Union Theological Seminary votes to divest from companies profiting from Gaza war

Union, a private, ecumenical school that serves as Columbia University’s faculty of theology but maintains a separate endowment, is the first U.S. institute of higher education known to divest from the war in Gaza.

Smoke and explosions rise inside the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, March 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

May 9, 2024
By Fiona Murphy

NEW YORK (RNS) — Union Theological Seminary’s board of trustees voted Thursday (May 9) to divest from all companies profiting off the war in Gaza.

Union, a private, ecumenical school, shares a graduate studies program with Columbia University but is independent and maintains a separate, $127 million endowment, is the first U.S. institute of higher education known to divest from the war in Gaza.

“We do it with humility and we do it with a sense of moral conviction,” said Union’s president, the Rev. Serene Jones.

In November, Union’s board of trustees, which includes Jones, hired Cambridge Associates, a private investment management company, to review the seminary’s investment portfolio to identify companies that are financially invested in the war in Gaza.

RELATED: For Muslim student protesters, a sense of purpose mingled with fear

The board will now transition to selling its shares of the identified companies. “We have a very good investment committee who are completely, at a moral level, committed to seeing this through,” Jones said.

In a statement after the trustees had approved the measure, they said, “With respect to companies that are profiting from the present war in Palestine, we continue to
hold these standards high and have taken steps to identify all investments, both domestic and
global, that support and profit from the present killing of innocent civilians in Palestine.”

Chris Marsicano, an assistant professor of educational studies and public policy at Davidson College, cautioned that divesting could take months, or even years, explaining that a single investment group can be invested in thousands of companies at one time. Additionally, the hedge funds that manage university endowments are constantly buying and selling shares and changing their investment strategy for the financial benefit of the institution, which makes an investigation difficult.

Brown Memorial Tower at Union Theological Seminary in New York. (Photo by Chris06/Wikimedia/Creative Commons)

As a seminary, Union already screens its investments based on social and environmental principles. “We don’t invest in any armaments or weapons,” Jones said. “It’s a small thing, but symbolically it’s an important step to take.”

“Although our investments in the war in Palestine are small because our previous, strong anti-armament screens are robust,” the trustees’ statement said, “we hope that our action today will bring needed pressure to bear to stop the killing and find a peaceful future for all.”

At Trinity College in Ireland, the school’s administration recently released a statement promising to “endeavour to divest” from Israeli companies after a five-day encampment led by student protesters caused conflict on campus. Student protesters in Ireland considered it only a partial victory as the university clarifies that divestment “will be considered by a task force as a first step.”

Calls for divestment have been a major demand of students participating in sit-ins and encampments at more than 100 colleges around the U.S. in protest of Israel’s response to Hamas’ terrorist attack and kidnapping on Oct. 7.

Union’s student body actively supported the dissenting Columbia students whose tents filled the university’s main quad in past weeks. Last month, a group of Union students hosted a Communion service in Columbia’s encampment attended by hundreds of people and held a small Passover Seder in Union’s courtyard for Jewish students suspended from Columbia.

“It felt like an ultimate integration of what I have learned at Union,” said Pearl Vercruysse, a third-year Master of Divinity student who participated in the Communion service, “and everything I’ve discerned as what I’m called to do in ministry.”

Credited with being the birthplace of liberation theology, Union has been a leading institution for progressive Christian activism for decades. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German pastor executed by the Nazi regime, was briefly resident at Union, and the influential theologian Paul Tillich taught there for two decades. The controversial academic and current presidential candidate Cornel West has been associated with Union since the 1970s.

In 2014, Union trustees voted unanimously to divest from fossil fuels after a wave of student protests. Three months later, a group of students occupied a classroom to organize their demonstrations against the killing of Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, Missouri.

Known as the “Love Hub,” the classroom became a center for students and faculty protesting Brown’s death. James Cone, a Methodist minister and theologian who is considered the founder of Black liberation theology, delivered his last lecture in the Love Hub. After inviting the entire school, Cone spoke on the horrors of police violence, expanding on ideas from his 2011 book, “The Cross and the Lynching Tree.”

“The divestment happened just before I showed up, and was swiftly overshadowed by student activism around Ferguson,” said Jorge Rodriguez, a Union alumnus who now teaches history at the school.

In 1968, when students at Columbia created encampments to protest the Vietnam War, Union opened its door to students and faculty who were suspended and expelled. Union’s then-President John Bennett sided with the protesters, agreeing to cancel classes for the rest of the school year. “After the cessation of classes, students created what they called the Free University,” Rodriguez said.

“In this moment,” Rodriguez said, “my hope is that we would see that same phenomena happen again.”

A sign is displayed at the pro-Palestinian demonstration encampment at Columbia University in New York, April 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)

Union is currently hosting Columbia University professors who continue to teach students penalized for protesting the war in Gaza. Jones says these students are focused on completing their work so there is no reason, apart from violating a university policy for participating in an encampment, that they should not graduate.


RELATED: What we have to learn from students leading the charge for justice

In a letter to Columbia students published in April, Jones called the Union campus “a safe haven” for those penalized for taking part in the protests. “As president, I have your back,” she wrote.

In the past month, as hundreds of students and other individuals have been arrested by the New York Police Department for protesting the war in Gaza, Jones said she has never seen this kind of “military action” taken from a university in all her career. “I’ve never had to face this level of escalation,” Jones said. “I fear for our country.”

Several people detained as protesters block parking garage at Massachusetts Institute of Technology


Pro-Palestinian demonstrators wave flags outside the Stata Center at MIT, Thursday, May 9, 2024, in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photo/Josh Reynolds)

BY STEVE LEBLANC
, May 9, 2024


CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — Police detained several people Thursday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after demonstrators blocked a parking garage in their ongoing protest movement connected to the Israel-Hamas war.

Tensions have ratcheted up in standoffs with protesters on campuses across the United States and increasingly in Europe. Some colleges cracked down immediately, while others have tolerated the demonstrations. Some have begun to lose patience and call in the police over concerns about disruptions to campus life and safety.

In Boston, the U.S. city most identified with higher education, students have set up encampments on at least five campuses, including MIT, Northeastern University and Harvard University.

At MIT, protesters have been asking administrators to end all research contracts with Israel’s Ministry of Defense, which they estimate total $11 million since 2015. On Thursday, the school issued an alert just before 2 p.m. saying protesters were blocking the entrance to a campus parking garage and spilling onto a nearby street.

About two hours later, authorities split protesters up and pushed them away from the garage. At least three people were detained. Protesters walked away continuing to chant “free Palestine.” The crowd dispersed, and the garage was reopened by 5 p.m., the school said.




Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters march in Malmo against Israel’s Eurovision participation


As pro-Palestinian encampments spread to European campuses, UK government seeks to head off unrest

MIT officials said later Thursday that fewer than 10 people were arrested by MIT police during the incident and the Stata Garage and Vassar Street are now open. Cambridge Police were also on hand to help clear the garage entrance, officials said.

Hannah Didehbani, an MIT student and one of the leaders of the protest, said the decision to block the garage was part of a larger effort to bring attention to what she described as MIT’s complicity with the Israeli military. Didehbani said she has been issued a suspension and an eviction notice by the school but said MIT cannot suspend the larger student movement.

“They’d much rather do those things than cut ties to a state that is currently enacting a genocide,” she said.

The pro-Palestinian protest movement began nearly three weeks ago at Columbia University in New York City. It has since swept college campuses nationwide, with more than 2,500 people arrested.

US campus Gaza protests echo past in crucial election year

William Noah Glucroft

DW

MAY  6, 2024

As the US academic year winds down, student protests are heating up. The tense exchanges over Israel-Gaza policy and police crackdowns have had consequences beyond the university campus.

California law enforcement made many arrests while taking down a pro-Palestinian encampment on the UCLA campus last week

Mario Tama/Getty Images


Many people in the United States and observing the scene from abroad over the last several weeks may be asking themselves, "What's going on?"

The title of the 1971 song by soul legend Marvin Gaye spoke to an era of civil unrest sparked by war, racism and political disillusionment when students and young people were putting themselves at the center of demands for major change.

If he were still alive today, Gaye would likely find just as much reason to produce that hit. Once again, US youth are turning their university campuses into stages to spotlight what some have described as "genocide live-streamed on their phones and a Democratic president who is fully in support of that," Leigh Raiford, a professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, told DW.

"There is a whole generation of people who will not vote for the Democratic Party, will not vote for Joe Biden," she said, explaining that Israel's treatment of Palestinians would be on the ballot for some voters in November.

That starkly contrasts four years ago, when Biden defeated former US President Donald Trump partly by appealing to young people engaged in nationwide protests linked to the Black Lives Matter movement. The catalyst for that election-year turmoil and this one differ, but the pursuit of social justice overlaps.

#BlackLivesMatter: A campaign goes viral  02:24

Whether the election outcome will also differ in 2024 remains a matter of debate among pollsters and campaign strategists. Biden has tried to show a balance between his unwavering military support for Israel and an interest in alleviating the civilian toll. In recent weeks, he has more vigorously pushed for a cease-fire.

What are the protesting US students demanding?

"Anti-genocide encampments" have popped up on dozens of campuses across the US, with participants calling for an end to Israel's seven-month bombardment of Gaza. Israel's military campaign that began after Hamas, which is recognized as a terrorist organization by the German government, the EU, the US and some Arab states, launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, has killed nearly 35,000 people.

Nearly half the dead are children, according to the United Nations, which uses figures from the Hamas-run Health Ministry. Many aid organizations have said the toll is likely an undercount.

Their demands vary, but the protesters on university campuses broadly want the US, as the largest supplier of lethal aid to Israel, to end its "ironclad" commitment to the state, as Biden has often described it.

The president has said the protests will not alter his stance. However, his administration paused a shipment of ammunition to Israel this week, according to a report by Axios, a US news platform. It was not immediately clear why, but this marks the first such hold in the current round of escalation.

Biden demands order amid US campus protest chaos  02:22

Students also want their universities, some of which maintain endowments worth billions of dollars, to divest from financial holdings in the weapons industry and Israel-related business.

With final exams and commencement approaching and under pressure from wealthy donors and politicians allergic to criticism of Israel, many universities have cited safety issues and other violations of campus policies as reasons to bring in police to clear out the protesters. At least 2,000 people have been arrested at universities across the country so far.

Myriad reports, such as from campuses in Georgia, Texas and New York City, appear to show police using excessive force. Yet at University of California, Los Angeles, they were criticized for doing too little as masked pro-Israel counterprotesters attacked the Palestinian encampment there last week. Social media posts captured protesters chanting, "Where were you yesterday?" as law enforcement moved in to dismantle the encampment following the attack.

US has long tradition of trying to discredit activist groups

"This is yet another example of suppression from colleges and universities of students' pro-Palestinian speech," Amr Shabaik, the legal director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement condemning the escalation.

Mindful of the roughly 1,200 people killed during Hamas' October attacks, many of them civilians, pro-Israel supporters have pointed to incidents of harassment or threats directed at Jewish students. They have presented circumstantial evidence alleging a connection between protest groups and foreign entities, such as Hamas.

Demonstrators watched the dismantling of an anti-war encampment at UW-Madison in Wisconsin

John Hart/AP/picture alliance

Many Jews have expressed solidarity with the protests, joining encampments and hosting traditional seder meals during last month's Passover holiday. The nuanced picture of who falls on what side has further complicated the universities' response.

For example, of the 282 arrests made at Columbia University and City College of New York on April 30, New York City police reported 71% and 40% had campus affiliation, respectively. Unlike Columbia, CCNY is a public college and remains more open to outsiders.

"These kinds of calls of 'outside agitation' are really dangerous, and they're also really disingenuous," said Raiford, currently in Germany as a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.

She pointed to a long tradition of trying to discredit activist groups in the US, from the Red Scare of the early and mid-20th century to civil rights and anti-war demonstrations of the 1960s and '70s, all of which opponents accused of being influenced by Soviet and communist outsiders. Raiford said that these movements have been seen as falling on the "right side of history."

Martin Luther King, Jr., and his wife Coretta Scott King led a civil rights march from Selma, Alabama, on May 3, 1965

mage: William Lovelace/Express/Getty Images

"They called Martin Luther King an 'outside agitator,'" she added, referring to segregationists dead set against equal rights for all Americans.

There have been plenty of allegations to go around. A coordinated effort between pro-Israel groups in the US and the state of Israel has worked to quash pro-Palestinian voices, especially on campuses, according to reports by the US monthly magazine The Nation and the Qatar-based Al Jazeera news channel.

Freedom of speech vs. order

Universities have found themselves caught between competing pressures when it comes to upholding rights. Freedom of speech enjoys greater constitutional protection in the US than in many other democracies. But safety and access to education are also guaranteed rights.

Tensions spill over at US university protests  03:22

While they have "legal obligations to combat discrimination and a responsibility to maintain order," Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote in an open letter to university officials, "it is essential that you not sacrifice principles of academic freedom and free speech that are core to the educational mission of your respected institution."

That mission, of teaching social and moral ideals to students so that they can "go out and change the world," Raiford said, clashes with US higher education, which often serves as "spaces of consolidating the power of the ruling class."

Major institutions such as Columbia and the University of Chicago, which are both currently in the national spotlight, benefit from their student body's reputation for taking part in social and political change, which may be vilified in the moment but lauded in hindsight. When police in riot gear entered Columbia's Hamilton Hall last week, it was hard to miss the uncanny timing: they had done the same thing exactly 56 years earlier during the 1968 anti-war and civil rights protests.

Congress’s Antisemitism Bill Is an Insult to Jewish History

On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives passed a bill to enshrine in law a definition of antisemitism that includes anti-Zionist messages. It’s an egregious attack on free speech — and one that gravely insults the memory of millions of anti-Zionist Jews.

By Oren Schweitzer

May 5, 2024

Source: Jacobin



Over the past two weeks, student protests over the US-Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza have been met with brutal police crackdowns. Meanwhile, the campus demonstrations have provoked hysteria among politicians and the media, who have smeared the protests as violent, antisemitic, and potentially even connected to international terror networks.

Last week, the McCarthyist meltdown reached absurd new heights last week when the House of Representatives passed a bill enshrining a legally binding definition of antisemitism that includes anti-Zionism. This past Wednesday, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved the Antisemitism Awareness Act, by a vote of 320 to 91. The bill urges the Department of Education to codify a definition of antisemitism that includes anti-Zionist criticism of Israel.

Despite the bill’s name, purporting to call “awareness” to antisemitism, its actual contents are an insult to Jewish history and historical memory, erasing decades of Jewish anti-Zionist politics. In fact, in a tragic and deeply twisted irony, the bill would desecrate the graves of millions of Jewish victims of the Holocaust, many of whom were anti-Zionists themselves.
Erasing Jewish Anti-Zionism

The Antisemitism Awareness Act directs the Department of Education to use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism when “reviewing, investigating, or deciding whether there has been a violation of title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” The controversial IHRA definition of antisemitism includes among its examples of antisemitism “the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity,” “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” and “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

In other words, the IHRA includes anti-Zionist political speech, the dominant Jewish stance on the idea of a Jewish nation-state before the Holocaust, in its definition of antisemitism. It would, for instance, define an article I wrote last spring — which outlines the similarities between the current politics of the Israeli state and my own family’s experiences in the Holocaust and the shtetl pogroms — as antisemitic.

If passed and adopted by the US Department of Education (DOE), the act would empower the DOE to strip schools of federal funding if they refuse to repress students engaged in anti-Zionist speech, ban organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and bar teachers and professors from endorsing anti-Zionist messages. It would further give legal cover and encouragement to university administrations and local police departments already seeking to repress anti-Zionist demonstrations.

Despite the Israeli state’s insistence on the centrality of Israel and Zionism to Jewish identity and practice, Zionism is a nationalist political movement, and a rather recent one in Jewish history. In Ten Myths About Israel, Israeli-born historian Ilan Pappé shows that before the Holocaust, Zionism was a minoritarian political movement among European Jewry.

Most European Jews, Pappe explains, held one of three other political views, all of which were non- or anti-Zionist. In Western Europe, where Napoleon’s conquests emancipated Jews from de jure oppression, Jewish people were more assimilated into their own countries’ cultural practices and identity. For these Jews, many of whom were liberals, the goal was to be accepted within these national communities, not to break off and form a new and separate one — an idea not too different from those advocated by antisemites in their home countries.

In Eastern Europe, where Jews remained subjugated under Tsarist rule — confined to the shtetls, ghettoes, and the Pale of Settlement — Jewish politics took two primary forms: socialist internationalism on the one hand, and religious orthodoxy on the other. Both were vehemently opposed to Zionism.

Working-class Jews throughout Eastern Europe played an outsize role in the militant and powerful labor movement that eventually seized power in the October Revolution. The Jewish Bund was the largest Jewish trade union movement and Jewish political party in Europe, and it fought for Jewish liberation alongside the struggle for socialism and international solidarity with other workers and oppressed peoples. In addition to the Bund, Jewish workers and intellectuals were disproportionately represented in other socialist, Marxist, and revolutionary parties like the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, as well as in communist and socialist parties outside the Russian Empire.

Against Zionism, the Bund insisted “wherever we are, that’s our homeland.” It saw Zionism as abandoning the struggle against antisemitism, which could be defeated through working-class solidarity and struggle, and overturning the political and economic conditions that fueled antisemitism. Zionists, on the other hand, accepted the basic nationalistic and racialistic premises of our oppressors: that Jews could never be safe among non-Jews and instead needed to separate ourselves.

Last, the more theologically orthodox in Eastern Europe rejected Zionism for religious reasons. Israel, the biblical promised land, could only be brought about by the messiah, not humankind. Transforming the concept of Israel into a modern nation-state-building project — let alone one requiring war, colonization, and displacement of the current population — was largely seen as anathema to religious dictates. As Pappé recounts, a prominent Hasidic rabbi declared that “Zionism [asked] him to replace centuries of Jewish wisdom and law for a rag, soil and a song (i.e., a flag, a land, and an anthem).”

Imperial powers, especially Britain, soon began to adopt their own form of Christian Zionism, having identified a potentially powerful symbiotic relationship between Jewish Zionists and Christian and imperialist interests. A Britain-aligned Jewish colony in Palestine was seen at once as an incredible geopolitical asset for the British Empire and a solution to British and other European leaders’ “Jewish problem” (i.e., antisemitic animus), all the while potentially fulfilling Christian prophecies of a Jewish-controlled Jerusalem that would bring about Armageddon.

It’s no wonder Bundists decried Zionism as “escapism,” and Jewish liberals saw it as bolstering, not opposing, antisemitism.
Suppressing Jewish Speech

The Antisemitism Awareness Act, expected to soon be passed in the Senate and signed into law by President Joe Biden, attempts to erase this history, and thereby gravely insults centuries of Jewish theology and politics. Since its founding, the Zionist movement and Israel have engaged in a global campaign to equate the political movement of Zionism with Judaism, the religion and people. In doing so, they have cynically co-opted the horrific tragedy of the Holocaust to silence critics of Israel’s apartheid system and military occupation of Palestine.

Supporters of Israel demonize Jewish anti-Zionist activists around the world as self-hating Jews, exiles from our own community. Before student protesters launched the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia and were met with brutal police repression, the university had already banned the chapter of the Jewish Voice for Peace there.

Similarly, one of first three students to be expelled by a university for Palestine activism, an organizer at Vanderbilt, was the chair of the school’s JVP chapter and had lived in Israel for a year, where he first became an anti-Zionist after participating in anti-eviction activism in East Jerusalem. In Germany, perhaps the one country where anti-anti-Zionism crackdowns have been even more extreme than within Israel and the United States, many Jewish activists have been among those arrested and facing repression.

In fact, Jewish anti-Zionism not only has a rich history, but until the Holocaust was the dominant politics of international Judaism. While many survivors were convinced that their earlier ideas were naive, internalizing the fascist premise that Jews will never have a place in broader society, and many more were won over to Zionism in the years following the establishment of Israel, Zionism’s rise to dominance within institutional Judaism must be understood in the context of the extermination of millions of anti-Zionist and non-Zionist Jews in concentration camps.

Congress is currently seeking to pass a bill that would cast the views of millions of Jewish Holocaust victims as anti-Jewish and beyond the pale and would suppress those at schools throughout the country from freely discussing their ideas. In doing so, they are spitting on the graves of our ancestors.

Another Bogus Antisemitism Scare

by Sheldon Richman Posted onMay 07, 2024

I’ve been watching and thinking about the nationwide campus antiwar demonstrations in support of the suffering Palestinians of Gaza, and the appalling reaction to and “coverage” of those events. Something important needs to be addressed.

I won’t be concerned here with the violence committed by anyone, including the police, or by lesser misconduct, such as occupying and damaging buildings and other violations of university rules. It’s also irrelevant whether the demonstrations stand any chance of ending Israel’s onslaught or ending U.S. and university complicity in it, or whether most of the pro-peace demonstrators share a libertarian orientation. (Not likely.) All that is for another time.

I want to examine the overwhelming depiction of the demonstrations as nothing more than rank antisemitism – the blind hatred of all Jewish people because and only because they are – by birth, blood, belief, or practice – Jewish.

Are the demonstrations antisemitic and hence pro-Hamas, as Spiked magazine and many other observers claim? Are the protestors tapping into what CNN’s Dana Bash called “a deep undercurrent of antisemitism”? (The smears know no bounds.)

To sort this out, I thought I might employ one of my areas of expertise. I spend a lot of time watching excellent British television police dramas. I consider myself a student of British detective techniques. (The Brits take their police dramas very seriously.)

Among other things, I’ve learned that if a crime is alleged to have been committed by a particular person, but you have no damning CCTV or credible witnesses, you begin your investigation by asking if the “person of interest” has a plausible motive for the offense. If not, the chances are good that the person is innocent. People act, which means they have motives.

That’s what I want to do here regarding the campus demonstrations, which are on their face objections to Israel’s bloody (not just in the British figurative sense) seven-month campaign against the Gaza Palestinians. That campaign has taken at least 34,000 lives, injured and starved countless other people, and destroyed so many homes, hospitals, universities, and other facilities vital to life.

So here’s the detective’s challenge: why would non-Jewish pro-peace demonstrators on college campuses across the country knowingly, intentionally alienate their clearly Jewish pro-peace co-demonstrators with whom they encamp all day every day, sharing meals, having teach-ins together, and participating in ecumenical outdoor religious events, like Passover seders? Why would antisemites want to do it?

Does that sound remotely plausible? Are the Jewish students idiots who don’t recognize antisemitism when they’re supposedly drowning in a sea of it? Are the antisemites able to threaten Jewish non-demonstrators and pro-Israel demonstrators while keeping it a secret from Jewish demonstrators standing next to them? That seems unlikely.

What do they take us for – those pro-Israel alarmists, who see an existential threat to all Jewish people every day around every corner? They assume (or pretend to believe) that anti-Zionism – that is, opposition to a Jewish supremacist state – is the same as antisemitism. But a moment’s reflection reveals that this is bunk – no matter how many times Israel’s partisans say so. On a variety of grounds, many Jewish people fundamentally oppose Israel as a Jewish state. They have since the time of Theodor Herzl, the reputed founder of Zionism.

As an aside, this is not the first time that America has been subjected to a false antisemitism scare. The boy has cried wolf falsely many times before. Whenever Israel lays waste to Gaza, a sudden spike in antisemitism is reported by the Anti-Defamation League, AIPAC, and their congressional spokesmen. Isn’t that interesting? Or is it? Could it be that the Israel lobby weaponizes antisemitism to shut up anyone who would object to Israel’s crimes against humanity?  (For a close look at this weaponization, see Norman Finkelstein’s Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History.)

Israel’s partisans tell us that America’s campuses today are indistinguishable from 1930s Nazi Berlin. Jewish students, they say, are routinely harassed, threatened, and assaulted. They can’t walk safely to class. The Hitler Youth rule. Really? I can’t recall newsreels from the Nazi years showing Jews and non-Jews peacefully celebrating the sabbath and Passover with open-air religious services and meals. Have you ever seen films from Nazi Germany in which Jewish Germans enthusiastically sported tee-shirts emblazoned with sayings like: “Jewish Voice for Peace,” “Not in Our Name,” “Jews for a Ceasefire Now,” and “Jews for Freedom in Palestine.” Maybe the memory is suppressed, but I’m pretty sure I haven’t.

My policy is to assume good faith in my opponents, but it’s tough in this case. I am confident that the alarmists do not believe their own words when they say that terrorists and Nazis control the universities.

So why do they say it? Because it distracts attention from Israel’s unending massacre. The apologists’ agenda is to support Israel no matter what and to explain away the palpable atrocities. It’s also an attempt to continue America’s shameful complicity.

If Israel and its supporters were truly concerned about antisemitism (rather than needing it to prevent assimilation and abandonment of Israel), they’d do some soul-searching. Israel identifies itself as the Jewish state and claims to represent “the Jewish people” – not only Jewish Israelis but Jews everywhere whether they want it or not. Thus Israel’s long mistreatment of the Palestinians encourages, at least tacitly, the relatively few antisemites, who are eager to point to anything they can use to describe “the Jewish people” as bad actors. “The Jewish state equals the Jewish people” – that’s what they’ve been told by the pro-Israel side. It’s not true, but they’re happy to believe it.

In other words, Israel’s definition of itself and its abuse of the Palestinians ratify the antisemites’ crazy ideas about the international conspiratorial malevolence and collective guilt of “the Jewish people.” Antisemites are encouraged to ignore the over-representation of Jewish Americans in the ranks of Israel’s opponents.

Israel and its supporters then aggravate matters by strategically equating odious antisemitism with honorable anti-Zionism. That in turn gives cover to the antisemites, who can hide in plain sight among the anti-Zionists.

That amounts to Israel’s protection of antisemitism!

You’d think that would be a bad thing. And it is. So why do Israel’s leaders and supporters do it? Because all that matters is the tribal sanctuary, Israel.

Sheldon Richman is the executive editor of The Libertarian Institute and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He is the former senior editor at the Cato Institute and Institute for Humane Studies; former editor of The Freeman, published by the Foundation for Economic Education; and former vice president at the Future of Freedom Foundation. His latest books are Coming to Palestine and What Social Animals Owe to Each Other.

US elite figures threaten pro-Palestine protesters with repercussions

American business leaders and legal experts have publicly voiced their disapproval of the pro-Palestine protesters and have threatened them with their job finding process.

Student demonstrations met with strong American police crackdown while thousands of students detained. / Photo: AA

Influential American figures from various sectors have taken a firm stance against the protesters threatening them with their future as demonstrations in support of Palestinians have spread across the United States and beyond.

ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods said the oil company would not be interested in hiring students taking part in pro-Palestinian protests at college campuses across the US.

"Harassment and intimidation, there's no place for that, frankly, at those universities and certainly no place for that in a company like ExxonMobil," Woods said in an interview with CNBC this week.

"We wouldn't look to bring folks like that into our company and if that action or those protests reflect the values of the campuses where they're doing it, we wouldn't be interested in recruiting students from those campuses," he added.

Student demonstrations began on April 17 at Columbia University to protest Israel's offensive in Gaza, where more than 34,600 Palestinians have been killed and 77,700 injured since an October 7 attack by Hamas.

The protests have served as a flashpoint for the wider movement to protest Israel’s war on Gaza.

'Will bring your picture in background check'

Shark Tank host and businessman Kevin O'Leary had a much more blunt take on the consequences student demonstrators may face after graduating.

"These people are screwed," O'Leary said during a Fox News interview earlier this week, describing how artificial intelligence (AI) can identify each and every protester from video footage being taken at campus demonstrations.

"Everything being shot now is 1080p or 4K, even the surveillance cameras. Every single image, even at night now, goes into an AI generator and will tell you who that individual is," he explained.

"I have a lot of companies. I hire thousands of people. Within weeks, I'm gonna be able on, when we're doing your background check, I'm going to find this cause it's going to be in there on the dark web," O'Leary continued, gesturing to two hypothetical stacks of resumes. "Here's your resume with a picture of you burning a flag. See that one? That goes in this pile over here cause I can get the same person's talent in this pile that's not burning anything," he said.

"I don't care what university or what you're burning or whose side you're on. You'll never know why you didn't get a mortgage ... you'll never know I didn't get the job because we see you now, and all you need is to have your eyes exposed with a new 4K image, and for the rest of your life, you're in this pile."

'We'll bankrupt them'

Meanwhile, Alan Dershowitz, a lawyer known with his pro-Israeli views, vowed that he would take every legal step necessary to punish student protesters engaging in any allegedly antisemitic actions, referring to them as "bigots, antisemites and potentially violent terrorists."

"We will sue them and we will get their dorm rooms taken away. We will take their cars and their boomboxes and we'll bankrupt them," Dershowitz said in an interview with Newsmax.

"We will do whatever is necessary, under the law, in order to bring these lawsuits, bring them successfully and deter Oct. 7," he said, referring to a cross-border attack last year by Palestinian groups from Gaza into Israel.

Israel has pounded Gaza since a cross-border attack by Hamas, which Tel Aviv says killed nearly 1,200 people.

The Israeli war on Gaza has pushed 85 percent of the territory's population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60 percent of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

Hostilities have continued unabated, however, and aid deliveries remain woefully insufficient to address the humanitarian catastrophe.

SOURCE: AA

Tensions flare between DePaul pro-Palestine encampment and counterprotesters

By AVANI KALRA | akalra@chicagotribune.com | Chicago Tribune
PUBLISHED: May 5, 2024 

A group organized by the Chicago Jewish Alliance gathered at Fullerton and Seminary avenues Sunday morning in response to an encampment set up Tuesday at DePaul University to protest the war in Gaza.

Members of Chabad Lincoln Park, Stand With Us, Hillel Metro Chicago and the Jewish Institute for Liberal Voices, among other groups, helped organize the demonstration and said they wanted to help Jewish DePaul students feel safer. The group flew Israeli and American flags.

Doreen Helmer traveled from Northbrook to attend Sunday’s counter-rally. She said it was important to her to travel to Lincoln Park to defend Israel in what she considers to be an increasingly hostile environment.

“It’s sad to see what’s happening in our city,” Helmer said. “They’re allowing these protests to ruin our campus and our neighborhoods. My friends can’t enjoy their neighborhood, they can’t walk their children to school anymore because of this. This is not free speech.”

Helmer said she was driving to the encampment Sunday afternoon flying an Israeli flag from her car when someone jumped on the car and tried to rip the flag off.

Henna Ayesh, an organizer and a media liaison with the DePaul encampment, said she was proud of the way encampment protesters have handled counterprotesters on campus. Leaders have been hosting a “de-escalation training” two to three times a day, she said, to teach them how to interact with counterprotesters.

Members of the encampment locked arms around the quad Sunday morning, facing the counterprotesters and surrounding their tents, while Chicago police formed two lines separating the groups.

Ayesh, who is a Palestinian student, said she is proud of the self-sustaining community she’s seen arise in the encampment. Organizers instructed encampment protesters not to engage with counterprotesters, and they have by and large respected that request, she said.

“I think one of the strongest principles of our community is that we keep each other safe,” Ayesh said. “We’re not relying on police, relying on public safety or on administration to keep us safe. We had counterprotesters throwing rocks and sticks, saying Islamophobic statements, but I’m really proud because we kept ourselves in control.”

Ayesh said there was one instance of confrontation in the encampment Sunday morning when a Palestinian student was hit in the face with a flag by a counterprotester. The student received medical attention, Ayesh said, and is doing well. According to the university, two people received treatment for minor injuries, and no arrests were made.

Pro-Israel activists argue with pro-Palestinian activists while members of the Chicago Police Department stand between the two groups outside a pro-Palestinian encampment at DePaul University in Chicago on May 5, 2024. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)

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By Sunday afternoon, a smaller group of counterprotesters stood across from DePaul’s quad on Fullerton Avenue. Another group gathered on the music lawn at Halsted Street and Fullerton Avenue, with snacks, posters and flags. Cars honked as they drove by, while children holding Israeli flags stood at the entrance to the lawn.

Police moved the encampment protesters inside the quad by Sunday afternoon. Some continued to gather by the entrances and cling to fences, facing the counterprotesters.

Participants also gathered around a large stage in the middle of the encampment, chanting “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest” and “Free, free Palestine,” drumming and waving Palestinian flags.

Ayesh said encampment organizers negotiated with DePaul administrators before erecting the encampment and were told the university is invested in companies affiliated with Israel. Ayesh said the group decided to put up tents when administrators said they did not have the power to terminate those investments.Pro-Palestinian activists argue with pro-Israel activists while members of the Chicago Police department stand between the two groups outside a pro-Palestinian encampment at DePaul University in Chicago on May 5, 2024. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)

Organizers last spoke with administrators Wednesday, according to Ayesh.

“I think a lot of our demands, like calling for a cease-fire, could’ve been fulfilled the exact same day,” Ayesh said. “But it’s day five, and we haven’t heard anything.”

In a Sunday evening statement, President Robert Manuel said he, Provost Salma Ghanem and Executive Vice President and CFO Sherri Sidler had requested to meet with students from the DePaul Divestment Coalition on Monday.

“We are deeply concerned that today’s events escalated beyond peaceful protest on the Lincoln Park Campus,” Manuel said. “It is our sincerest hope that our dialogue will result in solutions for the university that will allow us to move forward.”

DePaul University sent an alert advising students to avoid the quad and encouraged them to use alternate routes on campus Sunday, according to several students gathered at the camp.

On campus, the atmosphere remained serene. Students played soccer and read outside residence halls and school buildings.

Also on Sunday, encampment organizers from the School of the Art Insititute of Chicago announced that all 68 people arrested at a demonstration Saturday were released Sunday morning

.

A person with a “We the people” tattoo shakes hands with officers while pro-Israel activists argue with pro-Palestinian activists as members of the Chicago Police Department stand between the two groups outside a pro-Palestinian encampment at DePaul University in Chicago on May 5, 2024. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)

The encampments are among dozens across Chicago and the nation at colleges, including the University of Chicago, Columbia University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

They started in the past few weeks amid the mounting death toll in Gaza. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.

Israel launched its war in Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, where the group killed some 1,200 people and took 250 hostages. President Joe Biden on Thursday defended the right to protest but insisted that “order must prevail” at college campuses, as some in Chicago’s Jewish community demanded action at local universities to prevent hate speech.

Chicago Tribune’s Adriana Pérez contributed.

Pro-Palestinian activists argue with pro-Israel activists while members of the Chicago Police Department stand between the two groups outside a pro-Palestinian encampment at DePaul University on May 5, 2024, in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)

Jordan's Queen Rania opens up about anti-Israel protests on US campuses, admits alarming global rise of antisemitism

The wife of King Abdullah II of Jordan, Queen Rania al Abdullah, is a Palestinian and has been an outspoken opponent of the Israel-Hamas war.

Queen Rania al-Abdullah of Jordan recently defended the wave of anti-Israel demonstrations that have taken over US campuses, claiming that the students' true goals are justice and peace.

Queen Rania advocates for justice and peace amid anti-Israel protests on US campuses

(AFP Photo)


ByNikhita Mehta
May 05, 2024 


“To vilify them as being, you know, pro-Hamas, pro-terrorism, or antisemitic—II think that’s inaccurate, And I think it’s somewhat patronizing,” Rania told CBS’ “Face the Nation” in an interview that aired on Sunday.

Callng the protestors “well-read and thoughtful young individuals”, she said that they know why are they protesting. “They are protesting for justice.”

However, Rania has advocated that it is unfair to paint all these students and these protests with a broad paintbrush.

She argued that a sizable portion of the student body participating in these protests is Jewish. Furthermore, the great majority of these protestors desire peace over destruction.

The wife of King Abdullah II of Jordan, Queen Rania al Abdullah, is Palestinian and has been an outspoken opponent of the Israel's war on Hamas that was launched in October 2023 after the terrorist organisation killed 1,200 people in an unexpected attack.

Queen Rania's views on antisemitism

She did, however, concede that antisemitism is on the rise and called on Muslims everywhere to take leadership roles in the battle against it.

Rania speaks about the presence of antisemitism and how it has been on the rise. “And it is the worst kind of bigotry; it is pure hatred,” she said.

“Muslims have to be at the forefront of fighting antisemitism, because Islamophobia is the other side of the same disease, and it’s also on the rise.”

She stated that criticising the conflict "is not antisemitism," but rather "speaking against Israeli policy," and that many in the Muslim world are witnessing unsettling sights coming out of Gaza.

If Palestinians dislike Israelis, it's not because of their nationality or religion or; it's because they have only met with them as military enforcers, she explained.

 Police arrest dozens of anti-Israel protesters at Chicago Art Institute

Protests escalate at Chicago's Art Institute, leading to arrests. Elsewhere, University of Michigan sees peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstration during commencement.

By THE MEDIA LINE STAFF

 themedialine.org

MAY 6, 2024 

Police arrest a pro-Palestinian protester at USC campus in Los Angeles, California, U.S., April 24, 2024, in this still image taken from video

(photo credit: REUTERS TV

Dozens of protesters were arrested outside the Art Institute of Chicago during a demonstration on Saturday, following a police request from the institute to clear the premises, according to the Chicago Police Department’s post on X (formerly Twitter.)

Meanwhile, protests on other campuses did not escalate to arrests. In Ann Arbor, pro-Palestinian demonstrators temporarily interrupted a University of Michigan commencement ceremony. Videos on social media showed several students donning keffiyeh headscarves and graduation caps while waving Palestinian flags.

They marched down the Michigan Stadium’s central aisle, evoking cheers and boos from the crowd. Campus police escorted the protesters toward the stadium’s back but made no arrests, according to Colleen Mastony, a university spokesperson.

Former hostages demand answers from Gantz, Eisenkot regarding hostage deal

Campus peace protests

Signs are displayed in front of Deering Meadow, where an encampment of students are protesting in support of Palestinians, during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, at Northwestern University campus in Evanston, Illinois, US. April 25, 2024

 (credit: REUTERS/Nate Swanson)

“Peaceful protests like this have taken place at U-M commencement ceremonies for decades,” Mastony said in a statement, reaffirming the university’s commitment to free speech and expression.

Controversial reactions to Israel’s conflict in Gaza have fueled heated protests across US campuses recently, with institutions like Columbia University seeking police assistance to manage the demonstrations. Police have so far detained over 2,000 protesters nationwide.

Demonstrators are protesting Israel’s response to the October 7 attack on southern Israel, in which Hamas operatives killed around 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals and took more than 250 people hostage.

At U. of C. encampment, Jewish organizers explain significance of their anti-Zionist Shabbat service

Ahmed Ali Akbar
Chicago Tribune (TNS)

After a tense day of protests, counterprotests and increased university police presence on the University of Chicago’s Main Quadrangle, the sun began to fade Friday evening and the Jewish holy day of Sabbath began.

Within the encampment established by the University of Chicago United for Palestine coalition, about 50 Jewish students and faculty and community members sat down on a blue tarp among tents and kaffiyehs to observe a planned prayer service. One challah was decorated with a Palestinian flag in seeds and herbs; the ceremonial “wine” (grape juice) was chosen because it was not made in Israel. Palestinian flags and handmade posters with slogans protesting genocide hung from trees. As they prayed, other students, many of whom were Muslim, held up kaffiyehs, jean shirts and checkered blankets to form a privacy screen.

Since April 29, Jewish anti-Zionist protesters at the Hyde Park campus have used food, ritual and community in the encampment as one of many ways to express their religious commitment to divestment from Israel, a multiethnic future and an end to killings in Gaza. In a practical sense, that means Seders and Shabbats (or Sabbaths), with non-Israeli kosher products, teaching about the pluralistic elements of Jewish traditions like the Moroccan Jewish Mimouna, and eating Palestinian food with Muslims and others in their coalition.

Avi Steinberg, a writer, faculty member and graduate of Orthodox yeshivas who spoke at the event, described Shabbat as a time of reflection.

“People sit with their thoughts and their emotions,” Steinberg said on a phone call Saturday. “It’s a time of stopping the clock completely.”

After the prayer and singing concluded, the Shabbat observers — a small but sizable portion of the broader encampment — dispersed; at the central food tent, a half-dozen or more unflipped maqluba pots sat beside rice and meat already doled out onto steam plates. Cold chopped salads and hot lentil soup were also served. This meal, donated by Arab restaurant Al Bahaar, acted informally as the Shabbat meal. The encampment food tent staff relies on donations of hot food and attempts to keep a variety of vegan, kosher, halal and nonallergenic options available for encampment dwellers.

The Muslim maghrib prayer began soon after on the same blue tarp. The University of Chicago United for Palestine coalition includes Students for Justice in Palestine, UChicago Jews for a Free Palestine, and several other organizations.

Nationally, encampments like this one have been accused of antisemitism. But in interviews with a half-dozen or more Jewish students and affiliated faculty members within the pro-Palestine encampment at the U. of C., none of them said they felt anything resembling antisemitism within the camp. Instead, they said they felt more connected to the Jewish tradition through their activism during the protests. They argued that anti-Zionism and advocating for Palestinian freedom is in a long tradition of Jewish values of pluralism and agitation for justice.

“When we’re praying for peace and human emancipation, to me this is the essence of what it means to be Jewish,” said graduate student Daniel Fernandez, speaking outside the encampment. “What is so profoundly disappointing is that this is somehow controversial.” Fernandez has stayed at the encampment, attending or sometimes leading several of the religious services this past week.

Chicago Jewish leaders held a news conference Wednesday where they called the encampments “platforms for antisemitism.” The university’s major Jewish organizations have disavowed, criticized or ignored the protesters.

In an email to the Tribune, Rabbi Yossi Brackman of Rohr Chabad at the University of Chicago wrote, “Movements have always had a token minority, this is no different. For example, there were some Black slave owners and Black people who fought for the Confederacy.”

Talking to the Tribune from within the encampment, graduate student Sofia Butnaru said many of the Israel-critical Jewish students did not feel they had a “religious home” at the U. of C. “We felt we weren’t represented in the other spaces, so we were really interested in building our own rituals and coming together as like-minded people to do the religious practices that are very near and dear to us,” Butnaru said.


Callie Maidhof, a professor of global studies and a member of Faculty for Justice in Palestine, agreed. “(Our Jewish institutions) have not made space for this,” she said. “That is especially true of the largest Jewish campus organizations like Hillel.”

While Hillel International’s Israel guidelines say the organization welcomes political pluralism and a diversity of student perspectives, its standards also state that it will not “partner with, house, or host organizations, groups, or speakers” that support practice certain positions, like the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement against the state of Israel. Members of organizations like FJP and Jewish Voices for Peace, which support BDS, would not be allowed to speak at Hillel under this policy.

A Hillel rabbi acknowledged but did not respond to a request for comment from the Tribune.

Despite feeling isolated from campus Jewish groups, UChicago Jews for a Free Palestine have organized several religious events since the encampment went up. According to messages with a Jewish organizer at DePaul’s encampment, a similar Shabbat service was held within the encampment on their campus. These events have attracted supportive community members like retired researcher Sandy Perpignani. She sat outside the U. of C. encampment and engaged with critical onlookers. At Shabbat time, she entered the encampment to pray with the students and organizers.

Regardless of some personal challenges, organizers constantly recentered the conversation toward what they see as the oppression and bravery of the Palestinian people. The protesters asked the university to divest from Israel and call for a cease-fire.


Within the Divinity School, Aviva Waldman, a writing instructor and alum who acts as a faculty liaison for organizing students, described a Passover event held by encampment organizers and allies that reflected their commitment to divestment from Israel, commitment to Palestinians and embrace of interreligious pluralism.

During Passover, which ended last week, Jewish communities avoided chametz (leavened goods like wheat and spelt) and instead consumed matzo. Encampment organizers are, for the most part, supportive of the demands of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, but many matzo brands, including Manischewitz, make much of their product in Israel. Though Manischewitz is not officially part of the BDS boycott list, organizers felt they needed to make a modification. Unable to find non-Israeli-origin matzo in Chicago, Waldman said they ordered matzo from a specialty farm in New York. Earlier, Butnaru cooked matzo ball soup for Passover using a matzo meal that was not a product of Israel.

“Our home is wherever we are,” Waldman said. “There’s no nation-state that is our national homeland. We wanted our ritual items, the matzo, to come from our home.”

Palestinian olive oil from Jenin in the Israeli-occupied West Bank was also added to the Seder plate. The oil was available a bit closer to campus, from Canaan Palestine, a Madison, Wisconsin-based company that sources organic and fair trade olive oil from Palestinian orchards.

“The Seder plate is the most symbolic ritual item,” Waldman said. “(It) symbolizes Palestinian connection to the land and commitment to nurturing the land through farming olives and olive orchards.”


Organizers also revised their Haggadah, the text traditionally read at Passover Seder, to highlight parallels between the Palestinian freedom struggle and the story of the Jewish community fleeing from Egypt.


These changes reflect deep rifts and debates happening within Chicago Jewish communities.

“The Passover Seder is about one thing and one thing only,” Yossi wrote in an email. “The exodus of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery to return to the land of their Patriarchs, what would then become known as the Land of Israel. Anything else is a bastardization of Judaism. “

Another Chicago-area rabbi was supportive of the protesters.

“I’m in favor of Jewish people observing Shabbat, praying three times daily and fulfilling the commandments wherever they are,” Rabbi Aryeh Bernstein wrote in a message on X, formerly Twitter. Bernstein said the students and organizers’ actions are “not in conflict with (the Torah and Jewish law and teachings).”

On April 30, organizers held a Mimouna, a Sephardic tradition where Moroccan Jews celebrated the end of Passover by partaking in leavened goods and sweets with their Muslim neighbors. According to the organizers, observant Jews “sell” their leavened goods to Moroccan Muslims, only to buy it back when Passover is finished. While the festival is celebrated in Israel, Waldman says the important element of coexistence is not present.

Undergraduate student Andrew Basta helped organize the Mimouna; he has stayed most nights at the encampment tents since they were established.

“The traditional kind of food of the holiday would be mofletta, which is a kind of crepe-like pancake that is sweet,” Basta said on a phone call Saturday. “Sadly, we are not able to achieve making that within the encampment, based on (lack of) access to stoves.” Instead, they settled on pita and sweet dates.


“There were moments where we could be neighbors and be friendly and celebrate together,” Butnaru said. “Not to say that it was perfect coexistence, but there was coexistence.”

Basta is optimistic about the future and sees the Mimouna as symbolic of what is possible.

“We can rebuild joyous futures and multiethnic futures where Jews and Muslims can be neighbors without being part of an apartheid state or ethnic cleansing,” Basta said.

While Passover had ended by the time of Friday’s Shabbat, many organizers were still thinking about the lessons of that story: the struggle for liberation in the face of oppression.

“There’s nothing Jewish about an ethno-state,” Butnaru said. “There’s plenty of things that are Jewish about building community.”

Many students expressed the challenges of bringing their activism to their parents. Fernandez described his parents as “deeply committed to Zionism” and said that their conversations around the subject of the war in Gaza and his organizing have been “agonizing” for both parties.

“They think when I am in these camps, standing on this tarp praying … they think I’m praying for the destruction of the Jewish people.” But Fernandez said he is committed to nonviolence. He and other organizers believe that there can be coexistence and repair between Palestinians and Jews.

For the most part, the organizers in the encampment wish things were different with their families; but that won’t stop them from protesting.

“I want to begin from a premise that their hurt is real,” Fernandez said. “Our history as Jewish people is rooted in that; it’s real and palpable and omnipresent. I don’t want to dismiss their fear … but the same Torah has placed us on opposite ends of the issue.”


During the Shabbat, Avi Steinberg spoke and referenced a daily prayer from the Book of Numbers that translated to “How goodly are your tents, oh Jacob?”

This reference got a chuckle, but he explained the deeper meaning: You need to live every day as if you are in the tents.

In a later message, Steinberg explained “that talk was presenting tent life as a metaphor for radical politics specifically … the need for maintaining that radical edge even on a daily basis when we’re not literally in the tents.” He said he believed the encampment itself is a victory and that they would succeed in getting university leadership to divest financially from Israel and call for a ceasefire.

In the meantime, they were building their vision here, in the impermanence of the tents. In what they say is a multiethnic, pluralistic group committed to justice and peace.

©2024 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

America continues its moral decline in supporting Zionist entity & suppressing all who criticize it [05/May/2024] SANA'A May 05. 2024 (Saba) - The United States of America continues its moral decline, its arrogance, its support , its blatant bias toward the Zionist enemy entity, and its suppression of anyone who dares to criticize this usurping entity, demonstrate against it, or reject the genocidal war it is committing in Gaza. In this context, media reports reported that America, more than 200 days after the ongoing barbaric aggression against Gaza, continues its arrogance and blatant bias towards the Zionist enemy entity, in a shocking loss and decline of its “moral compass” not only on the external level, but also beyond. The American house front is to suppress anyone who dares to criticize the occupying entity, demonstrate against it, or reject the genocidal war in Gaza. It stated that this decline has reached the point of dragging university professors, suppressing students, demonizing them, throwing them in prisons, or trampling on them, spraying them with dirty water, and using all the methods used by tyrannical police states in a scene that will leave a profound impact in continuing the collapse of America’s image and the fall of the alleged “Statue of Liberty” in a democracy that has revealed itself. Its true, ugly face that the whole world suffered from. It pointed out that this decline did not stop at this point, but rather went beyond that, as America threatened and intimidated the International Criminal Court after its talk about the possibility of issuing arrest warrants against the leaders of the Zionist enemy entity because of their crimes against humanity in Gaza, led by Netanyahu and the leaders of his war council. Which sparked the madness and obsession of the Zionist enemy and the Biden administration alike. Writer and political analyst Yasser Al-Zaatara commented on America’s reactions to the ICC, saying: “The Americans’ hysteria against the ICC began to please Netanyahu! While the Biden administration did not show a strong reaction to the court’s intention to issue an arrest warrant against Netanyahu, Gallant, and Halevy, it A frantic congressional campaign against her began. Al-Zaatarah pointed out that Netanyahu urged Biden to "intervene" during their call, while the latter's lack of action was explained by an attempt to pressure Netanyahu to pass the possible truce , exchange deal, with it and before it, the implementation of the conditions of the possible path of normalization with Saudi Arabia. Palestinian writer Abdel Bari Atwan exposed the secrets of the escalation and the upcoming American militancy and what is planned to be implemented in order to save the deep American state, saying: “In short, the state of American diplomatic frenzy led personally by President Joe Biden and his Secretary of State Anthony Blinken these days, to urgently reach a ceasefire.” The fire and exchange of prisoners between the Hamas movement and the Zionist enemy entity comes not out of mercy, or out of concern to stop the war of genocide and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, but rather for purely American internal reasons imposed by the student revolution in the rising American universities, and it could lead to a civil war, comprehensive and radical change. “In the American political map that has been rooted since the end of World War II, its most prominent title is absolute support for the occupying entity and preventing its fall.” He added: “The deep American state is trembling in horror from the outbreak of this war, in the depths of its university citadels and from future rulers , voters, and its focus on the Zionist massacres that have been continuing for more than 205 days in the Gaza Strip, the escalation of its flames, and the expansion of its circle, whether within the United States itself or in various countries.” The universities of the world are therefore exercising unprecedented pressure on America’s Arab allies, especially the mediators in Egypt and Qatar, to accelerate reaching an agreement. Stopping the war in Gaza means stopping the revolution in American universities, reducing its dangers , ramifications, and nipping it in its cradle.” Atwan stressed that this student revolution, which broke the false connection between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, reminds this deep state that its counterpart, which exploded at the height of the Vietnam War era, was the one that played a major role in the American defeat and the overthrow of President Johnson, and its sister, which broke out in the universities. In 1968, it was France that overthrew President Charles de Gaulle, the hero of the liberation war in his country, and the same thing was repeated, represented by the overthrow of the apartheid regime in South Africa, and the transfer of the great leader Nelson Mandela from prison to the presidential residence. The Zionist enemy entity is the largest recipient of American foreign aid since World War II, and according to official American indicators, the total aid provided by America to this entity between 1946 and 2023 amounted to about 158.6 billion dollars. It is noteworthy that most of the American aid to this usurping entity goes to the military sector, as the volume of military aid between 1946 and 2023, according to official American estimates, amounted to about 114.4 billion dollars, in addition to about 9.9 billion dollars for missile defense. Observers believe that American democracy will always remain lame, constantly losing influence until the fall of the dollar as the global reserve currency and the United States enters a paralyzing recession, at which time it will immediately face a massive contraction in its military machine. J.A

Los Angeles police make no arrests clearing USC pro-Palestinian encampment

Los Angeles police in the United States cleared a pro-Palestine encampment at the University of Southern California on Sunday, but made no arrests.

World2 min read
The New Arab Staff & Agencies
05 May, 2024


No arrests were made while the Los Angeles police cleared a pro-Palestine encampment at University of Southern California [GETTY]

Los Angeles police made no arrests on Sunday while clearing a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Southern California, following arrests and turmoil at universities across the country over Israel's war on Gaza.

Other universities with graduation ceremonies on Sunday braced for more protests after dozens were arrested the previous day.

After USC requested assistance, police entered the encampment about 5 a.m. local time (1200 GMT) and worked with campus police to remove tents as students peacefully left the area, police said.

Campus protests have emerged as a new political flashpoint during a hotly contested and deeply divisive US election year. Police have arrested over 2,000 protesters at dozens of colleges around the country.

Mitch Landrieu, the national co-chair for President Joe Biden's reelection campaign, said on Sunday that Senator Bernie Sanders's comment comparing the college protests to those during the Vietnam War was an "over-exaggeration."

"This is a very different circumstance," Landrieu said on CNN. "However, that is not to say that this is not a very serious matter."

Many schools, including Columbia University in New York City, have called police to quell the protests.

Students and other protesters have called for universities to divest their financial ties to Israel and push for a ceasefire. In April, Los Angeles police arrested 93 people at USC after they cleared an earlier encampment.

Separately, there have been at least four bomb threats at New York area synagogues over the weekend, police said, but none have proven credible.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul said on X late Saturday: "We will not tolerate individuals sowing fear & antisemitism. Those responsible must be held accountable for their despicable actions."

More than 34,600 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's assault that has flattened the Palestinian territory, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

(Reuters)

From America to Australia, student protests for Gaza could be the last hope for Global North's redemption

Opinion: Egyptian-American activist Aya Hijazi argues that the campus protests for Gaza are an awakening that could shift the West towards justice in Palestine

Aya Hijazi
05 May, 2024

Students watch as pro-Israel protestors demonstrate outside the gates and student demonstrators occupy the pro-Palestinian "Gaza Solidarity Encampment" on the West Lawn of Columbia University in New York, NY on Thursday, April 25, 2024 [Getty]


As Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza enters its seventh month this week, adding to seventy-five years of incremental ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, the only ray of hope lies in raising voices loud enough to pierce the silence and invisibility that Israeli, US, and European institutions have attempted to impose between Gaza and engaged citizens worldwide. The student protests sweeping across Western campuses may be the best chance to achieve that.

On April 18, a few courageous Columbia University students captured the world's attention with an encampment for Palestine, intending to address US complicity in Gaza.

They chose not to resign themselves to watching the genocide unfold on their phones while no one intervened, or at the very least, to give voice to the silenced cries of Palestinians in Gaza and the millions worldwide who cry out for them.

A few weeks earlier, a long-anticipated but diluted Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza was embarrassingly disregarded and quickly forgotten, as if it had never happened. The United States abstained and then falsely labeled it non-binding.

An ICJ ruling warning of an impending genocide was also dismissed. The United States and most European powers continued to provide weapons and military aid to Israel’s genocidal regime while many cut funding to UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for providing relief to Gaza, based on discredited Israeli allegations.

Global intifada for Palestine

The students who spoke out against this surreal duplicity quickly triggered the repressive instincts of the US establishment.

Instead of upholding the ethos of liberal education, where students learn how to "make the world a better place," one where genocides should not occur, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik - a British Egyptian woman - took a remarkably illiberal step and called on the notorious New York Police Department to suppress their students' voices.

Though I condemn her actions as a longtime activist interested in grassroots movements, I anticipated that her actions would backfire. If you want to inspire free spirits and fuel their movements, then apply force against them.

Sure enough, the brave and dedicated Columbia students were inspired to continue and expand their actions. In a rare moment of hope, pro-Palestine encampments spread rapidly across the United States and spilled over into Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, and even Australia.

A global intifada for Palestine was ignited.

RELATED

Inside Columbia's pro-Palestinian student encampment

World

Brooke Anderson

Last hope for a generation?

The world, but more importantly, the betrayed and forsaken free spirits in Gaza, felt the solidarity. University students in the United States are finally able to amplify their voices loud enough to break through the anti-Palestinian barriers of US institutions.

US universities and the government, from the executive to the legislative, have responded so far in ways reminiscent of the dictators they like to denounce, in two profound ways.

The first is through physical force, suppression, intimidation, and the arrest of student protesters.

The second is through defamation. The White House and mainstream media quickly denounced protests as anti-Semitic and uninformed. The US House of Representatives passed a bill redefining anti-Semitism as a radical anti-free speech measure intended to grant sweeping powers to the federal government to crack down on protests.

Yet, at this critical time, where the pendulum of history swings between progress and the liberation of natives from oblivion through settler colonialism, and their complete annihilation as a people with an identity, we must align ourselves with hope—the voices of university students echoing the cries of Palestinians in Gaza, unafraid to demand full liberation.

As the horrors of an imminent invasion of Rafah loom, so does the awakening of citizens in the Global North from indoctrination and therefore complicity in the horrors of Zionism. Yet, this prompts us to wonder: How long can US institutions ignore the awakening and continue to crack down on its leaders and fabricate lies about them as they have consistently done about Palestinians?

With all eyes on Gaza, how the United States responds to its students fighting for Gaza, and how history unfolds, will determine, at least for this generation, whether there is any hope in justice and humanity, or if it is all in vain.

US institutions, if not for the sake of justice but for their own survival, must embark on a path of self-correction. Otherwise, they will find themselves losing credibility with their population and future generations.

University students must persevere for this reason, and I have faith that they will. Their struggle is not symbolic, nor only for the sake of solidarity, but is one where their righteous fight can bend the arc of history towards justice, progress, and liberation.

With all eyes on Gaza, how the United States responds to its students fighting for Gaza, and how history unfolds, will determine, at least for this generation, whether there is any hope in justice and humanity, or if it is all in vain.

Aya Hijazi is an Egyptian American activist. She holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School as well as degrees in law and Conflict Analysis and Resolution. During the Arab Spring, she returned to Egypt where she established an NGO, Belady--An Island for Humanity. After the coup, police forces raided Belady and arrested Aya; she was imprisoned on fabricated charges for three years and was released after her case received international attention. She is now back in the US where she restarted Belady with a mission to defend human rights and freedom.

Follow her on X @ItsAyaHijazi

Inside a 'peaceful and proud' Gaza protest camp at a UK university

THEY ARE ALL PEACEFUL

Ashitha Nagesh,Community affairs correspondent,@ashnagesh

BBC

BBC/Ashitha NageshFrank has been camped outside Newcastle University since Wednesday

On a quiet morning outside Newcastle University, a small group of students listen to a lecturer talk about the opening song from Aladdin.

Specifically, this line: “It’s barbaric, but hey! It’s home.” She’s telling the group about Edward Said, and how his work looking at the way Middle Eastern cultures had been depicted in the West could be applied even to Disney films.

The talk then turns to how Said's theories could be applied to the portrayal of Palestinians in Western media.

While this scene doesn't sound out of the ordinary, this isn’t your usual university seminar. This lecturer was giving her talk in the middle of an encampment, which university students set up on Wednesday to protest against the war in Gaza.

Here in Newcastle, about 40 students have set up camp on the university’s quadrangle, with tents for sleeping, a makeshift first-aid centre, and tables for all the snacks donated by supporters - including crisps, water, and a Colin the Caterpillar cake.

Students themselves do coursework or exam revision on the grass, or slip off for seminars and lectures, as they would if it were student halls. Several staff members come in to show their support and drop off donations of snacks. All of those I speak to tell me they feel “proud” to see their students taking part.

BBC/Ashitha NageshPeople have been donating snacks and supplies to the protesters

Running along the perimeter are hand-painted signs.

Naomi, who’s asked that we don’t use her full name, shows me a sign that she’d painted the night before.

“It says ‘Tzedek, Tzedek, Tirdof’,” she tells me. “It means ‘justice, justice, shall you seek’.”

Naomi says the sign - written in Hebrew - reflects how her Jewish faith has shaped her view of the conflict in Gaza.

“I was always raised with a very strong sense of justice, because of my Jewish community,” she explains, adding that the sign “encompasses so much of what my Judaism means to me”.

“In many ways, if I hadn’t been Jewish, I wouldn’t feel so firmly in solidarity with Palestine, because of the sense of social justice that my faith gives me.”

Newcastle students are just one of many student bodies across the country to set up similar occupied protests this week.

Similar outdoor camps have been erected on campuses including at Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield, while a camp outside Warwick University has been in place for 10 days. At Goldsmiths, University of London, students have occupied the library, inside the university building.

Earlier this week the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) released a statement saying campus protests in support of Gaza were creating a “hostile and toxic atmosphere for Jewish students”.

Guy Dabby-Joory, from the UJS, told me they knew there were Jewish supporters of the movement, but that they’d heard a lot of concerns from members.

These UK protests have sprung up amid the backdrop of much larger demonstrations and occupations on campuses across the US - most prominently at Columbia University, New York, and at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Those protests have seen more than 2,000 people detained over the past fortnight.

BBC/Ashitha NageshNaomi's sign includes a Hebrew slogan for justice

While the calmness of the Newcastle camp feels a million miles away from those scenes, those who are taking part tell me that their counterparts in the US have seen what they’re doing, and have been in touch.

“We’ve had some people from Columbia message us,” Frank, another student protester, tells me. Frank’s pronouns are they/them, and they asked that we not use their real name. “They just wanted to send us their solidarity - and that is really warming to see.”

They say the group behind the occupation - Newcastle Apartheid Off Campus - had been organising in support of Gaza for several months, and that the occupation was planned before the recent disorder kicked off in the US. But the occupation was partly organised now to say to US students: “You’re not alone.”

Students in the UK share some common goals with their US counterparts - in particular, the call for their universities to sever financial and research ties with Israel, a process known as divestment.

But as well as this, Frank tells me they feel an emotional connection to students in Gaza - who, in better times, are no different to them.

“There are tens of thousands of students in Gaza, and their lives are completely upended. There's no way you can pursue an education when you've got bombs raining down on you,” Frank said.

“We’re sat in a peaceful university, studying, and they don’t have that opportunity.”

More UK students occupy campuses, in Gaza protest

Police fired gun while clearing Columbia University protest

Although it’s quiet now, rallies that are held at 5pm daily attract hundreds of other students. Frank estimates there were around 200 people at the last one.

I ask one of the staff members - Dr Jemima Repo, a reader in political and feminist theory - whether she worries at all about the camp becoming disruptive during exam season.

“No, not at all,” she says. The camp itself, while on the campus and visible, is set apart from walkways and entrances.

“As far as I understand the relationship between campus security and police has been very good,” Dr Repo says, adding that there haven’t been any tensions among staff, either.

BBC/Ashitha NageshDr Mori Ram has family in Israel, near the border with Lebanon

The university, meanwhile, says it “respects the right to peaceful protests and freedom of speech” and that they are “engaging with protesters”.

“Our priority is always to ensure that our campus remains safe for everyone and protests should be within the law - we do not tolerate the use of threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour that causes, or is likely to cause, distress,” it said in a statement this week.

Risk assessors also come by the camp while I’m there to make sure things are still peaceful, and that there aren’t any health and safety issues.

Lecturer Dr Mori Ram also comes to chat to students and show his support. He’s originally from Israel, and has family near the border with Lebanon.

The 7 October attacks by Hamas, and the Israeli bombardment of Gaza in the months since, have deeply affected him.

“To be honest, for the first time, I feel shame. My family is there… everything that happens there, they are exposed,” Dr Ram says.

“I do think that encampments like this, and what's happening right now in the US, may provide the necessary political pressure on the Israeli government to hopefully bring things to an end, in a good way.”

But Dr Mori says he knows he’s “not a representative of the majority of Israelis” with his views on the conflict.

Mr Dabby-Joory, from the UJS, said that "Jewish students, like all student communities, are broad and diverse, and there are a range of views in the Jewish student community".

“But I think many Jewish students are feeling unwelcome, uncomfortable and on edge," he said.

“That doesn’t mean that every student is feeling it, but we know from speaking to so many of our 9,000 students across the country that so many of them are feeling those things while on campus.”

The tensions within the community, and between others from her faith and those from her political groups, have affected Naomi too.

“It’s incredibly isolating,” she tells me.

“One of the slogans that’s often used [by Jewish pro-Palestinian activists] is ‘not in my name’. And I think, well, why should it be in anyone's name.

“It's also been an incredibly isolating experience to see the reaction to pro-Palestinian activism by other Jewish people, personally and in the wider world.

“It's been quite difficult at times to feel that sense of community, which has been such a big part of my upbringing.”

Pro-Palestine Student Protests Spread Despite Repression

MONDAY 29 APRIL 2024,

 BY DAN LA BOTZ


Thousands of students at dozens of campuses across the United States participated in April and continue today to join in pro-Palestine protests leading in some cases to brutal police repression, arrests, and suspensions or expulsions from the university.

The protests began at Columbia University, then spread to other elite private universities such as Yale and Harvard, and the University of Southern California, but soon included state universities such as the University of California campuses at Berkeley and Los Angeles and the University of Michigan, At Columbia, at Emory University in Atlanta, and at the University of Texas at Austin, police in riot gear broke up encampments on the campuses, beat and arrested students. On some campuses, police also arrested professors.

The student movement began as a demonstration of solidarity with the Palestinian people, calling for a “ceasefire now” and for an end to U.S. funding for Israel’s military. Quickly students also demanded that their universities divest from Israeli businesses, especially intelligence and arms makers, and some also called for an end to academic ties to Israeli institutions. Students pitched tents and set up camp in university plazas, engaging in peaceful protests. They didn’t engage in violence, did not damage property, and hardly interrupted university operations at all. Many of the protestors were both Palestinians and Jews, but also a diverse range of others.

College presidents, other university administrators, politicians, and some media characterized the demonstrations as anti-Semitic, claimed they were intimidating and threatening Jewish students, and alleged they were violent. Columbia University president Dr. Nemat Shafik was the first to call in the police, leading to beatings and arrests, outraging the students and many faculty members. Hundreds were arrested on various campuses around the country. While there doubtless some anti-Semitic remarks, they were rare exceptions and the demonstrations were fundamentally anti-Zionist and did not threaten Jewish students.

“Students are here because it has been over 200 days of watching a genocide unfold. Because people are tired of seeing their friends get beaten, arrested, suspended, and expelled for daring to use their voices to end their university’s complicity in the system,” says Cyn, a student at UC Berkeley. “Every year our universities send millions and millions of dollars to companies who manufacture weapons and surveillance equipment used to harass, intimidate, and brutalize Palestinians, and then our universities turn those same tactics on us. Our solidarity goes out to everyone fighting for a free Palestine.”

Mike Johnson, speaker of the House, in a shocking and unprecedented political move, went to Columbia University and spoke, calling the pro-Palestine protestors “a mob” that had threatened Jewish students and “supported terrorists.” He demanded that Columbia University president Shafik either bring the protests under control or resign. Republican Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, called for troops to be sent in to crush the pro-Palestine campus protests.

Other protests calling for an immediate ceasefire and an end to U.S. funding for Israel continue to take place, such as the one I joined, a seder-protest held in front of the Brooklyn home of Senate Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer, which blocked a major thoroughfare and led to 300 arrested.

Despite the repression, students appear to be determined to continue the protests and to force their universities to divest from Israel and to stop their government from aiding the Israeli military. But classes end in May. Where will the movement go? Some plan to go to the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago on August 19–22. Will it be another 1968?

28 April 2024


ATTACHED DOCUMENTS

pro-palestine-student-protests-spread-despite-repression_a8506.pdf (PDF - 904.9 KIB)
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Dan La Botz was a founding member of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU). He is the author of Rank-and-File Rebellion: Teamsters for a Democratic Union (1991). He is also a co-editor of New Politics and editor of Mexican Labor News and Analysis.