Just look at all the violence on these college campuses! Something must be done! Shut it all down! How dare they! Why ZooMass, Amherst lost their commencement speaker, oh the horror!
The picture of the MIT campus “protest” = scenes from Gaza.
I still find it interesting that someone can be against people breaking into the capital and for people breaking into buildings on campuses. But you know both sides….errrrr something like that anyhow…
Master class in horseshoe theory the last few months
Except one end of the horseshoe are mainstream republicans. When two thing that are different are declared the same, it enables and normalizes Trump and the party’s worship of him.
There's a cautionary tale in there if one chooses to see it
This is too ambiguous. Maybe it’s another attemp at bothsideism.
Just look at all the violence on these college campuses! Something must be done! Shut it all down! How dare they! Why ZooMass, Amherst lost their commencement speaker, oh the horror!
The picture of the MIT campus “protest” = scenes from Gaza.
yet the main protagonist on this forum is STILL making jokes about this topic, which doesn’t get noticed by mods, until people fight back. It’s not a joke. These are actual crimes being committed that has nothing to do with free speech. And many graduates are being robbed of a once in a lifetime commencement experience, so terrorists and live safely to plan more terrorist attacks.
Free speech supporting authoritarianism and supporting those that violated the cease fire that started this current bloodshed.
A different perspective from that of your wiki page. Some terrorist.
City University of New York School of Law (CUNY Law) student Nerdeen Kiswani is a well-known activist for Palestinian freedom. She chairs Within Our Lifetime–United for Palestine, a Palestinian-led community organization that builds support for Palestine in New York City.
As a vocal and visibly Muslim advocate for Palestinian liberation, Nerdeen is regularly targeted by Zionist groups who have smear campaigns and false accusations of antisemitism to vilify her.
Since Nerdeen started CUNY Law in Fall 2019, anti-Palestinian students and groups, like StopAntisemitism and BDSReport, have targeted Nerdeen, often by using cyberbullying tactics.
In September 2020, Nerdeen faced a character assassination campaignafter she posted an old video of herself waving a lighter while criticizing a friend for wearing a T-shirt promoting the Israeli military.
A vilification campaign based on this incident followed, and was bolstered by an Israeli-government affiliated app, which rewarded hundreds of users if they sent pre-scripted emails to the CUNY administration that falsely claimed Nerdeen had threatened a Zionist “fellow student” and called for her to be punished.
Nerdeen’s friend was neither a Zionist nor a CUNY student.
CUNY Law initially released statements condemning Nerdeen (which were later deleted) exposing her to further racist and violent vitriol.
StopAntisemitism and the Zionist Organization of America have filed a Title VI complaint against CUNY in September 2020 based on false allegations against Nerdeen.
In June 2021, after months of student pressure, CUNY Law issued a statement in support of Nerdeen, stating: “the Law School supports the free speech rights of Nerdeen Kiswani, other Palestinian students, and their Jewish and non-Jewish allies, who have been vilified for their activism.”
Outspoken Palestinian women like Nerdeen often face the fiercest attacks in Zionist harassment campaigns – ones that are fueled by violence, misogyny and racism.
CUNY campuses also have a history of censoring criticism of Israel. Israel advocacy groups commonly make false accusations of antisemitism against students and faculty solely for speech in support of Palestinian rights, prompting investigations that have ultimately cleared Palestine advocates of wrongdoing.
The Law Office of Lamis Deek is representing Nerdeen in conjunction with Palestine Legal.
Palestine Legal has proudly supported Nerdeen since she was co-president of Students for Justice in Palestine at CUNY-Staten Island in 2014.
Are the protesters breaking the law? Yes. Are they failing to obtain proper permits for public assembly. Yes
the constitution provides for peaceable assembly, not for breaking the law.
recent Harvard poll, although majority of young vote want cease fire , this issue was second to last, 15 out of 16. Are American kids being exploited and manipulated by a vocal and mostly foreign minority, and in return lose their once a lifetime commencement experience?
I don’t think you need a permit when it’s campus property.
Probably true. But is it not trespassing when the college tells you to leave? And assualting police when they try to clear the area out is definitely illegal too.
Just look at all the violence on these college campuses! Something must be done! Shut it all down! How dare they! Why ZooMass, Amherst lost their commencement speaker, oh the horror!
The picture of the MIT campus “protest” = scenes from Gaza.
I still find it interesting that someone can be against people breaking into the capital and for people breaking into buildings on campuses. But you know both sides….errrrr something like that anyhow…
Master class in horseshoe theory the last few months
Except one end of the horseshoe are mainstream republicans. When two thing that are different are declared the same, it enables and normalizes Trump and the party’s worship of him.
There's a cautionary tale in there if one chooses to see it
This is too ambiguous. Maybe it’s another attemp at bothsideism.
Good luck in November
0
Options
brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 40,840
Just look at all the violence on these college campuses! Something must be done! Shut it all down! How dare they! Why ZooMass, Amherst lost their commencement speaker, oh the horror!
The picture of the MIT campus “protest” = scenes from Gaza.
I still find it interesting that someone can be against people breaking into the capital and for people breaking into buildings on campuses. But you know both sides….errrrr something like that anyhow…
Master class in horseshoe theory the last few months
Except one end of the horseshoe are mainstream republicans. When two thing that are different are declared the same, it enables and normalizes Trump and the party’s worship of him.
There's a cautionary tale in there if one chooses to see it
This is too ambiguous. Maybe it’s another attemp at bothsideism.
Good luck in November
Interesting poll.
Now if you will excuse me, I have a tall building to jump off of. (These polls have a strange affect on my mental health, lol.)
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Just look at all the violence on these college campuses! Something must be done! Shut it all down! How dare they! Why ZooMass, Amherst lost their commencement speaker, oh the horror!
The picture of the MIT campus “protest” = scenes from Gaza.
I still find it interesting that someone can be against people breaking into the capital and for people breaking into buildings on campuses. But you know both sides….errrrr something like that anyhow…
Master class in horseshoe theory the last few months
Except one end of the horseshoe are mainstream republicans. When two thing that are different are declared the same, it enables and normalizes Trump and the party’s worship of him.
There's a cautionary tale in there if one chooses to see it
This is too ambiguous. Maybe it’s another attemp at bothsideism.
Good luck in November
Interesting poll.
Now if you will excuse me, I have a tall building to jump off of. (These polls have a strange affect on my mental health, lol.)
I cannot wrap my head around 4 years of Donald Trump in a lame duck term
Just look at all the violence on these college campuses! Something must be done! Shut it all down! How dare they! Why ZooMass, Amherst lost their commencement speaker, oh the horror!
The picture of the MIT campus “protest” = scenes from Gaza.
I still find it interesting that someone can be against people breaking into the capital and for people breaking into buildings on campuses. But you know both sides….errrrr something like that anyhow…
Master class in horseshoe theory the last few months
Except one end of the horseshoe are mainstream republicans. When two thing that are different are declared the same, it enables and normalizes Trump and the party’s worship of him.
There's a cautionary tale in there if one chooses to see it
This is too ambiguous. Maybe it’s another attemp at bothsideism.
Good luck in November
Interesting poll.
Now if you will excuse me, I have a tall building to jump off of. (These polls have a strange affect on my mental health, lol.)
I cannot wrap my head around 4 years of Donald Trump in a lame duck term
It's going to happen so get used to it.
0
Options
brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 40,840
Just look at all the violence on these college campuses! Something must be done! Shut it all down! How dare they! Why ZooMass, Amherst lost their commencement speaker, oh the horror!
The picture of the MIT campus “protest” = scenes from Gaza.
I still find it interesting that someone can be against people breaking into the capital and for people breaking into buildings on campuses. But you know both sides….errrrr something like that anyhow…
Master class in horseshoe theory the last few months
Except one end of the horseshoe are mainstream republicans. When two thing that are different are declared the same, it enables and normalizes Trump and the party’s worship of him.
There's a cautionary tale in there if one chooses to see it
This is too ambiguous. Maybe it’s another attemp at bothsideism.
Good luck in November
Interesting poll.
Now if you will excuse me, I have a tall building to jump off of. (These polls have a strange affect on my mental health, lol.)
I cannot wrap my head around 4 years of Donald Trump in a lame duck term
Just look at all the violence on these college campuses! Something must be done! Shut it all down! How dare they! Why ZooMass, Amherst lost their commencement speaker, oh the horror!
The picture of the MIT campus “protest” = scenes from Gaza.
I still find it interesting that someone can be against people breaking into the capital and for people breaking into buildings on campuses. But you know both sides….errrrr something like that anyhow…
Master class in horseshoe theory the last few months
Except one end of the horseshoe are mainstream republicans. When two thing that are different are declared the same, it enables and normalizes Trump and the party’s worship of him.
There's a cautionary tale in there if one chooses to see it
This is too ambiguous. Maybe it’s another attemp at bothsideism.
Good luck in November
Interesting poll.
Now if you will excuse me, I have a tall building to jump off of. (These polls have a strange affect on my mental health, lol.)
I cannot wrap my head around 4 years of Donald Trump in a lame duck term
It's going to happen so get used to it.
It's true, the reportage on poll seem to agree with you. But can we trust the polls? Let's see what Mr. Dan Rather thinks:
Back
a few years ago at the “CBS Evening News,” we aired a segment called
“Reality Check.” The late, great correspondent Eric Engberg would report
on taxpayer money being ill-spent. When he found waste, fraud, or
abuse, he would announce it with his signature phrase, “Time out!”
Perhaps
it’s time to take a reality check on current political polling. As
colleagues who have worked closely with me would attest, I don’t trust
polling. Never have. For many years, there was only one polling outfit,
Gallup. Now there are dozens. Which, if any, can we trust? Looking at
the last few elections, none seem to have gotten it right. Let’s call a
“time out” on polling.
Much hair will be pulled by Democrats over the latest poll from The New York Times and Siena College. It shows President Biden trailing Donald Trump in several key swing states.
Should
Democrats worry? You bet. As I’ve said for quite some time, the threat
of Trump 2.0 is real. President Biden’s accomplishments aren’t
resonating. The economy is the number one issue according to most polls,
and many don’t feel the economy is better now than it was under Trump,
no matter that objectively that is not the case. Large numbers of voters
— young people in particular — are deeply concerned about Biden’s
stance on the conflict in Gaza. At least that’s what the polls say.
But
the polls have also been wrong. Remember, pollsters predicted with 90
percent certainty that Hillary Clinton would beat Donald Trump in 2016.
Then
in 2020, Biden was supposedly, theoretically ahead by a comfortable
margin. He won, but in several swing states by only a whisker. One news
organization said the polling industry is “a wreck, and should be blown
up.” It turns out pollsters didn’t factor in enough white,
non-college-educated voters, who apparently are less likely to answer
pollsters’ questions. They also happen to be Trump’s biggest support
base.
How about the “Red Wave” predicted in 2022? Or the surveys that said Americans cared more about the economy than abortion after Roe v. Wade was struck down? Voters said otherwise.
Analysts
from the polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight explained the 2022 election
results this way. “[A poll’s] true utility isn’t in telling us who will
win, but rather in roughly how close a race is — and, therefore, how
confident we should be in the outcome. Historically, candidates leading
polls by at least 20 points have won 99 percent of the time. But
candidates leading polls by less than 3 points have won just 55 percent
of the time. In other words, races within 3 points in the polls are
little better than toss-ups — something we’ve been shouting from the
rooftops for years.”
I am not a gambler, but those don’t seem like very great odds. Here are a couple of other important points:
Most
voters aren’t really paying attention to the race yet. Based on
historical trends, that won’t happen until the conventions this summer
at the earliest, and more likely not until after Labor Day.
Pollsters
are struggling to keep up with changing technology. Not long ago, data
was collected by calling voters at home on landlines. Now with the
ubiquity of cell phones with caller ID, answer rates for pollsters have
been plummeting. Also, some folks, maybe more than we think, just
flat-out lie, to mislead the pollsters.
You
can also point the finger at news organizations that trumpet every poll
regardless of its quality because a horse race engenders clicks.
What the latest Times/Siena
poll should be is a great motivator. Sure, don’t believe the polls, but
also don’t believe that Donald Trump’s many legal troubles will spell
his political doom. Please, get involved. Make sure you’re registered
and your friends and family are registered too.
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Just look at all the violence on these college campuses! Something must be done! Shut it all down! How dare they! Why ZooMass, Amherst lost their commencement speaker, oh the horror!
The picture of the MIT campus “protest” = scenes from Gaza.
yet the main protagonist on this forum is STILL making jokes about this topic, which doesn’t get noticed by mods, until people fight back. It’s not a joke. These are actual crimes being committed that has nothing to do with free speech. And many graduates are being robbed of a once in a lifetime commencement experience, so terrorists and live safely to plan more terrorist attacks.
Free speech supporting authoritarianism and supporting those that violated the cease fire that started this current bloodshed.
A different perspective from that of your wiki page. Some terrorist.
City University of New York School of Law (CUNY Law) student Nerdeen Kiswani is a well-known activist for Palestinian freedom. She chairs Within Our Lifetime–United for Palestine, a Palestinian-led community organization that builds support for Palestine in New York City.
As a vocal and visibly Muslim advocate for Palestinian liberation, Nerdeen is regularly targeted by Zionist groups who have smear campaigns and false accusations of antisemitism to vilify her.
Since Nerdeen started CUNY Law in Fall 2019, anti-Palestinian students and groups, like StopAntisemitism and BDSReport, have targeted Nerdeen, often by using cyberbullying tactics.
In September 2020, Nerdeen faced a character assassination campaignafter she posted an old video of herself waving a lighter while criticizing a friend for wearing a T-shirt promoting the Israeli military.
A vilification campaign based on this incident followed, and was bolstered by an Israeli-government affiliated app, which rewarded hundreds of users if they sent pre-scripted emails to the CUNY administration that falsely claimed Nerdeen had threatened a Zionist “fellow student” and called for her to be punished.
Nerdeen’s friend was neither a Zionist nor a CUNY student.
CUNY Law initially released statements condemning Nerdeen (which were later deleted) exposing her to further racist and violent vitriol.
StopAntisemitism and the Zionist Organization of America have filed a Title VI complaint against CUNY in September 2020 based on false allegations against Nerdeen.
In June 2021, after months of student pressure, CUNY Law issued a statement in support of Nerdeen, stating: “the Law School supports the free speech rights of Nerdeen Kiswani, other Palestinian students, and their Jewish and non-Jewish allies, who have been vilified for their activism.”
Outspoken Palestinian women like Nerdeen often face the fiercest attacks in Zionist harassment campaigns – ones that are fueled by violence, misogyny and racism.
CUNY campuses also have a history of censoring criticism of Israel. Israel advocacy groups commonly make false accusations of antisemitism against students and faculty solely for speech in support of Palestinian rights, prompting investigations that have ultimately cleared Palestine advocates of wrongdoing.
The Law Office of Lamis Deek is representing Nerdeen in conjunction with Palestine Legal.
Palestine Legal has proudly supported Nerdeen since she was co-president of Students for Justice in Palestine at CUNY-Staten Island in 2014.
Are the protesters breaking the law? Yes. Are they failing to obtain proper permits for public assembly. Yes
the constitution provides for peaceable assembly, not for breaking the law.
recent Harvard poll, although majority of young vote want cease fire , this issue was second to last, 15 out of 16. Are American kids being exploited and manipulated by a vocal and mostly foreign minority, and in return lose their once a lifetime commencement experience?
I don’t think you need a permit when it’s campus property.
Probably true. But is it not trespassing when the college tells you to leave? And assualting police when they try to clear the area out is definitely illegal too.
For the non student protesters , estimated to be more than half, definitely illegal.
Considering alot of the funding and organizing is from an enemy of the United States, Iran, pro Palestinian protests in NY are unnerving to say the least. But when they break the law on American soil, supported by Iran, it’s totally fine.
But these kids, they know better. Once Israel withdraws from Gaza, we will have peace and tranquillity because the Palestinians are a peaceful people and would never invade their neighbor Israel. We all know, especially our intelligent and well educated college students, that all the Palestinians want is to exist peacefully with their neighbors and Arab cousins in Egypt and Jordan.
Just look at all the violence on these college campuses! Something must be done! Shut it all down! How dare they! Why ZooMass, Amherst lost their commencement speaker, oh the horror!
The picture of the MIT campus “protest” = scenes from Gaza.
yet the main protagonist on this forum is STILL making jokes about this topic, which doesn’t get noticed by mods, until people fight back. It’s not a joke. These are actual crimes being committed that has nothing to do with free speech. And many graduates are being robbed of a once in a lifetime commencement experience, so terrorists and live safely to plan more terrorist attacks.
Free speech supporting authoritarianism and supporting those that violated the cease fire that started this current bloodshed.
A different perspective from that of your wiki page. Some terrorist.
City University of New York School of Law (CUNY Law) student Nerdeen Kiswani is a well-known activist for Palestinian freedom. She chairs Within Our Lifetime–United for Palestine, a Palestinian-led community organization that builds support for Palestine in New York City.
As a vocal and visibly Muslim advocate for Palestinian liberation, Nerdeen is regularly targeted by Zionist groups who have smear campaigns and false accusations of antisemitism to vilify her.
Since Nerdeen started CUNY Law in Fall 2019, anti-Palestinian students and groups, like StopAntisemitism and BDSReport, have targeted Nerdeen, often by using cyberbullying tactics.
In September 2020, Nerdeen faced a character assassination campaignafter she posted an old video of herself waving a lighter while criticizing a friend for wearing a T-shirt promoting the Israeli military.
A vilification campaign based on this incident followed, and was bolstered by an Israeli-government affiliated app, which rewarded hundreds of users if they sent pre-scripted emails to the CUNY administration that falsely claimed Nerdeen had threatened a Zionist “fellow student” and called for her to be punished.
Nerdeen’s friend was neither a Zionist nor a CUNY student.
CUNY Law initially released statements condemning Nerdeen (which were later deleted) exposing her to further racist and violent vitriol.
StopAntisemitism and the Zionist Organization of America have filed a Title VI complaint against CUNY in September 2020 based on false allegations against Nerdeen.
In June 2021, after months of student pressure, CUNY Law issued a statement in support of Nerdeen, stating: “the Law School supports the free speech rights of Nerdeen Kiswani, other Palestinian students, and their Jewish and non-Jewish allies, who have been vilified for their activism.”
Outspoken Palestinian women like Nerdeen often face the fiercest attacks in Zionist harassment campaigns – ones that are fueled by violence, misogyny and racism.
CUNY campuses also have a history of censoring criticism of Israel. Israel advocacy groups commonly make false accusations of antisemitism against students and faculty solely for speech in support of Palestinian rights, prompting investigations that have ultimately cleared Palestine advocates of wrongdoing.
The Law Office of Lamis Deek is representing Nerdeen in conjunction with Palestine Legal.
Palestine Legal has proudly supported Nerdeen since she was co-president of Students for Justice in Palestine at CUNY-Staten Island in 2014.
Are the protesters breaking the law? Yes. Are they failing to obtain proper permits for public assembly. Yes
the constitution provides for peaceable assembly, not for breaking the law.
recent Harvard poll, although majority of young vote want cease fire , this issue was second to last, 15 out of 16. Are American kids being exploited and manipulated by a vocal and mostly foreign minority, and in return lose their once a lifetime commencement experience?
I don’t think you need a permit when it’s campus property.
Probably true. But is it not trespassing when the college tells you to leave? And assualting police when they try to clear the area out is definitely illegal too.
For the non student protesters , estimated to be more than half, definitely illegal.
Considering alot of the funding and organizing is from an enemy of the United States, Iran, pro Palestinian protests in NY are unnerving to say the least. But when they break the law on American soil, supported by Iran, it’s totally fine.
But these kids, they know better. Once Israel withdraws from Gaza, we will have peace and tranquillity because the Palestinians are a peaceful people and would never invade their neighbor Israel. We all know, especially our intelligent and well educated college students, that all the Palestinians want is to exist peacefully with their neighbors and Arab cousins in Egypt and Jordan.
Palestinians mark 76 years of dispossession as a potentially even larger catastrophe unfolds in Gaza
By JOSEPH KRAUSS
Today
JERUSALEM (AP) — Palestinians on Wednesday will mark the 76th year of their mass expulsion from what is now Israel, an event that is at the core of their national struggle. But in many ways, that experience pales in comparison to the calamity now unfolding in Gaza.
Palestinians refer to it as the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe. Some 700,000 Palestinians — a majority of the prewar population — fled or were driven from their homes before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel's establishment.
After the war, Israel refused to allow them to return because it would have resulted in a Palestinian majority within its borders. Instead, they became a seemingly permanent refugee community that now numbers some 6 million, with most living in slum-like urban refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
In Gaza, the refugees and their descendants make up around three-quarters of the population.
Just look at all the violence on these college campuses! Something must be done! Shut it all down! How dare they! Why ZooMass, Amherst lost their commencement speaker, oh the horror!
The picture of the MIT campus “protest” = scenes from Gaza.
yet the main protagonist on this forum is STILL making jokes about this topic, which doesn’t get noticed by mods, until people fight back. It’s not a joke. These are actual crimes being committed that has nothing to do with free speech. And many graduates are being robbed of a once in a lifetime commencement experience, so terrorists and live safely to plan more terrorist attacks.
Free speech supporting authoritarianism and supporting those that violated the cease fire that started this current bloodshed.
A different perspective from that of your wiki page. Some terrorist.
City University of New York School of Law (CUNY Law) student Nerdeen Kiswani is a well-known activist for Palestinian freedom. She chairs Within Our Lifetime–United for Palestine, a Palestinian-led community organization that builds support for Palestine in New York City.
As a vocal and visibly Muslim advocate for Palestinian liberation, Nerdeen is regularly targeted by Zionist groups who have smear campaigns and false accusations of antisemitism to vilify her.
Since Nerdeen started CUNY Law in Fall 2019, anti-Palestinian students and groups, like StopAntisemitism and BDSReport, have targeted Nerdeen, often by using cyberbullying tactics.
In September 2020, Nerdeen faced a character assassination campaignafter she posted an old video of herself waving a lighter while criticizing a friend for wearing a T-shirt promoting the Israeli military.
A vilification campaign based on this incident followed, and was bolstered by an Israeli-government affiliated app, which rewarded hundreds of users if they sent pre-scripted emails to the CUNY administration that falsely claimed Nerdeen had threatened a Zionist “fellow student” and called for her to be punished.
Nerdeen’s friend was neither a Zionist nor a CUNY student.
CUNY Law initially released statements condemning Nerdeen (which were later deleted) exposing her to further racist and violent vitriol.
StopAntisemitism and the Zionist Organization of America have filed a Title VI complaint against CUNY in September 2020 based on false allegations against Nerdeen.
In June 2021, after months of student pressure, CUNY Law issued a statement in support of Nerdeen, stating: “the Law School supports the free speech rights of Nerdeen Kiswani, other Palestinian students, and their Jewish and non-Jewish allies, who have been vilified for their activism.”
Outspoken Palestinian women like Nerdeen often face the fiercest attacks in Zionist harassment campaigns – ones that are fueled by violence, misogyny and racism.
CUNY campuses also have a history of censoring criticism of Israel. Israel advocacy groups commonly make false accusations of antisemitism against students and faculty solely for speech in support of Palestinian rights, prompting investigations that have ultimately cleared Palestine advocates of wrongdoing.
The Law Office of Lamis Deek is representing Nerdeen in conjunction with Palestine Legal.
Palestine Legal has proudly supported Nerdeen since she was co-president of Students for Justice in Palestine at CUNY-Staten Island in 2014.
Are the protesters breaking the law? Yes. Are they failing to obtain proper permits for public assembly. Yes
the constitution provides for peaceable assembly, not for breaking the law.
recent Harvard poll, although majority of young vote want cease fire , this issue was second to last, 15 out of 16. Are American kids being exploited and manipulated by a vocal and mostly foreign minority, and in return lose their once a lifetime commencement experience?
I don’t think you need a permit when it’s campus property.
Probably true. But is it not trespassing when the college tells you to leave? And assualting police when they try to clear the area out is definitely illegal too.
For the non student protesters , estimated to be more than half, definitely illegal.
Considering alot of the funding and organizing is from an enemy of the United States, Iran, pro Palestinian protests in NY are unnerving to say the least. But when they break the law on American soil, supported by Iran, it’s totally fine.
But these kids, they know better. Once Israel withdraws from Gaza, we will have peace and tranquillity because the Palestinians are a peaceful people and would never invade their neighbor Israel. We all know, especially our intelligent and well educated college students, that all the Palestinians want is to exist peacefully with their neighbors and Arab cousins in Egypt and Jordan.
A Jewish American Biden political appointee resigned from her post at the Interior Department on Wednesday, saying she could no longer work for the administration because of President Biden’s continued support of Israel’s war in Gaza.
Lily Greenberg Call, special assistant to the chief of staff in the Interior Department, cited her Jewish upbringing and ties to Israel in her resignation letter. She wrote that her family escaped antisemitic persecution in Europe and came to the United States, noting that they changed their names at Ellis Island and her grandparents could not go to college.
University of California union authorizes strike over response to Gaza protests
University of California graduate students and academic workers voted overwhelmingly to approve a labor action
The union that represents University of California academic workers announced Wednesday that it had authorized a work stoppage over the administration’s crackdown on Gaza protests on campus.
Members of United Auto Workers Local 4811, which represents more than 48,000 academic workers, graduate students, postdocs, and researchers, voted to approve a strike following the arrests of hundreds of demonstrators, including union members, at UCLA and the University of California at San Diego in recent weeks.
The authorization vote doesn’t guarantee a strike, but union leadership can call for a work stoppage at any point, local union leaders said. If the union goes on strike, classes and research could face major disruption at the 10 campuses that make up the University of California system, as many of the institutions wrap up the school year.
A work stoppage at the University of California would reflect a major escalation of tensions that have emerged as universities around the country have punished students for pro-Palestine activism and turned to law enforcement to remove protest encampments.
“We [held] this vote because the university has committed a number of unfair practice violations against members of our union and violated our fundamental right to freedom of speech and protest on campus,” said Rafael Jaime, co-president of UAW Local 4811.
Heather Hansen, a spokeswoman for the University of California, said in a statement Wednesday that the university system “believes the vote currently being conducted by UAW leadership sets a dangerous precedent that would introduce nonlabor issues into labor agreements.”
“If a strike is allowed for political and social disputes, the associated work stoppages would significantly impact UC’s ability to deliver on its promises to its students, community and the State of California,” Hansen said in the statement. “This precedent would apply far beyond the University, impacting public employers across the state and their ability to deliver core services.”
On April 30, police did not intervene for hours at UCLA as pro-Palestinian demonstrators, including many union members, were violently attacked by counter protesters at an encampment. The next night, Los Angeles police officers in riot gear dismantled the camp and arrested 210 people for refusing to leave.
The UAW strike authorization stems from unfair labor practice charges filed by the union in the aftermath of the arrests. Filed with the California Public Employment Relations Board, the labor charges accuse the university of illegally changing its workplace free-speech policies at UCLA without notice.
The UAW alleges the university interfered with employees’ “right to engage in peaceful protest at the worksite” and also violated labor rights by suspending student workers who had been arrested at the San Diego campus. The university also threatened those at the San Diego campus who face disciplinary charges with eviction from campus housing.
The union is asking the university to resolve the charges to avoid a work stoppage. The union is separately demanding the university negotiate with protesters and provide amnesty for all campus employees and students who face discipline and arrest, as well as divest from weapon manufacturers, contractors and companies “profiting from Israel’s war on Gaza.”
Local UAW leaders have approved a “stand-up strike,” modeled after the limited strikes that the UAW levied last year against the Big 3 Detroit automakers. During those strikes, the union called on workers at individual work sites to walk off the job, rather than target all locations at once.
Jaime, the UAW Local 4811 co-president, said that if the union moves to strike, it “will begin calling on campuses one by one” to walk out.
Here’s some more psychos. Why am I not surprised? Who’s funding these terrorists? Israel? AIPAC? Seems Hillel’s UCLA branch didn’t get the memo.
Unmasking counterprotesters who attacked UCLA’s pro-Palestine encampment
CNN —
A young man in a white plastic mask beats a pro-Palestinian protester. Another in a maroon hoodie strikes a protester with a pole. A local instigator pushes down barricades.
Law enforcement stood by for hours as counterprotesters attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA on April 30, which erupted into the worst violence stemming from the ongoing college protests around the country over Israel’s war in Gaza.
While a criminal investigation is underway into the assaults that occurred at UCLA, the identities of the most aggressive counterprotesters have gone largely unknown. A CNN review of footage, social media posts, and interviews found that some of the most dramatic attacks caught on camera that night were committed by people outside UCLA – not the university students and faculty who were eventually arrested.
Many at the scene appeared dedicated to the pro-Israel cause, according to social media and their own words that night. The violent counterprotesters identified by CNN, which included an aspiring screenwriter and film producer and a local high school student – were joined by unlikely allies, several of whom are known throughout southern California for frequenting and disrupting a variety of protests and public gatherings.
The young man sporting the white mask and a white hoodie in widely shared video clips is Edan On, a local 18-year-old high school senior, his mother confirmed to CNN, though she later said he denies being at UCLA. Video shows On joining the counterprotesters while waving a long white pole. At one point, he strikes a pro-Palestinian protester with the pole, and appears to continue to strike him even when he was down, as fellow counterprotesters piled on.
“Edan went to bully the Palestinian students in the tents at UCLA and played the song that they played to the Nukhba terrorists in prison!” his mother boasted in Hebrew on Facebook, referencing Hamas. She circled an image of him that had been broadcast on the local news.
“He is all over the news channels,” his mother wrote in a now-deleted post.
Some counterprotesters had been spotted on campus days earlier, drawn by a high-profile pro-Israel rally as inflammatory videos and claims rapidly spread across social media.
Many at the scene Tuesday hid their faces behind masks and scarves. Some attackers sprayed protesters with chemical irritants, hit them with wooden boards, punched and kicked them and shot fireworks into the crowd of students and supporters huddled behind umbrellas and wooden planks, attempting to stay safe. For hours, they sought to pull away pieces of the barrier, scooping up fallen wooden planks and poles to use as makeshift weapons, lunging toward pro-Palestinian protesters who emerged from the camp to protect it from being breached.
As protesters chanted, “We’re not leaving” from the encampment, some counterprotesters shouted back, “You are terrorists, you are terrorists!”
Video footage shows that some counterprotesters instigated the fighting, while others did little to intervene. Then police did little as a large group of counterprotesters calmy walked away, leaving behind bloody, bruised students and other protesters.
The Los Angeles Police Department and California Highway Patrol referred all questions about the incident to the UCLA Police Department, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Law enforcement did not track injuries from the attack. But according to the encampment’s organizers, more than 150 students “were assaulted with pepper spray and bear mace,” and at least 25 protesters ended up being transported to local emergency rooms to receive treatment for injuries including fractures, severe lacerations and chemical-induced injuries.
“I actually thought someone would get killed,” said Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, UCLA Hillel’s Director Emeritus, who called 911 around midnight as he watched the violence on live TV. “They came to beat people up.”
The next day, Hillel at UCLA posted an open letter from student leaders denouncing what it called “fringe members of the off-campus Jewish community” who did not represent “the estimated 3,000 Jewish Bruins at UCLA.”
We cannot have a clearer ask for the off-campus Jewish community: stay off our campus,” it stated. “Your actions are harming Jewish students.”
‘You guys are about to get f—ed up’
In one of the more dramatic videos of the night, a protester wearing the colors of the Palestinian flag underneath an LA Kings jersey was knocked to the ground and beaten by multiple counterprotesters as he guarded the encampment.
One of those assailants was On, who rushed into the middle of the fray with his pole. When CNN showed On’s mother a video of him attacking the protester, she said Edan, who she confirmed is a senior at Beverly Hills High School, was only defending himself.His mother – who previously described a smaller group of UCLA students protesting the war last year as “human animals” on social media – said dozens of his schoolmates had also gone to campus on the 30th and that her son intends to join the Israel Defense Forces.
The school district said federal law prohibits sharing information about students, including confirming their identities. On could not be reached for comment directly. When CNN contacted On’s mother for an interview with him, she replied that her son was in Israel and that he claimed he wasn’t at UCLA despite her earlier confirmation.
The man in the LA Kings jersey was ultimately dragged into a group of counterprotesters and kicked by an aspiring Los Angeles screenwriter and producer who CNN identified as Malachi Marlan-Librett, according to a review of social media photos, footage from the protest and interviews with multiple people who knew him. According to his LinkedIn, he graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2019 and attended a UCLA professional film and television program the following year.
A man in a maroon hoodie joined Marlan-Librett in dragging the protester into the mob.
The protester was later seen in a video receiving treatment for a bloody head injury at the encampment. Marlan-Librett and the man in the maroon hoodie, along with other counterprotesters, such as an unmasked man wearing a red bandana around his neck, were seen committing multiple acts of violence throughout the night.
They became prime targets for online researchers who told CNN they had created internal nicknames such as #UCLARedBandana, #UCLANeffHat and #UCLAMaroonHoodie as they attempted to identify them.
In one violent episode captured on video, Marlan-Librett is seen carrying the end of a broom in his hand, using it to strike a protester in the head before kicking him. Even after the protester retreats, Marlan-Librett sneaks up on him from behind and strikes him in the head once again. Marlan-Librett didn’t respond to calls and texts from CNN.
In another video, the man in the maroon hoodie runs toward the encampment yelling, “You guys are about to get f**ked up.” In the over 3-hour-long livestream, the young man is in the thick of the scrum and can be seen hitting another man with a pole before arming counterprotesters with wood planks. The man could be heard yelling at protesters, “F**k you, f**king terrorists,” then, “The score is 30,000” – a reference to the number of Palestinians killed by Israel’s bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza.
Just minutes earlier, the man pepper-sprayed a journalist in the face, while she was filming the crowd. “I had to walk off because I literally could not see anything,” the local journalist, Dolores Quintana, told CNN. “And it was getting in my mouth. And so, I was starting to choke.”
She said a volunteer came out of the encampment to wash out her eyes with water and saline. Quintana took a selfie when she could open her eyes again. In the photo, her face was drenched and pale, with red blotches on her forehead.
“This was the worst situation I ever found myself in as a journalist,” she said. “I was afraid they were going to kill somebody.”
Local provocateurs in the fray
According to multiple acquaintances of the man in the maroon hoodie, he attended Los Angeles Valley College with his brother. Both brothers were enrolled at USC in the fall 2023 semester for a couple weeks before disenrolling, according to the school.
CNN could not reach the man in the maroon hoodie, and he did not have any apparent connection to UCLA.
Neither did Tom Bibiyan, a 42-year-old who was once a local Green Party official. Bibiyan was stabbed at a KKK rally where he was a counter-protester in 2016 and has since become an ardent Trump supporter. His colorful Instagram page is a mix of right-wing memes, numerous posts defending famous men against sexual assault allegations and pro-Israel content.
Video footage shows Bibiyan among those at the front line of people rushing the encampment in an attempt to remove protective metal barriers, as campus security guards watched the violence unfold.
“The moment we rushed the terrorist encampment last night at ucla to take it apart,” he captioned a video he posted to Instagram. “F**k them kids,” he said in a separate post, which has since been deleted.
A CNN journalist reached Bibiyan outside his home, wearing the same jacket he had worn at UCLA, but he refused to say why he had taken part in the violence. “You’re being a little rude, and I’m going to call the police if you don’t leave,” he said.
Other older men spotted among the mob looked familiar to local public school mom Angie Givant as she followed what happened that Tuesday night on social media: a group of right-wing provocateurs who she’d seen protesting LGBTQ rights in public schools at school board and city council meetings around Los Angeles.
“As soon as there were rumors that, you know, things were going to go down at UCLA, there was a mobilization of very familiar reactionary extremists,” she told CNN.
One of the older men, Narek Palyan, joined the group of counterprotesters despite having posted anti-Jewish tropes on his social media accounts. Palyan, who didn’t appear to engage in the violence, claimed to CNN he has a child at UCLA, though a student was not seen accompanying him that night. “I was definitely keeping the peace, at least trying to,” he said.
Student journalists attacked
UCLA junior and student journalist Catherine Hamilton said that when a firework landed a few feet away from where she was standing and she saw the men approaching in masks, it was clear to her that they were about to do something they didn’t want to be recognized for.
“In that moment when that firework went off and started ringing in my ears, I was like, something very bad is going to happen on this campus,” she said.
When the police finally arrived hours later to break up the chaos, Hamilton and her colleagues regrouped to head back to their newsroom. As they walked past a line of cops and along a well-lit street in the center of campus, just before 3:30 am, she says they were encircled by a small group of counterprotesters mainly dressed in black. She told CNN the man leading the group was someone whom she immediately recognized. He was a counterprotester who had previously verbally harassed her and taken a photo of her press badge, she said.
Within seconds, they sprayed the student journalists with a type of mace or pepper spray and flashed lights in their faces. As she tried to get away, Hamilton said, she was repeatedly struck in the chest and abdomen.
One of the journalists confronted the attackers and shoved one before he was pummeled to the ground and beaten, according to video footage of the incident.
‘I was expecting us to start working on an obituary’
The day after the attack, UCLA’s chancellor called the events “a dark chapter” in the school’s history that “has shaken our campus to its core.”
A parent who was at the encampment with their child, a UCLA student, also described the night as feeling like “a civil war movie” with embers raining down and the wounded being treated all around. The parent said they were frantic to find help, calling UCLA campus police six times in a row.
One fourth-year UCLA student – who requested anonymity due to safety concerns – told CNN he was hit in the corner of his forehead with a traffic cone. Minutes later, video captured a counterprotester smashing a wooden plank into the back of his head.
With two deep cuts on his head, he said he rushed to the hospital and ultimately received 14 staples and three stitches for the injuries.
The violence directed at the protesters and his access to medical treatment reminded him of why they had set up the encampment in the first place, trying to raise awareness about the mass deaths and destruction from Israel’s war in Gaza, and calling for the university to divest from any financial ties with Israel. “I had the privilege of going to a hospital,” he said. “In Gaza, there are zero fully functioning hospitals.”
Thistle Boosinger, a 23-year-old member of the encampment who is not a UCLA student, had her hand smashed the night of the violence. She described how her assailant took a piece of wood above his head before slamming it down on her hand. “At first, I just screamed,” she said. “And then after like five minutes where my adrenaline wore off, it was so extremely painful.”
In a video call, Boosinger held up her hand wrapped in gauze and described her injury. “My bone is broken totally in half below my knuckle … [which is] shattered into a bunch of pieces and jumbled up.”
Dylan Kupsh, a UCLA graduate student, said he linked arms with other protesters in an attempt to defend the encampment and keep people safe. “We were … trying to keep the barricade wall up because that was literally protecting our lives,” Kupsh said. It wasn’t long before he was pepper sprayed, forcing him to seek medical treatment as the attacks continued.
Kupsh and others still wonder what would have happened had the encampment been breached that night.
“I hate to say it,” said Catherine Hamilton, the student journalist, “but I was expecting us to start working on an obituary the next day because I thought something that serious would happen to the students in the encampment.”
Do you have information to share about the attack at UCLA? Email us at watchdog@cnn.com.
And now we have billionaires paying for NYPD to do their bidding. We don’t have to wait for POOTWH to be re-elected to be a banana republic. We’re already there. Fuck freedom of speech and the right to peacefully assemble to redress grievances, eh? Maybe now we know who’s funding the terrorists?
Business titans privately urged NYC mayor to use police on Columbia protesters, chats show
A WhatsApp chat started by some wealthy Americans after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack reveals their focus on Mayor Eric Adams and their work to shape U.S. opinion of the Gaza war.
A group of billionaires and business titans working to shape U.S. public opinion of the war in Gaza privately pressed New York City’s mayor last month to send police to disperse pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, according to communications obtained by The Washington Post and people familiar with the group.
Business executives including Kind snack company founder Daniel Lubetzky, hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, billionaire Len Blavatnik and real estate investor Joseph Sitt held a Zoom video call on April 26 with Mayor Eric Adams (D), about a week after the mayor first sent New York police to Columbia’s campus, a log of chat messages shows. During the call, some attendees discussed making political donations to Adams, as well as how the chat group’s members could pressure Columbia’s president and trustees to permit the mayor to send police to the campus to handle protesters, according to chat messages summarizing the conversation.
One member of the WhatsApp chat group told The Post he donated $2,100, the maximum legal limit, to Adams that month. Some members also offered to pay for private investigators to assist New York police in handling the protests, the chat log shows — an offer a member of the group reported in the chat that Adams accepted. The New York Police Department is not using and has not used private investigators to help manage protests, a spokeswoman for City Hall said.
The messages describing the call with Adams were among thousands logged in a WhatsApp chat among some of the nation’s most prominent business leaders and financiers, including former CEO of Starbucks Howard Schultz, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman and Joshua Kushner, founder of Thrive Capital and brother to Jared Kushner, former president Donald Trump’s son-in-law.
People with direct access to the chat log’s contents supplied them to The Post. They shared the information on the condition of anonymity because the chat’s contents were meant to stay private. Members of the group verified the chat’s existence and their comments.
The chat was initiated by a staffer for billionaire and real estate magnate Barry Sternlicht — who never joined directly, instead communicating through the staffer, according to chat messages and a person close to Sternlicht. In an Oct. 12 message, one of the first sent in the group, the staffer posting on behalf of Sternlicht told the others the goal of the group was to “change the narrative” in favor of Israel, partly by conveying “the atrocities committed by Hamas … to all Americans.”
Israel estimates 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. In the months since the war began, the death toll in Gaza has risen above35,000, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The chat group formed shortly after the Oct. 7 attack, and its activism has stretched beyond New York, touching the highest levels of the Israeli government, the U.S. business world and elite universities. Titled “Israel Current Events,” the chat eventually expanded to about 100 members, the chat log shows. More than a dozen members of the group appear on Forbes’s annual list of billionaires; others work in real estate, finance and communications.
Overall, the messages offer a window into how some prominent individuals have wielded their money and power in an effort to shape American views of the Gaza war, as well as the actions of academic, business and political leaders — including New York’s mayor.
“He’s open to any ideas we have,” chat member Sitt, founder of retail chain Ashley Stewart and the global real estate company Thor Equities, wrote April 27, the day after the group’s Zoom call with Adams. “As you saw he’s ok if we hire private investigators to then have his police force intel team work with them.”
Sitt declined to comment through a spokeswoman.
A half-dozen prominent members of the group confirmed on the record their participation in the chat. Multiple people familiar with the group confirmed the names of other members.
Cypriot Israeli real estate billionaire Yakir Gabay, a chat member, wrote in a statement shared by a spokesperson that he joined the group because he wanted to “share support at a difficult and painful time,” to aid the victims of Hamas attacks and to “try and correct the false and misleading information intentionally spread worldwide to deny or cover up the suffering caused by Hamas.”
Asked about the Zoom meeting with chat group members, the mayor’s office did not address it directly, instead sharing a statement from deputy mayor Fabien Levy noting that New York police entered Columbia’s campus twice in response to “specific written requests” from university leadership. “Any suggestion that other considerations were involved in the decision-making process is completely false,” Levy said. He added, “The insinuation that Jewish donors secretly plotted to influence government operations is an all too familiar antisemitic trope that the Washington Post should be ashamed to ask about, let alone normalize in print.”
Adams demonstrated a willingness to send law enforcement to deal with campus protesters from the beginning. He sent police to Columbia’s campus to disperse pro-Palestinian demonstrators on April 18, at the university’s request — about a day after protesters erected their Gaza solidarity encampment. Officers arrested more than 100 protesters. The mayor has subsequently alleged student activists were affected by “outside influences” — and that police intervention was needed to prevent “children” from being “radicalized.”
Both he and Columbia’s president have since drawn criticism — but also support — for involving police, adding to a fraught stretch for Adams, who is up for reelection in 2025 and faces an FBI corruption investigation into whether his 2021 campaign received illegal donations from Turkey. Adams has defended that campaign, saying he held it to “the highest ethical standards.”
Four days after chat members held the video call with Adams, student protesters occupied a campus building and Columbia’s president invited police back to campus to clear the building. Officers removed and arrested dozens of protesters, pushing, striking and dragging students in the process, The Post reported. One officer accidentally fired his gun.
Months before the protests at Columbia this spring, some chat members attended private briefings with former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett; Benny Gantz, a member of the Israeli war cabinet; and Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Herzog, according to chat records.
Members of the group also worked with the Israeli government to screen a roughly 40-minute film showing footage compiled by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) — titled “Bearing Witness to the October 7 Massacre” — to audiences in New York City. The film portrays killings committed by Hamas. A chat member asked for help from other members to show the film at universities; it was later screened at Harvard, a showing chat member Ackman helped facilitate, attended and promoted publicly.
Sternlicht declined to comment on the record, although a person close to him — speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the chat grouppublicly — confirmed the real estate tycoon initiated the chat. Other members of the chat, including Ackman and Schultz, confirmed their membership.
A spokesman said Ackman had not participated in the chat since Jan. 10, adding Ackman never spoke to Adams about the Columbia protests or donated to Adams’s campaign, although Ackman “likes and is supportive of the Mayor.” Joshua Kushner declined to comment.
On Oct. 12, a staffer for Sternlicht relayed a message from his boss outlining the group’s mission: While Israel worked to “win the physical war,” the chat group’s members would “help win the war” of U.S. public opinion by funding an information campaign against Hamas.
The news site Semafor reported in November that Sternlicht was launching a $50 million anti-Hamas media campaign with various Wall Street and Hollywood billionaires. The people involved, per Semafor’s reporting, include some members of the WhatsApp chat, a review by The Post found. The chat messages, the contents of which have never before been reported, appear to reveal the start of the campaign, as well as separate pro-Israel activities undertaken later by chat members. It is unclear to what extent the chat group and media campaign overlapped.
Some of the media campaign’s activities were public, including its website, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook and X accounts, which together attracted more than 170,000 followers.
High-level contacts, private briefings
At a moment of rising antisemitism, the staffer for Sternlicht wrote in one of the first chat messages that his boss was proud of his Jewish heritage and wanted to support Israel, but was also concerned about security. Anonymity, the staffer wrote Oct. 12 on Sternlicht’s behalf, “is a practical need and concern for safety of my family in an increasingly complex world.”
The staffer wrote that Sternlicht understood if other members felt similarly and promised that all contributions to the media campaign would remain anonymous. “I’m sensitive to concerns about being less effective if it appears that this is a Jewish initiative,” the staffer wrote, speaking for Sternlicht.
From the start of the chat, members sought guidance and information from officials in the Israeli government.
Some of the WhatsApp chat members said in the chat they attended private briefings about the Gaza war with Israeli war cabinet member Gantz, former prime minister Bennett and Herzog, the ambassador. The chat log shows Zoom invites for these meetings.
“Most appreciative for the behind the scenes briefing by Naftali Bennett,” Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks, wrote to the group on Oct. 16. “Quite extraordinary!”
Bennett did not respond to a request for comment. Gantz could not be reached for comment. A spokesperson for the Israeli Embassy in Washington said the briefing Herzog gave chat members was “one of dozens” the ambassador delivered that month, adding that “communities here in the U.S. understandably wanted to learn more about what was happening on the ground in Israel.”
A spokesperson for Schultz confirmed in a statement that he attended the briefing with Bennett, but said Schultz “did not participate in, or contribute financially to, any of the group’s work.”
In late October, the chat records show, chat members appear to have suggested to Israeli officials they should hold a private New York City screening for media of “Bearing Witness,” the IDF film featuring graphic footage recorded by Hamas gunmen on body cameras and cellphones as they attacked Israel. Sitt wrote in a message to the group on Oct. 27 that Israeli officials wanted to thank them “for coming up with the concept of the press event in NYC.”
The next month, the group showed the film in New York, records show. Sitt wrote on Nov. 10 that the Israeli government “arranged for us” to screen the film in Gotham Hall on Nov. 17, adding in a later message the showing “will be listed as a IDF event not affiliated to Facts for Peace to keep them separate.”
In ensuing months, group members wrote in the chat to flag news articles or social media posts about Israel, events in Gaza or, later, college campus protests.
In the chat, discussion of how Adams was handling the Columbia protests — and how group members could help — took off the following day, after student protesters built a new encampment to replace the demolished one.
Lubetzky, of the snack company Kind, posted in the chat sharing a link to an Instagram video showing an Israeli Arab journalist getting hit by a man the video caption claims is an “anti-Israel protester.” Not long after, billionaire Blavatnik posted a picture of Adams and wrote, “He needs help.”
Sitt responded that he had already “been helping but can use more support.” He asked if others were “open to giving” to Adams.
Gabay, the Cypriot Israeli real estate billionaire, replied: “Pls send the info. Thanks.” Then Blavatnik posted an ActBlue link allowing donations to the Eric Adams 2025 committee.
Lubetzky messaged: “If there is a group to contribute through, or a way to ensure our contributions are known to be related to his efforts to fight antisemitism and hate, pls let us know and I will support meaningfully alongside you guys.” Sitt replied that he was arranging a “code” for such donations; asked about this message, Vito Pitta, counsel to Adams’s 2025 campaign, said “there is no ‘special code’ for contributions.”
A spokeswoman for Blavatnik said he contributed $2,100 to Adams’s reelection campaign in April. She said the donation was given “to endorse Mayor Adams’ stalwart support of Israel and firm stand against antisemitism.”
Spokespeople for Lubetzky, Sitt and Gabay said they did not donate to Adams. Loeb declined to comment.
In the chat, discussion turned to the fact that Columbia had to grant Adams permission before he could send city police to the campus.
One member asked if the group could do anything to pressure Columbia trustees to cooperate with the mayor. In reply, former congressman Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), CEO of the American Jewish Committee, shared a PDF of a letterhis organization had sent that day to Columbia President Minouche Shafik calling on her to “shut these protests down.”
“Also in touch with the board,” Deutch wrote to the chat group. “So NYPD can return.”
Asked for comment, a spokeswoman for Deutch wrote in an email to The Post that the American Jewish Committee “values all opportunities to engage with various individuals and institutions who support the Jewish people and the State of Israel.” Asked about the chat group and its activities, a Columbia spokesperson wrote, “We have no knowledge of this.”
A Zoom video call with chat group members and Adams took place a little after 11 a.m. April 26, according to chat records.
It is unclear how many members attended the meeting, which lasted for roughly 45 minutes, chat records show. Those present included at least Blavatnik, Sitt, Loeb and Lubetzky, according to the chat logs.
Sitt wrote minutes after the call ended to summarize items “discussed today,” including donating to Adams, using group members’ “leverage” to help persuade Columbia’s president to let New York police back on campus and paying for “investigative efforts” to assist the city.
Lubetzky replied listing concrete actions group members should take. These included resharing a link to offer financial support to Adams, calling and writing to Columbia’s president and board of trustees, and “getting Black Leaders to condemn Anti-Semitism.” He named several people he would contact and asked if anyone in the group knew Jay-Z, LeBron James or Alicia Keys.
Asked about his comments, Lubetzky wrote in a statement to The Post that “building bridges between the Black and Jewish communities … is more important than ever.”
Blavatnik, through a spokeswoman, confirmed he attended the Zoom with Adams but said he did not “participate in a conversation about private investigators and is unaware of discussions related to that subject.” The spokeswoman noted other people on the Zoom said things Blavatnik “did not weigh in on or agree with.” She said the billionaire, a Columbia alumnus and donor, only joined the Zoom to understand how Adams “was thinking about the Columbia protests.”
The chat does not record who donated money to Adams nor how much. The New York City Campaign Finance Board website shows donations sent only up to January of this year; more recent donations will not become public until July.
Pitta, the Adams campaign lawyer, said the campaign had not received donations from Lubetzky, Loeb, Sitt or Gabay. He confirmed Blavatnik had donated but did not respond to questions asking about the timing of Blavatnik’s donation.
A day after the April 26 Zoom with Adams, Loeb wrote the chat group to share reflections on what transpired during the call. He wrote that it was “a sad state that we feel the need to grovel to ask our elected officials to do their jobs.” He added, “I’ll be grateful when the perpetrators are dragged off campus.”
Police returned to Columbia on April 30, arresting dozens of demonstrators who had occupied a university building. Columbia President Shafik had requested law enforcement’s aid in a letter, writing that the takeover of Hamilton Hall raised “serious safety concerns.” She asked police to remain on campus at least through May 17.
The morning afterward, Adams gave a news conferencesummarizing the action. “We went in and conducted an operation,” he said, “to remove those who have turned the peaceful protests into a place where antisemitism and anti-Israel attitudes were pervasive.”
In early May, seven months since its inception, the chat was shut down. A person close to Sternlicht said he decided to shutter the group because the activities were moving beyond the initial objectives and the people who started it — including himself — were no longer actively participating, and hadn’t been for months.
“We are incredibly grateful for the dialogue and support that this group has provided over the past 7 months,” wrote a staffer for Sternlicht. The staffer wrote that members should not hesitate to reach out if they needed anything.
“We are stronger together,” the staffer wrote in closing.
Just look at all the violence on these college campuses! Something must be done! Shut it all down! How dare they! Why ZooMass, Amherst lost their commencement speaker, oh the horror!
The picture of the MIT campus “protest” = scenes from Gaza.
I still find it interesting that someone can be against people breaking into the capital and for people breaking into buildings on campuses. But you know both sides….errrrr something like that anyhow…
Master class in horseshoe theory the last few months
Except one end of the horseshoe are mainstream republicans. When two thing that are different are declared the same, it enables and normalizes Trump and the party’s worship of him.
There's a cautionary tale in there if one chooses to see it
This is too ambiguous. Maybe it’s another attemp at bothsideism.
Good luck in November
Interesting poll.
Now if you will excuse me, I have a tall building to jump off of. (These polls have a strange affect on my mental health, lol.)
I cannot wrap my head around 4 years of Donald Trump in a lame duck term
Wow, look at these terrorists. POOTWH claims he’d deport them.
Discord from last month’s mob attack on pro-Palestinian student activists encamped at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) flared again on Tuesday as academic workers staged a strike on campus protesting UCLA’s response to the violence.
Unionized academic researchers, graduate teaching assistants and post-doctoral scholars at UCLA walked off the job over what they regard as unfair labor practices in the university’s handling of pro-Palestinian demonstrations in recent weeks, organizers said.
They were joined by fellow academic workers at two other University of California campuses – UC Davis near Sacramento, and UC Santa Cruz, where the protest strike began on 20 May.
The strikers are demanding amnesty for grad students and other academic workers who were arrested or face discipline for their involvement in the protests, which union leaders say were peaceful except when counter-demonstrators and other instigators were allowed to provoke unrest.
The state public employee relations board ordered the University of California and the strikers to take part in mediated talks. A representative for the strikers said the parties met once over the weekend.
The strike was organized by the United Auto Workers (UAW) union local 4811, which represents some 48,000 non-tenured academic employees total across 10 University of California campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The UAW local includes about 6,400 academic workers at UCLA, 5,700 at Davis and about 2,000 at Santa Cruz. A union representative said thousands were withholding their work as of Monday. Several hundred attended a march and midday rally on the UCLA campus on Tuesday.
The expanding work stoppage marks the first union-backed protest in solidarity with the recent wave of student-led demonstrations on dozens of US campuses against Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Union leaders said a major impetus for the strike was the arrest of 210 people, including campus-employed grad students, at the scene of a Palestinian solidarity protest camp torn down by police at UCLA on 2 May.
About 24 hours earlier, on the night of 30 April, masked assailants armed with sticks and clubs attacked the encampment and its occupants, sparking a bloody clash that went on for at least three hours before police moved in.
The university has since reassigned the chief of the campus police department and opened an investigation into law enforcement’s reaction to the violence.
Last week, three weeks after the melee, campus police announced their first, and so far only, arrest of someone accused of taking part in the attack – a man they say was seen in video footage beating victims with a wooden pole.
Separately on Tuesday in Detroit, Wayne State University suspended in-person classes and directed staff to work remotely to avoid any disruptions that might be posed by a pro-Palestinian encampment there.
US representative Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat of Palestinian descent, joined those protests on Monday and Tuesday.
Comments
Time Out!
Treat the polls as a motivator, not a misery
Back a few years ago at the “CBS Evening News,” we aired a segment called “Reality Check.” The late, great correspondent Eric Engberg would report on taxpayer money being ill-spent. When he found waste, fraud, or abuse, he would announce it with his signature phrase, “Time out!”
Perhaps it’s time to take a reality check on current political polling. As colleagues who have worked closely with me would attest, I don’t trust polling. Never have. For many years, there was only one polling outfit, Gallup. Now there are dozens. Which, if any, can we trust? Looking at the last few elections, none seem to have gotten it right. Let’s call a “time out” on polling.
Much hair will be pulled by Democrats over the latest poll from The New York Times and Siena College. It shows President Biden trailing Donald Trump in several key swing states.
Should Democrats worry? You bet. As I’ve said for quite some time, the threat of Trump 2.0 is real. President Biden’s accomplishments aren’t resonating. The economy is the number one issue according to most polls, and many don’t feel the economy is better now than it was under Trump, no matter that objectively that is not the case. Large numbers of voters — young people in particular — are deeply concerned about Biden’s stance on the conflict in Gaza. At least that’s what the polls say.
But the polls have also been wrong. Remember, pollsters predicted with 90 percent certainty that Hillary Clinton would beat Donald Trump in 2016.
Then in 2020, Biden was supposedly, theoretically ahead by a comfortable margin. He won, but in several swing states by only a whisker. One news organization said the polling industry is “a wreck, and should be blown up.” It turns out pollsters didn’t factor in enough white, non-college-educated voters, who apparently are less likely to answer pollsters’ questions. They also happen to be Trump’s biggest support base.
How about the “Red Wave” predicted in 2022? Or the surveys that said Americans cared more about the economy than abortion after Roe v. Wade was struck down? Voters said otherwise.
Analysts from the polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight explained the 2022 election results this way. “[A poll’s] true utility isn’t in telling us who will win, but rather in roughly how close a race is — and, therefore, how confident we should be in the outcome. Historically, candidates leading polls by at least 20 points have won 99 percent of the time. But candidates leading polls by less than 3 points have won just 55 percent of the time. In other words, races within 3 points in the polls are little better than toss-ups — something we’ve been shouting from the rooftops for years.”
I am not a gambler, but those don’t seem like very great odds. Here are a couple of other important points:
Most voters aren’t really paying attention to the race yet. Based on historical trends, that won’t happen until the conventions this summer at the earliest, and more likely not until after Labor Day.
Pollsters are struggling to keep up with changing technology. Not long ago, data was collected by calling voters at home on landlines. Now with the ubiquity of cell phones with caller ID, answer rates for pollsters have been plummeting. Also, some folks, maybe more than we think, just flat-out lie, to mislead the pollsters.
You can also point the finger at news organizations that trumpet every poll regardless of its quality because a horse race engenders clicks.
What the latest Times/Siena poll should be is a great motivator. Sure, don’t believe the polls, but also don’t believe that Donald Trump’s many legal troubles will spell his political doom. Please, get involved. Make sure you’re registered and your friends and family are registered too.
But these kids, they know better. Once Israel withdraws from Gaza, we will have peace and tranquillity because the Palestinians are a peaceful people and would never invade their neighbor Israel. We all know, especially our intelligent and well educated college students, that all the Palestinians want is to exist peacefully with their neighbors and Arab cousins in Egypt and Jordan.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Palestinians on Wednesday will mark the 76th year of their mass expulsion from what is now Israel, an event that is at the core of their national struggle. But in many ways, that experience pales in comparison to the calamity now unfolding in Gaza.
Palestinians refer to it as the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe. Some 700,000 Palestinians — a majority of the prewar population — fled or were driven from their homes before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel's establishment.
After the war, Israel refused to allow them to return because it would have resulted in a Palestinian majority within its borders. Instead, they became a seemingly permanent refugee community that now numbers some 6 million, with most living in slum-like urban refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
In Gaza, the refugees and their descendants make up around three-quarters of the population.
https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-nakba-history-b5cea9556e516655c25598d5dbe54192
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A Jewish American Biden political appointee resigned from her post at the Interior Department on Wednesday, saying she could no longer work for the administration because of President Biden’s continued support of Israel’s war in Gaza.
Lily Greenberg Call, special assistant to the chief of staff in the Interior Department, cited her Jewish upbringing and ties to Israel in her resignation letter. She wrote that her family escaped antisemitic persecution in Europe and came to the United States, noting that they changed their names at Ellis Island and her grandparents could not go to college.
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https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2024/05/15/university-of-michigan-anti-israel-protest-danger/73704160007/
University of California union authorizes strike over response to Gaza protests
University of California graduate students and academic workers voted overwhelmingly to approve a labor action
The union that represents University of California academic workers announced Wednesday that it had authorized a work stoppage over the administration’s crackdown on Gaza protests on campus.
Members of United Auto Workers Local 4811, which represents more than 48,000 academic workers, graduate students, postdocs, and researchers, voted to approve a strike following the arrests of hundreds of demonstrators, including union members, at UCLA and the University of California at San Diego in recent weeks.
The authorization vote doesn’t guarantee a strike, but union leadership can call for a work stoppage at any point, local union leaders said. If the union goes on strike, classes and research could face major disruption at the 10 campuses that make up the University of California system, as many of the institutions wrap up the school year.
A work stoppage at the University of California would reflect a major escalation of tensions that have emerged as universities around the country have punished students for pro-Palestine activism and turned to law enforcement to remove protest encampments.
“We [held] this vote because the university has committed a number of unfair practice violations against members of our union and violated our fundamental right to freedom of speech and protest on campus,” said Rafael Jaime, co-president of UAW Local 4811.
Heather Hansen, a spokeswoman for the University of California, said in a statement Wednesday that the university system “believes the vote currently being conducted by UAW leadership sets a dangerous precedent that would introduce nonlabor issues into labor agreements.”
“If a strike is allowed for political and social disputes, the associated work stoppages would significantly impact UC’s ability to deliver on its promises to its students, community and the State of California,” Hansen said in the statement. “This precedent would apply far beyond the University, impacting public employers across the state and their ability to deliver core services.”
On April 30, police did not intervene for hours at UCLA as pro-Palestinian demonstrators, including many union members, were violently attacked by counter protesters at an encampment. The next night, Los Angeles police officers in riot gear dismantled the camp and arrested 210 people for refusing to leave.
The UAW strike authorization stems from unfair labor practice charges filed by the union in the aftermath of the arrests. Filed with the California Public Employment Relations Board, the labor charges accuse the university of illegally changing its workplace free-speech policies at UCLA without notice.
The UAW alleges the university interfered with employees’ “right to engage in peaceful protest at the worksite” and also violated labor rights by suspending student workers who had been arrested at the San Diego campus. The university also threatened those at the San Diego campus who face disciplinary charges with eviction from campus housing.
The union is asking the university to resolve the charges to avoid a work stoppage. The union is separately demanding the university negotiate with protesters and provide amnesty for all campus employees and students who face discipline and arrest, as well as divest from weapon manufacturers, contractors and companies “profiting from Israel’s war on Gaza.”
Local UAW leaders have approved a “stand-up strike,” modeled after the limited strikes that the UAW levied last year against the Big 3 Detroit automakers. During those strikes, the union called on workers at individual work sites to walk off the job, rather than target all locations at once.
Jaime, the UAW Local 4811 co-president, said that if the union moves to strike, it “will begin calling on campuses one by one” to walk out.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/05/15/university-california-uaw-union-strike/
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Unmasking counterprotesters who attacked UCLA’s pro-Palestine encampment
A young man in a white plastic mask beats a pro-Palestinian protester. Another in a maroon hoodie strikes a protester with a pole. A local instigator pushes down barricades.
Law enforcement stood by for hours as counterprotesters attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA on April 30, which erupted into the worst violence stemming from the ongoing college protests around the country over Israel’s war in Gaza.
While a criminal investigation is underway into the assaults that occurred at UCLA, the identities of the most aggressive counterprotesters have gone largely unknown. A CNN review of footage, social media posts, and interviews found that some of the most dramatic attacks caught on camera that night were committed by people outside UCLA – not the university students and faculty who were eventually arrested.
Many at the scene appeared dedicated to the pro-Israel cause, according to social media and their own words that night. The violent counterprotesters identified by CNN, which included an aspiring screenwriter and film producer and a local high school student – were joined by unlikely allies, several of whom are known throughout southern California for frequenting and disrupting a variety of protests and public gatherings.
The young man sporting the white mask and a white hoodie in widely shared video clips is Edan On, a local 18-year-old high school senior, his mother confirmed to CNN, though she later said he denies being at UCLA. Video shows On joining the counterprotesters while waving a long white pole. At one point, he strikes a pro-Palestinian protester with the pole, and appears to continue to strike him even when he was down, as fellow counterprotesters piled on.
“Edan went to bully the Palestinian students in the tents at UCLA and played the song that they played to the Nukhba terrorists in prison!” his mother boasted in Hebrew on Facebook, referencing Hamas. She circled an image of him that had been broadcast on the local news.
“He is all over the news channels,” his mother wrote in a now-deleted post.
Some counterprotesters had been spotted on campus days earlier, drawn by a high-profile pro-Israel rally as inflammatory videos and claims rapidly spread across social media.
Many at the scene Tuesday hid their faces behind masks and scarves. Some attackers sprayed protesters with chemical irritants, hit them with wooden boards, punched and kicked them and shot fireworks into the crowd of students and supporters huddled behind umbrellas and wooden planks, attempting to stay safe. For hours, they sought to pull away pieces of the barrier, scooping up fallen wooden planks and poles to use as makeshift weapons, lunging toward pro-Palestinian protesters who emerged from the camp to protect it from being breached.
As protesters chanted, “We’re not leaving” from the encampment, some counterprotesters shouted back, “You are terrorists, you are terrorists!”
Video footage shows that some counterprotesters instigated the fighting, while others did little to intervene. Then police did little as a large group of counterprotesters calmy walked away, leaving behind bloody, bruised students and other protesters.
The Los Angeles Police Department and California Highway Patrol referred all questions about the incident to the UCLA Police Department, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Law enforcement did not track injuries from the attack. But according to the encampment’s organizers, more than 150 students “were assaulted with pepper spray and bear mace,” and at least 25 protesters ended up being transported to local emergency rooms to receive treatment for injuries including fractures, severe lacerations and chemical-induced injuries.
“I actually thought someone would get killed,” said Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, UCLA Hillel’s Director Emeritus, who called 911 around midnight as he watched the violence on live TV. “They came to beat people up.”
The next day, Hillel at UCLA posted an open letter from student leaders denouncing what it called “fringe members of the off-campus Jewish community” who did not represent “the estimated 3,000 Jewish Bruins at UCLA.”
We cannot have a clearer ask for the off-campus Jewish community: stay off our campus,” it stated. “Your actions are harming Jewish students.”
‘You guys are about to get f—ed up’
In one of the more dramatic videos of the night, a protester wearing the colors of the Palestinian flag underneath an LA Kings jersey was knocked to the ground and beaten by multiple counterprotesters as he guarded the encampment.
One of those assailants was On, who rushed into the middle of the fray with his pole. When CNN showed On’s mother a video of him attacking the protester, she said Edan, who she confirmed is a senior at Beverly Hills High School, was only defending himself. His mother – who previously described a smaller group of UCLA students protesting the war last year as “human animals” on social media – said dozens of his schoolmates had also gone to campus on the 30th and that her son intends to join the Israel Defense Forces.
The school district said federal law prohibits sharing information about students, including confirming their identities. On could not be reached for comment directly. When CNN contacted On’s mother for an interview with him, she replied that her son was in Israel and that he claimed he wasn’t at UCLA despite her earlier confirmation.
The man in the LA Kings jersey was ultimately dragged into a group of counterprotesters and kicked by an aspiring Los Angeles screenwriter and producer who CNN identified as Malachi Marlan-Librett, according to a review of social media photos, footage from the protest and interviews with multiple people who knew him. According to his LinkedIn, he graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2019 and attended a UCLA professional film and television program the following year.
A man in a maroon hoodie joined Marlan-Librett in dragging the protester into the mob.
The protester was later seen in a video receiving treatment for a bloody head injury at the encampment. Marlan-Librett and the man in the maroon hoodie, along with other counterprotesters, such as an unmasked man wearing a red bandana around his neck, were seen committing multiple acts of violence throughout the night.
They became prime targets for online researchers who told CNN they had created internal nicknames such as #UCLARedBandana, #UCLANeffHat and #UCLAMaroonHoodie as they attempted to identify them.
In one violent episode captured on video, Marlan-Librett is seen carrying the end of a broom in his hand, using it to strike a protester in the head before kicking him. Even after the protester retreats, Marlan-Librett sneaks up on him from behind and strikes him in the head once again. Marlan-Librett didn’t respond to calls and texts from CNN.
In another video, the man in the maroon hoodie runs toward the encampment yelling, “You guys are about to get f**ked up.” In the over 3-hour-long livestream, the young man is in the thick of the scrum and can be seen hitting another man with a pole before arming counterprotesters with wood planks. The man could be heard yelling at protesters, “F**k you, f**king terrorists,” then, “The score is 30,000” – a reference to the number of Palestinians killed by Israel’s bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza.
Just minutes earlier, the man pepper-sprayed a journalist in the face, while she was filming the crowd. “I had to walk off because I literally could not see anything,” the local journalist, Dolores Quintana, told CNN. “And it was getting in my mouth. And so, I was starting to choke.”
She said a volunteer came out of the encampment to wash out her eyes with water and saline. Quintana took a selfie when she could open her eyes again. In the photo, her face was drenched and pale, with red blotches on her forehead.
“This was the worst situation I ever found myself in as a journalist,” she said. “I was afraid they were going to kill somebody.”
Local provocateurs in the fray
According to multiple acquaintances of the man in the maroon hoodie, he attended Los Angeles Valley College with his brother. Both brothers were enrolled at USC in the fall 2023 semester for a couple weeks before disenrolling, according to the school.
CNN could not reach the man in the maroon hoodie, and he did not have any apparent connection to UCLA.
Neither did Tom Bibiyan, a 42-year-old who was once a local Green Party official. Bibiyan was stabbed at a KKK rally where he was a counter-protester in 2016 and has since become an ardent Trump supporter. His colorful Instagram page is a mix of right-wing memes, numerous posts defending famous men against sexual assault allegations and pro-Israel content.
Video footage shows Bibiyan among those at the front line of people rushing the encampment in an attempt to remove protective metal barriers, as campus security guards watched the violence unfold.
“The moment we rushed the terrorist encampment last night at ucla to take it apart,” he captioned a video he posted to Instagram. “F**k them kids,” he said in a separate post, which has since been deleted.
A CNN journalist reached Bibiyan outside his home, wearing the same jacket he had worn at UCLA, but he refused to say why he had taken part in the violence. “You’re being a little rude, and I’m going to call the police if you don’t leave,” he said.
Other older men spotted among the mob looked familiar to local public school mom Angie Givant as she followed what happened that Tuesday night on social media: a group of right-wing provocateurs who she’d seen protesting LGBTQ rights in public schools at school board and city council meetings around Los Angeles.
“As soon as there were rumors that, you know, things were going to go down at UCLA, there was a mobilization of very familiar reactionary extremists,” she told CNN.
One of the older men, Narek Palyan, joined the group of counterprotesters despite having posted anti-Jewish tropes on his social media accounts. Palyan, who didn’t appear to engage in the violence, claimed to CNN he has a child at UCLA, though a student was not seen accompanying him that night. “I was definitely keeping the peace, at least trying to,” he said.
Student journalists attacked
UCLA junior and student journalist Catherine Hamilton said that when a firework landed a few feet away from where she was standing and she saw the men approaching in masks, it was clear to her that they were about to do something they didn’t want to be recognized for.
“In that moment when that firework went off and started ringing in my ears, I was like, something very bad is going to happen on this campus,” she said.
When the police finally arrived hours later to break up the chaos, Hamilton and her colleagues regrouped to head back to their newsroom. As they walked past a line of cops and along a well-lit street in the center of campus, just before 3:30 am, she says they were encircled by a small group of counterprotesters mainly dressed in black. She told CNN the man leading the group was someone whom she immediately recognized. He was a counterprotester who had previously verbally harassed her and taken a photo of her press badge, she said.
Within seconds, they sprayed the student journalists with a type of mace or pepper spray and flashed lights in their faces. As she tried to get away, Hamilton said, she was repeatedly struck in the chest and abdomen.
One of the journalists confronted the attackers and shoved one before he was pummeled to the ground and beaten, according to video footage of the incident.
‘I was expecting us to start working on an obituary’
The day after the attack, UCLA’s chancellor called the events “a dark chapter” in the school’s history that “has shaken our campus to its core.”
A parent who was at the encampment with their child, a UCLA student, also described the night as feeling like “a civil war movie” with embers raining down and the wounded being treated all around. The parent said they were frantic to find help, calling UCLA campus police six times in a row.
One fourth-year UCLA student – who requested anonymity due to safety concerns – told CNN he was hit in the corner of his forehead with a traffic cone. Minutes later, video captured a counterprotester smashing a wooden plank into the back of his head.
With two deep cuts on his head, he said he rushed to the hospital and ultimately received 14 staples and three stitches for the injuries.
The violence directed at the protesters and his access to medical treatment reminded him of why they had set up the encampment in the first place, trying to raise awareness about the mass deaths and destruction from Israel’s war in Gaza, and calling for the university to divest from any financial ties with Israel. “I had the privilege of going to a hospital,” he said. “In Gaza, there are zero fully functioning hospitals.”
Thistle Boosinger, a 23-year-old member of the encampment who is not a UCLA student, had her hand smashed the night of the violence. She described how her assailant took a piece of wood above his head before slamming it down on her hand. “At first, I just screamed,” she said. “And then after like five minutes where my adrenaline wore off, it was so extremely painful.”
In a video call, Boosinger held up her hand wrapped in gauze and described her injury. “My bone is broken totally in half below my knuckle … [which is] shattered into a bunch of pieces and jumbled up.”
Dylan Kupsh, a UCLA graduate student, said he linked arms with other protesters in an attempt to defend the encampment and keep people safe. “We were … trying to keep the barricade wall up because that was literally protecting our lives,” Kupsh said. It wasn’t long before he was pepper sprayed, forcing him to seek medical treatment as the attacks continued.
Kupsh and others still wonder what would have happened had the encampment been breached that night.
“I hate to say it,” said Catherine Hamilton, the student journalist, “but I was expecting us to start working on an obituary the next day because I thought something that serious would happen to the students in the encampment.”
Do you have information to share about the attack at UCLA? Email us at watchdog@cnn.com.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/16/us/ucla-student-protests-counterprotesters-invs/index.html
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Business titans privately urged NYC mayor to use police on Columbia protesters, chats show
A WhatsApp chat started by some wealthy Americans after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack reveals their focus on Mayor Eric Adams and their work to shape U.S. opinion of the Gaza war.
A group of billionaires and business titans working to shape U.S. public opinion of the war in Gaza privately pressed New York City’s mayor last month to send police to disperse pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, according to communications obtained by The Washington Post and people familiar with the group.
Business executives including Kind snack company founder Daniel Lubetzky, hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, billionaire Len Blavatnik and real estate investor Joseph Sitt held a Zoom video call on April 26 with Mayor Eric Adams (D), about a week after the mayor first sent New York police to Columbia’s campus, a log of chat messages shows. During the call, some attendees discussed making political donations to Adams, as well as how the chat group’s members could pressure Columbia’s president and trustees to permit the mayor to send police to the campus to handle protesters, according to chat messages summarizing the conversation.
One member of the WhatsApp chat group told The Post he donated $2,100, the maximum legal limit, to Adams that month. Some members also offered to pay for private investigators to assist New York police in handling the protests, the chat log shows — an offer a member of the group reported in the chat that Adams accepted. The New York Police Department is not using and has not used private investigators to help manage protests, a spokeswoman for City Hall said.
The messages describing the call with Adams were among thousands logged in a WhatsApp chat among some of the nation’s most prominent business leaders and financiers, including former CEO of Starbucks Howard Schultz, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman and Joshua Kushner, founder of Thrive Capital and brother to Jared Kushner, former president Donald Trump’s son-in-law.
People with direct access to the chat log’s contents supplied them to The Post. They shared the information on the condition of anonymity because the chat’s contents were meant to stay private. Members of the group verified the chat’s existence and their comments.
The chat was initiated by a staffer for billionaire and real estate magnate Barry Sternlicht — who never joined directly, instead communicating through the staffer, according to chat messages and a person close to Sternlicht. In an Oct. 12 message, one of the first sent in the group, the staffer posting on behalf of Sternlicht told the others the goal of the group was to “change the narrative” in favor of Israel, partly by conveying “the atrocities committed by Hamas … to all Americans.”
Israel estimates 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. In the months since the war began, the death toll in Gaza has risen above35,000, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The chat group formed shortly after the Oct. 7 attack, and its activism has stretched beyond New York, touching the highest levels of the Israeli government, the U.S. business world and elite universities. Titled “Israel Current Events,” the chat eventually expanded to about 100 members, the chat log shows. More than a dozen members of the group appear on Forbes’s annual list of billionaires; others work in real estate, finance and communications.
Overall, the messages offer a window into how some prominent individuals have wielded their money and power in an effort to shape American views of the Gaza war, as well as the actions of academic, business and political leaders — including New York’s mayor.
“He’s open to any ideas we have,” chat member Sitt, founder of retail chain Ashley Stewart and the global real estate company Thor Equities, wrote April 27, the day after the group’s Zoom call with Adams. “As you saw he’s ok if we hire private investigators to then have his police force intel team work with them.”
Sitt declined to comment through a spokeswoman.
A half-dozen prominent members of the group confirmed on the record their participation in the chat. Multiple people familiar with the group confirmed the names of other members.
Cypriot Israeli real estate billionaire Yakir Gabay, a chat member, wrote in a statement shared by a spokesperson that he joined the group because he wanted to “share support at a difficult and painful time,” to aid the victims of Hamas attacks and to “try and correct the false and misleading information intentionally spread worldwide to deny or cover up the suffering caused by Hamas.”
Asked about the Zoom meeting with chat group members, the mayor’s office did not address it directly, instead sharing a statement from deputy mayor Fabien Levy noting that New York police entered Columbia’s campus twice in response to “specific written requests” from university leadership. “Any suggestion that other considerations were involved in the decision-making process is completely false,” Levy said. He added, “The insinuation that Jewish donors secretly plotted to influence government operations is an all too familiar antisemitic trope that the Washington Post should be ashamed to ask about, let alone normalize in print.”
Continues next post
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Adams demonstrated a willingness to send law enforcement to deal with campus protesters from the beginning. He sent police to Columbia’s campus to disperse pro-Palestinian demonstrators on April 18, at the university’s request — about a day after protesters erected their Gaza solidarity encampment. Officers arrested more than 100 protesters. The mayor has subsequently alleged student activists were affected by “outside influences” — and that police intervention was needed to prevent “children” from being “radicalized.”
Both he and Columbia’s president have since drawn criticism — but also support — for involving police, adding to a fraught stretch for Adams, who is up for reelection in 2025 and faces an FBI corruption investigation into whether his 2021 campaign received illegal donations from Turkey. Adams has defended that campaign, saying he held it to “the highest ethical standards.”
Four days after chat members held the video call with Adams, student protesters occupied a campus building and Columbia’s president invited police back to campus to clear the building. Officers removed and arrested dozens of protesters, pushing, striking and dragging students in the process, The Post reported. One officer accidentally fired his gun.
Months before the protests at Columbia this spring, some chat members attended private briefings with former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett; Benny Gantz, a member of the Israeli war cabinet; and Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Herzog, according to chat records.
Members of the group also worked with the Israeli government to screen a roughly 40-minute film showing footage compiled by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) — titled “Bearing Witness to the October 7 Massacre” — to audiences in New York City. The film portrays killings committed by Hamas. A chat member asked for help from other members to show the film at universities; it was later screened at Harvard, a showing chat member Ackman helped facilitate, attended and promoted publicly.
Sternlicht declined to comment on the record, although a person close to him — speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the chat grouppublicly — confirmed the real estate tycoon initiated the chat. Other members of the chat, including Ackman and Schultz, confirmed their membership.
A spokesman said Ackman had not participated in the chat since Jan. 10, adding Ackman never spoke to Adams about the Columbia protests or donated to Adams’s campaign, although Ackman “likes and is supportive of the Mayor.” Joshua Kushner declined to comment.
On Oct. 12, a staffer for Sternlicht relayed a message from his boss outlining the group’s mission: While Israel worked to “win the physical war,” the chat group’s members would “help win the war” of U.S. public opinion by funding an information campaign against Hamas.
The news site Semafor reported in November that Sternlicht was launching a $50 million anti-Hamas media campaign with various Wall Street and Hollywood billionaires. The people involved, per Semafor’s reporting, include some members of the WhatsApp chat, a review by The Post found. The chat messages, the contents of which have never before been reported, appear to reveal the start of the campaign, as well as separate pro-Israel activities undertaken later by chat members. It is unclear to what extent the chat group and media campaign overlapped.
Some of the media campaign’s activities were public, including its website, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook and X accounts, which together attracted more than 170,000 followers.
High-level contacts, private briefings
At a moment of rising antisemitism, the staffer for Sternlicht wrote in one of the first chat messages that his boss was proud of his Jewish heritage and wanted to support Israel, but was also concerned about security. Anonymity, the staffer wrote Oct. 12 on Sternlicht’s behalf, “is a practical need and concern for safety of my family in an increasingly complex world.”
The staffer wrote that Sternlicht understood if other members felt similarly and promised that all contributions to the media campaign would remain anonymous. “I’m sensitive to concerns about being less effective if it appears that this is a Jewish initiative,” the staffer wrote, speaking for Sternlicht.
From the start of the chat, members sought guidance and information from officials in the Israeli government.
Some of the WhatsApp chat members said in the chat they attended private briefings about the Gaza war with Israeli war cabinet member Gantz, former prime minister Bennett and Herzog, the ambassador. The chat log shows Zoom invites for these meetings.
“Most appreciative for the behind the scenes briefing by Naftali Bennett,” Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks, wrote to the group on Oct. 16. “Quite extraordinary!”
Bennett did not respond to a request for comment. Gantz could not be reached for comment. A spokesperson for the Israeli Embassy in Washington said the briefing Herzog gave chat members was “one of dozens” the ambassador delivered that month, adding that “communities here in the U.S. understandably wanted to learn more about what was happening on the ground in Israel.”
A spokesperson for Schultz confirmed in a statement that he attended the briefing with Bennett, but said Schultz “did not participate in, or contribute financially to, any of the group’s work.”
In late October, the chat records show, chat members appear to have suggested to Israeli officials they should hold a private New York City screening for media of “Bearing Witness,” the IDF film featuring graphic footage recorded by Hamas gunmen on body cameras and cellphones as they attacked Israel. Sitt wrote in a message to the group on Oct. 27 that Israeli officials wanted to thank them “for coming up with the concept of the press event in NYC.”
The next month, the group showed the film in New York, records show. Sitt wrote on Nov. 10 that the Israeli government “arranged for us” to screen the film in Gotham Hall on Nov. 17, adding in a later message the showing “will be listed as a IDF event not affiliated to Facts for Peace to keep them separate.”
In ensuing months, group members wrote in the chat to flag news articles or social media posts about Israel, events in Gaza or, later, college campus protests.
‘So NYPD can return’
Columbia students first set up an encampment April 17, eventually leading some Jewish students to allege the protests had forged a hostile and harassing atmosphere. Police stepped in to clear the encampment at the Columbia president’s request on April 18, arresting more than 100 demonstrators.
In the chat, discussion of how Adams was handling the Columbia protests — and how group members could help — took off the following day, after student protesters built a new encampment to replace the demolished one.
Lubetzky, of the snack company Kind, posted in the chat sharing a link to an Instagram video showing an Israeli Arab journalist getting hit by a man the video caption claims is an “anti-Israel protester.” Not long after, billionaire Blavatnik posted a picture of Adams and wrote, “He needs help.”
Sitt responded that he had already “been helping but can use more support.” He asked if others were “open to giving” to Adams.
Gabay, the Cypriot Israeli real estate billionaire, replied: “Pls send the info. Thanks.” Then Blavatnik posted an ActBlue link allowing donations to the Eric Adams 2025 committee.
Lubetzky messaged: “If there is a group to contribute through, or a way to ensure our contributions are known to be related to his efforts to fight antisemitism and hate, pls let us know and I will support meaningfully alongside you guys.” Sitt replied that he was arranging a “code” for such donations; asked about this message, Vito Pitta, counsel to Adams’s 2025 campaign, said “there is no ‘special code’ for contributions.”
A spokeswoman for Blavatnik said he contributed $2,100 to Adams’s reelection campaign in April. She said the donation was given “to endorse Mayor Adams’ stalwart support of Israel and firm stand against antisemitism.”
Spokespeople for Lubetzky, Sitt and Gabay said they did not donate to Adams. Loeb declined to comment.
In the chat, discussion turned to the fact that Columbia had to grant Adams permission before he could send city police to the campus.
One member asked if the group could do anything to pressure Columbia trustees to cooperate with the mayor. In reply, former congressman Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), CEO of the American Jewish Committee, shared a PDF of a letterhis organization had sent that day to Columbia President Minouche Shafik calling on her to “shut these protests down.”
“Also in touch with the board,” Deutch wrote to the chat group. “So NYPD can return.”
Asked for comment, a spokeswoman for Deutch wrote in an email to The Post that the American Jewish Committee “values all opportunities to engage with various individuals and institutions who support the Jewish people and the State of Israel.” Asked about the chat group and its activities, a Columbia spokesperson wrote, “We have no knowledge of this.”
A Zoom video call with chat group members and Adams took place a little after 11 a.m. April 26, according to chat records.
It is unclear how many members attended the meeting, which lasted for roughly 45 minutes, chat records show. Those present included at least Blavatnik, Sitt, Loeb and Lubetzky, according to the chat logs.
Sitt wrote minutes after the call ended to summarize items “discussed today,” including donating to Adams, using group members’ “leverage” to help persuade Columbia’s president to let New York police back on campus and paying for “investigative efforts” to assist the city.
Lubetzky replied listing concrete actions group members should take. These included resharing a link to offer financial support to Adams, calling and writing to Columbia’s president and board of trustees, and “getting Black Leaders to condemn Anti-Semitism.” He named several people he would contact and asked if anyone in the group knew Jay-Z, LeBron James or Alicia Keys.
Asked about his comments, Lubetzky wrote in a statement to The Post that “building bridges between the Black and Jewish communities … is more important than ever.”
Blavatnik, through a spokeswoman, confirmed he attended the Zoom with Adams but said he did not “participate in a conversation about private investigators and is unaware of discussions related to that subject.” The spokeswoman noted other people on the Zoom said things Blavatnik “did not weigh in on or agree with.” She said the billionaire, a Columbia alumnus and donor, only joined the Zoom to understand how Adams “was thinking about the Columbia protests.”
The evening after the call, Sitt shared the ActBlue link for donations to Adams’s 2025 committee.
The chat does not record who donated money to Adams nor how much. The New York City Campaign Finance Board website shows donations sent only up to January of this year; more recent donations will not become public until July.
Pitta, the Adams campaign lawyer, said the campaign had not received donations from Lubetzky, Loeb, Sitt or Gabay. He confirmed Blavatnik had donated but did not respond to questions asking about the timing of Blavatnik’s donation.
A day after the April 26 Zoom with Adams, Loeb wrote the chat group to share reflections on what transpired during the call. He wrote that it was “a sad state that we feel the need to grovel to ask our elected officials to do their jobs.” He added, “I’ll be grateful when the perpetrators are dragged off campus.”
Police returned to Columbia on April 30, arresting dozens of demonstrators who had occupied a university building. Columbia President Shafik had requested law enforcement’s aid in a letter, writing that the takeover of Hamilton Hall raised “serious safety concerns.” She asked police to remain on campus at least through May 17.
The morning afterward, Adams gave a news conferencesummarizing the action. “We went in and conducted an operation,” he said, “to remove those who have turned the peaceful protests into a place where antisemitism and anti-Israel attitudes were pervasive.”
In early May, seven months since its inception, the chat was shut down. A person close to Sternlicht said he decided to shutter the group because the activities were moving beyond the initial objectives and the people who started it — including himself — were no longer actively participating, and hadn’t been for months.
“We are incredibly grateful for the dialogue and support that this group has provided over the past 7 months,” wrote a staffer for Sternlicht. The staffer wrote that members should not hesitate to reach out if they needed anything.
“We are stronger together,” the staffer wrote in closing.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/05/16/business-leaders-chat-group-eric-adams-columbia-protesters/
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https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2024/05/08/live-updates-pro-palestinian-protests-roil-boston-area-campuses-2/
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https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/24/us/pro-palestine-encampment-attack-ucla-arrest/index.html
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Discord from last month’s mob attack on pro-Palestinian student activists encamped at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) flared again on Tuesday as academic workers staged a strike on campus protesting UCLA’s response to the violence.
Unionized academic researchers, graduate teaching assistants and post-doctoral scholars at UCLA walked off the job over what they regard as unfair labor practices in the university’s handling of pro-Palestinian demonstrations in recent weeks, organizers said.
They were joined by fellow academic workers at two other University of California campuses – UC Davis near Sacramento, and UC Santa Cruz, where the protest strike began on 20 May.
The strikers are demanding amnesty for grad students and other academic workers who were arrested or face discipline for their involvement in the protests, which union leaders say were peaceful except when counter-demonstrators and other instigators were allowed to provoke unrest.
The state public employee relations board ordered the University of California and the strikers to take part in mediated talks. A representative for the strikers said the parties met once over the weekend.
The strike was organized by the United Auto Workers (UAW) union local 4811, which represents some 48,000 non-tenured academic employees total across 10 University of California campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The UAW local includes about 6,400 academic workers at UCLA, 5,700 at Davis and about 2,000 at Santa Cruz. A union representative said thousands were withholding their work as of Monday. Several hundred attended a march and midday rally on the UCLA campus on Tuesday.
The expanding work stoppage marks the first union-backed protest in solidarity with the recent wave of student-led demonstrations on dozens of US campuses against Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Union leaders said a major impetus for the strike was the arrest of 210 people, including campus-employed grad students, at the scene of a Palestinian solidarity protest camp torn down by police at UCLA on 2 May.
About 24 hours earlier, on the night of 30 April, masked assailants armed with sticks and clubs attacked the encampment and its occupants, sparking a bloody clash that went on for at least three hours before police moved in.
The university has since reassigned the chief of the campus police department and opened an investigation into law enforcement’s reaction to the violence.
Last week, three weeks after the melee, campus police announced their first, and so far only, arrest of someone accused of taking part in the attack – a man they say was seen in video footage beating victims with a wooden pole.
Separately on Tuesday in Detroit, Wayne State University suspended in-person classes and directed staff to work remotely to avoid any disruptions that might be posed by a pro-Palestinian encampment there.
US representative Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat of Palestinian descent, joined those protests on Monday and Tuesday.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/28/ucla-academic-workers-strike-pro-palestinian-protests
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