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UCLA Sued Over Handling of Pro-Hamas Encampment
Law enforcement officers detain a demonstrator, as they clear out a pro-Hamas protest encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Los Angeles, California, US, May 2, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/David Swanson
A lawsuit accusing the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) of fostering a discriminatory learning environment was filed in federal court on Wednesday, another in a series of cases Jewish students have brought forth against their colleges in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel and ensuing riotous pro-Hamas protests which convulsed the 2023-2024 academic year.
“This rampant anti-Jewish environment burst into view on Oct. 8, 2023, the day after Hamas terrorists attacked Israel in a harrowing rampage that saw over one thousand innocent Jews, including infants and the elderly, murdered, raped, and mutilated,” said the complaint, filed in the US District Court for the Central District Court of California.
“In the wake of these horrifying events, UCLA should have taken steps to ensure that its Jewish students were safe and protected from harassment and undeterred in obtaining full access to campus facilities,” it continued. “Instead, UCLA officials routinely turned their backs on Jewish students, aiding and abetting a culture that has allowed calls for annihilation of the Jewish people, Nazi symbolism, and religious slurs to go unchecked.”
The suit — which names UCLA students Yitzchok Frankel, Joshua Ghayoum, and Eden Shemuelian as plaintiffs — went on to excoriate UCLA’s handling of a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” that an anti-Zionist student group erected on campus in the final weeks of spring semester, explaining that it was a source of antisemitism from the moment it went up. Students there chanted “death to the Jews,” set up illegal checkpoints through which no one could pass unless they denounced Israel, and ordered campus security assigned there by the university to ensure that no Jews entered it, according to the complaint.
Alleging that UCLA refused to clear the encampment despite knowing what was happening there, the complaint charged that administrators put on a “remarkable display of cowardice, appeasement, and illegality.” In doing so, it continued, UCLA allowed a “Jewish Exclusion Zone” on its property, violating its own policies as well as “the basic guarantee of equal access to educational facilities that receive federal funding” and other equal protection laws.
“If masked agitators had excluded any other marginalized group at UCLA, Governor [Gavin] Newsom rightly would have sent in the National Guard immediately,” Mark Renzi, chief executive officer of the legal advocacy group Becket Law, said in a press release. “But UCLA instead caved to the antisemitic activists and allowed its Jewish students to be segregated from the heart of their own campus. That is a profound and illegal failure of leadership.”
He continued, “This is America in 2024 — not Germany in 1939. It is disgusting that an elite American university would let itself devolve into a hotbed of antisemitism. UCLA’s administration should have to answer for allowing the Jewish Exclusion Zone and promise that Jews will never again be segregated on campus.”
Numerous antisemitic incidents occurred at UCLA before the spring encampment, the complaint added.
Just five days after Oct. 7, it said, anti-Zionist protesters chanted “Itbah El Yahud” at Bruin Plaza, which means “slaughter the Jews” in Arabic. Other incidents included someone tearing a chapter page out of Philip Roth’s 2004 novel The Plot Against America, titled “Loudmouth Jew,” and leaving it outside the home of a UCLA faculty member, as well as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) staging a disturbing demonstration in which its members cudgeled a piñata, to which a picture of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s face was glued, while shouting “beat the Jew.”
Citing potential violations of Title VI of the US Civil Rights Act and the Religious Freedom Clause, the suit seeks “immediate injunctive relief.” If granted, UCLA would be prohibited from taking actions which violated the rights of Jewish students and faculty.
“We are aware of the lawsuit that has been filed, which to our knowledge has not yet been served,” UCLA said in a statement on Thursday. “We will review and respond in course. UCLA remains committed to supporting the safety and well-being of the entire Bruin community.”
“Gaza Solidarity Encampments” on US college campuses have caused immense harm to Jewish students, according to civil rights groups, which have cited incidents of antisemitic harassment and assault. Hesitating to restore order has so for led to legal consequences for Columbia University, which earlier this week settled a lawsuit that accused it of neglecting its obligation to foster a safe learning environment.
The resolution of the case, first reported by Reuters, calls for Columbia to hire a “Safe Passage Liaison” who will monitor protests and “walking escorts” who will accompany students whose safety is threatened around the campus. Other details of the settlement include “accommodations” for students whose academic lives are disrupted by protests and new security policies for controlling access to school property.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post UCLA Sued Over Handling of Pro-Hamas Encampment first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Egypt Hosts Hamas in New Gaza Ceasefire Push, Looting Halts Aid
Palestinian women react at the site of an Israeli strike on a house, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip December 1, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Hamas leaders held talks with Egyptian security officials on Sunday in a fresh push for a ceasefire in the Gaza war, two Hamas sources said, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to convene his security cabinet on the matter, two Israeli officials said.
The Hamas visit to Cairo was the first since the United States announced on Wednesday it would revive efforts in collaboration with Qatar, Egypt and Turkey to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza, that would include a hostage deal.
White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan said he thought the chances of a ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza were now more likely.
“(Hamas) are isolated. Hezbollah is no longer fighting with them, and their backers in Iran and elsewhere are preoccupied with other conflicts,” he told CNN on Sunday.
“So I think we may have a chance to make progress, but I’m not going to predict exactly when it will happen … we’ve come so close so many times and not gotten across the finish line.”
Residents said the military blew up clusters of houses in the northern Gaza areas of Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, where Israeli forces have operated since October.
The military says it has killed hundreds of Hamas terrorists in that part of Gaza as it fights to stop the faction regrouping. It has also lost around 30 soldiers there in combat with Hamas fighters over the past two months, a relatively high death toll.
Hamas does not provide details on its own fatalities.
The halting of aid deliveries through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing came almost two weeks after a large shipment was hijacked on the same route.
UNRWA’s Lazzarini said it was Israel’s responsibility “as occupying power” to protect aid workers and supplies, and that the humanitarian operation had become “unnecessarily impossible” due to what he said were Israeli restrictions.
COGAT, the Israeli military department responsible for aid transfers, denies it is hindering humanitarian relief into Gaza, saying there is no limit on supplies for civilians and blaming delays on the United Nations, which it says is inefficient.
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Trump Picks Massad Boulos to Serve as Adviser on Arab, Middle Eastern Affairs
Eric Trump, his sister Tiffany Trump and her boyfriend Massad Boulos arrive for U.S. President Donald Trump’s acceptance speech as the 2020 Republican presidential nominee during the final event of the 2020 Republican National Convention on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, U.S., August 27, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
US President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday said Lebanese American businessman Massad Boulos would serve as senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs.
Trump made the announcement on Truth Social. Boulos, the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Tiffany, met repeatedly with Arab American and Muslim leaders during the election campaign.
It was the second time in recent days that Trump chose the father-in-law of one of his children to serve in his administration.
On Saturday, Trump said that he had picked his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father, real estate mogul Charles Kushner, to serve as US ambassador to France.
In recent months, Boulos campaigned for Trump to drum up Lebanese and Arab American support, even as the US-backed Israel’s military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Boulos has powerful roots in both countries.
His father and grandfather were both figures in Lebanese politics and his father-in-law was a key funder of the Free Patriotic Movement, a Christian party aligned with Hezbollah.
His son Michael and Tiffany Trump were married in an elaborate ceremony at Trump’s Florida Mar-a-Lago Club in November 2022, after getting engaged in the White House Rose Garden during Trump’s first term.
Boulos has been in touch with interlocutors across Lebanon’s multi-polar political world, three sources who spoke to him in recent months say, a rare feat in Lebanon, where decades-old rivalries between factions run deep.
Particularly notable is his ability to maintain relations with Hezbollah, they say. The Iranian-backed Shi’ite Muslim party has a large number of seats in Lebanon’s parliament and ministers in the government.
Boulos is a friend of Suleiman Frangieh, a Christian ally of Hezbollah and its candidate for Lebanon’s presidency. He is also in touch with the Lebanese Forces Party, a vehemently anti-Hezbollah Christian faction, the sources say, and has ties to independent lawmakers.
Aron Lund, fellow at the Century Foundation think tank, said Boulos was well placed to influence Trump’s Middle East policy after playing a small but significant role in expanding Trump’s appeal to Arab American and Muslim voters during the campaign.
“Boulos’ Lebanese political past gives no real indication of a geo-strategic or even national vision, but it demonstrates ambition and a set of political allies that will stand out in Trump’s circle like a sore thumb,” Lund wrote.
MICHIGAN WIN
Boulos, a billionaire with extensive business ties in Nigeria, was born in Lebanon, but moved to Texas as a teenager, where he attended the University of Houston, earned a law degree and became a US citizen.
His son and Trump’s daughter, whose mother is Trump’s second wife Marla Maples, met on the Greek island of Mykonos, at actor Lindsay Lohan’s club, People Magazine reported in 2022.
Trump’s election win in Michigan came in part because of Boulos’ help flipping some of the 300,000 Arab Americans and Muslims in the state who overwhelmingly supported Biden in 2020 but opposed Biden’s policies in Israel, Gaza and Lebanon, Trump campaign officials and supporters told Reuters.
“Boulos played a big role in the outreach to Muslim voters,” said Rabiul Chowdhury, co-founder of Muslims for Trump.
Beginning in September, the Trump campaign held weekly meetings in person and via Zoom with dozens of Arab American and Muslim civic leaders and business executives.
Boulos spent weeks on the ground in Michigan, Pennsylvania and other states with big Arab American and Muslim populations, assuring audiences in private lunches and dinners that tapped his own connections to Lebanese American businessmen that Trump was committed to ending the wars in the Middle East.
The Trump campaign spent tens of millions of dollars on the effort to mobilize Arab American and Muslim voters, Boulos told Reuters in an interview shortly after the election.
Trump won endorsements from Muslim imams and the Muslim mayor of Hamtramck, another town near Detroit with a large Arab American population, as well as the large Bangladeshi community, and courted Iraqi Americans, Albanian Americans and others.
While the events on the ground in Lebanon played a factor, the economy did too. And conservative Arabs and Muslims were concerned about what they saw as the Democrats’ “far left ideology,” including support of transgender rights, Boulos said.
Boulos met with members of the 150,000 strong Albanian community in Michigan.
POLITICAL AMBITIONS?
The new role could offer Boulos the kind of political clout he could not achieve in Lebanon. He had a brief run for Lebanon’s parliament in 2018 alongside pro-Hezbollah candidates, but since then he has not consistently aligned himself with any particular party, sources in Lebanon said.He hails from a Greek Orthodox family. In Lebanon’s sectarian powersharing system, that would cap his chances at a senior role in government at the level of deputy speaker of parliament. The post of president – the highest Christian role in the country – is reserved for Maronite Catholics.
While he used to travel to Lebanon frequently, he has not visited in the last four years, one of the sources said.
Some people in Lebanon were hopeful about the prospects of having a friendly face in Trump’s inner circle even before the announcement on Sunday.
“It’s a nice thing – and hopefully he will work for Lebanon. And Trump maybe is of the type who makes a promise and could possibly be more loyal to it than others,” said Hamdi Hawallah, a Lebanese man in his late 70s.
“So we’re optimistic about him. These days we hold on to a piece of driftwood just to be optimistic.”
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Dubai Rabbi’s Killers Said to Be Planning Attack in Thailand
Zvi Kogan. Photo: LinkedIn via i24 News
JNS.org – The terrorist enterprise responsible for the murder of Rabbi Tzvi Kogan in Dubai is planning fresh attacks in southeast Asia and especially Thailand, Israeli authorities warned on Saturday.
“Intelligence suggests that the terrorist infrastructure that perpetrated the murder of Rabbi Tvzi Kogan in Dubai is planning additional terrorist activities,” according to a statement by Israel’s National Security Council. “Relevant security forces estimate this will happen in southeast Asia and especially Thailand,” the statement read.
Kogan’s body was found on Nov. 24. Local authorities arrested three men, all of them Uzbek nationals. Israeli authorities believe the murder may be linked to Iran, which has denied any involvement.
Hebrew media reported on Sunday that an Israeli tourist was assaulted by several Germans in Thailand.
The backpacker, identified only as Ilai, 22, told Ynet that the incident took place on Saturday night in Pai, a town situated about 800 kilometers (500 miles) north of Bangkok. Four Germans in their 20s asked him if he was Israeli and then punched him, leading to a scuffle, he said.
Ilai, a recently discharged Israel Defense Forces soldier who fought in Gaza, fought off his attackers and sustained only minor injuries, according to the report. He decided not to file a police complaint, he said, fearing this would complicate the rest of his stay in Thailand.
The Israeli government raised the threat level for travel in Thailand to level two on Nov. 24, meaning that it perceives a “potential threat,” and recommended that travelers “take increased precautionary measures.” It also maintained its “high threat” level-four advisory against travel in southern Thailand. Israelis in Thailand are advised not to display Israeli or Jewish symbols and avoid congregating with other Israelis.
The new security advice stopped short of calling on Israel to leave Thailand or avoid it.
The post Dubai Rabbi’s Killers Said to Be Planning Attack in Thailand first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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