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    Trump tells Jewish donors they would be ‘abandoned’ if Harris is elected

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    Donald Trump told Jewish donors on Thursday that they would be “abandoned” if Kamala Harris becomes president.In his speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas, the Republican presidential candidate also said he would ban refugee resettlement from “terror-infested” areas such as Gaza and arrest “pro-Hamas thugs” who engage in vandalism, an apparent reference to the college student protesters.While Trump sketched out few concrete Middle Eastern policy proposals for a second term, he painted a potential Harris presidency in cataclysmic terms for Israel.“You’re going to be abandoned if she becomes president. And I think you need to explain that to your people … You’re not going to have an Israel if she becomes president,” Trump said without providing evidence for such a claim.Under both Trump and Joe Biden, similar numbers of Palestinians were admitted to the US as refugees. From fiscal year 2017 to 2020, the US accepted 114 Palestinian refugees, according to US state department data, compared with 124 Palestinian refugees from fiscal year 2021 to 31 July of this year.Trump also said US universities would lose accreditation and federal support over what he described as “antisemitic propaganda” if he is elected to the White House.“Colleges will and must end the antisemitic propaganda or they will lose their accreditation and federal support,” Trump said, speaking remotely to a crowd of more than 1,000 donors.Protests roiled college campuses in spring, with students opposing Israel’s military offensive in Gaza and demanding institutions stop doing business with companies backing Israel.Republicans have said the protests show some Democrats are antisemites who support chaos. Protest groups say authorities have unfairly labeled their criticism of Israel’s policies as antisemitic.The Association of American Universities, which says it represents about 70 leading US universities, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In the United States, the federal government does not directly accredit universities but has a role in overseeing the mostly private organizations that give colleges accreditation.The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Trump’s speech.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Democratic presidential candidate has hewed closely to the president’s strong support of Israel and rejected calls from some in the Democratic party that Washington should rethink sending weapons to Israel because of the heavy Palestinian death toll in Gaza.She has, however, called for a ceasefire in Gaza, calling the situation there “devastating”.Health authorities in Gaza say more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli assault on the enclave since the 7 October 2023 attacks led by Hamas.Approximately 1,200 Israelis were killed in the surprise attack and about 250 were taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.The subsequent assault on Gaza has displaced nearly its entire 2.3 million population, caused a hunger crisis and led to genocide allegations at the world court that Israel denies. More

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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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      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

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      Sporadic pro-Palestinian protests staged during college commencements

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      Small pro-Palestinian protests popped up sporadically on Saturday as colleges and universities from North Carolina to California held commencement ceremonies, including dozens of graduating students at Virginia Commonwealth University who walked out on an address by Republican governor Glenn Youngkin.While some of the estimated 100 students and family members who left during Youngkin’s speech showed support for Palestinians, others held signs signaling opposition to his policies on education, according to WRIC-TV.At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a small group of demonstrators staged what appeared to be a silent protest during commencement at Camp Randall Stadium. A photo posted by the Wisconsin State Journal showed about six people walking through the rear of the stadium, with two carrying a Palestinian flag.Marc Lovicott, a spokesperson for campus police, said the group, which he believed were students because they were wearing caps and gowns, “was kind of guided out but they left on their own”. No arrests were made.The demonstration came after pro-Palestinian protesters at the campus agreed on Friday to permanently dismantle their two-week-old encampment and not disrupt graduation ceremonies in return for the opportunity to connect with “decision-makers” who control university investments by 1 July. The university agreed to increase support for scholars and students affected by wars in Gaza and Ukraine.At the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, pro-Palestinian demonstrators splattered red paint on the steps of a building hours ahead of the school’s commencement ceremony and chanted on campus while students wearing light blue graduation gowns posed for photos, the News & Observer reported. At the University of Texas, Austin, a student held up a Palestinian flag during a commencement ceremony and refused to leave the stage briefly before being escorted away by security.And at the University of California, Berkeley, a small group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators began waving flags and chanting during commencement and were escorted to the back of the stadium, where they were joined by others, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. There were no major counterprotests, but some attendees voiced frustration.“I feel like they’re ruining it for those of us who paid for tickets and came to show our pride for our graduates,” said Annie Ramos, whose daughter is a student. “There’s a time and a place, and this is not it.”Saturday’s events were less dramatic than what happened on other campuses Friday, when police made dozens of arrests as pro-Palestinian protest encampments were dismantled at the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Those actions came hours after police teargassed demonstrators and took down a similar camp at the University of Arizona.The Associated Press has recorded at least 75 instances since 18 April in which arrests were made at US campus protests. Nearly 2,900 people have been arrested at 57 colleges and universities. The figures are based on AP reporting and statements from schools and law enforcement agencies.At Virginia Commonwealth University, Youngkin, who also received an honorary doctorate of humane letters at Saturday’s commencement, did not appear to address the students who left the event.“The world needs your music,” Youngkin said during his speech. “You, all of you, will be the symphony. Make it a masterpiece.” More

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      US campus protests give Trump a target for his violent rhetoric of vengeance

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      Donald Trump delights in railing against his enemies, and when protesters set up encampments at college campuses nationwide to decry Israel’s invasion of Gaza, the former US president gained another useful antagonist.For some observers, Trump’s language is both dangerous in the current political environment as he seeks to rile up his base and a dark hint at how he might treat dissent and demonstrations should he defeat Joe Biden and achieve his ambition of returning to the White House in 2025.His language is certainly extreme.“These are radical-left lunatics, and they’ve got to be stopped now,” Trump said earlier this month outside the Manhattan courtroom where he is being tried on business fraud charges.The day prior, police had rounded up demonstrators at Columbia University, home to one of the most contentious protest sites. Trump called the sweep “a beautiful thing to watch”.He then deployed blood-curdling and violent rhetoric to describe the protesters. “Remove the encampments immediately. Vanquish the radicals, and take back our campuses for all of the normal students who want a safe place for which to learn,” he said at a rally in swing state Wisconsin. “The radical extremists and far-left agitators are terrorizing college campuses, as you possibly noticed, and Biden’s nowhere to be found.”Joe Biden has in fact weighed in on the protests, acknowledging that the right to demonstrate is protected in the country while saying “dissent must never lead to disorder”.But the campus unrest has nonetheless vexed the Democratic president as he navigates a backlash to his support for Israel, which may cost him votes essential to winning the November election against Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee whom polls show currently has a narrow lead over Biden.When it comes to the protests, the former president’s course of action is far more clearcut. Though congressional investigators have blamed Trump for instigating the deadly January 6 attack on the US Capitol, that has not stopped Trump from decrying the pro-Palestinian students as dangerous rabble-rousers who would not be tolerated under his administration.“It’s an old playbook,” said Robert Cohen, a history and social studies professor at New York University. “Nothing original about it except that he’s more unrestrained, in the kind of ludicrous way he talks about it, because he’s openly fascistic about this.”“To feel like it’s a beautiful thing when you’re using, basically, military force to suppress dissenters, that’s really sick, if you think about that in the context of a democratic society,” Cohen said.While the majority of college demonstrations in the United States have been peaceful, police arrested more than 2,500 people at the protests, which have spread to campuses in Europe, the UK, Lebanon and India.A USA Today/Suffolk University poll released earlier this week indicated that Biden supporters are split in their views of the demonstrations. Among those who plan to vote for the president, 39% oppose the protesters’ tactics but agree with their demands, 30% support them overall and 20% are against them.There’s far less diversity among Trump supporters: 78% are against the protests, and the ranks of those who support them to any degree are in the single digits.David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, said Trump was reacting to the encampments in concert with conservative news outlets like Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network, whose personalities echo the former president’s condemnation of the students, and incentivize him to keep up his attacks.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“You’ve got almost dual filters, reinforcing each other: Trump’s comments, and the outlets that these voters watch and trust the most,” he said in an interview.Trump may also see the protests as a way to win over undecided voters, Paleologos said, since his survey found voters who backed the students were a minority overall.“He’s figured out that if he criticizes the protesters themselves and their behavior, he wedges into the issue that potentially gets to seven-in-10 voters or two-thirds of voters,” Paleologos said.It would not be the first time a presidential candidate has profited from attacking student movements, said Cohen, who has studied the years of demonstrations on college campuses against the Vietnam war.“Doesn’t matter how non-violent they are, how admirable their goals are, dissenting student movements are always unpopular,” said Cohen, blaming the decades-long trend on America’s “overarching culture of conservatism”.“With these politicians on the right, they love this stuff. They know that playing up these student movements works because people don’t like these student movements,” he said.Yet the solutions they embrace often only lead to more intense protests.“Usually when you repress it, it just gets worse in terms of dissent and protest, because people who may not have been concerned about, in this case, Israel and Palestine, they are upset when their friends get arrested for just sitting on a plaza,” Cohen said. More

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      US public school officials push back in congressional hearing on antisemitism

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      Some of America’s top school districts rebuffed charges of failing to counteract a surge of antisemitism on Wednesday in combative exchanges with a congressional committee that has been at the centre of high-profile interrogations of elite university chiefs.Having previously grilled the presidents of some of the country’s most prestigious seats of higher learning in politically charged settings, the House of Representatives’ education and workforce subcommittee switched the spotlight to the heads of three predominantly liberal school districts with sizable Jewish populations.The hearing was presented as an investigation into how the authorities were safeguarding Jewish staff and students in an atmosphere of rising bigotry against the backdrop of Israel’s war in Gaza.Calling the need for the hearing “a travesty”, Republican member Aaron Bean from Florida said 246 “very vile” antisemitic acts had been reported in the three districts – in New York City, Montgomery county in Maryland and Berkeley in California – since last October’s attack by Hamas on Israel.“Antisemitism is repugnant in all its forms but the topic of today’s hearing is pretty troubling,” he said. “It’s hard to grasp how antisemitism has become such a force in our kindergarten-through-12 [high] schools.”He cited instances of students marching through corridors chanting “kill the Jews”, a pupil caught on a security camera imitating Hitler and performing the Nazi salute, and Jewish children being told to pick up pennies.The three districts insisted in response that they did not tolerate antisemitism in their schools. They said they had taken educational and disciplinary steps to combat antisemitism following the 7 October attack, which led to an Israeli military offensive in Gaza that has triggered a wave of demonstrations on university campuses and beyond.However, the districts gave divergent answers on whether teachers had been fired for actions deemed antisemitic. Each district has received complaints over their handling of post-7 October allegations of antisemitism.David Banks, the chancellor of the New York City school system, engaged in a testy exchange with Republicans over an episode at Hillcrest high school, whose principal had been removed following a protest against a pro-Israel teacher but had been reassigned to an administrative role rather than fired.The Republican representative, Elise Stefanik – noted for her pointed questioning of three university presidents over free speech at a previous hearing last December – sparred with Banks and accused the school leaders of paying “lip service”.Banks stood his ground and appeared to challenge the committee, saying: “This convening feels like the ultimate ‘gotcha’ moment. It doesn’t sound like people trying to solve for something we actually solve for.”He added: “We cannot simply discipline our way out of this problem. The true antidote to ignorance and bias is to teach.”Banks said his district had “terminated people” over antisemitism.Karla Silvestre, president of Montgomery county public schools in Maryland – which includes schools in suburbs near Washington – said no teacher had been fired, prompting Bean to retort: “So you allow them to continue to teach hate?”Enikia Ford Morthel, superintendent of the Berkeley unified school district in California, said her authority’s adherence to state and federal privacy laws precluded her from giving details on disciplinary measures taken against staff and students.“As a result, some believe we do nothing. This is not true,” she said.“Since October 7, our district has had formal complaints alleging antisemitism arising from nine incidents without our jurisdiction. However, antisemitism is not pervasive in Berkeley unified school district.”Echoing previous hearings that featured the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia, Bean asked all three district heads whether they considered the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” antisemitic.Each said yes, although Silvestre and Morthel qualified this by saying their affirmation was dependent on whether it meant the elimination of the Jewish population in Israel – an interpretation disputed by many pro-Palestinian campaigners. Bean said tersely: “It does.”Responding to the three opening statements, Bean said: “Congratulations. You all have done a remarkable job testifying. But just like some college presidents before you that sat in the very same seat, they also in many instances said the right thing. They said they were protecting students when they were really not.”The subcommittee’s ranking Democrat, Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon, accused Republicans of being selective in their stance against antisemitism, singling out the notorious white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, whose participants chanted “Jews will not replace us”. The then president Donald Trump later said the rally included some “very fine people” .She described one of those who took part, Nick Fuentes, as a “vile antisemite … who denied the scope of the Holocaust”, but noted that Trump hosted him at his Mar-a-Lago retreat in Florida in November 2022.“I will offer my colleagues on the other side of the aisle the opportunity to condemn these previous comments,” Bonamici said. “ Does anyone have the courage to stand up against this?”When committee members remained silent, she said: “Let the record show that no one spoke at this time.” More