Mideast War blowback

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The University of Toronto Faculty Association (UTFA) has voted to divest from Israel, the association announced on Friday.

This decision stems from Israel’s “illegal occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” the UTFA said.

The motion, which passed by 52% of the vote, calls on the Ontario University Pension Plan (UPP) to produce a rapid timeline for complete divestment from all direct and indirect holdings in entities that support or sustain Israel’s “occupation and/or which manufacture” or distribute arms, ammunition, or munitions of war where “there are reasonable grounds to suspect they may have been used by Israel in Palestine.”

Motion equates divestment from Israel akin to policy for Russia

It added that all new investments should be screened, and that these divestment commitments should then be incorporated into the UPP’s investment exclusion policy.

The motion claimed that the divestment from Israel should occur in line with the university’s current divestment from Russia.

One of the prominent driving forces behind the motion was the UofT Faculty and Librarians for UPP Divestment group.

It announced that all people who pledged support to the motion were anonymous, due to alleged fears of a “penalty for taking a public anti-war, anti-apartheid or anti-occupation position.”
The faculty also said it was fearful of “doxxing,” particularly against “indigenous colleagues, colleagues of color, [and] junior [or] precarious colleagues.”

The UPP is Ontario’s largest higher education pension fund. It has controlled all of UofT’s pension funds since 2021. It encompasses faculty and staff at the University of Toronto, Queen’s University, the University of Guelph, and Trent University.

As tourists crossed Basel’s Mittlere Brücke bridge Thursday, some of them paused to savor the warm spring sun just as they have done for centuries. This week, the crossing that straddles the Rhine river as it meanders across the borders with nearby France and Germany was lined with flags bearing the Eurovision Song Contest slogan, “United by Music.”

Basel, and Europe at large, are anything but united.

Police and the the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) are preparing themselves for a potential repeat of last year’s iteration of Eurovision, the song competition that launched the careers of ABBA and 1988 winner Celine Dion. The 2024 contest was overshadowed by politics perhaps more than in any previous year, with fierce protests over the participation of Israel amid its government’s intensifying war on Gaza.

It’s purely by chance that this year’s contest, usually an outrageous jamboree of inscrutable lyrics and scantily clad backing dancers, is being held in a country with a long-standing policy of neutrality. Each year’s venue is dictated by which country won the previous year.

The EBU, which organizes the contest, says the event is nonpolitical, but given that it brings together dozens of countries — this year, 37 nations will take part — the divisions and flashpoints present on the world stage inevitably creep in among the pyrotechnic reveling.

The political divide over Israel’s participation in Basel has already tested the EBU’s impartiality.

The singer representing Israel, which first took part in the contest in 1973, is Yuval Raphael — one of the survivors of that attack.

Last year, Raphael spoke to the United Nations Human Rights Council, describing how she sought refuge in a bomb shelter with other festivalgoers, hiding for eight hours under dead bodies. She told the U.N., “the physical injuries I sustained are healing, but the mental scars will stay with me forever.”

The EBU bars lyrics it views as political and last year forced Israel’s entry to change lyrics that referenced the Oct. 7 attacks.

While the lyrics of this year’s song, “New Day Will Rise,” don’t make reference to any events in particular, Galia Press-Barnathan, a professor of international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, says the message is nevertheless clear.

“You can’t ban a personal story from a competition,” she told NBC News in a Zoom interview earlier this month. “So you really get two for one,” she said, with a talented singer performing what sounds like “an old French chanson” paired with a story that makes clear the song is actually about “both a personal trauma and a national trauma, and how you sort of come out of this.”

But much as Israel takes part in various European sports leagues, its inclusion in Eurovision is an example of the Middle Eastern nation viewing itself as part of the European cultural community, an idea that Press-Barnathan says is an important “part of the Israeli societal imagination.”

Should be a happy occasion'
On Wednesday evening in central Basel, some 200 protesters demanded Israel be expelled from Eurovision and for an end to the Israeli offensive in Gaza. The crowd, some wearing Palestinian flags, marched in silence down a street ringing with music, The Associated Press reported.

For many critics, Israel’s inclusion in Eurovision is tantamount to accepting its military campaign, which has prompted the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli leaders for “crimes against humanity and war crimes,” charges that Israel denies.

Those pushing for the country to be kicked out of the contest — much as Russia was following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — include former participants, more than 70 of whom signed a joint letter earlier this month.

“It should be a happy occasion that Eurovision is finally in Switzerland, but it’s not,” Lea Kobler, a protester from Zurich in Basel, told the AP. “How can we rightfully exclude Russia but we’re still welcoming Israel?”

Participation in Eurovision has long pushed the geographical boundaries of Europe itself. While the contest started with seven countries in 1956, it has vastly expanded and now includes not only Israel, but countries like Georgia, Azerbaijan and even Australia.

Around the edges of last year’s festival in Malmö, Sweden, protests against Israel’s participation reached a fever pitch. Police scuffled with pro-Palestinian protesters who tried to make themselves heard over the pop music blaring outside the stadium as fans lined up to enter.

This year in Basel, demonstrators were highly visible at the opening ceremony of the contest, with large Palestinian flags being waved in the crowd. There were some boos for Raphael as she walked the carpet, and Israel’s X account posted a video of a pro-Palestinian protester making a throat-slitting gesture at the Israeli delegation.

Brigitte Vogel, a spokesperson for the police in Basel, told NBC News in an emailed statement, “The Cantonal Police is aware of the incident and will draw up a report for the responsible prosecution authorities.”

“By continuing to platform the representation of the Israeli state, the EBU is normalising and whitewashing its crimes,” the letter reads. “The EBU has already demonstrated that it is capable of taking measures, as in 2022, when it expelled Russia from the competition. We don’t accept this double standard regarding Israel.”

Some participating national broadcasters, including those from Spain, Iceland and Slovenia, have also questioned whether Israel should take part. Senior leadership from the Irish broadcaster RTÉ last week met with the EBU to raise its own concerns.

In an emailed statement, the EBU said it “will continue to listen to all members. As we did in 2024, we will have a broader discussion when the Contest concludes with all participating broadcasters to reflect on all aspects of this year’s event.”

More protests are expected when Israel competes in Thursday’s semifinal.

Participation amid criticism, Press-Barnathan says, is a way for Israel to fight against its detractors. “It’s the pushback against criticism, delegitimization, all that stuff.” And for a domestic audience, she said, it’s a way of saying, “We’re still here. You know, we’re not going anywhere.”

Ben Cohen, the co-founder of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, was arrested Wednesday after interrupting a Senate hearing to protest the United States' policy on Gaza, according to American media reports.

While Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was delivering a testimony, Cohen reportedly shouted: "Congress sent the bombs that kill children in Gaza and pays for it with cuts to Medicaid."

Cohen was escorted out by Capitol Police and arrested following the interruption. He has reportedly since been charged with the misdemeanor offense of Crowding, Obstructing, and Incommoding.

"I told Congress they're killing poor kids in Gaza by buying bombs, and they're paying for it by kicking poor kids off Medicaid in the US. This was the authorities' response," Cohen wrote on X/Twitter with footage of the incident.

In the video, Cohen claimed Israel had starved Gaza for 79 days, and the US needed to enable food to enter the enclave.

Cohen was one of seven protesters escorted from the building, according to NBC News.

Las Vegas man who sent antisemitic death threats to Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Nevada Jewish Democrat, was sentenced to almost four years in prison Tuesday.

John Anthony Miller, 44, pleaded guilty to one count of threatening a federal official as well as two more charges related to the threats in December, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Nevada.

The charges relate to a series of threatening messages left by Miller in October 2023, shortly after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, on the office phone of Rosen, who has been a staunch Israel advocate.

In one of the Oct. 17 voicemails, Miller allegedly said, “You done picked your side, b***h, and you done chose evil. I don’t give a f— if you were born into it or not, b***h, you are f—ing evil, b***h, and we are going to exterminate you.”

Miller was sentenced to 46 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release by a Nevada U.S. District court. He had also made threats against the family of another U.S. senator who was not named, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.

Miller’s lawyer, Jess Marchese, told the Associated Press that Miller struggles with addiction and was high on methamphetamine at the time of the crimes.

“I felt the sentence was a little harsh for a nonviolent offender with a minimal criminal record, but we respect the court’s ruling and look forward to John moving forward and dealing with his addiction,” Marchese said to the Associated Press.

A Chicago theater canceled an advance screening of “Bring the Family Home,” a documentary about campus antisemitism, four hours before its showtime, citing “the safety and well-being of our community.”

Rami Even-Esh, an Israeli-American Jewish rapper who uses the stage name Kosha Dillz, created the still-unfinished documentary about his music and life on college campuses after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. The screening was also to feature a panel discussion with Kosha Dillz and Michael Kaminsky, a Jewish student who was assaulted last November in an alleged hate crime at the nearby DePaul university.

But before Tuesday’s screening could take place, Facets, an independent cinema in Chicago, canceled it. The theater announced the decision in a since-deleted post on Instagram that night that began with the sentence, “We are firmly not an antisemitic organization.”

It cited statements by the filmmaker, though it did not detail what they said.

“Based on the public posts made by Kosha Dillz and the overall tone surrounding the event, we determined that proceeding would not align with our values or our responsibility to protect the safety and well-being of our community,” the statement said. “We reject antisemitism in all forms — just as we reject Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian racism, and any form of hate or dehumanization.”

Kosha Dillz said that they had offered to provide security measures for the screening, but Facets declined.

“We are now hostages to a new form of bigotry that is called exclusion,” he said in a statement. “It will bar us from intellectual spaces that we would normally attend such as facets.”

The Chicago Jewish Alliance, which helped organize the screening, lambasted the decision, writing in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Facets’ website says it “expands perspectives and affirms a shared humanity through inclusive engagement with film.”

“Cancelling a documentary film about the challenges with creating discourse about a difficult topic made by an Israeli filmmaker should have fit squarely within this mission,” the CJA statement said. “Instead, Facets shut down a perspective, denied shared humanity, and excluded Jews.”

Following the cancellation, CJA rescheduled the screening at the Wilmette Theater in suburban Chicago.

In an op-ed published last week, Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur, who leads a Reform congregation in Paris, urged support for those "who know that no pain is eased and no death is avenged by starving innocents or condemning children."

The words were directed at far-right members of the Israeli government who have justified denying humanitarian aid and vital food supplies to Palestinians in Gaza as legitimate acts of war.

Her piece was published in Tenou'a ("movement" in Hebrew), a quarterly magazine devoted to liberal Jewish thought.

"Without a future for the Palestinian people, there can be none for the Israeli people either," wrote Horvilleur, who serves as editor-in-chief of the publication.

The backlash from conservative elements within the Jewish community was immediate, and the rabbi has since faced a torrent of online abuse, including calls that she be subjected to din rodef – a halakhic concept that permits the execution of an individual perceived as an imminent threat to others.

It marks a stunning switch for this rabbi, who had emerged as a prominent spokesperson for France's 500,000-strong Jewish community – the largest in Europe – after the October 7 attack and was often called on to speak in Israel's defense on mainstream media outlets. Because of her advocacy for Israel, she has also been targeted by anti-Zionist political figures, who regularly attack her on social media.

"Too Zionist for some, not Zionist enough for others – I'm caught in the crossfire," Horvilleur, who serves as co-director of the Liberal Jewish movement in France, reflected in a conversation with Haaretz.

As both a public Jewish figure and a rabbi, she has long been seen by law enforcement authorities in France as a potential target. But this is the first time the threats have come from within her own community.

"There are petitions against me, and 90 percent of the messages I receive are misogynistic," she said. "They comment on my appearance, insist that a woman shouldn't speak, shouldn't be in a position of religious authority."

Her social media accounts are now under police scrutiny, she said, because of the volume and nature of the threats.

Still, some prominent Jewish figures have expressed solidarity with Horvilleur. Journalist Anne Sinclair and author-cartoonist Joann Sfar have both published columns in recent days echoing her concerns about the humanitarian disaster confronting Palestinians in Gaza. They are now facing a similar backlash.

In addition, 42 French intellectuals – both Jewish and non-Jewish – signed an op-ed published in Sunday's La Tribune du Dimanche condemning the Israeli government for undermining democracy and the rule of law, endangering the hostages, expanding settlements, and openly preparing for the annexation of the occupied territories.

In response, Meir Ben Hayoun, a French spokesperson for Otzma Yehudit, the far-right Israeli political party, wrote in Tribune Juive – a right-wing French Jewish media outlet – that Horvilleur and her allies had desecrated the "Jewish tradition," warning that it "will be paid for in spilled blood."

Her critics may be quite vocal, but Hovilleur said she was confident they did not represent the majority of French Jews.

"I've received hundreds of messages from Jews who are more distanced from institutional community life, thanking me for breaking the silence – for saying what they struggle to express: that one can love Israel, be Zionist, and still condemn how this war is being conducted," she said.

Asked for her response to claims that when Israel is at war, Jews must display a united front and offer unconditional support, the rabbi said she believes Diaspora Jews are obligated to speak up when the Israeli government acts or speaks in ways that could undermine core Jewish values: "I'm willing to be quiet," she said, "but how can I, when the Israeli government claims to speak in my name, as a Jew, and so often against my values? When it rolls out the red carpet for far-right figures I've spent years opposing?"

The US Department of Health and Human Services said on Monday that it was terminating $60 million in federal grants to Harvard University, saying the Ivy League institution failed to address antisemitic harassment and ethnic discrimination on campus.

US President Donald Trump's administration has frozen or ended federal grants and contracts for the university worth nearly $3 billion in recent weeks.

Due to Harvard University’s continued failure to address antisemitic harassment and race discrimination, HHS is terminating multiple multi-year grant awards ... over their full duration," the health department said in a post on X on Monday.

British Jewish areas in Manchester and London have been targeted by antisemitic graffiti and vandalism over the last few days.

On Sunday night, the words "Free Palestine" were sprayed across the road of a Jewish area in North West London, according to photos on social media.

Additionally, a sticker reading "antisemitism is a crime, anti-Zionism is a duty" was affixed to the inside of a northern line tube carriage - a line that services much of the London Jewish community.

In Prestwich, Manchester, several Jewish-owned buildings were daube d with antisemitic graffiti. The Greater Manchester Police said the incidents were under investigation.

Jewish local paper The Manchester Scoop reported that multiple Jewish-owned establishments, including Benny's Bistro and synagogues Beis Mordechai and The Shtieble, were defaced with "vile antisemitic graffiti."

Photos show the words "Nazi Jews," and "Nazi Jews are scum" written on the walls of Benny's Bistro - a Kosher food joint.

A day later, The Manchester Scoop posted a photo of the same hate message surrounded by messages of support from the community, including the Israeli flag, Jewish stars, and words such as "Keep hatred away from Benny's."

A rapper from Northern Ireland who has criticized Israel’s war in Gaza was charged with a terrorism offense after he was accused of displaying the flag of the Hezbollah militant group, British authorities said Wednesday.

London’s Metropolitan Police accused Liam O’Hanna, 27, who performs as Mo Chara in the hip-hop trio Kneecap, of violating a provision in the country’s terrorism law that bans people from displaying flags “in such a way or in such circumstances as to arouse reasonable suspicion that he is a supporter” of groups the United Kingdom considers terrorists.

The Met said it launched an investigation after it learned of an online video last month that showed O’Hanna displaying the flag of Hezbollah at a venue north of London on Nov. 21.

The group expressed support for Hamas’ attacks on Israel

After Wednesday’s announcement, Kneecap’s X account posted a previous interview with O’Hanna in which he said, “I don’t want to be 80, 90 years of age and my grandkids asking me, 'Why did nobody do anything about the Palestinian genocide?' And me sitting there being like, 'F---, I didn’t do enough.' I don’t want to be on that side of history.”

Kneecap has described criticism of its outspoken views about the war in Gaza as a "coordinated smear campaign" by those who "want to silence criticism of a mass slaughter. They weaponize false accusations of antisemitism to distract, confuse, and provide cover for genocide.”

After the group performed at Coachella last month in front of a screen that said, “F--- Israel, Free Palestine," the organizers behind Israel's Tribe of Nova music festival, where hundreds of people were killed in the October 2023 attack, said Kneecap's messaging was "an affront made even more painful in light of the massacre."

"We invite the members of Kneecap to visit the Nova Exhibition in Toronto and experience firsthand the stories of those who were murdered, those who survived, and those are still being held hostage," the organizers said. "Not to shame or silence — but to connect. To witness. To understand."

O’Hanna is scheduled to appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on June 18, the Met said

What we know about how the attack unfolded
Initial calls to police: Around 9:08 p.m. ET, police received “multiple calls” for a shooting in the area of Third Street and F Street Northwest, according to Pamela A. Smith, chief of the Metropolitan Police Department. “Officers located one adult male and one adult female unconscious and not breathing at the scene.” DC Fire and EMS responded, and despite life-saving efforts, “both victims succumbed to their injuries,” Smith said.

The event: Both victims were leaving an event held at the Capitol Jewish Museum, Smith said. The American Jewish Committee said in a statement it had hosted an event in the museum that night.

Before the attack: The suspect was seen pacing back and forth outside the museum ahead of the shooting, Smith said.

The shooting: The suspect approached a group of four people and opened fire with a handgun. The two victims who died were a couple about to be engaged, the Israeli ambassador to the US said.

Suspect detained: After the shooting, the gunman entered the museum and was detained by event security, Smith said. Once handcuffed, he told security where he had discarded the weapon, which was recovered by authorities.

What else we know: The suspect was named as Elias Rodriguez, 30, from Chicago, Illinois. He chanted “Free free Palestine” while in custody. Rodriguez was not previously known to police. Police say they believe he was the sole shooter and there is no active threat remaining.

Eyewitness says DC shooter pretended to be a witness and waited for police to arrive before saying he "did it for Gaza"
The shooter who killed a young couple outside the Jewish Museum in DC on Wednesday night “pretended to be a witness” and waited for police to arrive for over 10 minutes before claiming he did it “for Gaza”, eyewitness Sara Marinuzzi told CNN.

Marinuzzi, 28, said gunshots rang out shortly after the event ended at 9 p.m.

“There were some more shots and then a guy came running into the center, and the security guards offered him water, trying to comfort him. He was kind of having erratic behavior. They figured he witnessed the shooting,” Marinuzzi said.
The man asked security to call the police. When police arrived about 10 minutes later, the man took accountability for the crime, saying

“I did it, I did it for Gaza. Free Palestine!” Marinuzzi recalled

How is 'Free Palestine' antisemitic?

Authorities have identified a suspect in the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy workers near a Jewish museum in Washington D.C. as 30-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago.

The Israeli foreign ministry said the victims were Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim. "No words can express the depth of our grief and horror at this devastating loss," it said.

Video footage on social media showed a man chanting "free, free Palestine" being led away by officers inside what appeared to be the Washington D.C. Capital Jewish Museum.

Washington Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith told reporters the suspect made the same chant while in custody.

One eyewitness inside the museum told WAGA-TV a man ran into the building after the shooting and was initially offered help.

"The security guard happened to let this guy in. I guess they were thinking and he was covered in rain, he was clearly in trauma, he was in shock, and some of the people in the event brought him water, they sat him down. 'Are you ok? Were you shot? What happened?' He's like, 'Somebody call the cops.'

"So about 10 minutes later when the cops actually came in he said, 'I did this,' he said, 'Sir I'm unarmed,' he put his hands up he grabbed a red kaffiyeh out of his pocket and started the free Palestine chants. You know, 'there's only one solution, intifada revolution' and he was being dragged out of the building as he was yelling 'free Palestine'."

A LinkedIn profile under the name of a Chicago-based Elias Rodriguez, whose profile photograph appears to match those of the suspect, says he worked as a "profiles administrative specialist" at the American Osteopathic Information Association (AOIA), a body which represents osteopathic medical doctors. The AOIA also lists an "Elias Rodriguez" as an employee in this role on its official website.

According to the LinkedIn page, Rodriguez previously worked as a "production and logistics coordinator and oral history researcher" at the HistoryMakers, a nonprofit that says it is committed to "preserving and making widely accessible the untold personal stories of both well-known and unsung African Americans."

The HistoryMakers says Rodriguez has a B.A. degree in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago, lived in the city's Avondale neighborhood and previously worked as a content writer "for commercial and noncommercial firms in the technology space."

Newsweek has not independently verified that the Elias Rodriguez listed by the HistoryMakers is the same person police arrested over the Washington D.C. shooting.

Newsweek has contacted Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police, the Chicago Police Department, the AOIA and the HistoryMakers for comment on Thursday outside of regular office hours via telephone, email and online inquiry form.

In October 2017, an article by Liberation, the newspaper of the left-wing Party for Socialism and Liberation, listed an "Elias Rodriguez" as one of its activists in an article about the police shooting of 17-year-old Black youth Laquan McDonald in Chicago in 2014. The article appears to have since been removed.

Speaking to the publication, Rodriguez said that "[Amazon's] whitening of Seattle is structurally racist and a direct danger to all workers who live in that city. So do we in Chicago and all across the country want a nation of cities dominated and occupied by massive corporations where only the rich and white can live and the vast majority of us must live on edges of the city and society living in deeper and deeper poverty?"

Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein shared what he said was the shooter's 980-word manifesto on his website, though he didn't say how he obtained the document and its authenticity has not been independently verified.

"I believe the document to be authentic for several reasons, including the fact that it is signed by Rodriguez and timestamped well before he was named by law enforcement or any media," Klippenstein wrote.

The document advocates for what its author calls "armed demonstration" as a response to "genocide," a term they use to describe the Israeli military operation in Gaza.

The author writes: "Israelis themselves boast about their own shock at the free hand the Americans have given them to exterminate the Palestinians. Public opinion has shifted against the genocidal apartheid state, and the American government has simply shrugged, they'll do without public opinion then, criminalize it where they can, suffocate it with bland reassurances that they're doing all they can to restrain Israel where it cannot criminalize protest outright."

Referring to Operation Protective Edge, a 2014 Israeli military operation against Hamas in Gaza, the author added: "The action would have been morally justified taken 11 years ago during Protective Edge, around the time I personally became acutely aware of our brutal conduct in Palestine.

"But I think to most Americans such an action would have been illegible, would seem insane. I am glad that today at least there are many Americans for which the action will be highly legible and, in some funny way, the only sane thing to do."

Speaking to the BBC, Washington D.C.-based Rabbi Levi Shemtov described the couple shot as "nice people, popular," adding this is "brutal news."

Israel-based organization present at DC event says it was focused on Gaza humanitarian aid

IsraAID, an Israel-based non-governmental organization, said the event in Washington, DC, where two Israeli staff members were shot dead was focused on humanitarian aid for Gaza.

The event, where IsraAID members were keynote speakers, “focused on bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza through Israeli-Palestinian and regional collaboration,” the NGO said in a statement Thursday.

“We, and all the attendees, gathered in the interest of finding practical solutions to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and showing that working together is the only way forward for all the people in the region,” IsraAID said, adding that “the brutal and tragic irony that such an event – motivated by humanitarian principles – was targeted for more violence is heartbreaking.”

No it's not. As a common sense in ethnology Arabs are also semitic.