Mideast War blowback

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America’s second-largest teacher’s union has drafted a group of resolutions calling for the end of US military aid to Israel — and defending the anti-Israel protests that have rocked campuses across the country.

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) — which is affiliated with the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) that represents most teachers in New York City public schools — will vote on the controversial proposals at its national convention starting in Houston next Monday.

One of the resolutions, which calls for a cease-fire between the Jewish State and the terror group Hamas, demands a halt to US military assistance that enables the “violent dispossession” of Palestinians.

“American military cannot be used in ways that facilitate the seizure of Palestinian land, the violent dispossession of Palestinian communities and the annexation of occupied Palestinian territory,” the resolution reads.

Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, addressing the audience at their annual convention in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is affiliated with the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) that represents most teachers in New York City public schools.

“As long as Israel continues to block substantive and meaningful aid to Gaza, the AFT calls for the US to halt military aid to Israel,” it says.

Another resolution calls for anti-Israel protesters to be protected.

“[T]he AFT expresses solidarity with those students, faculty and other academic workers across the United States who have faced repressive and violent crackdown of their protests in the war in Gaza,” the resolution reads.

“[T]he AFT demands that campus administrators cease their campaign of threats, suspensions and expulsions against peaceful protesters and cease using law enforcement agencies to disrupt and attack them,” it continues.

The proposal also defends the demonstrations as “academic freedom” and “free speech.”

A coalition of pro-Israel educators swiftly condemned the resolutions as antisemitic.

Thousands of demonstrators are expected to converge on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to protest against Netanyahu and the Gaza war.

Seven labor unions totaling millions of members sent a letter Tuesday to the White House demanding a truce in Gaza and for the U.S. to stop supplying weapons to Israel. The signatories included the United Auto Workers, based in Michigan, home to the biggest percentage and second largest number of Arab Americans in the country.

In addition, several aid groups and other organizations have partnered to launch a mobile billboard that will drive around Washington on Wednesday with the message: “No more bombs for Netanyahu.” Abby Maxman, U.S. CEO of the British-based anti-poverty agency Oxfam, called Netanyahu's planned congressional address "wildly inappropriate."

"His governing coalition continues to bombard Gaza, international condemnation is growing, Israelis are demanding that hostages be brought home, and, under his leadership, the Israeli military is bombing aid workers, schools and hospitals," Maxman said in a statement.

Tuesday protest near Capitol a possible harbinger
In perhaps a preview of what's in store Wednesday, a few hundred members of the group Jewish Voice for Peace wearing red T-shirts protested the war and demanded a cease-fire Tuesday in the rotunda of the Cannon House office building near the Capitol.

The demonstrators had large signs with messages such as "Jews to Congress: Stop Arming Israel'' and "Let Gaza Live'' as they sat in a circle, clapped and chanted.

Video images showed some of the protesters being detained by law enforcement, which Capitol Police confirmed in a posting on the X platform that said: "Demonstrations are not allowed inside the Congressional Buildings. We told the people, who legally entered, to stop or they would be arrested. They did not stop, so we are arresting them.''

The office of Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich., said in a statement that Capitol Police were called after protesters "became disruptive, violently beating on the office doors, shouting loudly, and attempting to force entry into the office.'' The incident was soon quelled, Kildee's office said.

New York Rep. Jerry Nadler tears into Netanyahu
Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York said he'll attend Netanyahu's address to Congress, in contrast with several lawmakers who plan to boycott in protest of the Israeli leader's policies toward Palestinians in Gaza.

But Nadler did not hold back in expressing his disdain for Netanyahu, calling him "the worst leader in Jewish history since the Maccabean king who invited the Romans into Jerusalem over 2100 years ago.''

Nadler, the most senior Jewish member of the House, said Netanyahu is merely trying to boost his standing at home and should not have been invited. In a social media posting explaining why he's still attending, Nadler also said: "The Prime Minister is putting the security of Israel, the lives of the hostages, the stability of the region, and longstanding Israeli democratic norms in perilous jeopardy, simply to maintain the stability of his far-right coalition and absolve him of his own legal troubles.''

The American families of hostages held by Hamas are pushing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to announce in a Wednesday speech to Congress that he will accept the cease-fire deal laid out by President Biden, describing anything less as a total failure.

Eight U.S. citizens are among the 120 hostages held by Hamas since the group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Three of those people are known to have been killed, but their bodies have not been released by Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist group by the United States.

Biden has said Israel and Hamas have accepted a three-phase cease-fire deal in principle and are working to hammer out final details and logistics. Netanyahu’s office has said that he directed the Israeli negotiation team to engage in discussions on Thursday — although a location has not yet been announced.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu is here this week to address Congress on Wednesday. We fully expect that his speech to Congress on Wednesday is going to be the announcement of this hostage deal that we’ve all been waiting for,” said Jonathan Polin, the father of American Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was kidnapped by Hamas.

Goldberg-Polin was seen in footage from Oct. 7 being loaded onto the back of a truck with other people being kidnapped, with part of his left arm blown off. Hamas released a propaganda video showing a gaunt-looking Goldberg-Polin in their custody, his injured arm appearing as a stump and his head shaved.

Jonathan Polin, along with other American family members of hostages, addressed a roundtable of journalists on Monday ahead of Netanyahu’s arrival in the U.S.

“Now is the right time, it is 290 days past the right time, but now is the time to close this deal,” Polin said. “We view any speech that is not the announcement of the signing and closing of a hostage deal to be a total failure.”

The American families of hostages have requested a meeting with Netanyahu separate from the families of other hostages held by Hamas.

Ronen Neutra, whose son has been held in captivity, called Netanyahu a “guest of the United States” with a responsibility to answer the American families and their congressional representatives over what he is doing to secure the release of the hostages.

“We feel this is a good opportunity to hear from him and keep him accountable to the deal that is on the table, and that’s why we ask for this meeting,” Neutra said, adding that Netanyahu’s staff has not confirmed the meeting.

Neutra, along with his wife Orna, addressed the Republican National Convention last week and were met with chants from the crowd of “Bring them home.”

Ronen Neutra said he and his wife had a short call with former President Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, in October and that Trump was “very sympathetic.”

Following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's arrival in Washington, D.C., more Democrats are deciding to skip his expected speech Wednesday, as former President Donald Trump gears up to welcome the Israeli leader.

During his trip, Netanyahu is anticipated to deliver an address to Congress on Wednesday and meet with President Joe Biden Thursday, according to a report from the Associated Press (AP), which added that the Israeli leader will hold separate talks with Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday.

Trump announced on Truth Social that Netanyahu will also make a stop at Mar-a-Lago on Friday.

"Looking forward to welcoming Bibi Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida … During my first term, we had Peace and Stability in the Region, even signing the historic Abraham Accords—And we will have it again," Trump wrote on his Truth Social.

Since it was announced Netanyahu would give an address, several Democratic lawmakers have said they will not attend, citing the war.

In a statement released on Tuesday, representative Mark Takano of California became the latest Democratic lawmaker to announce he's skipping the speech.

For weeks I have wrestled with whether or not to attend Prime Minister Netanyahu's joint address before Congress. In recent months, I've grown increasingly troubled by Mr. Netanyahu's actions, which have sought to further his own political survival rather than securing the return of hostages and a much-needed ceasefire. As someone who cares deeply about Israel, I recognize that any path towards a permanent peace must begin with a bilateral ceasefire. Mr. Netanyahu has consistently demonstrated that he is an obstacle to the peace that both Israelis and Palestinians alike deserve," Takano said in a news release.

This follows Senate Pro Tempore Patty Murray, who was expected to sit behind Netanyahu at the address, declining to attend the speech, along with Representatives Greg Casar, Jim Clyburn, Lloyd Doggett, Pramila Jayapal, Hank Johnson, Stephen Lynch and Jan Schakowsky.

In June, AP reported that interviews with more than a dozen Democrats revealed the discontent over Netanyahu's address, and how some feel it is a Republican ploy to divide Democrats.

"It is apparent Republican leadership have given this platform to the Prime Minister in order to sow division amongst Members of Congress during this precarious time. Rather than engage in political games, I plan to meet with Israeli citizens during the morning of the address to support families that have suffered in the wake of the October 7th attack," Takano added on Tuesday.

GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson, who helped facilitate Netanyahu's address, is expected to highlight Republican support for the Israeli leader.

During the visit, Biden is expected to focus his talk with Netanyahu on negotiating a hostage release and ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, which Jake Sullivan, national security adviser, indicated at a security conference in Colorado last week.

According to AP, Biden expressed optimism of a deal as he spoke to campaign staffers on Monday: "I think we're on the verge" of ending the war.

The outlet also reported that before he departed Israel for the U.S., Netanyahu pointed toward his intent to discuss continuing the conflict with Hamas and confront other Iran-backed groups, along with addressing the release of hostages.

Protests are also planned, according to AP, as the demonstrations outside the Capitol are expected to include demonstrators condemning the Israeli military campaign as well as others expressing support for Israel. The largest protest could see at least 5,000 people and is set for Wednesday morning, with organizers planning to march and demand Netanyahu's arrest on war crime charges.

For weeks I have wrestled with whether or not to attend Prime Minister Netanyahu's joint address before Congress. In recent months, I've grown increasingly troubled by Mr. Netanyahu's actions, which have sought to further his own political survival rather than securing the return of hostages and a much-needed ceasefire. As someone who cares deeply about Israel, I recognize that any path towards a permanent peace must begin with a bilateral ceasefire. Mr. Netanyahu has consistently demonstrated that he is an obstacle to the peace that both Israelis and Palestinians alike deserve," Takano said in a news release.

This follows Senate Pro Tempore Patty Murray, who was expected to sit behind Netanyahu at the address, declining to attend the speech, along with Representatives Greg Casar, Jim Clyburn, Lloyd Doggett, Pramila Jayapal, Hank Johnson, Stephen Lynch and Jan Schakowsky.

In June, AP reported that interviews with more than a dozen Democrats revealed the discontent over Netanyahu's address, and how some feel it is a Republican ploy to divide Democrats.

"It is apparent Republican leadership have given this platform to the Prime Minister in order to sow division amongst Members of Congress during this precarious time. Rather than engage in political games, I plan to meet with Israeli citizens during the morning of the address to support families that have suffered in the wake of the October 7th attack," Takano added on Tuesday.

GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson, who helped facilitate Netanyahu's address, is expected to highlight Republican support for the Israeli leader.

During the visit, Biden is expected to focus his talk with Netanyahu on negotiating a hostage release and ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, which Jake Sullivan, national security adviser, indicated at a security conference in Colorado last week.

According to AP, Biden expressed optimism of a deal as he spoke to campaign staffers on Monday: "I think we're on the verge" of ending the war.

The outlet also reported that before he departed Israel for the U.S., Netanyahu pointed toward his intent to discuss continuing the conflict with Hamas and confront other Iran-backed groups, along with addressing the release of hostages.

Protests are also planned, according to AP, as the demonstrations outside the Capitol are expected to include demonstrators condemning the Israeli military campaign as well as others expressing support for Israel. The largest protest could see at least 5,000 people and is set for Wednesday morning, with organizers planning to march and demand Netanyahu's arrest on war crime charges.

U.S. Capitol Police used pepper spray to disperse a protest opposing a congressional visit from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which has drawn anger from anti-war activists.

The group of protesters were with the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition, and comes just a day after protesters with Jewish Voice for Peace were arrested in the Cannon House Office Building.

Capitol police posted to social media that the group pepper sprayed on Wednesday had "failed to obey our order to move back from our police line." Police also alleged that part of the group had become violent.

"We are deploying pepper spray towards anyone trying to break the law and cross that line," police said.

Capitol Police later confirmed that six people were arrested in the House Galleries

An NBC News producer witnessed some protesters getting close to the Capitol Police officers on the corner of Louisiana and Constitution avenues. The situation escalated quickly afterwards and members of the NBC News crews could feel the chemical on their skin.

ANSWER Coalition posted video to X of the incident, in which one protester can be heard yelling, "f--- you, stupid pigs" as a liquid is sprayed in their direction.

Protesters outside of the Capitol building were standing behind a large canvas banner that reads “Arrest Netanyahu for Genocide” and planned to create a “people’s red line against genocide” and conduct a “citizen’s arrest” of Netanyahu.

The group has provided attendees with signs on wood posts with phrases like “free all Palestinian political prisoners” and “lift the siege on Gaza now” as well as a “wanted” posted for Netanyahu.

Inside the chamber where Netanyahu was speaking, three people were arrested after unbuttoning their shirts to reveal yellow T-shirts that read “SEAL THE DEAL NOW," in reference to the ongoing cease-fire negotiations. Two men and one woman were put in zip-tie cuffs and escorted away from the chamber.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., the only Palestinian American in Congress, held a “war criminal” sign during Netanyahu’s speech as he criticized pro-Palestinian demonstrations in his address.

The prime minister urged the legislators for continued, bipartisan support of Israel as it fights Hamas. Notably, he did not shake hands with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Pro-Palestinian protesters gathered around D.C.’s Union Station on Wednesday afternoon amid Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the District for a speech before Congress, leading police to block off most entrances to the station.

The crowd set fires, defaced monuments in the area and scuffled with police, according to WTOP reporters who were at the scene.

Virginia Railway Express said in a post on X that Amtrak Police closed every entrance to the station except the entrance on the west side and that passengers were required to show their paper or mobile train tickets to gain access to the station.

Protesters were gathered at Columbus Circle just outside Union Station, and WTOP’s Mike Murillo reported from the scene that they were defacing monuments and statues there with red and green paint — colors on the Palestinian flag. Demonstrators were painting messages such as “Free Gaza” and “Hamas is comin” on the monuments.

Around 3:20 p.m., U.S. Park Police posted on X that protesters were engaged in criminal activity and confronting law enforcement at Columbus Circle. About 20 minutes later, USPP said the permit for the gathering had been revoked and the area should be cleared.

WTOP’s Nick Iannelli, who was also reporting from the scene, said many of the protesters had been cleared out by around 4:20 p.m.

“The smoke has literally cleared. Protesters were starting fires and I’m actually looking at a charred shopping cart with a flame still going. So they had started fires here and the smoke has cleared and you look around, and the statues outside Union Station are absolutely covered with profane graffiti. There’s trash littered everywhere.”

Iannelli reported that police arrested some demonstrators, and as that was happening, a dense crowd formed and began chanting, “Let them go! Let them go!”

“It is just locked down, a really intense atmosphere with all the security. And there were those arrests and there was that heightened moment, an uneasy moment, with a lot of people surrounding just a handful of police officers as they were making those arrests. But now, as I say, the smoke has cleared and it’s a complete mess outside Union Station.”

University of California, Los Angeles must develop a plan with Jewish plaintiffs to protect them from anti-Israel and antisemitic encampments and protests in the coming semester, a Western Division California Central District Court ruled on Monday, according to the plaintiff’s representation.

UCLA must consult with the Becket and Clement & Murphy law firms and submit a plan to Judge Mark Scarsi by August 5.

The ruling came in response to a June 5 legal complaint by three Jewish UCLA students against the university regents, arguing that the university had facilitated the establishment of protests and an encampment that restricted movement and endangered the students. The students contended that their Jewish identity prevented them from attending classes properly and prevented them from accessing certain areas of the campus.

rgued on July 8 that it had attempted to de-escalate tensions on campus and safely dismantle the April 25 encampment. The university said that it had sought to manage the tensions on campus despite pro-Israel counter-protests on April 28 and an attack on the encampment on May 1. Ultimately, the administration had police clear the tents and temporary structures on May 2.
The university contended that it had demonstrated that it was far from indifferent to the problems facing students and that the supposed harm the plaintiffs claimed would manifest in the future was vague. UCLA said it had no policy of denying Jewish students access to campus areas, so addressing the institution for injunctive relief was incorrect.

The students’ representatives said that UCLA had installed encampment barricades and appeased the protesters who had enforced rules that limited access to campus areas based on ideological leanings, such as Zionism. The students said that this effectively excluded Jewish students, denying them equal access to facilities.

In some instances, students were discouraged from approaching the encampment area, they said.

“UCLA tried to force me to choose between being a student or being a Jew,” third-year law student and father of four Yitzchok Frankel said in a statement with the Becket firm. “I appreciate the chance to have my day in court, and I look forward to being able to return to campus safely next month.”

Failure to protect Jewish students
The students accused UCLA of failing to provide a safe and inclusive learning environment for the estimated eight percent of its student body that were Jewish.

The plaintiffs alleged that protests, which emerged soon after the October 7 massacre, featured antisemitic and violent rhetoric and chants. According to the court filing, a claim was made on October 12 that protesters chanted in Arabic, “Slaughter the Jews.”

On November 8, at a Law School protest, some demonstrators allegedly chanted “Death to Israel” and “Death to Jews.” At a Students for Justice in Palestine-led protest the same day, activists beat a pinata bearing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s image, and one of them shouted through a megaphone, “Beat that f**king Jew.”

The filing detailed multiple instances of graffiti with swastikas and curses against Zionists on campus.

On November 10, Chancellor Gene Block denounced the hateful behavior and antisemitic language that had occurred that week on campus.

A fake protest encampment set up for a TV shoot on a New York City college campus sparked a real reaction from pro-Palestinian activists, who organized their own demonstration against the filming, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

The scenario unfolded Monday and Tuesday at Queens College, where the CBS drama “FBI: Most Wanted" was filming an upcoming episode involving a climate change protest, The New York Times reported.

Like some of the encampments that formed on college campuses in the U.S. and elsewhere this spring to protest Israel's actions in its war against Hamas, the TV set protest featured tents, sleeping bags and handmade banners.

Members of some pro-Palestinian groups, Within Our Lifetime and Students for Justice in Palestine, took umbrage and organized a protest of their own on the sidelines of the fictional one, the Times reported. Production wrapped up earlier than expected Monday following the protesters' appearance, and a group of about 15 protesters returned Tuesday, the paper reported. It wasn't clear whether any were students.

The newspaper said the demonstrators declined to speak to a reporter. However, in chants and flyers, they called the film shoot “propaganda” and the use of the campus “a clear attempt to simultaneously demonize and profit from the student movement.”

The show's producers declined to comment, the Times said.

Queens College said in a statement that the “campus community” had been told in advance about the TV shoot, including its “focus on a climate change/environmental issue protest at a fictitious college.”

Since her arrest at a protest at the University of Massachusetts, Annie McGrew has been pivoting between two sets of hearings: one for the misdemeanor charges she faces in court, and another for violations of the college’s conduct code.

It has kept the graduate student from work toward finishing her dissertation in economics.

“It’s been a really rough few months for me since my arrest,” McGrew said. “I never imagined this is how UMass (administration) would respond.”

Some 3,200 people were arrested this spring during a wave of pro-Palestinian tent encampments protesting the war in Gaza. While some colleges ended demonstrations by striking deals with the students, or simply waited them out, others called in police when protesters refused to leave.

Many students have already seen those charges dismissed. But the cases have yet to be resolved for hundreds of people at campuses that saw the highest number of arrests, according to an analysis of data gathered by The Associated Press and partner newsrooms.

Along with the legal limbo, those students face uncertainty in their academic careers. Some remain steadfast, saying they would have made the same decisions to protest even if they had known the consequences. Others have struggled with the aftermath of the arrests, harboring doubts about whether to stay enrolled in college at all.

In St. Louis, Valencia Alvarez is waiting to hear what will come of the potential charges she and 99 others could face for a protest April 27 that lasted less than half a day at Washington University.

Twenty-three of those arrested were students. In June, the university gave them two options: They could face a hearing with the Office of Student Conduct, or they could “accept responsibility” and forgo further investigation. Alvarez took the first option.

“I don’t really plan on being quiet about this, and I think that’s the goal of the second option,” Alvarez said.

The demonstrations swept public and private universities, on campuses large and small, urban and rural. As students return this fall, colleges are bracing for more protests against both Israel’s military and Hamas, and strategizing over tactics including when to call in law enforcement — decisions that have had lasting reverberations.

Which charges are worth pursuing?
The vast majority of the cases against the demonstrators — ranging from students and faculty to people without any ties to the colleges — involve misdemeanors or lower-level charges. Examples include trespassing, failure to disperse, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

More serious charges were filed against demonstrators who occupied a campus building at Columbia University, where some were arrested initially on felony trespassing charges. Those were lowered to misdemeanors, and dozens of students have had their charges dropped. In a decision criticized by Jewish groups, prosecutors said there was a lack of evidence tying them to acts of property damage, and none of the students had criminal histories.

Prosecutors in several cities are still evaluating whether to pursue charges. But in many cases, officials have indicated they do not intend to pursue low-level violations, according to AP’s review of data on campuses with at least 100 arrests.

In upstate New York, the Ulster County district attorney asked judges to dismiss 129 cases stemming from arrests at the State University of New York at New Paltz.

“I have concluded that it is best to dismiss these charges now and relieve all concerned and the courts of any further burdens, expenses, and expenditures of scarce public and judicial resources,” District Attorney Emmanuel Nneji wrote in June.

New Paltz students said they were sitting with their arms interlocked when officers hauled them away on May 2.

“It was handled very brutally,” said Maddison Tirado, a student whose trespassing charge has been dismissed. Tirado said protesters were treated as if authorities saw them “like little terrorists running around.”

One student demonstrator, Ezra Baptist, said he was taken to a hospital with a concussion and a cut after being thrown forward and hitting his head during his arrest by state troopers. He was supposed to avoid looking at screens because of his injury and could not complete one class he needed to graduate in May.

State police said if anyone believes troopers acted inappropriately, they should file a complaint so it can be investigated. Another police agency at the scene, the county sheriff’s office, said officers showed restraint and that a trooper was injured when demonstrators threw bottles.

Arrests put students’ degrees on hold
For some students, the impact on their academic careers has affected them more than any legal jeopardy.

At Washington University, conduct hearings for arrested students began recently but have yet to result in disciplinary decisions. In the meantime, Alvarez does not have the master’s degree in public health she would have received by now if not for her arrest.

Alvarez, who hopes to branch into social justice and community organizing, said she doesn’t have regrets. But that’s not to say the protest didn’t come at a cost.

“I want that degree,” Alvarez said. “I worked four jobs throughout my two years at Wash U to be able to afford tuition without pulling out any loans.”

At Emerson College in Boston, 118 people were arrested when police were asked to enforce a city ordinance against camping on public property. All were charged with disturbing the peace and granted “pre-arraignment diversion,” which means no charges will be filed in exchange for 40 hours of community service, prosecutors said.

Owen Buxton, an Emerson student, said he suffered a concussion when police shoved him into a bronze statue. It was his second arrest of the semester for protesting the war in Gaza. The experience made it hard for him to concentrate or participate in classes.

“It stifled all my creativity — I didn’t make anything for months, which is not typical of me,” said Buxton, a filmmaker.

Emerson allowed students to take the semester pass-fail following an outcry over the arrest.

A reckoning over inviting police to campus
At the UMass campus in Amherst, students recalled a peaceful demonstration with singing and dancing before police arrived. It was the second tent encampment students had put up that week. UMass Chancellor Javier Reyes said he ordered the sweep after discussions broke down with protesters.

“Let me be clear — involving law enforcement is the absolute last resort,” Reyes wrote to the campus community.

The law enforcement response, including 117 police vehicles on campus, unsettled protesters. McGrew remembers seeing police with riot gear rushing the crowd of students. A total of 134 people were arrested.

As arrestees were processed at the university’s sports arena, graduate student Charles Sullivan, who is transgender, said they felt humiliated by campus police. An officer, Sullivan said, forced them to loudly describe their genitalia to gain access to a restroom.

Sullivan has since decided to leave the university to continue their studies, in part because of the arrest. Wrapping up a master’s degree in anthropology, Sullivan will move to Ohio in the fall to pursue a Ph.D., instead of continuing at UMass.

“I think mostly I’m just kind of ready to get out of this place,” Sullivan said.

Many campus organizations have rebuked Reyes for deploying police, including the UMass faculty senate, which passed a vote of no confidence against the chancellor.

In June, Reyes announced a task force to review campus policies on demonstrations, including the land-use policy many arrestees were charged with violating.

The group is just getting started with their work, said Anthony Paik, a member of the faculty senate and co-chair of the task force. It would have more information by the end of August, he said, just before the start of the new school year.

Amid rising levels of antisemitism, Jews likely do not have more than a decade in France before they will have to leave, Sarcelles Chabad Rabbi Yaacov Bitton told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday, but emphasized that he and his family would stay to serve the community until the end.

Bitton, who heads the Beth Loubavitch de Sarcelles, said that while he hoped that the Jewish community would continue for many years in France, his personal feeling was that Jews had “no more than 10 years in France.”

The rabbi compared the French Jewish community to the Tabernacle, the mobile temple used by the Jewish people for hundreds of years before the Jerusalem Temple. When the children of Israel wandered the desert post-exodus, the Tabernacle would be erected regardless of how long the Jewish host stopped to rest – be it for weeks, days, or even hours. Like with the Tabernacle, the Jewish people had to continue to bring light into the world, and that mission didn’t cease because they thought that they might soon continue to wander.

Rising antisemitism had recently caused many French Jews to continue their wandering elsewhere. Bitton recalled that physical confrontations and antisemitic attacks had begun in the city of Sarcelles during the First and Second Intifadas, and exploded further during the 2014 Protective Edge operation against Hamas in Gaza. Jewish businesses were burned and storefront windows were broken.

The October 7 Massacre saw a spike in incidents of violence, but fewer than expected, said Bitton. The city and police had done a lot to protect the Jews throughout the years, but the security situation remained tense since the Hamas pogrom, and Jews were increasingly uncomfortable in an area that had once been heavily Jewish.

Jewish children were increasingly transferring into Chabad education from public schools. Bitton said some children had complained that their peers had been pressuring them to convert to Islam. Bitton recalled a particular parent who transferred his child a month ago after they had been told in the playground “I don’t want to play with you because you’re a Jew.”

Many of the area’s 15,000 Jews had grown wary of working with Muslims and Arabs after seeing how many had responded to the October 7 massacre and the subsequent war with Hamas on social media.

“There are many good Arabs and Muslims that want to live together” with Jews, Bitton emphasized.
The rabbi also attributed antisemitism to rising far-left-wing political groups, which were influencing how French groups lived and interacted together.

Over 200 BBC staff, contractors, suppliers, and contributors wrote to the board and Samir Shah, the BBC chairman, in July to demand “an urgent formal investigation” into what the letter described as “anti-Jewish racism” at the BBC, The Telegraph reported on Friday.

The signatories stated that “Jews don’t count” and declared that antisemitism is systematic at the BBC, according to The Telegraph.

Shah dismissed the calls for an investigation, praised the BBC’s “inclusive” culture, and highlighted a process for whistle-blowers in response to the letter.

At the end of July, he said it was of “great concern” that some staff felt that way but that he believes the corporation is “successful” in creating an “inclusive working environment where people from all backgrounds feel welcome, safe and supported,” The Telegraph added.

“I am satisfied, however, that where we have made errors, the executive have acted appropriately and handled matters in accordance to the guidance as they apply to my colleagues,” Shah said. “Following your correspondence, I have asked the executive to review the papers you sent and to see if there’s anything included that has not been previously considered.”

The letter included specific instances where Jewish staff experienced “prejudice and racism at work” and said that their community does not trust the BBC. It stated that there is “a widespread opinion that, when it comes to racism and discrimination at the BBC, Jews don’t count.”

They allegeed that if other minorities were treated the same, the network would have a “zero tolerance” policy.

Employees share their testimonies
“When Jews tell you they feel antisemitism, don’t question it or define it for us,” Neil Grant, a Bafta-award-winning executive producer and signatory of the letter, said, claiming that Shah was gaslighting his employees.

The letter provided examples of inaccuracy and bias in the BBC’s coverage of the war in Gaza and provided testimony from Jewish employees. It also included survey responses that show 78% of Jewish BBC readers see the network as, at minimum, biased on the Israel-Hamas War.

In addition to the 208 named signatories, there were 112 who wished to remain anonymous.

One anonymous employee said, “Every week, it gets a little harder being a Jew at the BBC. Harder to sit in the office and listen to colleagues discussing their very personal views about the war in Gaza and attacks by Hezbollah on northern Israel. Harder listening, watching, and reading the loaded output about events in the Middle East and colleagues’ partial and often offensive social media posts, and harder to go home at night and speak to friends and family who hold me responsible for the BBC contributing to the rise in antisemitism in the UK because I am an employee and so guilty by association.”

Film producer Leo Pearlman, who also signed the letter, said, “No other minority has been or will be treated with this level of disdain.”

“The response, nothing to see here, not even worthy of an investigation, gaslighting by every definition,” he added.

Another signatory, Will Daws, a managing director at Plum Pictures, said the response was “disingenuous and frankly mealy-mouthed.”

“The BBC has a systemic problem with its reporting of Israel that often crosses the line into anti-Semitism. I, for one, will not be placated with merely sympathetic words,” Daws said.

A woman who police say helped vandalize the homes of the Brooklyn Museum’s leaders with red paint during a wave of pro-Palestinian protests has been arrested on hate crimes charges.

Taylor Pelton, 28, was arrested Wednesday on charges of criminal mischief and criminal mischief as a hate crime, police said.

Police say Pelton was one of six people seen on surveillance video vandalizing the homes of the museum’s director, Anne Pasternak, and its chief operating officer, Kimberly Trueblood, on June 12. The other people seen in the videos were still being sought Thursday.

Pasternak is Jewish. The activists left the front of her apartment building splattered with paint and a banner calling her a “white-supremacist Zionist.” An inverted red triangle that authorities say is a symbol used by Hamas to identify Israeli military targets was sprayed onto her door, according to court papers.

Pelton was arraigned Wednesday night and released with court supervision, a spokesperson for the Brooklyn district attorney’s office said.

In an email, Pelton’s attorney, Moira Meltzer-Cohen, didn’t address the specifics of the charges but criticized “the increasing trend of characterizing Palestine solidarity actions as hate crimes.” She said the willingness of prosecutors “to endorse the rhetorical collapse of Zionist ideology and protected religious identity, in order to criminalize criticism of Israel, signals a troubling departure from the principles on which our legal and political systems rest.”

The paint splashing happened days after hundreds of pro-Palestinians protesters marched to the museum, occupied its lobby, vandalized artworks and hung a “Free Palestine” banner from its roof. Police arrested several dozen people.

The protest group Within Our Lifetime and other organizers of those demonstrations said they targeted the museum because they believed it was “deeply invested in and complicit” in Israel’s military actions in Gaza through its leadership, trustees, corporate sponsors and donors — an accusation museum officials denied.

Brooklyn Museum officials said in a statement that “it is crucial to distinguish between peaceful protest and criminal acts.”

The officials said the museum’s vision “remains rooted in the belief that art fosters dialogue and mutual understanding among people with diverse experiences and perspectives.”

Israeli youth ultimate frisbee teams were banned from participating or attending a tournament in Belgium in response to threats of protest and unrest by anti-Israel demonstrations, according to Tuesday statements by the Israeli Flying Disc Association (IFDA), the European Ultimate Federation (EUF), European Flying Disc Federation (EFDF), and the De Pinte municipality.

The Israel boys and girls teams were notified Tuesday that they would be banned from involvement in the 2024 Under 17 European Youth Ultimate Championships following a decision by De Pinte mayor Vincent Van Peteghem in response to damage and vandalism to the Moerkensheide sports park by anti-Israel activists.

“Boycott Israhell now!” was painted on the sports complex building, according to the mayor’s office.

The Israeli Foreign Affairs and Culture and Sports Ministries and the ambassador to Belgium attempted to intervene and the first day of the competition was postponed, but the final decision to ban the teams was made on Tuesday night.

The Israeli teams said that they had received a message from Ghent Mayor Mathias De Clercq threatening to cancel the entire August 6-10 tournament if Israel participated, but negotiated with tournament organizers to find an alternative venue. The deal was made on the condition that the Israeli delegation not take part in the opening ceremony and any tournament social events.

The De Pinte municipal council said that it had been decided to hold Israeli matches at the Moerkensheide sports park rather than the Blaarmeersen recreation park after a security assessment that there was a significant terrorist threat and a “high risk of public order disruption” by anti-Israel organizations. The council cited 58 anti-Israel protests, occupations, and vandalism in the Ghent area and threats by groups as evidence of the concrete problem. The Blaarmeersen facility’s layout made it vulnerable to protests, and the city noted that warm weather at the site had in the past fostered inter-group tensions.

Arad Kauf sits in the empty dining area of the bagel shop he is supposed to be managing. He’s got some new recipes proofing in the back, but they’re just sheets of raw dough. There’s no one on hand to do the baking.

Everyone on staff at the Detroit Institute of Bagels either quit or was fired last month after a conflagration centered in part on Israel, Kauf’s homeland.

“I was ashamed. I was embarrassed,” Kauf said. “I was trying to understand what I did wrong. What happened here?”

What happened at the Detroit Institute of Bagels married a long-simmering local real estate dispute to the widespread tensions over Israel and Gaza that have rippled out across the country over the past 10 months. The sale of the bagel shop to Philip Kafka, a hard-charging Jewish property developer and Kauf’s business partner, elicited protests over Kafka’s past comments supporting Israel.

“My own core beliefs do not allow me to work for a zionist,” one staffer wrote in an email to the bagel shop’s new management. “I cannot allow my creativity and work to be associated with zionism when this is something I vehemently reject, and am very vocal about.”

The first two staffers to resign also cited “the zionist political leanings of new ownership” alongside a “history of poor business practices” and “lack of transparency” as their reasons.
“I would call you a vulture, but I like vultures too much to demean their good name,” a third staffer wrote

Kafka declined to speak with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency; so did a representative for the ex-staffers. The emails, which JTA viewed, show that the staffers’ criticism of Israel and its supporters merged with concerns about work conditions and anxieties about gentrification in Detroit. Staffers also rejected criticism that their opposition to a sovereign Jewish homeland in the Middle East makes them antisemitic.
“I believe Judaism to be a beautiful religion, and zionism to be deeply anti-semitic,” wrote the staffer who likened Kafka to a vulture.

Not the first
The Detroit Institute of Bagels is hardly the first workplace to be upended by divides over the Israel-Hamas war since it began with Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

But the Detroit bagel drama stands out for unfolding at a business that was self-consciously Jewish, with a vision outlined by founding owners Philip and Ben Newman of bringing “Jewish comfort food” back to a city that had largely been emptied of its Jewish past

“Growing up, a ‘Zionist’ embodied community, culture, and a love for the land of Israel — not its government or politics, but its inherent beauty,” he said, declining to share his current political views.

Now, he fears he’ll still catch strays from the controversy — though he knows the bulk of staff anger was directed at Kafka. Since the mid-2010s the Dallas-born billboard scion has transformed this blighted but strong-willed Detroit community of Core City into an architectural playground of fanciful Quonset huts and luxury restaurants. Kafka also launched an ad campaign encouraging New Yorkers to move to Detroit.

These kinds of ventures have earned Kafka acclaim from the design community — and from Kauf, who said he moved into one of Kafka’s buildings because it looked “very exciting and futuristic.” Kauf was impressed enough with Kafka’s vision that, after a stint working for Hillel of Metro Detroit, he sought work from his landlord and wound up managing Cafe Prince, which Kafka owns. Though not explicitly Israeli or Jewish, the cafe has a mezuzah on the door and prices many of its menu items in multiples of 18, which signifies “life” in Jewish tradition.

Many locals, though, are angry with Kafka’s approach to development. Some of them have taken to calling him a “gentrifier” and a “colonizer.” It didn’t help matters when Cafe Prince, as part of a stated focus on fresh ingredients, started selling single raw, peeled carrots for $1.80 — further evidence for many that Kafka’s ventures were out of touch with the community. (Kauf still has the carrot on his menu and defends it as “a way for us to put forward our philosophy”; advertising for the carrot called it a “nude raw.”)

While Kafka and Kauf were charting one kind of path as Detroit businessmen, Newman was forging another. A metro Detroit native, he and his brother opened the Detroit Institute of Bagels’ first brick-and-mortar incarnation in 2013 in the hip Corktown neighborhood, naming it in part after the city’s beloved art museum.

The throwback business quickly became a local favorite, and fit a trend of young Jews moving back to the city decades after an earlier generation of Jewish residents — and their bagel suppliers — had fled for the suburbs. Newman said he was inspired by the Jewish delis of his youth.

Yet his business struggled, and he shut its doors in 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Reopening in Kafka’s building last year, next door to Kauf’s cafe, Newman hired a young, diverse and close-knit staff that spoke of wanting to create a “community” around the shop. Kauf himself was a big fan; he built his own menu around the bread baked at the bagel shop, and bought three loaves from them every morning.

But finances were a continuing struggle, and Newman forewent a salary for 18 months and even started looking for a second job just to support the bagel shop, he told JTA. The sale to Kafka, he said, was intended to preserve both the business and his staff’s jobs.

“Instead of selling the business to parties interested only in its parts, I chose to sign an agreement with Philip and [his] team because I thought that was the best way to keep DIB open and provide job security for our staff,” Newman said. “Philip and I wanted to keep this business operating and people employed. That’s why we transitioned ownership.”

The new owners told staff they would maintain the same staffing and pay; the plan was for Kauf to solely manage front-of-house matters and leave everything else to the team already in place. But an attempt to meet with staff members elicited frustration and questions about whether Kafka was being transparent about his plans.

Then, already angry with Kafka, staff unearthed evidence of his pro-Israel views. Kafka has published op-eds and Instagram posts expressing support for Israel and once told Jewish Insider he wanted to obtain Israeli citizenship — though at the time of the bagel shop sale last month, he hadn’t commented publicly on Israel since the last Gaza war in 2021.

For some, Kafka’s support for Israel and his interests in Detroit were linked. “It’s easy for him to sidestep the Zionist allegations, but it’s a lot easier based on his actions to point to just the straight-up colonizing,” one ex-staffer told local news site Bridge Detroit.

Newman declined to comment on his former staff citing Kafka’s “Zionism” as one reason they didn’t want to support him, or on whether Newman’s own Judaism or views on Israel ever came up in his interactions with staff. Upon their resignations, the crew posed for photos standing defiantly with folded arms outside the store’s hand-painted signage advertising “latke fries” and “matzo ball soup.”

In response to the first wave of resignations, Kafka urged, “If anyone else would like to terminate their employment based on rumors about me, our heritage, or our presumed politics, I implore you to take the same step.” More did, and Kafka promptly shuttered the store, putting remaining staff out of a job. “The business can’t operate without the key participants who have recently resigned,” he wrote by way of explanation.

In a letter to his other tenants and business partners, Kafka defended his record in the Core City neighborhood and said the staff “had preconceived notions about the new owners that they were unwilling to change.”

When the first round of staff cited his “zionist political leanings,” he wrote, “I was shocked that two people who I had only shared casual good mornings with felt that they knew what I believed about a topic as complicated and tragic as the situation in the Middle East.”

He also addressed his views on Israel, writing, “All people deserve peace, security, and safety. War and death is terrible. I support the cause of any and all people to assemble a nation whose priority is the security, safety and happiness of its citizens. However, I will never support a country whose primary objective is the destruction of its neighbor. Period. This is not the forum for further discussion on this topic.”

Kafka said that his attempts to sit down with staff to discuss the transition were rebuffed, and that “we made our best efforts to try and move forward productively until it became clear that the staff had preconceived notions about us, our work and beliefs.”

As news of the closure rippled through Detroit, Zionism became the prevailing narrative as to why it happened. The store’s Instagram page began filling up with comments accusing the new owner of being a “Zionist,” while one Reddit commenter who claimed to be an ex-staffer theorized, “He’s practicing: exploiting Detroit so he can go do illegal s**t in Palestine.” On the social network X, a Detroit-based mutual aid group called Kafka a “Zionist land baron.” One of Kafka’s non-Jewish commercial tenants, a Brazilian restaurateur whose family originated in Lebanon, told JTA his business was now on a “blacklist” of places to boycott because he rents from Kafka.

“For some reason I’ve been punished for things he was saying or believing,” Javier Bardauil said. “What do you want me to do, burn this restaurant because you don’t like my landlord? I’m employing more than 50 people in Detroit.”

Bardauil said he was especially frustrated because he doesn’t think he agrees with Kafka about the Israel-Hamas war.

“I’m pissed too about what’s going on in Palestine right now. I think war is not good for anyone,” he said. Of the protesters, he said, “The worst part is they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Despite all the commotion, Kauf is still excited to relaunch the Detroit Institute of Bagels as part of Cafe Prince. But it was clear that the road ahead would be challenging: On Instagram, activists were starting to DM customers who shared photos from inside Cafe Prince. They were sending them local coverage of Kafka in the hopes of dissuading people from patronizing his cafe.

A Jewish fraternity near the Temple University campus has been repeatedly vandalized and trespassed on over recent months, with the most recent incident occurring on July 27, according to an alum and a statement by the administration last Friday.

Temple University President Richard Englert and Senior Vice President and Provost Gregory Mandel said that the Alpha Epsilon Pi off-campus house had seen trespass and vandalism incidents twice in May and once again on the weekend of July 27. Alum and media commentator Brian Hart reported on social media on July 27 that a group of young adults trespassed on the roof of the building and urinated into a rooftop access door. The incident was recorded by Temple University Public Safety as criminal trespass.

"Temple University and Philadelphia police officers were called to the residence again to respond to reports of individuals on the rooftop," said Englert and Mandel. "Temple’s police officers and detectives are actively investigating these incidents as both a criminal and student disciplinary matter."

At the beginning of May, "Free Palestine" was spray painted on the roof of the AEPi house, according to 6 ABC Action News. Hart wrote on X that three college-aged suspects were seen in security footage walking on the roof on May 24. In the footage, the suspects suggest drawing swastikas and the ease of breaking into the house.

AEPi identifies as a Jewish fraternity, and there was evidence the incidents were motivated by antisemitism," said Englert and Mandel. "Temple University does not tolerate antisemitic or other hate crimes, including vandalism and damage to property. Temple unequivocally condemns antisemitism and other acts of hatred, incitement to violence, threats, harassment, and discrimination against any person."

[/b]Under the rug[/b]
The administrators warned that if students were to be found involved, they would face disciplinary action in addition to criminal charges.

Hart accused the university of sweeping the issue under the rug until he brought the issue to the attention of local media, prompting the statement last Friday. The university had the security footage for more than two months, and he said that there was no entry in the Public Safety crime log for the May 24 incident.

Like many other American universities, Temple has fallen under investigation by the US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights (OCR) for failing to respond to incidents of discriminatory harassment on the basis of Jewish ancestry.

Since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, Donald Trump and other senior GOP leaders have repeatedly called for the Biden administration to revoke the visas of foreign nationals in the U.S. who openly support Hamas or other U.S. designated terrorist organizations.

Last month, one of the 20 promises in the preamble of the platform adopted at the Republican National Convention was to “deport pro-Hamas radicals and make our college campuses safe and patriotic again."

But protest organizers contend that Trump and other Republicans are ignoring key facts. The overwhelming majority of demonstrators are U.S. citizens who, under the First Amendment and current U.S. law, have the right to express pro-Hamas, antisemitic or anti-Israel views as long as they don’t break the law.

And Muslim American civil rights organizations say the vast majority of pro-Palestinian protests have been peaceful and showed no public displays of support for Hamas.

The protests, which spread across American college campuses and took over streets in some cities this spring, are expected to flare up again at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week.

GOP officials and pro-Israel groups told NBC News that they have so far identified only four foreign students on academic visas who were reportedly arrested, barred from graduation or expelled for participating in unauthorized campus protests.

Former Trump administration officials argue that more foreign students are involved in the campus protests and accuse the Biden administration and universities of withholding such information.

Biden administration immigration officials told NBC News that, as of July, they had not terminated any student, or F-1, visas based on protest activity related to the Israel-Gaza war.

The four students flagged by Republicans and pro-Israel groups attended Harvard, Columbia and Emory universities and the University of Pennsylvania. The universities declined to comment, citing privacy concerns, or didn’t respond to requests for comment. The four students didn’t respond to requests for interviews.

Civil liberties groups say attempts to deport protesters who are visa holders for speech-related offenses would spark legal battles nationwide.

Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, argued that foreign nationals who are visa holders are also protected by the First Amendment. He contended that it would be unconstitutional for authorities to try to deport them based solely on their expressing support for Hamas at protests.

“No administration has ever really tried to do this,” Wizner said. “It would be an incredibly novel and extreme policy to remove people from the country simply for their political advocacy in a country that was founded on treasonous political advocacy.”

Reed Rubinstein, a former Trump administration official who is senior vice president at America First Legal, a public policy law firm founded by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, said foreigners, on visas or seeking them, aren’t allowed to endorse terrorist groups.

“Wearing your little Hamas band, saying, ‘Yea, I support Hamas,’ if you are an alien, that should get you tossed out of the country,” said Rubinstein, who held leading positions at the Justice and Education departments under Trump. “Standing there waving your Hamas flag, saying, ‘I love Hamas,’ if you’re a U.S citizen, it’s fine.”

Over the last 10 months, Republicans in Congress have repeatedly proposed bills and sent letters calling on the Biden administration to enforce immigration laws that say foreign visitors aren’t eligible for visas or admission into the country if they “endorse” or “espouse” terrorist activity.

When I am president, we will not allow our colleges to be taken over by violent radicals,” Trump told a crowd in New Jersey in May. “If you come here from another country and try to bring jihadism or anti-Americanism or antisemitism to our campuses, we will immediately deport you.”

An NBC News review of videos, photographs and news accounts of demonstrations on college campuses this spring found that signs specifically declaring support for Hamas weren’t prevalent, but there were reports of violence and property destruction.

Many signs and chants focused on the high number of civilian deaths in Gaza. About 40,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza since Hamas’ terrorist attack on Oct. 7, according to local health officials.

Some called for an intifada, or armed uprising, and for pushing Israelis out of the country “from the river to the sea,” language that many see as a call for the destruction of the state of Israel. Others called for the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Over the summer, pro-Hamas rhetoric appeared to increase at some protests. When demonstrators flooded Washington, D.C., streets in response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit last month, some spray-painted “Hamas Is Comin” on a statue outside Union Station. Next to the threat was an inverted red triangle, which Hamas’ military wing has used to mark its targets. Some protesters say it is a symbol of Palestinian unity.

Law enforcement officials in Washington later released photos of several protesters, some holding cans of spray paint, and asked for help identifying them. At least 19 people were arrested. Law enforcement officials told NBC News that they don’t seek out visa information, nor contact federal immigration officials after an arrest, because Washington is a sanctuary city.

In New York City, two people were recently charged with hate crimes, police say, for an incident in June in Brooklyn. Vandals spray-painted an inverted red triangle and other anti-Israel graffiti on an apartment building where the director of the Brooklyn Museum, who is Jewish, resides. They also unfurled a banner that called her a “white supremacist zionist.”

And in July protesters waved Hamas flags during an anti-Israel demonstration in Times Square. Five people were arrested and charged with reckless endangerment.

Law enforcement officials in New York, which is also a sanctuary city, declined to say whether the individuals arrested in Brooklyn and Times Square were visa holders.

An NBC News investigation this year found no clear evidence financially linking Hamas or any foreign governments to the protests in the U.S.

What did emerge was a vast network that includes left-leaning, billion-dollar American philanthropies and collaboration with at least one foreign organization that Germany and Israel have banned over allegations it worked with or supported Hamas and another terrorist group.

Some U.S.-based protest groups promoted rhetoric or speakers from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which the U.S. also designates as a terrorist organization.

But the pro-Palestinian protest movement, overall, appears to be grassroots, with localized efforts that coordinate primarily through social media. Protests are expected to resume at universities in a few weeks when students return to campus.

Biden’s approach
Biden administration officials told NBC News that Trump’s threats don’t match the realities of the country’s overburdened immigration system. They argue that it is more important to expel foreign nationals in the U.S. who are committing violent crimes, as opposed to protest-related offenses such as vandalizing buildings.

They also argue that terminating visas isn’t as simple as Trump contends. If a visa holder is charged with violating immigration or criminal law, the case often goes before a judge who then has to decide whether the person violated the visa’s terms.

“The United States supports the ability of anyone to peacefully protest, to demonstrate, to make their voices heard, and to express themselves in a peaceful and nonviolent way, consistent with federal, state, and local laws,” a spokesperson for the State Department, which has the authority to revoke a person’s visa, said in a statement.

A spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said reasons to begin proceedings to remove a student from the country include a criminal conviction for a violent offense that carries at least a year in prison or “failing to make normal progress in a course of study, or other regulatory violations.”

ICE regulations state that schools are also required to inform immigration officials within 21 days if students fail to maintain or complete their academic programs. ICE officials must also be informed if a school takes disciplinary action against a student who is convicted of a crime. ICE policies don’t specify what type of crime.

“To initiate removal proceedings against a student, there must be evidence of a status violation,” an ICE spokesperson said.

Jon Feere, an ICE senior adviser in the Trump administration, said the Biden administration isn’t sufficiently focused on ensuring that foreign students are following the terms of their visas.

A second Trump term
America First Legal, the Washington-based public policy law firm founded by former Trump aides, sued the Biden administration in April. It argued that the Education Department is purposely protecting “pro-Hamas foreign extremists on American college campuses” and failing to provide records on foreign students, or pro-Hamas activities, at schools.

“They don’t even want to touch this,” said Rubinstein, the former Justice Department official.

In federal court papers filed in June, the Education Department denied the allegations and said it was still working on the group’s request for documents. Kenneth Marcus, who ran the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights during the Trump and George W. Bush administrations, said a second Trump administration would most likely target foreign students who participate in unlawful protests.

“The Biden administration has done a lot of outreach and publishes a lot of guidance documents, letters, toolkits and the like,” said Marcus, who leads the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a nonprofit organization that has sued multiple universities alleging discrimination toward Jewish students since Oct. 7.

Nerdeen Kiswani, founder of Within Our Lifetime, a pro-Palestinian organization that led the Times Square rally, along with dozens more demonstrations across the city since Oct. 7, said that she hasn’t heard of law enforcement officials contacting any protesters who are foreigners on visas.

Kiswani said that protesters brought Hamas flags out of frustration and anger. “People are doing this as a way to call out that double standard. We see the Israeli flag, the IDF flag," she said, referring to the Israel Defense Forces, "these flags, as being support for terrorism, for genocide.”

Kiswani added that Trump’s threats of deportation won’t deter people from attending her rallies.

“We think whatever personal sacrifice we make or any risk that we’re taking by being openly supportive of Palestine and continuing to build the movement is still nothing in comparison to what the Palestinian people as a whole go through on a daily basis,” Kiswani said.

It’s not going to be a cakewalk’
Civil rights groups and advocates for Palestinian rights say they are prepared to face Trump’s deportation threats if he is re-elected. And former federal prosecutors say that winning convictions for speech-related crimes will be challenging.

Columbia Law School professor Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor, said a successful prosecution for a speech-related crime would require federal investigators to prove that a visa holder was knowingly in communication with a member of a terrorist group. And that member would have to instruct the visa holder to express support for Hamas or another terrorist organization.

“If they instructed you to speak, that definitely counts,” said Richman, citing a federal law that prohibits providing material support to U.S.-designated terrorist organizations.

The Council on American–Islamic Relations, one of the country’s largest Muslim American civil rights organizations, said no one has asked to or tried to raise Hamas flags at its protests. If he or she did, they said, CAIR wouldn’t allow it.

Edward Ahmed Mitchell, a board chair of CAIR Action, the organization’s political arm, acknowledged that visa holders don’t have the same free speech and civil rights protections as U.S. citizens or permanent residents with green cards.

“If a foreign student were to express support for an organization that’s been designated a terrorist group, that would obviously put them at legal risk, especially if they leave the country and try to come back,” Mitchell said. “The law is very clear that the government can deny entry to people for all sorts of reasons.”

Mitchell stressed, though, that most pro-Palestinian demonstrations haven’t involved violence or featured displays of support for Hamas.

“When Mr. Trump threatens to deport people, he could try,” Mitchell said. “But if he’s trying to deport people solely based on speech, it’s not going to be a cakewalk.
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Pro-Palestinian college students may choose to stay home from class at the start of the upcoming fall semester as part of a national student strike organized by the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), which hopes to revive the anti-Israel protest movement that gained traction at schools around the United States during the last academic year.

A report published Monday by The Free Press found that the YDSA — the youth and student wing of the far-left Democratic Socialists of America — published a new resolution last month in which it encouraged members of its more than 100 university chapters across the country to take part in a “Student Strike for Palestine” at the start of the 2024-2025 academic year.

The movement’s chapters were encouraged to “organize democratically-run campaigns demanding their school’s divestment from Israel, a ceasefire in Gaza, and free speech on campus,” the report stated, adding that it was not clear how long the strike could last.

Among the schools that host chapters of the YDSA are Columbia University, UCLA and New York University, all of which found themselves at the center of scandals relating to the anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian protests last year.

At Columbia, unrest has threatened to break out before the school year has even started. In June, the Manhattan District Attorney dropped charges against a majority of anti-Israel protesters who broke into and occupied Hamilton Hall in April, claiming insufficient evidence as the protesters had concealed their faces with masks and covered security cameras.

Earlier in August, Columbia’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) announced that it would be back at the start of the academic year.

“We recommit to continue strategic, targeted attacks on all aspects of university life. There will be no business as usual during genocide,” the group wrote on Instagram.

Along with the university’s chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, Columbia said it was suspending SJP last November for failing to adhere to the school’s policies.

In their stead, a coalition of student organizations operating under the name “Columbia University Apartheid Divest” took over responsibility for organizing the campus’s anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian events.

CUARD has vowed to escalate its activities going forward, and in a recent social media post hailed the October 7 Hamas onslaught and the recent unrest in Bangladesh as a model of “escalating the global battle for liberation.”

Declaring itself to be “on the frontlines of the fight against tyranny and domination which undergird the imperialist world order,” CUARD wrote in the same post that its members were “Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.”

A group of protesters calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war and an end to U.S. military support of Israel marched onto the southbound 405 Freeway in West Los Angeles Tuesday, halting traffic and creating a miles-long backup at the tail end of the morning rush hour.

The protesters, organized in part by the group IfNotNow Los Angeles, walked onto the freeway around 9 a.m. in the area of Venice Boulevard, creating an instant backup of traffic south of the 10 Freeway.

California Highway Patrol officers quickly responded to the scene, and the group was quickly moved out of traffic lanes. The group, consisting of several dozen people, could then be seen marching south along the freeway shoulder and being escorted off the roadway under the watch of CHP officers.

There were no reports of injuries or arrests.

American Jews and allies have shut down the 405 Freeway in West Los Angeles in protest of U.S. support for Israel’s assault on Gaza,” said a statement from the organizers. “With one week to go before the Democratic National Convention, protesters are coalescing around three demands for all elected officials: call for a lasting ceasefire, reject the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and legislate an arms embargo.

“This act of solidarity with the Palestinian people takes place on the Jewish fast day of Tisha B’Av, often described as the saddest day in the Jewish calendar, and is dedicated to the mourning of dead civilians and the destruction of holy sites.”

A federal judge on Tuesday issued a preliminary injunction against the prestigious University of California, Los Angeles, saying the school cannot allow Jewish students to be barred from accessing classes and campus.

The ruling is the first of its kind against a university pertaining to anti-Israel protests that roiled American college campuses this year.

Three Jewish students had filed a complaint against the Regents of UCLA in June saying the university devolved into a “hotbed of antisemitism” in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war and the school failed to ensure the safety of Jewish students and full access to campus facilities.

Protests erupted on campus in late April to early May in which pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up an encampment in the center of campus and put up barricades.

The complaint alleged the protesters created a “Jew Exclusion Zone” where in order to pass “a person had to make a statement pledging their allegiance to the activists’ view.” Those who complied with the protester view were issued a wristband to allow them to pass through, the complaint said, which effectively barred access to Jewish students that supported Israel and denied them access to the heart of campus. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi sided with the three students, and rebuked the school.

“Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith. This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom,” he wrote.

The filing said that when the protests broke out on campus, the three Jewish students stopped passing through major quads and courtyards on campus including Powell Library, because it meant traversing the encampment and “carried a risk of violence.”

“If any part of UCLA’s ordinarily available programs, activities, and campus areas become unavailable to certain Jewish students, UCLA must stop providing those ordinarily available programs, activities, and campus areas to any students,” Scarsi wrote.

How to handle making those programs and access available again is up to UCLA's discretion, he added.

As a result, the regents of UCLA are prohibited from offering programs, activities or campus access if the defendants know they’re not “fully and equally accessible to Jewish students.”

The filing noted that the exclusion of Jewish students includes exclusion of Jewish students based on religious beliefs concerning the Jewish state of Israel.

UCLA said that it has made remedial actions following the encampment including the creation of a new Office of Campus Safety and the "transfer of day-to-day responsibility for campus safety to an Emergency Operations Center," the filing said. However, Scarsi said the changes “do not minimize the risk that Plaintiffs ‘will again be wronged.’”

UCLA spokesperson Mary Osako told The Associated Press that the ruling “would improperly hamstring our ability to respond to events on the ground and to meet the needs of the Bruin community.”

“UCLA is committed to fostering a campus culture where everyone feels welcome and free from intimidation, discrimination, and harassment,” Osako said

A controversial ban on wearing face coverings in public was signed into law on Wednesday in Nassau County, New York — the first ban of its kind in the nation.

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman signed the bill Wednesday morning during a news conference. Nassau County covers part of Long Island, just east of New York City.

The ban, which has exemptions for health and religious reasons, is touted as a public safety measure meant to target those who commit crimes while wearing face coverings.

Those who violate the law face a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Earlier this month Legislator Howard Kopel said the measure was introduced in response to “antisemitic incidents, often perpetrated by those in masks” since the Oct. 7 start of the Israel-Hamas war.

Blakeman called the legislation Wednesday a “bill that protects the public.”

He noted that in the protests that unfolded at nearby Columbia University in Manhattan earlier this year, people wearing masks allegedly engaged in antisemitic and violent acts. It was part of a wave of protests at American college campuses decrying the Israel-Hamas war and expressing solidarity with the suffering of the Palestinian people.

The bill goes beyond protecting cultural groups. Blakeman said that it will curb crime and address face-covering-wearing criminals who commit robberies and carjackings.

However, opponents of the legislation argued that it poses a risk for those who want to peacefully protest while concealing their identity.

The bill has also been criticized from local law makers.

The county’s Democratic Minority Leader Delia DeRiggi-Whitton said in a statement Wednesday the decision to sign the law “is nothing more than political theater and a blatant waste of taxpayer money.”

“This law is destined to be struck down in court, further tarnishing Blakeman’s already losing record of lawsuits,” DeRiggi-Whitton said. “It’s deeply disappointing that Blakeman and his Republican colleagues chose to ignore any opportunity for bipartisan compromise or even consider the Democratic bill — a bill that upholds the rule of law, offers a fairer approach for residents, and imposes firmer penalties on actual offenders.”

The New York Civil Liberties Union slammed the mask ban as an infringement on free speech rights.

“Masks protect people who express political opinions that are controversial,” Susan Gottehrer, Nassau County Regional Director of the NYCLU, said in a statement Wednesday.

“Masks also protect people’s health, especially at a time of rising COVID rates, and make it possible for people with elevated risk to participate in public life. We should be helping people make the right choice for themselves and their loved ones — not letting the government exile vulnerable people from society," she added.

“Nassau County’s officials should be safeguarding rights and liberties, not scoring political points at the expense of New Yorkers,” she said.

Blakeman, a Republican, stressed the legislation is a bipartisan effort.

"Mayor Eric Adams has been very vocal that he’d like the New York City council to pass a similar legislation," he said.

Columbia University President Dr. Minouche Shafik announced she was resigning on Wednesday. The announcement came months after she was criticized for her handling of antisemitism on campus and protests in response to the Israel-Hamas war.

In a letter sent to students and faculty, Shafik wrote in part:

"I write with sadness to tell you that I am stepping down as president of Columbia University effective August 14, 2024. I have had the honor and privilege to lead this incredible institution, and I believe that–working together–we have made progress in a number of important areas. However, it has also been a period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community. This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community. Over the summer, I have been able to reflect and have decided that my moving on at this point would best enable Columbia to traverse the challenges ahead. I am making this announcement now so that new leadership can be in place before the new term begins."

Shafik, who is British-American, went on to say she has been asked by the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary to chair a review of the government's approach to international development, which will allow her to return to the House of Lords in the U.K. Parliament.

"I am very pleased and appreciative that this will afford me the opportunity to return to work on fighting global poverty and promoting sustainable development, areas of lifelong interest to me," she wrote.

Shafik became president of the school at the beginning of the 2023-2024 academic year. She was the first woman to hold the position.

Katrina Armstrong has been named interim president, according to Columbia's website.

In a message to the Columbia community, she wrote in part, "As I step into this role, I am acutely aware of the trials the University has faced over the past year. We should neither understate their significance, nor allow them to define who we are and what we will become."

Columbia's fall semester begins Sept. 3. The university has already started restricting access to its main campus in case of potential disruptions, and earlier this month, Shafik proposed the school add peace officers to its security personnel.

Jordanian citizen Hashem Younis Hashem Hnaihen was arrested after causing $700,000 in damage to a solar power facility in Wedgefield, Florida, and charged with four counts of threatening the use of explosives and one count of destruction of an energy facility for supporting Israel, the US Department of Justice reported on Thursday.

Hnaihen, 43, a resident of Orlando, was arrested on July 11 after a written threat letter was discovered at a propane gas distribution depot in Orlando. Upon his detention hearing on Thursday, he was ordered detained pending trial.

According to court documents, Hnaihen had been targeting and attacking various businesses in Florida based on their perceived support of Israel, in the middle of the night, wearing a mask.

Letters found addressed to the US government mentioned threats to "explode everything here in whole America. Especially the companies and factories that support the racist state of Israel,” as well as various political demands.

Prior to the attack on the solar power facility, Hnaihen had smashed the glass doors to targeted businesses and left them 'warning letters' threatening to destroy them.

If charged, Hnaihen faces 10 years for each individual threat offense and a penalty of 20 years in prison for the destruction of an energy facility offense.

Pro-Palestinian protestors in New York reportedly interrupted an event in support of Democratic US presidential candidate Kamala Harris by throwing smoke bombs at the scene, resulting in the arrest of dozens.

In footage circulating on X, formally Twitter, a video published by the unofficial independent news outlet FreedomNews shows police officers pulling what appears to be pro-Palestine protesters out of the crowd and arresting them. Additionally, the video shows a considerable amount of smoke, possibly from a smoke bomb allegedly being thrown.

Alleged pro-Palestinian protesters in viral video
In another post circulating on X and published by the pro-Palestinian activist group Withing Our Lifetime, a congregation of people can be viewed as a pro-Palestinian protest due to the Palestinian flag being waved and multiple people donning various keffiyehs.
In the video, the alleged protesters are facing the road while a large black vehicle flanked by two large white vehicles appears to attempt to pass by.

Furthermore, pro-Israel activist Emily Schrader shared a video of the alleged protest in New York outside of a restaurant hosting a Democratic Party event, stating, "It’s no secret I’m not a fan of Kamala. Her record on national security is horrendous (border crisis) and she has tied herself to Islamic regime in Iran allied lobby NIAC."

A New York Times reporter based in Melbourne was responsible for the leak of personal information of over 600 Australian Jewish members of a WhatsApp Group earlier in 2024, according to a New York Times statement and Wall Street Journal investigation. The New York Times has announced that it will be taking legal action against the reporter, Natasha Frost, after she acknowledged the data breach.

The data was subsequently disseminated online, leading to mass doxxing, threats and harassment against the members of the group by pro-Palestine activists.

Frost, downloaded and shared 900 pages of content from the private WhatsApp group launched by multiple Australian Jews in the aftermath of the October 7 massacre and which become a "lifeline" to its members, according to New York Post and WSJ reports.

The incident, which happened in February, resulted in list called “Zio600," which was used to threaten the people in the WhatsApp group, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency at the time.

The pro-Palestinian activists posted names, photos, and social media pages of many of the 600 members of the group, resulting in online and in-person harassment, threats, and vandalism, the WSJ said.

The Jewish Independent reported that one Jewish family in Melbourne had to close their shop and go into hiding after receiving a message with a photograph of their child saying, “I know where you live." Their shop was vandalized.

One woman, a high-school teacher at a Jewish school in Melbourne, had people call her school to accuse her of being "complicit in genocide" and threaten her, the WSJ reported. The woman installed security cameras into her home as a result of the threats.

Alex Ryvchin, co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australia Jewry, said in a statement at the time that the list called to mind those created by the Nazis as they sought to murder the Jews of Europe.

Response from reporter, NYT
Frost acknowledged having shared the information with one person, before it was distributed and published online, according to the WSJ.

A spokeswoman for the NYT said that said that “appropriate action” had been taken against Frost.

“It has been brought to our attention that a New York Timesreporter inappropriately shared information with the subject of a story to assist the individual in a private matter, a clear violation of our ethics,” she said. “This was done without the knowledge or approval of The Times.”

In response to the claims against her, Frost, speaking with the WSJ, said that she shared the document with one other person, and that it was subsequently disseminated and misused "without her knowledge or consent.

Doxxing laws
Doxxing is the sharing of personal or identifiable details of a group or individual online, without consent, and with malicious intent. As yet, it is not illegal in Australia, however some measures are in place to protect victims. As a result of the incident, among other things, the Australian government announced it would be considering reforms to the Privacy Act. In March 2024, they began discussing proposed civil reforms to address the practice of doxxing.

Security remains a top priority at the Democratic National Convention, after a fence outside the United Center was breached Monday.

Just as delegates were arriving at the United Center, some protesters breached the outer security fence.

Whole sections of snap-together iron fencing were taken down, and, in some cases, dragged away by protesters.

Chicago police broke out the riot gear, and swarmed the frenzied scene within minutes of the breach.

"We had officers who had objects thrown at them," Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling said. "We had people who sprayed our officers with pepper spray. They stayed controlled, and they handled the situation."

As of Tuesday afternoon, 13 people had been arrested. Eleven have been charged in DNC-related protests. Most are from the Chicago area.

At least 10 of those arrested were connected to the fence breach, Snelling said.

They face aggravated battery of a peace officer, criminal trespassing, disorderly conduct or resisting charges, and range in age from 22 to 70.

At least two of the people arrested already faced a judge, and were released on the condition that they stay away from the DNC perimeter.

Thousands had marched from Union Park to Park 578 to demand action on a number of issues, including the Israel-Hamas war, in what was a mostly peaceful protest.

"What I don't want to do is associate everything that happened, the fencing was breached, with the entirety of that march. Because, there were people who exercised their First Amendment rights, did not commit any crimes, and they marched away from here," Superintendent Snelling said. "What we saw yesterday was not a peaceful protest at that location where the fence was breached. The people who decided that they wanted to commit crimes and vandalism stayed behind."

Snelling had a front-row seat to his department's response.

"Our focus for the march was having a march on the DNC, and we did that," Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression spokesperson Faayani Aboma Mijana said. "We marched within the sight and sound of the United Center. We protested the genocide, and we don't control everyone. But, at the same time, we are talking about a fence, when there is a genocide happening."

The Chicago Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild in a statement characterized the response by Chicago police as "aggressive, and at times, violent."

"I can tell you this right now: The officers could have used more force in situations yesterday than they actually did, and those officers showed great restraint. So, we're always going to have opposition to our response. There are people out there who don't believe we should even exist," Snelling said.

Tuesday morning, crews added an extra layer of those steel cages, more concrete K-rails/jersey barriers and screwed in steel brackets to doubly protect the perimeter and prevent barriers from being lifted off their hinges.

Secret Service officials in Washington told the I-Team that the outside perimeter fence was their responsibility, and that the design was intentional, not a mistake by the government contractor.

"It probably should have been more secure. With some of these festivals, they bolt the fences together, so they're actually sometimes more secure," retired CPD Lt. John Garrido said.

Most students at Columbia University who faced disciplinary action, suspension or arrest for participating in protests last year calling on the school to cut ties with Israel over its war against the Hamas terror group in Gaza will soon return to campus, information shared by the university shows.

Of the 40 students arrested or disciplined when the university called police to the campus on April 18 on the eve of then-university president Minouche Shafik’s testimony to congress, only two remain suspended, according to information released by a Republican-led US congressional panel.

From the over 80 students arrested between April 29 and May 1, among them some 22 students who were detained after breaking into and occupying the university’s Hamilton Hall building, only three students now face interim suspension without access to the campus, while one more is on disciplinary probation from a prior hearing and 18 are in “good standing,” the information released on Monday showed.

The US House of Representatives’ Education and the Workforce Committee, which is probing allegations of antisemitism on American campuses, asked for this information from the university and was critical of Columbia, saying its actions were insufficient to address a hostile environment for Jewish students.

“The failure of Columbia’s invertebrate administration to hold accountable students who violate university rules and break the law is disgraceful and unacceptable,” said committee chairwoman Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina, in a statement.

“Breaking into campus buildings or creating antisemitic hostile environments like the encampment should never be given a single degree of latitude — the university’s willingness to do just that is reprehensible,” Foxx said.

The information shared by the university showed dozens of disciplinary cases are ongoing. Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a group behind the protests, said those students could still face disciplinary action.

The information released on Monday, which was current up to August 6, also showed Columbia had not charged any protesting students with hate speech, but rather with trespassing, disruptive behavior, participation in unauthorized protests and failure to disperse.

At a court hearing in June, Bragg’s office said it would not pursue criminal charges for 31 of the 46 people initially arrested on trespassing charges inside the building, citing a lack of evidence tying them to specific acts of property damage and the fact that none of the students had criminal histories.

Stephen Millan, an assistant district attorney, noted that the protesters wore masks and blocked surveillance cameras in the building, making it difficult to “prove that they participated in damaging any Columbia University property or causing harm to anyone.”

Prosecutors said they would move forward with charges against one person involved in the building occupation, who is also accused of breaking an NYPD camera in a holding cell. Thirteen others arrested in the building were offered deals that would have eventually led to the dismissal of their charges, but they refused them.

French authorities have opened a “terrorism investigation” after an arson attack on a synagogue in a southwestern Mediterranean town injured a police officer and security forces searched for a suspect.

Two cars parked at the Beth Yaacov synagogue complex in the seaside resort town of La Grande Motte near Montpellier were set ablaze on Saturday, the National Anti-terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.

Firefighters discovered additional fires at two entrances to the synagogue. A police officer who walked up to the site was injured after a propane gas tank in one of the vehicles detonated, the statement said.

Five people, including the rabbi, who were present in the synagogue complex at the time of the attack were unharmed, it added.

Several French news outlets reported that the injured police officer’s life was not in danger.

The town of La Grande Motte has about 8,500 permanent residents but the population swells during the tourism season in the summer.

President Emmanuel Macron said the synagogue attack was a “terrorist act” and stressed that “everything is being done to find (its) perpetrator.”

“The fight against anti-Semitism is a constant battle,” Macron said on X.

Acting Prime Minister Gabriel Attal also said the synagogue was targeted in an “act of anti-Semitism”.

Students and faculty who discriminate against or harass “Zionists” may be violating New York University’s hate speech policies, according to the school’s updated guidelines for the fall semester.

Pro-Palestinian activists claim that targeting “Zionists” is not antisemitic because not all Jews identify as Zionists. But many Jewish leaders counter that claim by arguing that support for the existence of a Jewish homeland is normative among contemporary Jews.

NYU’s new policy echoes that argument.

“For many Jewish people, Zionism is a part of their Jewish identity,” the standards said. “Speech and conduct that would violate the NDAH if targeting Jewish or Israeli people can also violate the NDAH if directed toward Zionists.”

The NYU chapter of Jewish on Campus, a national antisemitism watchdog group, posted about the new policy on Instagram, saying that the revised policy “makes it abundantly clear: Zionism is a core component of Jewish identity.” Commenters applauded the change and urged their own campuses to follow suit.

Pro-Palestinian groups on campus, meanwhile, said the new code of conduct “criminalizes Palestine solidarity.” In an Instagram post, the student groups and the activist group Writers Against The War on Gaza (which includes several Jews) said the guidelines were “a deliberate attempt to dissolve student and faculty efforts to protest a genocide that is approaching the one-year mark, with a death toll rising into the six-digit range.”

“For many Jewish people, Zionism is a part of their Jewish identity,” the standards said. “Speech and conduct that would violate the NDAH if targeting Jewish or Israeli people can also violate the NDAH if directed toward Zionists.”

The NYU chapter of Jewish on Campus, a national antisemitism watchdog group, posted about the new policy on Instagram, saying that the revised policy “makes it abundantly clear: Zionism is a core component of Jewish identity.” Commenters applauded the change and urged their own campuses to follow suit.

Pro-Palestinian groups on campus, meanwhile, said the new code of conduct “criminalizes Palestine solidarity.” In an Instagram post, the student groups and the activist group Writers Against The War on Gaza (which includes several Jews) said the guidelines were “a deliberate attempt to dissolve student and faculty efforts to protest a genocide that is approaching the one-year mark, with a death toll rising into the six-digit range.”

In addition to advising against targeting “Zionists,” NYU’s revised guidelines spell out that encampments and overnight protests are not permitted on NYU’s campus. More than 100 people were arrested last spring when NYU cracked down on an encampment erected on its campus.

The school’s new harassment policies offer examples of potential conduct violations, including instances when “Zionists” may have been singled out. The examples include: “Excluding Zionists from an open event, calling for the death of Zionists, applying a ‘no Zionist’ litmus test for participation in any NYU activity, using or disseminating tropes, stereotypes, and conspiracies about Zionists (e.g., ‘Zionists control the media’), demanding a person who is or is perceived to be Jewish or Israeli to state a position on Israel or Zionism, minimizing or denying the Holocaust, or invoking Holocaust imagery or symbols to harass or discriminate.”

In its policy, NYU cited guidelines from the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which has investigated numerous schools for Title VI violations against Jewish students in the wake of October 7. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination at federally funded institutions on the basis of shared ancestry and national origin, and filing Title VI complaints became a first line of defense against campus antisemitism for Jewish and pro-Israel groups last year.

As part of its settlement with Jewish students this summer, NYU promised to create a new Title VI coordinator position and also said it would embrace the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s definition of antisemitism, which includes some criticism of Israel among its examples of antisemitism. A Pro-Palestinian law student group at the school accused NYU’s settlement of having “bolstered its support for the Zionist Entity.”

The school’s anti-harassment guidelines also forbid “calls for genocide of an entire people or group,” “use or dissemination of tropes about protected groups,” and “actions taken against someone based on their field of study, course enrollment, or study abroad participation.” Three leaders of elite universities, though not NYU’s, drew widespread backlash when they declined to unequivocally say in a congressional hearing last year that calls for the genocide of Jews violated school policy.

The guidelines do not distinguish between targeting Jews and targeting Zionists, nor do they address the presence of anti-Zionist Jews in many of the campus protests; one such NYU group calls itself Jews Against Zionism.

A disability rights organization is challenging a suburban New York ban on wearing masks in public except for health and religious reasons, arguing it is unconstitutional and discriminates against people with disabilities.

The federal class action lawsuit, filed by Disability Rights of New York on behalf of individuals with disabilities, seeks a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to immediately stop enforcement of Nassau County’s Mask Transparency Act.

“This mask ban poses a direct threat to public health and discriminates against people with disabilities.” Timothy A. Clune, executive director of the rights organization, said in a statement. The lawsuit includes two plaintiffs with various health conditions who wear medical-grade face masks to protect themselves, noting they are now fearful of being harassed and possibly arrested because of the new mandate.

“While in public and private places, strangers have come up to G.B. since August 5, 2024, to ask them if they are sick, if they are healthy or not, and to ask why they are wearing a facemask,” according to the lawsuit, referring to one of the plaintiffs by their initials and to the date when the Nassau County Legislature passed the local bill.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday, said G.B., a resident of Nassau County for 24 years, has been diagnosed with cerebral palsy and asthma and uses a wheelchair for mobility.

G.B. fears that they will be arrested just for wearing a facemask for their health because there is no standard for the police to follow to decide if they meet the health exception or not,” according to the lawsuit. “G.B. is also concerned that they will be harassed, discriminated against, or even assaulted by people, including business owners and employees, in Nassau County for just going about their day with a mask on.”

In a written statement, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a Republican who signed the bill into law on August 14, said county officials are “confident that the law will be upheld as there is a presumption of constitutionality when the legislature acts, and this legislation is reasonable and responsible.”

When the county’s Republican-controlled Legislature approved the ban on face coverings, legislator Howard Kopel said lawmakers were responding to “antisemitic incidents, often perpetrated by those in masks” since the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel that started the war in Gaza.

The law makes it a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine for anyone in Nassau to wear a face covering to hide their identity in public. It exempts people who wear masks “for health, safety, religious or cultural purposes, or for the peaceful celebration of a holiday or similar religious or cultural event for which masks or facial coverings are customarily worn.”

Blakeman has said that while mask-wearing campus protesters were the impetus for the ban, he sees the new law as a tool to fight everyday crime as well.