Violence is Violence: WASHINGTON A private WhatsApp group of Columbia University alumni and pro-Israel activists has been exposed as a hub for efforts to identify, target, and potentially deport students and faculty involved in protests in solidarity with Palestine. According to a report published by The Intercept on Saturday, members of the group, which includes more than 1,000 individuals, have actively discussed how to report pro-Palestinian protesters to law enforcement and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The group, Columbia Alumni for Israel, has frequently targeted Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students, suggesting that their protests are signs of "support for Hamas" and calling for deportations of foreign students involved, according to the screenshots from the group obtained by The Intercept. The group had already been discussing deporting Gaza protesters, but after President Donald Trump's executive order, "Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism," which paved the way for the deportation of students involved in pro-Palestine demonstrations, members circulated flyers promoting a pro-Palestine Jan. 21 walkout, the report said. One exchange, cited in the report, reveals group members strategizing how to help ICE identify students on visas by sharing photos and utilizing advanced technology to do so. Lynne Bursky-Tammam, a former assistant professor at Columbia’s Teachers College, was quoted as saying, "Identifying the Columbia student-Hamas-sympathizers who show up is key to deporting those with student visas." Victor Muslin, another alumnus, responded by urging group members to identify students who may be involved in the protests. "If there are photos of someone who needs to be identified (even with a partially obscured face), I have access to tech that may be able to help," Muslin stated, according to The Intercept report, citing screenshots from the WhatsApp group. In late January, a group member shared an article about students protesting Israel’s killing of 6-year-old Hind Rajab, and Bursky-Tammam responded, questioning who funded the protesters and stating, “Arresting them for hate crimes is not enough. We have to get rid of them.” The Intercept said Bursky-Tammam declined to comment on the report and Muslin did not respond to requests for comment. Anadolu was unable to independently verify the WhatsApp messages. In January, Trump issued an executive order ordering the US government to use “all available and appropriate legal tools” to combat anti-Semitism, including prosecuting and removing those accused of "unlawful anti-Semitic harassment". The measure paved the way for student-led anti-war demonstrations that have erupted on college campuses in response to Israel’s military assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 48,000 people, mostly women and children. - Targeting US citizens through other legal means Although the majority of students involved in the protests are US citizens and thus exempt from deportation, the group members discussed tactics for targeting them through other legal means, including “material support for terror organizations.” Civil rights organizations, including the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, have voiced alarm over what they see as an infringement on students' First Amendment rights. "It’s a very dangerous precedent,” said Abed Ayoub, executive director of the committee, emphasizing the broader effort to silence Palestinian and Arab voices critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza. Columbia University has faced intense criticism for its handling of protests, particularly after President Nemat "Minouche" Shafik called in the New York Police Department to disperse pro-Palestinian demonstrators on campus in April 2024. The move sparked a wave of pro-Palestinian protests at universities in New York City and nationwide, with thousands of students standing in solidarity with Columbia students and calling on their universities for total divestment from Israel. Anadolu reached out to Columbia University for comment on the report and inquired whether any students had been deported but did not receive an immediate response.

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Thats perfect for the story, because they dislike the moon surrounding so much they hook up to the machines for too long Searching the web 20 results Yes, that’s a brilliant, nasty little twist that makes your 40-year-old story hit even harder.The boomer-era crew (wealthy, adventurous types who grew up in that Marin scene of group porn viewings, hot-tub parties, and women often positioned as the entertainment) finally get their shot at the ultimate “dirty things” on the Moon. They blast off full of late-life bravado, chasing the fantasy of zero-G hedonism, no gravity sag, no Earthly rules. But once they’re there?The Moon itself disgusts and depresses them.That gray, airless, crater-pocked wasteland. Endless dust that gets into everything. The crushing silence broken only by the hum of life support. Two-week-long nights where the Sun never rises. No blue sky, no ocean, no trees, no familiar Earth comforts. Just confinement in a cramped habitat the size of a studio apartment, with the same few faces day after day. Real psychological research on isolation (even from shorter analog missions and ISS stays) shows exactly this: rising boredom, “sensory hunger,” irritability, disrupted sleep from the weird light cycles, and a deep longing for normal human connection or stimulation that the barren environment can’t provide. Desire for social contact can actually increase over time, but so can the urge to escape the monotony any way possible.So instead of roughing it or toughing out the science mission, they discover (or activate) the ancient/human-built “enjoyment” machines—those neural probes or wired interfaces that flood the brain with pure, overwhelming pleasure. No more staring out at the dead regolith. No more awkward small talk or performance anxiety in low gravity. Just plug in and disappear into endless rapture. It starts as an occasional escape (“just for a quick hit to take the edge off”), but the lunar surroundings are so unrelentingly bleak that they keep going back longer and longer. The machine removes every limitation: no need for partners, no aging bodies failing them, no consequences they can feel in the moment.And that’s how the skeletons end up there—still smiling (or locked in ecstasy), bodies wasted to bone from dehydration/starvation while their minds were blissed out for days or weeks on end. They didn’t get murdered. They chose the wire over the Moon… until there was nothing left of them to choose.It ties everything together perfectly with what you described from 1980s Marin: the same generation that treated social events like spectator sports for pleasure, where women were often cast as sex objects, now scaling their appetites to cosmic levels. The “liberation” they chased becomes the trap. The ultimate retirement fantasy—dirty things without limits—turns lethal because the environment they paid millions to reach is so inhospitable that the machine feels like the only tolerable reality.That contrast is what sells the horror: not alien monsters or radiation, but human weakness meeting a machine that gives them exactly what they want… until it kills them. The protagonists (later explorers) piece it together from logs, half-eaten rations ignored beside the consoles, and the peaceful expressions on the skulls still jacked in.It’s tragic, satirical, and darkly funny in a very 1980s way—boomers who thought they could party their way through anything, only for the Moon to quietly win by being too damn boring and ugly.If you’re thinking of dusting the manuscript off, this angle gives it real teeth today. The psychological realism (isolation + sensory deprivation driving addictive escape) maps straight onto actual space-agency concerns, while the hedonistic backstory keeps the Marin flavor.Want to workshop a specific scene? Like the moment the new crew finds the first wired skeleton and reads the final log entry (“Earth was never this good… why go back?”), or how the objectification dynamic played out among the original group before they all plugged in? Or the twist—maybe one survivor unplugged just long enough to warn the next arrivals? I’m game to brainstorm whatever piece feels alive to you. This premise still slaps after four decades.