The Times of Israel is liveblogging Wednesday’s events as they happen.
Nikki Haley writes ‘Finish Them’ on IDF shell while touring Lebanon border
Former US presidential hopeful Nikki Haley has been photographed writing “Finish Them” on an Israeli shell as she toured sites near the northern border with Lebanon.
The photograph was posted on X by Danny Danon, a member of the Israeli parliament and former ambassador to the United Nations, who was accompanying Haley on her visit.
“‘Finish Them’. This is what my friend the former ambassador Nikki Haley wrote,” Danon says in his post that shows a kneeling Haley writing on a shell with a purple marker pen.
Haley was a hawkish UN envoy under Donald Trump, and her term overlapped with Danon.
Finish them!
זה מה שכתבה היום חברתי, השגרירה לשעבר, ניקי היילי על פגז במהלך ביקור במוצב של תותחנים בגבול הצפון.
הגיע הזמן לשינוי משוואה – תושבי צור וצידון יתפנו, תושבי הצפון יחזרו.
צה"ל יכול לנצח! pic.twitter.com/qvLNCXPl7o
— Danny Danon ???????? דני דנון (@dannydanon) May 28, 2024
Detroit college suspends in-person classes due to anti-Israel encampment
Wayne State University in Detroit suspended in-person classes and encouraged staff to work remotely to avoid any problems with an anti-Israel encampment that sprouted last week.
“All on-campus events are canceled until further notice. Critical infrastructure workers are expected to report to campus,” the school says in a statement around 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday.
Wayne State spokesperson Matt Lockwood says there have been “public safety concerns,” especially about access to certain areas.
There are two dozen tents on green space near the undergraduate library. Participants mill around while police and private security watch nearby. Two portable toilets are full and not usable.
Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, who over the weekend spoke at a conference with speakers affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group, has been at the site to offer support.
“We have told the organizers to remove the encampment several times and they have declined to do so,” Lockwood says.
Wayne State has 16,000 undergraduate students but fewer during the summer term.
Academic workers at several UC campuses strike in support of anti-Israel protests
Discord from last month’s violent mob attack on pro-Palestinian students and activists encamped at the University of California, Los Angeles, flares again as academic workers stage a protest strike on campus protesting UCLA’s response to the incident.
Unionized academic researchers, graduate teaching assistants and post-doctoral scholars at UCLA walked off the job over what they regard as unfair labor practices in the university’s handling of anti-Israel demonstrations in recent weeks, organizers say.
They are joined by fellow academic workers at two other University of California campuses — UC Davis near Sacramento, and UC Santa Cruz, where the protest strike began on May 20.
The strike was organized by the United Auto Workers union Local 4811, which represents some 48,000 non-tenured academic employees total across 10 University of California campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The UAW local includes about 6,400 academic workers at UCLA, 5,700 at Davis and about 2,000 at Santa Cruz. A union representative says “thousands” had joined the strike as of Monday by withholding their work, though fewer than 200 were seen attending a noon-time rally on the UCLA campus.
The expanding work stoppage marks the first union-backed protest in solidarity with the recent wave of student-led demonstrations on dozens of US campuses against Israel over the war with Hamas in Gaza that was sparked by the terror group’s October 7 onslaught.
Union leaders say a major impetus for the strike was the treatment of 210 people arrested at the scene of a Palestinian solidarity protest camp torn down by police at UCLA on May 2.
About 24 hours earlier, on the night of April 30-May 1, a group of masked assailants armed with sticks and clubs attacked the encampment and its occupants, sparking a bloody clash that went on for at least three hours before police moved in to quell the disturbance.
The university has since reassigned the chief of the campus police department and opened an investigation into law enforcement’s reaction to the violence, which followed several days of rising tensions during which Jewish students on campus were harassed.
The strikers are demanding amnesty for grad students and other academic workers who were arrested or face discipline for their involvement in the protests, which union leaders claim were peaceful except when counter-demonstrators and other instigators were allowed to provoke unrest.
Algeria to present UN Security Council resolution ‘to stop the killing in Rafah’
UNITED NATIONS — Algeria will present a draft UN resolution calling for an end to “the killing” in Rafah as Israel attacks Hamas operatives in the crowded Gaza city, its ambassador says after a Security Council meeting.
“It will be a short text, a decisive text, to stop the killing in Rafah,” Ambassador Amar Bendjama tells reporters.
It was Algeria that requested Tuesday’s urgent meeting of the council after the Sunday strike.
The Algerian ambassador doesn’t say when he hopes the resolution might be put to a vote.
“We hope that it could be done as quickly as possible because life is in the balance,” says Chinese Ambassador Fu Cong, expressing hope for a vote this week.
“It’s high time for this council to take action. This is a matter of life and death. This is a matter of emergency,” the French Ambassador Nicolas de Riviere said before the council meeting.