2022-05-05 The Nakba and Palestine Refugees | IMEU Questions and Answers From an original estimated population of 750,000 in 1948, today there are more than 7 million Palestinian refugees worldwide, 5.7 million of whom are refugees registered with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), a specialized UN agency established in 1949 to provide social services to refugees.
Nakba is an Arabic word meaning “catastrophe” and refers to Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine, its exiling of Palestinians and making them into refugees, its dispossession of Palestinian property, its destruction of Palestinian cities, towns, and villages, and its attempt to erase the existence of the Palestinian people from its homeland in 1948.
Why Did Palestinians Not Accept the UN Partition Plan?
At the time of the UN Partition Plan, which was recommended by the General Assembly in November 1947, the Zionist movement owned just 7 percent of the land of Palestine and Jewish people constituted only one-third of the total population. Despite this, the partition plan called for the establishment of a Jewish State in more than 55 percent of Palestine. Even within the proposed borders of the Jewish State, there would have been only a tiny majority of Jewish residents (498,000 to 497,000 Palestinians).
Palestinian political bodies, led by the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), rejected the partition plan as a violation of the principle of self-determination and majority rights. Instead, the AHC proposed that Palestine remain a unitary, democratic state with strong minority rights, including proportional representation for Palestine’s Jewish citizens in the legislature, and Jewish communal autonomy in some spheres.
Even though the United States voted in support of the partition plan, the Truman administration quickly realized that the partition plan could not be implemented and instead threw itself behind a proposal to place Palestine under a UN trusteeship until a political resolution could be found. The Truman administration reversed itself again by recognizing Israel. https://imeu.org/article/the-nakba-and-palestine-refugees-imeu-questions-and-answers
2024-07-31 UN Probe Finds ‘Appalling Acts’ of Torture Against Palestinians Detained by Israel The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Wednesday released a report detailing torture and abuse of Palestinians at Israeli detention centers, including sexual violence, waterboarding, and the use of dogs.
Israeli security forces have also used electric shocks, burned detainees with cigarettes, and deprived them of food, water, sleep, and toilet access, according to the 23-page OHCHR report, based largely on interviews with released detainees. Some detainees said they were held with their arms suspended from the ceiling; were forced to be naked for prolonged periods, wearing only diapers; and were blindfolded for extended periods.
Israel security forces have arrested thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza since October, many of them arbitrarily; they held more than 9,400 “security detainees” as of the end of June, often in secret and incommunicado, without providing a reason for the detainment, the report says.
“The testimonies gathered by my office and other entities indicate a range of appalling acts, such as waterboarding and the release of dogs on detainees, amongst other acts, in flagrant violation of international human rights law and international humanitarian law,” U.N. Human Rights chief Volker Türk said in a statement accompanying the report. https://www.commondreams.org/news/israeli-detention-un-report
2024-07-31 UN Report Details Vast, Systemic Torture of Palestinians in Israeli Detention Israeli forces are arbitrarily imprisoning at least 9,400 Palestinians, including children, the UN found. The UN has released a report detailing the many instances of systemic torture and abuse that Israeli soldiers and police have performed on Palestinians they are imprisoning arbitrarily just in the last 10 months of Israel’s genocide.
The 23-page report by the UN Human Rights Office finds that Israeli forces are holding at least 9,400 Palestinians, including many children, in prisons and military facilities, with conditions in military facilities like the infamous Sde Teiman being particularly brutal. Israeli officers relentlessly torture detainees, using all variety of methods, encompassing humiliation, deprivation of basic needs, and physical abuse. The report also includes numerous testimonies from survivors of rape by Israeli guards. https://truthout.org/articles/un-report-details-vast-systemic-torture-of-palestinians-in-israeli-detention/
2024-07-24 Israeli Forces Have Killed 366 UN Workers and Their Family Members in Gaza A leaked report obtained by Drop Site estimates that Israeli forces have killed at least 366 United Nations staffers and their family members in the Gaza Strip since October, an indication of the grave threat Israel’s ongoing assault poses to humanitarian relief workers and the enclave’s broader civilian population.
Drop Site’s Ryan Grim reported Wednesday that the confidential figures, assembled by the U.N.’s Crisis Coordination Center, show that three family members of World Food Program staffers and four dependents of U.N. Children’s Fund workers were among those killed by Israeli forces. The total number of U.N. staffers killed so far is 195, according to the data.
2024-06-07 ‘Historic, But So, So Late’: Israel Added to UN’s Child-Killing ‘List of Shame’ “It took a genocide that killed 15,000 children and maimed and scarred thousands more but the U.N. has finally and rightly added Israel to its List of Shame,” said one Palestinian observer.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres informed Israel on Friday that, for the first time, it is being added to the so-called “List of Shame” of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts, a decision that infuriated Israeli officials but was welcomed by human rights defenders as long overdue.
The Secretary-General Office’s annual Children and Armed Conflict report—which is likely to be released publicly later this month—has included countries and militant groups such as Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Iraq, Islamic State, Myanmar, Russia, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. This is believed to be the first time the list has included a nation hailed by Western governments as a democracy. https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-killing-children-2668478068
2024-05-02 ‘Their Blood Is on Gene Block’: UCLA Students Injured in Violent Police Raid Los Angeles police wearing riot gear launched a violent attack on a pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA early Thursday, using flash bangs and firing impact munitions at students demanding an end to their university’s complicity in Israel’s war on Gaza.
Video footage posted to social media by reporters present at the scene shows officers firing multiple “less lethal” munitions and sound-concussive devices at student demonstrators as they closed in on the encampment, which UCLA’s leadership has declared unlawful. Police reportedly arrested dozens of students as they advanced on the encampment. “They’d rather shoot kids than stop this genocide,” said one observer.
Faculty for Justice in Palestine at UCLA, told the university’s student newspaper early Thursday that police officers “violently dragged” students from the Gaza solidarity encampment and that some demonstrators were “visibly injured.” “Their blood is on Gene Block and the UC administration’s hands for a series of catastrophic decisions over the last two days,” said Blair, referring to UCLA’s chancellor. “It did not need to be this way.” https://www.commondreams.org/ucla-police-crackdown
2024-05-01 Pro-Genocide Mob Attacks Nonviolent Encampment, Beats Students at UCLA Encampment organizers called the assault “nothing less than a horrifying, despicable act of terror.”
A pro-Israel mob violently attacked a Gaza solidarity encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles overnight Tuesday, hurling fireworks at the structure and beating demonstrators as campus security and city police stood by.
Los Angeles Times higher education journalist Teresa Watanabe reported that members of the pro-Israel mob used explicitly genocidal language as they ripped down encampment barriers, yelling, “Second Nakba!”—a reference to the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in 1948. https://www.commondreams.org/news/pro-genocide-mob-ucla
2024-05-07 TikTok Sues US Government Over ‘Unconstitutional’ Potential Ban One expert said legislators’ admissions “that the ban was motivated by a desire to suppress content about the Israel-Gaza conflict will make the law especially difficult for the government to defend,” said one First Amendment expert. https://www.commondreams.org/news/tiktok-ban
Symington Amendment – Background The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 was amended by the Symington Amendment (Section 669 of the FAA) in 1976. It banned U.S. economic, and military assistance, and export credits to countries that deliver or receive, acquire or transfer nuclear enrichment technology when they do not comply with IAEA regulations and inspections. This provision, as amended, is now contained in Section 101 of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA). https://www.liquisearch.com/symington_amendment/background
2024-04-20 ‘The Law Is Simple’: Israel’s Unregulated Nukes Mean Biden Must Halt Military Aid The national organization Veterans For Peace is demanding that the Biden administration abide by U.S. law regarding the illegal possession of unregulated nuclear weapons and halt all military aid to Israel.
In a letter to President Joe Biden and top members of his administration, Veterans For Peace asserts that U.S. law requires the cutoff of all military aid to Israel because it possesses nuclear weapons in noncompliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Israel does not admit it possesses nuclear weapons, has not signed the NPT, and does not allow inspections of its nuclear arsenal.
The letter lists multiple credible reports that Israel has possessed nuclear weapons for decades. Because Israel has not signed the NPT, the Symington-Glenn Amendments to the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976, which allow no presidential discretion, require the suspension of all military aid. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israel-nukes-halt-military-aid
2016-08-17 Lawsuit claims US aid to Israel violates nuclear pact Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy says atomic powers who don’t sign NPT aren’t legally eligible for American money. A lawsuit filed in a US district court claims that American aid to Israel is illegal under a law passed in the 1970s that prohibits aid to nuclear powers who don’t sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
2024-08-25 Protesters vow to return to Columbia, new leadership pushes for calm Columbia University is bracing for disruptive protests to resume as students arrive on campus this week, even as some hold out hope that the new administration will be able to broker peace. The days before the start of classes have been marked by restricted campus access, talk of giving campus security officers more clout and last-minute discussions about rules. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/protesters-vow-to-return-to-columbia-new-leadership-pushes-for-calm/ar-AA1poGEg?
2024-08-15 Columbia President Resigns After Violent Crackdown on Pro-Palestine Student Protests “She finally got the memo,” said Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine. “Any future president who does not pay heed to the Columbia student body’s overwhelming demand for divestment will end up exactly as President Shafik did.”
The president of Columbia University announced her resignation late Wednesday, months after she authorized a violent police crackdown on student demonstrators urging the school to divest from Israel over the country’s devastating assault on the Gaza Strip.
Minouche Shafik said in her announcement that recent months have been “a period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community.” Dozens of Columbia students were arrested and injured during a Shafik-approved police raid of a campus building in late April. https://www.commondreams.org/news/columbia-president-resigns
2024-05-25 Punched, choked, kicked: German police crack down on student protests “We are witnessing a great endangerment of academic freedom – and this has started since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza,” says Cecilia, an undergraduate student at Berlin’s Free University. After her university published what she saw as a one-sided statement of support for Israel following the Hamas attacks of October 7, and students on campus began to experience an increase in Islamophobic harassment on campus, she and others formed a committee to show solidarity with Palestine and oppose Israel’s war in Gaza.
At universities across Germany, thousands of students like her have mobilised in support of Palestine, leading demonstrations, organising lectures and sit-ins occupying university buildings and campus lawns. They have also opposed the speeches of visiting Israeli officials – notably Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor who visited Cologne University in January and the Israeli judge, Daphne Barak-Erez who spoke at Humboldt University in February.
But students and university staff also say that their right to free expression has come under assault from hostile media coverage, repressive legal measures taken by universities and politicians, and the use of police violence against peaceful demonstrators. “Staff, teachers and students who have been trying to objectively teach and raise their voice about what is happening in Gaza and Palestine have been systematically repressed,” says Cecilia. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/5/25/punched-choked-kicked-german-police-crack-down-on-student-protests
2024-05-25 Zionists condemn us for posting on the Internet Since October 7, more than 160 Palestinian students have been suspended or expelled from Israeli universities – and even arrested. The reason? – Their posts on social networks. This is their story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiP0vRv-umU
2024-05-25 Watching the watchdogs: The US media and intergenerational fault lines As Israel continues to wage its genocidal war on Gaza, a fault line in American society is becoming increasingly more pronounced. University students are challenging the political establishment on university campuses across the country. One side opposes US backing for Israel and profiteering from investments in arms industries, while the other supports the Israeli offensive and has urged police action to break up the student protest encampments. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/5/25/watching-the-watchdogs-the-us-media-and-intergenerational-fault-lines
2024-05-24 Why are Gen Z broke? In this episode, we look at why Gen Z around the world are broke and whether they deserve the bad reputation for their lifestyle choices. Gen Z are struggling financially. A 2023 survey of Gen Z in 44 countries suggested that around half of them were living paycheck to paycheck and almost half needed a side job. So why are Gen Z broke?
“Gen Z spends all their money on avocado toast and coffee and all they do is sit on social media and they don’t wanna work” – or such is the perception of the financial woes afflicting Gen Z. Studies show that Gen Z are the generation least likely to have savings or a plan for the future when it comes to money – but the “doomers” also report very little hope in the future.
2024-05-24 Cambridge remembers Nakba Day, in solidarity with Rafah! Around 200 demonstrators gathered on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus in Cambridge on May 15 to demand an end to the Zionist genocide in Gaza and the liberation of Palestine. Members of the Boston Coalition for Palestine, including the Palestine Youth Movement, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and student organizers at MIT, organized the action to commemorate the 76th anniversary of the Nakba — the 1948 genocidal colonization of Palestine. https://www.workers.org/2024/05/78868/
2024-05-15 Rafah Invasion Goes to Court at the ICJ; Plus, the Student Movement for Palestine George Bisharat, Professor Emeritus at University of California College of Law, San Francisco. His research and writing focus on international legal aspects of Palestine/Israel and on U.S. policies toward the Middle East.
Ali Winston is an independent reporter covering criminal justice, privacy, and surveillance.
2024-05-14 How has the war on Gaza changed the narrative among young people? We look into how the war on Gaza has been reshaping global perceptions among youth in the West and what potential reforms that might bring. Through a conversation with young online activists, we delve into some of the new shifts in young people’s perspectives of their governments, mainstream media, international law, Western democracy and more. https://www.aljazeera.com/program/the-stream/2024/5/14/how-has-the-war-on-gaza-changed-the-narrative-among-young-people
2024-05-13 Palestine Post: Rafah Invasion and the Student Intifada in the DMV As with most Mondays, we spend this hour on the latest in Palestine. We talk about the latest updates about the siege on Rafah with Phyllis Bennis, a Middle East analyst and directs the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. And then, a look at the student activism sweeping the US with the latest and what happened to the encampments in Washington DC. We’ll be joined by Thandiwe Abdullah, a student organizer at Howard University with Students for Justice in Palestine. https://kpfa.org/episode/law-disorder-may-13-2024/
2024-05-13 Palestine Talks | Dr. Sahar Mohamed Khamis on US student protests for Gaza Professor of Communication Sahar Mohamed Khamis from the University of Maryland tells TRT World that student protests for Gaza across the globe show that “the world is waking up” and that they will have a “ripple effect on American policy” in the long-term. She says the “snowballing effect” and “eye-opening moment”, which has led to more than 120 universities being impacted by Gaza encampments, is the result of students realising that the US ideals they have been taught are not respected when it comes to Palestine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgvR1U5YuMk&list=PLUW304lJeu3Vg_nM0WQfWDZTDyu6h6PlD&index=3
2024-05-13 Christian School to Divest From Businesses Profiting From Israel, Hamas War Christian seminary in New York affiliated with Columbia University recently announced plans to divest from Israel and other companies involved in the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas militants. On May 9, the Union Theological Seminary in New York announced that its board of trustees had endorsed a divestment plan from “companies profiting from war in Palestine/Israel.”
“Over the decades, we have developed what are called ‘socially responsible investment (SRI) screens’ to express our values and not financially support damaging and immoral investments,” the seminary said in a statement. “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, whose numbers are now over 34,000—and a humanitarian crisis of ever-growing magnitude.”
2024-05-10 The impact of student encampments for Gaza at universities worldwide After the escalation at US student encampments, we revisit the students raising their voices to protest Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza.
Anti-war student protesters have been met with brutal pro-Israel counterprotests, violent arrests and suspensions, raising debates around freedom of expression and the future of activism on college campuses. What started as a student encampment at Columbia University in New York City three weeks ago has now turned into a global student movement, expanding to Europe, Australia, Canada and beyond. We’ll get the latest from the campus grounds and ask w hat is next for the global student movement for Gaza.
2024-05-09 AS`AD AbuKHALIL: History of US Activism for Palestine While their ultimate impact should not be exaggerated, the protests for Palestine taking place on U.S. college campuses are historic. There is a long history of muted protests for Palestine on college campuses. Imagine, Palestine never drew the attention of the American left in the 1960s and 1970s. Few Americans knew the word Palestinian before the assassination by Palestinian American, Sirhan Sirhan.
Most leaders of the American left (including Michael Harrington and Jerry Rubin) were staunch Zionists and thought of Israel as a progressive project in the midst of reactionary Arab countries (not that progressive Westerners were free of the racism that afflicted conservative Westerners).
The AFL-CIO and all affiliates of the Democratic Party were prominent elements of the Israel Lobby. It was a time when Republicans in New England were more likely to oppose Israel than liberal Democrats of the big cities.
College campuses were hostile to Palestinian activism and after 1975, Congress initiated legislation to conflate Palestinian struggle with terrorism. In the 1980s, a group of students in California faced deportation because they attended a “haflah” (literally, party) which was allegedly sponsored by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
In 1984, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee published The AIPAC College Guide: Exposing the Anti-Israel Campaign on Campus which failed, in fact, to show much anti-Israeli presence on college campuses (with the exception of a few places such as Georgetown University).
Many U.S. universities (including Georgetown which was accused of pro-Arab bias) established chairs for visiting Israeli professors. There were and are more college courses offered on Israel than on all of Asia and Africa combined. Israel fought the spread of knowledge about Arabs and Islam and the creation of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown was met with enormous opposition and resistance from the Israel Lobby. https://consortiumnews.com/2024/05/09/asad-abukhalil-history-of-us-activism-for-palestine/
2024-05-07 750+ Jewish Students Affirm Support for Pro-Palestine Campus Protests The students’ open letter—which circulated as U.S. President Joe Biden again linked campus encampments to antisemitism—urges institutions of higher learning to “take immediate action” to stop Israel’s Gaza genocide.
Against the backdrop of President Joe Biden’s Tuesday speech condemning antisemitism, hundreds of Jewish students at U.S. universities signed an open letter supporting the nationwide pro-Palestine campus protests, decrying the false smearing of the encampments as antisemitic, and urging institutions to take action to stop Israel’s “genocidal assault on Gaza.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/jewish-students-support-gaza
2024-05-07 Students Demanding Divestment: You’re on the Right Side of History Israel has damaged or destroyed every university in Gaza. But no university president has denounced Israel’s genocide or supported the call for divestment.
Stanford students are rising up for peace and justice. They have established a “People’s University” encampment and they are demanding that Stanford: (1) explicitly condemn Israel’s genocide and apartheid; (2) call for an immediate ceasefire, and for Israel and Egypt to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza; and (3) immediately divest from the consumer brands identified by the Palestinian BDS National Committee and all firms in Stanford’s investment portfolio that are complicit Israeli war crimes, apartheid and genocide.
At this moment in history, there are two related military occupations occurring simultaneously – 5,675 miles apart. One is Israel’s ongoing 57-year occupation of Palestinian territory, which is now taking the form of a full-fledged genocide that has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians. The other is at Columbia University, where the administration has asked the New York Police Department to occupy the school until May 17. Both occupations are fueled by the Zionist power structure. Both have weaponized antisemitism to rationalize their brutality.
The students at Columbia are demanding that the university end its investments in companies and funds that are profiting from Israel’s war against the Palestinians. They want financial transparency and amnesty for students and faculty involved in the demonstration. Most protesters throughout the country are demanding an immediate ceasefire and divestment from companies with interests in Israel. More than 2,300 people have been arrested or detained on U.S. college campuses. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israel-gaza-war-bds
2024-05-07 NYC Driver Rams Into Anti-Genocide Protest, Hospitalizes One “Zionists on the streets and in police precincts have declared open season on young people fighting for Palestinian liberation,” said one Columbia University student group.
One pro-Palestinian protester was hospitalized on Tuesday after a pro-Israel driver “intentionally drove” into a group of picketers outside the home of one of Columbia University’s trustees on New York City’s Upper East Side, as demonstrations against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza continued. https://www.commondreams.org/news/pro-israel-driver-protest
2024-05-06 Antisemitism: The big lie smearing campus protesters Mainstream journalists and politicians have engaged in a campaign of mass slander against U.S. college students protesting the Gaza genocide. Their “antisemitism” Big Lie echoes the racist hate campaigns of the past, inciting hostility toward young people whose only crime is their dedication to justice.
A newly published survey provides some important context for these protests and undermines the smear campaign against the protesters. Students Are Not Antisemitic
The Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST), a project of the University of Chicago, recently published “Understanding Campus Fears After October 7 and How to Reduce Them,” subtitled “a non-partisan analysis of Antisemitism and Islamophobia among College Students and American Adults.” Robert A. Pape, political scientist and CPOST’s director, writes that its findings “are an opportunity to re-center the national discussion around students and away from politics.” Let’s hope so. https://www.alternet.org/antisemitism-on-college-campuses/
2024-05-06 Palestine Post w/ Linda Sarsour, Sahar Francis & Liz Arias As we do most Mondays, we spend today’s show on the ongoing genocide that Israel is waging against Palestinians. Today we’re in conversation with Linda Sarsour, a Brooklyn-born Palestinian Muslim American activist, author, and community organizer. She is the author of her memoir We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders. We’re also joined by Sahar Francis, is the General Director of Ramallah-based Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, a Palestinian organization providing legal and advocacy support to Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli and Palestinian prisons. She is also an attorney by training.
At the end of the hour we’re also joined by Liz Arias, a student in her senior year at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, where the student encampment protest negotiated a successful divestment commitment from the school’s administration last week. https://kpfa.org/area941/episode/palestine-post-w-evergreen/
2024-5-06 Antony Blinken Greeted by Protestors for Palestine On Today’s Show: US Secretary of State in San Francisco, greeted by protesters with the mock blood of Palestinians. The East Bay City of Richmond, California takes a bold step to divest from companies that do business with the Israel apartheid State. And Nora Barrows Friedman talks to antigenocide students from coast to coast https://kpfa.org/episode/flashpoints-may-6-2024/
2024-05-06 War, Money, and US Universities’ Response to Israel Divestment Protests Yes, the peaceful protesters are interrupting the status quo—setting up encampments, even occupying university buildings. For instance, at Columbia University, students actually renamed the occupied Hamilton Hall, declaring its new name to be Hind’s Hall, after Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli armed forces, along with the rest of her family (and several aid workers), as they were fleeing their home in Gaza. The point of the protests is, indeed, to change the world: to stop U.S., including university, support of the devastating “war” (i.e., carnage). They’re not trying to eliminate an enemy but, rather, illuminate the situation—putting themselves on the line to do so.
Some of the responses to the protests are definitely illuminating. A statement from UCLA’s Palestine Solidarity Encampment, for instance, noted:
The life-threatening assault we face tonight is nothing less than a horrifying, despicable act of terror. For over seven hours, Zionist aggressors hurled gas canisters, sprayed pepper spray, and threw fireworks and bricks into our encampment. They broke our barriers repeatedly, clearly in an attempt to kill us.
Furthermore, the account continued: “Campus safety left within minutes, external security the university hired for ‘backup’ watched, filmed, and laughed on the side as the immediate danger inflicted upon us escalated. Law enforcement simply stood at the edge of the lawn and refused to budge as we screamed for their help. . . .
2024-05-03 How students around the world are taking a stand for Gaza Students around the world are raising their voices to protest against Israel’s continuing war on Gaza. More than 50 universities across the United States have now established Palestine solidarity encampments, demanding action to stop Israel’s war on Gaza. What started as a student encampment at Columbia University in New York City two weeks ago has turned into a global student movement, expanding to Europe, Australia and Canada. Student protesters have been met with brutal counterprotests, arrests and suspensions, raising debates around freedom of expression and the future of activism on college campuses. But beyond the mainstream media’s attempt to reduce this movement to free speech and safety, why are students risking it all for Gaza?
2024-05-02 Antisemitism: The Big Lie Smearing Campus Protesters Mainstream journalists and politicians have engaged in a campaign of mass slander against U.S. college students protesting the Gaza genocide. Their “antisemitism” Big Lie echoes the racist hate campaigns of the past, inciting hostility toward young people whose only crime is their dedication to justice.
A newly published survey provides some important context for these protests and undermines the smear campaign against the protesters.
The Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST), a project of the University of Chicago, recently published “Understanding Campus Fears After October 7 and How to Reduce Them,” subtitled “a non-partisan analysis of Antisemitism and Islamophobia among College Students and American Adults.” Robert A. Pape, political scientist and CPOST’s director, writes that its findings “are an opportunity to re-center the national discussion around students and away from politics.” Let’s hope so.
President Biden, like the others, has condemned what he calls “antisemitic protests.” That slur is challenged by the Chicago study. The authors found that “while college students are not more antisemitic than the general population,” they are “more anti-zionist.” They also found that “prejudicial antisemitism and anti-zionism are largely separate phenomena,” with an “overwhelming” absence of any overlap between antisemitism and a negative view of Israel.
2024-05-02 Professors, Speakers Cut Ties With Universities Over Police Crackdowns on Protests “What President Shafik did at Columbia moved the whole world a step closer to universally criminalizing direct action, and direct action is the ONLY thing that is going to help the world halt global heating,” said one climate scientist as she canceled a planned speech at the school.
Repercussions of American universities’ crackdowns on student protesters are becoming increasingly evident this week as faculty members, public speakers, and others who collaborate with higher education institutions announced they would cut ties with schools that have repressed students’ constitutional right to protest against Israel’s U.S.-backed assault on Gaza.
Last week, more than 2,100 academics from across the globe signed a statement expressing solidarity with student and faculty protesters and supporting an “academic and cultural boycott” of the school. https://www.commondreams.org/news/speakers-cut-ties-universities
2024-05-02 The Older Generation of Politicians Can’t Stop the American Intifada The mass protests at dozens of U.S. universities cannot be reduced to a stifling and misleading conversation about antisemitism.
Thousands of American students across the country are not protesting, risking their own futures and very safety, because of some pathological hate for the Jewish people. They are doing so in a complete rejection of, and justifiable outrage over, the mass killing carried out by the state of Israel against defenseless Palestinians in Gaza. They are angry because the bloodbath in the Gaza Strip, starting on October 7, is fully funded and backed by the U.S. government.
None of them is motivated by fear that they could be drafted to fight in Gaza, as was, indeed, the case for many American students during the Vietnam War era. Instead, they are united around a clear set of priorities: ending the war, ending U.S. support of Israel, ending their universities’ direct investment in Israel, and the recognition of their right to protest. This is not idealism, but humanity at its finest moments.
2024-05-02 DOE Investigating Columbia University for Anti-Palestinian Harassment “Students have the right to speak out against the genocide of Palestinians, without fear of unequal treatment, racist attacks, or being denied access to an education by their university,” one lawyer said.
Palestine Legal announced Thursday that the U.S. Department of Education has launched a federal investigation into “extreme anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic harassment” at Columbia University a week after the advocacy group filed a complaint on behalf of four students and a campus organization.
“While the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) looks into all complaints it receives, it only opens a formal investigation when it determines the facts warrant a deeper look,” Palestine Legal pointed out on social media. “The complaint explains how Columbia has allowed and contributed to a pervasive anti-Palestinian environment on campus—including students receiving death threats, being harassed for wearing keffiyehs or hijab, doxxed, harassed by [administration], suspended, locked out of campus, and more.”
2024-05-02 ‘Their Blood Is on Gene Block’: UCLA Students Injured in Violent Police Raid Los Angeles police wearing riot gear launched a violent attack on a pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA early Thursday, using flash bangs and firing impact munitions at students demanding an end to their university’s complicity in Israel’s war on Gaza.
Video footage posted to social media by reporters present at the scene shows officers firing multiple “less lethal” munitions and sound-concussive devices at student demonstrators as they closed in on the encampment, which UCLA’s leadership has declared unlawful. Police reportedly arrested dozens of students as they advanced on the encampment. “They’d rather shoot kids than stop this genocide,” said one observer. https://www.commondreams.org/ucla-police-crackdown
2024-05-01 The Biden Administration’s Hypocrisy on College Protests Must End While the White House is quick to condemn any allegation of antisemitism at protests, whether verified or manufactured, it has repeatedly failed to condemn verified incidents of anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia on college campuses.
Do you remember President Biden’s swift and strong response when pro-Israel extremists reportedly blasted the chemical weapon “skunk spray” on students peacefully protesting at Columbia University earlier this year? Do you remember how the White House condemned the attack, demanded accountability, and called on the school to protect students from such hate?
No? You don’t remember? Of course you don’t. Because none of it happened. President Biden didn’t respond swiftly or strongly to the skunk spray attack. He didn’t respond at all.
How about President Biden’s response when a Texas man hurled racist slurs at a group of Palestinian Americans after a ceasefire protest at the University of Texas in Austin, ripped a Palestinian flagpole off their car, dragged one of them out of the backseat, and stabbed him?
2024-05-01 Party Leaders ‘Utterly Isolated’ as College Democrats Back Campus Protests “Each day that Democrats fail to stand united for a permanent cease-fire, two-state solution, and recognition of a Palestinian state, more and more youth find themselves disillusioned with the party,” said the College Democrats of America.
Progressive lawmakers and rights advocates on Wednesday implored U.S. President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party to listen to young voters who oppose the government’s funding of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, as the party’s student organization announced its support for campus anti-war protests that have spread across the country over the past two weeks.
The College Democrats of America refuted Biden’s suggestion last week that the protests are inherently antisemitic and urged the president to listen to the widespread calls for him to demand a permanent cease-fire in Gaza and end funding for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which is set to receive an additional $17 billion following Biden’s signing of a foreign aid bill last week.
By failing to listen to those demands—backed by 77% and 56% of Democratic voters, respectively, according to recent polling—Biden risks losing crucial support from the voting bloc that the College Democrats has been tasked with engaging for decades. https://www.commondreams.org/news/college-democrats-campus-protests
2024-05-01 Pro-Genocide Mob Attacks Nonviolent Encampment, Beats Students at UCLA A pro-Israel mob violently attacked a Gaza solidarity encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles overnight Tuesday, hurling fireworks at the structure and beating demonstrators as campus security and city police stood by.
Los Angeles Times higher education journalist Teresa Watanabe reported that members of the pro-Israel mob used explicitly genocidal language as they ripped down encampment barriers, yelling, “Second Nakba!”—a reference to the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in 1948. https://www.commondreams.org/news/pro-genocide-mob-ucla
2024-05-01 Joe Scarborough’s Condescending, Irresponsible, and Ignorant Rant on Students Protesting Gaza War Sometimes in the morning with a cup of coffee I watch some of Morning Joe on MSNBC. I did on Monday (April 29) hearing Joe Scarborough’s condescending rant on college protests. On those today opposing Israel’s actions in the Gaza war, and on those earlier opposing the Vietnam war.
“Where are the adults!?” Scarborough asked after saying “it makes as much sense in 2024 having 18- and 19-year-olds running college campuses as in 1968, which is to say it doesn’t make any sense at all.” Any 18- and 19-year-olds protesting in 1968 and 2024 are not “adults” according to Scarborough, even though in 1968 they could be killed in Vietnam.https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/joe-scarbarough-gaza-campus-protests
2024-05-01 ‘Are We in a Police State?’ Progressives Demand End to Crackdown on Campus Protests Progressive members of the U.S. Congress on Wednesday demanded an end to nationwide police attacks on pro-Palestinian campus protests following violent raids and mass arrests at universities across the country, from Columbia in New York City to the University of South Florida in Tampa.
“The continued repression and violence against anti-war student activists and their allies by Columbia University, NYPD, and Mayor [Eric] Adams is abhorrent and barbarous,” Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) wrote on social media. “The nationwide crackdown on protesters must end.”
More than 300 demonstrators were arrested at Columbia and the nearby City College of New York late Tuesday alone, bringing the total number of arrests at dozens of universities across the U.S. to more than 1,000.
In a statement Tuesday, Bush said she was “appalled” by the police response to demonstrations at Washington University in St. Louis, which is in the Missouri Democrat’s district.
“The police brutality, mass arrests, suspensions, evictions, and wholesale bans on access to the St. Louis campus are inappropriate, unacceptable, and outright shameful,” said Bush. “Washington University administrators have joined the disgraceful nationwide trend of violent, aggressive responses by university administrators and local law enforcement aimed at curbing the rights to free speech and assembly by students, faculty, staff, and community members.”
“Violently assaulting and injuring people who are courageously advocating for peace and justice for Palestinians and Israelis alike is unconscionable,” she added. “I know from experience that these actions are traumatizing and dangerous; they do nothing to address the underlying issues and simply fuel more violence against nonviolent protesters.”https://www.commondreams.org/news/nationwide-crackdown-campus-protests
2024-04-30 Rahma Zein: Pro-Palestine protesters at American universities were ‘predominantly Jewish’ While speaking with Piers Morgan on his show Uncensored on Monday, Egyptian podcaster Rahma Zein responded to concerns over Jewish students feeling “threatened” by pro-Palestine protests on American university campuses by saying that she was joined by “predominantly Jewish students” at the protests she attended. She further added that the students faced police brutality and “infiltrators” who tried to discredit the protests. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cksRi_ulWRk
2024-04-30 The student movement for justice in Palestine is exploding peacefully across America Today on the Show: The student movement for justice in Palestine is exploding peacefully across America, despite a violent police crack down on several campuses; we’ll feature live reports from New York City and Los Angles. Also Ziad Abbas is back for a frontline update on the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the west bank: And we’ll also have a rafa update on the threatened israeli invasion https://kpfa.org/episode/flashpoints-april-30-2024/
2024-04-23 Cops Raid Palestinian Solidarity Encampments, Arrest Protesters at Yale and NYU Palestinian solidarity protests and encampments are appearing on college campuses from Massachusetts to California to protest Israel’s attacks on Gaza and to call for divestment from Israeli apartheid.
This week, police have raided encampments and arrested students at Yale and New York University. Palestinian American scholar and New York University professor Helga Tawil-Souri describes forming a faculty buffer to protect students, negotiating with police, and the ensuing crackdown that led to over 100 arrests Monday night. Uptown in New York City, the encampment at Columbia University is entering its seventh day despite mass arrests of protesters last week.
“In my opinion, the NYPD were called in under false pretenses by the president of the university,” says Joseph Slaughter, professor at Columbia University. “The university is being run as a sort of ad-hocracy at this point, the senior administration making up policies and procedures and prohibitions on the fly, changing them in the middle of the night.” https://truthout.org/video/cops-raid-palestinian-solidarity-encampments-arrest-protesters-at-yale-and-nyu/?
2023-11-07 The Unabashed Jewishness of Barbra Streisand In the history of Hollywood schmaltz, few moments quite beat the sight of Barbra Streisand dressed as a yeshiva boy, on her knees in prayer as the night sky swirls around her, plaintively singing in her buttery soprano, “Papa … can you hear me?”
In 1983, Barbra was at the height of her stardom, a well-established diva with Funny Girl, A Star Is Born, and The Way We Were behind her. A silhouette of her nose was enough to identify her. She used that accumulated capital to make this: a musical adaptation of an Isaac Bashevis Singer story, “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy,” about a girl in the old country who wants to study Talmud and disguises herself as a boy to do so.
It took 15 years from that day until she was finally able to make the film. Along the way, all manner of people cringed when she would describe her passion for the project. Among the studio heads, in rejection after rejection, she began to sense a common theme. The whole project appeared too Jew-y to them, she recalls:
When the studio executives refused to see beyond the Jewish context of Yentl to the larger themes of gender equality … This was about a woman who simply wanted the same opportunities as a man … Their real concern was unspoken but I could feel it. They did not want to draw attention to Jews and their world. As I wrote in my journal, Jews were apparently considered too “different, alien, especially now, and again, and it seems always …”
The struggle to make a film about Jews dovetailed with her struggle to be taken seriously as a woman director. Streisand constantly needed to affirm her power and assert her ideas for the film. She did seem to have to fight, however, throughout the shoot in Czechoslovakia and into the editing booth, all the while dealing with misogynistic whispering in the press about her being a control freak. Many of these stories do show a director intent on getting exactly what she wants, even if it means driving her crew crazy—she had to have the shot of sunlight falling on a stream in exactly the way she imagined, even if it meant doing it over and over again. But every auteur director is like this, including Kubrick and Spielberg—they’re just men. https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/the-unabashed-jewishness-of-barbra-streisand/ar-AA1jwL7g?
2024-05-01 Joe Scarborough’s Condescending, Irresponsible, and Ignorant Rant on Students Protesting Gaza War Sometimes in the morning with a cup of coffee I watch some of Morning Joe on MSNBC. I did on Monday (April 29) hearing Joe Scarborough’s condescending rant on college protests. On those today opposing Israel’s actions in the Gaza war, and on those earlier opposing the Vietnam war.
“Where are the adults!?” Scarborough asked after saying “it makes as much sense in 2024 having 18- and 19-year-olds running college campuses as in 1968, which is to say it doesn’t make any sense at all.” Any 18- and 19-year-olds protesting in 1968 and 2024 are not “adults” according to Scarborough, even though in 1968 they could be killed in Vietnam.https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/joe-scarbarough-gaza-campus-protests
2024-03-04 Sarandon “Our enemy is colonization, our enemy is greed and our enemy is silence.” These are the words of actor Susan Sarandon who urged pro-Palestine protestors to continue taking to the streets and for others to stand “on the right side of history.” https://www.tiktok.com/@ajplus/video/7342647097809784094
Ramon Airbase – Wikipedia Ramon Airbase, Basis Hayil-HaAvir Ramon, lit. Ramon Air Force Base) is an Israeli Air Force (IAF) base in the Negev desert, 50 km south of Beersheba and 20 km northwest of the town Mitzpe Ramon. The base and the town got their names from the huge “erosion crater” Makhtesh Ramon south of it. The base is also titled Kanaf 25, it was formerly known as Matred.
The Ramon Airbase was built as the result of joint Israeli and US government funding as part of the IAF’s redeployment out of its bases Eitam, Etzion, Ofira and Refidim in the Sinai after the peninsula was handed over to Egypt following the 1978 Camp David Accords. It was constructed from 1979 to 1982 by US companies together with the bases Nevatim and Ovda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Airbase
2024-04-14 At least 7 missiles hit Israeli Ramon airbase Sputnik cited the Zionist regime’s media sources that at least seven missiles hit Ramon Airbase base in the Negev desert.
In response to the Israeli terrorist attack on Iran’s consulate building in Syria on April 1, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps attacked targets in occupied Palestine with dozens of drones and missiles early on Sunday. The Israeli regime attacked Iran’s consulate in the Syrian capital of Damascus on April 1. The Israeli aggression led to the destruction of the entire building and the martyrdom and injury of the entire people inside it. Seven of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) military advisors were martyred following the Israeli attack on Iran’s consulate in Damascus, IRGC said in a statement. https://en.mehrnews.com/news/213835/At-least-7-missiles-hit-Israeli-Ramon-airbase
2024-04-13 What we know about the strike Iran is sending into Israeli territory Iran launched more than 100 drones at Israel Saturday, in a retaliatory attack weeks after a strike hit an Iranian government building in Syria. Iran holds Israel responsible for the attack that killed two top Iranian commanders. The counter strike heightens concerns about “a major escalation between the regional archenemies,” Reuters reported.
According to a White House press release, President Joe Biden’s administration expects the attack to “unfold over a number of hours,” and confirmed the U.S.’s alliance with Israel. This attack is likely to unfold over a number of hours. “President Biden has been clear: our support for Israel’s security is ironclad. The United States will stand with the people of Israel and support their defense against these threats from Iran.”
The U.S. military shot down some of the Iranian drones en route to Israel Saturday afternoon. Israel has a “very strong defensive posture in order to address anything flying toward Israel,” an Israel Defense Forces official said, per The Washington Post.
Iran is targeting the Negev Desert region, an area that houses several military bases, per The New York Times.
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