Israeli Businessmen Urged NYC Mayor to Clear Pro-Palestinian Protests, Report Reveals
An investigative report in the Washington Post claimed that a group of influential business tycoons involved in running the city office aimed to use police force against pro-Palestinian student protesters at Columbia University. Disclosing conversations on WhatsApp, this proceeding found that these billionaires were looking to influence the governor and Columbia University’s president to end the protests.
After it was published on Thursday, the storyline revealed that essential people in the media were arranged. This led to an anger outburst, as the forces clearing the demonstrations last month were criticised for their heavy-handed approach.
“The WhatsApp chat group member told The Post in the same story he had given $2,100, the maximum allowed sum, to the mayoral candidate in that given month,” the article elaborates. “On the same account, some members also proposed they would engage private investigators to work with New York Police during the riots; the chat log reveals — a matter one of their group members reported in the conversation, being happy about it. However, officials denied using private investigators to control the protest. ”
This conclusion is made as colleges around the USA still apply power to provocatively active pro-Palestinians, which, in turn, brings worries about political expression stifling. While some campuses can handle recent instances of students demanding the universities to divest from companies directly involved in the Israeli intervention in Gaza, other schools face repeated challenges by setting up encampments and boycotting Israeli educational institutions.
The predominant thread of the leaked WhatsApp chat shares many business people, including the likes of former Starbucks CEO and Dell founder and CEO Howard Schultz and Michael Dell, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, and Joshua Kushner, the brother of former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Middle East advisor, Jared Kushner. Alongside Luistky, founder of snack companies; Loeb, hedge fund manager; Blavatnik, billionaire; and Sitt, real estate investor, other rich personalities they reportedly held a video conference with Mayor Adams on the 26th of April recently.
Although there are police officers in the rally, it has not made pro-Palestine protesters give up their firmness; instead, they have been seen to gain additional support from fellow students and professors.
The advocates of police action assert that one of its purposes is the security of Jewish students, and some of them complain of being uncomfortable while listening to anti-Israel statements at the protests. Nonetheless, the activists who fought for the Palestinian side, some of them Jewish as well, were subjected to various forms of violence in demonstrations without any concern from the authorities.
A joint union representing as many as 48,000 grad students is issuing a strike over student protesters mistreated at universities like the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). A pro-Israel campaign group that was pro-Israel used pipes and mace against Palestinian students at UCLA as the police, which stood there, did nothing. Different protesters in the Palestinian demonstrations were hospitalised. Because of this, the authorities the second day sent police to displace the Palestinian encampment.
These events manifest the tensions and dynamics of complexity around the campus of Pali, celebrated in college schools across and beyond the United States. In the wake of the developing protests and quite variable face responses, the debate about political freedom and the law enforcement purpose of protest management will be contentious.
