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White House convenes meeting to address spike in campus antisemitism during Israel-Hamas war
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Biden administration is convening a meeting with Jewish leaders on Monday on what it says is an “alarming” rise in reports of antisemitism on college campuses in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war.
Doug Emhoff, the Jewish Second Gentleman who launched a task force on antisemitism last year along with the Biden administration’s plan to counter anti-Jewish bigotry, will convene the meeting, which will take place at the Department of Education.
“The Biden-Harris Administration is taking multiple actions to address the alarming rise of reported antisemitic incidents at schools and on college campuses, since the October 7th Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel,” said an email to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency from a White House official.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona will also attend the meeting, a White House official said. Later this week, Cardona and Neera Tanden, President Joe Biden’s top domestic advisor, will visit a university campus and hold a roundtable with Jewish students. White House officials did not respond to an inquiry regarding which school they will visit.
Since Oct. 7, when Hamas invaded Israel, killing more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians, pro-Palestinian groups at a series of campuses have celebrated or endorsed the attack. At multiple campuses, Jewish students have been barricaded in buildings amid pro-Palestinian protests. Other Jewish students have been assaulted or engaged in violent altercations with pro-Palestinian students.
Last week, the White House decried what it called an “extremely disturbing pattern of antisemitic messages being conveyed on college campuses” recently, adding, “Delegitimizing the State of Israel while praising the Hamas terrorist murderers who burned innocent people alive, or targeting Jewish students, is the definition of unacceptable — and the definition of antisemitism.”
Over the weekend, anonymous antisemitic posts on a Greek life website threatened to “shoot up” the Cornell University kosher dining hall and kill and rape Jewish students. Police were called to the dining hall, and the campus Hillel warned students to stay away from it.
Separately, Deborah Lipstadt, the State Department’s envoy to combat and monitor antisemitism, said the Biden Administration was “deeply concerned” what she said was a “dramatic increase” in antisemitic incidents worldwide since Oct. 7.
“Governments, law enforcement, and community groups in Europe, Latin America, Australia, South Africa, North America, Russia, and elsewhere have reported a sharp increase in antisemitic incidents, rhetoric, and incitement in the past three weeks,” she said. “Violent incidents throughout the world in October have included harassment of and attacks on Jewish individuals, and defacement of and attacks on Jewish sites.”
On Sunday, hundreds of people stormed onto the tarmac at the airport in Russia’s Dagestan republic as a flight from Israel arrived, reportedly yelling antisemitic slogans and forcing officials to shut the airport down.
Jewish officials attending the Department of Education meeting will include William Daroff, the CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations; Sheila Katz, the National Council of Jewish Women CEO; Jonathan Greenblatt, the Anti-Defamation League CEO; Eric Fingerhut, the Jewish Federations of North America CEO; Adam Lehman, the CEO of Hillel International; and Nathan Diament, the Washington director of the Orthodox Union,
The White House official’s email listed other actions the Biden Administration has taken since Oct. 7, including the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security engaging law enforcement nationwide on the campus, local and state level; support for Jewish, Muslim and Arab students on campuses around the country; and outreach from federal cybersecurity experts to schools.
The email said the Biden Administration has also expedited an initiative launched just over a week before the attacks to instruct federal officials to include antisemitism and other forms of religious bigotry as protected under civil rights law. That initiative was part of a broader presidential strategy to combat antisemitism launched in May, the first of its kind.
The administration says it has speeded up the process to file complaints and will also offer technical assistance to people on campuses who want to file complaints.
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The post White House convenes meeting to address spike in campus antisemitism during Israel-Hamas war appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.