CUNY Chancellor Matos Rodriguez has strategically replaced Jewish leaders with individuals that spew harmful antisemitic rhetoric

STOP ANTISEMITISM
Antisemite of the Week:
CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos Rodríguez

June 10, 2023

In 2019, Felix Matos Rodriguez was promoted as Chancellor of The City University of New York (CUNY), leading the nation’s largest urban university and overseeing its 25 colleges and nearly 250,000 students. Just 4 short years later, in the city where the population is 20% Jewish, Matos Rodriguez has transformed CUNY into America’s most antisemitic university. Matos Rodriguez parades himself as a “champion of student equity” however results show CUNY’s Jewish students and faculty are continually disregarded, dismissed, and attacked over their identity. Jewish students at CUNY have said they have been harassed and bullied to the point of some dropping out. In most of these instances, the perpetrators of this abuse are never addressed, and Chancellor Matos Rodriguez’s silence is deafening. READ MORE

NEW YORK POST College grad delivers ‘sick’ speech accusing Israel of ‘killing and torturing Palestinians’ Another college student at a publicly funded school spewed antisemitic hate during her recent commencement speech, critics say — and the university even touted part of her talk on Twitter.

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Tree of Life shooter’s attorney: “There is no disagreement, there is no dispute and there will be no doubt as to who shot the 11 congregants”

JTA
Defense rests in Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial without calling witnesses or presenting evidence
Ron Kampeas
June 14, 2023

Defense attorneys in the trial of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter will not be calling witnesses or presenting evidence in court, following 11 days of harrowing testimony from witnesses called by the prosecution. The defense attorneys’ choice underscores their acknowledgement that their client committed the attack. Since the beginning of the trial, lead defense attorney Judy Clarke has made clear that her goal is to prevent the shooter, Robert Bowers, from being sentenced to death…The prosecution wrapped up its case before lunch on Wednesday with testimony from Andrea Wedner, one of two worshippers who were injured by gunfire in the shooting and survived. Wedner was with her mother, Rose Mallinger, when the gunman entered the chapel. Mallinger, who was 97, was killed in the attack. READ MORE

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US Secretary of State Blinken vows “to stand with J Street,” also that J Street is “now more needed than ever”

ZIONIST ORGANIZATION OF AMERICA
ZOA Condemns Secy Blinken’s Extraordinarily Hostile-to-Israel & Jews AIPAC Speech
Morton A. Klein
June 14, 2023

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s speech to the June 5, 2023 AIPAC Policy Summit shamefully reiterated and promoted Biden administration policies that are extraordinarily hostile to our greatest and most reliable human rights-loving ally, the Jewish country of Israel. Sadly, we are not surprised. Blinken promoted similar policies in his more detailed speech to the extremist, Soros-funded anti-Israel group J Street in December 2022; and President Biden promoted these policies in statements during his Middle East trip last July. Blinken’s policies contradicted the empty “lip service” that Blinken gave to the need for a strong Israel…READ MORE

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The IDF said that during the first week, the 91st Territorial Division carried out exercises that simulated “defense scenarios in large numbers along the Lebanese front” and “wide-ranging offensive scenarios”

TIMES OF ISRAEL
IDF wraps up major drill focused on multi-front war with Iran, Middle East proxies
Emanuel Fabian
June 8, 2023

The Israel Defense Forces on Thursday wrapped up a two-week drill focused on a potential multi-front war with Iran and its terror proxies across the Middle East, such as the Lebanese Hezbollah. The exercises — dubbed “Firm Hand” — involved troops from the standing and reserve army, from nearly all units. According to the IDF, the drills included ground forces simulating fighting on Israel’s northern frontier with Lebanon, the Air Force carrying out mock airstrikes “deep in enemy territory,” Navy operations at sea, intelligence units working around the clock, and cyber units simulating electronic warfare. READ MORE

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UN “Commission of Inquiry” parrots terror-linked NGOs, grossly distorts Israeli policy and practice, and contravenes fact-finding best practices”

NGO MONITOR
UN Human Rights Council COI Report: Defamation and Disinformation
June 8, 2023

On June 8, 2023, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC)’s permanent “Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel” (COI) published a report purporting to investigate “attacks, restrictions and harassment of civil-society actors.”…The COI document contains little original research. Rather, it copies-and-pastes from previous UN attacks on Israel – themselves largely based on distorted NGO claims; NGO publications account for nearly 40% of all material cited in the report. Notably, the COI cites to Israeli-designated terrorist entities – including Addameer, Al-Haq, and Bisan – and other terror-linked organizations such as the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) and the Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR). READ MORE

JNS Will a flawed UN report lead to a blacklisting of Israel? A United Nations report accusing the Israeli military of grave human rights violations is expected to be released in the coming weeks, and could have serious ramifications for the Jewish state.

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Outgoing Israel Ambassador Tom Nides involvement in $1m funding effort certain to attract congressional scrutiny as Israel’s defenders on Capitol Hill worry the Biden administration is alienating the Jewish state

FREE BEACON
Biden’s Ambassador to Israel Approved Grant Aimed at Delegitimizing Israel, Emails Show
Adam Kredo
June 7, 2023

The Biden administration’s outgoing ambassador to Israel personally signed off on a controversial $1 million grant to a program critics said was meant to delegitimize Israel, according to internal State Department communications obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. U.S. ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides approved the funding project in a January 2022 internal “action memo,” according to a trove of internal emails obtained by the America First Legal Foundation through a Freedom of Information Act request for information about the grant. The emails detail how Nides personally cleared the State Department to offer $987,654 for groups to investigate alleged human rights abuses in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. READ MORE

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Egyptian President al-Sisi orders transfer of $3 million to three Israeli families

JEWISH PRESS
Netanyahu, Sisi, Discuss Murder of 3 Soldiers, Source Says Egypt Paid Families $3m
David Israel
June 6, 2023

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi spoke by phone Tuesday, three days after the attack in which three IDF soldiers were murdered by an Egyptian policeman who crossed the border. According to a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office, the Egyptian president expressed his condolences over the incident, and Netanyahu thanked him for his commitment to an “exhaustive and joint” investigation. It was also reported that the two expressed their commitment to continuing to strengthen peace and security cooperation between the countries. READ MORE

TIMES OF ISRAEL ‘An unimaginable loss’: 3 IDF soldiers killed in Egypt border shooting laid to rest Sgt. Lia Ben Nun, 19, Staff Sgt. Ori Yitzhak Iluz, 20 and Staff Sgt. Ohad Dahan, 20, mourned by family and friends at separate ceremonies day after attack by Egyptian policeman. According to the IDF’s initial probe, the Egyptian policeman infiltrated through the border through an emergency gate early Saturday morning. The small gate — held shut with just zip ties — is used by the IDF to cross the border when necessary, in coordination with the Egyptian army.

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The 19-minute video poses the question why Amnesty International felt the need to demonize the Jewish state

JNS
CAMERA responds to ‘15 lies’ in Amnesty ‘apartheid’ attack on Israel
April 24, 2023

In a video documenting “15 Lies in 15 Minutes,” the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis is taking on a February 2022 video that Amnesty International made, accusing Israel of “apartheid.” Among Amnesty’s lies is its use of incomplete quotes from Israeli founding father David Ben-Gurion and from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to suggest they and Israel are racist, according to CAMERA. Alex Safian, research director at CAMERA, noted that Amnesty did not include the next line in a statement of Netanyahu’s, in which he says that Arab citizens have equal rights to Jews, “something antithetical to apartheid,” said Safian. “This malicious editing is no anomaly—the rest of the report is filled with similar deceptions.READ MORE

CAMERA BLOG Gilead Ini: Amnesty board member shares support for war crimes, terrorism, and erasing Israel An Amnesty International USA board member shared content on social media indicating support for deadly terrorist attacks, war crimes, and the elimination of Israel. Rasha Abdel Latif, a director at Partners Global, joined the Amnesty USA board last year.

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A senior rabbi in the US Reform Judaism stream recently issued a rare warning about the potential split in the movement if some of the anti-Israel elements are not countered

ISRAEL HAYOM (by agreement with JNS)
Senior Reform rabbi warns of ‘devastating’ rift because of anti-Israel sentiment
Ariel Kahana
June 6, 2023

Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, the senior rabbi of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City, delivered the keynote address at the Re-CHARGING Reform Judaism Conference in late May. The conference convened “thought leaders, Jewish scholars, philanthropists, and committed lay leaders from throughout the US and Canada for an extraordinary opportunity to assess this crossroads moment and offer a call for a bright future.” In part, this was designed to address “the growing distance between North American liberal Jews and Israel, and their fraying connection with the concept of Jewish peoplehood.” READ MORE

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What you must know about The Nakba

CAMERA BLOG
The Nakba Narrative is Nonsense
Alex Safian
May 17, 2023

In the years since Israel’s rebirth in 1948 a narrative has taken root, a narrative that portrays well-armed and financed Jewish immigrants overrunning peaceful Palestinian villages, brutally expelling Palestinians from their homes and their country, a narrative summed up in the Arabic word nakba, or catastrophe. In contrast, Israelis view their War of Independence as a battle of the few against the many, a battle forced on a beleaguered Jewish community by Palestinian militias and the invading armies of five Arab states, leading to competing “narratives” about that period which lie at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict. If, as is believed almost uniformly throughout the Arab world, Israel was born in original sin, if the Jews really did ransack placid Palestinian villages, murdering children in front of parents and parents in front of children, and expelling whoever was left, then Palestinian hatred for Israel and Jews would be understandable, as would their fundamental refusal to really make peace with Israel. READ MORE

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