Free Republic

(JTA) — An LGBTQ student group at Rice University has cut ties with the school’s Hillel, in the latest instance of backlash from a progressive group against the Jewish campus organization’s support for Israel. The LGBTQ group, Rice Pride, announced the split last week in a statement on Instagram that said Hillel’s international umbrella group was “not reflective of the values of inclusion upheld by Rice Pride.” “Rice Pride’s ultimate goal is to provide a safe space for queer students of all backgrounds, and to recognize the intersectionalities between queer identity and race, ethnicity, and religion,” the statement said. The...

Last month, Harvard Law School deemed Israel in a report to the United Nations as “an apartheid regime.” They issued a 22 page report claiming that Israel systematically discriminates against Palestinians and suppresses their civil and political rights.” Harvard’s report “finds that Israel’s actions in the occupied West Bank are in breach of the prohibition of apartheid and amount to the crime of apartheid under international law.” Now, the editorial board of the Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper at Harvard University, has endorsed the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement. They also expressed support for Harvard’s Palestine Solidarity Committee, a student group...

Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's membership in a Harvard University student group that once invited a controversial anti-Semitic speaker to campus has surfaced ahead of her confirmation hearings later this month. In 1992, Jackson was a member of the Harvard Black Students Association when they invited Leonard Jeffries, a professor known for making anti-Semitic remarks, to speak at the university, Fox News reports. According to the Anti-Defamation League, Jeffries first gained public attention in 1991, “when the New York Post published an account of a vitriolic anti-Semitic and racist speech he made on July 20 at the Empire...

On the heels of Brandeis University’s controversial decision to rescind an honorary degree to women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, organizers of a week-long pro-Israel event called iFest, which is currently underway at the University of California, Irvine, say they have been forced to cancel a scheduled speech by Nonie Darwish, a prominent pro-Israel speaker. Lead iFest organizer Daniel Narvy, president of the campus group Anteaters for Israel (AFI), who will be joining the Israeli Defense Forces this summer, says Orange County Hillel was primarily responsible for the cancellation and that the incident is another example of Hillel’s marginalization of...

A new campaign that seeks to pressure the Jewish campus group Hillel into partnering with anti-Israel organizations is being hailed as a way to “a “liberate young Jews from the vice grip of Zionism” by anti-Zionist activist Max Blumenthal. Blumenthal, who recently wrote a book that compared Israel with the Third Reich, praised the new campus movement “Open Hillel” during a speech at Brandeis University, according to video posted by a group called Safe Hillel. “There is a movement afoot, an organic movement on campuses now … which I consider to be a movement to liberate young Jews, from the...

Jewish students at Swarthmore College have become the first in the nation to break with the global student association Hillel and agree to open their doors to groups and speakers who do not support Israel. The Swarthmore student board unanimously voted to renounce Hillel International's restrictions, which bar chapters from sponsoring events, hosting speakers, or partnering with groups that oppose Israel's right to exist or support a movement for universities to end investments in Israel because of its policies toward the Palestinians. Students at the liberal Quaker college say they wanted to start a dialogue on Israel-Palestinian issues by holding...

How low, Obama can go... Using the JudeaChristian 'Golden Rule' to promote Gay "marriage"? Mr. Obama on Wednesday cited his Christian faith as a driving force behind the "evolution" of his thinking on gay marriage. "When we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it's also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated," Mr. Obama told ABC News' Robin Roberts on Wednesday.Washington Times - May 10, 2012 It's also horrific how Chris Mathews today like other lib....

Dear Governor Kasich (http://governor.ohio.gov/): It has been awhile since we talked about the case of Julio Pino – a tenured member of the faculty of Kent State University. Shortly after I last wrote to you there was a Secret Service raid on his home. The raid was meant to ensure that certain veiled threats directed to the Obama White House were not a prelude to some planned act of violence. I thank you for any role you may have played in helping alert the federal authorities. As you may know, Pino is continuing to cause substantial problems in Ohio. I...

During a recent speaking tour in Canada, MK Nahman Shai (Kadima) shocked some of his hosts when he said that his primary goal in politics today is to bring down the Netanyahu government. Although indelicate, Shai's comment was not surprising. Kadima is in the opposition. And like all opposition parties in all parliamentary democracies, the primary goal of its members is to bring down the government so that they can take power. Given that this is the case, it is unsurprising that until this week, Kadima leader Tzipi Livni tried to blame Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for US President Barack...

Once upon a time, Jews who found Judaism cumbersome simply declared the Torah obsolete and went about their lives as they pleased. They weren't inclined to intellectual contortions. Some "progressive" Jews today, though, choose instead to twist and torture the Jewish canon, in an attempt to force it to "yield" what they wish it actually did. In a way, their reluctance to just jettison the Torah and Talmud is admirable. Other words, though, come to mind for their merciless manipulation of the Jewish religious tradition. A recent example of such intellectual anarchism is Hillel. The campus organization, that is, not...

BANNED: THE SPEECH THE U.N. REFUSED TO HEAR March 29, 2007 http://www.unwatch.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=bdKKISNqEmG&b=1313923&ct=3698367&msource=UNWnews&tr=y&auid=2501956 If you haven't seen it yet, please watch the video below. It's a glimpse into UN Watch's daily work—in public statements and private diplomacy—to hold the United Nations accountable to the principles of its charter, and to promote human rights for all. Thank you for supporting our ability to fight for what is right—and to speak truth to power. Rest assured: we won't give up.

January 9, 2007 -- Pace University administrators threatened to sic the cops on a Jewish-student club if it went ahead with plans to screen a critically acclaimed film about radical Islam, the head of the group charged yesterday. Michael Abdurakhmanov, president of Pace Hillel, said two deans warned that showing the documentary film would implicate club members as suspects in two hate crimes involving the desecration of the Koran at the university's lower-Manhattan campus last fall. In addition, Abdurakhmanov said an assistant dean physically restrained him as he attempted to defend the film and his group in a meeting with...

Hillel’s national president backed the showing of a controversial film on radical Islam at Pace University’s Hillel. Pace Hillel President Michael Abdurakhmanov told The New York Times this week that university officials had threatened to call the police if his group aired “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.” Abdurakhmanov said that following complaints by a Muslim student group, a dean told him not to show the film, warning him that police could be called in if the film was shown and Hillel members could be considered suspects in recent Islamophobic acts. A Pace spokesman denied any coercion. Pace Hillel,...

UNIVERSITY PARK-An art student is claiming his work is being censored by Penn State because of its provocative images of terrorism, while school officials say the decision to cancel his exhibit is not content-related.In an e-mail sent Friday to fifth-year student Josh Stulman, Charles Garoian, director of the School of Visual Arts, said the exhibit was pulled because it was sponsored by Penn State Hillel, making it a commercial work. The Patterson Gallery is dedicated to unsponsored class work. Garoian wrote in the e-mail that the exhibit would continue if the sponsorship is removed.

A week ago, Penn State University canceled a student’s art exhibit because of who was sponsoring it. According to the Penn State Collegian, Josh Stulman’s art exhibit Portraits of Terror which was being sponsored by Penn State Hillel, a Jewish student group, was cancelled by Charles Garoian, the Director of Visual Arts. Stulman is a senior in painting and anthropology and is himself Jewish. Garoian sent Stulman an email three days before the exhibit was going to be displayed, saying his work “did not promote cultural diversity,” according to the Collegian. The email also said the decision was made after...

Back in 2003, netwmd.com spearheaded an effort to oppose the Palestinian Solidarity Movement's (PSM) "conference" at Ohio State University (OSU). Despite the fact that the PSM is basically a group of pro-Palestinian terrorist supporters and enablers, Ohio’s “mainstream” Jewish community, including the Ohio State Hillel, did nothing to oppose the 2003 hate fest at OSU – this is even after repeated requests on my part for their assistance. [1] Yesterday, I received a form letter from Hillel decrying the PSM, and asking for money to “help Jewish students respond to the one-sided, anti-Israeli propaganda of the Palestinian Solidarity Movement on...

San Francisco State University has been in the spotlight lately, and the picture that has emerged is not a flattering one. Following last month's nationwide elections, members of the SFSU chapter of the College Republicans were confronted by an angry mob simply for setting up a table and handing out political literature. Members of the International Socialist Organization, the General Union of Palestinian Students and others surrounded the Republican students, shouting at them to "get out" of SFSU. Although the exact details are still being disputed by the various parties, police reports and eyewitness accounts appear to back up the...

Security forces reported the arrest of 4 East Jerusalem Arabs involved in last year's bombing of Jerusalem’s Hillel Café last year that killed an American-born doctor, his daughter and 5 others. The terrorists helped gather information on targets for the terror gang and helped collect arms more than a year before the September attack that killed Dr. David Applebaum, formerly of Cleveland, and his daughter Nava, who was to be married the next day. Dr. Applebaum was an ordained rabbi and was director of the emergency room at Jerusalem’s Shaarei Tzedek Hospital Since the beginning of 2004, 51 East Jerusalem...

Representatives of the group Stand With Us, Isralert subscribers, monitored the Palestinian Solidarity Movement (PSM) Conference held at Duke University. The Idea was for them to monitor and report all the goings on in this Palestinian terrorist sympathizer forum. What they reported back is very disturbing and yet not surprising. Hillel is a good way to infiltrate the organized Jewish community on campus.....That is because Hillel is a democracy...... Hillel makes it easy to get involved...Some Hillel's have brought refusniks to speak... So it will be easy to get "in" and get on their boards.....Hillel's guiding Principles agree with Zionism...

A major campus Hillel director’s physical attack on a journalist with whom he disagreed politically, has put the organization’s national leadership on the defensive. After an address by Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz last October, UCLA Hillel director Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, a renowned left-wing activist, physically assaulted pro-Zionist journalist Rachel Neuwirth. The Los Angeles district attorney chose not to press charges, but rather required Rabbi Seidler-Feller to attend 36 hours of anger management training at his own expense. The rabbi was also ordered to issue Ms. Neuwirth a “heartfelt” apology. The event was first reported in the UCLA Daily Bruin...