Today’s blacklisted American: Two students harassed and blackballed from a “sexual assault survivor’s club” because they were Jewish
Two female students attending the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz, Cassandra Blotner and Ofek Preis, have now filed a federal civil rights complaint because of the vicious and hostile treatment that they were subjected to by “the sexual assault survivor’s club” at the college, simply because both were Jewish and supporters of Israel.
You can read their civil rights complaint here [pdf].
Denise Katz-Prober, a Brandeis Center lawyer who represents Blotner and Preis, said in an interview with The College Fix that the two women were treated horribly. “They essentially have been victimized three times,” she said. “They were victimized first when they were sexually assaulted, then by the community of students and support services they turned to, and then by the university when they reached out for help and the university failed to take steps to protect them.”
When the other members of the club, officially called New Paltz Accountability (NPA), learned that both women were ardent and public supporters of Israel, these club members began a campaign to harass and dox the women continuously.
Countless threatening messages were sent over messaging apps, detailing where students could find Blotner. She said some messages read “Find Cassie in town,” “She is here,” “Find the Zionist” and “Spit on her,” according to Blotner. “For this entire social media platform to only be talking about me and threatening me because of my beliefs, that was enough that I did not feel safe at all, so my dad picked me up and I went home,” Blotner said.
Preis described the ordeal as “very traumatizing.”
Because of their fear of being attacked, both students missed numerous classes. And they did so according to the advice of the New Paltz administration, which refused to provide them protection and instead told the two women to simply stop attending classes. Blotner received incompletes in all her classes, while Preis was unable to complete the double major she was working towards.
Nor was this campaign of harassment by NPA a secret. It later publicly declared in an Instagram post that it would blacklist anyone who supports Israel.
[I]f we allow a pro-Zionism member in the group, we would essentially be sending a message to all Palestinians that they are not welcome. Denouncing Zionism is crucial to ending all forms of colonialism and oppression. Regardless of how Zionism is defined, it is a form of white supremacy in practice.”
So, based on this slogan-filled and very ignorant understanding of the history of the Middle East, NPA feels it can blacklist actual Jewish victims of sexual assault so that all potential Palestinian victims will feel welcome. Talk about a double standard, based on race and ethnicity. Moreover, none of this seems to have anything to do with helping sexual assault victims. I doubt very strongly that rapists will be thinking about the situation on the West Bank when they attack women.
The complaint also takes to task the administrators at New Paltz, who even after they admitted they were very aware of the harassment and blacklisting, chose to do nothing about it.
On February 17, 2022, President Christian issued a second statement acknowledging that NPA’s actions were exclusionary, discriminatory, and motivated by anti-Semitism, but claiming that the University’s ability to respond was limited because NPA was not a recognized student organization.
It was this lack of response from the university that forced the two women to forego filing a complaint with the university itself, and go straight to the federal Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
Considering the leftist politics that dominate the Biden administration and its bureaucracy, it would be astonishing if Blotner and Preis’s complaint accomplishes anything. I would expect the feds to sweep it under the rug, since the federal government, dominated by partisan Democrats, whole-heartedly supports blacklisting and anti-Semitism and bigotry. To get any satisfaction, Blotner and Preis are going to have to sue, and sue hard, in the federal courts. They have been violated in numerous ways, both morally and legally.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Two female students attending the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz, Cassandra Blotner and Ofek Preis, have now filed a federal civil rights complaint because of the vicious and hostile treatment that they were subjected to by “the sexual assault survivor’s club” at the college, simply because both were Jewish and supporters of Israel.
You can read their civil rights complaint here [pdf].
Denise Katz-Prober, a Brandeis Center lawyer who represents Blotner and Preis, said in an interview with The College Fix that the two women were treated horribly. “They essentially have been victimized three times,” she said. “They were victimized first when they were sexually assaulted, then by the community of students and support services they turned to, and then by the university when they reached out for help and the university failed to take steps to protect them.”
When the other members of the club, officially called New Paltz Accountability (NPA), learned that both women were ardent and public supporters of Israel, these club members began a campaign to harass and dox the women continuously.
Countless threatening messages were sent over messaging apps, detailing where students could find Blotner. She said some messages read “Find Cassie in town,” “She is here,” “Find the Zionist” and “Spit on her,” according to Blotner. “For this entire social media platform to only be talking about me and threatening me because of my beliefs, that was enough that I did not feel safe at all, so my dad picked me up and I went home,” Blotner said.
Preis described the ordeal as “very traumatizing.”
Because of their fear of being attacked, both students missed numerous classes. And they did so according to the advice of the New Paltz administration, which refused to provide them protection and instead told the two women to simply stop attending classes. Blotner received incompletes in all her classes, while Preis was unable to complete the double major she was working towards.
Nor was this campaign of harassment by NPA a secret. It later publicly declared in an Instagram post that it would blacklist anyone who supports Israel.
[I]f we allow a pro-Zionism member in the group, we would essentially be sending a message to all Palestinians that they are not welcome. Denouncing Zionism is crucial to ending all forms of colonialism and oppression. Regardless of how Zionism is defined, it is a form of white supremacy in practice.”
So, based on this slogan-filled and very ignorant understanding of the history of the Middle East, NPA feels it can blacklist actual Jewish victims of sexual assault so that all potential Palestinian victims will feel welcome. Talk about a double standard, based on race and ethnicity. Moreover, none of this seems to have anything to do with helping sexual assault victims. I doubt very strongly that rapists will be thinking about the situation on the West Bank when they attack women.
The complaint also takes to task the administrators at New Paltz, who even after they admitted they were very aware of the harassment and blacklisting, chose to do nothing about it.
On February 17, 2022, President Christian issued a second statement acknowledging that NPA’s actions were exclusionary, discriminatory, and motivated by anti-Semitism, but claiming that the University’s ability to respond was limited because NPA was not a recognized student organization.
It was this lack of response from the university that forced the two women to forego filing a complaint with the university itself, and go straight to the federal Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
Considering the leftist politics that dominate the Biden administration and its bureaucracy, it would be astonishing if Blotner and Preis’s complaint accomplishes anything. I would expect the feds to sweep it under the rug, since the federal government, dominated by partisan Democrats, whole-heartedly supports blacklisting and anti-Semitism and bigotry. To get any satisfaction, Blotner and Preis are going to have to sue, and sue hard, in the federal courts. They have been violated in numerous ways, both morally and legally.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The fact that the support group used Zionism as an excuse to remove two victims from is group would indicate that its not a support group like AA but a political organization hiding behind an Assault Victims label.
I would separately sue them enough to bankrupt them.
Unless they can come up with evidence that they have removed others from the group for similar reasons.
The fact they called for violent deadly attacks on the two should be enough to close them down permanently. Spitting in some areas can be considered assault, if not a deadly attack because of disease.
They should first hire a good hacker/investigator to find out who was sending the messages. This could be the difference of an expensive defense for the group and a finding of guilty.
New Paltz is a state institution. THus it is subject to the US Constitution and the Federal statutes against discrimination, not to mention the New York state versions of the same. Time for the US offfice of Civil Rights to show up and impose sanctions
The school can hide behind “not a recognized student organization.”.
This gives them all kinds of cover.
LGBTQ Forces itself on Jewish University
Kurt at Uncivil Law (Sept 11, 2022)
https://youtu.be/g7MxvmNWcCo
7:04
Denouncing Zionism is crucial to ending all forms of colonialism and oppression.
Sorry but isn’t “Palestine” a colonial state? If anyone is indigenous to that part of the world, it’s the Jews.
“If anyone is indigenous to that part of the world, it’s the Jews. “Not according to the Left. Consider this “In recent months, the never-ending heated debate on the Israel-Palestinian conflict has sometimes boiled over to a new debate: Are Jews indigenous to the land of Israel?”
Over two thousand years of written history say so,
Yes they are religious texts but now its a debate on just how accurate they are. Professional archeologists and anthropologists accept less to prove more.
Any genetic testing will just prove everyone in the region is kissing cousins.