Weekly roundup of world briefs

New Title VI probes of Harvard, UMich, New School, USF, Indiana

(JNS) — The U.S. Department of Education announced five new investigations under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Law.

Harvard University, the University of Michigan, The New School (New York City), Indiana University-Bloomington, the Butler School District 53 (Illinois) and the University of South Florida are all being probed for violations “for discrimination involving shared ancestry.”

Campus Reform said it filed the complaint against Indiana, a public university.

The Education Department does not state the reasons for the investigations.

Amin Husain, a New York University professor who used to teach at New School, denied that Hamas terrorists beheaded babies and raped women during a Dec. 5 “teach-in” at the New School, sponsored by Students for Justice in Palestine. Husain also said that “we live in a Zionist city” and joked about his antisemitic reputation, the Free Press reported. 

A New School spokesperson told the publication that the campus SJP chapter “is entitled to use university space, as are all New School student organizations, for educational activities and has the right to invite speakers representing various points of views to the university.”

In a Nov. 17 teach-in at the New School, Husain said of Israel: “This land isn’t for the Jews, I’m sorry.”

“This land is for a lot of other things that has to do with profit, … imperialism, … with interests, geopolitical interests, so that’s something also to keep in mind,” he said.

“Founded in 1919 as a progressive alternative to traditional higher education, The New School was a haven for Jews in the 1930s, offering them jobs and visas to help them escape Hitler’s Nazi Germany,” the Free Press noted.

Iran sent undercover operatives to Sweden to murder Jews

(JNS) — A Jewish community leader has started speaking out about a plot to kill him that was foiled in 2021.

Aron Verständig, chair of the Official Council of Swedish Jewish communities, told Radio Sweden about Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps sending two sleeper agents—couple Mahdi Ramezani and Fereshteh Sanaeifarid—who were activated after they had lived in the Scandinavian country for five years.

Ramezani and Sanaeifard were arrested in 2021 with plans to kill two other Swedish Jews.

Verständig has hesitated to speak about the threat to his life until now. “I was born a Jew I will remain a Jew for the rest of my life, and I can choose to sort of hide under a rock or I can choose to be the person who I am and that’s what I’ve chosen,” he said.

“I think that what Iran wants to do is to harm Israel, and I think it’s very difficult for them to do these kinds of things in Israel,” Verständig said. “So instead they are, I mean, randomly choosing people who have some kind of official position in the Jewish diaspora and trying to create fear.”

On Jan. 31, a bomb was found outside the Israeli embassy in Stockholm. “We thank the Swedish authorities for their swift response. We will not be intimidated by terror,” stated Ziv Nevo Kulman, Israel’s ambassador to Sweden.

In February 2023, the Jewish Chronicle reported that Iran had developed plans to murder Jewish leaders globally if Israel attacked the Islamic regime.

NYC staffer who sold gun, ammo to men planning shul attack gets 27 months

(JNS) — Jamil Hakime, a former employee of the New York City Administration for Children’s Services, was sentenced to 27 months in prison and three years of supervised release on Feb. 6 for selling a gun and 19 rounds of ammunition to two men planning to attack a synagogue, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York stated.

Hakime, 59, sold the weapons to Christopher Brown and Matthew Mahrer on Nov. 18, 2022. He pleaded guilty on March 14, 2023.

“Jamil Hakime, a city employee who was supposed to be protecting youths, instead decided to arm two men—one of whom had just declared on Twitter his plan to ‘shoot up a synagogue’—with a powerful firearm and ammunition,” stated Damian Williams, U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York.

Williams credited the “swift action” of law enforcement with preventing “a monumental tragedy on New York’s Jewish community” that “could have devastated the lives of many people who were targeted solely for their religious beliefs and their desire to worship.”

“The sentence imposed today sends a clear message to those who would recklessly arm others with weapons that may be used to commit acts of mass violence that such conduct will not be tolerated,” the U.S. attorney added.

In 2022, an attorney for Mahrer—one of the two people who purchased the weapon—said, “My client is of Jewish heritage. He resides with his parents and his grandfather is actually a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor—and my client is his part-time caretaker.”

When Mahrer and his friend Brown were detained, Brown had a Nazi armband.

On Nov. 18, 2022, Brown posted on Twitter that he aimed “to shoot up a synagogue,” adding, “This time I’m really gonna do it,” according to the complaint.

Hakime taught the two young men, both in their early 20s, how to use the gun and “instructed the men to wipe off the firearm to remove Hakime’s fingerprints,” per the U.S. attorney’s office. “Brown and Mahrer paid Hakime approximately $650 for the firearm and ammunition.”

Netanyahus visit United Hatzalah headquarters

(JNS) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, visited the headquarters of the United Hatzalah emergency rescue organization in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

The Netanyahus toured United Hatzalah’s operations center and met with the group’s founder and president Eli Beer and CEO Eli Pollak. During the visit, they watched video clips of the organization’s activities during Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre and met with volunteers who helped rescue victims that day.

“My wife and I have come to be here with Eli Beer and the thousands of United Hatzalah volunteers, Jews and Arabs, around 700 Muslim Arabs and others who have volunteered to help and to save lives, together with secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews, 50 percent ultra-Orthodox, people who are deployed throughout the country and give of themselves,” said the prime minister.

“They gave on October 7, under fire, and occasionally were fired upon, and treated themselves [if wounded] even as they saved lives—and they are doing this all the time. I think that you deserve to be recognized for saving lives. You have saved many people and you are doing amazing work,” he added.

Shortly after the massacre, Beer met with U.S. President Joe Biden during the latter’s solidarity trip to the Jewish state.

“I have never in my life seen a president crying,” Beer told JNS of the meeting. “It was like he was paying a shivah call,” he said, referring to the weeklong Jewish period of mourning.

“I was [initially] told I would have three minutes with the president, so I didn’t really expect much,” he said. “I was totally shocked by how pained he was by the stories. He wanted to give comfort.”

With its network of 7,000 Israeli volunteers of all faiths, United Hatzalah medics were among the first responders to the Oct. 7 Hamas onslaught in southern Israel which killed some 1,200 people and wounded over 4,500 others. It was the worst attack on Israel in the last half-century and the deadliest one-day attack on Jews since the Holocaust.

The first responders encountered something they had never seen before, treating thousands of victims, including hundreds with serious injuries, according to Beer.

Hamas terrorists murdered two of the organization’s volunteers—Awad Mosa Darawshy, a 27-year-old Arab-Israeli paramedic from Nazareth, and 55-year-old Maor Shalom from Kiryat Malachi, said Beer.

Israel’s Hadassah hospital treating daughter of Egyptian official

(JNS) — An Egyptian official’s 12-year-old daughter is being treated in Israel following a traffic accident and hospitalization in Cairo.

The official is described as a close associate of the al-Sisi government and security authorities in the Sinai Peninsula. 

The girl is receiving medical treatment at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, where there is a dedicated department for the care of complex trauma in children.

Israel approved the transfer as a humanitarian gesture at a particularly difficult period in the relations between Jerusalem and Cairo, with public disputes surfacing over the Israel Defense Force’s strategy with regard to securing Rafah and the Philadelphi Corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border.

Channel 13 reported on Monday that Israel is also treating a close relative of Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh.

Haniyeh’s sisters, Israeli citizens, live in the Bedouin town of Tel Sheva in the Negev. His niece gave birth prematurely in recent days, and the infant is being treated at the neonatal intensive care unit of Beersheva’s Soroka Medical Center.

CUNY cancels ‘Globalizing Intifada’ panel from anti-racism conference

(JNS) — The City University of New York’s Lehman College has chosen to amend its schedule for Feb. 16’s “Engagement, Equity and Antiracism” conference, removing a session after receiving strong criticism.

The school had intended to feature a panel titled “Globalizing the Intifada! Mapping Struggles for Palestine Between the Streets and Our Classrooms” before canceling the planned discussion.

Lehman College spokesman Richard Relkin said the panel’s “polarizing title” did not fit with “the theme of the conference and does not align with campus policy.”

Jane Kehoe Higgins, director of Lehman’s Institute for Literacy Studies, told the New York Post that “the goal is to bring people together, not to cause harm or make students feel unsafe” and that “after discussion with the panelists, I do not believe we share the same goal.”

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) said, “Any event seeking to ‘globalize the intifada’ is an open invitation to violence against Jews across the globe. The glorification of antisemitic violence has no place in a public university, where all students have a right to be and feel safe.”

Judea and Samaria Jewish population up 15,000 in 2023

(JNS) — The Jewish population in Judea and Samaria grew by almost 15,000 people last year, according to an annual report compiled by former Israeli lawmaker Ya’akov Katz and based on Interior Ministry data.

As of Jan. 1, 517,407 Jews lived in the area, which Israel liberated during the 1967 Six-Day War, up from 502,991 on the same date in 2023.

Katz’s figure does not include the nearly 350,000 Jews living in the eastern part of Jerusalem, which the Palestinians claim despite it being part of the Jewish state’s capital.

Last year’s growth amounts to a 2.87 percent increase, the report said. Israel’s total population grew by 1.9 percent in 2023, per the Central Bureau of Statistics.

The 500,000-plus Jews living in Judea and Samaria account for an estimated 3.3 percent of the Jews in the world.

The Jewish population in Judea and Samaria has grown 15.11 percent since 2019, when 449,508 Jews lived in the area, according to the report.

Some of the fastest-growing towns include Mevo Dotan in northern Samaria, Ma’aleh Amos and Nokdim in eastern Gush Etzion, and the Jordan Valley farming communities of Masua and Na’ama.

The report projects the Jewish population in the area to reach 613,554 by 2030, 706,233 by 2035 and 1,020,506 by 2047.

Between Oct. 7 and Jan. 15, the Hatzalah Judea and Samaria rescue group recorded more than 2,600 terrorist attacks against Israelis in the area, including 760 cases of rock-throwing, 551 fire bombings, 12 attempted or successful stabbings and nine vehicular assaults.

Four months after Oct. 7, rebuilding of Kibbutz Be’eri begins

(JNS) — The rebuilding of Kibbutz Be’eri began on Feb. 8, four months and a day after Hamas terrorists murdered more than a hundred of its members on Oct. 7.

One hundred twenty of the community’s 350 houses are slated for demolition. Six destroyed houses will be removed in the first phase.

In addition, dozens of houses and public buildings need renovation after suffering various levels of damage during the attack.

Around 70 Hamas terrorists invaded the farming community near the Gaza Strip on the morning of Oct. 7, murdering 130 people—some 10 percent of the kibbutz’s 1,200 residents—including women and children, and burning down many homes. Dozens of hostages were also taken from Be’eri.

The victims of the brutal attack included three generations of one family: A 73-year-old woman, her 43-year-old son and her barely 10-month-old granddaughter.

Be’eri announced that its member, Meni Godard, missing since Oct. 7, was murdered during the Hamas attack and his body is being held by the terrorist group in Gaza. Godard’s wife, Ayelet, was also murdered when terrorists stormed their home.

The couple left behind four children—Mor, Gal, Bar and Goni—and six grandchildren.

“Meni moved to Kibbutz Be’eri when he was 13 years old. Throughout his life, he worked in several different positions on the kibbutz, and worked as a printer at the Be’eri printing house, managed the kibbutz’s department store and pool, also worked as the chief economist, and at the same time was a player and coach of the local soccer team,” the Be’eri announcement said. 

“His children said that he was the most devoted and loving father and grandfather, a family man who took care of everyone around him, a man of the sea and love, and an ardent fan of Hapoel Tel Aviv.”

His death brings to six the number of hostages from Be’eri murdered, while five hostages are believed to be alive.

2.25 million families in Israel, average of 3.69 members each

(JNS) — There are approximately 2.25 million families in Israel with an average of 3.69 people per family, according to data the Central Bureau of Statistics published ahead of the annual Family Day, which begins on Thursday evening and ends on Friday evening.

Known as Yom HaMishpacha in Hebrew, the national holiday honoring the family unit takes place every year on the last day of the Hebrew month of Shevat. Until the 1990s, it was known as Mother’s Day (Yom HaEm).

The CBS data, which is for the year 2022, shows that about half of families in Israel consist of a pair of parents and at least one child up to the age of 17.

Arab families larger, except for the Orthodox

The proportion of families with two parents and children up to the age of 17 is higher among the Arab population (around 59 percent) than in the Jewish population (about 45 percent).

In 2022 there was an average of 3.58 people in Jewish families on average compared to 4.3 people in Arab families.

Among Jews, secular families average 3.18 members, religious families average 3.86, very religious families 4.79, and among the ultra-Orthodox, that figure rises to 5.33.

Among cities with more than 100,000 residents, Beit Shemesh has the highest proportion of families with couples and children up to 17 at 68 percent, compared to about 4.75 in the national average.

The highest average number of people per family is found in Beit Shemesh (4.96), Bnei Brak (4.73) and Jerusalem (4.25), compared to the national average of 3.69.

Ashkelon is home to the highest proportion of single-parent families with children up to 17 at 9.5 percent, versus the national average of 6 percent. Tel Aviv-Jaffa is home to the highest proportion of couples without children at 41 percent, compared to the national average of 26 percent.

Nationally, 29 percent of Jewish families and 12 percent of Arab families are childless.

Antisemitic incidents in January rose 171 percent globally from previous year

(JNS) — The Combat Antisemitism Movement has released its monthly report of antisemitic incidents, finding 468 running across a spectrum of actions and motives.

Comparing last month’s total to January 2023, CAM reports an increase of 171 percent.

The largest share of the incidents (65.3 percent) were Israel-related with 16.25 percent as expressions of “classical” antisemitism; 8.97 percent as Islamist in motivation; and the rest as Holocaust denial, minimization, distortion or unattributable categories.

Types of incidents included vandalism (68 incidents), physical threats (52) and the majority (329) as hate speech.