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Scoop
27-04-2025
- Politics
- Scoop
Yale, Ben-Gvir and Banning Palestinian Groups
Opinion – Binoy Kampmark This profaning of protest in a university setting is a convenient trick, using the popular weasel words of offensive and unsafe while deploying, more generically, the pitiful policy inventory that makes freedom of expression an impossibility. Universities are in a bind. As institutions of learning and teaching, knowledge learnt and taught should, or at the very least could, be put into practice. How unfortunate for rich ideas to linger in cold storage or exist as the mummified status of esoterica. But universities in the United States have taken fright at pro-Palestinian protests since October 7, 2023, becoming battlegrounds for the propaganda emissaries of Israeli public relations and the pro-evangelical, Armageddon lobby that sees the end times taking place in the Holy Land. Higher learning institutions are spooked by notions of Israeli brutality, and they are taking measures. These measures have tended to be heavy handed, taking issue with students and academic staff. The policy has reached another level in efforts by amphibian university managers to ban various protest groups who are seen as creating an environment of intimidation for other members of the university tribe. That these protesters merely wish to draw attention to the massacre of Palestinian civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, and the fact that the death toll, notably in the Gaza Strip, now towers at over 50,000, is a matter of inconvenient paperwork. Even worse, the same institutions are willing to tolerate individuals who have celebrated their own unalloyed bigotry, lauded their own racial and religious ideology, and deemed various races worthy of extinguishment or expulsion. Such a man is Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who found himself permitted to visit Yale University at the behest of the Jewish society Shabtai, a body founded by Democratic senator and Yale alumnus Cory Booker, along with Rabbi Shmully Hecht. Shabtai is acknowledged as having no official affiliation with Yale, though it is stacked with Yale students and faculty members who participate at its weekly dinners. Its beating heart was Hecht, who arrived in New Haven after finishing rabbinical school in Australia in 1996. The members of Shabtai were hardly unanimous in approving Ben-Gvir's invitation. David Vincent Kimel, former coach of the Yale debate team, was one of two to send an email to a Shabtai listserv to express brooding disgruntlement. 'Shabtai was founded as a space for fearless, pluralistic Jewish discourse,' the email remarks. 'But this event jeopardizes Shabtai's reputation and every future.' In views expressed to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Kimel elaborated: 'I'm deeply concerned that we're increasingly treating extreme rhetoric as just another viewpoint, rather than recognizing it as a distortion of constructive discourse.' The headstone for constructive discourse was chiselled sometime ago, though Kimel's hopes are charming. As a convinced, pro-settler fanatic, Ben-Gvir is a fabled-Torah basher who sees Palestinians as needless encumbrances on Israel's righteous quest to acquire Gaza and the West Bank. Far from being alone, Ben-Gvir is also the member of a government that has endorsed starvation and the deprivation of necessities as laudable tools of conflict, to add to an adventurous interpretation of the laws of war that tolerates the destruction of health and civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. After a dinner at President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort (the bad will be fed), Ben-Gvir was flushed with confidence. He wrote on social media of how various lawmakers had 'expressed support for my very clear position on how to act in Gaza and that the food and aid depots should be bombed in order to create military and political pressure to bring our hostages home safely.' By any other standard, this was an admission to encouraging the commission of a war crime. In July last year, Israel's State Prosecutor Amit Aisman reportedly sought permission from Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to open a criminal investigation into Ben-Gvir for alleged incitement of violence against residents of Gaza. The move was said to be a gesture to placate the International Court of Justice as it considers the genocide case filed by South Africa against Israel over the war in Gaza. In a string of increasingly agitated interim orders, the ICJ has asked that Israel comply, as signatory member, with the obligations imposed by the United Nations Genocide Convention. These include prohibitions against incitement to genocide. Incitement has become something of a nervous tic for the minister. In November 2023, for instance, Ben-Gvir remarked that 'When we say Hamas should be destroyed, it also means those who celebrate, those who support, and those who hand out candy – they're all terrorists, and they should also be destroyed.' Seeing himself as essentially immune to any form of prosecution, Ben-Gvir gave the State Prosecutor a sound verbal thrashing, claiming that it was 'trying to make an Israeli minister stand trial for 'incitement' against citizens of an enemy state that danced on the blood our soldiers on the streets of Gaza on October 7.' In a statement responding to protests against Ben-Gvir's visit, Yale stated that the student encampments set up on April 22 on Beinecke Plaza were in violation of the university's policies on the use of outdoor spaces. Students already on notice for previous protests along similar lines would face 'immediate disciplinary action'. With dulling predictability, the university revealed that it was looking into 'concerns … about disturbing anti-Semitic conduct at the gathering'. University officialdom had also focused on the activities of Yalies4Palestine, a student organisation whose club status was revoked for 'sending calls over social media for others to join the event'. The statement makes the claim that the group 'flagrantly violated the rules to which the Yale College Dean's Office holds all registered student organizations'. Consequently, the body cannot receive funding from Yale sources, use the university name, participate in relevant student activities, or book spaces on the campus. This profaning of protest in a university setting is a convenient trick, using the popular weasel words of 'offensive' and 'unsafe' while deploying, more generically, the pitiful policy inventory that makes freedom of expression an impossibility. Mobilised accordingly, they can eliminate any debate, any discussion and any idea from the campus for merely being stingingly contrarian or causing twinges of intellectual discomfort. The moment the brain aches in debate, the offended howl and the administrators suppress. Play nice, dear university staff and students, or don't play at all. Besides, Ben-Gvir, by Yale standards, is a half-decent fellow.
Scoop
27-04-2025
- Politics
- Scoop
Yale, Ben-Gvir and Banning Palestinian Groups
Universities are in a bind. As institutions of learning and teaching, knowledge learnt and taught should, or at the very least could, be put into practice. How unfortunate for rich ideas to linger in cold storage or exist as the mummified status of esoterica. But universities in the United States have taken fright at pro-Palestinian protests since October 7, 2023, becoming battlegrounds for the propaganda emissaries of Israeli public relations and the pro-evangelical, Armageddon lobby that sees the end times taking place in the Holy Land. Higher learning institutions are spooked by notions of Israeli brutality, and they are taking measures. These measures have tended to be heavy handed, taking issue with students and academic staff. The policy has reached another level in efforts by amphibian university managers to ban various protest groups who are seen as creating an environment of intimidation for other members of the university tribe. That these protesters merely wish to draw attention to the massacre of Palestinian civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, and the fact that the death toll, notably in the Gaza Strip, now towers at over 50,000, is a matter of inconvenient paperwork. Even worse, the same institutions are willing to tolerate individuals who have celebrated their own unalloyed bigotry, lauded their own racial and religious ideology, and deemed various races worthy of extinguishment or expulsion. Such a man is Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who found himself permitted to visit Yale University at the behest of the Jewish society Shabtai, a body founded by Democratic senator and Yale alumnus Cory Booker, along with Rabbi Shmully Hecht. Shabtai is acknowledged as having no official affiliation with Yale, though it is stacked with Yale students and faculty members who participate at its weekly dinners. Its beating heart was Hecht, who arrived in New Haven after finishing rabbinical school in Australia in 1996. The members of Shabtai were hardly unanimous in approving Ben-Gvir's invitation. David Vincent Kimel, former coach of the Yale debate team, was one of two to send an email to a Shabtai listserv to express brooding disgruntlement. 'Shabtai was founded as a space for fearless, pluralistic Jewish discourse,' the email remarks. 'But this event jeopardizes Shabtai's reputation and every future.' In views expressed to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Kimel elaborated: 'I'm deeply concerned that we're increasingly treating extreme rhetoric as just another viewpoint, rather than recognizing it as a distortion of constructive discourse.' The headstone for constructive discourse was chiselled sometime ago, though Kimel's hopes are charming. As a convinced, pro-settler fanatic, Ben-Gvir is a fabled-Torah basher who sees Palestinians as needless encumbrances on Israel's righteous quest to acquire Gaza and the West Bank. Far from being alone, Ben-Gvir is also the member of a government that has endorsed starvation and the deprivation of necessities as laudable tools of conflict, to add to an adventurous interpretation of the laws of war that tolerates the destruction of health and civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. After a dinner at President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort (the bad will be fed), Ben-Gvir was flushed with confidence. He wrote on social media of how various lawmakers had 'expressed support for my very clear position on how to act in Gaza and that the food and aid depots should be bombed in order to create military and political pressure to bring our hostages home safely.' By any other standard, this was an admission to encouraging the commission of a war crime. In July last year, Israel's State Prosecutor Amit Aisman reportedly sought permission from Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to open a criminal investigation into Ben-Gvir for alleged incitement of violence against residents of Gaza. The move was said to be a gesture to placate the International Court of Justice as it considers the genocide case filed by South Africa against Israel over the war in Gaza. In a string of increasingly agitated interim orders, the ICJ has asked that Israel comply, as signatory member, with the obligations imposed by the United Nations Genocide Convention. These include prohibitions against incitement to genocide. Incitement has become something of a nervous tic for the minister. In November 2023, for instance, Ben-Gvir remarked that 'When we say Hamas should be destroyed, it also means those who celebrate, those who support, and those who hand out candy – they're all terrorists, and they should also be destroyed.' Seeing himself as essentially immune to any form of prosecution, Ben-Gvir gave the State Prosecutor a sound verbal thrashing, claiming that it was 'trying to make an Israeli minister stand trial for 'incitement' against citizens of an enemy state that danced on the blood our soldiers on the streets of Gaza on October 7.' In a statement responding to protests against Ben-Gvir's visit, Yale stated that the student encampments set up on April 22 on Beinecke Plaza were in violation of the university's policies on the use of outdoor spaces. Students already on notice for previous protests along similar lines would face 'immediate disciplinary action'. With dulling predictability, the university revealed that it was looking into 'concerns … about disturbing anti-Semitic conduct at the gathering'. University officialdom had also focused on the activities of Yalies4Palestine, a student organisation whose club status was revoked for 'sending calls over social media for others to join the event'. The statement makes the claim that the group 'flagrantly violated the rules to which the Yale College Dean's Office holds all registered student organizations'. Consequently, the body cannot receive funding from Yale sources, use the university name, participate in relevant student activities, or book spaces on the campus. This profaning of protest in a university setting is a convenient trick, using the popular weasel words of 'offensive' and 'unsafe' while deploying, more generically, the pitiful policy inventory that makes freedom of expression an impossibility. Mobilised accordingly, they can eliminate any debate, any discussion and any idea from the campus for merely being stingingly contrarian or causing twinges of intellectual discomfort. The moment the brain aches in debate, the offended howl and the administrators suppress. Play nice, dear university staff and students, or don't play at all. Besides, Ben-Gvir, by Yale standards, is a half-decent fellow.
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Yale Jewish students speak out after anti-Israel demonstrators refuse to let them walk through campus
Jewish students at Yale University who were subjected to verbal abuse and had their right of way blocked on campus by anti-Israel demonstrators are speaking out about the antisemitism they've experienced. "This type of discrimination and ongoing harassment of Jewish students on campus has not only disrupted, but completely shattered the framework that I had and that many of my peers had upon arriving at Yale," student Netanel Crispe told Fox News Digital. "The one word I would choose is devastating." Crispe, 22, was seen on video this week with a human chain of anti-Israel demonstrators barring his way as he attempted to walk through Yale's Beinecke Plaza. An anti-Israel tent encampment had sprung up on the New Haven, Conn., campus ahead of a Wednesday speech by firebrand Israeli right-wing minister Itamar Ben Gvir. Iran-born Yale Scholar Fired Over Allegations Of Working With Terrorist-tied 'Sham Charity' Gvir had been invited to deliver a speech on Yom Hashoa, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, by Shabtai, a Jewish intellectual society not officially affiliated with Yale. Demonstrators were seen on video hurling water bottles at Ben Gvir and attendees of the lecture as they were exiting the Shabtai building on Wednesday. Read On The Fox News App Crispe, a senior who is studying U.S. history, said that when he got word that a new "emergency" anti-Israel protest had sprung up on Tuesday, he decided to walk around the plaza to show that he and other Jews wouldn't be driven out of what should be a communal university space. When the demonstrators saw him roaming the grounds, he said they called out instructions to form a human chain and bar his way. He said they similarly obstructed the path of other Jewish students attempting to exercise their right to walk through university grounds. Crispe alleged that the demonstrators would break the human chain to allow non-Jewish students to pass through. "I was trying to access the space. This is a communal space that is supposed to be available to students and that all students pay a lot of tuition to be able to use," Crispe said. Sahar Tartak, a Yale junior, said an anti-Israel demonstrator had referred to her, Crispe and another Jewish student as "scum" as they strolled the university grounds and subjected them to other racist abuse. Video of the aftermath of the incident was posted online. Antisemitism At Yale, Univ. Of Michigan To Face Congressional Scrutiny "You're trying to victimize yourself, is that what it is? That's what you people do, so I should get used to that," the demonstrator can be heard saying. When asked who he was referring to by the phrase "you people," the demonstrator replied "Israelis, Zionists… Caucasians." Tartak had been assaulted at a prior anti-Israel Yale demonstration in April 2024, where a demonstrator allegedly jabbed her in the eye with a Palestinian flag. She says being a Jew at Yale the last two years has been "terrifying." "Anybody who stands up for a Jewish right to life, and that tends to be Jewish students, that puts a target on your back," Tartak said. Crispe, a practicing Hasidic Jew, said that antisemitism on Yale's campus has been "pervasive" since the horrific Hamas Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, which saw more Jews killed in a single day since the Holocaust. The student group Yalies4Palestine called for a march to "celebrate the resistance's success" just two days after the attack. Yale associate professor Zareena Grewal wrote "settlers are not civilians" and "Palestinians have every right to resist through armed struggle" on social media as the attacks were still ongoing. Click Here For More Coverage Of Media And Culture Yale revoked recognition of Yalies4Palestine, which is the university's chapter of "Students for Justice in Palestine" a far-left group linked to many of the explosive campus protests, after members "flagrantly violated the rules" with their campus encampments. According to the Yale Daily News, Yalies4Palestine denied organizing the protest this week, but it was held responsible for amplifying the event with social media postings. The organization wrote on Instagram that "disbanding a group doesn't stop a movement" and it wouldn't be silenced. Yale also claimed it's taking disciplinary action against students who participated in the "disturbing" campus demonstration. The university said it had cleared the encampment from university grounds due to its violating campus rules. "Concerns have been raised about disturbing antisemitic conduct at the gathering. The university is investigating those concerns, as harassment and discrimination are antithetical to learning and scholarship. Yale condemns antisemitism and will hold those who violate our policies accountable through our disciplinary processes," the school said in a statement on Wednesday. "I arrived at Yale with the hope and excitement of being able to learn from and contribute to this broader diverse community and to be able to contribute what I had to give as a Hasidic Jew, to be able to be proud and open in this space, and all that was shattered as a dream," Crispe told Fox News Digital. Fox News Digital reached out to Yale for additional article source: Yale Jewish students speak out after anti-Israel demonstrators refuse to let them walk through campus
Winnipeg Free Press
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Winnipeg Free Press
US visit by far-right Israeli minister draws tense protests and ‘big fissures' in Jewish community
NEW YORK (AP) — Far-right Israeli security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was speaking to a small crowd at a Manhattan steakhouse Thursday afternoon when a Brooklyn man, who had been hiding in a bathroom for two hours, stormed into the private event. 'Get the (expletive) out of New York!' cried the protester, Gabriel DeFazio. He was swiftly removed by security, though not before telling the minister he would be 'remembered as a Nazi and Palestine will be free.' So it has gone for Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist settler leader once on the fringes of Israeli politics, as he embarks on his first official U.S. state visit since joining Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet in 2022. His appearances near Yale University on Wednesday drew hundreds of demonstrators, along with the resignations of several members of the Jewish society that hosted him. The following night, he visited the headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in Brooklyn, where he was greeted by scores more protesters who waved Palestinian flags. The group jostled with Orthodox Jewish counter-demonstrators, resulting in six arrests and leaving one woman, who was draped in a kaffiyeh, bloodied, according to social media videos. Rabbi Motti Seligson, a spokesperson for Chabad, said Ben-Gvir was invited by some members of the community, but that the event was not officially sanctioned or organized by the synagogue's leadership. The state visit has not only ignited fierce protests but 'exposed big fissures in American Judaism,' said David Vincent Kimel, a former member of Shabtai, the group that hosted Ben-Gvir near Yale University. Kimel and two others resigned from the group this week, citing the decision by Shabtai's co-founder, Rabbi Schmully Hecht, to host the 'deliberately provocative event.' 'Ben-Gvir represents a grotesque extreme that for tragic circumstances was elevated to high power,' said Kimel, who was born in Israel. 'It'd be like a white society hosting the Ku Klux Klan.' Hecht didn't respond to inquires from The Associated Press, but he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he admired Ben-Gvir. 'Itamar promotes what he believes is best for his people that democratically elected him,' Hecht said. A hard-line supporter of Jewish settlements, Ben-Gvir was previously convicted in Israel of racist incitement and support for terrorist groups. He has called for the deportation of all Arab citizens from Israel and, for years, hung a picture in his home of a man who massacred more than two dozen Muslim worshippers. In 2023, he said that his right to move through the West Bank was 'more important than the right of movement of the Arabs.' Though once widely shunned by Israel's politicians, Ben-Gvir's influence has grown alongside a rightward shift in the country's electorate. And his brand of ultranationalist religious ideology, which once prompted President Joe Biden's State Department to accuse him of 'sowing chaos,' appears to be finding purchase with American officials as well. He kicked off his trip to the U.S. with a dinner on Monday at Mar-a-Lago, where he said he met with Republican Party officials who expressed support for his plan to bomb food and aid depots in Gaza. A spokesperson for Ben-Gvir did not reply to a request for comment about who he had met with, though it did not appear that President Donald Trump was among the attendees. During Elections Get campaign news, insight, analysis and commentary delivered to your inbox during Canada's 2025 election. From there, he visited the Miami Police Department, a Jewish school in Florida and a Jewish-owned gun shop, according to social media posts. Other scheduled events have since been canceled, including a meeting with a Hasidic congregation in Brooklyn and a Modern Orthodox synagogue on Long Island, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported. On Thursday, a group of Jewish leaders gathered in New York to denounce Ben-Gvir, including U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, who called him a 'racist, terrorist, Jewish supremacist.' As a response to Ben-Gvir's visit, Nadler said he planned to introduce legislation to combat violence in the West Bank. DeFazio, the protester who confronted Ben-Gvir at the steakhouse event, said his brief disruption was aimed at calling attention to the extremist politics that were becoming 'normalized' in both the U.S. and Israel. 'I was shocked to see he can freely traipse around the U.S., through our most prestigious campuses and even New York City,' he said. 'When I realized this guy was coming here, it became my duty to make sure he didn't feel welcome.'
Associated Press
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Associated Press
US visit by far-right Israeli minister draws tense protests and 'big fissures' in Jewish community
NEW YORK (AP) — Far-right Israeli security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was speaking to a small crowd at a Manhattan steakhouse Thursday afternoon when a Brooklyn man, who had been hiding in a bathroom for two hours, stormed into the private event. 'Get the (expletive) out of New York!' cried the protester, Gabriel DeFazio. He was swiftly removed by security, though not before telling the minister he would be 'remembered as a Nazi and Palestine will be free.' So it has gone for Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist settler leader once on the fringes of Israeli politics, as he embarks on his first official U.S. state visit since joining Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet in 2022. His appearances near Yale University on Wednesday drew hundreds of demonstrators, along with the resignations of several members of the Jewish society that hosted him. The following night, he visited the headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in Brooklyn, where he was greeted by scores more protesters who waved Palestinian flags. The group jostled with Orthodox Jewish counter-demonstrators, resulting in six arrests and leaving one woman, who was draped in a kaffiyeh, bloodied, according to social media videos. Rabbi Motti Seligson, a spokesperson for Chabad, said Ben-Gvir was invited by some members of the community, but that the event was not officially sanctioned or organized by the synagogue's leadership. The state visit has not only ignited fierce protests but 'exposed big fissures in American Judaism,' said David Vincent Kimel, a former member of Shabtai, the group that hosted Ben-Gvir near Yale University. Kimel and two others resigned from the group this week, citing the decision by Shabtai's co-founder, Rabbi Schmully Hecht, to host the 'deliberately provocative event.' 'Ben-Gvir represents a grotesque extreme that for tragic circumstances was elevated to high power,' said Kimel, who was born in Israel. 'It'd be like a white society hosting the Ku Klux Klan.' Hecht didn't respond to inquires from The Associated Press, but he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he admired Ben-Gvir. 'Itamar promotes what he believes is best for his people that democratically elected him,' Hecht said. A hard-line supporter of Jewish settlements, Ben-Gvir was previously convicted in Israel of racist incitement and support for terrorist groups. He has called for the deportation of all Arab citizens from Israel and, for years, hung a picture in his home of a man who massacred more than two dozen Muslim worshippers. In 2023, he said that his right to move through the West Bank was 'more important than the right of movement of the Arabs.' Though once widely shunned by Israel's politicians, Ben-Gvir's influence has grown alongside a rightward shift in the country's electorate. And his brand of ultranationalist religious ideology, which once prompted President Joe Biden's State Department to accuse him of 'sowing chaos,' appears to be finding purchase with American officials as well. He kicked off his trip to the U.S. with a dinner on Monday at Mar-a-Lago, where he said he met with Republican Party officials who expressed support for his plan to bomb food and aid depots in Gaza. A spokesperson for Ben-Gvir did not reply to a request for comment about who he had met with, though it did not appear that President Donald Trump was among the attendees. From there, he visited the Miami Police Department, a Jewish school in Florida and a Jewish-owned gun shop, according to social media posts. Other scheduled events have since been canceled, including a meeting with a Hasidic congregation in Brooklyn and a Modern Orthodox synagogue on Long Island, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported. On Thursday, a group of Jewish leaders gathered in New York to denounce Ben-Gvir, including U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, who called him a 'racist, terrorist, Jewish supremacist.' As a response to Ben-Gvir's visit, Nadler said he planned to introduce legislation to combat violence in the West Bank. DeFazio, the protester who confronted Ben-Gvir at the steakhouse event, said his brief disruption was aimed at calling attention to the extremist politics that were becoming 'normalized' in both the U.S. and Israel. 'I was shocked to see he can freely traipse around the U.S., through our most prestigious campuses and even New York City,' he said. 'When I realized this guy was coming here, it became my duty to make sure he didn't feel welcome.'
