Harvard is facing backlash for hiring an anti-Zionist rabbi to new role, meant to combat antisemitism.

By World Israel News Staff

Harvard Divinity School (HDS) announced last week that it hired an anti-Zionist rabbi who downplayed the October 7th Hamas massacres and denied that antisemitism is rampant at the school.

Rabbi Shaul Magid will begin serving as the school’s Professor of Modern Jewish Studies in Residence, starting on July 1st, HDS said in a media statement.

Magid is an avowed “counter-Zionist,” who has repeatedly and publicly expressed his opposition to Zionism and the existence of Israel as a Jewish State.

In an essay written less than two weeks after the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel, Magid wrote that while he “will not justify a massacre,” he stressed that he “will not justify” viewing the attack, which included numerous atrocities, “as if it happened in a vacuum.”

Referring to the invasion which saw Hamas rape, butcher, and mutilate civilians including the elderly and children, Magid wrote that “all human endeavors have context, and to deny that is itself an act of dehumanization.”

He also wrote that he stands with “his people,” presumably meaning Jews, but that he will “not condemn the Palestinian people.”

Notably, Magid was appointed to an academic position newly created by Harvard, which the school claimed will help counter antisemitism within the institution.

Rabbi David Wolpe said he disagreed with Harvard’s selection of Magid, arguing it would further promote anti-Zionist views at the university – which are not reflective or inclusive of most American Jews.

Wolpe was briefly part of a taskforce aimed at combating antisemitism at Harvard before he resigned, citing concerns over the school’s commitment to creating a safe atmosphere for Jews on campus.

Magid is “not an answer to the problem that Harvard has with their Jewish students or with the exclusion of mainstream views,” Wolpe told the Washington Free Beacon.

Wolpe emphasized that Magid’s stances on Israel and antisemitism are “very fringe” and do not “represent anything like the mainstream view of the American Jewish community.”

Born in New York to a secular Jewish family, Magid became interested in Orthodox Judaism in his 20s.

He studied at a yeshiva in Jerusalem for several years, and received rabbinical ordination from several prominent Religious Zionist rabbis in 1984.

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What else would make an antisemite pretending to be an anti-Zionist as angry as the Jews making it harder to kill them?

By Daniel Greenfield, Frontpage Magazine

In a London cafe, Jewish theatergoers arriving to take in ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ were accosted by bigots waving PLO flags. In Los Angeles, a Holocaust museum and a synagogue were attacked by masked mobs in keffiyehs who claimed to be protesting against Israel.

In Brooklyn, a Hasidic Jewish man was stabbed by a thug shouting, “Free Palestine”.

The old arguments about the difference between antisemitism and anti-Zionism are in the same sort of ruin as the Jewish communities on the border with Gaza and Lebanon after Oct 7.

The entire intellectual infrastructure for arguing that there is some distinction between opposing Jews and opposing a country for the Jews was destroyed not by concerted debate or the universal adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, but by the actions of the Left.

From the Biden administration to the Ivy League campuses that provide its manpower and its donor and voter bases, the Left universally accepted the legitimacy of the anti-Israel movement as a principled moral activity, and the anti-Israel movement celebrated by scrawling “Hamas is Coming” on D.C. monuments, waving Hamas and Hezbollah flags, and attacking synagogues.

Pro-Israel groups argued there was no difference between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. Anti-Israel groups proved them right. What would the anti-Israel movement have to do to Jews to have its actions be officially acknowledged as antisemitism? There seems to be no red line.

There is little that the Nazis did that the so-called anti-Zionist movement hasn’t done from promoting the mass murder of Jews, drawing up lists of Jewish writers to purge, attacking houses of worship, and calling for the elimination of Jews from public life.

Ivy League bosses who had policed Halloween costumes argued that another Holocaust was all about the context.

The Bolsheviks banned antisemitism in the Soviet Union only to define any form of Jewish identity that did not involve leftist activism as Zionist or otherwise reactionary.

In the name of anti-Zionism, the USSR banned the Hebrew language and most expressions of Jewish culture and life except for a narrow slice of ‘Yiddishism’ and a few closely monitored synagogues.

The Soviet Union did all this while officially prohibiting antisemitism. The modern Left does much the same thing. It officially rejects antisemitism while endorsing anti-Zionism.

As in the USSR there is a cadre of leftist Jews who support the destruction of Israel and are anti-Zionists in good standing (at least for now) and, like George Soros, are the only official victims of antisemitism.

The other 99% of Jews are Zionists. And they may be protested, harassed, assaulted, and killed.

Since 99% of Jews are Zionists, their synagogues, Holocaust museums and even productions of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ are fair game for the decolonization program. When Hamas or Hezbollah kill Jews, they never bother to check their views on an independent Jewish homeland.

Why should their allies, whether wearing Jihadist black, white or green, or Marxist red and yellow, be any more scrupulous when attacking synagogues or randomly stabbing Jews in Brooklyn?

The Jewish position was that anti-Zionism was antisemitism and therefore an ugly form of hatred. The anti-Zionist position is that most Jews are Zionists and therefore antisemitism is justified.

The fundamental disagreement here is not over whether there is a difference between killing Jews or killing Zionists, but whether Jews deserve to be killed.

Since Oct 7, it has been abundantly clear that the supporters of killing Jews call themselves anti-Zionists. By rebranding antisemitism as anti-Zionism, they transform the act of persecuting and killing a minority group from a shameful form of bigotry to a courageous form of progressivism.

Targeting a minority group because of its religion or its ethnicity is considered reactionary, but redefine the group as an ideology and suddenly targeting Jews becomes noble.

College encampments that barred black or Latino students from campus would be a hate crime, but campus encampments targeting Jews as Zionists follows the right side of history.

Redefining Jews to justify antisemitism is not as innovative as leftists like to think.

Antisemitism was always premised on redefining the Jewish existence as unnatural and artificial. Jews were being denounced as colonizers as far back as the days of Pharaoh. The term ‘antisemitism’, coined by Wilhelm Marr, a German socialist, followed in the proud tradition of socialists justifying why they wanted to liberate all the oppressed of Europe except the Jews.

The Jews, being semites, did not belong in Europe. The Jews, being European, do not belong in Israel. The Jews, being Zionists, do not belong at progressive institutions like Harvard or Columbia. And the Jews being occupiers, do not belong in London watching ‘Fiddler on the Roof’.

t is the duty of all progressive people of goodwill to make them uncomfortable not only by lobbing rockets at Jerusalem and burning Jewish families alive in their homes, but also by showing up to attack them anywhere in the world they might be. Because it’s not about Israel.

Just as anti-Zionism is a manifestation of antisemitism, so the calls for the destruction of Israel by the average non-Muslim has nothing to do with a tiny country in the Middle East.

And everything to do with the Jews.

The profusion of PLO flags and shouts about rivers, seas and the Arab Muslim colonizers who adopted the name of the European colonizers known as the Philistines, are simply the latest incarnation of the Swastika and shouts on German streets of “Juden Raus!”

Anti-Zionism is antisemitism misspelled or revamped for a new and more tolerant age that needs heavy doses of ideological formulation before it can go ahead with its pogroms.

If Israel didn’t exist, it would have had to be invented. European Jews reinvented Israel because of antisemitism. And antisemites cling to Israel so that they can claim to be anti-Zionists.

The idea that the current plague of antisemitism would not exist without Israel is a fantasy.

The obsession of the Muslim wing of the anti-Zionist coalition with Jews long predates the rebirth of Israel. And socialists were hurling antisemitic invective at Jews in the antebellum era.

Mohammed did not ethnically cleanse the Jews of Arabia because of the State of Israel. Nor did Marx rant that “money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist” back when Theodor Herzl was a teenage boy because he was so infuriated by Zionism.

The red-green alliance of Marxism and Islam has always hated the Jews. It will always do so.

But the followers of Mohammed and Marx also hate a great many other people besides Jews because hatred is their ideology more than any faith or economic system.

They distill and channel that hate along ideological lines, but it is not their ideology that defines their hate, but their hate that defines their ideology. If there were no Israel, they would still be turning up outside synagogues and chanting for the death of Jews as they did before there was an Israel.

Israel is not the cause of the antisemitism or anti-Zionism of Marxists and Muslims, it is the best defense against it. Israel’s existence infuriates them because it has made it harder to kill Jews.

And what else would make an antisemite pretending to be an anti-Zionist as angry as the Jews making it harder to kill them?

The post Anti-Zionism is just antisemitism misspelled appeared first on World Israel News.

Vegan eatery that bans Israelis claims to be an “anti-racist safe space.”

By World Israel News Staff

A vegan restaurant in Madrid posted a sign stating that “Zionists” are not welcome and officially declared itself a “anti-Zionist zone,” in a move evocative of Nazi-era policies that banned Jews from businesses in Germany.

On its website, La Oveja Negra Vegana declares itself to be a “safe space created for all people who have been marginalized and oppressed,” and that they work to create an atmosphere “based on mutual support, solidarity and respect.”

But apparently, the welcoming environment for ethnic minorities and other groups who have suffered historical oppression does not include Israelis, Jews, or those who believe that the Jewish state has a right to exist.

“A vegan friend who ate at the restaurant last week told me about the sign, so yesterday we went there to find out what the story was,” Ben Yahav-Nevat, an Israeli expat who has lived in Spain for nearly a decade, told Hebrew-language media outlet Ynet.

מסעדה טבעונית במדריד, נחשבת לטובה מאוד אגב, הגדירה את עצמה כעת כ- Anti Zionist Zone. זה השלט בכניסה: pic.twitter.com/1pb7tANDa1

— Itai Herman (@ItaiHerman) June 7, 2024

“I went in and asked why they hung that sign there, and an employee came and started yelling at us. I told them I was a proud Zionist and told them it was a racist, antisemitic sign and that they should remove it.”

Yahav-Nevat said in response, the restaurant’s staff “shouted at us and accused us of murdering children.”

On Instagram, La Oveja Negra Vegana doubled-down on their anti-Israel stance, posting a story which explicitly stated that people “who don’t recognize what is happening in Palestine as genocide” should “not enter our doors.”

The story urged Spain to end trade and diplomatic relations with Israel, along with the phrase “Long live the struggle of the Palestinian people!”

Users on social media platform X reacted to a photo of the restaurant’s anti-Israel signs, noting the similarities between the restaurant declaring itself a “Zionist-free zone” and Holocaust-era businesses banning Jews from entry.

“This is giving 1930s vibes,” wrote one user in response to the photo.

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Hundreds of students have created an encampment to show their Jew hatred.

By Hugh Fitzgerald, Frontpage Magazine

Details on Columbia University’s descent into pure racist hatred be found here: “‘Burn Tel Aviv to the ground:’ Calls for violence continue at Columbia,” by Michael Starr, Jerusalem Post, April 21, 2024:

In another Instagram video, in which a poster of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine secretary-general Ahmad Sa’adat can be seen in the background, anti-Israel activists sang, “Oh Hamas, our beloved, strike, strike Tel Aviv.”

These students on Instagram display a PFLP official on a poster in the background, while they sing about a different terror group, Hamas, calling on its operatives to engage in a genocidal attack on Tel Aviv: “Oh Hamas, our beloved, strike, strike Tel Aviv.”

Either they couldn’t find a Hamas poster to use or, more likely, they can’t tell the difference between Hamas and the PFLP.

As the counter-protesters returned to their dormitories, Students Supporting Israel Columbia video showed that they were taunted with calls of “Jews” and told to “go back to Poland.”

The word “Jew” is now considered, in the antisemitic atmosphere in which we now live, an insult.

And note the constant insinuation that Jews in America don’t belong, that they must leave and “go back to Poland” or “go back to Europe.”

Jews don’t belong here, and they don’t belong in “Palestine.”

So let them go to some place in eastern Europe with their bagels and lox, and leave us, real Americans such as Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and Professor Joseph Massad, alone.

Oh, we almost forget — there is always the Jewish Republic of Birobidzhan, in the godforsaken middle of Siberia.

Just the place for Jews to settle, and read their Talmud undisturbed.

One Jewish counter-protester tried to stop the activists from setting an Israeli flag on fire, according to SSI. In another video, a Jewish student was splashed with water.

Within Our Lifetime leader Nerdeen Kiswani, after her wedding, managed to enter the campus despite it being allegedly locked down.

Kiswani led the crowd in a chant in a video published by Students for Justice in Palestine Columbia, saying “There is only one solution, Intifada revolution.”

In a video published by Palestinian Youth Movement NYC, they chanted, “Zionism will fall, brick by brick, wall by wall, Israel will fall” and called “US imperialists, number one terrorists.”

Uptown 4 Palestine published videos of activists proclaiming in Arabic that “From the water to the water (a reference to the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea), Palestine is Arab.” (The chant is an alternate version of the chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”)

As of now, Zionism will not “fall.” Israel goes from strength to strength.

The Start-Up nation continues to produce unicorns, as Israeli scientists and entrepreneurs make advances in cybersecurity, solar energy, electric batteries, anti-missile defense systems, medicines and medial equipment, and much more.

Israelis have more companies listed on our Stock Exchange than any other foreign country except China.

Jews from Europe are making aliyah in ever-increasing numbers, undeterred by the current violence.

Israel’s military is ranked as the fourth most powerful, in the world, after those of the United States, Russia, and China, and ahead of the UK, France, and Germany.

It has made startling advances in military hardware, including the anti-missile defense systems David’s Sling, Iron Dome and, to be introduced into service next year, Iron Beam, a laser-based system that will cost only $2 for each lethal laser hit.

And despite having had to fight, in its young life, four wars for its very survival (in 1948, 1967, 1973, and 2023-24), and many smaller campaigns against terror groups, including the PLO, Hamas, PIJ, PFLP, and Hezbollah, Israel has been ranked as the “fourth happiest nation,” after three Scandinavian countries, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark.

Quite a list of achievements for such a young, small country with hardly any natural resources, that is surrounded by enemies.

What will the next 75 years bring?

Those protesters at Columbia, UNC-Chapel Hill, Berkeley, Harvard, Rutgers, and a hundred sundry other colleges, will yip and yap, and issue their bloodcurdling threats about burning down Tel Aviv and removing Jews from America, but they have had no discernible effect except, one hopes, to get themselves expelled from the schools that heretofore have coddled them.

As for the IDF, it must now finish the dismantling of Hamas, by attacking its four last intact battalions in Rafah.

Once that is accomplished, it must then proceed to destroy Hezbollah’s stockpiles of rockets and missiles in Lebanon.

The last, and most important task, for the IDF is to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities so that there is no chance that Iran will be able to build a nuclear weapon.

It’s a formidable To-Do List, but when has Israel ever failed at the tasks it sets itself?

The post Columbia University descends into pure racist hatred appeared first on World Israel News.

They demanded that the school divest any of its holdings in companies linked to Israel.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

A group of professors and other workers at the University of Michigan has formed a “Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine” (FSJP) chapter and as its first act published a guest column in The Michigan Daily accusing the school of “horrific suppression” of anti-Zionist viewpoints and “brutal actions against students.”

Claiming to be “engaged in education, advocacy, and action in solidarity with Palestinian liberation,” the group, which is a companion to the extreme anti-Zionist group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), railed against University of Michigan president Santa Ono for taking steps to cool the campus climate and discourage rhetoric that denigrates those who have staked out positions on either side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.

One action the group singled out for opprobrium was the university’s decision in November to cancel a campus-wide vote on an anti-Israel resolution accusing the Jewish state of “genocide” and “apartheid.”

Another vote on a resolution condemning Hamas as well as bigotry targeting both Jews and Muslims was also canceled. In a statement issued on Dec. 5, Ono defended the decision, saying both measures “have done more to stoke fear, anger, and animosity on our campus than they would ever accomplish” if adopted as policy.

FSJP called his plea for civility hypocritical.

Regarding its claims of “brutal actions against students,” FSJP cited to two incidents in which a crush of anti-Zionist protesters stormed administrative buildings while screaming “ceasefire now,” a call for Israel to halt its military operations aimed at eradicating the Hamas terror group from Gaza.

In one of the demonstrations, held on Nov. 22, the protesters attempted to force their way into Ono’s office in the Alexander G. Ruthven administrative building, pushing past Division of Public Safety and Security (DPPS) officers while clamoring to see the president.

An altercation caught on video ensued between the demonstrators and the police, and a female Muslim student was arrested. The faculty group as well as Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE) claimed that footage of the arrest showed an officer ripping off the student’s hijab while attempting to handcuff her. The Algemeiner has viewed the footage, however, and cannot substantiate the allegation.

In total, police arrested 40 students from the building that day. A similar incident occurred four days earlier, when the protesters clashed with police after successfully taking over the Ruthven building.

“Forty students were arrested and cited for trespassing because they dared to request a meeting with their president,” FSJP wrote. “All of this, in a campus community that waxes poetic about its efforts in diversity, equity, and inclusion, and its exceptional status as ‘leaders and best.’”

The campus employees added that they believed the University of Michigan has tried to “bury the university’s complicity in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people” and demanded that the school divest any of its holdings in companies linked to Israel. “A genocide carried out by the Israeli government and facilitated by corporations in which the university invests,” they continued.

The University of Michigan has long been a hub of anti-Israel activity. In January, anti-Israel student protesters there chanted, “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide, you’re committing genocide,” during US Vice President Kamala Harris’ visit to campus, where she was scheduled to discuss climate change.

They also chanted, “There is only one solution: Intifada revolution” while waving Palestinian flags. A student who appeared to be leading the demonstration condemned the Biden administration for approving aid to Israel, which she referred to as “the Zionist entity.”

FSJP is a new effort organized and supported by the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), a nonprofit organization that lobbies universities to adopt an academic boycott of Israel.

The group advocates policies stipulating that “projects with all Israeli academic institutions should come to an end” and delineates specific restrictions that adherents should abide by — for instance, denying letters of recommendation to students who seek to study in Israel.

On its website, USACBI says professors should form such chapters “in response to the genocidal assault on Gaza and the crackdown on pro-Palestinian voices” and asks that “founding members make a commitment” to supporting academic boycotts of Israel.

The movement to form new “Faculty for Justice in Palestine” groups is growing. So far, chapters have cropped up all over higher education since Oct. 7, including at New York University, the Claremont Colleges, the University of California system, University of Florida, University of Massachusetts-Boston, Rutgers University, Haverford College, Princeton University, and Harvard University.

Critics argue the movement’s growth poses a threat to the well-being of Jewish college students. According to a recent study conducted by the AMCHA Initiative, an antisemitism watchdog, a positive correlation exists between college faculty who support boycotts of Israel and the occurrence of antisemitic incidents on college campuses.

AMCHA researchers found that the “presence and number of faculty” who supported academic boycotts before Israel’s last war with Hamas in 2021, which began after the terrorist organization fired more than 150 rockets at Israeli territory, “were strongly and reliably associated with every measure of faculty and student-perpetrated antisemitic activity during this period.”

They also found through a series of regression analyses that schools with “five or more faculty who had expressed support for academic BDS [the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against Israel] prior to May 2021” were 5.6 times “more likely to have a student government that issued an anti-Zionist statement,” and 3.6 times more likely to have incidents of antisemitic harassment and intimidation.

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, the director of the AMCHA Initiative, reiterated that point on Thursday.

“AMCHA’s research has shown consistently that promoting BDS in the classroom is highly correlated with increased antisemitism in the campus square,” Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner. “So if the University of Michigan really wants to address the problem of antisemitism, it must start with ensuring that its faculty are prohibited from using their academic positions as bully pulpits for spewing hatred of the Jewish state and its supporters and encouraging activism to harm them.”

“Not only are FJP groups charged with giving support and academic legitimacy to the BDS efforts of their campus SJP groups, they are also committing their members to bringing academic BDS and its goals of delegitimizing and dismantling the Jewish state into their classrooms and conference halls,” she added.

Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network (AEN), a nonprofit that promotes academic freedom in higher education, told The Algemeiner that while faculty should form groups centered on common interests, doing so for the purpose of denigrating others is grossly inappropriate.

“Unfortunately, based on its first public statement, the Michigan FJP appears bent on uplifting the Palestinian cause while demeaning and denigrating Jews on campus,” Elman explained. “It’s astonishing that in its lengthy initial public statement the group could find no space to advocate for the 100 plus hostages including US citizens and young women, who continue to be held in captivity by Hamas.”

“What’s most concerning about these new Faculty for Justice in Palestine groups is that they’ll end up giving a faculty ‘pass’ for the bad behavior and hostile and bigoted rhetoric that we’ve seen from all too many Students for Justice in Palestine and affiliated clubs in recent weeks,” she added. “Students tend to take their cues from faculty. On campuses where these groups are forming, I wont be surprised to see an uptick in student peer-on-peer harassment, anti-Israel activity, and antisemitism.”

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Hamas co-founder speaks of a world with “no Zionism or treacherous Christianity,” says full Islamic control of planet will ensure justice for all.

By World Israel News Staff

Following a massive Hamas attack that killed 900 in Israel, resurfaced video footage of a senior member of the terror group indicates that the organization’s goals may be to usher in Islamic control of the entire world.

“We are not talking about liberating our land alone. We believe in what our Prophet Muhammad said: ‘Allah drew the ends of the world near one another for my sake, and I have seen its eastern and western ends. The dominion of my nation would reach those ends that have been drawn near me,'” said Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas, in a December 2022 video that has attracted attention once again.

“The entire 510 million square kilometers of Planet Earth will come under [a system] where there is no injustice, no oppression, no Zionism, no treacherous Christianity and no killings and crimes like those being committed against the Palestinians, and against the Arabs in all the Arab countries, in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and other countries,” he said in the video, which was translated and published by watchdog group MEMRI.

This Hamas Commander says this is not about land, not just Palestine. “The entire planet will be under our law, there will be no more Jews or Christian traitors.” Only then, if everyone adopts his law, will there be peace. pic.twitter.com/97sWBcH8yJ

— CSW Latinoamérica (@CSWLatAm) October 8, 2023

Al-Zahar, who once served as the Foreign Affairs Minister of the Palestinian National Authority, has justified the intentional murder of Israeli and Jewish children in past media statements.

In a May 2021 interview with Sky News, Al-Zahar admitted that Hamas intentionally targets Israeli civilian communities with rocket fire.

“is the degree of the resistance movement, particularly in Gaza, to attack the Israeli targets at very important points, including most of the overcrowded area in the civilian society. So for how long the Israeli will accept that, I think this is the main issue,” he said.

However, Al-Zahar denied the reality that such a strategy is a clear violation of human rights and considered a war crime under international law.

“This is not against Israeli communities. This is against Israeli occupation. This is against Israeli aggression,” he said.

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Members of radical anti-Zionist Neturei Karta movement meet with President Ebrahim Riasi, who praised them for their opposition to Israel.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A pair of fiercely anti-Zionist ‘rabbis’ met with Iran’s president in New York Wednesday to praise the Islamic Republic for differentiating between Israel and Judaism and allegedly supporting its Jewish community.

Video footage of the brief meeting shows two elderly, bearded men who introduced themselves as being part of the Neturei Karta movement – a radical ultra-Orthodox organization dedicated to the dismantling of the State of Israel and Zionism – can be seen greeting Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi in a corridor, with one kissing each of his shoulders in a show of respect.

“We have found that throughout the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran, you have protected the Jewish community, and you are only distinguishing that Zionism is nationalism, nothing [to do] with religion,” said the man, who was wearing a scarf-like keffiyeh over the shoulders of his suit.

Just last week, prior to the Rosh Hashanah holiday, Iran’s Jewish leadership warned its community not to gather in the streets after synagogue services due expected anti-government demonstrations that might turn violently against them, although they couched their language carefully and lauded “the loved ones of the police force for their unquestionable and constant help.”

Iranian Jews who have fled the country have attested to the fear that the community lives with, as arbitrary arrests, or worse, are a constant threat.

Neturei Karta has come under fire from mainstream Orthodox Jewish groups for offering its support to the Iranian government throughout its decades of anti-Israel actions and threats to destroy the Jewish state, seeing an Israeli state as an affront to God’s true plan for the Jewish people.

Neturei Karta leaders have even gone to Iran to meet with senior government officials, while the sect’s members attend Iran-backed anti-Israel demonstrations in the West.

The Iranian president told his guests, “I have heard that there are anti-Zionist Jews, and this is a great thing.”

In meetings of interfaith dialogue, he continued, “we always reiterate the fact that we have no issue whatsoever with the Jewish faith, with the Torah, and in Iran Jews are free to practice their religion.”

“Our only issue is with the Zionists,” he continued, saying that “anyone who enters the arena under the auspices of violence, and bring[s] about oppression” is “an issue for us.”

He offered that Iran never recognized ISIS as Muslims, despite the religion being the basis of all the terrorist organization’s actions, because of “the crimes it committed as so-called Muslims cannot be justified in anyone’s faith.”

He immediately followed this with the statement, “Today, the Zionists wish to discredit the Jewish faith,” and so the men’s announcement that they “are Jewish but against Zionists is something to be commended.”

Raisi is known in the West as “the Butcher of Tehran” for his leadership role in the 1980s execution of thousands of political prisoners. According to Iran’s Fars new agency, the president met the Neturei Karta leaders at the hotel where he is staying during the opening of the UN General Assembly.

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Demonstrators claim that cloud computing infrastructure for Israeli government ministries renders Google complicit in alleged “oppression” of Palestinians.

By World Israel News Staff

Dozens of protesters gathered outside of Google’s San Francisco headquarters on Tuesday, holding signs and chanting their opposition to a contract between the Israeli government and the tech industry titan.

The demonstrators expressed their disapproval of Project Nimbus, a Google and Amazon Web Services collaborative initiative to transition many of Israel’s government ministries onto a cloud computing model.

According to local news reports, the demonstrators – who included people identifying themselves as current employees of the company and anti-Zionist activists – unfurled a massive banner reading “Google fuels Israeli apartheid.”

Another banner, depicted in pictures circulating on social media, read “Google: Drop Project Nimbus. #NoTechForApartheid.”

Some hoisted Palestinian flags in the air.

In a statement, the protesters charged that Project Nimbus “will enable the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in occupied territory through Google and Amazon’s technical support of Israel’s AI and mass surveillance apparatus,”

The protesters, spilling out onto the roadway, temporarily blocked traffic on nearby Howard Street.

Police initially attempted to clear the protesters from the roadway but relented and “mostly looked on” as demonstrators continued snarling traffic in the area, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Ariel Koren, a former Google employee, spoke at the protest. She said that Google “setting a clear precedent that the motto they were founded on, ‘Don’t be evil,’ and all of their championing of diversity, equity and inclusion, has gone out the window” by engaging in a project with Israel.

Koren, who is Jewish, is a longtime opponent of the initiative and made headlines last year for her claim that Google illegally fired her due to her activism.

That claim was investigated by the National Labor Board and dismissed for lack of evidence.

Although the project is not specifically focused on providing technological capabilities for the Israeli military, the country’s Defense Ministry will transition to Google-backed cloud servers.

In 2022, Atle Erlingsson, a Google Cloud spokesperson, told Wired that “our work is not directed at highly sensitive or classified military workloads.”

Erlingsson stressed that the company provides technical infrastructure for numerous governments around the world.

The post ‘Google fuels Israeli apartheid’ – Anti-Zionist protest outside tech giant’s SF headquarters appeared first on World Israel News.

The shocking messages coming out of these protests are the same – the “enemy” is the Jew.

Same hate, same message. WATCH this VIDEO about the vitriolic language about Jews used by both @WOLPalestine and neo-Nazis. Do they coordinate?? pic.twitter.com/VGpli2CCT9

— Canary Mission (@canarymission) June 28, 2023

The post WATCH: Same hate, same message – Do neo-Nazis and Palestinian groups coordinate? appeared first on World Israel News.

In a video exclusive for World Israel News, an antisemitic, anti-Zionist man was filmed stamping out the Israeli flag with his feet while hurling invectives and swearing at passersby – including young children – who stood up for Israel.

The post WATCH: Man cursing Israel wipes Israeli flag off central London street art appeared first on World Israel News.

“More Jews will get hurt at or because of CUNY Law’s bigoted and violence-inciting incubator. It’s time for the American Bar Association or New York State to shut them down and ensure that no one else gets hurt,” Prof. Jeffrey Lax told World Israel News.

By World Israel News Staff

Two vehemently anti-Israel activists who delivered CUNY Law School’s commencement speeches in 2022 and 2023 were key speakers at a New York city pro-Palestinian rally that culminated in antisemitic attack against a Jewish man.

Both Nerdeen Kiswani and Fatima Mohammed made headlines for leveraging their commencement speeches as an opportunity to slam the Jewish state and promote a pro-Palestinian narrative.

Pro-Israel and Jewish activists have pointed to the speeches by Kiswani and Mohammed as evidence of pervasive antisemitism at CUNY, which makes Jewish staff and students feel unsafe at the educational instituion.

But according to a Times of Israel report on Tuesday, the women’s involvement with pushing a virulent anti-Israel narrative has led to real-world consequences for Jews off-campus as well.

The women are members of the If Not Now organization, a pro-Palestinian group that has called for the destruction of Israel and demonizes Zionism. Both Kiswani and Mohammed spoke at an If Not Now rally held near the Israeli consulate in Manhattan in April 2022, TOI reported.

During that demonstration, Kiswani led chants accusing “Zionists” of committing “genocide,” called for a “globalized intifada,” and advocated for “freeing every inch of Palestine” by “any means necessary.” Notably, Mohammed made those same points the following year in her commencement speech.

At the rally, Mohammed chanted, “Glory to the martyrs, glory to the resistance, glory to Palestinian men fighting on the land,” and swore “by Allah” that the collapse of the State of Israel was imminent.

Matt Greenman, a Jewish man who was participating in a counter-rally, was then viciously beaten on the street nearby in an unprovoked attack by attendees of the pro-Palestinian demonstration.

One of Greenman’s assailants was recently sentenced to prison after being found guilty of hate crime charges.

“In calling for ‘revolution’ against capitalism and ‘rage’ against Zionist Jews, Fatima Mohammed’s commencement speech came dangerously close to incitement to violence which, of course, is not protected under the First Amendment. So, it is hardly surprising to hear that she spewed similarly venomous and dangerous language at Nerdeen Kiswani’s rally the year before. That rally did lead to violence against a Jewish victim,” Prof. Jeffrey Lax, business department chair at CUNY’s Kingsborough Community College and founder of S.A.F.E. CUNY, a non-profit that advocates for Zionist Jews systemically discriminated against and excluded by the CUNY, told World Israel News.

“Instead of taking precautions to protect its students, and especially its Jews, CUNY School of Law praised Kiswani and now stands proudly behind Mohammed’s hate, vitriol, and dangerous language,” Lax said. “More Jews will get hurt at or because of CUNY Law’s bigoted and violence-inciting incubator. It’s time for the American Bar Association or New York State to shut them down and ensure that no one else gets hurt.”

In a separate incident in 2021, several pro-Palestinian men affiliated with If Not Now attacked a Jewish man wearing a kippah shortly after a demonstration. One of them, Wasseem Awawdeh, was recently sentenced to 18 months in jail for the assault.

Citing a policy of refusing to speak to “Zionist media,” If Not Now declined to comment on the TOI report.

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Ariel Koren denounced Google’s “culture of silencing anti-Zionist Jews” in her resignation letter.

By Adina Katz, World Israel News

A Jewish Google employee who led a campaign attempting to force the tech titan to pull out of a $1 billion project for the Israeli government quit on Tuesday, releasing a dramatic resignation letter in which she claimed Google’s “complicity in Israeli apartheid” as the reason for her departure.

Ariel Koren, who worked in the organization’s educational division, had previously claimed that Google retaliated against her for her anti-Zionist activism.

“Google has consistently sustained a culture of silencing anti-Zionist Jews and creating toxic and unjust conditions for Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim workers at Google, all while ignoring the widespread internal and public dissent against the company’s complicity in Israel’s apartheid violence via Project Nimbus,” Koren charged in her resignation letter, which she published on Medium.

“Israel is an apartheid state. Even in the wake of the growing mainstream acknowledgement of Israeli apartheid, Google has stood by its contracts with the Israeli government and military. The world’s largest search engine is contracting with a military actively carrying out war crimes and upholding apartheid, while workers have no say in how the technology we provide them is used.”

She named statements of support for Israeli civilians made by senior executives during the May 2021 Israel-Gaza clash as an example of Google’s alleged pro-Israel bias.

“Leaders like Sundar Pichai and Susan Wijcicki [sic] sent emails explicitly expressing concern for Israelis, but there was no such communication to or about Palestinians, who are targeted by Israel’s daily violence and oppression,” she wrote.

Other grievances listed by Koren included being excluded from an internal Google Jewish discussion group, after moderators explained that her repeated accusations of Israeli war crimes and apartheid were disruptive to the space, and an allegation that her opposition to the Israeli government project had led to retaliation.

After speaking to multiple media outlets about Project Nimbus and alleging that Google was complicit in genocide and child murder, Koren said that her boss informed her that she was being relocated to Sao Paolo, Brazil, on extremely short notice.

Koren was one of two Jewish Google employees who penned a letter slamming the company for agreeing to a cloud infrastructure project for various branches of the Israeli government and the IDF.

The letter, which was signed by some 90 anonymous Google employees, was published in the UK daily The Guardian in October 2021.

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Rose Ritch resigned as vice president of the University of Southern California Undergraduate Student Government after facing impeachment proceedings and harassment over her support for Israel.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

The U.S. Department of Education is formally investigating allegations that the University of Southern California (USC) did not do enough to stop a “concerted campaign of antisemitic harassment” that drove a former student out of an undergraduate student government body.

The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) probe was launched in June following a 2020 complaint by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law over the case of Rose Ritch, who resigned as vice president of the USC Undergraduate Student Government (USG) after facing impeachment proceedings and harassment over her support for Israel.

The alleged abuse began during Ritch’s candidacy for USG office, when her campaign posters and that of other Jewish candidates’ were vandalized, the complaint said.

It continued after she took office, with USC students demanding her resignation due to her identity as a Zionist, including via a social media campaign to “impeach [her] Zionist a**.”

“Although USC was aware of the discriminatory harassment against Ms. Ritch and the hostile environment it fostered, the University failed to take prompt and effective steps to end the harassment or eliminate the hostile environment,” said the complaint.

Ritch told The Algemeiner on Monday that she is “very grateful that after two years OCR is opening up this investigation.”

“What happened was very frustrating, upsetting, and difficult to go through as a student,” she said. “When this happened to me, I was contacted by many people sharing stories about similar incidents that were occurring at the same time or had happened twenty years ago on their college campuses.”

“I also know that since this happened in the summer of 2020 it’s continuing to be a significant issue, so I’m grateful that it’s moving in this direction and hope this isn’t something students have to deal with in the future,” she added.

At the time, Ritch’s cause drew broad support from national Jewish organizations, as well as a group of 43 USC faculty who issued a letter deploring the associations of Zionism with “racism, colonialism, and white supremacy” that had underpinned the accusations against her.

The Alliance for Academic Freedom, a group of progressive academics, also weighed in, noting that Ritch “is far from the only college student who has been harassed in recent years for their pro-Israel politics.”

Being blamed for the Israeli government’s actions

The campaign against Ritch included shocking attacks on social media blaming her for actions of the Israeli government, with one student posting, “Rose should be impeached too! Just as complicit and also a Zionist. The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] trains LAPD [Los Angeles Police Department] so it’s all connected.”

Another said, “warms my heart to see al [sic] the zionists from USC and USG getting relentlessly cyberbullied,” the complaint said.

Ritch told The Algemeiner that the university did nothing to stop the onslaught, staying quiet even when USG scheduled her impeachment trial.

That development prompted the involvement of the Brandeis Center, a legal advocacy group, which urged school officials to apply the Civil Rights Act and protect her from harassment intended to “deny her an equal educational opportunity to serve in USG” because she is Jewish, according to the complaint.

University officials did ultimately suspend Ritch’s impeachment, but the Brandeis Center argued that USC’s communications about the episode did not “specifically mention Ms. Ritch or the antisemitic harassment that targeted her” until she was pressed to resign from student government.

“USC failed to intervene; failed to speak out publicly in support of Ms. Ritch; failed to condemn or even acknowledge the harassment that targeted her; and failed to void the baseless impeachment complaint filed against her,” the complaint, filed by Brandeis Center president Alyza D. Lewin and Director of Legal Initiatives Denise Katz-Prober said.

“Through its silence and inaction, the University tolerated the discriminatory harassment directed at Ms. Ritch, thus emboldening it and leaving Ms. Ritch vulnerable to the negative effects of the hostile environment that the harassment created at USC,” it added.

The complaint asked OCR to require USC to prevent the future harassment of Jewish students and ensure their inclusion in all aspects of university life, and adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of antisemitism, which cites examples that include holding Jews responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

‘Universities should be safe and inclusive spaces’

In a statement on Tuesday, USC said it “is proud of its culture of inclusivity for all students, including members of our Jewish community.”

“USC over the last two years has made a number of commitments to combat antisemitism and anti-Jewish hatred,” the university said, pointing to partnerships with national Jewish groups and its Stronger Than Hate initiative, among other steps.

“We are continuing to take these steps to further build on the welcoming environment we have created for our Jewish community,” it continued. “We look forward to addressing any concerns or questions by the U.S. Department of Education regarding this matter.”

Commenting on the news of the inquiry, Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles CEO Rabbi Noah Farkas said Monday that “universities should be safe and inclusive spaces,” and pledged to work with the school administration and campus Jewish groups to “ensure that Jewish students at USC can thrive and live their fullest Jewish life free of any hate or bias.”

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Nelson Mandela’s grandson blames Russian invasion on ‘Ukraine neo-Nazis’ and “Apartheid Israel dogs of war.”

By Ben Cohen, The Algemeiner

A South African member of parliament who is also the grandson of Nelson Mandela, the country’s iconic leader in the struggle against apartheid during the late 20th century, is making headlines for a bombastic speech in which he branded Ukraine’s leaders as “neo-Nazis” who are allied with “apartheid Israel’s dogs of war.”

Nkosi Zwelivelile “Mandla” Mandela, a convert to Islam who is one of South Africa’s most outspoken anti-Zionist activists, was speaking at a session of the Pan African Palestinian Solidarity Network in the Senegalese capital Dakar last weekend, where he began by greeting “the global BDS family” — a reference to the cluster of pro-Palestinian organizations pushing for a comprehensive boycott of Israel.

Omitting the basic fact that Russia — a country that went entirely unmentioned — invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, Mandela went on to blame the war on Israel and the western alliance.

“The global military industrial complex that beat the drums of war in Ukraine feeds an agenda of which they are the sole beneficiaries. Behind them lies the ruins of Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. They are joined in this disgraceful endeavor by neo-Nazis in Ukraine, the apartheid Israel dogs of war and those in NATO intent on advancing cold war politics,” Mandela stated.

The false accusation that Ukraine is led by neo-Nazis originated with Russian President Vladimir Putin and other members of his inner circle. Despite being roundly condemned by Holocaust survivors, Jewish groups and western governments, the accusation has been endorsed by some pro-Russian commentators in the west on both the far left and the extreme right.

On Wednesday, Putin doubled down on his claim, asserting that western countries sought “Russia’s destruction” by imposing sanctions whose effects were reminiscent of the “antisemitic pogroms” carried out by the Nazis.

Later on in his speech, Mandela painted a conspiratorial picture of a vast “Zionist” effort to dominate the African continent, drawing on antisemitic tropes about Jewish wealth and political influence.

“Apartheid Israel has done all in its power to deny the Palestinian people their very existence,” he claimed. “It has mobilized formidable lobbies in the West and pursued a policy of checkbook diplomacy in Africa.”

He complained in particular about the Jewish state’s admission to African Union (AU) as an observer member in July 2021.

“We must as our first line of duty step up our mobilization … and remove apartheid Israel from its AU observer status,” Mandela declared.

While the younger Mandela is wedded to extreme anti-Zionist positions supporting the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state, his late grandfather rejected these entirely, insisting that only a two-state solution would deliver justice to both Israel and the Palestinians.

A billboard campaign staged by South African Friends of Israel last year in Johannesburg highlighted Nelson Mandela’s documented commitment to the continued existence of a Jewish state.

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A report exposes antisemitic, anti-Israel postings from the Qatar-Northwestern program.

By Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon

The Qatari government and Northwestern University are “training a new generation of journalists who will legitimize antisemitic, anti-Israel and anti-American positions,” according to a report by a watchdog group.

“Qatar’s Multimillion-Dollar Plan to Influence American Media,” a report authored by Canary Mission, a watchdog group that documents antisemitism on U.S. college campuses, focuses on administrators, professors, lecturers, graduates, and students at Northwestern’s satellite campus (NU-Q) in Doha, Qatar’s capital, who were found to have made at least 750 “antisemitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American” social media postings.

This number includes posts endorsing terrorism, touting boycotts of Israel, referring to pro-Israel Jews as “Zionist pigs,” and praising Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

Of the 37 individuals highlighted in the report, 73 percent expressed support for terrorism, 81 percent demonized Israel and Jews, 27 percent posted antisemitic content, and 54 percent backed the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS), which wages economic warfare on the Jewish state.

“The NU-Q learning experience consists of a fully immersive environment that includes a heavily biased curriculum and a host of lecturers who hold antisemitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American views,” according to the report.

NU-Q is completely funded up to $50 million annually by Qatar through two state-controlled organizations: the Qatar Foundation and the Al Jazeera Media Network, both of which have come under fire for attempting to wage influence operations in the United States and mainstream anti-Israel and antisemitic views.

The program lecturers include in-house professors as well as Al Jazeera reporters, producers, and management. Qatar has long been accused of funding U.S. academic institutions to build an influence network across the United States. Programs funded by the Qatari government have come under scrutiny for their anti-Israel bent and focus on demonizing the pro-Israel community.

“Whether students begin with anti-Western views or not, too many emerge from their studies at NU-Q with an anti-Israel and anti-American mindset,” Canary Mission said in a statement on its findings. “When they subsequently find positions in mainstream media, they come equipped with both the motivation and ability to influence public opinion.”

The watchdog group further says in the report that Northwestern’s campus in Doha “trains students to legitimize antisemitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American narratives in Western media.” Once completing the program, students are pushed into mainstream media jobs where they can promote these views, according to the report.

Supporting Hezbollah, BDS

One professor highlighted in the report, Sami Hermez, appeared to support Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a 2007 posting at the Electronic Intifada website, which is known for its anti-Israel and anti-Zionist views.

“Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, general secretary of Hezbollah, is the leader of a movement claiming to fight for the right of self-determination, in the same way that Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela were leaders of movements that claimed similar ends,” Hermez wrote. He is also affiliated with the BDS movement, according to Canary Mission’s findings.

Another professor, Ibrahim Abusharif, was a founder of the Quranic Literacy Institute, a nonprofit that was alleged to be acting as a “money-laundering clearinghouse” for the Hamas terror group. More than $1 million of the organization’s assets were seized in 2004 after it was found guilty of funding a Hamas strike that killed an American teenager in Judea and Samaria, according to reports from the time.

Current students and graduates of the program also were found to hold extreme anti-Israel views.

Alaa Lami, whom the report cites as a current student studying journalism at the Doha campus and slated to graduate in 2024, said in a 2021 tweet, “I called ppl who said ‘innocent Israelis shouldn’t die’ zionist pigs on a uni group.”

Another current student, Lujain Assaf, described Israel as “a colonizer and oppressor” and said that “Zionism is a violent racist ideology” in a 2020 tweet cited in the report.

Nawal Aqeel, who Canary Mission says graduated from the Northwestern-Qatar campus site, tweeted in 2014, “I wish Hitler was alive so he could exterminate the existence of Jews attacking the beautiful land of Gaza!”

Northwestern did not respond to a request for comment on the report and its findings.

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Sierra Club previously organized trips to Israel to survey archaeological sites and learn about its biodiversity and environmental policies.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

A leading U.S. Jewish organization condemned the Sierra Club on Monday for canceling member trips to Israel after facing pressure from anti-Zionist groups.

The conservation group had previously organized trips to Israel to survey archaeological sites and learn about its biodiversity and environmental policies.

According to a mass email obtained by the Jewish News of Northern California (J.), which first reported the story, Sierra Club official Mary Owens ascribed the group’s decision to an ultimatum issued by several anti-Zionist groups and “one Jewish American activist” to cancel the trips by March 7.

The email threatened “that if we did not cancel the upcoming trips within a week, they would go public that the organization violating the organizational values it recently rolled out,” Owens wrote, adding that the National Outings team did not want to accede to the demand.

According to J., groups behind the effort included the Adalah Justice Project, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the Sunrise Movement, among others. Ultimately, an ad hoc group convened by Sierra Club recommended that the trips be discontinued. A webpage with details of an upcoming Israel trip was later taken down, and references to past trips were removed.

The American Jewish Committee’s Bay Area regional director, Rabbi Serene Eisenberg, said Monday that the national environmental group had “squandered an opportunity to experience a country with a rich legacy of environmental innovation and water conservation.”

“It’s regrettable that the Sierra Club would cave in to pressure based on biased and inaccurate reports that unfortunately foment the demonization of Israel,” Eisenberg said in a statement. “Israel has pioneered environmental stewardship methods and exported these technologies to benefit populations all over the world.”

“It speaks volumes that the Sierra Club is canceling a trip to the only democracy in the Middle East while moving forward with trips to nations with a well-documented record of human rights abuses,” she added. Programs still advertised on Sierra Club’s website include several hundred trips, with many in the U.S. and destinations abroad including China and Malaysia.

“We urge the organization to reconsider this ill-advised decision,” Eisenberg said.

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