Lana Aldos
Overview
Lana Aldos [Lana Feras Aldos] signed a 2021 anti-Israel statement by the Student Assembly (SA) at Cornell University (Cornell). She has also dismissed anti-Semitism, demonized Israel, defended a pro-Hamas professor and endorsed an anti-Israel agitator.
In 2020-2021, Aldos was a member of the Student Advisory to the Dean Council at Cornell and a member of the Student Health Advisory Committee, a joint committee of the Cornell SA, the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly and Cornell Health.
As of the same date, Aldos’s LinkedIn profile said she had been the “Founder and CEO” at NewBeginning Foundation since June 2020 and an intern with the UN Medical Emergency Response team in New York from July 2022 to January 2023.
She also served as a research assistant at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University (Harvard) and a research assistant at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative from May 2022 to May 2023.
As of December 2023, Aldos’s LinkedIn said she was a “Public Health Equity Fellow” at the Maryland Department of Health from August 2021 to August 2023 and a Contributing Editor for the Harvard Medical School Primary Care Review from September 2021 to February 2022.
As of the same date, Aldos’s LinkedIn said she was pursuing a PhD. in “International Health - Health Systems” at the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, slated to graduate in 2026.
Aldos graduated with a master’s degree in “Public Health, Population & Health” from JHU Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2022.
As of December 2023, Aldos’s LinkedIn said she graduated from Cornell with a bachelor’s degree in “Biology & Society” in 2021.
Aldos’s LinkedIn also said she attended Loyola University Chicago (LUC) from 2017 to 2019, where she was a LUC “Student Diversity and Multicultural Affairs Scholar.”
Aldos’s LinkedIn said she was located in Palos Hills, Illinois.
She also served as a research assistant at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University (Harvard) and a research assistant at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative from May 2022 to May 2023.
As of December 2023, Aldos’s LinkedIn said she was a “Public Health Equity Fellow” at the Maryland Department of Health from August 2021 to August 2023 and a Contributing Editor for the Harvard Medical School Primary Care Review from September 2021 to February 2022.
As of the same date, Aldos’s LinkedIn said she was pursuing a PhD. in “International Health - Health Systems” at the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, slated to graduate in 2026.
Aldos graduated with a master’s degree in “Public Health, Population & Health” from JHU Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2022.
As of December 2023, Aldos’s LinkedIn said she graduated from Cornell with a bachelor’s degree in “Biology & Society” in 2021.
Aldos’s LinkedIn also said she attended Loyola University Chicago (LUC) from 2017 to 2019, where she was a LUC “Student Diversity and Multicultural Affairs Scholar.”
Aldos’s LinkedIn said she was located in Palos Hills, Illinois.
As of December 2023, Aldos went by the username “Lana Feras A.” on LinkedIn.
Anti-Israel Statement
On May 13, 2021, Aldos signed a statement titled: “Recognizing and Condemning Violent Attacks Against Palestinians.”
The statement, published on Cornell SA letterhead, said: “We, the undersigned, are writing to condemn the violent and vicious acts of terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and settler-colonialism, that have been plaguing Palestinians for years and specifically regarding recent events.”
The statement also alleged Israel carried out “illegal evictions” and deliberately targeted Palestinians celebrating Ramadan for violent attacks. Claiming “Mosques full of Muslims observing the last 10 days of Ramadan in solitude were attacked with grenades and ransacked,” the statement also alleged that Israel was considering an invasion of Gaza during the Islamic holiday of Eid.
The statement, published on Cornell SA letterhead, said: “We, the undersigned, are writing to condemn the violent and vicious acts of terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and settler-colonialism, that have been plaguing Palestinians for years and specifically regarding recent events.”
The statement also alleged Israel carried out “illegal evictions” and deliberately targeted Palestinians celebrating Ramadan for violent attacks. Claiming “Mosques full of Muslims observing the last 10 days of Ramadan in solitude were attacked with grenades and ransacked,” the statement also alleged that Israel was considering an invasion of Gaza during the Islamic holiday of Eid.
Incitement surrounding Al-Aqsa and Sheikh Jarrah were leading factors in Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists firing over 4,300 rockets from Gaza at Israeli population centers from May 10 to 21, 2021. In response to rocket attacks from Gaza, Israel launched “Operation Guardian of the Walls (OGW),” striking military targets in the terrorist-controlled enclave.
The statement then called on the university administration to “act immediately” to end “their relationship with Technion in Haifa, Israel” and “any relationship between the Cornell University Police Department (CUPD) and Israel.” The statement also called on the University to issue a statement in defense of Palestinian rights and to reconsider investments in Israel.
On May 13, 2021, Cornell’s student newspaper, The Cornell Review, reported that Abd Elmagid, as well as Uche Chukwukere, SA Vice President of Finance and SJP Cornell affiliate, and Joseph Mullen, an SJP Cornell activist and incoming College of Arts and Sciences Representative, introduced the anti-Israel statement during the final SA meeting of the year.
The statement was signed by 23 students, but neither voted on nor enacted by the SA.
Dismissing Anti-Semitism
In May 2021, during OGW, Aldos signed a letter by the Cornell Arab Student Association (Cornell ASA) condemning Cornell’s President Martha Pollack.On May 26, 2021, President Pollack issued a statement that recognized the “alarming national rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes…amid ongoing tensions in the Middle East,” and appealed for “rigorous discourse and debate, devoid of personal invective and attacks.”
Anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. “more than doubled” during OGW and its aftermath, compared to the same time period in 2020, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
Demonizing Israel
On February 11, 2020, Aldos shared to Facebook a Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) post with text that read: “Aerial view of current apartheid in Israel/Palestine…”On December 29, 2019, Aldos shared to Facebook a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) Chicago (SJP Chicago) post that read: “Merry Christmas to all those celebrating and to the thousands of Christian Palestinians celebrating under apartheid that still find a way to resist! May we all celebrate one day under a FREE Palestine
Defending a Pro-Hamas Professor
Aldos signed a November 2023 letter defending a professor at Cornell who expressed support for the Hamas terror group the previous month.The November 21, 2023 letter was authored by “Members of Cornell University’s Faculty” and it called on Cornell to take action following “attacks on a faculty member over comments about Israel’s war on Gaza.”
The letter referred to Professor Russell Rickford, who gave a speech on October 15, 2023, praising [00:00:04] Hamas terror attacks and war crimes against Israeli civilians, including mass murder, torture, rape, beheadings and kidnappings. Hamas executed the terror attacks on October 7, 2023, and left over 1,200 Israelis dead, hundreds kidnapped and thousands wounded. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.”
Rickford said [00:01:39]: “It was exhilarating! It was exhilarating! It was energizing!” He then said [00:01:47] that if Palestinians “weren’t exhilarated by this challenge to the monopoly of violence, by this shifting of the balance of power, then they would not be human. I was exhilarated!”
Rickford made his statements at a rally hosted by the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) organization.
On November 16, 2023, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) opened an investigation into discriminatory incidents, including anti-Semitic ones, at Cornell following the October 2023 Hamas terror attacks.
Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., Canada, European Union, Israel and other countries. Founded in 1987, it has killed thousands of Israeli civilians through mass shootings and suicide bombings. Hamas has also kidnapped children, families and the elderly and held them hostage in Gaza. It has desecrated [slide 2] dead bodies and launched numerous rocket attacks against Israeli civilians.
Endorsing an Anti-Israel Agitator
On February 3, 2020, Aldos shared to Facebook a video of anti-Israel agitator Noura Erakat, in which she condemned [00:00:45] then-U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Deal of the Century,” as well as the Oslo Peace Accords.In the video, Nourekat said [00:01:30]: “... this is not a deal. This is a plan to consolidate Israel’s colonial takings, which is on the ground tantamount to an apartheid regime.”
Supporting BDS
On February 17, 2020, Aldos shared to Facebook an article reporting the United Nation (UN)’s release of a list of mostly Israeli companies, compiled by the UN Human Rights Council, as a guide for which businesses to boycott.The BDS movement celebrated the release of the list they called the “UN list of shame,” and wrote: “Palestinian civil society welcomes this long-awaited UN list of companies that are complicit in Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise, which constitutes a war crime under international law.”
On November 16, 2019, Aldos shared to Facebook an article by former Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, published in Haaretz and titled: “Don’t label Israeli settlement products. Ban them.”
BDS
The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by Omar Barghouti in 2005 to challenge “international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.” BDS is an allegedly “Palestinian-led movement,” although leading BDS activists have admitted [00:01:01] this is not true.
One of the demands of BDS includes [point 3] what is generally known as the “right of return,” a demand discredited as a way to eliminate Israel. Barghouti said the “right of return” is a means to “end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.”
Barghouti has said that BDS “aims to turn Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.”
In his activism, Barghouti has also said [00:05:55] regarding Israel: “Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No…rational Palestinian, not a sellout Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”
The movement has been linked to numerous terrorist organizations and received a public endorsement from Hamas in 2017.
BDS initiatives include calling on institutions and individuals to divest from Israeli-affiliated companies, promoting academic and cultural boycotts of Israel, and organizing anti-Israel rallies, protests and campaigns.
The movement’s most notable achievement has been the infiltration of university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments and student groups, backed by their own anti-Israel members and affiliates, have proposed resolutions on some form of boycott of, or divestment from, Israel and Israeli-affiliated entities.
Boycott resolutions, although non-binding, have been passed by student governments on numerous North American campuses.
BDS activity is often aggressive and disruptive. It has been noted that universities that pass BDS resolutions see a marked increase in anti-Semitic incidents on campus. On one campus, when the student government debated a BDS resolution, reports emerged of violent threats against those opposing it.
Social Media and Weblinks
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lanaaldos [Deleted]Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lana.f.aldos
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lanaaldos/
Researchgate.com: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lana-Aldos
