Mideast War blowback

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TBH accusing Israel of intentional genocide is the present day Blood Libel.

A man wearing a Palestinian pin was shot in Newton, Massachusetts Thursday evening after he charged across a street and tackled a pro-Israel veteran protester.

In a video shared with The Daily Wire, the man with the pin, sporting a surgical mask around his neck, stood across the street shouting at the group of 10 protesters, calling them “sick” and accusing them of “defending genocide.”

Scott Hayes, 47, of Framingham, Mass., was getting ready to leave when the assailant began yelling at the group, showing his middle finger and shouting at the protesters.

In the next video, the man charges across the street through traffic and tackles Hayes, an Iraq War veteran, who was carrying an American flag during the protest. Seconds later, the gun was discharged and the man was shot in the stomach during their tussle on the ground, another video angle shows.

Hayes then places the gun on the sidewalk behind him as bystanders try to break the two apart. After the altercation, Hayes told bystanders to call 911, and tended to wounds of the man who tackled him, a video shared with The Daily Wire shows.

Hayes is being charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and violation of a constitutional right causing injury, Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan said. Ryan said the veteran had full legal possession of the gun, according to Boston 25 News. The veteran’s fellow protesters say they were not aware he had a gun, but believe he was acting in self defense.

The man shot reportedly suffered life-threatening injuries.

Hayes was with a group of pro-Israel individuals hold American, Israeli, and Pahlavi Iranian flags in various parts of Massachusetts to raise awareness about the hostages and the troubles of the Iranian regime. Newton, a suburb of Boston and considered one of the most Jewish cities in the United States, with Jews comprising between 20-30% of the population, according to Forward.

A man intentionally set himself on fire outside the Four Seasons hotel, directly across from the Israeli consulate and a Chabad house, in Boston on Wednesday, according to local media citing surveillance footage and eyewitnesses.

The incident, which occurred on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks on New York, occurred at approximately 8:15 p.m. local time, according to NBC Boston. A large number of police officers arrived at the scene shortly after.

Before the fire, surveillance footage reportedly revealed a man walking back and forth outside the hotel before catching on fire. Bystanders reportedly then attempted to put out the fire.

Witness Jeferson Zapata told Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra that the man poured gasoline over himself and that he tried to throw water on the man.

Australia's centre-left government on Thursday introduced new hate crime legislation that would impose criminal penalties including jail for offenders if they targeted a person's race, gender, ethnic origin, religion or sexual orientation.

The bill comes as the government responds to a rise in hate incidents following the Israel-Gaza war, and follows landmark laws passed last year which banned the Nazi salute and public displays of terror group symbols.

The bill proposes jail sentences of up to five years for anyone threatening to use force or violence against a group or person, and if a person fears that the threat would be carried out. Offenders could get seven years in jail if the threats pose a danger to the government.

The Labor government said it would also introduce a separate legislation on Thursday to tackle "doxxing", the malicious release of anyone's personal data online, threatening offenders with jail of up to six years.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in February promised to take steps to outlaw doxxing after names, social media accounts and other personal details of hundreds of Jewish Australians were published online by anti-Israel groups.

The anti-doxxing bill would include a provision for victims to sue for "serious privacy invasions" though journalists and intelligence agencies would be given exemptions.

When American universities issued statements about Hamas’s October 7 attacks and the war in Gaza last year, many led to intense blowback, donor revolts and — in some cases — high-profile leaders resigning. No statement, it seemed, was good enough to avoid criticism.

So going forward, many of them won’t say anything at all.

“The practice of issuing statements supports some members of our community while disregarding others, intentionally or otherwise,” Maud Mandel, the president of Williams College and a Jewish Studies scholar, wrote in a letter to campus last week explaining her own decision to remain neutral after Oct. 7 — a decision she has now codified into college policy. “It makes some issues visible while leaving many more unseen.”

She wasn’t the only one to opt out. This week the University of Pennsylvania, Barnard College and the University of Alabama’s campuses were some of the latest schools to announce they would institute a broad policy of “institutional neutrality” on world events that do not directly affect the populations of their universities. Yale University, too, announced it would be exploring whether to adopt a similar policy, convening a committee of seven professors to conduct listening sessions and collect feedback on the question.

These schools join around two dozen others that already have codified some policy of political neutrality, according to the campus free-speech organization FIRE, which supports adopting such policies. Most of them have only been implemented within the past few months. And Jewish leaders, many of whom pushed for strongly-worded university statements in the wake of Oct. 7, are divided on the issue.

In a statement to JTA, Hillel International CEO Adam Lehman called institutional neutrality “a good step forward in returning campuses to their core missions of education, learning and research.”

But, he said, the policy “is not a panacea that solves the problems of harassment, intimidation and discrimination directed at Jewish students.”

The list of schools that adopted a neutrality policy this year includes elite universities such as Harvard, Columbia, Stanford and the University of Southern California, all schools that faced significant unrest over campus responses to Oct. 7. It also includes some large public universities and systems, including Syracuse, and the University of Texas. The University of North Carolina adopted such a policy in July 2023.

After months of sustained criticism and a widely derided appearance before Congress, Gay stepped down from the presidency in January. In May her Jewish replacement, Alan Garber, announced the university would no longer “issue official statements about public matters that do not directly affect the university’s core function.”

Jewish groups alongside Hillel aren’t speaking in a unified voice on institutional neutrality. The Anti-Defamation League, which has factored university statements on Israel into the group’s controversial “report cards” on campus antisemitism, is maintaining its own form of neutrality: It declined to comment when contacted for this article.

But other Jewish activists in the campus space are against institutional neutrality. Speaking to Jewish Insider, Mark Yudof, chair of the pro-Israel Academic Engagement Network and former president of the University of California system, said the idea had “iffyness” when it came to Israel because what happens there does directly affect Jewish members of campus.

“If you’ve had assaults of women, racist misbehavior, if Jewish students can’t cross campus safely, I expect presidents to speak out about that and I don’t want institutional neutrality to say they can’t look out for the best interests of students, faculty and staff,” Yudof said. At least one Jewish college president, Oakland University head Ora Pescovitz, said she opposed neutrality.

Many pro-Palestinian campus voices, meanwhile, are also opposed to institutional neutrality. Some argue that universities have already effectively declared themselves not to be neutral on Israel because of their refusal to divest from it.

“It has enabled college presidents to foreclose public debate, while draping themselves in the mantle of a lofty moral principle,” Anton Ford, a University of Chicago professor who has advocated for his school to divest from Israel, wrote in an op-ed in the Chronicle of Higher Education in May. “In the midst of a national protest movement, nothing could be more convenient.”

Some schools have paired their newfound neutrality with other initiatives that support Jewish students. Days before announcing its own neutrality policy, Penn announced the creation of an Office of Religious and Ethnic Inclusion. It is designed to respond to Title VI complaints such as the ones filed against the university on behalf of Jewish students in recent months, in addition to instances of Islamophobia.

Nearly 2,100 incidents of anti-Israel activism were tallied on U.S. college campuses during the 2023-24 school year, according to a report published by the Anti-Defamation League on Monday.

This was the highest number since the ADL began monitoring such incidents, and more than five times the number registered the previous year.

The figure refers not only to protests, which accounted for the majority of incidents, but also acts of physical assault, vandalism, harassment and divestment resolutions. It includes both "blatant acts of antisemitism" and anti-Israel activity, which the report noted "is not always antisemitic" – though the report does not distinguish between the two.

"Many incidents crossed the line from extreme anti-Israel rhetoric into antisemitism, though others did not," said the report, titled "Anti-Israel Activism on U.S. Campuses: 2023-2024."

The vast majority of incidents took place after the October 7 Hamas massacre and ensuing war in Gaza. The campus protests that swept through the United States were of a scale unseen since the Vietnam War era in the 1960s.

According to the report, the campuses with the highest number of tallied incidents were Columbia (52), University of Michigan (38), Harvard (36), University of California, Berkeley (also 36), University of California, Los Angeles (35), Rutgers University, New Brunswick (33), Stanford (30), Cornell (27), University of Washington (26) and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (25).

The total of 2,087 incidents tallied by the ADL did not include events such as panels, speeches, conferences and petitions, which had been taken into account in previous years. There were far too many to count, the report explained.

In tallying the number of incidents, the ADL said it relied primarily on open-source research methods, such as monitoring information posted online by anti-Israel activists, as well as student newspapers and other media. Any information gleaned from the media or third parties was corroborated, it said.

It is highly likely, therefore, that the actual number of incidents was much higher, the report added.

According to the report, the groups responsible for most of the anti-Israel incidents on campus were Students for Justice in Palestine, Students for a Democratic Society, Young Democratic Socialists of America and Jewish Voice for Peace.

The report also lists some of the funders of these organizations – including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Lannan Foundation and Schwab Charitable, which have donated to Jewish Voice for Peace; and Resist Inc. and the Emergent Fund, which have donated to Students for Justice in Palestine.

About half a dozen universities last year suspended their campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine. Columbia University also suspended Jewish Voice for Peace, which coordinated its activities with SJP.

More than two-thirds of the incidents tallied in the report were demonstrations, rallies and encampments. A total of 1,418 such protests were recorded in 2023-24, compared with only 326 the previous year. They took place on 360 campuses in all but four states and, aside from conventional forms of protest, included walkouts, sit-ins, "die-ins" and the physical occupation of buildings.

According to the report, at least 73 incidents involved the direct targeting of campus chapters of Hillel – the world's largest Jewish campus life organization – and Chabad, the Orthodox outreach organization. Many universities faced demands from anti-Israel protesters that they cut ties with their campus Hillel chapters, the report said, or replace them with non-Zionist Jewish organizations.

The following are other key findings of the 13-page report:

■ Of the 28 incidents of physical assault tallied last year on 20 different campuses, the biggest number were in California. In the previous year, no assaults were registered.

■ Of the 201 incidents of vandalism tallied last year, most involved graffiti, flyers of Israeli hostages being damaged or torn down, and offensive stickers being placed on campus property. In the previous year, nine such incidents were registered.

Of the 360 harassment incidents, most involved verbal remarks, online comments, and offensive flyers and signs. In the previous year, 24 such incidents were registered.

■ At least 80 boycott, divestment and sanctions resolutions were considered by student organizations and faculty/staff unions. That compared with only three the previous year. Students also led boycott campaigns against Starbucks and McDonald's for their perceived support of Israel.

Professor Russell Rickford returned to teaching at Cornell University after a brief “voluntary leave” following his public celebration of Hamas’s October 7 attacks on southern Israel, which he described as “Exhilarating,” the New York Post reported on Sunday.

“It was exhilarating, it was energizing ….I was exhilarated,” Rickford said in October, later apologizing for his statements.

Rickford made his initial comments during an Oct. 15 pro-Palestinian rally on the Ithaca, New York, campus. Standing in front of banners arguing that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, he announced, “Hamas has challenged the monopoly of violence” and “shifted the balance of power.”

Claiming that even “Palestinians of conscience” were “able to breathe for the first time in years,” Rickford continued, “And if they weren’t exhilarated by this challenge to the monopoly of violence, by this shifting of the balance of power, then they would not be human. I was exhilarated.”

Rickford later retracted his comments in a statement published in the campus newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun.

“I apologize for the horrible choice of words that I used in a portion of a speech that was intended to stress grassroots African American, Jewish, and Palestinian traditions of resistance to oppression,” he wrote. “I recognize that some of the language I used was reprehensible and did not reflect my values.”

Rickford's place at Cornell
The professor will be teaching African Americans Vision of America and Socialism in America and a seminar this upcoming semester.

Cornell confirmed to the New York Post that it had not disciplined Rickford. Cornell VP of University Relations Joel Malina claimed that while Rickford’s comments were “reprehensible,” they were protected by his rights to free speech.

“Given that Professor Rickford’s comments were made as a private citizen in his free time, the university’s academic leadership has concluded that Professor Rickford’s conduct in relation to this incident did not meet that high bar” to warrant otherwise, Malina said in his e-mail.

A pro-Palestinian activist who police said wore a kaffiyeh at a protest in Cedarhurst on Sunday in violation of Nassau's face mask ban became the first person apparently arrested at a political protest and charged under the month-old ordinance.

Sunday's arrest came after police officers at the rally asked the activist if he was wearing the kaffiyeh — for many, a symbol of support for the Palestinian people — for medical or religious purposes, said Nassau County Police Department spokesman Scott Skrynecki.

When the man said he was wearing the kaffiyeh for neither purpose, Skrynecki said, officers took him into custody. Newsday is not naming the man because he was charged with a misdemeanor.

In late August, a Hicksville man who was allegedly wearing a mask and carrying a 14-inch knife when Nassau police officers stopped in Levittown while investigating a report of a suspicious male, faced weapons and other charges, including for violating the ban.

Nassau's Mask Transparency Act, backed by County Executive Bruce Blakeman and approved in August by the legislature, made it a misdemeanor for people to cover their faces in public, with exceptions for religious, medical and cultural purposes. The measure has been condemned as unconstitutional by civil rights groups, disability rights advocates, public health experts and religious leaders.

Rachel Hu, a spokeswoman for the ANSWER Coalition, one of the groups that organized Sunday’s protest, said the arrest was an attempt to silence critics of United States support for Israel and Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.

"This arrest was politically motivated," Hu told Newsday. "I definitely believe he was arrested and targeted for his political beliefs."

Blakeman and Nassau Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder were present at Sunday’s protest, Hu said in a news release, "overseeing this blatant infringement of our rights."

Chris Boyle, a spokesman for Blakeman, declined to comment when asked whether the county executive and Ryder were present, or about anything else related to the arrest.

Outside Nassau County headquarters in Mineola on Tuesday evening, Hu was joined by about a dozen people demanding the charges be dropped against the protester and for the mask ban to be rescinded.

Kiana Abbady, a board chair with the Long Island Progressive Coalition, said the ban serves no purpose but to be used as a tool to harass people and is unconstitutional.

"Banning a mask is not going to stop a hate crime or stop someone who has hate in their heart," she said. "You can't determine if someone is wearing a mask to commit a crime."

Rabbi Dovid Feldman, of Neturei Karta International, said he attended the rally Sunday. He said the arrest was a bad experience, adding that silencing anyone's voice is un-American.

The demonstration at Young Israel of Lawrence-Cedarhurst on Sunday included about 100 protesters. It was held to voice opposition to the sale of occupied Palestinian land, Hu said.

Hu earlier Tuesday shared video that showed the activist cooperating with arresting officers, leading a chant of "free, free Palestine" as he was handcuffed and led away.

He was detained for about three hours Sunday and released with an appearance ticket.

Violations of the Mask Transparency Act are punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Fred Klein, a professor at Hofstra University’s law school and a former Nassau County prosecutor, said he believes the law is unconstitutional.

"You have a First Amendment right to protest, to share your views in public, and you have a right to be anonymous," Klein said

Anti-Zionism Sweeping Across Jewish Communities

CUNY’s Baruch College tried to block a campus celebration of Rosh Hashanah over safety concerns — and only reversed course after it was put on blast for kowtowing to anti-Israel agitators instead of protecting its Jewish students.

Jewish students at the public college in Manhattan were told by school officials not to hold the Sept. 26 event celebrating the Jewish New Year because Baruch could not “guarantee their security,” Baruch College English professor and Hillel director Ilya Brayman told The Post.

“We were told by the administration that the campus can’t guarantee the safety of Jewish students because of other agitators who want to hurt, intimidate or harass them,” Brayman seethed.

CUNY officials only “changed their mind” after New York Rep. Ritchie Torres joined Baruch trustees and Jewish students and faculty to push back.

In a scathing letter sent Tuesday to CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez, Gov. Kathy Hochul, Mayor Eric Adams and Interim NYPD Commissioner Tom Donlon, Rep. Torres blasted the “under-policing” of antisemitism on campus.

Imagine, for a moment, if the KKK were harassing black students on or near CUNY’s campus. Or if the congregants of the Westboro Baptist Church were harassing LGBTQ students. Or if white nationalists, acting on the Great Replacement Theory, were harassing immigrants?,” he continued.

“Does anyone think the response from the NY political and academic establishment would be anything other than overwhelming outrage?”

Baruch College on Tuesday denied that it tried to block the celebration.

“Baruch College did not request that students or faculty cancel Rosh Hashanah celebrations and any reports suggesting otherwise are entirely false,” the college said in a statement.

“A Rosh Hashanah Festival will continue as planned on the nearby public plaza on September 26. Baruch College does not tolerate antisemitism or any act of hate and is dedicated to providing a learning environment that is safe and fosters respect and inclusion for every member of the community.”

Rosh Hashanah is celebrated from Oct. 2-4.

Israel is at the heart of Hillel’s work. Our goal is to inspire every Jewish college student to develop a meaningful and enduring relationship to Israel and to Israelis.

To put this into context: Why does SJP protest Hillel events, in the first place? Probably because, as Hillel's own website puts it:


In short, it would appear that Hillel's primary goal (the very "heart" of its work) is Zionist indoctrination of Jewish college students outside of Israel. For more details on how they accomplish that goal, see the links on that very page.

Unfortunately, Hillel is also "the" Jewish student club on many campuses, a fact which makes protests against Hillel events come across as anti-Jewish bigotry. Hopefully anti-Zionist Jews will be able to create not just political activist groups that protest Hillel events, but also alternative Jewish student clubs that serve the same social needs as Hillel.

Middle school students were forced to take part in a protest in Toronto earlier this week, where teachers allegedly instructed them to wear blue shirts to identify themselves as “settlers” and “colonizers,” Canadian media and government officials reported on Friday.

Parents had been told the 7th and 8th-grade students were at the protest to “observe,” but videos and witnesses who spoke to the Toronto Sun revealed that the students were encouraged to take an active role.

'You'll get over it'
While the protest had been in support of the Grassy Narrows First Nation and the ongoing water crisis, anti-Israel chants reportedly quickly took over.

One Jewish student expressed their discomfort to their teacher about the anti-Israel chants, the student’s cousin told the Sun. The teacher allegedly responded, “You’ll get over it.”

It is very frustrating that elements of the anti-Israel mob are using their positions as educators to drive this agenda on impressionable children who know nothing about this conflict in the Middle East,” Toronto City Councillor James Pasternak told the [/i]Sun[/i]. “Our education system must nurture young minds in a positive way and not teach them to demonize those they don’t agree with.”

An Indian student who recently migrated to Canada also reportedly asked the teacher to stop referring to him as a “colonizer.”

Officials condemn the incident
Ontario Education Minister Jill Dunlop said she felt “deeply disappointed.”

Canadian MP Kevin Vuong called for the teachers, who “lied about the purpose of the field trip” and “what students would do,” to be held accountable for misleading parents.

The Toronto District School Board has apologized to families after middle-school students attending a downtown field trip ended up in a rally where pro-Palestinian slogans were heard.

Parents had been told that their children would attend the Grassy Narrows River Run rally and march to Queen’s Park from Grange Park on Wednesday. The community event was organized in support of the Grassy Narrows First Nation, and students were expected to learn about the impact of mercury contamination in that community. Schools were aware the event would likely have a political component but assured parents in a letter that students would not be participating in a planned rally.

The event took a different turn.

“Students as young as 11 were seen marching with their teachers and protesters while chanting, ‘From Turtle Island to Palestine, Occupation is a Crime,’” according to a statement issued by the Jewish Educators and Families Association of Canada (JEFA).

The TDSB issued a note of apology on Thursday, acknowledging that “some students may have been negatively impacted by what they saw and heard.”

“This excursion was organized as an educational experience for students to hear from Indigenous voices about the ongoing challenges faced by the people of Grassy Narrows,” the TDSB stated.

“The TDSB was not aware that students would engage with any issues outside of the main focus of the River Run and we apologize for the harm that some students may have experienced as a result,” the statement said, adding “we are supporting impacted students and their families.”

The board said it’s reviewing its field trip procedures to provide guidance to uphold the well-being and safety of students.

“In general, students should not be participating in organized protests as part of a field trip, and this clarification will be shared with the system,” the TDSB stated in a letter.

Palestinian-American member of US Congress Rashida Tlaib condemned a cartoon published in a conservative magazine that depicted her next to an exploding pager, implying an association with Hezbollah.

The cartoon by Henry Payne, published Thursday in the National Review, referred to a wave of exploding communication devices this week in Lebanon.

“Our community is already in so much pain right now,” Tlaib, a Democratic representative from the state of Michigan, wrote on X.

She added: “This racism will incite more hate + violence against our Arab & Muslim communities, and it makes everyone less safe. It’s disgraceful that the media continues to normalize this racism.”

In the cartoon, a woman identified as Rep. Tlaib is seen sitting at a desk next to an exploding electronic device while a speech bubble reads “Odd. My pager just exploded.”

The cartoon also sparked condemnations from several Democratic lawmakers.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, “The way Islamophobia and anti-Arab hatred is so deeply normalized and accepted in our politics is horrifying.”

“It rarely receives the equal condemnation it deserves. It is inexcusable and a massive double standard,” she adds.

Rep. Elissa Slotkin, who is running for Senate in Michigan, said the “cartoon is way over the line.”

“It’s Islamaphobic and downright dangerous. Anyone publishing this should retract it and apologize for spreading hate,” she tweeted.

An authors’ panel at an Albany book festival Saturday has been canceled after organizers said two panelists refused to share a stage with the “Zionist” moderator.

Elisa Albert, who is Jewish, was set to moderate a panel at the Albany Book Festival on Saturday called “Girls, Coming of Age.” But on Thursday, she received an email from a festival organizer informing her that the event had been canceled: Two of the three panelists — authors Lisa Ko and Aisha Abdel Gawad — objected to sitting on the panel with Albert because they did not want to appear with a “Zionist.” The third panelist was to be Emily Layden.

Albert said the cancellation is of a piece with her experiences since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7.

Unfortunately, I’m not surprised,” Albert told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday. “I’ve been really vocal from the get-go, and I’ve lost many friends. I’ve seen my whole professional life wildly altered. I’m not surprised at all. I’ve seen all kinds of people behaving in all kinds of ways that are on the spectrum of this exact same kind of bigotry, complicity, fear — all of it.”

Albert, who lives in Albany, first learned about the panelists’ objections on Thursday afternoon, when she got an email from Mark Koplik, the assistant director of the New York State Writers Institute, which is organizing the festival.

“We have a crazy situation developing and we’d love to talk on the phone,” Koplik wrote in a message that JTA obtained.

“Basically, not to sugar coat this, Aisha Gawad and Lisa Ko don’t want to be on a panel with a ‘Zionist,’” he added. “We’re taken by surprise, and somewhat nonplussed, and want to talk this out.”

By Thursday evening, Albert had been notified by Paul Grondahl, director of the Writers Institute, that the event had been canceled.

“We regret this situation, which was out of our control,” Grondahl wrote in an email obtained by JTA. “It is unfortunate for everyone involved.”

The cancellation of the panel is the latest in a long series of literary events to be upended or nixed because of disputes over the Israel-Hamas war and Zionism. Activists have sought to hinder the careers of authors they deem “Zionist,” many of whom have Jewish heritage.

Some of those facing the criticism have not expressed public support for Israel. Gabrielle Zevin, who wrote the bestseller “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,” for example, has faced calls for cancellation despite saying nothing publicly about Israel or the war.

Albert, on the other hand, has been an outspoken advocate for Israel since the outbreak of the war nearly a year ago. On Instagram, she has posted aggressively and frequently in support of Israel and against Hamas and those she perceives as supporting it, including pro-Palestinian protesters in the United States, whom she has called “terror apologists.”

On Friday afternoon, following the cancelation, she appeared to embrace the cancellation, posting an image of her latest book — “The Snarling Girl,” a collection of personal essays published last month — with the text, “Now’s as good a time as ever to promote Zio lit!” She later added a selfie with the text “Friendly local Zio b***h” over it.

Albert told JTA she hoped that the festival organizers would put out a statement about the incident and was frustrated that they had not. She said she had proposed an alternative to the scheduled panel in which she would appear alone, without her co-panelists, to discuss their objections to her with whoever was in the audience. But the festival declined.

“They said, ‘No, that’s not fair. People will be affronted. It’s a panel about girls coming of age. Nobody came to talk about antisemitism or the conflict in the Middle East,’” Albert recounted.