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UN, Campus Women’s Groups Silent on, Deny Hamas Rapes of Israelis in Oct. 7 Onslaught
Bartender and survivor of the Nova Festival, May Hayat, takes cover as rocket sirens sound, during her first visit to the scene of the attack, on the one-month anniversary of the attack by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas on Oct. 7, near Re’im, Israel, Nov. 6, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Women’s groups and sexual assault centers both within the United Nations and on university campuses have been noticeably silent on or in denial of well documented cases of Hamas terrorists raping Israeli girls and women during their brutal onslaught across southern Israel on Oct. 7.
The most recent outrage occurred on Friday, when the director of the sexual assault center at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada triggered an outcry for signing onto an open letter denying that Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas raped women during their Oct. 7 massacre in Israel.
Samantha Pearson signed the letter, titled “Stand with Palestine: Call on Political Leaders to End Their Complicity in Genocide,” which attacked center-left New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jagmeet Singh for repeating “the unverified accusation that Palestinians were guilty of sexual violence,” among other criticisms.
Edmonton – the University of Alberta Sexual Assault Centre signs onto an open letter that denies that Israeli women were subjected to rape and sexual violence on October 7th. Sarah Jama is the first signatory. The message is clear – believe all women, except Jewish women. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/7pSZTYzpvh
— Documenting Antisemitism (@AntisemitismCA) November 17, 2023
The letter was penned by Susan Kim, a city councilor in Victoria, and Sarah Jama, a member of Ontario’s provincial parliament. Jama who was kicked out of the NDP over remarks just three days after the Oct. 7 massacre ignoring the Hamas atrocities while calling Israel an “apartheid” state.
Copious and publicly verified documentation — including videos, eyewitness accounts, press reports, and investigations by Israeli authorities and women’s rights groups — have found numerous cases of rape and other sexual atrocities against women carried out by the Hamas-led terrorists during their rampage. During the assault, the terrorists murdered more than 1,200 people and took over 240 others as hostages.
Hamas terrorists also admitted to acts of rape during taped interrogations by Israeli security forces following their capture.
On Saturday, the University of Alberta indicated in a statement posted to X/Twitter that that it had fired Pearson.
“The recent improper and unauthorized use of the name of the [university]’s Sexual Assault Center in endorsing an open letter has raised understandable concerns from members of our community and the public,” the statement read. “Effective immediately, the director of the center is no longer employed by the university.”
“I want to be clear that the former employee’s personal views and opinions do not in any way represent those of the University of Alberta,” wrote university president Bill Flanagan. “The University of Alberta stands firmly and unequivocally against discrimination and hatred on the basis of religion, race, ethnicity, national origin, and other protected categories. We recognize the historical and ongoing harms of antisemitism and commit to doing all we can as a university to advance a world free of prejudice and discrimination.”
Meanwhile, the most important women’s organizations within the UN have seemingly ignored the sexual violence against women and girls in Israel.
UN Women, whose mandate is to champion the rights of women regardless of race or ethnicity, has been noticeably silent. On its website, the only reference to Israel since the Oct. 7 massacre addresses the “devastating impact of the crisis in Gaza on women and girls.” The organization also discusses a two-day trip to Egypt by its executive director, Sima Bahous, where she called for “immediate and unhindered humanitarian access” to Gaza, the Palestinian enclave ruled by Hamas.
“We’ve sent letters and shared graphic documentation,” Sarah Weiss Maudi, a senior diplomat and legal adviser in Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Fox News Digital. “Their silence is so deafening that it’s sickening.”
A UN Women spokesperson told Fox that the organization “unequivocally condemns all forms of violence against women and girls, as well as any use of sexual violence as a weapon of war, which is a grave violation of human rights. It is never acceptable. International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law must be respected and upheld at all times.”
The organization added that an independent commission of inquiry had already started “collecting and preserving evidence of war crimes committed by all sides since 7 October 2023, when Hamas launched a complex attack on Israel and Israeli forces responded with airstrikes in Gaza.”
The UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), meanwhile, has ambiguously mentioned “the gendered dimensions of conflict” without detailing the brutality suffered by women in Israel at the hands of Hamas.
The post UN, Campus Women’s Groups Silent on, Deny Hamas Rapes of Israelis in Oct. 7 Onslaught first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Shifts One of Two Aircraft Carriers Away From Middle East
The world’s largest aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford steams alongside USNS Laramie (T-AO-203) during a fueling-at-sea in the eastern Mediterranean Sea in this photo taken on Oct. 11, 2023 and released by the US Navy on Oct. 14, 2023. Photo: US Naval Forces Central Command / US 6th Fleet / Handout via REUTERS
One of two US aircraft carrier strike groups deployed to the Middle East in part to deter Iran from carrying out a threatened attack against Israel has departed the region, the Pentagon said on Thursday.
The decision to end the dual-carrier presence came nearly three weeks after US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group to remain in the Middle East, even after the arrival of the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group to replace it.
The Roosevelt has now departed the Middle East and is headed to the Asia-Pacific region, Major General Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, told a news briefing.
Austin’s order for the Roosevelt to stay in place came on Aug. 25, as Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel and Israel‘s military said it struck Lebanon with around 100 jets to thwart a larger attack, in one of the biggest clashes in more than 10 months of border warfare.
Officials have been concerned that Iran might make also good on its threats to carry out an attack against Israel over the killing of a Hamas leader in Tehran in July.
Ryder played down the idea that the United States was no longer concerned about potential Iranian action and said the decision was based on the Navy’s fleet management.
“Iran has indicated that they want to retaliate against Israel. And so we’re going to continue to take that threat very seriously,” Ryder told reporters at the Pentagon.
Iran has vowed a severe response to the July killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, which took place as he visited Tehran and which it blamed on Israel. Israel has neither confirmed or denied its involvement.
US President Joe Biden’s administration has been seeking to limit the fallout from the war in Gaza between Hamas and Israel, now approaching its one-year anniversary. The conflict has leveled huge swathes of Gaza, triggered border clashes between Israel and Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror group and drawn in Yemen’s Houthis.
“We remain intensely focused on working with regional partners to de-escalate tensions and deterring a wider regional conflict,” Ryder said.
The post US Shifts One of Two Aircraft Carriers Away From Middle East first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Toronto police charge three people at UJA event protest—while more cops find themselves assaulted
Protests also occurred at multiple screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival.
The post Toronto police charge three people at UJA event protest—while more cops find themselves assaulted appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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SUNY Purchase President Steps Down Amid Backlash Over Handling of Anti-Israel Protests, Campus Antisemitism
SUNY Purchase College President Milagros Peña attends the 52nd annual commencement at Westchester County Center in White Plains, New York, May 17, 2024. Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect
State University of New York (SUNY) Purchase president Milagros Peña will leave office at the end of this academic year, ending a four-year tenure that was derailed by pro-Hamas demonstrations on the campus.
According to The Journal News, Peña announced her “retirement” in a letter to the campus community and further discussed the decision at a convocation event held earlier this month.
“After considerable reflection and discussion about what is best for me and my family, I informed Chancellor [John B. King, Jr.] over the summer that this 2024-2025 academic year will be my last year as president,” Peña wrote, according to excerpts of the letter shared by the local news outlet. “I have mixed emotions about my decision to retire as president after the spring semester, because, though we still face challenges as a community, we have accomplished a great deal together and our shared mission of providing access to a high quality, transformative public education is as important as ever.”
Appointed to office 2020, Peña became a target of far-left faculty last academic year when she authorized the clearing of an illegal “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” which, the school’s newspaper reported at the time, led to clashes between law enforcement and pro-Hamas students who refused to obey orders to leave the area. An estimated 70 students were arrested, The Phoenix Purchase has said, and at least one professor was detained for obstructing justice.
However, Peña was inconsistent as a policy maker. In an account of her responses to campus antisemitism published by The Algemeiner on Wednesday, SUNY Purchase alumna Esti Heller said the president ignored numerous supplications for increased security for Jewish life on campus after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel. Peña was unresponsive, even after someone vandalized an Israeli flag and desecrated a sukkah, a hut built for the Jewish festival of Sukkot. Later, Peña reversed course in her handling of the pro-Hamas protesters, Heller said, acceding to their demands for “ethical investing,” amnesty for students charged with violating the code of conduct, and public disclosure of the school’s financial decisions.
Ultimately, Peña lost a no-confidence vote on June 3 in which 87 percent of the voting faculty called for her to leave office.
“While disappointed by the resolution, I am committed to continuing to take part in conversations with stakeholders on and off campus about many of the issues raised and look forward to engaging with the faculty, staff, and students about our shared goals and the best way of moving forward as a community,” Peña told the Purchase following the vote.
Now, three months later, Peña has granted faculty their wish, becoming the third university president in New York State this year to leave office after being criticized for mismanaging a series of crises, antisemitic incidents, and riotous demonstrations. Last month, Minouche Shafik resigned as president of Columbia University after her administration’s credibility crumbled amid revelations of antisemitic conversations between administrators and a partisan investigation of a pro-Israel professor. In May, Cornell University president Martha Pollack resigned after weeks of convulsive protests and disruptions on campus caused by mobs of pro-Hamas students and faculty.
In Wednesday’s announcement, Peña pledged to make her final months in office productive.
“We still have a lot to do before I step away, and I look forward to working together to ensure that Purchase College continues to thrive,” she said. “While there are challenges ahead, I feel confident that we have the flexibility, the skills, and the determination to continue to provide an excellent education for our students and to make progress as an institution that is continually evolving, while safeguarding our community and living up to our values during this extraordinary time.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post SUNY Purchase President Steps Down Amid Backlash Over Handling of Anti-Israel Protests, Campus Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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