Education Secretary Linda McMahon Makes Historic Visit To Jewish Day School

Education Secretary Linda McMahon visited an Orthodox Jewish Day School in Miami, the first education secretary to do so in years. McMahon reaffirmed this administration's commitment to fighting antisemitism and ensuring Jewish students feel safe on campus. Yehuda Kaploun helped facilitate the visit and joined One America's Stella Escobedo to talk about the historic visit.

DOGE Cuts DEI Funding, Axes Over $370M In Education Grants

The US Department of Education building is seen in Washington, DC, February 13, 2025. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
The US Department of Education building is seen in Washington, DC, February 13, 2025. (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

OAN Staff James Meyers
2:29 PM – Monday, February 17, 2025

In only two days, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cut a staggering $370 million in taxpayer funding that was being spent on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at the Department of Education (DOE).

DOGE revealed in a post on their x account that they got rid of 70 DEI training grants within the department. 

According to the department run by Elon Musk, the grants totaled $373 million. 

One specific grant was funding training for teachers to “engage in ongoing learning and self-reflection to confront their own biases and racism, and develop asset-based anti-racist mindsets,” the cost-cutting department said.

DOGE has been revealing significant findings over the past few weeks, including the cancellation of multiple avenues of funding for DEI in education, including $9.7 million for UC Berkeley to develop “a cohort of Cambodian youth with enterprise driven skills.”

Additionally, DOGE announced the termination of another 89 DOE contracts that totaled $881 million. This number included over $100 million in DEI grants. 

Meanwhile, the Education Department has been cutting DEI practices in education as a whole, mandating all 50 state education departments last week to remove DEI policies within 14 days or else they will lose federal funding. 

The letter said the “overt and covert racial discrimination that has become widespread in this nation’s educational institutions” will no longer be tolerated.

“The law is clear: treating students differently on the basis of race to achieve nebulous goals such as diversity, racial balancing, social justice, or equity is illegal under controlling Supreme Court precedent,” the letter reads.

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Biden Regime’s Department of Education Sues Columbia University

But not for what you’d expect.

SEE: https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-regimes-department-of-education-sues-columbia-university/; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

[Order a copy of Robert Spencer’s forthcoming book, "Muhammad: A Critical Biography"by clicking here.]

After anti-Israel mobs rioted at Columbia University, broke into an academic building, and menaced Jewish students, it’s not surprising that the Department of Education has opened a civil rights investigation of the university. Clearly, the rights of many Jewish and pro-Israel students have been trampled, and so it’s reassuring to see education bureaucrats acting to restore some sanity and decency at Columbia.

The only problem is that they’re not doing that. Instead, the Biden regime’s Department of Education is only making things worse. Its civil rights investigation is not about the mistreatment of Jewish students, but of Palestinian students.

Yes, we have really entered bizarro world, and everything is upside down. USA Today reported Friday that “the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights on Thursday opened an investigation into Columbia University for how it’s treated Palestinian students and allies, lawyers said.” The Biden apparatchiks have filed a complaint that “alleges unequal treatment by Columbia administrators, including President Minouche Shafik.”

Remember, this is the same Minouche Shafik, about whom the Washington Post reported Friday that “several Republican lawmakers have accused her of not taking rapid action against protesters and not doing enough to make Jewish students feel safe on campus.” Yet as far as the Biden regime’s Department of Education is concerned, it isn’t the Jewish students who feel unsafe. USA Today continues: “Four students and the student organization, Students for Justice in Palestine, told federal officials they experienced harassment, death threats and doxing on campus since the start of the war, according to the complaint filed by Palestine Legal, a legal aid organization.”

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, this is what has really been happening at Columbia University. At the end of April, pro-Hamas thugs assaulted a Jewish student. This took place as pro-Hamas protestors, many from outside the university, shattered the glass of the university’s main building and occupied it.

All that happened months after Columbia administrators met with a student, Khymani James, and heard him speak openly about murdering Jews. Not only did they opt not to expel him and allow him to remain on campus, but they watched as he became the leader of the encampment protests. Then he issued a video in which he said: “Be glad — be grateful — that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists." I’ve never murdered anyone in my life, and I hope to keep it that way.”

Back in the Education Department’s bizarro world, however, Radhika Sainath of Palestine Legal claimed that “for months, Columbia has not only failed to take action to protect Palestinian students and their allies speaking out for Palestinian freedom from racist harassment and discrimination, but actively engaged in differential treatment. This investigation could not have come at a better time, as we just saw Columbia escalate its crackdown against Palestinian students and their allies by bringing in the NYPD to brutally arrest student protesters for the second time in less than two weeks.”

This civil rights complaint couldn’t possibly be more absurd. In pursuing it, the Biden regime once again demonstrates its true colors and deep hatred of Israel. Are Jewish students breaking into and trashing university buildings? Are Jewish students assaulting Palestinian Arab students?

There is abundant justification for a civil rights investigation of how Jewish students are being treated at Columbia, but the Students for Justice in Palestine and Palestine Legal know how to play the game: they know that victimhood is a coveted status in our sick society, and that consequently, being the first or loudest to claim that status is a quick pathway to preferential treatment and even pecuniary reward.

It’s also useful to recall that Students for Justice in Palestine is the brainchild of a professor of “Islamophobia” named Hatem Bazian, who has openly called for an intifada, a violent uprising, not in Israel only, but in the United States as well. And regarding supporters of Israel, he has declared, “We need to harass them.”

Yet it is his group, not the people that members of his group frequently harass on campuses, that is the object of the Department of Education’s efforts. This entirely ridiculous charade is a prime example of how our academic institutions have lost their way, deserve no public funding, and are in severe, cryptic need of reform.

What has happened of late at Columbia illustrates that anew. But also in radical need of reform is the Washington bureaucracy. Instead of acting against the pro-Hamas thuggery at Columbia and other campuses, the Biden regime is aiding and abetting it.

Columbia U: Pro-Hamas Protesters Call for Killing of Jewish Students, Praise Jihad Murderers~The fruit of indoctrination that passes for education.

SEE: https://www.frontpagemag.com/columbia-u-pro-hamas-protesters-call-for-killing-of-jewish-students-praise-jihad-murderers; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

[Order a copy of Robert Spencer’s forthcoming book, "Muhammad: A Critical Biographyby clicking here.]

This is the fruit of the hard-left indoctrination that passes for university education today.

…Two days after more than 100 students were arrested when the NYPD raided a tent encampment on the Ivy League campus, roughly 200 demonstrators were still going strong on Saturday, chanting, holding signs and waving Palestinian flags.

At least three people were arrested, the NYPD confirmed. Two were cuffed for disorderly conduct and a third was slapped with a summonses for a sound reproduction device.

“Up, up with liberation." Down, down with occupation,” they yelled through the locked campus gate on W. 115th and Broadway….

“We want justice, you say how?" "Stop arming Israel now!” another group chanted.

The students are demanding the university divest from Israel.

“We demand that Columbia sever academic ties with Israeli universities and we demand that Columbia stop censoring and intimidating students who are standing up and advocating for Palestinian liberation,” one student yelled through the gate to the crowd that had gathered on the other side outside of campus.

Over 100 students were arrested at Columbia University on Thursday night.

A line of police officers in riot helmets watched on. A handful of Israeli supporters stood across Broadway — including one who was doused with fake blood for engaging with pro-Palestinian students.

Avi Lichtschein, 37, of Manhattan was walking his dog when the group surrounded him and shouted, “We don’t want no Zionists here!”…

Another pro-Israel bystander, Ross Glick, 50, told The Post his grandparents were Holocaust survivors. The Upper East Side resident grew up in the Midwest during the first intifada but said “this is more concerning.”

“There’s no doubt that there’s a lot of innocent people dying in Gaza but to call it a genocide….What about the 6,000 Muslims that were gassed by Assad?” Glick said.

“If you don’t like it go to Gaza,” he said about the protesters.

The protesters, he said, don’t want a peaceful solution.

Students continued to occupy the lawn area at the Ivy League school on Saturday..

“You don’t hear them talk about peace or co-existence. [It’s] death to Israel,” he said….

Columbia University and Barnard College faculty slammed Thursday’s arrests and demanded that their records be expunged.

The American Association of University Professors at the sister schools issued a statement following a “mass emergency meeting” of faculty on Friday.

“We condemn in the strongest possible terms the Administration’s suspension of students engaged in peaceful protest and their arrest by the New York City Police Department,” according to a statement provided to The Post.

They said Columbia has an “absolute obligation” to protect students’ freedom of speech….

Yeah, except the freedom of speech of those with whom they disagree. If these were Trump supporters or foes of jihad violence who were demonstrating, the American Association of University Professors would be silent, or cheering on their incarceration.

 

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Robert Spencer

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 28 books, including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad, The History of Jihad, and The Critical Qur’an. His latest book is Muhammad: A Critical Biography. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.

Police Arrest Students At Yale University As Hundreds Stage Anti-Israel Protest

Police Arrest Students At Yale University As Hundreds Stage Anti-Israel Protest

FILE - New York City police in riot gear stand guard outside the Columbia University campus after clearing the campus of protesters, April 18, 2024, in New York. Columbia University canceled in-person classes Monday, April 22, 2024 and police arrested several dozen protesters at Yale University as tensions on U.S. college campuses continue to grow over the war in the Middle East. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, file)
New York City police in riot gear stand guard outside the Columbia University campus after clearing the campus of protesters, April 18, 2024, in New York. Columbia University canceled in-person classes Monday, April 22, 2024 and police arrested several dozen protesters at Yale University as tensions on U.S. college campuses continue to grow over the war in the Middle East. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, file)

OAN’s James Meyers
8:23 AM – Monday, April 22, 2024

Police clashed with students at Yale University’s Connecticut campus on Monday morning and began arresting students who had been staging an anti-Israel protest for several days. 

Video footage posted online showed police arriving and blocking off entrances to a plaza on the New Haven campus, where an estimated 200 protesters had been gathered. 

Cops told students that they would be arrested if they continued to protest and not leave, according to the Yale Daily News

Meanwhile, dozens of protesters were handcuffed for trespassing and taken away on Yale University shuttle buses. 

During the arrests, protesters could be heard yelling at the Yale Police Department (YPD), “YPD or KKK, IDF they’re all the same!” and chanting, “Arab blood is not cheap, for the martyrs we will speak!”

Authorities cleared the plaza and encampment of student protesters at around 8 a.m.

The latest campus clear-out comes after protests at Yale turned violent over the weekend when a Jewish student was stabbed in the eye with a Palestinian flag on Saturday night. 

Sahar Tartak, editor-in-chief of the Yale Free Press, was covering the protest when she was suddenly swarmed by protesters. 

“There’s hundreds of people taunting me and waving the middle finger at me, and then this person waves a Palestinian flag in my face and jabs it in my eye,” Tartak told the New York Post.

“When I tried to yell and go after him, the protesters got in a line and stopped me.”

After the brutal incident, Yale president Peter Salovey responded by sending all students an email on Sunday night, saying that the university “will pursue disciplinary actions according to its policies” amid the ongoing demonstrations.

“Many of the students participating in the protests, including those conducting counterprotests, have done so peacefully. However, I am aware of reports of egregious behavior, such as intimidation and harassment, pushing those in crowds, removal of the plaza flag, and other harmful acts,” he wrote.

“Yale does not tolerate actions, including remarks, that threaten, harass, or intimidate members of the university’s Jewish, Muslim, and other communities."

“The Yale Police Department is investigating each report, and we will take action when appropriate, including making referrals for student discipline.”

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High School Student Suspended For Saying “Illegal Alien”

A North Carolina male high school student, Christian McGhee who’s 16, was suspended for using the term "illegal alien" when asking his English teacher a question. The journalist who broke the story, Brianna Kraemer, joins One America's Stella Escobedo.

Department of Education Reportedly Vows to Shut Down Largest Christian University in the U.S.~The Biden administration and the largest Christian university in the U.S., Grand Canyon University (GCU), are locked in a heated battle, reaching a fever pitch. Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has reportedly vowed to shut down the university. Last year, the Department of Education accused GCU of misleading more than 7,500 students about the costs of its doctoral programs, resulting in students allegedly paying more due to undisclosed continuation course fees. Consequently, the department imposed a $37.7 million fine on the university. Then, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued GCU over similar allegations. GCU has staunchly challenged the accuracy of these allegations. Tanner DiBella, President of the American Council, joins OAN’s Alicia Summers.

Biden Administration Announces $7.4B Student Debt Cancellation

Biden Administration Announces $7.4B Student Debt Cancellation

President Joe Biden delivers remarks on proposed spending on child care and other investments in the "care economy" during a rally at Union Station, Tuesday, April 9, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Joe Biden delivers remarks on proposed spending on child care and other investments in the “care economy” during a rally at Union Station, Tuesday, April 9, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

OAN’s James Meyers
8:28 AM – Friday, April 12, 2024

SEE: https://www.oann.com/newsroom/biden-administration-announces-7-4b-student-debt-cancellation/; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

The Biden Administration has announced they are canceling an additional $7.4 billion in student loan debt just ahead of the upcoming presidential election. 

Biden said the latest student loan forgiveness plan will target an estimated 277,000 borrowers across America, with the national debt topping $34.5 trillion. 

The president praised his Savings on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan, which came after the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) stopped Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. 

“These 277,000 borrowers are enrolled in my administration’s SAVE Plan, or were approved for relief because of fixes we made to Income-Driven Repayment Plans and Public Service Loan Forgiveness,” Biden said in a news release. “From day one of my administration, I promised to fight to ensure higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity.”

Additionally, Biden said he will promise to “never stop” working to cancel student debt, which took a shot at Republicans who have been in opposition to student loan repayment plans due to the knowledge that taxpayers nationwide would be “picking up the check,” even if they have never attended college.

“Republican elected officials across 18 states want to protect their own constituents from benefiting from the SAVE plan,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. “They want to end SAVE and make their constituents’ monthly payments go up and keep them under mountains of loan debt with no end in sight.”

“The president will continue fighting to give people more breathing room and use every tool at his disposal to help borrowers.”

According to the Department of Education (DOE), it said that the new plans would wave built-up and capitalized interest for millions of borrowers, automatically discharge debt for borrowers, and eliminate student debt for borrowers in repayment for 20 years or more. 

Additionally, the plans are also there to help those enrolled in low-financial-value programs, and assist borrowers who experience hardship in repaying their loans. 

The newly announced student loan forgiveness plan comes as 18 states have sued against Biden’s student loan plan. 

Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Missouri, North Dakota and Oklahoma have joined a growing number of states and filed a complaint against the plan on Tuesday.

Furthermore, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s (R-Mo.) lawsuit has argued that Biden’s “SAVE” plan, which was originally announced in February, is illegal and would cost taxpayers an estimated $475 billion. 

“With the stroke of his pen, Joe Biden is attempting to saddle working Missourians with a half trillion dollars in debt. "The United States Constitution makes clear that the President lacks the authority to unilaterally ‘cancel’ student loan debt for millions of Americans without express permission from Congress,” Bailey told Fox News Digital.

“The president does not get to thwart the Constitution when it suits his political agenda. I’m filing suit to halt his embarrassing attempt to buy the 2024 election in direct violation of the law. The Constitution will continue to mean something as long as I’m Attorney General.”

According to the DOE, the public will have an opportunity to comment on the proposed actions “in the coming weeks.”

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Hamas Chief Ismail Haniyeh was an UNRWA official and schoolteacher

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2024/03/hamas-chief-ismail-haniyeh-was-an-unrwa-official-and-schoolteacher; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

It is no secret that UNRWA textbooks for schoolchildren are littered with antisemitic material and incitement to terrorism. After the revelation that UNRWA employees actively took part in the October 7th savagery against Israelis, UNRWA’s Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini, stated that UNRWA employees were “part of the social fabric in Gaza,” and that Hamas was part of that social fabric."

Now, in a new revelation that further reveals a longtime, entrenched pattern of terrorism in UNRWA, “Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh was once an UNRWA teacher and former agency official.” Yet many Western countries, including Canada, are funding the terror-linked agency.

“Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh was a UNRWA teacher – former agency official,” by Tzvi Joffre, Jerusalem Post, March 19, 2024:

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh has worked as a teacher for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in the past, former UNRWA official Ahmad Oueidat revealed in an interview with the London-based Al-Hiwar TV channel last week, according to footage translated by MEMRI.

“First and foremost, we can mention Ismail Haniyeh, who was a UNRWA teacher, and so was Dr. Talal Naji, Secretary-General of the PFLP-GC,” said Oueidat.

The former UNRWA official said that UNRWA has tried “to constitute a national platform and a long arm, which would enable the Palestinian refugees to obtain their rights and first and foremost – the Right of Return.”

“There used to be quality in [UNRWA’s] education. The teaching cadres really embraced their profession. However, the Americans and the Zionists did not look at this favorably. This is why they insisted on interfering. We, as UNRWA employees, had to deal with that interference. My final position was head of the Professional Development and Curriculum Unit, so I had to deal with it directly. They forced us to remove pictures and various topics….

Biden Cancels $6 Billion In Student Debt For 78,000 Public Service Workers

Biden Cancels $6B in Student Debt For 78,000 Public Service Workers

WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 12: Student loan borrowers gather near The White House to tell President Biden to cancel student debt on May 12, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for We, The 45 Million)
WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 12: Student loan borrowers gather near the White House to tell President Biden to cancel student debt on May 12, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for We, The 45 Million)

OAN’s James Meyers
11:10 AM -Thursday, March 21, 2024

SEE: https://www.oann.com/newsroom/biden-cancels-6b-in-student-debt-for-78000-public-service-workers/; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

President Joe Biden announced on Thursday that the White House had approved the cancellation of $6 billion in federal student debt for “thousands of public service workers.”

The 78,000 eligible public service workers include nurses, teachers, and firefighters, according to the White House.

“These public service workers have dedicated their careers to serving their communities, but because of past administrative failures, they never got the relief they were entitled to under the law,” Biden said in a statement touting the move.

“From day one of my Administration, I promised to fix broken student loan programs and make sure higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity,” Biden continued. “I won’t back down from using every tool at my disposal to deliver student debt relief to more Americans, and build an economy from the middle out and bottom up.”

Meanwhile, as of June 2023, almost 43.4 million U.S. student loan recipients had $1.63 trillion in outstanding loans, according to the Federal Student Aid website. 

This comes after the Biden administration canceled almost $5 billion in debt for 74,000 public-sector borrowers. 

Overall, the White House has approved $144 billion in federal loan forgiveness for about 4 million borrowers in total, according to the Biden administration. 

Meanwhile, the White House will reportedly email close to 380,000 student loan borrowers to let them know they are on track to have their student debt canceled within two years. 

However, other former college students have expressed frustration regarding how their loans have not paid off while others have, accusing Biden of being choosy and unfair. 

“So… what? Biden’s just gonna cancel some people’s debt and not everyone’s? How is that fair? "It should be everyone or no one,” said one X (Twitter) user.

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Protecting Children Against Indoctrination with Alex Newman

Tonight IN FOCUS...The indoctrination of America's youth continues and now kids are being bribed -- Alex Newman joins us to discuss. Also, what's really going on in Haiti? And who is this alleged cannibal gang leader's 'Barbeque' character? We'll ask Infowars' Harrison Smith. Plus what does the "TikTok" Bill really entail for Americans? We'll break it down with Isabel Brown. And you know the EV craze is over when Mockingbird media has to report on it -- Tom Maoli joins.

UNC-Chapel Hill: Professors Hail Hamas’ Oct. 7 ‘Resistance’

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2024/03/unc-chapel-hill-professors-hail-hamas-oct-7-resistance; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a handful of anti-Israel and pro-Hamas faculty members gathered to celebrate the acts of “resistance” by Hamas on October 7. A report on the anti-Israel meeting by one of those who attended can be found here: “The Anti-Israel Hate and Moral Bankruptcy at UNC Is Stunning,” by Peter Reitzes, Algemeiner, March 12, 2024:

Five days after the event, UNC Provost Christopher Clemens wrote a blistering letter of concern to UNC faculty that included Claudia Yaghoobi, Director of the UNC Center for Middle East & Islamic Studies, and Conghe Song, chair of the Department of Geography and Environment. They have been included since the two departments sponsored the Nov. 28 event.

Clemens wrote:

I will admit that I struggle to understand what the rhetoric in this event was supposed to accomplish….

One thing is clear: from the outside, the academy appears to be fostering a banal kind of evil.

In preparation for the meeting with Provost Clemens, Purifoy sent an email to Conghe and Sara Smith. Smith is a UNC professor of Geography who introduced the Nov. 28 panel:

I hope that today’s meeting will go as well as possible. I’ve attached a screenshot of Mark Davidson’s comments about the panel last Tuesday which might be helpful. He and Rania [Masri] approved of me sharing it with you.

Purifoy is hoping that the comments by the pastor, Mark Davidson, in which he praised the pro-Hamas event, will be enough to assuage Provost Clemens’ fury. But it won’t. Davidson is just as morally obtuse as the others who were in attendance, or even more so, because while many of them remained silent, Davidson was positively glowing over the event.

In the comments that Purifoy attached, Davidson wrote, “The inmate prison-break from the concentration camp [Gaza] in the early morning hours of October 7 was, from a Palestinian perspective … something to celebrate.” In this single sentence, Davidson compared Israel to the Nazis and celebrated Hamas….

So Gaza, according to Davidson, was akin to a “concentration camp.” The Israelis are the new Nazis. And the Palestinians are the new Jews, being tormented by the SS-men of the IDF. Or if Gaza is not a concentration camp, then it is at the very least a prison. And the 3,000 Hamas operatives who raped, tortured, and murdered Israelis on October 7 were engaged in a “prison break.” But was Gaza a prison? In the last few years, 150,000 Gazans have left the Strip and moved to other Arab countries or to Europe. Israel didn’t stop them. And Israel has even given work to 19,000 Gazans who entered the Jewish state every day to work — or did, until October 7. While working in Israel, those Gazans earned wages that were from three to ten times more than what they could earn in Gaza. concentration camp. What kind of a prison lets thousands of inmates out every day?

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. The UNC Provost, Christopher Clemens, is not about to let such insidious praisers of mass rape, torture, and murder as Rania Masri be sponsored by teachers at his school, and heaped with praise for what she said, on his campus, with her grotesque comments about what a “beautiful day” October 7 had been. And no one in the audience took issue with her, none there deplored her sentiments. Clemens is clearly not about to let this matter drop. Danielle Purifoy, Ajamu Dillahunt, Claudia Yaqhoobi, Conghe Song, fasten your seatbelts. For all of you, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

The campus justification of Hamas’ atrocities is a big problem. It’s all over the place. But at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and on every other campus where analogous incidents are unfolding, some faculty members, and some members of the administration, and some trustees and alumni, and even some students, have got to grab hold of this problem, and not let go.

Rutgers University Professors Bash ‘Privileged’ Jews

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2024/03/rutgers-university-professors-bash-privileged-jews; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

American Jews enjoy and suffer from, respectively, “white privileging and white fragility,” stated Sahar Aziz, director of Rutgers University Center for Security, Race, and Rights (CSRR), during its February 21 webinar. While Jews in America and beyond face a global surge in antisemitism following Hamas’ brutal October 7, 2023, attack upon Israel, CSRR and its factually-challenged director have once again displayed anti-Jewish, jihadist apologetics.

Aziz spoke with her likeminded colleague, Noura Erakat, Rutgers University associate professor of Africana studies, in a webinar titled after her 2019 bookJustice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine. She concurred with Aziz, stating that Jews have effectively “become white in the United States,” like groups such as Irish Americans, who have entered mainstream society following past prejudice. American Jews should recognize that they “are privileged vis-à-vis their Muslim, their Palestinian, their Arab counterparts and colleagues,” Aziz said of groups increasingly notable for their hatred of Jews and Israel.

“With privilege comes responsibility and not the abuse of that privilege to oppress other people,” Aziz lectured supposedly powerful, oppressive Jews while Muslims worldwide have celebrated jihadists such as Hamas. She contrasted in America “how easily vilified and dehumanized the Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab communities” are while Jewish “voices are centered, their experiences are centered.” “White fragility is all about feelings of the white privileged group and to hell with the bodily autonomy, the liberty, the life, the dignity, and the physical safety of black bodies,” she said without showing concern for Jewish bodies.

Given Aziz’s denial of Islamic and leftist antisemitism centered around hatred of Israel, she considered Jew-hatred largely a matter of history. Many people “are speaking in anachronistic terms and in contexts that are not even in the United States and also happened in the past,” she said. She seems to think antisemitism died with Adolf Hitler in 1945 and has no relation to Iran’s modern Islamic Republic.

Such denialism prompted Aziz laughably to assert that Jews should join her Israel-hating coalition to win allies against what she saw as the main antisemitic threat. This intersectionality was a precondition if Jews “want people to pay attention and to care about the various ways in which your community may be oppressed” from “traditional Eurocentric, white nationalist antisemitic” threats. Erakat similarly wanted “to imagine our struggle as a united struggle against white supremacy” alongside “Jews who face antisemitism…stemming from white supremacy.”

Few Jews would see Erakat as an ally, given her venom against Israel, slandered by her as an “exclusively Jewish state that necessitates the ongoing removal of Palestinians, their dispossession, and containment.” Israel lacks “meaningful equality for the Palestinian citizens of the state” under “apartheid,” she said, even as Israel’s Arabs increasingly identify with Israel and volunteer to perform both military and nonmilitary national service. This undermines her assertation that in Israel to “discriminate, you don’t have to say no Arabs welcome or no Palestinians welcome, you can say other things like military service required, which becomes a smoke screen.”

Correspondingly, Israeli self-defense, a responsibility that any state must fulfill in response to aggression, held little appeal for Erakat. Currently protesting Israeli actions to destroy Hamas, “anti-war activists are being accused of antisemitism for being anti-war activists for calling for an end to genocide,” she said. Yet the extraordinarily low levels of civilian casualties during Israel’s Gaza offensive refute her absurd genocide charges while Hamas theft of humanitarian aid is the reason that Gaza Arabs are “starving”.

While Erakat demanded that Israel cease its military actions, hostile moves towards Israel did not bother her. “This is a moment to rescind from the Abraham Accords,” she said, citing the peace agreements negotiated between Israel and various Arab states in 2020. “Egypt has threatened to rescind from Camp David, which is good,” she added in praise of indications that Egypt might abandon its 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

While Erakat made the debunked claim that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) recognized Israel in 1988, she undermined any such recognition by demanding a Palestinian “right of return.” Under this concept, millions of descendants of some 600,000 Arabs who fled what became Israel during its 1948 independence war could demand a “return” to Israel as so-called “refugees,” resulting in a demographic destruction of Israel’s Jewish state. Numerous legal arguments rebut her contention that Palestinians “are denied the right of return as established by customary law, human rights law as well as [United Nations] General Assembly Resolution 194.”

Even as Erakat advocated destroying Israel, it remained unalterably an aggressor in her mind. Since October 7, 2023, Israel has attacked Lebanese targets “in an effort to draw Lebanon into the war,” she said, ignoring the attacks upon Israel by Hamas’ fellow jihadists in Lebanon from the Iranian-backed Hezbollah. It “would be in Israel’s interest to expand the war to have the U.S. become involved to be able to finish the job under the cover of a massive war,” she said, as if Israel had some nefarious objective other than to live in peace.

Yet Zionist Jews fighting to survive in Israel, and not their Palestinian and other jihadist tormenters, appeared to Erakat as selfish. “The way that we have thought about Palestine all this time is to center Zionist settler sovereignty as the ultimate priority around which people can get the crumbs once that’s taken care of,” she said. Given Arab rejection of Zionist offers to accept an Arab state alongside a Jewish state in the territory of what was the post-World War I League of Nations Palestine Mandate going back to 1937, her statement is ludicrous.

Perhaps the only thing more shocking than the topsy-turvy views of academics such as Erakat and Aziz is the fact that they are so prominent throughout publicly and privately funded higher education. Jews and others with the slightest pro-Israel inclinations will never receive fair treatment from this duo inside or outside of the classroom, a mockery of the university as a free exchange of ideas. Tax and tuition payers in New Jersey and beyond must find ways to end this intellectual farce.

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