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      House Republicans assail university head for negotiated end to Gaza protest

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      Members of a Republican-led congressional committee confronted another set of university heads on Thursday over their approach to pro-Palestinian protests in the latest hearings on Capitol Hill on a reported upsurge of campus antisemitism.Republicans on the House of Representatives’ education and workforce committee repeatedly clashed fiercely with Michael Schill, president of Northwestern University in Illinois, over his decision to negotiate an end to a tented protest community rather than call in police, as has happened on other campuses.In a sometimes fiery three-hour session, Schill – who opened his testimony by declaring that he was the Jewish descendant of Holocaust survivors – became the lightning rod in a hearing also featuring the chiefs of Rutgers University and the University of California, Los Angeles.All three institutions witnessed the appearance of encampments in April similar to one set up on the grounds of Columbia University in New York by students protesting Israel’s military offensive in Gaza and related financial ties with their universities.Schill and Jonathan Holloway, president of Rutgers in New Jersey, drew Republican ire for adopting a softly-softly approach by persuading protesters to dismantle their sites through agreements that some members depicted as appeasement.The UCLA encampment was dismantled by police after it was violently attacked by pro-Israeli counter-protesters on 30 April. Gene Block, that university’s chancellor – although criticised for deploying police too late and failing to act when pro-Palestinian protesters blocked the movement of students they accused of being Zionist, as detailed by the Los Angeles Times – attracted less rough treatment from GOP members.But Block was strongly denounced by Ilhan Omar, the leftwing Democratic representative from Minnesota, who told him that he “should be ashamed” for failing to protect protesters from violent attack.“You should be ashamed for letting a peaceful protest gathering get hijacked by an angry mob,” she said.Thursday’s session was the full committee’s third hearing on a trend of campus protests that have been subject to accusations of antisemitism and intimidation alleged to have arisen after October’s attack by Hamas on Israel, which produced a devastating and ongoing Israeli military retaliation.An initial hearing last December led to the resignation of two university presidents, Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania and Claudine Gay of Harvard, for giving answers deemed too legalistic.A second hearing last month on developments at Columbia University brought assurances of action from its president, Minouche Shafik, who immediately afterwards called in police to remove an encampment on the main campus lawn. But her actions triggered an upsurge of similar tented protests at campuses across the US that became the partial focus of Thursday’s hearing.The committee’s Republican chair, Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, set a confrontational tone by quoting from Ernest Hemingway’s novel, The Sun Also Rises, where a character describes going bankrupt – gradually, then suddenly.“These three little words paved the road that led to today’s hearing,” she said. “Over the course of years – decades, even – universities gradually nurtured a campus culture of radicalism in which antisemitism grew and became tolerated by administrators.“Each of you should be ashamed of your decisions that allowed antisemitic encampments to endanger Jewish students.”Schill, saying that antisemitism and supporting Israel were not “abstract” or “theoretical” for him, admitted that his university’s rules and policies had fallen short and the university had not been ready for the students’ response to the 7 October attack and its aftermath.But he was targeted by Republican members who questioned his compromise with protesters and suggested he had tolerated antisemitism.He showed visible irritation with Elise Stefanik, the representative from New York, after she told him “I’m asking the questions here” and held up a placard emblazoned with an “F” to signify that the Anti-Defamation League had pronounced Northwestern’s policy on antisemitism a failure.Answering Burgess Owens, a Republican representative from Utah, who used another placard designed as a cheque for $600m to depict funding the university receives from Qatar – a Gulf kingdom that also finances Hamas – Schill said: “I’m really offended by you telling me what my views are.”Jim Banks, a GOP representative from Indiana, told Schill that “your performance here has been an embarrassment to your school”, adding that Northwestern University had become “a joke”.Responding to Representative Brandon Williams of New York, all three heads said they had been taken by surprise by the encampments’ appearance and did not know who was behind them. Williams called this an “astonishing admission”.Several Democratic members questioned the hearing’s premise and the sincerity of Republicans in tackling antisemitism, accusing them of silence when it came from their own side.“The first amendment protects both popular and agreeable speech, and speech that people can reasonably disagree with, including sometimes hateful words but again and painting with a broad brush,” said the committee’s ranking Democrat, Bobby Scott of Virginia. “The [Republican] majority has attempted to remove any distinction between hate speech and genuine political protest.”Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon highlighted what she depicted as Republican hypocrisy. She said: “Just a few days ago, the true social account of Donald Trump included an outrageous video with Nazi-like language about a unified Reich. Did any of my colleagues on this committee call that out?” More

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      Biden is dramatically out of touch with voters on Gaza. He may lose because of it | Moira Donegan

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      Joe Biden’s re-election team is playing it cool. The Biden campaign has long been shrugging at the president’s fading polls, turning down opportunities to put him in front of voters, and generally doing their best to portray an air of confident nonchalance. The campaign’s apparent lack of concern seems, or perhaps is meant to seem, like an expression of certainty in the outcome: that Biden will win re-election, and that it won’t be close. They want us to think that they’ve got it in the bag.They do not. Biden is in no way guaranteed re-election, and all available information suggests that the contest will be close. Donald Trump has been narrowly but consistently ahead in national polls. A new dataset released by the New York Times on 13 May found that Biden was trailing in five key swing states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania – and suffering from disillusionment among young voters as well as Black and Latino ones.In typical style, the Biden camp brushed this off. “Drawing broad conclusions about the race based on results from one poll is a mistake,” Geoff Garin, a pollster for the Biden campaign, told the New York Times. But at this point, it’s not just one poll. It’s a lot of polls.What’s driving this discontent among young voters and voters of color – those cornerstones of Biden’s coalition that were so key to his 2020 victory over Trump in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania? There are several factors, but one issue remains consistent in these voters’ accounts of their dissatisfaction with Biden: his handling of Israel’s assault on Gaza.The indiscriminate bombing and civilian massacres that have accompanied Israel’s assault on Palestinians are a moral catastrophe that has shaken many Americans’ souls. The United Nations now estimates that more than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since the start of the fighting. Since many human bodies are buried beneath the rubble of Gaza’s bombed homes, schools and hospitals, that number is likely to be a significant undercount. The dead are mostly women and children. More than 1,000 children in Gaza have lost limbs to Israel’s war of revenge.If that figure cannot shake you into moral recognition, consider that many of those children have endured their amputations without anesthesia, since medicine – like food – has largely been prohibited from being delivered to Gaza by Israeli authorities. More than 75% of Gaza’s population is now displaced, according to the UN; they have left homes, worlds, entire lives that they will never be able to retrieve. More than 1.5 million people are now sheltering in Rafah, the strip’s southernmost city, which Israel is currently bombing and is poised to invade. Many human rights advocates and experts in international law have described Israel’s actions against Gazans as genocide. The death toll will keep climbing.Many voters believe, with good reason, that none of this would have happened without Biden’s assent. Biden has continued to speak of Israel’s attack on Palestinian civilians using the absurd language of “self-defense”. He has insulted Jewish Americans and the memory of the Holocaust by invoking them to justify the slaughter. And though his White House repeatedly leaks that he is “privately” dismayed by Israel’s conduct of the war, he has done little to stop the flow of US money and guns that support it.Even after the US state department issued a vexed and mealy-mouthed report on Israel’s conduct, which nevertheless concluded that it was reasonable to assess that Israel was in violation of international humanitarian law, the Biden administration has continued to fund these violations. That state department report was published on 10 May. The Biden administration told Congress that it intends to move forward with a $1bn arms sale to Israel. “OK, [Israel] likely broke the law, but not enough to change policy,” is how one reporter summarized the administration’s judgment. “So, what is the point of the report? I mean, in the simplest terms, what’s the point?”Meanwhile, Biden has expressed public disdain for the Americans – many of whom he needs to vote for him – who have taken to protest on behalf of Palestinian lives. Speaking with evident approval of the violent police crackdowns against anti-genocide student demonstrations, he said coolly: “Dissent must never lead to disorder.”It is a creepy and nonsensical claim, almost chilling in its Orwellian ahistoricism. But Biden does not see the protest movement against his war support as a legitimate instance of dissent, because he does not seem to understand concern for Palestinians as a legitimate moral claim. At times, he has seemed almost incredulous that any Americans would take sincere offense at the massive violence and waste of Palestinian life, as if such a concern was incomprehensible to him.But it is not incomprehensible to the voters he needs in order to win re-election. The genocide in Gaza has quickly become a moral rallying cry for many Americans, particularly young people and people of color. And the disgust at Israel’s massacres is not confined to campus radicals: more than half of Americans now disapprove of Israel’s handling of the Gaza war, according to a recent Gallup poll. Maybe that’s one of the same polls that the Biden campaign feels determined to ignore. But they shouldn’t: the “uncommitted” movement that aimed to express displeasure at Biden’s support for the attack on Gaza in the Democratic primary produced vote tallies higher than Biden’s 2020 margin of victory in some states.Biden’s supporters are quick to point out that the alternative to Biden’s re-election will be dramatically worse, both for Americans domestically, and for those Palestinians who suffer as a result of US policy. And they are right. Biden supporters are right, too, that voting is a binary choice, between the options available. And they are right that abstaining from voting hastens a statistically likely Trump victory.But these lesser-of-two-evils argument do not lessen the tax on the conscience that many anti-war Americans will feel when they consider whether to vote for Biden in spite of his support for the genocide in Gaza. And they are certainly not justifications for Biden’s continued aid to Israel’s war project. Rather, the extreme dangers of a second Trump presidency are all the more cause for Biden to abandon this support, and to align himself with the moral cause championed by the voters he needs.On the issue of Gaza, Biden is dramatically out of touch with the voters he needs to win re-election. If he will not be moved by morality to stop his support of this war, he should be moved by vulgar self-interest. Gaza is not a distant foreign conflict: it is an urgent moral emergency for large swaths of voters. Biden will lose those voters – and may indeed lose the election – if he does not cease his support of these atrocities.Biden has that rare opportunity in politics: to help the country, and himself, by doing the right thing. But he must do so now. Both the Palestinian people and his own election prospects are running out of time.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      ‘What’s happening is not genocide’: Biden criticizes ICC for seeking arrest warrants for Israeli officials – as it happened

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      “I will always ensure that Israel has everything it needs to defend itself against Hamas and all its enemies,” Biden said. “We want Hamas to be defeated.”But Biden also mentioned support for civilians in Gaza. “It’s heartbreaking,” he said, noting that his administration is working to bring the region together and a two-state solution.“Let me be clear,” he added, “we reject the ICC’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders. Whatever these warrants may imply, there’s no equivalence between Israel and Hamas.”“What’s happening is not genocide.”Political leaders in the US sharply defended Israel today after international criminal court chief prosecutor Karim Khan has caused a political earthquake by requesting arrest warrants for top Israeli and Hamas officials. The warrants, which include prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Hamas group’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, were denounced by US president Joe Biden who doubled down on his comments during a speech for the Jewish American Heritage Month Celebration, held at the White House.It will now be up to the ICC’s judges to determine whether to issue the warrants.Here’s a rundown of what else has happened today so far:
      President Biden used his speech at the Jewish American Heritage Month Celebration to highlight his administration’s work to crack down on antisemitism while reiterating his “ironclad” support for Israel.
      Senators Mitch McConnel and Bernie Sanders voiced strong opinions from opposite sides of the debate, with McConnell condemning the ICC and Sanders championing its cause.
      Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, has also come out against the ICC’s request for arrest warrants against top Israeli and Hamas officials, calling them “baseless and illegitimate”.
      US State Department officials also added criticisms of the ICC over it’s approach to Israel but said they would continue working with them to prosecute Russian President Vladimir Putin over actions taken against Ukrainian civilians.
      The UK Foreign Office also objected to Khan’s request, saying it would not help the process of negotiating a ceasefire in Gaza.
      US senator Lindsey Graham said he feels deceived by ICC staff, and accused Khan of rushing the decision to seek arrest warrants.
      Khan thanked international human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, who he said acted as a special adviser in his investigation.
      Biden concluded his speech by emphasizing his work to combat antisemitism in the US, calling it “absolutely despicable”. Pointing to a national strategy rolled out before last October, Biden said a new wave of financing amounting to $400 million has been made available for jewish nonprofits, schools, synagogues and other faith-based organizations to support their physical security.He added that his administration has “put colleges on notice”. “The department has to investigate discrimination aggressively,” he said.His remarks ended with a promise.“Let me assure you as your president – you are not alone,” he said. You belong. You always will belong.” He thanked everyone in attendance. “In moments like this the ancient story of Jewish resilience endures because of its people. That’s what today is all about.”“I will always ensure that Israel has everything it needs to defend itself against Hamas and all its enemies,” Biden said. “We want Hamas to be defeated.”But Biden also mentioned support for civilians in Gaza. “It’s heartbreaking,” he said, noting that his administration is working to bring the region together and a two-state solution.“Let me be clear,” he added, “we reject the ICC’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders. Whatever these warrants may imply, there’s no equivalence between Israel and Hamas.”“What’s happening is not genocide.”Emhoff has just introduced President Biden, who noted he was honored to be introduced by the first-ever Jewish spouse.The President talked about the important history of freedom of religion in the US and the important contributions of Jewish Americans, before adding that the reception comes during hard times. Noting the “fresh and ongoing” trauma inflicted on October 7 and in its aftermath, Biden promised that the work continued to free Israeli hostages taken by Hamas, noting his support for Israel is “ironclad”.“We are going to get ‘em home,” he said of the hostages. “We are going to get em home, come hell or high water.”The event kicked off with cheers as Second Gentlemen Emhoff, flanked by the president and vice president, heralded the administration’s support for the Jewish community. But, the celebratory tone shifted quickly.“This is also a challenging time for our community,” he said. “It has been a dark and difficult 7 months. There is an epidemic of hate including a crisis of antisemitism in our country and around the world. We see it on our streets, our college campuses, and our places of worship.”Adding that the work feels difficult, he encouraged the crowd. “We keep fighting because we have no choice but to fight.”Biden and second gentleman Doug Emhoff will be speaking soon at the Jewish American Heritage Month Celebration. At last year’s event, held at the White House, Biden focused on his support for Israel and his strategy to combat antisemitism.“My support for Israel’s security remains longstanding and unwavering, including the right of Israel to defend itself against attacks,” Biden said last year. “And I’m proud – I’m proud of our support – and my colleagues that are here today as well – for Israel’s Iron Dome, which has intercepted thousands of rockets and saved countless lives in Israel.”Stay tuned as we wait for this year’s event to begin.Even as US political figures continue to rail against the ICC over Israel and Hamas, Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary, said the US is fully onboard with actions taken against Russia for crimes committed in the Ukrainian conflict.In a press conference on Monday, following a virtual meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, Matthew Miller, a state department spokesperson, said the US still supports the ICC and the “important work over the years to hold people accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity”.But National Security Council spokesman spokesman John Kirby claimed that there is a difference between what’s happening in Ukraine and what’s happening in Gaza.“It is an actual war aim of Mr Putin to kill innocent Ukrainian people,” Kirby said, noting that targeting of civilians and infrastructure is evidence of that.In Gaza, however, Kirby claimed the high toll taken on civilian lives was inadvertent. Meanwhile, as CNN reports, roughly 40% of Gaza’s population – more than 900,000 people – have been displaced in the past two weeks due to Israeli bombardment.Calling the ICC a “a rogue kangaroo court”, and its prosecutor “self-aggrandizing”, Senator Mitch McConnell vehemently criticized the move for arrest warrants in remarks on the Senate floor.“Since the immediate aftermath of October 7, Israel, her allies, and Jewish people around the world have faced pernicious efforts to equate a sovereign nation’s self-defense with barbaric acts of terrorism,” McConnell said, linking the issue to the protests that erupted across university campuses against the violence that’s been inflicted on Palestinian civilians.McConnell continued, calling the warrants for both leaders of Hamas and Israel are “the most noxious attempt at moral equivalence”. Using the move to question the legitimacy of the international criminal court, the Republican leader pushed his colleagues to act:
      Support Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorist savages like Sinwar … reject the fiction that unaccountable bureaucrats in The Hague have any power over a sovereign nation that isn’t a signatory to its authority … commit to imposing significant costs on the court and its agents if it pursues shameful and baseless charges against Israel … and choose once and for all between actual justice and the rule of the loud campus mob.
      Senator Bernie Sanders supports the request for arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders relating to the Israel-Gaza conflict, saying that the “ICC prosecutor is right to take these actions”, in a written statement released on Monday afternoon.Noting that the warrants may or may not be carried out, he said: “It is imperative that the global community uphold international law.”Here is Sanders’ statement in full:
      In the last several years, the international criminal court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for political leaders who violate international law and engage in war crimes and crimes against humanity. That includes Russian president Vladimir Putin, whose illegal invasion of Ukraine initiated the most destructive war in Europe since world war II; Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who started the horrific war in Gaza by launching a terrorist attack against Israel, which killed 1,200 innocent men, women, and children; and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, in response, has waged an unprecedented war of destruction against the entire Palestinian people, which has killed or injured over 5% of the population.The ICC prosecutor is right to take these actions. These arrest warrants may or may not be carried out, but it is imperative that the global community uphold international law. Without these standards of decency and morality, this planet may rapidly descend into anarchy, never-ending wars, and barbarism.
      The rights group Amnesty International is not pleased with the British Foreign Office’s criticism of the international criminal court prosecutor Karim Khan and his application for arrest warrants against Israel and Hamas’s leaders.“To see the UK undermining the International Criminal Court like this is a real slap in the face for Israeli and Palestinian victims of war crimes and other grave human rights violations who sorely deserve justice,” Amnesty International UK’s head of government affairs Karla McLaren said in a statement. She continued:
      By failing to recognise the ICC’s jurisdiction – which the court itself has established – the UK is placing itself on the wrong side of history and continuing a pattern of soft-pedalling over Israel’s crimes. This is deeply damaging for international justice and for the protection of civilians everywhere.
      We need major change from the UK over the human rights crisis in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including a realisation that justice and accountability processes are the best way out of this decades-long crisis.
      The UK should back the ICC chief prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants, get behind the ICJ genocide case, call for an immediate ceasefire and a massive scaling up of aid into Gaza, and it should order an immediate halt to further UK arms transfers to Israel.
      Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrat in the US House of Representatives, echoed Joe Biden’s rejection of the international criminal court chief prosecutor Karim Khan’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and defence minister Yoav Gallant.In a statement, the House minority leader said:
      The arrest warrant request by the International Criminal Court against democratically elected members of the Israeli government is shameful and unserious. America’s commitment to Israel’s security is ironclad. I join President Joe Biden in strongly condemning any equivalence between Israel and Hamas, a brutal terrorist organization.
      Biden has generally supported Israel since Hamas’s 7 October attack, though recently warned Benjamin Netanyahu against allowing its military to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah, and held up a weapons shipment.Despite Jeffries’s solidarity, rank-and-file Democrats are growing uneasy with Israel’s conduct in Gaza, and its impact on civilians. Here’s more on that:Inside Iran, the Guardian’s Deepa Parent reports that Ebrahim Raisi was remembered by many for his crackdown on nationwide protests that began after a woman died in custody following her arrest under the country’s hijab laws. Here’s more on that:Activists in Iran have said there is little mood to mourn the death of the country’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash near the border with Azerbaijan on Sunday.Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, announced a five-day public mourning period after the deaths of Raisi, the foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and other passengers on the helicopter. However, Iranians who spoke to the Guardian have refused to lament the death of a man who they say was responsible for hundreds of deaths in his four-decade political career.It was during Raisi’s tenure that protests swept the country after the death of the 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody after being arrested by police under Iran’s harsh hijab laws. More than 19,000 protesters were jailed, and at least 500 were killed – including 60 children – during the Woman, Life, Freedom protests. The police continue to violently arrest women for refusing hijab rules.Hours before Raisi’s death was confirmed by state media, videos circulated on Telegram showing celebratory fireworks, one of them from Amini’s hometown of Saqqez. Iranians from inside and outside the country shared posts reminding the world of Raisi’s brutal presidency and his repression of political dissidents.A spokesperson for the White House’s national security council offered condolences on the death of Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash, but noted he had channeled funds to armed groups in the Middle East, Reuters reported.“No question this was a man who had a lot of blood on his hands,” the spokesperson John Kirby said at the White House.Raisi perished in a helicopter crash alongside Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and six other passengers and crew. Here’s more about his death:In an interview with CNN, the international criminal court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, defended the investigation that led to his request for arrest warrants against top Israeli and Hamas officials.Khan accused Hamas’s leaders, including the group’s head, Yahya Sinwar, of extermination, murder, hostage-taking, rape, sexual assault and torture. He also leveled allegations against Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and defence minister, Yoav Gallant, of extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, the denial of humanitarian relief supplies and deliberately targeting civilians.Here’s what Khan had to say about how he reached his conclusion: More

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      Dignity, joy, a raised fist: Biden renews pitch to Black voters at Morehouse commencement

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      It was, in the end, an artful compromise.Joe Biden got to speak uninterrupted and renew his pitch to Black voters. Protesters got to make their point by wearing keffiyehs or raising a fist. Even the skies were merciful, hinting at but never quite unleashing rain.And through it all, Sunday’s 140th commencement at Morehouse College, a historically black men’s college in Atlanta, preserved not only its dignity but a sense of joy. Music played, parents wept and graduates who had weathered a global pandemic could savour their big day without being upstaged.“Thank you God for this ‘woke’ class of 2024 that is in tune with the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times,” the Rev Claybon Lea Jr said during a prayer at the start of the commencement, held on a lawn on the college’s century campus, surrounded by trees and red brick academic buildings.The urgency of the daily news agenda – will the US president be heckled over Gaza? – collided here with storied traditions dating back a century and half. Accompanied by organ music, the 2024 graduating class processed in black mortar boards with gold or black sashes. Most wore Kente stoles with the Morehouse seal.Morehouse alumni followed, many wearing maroon jackets and straw hats with maroon bands. Some went all the way back to 1954. The alumni seemed more enthusiastic about standing to applaud Biden than the fresh wave of graduates.They took their seats and looked at a stage that had been erected with a black awning with a maroon backdrop that said “Morehouse”’ in giant letters. Two big screens were showing the event, including close-ups of graduates who smiled, waved or made goofy faces.The programme began with the solemn ringing of a bell, an evocation and the Army Color Guard Corps performing the presentation of colours. The Morehouse College Glee Club performed the The Star Spangled Banner and Lift Every Voice and Sing – the swelling chorus resonant, resilient and transcending concerns of the moment.The emotion of the day was evident in David Thomas, president of Morehouse College, who choked up a few times. He paid tribute to students who got through the pandemic with perseverance: “You have demonstrated unparalleled fortitude in the face of adversity.”When Biden took the stage, wearing a maroon gown with three black stripes on the arms and maroon tie, there was polite applause, though it could hardly be described as fierce.There had been much hype around his Morehouse commencement address and whether, in light of unrest on other campuses around the country, it would be disrupted by protests over his handling of the war in Gaza. Some staff and students had called for Biden’s invitation to be rescinded over his support for Israel and their discomfort with an address during election campaign season.But not for the first time, Biden benefited from low expectations and will count the relatively modest dissent as a win. Outside the college, a lone protester brandished a handwritten “Genocide Joe” sign, watched closely by a police officer.Inside, a small number of graduates wore keffiyehs – the black-and-white head scarf which has become an emblem of solidarity with the Palestinian cause – around their shoulders on top of their black graduation robes. In his evocation, Lea cited a “Palestinian Jew named Jesus”, and said all children matter, from Israelis to Palestinians and beyond.DeAngelo Jeremiah Fletcher, the class valedictorian, wore a small Palestinian flag pin and decorated his mortarboard with another Palestinian emblem. First he spoke movingly of the dehumanisation that African Americans have long endured and said Morehouse has instilled pride “in our combined identities as Black and human”.He turned to global politics and referenced Morehouse graduate Martin Luther King, whose civil rights activism overlapped with opposition to the Vietnam war.Fletcher said: “From the comfort of our homes, we watch an unprecedented number of civilians mourn the loss of men, women and children, while calling for the release of all hostages.”Biden was staring ahead. Fletcher added: “It is my stance as a Morehouse man, nay as a human being, to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.”Biden joined the applause and shook Fletcher’s hand. When it was Biden’s turn to speak, some students turned their chairs around to turn their backs to him and one graduate appeared to briefly hold aloft a Palestinian flag.A lone graduate at the back, wearing a mortar and blue gown, remained still with his back turned to Biden and his right fist raised throughout the entire address. It was perhaps a more powerful statement than any number of disruptions or sign waving.Biden, who has lavished attention on historically Black colleges and universities, sought to assure his audience: “I support peaceful nonviolent protests. Your voices should be heard, and I promise you I hear them.”He described the war in Gaza as “heartbreaking” and acknowledged: “Innocent Palestinians are caught in the middle of this … It’s a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. That’s why I’ve called for an immediate ceasefire. I know it angers and frustrates many of you, including my family.”Opinion polls suggest that some African American men in Georgia, a crucial swing state, are tilting away from Biden towards his election opponent Donald Trump. But it was hard to imagine the former president coming to speak here, getting the same kind of reception or speaking out against “extremist forces”, as Biden went on to do.An honorary doctorate was bestowed on Biden, who wore a mischievous expression, then smiled and laughed and pointed at someone in the audience. He joked: “I’m not going home!”And for the first time that morning, the audience began chanting. Not “Genocide Joe” but “Four more years!” More

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      Washington is pushing policies to combat antisemitism. Critics say they could violate free speech

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      Against the backdrop of demonstrations against Israel’s war in Gaza on college campuses, the White House and Congress have announced a string of policies and commitments aimed at addressing what Joe Biden warned was a “ferocious surge of antisemitism” in the United States.Antisemitism was on the rise in the US before Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, killing roughly 1,200 people and taking another 250 hostage. But the ensuing war has exacerbated the problem, with the law enforcement officials recording a spike in threats against Jewish Americans.Several of the proposals coming out of Washington DC have converged around college campuses, where hundreds of students have been arrested as part of pro-Palestinian demonstrations against Israel’s ongoing offensive in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and caused catastrophic levels of hunger.Many Jewish students have said that rhetoric common to the protests – for example, their denunciations of Zionism and calls for a Palestinian uprising – too often veers into antisemitism and poses a threat to their safety. A number of Democratic and Republican lawmakers, as well as the president, have echoed their fears, condemning documented instances of antisemitism on campus.But critics say some of the actions and polices under consideration threaten free speech and are part of a broader effort to silence legitimate criticism of Israel.“The view that these encampments, these student protests, are per se antisemitic, which I think some people have, is leading to very aggressive repression,” said Genevieve Lakier, a professor of law at the University of Chicago law school and an expert in the first amendment. “I also think it is incorrect, particularly when the student movement is being populated and led in many ways by Jewish students.”​The wave of student activism​ against the war in Gaza has renewed a charged debate over what constitutes antisemitism.Many supporters of Israel say the situation on college campuses validates the view, articulated in 2022 by the Anti-Defamation League’s chief executive, Jonathan Greenblatt, that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism”. But the Jewish and non-Jewish students involved with campus protests say their critiques of Israel, and its rightwing government’s prosecution of the war, are legitimate political speech that should not be conflated with antisemitism.In remarks at a Holocaust remembrance ceremony at the Capitol last week, Biden vowed to leverage the full force of the US government to fight hate and bigotry against Jews and outlined specific policy steps his administration was taking to confront antisemitic discrimination in schools and universities.The debate is also playing out on Capitol Hill, where the Senate is considering a bill that would codify into federal law a definition of antisemitism adopted in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), an intergovernmental organization based in Stockholm.The IHRA defines antisemitism as “certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews”. But it also includes several modern examples of antisemitism that alarm free speech advocates, among them “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination”, claiming Israel’s existence is a “racist endeavor” and “applying double standards” to Israel that are not expected of other countries.Supporters say the bill, known as the Antisemitism Awareness Act, is critical.“We really believe it’s the single most important thing that Congress could do right now to help bring under control the rampant antisemitism we’ve seen on campus,” said Eric Fingerhut, president and CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, which is lobbying in support of the legislation.But opponents are urging the Senate to block the bill, recently approved by the House in a resounding 320-91 vote,“In a democratic society, we’re allowed to engage in political advocacy and political protests that criticize any government in the world,” said Tyler Coward, lead counsel for government affairs at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Fire). “Taking some ideas off the table for one country is classic viewpoint discrimination that the courts just won’t tolerate.”Fire has opposed iterations of this bill since it was introduced in 2016, citing concerns that the definition is “vague, overbroad, and includes criticism of Israeli government policy”.If enacted, the Department of Education would be required to use the definition when conducting federal investigations into alleged incidents of discrimination against Jewish students. Colleges or universities found to have violated the law could be stripped of federal funding.Fingerhut said free speech concerns were a “red herring”, arguing that the legislation was designed to give the Department of Education and academic institutions a “clear” standard for punishing acts of antisemitism.But the bill has drawn condemnation from pro-Palestinian advocacy groups who view it as an attempt to quash their ascendent movement.The Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) condemned the legislation as a “one-sided, and dishonest proposal about campus antisemitism that ignore[s] anti-Palestinian racism and conflates criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism”.Since the Israel-Hamas conflict began seven months ago, the law enforcement officials have also warned of a rise in threats against Muslim and Arab Americans, and advocates are monitoring an uptick in Islamophobia on college campuses.One of the effort’s most notable opponents is a lawyer and scholar who authored the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism. Kenneth Stern, who is the director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate and is Jewish, has said the definition was created with the purpose of collecting better data on antisemitism across borders, not to be turned into a campus hate-speech code.“In my experience, people who care about campus antisemitism, and want to do something about it, sometimes advocate things that feel good … but actually do great harm,” he testified in 2017 against a previous iteration of the bill.That version stalled, but two years later, proponents won a significant victory when Donald Trump issued a sweeping executive order instructing federal agencies to use the IHRA definition when investigating civil rights complaints.In recent months, alarm over rising antisemitism – which Jewish groups say is not unique to college campuses – appears to have broadened support for the Antisemitism Awareness Act. Still, the vote split House Democrats, including some Jewish members of the caucus, who disagreed over whether it was the right legislative fix.The representative Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat who sponsored the House bill, said it was a necessary response to the “tidal wave” of antisemitism, while Maryland representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat and constitutional scholar, voted for the bill but called it “essentially symbolic”.“At this moment of anguish and confusion over the dangerous surge of antisemitism, authoritarianism and racism all over the country and the world, it seems unlikely that this meaningless ‘gotcha’ legislation can help much – but neither can it hurt much,” Raskin said.But the representative Jerry Nadler of New York, who describes himself as “an observant Jew, a proud Zionist, a strong supporter of Israel”, voted against the bill. In an op-ed for the Washington Post, Nadler explained that he supported the sentiment behind the bill, but feared the it could “sweep in perfectly valid criticism of the state of Israel that, alone, does not necessarily constitute unlawful harassment or antisemitism”.“I want my Jewish community to feel safe on campus, but I do not need it shielded from controversial views simply because those views are unpopular,” he wrote.The legislation has also drawn opposition from some conservatives over concerns that it could be used to persecute Christians who express the belief that Jews killed Jesus, an assertion widely regarded as antisemitic that historians and Christian leaders, including Pope Benedict, have rejected.Civil liberties advocates are also raising concerns about an anti-terrorism bill approved overwhelmingly by the House last month in the wake of Iran’s unprecedented missile assault on Israel. Proponents say the measure is a necessary guardrail to prevent US-based organizations from providing financial support to Israel’s enemies. But critics have called it an “Orwellian bill aimed at silencing nonprofits that support Palestinian human rights”.Last week, Biden announced a series of actions that build on what the White House has called “the most comprehensive and ambitious US government effort to counter antisemitism in American history”.It included new guidance by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, sent to every school and college, that outlines examples of antisemitic discrimination and other forms of hate that could lead to a federal civil rights investigation. Since the 7 October attack, the Department of Education has launched more than 100 investigations into colleges and public school districts over allegations of “discrimination involving shared ancestry”, which include incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia.The initiative also includes additional steps the Department of Homeland Security would take to help campuses improve safety.Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, House Republicans have vowed to use their majority to intensify scrutiny of antisemitism on college campuses, part of their election-year strategy to use the unrest as a political cudgel against Biden and the Democrats, who are deeply divided over the Israel-Gaza war.Wielding their oversight powers, several House Republican chairs have announced plans to investigate universities where pro-Palestinian student protests have flourished. On Wednesday, a House subcommittee held a hearing, titled Antisemitism on College Campuses, in which Jewish college students testified that their university administrations had failed to stop antisemitic threats and harassment. And during a congressional panel last week, Republicans challenged the leaders of some of the nation’s largest public school systems to do more to counter antisemitism in their schools.It follows a tense hearing on antisemitism with administration officials from some of the nation’s most prestigious universities that precipitated the resignations of the presidents of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania. A congressional appearance last month by Columbia University’s president, Minouche Shafik, escalated the antiwar protests at her school that then spread to campuses across the country.“There are a lot of shades of McCarthyism as the House keeps calling people in to shame and name them, to spread moral panic,” said Lakier of the University of Chicago law school.Facing enormous pressure from Congress and the Department of Education, as well as from students, faculty, donors and alumni, universities and colleges, Lakier argued, are collectively showing less tolerance for the pro-Palestinian student protests than they did for Vietnam war-era campus activism.On dozens of university campuses, state and local police officers, sometimes in riot gear, have dispersed pro-Palestinian protesters, often at the request of university officials. As many as 2,400 people have been arrested during pro-Palestinian campus protests in recent weeks, while many students have been suspended or expelled.“From a first amendment perspective, one hopes you learn from the past,” Lakier said, “but to be repeating it is distressing.” More

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      Are US campus protests antisemitic? Jewish students weigh in | Panel

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      Theo Goldstine: ‘I didn’t join the protests because of slogans’I was in California for Passover when the encampment first came up. I was excited because I want to see an end to what Human Rights Watch calls a system of apartheid, which refers to the fact that there are over 65 laws discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel, roads in the West Bank are segregated, Israelis have civil law while Palestinians have military law, water allotment is unequal and so much more.I was hopeful because we urgently need a ceasefire, an end to crimes against humanity such as mass starvation in Gaza and to bring the hostages home. I assumed I would hear chants of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Even though I prefer a confederation so that both people can maintain national sovereignty while having their core interests met, that slogan is not a dealbreaker for me as long as it means one-person one-vote in an equal binational arrangement, which would end Israel as a Jewish state.However, at NYU and across the country, protestors regularly chanted “From the water to the water, Palestine is Arab” in Arabic. There were chants of “Settlers, settlers [referring to all Israeli Jews] go back home, Palestine is ours alone.” They were justifying and normalizing the egregious crimes Hamas committed against civilians on October 7 and glorifying Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis under the banner of “by any means necessary.”The protesters’ dream of a liberated Palestine looked a lot like pure revenge, rather than justice. I understand the desire for revenge, particularly for those between the River and the Sea. But I hold my peers – privileged US-based college students disconnected from the violence and existential antes — to a different standard. I support justice, freedom, liberty for the Palestinian people, but I could not and would not stand by a message filled with so much hate so I never joined the protests.However, I kept sticking around on the outside of the encampment because I did agree with a fair amount of what protesters were saying and wanted to see what was going on. I witnessed and heard many awful things said by both Pro-Palestine protesters and Pro-Israel counterprotesters. But then, something magical happened. I started having conversations with others at the protests where I realized how much we have in common.I realized that a sizable number of people did not in fact want the expulsion, subjugation, or death of Israeli Jews. Most important, these were conversations with Palestinians! In fact, I found the people I had common ground with the most were Palestinians.While eliminationist rhetoric divides us, I believe it is possible for the non-extremists on all sides to unite behind two goals: ending the war and bringing justice, freedom, and equality to Palestinians not at the expense of or dehumanization of Israelis. I believe that this vision could change the face of the earth. I will continue to do whatever small thing I can to make it reality.
      Theo Goldstine is an undergraduate at New York University studying international politics and computer science
      Benjamin Kersten: ‘It’s not antisemitic to criticize Israel’As a Jewish student who participated in the UCLA Palestine solidarity encampment, I find the charge that the encampments are antisemitic to not only be misleading but dangerous. All were welcome in the encampment who abided by the community agreements and engaged in good faith with its demands, including for the university to divest from weapons manufacturers and companies profiting from Israeli violence against Palestinians and to stop repressing pro-Palestinian advocacy on campus.For me, the encampments offered opportunities for Jewish learning and community building. We organized a Passover Seder and observed Shabbat and Havdalah, and we were part of a multicultural, interfaith space – a glimpse of the world we hope to build. Inside the encampment, students learned, imagined, disagreed and recommitted. We recommitted to the values of justice, equality and dignity for all without exception. The world we built was torn apart by outside agitators wielding two-by-fours, by police in riot gear and by UCLA administrators who opted to remain invested in genocide and violently suppress free speech rather than take seriously our calls for freedom for all. It was the administrators, counter-protesters and police that created an unsafe environment – not those protesting for an end to genocide.It is not antisemitic to criticize the state of Israel or to reject Jewish supremacy. The pervasive misidentification of antisemitism hinders our ability to understand and dismantle real antisemitism, which is expressed most violently by an increasingly empowered right wing. As we strive to end all forms of oppression, we must not look away from Gaza. Israel’s devastating assault on Palestine has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions, and left homes, hospitals and universities destroyed. I advocate for Palestinian freedom because Palestinians, like everyone, deserve to be free, and because our safety and liberation are intertwined.
      Benjamin Kersten is a PhD candidate in art history at UCLA, a fellow at the Leve Center for Jewish Studies and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) at UCLA
      Maya Ilany: ‘By casting out hateful ideas, the protestors can keep the focus on their demands’Student protesters I spoke to at Harvard’s encampment are obviously motivated by an ambition to halt the death and destruction in Gaza, not by antisemitism. But to deliver on that crucial goal, the movement must improve at rejecting hateful and unjust ideas it has played host to on some US campuses.There have been expressions of archetypal antisemitism: like a cartoon of a hand with a Star of David and a dollar sign holding a noose around the neck of two men. Calls for violence against Israelis or “Zionists” have been similarly concerning. It was no less than the leader of Columbia’s student protest who explained why Zionists “don’t deserve to live”.It serves no one to flatly deny these incidents, or to ignore the impact they have on Jewish students and faculty, including many that share the protesters’ views about the war, Israel’s far-right government and the wrongs of the occupation. This denial masquerades as solidarity with Palestinians, but undermines the movement and its aims.By casting out these hateful ideas, the protesters can keep the focus on their just demands. As a longtime campaigner for a two-state solution, I believe some of their demands are not just the wrong ones, but are unjust, unethical and unworkable. Though these calls are protected free speech, I absolutely reject demands that amount to more violence (“globalize the intifada”), the end of a state of Israel (“from water to water, Palestine will be Arab”) or a “repatriation” of Israeli citizens (“go back to Europe”). But while these conversations may be uncomfortable, I am ready to argue for a just resolution to the conflict that allows millions of Israelis and Palestinians to live in dignity.
      Maya Ilany is a graduate student in the MPA program at the Harvard Kennedy School and a research fellow at Molad: the Center for the Renewal of Israeli Democracy
      Matan Berg: ‘I will continue to advocate for a just peace’Before leaving for the summer, I visited the encampment on “the Diag” in the heart of the University of Michigan’s campus. I brought a banner proudly displaying the flags of both Israel and Palestine. This was my way of expressing support for a negotiated ceasefire and hostage release deal, an end to the cycle of violence, a fight against antisemitism and Islamophobia, a future of mutual self-determination and equality enshrined in a two-state solution, and peace and justice for all Palestinians and Israelis.The reactions I received (a combination of friendly conversations mixed with extreme opposition to dialogue), as well as the general conduct and rhetoric of the encampment, helped me to realize two things. First, I believe this movement is counterproductive and does perpetuate antisemitic tropes. In my view, the messaging at these encampments often justifies and glorifies the attacks of 7 October with chants like “resistance is justified under occupation” and “free Gaza by any means necessary”. Their activism glorifies the actions of terrorists through “teach-ins.” They have even gone as far as to retweet an official statement signed by Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine that thanked Michigan students. All of this is morally reprehensible and antithetical to any rational strategy that can end the plight of the Palestinian people.However, a second thing is also true: it is neither helpful nor right to chastise these encampments and the larger movement they represent as antisemitic. Many of the protestors I interacted with agreed with my goals, even though they often had different beliefs for how to achieve them. Moreover, rebuking a group of people pleading for an end to the deaths of innocent civilians in Gaza by calling every single one of them antisemitic is grossly uncharitable and severely lacks the empathy that we desperately need.I will continue to advocate for a just peace, and I will continue to insist that, as hard as it may seem, this moment is not “us v them”, but rather “all of us – together”.
      Matan Berg is an undergraduate at the University of Michigan and the chair of its chapter of J Street U More

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      How the right is weaponizing pro-Palestinian campus protests in the US

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      Republicans have identified recent college protests against Israel’s war in Gaza as the core of an election campaign narrative of chaos that they hope can be used to sink Joe Biden’s presidency.The approach was bluntly crystallised by Tom Cotton, the Republican senator from Arkansas, in a recent television interview when he mocked the encampments that have sprung up in recent weeks as “little Gazas” and lambasted the president for a perceived failure to unequivocally denounce instances of antisemitism.“The Democrats have deep philosophical divisions on Israel,” Cotton told ABC’s This Week programme. “That’s why you see all those little Gazas out there on campuses where you see people chanting vile antisemitic slogans … For two weeks, Joe Biden refused to come out and denounce it. That is the 2024 election.”In fact, Biden did condemn antisemitism in a White House statement criticising the protests on 1 May, but also spoke out against Islamophobia and other forms of prejudice.Cotton’s comments followed weeks of turbulence on university campuses across the US that have seen riot police forcibly dismantle pro-Palestinian encampments in widely televised scenes reminiscent of the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations of the 1960s.His labelling of the encampments as “little Gazas” was denounced as dehumanising by some who lauded the protesters for drawing attention to the death toll of Israel’s continuing military offensive in Gaza. While relatively few Americans identify the war in Gaza as a vote-influencer, Republicans are seeking to capitalise on the vocal minority who are expressing discontent over it.The conservative activist Christopher Rufo spelt out the approach in a recent article on Substack.“This encampment escalation divides the Left, alienates influential supporters, and creates a sense of chaos that will move people against it,” he wrote. “The correct response … is to create the conditions for these protests to flourish in blue [Democratic-run] cities and campuses, while preventing them in red [Republican] cities and campuses.”GOP intent was signalled by the visits of delegations, including Mike Johnson, speaker of the House of Representatives, to Columbia University – centre of the recent protests – and to George Washington University (GWU) in Washington DC, where protesters spray-painted graffiti and draped a Palestinian flag on a statue of the US’s eponymous founding father.“It’s what the protests say about American political society and culture that the Republicans are trying to pick up on,” said Patrick Murray, director of the polling institute at Monmouth University.“Biden has tried to make this election a referendum on what happened during the Trump administration, with his focus being ‘we don’t want to go back to the chaos of the Trump years.’ That argument can be undercut if people are seeing chaos from college campuses on their TV screens – Republicans are trying to say it’s no more stable and calm under Biden than it was under Trump.”Republicans are also expanding congressional investigations into antisemitism allegations in the protests, an approach that has already reaped political dividends after the presidents of two elite colleges, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, were forced to resign following criticism of their testimony in previous hearings.Besides the House’s education and workforce committee – whose hearings led to the resignations, and which has now invited three more university heads to testify – three other GOP-led committees have announced proceedings to scrutinise the protests.The House energy and commerce committee is set to investigate universities for possible breaches of the Civil Rights Act, a supposed protection against discrimination, while the oversight committee has called hearings on Democratic-run Washington’s response to the GWU protests.Meanwhile, Jim Jordan, chairman of the House judiciary committee, has asked Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, and Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, if the visas of any foreign students have been revoked for participating in pro-Palestinian protests.The message is clear: even as the imminent college summer recess ushers in a likely period of campus calm, Republicans will strive to keep the issue in the public eye.The historical template is 1968, when mass protests against the Vietnam war fed bitter Democratic divisions, fuelled violent clashes with police at the party’s convention in Chicago (coincidentally the venue of this year’s convention) and ultimately led to the GOP candidate Richard Nixon winning that year’s presidential election.“I think the Republicans can make an issue of this and I don’t think they need to do very much to be successful,” said Alvin Felzenberg, a veteran former Republican operative and historian who served in both Bush administrations.“Just like in 1968, there’s not a Republican in this play. The Democratic coalition seems under threat and possibly out of control. I see a lot of parallels, and I think the Trump campaign is paying a lot of attention to what Nixon did then.”The deciding factor of whether history repeats may be Biden, who Felzenberg says has given the impression of “being blown about by events” as he has sought a balance between supporting Israel and pacifying progressive, pro-Democratic voters alienated by the soaring Palestinian casualties in Gaza.With nearly six months until election day, Biden has time to assert control.Working in his favour is that the current unrest is so far less violent than in 1968, a year scarred by political assassinations and race riots. While police action to dismantle the recent protests produced negative headlines and more than 2,000 arrests, it resulted in no serious casualties – an outcome Felzenberg said Biden should have publicly celebrated.“Biden gave a speech last week that was the perfect opportunity for him to say the police did a great job – and he didn’t do it, which made it look like he wasn’t in charge and is scared of all the people on his own side yelling at him,” Felzenberg said. “If I were one of the people around Joe Biden, I would spend the next few months showing that he can lead.” More