#Jewish protesters flood #TrumpTower's lobby to demand the #ColumbiaUniversity #activist's release

by Cedar Attanasio, AP, 3/13/2025

New York — "Demonstrators from a Jewish group filled the lobby of #TrumpTower on Thursday to denounce the immigration arrest of #MahmoudKhalil, a #ProPalestinian activist who helped lead protests against #Israel at Columbia University.

"The demonstrators from Jewish Voice for Peace wore red shirts reading 'Jews say stop arming Israel' and held up banners as they chanted 'Bring Mahmoud home now!' on the lower level of the Fifth Avenue building's public atrium.

"After warning the protesters to leave, police said they arrested 98 people who stayed on various charges, including trespassing, obstruction and resisting arrest.

"Khalil, a 30-year-old permanent U.S. resident who is married to an American citizen and who hasn't been charged with breaking any laws, was arrested outside his New York City apartment Saturday and faces deportation. He's being held at an immigration detention center in Louisiana."

detroitnews.com/story/news/nat…
#JewishVoiceForPeace #FreeMahmoud #FreeMahmoudKhalil #FreePalestine #ResistFascism #ResistRacism #BringMahmoudHomeNow #StopArmingIsrael #NotInOurName #VeteransAgainsFascism

#ColumbiaUniversity Bent Over Backward to Appease #RightWing, #ProIsrael Attacks — And #Trump Still Cut #FederalFunding

Instead of #outrage, the school’s interim president responded to the cuts by vowing to continue its misguided crackdown.

by Natasha Lennard, March 8 2025

"Columbia University could hardly have been more draconian in the last year and a half since students began speaking out against Israel’s assault on #Gaza.
In early November 2023, four months before the Columbia #GazaSolidarity encampment even began, the university banned its chapters of #StudentsForJusticeInPalestine and #JewishVoiceForPeace. A few hundred students from the groups had had the audacity to walk out from classes and hold a “die-in” protest on campus — some of the most widely celebrated nonviolent protest tactics available.

"The crackdown was just getting started.

Since then, the university has ordered police raids on campus three times, leading to the arrests of over 100 students. Last week, the school expelled four students, three from #BarnardCollege one from Columbia. Many dozens of students have faced discipline and suspensions for participating in pro-Palestine protests and speech.

"Professors have been slandered before Congress, censured, removed from positions, and reportedly pushed into retirement over their support for Palestine and criticism of Israel. The campus has been essentially locked down for almost a year.

"Again and again, Columbia has shown a willingness to throw #students, #faculty, #FreeSpeech, and academic freedom under the bus in acquiescence to a #RightWing, #ProIsrael narrative that treats support for Palestinians as an affront to Jewish safety.

"For all Columbia’s #appeasement, President Donald Trump’s Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism announced last week that it would cancel $400 million in #FederalGrants and contracts to the university.

"'Columbia has worked overtime to appease,' wrote Layla, a student at Columbia’s School of Social Work, who asked to withhold her last name having faced doxxing attacks and harassment from Zionist groups. 'Students are miserable. Campus is a #panopticon. And their funding was still cut.'

"The Trump administration can be expected to use its perverted conception of antisemitism to further its explicit plans to decimate, #corporatize, and #ReWhiten #HigherEducation. The shame here lies with university leaderships — at Columbia and schools nationwide — that have failed to stand up for their purported missions of #CriticalThinking and #AcademicFreedom. Instead, they have put some of their most vulnerable community members, particularly international students and students of color, at risk.

"There is no appeasing a political force like the #TrumpianRight, intent on a program of destruction. And there is no appeasing a nationalist #Zionist worldview that, defying reason, sees #antisemitism in every call for #Palestinian freedom. Columbia is proof of the failure of caving in; the administration has offered up a platter of repression for more than a year and is still slated to lose $400 million."

Read more:
theintercept.com/2025/03/08/co…

Archived version:
archive.ph/jrNva
#Fascism #Appeasement #FreePalestine #Gaza #RightToProtest #Censorship #Fascism #ICE #ACAB #Authoritarianism #USPol #FreeSpeech

The #FarRight Group Building a List of Pro-Palestine Activists to Deport

#BetarUS said it has shared with the Trump administration a list of the “names of hundreds of terror supporters.”

"This conflation of speech critical to #Israel with #antisemitism or support of Hamas will do little to protect Jews in the United States from hate, said #JonahRubin, with #JewishVoiceForPeace, a progressive #JewishAmerican group that advocates for #Palestinian #HumanRights."

Jonah Valdez
February 6 2025

"The premise behind Trump’s more recent order is rooted in #ProjectEsther: a treatise by the authors of #Project2025. The document was billed as 'a blueprint to counter antisemitism' and offered strategies to target and silence critics of Israel, including deportation. A fact sheet about the executive order related by the Trump administration mirrored language from Project Esther and laid bare the order’s intent to 'cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses,' vowing to deport 'all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests.'

"Such ideas are increasingly gaining purchase in conservative discourse. Pledges to deport supporters of Palestinian rights were a key part of the Republican Party’s platform. A congressional bill introduced last May called for similar measures.

"#Academia is a key focus of Project Esther and Trump’s executive orders. While the most recent order instructs all agencies within the executive branch to take part in the crackdown, it encourages #surveillance in specific areas, such as #universities and even K-12 schools, where administrators are being told to monitor and report #InternationalStudents for possible deportation.

"On Monday, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights launched investigations into five schools — #ColumbiaUniversity; #UCLABerkley; #NorthwesternUniversity; #UniversityOfMinnesota, Twin Cities; and #PortlandStateUniversity — for #antisemitism, the first use of the executive order.

"'Americans and college students that visit the United States should be able to protest the #Israeli government’s human rights violations in the same way that the United United Nations, the International Criminal Court [#ICC], #AmnestyInternational, #HumanRightsWatch, and other respected institutions have for the past several years, without fear of retaliation,' said Robert McCaw, a leader with the Council on American-Islamic Relations who heads the government affairs department. He decried the order’s fact sheet of peddling anti-Muslim terms such as 'pro-Jihad.'"

"Trump’s efforts have inspired a grassroots campaign to identify possible targets for deportation. On #SocialMedia, groups such as #MothersAgainstCollegeAntisemitism and the #ChicagoJewishAlliance have shared links to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement tip line and called on people to report 'foreign students and faculty who support Hamas' and 'students on visas who are suspected of engaging in pro-terror activities,' respectively."

Read more:
theintercept.com/2025/02/06/be…

Archived version:
archive.ph/fCZve
#McCarthyism #HumanRightsAreNeverWrong #DontSnitch #ICE #ICERaids #ICEArrests #Deportation #CollegeStudents #FreeSpeech #Censorship #Fascism #AuthoritarianRule #authoritarianism #USPol