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      Mahmoud Khalil reunites with family after more than 100 days in Ice detention

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      Mahmoud Khalil – the Palestinian rights activist, Columbia University graduate and legal permanent resident of the US who had been held by federal immigration authorities for more than three months – has been reunited with his wife and infant son.Khalil, the most high-profile student to be targeted by the Trump administration for speaking out against Israel’s war on Gaza, arrived in New Jersey on Saturday at about 1pm – two hours later than expected after his flight was first rerouted to Philadelphia.Khalil smiled broadly at his cheering supporters as he emerged from security at Newark airport pushing his infant son in a black stroller, with his right fist raised and a Palestinian keffiyeh draped across his shoulders. He was accompanied by his wife, Noor Abdalla, as well as members of his legal team and the New York Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.“If they threaten me with detention, even if they would kill me, I would still speak up for Palestine,” he said at a brief press conference after landing. “I just want to go back and continue the work I was already doing, advocating for Palestinian rights, a speech that should actually be celebrated rather than punished.”“This is not over, and we will have to continue to support this case,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “The persecution based on political speech is wrong, and it is a violation of all of our first amendment rights, not just Mahmoud’s.”The Trump administration “knows that they’re waging a losing legal battle,” added Ocasio-Cortez, who represents parts of the Bronx and Queens.Khalil embraced some of his supporters, many of whom were also wearing keffiyehs in a show of solidarity with the Palestinian cause.Khalil was released from a Louisiana immigration detention facility on Friday evening after a federal judge ruled that punishing someone over a civil immigration matter was unconstitutional and ordered his immediate release on bail.Khalil was sent to Jena, Louisiana, shortly after being seized by plainclothes US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents in the lobby of his university residence in front of his heavily pregnant wife, who is a US citizen, in early March.The 30-year-old, who has not been charged with a crime, was forced to miss the birth of his first child, Deen, by the Trump administration. Khalil had been permitted to see his wife and son briefly – and only once – earlier in June. The American green card holder was held by Ice for 104 days.In ordering Khalil’s immediate release on Friday, federal judge Michael Farbiarz of Newark, New Jersey, found that the government had failed to provide evidence that the graduate was a flight risk or danger to the public. “[He] is not a danger to the community,” Farbiarz ruled. “Period, full stop.”The judge also ruled that punishing someone over a civil immigration matter by detaining them was unconstitutional.Speaking to reporters outside the Jena detention facility where an estimated 1,000 men are being held, Khalil said: “Trump and his administration, they chose the wrong person for this. That doesn’t mean there is a right person for this. There is no right person who should be detained for actually protesting a genocide.”“No one is illegal – no human is illegal,” he said. “Justice will prevail no matter what this administration may try.”The Trump administration immediately filed a notice of appeal, NBC reported.Khalil was ordered to surrender his passport and green card to Ice officials in Jena, Louisiana, as part of his conditional release. The order also limits Khalil’s travel to a handful of US states, including New York and Michigan to visit family, for court hearings in Louisiana and New Jersey, and for lobbying in Washington DC. He must notify the Department of Homeland Security of his address within 48 hours of arriving in New York.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKhalil’s detention was widely condemned as a dangerous escalation in the Trump administration’s assault on speech, which is ostensibly protected by the first amendment to the US constitution. His detention was the first in a series of high-profile arrests of international students who had spoken out about Israel’s siege of Gaza, its occupation of Palestinian territories and their university’s financial ties to companies that profit from Israeli military strikes.Khalil’s release marks the latest setback for the Trump administration, which had pledged to deport pro-Palestinian international students en masse, claiming without evidence that speaking out against the Israeli state amounts to antisemitism.In Khalili’s case, multiple Jewish students and faculty had submitted court documents in his support. Khalil was a lead negotiator between the Jewish-led, pro-Palestinian campus protests at Columbia in 2024. And during an appearance on CNN, he said, “The liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand-by-hand, and you cannot achieve one without the other.”In addition to missing the birth of his son, Khalil was kept from his family’s first Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, and his graduation from Columbia while held in custody from 8 March to 20 June.Trump’s crackdown on free speech, pro-Palestinian activists and immigrants has triggered widespread protests and condemnation, as Ice agents ramp up operations to detain tens of thousands of people monthly for deportation while seeking – and in many instances succeeding – to avoid due process.Three other students detained on similar grounds to Khalil – Rümeysa Öztürk, Badar Khan Suri and Mohsen Mahdawi – were previously released while their immigration cases are pending. Others voluntarily left the country after deportation proceedings against them were opened. Another is in hiding as she fights her case.On Sunday, a rally to celebrate Khalil’s release – and protest against the ongoing detention by thousands of other immigrants in the US and Palestinians held without trial in Israel – will be held at 5.30pm ET at the steps of the Cathedral of St John the Divine in upper Manhattan. Khalil is expected to address supporters, alongside his legal representatives.“Mahmoud’s release reignites our determination to continue fighting until all our prisoners are released – whether in Palestine or the United States, until we see the end of the genocide and the siege on Gaza, and until we enforce an arms embargo on the Israel,” said Miriam Osman of the Palestinian Youth Movement. More

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      Trump administration urges other countries to skip UN conference on Israel-Gaza war

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      Donald Trump’s administration is discouraging governments around the world from attending a UN conference next week on a possible two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, according to a US cable seen by Reuters.The diplomatic demarche, sent on Tuesday, says countries that take “anti-Israel actions” following the conference will be viewed as acting in opposition to US foreign policy interests and could face diplomatic consequences from Washington.The demarche runs squarely against the diplomacy of two close allies, France and Saudi Arabia, who are co-hosting the gathering next week in New York that aims to lay out the parameters for a roadmap to a Palestinian state, while ensuring Israel’s security.“We are urging governments not to participate in the conference, which we view as counterproductive to ongoing, life-saving efforts to end the war in Gaza and free hostages,” read the cable.Emmanuel Macron has suggested France could recognise a Palestinian state in Israeli-occupied territories at the conference. French officials say they have been working to avoid a clash with the US, Israel’s staunchest major ally.“The United States opposes any steps that would unilaterally recognise a conjectural Palestinian state, which adds significant legal and political obstacles to the eventual resolution of the conflict and could coerce Israel during a war, thereby supporting its enemies,” the cable read.The United States for decades backed a two-state solution between the Israelis and the Palestinians that would create a state for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza alongside Israel.Trump, in his first term, was relatively tepid in his approach to a two-state solution, a longtime pillar of US Middle East policy. The Republican president has given little sign of where he stands on the issue in his second term.But on Tuesday, the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, a long-time vocal supporter of Israel, said he did not think an independent Palestinian state remained a US foreign policy goal.“Unilaterally recognizing a Palestinian state would effectively render Oct 7 Palestinian Independence Day,” the cable read, referring to when Palestinian Hamas militants carried out a cross-border attack from Gaza on Israel in 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages.Hamas’ attack triggered Israel’s air and ground war in Gaza in which almost 55,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of the population of 2.3 million displaced and the enclave widely reduced to rubble.If Macron went ahead, France, home to Europe’s largest Jewish and Muslim communities, would become the first Western heavyweight to recognise a Palestinian state.This could lend greater momentum to a movement hitherto dominated by smaller nations generally more critical of Israel.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMacron’s stance has shifted amid Israel’s intensified Gaza offensive and escalating violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, and there is a growing sense of urgency in Paris to act now before the idea of a two-state solution vanishes forever.The US cable said Washington had worked tirelessly with Egypt and Qatar to reach a ceasefire in Gaza, free the hostages and end the conflict.“This conference undermines these delicate negotiations and emboldens Hamas at a time when the terrorist group has rejected proposals by the negotiators that Israel has accepted.”This week the UK, Australia and Canada were joined by other countries in placing sanctions on two Israeli far-right government ministers to pressure Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, to bring the Gaza war to an end.“The United States opposes the implied support of the conference for potential actions including boycotts and sanctions on Israel as well as other punitive measures,” the cable read.Israel has repeatedly criticised the conference, saying it rewards Hamas for the attack on Israel, and it has lobbied France against recognising a Palestinian state.“Nothing surprises me anymore, but I don’t see how many countries could step back on their participation,” said a European diplomat, who asked for anonymity due to the subject’s sensitivity. “This is bullying, and of a stupid type.“ More

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      Jewish Americans of all stripes reconsider safety protocols – but disagree on roots of recent violence

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      On the first night of Passover, it seemed like a one-off – an arson attack on the mansion of the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro. The arsonist, per police, took issue with Shapiro’s stance on Israel and Palestine.Then, in late May, outside an American Jewish Committee young professionals’ event for young Jews in the DC area to meet young diplomats, two Israeli embassy staffers were shot and killed; the shooter yelled, “Free Palestine.” Roughly a week and a half later, in Boulder, Colorado, a rally in solidarity with hostages held in Gaza was firebombed; the attacker also reportedly yelled, “Free Palestine.”The string of events have deeply unnerved Jewish Americans of all stripes. Despite a wide range of political views, there exists a measure of consensus among Jewish institutions that they need to reconsider their safety protocols. There is less unity on the root causes of the violence, and what policy solutions should address it.“I don’t know anyone who isn’t rethinking their security and the security of the Jewish institutions that they visit,” said Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America.Many synagogues have recently heightened security, whether in the form of armed guards, metal detectors, surveillance systems or some combination.Rabbi Joe Black is a senior rabbi of Temple Emanuel, a Reform congregation in Denver, Colorado, a Jewish community he described as “closely linked” to Boulder’s. He said that his synagogue has in recent years upped its spending on security in response to rising antisemitism, putting in place guards, cameras and security systems.View image in fullscreenThe last several weeks have also seen a change of protocols. “I never liked the thought of having armed guards in the synagogue. I do now. And I hate that,” Black said. Meanwhile, Eric Fingerhut, president and CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, recently called for Congress to increase funding for security at Jewish institutions.The American Jewish community is deeply divided over thorny questions around when calls for Palestinian rights cross over into antisemitism. Many view the string of attacks as part of a rising wave of antisemitism fueled by the pro-Palestinian movement. Some on the left, on the other hand, object to conflations of anti-Zionism with antisemitism that are used to suppress protest against Israel’s US-backed war in Gaza. The recent acts of violence all involved targets associated to varying degrees with Jewish life but also with Israel – though it is not entirely clear what the perpetrators knew about them or, in the case of the latter two, precisely how they selected their targets.For some, particularly more conservative voices, the issue is one of speech that has gotten out of hand. Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League, has singled out the Twitch streamer Hasan Piker and university graduation speakers who have spoken out in support of Palestinian rights, whom he accused of spreading “blood libel” against Jews. “We’ve got to stop it once and for all,” he said on Fox News.“We were told over and over again that this was just freedom of speech being exercised. It should not be misunderstood at this point: when someone says ‘Free Palestine,’ what they mean is ‘kill Jews,’” Dr Nolan Lebovitz, senior rabbi at California’s Valley Beth Shalom, one of the largest conservative synagogues in the country, told the Guardian. He pointed as an example to a protest on 8 October 2023 that included some voices that appeared to celebrate the Hamas attacks from the day before, referring to it as a “terror parade”.Others see a different kind of predictability, arguing that if Jewish institutions themselves blur the lines between Judaism and support for Israel – particularly as Israel wages a war in Gaza that has killed by a conservative estimate of more than 50,000 Palestinians since the 7 October attacks – it is inevitable that others will, too.“When you have the main [Jewish] institutions … consistently hammering home that Zionism and Judaism are entirely equivalent, that you can’t have Judaism without Zionism, and that 90% of American Jews are Zionist – how do you expect people outside of the community to not just take that for granted?” asked Rabbi Andrue Kahn, the executive director of the American Council for Judaism, which is devoted to promoting Jewish life “free from Zionist and other nationalist ideologies”.The backdrop to all of this is the Trump administration, which has spent the last several months cracking down on universities and detaining and trying to deport students involved in pro-Palestinian protests, all in the name of fighting antisemitism. In the wake of the attack in Washington DC, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, denounced the term “free Palestine” and vowed to continue a crackdown on foreign nationals. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, in a social media statement following the Boulder firebombing, did not explicitly mention Jews, but did blame his predecessor Joe Biden’s border policies for the attack, suggesting he would use the attack as further justification for his anti-immigrant crackdown.View image in fullscreen“I think one of the things that we’ve been seeing over the past several months is a weaponization of antisemitism by the current administration in order to promote policies that are contrary to my values, contrary to Jewish values,” said Black, the Reform rabbi from Denver. “That doesn’t mean antisemitism is not real. It needs to be addressed in a sane, clear, logical way.”Black believes that the attacks were a consequence of the term “Zionism” being warped in public discourse to become synonymous with oppression. (He calls himself a “proud Zionist” who supports Israel’s right to defend itself but questions the motives of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in prosecuting the war.) Asked what steps he wanted to see taken, he, too, said he wanted more funding for non-profit security – and also for politicians to avoid using the attacks to justify their own political ends.“There’s disagreement about what it will take for the current administration to really take on antisemitism,” said Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism. Law enforcement needed to work with and be responsive to Jewish communities, he said, and there needed to be a national conversation about distinguishing between free speech and incitement to violence. “But at the same time, we don’t want to dismantle our democracy and the rule of law and constitutional rights. It’s a delicate balance,” he continued.“We have a wider Jewish community that’s fearful,” he said. “No one is surprised when they get the news flash that there’s been yet another attack on the Jewish community.”There is one point of agreement: the answer is not for Jews to drop out of engaging civically and as Jews. Jacobs insisted: “We will not accept a reality where people are just too afraid to participate in Jewish life.” More

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      Antisemitic and Islamophobic violence is rising in the United States. Both must stop | Moustafa Bayoumi

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      This must stop. Two incidents of political violence, both targeting groups of Jewish people, are two incidents too many. Less than two weeks ago, a gunman shot and killed two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington DC, yelling “Free Palestine” as he was being detained. This week, a man used a “makeshift flamethrower” along with other incendiary devices to attack a Boulder, Colorado, rally organized by Run for Their Lives, a group which organizes events “calling for the immediate release of the hostages held by Hamas”. Eight people were injured in this latest assault, at least two of them seriously.These horrific acts will no doubt increase the anxiety many Jewish people have about increasing – and increasingly violent – antisemitism in the US. Understandably so. Antisemitism must not be given any oxygen to breathe. One can oppose Israel’s 600-plus day war, relentlessly pounding innocent people in Gaza, while vigorously opposing all forms of antisemitism. In fact, one must oppose both. Such is our duty to each other in a civilized world.And as we have a duty to call out antisemitism when we see it, we also have an equal duty to remember that Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims have also been subjected to extreme forms of violence and bigotry in the US since the beginning of this terrible war. And while we are certain to hear much about today’s rising antisemitism in the coming days, as we should, we must also make sure to acknowledge the rising threats against Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims.Consider what happened to Wadea al-Fayoume, a six-year-old Palestinian American boy. Wadea was murdered in October 2023 by his landlord, who stabbed the young boy 26 times in his home in Plainfield Township, Illinois. The landlord also attacked the boy’s mother, Hanan Shaheen, stabbing her over a dozen times while telling her “you, as a Muslim, must die.” Joseph Czuba, 73, the landlord, was found guilty of murder, attempted murder, and hate crime charges last month and sentenced to 53 years in prison.Or there are the three Palestinian friends, all college students, who were out for a stroll in Vermont during the Thanksgiving long weekend in 2023. They were gunned down in what many are assuming is a hate crime. The three were speaking a mixture of Arabic and English and were sporting keffiyehs, and one of the three, Hisham Awartani, is now paralyzed from the neck down due to the shooting. The alleged assailant, Jason Eaton, is currently on trial for the shooting.And there’s the time, in May 2024, when a woman attempted to drown a three-year old Palestinian girl in a swimming pool in an apartment complex in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Euless. The suspect, Elizabeth Wolf, was arrested after the attack and, in September 2024, a grand jury indicted Wolf on attempted capital murder and bodily injury to a child under and intentionally causing bodily injury to a child. The grand jury also included a hate crime enhancement in the indictment.Or what about the evening when Zacharia Doar and three of his friends were attacked while they were in their truck, which had a keffiyeh hanging off its side. They were returning from a rally for Palestine in Austin, Texas, in February 2024. Their alleged attacker, Bert James Baker, was yelling racial slurs at them when he reportedly pulled Doar out of the truck and stabbed the 23-year-old Palestinian American in the back. Austin police labeled the attack a hate crime, though the grand jury did not include a hate crime finding in their indictment of Baker for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.We should recall that more than 30 protestors for Palestinian rights have filed a lawsuit against campus officials at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and law enforcement agencies, alleging that their civil rights had been violated during protests on campus. Last year, a mob of at least a 100 masked young men descended on an encampment for Palestine that had been erected on campus. The mob attacked the protest for hours while law enforcement watched from the sidelines. As the New York Times described it, “counterprotesters swarmed individuals – sometimes a group descended on a single person. They could be seen punching, kicking and attacking people with makeshift weapons, including sticks, traffic cones and wooden boards.” Dozens of people were injured and taken to the hospital for treatment, according to the Los Angeles Times.These are just a few of the stories of violence and abuse. There are, unfortunately, plenty more, such as the Illinois woman who allegedly attacked a man and his pregnant wife at a Panera Bread because the man was wearing a shirt that said “Palestine.” The woman was charged with two counts of a hate crime and one count of misdemeanor disorderly conduct. Or there’s the bizarre case of the Jewish man in Miami Beach who allegedly shot at two men he believed to be Palestinians but who were in fact Jewish Israeli tourists. While in custody, the shooter told the police “he saw two Palestinians and shot and killed both,” according to arrest documents. Stranger still, one of the men who was shot reportedly posted on social media that he and his father “survived an attempted murder motivated by antisemitism,” and then ended his message writing “death to Arabs.”The organizations which track antisemitism and Islamophobia have each recorded record high incidents and complaints in the past year, as the violence of this war blows back our shores. None of this should be happening, and it’s clear that our first line of defense, and our responsibility as Americans, is to stop this war immediately, “before this violence grows and spreads further, consuming even more innocent lives in its monstrous path.” I wrote those words just over a week ago after the murder of embassy staffers in Washington DC. In a grim turn of events, they are even more true today.

      Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist More

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      BBC accuses White House of misrepresenting fatal Gaza attack report

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      The BBC has defended its reporting on the war in Gaza and accused the White House of misrepresenting its journalism after Donald Trump’s administration criticised its coverage of a fatal attack near a US-backed aid distribution site.Senior BBC journalists said the White House was political point-scoring after Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, accused the corporation of taking “the word of Hamas with total truth”. She also falsely claimed that the BBC had removed a story about the incident.Leavitt launched her attack on the BBC after being asked about reports that Israeli forces opened fire near an aid distribution centre in Rafah. Brandishing a print-out of images taken from the BBC’s website, she accused the corporation of having to “correct and take down” its story about the fatalities and injuries involved in the attack.The Hamas-run health ministry had said at least 31 people were killed in the gunfire. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) later said at least 21 Palestinians were killed by IDF troops.In a briefing on Tuesday, Leavitt said: “The administration is aware of those reports and we are currently looking into the veracity of them because, unfortunately, unlike some in the media, we don’t take the word of Hamas with total truth. We like to look into it when they speak, unlike the BBC.“And then, oh, wait, they had to correct and take down their entire story, saying: ‘We reviewed the footage and couldn’t find any evidence of anything.’”The BBC swiftly issued a robust statement. It said that casualty numbers were updated throughout the day from multiple sources, as is the case of any incident of the kind in a chaotic war zone. It also clarified that the accusation from Leavitt that the BBC had removed a story was false.“The claim the BBC took down a story after reviewing footage is completely wrong,” it said. “We did not remove any story and we stand by our journalism.View image in fullscreen“Our news stories and headlines about Sunday’s aid distribution centre incident were updated throughout the day with the latest fatality figures as they came in from various sources … This is totally normal practice on any fast-moving news story.”It said the White House had conflated that incident with a “completely separate” report by BBC Verify, the corporation’s factchecking team, which found a viral video posted on social media was not linked to the aid distribution centre it claimed to show. “This video did not run on BBC news channels and had not informed our reporting,” it said. “Conflating these two stories is simply misleading.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe BBC called on the White House to join forces with its calls for “immediate access” to Gaza. International journalists are prevented from entering by Israel.Jonathan Munro, the deputy director of the BBC News, said the claims were wrong, adding: “It’s important that accurate journalism is respected, and that governments call for free access to Gaza.”Jeremy Bowen, the corporation’s international editor, accused the White House of launching a political attack. “To be quite frank, the Trump administration does not have a good record when it comes to telling the truth itself,” he said. “She’s making a political point, basically.“Israel doesn’t let us in because it’s doing things there, clearly I think, that they don’t want us to see otherwise they would allow free reporting.“I’ve reported on wars for the best part of 40 years. I’ve reported on more than 20 wars. And I’m telling you, even when you get full access, it is really difficult to report them. When you can’t get in, it’s even harder.” More

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      ‘Antisemitism is real’: US leaders condemn attack on Colorado rally for Israeli hostages

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      Political leaders across the US have condemned what they describe as a horrific, antisemitic attack in Boulder, Colorado, after a man allegedly used a makeshift flamethrower and incendiary devices to target people at a rally calling for the release of the hostages held by Hamas.Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, has been charged with multiple felonies after allegedly shouting “Free Palestine” as he attacked the crowd on Sunday. The incident occurred during an event organized by Run for Their Lives, a group that aims to draw attention to people taken hostage following Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023.The FBI is treating the attack as an “act of terrorism”, with Pam Bondi, the attorney general, saying that “FBI agents are on the ground in Colorado following what appears to be a horrific antisemitic attack”.Hakeem Jeffries described the incident as targeting “the Jewish community in America” and called it an “unconscionable act of terror”. The House Democratic leader posted on X: “As residents of Boulder gathered on the eve of the holiday of Shavuot to raise awareness for the hostages still being held captive in Gaza, the peacefulness of their assembly was shattered.”Many of Colorado’s politicians denounced the attack. Jason Crow, a Democratic representative, characterized the attack as “targeted political violence at the Jewish community meant to spread fear”, adding: “Antisemitism is real. Sadly, it’s on the rise in America.”Another Colorado representative, Lauren Boebert, linked the attack to broader pro-Palestine rhetoric, saying: “When progressives allow and encourage hate speech toward Jews for their mere existence, people get hurt.” She called for the incident to be investigated “as an act of targeted terrorism”.Michael Bennet, Colorado’s Democratic senator, said he and his wife were “praying for the victims of today’s horrific antisemitic attack against Coloradans marching peacefully in support of the hostages Hamas has held in Gaza for over 600 days”.Joe Neguse, a representative of Colorado, said the attack demonstrated how “the scourge of antisemitism has metastasized across our country”, calling for more to “stop this violence”.The attack took place on the Pearl Street Mall, close to the University of Colorado, on Sunday afternoon. Four women and four men, aged between 52 and 88, were transported to hospitals with injuries ranging from minor to “very serious”, according to Boulder police.CNN, citing law enforcement officials, reported that Soliman arrived in the US in August 2022 as a non-immigrant visitor. It reported that the officials said he was granted a work authorization in March 2023, which expired at the end of March this year, more than two months into Trump’s presidency.Soliman had previously applied for asylum in the US, CNN reported. He was denied a visa to enter the country in 2005.Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, described Soliman as “an illegal alien” who had been “granted a tourist visa by the Biden administration” before overstaying.The Boulder attack is the latest in a series of violent incidents in the US since the outset of the Israel-Gaza war. On 21 May, a shooter killed two Israeli embassy employees in Washington after attending an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee. Pro-Palestinian protesters have also been targeted, most notably at UCLA in April 2024 when counter-protesters attacked demonstrators with pepper spray, sticks and fireworks, injuring at least 15-16 people and requiring some hospitalizations. In December 2023, a man fired at three Palestinian students while they were walking down the street near their university in Vermont and wearing keffiyehs, with two sustaining injuries and one now paralyzed from the waist down.Officials said there was no indication that Sunday’s attack was associated with any organized group. Soliman has been booked into Boulder county jail and has a hearing scheduled for Monday afternoon.In their latest annual reports, the Anti-Defamation League says it has tabulated 9,354 antisemitic incidents over the last year, while the Council on American-Islamic Relations says it counted 8,658 complaints in the same span. Both organizations say it is the highest number of incidents in their respective histories. More

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      How ‘a man with a blow torch’ turned a rally in Colorado into a scene of horror

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      The first 911 calls reporting the Colorado flamethrower attack were as horrific as they were unbelievable.“There is a male with a blow torch setting people on fire,” a dispatcher advised the city’s police department, passing on the account of an eyewitness. Another official reported: “Multiple burns, potential terror attack.”What had been a peaceful rally at the Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall on Sunday in solidarity with hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza quickly turned into a scene of horror, with medical crews arriving to find victims lying or sitting on the ground with their legs and bodies burned – and police holding a suspect face down with a gun at his back.Members of the public raced from local restaurants with buckets and jugs of water to pour over those who were injured.The attack by a man hurling molotov cocktails and shouting “Free Palestine” struck at the heart of one of Colorado’s largest Jewish communities, just 10 days after two Israeli embassy staffers were shot dead in Washington DC by a man yelling the same statement. It also came weeks after an arson attack on the home of Josh Shapiro, the Jewish governor of Pennsylvania, by a pro-Palestinian activist.“Make no mistake: if and when Jews are targeted to protest Israel’s actions, it should clearly and unequivocally be understood and condemned as antisemitism,” Amy Spitalnick, chief executive of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said in a statement.“These attacks come alongside a broader rise in antisemitism, from hate crimes targeting Jews walking down the street, to efforts to marginalize, isolate, and discriminate against Jews, to antisemitic and white supremacist mass violence targeting synagogues and other spaces.”Boulder county, where Sunday’s attack took place, had long been considered a safe, “dream community” for Jewish families drawn there over the last decade. Numbers have doubled to represent more than 10% of the county’s 330,000 population.The eight victims – four men and four women, including an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor, and a mother and daughter – represented a cross-section of a vibrant diaspora in a city with numerous Jewish community centers, schools and businesses.“What happened here in our local community in Boulder is shameful, and I think people really need to have a sense of accountability,” Fred Greene, rabbi of Boulder’s Har HaShem congregation, told CNN on Monday.“If we want peace, if we want dignity for people, there have to be other ways than this kind of violence.”Another expert, University of Boulder Hillel executive director Elyana Funk, told the network that the assault was especially shocking because it targeted a “quiet and respectful” assembly of residents who were taking part in a solidarity walk, which has become popular in numerous Jewish communities around the world since the Hamas terror attack on Israel and taking of hostages on 7 October 2023.“This wasn’t a pro-Israel rally or some sort of political statement on the war,” she said. “These are peaceful people who’ve been walking for nearly 20 months weekly to bring awareness for the hostages.”The attack came on the same day as the start of Shavuot, a two-day Jewish festival to celebrate the 50th day after the Passover holiday. Several events were postponed or canceled after the attack, but Funk said resilience would shine through.“The antidote for antisemitism can be Jewish joy, and Jewish community and Jewish connection,” she said.Meanwhile, the Boulder police chief, Stephen Redfearn, recalled the community reaction to the 2021 mass shooting at a supermarket in the city that left 10 people dead.“Boulder is not immune to tragedy sadly and I know a lot of people are scared right now and questioning how this happened and why,” he said at a press conference on Sunday night.“Boulder has recovered from acts of violence before and we will again recover. I urge this community to come together. Now is not the time to be divisive.”The attack took place on Pearl Street Mall, a popular pedestrian area of downtown Boulder laced with stores and restaurants, overlooked by the University of Colorado, and a regular venue for the event supporting Run for Their Lives, an organization calling for the immediate release of the Gaza hostages.Eyewitnesses said the suspect, 45-year-old Mohamed Sabry Soliman, appeared out of nowhere and seemingly singled out individuals taking part in the rally.“It was easily the most horrific thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Brian Horowitz, 37, told CNN.The Denver resident said he was in a cafe with his family when he heard screams and raced to confront the suspect, who was shouting profanities at his victims.“‘Fuck you Zionists,” Horowitz said the man yelled. “‘You’re killing my people so I kill you.’”Horowitz added: “There’s someone who is outraged enough to go and attack these elderly people who are doing absolutely nothing to provoke it other than walk in silence and meet in a courtyard peacefully. It’s unbelievable.” More

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      Jewish organizers are increasingly confronting Trump: ‘The repression is growing, but so is the resistance’

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      On the morning of Columbia University’s commencement last week, an intergenerational group of Jewish alumni gathered in the rain outside the Manhattan campus’s heavily policed gates, wearing keffiyehs and shirts emblazoned with the words “not in our name”. Two had graduated more than 60 years earlier, and one spoke of having fled the Nazis to the US as a child. Others recalled participating in Columbia protests of the past, including those that led the university to divest from apartheid South Africa.They spoke as alumni and as Jews to condemn the university’s investments in Israel, its repression of pro-Palestinian speech, and its capitulation to the Trump administration’s assault on academic freedom in the name of fighting antisemitism on campus. They had planned to burn their Columbia diplomas in protest, but the rain got in their way, so many ripped them to pieces instead.“As a Jewish person, I’m really appalled at the idea that they are trying to make it sound as if opposing genocide is somehow antisemitic,” said Josh Dubnau, a professor at Stony Brook University who received a PhD from Columbia in 1995 and led the protest. “There are thousands of us who don’t believe in the right of the Jewish people to ethnically cleanse Palestine. There were Jews thousands of years before Zionism, and there will be Jews when Zionism is in the dustbin of history.”Another alumna, who graduated last year after being suspended over her participation in campus protests, wore a graduation gown and carried the photo of one of nearly 15,000 Palestinian students killed in Gaza during the current war.“We have a particular duty to show up as Jews because we are not being actively targeted in the way that Palestinian students, Muslim students and Arab students are,” said the student, who asked to remain anonymous. “It’s our duty to weaponise our privilege as Jewish students.” New York police arrested her along with another protester after they set their Columbia diplomas on fire.View image in fullscreenNineteen months into Israel’s war in Gaza and the US protest movement it prompted, allegations of antisemitism on campuses have become one of the primary pretexts for the Trump administration’s multipronged attack on higher education, including billions in funding cuts, demands universities submit to a string of measures curtailing their academic freedom, and the detention and attempted deportation of international students who expressed pro-Palestinian views.But increasingly, Jewish students, faculty and alumni are pushing back against the exploitation of antisemitism charges to justify repressive policies they say do not represent their Jewish values. They have written letters, led protests, lobbied legislators and denounced what they say is the systematic exclusion of Jewish perspectives that are critical of Israel from the national conversation over antisemitism.Jewish Americans – some identifying as “anti-Zionists”, others with a range of views about Israel – have been at the forefront of the movement against the war in Gaza. Last summer, some 200 people, almost all Jewish, were arrested at a protest on Capitol Hill a day before a visit by Benjamin Netanyahu. Earlier this year, more than 350 rabbis, along with more Jewish creatives and activists, signed a New York Times ad denouncing Donald Trump’s proposal to ethnically cleanse Gaza.But Jewish-led organising has broadened in recent months. As Jewish Americans continue to protest the war, they are also taking on Trump’s onslaught against higher education in the name of Jewish safety, rallying around detained students and condemning what they view as the exploitation of antisemitism in the service of a rightwing political project. In yet another New York Times ad, several former heads of leading Jewish advocacy groups, including conservative ones like Aipac and Hillel International, criticised US Jewish groups that “have been far too silent about the stunning assault on democratic norms and the rule of law” under Trump.“The repression has been growing, but so has the resistance,” said Marianne Hirsch, a retired literature professor at Columbia University, who researches memory and the Holocaust and is outspoken against efforts to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism. “I’m seeing a really cross-generational, Jewish faculty, student, and community mobilisation against this narrative.”A need for nuanceJewish Americans’ views on Israel, the war in Gaza, antisemitism on campuses and the Trump administration’s actions are far more complex than mainstream political discourse may suggest.A recent poll by the Jewish Voters Resource Center found that a majority of Jewish Americans are concerned about antisemitism and say they are “emotionally attached” to Israel, although older respondents poll much higher on both questions than younger ones. But the survey also found that 64% disapprove of Trump’s policies to purportedly combat antisemitism, and 61% believe arresting and deporting pro-Palestinian protesters contribute to increased antisemitism. A rightwing Israeli thinktank found last year that one-third of American Jews believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.While large numbers of Jewish students point to feelings of ostracization on campus in the last year and a half, their views on the campus protests vary widely. A qualitative study of the experiences of Jewish students, published this month, criticizes representations of campus life that “compartmentalize students into either/or categories, diminishing nuances between them”. The authors point to “a need for nuanced discussions about Israel, antisemitism, and Jewish identity that respect generational differences and diverse perspectives”.View image in fullscreenBut tackling complex questions – for instance, about when anti-Zionism veers into antisemitism – has become difficult in an increasingly repressive climate. “It is making it impossible to have discussions in the classroom,” said Joel Swanson, a Jewish studies professor at Sarah Lawrence College.Swanson noted that many Jewish Americans are now mobilising against precisely the kind of repression their ancestors came to the US to escape. “The very liberal principles that have enabled Jewish thriving in the United States are being chipped away at systematically, one by one,” he said.Many of those who identify as anti-Zionist have found a home under the umbrella of Jewish Voice for Peace, a pro-Palestinian Jewish group whose membership has doubled since the war started – to 32,000 dues-paying members – and whose student chapters were banned from several campuses during last year’s protests. In Baltimore, earlier this month, members of the group’s dozens of chapters gathered for a national convening. Over four days of workshops at the heavily secured event, participants talked about organising from campuses to religious spaces to promote a “Judaism beyond Zionism”, as the conference tagline read, as well as address authoritarianism in the US.Leaning on JewishnessAs US universities have become political battlefields, much Jewish organising is happening on campuses and academic spaces.Responding to what they view as a crisis in their scholarly field precipitated by Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, Hirsch, the Columbia scholar and others have launched a multidisciplinary Genocide and Holocaust Studies Crisis Network, a group of mostly Jewish academics invoking their expertise to advocate against universities capitulating to authoritarianism.Jewish faculty and students have also organised in defense of pro-Palestinian students detained by the Trump administration. Following the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian permanent resident and Columbia University graduate who has been detained for nearly three months with no charges, more than 3,400 Jewish faculty across the country signed a letter to denounce “without equivocation, anyone who invokes our name – and cynical claims of antisemitism – to harass, expel, arrest, or deport members of our campus communities”. Several Jewish students and faculty wrote letters to the court in support of Khalil. And Jewish groups and synagogues filed a court briefing in support of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish Tufts University student who was detained over an op-ed critical of Israel and released earlier this month as her case continues.“Jewish people came to America to escape generations of similar predations,” they wrote. “Yet the images of Ozturk’s arrest in twenty-first century Massachusetts evoke the oppressive tactics employed by the authoritarian regimes that many ancestors of [our] members left behind in Odessa, Kishinev, and Warsaw.”View image in fullscreenFaculty and students have also denounced congressional hearings against antisemitism on campuses that they say misrepresent their experiences and exclude their perspectives. As their president prepared to face legislators for a fresh round of antisemitism hearings in Congress this month, Jewish faculty and students at Haverford College issued a statement saying that their voices “have absolutely not been represented in the current public discussion of antisemitism” and questioning the credibility of mostly non-Jewish, Republican legislators leading the battle over antisemitism on campuses.Earlier this month, a group of Jewish students from Columbia University visited Congress to talk to legislators about their participation in campus protests that politicians paint as antisemitic, bringing their views “to lawmakers who are almost never hearing from that specific perspective”, said Beth Miller, the political director of Jewish Voice for Peace’s action group, who accompanied the group.As the Trump administration has sought to justify its repressive measures in their names, many American Jews have found themselves invoking their Jewishness in a public way for the first time. “We’ve been criticising identity politics and the way everything gets siloed into identities, and suddenly we find ourselves saying ‘as Jewish faculty’ or ‘as the daughter of Holocaust survivors’,” said Hirsch.“I’ve always tried to steer clear of having a public Jewish identity. I never felt like I had to advertise it,” echoed Joshua Moses, an anthropology professor at Haverford College. “But this moment kind of demands it.” More