The Times of Israel is liveblogging Thursday’s events as they happen.
US ‘very troubled’ by Norway’s divestment from Caterpillar for supplying gear to Israel
WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump’s administration says it’s “very troubled” by the divestment by Norway’s $2 trillion wealth fund from US construction equipment group Caterpillar, adding Washington is directly engaging with the Norwegian government on the issue.
Norway’s $2 trillion wealth fund, the world’s largest and operated by Norway’s central bank, said last week it had divested from Caterpillar on ethics grounds over the use of the company’s products by Israeli authorities in Gaza and the Israeli-controlled West Bank.
The fund’s ethics watchdog said that in its assessment, Caterpillar’s products such as bulldozers it manufactured were being used by Israeli authorities “to commit extensive and systematic violations of international humanitarian law” such as the “widespread unlawful destruction of Palestinian property.”
The fund said Caterpillar has “not implemented any measures to prevent such use.” Caterpillar has not responded to requests for comment on the wealth fund’s move.
“We are very troubled by the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund’s decision, which appears to be based on illegitimate claims against Caterpillar and the Israeli government,” a US State Department spokesperson says.
“We are engaging directly with the Norwegian government on this matter.”
Trump ally and Republican US Senator Lindsey Graham has suggested Washington should impose tariffs and visa revocations in retaliation.
UK charges 6 anti-Israel activists for supporting proscribed terror group Palestine Action
British authorities have charged six people for participating in meetings to plan a demonstration in support of the banned group Palestine Action, prosecutors say.
The six, aged from 26 to 62, are charged “with various offenses of encouraging support for a proscribed terrorist organization,” the Crown Prosecution Service says in a statement.
They were placed in detention and are due to appear in court on Thursday. They risk up to 14 years in prison.
Palestine Action was designated a terrorist organization and banned in July after vandalism at a Royal Air Force base.
The charges result from 13 online meetings they attended to prepare for several protests over the summer.
During an online press conference Wednesday, representatives of the group Defend Our Juries, to which the arrested individuals belonged, confirmed that demonstrations would go ahead on Saturday in London, Derry in Northern Ireland, and Edinburgh in Scotland.
Ashkenazi Haredi leaders, Jerusalem reach deal on school placement of Sephardic students
Ashkenazi Haredi leaders and the Jerusalem Municipality reach an agreement on the placement of Sephardic girls in high schools and post-high school programs run by Ashkenazi institutions, after many of them delayed the opening of the school year over the issue.
“After many efforts, we succeeded in finding a solution that will allow the school year to open in the seminaries,” Mayor Moshe Lion says in a statement. “As part of the solution, two new classes will be opened to accommodate all the girls who, until now, had no placement. I want to thank all those who helped lead this solution.”
On the instructions of community rabbis, multiple seminaries in Beit Shemesh and Jerusalem declined to allow ninth graders to begin their studies Monday in order to protest instructions by the two cities’ municipalities to accept students of Middle Eastern and North African heritage who had not been accepted elsewhere.
Discrimination against Sephardic students has plagued the Haredi community for years, and critics charge that many Ashkenazi schools maintain unofficial quotas of Sephardic students due to racism against families of Middle Eastern origin.
Earlier this week, Channel 13 news reported that Rabbi Dov Lando, one of the most prominent rabbinic leaders of the so-called Lithuanian stream of Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodoxy and the spiritual leader of the United Torah Judaism party’s Degel HaTorah faction, was behind instructions to local rabbis not to accept the girls.
According to a statement by Lando’s office, the rabbi directed the “Old Seminary” — a prestigious Beit Yaakov teacher training program — and the other seminaries to open the school year after the agreement reached with the mayor.
“The cries of the students cannot be ignored,” Lando told the seminary’s director, Rabbi Yisrael Levin, according to the statement.
Asked if all the students in the new classes are of Sephardic origin, a spokesperson for the municipality says that is not the case.
“The Jerusalem Municipality, under my leadership, will not allow any form of discrimination — not on racial grounds nor on any other basis,” Lion says in the statement.
According to the Haredi news outlet Kikar HaShabbat, work on a solution is currently underway for the seminaries in Beit Shemesh, where efforts are being made to establish a new seminary for the students who did not receive a placement.
Ruling against Trump, US judge says ‘antisemitism used as smokescreen’ to cut Harvard’s funding
BOSTON — A federal judge in Boston orders the reversal of cuts of more than $2.6 billion in federal funding for Harvard University, delivering a significant victory to the Ivy League school in its battle with the Trump administration.
US District Judge Allison Burroughs rules the cuts amounted to illegal retaliation for Harvard’s rejection of White House demands for changes to its governance and policies.
The government had tied the freezes at Harvard to delays in dealing with antisemitism on its campus, but the judge says the federally funded research had little connection to antisemitism. “A review of the administrative record makes it difficult to conclude anything other than that Defendants used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities,” Burroughs writes.
The ruling reverses a series of funding freezes that later became outright cuts as the Trump administration escalated its fight with the nation’s wealthiest university. The administration also has sought to prevent the school from hosting foreign students and threatened to revoke its tax-exempt status in a clash watched widely across higher education.
Whether Harvard actually receives the money remains to be seen. If the ruling stands, it promises to revive Harvard’s sprawling research operation and hundreds of projects that lost federal money.
Neither the White House nor Harvard respond immediately to requests for comment.
Beyond the courthouse, the Trump administration and Harvard officials have been discussing a potential agreement that would end investigations and allow the university to regain access to federal funding. US President Donald Trump has said he wants Harvard to pay no less than $500 million, but no deal has materialized, even as the administration has struck agreements with Columbia and Brown.
Harvard’s lawsuit accused the Trump administration of waging a retaliation campaign against the university after it rejected a series of demands in an April 11 letter from a federal antisemitism task force.
The letter demanded sweeping changes related to campus protests, academics and admissions. It was meant to address government accusations that the university had become a hotbed of liberalism and tolerated anti-Jewish harassment on campus.