and armed groups in Iraq, all backed by Iran.
The post Israeli Military Says It Intercepted Missile Fired from Yemen; Houthis Claim Responsibility first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Columbia University Agrees to Some Trump Demands in Attempt to Restore Funding
A pro-Palestine protester holds a sign that reads: “Faculty for justice in Palestine” during a protest urging Columbia University to cut ties with Israel. November 15, 2023 in New York City. Photo: Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Columbia University agreed to some changes demanded by US President Donald Trump’s administration before it can negotiate to regain federal funding that was pulled this month over allegations the school tolerated antisemitism on campus.
The Ivy League university in New York City acquiesced to several demands in a 4,000-word message from its interim president released on Friday. It laid out plans to reform its disciplinary process, hire security officers with arrest powers and appoint a new official with a broad remit to review departments that offer courses on the Middle East.
Columbia’s dramatic concessions to the government’s extraordinary demands, which stem from protests that convulsed the Manhattan campus over the Israel-Gaza war, immediately prompted criticism. The outcome could have broad ramifications as the Trump administration has warned at least 60 other universities of similar action.
What Columbia would do with its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies department was among the biggest questions facing the university as it confronted the cancellation, called unconstitutional by legal and civil groups, of hundreds of millions of dollars in government grants and contracts. The Trump administration had told the school to place the department under academic receivership for at least five years, taking control away from its faculty.
Academic receivership is a rare step taken by a university’s administrators to fix a dysfunctional department by appointing a professor or administrator outside the department to take over.
Columbia did not refer to receivership in Friday’s message. The university said it would appoint a new senior administrator to review leadership and to ensure programs are balanced at MESAAS, the Middle East Institute, the Center for Palestine Studies, the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and other departments with Middle East programs, along with Columbia’s satellite hubs in Tel Aviv and Amman.
‘TERRIBLE PRECEDENT’
Professor Jonathan Zimmerman, a historian of education at the University of Pennsylvania and a “proud” graduate of Columbia, called it a sad day for the university.
“Historically, there is no precedent for this,” Zimmerman said. “The government is using the money as a cudgel to micromanage a university.”
Todd Wolfson, a Rutgers University professor and president of the American Association of University Professors, called the Trump administration’s demands “arguably the greatest incursion into academic freedom, freedom of speech and institutional autonomy that we’ve seen since the McCarthy era.”
“It sets a terrible precedent,” Wolfson said. “I know every academic faculty member in this country is angry about Columbia University’s inability to stand up to a bully.”
In a campus-wide email, Katrina Armstrong, Columbia’s interim president, wrote that the her priorities were “to advance our mission, ensure uninterrupted academic activities, and make every student, faculty, and staff member safe and welcome on our campus.”
Mohammad Hemeida, an undergraduate who chairs Columbia’s Student Governing Board, said the school should have sought more student and faculty input.
“It’s incredibly disappointing Columbia gave in to government pressure instead of standing firm on the commitments to students and to academic freedom, which they emphasized to us in almost daily emails,” he said.
The White House did not respond to Columbia’s memo on Friday. The Trump administration said its demands, laid out in a letter to Armstrong eight days ago, were a precondition before Columbia could enter “formal negotiations” with the government to have federal funding.
ARREST POWERS
Columbia’s response is being watched by other universities that the administration has targeted as it advances its policy objectives in areas ranging from campus protests to transgender sports and diversity initiatives.
Private companies, law firms and other organizations have also faced threatened cuts in government funding and business unless they agree to adhere more closely to Trump’s priorities. Powerful Wall Street law firm Paul Weiss came under heavy criticism on Friday over a deal it struck with the White House to escape an executive order imperiling its business.
Columbia has come under particular scrutiny for the anti-Israel student protest movement that roiled its campus last year, when its lawns filled with tent encampments and noisy rallies against the US government’s support of the Jewish state.
To some of the Trump administration’s demands, such as having “time, place and manner” rules around protests, the school suggested they had already been met.
Columbia said it had already sought to hire peace officers with arrest powers before the Trump administration’s demand last week, saying 36 new officers had nearly completed the lengthy training and certification process under New York law.
The university said no one was allowed to wear face masks on campus if they were doing so intending to break rules or laws. The ban does not apply to face masks worn for medical or religious purposes, and the university did not say it was adopting the Trump administration’s demand that Columbia ID be worn visibly on clothing.
The sudden shutdown of millions of dollars in federal funding to Columbia this month was already disrupting medical and scientific research at the school, researchers said.
Canceled projects included the development of an AI-based tool that helps nurses detect the deterioration of a patient’s health in hospital and research on uterine fibroids, non-cancerous tumors that can cause pain and affect women’s fertility.
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