Tag Archives: Gaza War

Third Ivy League university president to resign over handling of Gaza war protests

Dr-Shafik

Important Takeaways:

  • Columbia University President Minouche Shafik has resigned from her position, four months after the institution was rocked by campus protests over the war in Gaza.
  • Dr Shafik’s resignation comes only a year after she took the position at the private Ivy League university in New York City, and just a few weeks before the autumn semester is due to begin.
  • In April, Dr Shafik authorized New York Police Department officers to swarm the campus, a controversial decision that led to the arrests of about 100 students who were occupying a university building.
  • The episode marked the first time that mass arrests had been made on Columbia’s campus since Vietnam War protests more than five decades ago.
  • Her resignation comes after three Columbia University deans also resigned last week, after text messages showed the group used “antisemitic tropes”, according to a statement by Dr Shafik, while discussing Jewish students.
  • US college campuses have been a flashpoint for Gaza war protests since Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, and Israel’s subsequent incursion into the Gaza Strip.
  • The presidents of Harvard and UPenn ultimately resigned amid backlash over their handling of campus protests and congressional testimony, including their refusal to say that calling for the deaths of Jews could violate university policy.

Read the original article by clicking here.

Open hatred for Jews hasn’t been this horrendous since WWII

Hate-the-Jews

Important Takeaways:

  • Open hatred of Jews surges globally, inflamed by Gaza war
  • In Los Angeles, a man screaming “kill Jews” attempts to break into a family’s home. In London, girls in a playground are told they are “stinking Jews” and should stay off the slide. In China, posts likening Jews to parasites, vampires or snakes proliferate on social media, attracting thousands of “likes”.
  • These are examples of incidents of antisemitism, which have surged globally since the attack by Hamas gunmen on southern Israel on Oct. 7 and subsequent war on the Islamist group launched by Israel in the Gaza Strip.
  • “This is the scariest time to be Jewish since World War Two. We have had problems before, but things have never been this bad in my lifetime,” said Anthony Adler, 62, speaking outside a synagogue where he had gone to pray in Golders Green, a London neighborhood with a large Jewish community
  • Adler, who runs three Jewish schools, temporarily closed two of them after Oct. 7 because of fears of attacks on pupils, and has beefed up security at all three.
  • The most chilling antisemitic incident globally was the storming of an airport in Russia’s Dagestan region on Sunday by an enraged crowd looking for Jews to harm after a flight arrived from Tel Aviv.
  • In Buenos Aires, pupils at a well-known Jewish school were asked not to wear their usual uniforms to be less easily identifiable, parents said.
  • At Cornell University in upstate New York, security was increased around the Center for Jewish Living after online threats, including a call for it to be bombed.

Read the original article by clicking here.

U.S. plans for evacuation of its 600,000 citizens in worst-case scenario

Ship-ready-evacuation

Important Takeaways:

  • U.S. readies plans for mass evacuations if Gaza war escalates
  • The Biden administration is preparing for the possibility that hundreds of thousands of American citizens will require evacuation from the Middle East if the bloodshed in Gaza cannot be contained, according to four officials familiar with the U.S. government’s contingency planning
  • The specter of such an operation comes as Israeli forces, aided by U.S. weapons and military advisers, prepare for what is widely expected to be a perilous ground offensive against Hamas militants responsible for the stunning cross-border attack that has reignited hostilities. The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to detail internal deliberations, said Americans living in Israel and neighboring Lebanon are of particular concern, though they stressed that an evacuation of that magnitude is considered a worst-case scenario and that other outcomes are seen as more likely.
  • Still, one official said, it “would be irresponsible not to have a plan for everything.”
  • There were about 600,000 U.S. citizens in Israel and another 86,000 believed to be in Lebanon when Hamas attacked, according to State Department estimates.

Read the original article by clicking here.

Israeli warplanes strike Gaza after rockets fired toward Tel Aviv

Israeli soldiers are seen on top of an armoured personnel carrier (APC) near the border between Israel and Gaza on its Israeli side, March 15, 2019. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – Israeli warplanes bombed Hamas targets in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza early on Friday after Israel’s military said militants had fired two rockets toward the city of Tel Aviv.

The air strikes, the heaviest in five months, hit about 100 military targets belonging to Hamas, the Islamist group which controls Gaza, the military said. These included a rocket manufacturing site, a naval post and weapons facility, and a Hamas headquarters, it said.

Palestinian news media reported strikes throughout the densely populated coastal strip that is home to two million Palestinians. Four people were wounded, health ministry officials said.

The Israeli military accused Hamas of firing rockets from Gaza toward Tel Aviv – the first time the seaside city had been targeted since the 2014 Gaza War.

But Hamas denied responsibility and Israeli media, including Ha’aretz and Channel 7 News, later carried reports that the rockets might have been fired from Gaza by mistake.

A security official briefed on the situation, who declined to be identified by name or nationality, told Reuters the launch was “the result of an error – that an attack on Israel was not intended. Israel holds Hamas responsible, hence the response”.

The exchange was the most serious since a botched Israeli commando incursion into Gaza last November.

In the aftermath of that episode, dozens of Israeli air strikes killed seven Palestinians, at least five of them gunmen, and destroyed several buildings. Rocket attacks from Gaza sent residents of southern Israel to shelters, wounding dozens and killing a Palestinian laborer from the occupied West Bank.

SIRENS WAIL

The first rocket attack came on Thursday evening, with warning sirens sounding in the Tel Aviv area and residents hearing explosions.

The Israeli military said two longer-range rockets had been fired from Gaza but caused no casualties or damage. The Israelis retaliated in the early hours of Friday.

Just after dawn, six more missiles were fired from Gaza toward Israeli border towns but all but one were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, the military said.

Calm was restored by mid-morning as an Egyptian delegation mediated between Israel and Palestinian factions, a Palestinian official said.

The incident immediately played into the campaign for an election in Israel on April 9 in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking a fifth term on the strength of his security credentials.

His right-wing rival, Naftali Bennett, demanded that Israel resume its killings of Hamas chiefs.

“The time has come to defeat Hamas once and for all,” he said on Thursday night.

Netanyahu also faced pressure from his center-left opponent, former General Benny Gantz, who said: “Only aggressive, harsh action will restore the deterrence that has eroded” under the prime minister’s watch.

Tensions have been high for the past year along the Israel-Gaza frontier, but on Friday morning Palestinian officials canceled the weekly border protests.

Some 200 Palestinians have been killed during the demonstrations that began a year ago and about 60 more have been killed in other incidents, including exchanges of fire across the border. Two Israeli soldiers have been killed by Palestinian fire.

Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from the packed, narrow enclave in 2005 but maintains tight control of its land and sea borders. Egypt also restricts movement in and out of Gaza on its border.

Frustration is growing in Gaza over the dim prospects for an independent Palestinian state. Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians have been stalled for several years and Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank have expanded.

The 2014 Gaza War was the third between Israel and Hamas in a decade. More than 2,100 Palestinians were killed in Gaza during that war, most of them civilians, along with 66 Israeli soldiers and seven civilians in Israel.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Writing by Dan Williams and Rami Ayyub; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Israel deploys 100 sharpshooters on Gaza border for Palestinian protests: Israeli army chief

A man hangs a Palestinian flag at an electric pole near the border with Israel, in the southern Gaza Strip March 28, 2018. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

By Jeffrey Heller and Nidal al-Mughrabi

JERUSALEM/GAZA (Reuters) – The Israeli military has deployed more than 100 sharpshooters on the Gaza border ahead of a planned mass Palestinian demonstration, Israel’s top general said in an interview published on Wednesday.

Organizers said they expect thousands in Gaza, including entire families, to answer their call to gather in tent cities in five locations along the sensitive border from Friday in a six-week protest for a right of return of Palestinian refugees to what is now Israel.

Citing security concerns, the Israeli military enforces a “no go” zone for Palestinians on land in Gaza adjacent to Israel’s border fence.

Lieutenant-General Gadi Eizenkot, the military’s chief of staff, told the Yedioth Ahronoth daily that the military would not allow “mass infiltration” or tolerate damage to the barrier during the protests.

“We have deployed more than 100 sharpshooters who were called up from all of the military’s units, primarily from the special forces,” Eizenkot said in the interview. “If lives are in jeopardy, there is permission to open fire.”

Israeli soldiers are confronted by frequent violent Palestinian protests along the Gaza border and have used tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition against demonstrators who the military said hurled rocks or petrol bombs at them.

Organizers said the protest is supported by several Palestinian factions, including Gaza’s dominant Islamist Hamas movement, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.

Nickolay Mladenov, the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, called on all sides “to exercise restraint and take the necessary steps to avoid a violent escalation”.

In a statement emailed to Reuters, he said: “Children in particular should not be put at risk at any time by anyone.”

RISING TENSION

Israeli cabinet minister Tzachi Hanegbi, speaking on Israel Radio, said Hamas had avoided direct conflict with Israel since the end of the 2014 Gaza war.

But he said that pressure Hamas was now feeling from Israel’s destruction of some of its network of attack tunnels near the border, coupled with harsh economic conditions in Gaza, were “a formula for rising tension”.

The start of the demonstration was symbolically linked to what Palestinians call “Land Day”, which commemorates the six Arab citizens of Israel killed by Israeli security forces in demonstrations in 1976 over land confiscations. The week-long Jewish holiday of Passover, when Israel heightens security, also begins on Friday.

The protest is due to end on May 15, the day Palestinians call the “Nakba” or “Catastrophe”, marking the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the conflict surrounding the creation of Israel in 1948.

Palestinians have long demanded that as many as 5 million of their compatriots be granted the right to return. Israel rules this out, fearing an influx of Arabs that would eliminate its Jewish majority. Israel argues the refugees should resettle in a future state that the Palestinians seek in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

(Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Alison Williams)

Israeli troops say kill Palestinian attacker in West Bank

Israel security after the death of a Palestinian attacker in the West Bank

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian woman who rammed a vehicle into a parked car near an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank on Friday, injuring two people sitting inside, the army said.

“Forces on site responded and fired toward the attacker, resulting in her death,” a military spokeswoman said.

Palestinian officials had no immediate comment.

Palestinian knife, shooting and car ramming attacks have killed 32 Israelis and two visiting U.S. citizens over the past eight months. Israeli forces have shot dead at least 198 Palestinians, 135 of whom Israel has said were assailants. Others were killed in clashes and protests.

Religious and political tensions over a Jerusalem site sacred to both Muslims and Jews have fueled the worst wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence since the 2014 Gaza war.

Confrontations have been exacerbated by Palestinians’ frustration over Israel’s 48-year occupation of land they seek for an independent state and the expansion of settlements in those territories which were captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

(Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch; Editing by Andrew Heavens)