Mideast War blowback

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A Jewish man in Miami Beach was arrested Sunday and charged with two counts of attempted murder, a day after opening fire at a car in which he said he saw “two Palestinians” inside.

However, police said that the victims were actually two Jewish Israelis visiting the US. The victims, Ari Rabey and his father, initially thought they were being targeted in an antisemitic attack..

Mordechai Brafman, 27, was arrested and charged with two counts of attempted murder after he shot at the car 17 times with a semiautomatic handgun on Saturday.

Police said there was no altercation between Brafman and the two victims before the shooting, which they described as unprovoked, reports said.

According to the arrest sheet, Brafman said that while he was driving his truck, “he saw two Palestinians and shot and killed both.”

Neither victim was killed. One was hit in the left shoulder, while the other was grazed by a bullet.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations called for Brafman to be charged with a hate crime, which would increase the severity of his offenses.

Brafman, who is married, gave his occupation as plumber, reports said.

A year ago he was interviewed by local media after vandalism to a bagel store on Miami Beach that had displayed an Israeli flag, Hebrew media reported. At the time Brafman called for more unity and less conflict between people.

Ari Rabey, who was hit in the shoulder, later posted to his Facebook page about the shooting.

“Dear Jews,” he began and then explained that he was in Miami with his father.

“They tried to kill us for nationalistic reasons,” he wrote.

Rabey went on to explain that his father had been wearing a yarmulke on his head when they were driving in the car at the time of the shooting.

Surveillance video posted to social media showed the Rabeys seeking help from a building they drove to. One of the men can be seen with blood on his shoulder.

The two men later spoke to the local ABC 10 News station with Ari talking in Hebrew which was translated by his cousin.

Ari said that Brafman pulled up alongside their car, rolled down his window, and opened fire. Even as they tried to drive away, Brafman kept firing, bullets hitting the back of their car with one round grazing his father’s ear as he drove the vehicle.

Ari at first thought his father had been shot in the head, he recalled.

“God gave me my life as a gift,” he said. He was treated at the hospital and later released.

Anti-Israel protest groups staged a rally in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn on Tuesday night, berating the residents as “settlers” and “Zionists” and sparking fights with pro-Israel counterprotesters.

The protest, led by the Pal-Awda activist group, took place in Boro Park, an area with a large Orthodox population.

Around 200 anti-Israel protesters gathered on a street in the neighborhood within a barricaded area set up by police. A crowd of Jewish neighborhood residents and other pro-Israel counterprotesters demonstrated on the sidewalk across the street. Dozens of police officers separated the two sides. The protest began just after sundown and the temperature was below freezing.

The anti-Israel protesters chanted, “settlers settlers go back home, Palestine is ours alone,” “Zionists go to hell,” and “We don’t want no Zionists here.” Most wore masks or keffiyehs to cover their faces.

“How many kids did you kill today?” they shouted, to the beat of a snare drum. Some of the protesters held up their hands in an inverted triangle, a Hamas symbol, toward Jewish counterprotesters.

Others shouted insults, including at children. One man called neighborhood residents “filthy Zionist as*holes,” and a woman shouted at a pair of young girls watching from a crosswalk, saying, “you’re so gross. You’re disgusting.” Children on their way home from neighborhood yeshivas peered out their bus windows at the scene.

The anti-Israel organizers said they were protesting against an Israeli real estate event in the area, accusing organizers of marketing land in the West Bank.

“Flood Boro Park to stop the sale of stolen Palestinian land,” organizers said in a social media post announcing the event. Anti-Israel groups in New York often refer to their events as “floods,” an homage to the Hamas term for the October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel, the “Al-Aqsa Flood.”

On the Jewish side, dozens of adults and children from the neighborhood and other counterprotesters lined a police barricade across the street. Some were actively protesting, while others were curious passersby who stopped to take photos on their phones. Several held Israeli flags and shouted at the anti-Israel crowd. One woman held up the yellow flag of the far-right Jewish Defense League.

Brooklyn doesn’t want you,” one man shouted. “Get out of our neighborhood. We don’t want you here.”

“Nazis go home,” a group chanted. Others called the protesters “terrorists.”

Several participants danced and sang along to a song in Hebrew played through a cellphone held up to a megaphone.

“Who believes is not afraid,” the song said.

Several fights broke out. A couple of anti-Israel activists who walked into the Jewish side were shouted at and pushed out. Some participants traded blows on the sidelines of the rally. As the protest wound down, the two opposing groups walked down opposite sides of the street, with some crossing back and forth, leading to further scuffles. The police struggled to keep participants separated, and on the sidewalks, away from traffic.

“Were you guys like this on October 7? Stay in Palestine and there’ll be more October 7s,” a woman shouted across the street.

“We were dragging your soldiers on October 7,” she said.

As the anti-Israel group headed toward a subway station, NYPD Deputy Chief Richie Taylor, the highest-ranking Orthodox Jewish police officer in the city, urged neighborhood residents to not follow them any longer.

“There’s no reason for it. They’re leaving,” he told a crowd of young men.

So allegedly both the victims and the perpetrator agree, this is all the fault of Arabs, not the guy who did it and his hateful ideology.

I could tell the passengers were not American. If two random guys just drove up to me and started shooting I would assume they were fired from work or dumped by their girlfriends and were on their way to a mass shooting but just could not wait.

I'm deeply grateful that such a scenario would seem completely alien to me to the point I wouldn't have any assumptions on my mind as it unfolds. Is this what they mean when they speak of American exceptionalism?

A Palestinian American woman whose 6-year-old son was fatally stabbed in an attack that prosecutors say was motivated by hate for Muslims described Tuesday how her son watched in fear as their landlord stabbed her more than a dozen times before he turned the knife on the young boy.

Hanan Shaheen was the first witness to take the stand in the trial of Joseph Czuba, 73, who is charged in the fatal stabbing of Wadee Alfayoumi and the wounding of Shaheen on Oct. 14, 2023. Authorities said they were targeted because of their Islamic faith and as a response to the war between Israel and Hamas that erupted on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked southern Israel.

Shaheen testified she and her son had been renting two rooms for $300 a month from Czuba and his wife at the residence in Plainfield Township, a suburb about 40 miles southwest of downtown Chicago. Shaheen said they had lived there for about two years and had not previously had any issues with the Czubas, who shared a kitchen and a living room with them.

Shaheen testified that she had told the Czubas she was Muslim and from Jerusalem when she met with them before she rented the space.

After the war started, she said, Czuba told her she needed to leave because he wanted to rent the room to a friend. She said she told him she was looking for a new place to live, and Czuba told her Muslims were not welcome in his home.

“I told him to pray for peace,” she testified.

On the day of the attack, she said, Czuba was angry that she was still there.

Shaheen, 33, recounted in graphic detail how Czuba forced his way into her room, held her down and stabbed her more than a dozen times. At one point, she said, Czuba put his fingers in her mouth and tried to break her teeth. As she struggled to fight him off, Shaheen said, she pulled Czuba’s white hair, while he shouted: “You must die!”

Shaheen said Wadee stood in the corner of a room and watched fearfully as Czuba stabbed her. She testified that Czuba yelled, “Wadee, I will take care of you. I will raise you,” and “don’t tell people I killed your mom” as he stabbed her.

She said she remembered thinking: “It’s the moment, it’s the day I am dying.”

She said that she was eventually able to break free and that while she was unable to see clearly, she ran to a bathroom to retrieve her phone to call 911. She said Czuba followed her with his knife and tried to gain access to the bathroom, so she locked herself inside.

Shaheen repeatedly told the dispatcher, “He is killing my baby,” according to a recording of the call that was played in court.

Shaheen testified that while she was on the phone with a dispatcher, she could hear Wadee shouting, “Oh no, stop!”

Shaheen kept her head down the entire time the recording of the 911 call was played at the Will County Courthouse in Joliet. She testified that she did not leave the bathroom until police were outside the door.

Wadee, a kindergartner, was stabbed 26 times. He was pronounced dead at a hospital. He had just celebrated his birthday. Jurors were shown graphic images of Shaheen’s wounds that were taken at the hospital.

Some evidence from police body cameras was so graphic that a judge said only jurors would see it. At least one juror appeared to be holding back tears when an officer testified she found Wadee’s body and was unable to find a pulse as he lay on the bed.

Prosecutors have said Czuba had been listening to conservative radio coverage of the Middle East war in the days before the attacks.

“This happened because this defendant was afraid that a war that had started on Oct. 7, 2023, a half a world away in the Middle East, was going to come to his doorstep,” Michael Fitzgerald, a Will County assistant state’s attorney, told jurors in his opening statement. “This happened because Hanan and Wadee were Muslim.”

“If it wasn’t enough that this defendant killed that little boy, he left the knife in the little boy’s body,” Fitzgerald also told jurors. He said they would hear a conversation between Czuba and a Will County sheriff’s sergeant in which Czuba compared Wadee and Shaheen to “infested rats".

Czuba, who was dressed in a suit and tie in court, is charged with murder, attempted murder, aggravated battery and two counts of a hate crime. Wadee’s father, Odai Alfayoumi, who did not live at the home, attended the court proceedings Tuesday.

Kylie Blatti, an attorney for Czuba, said in her opening statement that “there are holes in the state’s case.” She asked jurors to carefully examine the evidence.

Shaheen mostly testified in English, but under cross-examination by one of Czuba’s attorneys, George Lenard, she sometimes turned to an Arabic translator for clarification. While the jury and Shaheen were outside the courtroom, Lenard accused her of “embellishing” her testimony and suggested she had impeached herself.

Prosecutors in turn said Lenard was trying to use the language barrier to confuse Shaheen and ask her about word-for-word statements.

Lenard questioned her about what she told police after the stabbings, as well as about whether she had filed a civil lawsuit seeking monetary damages, all in an apparent attempt to discredit her. Lenard asked her whether she had hired civil rights attorney Ben Crump and whether she had met with former President Joe Biden after her son’s killing, which drew objections from the prosecution that Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak sustained.

The trial is expected to last about a week.

Thousands of people gathered in Buenos Aires on Monday to honor the memory of Shiri, Kfir and Ariel Bibas, along with the other victims of the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023, and to call for the release of all remaining hostages being held by the terror group in Gaza.

An estimated 15,000 people attended the demonstration, waving Israeli flags and orange handkerchiefs — an homage to the red-headed Bibas children — in an event marked by emotion, sadness and remembrance.

The Bibas family, which held mixed Argentine, Israeli and German citizenship, became a symbol of the struggle to return the hostages from the Strip. At 4 years old and 9 months old, respectively, Ariel and Kfir Bibas were the youngest captives to remain in Gaza. Their bodies, along with that of their mother Shiri, who was 32 at the time of her kidnapping, were returned to Israel last week, laying to rest the last hopes that they might come home alive.

The event was organized by the AMIA Jewish Community Center; the DAIA, which is the umbrella organization of Argentina’s Jewish community; the Argentine Zionist Organization; and the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

The demonstration began with a candle-lighting ceremony by Argentine relatives of hostages and victims of the Hamas atrocities marked by emotion. As they embraced each other, one cried out, pleading for the well-being of their loved one. Even without the aid of a microphone, the anguished cry pierced the crowd.

“The way Ariel and Kfir’s bodies were returned and what they have done with Shiri’s remains are among the most macabre actions of evil in the world. Nazism was the evil of the last century, and radical Islam is the evil of this century […] From here, together, we demand the freedom of all hostages — the living to be reunited with their families, the dead to be laid to rest,” Sela said.

As the event neared its conclusion, the crowd raised their handkerchiefs, covering the street in orange. The brilliant orange sunset blanketing the sky seemed to echo their anti-terror message as they commemorated the murdered victims and desperately pleaded for the immediate release of all the hostages.

A Pro-Palestinian protest unfolded at Barnard College in New York City on Wednesday, where a small group “forcibly entered” a campus hall and allegedly physically assaulted a school employee, college officials said.

A sit-in demonstration was organized Wednesday at Barnard's Office of the Deans to protest the expulsion of two Barnard students last week for allegedly “disrupting” a Columbia University class on Israeli history a month earlier, according to protest group Columbia University Apartheid Divest. Barnard College is an independent women’s college affiliated with Columbia in which students can take courses at both schools.

During the protest, a small group of masked demonstrators “forcibly entered Milbank Hall” and “physically assaulted a Barnard employee, sending them to the hospital,” Robin Levine, Barnard College’s Vice President for Strategic Communications, said in a statement Wednesday evening.

The New York City Police Department said it responded to the vicinity of West 120 Street and Broadway around 4 p.m. Wednesday and found a 41-year-old man who said he was “shoved by numerous individuals and complained of pain about the body.” He was taken to Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital in stable condition. Police said no arrests were made.

“They encouraged others to enter campus without identification, showing blatant disregard for the safety of our community,” Levine said. “Violence and intimidation have no place here.”

However, the group Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine had posted on X: “We do not need outside support for the sit-in.” Instead, anyone who wanted to support was asked to head to a rally in Bay Ridge instead.

Levine said protesters had until 9:30 p.m. to leave the building or else the college would "be forced to consider additional, necessary measures to protect our campus.”

Barnard President Laura Rosenbury said in a statement later Wednesday night that the protesters had vacated Milbank Hall.

“Tonight, a small group of masked protesters attempted to undermine Barnard’s core values of respect, inclusion, and academic excellence," Rosenbury said. “Thanks to the efforts of our staff and faculty, the protesters have now left Milbank Hall without further incident. But let us be clear: their disregard for the safety of our community remains completely unacceptable.”

Student group Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine shared videos on X of the protest's progress.

One video showed participants wearing keffiyehs, a traditional Arab headdress and symbol of Palestinian nationalism, and masks covering their mouths chanting and clapping to the beat of a drum while sitting in the hall of a building. Another video shared at 5 p.m. Wednesday showed a protest organizer updating participants on conversations with school leaders

The Columbia Spectator reported that the group gathered outside Barnard Dean Leslie Grinage’s office in Milbank Hall, where they remained for over six hours.

The protest disrupted classes in Milbank, according to the student paper. Barnard told faculty members with classes there after 5 p.m. Wednesday to either relocate or cancel.

Later in the evening, the student protest group posted on X that Barnard protesters had dispersed “after successfully forcing administrators to the negotiating table” in a meeting set for 1 p.m. Thursday.

Nearly 100 students from both Barnard and Columbia participated in the initial sit-in protest at the Office of the Deans, Columbia University Apartheid Divest said in a news release.

They were demanding that last week's two expulsions be reversed, amnesty for students disciplined for pro-Palestine views, and a public meeting with Barnard Dean Leslie Grinage and President Laura Rosenbury.

The group said Barnard had already suspended over 50 students for pro-Palestinian protest. The expulsions last Friday marked the first at either Columbia or Barnard for pro-Palestinian protest, and the first expulsions for protest on the campus since 1968.

An Illinois man was found guilty Friday in the fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy and the wounding of his mother, an attack that prosecutors said was motivated by anti-Muslim hate and just days after Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023.

Joseph Czuba was convicted of first-degree murder, attempted murder, aggravated battery and hate crimes in the Oct. 14, 2023, killing of Wadee Alfayoumi, who was stabbed 26 times, and in the wounding of his mother, Hanan Shaheen, who was stabbed more than a dozen times in suburban Chicago.

The jury deliberated for just over an hour.

The mother and son rented two rooms from Czuba and his then-wife in Plainfield Township, about 40 miles southwest of downtown Chicago, where the attack took place.

Shaheen, 33, testified that Czuba, 73, turned on her shortly after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. She said he and his then-wife were aware that she is Muslim and of Palestinian descent before they agreed to rent the rooms to her, and that she didn’t previously have any issues in the two years she rented from them. She was the prosecution’s first witness.

Shaheen and Czuba’s ex-wife, Mary Connor, who also testified for the prosecution, said that in the week leading up to the stabbings, Czuba was outraged about the war between Israel and Hamas. Shaheen said he began speaking hatefully about Muslims. Shaheen testified that Czuba told her “your people” are killing Jewish people and babies in Israel, that Muslims were not welcome in his home and that she needed to move out.

“I told him, ‘Pray for peace,’” Shaheen testified.

Days later, Shaheen said, Czuba forced his way into her room, held her down, stabbed her with a knife and tried to break her teeth, as her son, Wadee, watched in fear. At one point, she said, she was able to get ahold of the knife and stab Czuba with it before he seized it from her.

She said that when she went into a bathroom to call 911, Czuba moved on to Wadee, who had just celebrated his birthday. She said she could hear him shouting, “Oh no, stop!”

A knife with a 7-inch blade, which prosecutors held up to show jurors multiple times during closing arguments, was still lodged in Wadee's body when first responders arrived and was later removed. Shaheen was hospitalized and received 19 stitches on her face, as well as staples on the back of her head.

Czuba, who did not testify at his trial, will be sentenced May 2.

In court documents, prosecutors said he became obsessed with the war in the Middle East.

“This happened because this defendant was afraid that a war that had started on Oct. 7, 2023, a half a world away in the Middle East, was going to come to his doorstep,” prosecutor Michael Fitzgerald, a Will County assistant state’s attorney, told jurors in his opening statement. “This happened because Hanan and Wadee were Muslim.”

Connor, 64, testified that he had become paranoid about his personal safety and believed that their lives might be in danger because of Shaheen. She said that they both had a good relationship with Shaheen, whom she said she considered a friend and good tenant. Czuba tried to make the home enjoyable and would sometimes bring home toys for Wadee, she said. Days after the war, she said, Czuba became withdrawn and told her that he wanted Shaheen to move out of their home.

“Hanan needs to move because her friends could come and do us harm,” Connor testified Czuba had told her.

But Connor, who was married to Czuba for 30 years, said she disagreed. She believed they should adhere to the terms of Shaheen’s lease, and give her 30 days notice to move, and told Czuba that Shaheen had never had a guest in the home.

“I was angry,” Connor testified. “In my mind, there was no reason for her to move.”

She said Czuba also talked of an upcoming “day of jihad” and withdrew $1,000 from his bank account because of fears the U.S. banking system would fail.

Prosecutors played for jurors a conversation between Czuba and a Will County sheriff’s sergeant, in which Czuba compared Wadee and Shaheen to “infested rats.”

“What do you do when you have an infested rat situation? You exterminate them. And that’s what he did that day,” prosecutor Chris Koch said in his closing argument Friday. “That was his thought process.”

In his closing argument, George Lenard, one of Czuba’s attorneys, invoked O.J. Simpson’s trial attorney Johnnie Cochran, telling jurors that there had been a rush to judgment in Czuba’s case.

Lenard also questioned why Shaheen retreated to the bathroom, evidence from the scene, the location of some of her wounds and appeared to suggest she had a financial interest in the case, something he tried to question her about under cross examination. Shaheen filed a wrongful death suit against Czuba and his ex-wife that is still pending.

“You know this is a half-baked case that the prosecution is giving you,” he said.

He urged the jurors to “have the courage” to find Czuba not guilty.

Prosecutor Christine Vukmir rebutted his argument, calling the suggestion that Shaheen stabbed Wadee and then framed Czuba as “outlandish.”

“That is the plot that he is presenting to you,” she told jurors. “It is ridiculous.”

Czuba was found on the ground outside when deputies arrived at the house.

Jurors heard from police officers, firefighters and other first responders, as well as from a physician assistant who treated Shaheen at a hospital. They also heard Shaheen’s 911 call to police, in which Wadee’s cries could also be heard and she repeatedly told the dispatcher, “He is killing my baby.”

One of the Will County sheriff’s deputies who found Wadee’s body cried on the stand as jurors watched footage from her body-worn camera. Some of the footage and images were so graphic during the trial, that Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak granted a defense request that the courtroom television monitor be turned away from the gallery, where members of Wadee’s family sat during the trial, so that only the jurors could see it.

Wadee’s father, Odai Alfayoumi, said outside the Will County Courthouse in Joliet that he felt "like this decision came a little too late."

Hunter College was ordered to remove two job postings for Palestinian studies positions by the Democratic governor of New York in the latest targeting of academic freedom in the state.

Hunter College - which makes up one of City University of New York's (Cuny) 25 campuses - advertised it was seeking both humanities and social sciences faculty to take “a critical lens to issues pertaining to Palestine including but not limited to: settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid, migration, climate and infrastructure devastation, health, race, gender and sexuality”.

The roles were announced Monday afternoon after they were posted on Cuny’s website, but the posts were removed by mid-week.

In a Bluesky post announcing the roles, sociology professor Heba Gowayed said on Monday, “I am so pleased to announce a Palestinian Studies cluster hire. This is an incredible source of pride for me as a faculty member and one of the many reasons that I feel so lucky to work here.”

She also said she felt like “the luckiest person in academia…Proud of Hunter administration for being a voice for justice in the face of so much horror.”

By the next day, on Tuesday, Governor Kathy Hochul had taken action to order the postings be removed “to ensure that antisemitic theories are not promoted in the classroom”, according to a statement that The New York Post said her office had issued.

The very same day, Cuny chancellor Felix Rodríguez and board of trustees chairperson William C Thompson Jr capitulated and announced they agreed with Hochul’s decision to remove the postings, and the university would continue to “tackle antisemitism”.

In a joint statement, they said: “We find this language divisive, polarizing and inappropriate and strongly agree with Governor Hochul’s direction to remove this posting, which we have ensured Hunter College has since done. CUNY will continue working with the Governor and other stakeholders to tackle antisemitism on our campuses and combat hate in all of its forms.”

By Wednesday, the postings had been taken down. The same day, Gowayed said she was “feeling grief at the dehumanization inherent to all this”.

The Professional Staff Congress, a labour union representing 30,000 faculty and staff at Cuny, hit back at the removal of the postings, calling it “a violation of academic freedom” at Hunter College, in a letter to Hochul and Rodriguez.

American Jews are significantly less supportive of US President Donald Trump’s proposal to relocate Gazans, according to a new survey by the Jewish People Policy Institute published Thursday.

The survey titled “Jewish American Views on US Involvement in Gaza” was part of the JPPI’s monthly Voice of the Jewish People survey through JPPI’s respondent panel of connected American Jews across the spectrum of political orientation and denominational affiliation.

Nearly two-thirds (59%) of the American Jewish survey respondents said they would likely oppose the US taking control of Gaza, and only 17% indicated they would support such an action. Nearly a quarter of respondents (24%) said they would need more details in order to form an opinion.

In response to the proposal to relocate Gaza’s residents, only 20% of survey respondents see Trump’s proposal as practical and worth pursuing, in contrast to the 50% of Israeli Jews who were asked the same question.

Nearly a third (28%) of respondents said they do not consider the plan feasible but would support it if it were possible, and another third (29%) believe the proposal is immoral and should not be considered. When Israeli Jews were asked this question, only 3% said the same.

American Jews happy with level of US support
A majority of US Jews think the US is doing enough to support Israel, with 57% saying US support for Israel is at an appropriate level.

This contrasts with results from last month when 54% of respondents said the US wasn't doing enough to support Israel. This marks the first time a majority of conservative and centrist Jews believed the US was doing enough to support Israel.

However, this has not translated into trust in President Trump; only 45% of respondents said they have no confidence at all that he will “do the right thing” regarding the Israeli-Palestine conflict, while 23% expressed high confidence in him.

The US Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism will visit 10 university campuses where reports of discrimination against Jewish people have been made, the US Public Affairs Office said on Friday.

The reports on antisemitic incidences that encouraged the task force's visits were all made after Hamas's attacks in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

The ten universities the task force will visit are Columbia University, Harvard University, George Washington University, New York University, UCLA, USC, UC Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University, Northwestern University, and the University of Minnesota, according to the US Department of Justice.

The ten institutions were notified by leading task force member Leo Terrell that the force was made aware of allegations that the schools failed to protect their Jewish students and faculty members from discrimination.

Terrell also said that the Task Force will meet with each of the leaderships from the universities, as well as local law enforcement from the cities the institutions are located, and community members to gather information on antisemitic incidences.

Five Microsoft employees were removed from a conference on February 24 for protesting company services to the IDF.

During the meeting, as Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella spoke, the five protest participants stood, each wearing a shirt displaying one word and one letter that collectively spelled out the sentence, "Does our code kill kids, Satya?"

The incident happened without delaying the meeting, and Nadella ignored the protesters. According to photos and videos taken by other conference attendees, the five protesters were seen being escorted out of the room.

The protest was due to Microsoft providing the IDF with sophisticated AI models and its Azure cloud computing platforms. The protestors are connected to the No Tech for Apartheid and No Azure for Apartheid campaigns.

No Tech For Apartheid connects workers from Amazon, Google, and Microsoft to end their contracts with the IDF and the government. No Azure for Apartheid is the coalition of around 1,000 Microsoft employees protesting for Microsoft executives to terminate contracts between the IDF and the Israeli government.

The protest was due to Microsoft providing the IDF with sophisticated AI models and its Azure cloud computing platforms. The protestors are connected to the No Tech for Apartheid and No Azure for Apartheid campaigns.

No Tech For Apartheid connects workers from Amazon, Google, and Microsoft to end their contracts with the IDF and the government. No Azure for Apartheid is the coalition of around 1,000 Microsoft employees protesting for Microsoft executives to terminate contracts between the IDF and the Israeli government.

Firing of two pro-Palestinian employees
This incident occurred following the firing of two employees in October for organizing an unauthorized vigil during lunch. One of the two employees fired was Egyptian-raised, Harvard University graduate Hossam Nasr, who said the purpose of the vigil was “to honor the victims of the Palestinian genocide in Gaza and to call attention to Microsoft’s complicity in the genocide”.

The other employee fired in October, Abdo Mohamed, also from Egypt, “The demands are clear,” said Mohamed “Satya Nadella and Microsoft executives need to answer to their workers by dropping contracts with the Israeli military.”

Mohamad is also involved in the group No Azure for Apartheid. In a statement made by Microsoft, Nasr and Mohamed were terminated in compliance with internal policy.

“No Other Land,” which chronicles Israel’s demolitions in the Palestinian West Bank village of Masafer Yatta, won the Academy Award for best documentary feature on Sunday night.

Taking the stage at the Oscars in Los Angeles, two of the film’s four co-directors — an Israeli and a Palestinian — used their acceptance speeches to call for Palestinian rights and a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel’s culture minister bemoaned the win as a “sad moment.”

“About two months ago I became a father, and my hope to my daughter: that she will not have to live the same life I am living now,” said Basel Adra, a Palestinian who lives in the West Bank, in his speech. “Always feeling settler violence, home demolitions and forceful displacement that my community, Masafer Yatta, is living and facing every day under the Israeli occupation.”

He added: “We call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.”

His co-director, left-wing Israeli Yuval Avraham, spoke in his speech of the “atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people, which must end, the Israeli hostages, brutally taken in the crime of October 7, which must be freed.”

He also criticized Israel’s “unequal” treatment of West Bank Palestinians and said US policy in the region was playing a negative role.

“There is a different path, a political solution, without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people,” he said. “And I have to say, as I am here, the foreign policy in this country is helping to block this path. Can’t you see that we are intertwined? That my people can be truly safe if Basel’s people are truly free and safe? There is another way. It’s not too late for life, for the living.”

Also winning the Oscar were Israeli Rachel Szor and Palestinian Hamdan Ballal.

In Israel, Culture Minister Miki Zohar slammed the accolades given the film, claiming it was part of a campaign to “sabotage” Israel.

“The Oscar win for the film ‘No Other Country’ is a sad moment for the world of cinema – instead of presenting the complexity of our reality, the filmmakers chose to echo narratives that distort Israel’s image in the world,” Zohar wrote on X. “Freedom of expression is an important value, but turning the slander of Israel into a tool for international promotion is not creativity – it is sabotage of the State of Israel.”

He also called for legislation to cut state funding for movies or other creative works that are critical of the country or its policies, saying public resources should be “directed to works that speak to the Israeli audience, and not to an industry that makes a career out of defaming the country at foreign festivals.”

The Oscar win is especially significant as “No Other Land” has not yet gotten a US distributor despite being touted by film critics.

Anti-Israel activists occupied a Barnard College building on Wednesday, which followed Tuesday demonstrations at the affiliated Columbia University lecture by former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett.

Masked activists entered the Milstein Center while classes were still being held, according to Barnard, disrupting activities.

“Intifada, intifada,” the activists chanted and drummed, according to Columbia University Apartheid Divest Instagram videos.

CUAD claimed that false bomb threats and warnings that the New York Police Department would intervene were related in an attempt to clear the activists from the building. One video showed law enforcement approaching the protest site.

The keffiyeh-clad students demanded a meeting with Dean Leslie Grinage, as with last Wednesday’s Milbank Hall occupation in response to the expulsion of two activists for their January 21 disruption of a Columbia Israeli history class. A mock wanted poster of Grinage posted on Wednesday proclaimed that she was sought “for the wrongful expulsion of pro-Palestinian students.

Anti-Israel activists occupied a Barnard College building on Wednesday, which followed Tuesday demonstrations at the affiliated Columbia University lecture by former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett.

Masked activists entered the Milstein Center while classes were still being held, according to Barnard, disrupting activities.

Barnard said that was managing the disruption and would “not allow the actions of a few interfere with our mission.”

Follows the expulsion of a third student
The protest came after a third Barnard student was supposedly expelled Friday, according to CUAD, for their involvement in the April occupation of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall. CUAD asserted on social media Tuesday that the decision on the several-months-long disciplinary process was both an act of intimidation against participants of last Wednesday’s protest and an attempt to placate a recently announced Justice Department antisemitism taskforce probe of Columbia. The group also said that negotiations for a meeting with the administration had collapsed.
“Expel one of us, and a hundred more rise up!” said CUAD.

Columbia Jewish Voice for Peace also called for a protest against a Columbia Hillel lecture by Bennett on Tuesday. Columbia said that they had coordinated with the Jewish campus group, and the event was well attended and without disruption.

“We understand groups from outside our Columbia community also protested in public spaces outside the University’s gates, which the NYPD was responsible for managing,” said Columbia
.
School of International and Public Affairs' dean, Keren Yarhi-Milo, was allegedly harassed as she entered the campus. A video posted on Instagram by CUAD shows Yarhi-Milo being heckled by an activist who asserted that she had “blood on her hands.”

A Jewish man is suing a cafe that he was kicked out of in Oakland, California, for wearing a hat with a Star of David on it in October. The case was filed by the Anti-Defamation League and Cleveland, Ohio-based law firm Benesch Friedlander Coplan & Aronoff LLP, according to Cleveland Jewish News.

The case and complaint alleges that Oakland’s Jerusalem Coffee House violated the civil rights of Michael Radice, both federally and in the state of California..

Radice, who is a former resident of Cleveland, runs a nonprofit organization in Los Angeles and was subjected to antisemitic harassment both times he visited Jerusalem Coffee House. This case is a first for the ADL, filing to halt discriminatory practices by refusal to serve Jewish customers.
“No one should have to hide who they are to order a cup of coffee, but at Jerusalem Coffee House, antisemitism was literally on the menu,” said Marc Levine, Regional Director for ADL Central Pacific. “Bigotry against Jews is on the rise, but we will not be turned away – this behavior cannot be tolerated anywhere.”

What were the antisemitic incidents at Jerusalem Coffee House?
According to the ADL, the first incident Radice experienced was when a man sitting outside of the cafe saw his baseball cap with a Star of David icon and the phrase “Am Israel Chai,” or, the people of Israel live. A man sitting outside demanded, “Are you a Jew?” After his affirmative answer, the man continued to spew claims regarding the Israel-Hamas war and accused him of being responsible for “killing children.” As he turned away, he saw the owner speaking to the man and assumed the owner was intervening on his behalf.

He returned months later, unsuspecting of additional aggression to come. In a now-viral video uploaded October 26, Jonathan Hirsch was confronted by the owner of Jerusalem Coffee House, Abdulrahim Harara, arguing that the star on his hat possessed a “violent” connotation, identifying him as a “Zionist.”

Hirsch was unable to make a purchase and instead found himself confronted by the man who initially harassed him, the owner, and an additional employee. “You’re the guy with the hat. You’re the Jew. You’re the Zionist. We don’t want you in our coffee shop. Get out,” according to the ADL.

Harara and Hirsch had a heated argument, and Hirsch accused the cafe of discrimination.

“You’re being asked to leave. You’re causing a disruption. This is a private business. You’re being asked to leave,” Harara said.

“This gentleman asked me to leave because of my hat,” Hirsch said from behind the camera.
Harara told Hirsch that his hat was violent, asking, “Are you a Zionist?”
“I don’t have to identify myself,” Hirsch answered, accusing the owner of discrimination and threatening to sue the cafe.

Radice’s incident only brought to light additional examples of Jerusalem Coffee House celebrating the murder of Jewish people.

Around the first anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attacks on Israel by Hamas, the cafe added items called “Iced In Tea Fada” and “Sweet Sinwar,” with Hamas symbols decorating the menu, according to the ADL.