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Yale University Students Abort Anti-Israel Encampment Attempts After Warning From Officials
Yalies4Palestine attempted to establish a so-called “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on the Beinecke Plaza section of Yale University’s campus on Tuesday evening, prompting a quick disciplinary response from the administration.
The students were told in no uncertain terms that refusing to discontinue the activity by an 11 pm deadline set by administrators would result in disciplinary sanctions, according to a report by the Yale Daily News. Prior to that, they obstructed Jewish students’ right to walk through campus, according to videos posted to social media by a Jewish student at Yale.
Such action blocking Jews from parts of campus elsewhere has triggered a lawsuit in which the US Justice Department recently filed a statement of interest.
“The group’s activities violated Yale’s time, place, and manner polices,” a university spokesperson told the News when asked about the incident. “University officials clearly articulated Yale’s policies and the consequences of violating them.”
The students eventually left after Yale’s assistant vice president for university life, Pilar Montalvo, walked through the area distributing cards containing a message which implored students to “Please stop your current action immediately. If you do not, you may risk university disciplinary action and/or arrest” and a QR code for a webpage which explains Yale’s policies on expression and free assembly.
The cards triggered a paranoiac fit, the News reported. Upon receiving them, the students became suspicious that the QR code could be used to track and identity those who participated in the unauthorized protest. “Do not scan the QR code!” they began to chant. They left the area soon after, the paper added, clearing the way for public safety officers to photograph and remove the tents they had attempted to pitch.
According to the News, the protest was triggered by an upcoming off-campus event at which Israel’s controversial national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir — who has called for annexing the West Bank and the emigration of Gaza’s residents — will be hosted by Shabtai, a student group not formally recognized by the university.
Writing to The Algemeiner in a message titled “Yale Maintains Calm Campus and Takes Disciplinary Action,” the university took credit for preventing a style of protest that could have lasted for weeks and upended the campus during final exams. It also confirmed that disciplinary sanctions have already been meted out to several students who participated in Tuesday’s unauthorized demonstration despite having been punished for committing the same infraction in the past.
“University officials articulated Yale’s policies and the consequences of violating them and actively cleared the area, which has remained clear since that time,” a spokesperson wrote. “During the interaction, staff identified students who had been warned or disciplined in previous incidents that violated university policy. Those students have received written notice today that they are subject to immediate disciplinary action.”
The most severe sanction handed down is the revocation of Yalies4Palestine’s status as a registered student organization, which proscribes their holding events on campus indefinitely. Additionally, the group will no longer enjoy access to funds that subsidize club activities and is deprived entirely of the privilege of assembling on university property. A string of transgressions precipitated the action, Yale said in Wednesday’s statement, noting that the group had been forewarned on Monday that it had exhausted the university’s tolerance for its misconduct.
“Concerns have been raised about disturbing antisemitic conduct at the gathering,” the statement continued. “The university is investigating those concerns, as harassment and discrimination are antithetical to learning and scholarship. Yale condemns antisemitism and will hold those who violate our policies accountable through our disciplinary processes.”
Yale University has ample cause to claim credit for quelling the would-be encampment and punishing those who were involved in it. The Trump administration has been impounding federal funds previously appropriated to universities that allow pro-Hamas demonstrations and promote excessive “wokeness.”
In March, it cancelled $400 million in federal contracts and grants for Columbia University, a measure that secured the school’s acceding to a slew of demands the administration put forth as preconditions for restoring the money. Princeton University saw $210 million of its federal grants and funding suspended too, prompting its president, Christopher Eisgruber to say the institution is “committed to fighting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination.” Brown University’s federal funding is also reportedly at risk due to its alleged failing to mount a satisfactory response to the campus antisemitism crisis, as well as its alignment with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) movement.
Most recently, the Trump administration cancelled $2.26 billion in federal funding for Harvard University following the institution’s refusal to agree to a wishlist of reforms that Republican lawmakers have long argued will make higher education more meritocratic and less welcoming to anti-Zionists and far-left extremists. Contained in a letter shared by interim Harvard president Alan Garber, the policies called for included “viewpoint diversity in hiring and admissions,” the “discontinuation of [DEI initiatives],” and “reducing forms of governance bloat.” They also implored Harvard to begin “reforming programs with egregious records of antisemitism” and to recalibrate its approach to “student discipline.”
Harvard is now suing the administration in federal court to halt its sequestering of grants and contracts paid for by the American taxpayer. However, resolving the complaint could take months, and any money confiscated from Yale before a ruling in that case is rendered could cause catastrophic levels of harm that lead to hiring freezes, job cuts, and unsustainable borrowing, a measure to which several universities, including Harvard, have resorted to cover budget shortfalls.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Yale University Students Abort Anti-Israel Encampment Attempts After Warning From Officials first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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A quiet diplomatic shift in the Middle East, with monumental consequences for Israel
Something significant is happening between Israel and Syria, and it deserves more attention than it is getting.
With the backing of the United States, Israeli and Syrian officials have agreed to create what they call a “joint fusion mechanism” — a permanent channel for coordination on intelligence, de-escalation, diplomacy and economic matters — during meetings in Paris. It appears to be the beginning of institutionalized contact between two countries that have formally been at war since 1948.
If this process continues, it will count as a genuine foreign-policy success for President Donald Trump’s administration.
To understand how profound that change would be, it is worth recalling the two countries’ shared history.
Israel and Syria — which the U.S. struck with a set of targeted attacks on the Islamic State on Saturday — have fought openly or by proxy for decades. Before 1967, Syrian artillery positions in the Golan Heights regularly shelled Israeli communities in the Hula Valley and around the Sea of Galilee. After Israel captured that region in 1967, the direct shelling stopped, but the conflict did not.
Syria remained formally committed to a state of war; Israel entrenched itself in the Golan Heights; both sides treated the frontier as a potential flashpoint to be managed carefully. After Egypt and Israel made peace in 1979, Syria became Israel’s most dangerous neighboring state.
A 1974 disengagement agreement created a United Nations-monitored buffer zone, which mostly ensured peace along the border, but did not resolve anything fundamental. In Lebanon, Israel and Syria backed opposing forces for years, and their air forces clashed briefly during the 1982 Lebanon War. Later, Iran’s growing role in Syria and Hezbollah’s military buildup added new threats. The Syrian civil war then destroyed basic state capacity and created precisely the kind of militia-rich environment Israel fears along its borders.
Now, with the dictator Bashar al-Assad gone and the former rebel leader Ahmed al-Sharaa in power, Syria is a broken country trying to stabilize. Sharaa’s past associations, disturbingly, include leadership of jihadist groups that were part of the wartime landscape in Syria. But today he governs a state facing economic collapse, infrastructure ruin and a population that needs jobs and basic services. His incentives are simple and powerful: ensure the survival of his regime, invite foreign investment, and secure relief from isolation and sanctions. Those goals point toward the U.S. and its partners, including Israel.
The Trump administration has made it clear that it wants to see new Syrian cooperation with Israel, with the suggestion that progress with Israel will become a gateway to international investment, and to a degree of political acceptance that Syria has lacked for years. Al-Sharaa’s willingness to engage is therefore not a mystery.
Israel’s motivations are also straightforward. After the Gaza war, Israel is facing a severe reputational problem. It is widely viewed abroad as reckless and excessively militarized. The government is under pressure over not only the conduct of the war but also the perception that it has no political strategy and relies almost exclusively on force. A diplomatic track with Syria allows Israel to present a very different picture: that of a country capable of negotiations with ideologically opposed neighbors, de-escalation, and regional cooperation.
There are significant security incentives, too.
Israel wants to limit Iran and Hezbollah’s influence in Syria. It wants a predictable northern border. It wants assurances regarding the Druze population in southern Syria — brethren to the Israeli Druze who are extremely loyal to the state, and who were outraged after a massacre of Syrian Druze followed the installation of al-Sharaa’s regime. It wants to ensure that no armed Syrian groups will tread near the Golan. A coordinated mechanism supervised by the U.S. offers a strong diplomatic way to address these issues.
The U.S. will benefit as well. The Trump team is eager to show that it can deliver lasting diplomatic achievements in the Middle East after the success of the Abraham Accords in Trump’s first term. A meaningful shift in Israel–Syria relations would be a very welcome addition, especially as the U.S.-brokered ceasefire in the Gaza war faces an uncertain future.
The main questions now are practical. Can the “joint fusion mechanism” function under pressure? What will happen when there is, almost inevitably, an incident — a drone downed, a militia clash, a cross-border strike? Will the new system effectively lower the temperature, or will it collapse at the first crisis?
Will Iran — facing its own profound internal political crisis — accept a Syria that coordinates with Israel under U.S. supervision, or will it work to undermine al-Sharaa? How will Hezbollah react if Damascus appears to move away from the axis of “resistance” and toward a security understanding with Israel?
How would an Israel-Syria deal impact Lebanon’s moribund efforts to dismantle Hezbollah’s military capacity? Al-Sharaa has already helped significantly by ending the transfer of weapons to Hezbollah from Iran through his territory. Might he also actively help with the disarming of the group?
No one should expect a full peace treaty soon. The question of possession of the Golan Heights probably remains a deal-breaker. Public opinion in Syria has been shaped by decades of official hostility to Israel, and Israeli politics is fragmented and volatile.
But diplomatic breakthroughs can confound expectations. They usually begin with mechanisms like this one, involving limited cooperation, routine contact and crisis management.
If this effort helps move the border from a zone of permanent tension to one of managed stability, that alone would be a major shift. It would also send a signal beyond the region: U.S. engagement still matters, and American pressure and incentives can still change behavior.
The post A quiet diplomatic shift in the Middle East, with monumental consequences for Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel’s Netanyahu Hopes to ‘Taper’ Israel Off US Military Aid in Next Decade
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the press on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview published on Friday that he hopes to “taper off” Israeli dependence on US military aid in the next decade.
Netanyahu has said Israel should not be reliant on foreign military aid but has stopped short of declaring a firm timeline for when Israel would be fully independent from Washington.
“I want to taper off the military within the next 10 years,” Netanyahu told The Economist. Asked if that meant a tapering “down to zero,” he said: “Yes.”
Netanyahu said he told President Donald Trump during a recent visit that Israel “very deeply” appreciates “the military aid that America has given us over the years, but here too we’ve come of age and we’ve developed incredible capacities.”
In December, Netanyahu said Israel would spend 350 billion shekels ($110 billion) on developing an independent arms industry to reduce dependency on other countries.
In 2016, the US and Israeli governments signed a memorandum of understanding for the 10 years through September 2028 that provides $38 billion in military aid, $33 billion in grants to buy military equipment and $5 billion for missile defense systems.
Israeli defense exports rose 13 percent last year, with major contracts signed for Israeli defense technology including its advanced multi-layered aerial defense systems.
US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch Israel supporter and close ally of Trump, said on X that “we need not wait ten years” to begin scaling back military aid to Israel.
“The billions in taxpayer dollars that would be saved by expediting the termination of military aid to Israel will and should be plowed back into the US military,” Graham said. “I will be presenting a proposal to Israel and the Trump administration to dramatically expedite the timetable.”
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In Rare Messages from Iran, Protesters ask West for Help, Speak of ‘Very High’ Death Toll
Protests in Tehran. Photo: Iran Photo from social media used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law, via i24 News
i24 News – Speaking to Western media from beyond the nationwide internet blackout imposed by the Islamic regime, Iranian protesters said they needed support amid a brutal crackdown.
“We’re standing up for a revolution, but we need help. Snipers have been stationed behind the Tajrish Arg area [a neighborhood in Tehran],” said a protester in Tehran speaking to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity. He added that “We saw hundreds of bodies.”
Another activist in Tehran spoke of witnessing security forces firing live ammunition at protesters resulting in a “very high” number killed.
On Friday, TIME magazine cited a Tehran doctor speaking on condition of anonymity that just six hospitals in the capital recorded at least 217 killed protesters, “most by live ammunition.”
Speaking to Reuters on Saturday, Setare Ghorbani, a French-Iranian national living in the suburbs of Paris, said that she became ill from worry for her friends inside Iran. She read out one of her friends’ last messages before losing contact: “I saw two government agents and they grabbed people, they fought so much, and I don’t know if they died or not.”