Recent Appearances...

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Recent Appearances...

Africa Subsaharan

Biden-era reports, genocide group confirm Trump's human rights fears for South African farmers

2025-05-24

[JustTheNews] Trump's video evidence of hate directed at Afrikaners met with quibbles about what genocide means.

The tit-for-tat battle the news media has waged against President Donald Trump over his administration's South African refugee policy is masking a harsh reality: that the country's farmers do in fact face a crisis of violence.

Even Biden-era government reports and genocide watch group have raised flags, mostly being ignored until now. The only question is whether race or greed is the motive for the crimes.

“We have many people that feel they’re being persecuted, and they’re coming to the United States,” Trump said in the Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday. “People are fleeing South Africa for their own safety. Their land is being confiscated, and in many cases, they’re being killed.”

The problems that President Trump identified in his meeting with the South African president, from rural violence that affects white South Africans—known as Afrikaners or Boers—to a legal regime promoting race-based property seizures, are certainly real—but debate rages about whether it rises to the level of “genocide.”

A BACKGROUND OF VIOLENCE
A Biden-era State Department report on human rights conditions in South Africa cited data from a “civil society organization” that in 2021 and 2022 there were 748 total farm attacks and more than 100 killings targeting white South Africans. The report noted, however, though some advocacy groups asserted that white farmers were targeted for burglaries, home invasions, and killings because of their race, it is unclear whether the attacks are actually just part of South Africa’s exorbitant crime rate.

The country is the most violent in Africa, boasting the world’s third-highest murder rate (according to 2023 data), leading many observers to suggest that the violence experienced by white South African farmers does not meet the traditional definitions of a genocide.

Adding to defining the problem as everyday murder, “South Africa has one of the highest crime rates in the world. Its murder rate of 34 per 100,000 population, tenth in the world, is exceeded only by the narco-states of Central and South America. It has, by far, the highest murder rate in Africa,” Genocide Watch, a Washington-based organization founded by former State Department employee Gregory Stanton, wrote in a country report.

“If the state's first duty is to provide personal security to its people, South Africa is a failed state,” the group wrote.

Genocide Watch specifically cites a failure to prosecute murderers who targeted white farmers, which it says contributes to a culture of impunity as the general murder rate remains high.

President Trump on Wednesday suggested the attacks were part of a “genocide” specifically targeting white South Africans, specifically forcing the unsuspecting South African president to watch videos showing calls from radical communist politician Julius Malema to “Shoot the Boers.” Malema was previously convicted under the country’s hate speech laws in 2011 for singing a song by that title, popularized deputy minister in Nelson Mandela’s government in the 1990s.

Genocide Watch agrees that Malema and his Marxist Economic Freedom Front party “encourages these murders, which are meant to terrorize farmers into emigrating from South Africa” and noted “White farmers are defenseless because South Africa outlawed private gun possession and disbanded the mutual protection cooperatives.”

Though Afrikaners make up roughly 8% of the population, they are the victims of only 2% of murders, veteran South Africa reporter Geof Hill reported in 2023. And, the problem may be even worse in urban areas—four of South Africa’s cities of over 300,000 people are among the world’s 50 most dangerous cities.

LEGACY MEDIA CALLS THE RAMPAGE "INACCURATE"
Trump's opponents largely reacted by challenging the existence of the attacks despite the videos. Instead, the headlines blared that South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was "ambushed" by Trump's video exposition, and then turned to denying the underlying facts that Trump's videos presented.

Link

-Land of the Free

Ernie Els and Retief Goosen dragged into Donald Trump's ambush of Cyril Ramaphosa

2025-05-23

[The South African] Former world number one golfer, Ernie Els, declared himself a "proud South African" as he was dragged into the ambush of his country’s leader Cyril Ramaphosa by US President Donald Trump

...Never got invited to a P.Diddy party...
in the Oval Office.

Ramaphosa invited Els and another leading South African golfer, Retief Goosen, to accompany him to the White House meeting on Wednesday, where Trump claimed genocide is being committed against white people in South Africa.

KEEN GOLFER
The South African president had strategically chosen Els and Goosen, who are white and have six major championship titles between them, to appeal to Trump, a keen golfer who also owns several golf courses around the world.

They watched as Trump played a video that he said showed black South African politicians calling for the persecution of white people and Ramaphosa repeatedly tried to debunk the claims.

As Trump dug in, Els, who has played golf with the US president, was invited to speak from his position behind one of the sofas where the South African delegation was sitting.

Els pulled out his passport and described himself as a "proud South African" and referred to post-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela’s calls for unity in South Africa.

"I know there was a lot of anger through the transition, there was a lot of stuff happening in the apartheid days," he said.

"We grew up in the apartheid era, but I don’t think two wrongs make a right."

Link

International-UN-NGOs

Israeli ambassador to Ethiopia expelled from conference on Rwandan genocide

2025-04-08

[IsraelTimes] Israeli Ambassador to Æthiopia Avraham Neguise

…an Ethiopian-Israeli, he was naught more than a shepherd back in the old country, but after arriving in Israel he grqbbed the opportunity to be educated with both hands, and collected a sheaf of advanced degrees from around the world.

has been removed from an African Union
...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful...
conference held today in Addis Ababa commemorating the Rwandan genocide after member states refused to participate alongside him, the Foreign Ministry confirms to The Times of Israel.

“Eeewwwww! Joooos are icky! I don’t want to catch his Joooo cooties!”

The Foreign Ministry condemns Chairperson of the African Union Commission, H.E. Mahmoud Youssouf from Djibouti, saying, "It is outrageous that at an event commemorating the victims of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, to which the Israeli ambassador in Addis Ababa was invited, [Youssouf] chose to introduce anti-Israel political elements."

"This unacceptable conduct first and foremost dishonors the memory of the victims, and reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the histories of both the Rwandan and Jewish peoples," continues the Foreign Ministry.

Neguise, a former Likud politician, has served as ambassador to Æthiopia since August 2024. He attended the annual conference, entitled "Commemoration of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda," at the Nelson Mandela Hall at the African Union Headquarters in the country’s capital.

Youssouf previously served as Djibouti’s Ambassador to Egypt and Permanent Representative to the Arab League
...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing...
, while also acting as a non-resident ambassador to Sudan
...a Moslem country located in the Horn of Africa. It is noted for its affinity for rule by ex- or current generals, its holy men, and for the oppression of the native Afro population by its Arab conquerors. South Sudan, populated mostly by the natives, split off from Sudan proper, which left North and South Darfur to be oppressed by the guys with turbans...
, Leb
Leb

...The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else?...
, Syria, and ~~The Sick Man of Europe~~ Turkey
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire...
. He has also chaired the Council of Ministers of both the vaporous Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

The Foreign Ministry added that they "will take the necessary diplomatic steps with the relevant parties to clarify the seriousness with which we view this incident."

Link

Arabia

One killed, 15 injured in US airstrikes on Yemen’s capital

2025-03-25

[HodhodYemenNews] US aggression aircraft resumed their criminal raids on the capital, Sana’a, and Sa’adah province, which led to the martyrdom of at least one person and injuring 15 others, including 3 children and 2 women in an initial toll.

According to local sources in Sana’a, reported that the US aggression launched raids on the capital, targeting a residential building in the Asr neighborhood of Mo’een district.

In Saada, the aggression aircraft carried out two raids on the outskirts of the city. The US aggression later launched a raid on Sahar district and another on Saqeen district.

These raids on Saada follow a series of US aggression strikes on Saturday evening and Sunday dawn, which targeted the districts of Kitaf and Saqeen in the same province, as well as Hodeidah airport, Salif port, and areas in Ma’rib province.

The American aggression is aimed at trying to stop Yemen’s operations against Israeli targets, including Israeli ships, and Israeli-linked vessels. They describe the aggression as an attempt on the part of Washington to render Sana’a’s defenses incapable of taking on the regime in response to its bloodshed and destruction in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
.

The Times of Israel adds:

Saudi news site claims senior rebel killed in strike on residential neighborhood in capital; Trump official claims bombing campaign taking out Iran-backed group’s ‘key leadership’

US airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels pounded sites across the country into Monday, with the group saying the one attack in the capital killed at least one person and wounded more than a dozen others, as the American air campaign against the rebel group entered a second week.

The rebel-controlled SABA news agency reported, citing health officials, that the US-attributed strike on a residential neighborhood in western Sanaa killed one and injured 13, including three children.

According to the Saudi Al Hadath network, a senior Houthi official was killed in the strike on the capital. However, the report did not identify the official by name or by position.

Footage released by the rebels showed the rubble of a collapsed building and pools of blood staining the gray dust covering the ground.

A building next to the collapsed structure still stood, suggesting American forces likely used a lower-yield warhead in the strike.

The Houthis also described American airstrikes targeting sites around the city of Saada, a Houthi stronghold, the Red Sea port city of Hodeida, and Marib province, home to oil and gas fields still under the control of allies to Yemen’s exiled central government.

The American strikes entered a 10th day without a sign of stopping, part of a campaign by US President Donald Trump, targeting the rebel group that threatens maritime trade and Israel, while also trying to pressure Iran, the Houthis’ main benefactor.

So far, the US has not offered any specifics on the sites it is striking, though Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz claimed the attacks have “taken out key Houthi leadership, including their head missileer.”

That has not been acknowledged by the Houthis, though the rebels have downplayed their losses in the past and exaggerated their attacks in attempting to target American warships.

“We’ve hit their headquarters,” Waltz told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “We’ve hit communications nodes, weapons factories, and even some of their over-the-water drone production facilities.”

The campaign of airstrikes targeting the rebels, which killed at least 53 people immediately after they began March 15, started after the Houthis threatened to begin targeting “Israeli” ships again over Israel blocking aid entering the Gaza Strip.

More from the Times of Israel:

The latest US strikes came after antisemitic influencer Jackson Hinkle visited Yemen over the weekend and met with senior Houthi leaders at a conference in Sanaa entitled “Palestine: The Central Issue of the Nation – You Are Not Alone.”

Hinkle, a US citizen known to spread disinformation and conspiracy theories about Israel and Ukraine on social media, met with members of the US-listed terrorist organization at the conference in apparent violation of American law, though he currently resides in Russia.

❤️???????? It was a GREAT HONOR to meet ANSAR ALLAH’S YAHYA SAREE in Yemen. pic.twitter.com/nZISJuDCAH

— Jackson Hinkle ???????? (@jacksonhinklle) March 23, 2025

Hinkle also attended the funeral of slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon last month.

The conference on Saturday included Hamas representatives in Yemen, former South African parliamentarian and grandson of Nelson Mandela, Zwelivelile Mandla Mandela, former Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi, Brazilian analyst Deb Escobar, former Member of European Parliament Mick Wallace, and others.

The conference discussed the strategic dimensions of Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the dangers of normalization, and the role of resistance in confronting the Zionist entity, according to its press announcement.

Link

Africa Subsaharan

Trump Administration Kicks South African Ambassador Out of the U.S. After Breitbart News Report: ‘Persona Non Grata'

2025-03-15

[Breitbart] The Trump administration has ejected South African Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool out of the country, declaring him persona non grata after he gave a lecture claiming that President Donald Trump is a white supremacist leader.

The Trump administration has ejected South African Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool out of the country, declaring him persona non grata after he gave a lecture claiming that President Donald Trump is a white supremacist leader.

Rasool also had a history of supporting Hamas, which reportedly led American officials to avoid meetings with him.

Rasool’s ejection is the latest chapter in a confrontation between South Africa and the U.S. over South Africa’s expropriation laws and its alliance with hostile regimes such as Chin and Iran. South Africa equivocated on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and led international efforts to isolate Israel after the Hamas terror attack of October 7, 2023.

Courtesy of Fred, the New York Post adds:

The State Department did not have additional details about the ban, and it was unclear whether Rasool was even in the U.S. at the time the decision was made.

Rubio posted as he was flying back to Washington from a Group of 7 foreign ministers meeting in Canada.

It is highly unusual for the U.S. to expel a foreign ambassador, although lower-ranking diplomats are more frequently targeted with persona non grata status.

Rasool previously served as his country's ambassador to the U.S. from 2010 to 2015 before returning in January.

As a child, he and his family were evicted from a Cape Town neighborhood designated for white people. Rasool became an active anti-apartheid campaigner, serving time in prison and identifying as a comrade of the country's first post-apartheid president, Nelson Mandela.

He later became a politician in Mandela's African National Congress political party.

His ouster comes after Trump signed an executive order that cut aid and assistance to the Black-led South African government.

In the order, Trump said South Africa's Afrikaners, who are descendants of mainly Dutch colonial settlers, were being targeted by a new law that allows the government to expropriate private land.

The South African government has denied its new law is tied to race and says Trump's claims over the country and the law have been full of misinformation and distortions.

Trump said land was being expropriated from Afrikaners — which the order referred to as ''racially disfavored landowners'' — when no land has been taken under the law.

Link

Africa Subsaharan

South African leader seeks deal with Trump to address US anger over ICJ case against Israel

2025-02-28

”We’ll placate the big, dumb oaf with a superficial trade thing so he doesn’t notice our continued war against the Jewish entity.”

[IsraelTimes] South African President Cyril Ramaphosa says that he wants to “do a deal” with US President Donald Trump to resolve a dispute over his country’s land policy and genocide case against Israel at the World Court.

Trump cut US financial assistance to South Africa in an executive order this month, citing disapproval of its approach to land reform and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) case against Washington’s close ally.

Ramaphosa tells a conference organized by US bank Goldman Sachs in Johannesburg that he wanted the “dust to settle” after the executive order, but that the longer-term goal was to go to Washington to mend relations.

“We don’t want to go and explain ourselves. We want to go and do a meaningful deal with the United States on a whole range of issues,” Ramaphosa says. “I’m very positively inclined to promote a good relationship with President Trump.”

Ramaphosa does not say what the deal could involve, only that it could touch on trade, diplomatic, and political matters.
"Give us money"
South Africa is not hugely dependent on US aid, but some fear that its preferential trade status under the US African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) could be under threat with Trump in the White House.

The country tries to project itself as non-aligned in geopolitical conflicts, not tying its interests too closely to those of rival powers the United States, China, and Russia.

But Trump has cited the ICJ case as an example of South Africa taking positions against Washington and its allies.

Link

Africa Subsaharan

Western Media Scrambles To Dismiss White Genocide Concerns In South Africa

2025-02-17

[ZH] The western public has been hearing a lot about "genocide" in recent years, from the genocide of indigenous peoples, to the genocide of Palestinians to the genocide of trans people. The demand is that these concerns be taken seriously whether they are realistic or exaggerated, that reparations be distributed and that refugees be taken in by the millions. The underlying narrative is always the same - "White colonialism" is the ultimate culprit behind every social injustice in the world and marginalized minorities are perpetual victims that require protection.

But what happens when white people are the minority under attack?

That's a question that's simply not acceptable according to the establishment media, and any suggestion that such a thing is possible is treated as an act of xenophobia. White people can never be considered a "marginalized minority". This is the conundrum the western public often encounters when the issue of South Africa is broached.

The country's well known history of segregation and Apartheid, which was dismantled from 1990 to 1993, is publicized and dramatized constantly in the media and by Hollywood. However, the aftermath is barely discussed.

Nelson Mandela, a member of the South African Communist Party and a co-founder of the terrorist group "uMkhonto we Sizwe" in 1961, was elected the first black president of the nation in 1994 and rebranded as a civil rights hero akin to Martin Luther King. After a honeymoon period of around ten years the country's economy went into a steady spiral. Unemployment has now exploded to over 30%....
[Took 'em long enough to 'scramble'.]

Link

International-UN-NGOs

US bars entry to ICC chief over arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant

2025-02-14

[IsrelTimes] Sanctions freeze Karim Khan’s US assets, ban him from the country, a week after Trump signed order to punish court for having ‘abused its power’ in Gaza, Afghanistan probes

The US on Thursday slapped sanctions on International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Karim Khan, following US President Donald Trump
...Oh, noze! Not him!...
’s order last week to penalize the court over its decision in November to issue arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant.

The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said that any assets Khan has in the US are now frozen, and he is barred from entering the country.

Khan, who announced in May that he was seeking the warrants, is the first ICC official to be sanctioned under Trump’s order. The White House confirmed on Monday that Khan would be first on the list of ICC officials to be targeted by the order.

Trump signed the executive order last Thursday, while Netanyahu was visiting Washington. The order accused the court of having "abused its power" by issuing the arrest warrants for the Israeli leaders.

The order also accused the tribunal of having engaged in "illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America," referring to ICC probes into alleged war crimes by US service members in Afghanistan.

Republican politicians had already sought to pass separate legislation sanctioning the ICC over the arrest warrants against Israel. Last month, a bill was passed by the US House of Representatives before being blocked by Democrats
...every time you hear the phrase white people, white supremacy, white anything but paint, you're listening to a Democrat. Ask him/her/it to reimagine something for you; they do that a lot, though not well. They can hear a dog whistle a mile or two away. They invented the spoils system and Tammany Hall, and inspired the addition of the word (Thomas) Nasty to the English language. They want to stop continental drift and repeal the law of unintended side effects...
in the Senate.

In May, Khan announced he was seeking warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant for allegedly targeting civilians and using starvation as a weapon of war in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
. Israel has rejected the accusations, with some calling the arrest warrants antisemitic.

Khan also sought warrants against Hamas
Hamas

..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,...
leaders Ismail Haniyeh
...became Prime Minister of Gaza after the legislative elections of 2006 which Hamas won. President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Haniyeh from office on 14 June 2007 at the height of the Fatah-Hamas festivities, but Haniyeh did not acknowledge the decree and continued as the PM of Gazoo while Abbas maintained a separate PM in the West Bank. Zapped during the 2023-24 war, to eveyone's satisfaction...
, Muhammad Deif and Yahya Sinwar for crimes against humanity perpetrated during and after October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led forces of Evil stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.

Israel killed Sinwar in October and Haniyeh and Deif in July. However,
a clean conscience makes a soft pillow...
Hamas did not acknowledge Deif’s death until last month. As a result, the ICC dropped the charges against Haniyeh and Sinwar but issued an arrest warrant against Deif, as well as Netanyahu and Gallant, in November.

Link

Africa Subsaharan

Nelson Mandela's Dream Has Been Subverted

2025-02-09

[RedState] With the end of Apartheid in South Africa came the dream of new beginnings, a "Rainbow Nation" that would make racial division a thing of the past. In the famous phrasing of President Nelson Mandela’s 1994 Inaugural Address: "Each of us is as intimately attached to the soil of this beautiful country as are the famous jacaranda trees of Pretoria and the mimosa trees of the bushveld — a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world." The 2009 film "Invictus" helped many international audiences appreciate for the first time how South Africans of all backgrounds came together around the new flag and the new system out of common love of country during the 1995 Rugby Cup.

Unfortunately, the current leadership of the nation has abandoned Mandela’s dream in favor of democratic backsliding, antagonistic rhetoric and policies against minority groups, a troubling alignment with the world’s most vicious human rights abusers, and increasing levels of antisemitic scapegoating. Nowhere does this toxic stew of policies come together more noxiously than with South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Trump Administration has rightly targeted the ICC for dangerously perverting its intended role as it targets democracies executing self-defense rather than genuine aggressors and perpetrators of atrocities. It is also time to trace the problem back to its source and demand change from the originator of the ugly ICC case against Israel — South Africa.

South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has sought to distract from his domestic abuses by accusing Israel of "Apartheid." But Apartheid is an Afrikaans term unique to South Africa that describes an ugly system similar to segregation, whereby that country treated people differently based on their race, even prohibiting romantic relationships between people of different races. In Israel, in contrast, citizens of all races and religions have had full civil, social, and political rights since the country’s independence.

Actually, it is modern South Africa, not Israel, that is aggressively reducing the rights of minority citizens. South Africa’s Expropriation Act, signed into law by Ramaphosa on January 23, 2025, allows the South African parliament, as well as all local, provincial, and national authorities, to seize land from private citizens without any compensation if that is considered "just and reasonable." Ramaphose claims to be acting against "white privilege" and backs up these policies with inciteful rhetoric like, "Don't fear white people, their time has passed, and they no longer have power."

Link

Fifth Column

The college/Hamas nexus round-up: Jan 12 - Feb 1, 2025

2025-02-02

A very incomplete collection of whatever articles I happened across while collecting the usual mostly WoT articles for Rantburg. I’ve seen claims that even before President Trump announced that anti-Israel/anti-Jewish foreign campus agitators would lose their visas and sent home, following the summer break there were fewer incidents, but I have not spent the time to research the subject.

US colleges rush to settle federal antisemitism suits, but some pan ‘toothless’ deals
[IsraelTimes] With over 100 schools under Title VI investigations over anti-Israel campus activity, many are looking to get cases cleared before Trump can make good on threats to cut off funding.

Biden team resolves more Title VI antisemitism and anti-Arab cases before departure
[IsraelTimes] Trump administration will take over a portfolio that includes dozens more outstanding cases involving allegations of antisemitic and anti-Palestinian discrimination

In the final days of the Biden administration, the federal Department of Education has resolved a small number of its many remaining Title VI cases involving allegations of antisemitic and anti-Palestinian discrimination.

The resolutions at the University of Washington, Emory University, Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and Howard County Public Schools in Maryland come in the waning days of the administration’s closely scrutinized handling of campus issues during the Israel-Hamas war.

The Trump administration will now take over a portfolio that includes dozens more outstanding cases. Trump has signaled hostility to both higher education and public education, and has even floated the idea of shuttering the Department of Education altogether.

The Anti-Israel Institute Critics Call a ‘Terrorist Think Tank’: Inside the ICSZ Controversy
“We really idolize somebody... who actually goes to a plane and hijacks it" said ICSZ board member Rabab Abdulhadi.

A new institute dedicated to eradicating Israel has been founded by a collective of elite professors. But some pro-Israel academics have blown their whistle, with one vocal member likening the institute to a “terrorist think tank” that should be reformed.

The Institute for Critical Zionism Studies (ICSZ) was founded in 2023 by former Sarah Lawrence professor Emmaia Gelman — a self described Irish-Jewish queer New Yorker who is known to have cheered for Hamas in a protest the day after October 7th and who is known to justify Palestinian violence against Israelis as retribution.

[X]

EXCLUSIVE: Amy Wax has sued the University of Pennsylvania for race discrimination, arguing that Penn punishes speech that offends racial minorities but not speech that offends Jews.

Here is a table from the complaint, which was filed in federal court this morning.🧵 pic.twitter.com/mIdKNDftfs
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) January 16, 2025

Columbia anti-Israel activists call on followers to ‘fight and escalate’ following announcement of Israel-Hamas ceasefire.
[CampusReform] ‘[T]his is not time for us to rest! This victory is Gaza's alone, we must fight and escalate!’ the group wrote. The group also announced: ‘Ceasefire today, liberation tomorrow.’

Oakland, CA middle school teacher created ‘divisive,’ ‘unwelcoming’ environment for Jewish students: report
[CollegeFix] An atmosphere in which ‘Jewish and Israeli students were labeled as being complicit’ in Israel’s actions

An investigation into an Oakland, California English teacher’s conduct recently concluded he created a “divisive” and “unwelcoming” environment for Jewish students. The independent probe found Arvind Reddy of Montera Middle School had “posted ‘antisemitic materials’ in and near his classroom” during the previous school year, The Jewish News of Northern California reports. The posters (pictured) — which Reddy “refused to take down” — read “END GENOCIDE NOW,” “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and Nelson Mandela’s quote “Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

Harvard settles 2 lawsuits over antisemitism on campus
Among other commitments, university to adopt International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, report its responses to harassment for next five years, form official partnership with a university in Israel instead of divesting.

Both lawsuits accused Harvard of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars federal funds recipients from allowing discrimination based on race, religion and national origin. The settlements include unspecified monetary terms. Harvard did not admit wrongdoing in agreeing to settle.

Students Against Antisemitism, a Harvard group, sued last January, accusing Harvard of selectively enforcing its anti-discrimination policies to avoid protecting Jewish students from harassment, ignoring their pleas for protection, and hiring professors who supported anti-Jewish violence and spread antisemitic propaganda.

Then in June, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education filed another lawsuit accusing the university of ignoring campus antisemitism.

The lead plaintiff in the SAA lawsuit, Shabbos Kestenbaum, has refused to accept the settlement and intends to continue litigation on his own, the Crimson reported.

American Historical Association Council vetoes resolution about ‘scholasticide’ in Gaza
The council of the American Historical Association (AHA) vetoes a resolution passed earlier this month condemning Israel’s “scholasticide” in Gaza. The resolution, which was approved 428-88 at the AHA’s annual conference, accused Israel of intentionally destroying the Palestinian enclave’s education system amid the 15-month war against Hamas. However, that resolution was subject to the approval of the AHA council. Last Friday, the council concluded that the measure “contravenes the Association’s Constitution and Bylaws, because it lies outside the scope of the Association’s mission and purpose.”

NYU suspends nearly a dozen pro-Palestine students for a year after ‘sit-in’ protest during finals week.

In California and Michigan, a Surprising Force Drives Anti-Israel Campus Activism: Labor Unions
[FreeBeacon] 'You basically have auto workers across the nation subsidizing these trust fund graduate students'

The average United Auto Workers training session involves discussions on how members can negotiate strong health programs, meet federal safety standards, and investigate work accidents. For UAW chapter 4811, which serves the University of California, it involves a panel with the Palestinian Youth Movement, a leading anti-Israel group that's organized protests across the country condemning the "brutal US-Israeli genocide."
The chapter held that panel last summer as part of "four days of classes, conversations, and workshops" through which "members learned about the critical tasks ahead of us: winning strong contracts, helping hundreds of thousands of new workers form unions, and continuing to fight for justice in Palestine." Those classes came in the wake of a UAW-backed strike within the UC system that centered not on wage or working hour disputes but rather on the arrests of illegal anti-Israel protesters at the University of California, Los Angeles, months prior.

The ordeal reflects the growing influence unions like the UAW and American Federation of Teachers have on anti-Israel campus unrest. Those unions typically represent graduate students who work for their universities—a far cry from the high-paid administrators who determine school rules. And yet, they've increasingly provided institutional support for controversial activism.

Those grad students, Frank notes, launched a strike in 2022 to obtain significant increases in wages, childcare subsidies, and paid leave—provisions that he said are "bankrupting the University of California." Shortly thereafter, "they tried to go on strike again, but this time, it's for the right to discriminate against Jews with these protests."
A similar dynamic has emerged at the University of Michigan. There, the Graduate Employees' Organization (GEO), which also represents grad student workers, has promoted and endorsed anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaigns on campus. It's done so in part thanks to support from the American Federation of Teachers, the country's second-largest teachers' union, which provides the GEO with legal defense and strategic support and collects 18 percent of union dues in exchange.

Columbia University identifies 2 more activists who disrupted Israeli professor’s class
Masked anti-Israel activists barged into Professor Avi Shilon’s class on modern Israeli history last week, on the first day of the spring semester, accusing the lesson of fomenting “genocide.” The university said last week that it had identified one of the protesters, a “Columbia participant.”

The university says in a statement that its investigation into the incident has identified two more of the activists. The protesters are not Columbia students, but “from an affiliated institution,” the statement says. The protesters have been barred from Columbia’s campus and “referred to their home institution for further investigation and discipline,” the university says.

Hot Air adds:

The affiliate institutions in this case are Barnard, Union Theological Seminary, and Teachers College. In addition to condemning the behavior, the school's interim president has also discussed the possibility of bringing NYPD officers back onto the campus. Finally, there is also a new effort to create a mask policy on campus which would prevent activists from hiding their identities when they pull these stunts.

NY governor condemns NYC university system’s faculty union for Israel boycott vote
Resolution passed by CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress, representing 30,000 members, puts organization at odds with the university administration and state government. The union, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), has been a battleground for anti-Israel activism for years. Jewish professors said the boycott resolution was the latest discriminatory measure by the union, their sole labor representation. The resolution also divided the union’s delegate assembly, the governing body that voted on the measure.

The resolution passed PSC’s delegate assembly by a close vote of 73-70, on January 23, the union confirmed. The union’s executive council and principal officers opposed the resolution, the PSC told The Times of Israel.

OSU student protesters target Israeli veterans wounded on October 7
Ohio State University activists led by the campus branch of Students for Justice in Palestine demonstrate against lecture by 2 soldiers hurt in Hamas attack who are on Belev Echad American campus tour. The protest gained attention among pro-Israel students, causing attendance at the IDF veterans’ lecture to swell. The morning of the event, 45 attendees had registered, but around 130 showed up.

“We didn’t know what to expect,” Saar Arie told The Times of Israel in a phone interview, recounting how he and Maya Desiatnik arrived to find around 60 protesters outside the event in Columbus.

“The first couple seconds I was halfway scared, but after I saw the security at the place and I saw all of the great people that came to support us I wasn’t scared anymore,” he said.

Columbia anti-Israel protesters post ‘anonymous’ video of activists blocking campus sewage lines
Anti-Israel protesters at Columbia University in New York City post a video of activists vandalizing the campus by spraying red paint on a building and blocking campus sewage lines. Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of student groups led by the campus branches of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, posts the video showing a vandal dousing Columbia’s Kravis Hall with red paint. The video also shows what appears to be a row of blocked toilets. Text accompanying the post says the bathroom is at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs.

U of Michigan suspends Students for Justice in Palestine’s local chapter for 2 years
A pro-Palestinian group at the University of Michigan has been suspended for two years and will lose its funding in connection with protesters’ demands for divestiture from companies doing business with Israel. Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, also known as SAFE, was accused of violating the university’s standards of conduct for recognized student organizations following a protest last spring outside a regent’s home and a demonstration without school permission on its Ann Arbor campus.

2 High School Basketball Coaches Fired for Antisemitism and Pro-Hamas flags: Denver
[ToniAiraksinen] A Colorado School is facing backlash after their Palestinian baseball coach refused to shake hands with Jewish students on the opposing team, and another staffer also showed up to the Jewish school and decked out the rafters with keffiyehs and Palestinian flags with him.

The basketball game happened on the 22th of January, and many of my readers in the Denver area sent the story to me. Their —“Coach O”, also known as Samir Omar —arrived in a Lotus School uniform and keffiyeh has been fired (as well as Sami Jabai, another coach who wore a keffiyeh).

“The coaches were suspended for 1 day until the end of the investigation, and as of last Friday morning, January 24th, both were fired,” said Lotus School Executive Director Mehmet Nalcaci in an email he sent at 4:45pm EST Wednesday.

According to Lotus School executive director Mehmet Nalcaci, two coaches wore a keffiyeh and a Palestinian scarf flag, which may have triggered the events.

“As a public charter school, Lotus School for Excellence (LSE) does not encourage or tolerate the display of any political or religious symbols.

Encourge, Mehmet? Perhaps not. But clearly both of your coaches believed their display was tolerated or they would not have done it.

In response, we took immediate action and suspended the high school basketball coach and his assistant, both of whom are hourly part-time staff and not full-time employees.”

Link

Africa Subsaharan

Mandela's vision of Black unity fades as South Africa closes door to migrants

2024-10-24

[Reuters] Munera Mokgoko was just three when apartheid fell. She can barely remember, much less fathom, the swell of hope that accompanied Black liberation three decades ago, shaped by Nelson Mandela’s vision of social equality and pan-African solidarity.
See: "Hutu and Tutsi solidarity"
"South Africa doesn’t have any ubuntu," the 33-year-old said, using a Zulu word meaning humanity, ahead of an election in which the ruling African National Congress (ANC) is pledging to crack down on undocumented migrants from the rest of the continent.

"It’s like we don’t know how to welcome people."

Mokgoko’s Tanzanian husband is among many African migrants who have flocked here since the end of white minority rule and met with the colder side of the "Rainbow Nation", a name used by Mandela and others in the 1990s to describe South Africa’s aspirations to be a beacon of multicultural harmony.

Public resentment at immigration has become a hot issue in the run-up to the May 29 vote. It’s the first national election in which most people in South Africa — which has a median age of about 28 — have no memory of decades of apartheid, the fight for freedom or the ANC liberation movement’s rise to power in 1994.

Idi Rajebo, Mokgoko’s 34-year-old husband, and thousands of other hopefuls fleeing rural penury in much poorer nations like Tanzania and Malawi have packed themselves into decrepit minibuses, footslogged through bush and bribed border guards to reach Johannesburg, the "City of Gold".

He and dozens of others ended up crammed into a derelict apartment tower that was being taken over — or "hijacked" — by criminals, where toilets overflowed and drug addicts drooped over stairwells.

"It wasn’t nice," said Isaac Simon, 39, a Tanzanian friend of Rajebo’s who ran a kitchen on the ground floor.

"We all had the same idea: make some money and get out."

Dozens didn’t get the chance. Nine months ago, the Usindiso apartment block burst into flames, killing 77 people — mostly migrants — and leaving hundreds homeless.

Link

Government Corruption

Biden's Guilty Smile Reveals the Malevolent Creature Within

2024-06-03

[John Kass] One glaring feature of President Joe Biden’s raging dementia is this:

Despite the best efforts of puppet master Barack Obama and other handlers to obscure his condition, Biden keeps revealing the malevolent creature within.

The truth flashed uncontrollably the other day at the White House. Any American who saw Biden’s long, weird smirk celebrating the criminal conviction of his rival—former President Donald Trump—won’t forget it. If you care about this country you won’t forget it.

Because just then Biden admitted that he and the Democrats had crossed the Rubicon and taken all of us with them. And now there is no safe, painless, easy way of going back.

Some may try convincing themselves that it was just the smirk and smile of some harmless, witless old weirdo. But the weirdo happens to be president of the United States. He had already publicly released his Justice Department dogs and George Soros’ own New York prosecutor to take some old misdemeanors and Frankenstein them into phony felonies to get Trump.

Biden crossed the Rubicon to tear up our American understanding of impartial justice and the rule of law and replaced it with the political left’s operating theory that is common to all authoritarian regimes: The ends justify the means.

The media had an orgy over Trump’s conviction. It should have been X rated. The flesh eating harpies of "The View" wanted him sent to Rikers Island to be assaulted by street criminals. They laughed as they confessed to being so excited they were leaking. The audience cheered and cooed.

And once the American rule of law was torn by angry partisan teeth, we realized that we’re finally no different than any communist nation or some banana republic where it is routine to jail the political opposition.

Consider the image at the top of this column. He knew about using "justice" and "show trials" to imprison political opposition. In the U.S.S.R, the monstrous Lavrentiy Pavvlovich Beria ran Stalin’s secret police, and was credited with the famous phrase of all the authoritarians: "Show me the man, and I will give you the crime"

Beria was the most influential of Stalin’s secret police chiefs. He organized the massacre of tens of thousands of Polish and Romanian officers. The Deep State was refuge for him and he thrived there for decades in its wet dungeons, with bare electrical wires and the screams of generations of innocents. In those dark dungeons there must have been some captives who dreamed of a place like America where such things never happened, where political show trials would never, ever happen.

But they happen now in America, don’t they? Especially now in America, where the ruling class seeks to use "justice" to put political opponents in prison.

After Biden praised himself and began to walk shakily out of the room a reporter shouted a question:

"Mr. President, can you tell us, sir: Donald Trump refers to himself as a political prisoner and blames you directly. What’s your response to that, sir?"

The video is now a Trump campaign spot. The left-leaning Axios noted that Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita tweeted the video and labeled it "The face of corruption" — "a phrase you’ll hear again."

We will hear it and see it. Again and again and again. And we should. Those who don’t want to watch that video, those who don’t want Americans to appreciate Biden’s creepy smile are themselves complicit.

Please consider that creepy smile once again. Consider the president smiling. It is a smile of an evil and sentimental man, a corrupt man who has opened the borders to millions of illegals, yet tells us the border is secure, a man who has spent the last 52 years of his political/public life layered in corruption and artifice and lies.

And during the eternity of that painfully long smirk and smile, the lifetime of lies fell away to reveal the creature hidden behind the artifice. It happens with dementia patients. But this is not just some aged family member. This is your president. He doesn’t "run" the country, he is too feeble minded to run anything. Obama and the Obama crew let him pretend and talk of ice cream. He is the front man. And the American people know him for what he is: A liar.

His lies are well-known yet ignored or glossed over by his allies in the leftist corporate media who protect him. Yet happily for the rest of us, The Federalist magazine has kept a list. Here are just a few of many examples: He has lied about being arrested in Soweto trying to visit the jailed South African leader Nelson Mandela. He lied about the fatal crash that took the life of his wife, and compounded that lie by alleging that the truck driver was drunk. The driver was not drunk.

He has lied about fighting off the fabricated black street gang leader "Corn Pop," waging epic battle with a length of chain as if he were some heroic Delaware version of el Cid. He lied that he drove an 18-wheeler, lied about his uncle having been eaten by cannibals in the South Pacific.

Biden lied that he didn’t know a thing about his son Hunter selling the Biden family name in illegal influence peddling schemes with China, Ukraine and other nations. He lied that he never met Hunter’s business partners. He lied that he didn’t know anything about the laptop from hell.

He didn’t know a thing about how more than 50 American intelligence officials signed that mysterious letter dismissing the Hunter laptop as Russian disinformation. It wasn’t Russian disinformation. It was true. But the compliant leftist American corporate media protected him—and attacked, and ignored the true story in the New York Post—rather than let Americans read it for themselves. And the titans of social media helped him bury that laptop story right before the last election.

He has told a lifetime of lies. The American media has gone out of its way to carry his water. And now that the American justice system has been weaponized, as if it were a criminal court on the edge of Chinatown, or Central American banana republic or some jail in Belarus, can we just hop back across the Rubicon and pretend nothing has happened?

Or will some red-state prosecutor in some conservative jurisdiction indict Joe Biden and his crew out of office? Will the media like that?

"I think these Trump trials, and this one in particular shows we have now opened the door to the weaponization of our justice system, against political opponents, and that genie is not going to easily be put back in the bottle," said my friend Tom Bevan, president and co-founder of Real Clear Politics on my podcast The Chicago Way that I co-host with WGN executive producer Jeff Carlin.

"Part of this is you can argue, that part of this simply unique to Trump. The dems have an absolute fever and are willing to do whatever is necessary, any means necessary, to take him down."

Bevan says that Americans may believe that once Trump is "gone off the scene, whether he’s acquitted, convicted, and whether he wins election, or loses the election, whether he’s here for another four years or four months, when he’s gone that we will revert to the mean, and some of these excesses will ebb away and we’ll go back to something more normal."

But you once these precedents have been set and if Joe Biden wins re-election, Bevan asks:

"What’s going to stop a red state attorney general who wants to make a name for themselves to do what Alvin Bragg did, and invent these novel charges and move things from misdemeanors to up to felonies and use legal theories to concoct something, and get a red state attorney general to indict Joe Biden or Hunter Biden or anyone else?"

Many of us have asked that.

"Once you’ve crossed that Rubicon that seems it’ll become the rule rather than the exception," Bevan said. "A terrible terrible thing for this country. It’s what a lot of us have been screaming about and warning about for years: Don’t do this because the shoe will be found on the other foot."

As the American political left celebrated the taking down of Trump, there were perhaps a few who could see the inevitable counter reformation to come. Those who understand human nature might see what’s coming. But most of the left didn’t want to take a look at the bed they had made for themselves. They praised themselves and prattled on and on about their precious rule of law, ignoring the fact that they had grabbed the tomahawks, leaving the opposition no other choice than to grab tomahawks for themselves.

They were full of chatter about "truth" in politics. But they really don’t want to see the truth.

The truth of where Joe Biden has taken the country was written all over his face.

It was in that eerie, creepy smile written in the hollows of what once were his eyes, that smile that unwittingly acknowledged the truth of what Joe Biden and his puppet master Barack Obama have done.

They have dragged America across the Rubicon. And now there is no easy, painless way for us to return home.

Link

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