war crimes

Columbia Faculty Walk Out Over Student Suspensions, Arrests for Gaza Protests

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Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

While expressing gratitude for solidarity actions, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar—whose daughter was suspended—said that “this about the genocide in Gaza and the attention has to remain on that.”

Over 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by U.S.-backed Israeli troops, and Columbia University students have been suspended and arrested by New York Police Department officers in recent days for protesting the slaughter—which led to a walkout by the Ivy League institution’s faculty on Monday.

The Guardian reported that “hundreds of members of the teaching cohort at Columbia walked out in solidarity with the students who were arrested” while “students put protest tents back up in the middle of campus on Monday after they were torn down last week when more than 100 arrests were made.”

Yonah Lieberman, co-founder of IfNotNow, a Jewish-led U.S. group that organizes against Israel’s apartheid, declared: “Solidarity with these faculty members. Shame on establishment politicians and agitators who are smearing the anti-war protest at Columbia as anything other than what it is: a courageous stand for freedom and peace.”

Naureen Akhter, a founding member of the New York-based group Muslims for Progress, said: “Thank you to the professors who stood in solidarity with student protestors, who didn’t give into instigators who are fanning flames of hate and division. Remember the calls are for transparency, divestment, and amnesty for students!”

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)—a critic of Israel’s war on Gaza whose own daughter, Isra Hirsi, was suspended from Columbia’s Barnard College last week for “standing in solidarity with Palestinians facing a genocide,” as the 21-year-old junior put it—also noted the faculty walkout and “nationwide Gaza solidarity movement.”

“This is more than the students hoped for and I am glad to see this type of solidarity,” said Omar. “But to be clear, this about the genocide in Gaza and the attention has to remain on that.”

The walkout in New York City followed 54 Columbia Law School professors sending a letter to administrators that states, “While we as a faculty disagree about the relevant political issues and express no opinion on the merits of the protest, we are writing to urge respect for basic rule-of-law values that ought to govern our university.”

“Procedural irregularity, a lack of transparency about the university’s decision-making, and the extraordinary involvement of the NYPD all threaten the university’s legitimacy within its own community and beyond its gates,” they wrote. “We urge the university to conform student discipline to clear and well-established procedures that respect the rule of law.”

In a statement early Monday, several hours before the walkout, Columbia University president Minouche Shafik—who last week enabled NYPD arrests of students at the encampment—announced in her first statement since the sweep that all classes would be virtual “to deescalate the rancor and give us all a chance to consider next steps.”

“Faculty and staff who can work remotely should do so; essential personnel should report to work according to university policy. Our preference is that students who do not live on campus will not come to campus,” Shafik said. “During the coming days, a working group of deans, university administrators, and faculty members will try to bring this crisis to a resolution.”

The national group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) on Monday accused Columbia of creating “a climate of repression and harm for students peacefully protesting for an end to the Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza” over the past six months.

“Columbia University has actively created a hostile environment for students who are Palestinian or who support Palestinian freedom. Additionally, the administration’s actions have made the campus much less safe for Jewish students,” JVP said.

According to JVP:

Instead of listening to the calls of Columbia and Barnard students to divest from the genocide perpetrated by the Israeli government, the university has called in the NYPD to arrest students, suspended them, and even expelled them. At present 85 students, 15 of whom are Jewish, are suspended.

Yesterday’s statement by the White House, like the administrators of Columbia University, dangerously and inaccurately presumes that all Jewish students support the Israeli government’s genocide of Palestinians. This assumption is actively harming Palestinian and Jewish students.

The administration has not only harassed Jewish students and failed to ensure their safety and well-being, it has also obstructed their religious observances during Shabbat and prevented them from accessing their Jewish community on the eve of Passover.

While President Joe Biden’s Sunday statement was officially about Passover—a Jewish holiday that begins at sundown on Monday—and not the protests at Columbia and other campuses across the country, it was widely received as a response to the latter.

Biden said in part that “we must speak out against the alarming surge of antisemitism—in our schools, communities, and online. Silence is complicity. Even in recent days, we’ve seen harassment and calls for violence against Jews. This blatant antisemitism is reprehensible and dangerous—and it has absolutely no place on college campuses, or anywhere in our country.”

Jonathan Ben-Menachem, a Ph.D. student at the university, toldCNN that “Columbia students organizing in solidarity with Palestine—including Jewish students—have faced harassment, doxxing, and now arrest by the NYPD. These are the main threats to the safety of Jewish Columbia students.”

“On the other hand, student protesters have led interfaith joint prayers for several days now, and Passover Seder will be held at the Gaza solidarity encampment tomorrow,” he added. “Saying that student protesters are a threat to Jewish students is a dangerous smear.”

Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine said in a lengthy statement that “we are student activists at Columbia calling for divestment from genocide. We are frustrated by media distractions focusing on inflammatory individuals who do not represent us. At universities across the nation, our movement is united in valuing every human life.”

“As a diverse group united by love and justice, we demand our voices be heard against the mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza,” the statement continues. “We’ve been horrified each day, watching children crying over the bodies of their slain parents, families without food to eat, and doctors operating without anesthesia. Our university is complicit in this violence and this is why we protest.”

The Columbia Spectator reported Monday that Columbia College passed a divestment referendum that “asked whether the university should divest financially from Israel, cancel the Tel Aviv Global Center, and end Columbia’s dual degree program with Tel Aviv University,” with respective votes of 76.55%, 68.36%, and 65.62%. However, a statement from a university spokesperson signaled the referendum would not lead to any shift in campus policies.

Beyond Columbia, there are ongoing demonstrations at institutions including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, the University of Michigan, and Yale University, another Ivy League school, where at least 47 peaceful student protesters were arrested on Monday.

Those arrested were “charged with class A misdemeanors, which is the highest class of misdemeanors in Connecticut—the same degree applies to third-degree assault,” according to the Yale Daily News. Citing a university spokesperson, the student newspaper added that they “will be referred for Yale disciplinary action—which could include reprimand, probation, or suspension.”

Pushing back against some administrators’ statements, journalist Thomas Birmingham, who was with the Yale protesters overnight, said on social media: “Here’s some things I saw… 1. Repeated and loud calls to remain peaceful. 2. Students locking arms, teaching Arabic and Hebrew, and passing around pizza and water. 3. Lots of singing.”

Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingColumbia Faculty Walk Out Over Student Suspensions, Arrests for Gaza Protests

Students launch encampments in solidarity with Gaza across the US

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Original article republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Students set up an encampment at the University of Michigan in solidarity with Gaza (Photo via Jewish Voice for Peace UMich)

Police launch new wave of repression as student movement for Palestine grows

Almost a week after Columbia students launched their Gaza Solidarity Encampment, students across the country have taken from their example and began encampments in public spaces in their own universities in solidarity with Palestine.

In the early hours of the morning of April 22, students at New York University began an encampment on Gould Plaza, joining their New York City counterparts at the New School, which had launched an encampment the previous day.

In the Greater Boston Area students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Emerson College, and Tufts University set up encampments at their own universities. Students at the University of Michigan also launched an encampment on April 22, pitching tents outdoors with ice still visibly on the ground.

Also on the morning of April 22, New Haven police repressed the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Yale University, which had been established on April 20, making 47 arrests. In response, students took over the street outside of campus, shutting down an intersection with hundreds of demonstrators.

Students are broadly demanding that their universities divest from Israel, and have pledged to maintain their encampments until their demands are met. The intensification of the student action began when Columbia students launched their encampment at 4 am on April 17. Despite a severe crackdown by the University and the NYPD, resulting in 122 arrests, students have been able to sustain the encampment on the Butler Lawn for almost a week, inspiring others across the country to do the same and put pressure on their own universities to divest from Israel. 

On the afternoon of April 22, a new wave of repression began outside of Columbia’s campus as several demonstrators were arrested outside the campus gates, who were picketing outside of the encampment. 

Original article republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingStudents launch encampments in solidarity with Gaza across the US

The McCarthyist Attack on Gaza Protests Threatens Free Thought for All

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Original article by ARI PAUL republished from FAIR under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

With the encouragement of the state, universities from coast to coast are taking draconian steps to silence debate about US-backed violence in the Middle East.

The Columbia University community looked on in shock as cops in riot gear arrested at least 100 pro-Palestine protesters who had set up an encampment in the center of campus (New York Post, 4/18/24). The university’s president, Nemat Shafik, had just the day before testified before a Republican-dominated congressional committee ostensibly concerned with campus “antisemitism”—a label that has come to be misapplied to any criticism of Israel, though the critics so smeared are often themselves Jewish.

The New York Post (4/18/24) was also pleased that Google had fired 28 employees for protesting genocide.

A sense of delight has filled the city’s opinion pages. The New York Post editorial board (4/18/24) hailed both the clampdown on protests and Congress’s push to ensure that such drastic action against free speech was taken: “We’re glad to see Shafik stand up…. Congress deserves some credit for putting educrats’ feet to the fire on this issue.” The paper added, “Academia has been handling anti-Israel demonstrations with kid gloves.” In other words, universities have been allowing too many people to think and speak critically about an important issue of the day.

In “At Columbia, the Grown-Ups in the Room Take a Stand,” New York Times columnist Pamela Paul (4/18/24) hailed the eviction, saying of the encampment that for the “passer-by, the fury and self-righteous sentiment on display was chilling,” and that for supporters of Israel, “it must be unimaginably painful.” In other words, conservative pundits have decided that campus safe spaces where speech is banned to protect the feelings of listeners are good, depending on the issue. Would Paul (no relation!) favor bans on pro-Taiwan or pro-Armenia demonstrations because they could offend Chinese and Turkish students?

And for Michael Oren, a prominent Israeli politico, Columbia students hadn’t suffered enough. He said of Columbia in a Wall Street Journal op-ed (4/19/24):

Missing was an admission of the university’s failure to enforce the measures it had enacted to protect its Jewish community. [Shafik] didn’t address how, under the banner of free speech, Columbia became inhospitable to Jews. She didn’t acknowledge how incendiary demonstrations such as the encampment were the product of the university’s inaction.

Shafik had assured her congressional interrogators that Columbia had already suspended 15 students for speaking out for Palestinian human rights, suspended two student groups—Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 11/10/23)—and had even terminated an instructor (New York Times, 4/17/24).

The hearing was bizarre, to say the least; a Georgia Republican asked the president if she wanted her campus to be “cursed by God” (New York Times, 4/18/24). (“Definitely not,” was her response.)

The former World Bank economist had clearly been shaken after seeing how congressional McCarthyism ousted two other female Ivy League presidents (FAIR.org, 12/12/23; Al Jazeera, 1/2/24).

‘Protected from having to hear’

Twenty-three Jewish faculty members at Columbia published a joint op-ed (Columbia Spectator, 4/10/24) reminding President Shafik that “labeling pro-Palestinian expression as anti-Jewish hate speech requires a dangerous and false conflation of Zionism with Jewishness, of political ideology with identity.”

“What happened at those hearings yesterday should be of grave concern to everybody, regardless of their feelings on Palestine, regardless of their politics,” Barnard College women’s studies professor Rebecca Jordan-Young told Democracy Now! (4/18/24). “What happened yesterday was a demonstration of the growing and intensifying attack on liberal education writ large.”

Her colleague, historian Nara Milanich, said in the same interview:

This is not about antisemitism so much as attacking areas of inquiry and teaching, whether it’s about voting rights or vaccine safety or climate change — right?—arenas of inquiry that are uncomfortable or inconvenient or controversial for certain groups. And so, this is essentially what we’re seeing, antisemitism being weaponized in a broad attack on the university.

Jewish faculty at Columbia spoke out against the callous misuse of antisemitism to silence students, but those in power aren’t listening (Columbia Spectator, 4/10/24).

Shafik justified authorizing the mass arrests, which many said hadn’t been seen on campus since the anti-Vietnam War protests of 1968. “The individuals who established the encampment violated a long list of rules and policies,” she said (BBC, 4/18/24).  “Through direct conversations and in writing, the university provided multiple notices of these violations.”

One policy suggested by the university’s “antisemitism task force,” according to a university trustee who also testified (New York Times, 4/18/24): “If you are going to chant, it should only be in a certain place, so that people who don’t want to hear it are protected from having to hear it.”

Cross-country rollback

USC valedictorian Asna Tabassum says the school did not tell her what the security threats were, but said that the precautions that would be necessary to allow her to speak were “not what the university wants to ‘present as an image’” (Reuters, 4/18/24).

Meanwhile, the University of Southern California canceled the planned graduation speech by valedictorian Asna Tabassum—a Muslim woman who had spoken out for Palestine (Reuters, 4/18/24). The university cited unnamed “security risks”;  The Hill (4/16/24) noted that “she had links to pro-Palestinian sites on her social media.”  Andrew T. Guzman, the provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, said in a statement that cancelation was “consistent with the fundamental legal obligation—including the expectations of federal regulators—that universities act to protect students and keep our campus community safe” (USC Annenberg Media, 4/15/24).

This is happening as academic freedom is being rolled back across the country. Republicans in Indiana recently passed a law to allow a politically appointed board to deny or even revoke university professors’ tenure if the board feels their classes lack “intellectual diversity”—at the same time that it threatens them if they seem “likely” to “subject students to political or ideological views and opinions” deemed unrelated to their courses (Inside Higher Ed, 2/21/24).

Benjamin Balthaser, associate professor of English at Indiana University South Bend, told FAIR in regard to the congressional hearing:

There is no other definition of bigotry or racism that equates criticism of a state, even withering, hostile criticism, with an entire ethnic or religious group, especially a state engaging in ongoing, documented war crimes and crimes against humanity. Added to this absurdity is the fact that many of the accused are not only Jewish, but have strong ties to their Jewish communities. To make such an equation assumes a collective or group homogeneity which is itself a form of essentialism, even racism itself: People are not reducible to the crimes of their state, let alone a state thousands of miles away to which most Jews are not citizens.

Of course, witch hunts against leftists in US society are often motivated by antisemitism. Balthaser again:

The far right has long deployed antisemitism as a weapon of censorship and repression, associating Jewishness with Communism and subversion during the First and Second Red Scares.  Not only did earlier forms of McCarthyism overwhelmingly target Jews (Jews were two-thirds of the “defendants” called before HUAC in 1952, despite being less than 2% of the US population), it did so while cynically pretending to protect Jews from Communism.  Something very similar is occurring now: Mobilizing a racist trope of Jewish adherence to Israel, far-right politicians are using accusations of antisemitism to both silence criticism of Israel and, in doing so, promote their antisemitic ideas of Jewishness in the world.

Silencing for ‘free speech’

The darker blue states have passed restrictions aimed at Critical Race Theory; in the lighter blue states, proposed restrictions have not been adopted (CRT Forward).

These universities are not simply clamping down on free speech because the administrators dislike this particular speech, or out of fear that pro-Palestine demonstrations or vocal faculty members could scare donors from writing big checks. This is a result of state actors—congressional Republicans, in particular—who are using their committee power and sycophants in the media to demand more firings, more suspensions, more censorship.

I have written for years (FAIR.org, 10/23/20, 11/17/21, 3/25/22), as have many others, that Republican complaints about “cancel culture” on campus suppressing free speech are exaggerated. One of the biggest hypocrisies is that so-called free-speech conservatives claim that campus activists are silencing conservatives, but have little to say about blatant censorship and political firings when it comes to Palestine.

This isn’t a mere moral inconsistency. This is the anti-woke agenda at work: When criticism of the right is deemed to be the major threat to free speech, it’s a short step to enlisting the state to “protect” free speech by silencing the critics—in this case, dissenters against US support for Israeli militarism.

But this isn’t just about Palestine; crackdowns against pro-Palestine protests are part of a broader war against discourse and thought. The right has already paved the way for assaults on educational freedom with bans aimed at Critical Race Theory adopted in 29 states.

If the state can now stifle and punish speech against the murder of civilians in Gaza, what’s next? With another congressional committee investigating so-called infiltration by China’s Communist Party, will Chinese political scholars be targeted next (Reuters, 2/28/24)? With state laws against environmental protests proliferating (Sierra, 9/17/23), will there be a new McCarthyism against climate scientists? (Author Will Potter raised the alarm about a “green scare” more than a decade ago—People’s World, 9/26/11; CounterSpin, 2/1/13.)

Universities and the press are supposed to be places where we can freely discuss the issues of the day, even if that means having to hear opinions that might be hard for some to digest. Without those arenas for free thought, our First Amendment rights mean very little. If anyone who claims to be a free speech absolutist isn’t citing a government-led war against free speech and assembly on campuses as their No. 1 concern in the United States right now, they’re a fraud.

Original article by ARI PAUL republished from FAIR under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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Continue ReadingThe McCarthyist Attack on Gaza Protests Threatens Free Thought for All

John McDonnell MP slams UK government’s record on sanctioning Israeli settlers in the West Bank

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https://leftfootforward.org/2024/04/john-mcdonnell-mp-slams-uk-governments-record-on-sanctioning-israeli-settlers-in-the-west-bank/

‘What’s happening in the West Bank just as in Gaza are war crimes’

Labour MP John McDonnell has questioned the UK government’s record on sanctioning Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, as violence in the region escalates. 

Speaking in Parliament on Wednesday, McDonnell called on the UK government to publish a detailed report into the sanctions imposed by the government on Israeli settlers in the West Bank. 

It comes after the UN human rights office has demanded that Israeli security forces immediately stop participating in and enabling attacks by Jewish settlers in the region, stating the, “escalating violence over the past few days is also a matter of grave concern”.

This followed the killing of a 14 year-old Israeli from a settler family, which sparked the biggest settler rampage since the war in Gaza began, with seven Palestinians reported murdered and many others wounded.

Speaking on Wednesday in Parliament McDonnell said: “At a meeting with Israeli colleagues this morning we heard that the Israeli government is arresting legal and peaceful observers in the West Bank.

“Could the government now make it very clear to the Israeli government that observers should be allowed to operate within the West Bank, to ensure that peace is maintained, but also could we have a report in detail on the sanctions that the government is applying to Israeli settlements and Israeli settlers.”

…

https://leftfootforward.org/2024/04/john-mcdonnell-mp-slams-uk-governments-record-on-sanctioning-israeli-settlers-in-the-west-bank/

Continue ReadingJohn McDonnell MP slams UK government’s record on sanctioning Israeli settlers in the West Bank

‘The Opposite of Leadership’: US Vetoes Palestine’s UN Membership

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Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Robert A. Wood, deputy permanent representative of the United States to the United Nations, vetoes Palestine’s U.N. membership during the Security Council meeting on April 18, 2024. (Photo: Manuel Elías/United Nations)

Palestine’s permanent observer at the United Nations said the resolution’s failure “will not break our will, and it will not defeat our determination.”

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration on Thursday used the country’s veto power at the United Nations Security Council to block Palestine’s bid to become a full member of the U.N.

While 12 nations voted in favor of Palestinian membership and two abstained, the United States is one of five countries—along with China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom—who have veto authority at the Security Council.

Since Israel launched what the International Court of Justice has said is a “plausibly” genocidal assault of the Gaza Strip in response to a Hamas-led October attack, the Biden administration has blocked three cease-fire resolutions at the Security Council. Under mounting global pressure, the U.S. finally abstained last month, allowing a cease-fire measure to pass.

In the lead-up to Thursday’s vote, the Biden administration was pressuring other countries to oppose the Palestinian Authority’s renewed membership effort so it could possibly avoid a veto, according to leaked cables obtained by The Intercept.

“Take a moment to ponder how isolated Biden has made the U.S.,” said Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, after the veto. “Biden lobbied Japan, South Korea, and Ecuador HARD to oppose the Palestine resolution so that the U.S. wouldn’t have to veto. They refused. So Biden cast his fourth veto in seven months (!!) This is the opposite of leadership.”

In addition to the nations Parsi highlighted, Algeria, China, France, Guyana, Malta, Mozambique, Russia, Sierra Leone, and Slovenia voted for giving Palestine full U.N. membership while Switzerland and the United Kingdom abstained.

After the vote, U.N. News reported on remarks from Riyad Mansour, a U.N. permanent observer for the state of Palestine:

“We came to the Security Council today as an important historic moment, regionally and internationally, so that we could salvage what can be saved. We place you before a historic responsibility to establish the foundations of a just and comprehensive peace in our region.”

Council members were given the opportunity “to revive the hope that has been lost among our people” and to translate their commitment towards a two-state solution into firm action “that cannot be maneuvered or retracted,” and the majority of council members “have risen to the level of this historic moment, and they have stood on the side of justice and freedom and hope, in line with the ethical and humanitarian and legal principles that must govern our world and in line with simple logic.”

“The fact that this resolution did not pass will not break our will, and it will not defeat our determination,” Mansour added. “We will not stop in our effort. The state of Palestine is inevitable. It is real. Perhaps they see it as far away, but we see it as near, and we are the faithful.”

Parsi said that “a Western-friendly senior Global South diplomat” told him of Biden’s veto: “Whatever agonizing claim the U.S. had to lead a self-appointed free world has died a very loud public death on the Security Council horseshoe tonight. YOU CAN’T LEAD IF YOU CAN’T LISTEN.”

Biden, a Democrat seeking reelection in November, has faced fierce criticism in the United States and around the world for U.S. complicity in Israel’s war on Gaza—which Hamas, not the Palestinian Authority, has controlled for nearly two decades. In under seven months, Israeli forces have killed 33,970 Palestinians, injured another 76,770, displaced most of the besieged enclave’s 2.3 million population, devastated civilian infrastructure, and severely limited the flow of lifesaving humanitarian assistance.

Israel—which already got $3.8 billion in annual U.S. military aid before October 7—continues to receive weapons support from the Biden administration, even as a growing chorus of critics, including some Democrats in Congress, argues that the arms transfers violate U.S. and international law.

Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue Reading‘The Opposite of Leadership’: US Vetoes Palestine’s UN Membership