Latest news with #PalestinianLiberation
Daily Mail
10-07-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Dem-run city's taxpayer-funded libraries to hold sinister anti-Israel CHILDREN'S workshops
Philadelphia's public libraries have been hosting anti-Israel 'storytime' workshops for kids that promote 'Palestinian liberation' and recently featured a children's book showing Israel wiped off the map. Libraries in the Democrat-run city are planning at least six ' Palestine Story Time & Crafts' events this summer at various branches. At one event in June, a library did a reading of 'A Map for Falasteen,' which states that Israeli soldiers came 'with their tanks and guns' and 'destroyed our villages,' the Washington Free Beacon reported. The book also shows a colorful map of 'Falasteen' - the Arabic word for Palestine -that doesn't include Israel. At another event, kids were given coloring pages featuring house keys on them. The children were told the keys represent Palestinian families who were 'thrown out of their homes.' A third event had children making paper birds decorated with the names of 'martyred children of the ongoing Israeli bombardment of Gaza,' according to the Free Beacon. The events are hosted by Families for Ceasefire Philly, which touts itself as '[f]amilies in Philly coming together to stop the genocide in Gaza.' The events are hosted by Families for Ceasefire Philly, which touts itself as '[f]amilies in Philly coming together to stop the genocide in Gaza' The group organized a rally in February where speakers said 'all glory to the martyrs,' and led workshops aimed at teaching people how to have conversations with kids about 'oppression,' 'genocide' and 'apartheid.' The group is actively expanding its programs, advertising upcoming sessions on July 22, August 9 and August 16. A advertisement for the August 9 event featured a photo of a child wearing a headscarf reading 'Jerusalem, we are coming' - a slogan used by terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah, the Free Beacon reported. The events have sparked major backlash from community members and Jewish leaders who are furious that tax money is paying for what they call anti-Jewish propaganda aimed at children. 'Libraries are [viewed as] safe places where parents and grandparents can take their kids and the programming is safe as milk,' Steve Feldman, executive director of the Zionist Organization of America's Philadelphia, told the Free Beacon. '[They] shouldn't be used for programming that incites Jew-hatred and other forms of social engineering . . . They're not indoctrination centers.'
National Post
29-06-2025
- Politics
- National Post
Gdalit Neuman: Insidious anti-Israel propaganda has corrupted our universities
As a lifelong student and educator, I've been in academia and the arts for the last quarter-century. I was a witness to the first Israeli Apartheid Weeks at York University in the early 2000s. I've followed, and fought, the anti-Israel obsession of CUPE 3903 (York University's contract faculty union), including introducing a motion to stop them from manipulating their platform to promote non-labour issues on campus. It didn't take. Article content Article content Days after the October 7 massacre in Israel by Hamas and other Gazan groups, the York Federation of Students (YFS), York University Graduate Students' Association (YUGSA) and the Glendon College Student Union (GCSU) celebrated the atrocities as ''land-back' actualized' and Palestinian 'resistance against their oppressors' in an abhorrent pro-Palestinian public statement, which is still online. Article content Article content Article content CUPE 3903 is particularly notorious for its anti-Israel stance. In late January 2024, its Palestine Solidarity Working Group and the union's education committee published 'A Toolkit on Teaching Palestine,' which included a martyr's poem and asked teaching assistants and university instructors to 'divert this week's tutorials to teaching on Palestinian liberation.' Article content More recently, CUPE 3903 promoted off-campus anti-Israel radicalization sessions, including an event organized by the problematic Palestine Youth Movement to 'unpack Canada's entanglement with global imperialism and subsequently the occupation of Palestine.' Article content It also advertised to members an April 24 fundraising party that raised money for the Toronto Community Justice Fund, which helps cover the legal costs of over 100 pro-Palestinian arrestees in the area. Among the beneficiaries are the 11 vandals who, in 2023, plastered an Indigo bookstore with posters of CEO Heather Reisman and splashed them with red paint, a response to Reisman's scholarship program for discharged members of the Israel Defense Forces who have no family supports in the country. Article content The issue goes far beyond student groups and labour unions on campus, however. As first- and second-generation anti-Israel activists grew and graduated from students to faculty and beyond, they took their terrible ideas with them. Jump forward 25 years and the consequences can be felt at Canada's Congress for the Humanities and Social Sciences, organized by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. It's the country's largest gathering of academics, hosting numerous annual conferences of scholarly organizations under one roof, and during one week.
The Guardian
28-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Zohran Mamdani has the Palestinian protest movement to thank for his win
In a tremendous upset of politics as usual, Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old brown, Muslim, Democratic socialist who had little name recognition in February beat the poster boy of the Democratic party establishment, Andrew Cuomo, by a plurality of votes in the first round of the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City. What makes this win even more remarkable is that Mamdani has refused to back down from his vocal support for Palestinian liberation, a position that has long been a death knell for candidates within a party whose establishment is unabashedly pro-Israel. Mamdani's victory shows that his support for Palestine is not a liability, nor irrelevant to his mayoral campaign. In fact, Palestine has moved to the heart of domestic politics thanks to an organized, grassroots movement of Palestinians and allies, students and activists, that paved the way for this mayoral win. Over the course of the last two years of genocide, protests and social media activism has shifted the national discourse around Palestine. A Quinnipiac poll has found that sympathy for Israel has reached an all-time low, with Pew showing that over 71% of Democrats aged 18-49 have a negative view. On Wednesday, the day of the Democratic primary (as well as the hottest day New York has seen in over 13 years), I stood on the corner of 146th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, trying to convince New Yorkers to rank Mamdani on their ballot. One of the leaders of our canvass was a student who was doxed for fighting for her university's divestment from Israel alongside Mahmoud Khalil. Later that evening, after Cuomo's concession, Mamdani's campaign manager thanked Jewish Voice for Peace, whose chapters are integral in organizing against Israel's genocide and apartheid, for its early endorsement of his campaign. While Cuomo was rich in money, receiving $26m in Super Pac funds as opposed to Mamdani's $1.8m, Mamdani's wealth was in the people already organized on issues of progressive politics, including Palestine. The Mamdani campaign's 'joyous' ground game, tens of thousands of people who volunteered to knock on over 1.6m doors, is not simply a story of individuals being organically moved to action by progressive politics or a charismatic candidate. It is instead a story of people who have for years been organizing to oppose an electoral system that marginalized them, who saw Mamdani as an alternative to 'elected officials [who] endorse or overlook genocide' whether they organized through ethnic organizations like Desis Rising Up and Moving (Drum) or the Democratic Socialists of American (DSA). This is not a campaign that can be recreated with any fresh face, or just any economically progressive platform. Bernie Sanders is wrong to say that Kamala Harris would 'be president of the United States today' had she simply had a platform geared towards the working class, and focused on knocking on doors. People came out for Mamdani because he rejected a party machinery whose establishment candidate, Cuomo, was literally part of Benjamin Netanyahu's legal team. It mattered that Mamdani started his college's Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. It mattered that Mamdani said he would arrest Netanyahu, that he'd disband the Strategic Response Group of the NYPD, which I'd watched brutalize my City college students as they protested. People came out to campaign for him, rain or shine, because he refused to decry the phrase 'Globalize the Intifada' even as he endured vile smears and a death threat for it. If the mayoral race is a referendum on Israel, there was a record turnout for Mamdani. People who had not voted in prior elections showed up to the polls, with Mamdani winning in deeply Hispanic and Asian areas, and doing extraordinarily well among young people of all races. Polling showed him second among Jewish voters. Mamdani's victory in the Democratic primary, however, is just one big step in what will continue to be a tough mayoral race. Perhaps the largest threat this campaign will face is the pressure placed on it by the pro-Israel machinery of the Democratic party. The senator Kirsten Gillibrand suggested he may be a threat to Jewish New Yorkers, Laura Gillen, a congressperson, called him 'too extreme' and Tom Suozzi, another congressperson, said he had 'serious concerns' about his campaign. Mamdani is reportedly scheduled to sit down for meetings with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, who have so far declined to endorse him. Mamdani is also being targeted by the right. In a grossly racist action, the Tennessee Republican Andy Ogles called for Mamdani to be denaturalized and deported, posting on X 'Zohran 'little muhammad' Mamdani is an antisemitic, socialist, communist who will destroy the great City of New York.' And even as she called his campaign 'unique' and 'smart', Marjorie Taylor Green retweeted an AI-generated image of the Statue of Liberty covered head-to-toe in a black burqa saying, 'This hits hard.' Mamdani's very identity is a challenge to a two-party system that has normalized anti-Muslim hate, and through its prism anti-Palestinian repression and genocide. Trump began testing his mass deportation policy on the Palestinian students who led the movements that made the Mamdani campaign possible, including by kidnapping and imprisoning Khalil, the negotiator for the Columbia encampment. Trump justified his travel ban, which Mamdani's home country Uganda may be added to in the coming months, as part of fighting antisemitism. What his pathway to victory in the primary shows is that his continued strength, and that of any other candidate hoping to secure a similar victory, will not rely on political endorsements. Instead, it will rely on him staying true to the authenticity that made this campaign resonate with millions of people in New York and around the world.
The Guardian
28-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Zohran Mamdani has the Palestinian protest movement to thank for his win
In a tremendous upset of politics as usual, Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old brown, Muslim, Democratic socialist who had little name recognition in February beat the poster boy of the Democratic party establishment, Andrew Cuomo, by a plurality of votes in the first round of the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City. What makes this win even more remarkable is that Mamdani has refused to back down from his vocal support for Palestinian liberation, a position that has long been a death knell for candidates within a party whose establishment is unabashedly pro-Israel. Mamdani's victory shows that his support for Palestine is not a liability, nor irrelevant to his mayoral campaign. In fact, Palestine has moved to the heart of domestic politics thanks to an organized, grassroots movement of Palestinians and allies, students and activists, that paved the way for this mayoral win. Over the course of the last two years of genocide, protests and social media activism has shifted the national discourse around Palestine. A Quinnipiac poll has found that sympathy for Israel has reached an all-time low, with Pew showing that over 71% of Democrats aged 18-49 have a negative view. On Wednesday, the day of the Democratic primary (as well as the hottest day New York has seen in over 13 years), I stood on the corner of 146th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, trying to convince New Yorkers to rank Mamdani on their ballot. One of the leaders of our canvass was a student who was doxed for fighting for her university's divestment from Israel alongside Mahmoud Khalil. Later that evening, after Cuomo's concession, Mamdani's campaign manager thanked Jewish Voice for Peace, whose chapters are integral in organizing against Israel's genocide and apartheid, for its early endorsement of his campaign. While Cuomo was rich in money, receiving $26m in Super Pac funds as opposed to Mamdani's $1.8m, Mamdani's wealth was in the people already organized on issues of progressive politics, including Palestine. The Mamdani campaign's 'joyous' ground game, tens of thousands of people who volunteered to knock on over 1.6m doors, is not simply a story of individuals being organically moved to action by progressive politics or a charismatic candidate. It is instead a story of people who have for years been organizing to oppose an electoral system that marginalized them, who saw Mamdani as an alternative to 'elected officials [who] endorse or overlook genocide' whether they organized through ethnic organizations like Desis Rising Up and Moving (Drum) or the Democratic Socialists of American (DSA). This is not a campaign that can be recreated with any fresh face, or just any economically progressive platform. Bernie Sanders is wrong to say that Kamala Harris would 'be president of the United States today' had she simply had a platform geared towards the working class, and focused on knocking on doors. People came out for Mamdani because he rejected a party machinery whose establishment candidate, Cuomo, was literally part of Benjamin Netanyahu's legal team. It mattered that Mamdani started his college's Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. It mattered that Mamdani said he would arrest Netanyahu, that he'd disband the Strategic Response Group of the NYPD, which I'd watched brutalize my City college students as they protested. People came out to campaign for him, rain or shine, because he refused to decry the phrase 'Globalize the Intifada' even as he endured vile smears and a death threat for it. If the mayoral race is a referendum on Israel, there was a record turnout for Mamdani. People who had not voted in prior elections showed up to the polls, with Mamdani winning in deeply Hispanic and Asian areas, and doing extraordinarily well among young people of all races. Polling showed him second among Jewish voters. Mamdani's victory in the Democratic primary, however, is just one big step in what will continue to be a tough mayoral race. Perhaps the largest threat this campaign will face is the pressure placed on it by the pro-Israel machinery of the Democratic party. The senator Kirsten Gillibrand suggested he may be a threat to Jewish New Yorkers, Laura Gillen, a congressperson, called him 'too extreme' and Tom Suozzi, another congressperson, said he had 'serious concerns' about his campaign. Mamdani is reportedly scheduled to sit down for meetings with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, who have so far declined to endorse him. Mamdani is also being targeted by the right. In a grossly racist action, the Tennessee Republican Andy Ogles called for Mamdani to be denaturalized and deported, posting on X 'Zohran 'little muhammad' Mamdani is an antisemitic, socialist, communist who will destroy the great City of New York.' And even as she called his campaign 'unique' and 'smart', Marjorie Taylor Green retweeted an AI-generated image of the Statue of Liberty covered head-to-toe in a black burqa saying, 'This hits hard.' Mamdani's very identity is a challenge to a two-party system that has normalized anti-Muslim hate, and through its prism anti-Palestinian repression and genocide. Trump began testing his mass deportation policy on the Palestinian students who led the movements that made the Mamdani campaign possible, including by kidnapping and imprisoning Khalil, the negotiator for the Columbia encampment. Trump justified his travel ban, which Mamdani's home country Uganda may be added to in the coming months, as part of fighting antisemitism. What his pathway to victory in the primary shows is that his continued strength, and that of any other candidate hoping to secure a similar victory, will not rely on political endorsements. Instead, it will rely on him staying true to the authenticity that made this campaign resonate with millions of people in New York and around the world.
Fox News
23-06-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Newly released Mahmoud Khalil spotted back at anti-Israel protest at Columbia University
Anti-Israel activist Mahmoud Khalil returned to Columbia University on Sunday to lead another protest march just days after his release from an immigration detention facility on a judge's orders. Khalil was seen being honored in New York City and gave a speech referencing the Trump administration detaining and attempting to deport him. "Well, who is Mahmoud Khalil?" Khlalil said. "That's what the administration has tried its best to portray me as someone who's violent. Mahmoud Khalil is a human rights defender. Mahmoud Khalil is a freedom fighter. Mahmoud Khalil is a refugee. Mahmoud Khalil is a father and husband. And above all, Mahmoud Khalil is Palestinian." He called this latest protest the beginning of a "longer fight towards justice." "The wave of repression that the Trump administration initiated with my detention was intended to silence the movement for Palestinian liberation," Khalil said. "It was intended to scare people into silence. It was intended to distract us from the fact that the U.S. government is a killing machine in Palestine and across the world. But they completely failed. Millions of people spoke up even louder, that it is our responsibility to end this genocide, no matter the personal cost, no matter the personal cost. And that's exactly what I will continue trying to do as long, so long as I'm able, so long as I am breathing." Additional footage across social media showed him holding a Palestinian flag and leading a chant of "Columbia, Columbia, you can't hide. You're supporting genocide." Khalil was arrested in March at Columbia over his anti-Israel activism on campus, and an immigration judge ruled he could be removed from the country based on a memo from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that said his campus protests were at odds with U.S. foreign policy interests. Rubio cited a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act to justify his finding, and U.S. District Judge Farbiarz later enjoined the secretary from using that determination to deport Khalil. However, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) also added a second reason for keeping Khalil detained and attempted to deport him. The DHS said Khalil allegedly omitted key information from his green card application about groups with which he was affiliated, including the Columbia University Apartheid Divest. Farbiarz ordered on Friday that Khalil be released on bail from an immigration detention center in Jena, Louisiana after determining that Khalil would not be considered a flight risk.
