This past Wednesday, at the annual White House Chanukah party, President Trump offered a very special Chanukah gift to the Jewish people. Unlike any president before him, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at fighting anti-Semitism at universities and colleges across the country by protecting Jews under federal law.
Edited by: TJVNews.com
The measure interprets part of a U.S. civil rights law to include members “of a group that shares common religious practices.” Part of the law bars discrimination based on race, color and national origin in federally-supported programs.
The Trump administration said it will, as a policy, extend protections under the law to Jewish people. Some major Jewish organizations praised the action. They said it means that universities could lose federal money if they do not stop discrimination against Jews at their schools.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, of the Los Angeles based Simon Wiesenthal Center said, “This is a very critically important move…that will set an environment wherein Jewish students who were targeted with anti-Semitism on university campuses in America will actually have…protection and recourse.”
In an article that appeared on December 15th on the FrontPageMag web site, prolific writer Daniel Greenfield said the media “lied about President Trump’s executive order against anti-Semitism. It lied about it because it wanted to gaslight American Jews into opposing a measure meant to fight campus anti-Semitism.” Below, are excerpts on an article written by New York University alumna Adela Cojab Moadeb. Moadeb is a Syrian-Lebanese, Mexican Jew who graduated from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individual Study in May 2019, according to a JPost report.
She praised President Trump’s executive order, which recognized Jewish students as a protected group under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
“When I sued NYU for campus antisemitism, college leaders shrugged. It took the US president to do something about it,” Moadeb, who sued the school over allegations of allowing antisemitism on campus, wrote in a New York Post op-ed. She said that Trump’s executive order “corrects a longtime gross injustice against Jewish students.”
Speaking of her battle against harassment of Jewish and pro-Israel students on the NYU campus by the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) group, she wrote:
“When I first started at NYU, I was excited to go to a school that championed diversity and inclusion — until that diversity and inclusion applied to everyone except my community. After years of overt protests, boycotts, and direct aggression toward Jewish students from NYU’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the university honored the organization with the President’s Service Award for “outstanding contribution to NYU life.”
What did SJP do to “earn” this prize? They organized a 53-group boycott against Realize Israel, a non-political student organization, depicting assault rifles on flyers calling for a revolt. Further, at the 2018 Rave in the Park in which NYU students celebrated Israel Independence Day, one SJP member burned an Israeli flag and another physically assaulted a Jewish student; both students were arrested.
Throughout the year, I spoke with eight administrators from multiple NYU departments — the Office of Student Affairs; Center for Student Life; Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards; and even the Office of Public Safety — about rising hostility against the Jewish community on campus. My concerns were brushed off, and after the arrests, I was asked not to draw attention to the issue.
The presidential award solidified the university’s stance: violent acts against students on the basis of their views are not only tolerated, but celebrated, and the concerns of Jewish students are not to be taken seriously.
When I sued NYU for campus anti-Semitism, college leaders shrugged. It took the US president to do something about it.
Although my legal complaint argued that NYU’s reaction — or lack thereof — to its Jewish community’s plight already violated Title VI, religion was not a protected class under civil rights law — at least until this week. President Trump’s new executive order not only changes that reality, but corrects a longtime gross injustice against Jewish students. The order expands Title VI’s existing protections to explicitly include discrimination against Jews.
Standing with President Trump on stage allowed me the opportunity to elevate the voices of Jewish students nationwide
This is the basic reality of what the executive order did. It protected the civil rights of Jewish students. And we’re talking about people who are being violently assaulted on campuses.”