NYC Mayor Smeared a Grandmother as an “Outside Agitator” to Justify NYPD Assault on Columbia

(They just continue to lie and they wont stop lying until they shut down free speech and the right to free assembly in this country like they have in glorious Israel. And the fucking right-wingers are all on-board with the plan. Unbelievable.)

from The Intercept

Nahla Al-Arian lost more than 200 relatives in Israel's attacks on Gaza. Then Eric Adams said she was the reason police raided Columbia. 

Nahla Al-Arian has been living a nightmare for the past seven months, watching from afar as Israel carries out its scorched-earth war against her ancestral homeland in the Gaza Strip. Like many Palestinian Americans, the 63-year-old retired fourth-grade teacher from Tampa Bay, Florida, has endured seven months of a steady trickle of WhatsApp messages about the deaths of her relatives.

“You see, my father’s family is originally from Gaza, so they are a big family. And they are not only in Gaza City, but also in Deir al Balah and Khan Younis, other parts,” Al-Arian told me. Recently, the trickle of horrors became a flood: “It started with like 27, and then we lost count until I received this message from my relative who said at least 200 had died.”

The catastrophe was the backdrop for Al-Arian’s visit last week to Columbia University in New York City...

Her husband posted a picture of Nahla, sitting on the lawn at the tent city erected by the student protesters, on his Twitter feed. “My wife Nahla in solidarity with the brave and very determined Columbia University students,” he wrote. Nahla left New York, inspired by her visit to Columbia, and returned to Virginia to spend time with her grandchildren.

A few days later, that one tweet by her husband would thrust Nahla Al-Arian into the center of a spurious narrative promoted by the mayor of New York City and major media outlets. She became the exemplar of the dangerous “outside agitator” who was training the students at Columbia. It was Nahla’s presence, according to Mayor Eric Adams, that was the “tipping point” in his decision to authorize the military-style raids on the campus...

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