RSS
Jewish MIT Students Warn Campus ‘Not Safe for Jews,’ Describe Hostile Environment Amid Anti-Israel Protests
Pro-Hamas and anti-Israel activists march to the White House and demand a cease-fire in Gaza. Photo: Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
Jewish and Israeli students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have warned in a new letter to university president Sally Kornbluth that radical anti-Zionism and intimidation of Jewish students on campus has become intolerable and reminiscent of Nazi Germany on the eve of the Holocaust.
The letter, shared on X/Twitter by MIT professor Retsef Levi, recounted an incident from Thursday in which students from the MIT Coalition Against Apartheid (CAA), a campus anti-Israel group, “physically prevented” them from attending class by forming a “blockade” of bodies in Lobby 7, a space inside the main entrance of the university. Non-students were invited to attend CAA’s demonstration, and together the entire group spent hours chanting “Intifada” — a term used to describe violent Palestinian uprisings against Israel — and declaring solidarity with Hamas.
“Instead of dispersing the mob or de-escalating the situation by rerouting all students from Lobby 7, Jewish students specifically were warned not to enter MIT’s front entrance due to a risk to their physical safety,” wrote the MIT Israel Alliance. “The onus to protect Jewish students should not be on the students themselves.”
Even after being threatened with suspension should they not disperse, the letter continued, CAA remained in Lobby 7, inviting more non-student protesters, which caused the university to issue through its emergency notification system a directive to “avoid” the area. The students added that a high-level official of MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning vowed, in defiance of official orders, to protect any CAA students who continued the demonstration.
The MIT Israel Alliance said that by the end of the day, Jewish students were told to enter the university through its back entrance and avoid the campus’ Hillel building.
“On the 9th of November, on the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, which marked the beginning of the Holocaust, Jews at MIT were told to enter campus from back entrances and not to stay in Hillel for fear of their physical safety,” the group concluded. “We are seeing history repeating itself and Jews on MIT’s campus are afraid.”
When asked for comment, an MIT spokesperson told The Algemeiner that the school is closed in observance of Veterans Day, but MIT President Sally Kornbluth addressed the incident late Thursday after the MIT Israel Alliance issued its letter. Her statement did not mention antisemitism.
“I am deliberately not specifying the viewpoints, as the issue at hand is not the substance of the views but where and how they were expressed,” Kornbluth said, noting that Jewish and pro-Israel counter-protesters were also present in Lobby 7 and that all students were recently reminded of guidelines forbidding holding protests in the building. “Today’s protest — which became disruptive, loud, and sustained through the morning hours — was organized and conducted in defiance of those MIT guidelines and polices. Some students from both the protest and counterprotest may have violated other MIT policies, as well.”
Kornbluth added that protesters who remained after being told to leave will receive a non-academic suspension.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Jewish MIT Students Warn Campus ‘Not Safe for Jews,’ Describe Hostile Environment Amid Anti-Israel Protests first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Europeans Launch UN Sanctions Process Against Iran, Drawing Tehran’s Ire

Satellite image shows buildings at Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center, before Israel launched an attack on Iran targeting nuclear facilities, in Isfahan, Iran, May 17, 2025. Photo: Planet Labs PBC via REUTERS
Britain, France, and Germany on Thursday launched a 30-day process to reimpose UN sanctions on Iran over its disputed nuclear program, a step likely to stoke tensions two months after Israel and the United States bombed Iran.
A senior Iranian official quickly accused the three European powers of harming diplomacy and vowed that Tehran would not bow to pressure over the move by the E3 to launch the so-called “snapback mechanism.”
The three powers feared they would otherwise lose the prerogative in mid-October to restore sanctions on Tehran that were lifted under a 2015 nuclear accord with world powers.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said the decision did not signal the end of diplomacy. His German counterpart Johann Wadephul urged Iran to now fully cooperate with the UN nuclear watchdog agency and commit to direct talks with the United States over the next month.
A senior Iranian official told Reuters the decision was “illegal and regrettable” but left the door open for engagement.
“The move is an action against diplomacy, not a chance for it. Diplomacy with Europe will continue,” the official said, adding: “Iran will not concede under pressure.”
The UN Security Council is due to meet behind closed doors on Friday at the request of the E3 to discuss the snapback move against the Islamic Republic, diplomats said.
Iran and the E3 have held several rounds of talks since Israel and the US bombed its nuclear installations in mid-June, aiming to agree to defer the snapback mechanism. But the E3 deemed that talks in Geneva on Tuesday did not yield sufficient signals of readiness for a new deal from Iran.
The E3 acted on Thursday over accusations that Iran has violated the 2015 deal that aimed to prevent it developing a nuclear weapons capability in return for a lifting of international sanctions. The E3, along with Russia, China, and the United States, were party to that accord.
US President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of that accord in 2018 during his first term, calling the deal one-sided in Iran‘s favor, and it unraveled in ensuing years as Iran abandoned limits set on its enrichment of uranium.
Trump’s second administration held fruitless indirect negotiations earlier this year with Tehran.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio welcomed the E3 move and said Washington remained available for direct engagement with Iran “in furtherance of a peaceful, enduring resolution to the Iran nuclear issue.”
An Iranian source said Tehran would do so only “if Washington guarantees there will be no [military] strikes during the talks.”
The E3 said they hoped Iran would engage by the end of September to allay concerns about its nuclear agenda sufficiently for them to defer concrete action.
“The E3 are committed to using every diplomatic tool available to ensure Iran never develops a nuclear weapon,” including the snapback mechanism, they said in a letter sent to the UN Security Council and seen by Reuters.
“The E3’s commitment to a diplomatic solution nonetheless remains steadfast.”
Iran has previously warned of a “harsh response” if sanctions are reinstated, and the Iranian official said it was reviewing its options, including withdrawing from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The E3 had offered to extend the snapback for as much as six months to enable serious negotiations if Iran restored access for UN nuclear inspectors – who would also seek to account for Iran‘s large stock of enriched uranium whose status has been unknown since the June war – and engages in talks with the U.S.
Calling the E3 decision inevitable, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said it was an “important step in the diplomatic campaign to counter the Iranian regime’s nuclear ambitions.”
GROWING FRUSTRATION IN IRAN
The UN process takes 30 days before sanctions that would hit Iran‘s financial, banking, hydrocarbons, and defense sectors are restored.
Russia and China, strategic partners of Iran, finalized a draft Security Council resolution on Thursday that would extend the 2015 nuclear deal for six months and urge all parties to immediately resume negotiations.
But they have not yet asked for a vote.
“The world is at crossroads,” Russia’s deputy UN Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy told reporters. “One option is peace, diplomacy, goodwill … Another option is a kind of diplomacy at the barrel of the gun.”
The specter of renewed sanctions is stirring frustration in Iran, where economic anxiety is rising and political divisions are deepening, three insiders close to the government said.
Iranian leaders are split over how to respond — with anti-Western hardliners urging defiance and confrontation, while moderates advocate diplomacy.
Iran has been enriching uranium to up to 60 percent fissile purity, a short step from the roughly 90 percent of bomb-grade, and had enough material enriched to that level, if refined further, for six nuclear weapons, before the airstrikes by Israel started on June 13, according to the IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog.
Actually manufacturing a weapon would take more time, however, and the IAEA has said that while it cannot guarantee Tehran‘s nuclear program is entirely peaceful, it has no credible indication of a coordinated weapons project.
The West says the advancement of Iran‘s nuclear program goes beyond civilian needs, while Tehran says it wants nuclear energy only for peaceful purposes.
RSS
UN Security Council Renews Lebanon Peacekeeping Mission ‘For a Final Time’

UN peacekeepers (UNIFIL) vehicles ride along a street in Marjaayoun, southern Lebanon, Jan. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
The United Nations Security Council on Thursday unanimously extended “for a final time” a long-running peacekeeping mission in Lebanon until the end of 2026, when the operation will then begin a year-long “orderly and safe drawdown and withdrawal.”
The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), established in 1978, patrols Lebanon‘s southern border with Israel.
The 15-member council unanimously adopted a French-drafted resolution after a compromise was reached with the United States, a veto-wielding council member.
The Security Council decided “to extend for a final time the mandate of UNIFIL.”
The resolution “requests UNIFIL to cease its operations on 31 December 2026 and to start from this date and within one year its orderly and safe drawdown and withdrawal of its personnel, in close consultation with the Government of Lebanon with the aim of making Lebanon Government the sole provider of security in southern Lebanon.”
This will be the last time the United States will support an extension of UNIFIL, said acting US Ambassador to the UN Dorothy Shea. “The security environment in Lebanon is radically different than just one year ago, creating the space for Lebanon to assume greater responsibility,” she told the council.
UNIFIL’s mandate was expanded in 2006, following a month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah, to allow peacekeepers to help the Lebanese army keep parts of the south free of weapons or armed personnel other than those of the Lebanese state.
That has sparked friction with Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and effectively controls southern Lebanon despite the presence of the Lebanese army. Hezbollah, an internationally designated terrorist group, is a heavily armed party that is Lebanon‘s most powerful political force.
“Decades since UNIFIL’s mandate was extended, it is time to dispel the illusion. UNIFIL has failed in its mission and allowed Hezbollah to become a dangerous regional threat,” Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon said after the vote.
The United States brokered a truce in November between Lebanon and Israel following more than a year of conflict sparked by the war in Gaza.
The US is now seeking to promote a plan for Hezbollah’s disarmament. Washington is linking the plan to a phased Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon, while also promoting a US- and Gulf-backed economic development zone in Lebanon‘s south aimed at reducing Hezbollah’s reliance on Iranian funding.
Lebanon‘s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam welcomed the extension, noting that it “reiterates the call for Israel to withdraw its forces from the five sites it continues to occupy, and affirms the necessity of extending state authority over all its territory.”
RSS
Israeli Strikes Hit Yemen’s Sanaa for Second Time in a Week

Smoke billows from the site of Israeli air strikes in Sanaa, Yemen, August 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
Israel struck at Houthi terrorists in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa on Thursday, the Israeli military said, in the second such assault on the city in less than a week.
Residents told Reuters the attacks struck an area near the presidential complex and a building in southern Sanaa.
Yemeni military sources said the presidential complex housed an operations room and a missile storage facility used by the Iran-aligned terrorists.
An Israeli military statement referred to a single attack.
Israeli security sources said it had targeted various locations where a large number of senior Houthi officials had gathered to watch a televised speech recorded by leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi.
But a source from the Houthi Ministry of Defense denied reports of leaders being targeted in Sanaa, the Houthi-run news agency reported.
“Whoever raises a hand against Israel – his hand will be cut off,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement on Thursday.
On Sunday, Israel said it had hit the city in retaliation for Houthi missiles fired towards Israel.
The strikes are the latest in more than a year of attacks and counterstrikes between Israel and Houthi terrorists in Yemen, part of a spillover from the war in Gaza.
Nasruldeen Amer, a senior Houthi official, said on Thursday the Houthis, who control much of Yemen’s population, would continue to act in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
The Iran-aligned Houthis have attacked vessels in the Red Sea in what they describe as acts of solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.
They have also fired missiles towards Israel, most of which have been intercepted. Israel has responded with strikes on Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, including the vital Hodeidah port.