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University Chancellor Apologizes for Caving to Pro-Hamas Protesters

Illustrative: Anti-Israel protesters outside Columbia University in Manhattan, New York City, April 22, 2024. Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s (UWM) chancellor has apologized to the Jewish community for reaching an agreement with an anti-Zionist group which ended a “Gaza encampment” in exchange for the school’s issuing a statement calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s war against Hamas and considering an academic boycott of Israel.

“It is clear to me that UWM should not have weighed in on deeply complex geopolitical and historical issues,” UWM chancellor Mark Mone said on Tuesday. “And for that, I apologize. I acknowledge that it is an increasingly difficult time for many Jewish students at UWM and across America.”

He added, “Let me be clear: UWM resolutely condemns antisemitism, just as we do Islamophobia and all other forms of hatred. Our campus must be a place that welcomes all students and the full expression their history, culture, identity, and ethnicity. But words alone cannot create the culture of inclusion we desire, which is why we must transform our words into commitment and action. This work will take time, as all hard work does, and it will also take the openness of our entire community.”

Mone did not say whether he intends to honor the deal he brokered with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a group that has been linked to terrorist organizations and is a source of a substantial number of antisemitic incidents on college campuses. In addition to agreeing to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, on May 12, he issued a statement describing Israel’s war to destroy the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza as “genocide,” citing figures reported by Hamas-controlled authorities which have been lambasted by experts as unreliable. The deal also stipulates UWM’s reviewing “its study abroad policies” and pressuring a local environmental organization to cut ties with two Israeli companies, which Mone has already done.

“University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Chancellor Mark Mone capitulated to protesters who violated UWM codes of conduct and state law, vandalized university property, and used harassment and intimidation to fuel antisemitism on campus,” the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, Hillel Milwaukee, and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said about the deal in a joint statement. “The agreement is amongst the most offensive and dangerous of any university agreement reached with encampment protesters over the last two weeks.”

Mone is not the only university leader accused of injuring Jewish university life to appease anti-Zionist protesters.

Wesleyan University agreed on Friday to create scholarships for “displaced” Palestinian students, form a working group of anti-Zionists which will “review” the possibility of an academic boycott of Israeli institutions, disclose its investments in what SJP called the “military industrial complex” and Israeli companies — a provision of the deal the school has already satisfied — and consider investment recommendations by an anti-Zionist group of students and faculty.

Earlier this month, Northwestern University in Illinois agreed to establish a new scholarship for Palestinian undergraduates, contact potential employers of students who caused recent campus disruptions to insist on their being hired, and create a segregated dormitory hall that will be occupied exclusively by Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) and Muslim students. It also agreed to form a new investment committee in which anti-Zionists students and faculty may wield an outsized voice.

Days later, Brown University in Rhode Island announced that it will hold a vote on divesting from companies linked to Israel in exchange for the students disassembling their encampment and abstaining from holding more protests until the school’s commencement on May 26, according to the Brown Daily Herald. The student newspaper added, however, that the university will not “at this time” drop criminal charges filed against 41 students who illegally occupied an administrative building in December.

“It’s not that administrators are capitulating to students. They are capitulating to the faculty, because they know that if they run afoul of the faculty, they are history,” Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a campus antisemitism expert and founder of antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative told The Algemeiner during an interview earlier this month. “This situation is not sustainable, and we have to focus specifically on the faculty. Take away their shared governance. Take away their tenure. You have to get rid of tenure because it has protected faculty whose goal is to upend and undermine the university itself. It’s not just about social justice — their aim for decades has been to destroy the university as we know it and to use the university as a tool for revolutionizing society.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post University Chancellor Apologizes for Caving to Pro-Hamas Protesters first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Treasure Trove: An Israeli stamp reflects the complex mix of emotions about Oct. 7

Michelle Shalmiev was born in a village in the Caucasian mountains and immigrated to Israel and settled on a kibbutz when she was 14. Her series “Putting Your Stamp on History” […]

The post Treasure Trove: An Israeli stamp reflects the complex mix of emotions about Oct. 7 appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.

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Download a special Oct. 7 print edition of The Canadian Jewish News

Printable obituaries of eight Canadian victims and more of our original coverage.

The post Download a special Oct. 7 print edition of The Canadian Jewish News appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.

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The Jewish People Perform Another Miracle

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is seen addressing supporters, in Beirut, Lebanon. Photo: Reuters.

JNS.orgThis Oct. 7 will not only be an anniversary of tears, of pure contrition, even if the memory is burning as the people of Israel live. As to how, it wasn’t at all obvious. Our whole history is made of miracles—from the splitting of the sea to escape from the Egyptians to the Inquisition to the pogroms to the thousand other genocidal attacks to which the Jews have been subjected. In every case, the results are always incredible and surprising, especially for how we have emerged active, faithful to our Torah tradition and committed to the return to Jerusalem until we made it happen.

The War of Independence in 1948 was fought by concentration-camp veterans, yet we defeated all the Arab armies, united in hatred, who marched against us. Later, in 1967, 1973 wars were won by a hair’s breadth with miraculous strokes of imagination and leaders who gave birth to ideas that people would have expected. No one would have ever bet a euro, penny or shekel on the idea that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and his entire hierarchy could be eliminated, petrifying Iran, especially since we have already reduced its other favorite proxy, Hamas, to pieces. And now we have bombed Iran’s other proxy, the Houthis, some 2,000 kilometers away, destroying the airport from which they receive their weapons and aid from the ayatollahs. The Islamic Republic’s leader, Ali Khamenei, is reportedly hiding underground, the Iraqi and Syrian Shi’ites are waiting to see if they are next, and cities controlled by Tehran are shaking.

As President Joe Biden said, it is a measure of justice, but one that Israel has undertaken in an impossible fashion, defending its citizens amid a thousand prohibitions with determination and without fear. Only in this way can a 76-year-old young state, which has been attacked from all sides, defend itself. The country’s existence is the latest chapter in the history of a people born many millennia ago in the Land of Israel, who are finally back home and defending their state.

The war is certainly not over, as Hezbollah reportedly had 100,000 fighters. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows that he must see this fight through to the end, despite the international pressure to which Israel has been subjected for nearly a year. Israel’s leadership understands that its very existence is at definitive risk if there is no “new Middle East” in the aftermath of Oct. 7.

While previous generations and Israeli leaders hoped that peace agreements would establish peace in the region, today’s leaders know that there is also a need for battle to stop those who, dominated by absurd fanatical and religious beliefs, wish to kill you. (After all, what do the Houthi rebels in Yemen have to do with the Jews and Israel?)

This is the lesson of our time—not just for Israel and the Jewish people but for everyone. The Jewish people are writing a new page in history, one in which the free world must write and fight alongside them, as it is a battle for the survival of Western ideals. Israel has eliminated the two most dangerous terrorist groups in the world—Hamas and Hezbollah—with operations that will set a precedent for decades. And it challenges Iran. I would like to hear the applause, please.

The post The Jewish People Perform Another Miracle first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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