Free Republic

I have spent the last week walking throughout the area of Columbia University. What I have seen feels like a nightmare of unreality. Only someone who is functionally brain dead or a consummate liar can deny what is blazingly obvious: At the center of the “occupation” and “protest” is compulsively vicious Jew-baiting, Jew-hatred, anti-Americanism and hysterical insistence on Israel’s obliteration. I could literally not walk five paces without seeing or hearing the most horrendous verbal and, in many instances, physical assaults on Jews, Judaism and Israel. In particular, the hitherto inconceivable sentence “We Are Hamas!” was shouted so often, it...

Sunday saw the fifth consecutive day of protests at Columbia University.New York City Mayor Eric Adams addressed the ongoing protests at Columbia University, condemning examples of antisemitism and hate speech in a statement Sunday. "I am horrified and disgusted with the antisemitism being spewed at and around the Columbia University campus," Adams said. Protests over the Israel-Hamas war continued at the University campus in Upper Manhattan for the fifth day on Sunday, which has led to the arrest of over 100 people, according to police. "I have instructed the NYPD to investigate any violation of law that is reported," Adams...

Mobs of rowdy migrants got into an all-out brawl outside a Midtown hotel, swinging sticks, belts and even traffic cones during the violent, broad-daylight melee, shocking new video shows. At least a dozen asylum seekers squared off Sunday afternoon outside The Row hotel on Eighth Avenue, with one out-of-control migrant seen swinging a bat menacingly at the mob before one of the combatants is taken to the ground and pummeled by four others, footage posted on X shows. At least two men are seen wearing bicycle helmets as the two sides square off in the middle of the street —...

Aidan Parisi pledged to 'resist' and called for 'intifada' after Columbia ordered him to vacate his on-campus apartment.. For more than two weeks, Columbia University graduate student Aidan Parisi has defied the university’s suspension, refusing to vacate his dorm room on the school's Manhattan campus. The school announced Parisi’s suspension on April 4 following his participation in a pro-Hamas event. And while Columbia leaders have pledged to enforce the suspension, they have yet to follow through. In the meantime, Parisi has contributed to the mayhem that has engulfed the campus over the past several days, serving as a leader of...

The movement’s ideological character invites rage and violence.The anti-Israel demonstrations around Columbia University turned threatening and antisemitic Saturday night, as they have repeatedly across the country. On social media, you can find footage of crowds taunting Jewish students to “Go back to Poland!” and chanting, “We don’t want no Zionists here!” There is a masked protester with a sign that reads “Al-Qasam’s Next Target” with an arrow pointing at Jewish counterprotesters nearby. Al-Qassam is the military wing of Hamas. A protester screamed at Jewish students, “The 7th of October is going to be every day for you!” The protest groups...

A Jewish Columbia professor has been blocked from campus after he created a pro-Israel demonstration to counter the student-led Gaza encampment. Shai Davidai, an assistant professor at the Business School was shown on camera in a fiery face-off with pro-Palestine students on Monday morning. A source told DailyMail.com Davidai's employee card was deactivated after he refused to hold his counter-protest in the designated area and instead staged it beside the pro-Gaza demonstration.

A Jewish NYU professor tore into anti-Israel student protesters, calling out the “double standard” that allows them to spread antisemitism when hate spread about other groups would never be tolerated. “I can tell you, if I went into the NYU square with a white hood on and said, ‘Lynch the blacks’ or ‘Burn the gays,’ my ID would be shut off by that night,” Scott Galloway, an NYU Stern School of Business professor, told MSNBC on Tuesday. “I would never work in academia again,” he added. “There would be no need for the words ‘context’ or ‘nuance,’ I wouldn’t be...

On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Lead,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) said that Jewish students are “going through” the same experience as black students did in Little Rock when they had “to be escorted on campuses because they were afraid for their lives.” Adams said, “I can feel the duality of this moment. As I stated, I understand the pain that is playing out in Israel and in Gaza at this time. I understand what Palestinian New Yorkers are going through, and, in a peaceful way, to display that. I understand what the Israeli[s] experienced on October...

gets confronted on a plane by an enraged pro-Palestine protester Are you Eric Adams? Yeah? F**K YOU!" the woman in the video shouted. "New York mayor Eric adams spotted flying back from a weekend in Miami (Monday 4/22)." "The same weekend that hundreds of NYC college students and faculty members were arrested for protesting the Palestinen genocide

A former shoemaker pleaded guilty Tuesday to allegations that he ran an illegal gambling operation for the Mafia out of his shop in Brooklyn. Salvatore Rubino, also known as “Sal the Shoemaker,” admitted in federal court in Brooklyn to running card games and operating illegal gambling machines inside his former shoe repair business and to kicking profits to the Genovese crime family. He pleaded guilty to gambling charges. Four co-defendants — Carmelo "Carmine" Polito, Joseph "Joe Fish" Macario, Joseph "Joe Box" Rutigliano and Mark Feuer — pleaded guilty earlier this month to charges including racketeering, attempted extortion and illegal gambling...

Swiss Air flight aborts takeoff from JFK, safely leaves minutes later... A Swiss Air flight traveling from New York City to Zurich last week had to abort takeoff, averting a "potentially dangerous situation," the airline confirmed. Flight LX17 from John F. Kennedy Airport left the gate at 4:21 p.m. April 17, according to FlightAware. The aircraft was cleared for takeoff at the same time an air traffic controller on another frequency cleared four other jets to cross the runway, according to audio obtained by NPR. "Due to the high level of situational awareness and quick reaction of our crew, a...

The first witness in Donald Trump's trial for alleged "criminal" bookkeeping errors came with National Enquirer-worthy titillations about what a hot commodity the former president was back in the day. Prosecutors thought they'd burst out of the gate with a little razzle-dazzle and T&A, hoping that jurors would believe the witness had anything to do with the actual charges in the case. This is because — spoiler alert — the prosecutors' actual case is a "confusing" distraction. It's the "Seinfeld" of legal cases. But since a Manhattan jury will likely convict the former president because Orange Man Bad, here's what...

Dozens have been arrested at NYU and Yale, and Columbia cancels in-person classes as discord over the war in Gaza grows among students across the country.The president of Columbia University announced a midnight deadline for students and others to reach an agreement about dismantling an encampment on campus set up in protest. The encampment was set up four days ago on the Manhattan campus’ West Lawn. On Thursday, police made more than 100 arrests when they were called in about an encampment on the South Lawn, and for which Columbia was criticized. Columbia University President Minouche Shafik said in a...

By Jonathan Chait, who’s been a New York political columnist since 2011. This week, The Atlantic published an account of how the war between Israel and Hamas has convulsed a campus (in this case, that of the author, Stanford sophomore Theo Baker). The most explosive details in the story showed activists endorsing violence or anti-Semitism, which has fed directly into the cycle of anger and fear felt by both Jewish and Muslim students. This has predictably set off the same progressive eye-rolling that occurs any time the mainstream media reports on crazy things happening on the left. “Incredibly brave for...

This week, as Jews worldwide gather around the Seder table to celebrate the first nights of Passover, college campuses are closing their gates and moving their classes online in response to — and in anticipation of — vitriol and violence toward Jewish students during pro-Palestine demonstrations. The Crimson reported on Monday that the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee was suspended for “violating student organization rules”— but that doesn’t mean that student organizing efforts will suddenly cease. It’s likely that, like on campuses across the country, the opposite will occur. While inflated accusations of antisemitism on college campuses may undermine the...

Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) took a shot at former President Donald Trump on Tuesday. The Utah Republican Senator said of Trump’s character during an interview that aired on CNN’s “News Central” that you don’t pay someone not to have sex with you. On the steps of Capitol Hill, speaking to CNN chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju, Romney said, “I think everybody has made their own assessment of President Trump’s character. And so far as I know, you don’t pay someone $130,000 not to have sex with you.”

As Columbia University President Dr. Nemat "Minouche" Shafik faces scrutiny from ongoing campus protests over Israel’s war with Hamas, a more than 20-year-old video is getting renewed attention for remarks on the causes of terrorism. The video, filmed just two months after 9/11, shows Shafik – who was then vice president at the World Bank – discussing the economic roots of terrorism with UC Berkeley’s Harry Kreisler on the program, "Conversations with History." Shafik argued that although terrorism has sprung up in "fairly rich and open societies," its most fertile ground is in countries beset by "economic stagnation and political...

There's been a case in New York that I should have been following more closely. Dexter Taylor was a hobby gunsmith. He liked the nature of putting together guns from lawfully purchased parts. However, the state of New York disapproved of this pastime. They arrested Taylor and, on Monday, he was convicted. My friend Jeff Charles over at our sister site RedState has been covering this case pretty much from the jump, and in his story from Monday about the sentencing, there was something we had to talk about. You see, the judge in the case has decided that a...

It is every homeowner’s nightmare: Leave your property unattended and come back to a squatter infestation. It’s even impacted celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey, who recently saw his London restaurant overrun by intruders. These real estate pros fought back and won. Here’s how they got rid of squatters: Mohammed Choudhary, a 61-year-old Pakistani immigrant who works in construction, and his business partner Boysin Lorick, 76, originally from Trinidad, were chasing the American dream. In 2020, the men used large portions of their life savings to purchase a trio of one- and two-family houses on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island for $1.3...

Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker will return the witness stand today for the second day of Donald Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial over covering up “hush money” payments to a porn star. Pecker will resume testimony where he is expected to detail the inner workings of a scheme he, Trump and his “fixer” lawyer Michael Cohen devised to buy up and bury bad news during the 2016 presidential election. Trump is on trial for allegedly fudging business records to conceal a $130,000 payoff to Stormy Daniels made before the 2016 presidential election. The 72-year-old ex-CEO of the Enquirer’s parent company,...