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Feds to investigate NY college where an assault survivor group booted a Zionist student
(JTA) – The U.S. Department of Education has opened an investigation into the State University of New York at New Paltz surrounding an incident in which a student-led group for sexual assault survivors kicked out one of its co-founders for sharing a pro-Israel Instagram post.
Pro-Israel legal groups filed a complaint with the department last year alleging that the school did not respond forcefully enough to the incident, which they characterized as antisemitic discrimination. They are calling on the school to improve its training on antisemitism, which they define as including targeting students for a “connection to Israel.”
Announced Thursday, the investigation is taking place under the auspices of the department’s Office of Civil Rights, which looks into allegations of discrimination at educational institutions that receive federal funding. It is the latest in a series of investigations opened into allegations of campus antisemitism since the Trump administration broadened the office’s mandate to include certain kinds of anti-Israel speech in 2019.
It is also the first antisemitism investigation to be opened since the Biden administration unveiled a plan last month to combat antisemitism that includes a section on higher education. The 60-page document outlining the plan notes that “Jewish students and educators are targeted for derision and exclusion on college campuses.”
“No student should ever be excluded from campus because of facets of their Jewish identity, let alone survivors of sexual assault,” Julia Jassey, a recent University of Chicago graduate who is the co-founder and CEO of the college antisemitism watchdog group Jewish on Campus, said in a press release celebrating the investigation.
Jewish on Campus brought the federal complaint in partnership with the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a pro-Israel legal group that often involves itself in campus conflicts over speech about Israel. The complaint was filed on behalf of two Jewish students at the school, which is located in upstate New York.
A spokesperson for SUNY New Paltz said the university does not comment on pending investigations, adding, “We unequivocally condemn any attacks on SUNY students who are Jewish, and we will not tolerate anti-Semitic harassment and intimidation on campus.” In the immediate aftermath of the controversy, the school’s president condemned antisemitism but indicated that, because the student group was not formally recognized by the university, administrators were limited in their ability to respond.
The federal investigation will focus on two claims: that SUNY New Paltz did not respond appropriately to the exclusion of a Jewish student from a student group, and that students were being harassed on the basis of their Judaism.
The investigation itself does not mean the department believes the claims have merit — only that they fall under the purview of its Office of Civil Rights under a section of the law known as Title VI.
The complaint focuses on an episode that CNN featured as part of a prime-time special on antisemitism in the United States last year. It was filed on behalf of Cassandra Blotner, a Jewish student who was, according to coverage by the campus newspaper, removed from the student group New Paltz Accountability over her pro-Israel Instagram post. It was also filed on behalf of another Jewish student, Ofek Preis, who quit the group in solidarity with Blotner. Blotner was a co-founder of the group, which seeks to pressure the university to adopt greater transparency in its sexual assault investigations.
As reported last year by the New Paltz Oracle, a student newspaper, Blotner shared an infographic on Instagram in December 2021 from pro-Israel influencer Hen Mazzig reading, in part, “Jews are an ethnic group who come from Israel,” and, “Israel is not ‘a colonial state’ and Israelis aren’t ‘settlers.’ You cannot colonize the land your ancestors are from.”
Shortly afterward, Blotner said, her fellow group leaders messaged her to request a conversation about her views on Israel. One wrote, “Personally, I think Israel is a settler colonial state and we can’t condone the violence they take against Palestinians.”
Blotner at first refused to have a conversation with other members of the group, then later suggested they talk to the school’s Jewish Student Union — at which point, she said, the group kicked her out. Preis then decided to resign from the group (administrators said she had only been a prospective member).
“They told me that because I’m a Zionist, that that means I’m an oppressor, and that means I’m not against all forms of oppression, which means that I’m not against sexual violence,” Blotner told CNN’s Dana Bash in the antisemitism special.
One day after the publication of the student newspaper article detailing the allegations against the group, New Paltz Accountability appeared to defend its opposition to Zionism in an Instagram post.
“Being against sexual violence but indifferent to colonialism are conflicting ideologies,” the post stated. “Justifying the occupation of Palestine, in any way, condones the violence used to acquire the land. This does not mean we do not support survivors or students with different political beliefs.”
According to the Brandeis Center and Jewish on Campus, Blotner requested that university administrators provide her with a security escort because her interactions with the group left her feeling unsafe on campus, but they declined her request. She graduated last month, thanking the Brandeis Center, Jewish on Campus and Mazzig in an Instagram post that said they “lifted me up when I was down.”
In response to the incident, SUNY New Paltz’s president met with Jewish students and issued a strongly worded condemnation of antisemitism, saying, “Excluding any campus member from institutional events and activities on the basis of differing viewpoints on such matters is a traditionally defined form of antisemitism.”
The university, according to the Brandeis Center, also said that it should adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism. That definition has been endorsed by dozens of U.S. universities, according to the American Jewish Committee, but has drawn criticism for saying that certain criticisms of Israel are antisemitic.
The Brandeis Center has frequently called for universities to adopt the IHRA definition, yet in this case it said SUNY New Paltz had not gone far enough and called on the school to change other policies in response to the incident. Some previous investigations into schools accused of antisemitism violations have resulted in universities pledging to make tangible changes to their diversity training programs and other initiatives.
That was the case recently at the University of Vermont, which was the subject of a federal civil rights complaint that also partially revolved around a student group for sexual assault survivors excluding Zionists. In 2020, the University of Illinois pledged to take steps to combat antisemitism days after the Department of Education opened up a Title VI investigation into the school.
But other campus communities faced with Title VI antisemitism investigations into Israel-related matters have seen the investigations prompt division and distrust. George Washington University faced its own investigation days after clearing a professor of antisemitism allegations brought against her by pro-Israel groups.
And the University of California, Berkeley saw an investigation opened into its law school after the Brandeis Center’s founder, a former Trump administration official, alleged in an op-ed that it was propagating “Jew-free zones” because an alliance of student groups at the law school pledged not to invite Zionist speakers. The Jewish dean of the law school vehemently denied the charge.
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The post Feds to investigate NY college where an assault survivor group booted a Zionist student appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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I’m a rabbi arrested for protesting ICE in Minneapolis. The Book of Exodus shows us how this ends
On Friday, hours before Shabbat began, I was arrested with 96 other multifaith clergy members and Faith in Minnesota leaders while protesting ICE in Minneapolis.
“Who could have imagined such times as these?” we sang, in the words of local songmaker Sarina Partridge. “We will grieve through these times, and soon enough we’ll be grieving on the other side.”
We cannot keep on with business as usual when our federal government is engaged in escalating state terror right here, right now. To grieve through these times is not enough; we must also act.
In the bitter cold, thousands of Minnesotans gathered at that airport. Tens of thousands more marched downtown, and others simply stayed home in the largest work stoppage in this country in many decades, the Day of Truth and Freedom. Nearly one thousand interfaith clergy answered the call to come to Minnesota — as they did for the Civil Rights Movement call to march in Selma in 1965 — to join us in the fight.
Standing there among them, on erev shabbes in the cold, I thought about the Torah portion we would read the next morning in shul: parashat Bo, from the Book of Exodus.
In it, the darkness of the ninth plague that befell the Egyptians is described as something that the oppressors — the mitzrim, which I’ll translate as “the ones of narrowed sight” — could actually touch. It was so thick that it kept them isolated from each other, unable to move.
In contrast, the dwellings of those seeking liberation were full of light.
I imagined that palpable darkness not as a punishment, but as a reflection of reality. The oppressors were unwilling to see the humanity of their neighbors. But if they had been, they too could have found themselves in dwellings full of light, able to clearly perceive the richness and possibility of living in a multiethnic community.
So too with the federal oppressors here in Minnesota, and those who collude with them. They are so welcome to join us in the light of that recognition. We were there at the airport to invite them in.
Instead, they arrested nearly 100 of us, while we sang and prayed for the protection of our people in the languages of our diverse traditions. Doing this work in coalition builds the power we need to break through the oppression: Our differences make us stronger.
As a minister next to me chanted the Lord’s Prayer, and a clergy member close by meditated with closed eyes, I chimed in with “Ana Bekoach,” a kabbalistic prayer that is part of Friday night services, envisioning divine protection holding close all the people of this place.
At our airport, Signature Aviation is facilitating the internment of our fellow Minnesotans every day, adults and children alike, flying them to detention centers where they suffer in conditions that deny their humanity. ICE is even disappearing workers at that airport from the jobs they work every day, keeping all of us safe and supported as we travel.
The airport is supposed to encourage connection. Come join us in our city, it is supposed to say; come see the beauty of our communities. Come, with your eyes open, to join a dwelling of light. Instead, it has turned into a hub of darkness, and separation.
As Jews, so many aspects of our history are particularly resonant in this moment.
As ICE has engaged in a campaign of terror in our city since the start of the year, I have heard Jews in my community reflecting on their families’ experiences with state terror in Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and under dictatorships in Latin America. We join neighbors, refugees and immigrants from around the world, who never thought those feelings of suffocating fear would again define their lives here in the United States.
Now that they are, our obligation is to resist.
I was moved to tears during a march last week, when I saw families in hiding peeking out from behind their attic blinds as we sang of our love for our immigrant neighbors. It reminded me of Jewish families reduced to hiding in Nazi Germany, and of those brave souls who tried to protect them.
When I was arrested, I felt my heart open to the clergy standing and kneeling together with me, and all those in our state who have stood up with courage and generosity throughout these weeks and months. I hoped that all those who would see or hear of our arrest would be motivated to join this work.
The safety of all marginalized communities in this country, our Jewish community included, depends on our efforts to protect our democratic practices, and one another. You can join us, in Minnesota, or wherever you are.
Call for ICE to get out of Minnesota. Their presence is endangering us all. Just yesterday, Alex Jeffrey Pretti — an ICU nurse, mountain bike enthusiast, dog lover and beloved community member — was shot and killed by federal agents while attempting to aid a fellow protester. Our government, rather than accept responsibility for the injustice of his death, and that of Renée Nicole Good, is already lying about who these upstanding Minnesotans were and what those agents did.
Learn from us and protect each other in your home communities. You can stand with Minnesota; we’ll stand with you too. Call your senators to demand that they deny ICE funding in an upcoming vote this week. Push for prosecution of ICE agents who kill our civilians. Together we will fight the plague of narrow sight, instead creating dwellings of warm light where we hold and honor the fullness of humanity of each and every one of us.
On Saturday night, Minnesotans gathered in candlelight vigils on street corners in our neighborhoods to mourn and remember Pretti. I was with hundreds of my students on campus. We imagined, together, all the vigil-goers, holding candles to decry Pretti’s death and honor his memory, as points of light, linked across Minnesota and the country, and around the world.
The stars came out just then, as if the universe was joining us in a vast web of care and light. We sang a song from Heidi Wilson: “Hold on, hold on, my dear ones, here comes the dawn.”
The post I’m a rabbi arrested for protesting ICE in Minneapolis. The Book of Exodus shows us how this ends appeared first on The Forward.
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US-Brokered Peace Talks Break Off Without Deal After Overnight Russian Bombardment of Ukraine
Some windows glow in a residential building left without heating and facing long power cuts after critical civil infrastructure was hit by recent Russian missile and drone strikes, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine, January 23, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Alina Smutko
Ukraine and Russia ended a second day of US-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi on Saturday without a deal but with more talks expected next weekend, even as overnight Russian airstrikes knocked out power for over a million Ukrainians amid subzero winter cold.
Statements after the conclusion of the talks did not indicate that any agreements had been reached, but Moscow and Kyiv both said they were open to further dialogue.
“The central focus of the discussions was the possible parameters for ending the war,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on X after the meeting.
More discussions were expected next Sunday in Abu Dhabi, said a US official who spoke to reporters immediately after the talks.
“We saw a lot of respect in the room between the parties because they were really looking to find solutions,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“We got to real granular detail and (we feel) that next Sunday will be, God willing, another meeting where we push this deal towards its final culmination.”
A UAE government spokesperson said there was face-to-face engagement between Ukraine and Russia — rare in the almost four-year-old war triggered by a full-scale Russian invasion — and negotiators tackled “outstanding elements” of Washington’s peace framework.
Looking beyond next week’s negotiations in Abu Dhabi, the US official voiced hopes for further talks, possibly in Moscow or Kyiv.
“Those sorts of meetings have to happen, in our view, before we get a bilateral between (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and Zelensky, or a trilateral with Putin, Zelensky and President Trump. But I don’t think we’re so far away from that,” the official said.
BOMBARDMENT OF UKRAINE BEFORE SECOND DAY OF TALKS
The bombardment of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and its second-largest city Kharkiv by hundreds of Russian drones and missiles prompted Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha – who was not at the talks – to accuse Putin of acting “cynically.”
“This barbaric attack once again proves that Putin’s place is not at (US President Donald Trump’s) Board of Peace, but in the dock of the special tribunal,” Sybiha wrote on X.
“His missiles hit not only our people, but also the negotiation table.”
Saturday was scheduled to be the final day of the talks, billed by Zelensky as the first trilateral meeting under the US-mediated peace process.
The UAE statement said the talks were conducted in a “constructive and positive atmosphere” and included discussions about confidence-building measures.
Kyiv is under mounting Trump administration pressure to make concessions to reach a deal to end Europe’s deadliest and most destructive conflict since World War Two.
US peace envoy Steve Witkoff said at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos this week that a lot of progress had been made in the talks and only one sticking point remained. However, Russian officials have sounded more skeptical.
RUSSIA WANTS ALL OF DONBAS
After Saturday’s talks, Zelensky said the US delegation had raised the issue of “potential formats for formalizing the parameters for ending the war, as well as the security conditions required to achieve this”.
The US official said the proposed security protocols were widely seen as “very, very strong.”
“The Ukrainians and many of the national security advisors of all the European countries have reviewed these security protocols. And to a person, and this includes NATO, including (NATO Secretary General) Mark Rutte, they have expressed the fact that they’ve never seen security protocols this robust,” the official said.
Ahead of the discussions, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday Russia had not dropped its insistence on Ukraine yielding all of its eastern area of Donbas, the industrial heartland grouping the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Putin’s demand that Ukraine surrender the 20 percent it still holds of Donetsk – about 5,000 sq km (1,900 sq miles) – has proven a major stumbling block to any deal. Most countries recognize Donetsk as part of Ukraine. Putin says Donetsk is part of Russia’s “historical lands.”
Zelensky has ruled out giving up territory that Russia has not been able to capture in four years of grinding, attritional warfare against a much smaller foe. Polls show little appetite among Ukrainians for any territorial concessions.
Russia says it wants a diplomatic solution but will keep working to achieve its goals by military means as long as a negotiated solution remains elusive.
Umerov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said late on Friday that the first day of talks had addressed parameters for ending the war and the “further logic of the negotiation process.”
Meanwhile, Ukraine came under renewed Russian bombardment.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia had launched 375 drones and 21 missiles in the overnight salvo, which once again targeted energy infrastructure, knocking out power and heat for large parts of Kyiv, the capital. At least one person was killed and over 30 injured.
Before Saturday’s bombardment, Kyiv had already endured two mass overnight attacks since the New Year that cut electricity and heating to hundreds of residential buildings. Ukraine’s deputy prime minister said on Saturday that 800,000 people in Kyiv – where temperatures were around -10 degrees Celsius – had been left without power after the latest Russian assault.
Zelensky said on Saturday Russia’s heavy overnight strikes showed that agreements on further air defense support made with Trump in Davos this week must be “fully implemented.”
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Conscription Law Heads to Final Vote in Knesset Amid Political Showdown
A drone view of Jerusalem with the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem, Feb. 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ilan Rosenberg
i24 News – Israel’s conscription law is reaching its final stretch as the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee is expected to complete its discussions this week before bringing it to a first reading vote in the Knesset plenum, i24NEWS’s Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) affairs correspondent Ari Kalman reported Sunday.
The legal counsel of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee is expected to support the legislation, subject to changes that will be made in the wording of the law. However, it is not certain that this will satisfy its opponents. Meanwhile, opponents of the law within the coalition insist that they have “a majority that can defeat the law.”
Against the backdrop of the crisis with the Haredi parties, the state budget is expected to be brought to a first reading vote on Monday. Recently, i24NEWS reported that the Knesset’s legal advisor, Attorney Sagit Afik, told Knesset members that at least two months are required from the moment it is placed on the Knesset table until its final approval. Therefore, the coalition is required to submit it this week in order for it to be approved on time.
The problem facing the coalition and Prime Minister Netanyahu is that this year there is not enough time to pass the budget by the end of March, as Passover Eve falls on April 1, and therefore the budget needs to be approved in its third reading by March 25, two months from today.
Amid the pressure and the attempt to bring the budget to a vote, the Hasidic Council of Torah Sages published its decision this month against the conscription law: “The Council expresses its deep pain and concern over the campaign of harassment against Torah students by various authorities, the harm to them and to their rights, their public denigration and humiliation for being students of God’s Torah; something that is becoming increasingly severe.”
They also wrote that the Council of Torah Sages demands a law “without personal and institutional sanctions and without arrests, as has been customary all these years. Any other legislation that harms Torah scholars whose Torah study is their profession, imposes sanctions on them, or sets quotas is unacceptable. And it must be opposed with all force.”