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UCLA Suspends Students for Justice in Palestine After Vandalizing University Board Member’s Home

Illustrative: Anti-Israel protesters set up camp on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles, CA on April 25, 2024. Photo: Alberto Sibaja via Reuters Connect.

The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has suspended two leading anti-Zionist groups on campus — Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine — following their vandalizing the home of a Jewish member of the Board of Regents, the governing body for the University of California system.

According to The Daily Bruin, the university’s official campus newspaper, the decision is punishment for a Feb. 5 incident in which some 50 SJP members, along with Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine, amassed on the property of UC Regent Jay Sures 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, portions of which were quoted by The Bruin and can be found online, sent to the entire student body.

“Rigorous, healthy dialogue is central to everything we do to advance knowledge,” he explained. “What there should never be room for is violence. No one should ever fear for their safety. Without the basic feeling of safety, human 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. There is no place for violence in our Bruin community.”

He continued, “I am personally letting you know that the UCLA Office of Student Conduct has issued an interim suspension today to two registered student organizations, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine (GSJP), based on its review of initial reports about the groups’ involvement in an incident last week at the home of UC Regent Jay sures. Any act of violence undermines the foundation of our university … as your chancellor, I can commit to you that whenever an act of violence is directed against any member of the university community, UCLA will not turn a blind eye. This is a responsibility I must take seriously.”

Numerous reports suggest that SJP intends to defy the university’s sanctions by holding a demonstration to call for a “future free of Zionism.” Also, on Wednesday, the group told its social media followers to “stay tuned” for forthcoming developments, saying, “turn on our story & post notifications.”

Antisemitism at UCLA has been pervasive, Jewish students and faculty have reported.

On Sunday, a Jewish faculty group at the university sounded the alarm about the problem, issuing an open letter which called attention to a slew of indignities to which they are subjected.

One primary agent of anti-Jewish hatred named by the Jewish Faculty Resilience Group (JFrg) is the Task Force on Anti-Palestinian, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Muslim Racism (AAAR), a university-created body that has allegedly violated its mission to promote pluralism by lodging defaming accusations at the pro-Israel Jewish community in a series of reports, the latest of which contained what JFrg described as intolerable distortions of fact.

“The [AAAR] has released a deeply misleading report that falsely accuses Jewish faculty, staff, and students of harassment while ignoring the documented, escalating antisemitism at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM),” JFrg’s letter said. “DGSOM and UCLA’s ongoing silence concerning rising antisemitism continues to encourage more antisemitism, as we can plainly see in this report. JFrg unequivocally rejects this baseless and inflammatory report, and calls on the UCLA administration, DGSOM leadership, and the public to confront the reality of antisemitism at UCLA.”

JFRG’s letter went on to enumerate a slew of falsehoods included in the AAAR’s report, including that Jewish faculty have conspired to undermine academic freedom with “coordinated repression, involving university and non-university actors,” align itself with conservative groups, and harm minority students by opposing “racial justice.” It added that life for faculty at the Geffen medical school has wreaked demonstrable harm on Jewish students and faculty. Student clubs, it said, are denied recognition for arbitrary reasons; Jewish faculty whose ethnic backgrounds were previously unknown are purged from the payrolls upon being identified as Jews; and anyone who refuses to participate in anti-Zionist events is “intimidated” and pressured.

In 2024, a lawsuit accusing UCLA of fostering a discriminatory learning environment was filed in federal court.

The suit — which named UCLA students Yitzchok Frankel, Joshua Ghayoum, and Eden Shemuelian as plaintiffs — excoriated 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, as 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.

Republicans in Washington, DC have said that similarly disruptive and extremist political activity on college campuses “will no longer be tolerated in the Trump administration.” Meanwhile, the US President Donald Trump has enacted a slew of policies aimed at reining in disruptive and discriminatory behavior.

Continuing work started during his first administration — when Trump issued Executive Order 13899 to ensure that civil rights law apply equally Jews — Trump’s recent “Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitism” calls for “using all appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise … hold to account perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.” The order also requires each government agency to write a report explaining how it can be of help in carrying out its enforcement. Another major provision of the order calls for the deportation of extremist “alien” student activists, whose support for terrorist organizations, intellectual and material, such as Hamas contributed to fostering antisemitism, violence, and property destruction.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post UCLA Suspends Students for Justice in Palestine After Vandalizing University Board Member’s Home first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Trump Vows to Hold Iran Responsible for Houthi Attacks, Warns of ‘Dire Consequences’

A Houthi fighter mans a machine gun mounted on a truck during a parade for people who attended Houthi military training as part of a mobilization campaign, in Sanaa, Yemen, Dec. 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

US President Donald Trump has declared that Iran will be held directly responsible for any future attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who have targeted US and Israeli ships in the Red Sea in retaliation for Jerusalem’s ongoing blockade of the Gaza Strip.

“Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN, and IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social account on Monday.

Over the weekend, the US military launched strikes against the Houthis in Yemen after the Iran-backed terrorist group declared they had resumed attacks on ships “linked to Israel” in the Red Sea.

Since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023, the Houthis — whose slogan is “death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory to Islam” — have targeted over 100 merchant vessels in the Red Sea with missiles and drones. They asserted that these attacks, which caused a massive disruption of global trade, were a show of support for Palestinians in Gaza following Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

The attacks have forced vessels to avoid the Red Sea and Suez Canal in favor of longer routes around Africa, driving up travel and insurance costs.

“The hundreds of attacks being made by Houthi, the sinister mobsters and thugs based in Yemen, who are hated by the Yemeni people, all emanate from, and are created by, IRAN,” Trump wrote in his post on Truth Social.

“Any further attack or retaliation by the ‘Houthis’ will be met with great force, and there is no guarantee that that force will stop there,” he continued.

According to US officials, several senior Houthi commanders have been killed during the attacks. Meanwhile, local media reports said the Houthis claimed at least 53 people have been killed and 98 wounded as a result of the strikes.

On Sunday, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that Washington would conduct “unrelenting” strikes against the Houthis until the terrorist group ceases their military actions targeting US assets and international shipping.

“Iran has played ‘the innocent victim’ of rogue terrorists from which they’ve lost control, but they haven’t lost control,” Trump wrote in his post on Truth Social. “They’re dictating every move, giving them the weapons, supplying them with money and highly sophisticated Military equipment, and even, so-called, ‘Intelligence.’”

Over the weekend, Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi called for mass protests, urging Yemenis to take to the streets in response to US airstrikes. Demonstrations were held in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and other Houthi-controlled areas, with crowds chanting “Death to America! Death to Israel!” during a rally broadcast on the Houthis’ Al-Masirah television network.

The Yemeni terrorist group warned that its attacks on shipping in the Red Sea will continue until US military strikes on Yemen stop. The Houthis also claimed two attacks in the past 24 hours against the USS Harry S. Truman in the northern Red Sea.

In January, the group signaled it would limit its attacks in the Red Sea corridor to only Israeli-affiliated ships after a ceasefire began in the Gaza Strip but warned that broader assaults could resume if necessary. Reports have indicated that the Houthis used Iranian-supplied ballistic and cruise missiles to carry out its attacks.

Earlier this month, Washington imposed sanctions on seven senior members of the Houthis, shortly after the Trump administration officially redesignated the Iran-backed rebels in Yemen as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO).

Several countries — including Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Israel — currently designate the Houthis as terrorists.

Last month, the United Nations announced it suspended its humanitarian operations in areas controlled by Houthi rebels, after they detained dozens of UN staffers, who remain unreleased.

The Houthis have been waging an insurgency in Yemen for two decades in a bid to overthrow the Yemeni government. They have controlled a significant portion of the country’s land in the north and along the Red Sea since 2014, when they captured it in the midst of a civil war.

The post Trump Vows to Hold Iran Responsible for Houthi Attacks, Warns of ‘Dire Consequences’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Australian Jewish Leader Urges Continued Vigilance on Antisemitic Hate Crimes After Police Label Bomb Threat ‘Fake’

Car in New South Wales, Australia graffitied with antisemitic message. Photo: Screenshot

A top Australian Jewish leader has expressed disappointment with a recent announcement by police that an incident involving an abandoned caravan filled with explosives and antisemitic writings was “fake,” arguing law enforcement downplayed the severity of a recent spree of crimes targeting the Jewish community.

Alex Ryvchin — co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), an organization which advocates upholding the civil rights of the country’s some 120,000 Jewish citizens — on Monday urged Australian authorities to remain vigilant against antisemitism.

“We learned that in addition to everything we faced over the past 17 months, the doxxing, the vilification, the harassment, everything happening at schools and universities,” Ryvchin said during an appearance on Sky News. “On top of all that, you now have hardened criminals paying off lowly hoodlums to set fire to our buildings and cars and set our streets ablaze with reckless disregard for what happens.”

He continued, “But for some reason, the police in announcing this chose to completely downplay it, refer to it as a con job, and a fake.”

Ryvchin explained the framing had now “allowed negative actors who have tried to downplay it [the rise in antisemitism] this whole time to now galvanize and to try to dampen all the momentum and the enthusiasm for actually solving this problem. So, it’s really incredibly disappointing.”

Earlier this month, Australian police announced that an organized crime group had created a fake bomb threat intended to draw law enforcement resources, rather than a genuine targeting of Jews.

“It was about causing chaos within the community, causing threat, causing angst, diverting police resources away from their day jobs, to have them focus on matters that would allow them to get up to or engage in other criminal activity,” Dave Hudson, New South Wales (NSW) Deputy Police Commissioner, said in statement.

Krissy Barrett, the Australian Federal Police’s Deputy Commissioner for National Security, described the incident as “fake,” a “fabricated terrorism plot,” and a “criminal con job,” adding, “The plan was the following: organize for someone to buy a caravan, place it with explosives and written material of antisemitic nature, leave it in a specific location and then, once that happened, inform law enforcement about an impending terror attack against Jewish Australians. We believe the person pulling the strings wanted changes to their criminal status but maintained a distance from their scheme and hired alleged local criminals to carry out parts of their plan.”

Then last week, NSW Police and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) released a statement that they had arrested and charged 14 members of an organized crime group, allegedly involved in a series of antisemitic hate crimes.

“None of the individuals we have arrested … have displayed any form of antisemitic ideology,” Hudson said. “I think these organized crime figures have taken an opportunity to play off the vulnerability of the Jewish community.”

However, Ryvchin told ABC Radio that law enforcement should not be so quick to dismiss the role fo antisemitism, noting the historic surge in antisemitic attacks across Australia in recent months.

“I don’t feel we can definitively draw that conclusion,” he said. “Ultimately, the things that we’ve seen took place. They weren’t hoaxes. This is part of something transpiring in broader society. The fact that a criminal network with no apparent ideological links to antisemitism thought fit to latch on to what’s happening shows how deep-seated the problem already was.”

The Australian Jewish Association (AJA) has challenged the claim that the crimes were hoaxes, sharing a news article last week reporting that the man charged with allegedly orchestrating the series of crimes had posted antisemitic comments online.

Also last week, NSW Premier Chris Minns pushed back against calls for repeals of news laws passed in response to the recent wave of hate crimes. Among other measures, the laws imprison those who make terror threats or perform Nazi salutes.

“While these laws were drafted in response to horrifying antisemitism, we have always made clear they would apply to anyone, preying on any person, at any time. In response to calls for the laws to be scrapped, doing so would be a toxic message to our community that this kind of hate speech is acceptable when it’s not,” Minns said. “These laws are very important to maintaining social cohesion.”

On Monday, the Palestine Action Group reportedly filed suit in the NSW Supreme court, charging that the laws were unconstitutional, infringing on “constitutional freedom of communication on government or political matters.”

Southeastern Australia saw a string of hate crimes targeting Jews from November through January. These included cars set on fire and antisemitic graffiti targeting synagogues as well as other Jewish buildings.

That followed the ECAJ releasing a report last year showing that antisemitism in Australia quadrupled to record levels over the past year, with Australian Jews experiencing more than 2,000 antisemitic incidents between October 2023 and September 2024.

The post Australian Jewish Leader Urges Continued Vigilance on Antisemitic Hate Crimes After Police Label Bomb Threat ‘Fake’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Chuck Schumer Postpones Book Tour on Antisemitism Amid Planned Protests, Outrage Over Funding Bill

US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) holds a press conference in the US Capitol in Washington, DC, April 23, 2024. Photo: Annabelle Gordon / CNP/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect

US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s upcoming tour to promote his new book on antisemitism has been postponed for “security reasons” amid outrage over his decision to prevent a government shutdown last week

“Due to security concerns, Senator Schumer’s book events are being rescheduled,” a spokesperson for the New York Democrat said in a statement.

Schumer, who is Jewish, was slated to hold multiple events this week promoting his book, Antisemitism in America: A Warning, which is set to be released on Tuesday.

One of the events was supposed to take place at Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center in New York City. Information regarding the event, which was set to be moderated by US Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), was removed from the venue’s website.

Schumer’s other promotional events in Washington, DC and Baltimore were also shelved on short notice. The venues did not provide a reason for nixing the senator’s scheduled appearance. 

Jewish activists planned a protest of Schumer’s now-cancelled New York City book event, lambasting the Democratic leader for failing to advance the Antisemitism Awareness Act to the Senate floor for a vote. In addition, the left-wing anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace organized a protest of his Baltimore book event, accusing the senator of helping facilitate Israel’s so-called “genocide” in Gaza. 

The Democratic leader has also faced tremendous blowback over Senate Democrats’ decision to help pass a continuing resolution and thwart a government shutdown. The Senate voted 54 to 46 to pass the funding bill. Schumer argued that a government shutdown would provide US President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk a greater amount of unchecked power. 

“I know a lot of members didn’t like the CR [continuing resolution — the government shutdown would be far worse. A government shutdown gives Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE [the US Departmet of Government Efficiency] almost complete power … to close down because they can decide what is an essential service,” Schumer said in a statement.

In the 17 months following the Hamas terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, Schumer has struggled to coalesce strident support for the Jewish state among Democratic senators. Although Democrats have repeatedly issued nominal support for Israel’s right to “self-defense,” liberal lawmakers have steadily adopted a more adversarial posture against the Jewish state. In November 2024, 17 Democratic senators voted to impose a partial arms embargo on Israel, citing frustration over mounting civilian casualties in Gaza. 

Furthermore, critics allege that Schumer has not done enough to fight antisemitism in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 atrocities. According to a report by the US Committee on the Workforce and Education, Schumer advised embattled administrators at Columbia University to “keep heads down” amid outrage over surging antisemitism within the student body. 

Nonetheless, Schumer has continued using his platform to voice support for Israel’s right to defend itself. In a recent interview with the New York Times, Chuck Schumer defended Israel from false accusations of “genocide” in Gaza and lambasted the United Nations as “antisemitically against Israel.” 

Genocide is described as a country or some group tries to wipe out a whole race of people, a whole nationality of people. So, if Israel was not provoked and just invaded Gaza and shot at random Palestinians, Gazans, that would be genocide. That’s not what happened,” Schumer told the Times. “In fact, the opposite happened. And Hamas is much closer to genocidal than Israel.”

Schumer lamented the rising tide of anti-Jewish hatred across the country, claiming that antisemites often use the word “Zionist” as a placeholder for “Jew.”

I’ve criticized the Israeli government, and I’ve criticized [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, as you know. Criticism of Israel and how it conducted the war is not antisemitic. But it begins to shade over, and it shades over in a bunch of different ways. When you use the word ‘Zionist’ for Jew — you Zionist pig — you mean you Jewish pig,” Schumer said. 

The post Chuck Schumer Postpones Book Tour on Antisemitism Amid Planned Protests, Outrage Over Funding Bill first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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