Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, March 25, 2025

03/24 Links Pt2: Hamas’s American Mouthpieces; The appeasement of Iran; Former hostage tells of being sexually assaulted in Gaza; Argentina to declassify Nazi-era documents

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Hamas’s American Mouthpieces

The Internet is abuzz today over a lawsuit filed against several anti-Semitic organizations. The suit alleges, with a fair amount of evidence, that these groups aren’t merely pro-Hamas in outlook but that they coordinate their messaging and actions with Hamas and other terror groups.

The complaint is thorough and damning, and can be read in full here. But this is yet another case in which the legal implications serve to highlight the absolute depravity, and in some cases, inherently evil character of these so-called pro-Palestinian organizations. The defendants and their supporters will argue that these groups’ actions are permitted under the law. But there is no legitimate argument that these groups possess a single morally redeemable attribute.

Let’s start with the basics. In 1988, the complaint notes, Hamas and its parent, the Muslim Brotherhood, created the Palestine Committee to be its American support network. One of the groups in that committee was the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), founded by Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal. After an IAP affiliate was found liable for Hamas fundraising, it dissolved and its core formed American Muslims for Palestine (AMP). Students for Justice in Palestine and its post-university counterpart Within Our Lifetime grew out of that effort, as did the organization currently at the center of several anti-Semitism scandals: Columbia University Apartheid Divest.

This background is important to establish the following: The groups conducting anti-Zionist marches, riots, and encampments all grew from the original initiative of the terrorist organization that massacred 1,200 innocents on 10/7, took hundreds hostage, and subjected 10/7 victims and captives to sexual torture.

The complaint itself includes several eyebrow-raising allegations that should make apologists for these groups stop in their tracks.

First up: “Three minutes before Hamas began its attack on October 7, Columbia SJP posted on Instagram ‘We are back!!’ and announced its first meeting of the semester would be announced and that viewers should ‘Stay tuned.’ Before the post, Columbia SJP’s account had been dormant for months.”

Groups named in the suit also echoed Hamas’s public pronouncements. For example, they echoed Hamas’s call for a Day of Rage (though one of the groups used the phrase Day of Resistance) on the same day. “The advertisements for these events included clear references to many materials produced and provided by AMP/NSJP and even Hamas itself.” The days of rage on behalf of Hamas caused the closure of Jewish schools and other institutions in New York as well as Columbia’s campus, all out of security concerns. “Jewish students at Columbia University and Barnard College were advised to lock their doors and remain inside for their own safety.”

These marches took place in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, 2023, well before Israel’s counteroffensive ground incursion in Gaza began. Columbia’s march prominently featured Mahmoud Khalil, the Syrian-born U.S. permanent resident that the Trump administration is trying to deport for omitting certain past affiliations on his official application. At that point, not even a week had passed since the Hamas attacks. These organizations—again, which grew out of a coalition founded by a current Hamas leader—were essentially gloating in lockstep with Hamas.

The Rise of Civil Terrorism

Last week, a North Dakota court ordered the environmental organization Greenpeace to pay $667 million in damages for libel, vandalism, and acts of violent obstruction aimed at halting the construction of an oil pipeline. The ruling sets an important precedent: coordinated forms of disruptive protest that go far beyond anything that might be characterized as speech will be punished. (Greenpeace, by the way, has also accused Israel of genocide.)

Greenpeace’s actions seem to fit the description of what Tal Fortgang calls “civil terrorism,” and aren’t so different from the tactics employed recently by anti-Israel groups. Fortgang explains what addreses the problem these tactics pose as one of criminal law:

Masked criminals attacked several Citibank locations in New York City one night last September. They brandished no guns and demanded no cash. Instead, they squeezed epoxy and cemented stickers on debit-card readers, damaged door locks, and vandalized windows with profanities and threats of future violence. Rather than keep their identities hidden, the marauders filmed their work and posted it to their enterprise’s Instagram page.

Over the last few years, but especially since Hamas massacred Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, this type of organized criminal mayhem has increasingly become part of American life. The criminal bands that have arisen act for ideological reasons. They operate where they believe that they have the most latitude: on college campuses and in Democratic-controlled jurisdictions. And their beliefs are overwhelmingly leftwing: radically environmentalist (“Just Stop Oil”), anarcho-socialist (Antifa), and, most often, anti-Israel.

Fortgang notes that the movement employing these tactics

includes groups that openly support, and likely coordinate with, foreign terror organizations and hostile regimes. . . . In July 2024, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines confirmed that Iran is encouraging and funding some of these demonstrations.

Because civil terrorism utilizes illegal activity, the beginning of a policy agenda to fight it must start with enforcing existing laws—and investigating reasonable suspicions of wrongdoing.

Melanie Phillips: The appeasement of Iran

A criminal case in America that’s just ended has directed a spotlight onto Britain’s lackadaisical attitude to Iranian terrorism. Two men were found guilty of what the US Department of Justice called a “brazen plot” to murder a female Iranian dissident on American soil.

The Iranian regime has been trying to silence this dissident, Masih Alinejad, for years. Alinejad, a journalist, author and activist who has lived permanently in America since 2014 and has consistently drawn attention to Iran’s human rights abuses, has suffered harassment, intimidation and previous attempts on her life.

In 2020, Iranian intelligence officials and assets plotted to kidnap her from the US for rendition to Iran. In the case that finished last week, two members of an eastern European organised crime gang had been hired by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to murder her in New York.

The court heard that a hitman with an AK-47 had camped outside her Brooklyn home to kill her. She had spotted one of the plotters behaving suspiciously while she was gathering tomatoes and cucumbers from her garden.

After the convictions of her would-be assassins, Alinejad — who has nine million Instagram followers, especially among young Iranian women in revolt against the regime’s brutal enforcement of the hijab to cover their hair — noted the silence about the convictions by left-wingers who had “called me an Islamophobe” as well as by “the campus protesters chanting ‘I am Hamas’.”

The same left-wing “feminists,” of course, who have ignored or tried to deny the rape, mutilation, torture and burning alive of young Israeli women during the atrocities of October 7 2023. The same liberal world that demonises Israel and the west while sanitising and appeasing their Islamist attackers. And the west’s resolute refusal in particular to deal with the Iranian regime that is pledged to destroy it is beyond perplexing.

03/24 Links Pt1: Hamas's Oct. 7 Attack Was the Greatest Palestinian Strategic Blunder since the Rejection of the UN Partition Plan; UN agencies won’t confirm ‘famine’ occurred

From Ian:

Walter Russell Mead: Hamas's Oct. 7 Attack Was the Greatest Palestinian Strategic Blunder since the Rejection of the UN Partition Resolution in 1947

With so much going on in the Middle East, it's more vital than ever to distinguish between the deep trends bringing lasting change to the region and the dramatic but ultimately less important events that often dominate the headlines.

Among the major developments, we can count the strategic defeat of Iran's "Axis of Resistance," Russia's loss of influence following the fall of Bashar al-Assad, Turkey's increasing engagement in Middle East politics, and the continuing decline of Egypt as a regional force. Power in the region has passed to Persian Gulf states as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE jostle for influence. Israel is emerging from its war with Iran and its proxies more powerful and less isolated than before. Not since the aftermath of the Israeli War of Independence have the Palestinians been this weak or this divided. Yet Israel's worst nightmare, the Iranian nuclear program, is if anything becoming a greater danger.

Both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have come to the end of the road. Hamas's Oct. 7 attack on Israel was the greatest strategic blunder by Palestinian leaders since the rejection of the UN partition resolution in 1947. The Oct. 7 war has, thus far, brought Gaza's population nothing but misery and death. Civilians are caught between relentless Israeli attacks and fanatical Hamas terrorists who hide military facilities in hospitals and schools.

President Trump's interest in "relocating" Palestinians from Gaza is an important break. Given disenchantment with their political leaders and despair over the prospects of economic development, more Palestinians may choose to check out of the conflict and seek better lives elsewhere.

The biggest question in the Middle East today involves the future of America's role. Everyone wants American support; all fear the consequences if the American president sides with their rivals. President Trump wants what every American president has wanted since World War II: a quiet Middle East that pumps oil and gas and buys American goods (including arms) without entangling the U.S. in more wars.

Dov Lieber: Netanyahu and Top Aides Think Israel Must Beat Hamas on the Battlefield

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his national-security team are planning a major ground offensive in Gaza in the belief that capturing and holding swaths of territory will allow them to finally defeat Hamas, according to people familiar with the government's thinking.

Netanyahu and top aides argue that Hamas must be beaten on the battlefield before any political solution for Gaza can be advanced.

They believe that last year's military defeat of Hizbullah in Lebanon and the Trump administration's willingness to back a renewed offensive against Hamas give them more latitude to fight.

No, this isn’t the fall of democracy in Israel

The former Israeli chief justice Aharon Barak recently warned that the country could be headed toward civil war due to Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to fire the head of the Shin Bet, and the opposition thereto. To Amichai Attali, such comments are both “out of touch with reality” and irresponsible—as are those of Barak’s political opponents:

Yes, there is tension and stress, but there is also the unique Israeli sense of solidarity. Who exactly would fight in this so-called civil war? Try finding a single battalion or military unit willing to go out and kill their own brothers and sisters—you won’t. They don’t exist. About 7 percent of the population represents the extremes of the political spectrum, making the most noise. But if we don’t come to our senses, that number might grow.

And what about you, leader of [the leftwing party] The Democrats and former deputy IDF chief, Yair Golan? You wrote that the soldiers fighting Hamas in Gaza are pawns in Netanyahu’s political survival game. Really? Is that what the tens of thousands of soldiers on the front lines need to hear? Or their mothers back home? Do you honestly believe Netanyahu would sacrifice hostages just to stay in power? Is that what the families of those hostages need right now?

Israeli democracy will not collapse if Netanyahu fires the head of the Shin Bet—so long as it’s done legally. Nor will it fall because demonstrators fill the streets to protest. They are not destroying democracy, nor are they terrorists working for Hamas.

Statistics professor @AdiWyner wrote a rebuttal to @TheLancet's peer reviewed mistakes on Gaza. The Lancet ignored him.

In January, The Lancet published a peer-reviewed study that used a "capture-recapture" method to estimate that the actual number of people killed in Gaza was 60% higher than the Ministry of Health statistics - 64,000 compared to the 40,000 at the time of their analysis.

While I am no statistician, I showed that the input data they used was not at all appropriate for this estimation method. The capture-recapture method requires that sources of data are independent, but two of the sources they used were complementary, making all of their fancy math worthless. (The third source was also worthless.)

Since then, my conjecture was proven correct. If their numbers were correct, presumably the missing dead people were buried under the rubble, but the number of bodies recovered during the ceasefire was nowhere close to what one would expect if tens of thousands were missing.

I noted that this is one of three peer reviewed Lancet studies on Gaza casualties, all of which have major errors that never should have passed any review. I wrote, "This is not a coincidence. It is a pattern. The Lancet would never publish papers that disprove these, they would never correct these papers in light of new information that proves them wrong, and from what I can tell, they have not published any letters pointing out these severe flaws."

It looks like I am correct about that as well.

Professor Abraham Wyner, a professor of statistics at the Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania, submitted a rebuttal paper soon after the Lancet's publication. It agrees with my main point why the original study is flawed. He then recalculated the numbers based on more reasonable assumptions and showed that the paper's estimates were way off.

I wish it was easier to read; here is part of the abstract:

A January 9th Lancet (Jamaluddine, 2025) study on traumatic injury mortality in the Gaza Strip employs a three-list capture-recapture model, widely used for estimating partially observed populations using multiple random samples. But the methodological framework and assumptions underlying this study raise significant concerns about the reliability and accuracy of its conclusions. The authors estimate that the number of recorded decedents substantially undercounts the true population of traumatic deaths by approximately 35,000, an amount larger, by far, than the number of recorded deaths. In this response, we show that this surprisingly large estimate has two causes: 1) a methodological problem and 2) the inclusion of a relatively small but highly influential subset of bad data.

Here's the kicker: Wyner submitted this paper to The Lancet two months ago, and they have essentially ignored it.

I have long complained that The Lancet was only publishing papers that fit with its political position, the exact opposite of science. Now we have proof.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

There is a rich tradition of Black supersessionism, where many claim to be the real Jews, but the media downplays it

(This is a continuation of the series on my Unified Field Theory of Antisemitism, where I postulate that a major source of most forms of antisemitism is supersessionism. )

__________________________________

Didn't my Lord deliver Daniel,

Then why not every man?

He deliver'd Daniel from the lion's den,

Jonah from the belly of the whale,

And the Hebrew children from the fiery furnace,

And why not every man?

I set my foot on the Gospel ship,

And the ship, it begin to sail,

It landed me over on Canaan's shore,

And I'll never come anymore.

This excerpt from an African American spiritual is typical of the genre. In the early 1700s, white evangelists preached to African slaves and taught them Bible stories, and the slaves naturally felt an affinity to the Jews of the Hebrew scripture. Most of all, they identified with the Jews enslaved in Egypt and their miraculous Exodus, hoping for a similar miracle to free them.

There is nothing wrong with identifying with Jews in the Bible. America's Founding Fathers certainly did. There is, however, something wrong with claiming, without any evidence, that your people are Israelites. And there is a great deal wrong with saying that the Jews of today are imposters.

In the late 19th century, at least two Black people started their own churches based on the idea that Black people were Israelites.

William Saunders Crowdy established the Church of God and Saints of Christ in 1896 after he claimed to have had visions telling him "that blacks were descendants of the twelve lost tribes of Israel." He does not appear to have been antisemitic.

But Frank Cherry, who also claimed that God told him that Blacks were Jews and established the Church of the Living God, the Pillar Ground of Truth for All Nations in 1915, did preach both Black supremacy and antisemitism. Cherry preached that white Jews were not Jews, and moreover that white Jews as outside God’s favor, divinely cursed, echoing both Christian and Muslim supersessionism with a racial twist.

Other people with similar theologies gained some popularity through the 20th century. In the 1960s, these groups and offshoots proliferated, some of them rejecting both Judaism and Christianity and forming their own "Israelite" cults. They went beyond the supersessionism of Frank Cherry: these radical "Israelites" believe that they have been robbed of their identity as being “God’s chosen people" by the evil white Jews, who are referred to as “Edomites” or the “Synagogue of Satan.”

The hugely popular Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam is certainly not a Black Israelite, but he has adopted their claims. Farrakhan has been saying since the 1980s that “the real Jews are Black people,” and he has also spread the slander that “the Black man and woman of America are the real children of Israel, and the Jews have stolen their identity.”

The idea is not limited to the relatively small numbers of Black people who are actual members of these groups. These toxic ideas are mainstream.

Kendrick Lamar’s #1 2017 album DAMN included lyrics like “I’m an Israelite, don’t call me Black no mo’.” Kanye West said "Black people are actually Jews." Basketball star Kyrie Irving promoted a Black Hebrew Israelite film and book filled with both the supersessionist beliefs and blatant antisemitism like Holocaust denial. Nick Cannon and Professor Griff, two enormously popular celebrities, discussed at length during a 2020 podcast that Jews have taken the Black people’s birthright and are now scared because Jews know that Blacks know that they are fakes.

It is no coincidence that the belief that Black people are the real Jews is often paired with classic antisemitism, as with Farrakhan, Kanye West and Nick Cannon's rant in that same podcast about the Rothschilds. The murderers who attacked a kosher grocery in Jersey City in 2019 adhered to the Black Hebrew Israelite philosophy.

This is supersessionism happening today, in the US, almost completely under the radar of the media.

While the actual number of members of these groups is not known, their ideas have spread widely among the Black community. A 2023 Manhattan Institute survey found that 49% of Blacks in America strongly or somewhat believe that they are descended from Israelites, and 13.2% believe that Jews are not descended from Israelites - i.e., that Jews want to steal the Blacks' birthright. That translates to over 6 million Blacks in America holding antisemitic, supersessionist beliefs.

This is especially concerning since the Black Hebrew Israelites have been associated with violence, including one of the worst antisemitic attacks in US history, the 2020 murders at a kosher grocery store in Jersey City.

It is also significant that while the other forms of supersessionism that we've discussed so far are based on ideas that are not easily disproven by their nature, the claim that American Blacks descended from Israelites is easily debunked. In this case, the truth is not even on the radar. People believe what they want to believe, and when it comes to hating Jews, they will literally believe anything.

Supersessionism is not a historic curiosity. It is here, today, and it is being used as an excuse for attacking Jews.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Kaja Kallas, the recently appointed EU High Representative, has been in Israel and said some friendly things in her press conference with Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar:

Thank you. Foreign Minister Sa’ar, dear Gideon, it is important to be in Israel today – although I wish it would have been under different circumstances.

Let me start by condemning yesterday's attacks on a Rabbi in France. There is no place for anti-semitism in Europe.

We met exactly one month ago, after the EU-Israeli association Council in Brussels, and it is clear that we are very good partners. Israel is a very relevant trade and investment partner for the European Union, and also a major player in the growing tech sector.

I don't think her predecessor, Josep Borrell, would ever have uttered the words "dear Gideon." The tone may be better but the policy is the same.

Mr. Sa’ar, as I underlined when we met a month ago, the security of Israel is extremely important to the European Union. Israelis must be able to feel safe in their own homes. Israel has the right of self-defence against terror attacks, whether from Hamas, the Houthis or Hezbollah.

However, military actions must be proportionate. Israeli strikes into Syria and Lebanon risk further escalation. The fundamental steps here are restating the ceasefire; ensuring the release of all hostages and resume the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza – with the goal of a permanent ceasefire.

Her tone is better, but the content is the same as the EU position had been under Borrell.

Specifically, the "proportionate" line is virtually identical to what Borrell has said a number of times.

April 2023: "Israel has the right to defend itself. At the same time, any response must be proportionate."

May 2021: "We understand Israel’s right to protect its civilian population. Nevertheless, we expect its response to be proportionate."

The EU is not calling for Israel to follow the international law principle of proportionality. That principle says that any expected damage to civilians be proportional to the military advantage gained by an attack. Israel goes beyond the law in those cases no matter what the haters say.

The EU is demanding much more. It insists that Israel respond to terror attacks and military attacks in a tit for tat fashion, only using force that is similar in size and quality to what it suffered.

if Hezbollah fires rockets, Israel can fire a few missiles. If Hamas terrorists stab a few Israelis to death, Israel can destroy a weapons warehouse.

That is not how to win a war. It is how to prolong it.

Israel followed the EU playbook in Lebanon for over a year. Hezbollah would do something, Israel would respond back, Hezbollah would respond to the response, and so on, while tens of thousands of residents of northern Israel remained homeless.

If the EU had its way, this would still be the situation in Lebanon. Saying that responses must be proportionate is a recipe for further violence, not peace.

True to form, Josep Borrell criticized and condemned Israel's escalation in Lebanon in September and October, calling for a ceasefire and for diplomacy. He condemned Israel's assassination of Hassan Nasrallah as a violation of Lebanese sovereignty.

Now we can see how wrong he was. For the first time in decades, Lebanon has a chance to make its own decisions without Iran calling the shots through its proxy. Even the Lebanese media now feels more free, featuring criticism of Hezbollah that was unthinkable six months ago.

"Proportionate responses" do not work. They make things worse.

There is no doubt that Kallas is more pro-Israel than Borrell. She strongly defended Israel as Prime Minister of Estonia. Her government cracked down on extremist rhetoric in anti-Israel rallies and on antisemitic incidents. Her friendly tone towards Israel is important. But the EU still maintains its ossified policy towards Israel, pretending that we are still in the 1990s and there is a chance for a two state solution.

Let's hope that Kallas' empathy with Israel translates into EU policy.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

From i24News:

The Israel Defense Forces on Monday said that more than 100 pickup trucks used by Hamas had been attacked in the Gaza Strip.

These white pickup trucks were observed to have been used in the October 7 attack on Israel, with the terrorist group continuing to use them to this day.

Earlier, a Gazan journalist affiliated with Hamas, Hamza al-Masri, warned Palestinians against using Toyota pickup trucks, saying that "every Toyota pickup is being targeted by Israel. Stay away from such vehicles."

It appears that this was an attack on the vehicles themselves, not the drivers. That is obviously legal - Hamas uses them for military purposes.

I believe that even if Israel had targeted every Toyota pickup truck on the road, while being driven and killing the driver and passengers, it would still be legal under the laws of armed conflict.

It can safely be assumed that the white Toyota pickups are used almost exclusively by Hamas in Gaza. Civilians would be unlikely to afford such a truck, and everyone in Gaza knows that they are distinctive and used by the terrorists. If a Gazan wanted a pickup truck for innocent purposes, they would not choose white.

Attacking the trucks on the road is like attacking Hezbollah pagers in Lebanon. The odds that the driver and passengers are terrorists are very high, and the chances that innocent civilians would be killed as well (assuming Israel is following its own targeting rules of only attacking vehicles when they are not near innocents) are much lower than from bombing a building with a known senior terrorist, probably with his family. (And which is still legal.)

As it is, Israel does not appear to target vehicles without knowing exactly who and what is inside, and not when they are near civilians. My point is that Israel goes above and beyond the laws of war. If they would devise an AI drone that automatically shoots every white Toyota pickup it sees (and they won't) , it would still be legal under the principle of distinction between civilian and military targets.

A combatant wearing a uniform is a valid military target. Hamas terrorists take off their uniforms. The white trucks fulfill the same function in identifying them. The white pickup is as distinctive a "uniform" as Hamas ever uses.

(If the trucks entered Gaza through Israel, I certainly hope that they are outfitted with lots of electronic surveillance systems. And for all we know, perhaps they were and Hamas discovered them - maybe that is why the IDF decided to get rid of them now.)

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

03/24 Links Pt2: Columbia University Has the Free Speech Problem, Not the Trump Administration; The grand deception on American campuse; Khalil Omitted Work for Terror-Tied UNRWA From Green Card Application

From Ian:

Columbia University Has the Free Speech Problem, Not the Trump Administration

On Friday, Columbia University agreed to fulfill the Trump administration’s demands in exchange for the release of millions of dollars in suspended funds. Charles Fain Lehman explains that the government, by withholding the money, has in fact succeeded in protecting free speech on campus:
The ideal of academic freedom requires order and safety—not safety from “dangerous ideas,” but from actual violence. Free speech on campus is only possible if students do not have to fear that their dissenting views will be met with threats. And it is only possible if they can participate in classes or enter buildings without intimidation or disruption—otherwise, discourse is not possible.

Several of the conditions are tailored to check disruptive “speech” that forestalls actual discussion. The demand that Columbia implement “rules to prevent disruption of teaching, research, and campus life” means that student protest doesn’t get to shut down academic life. And the insistence that Columbia impose a ban on masking is . . . consistent with the First Amendment and with the dozens of state laws that recognize public, non-health-related masking as intimidating and deceitful.

But perhaps part of the problem is that Columbia’s administrators themselves do not understand the meaning of freedom of expression:
Two Columbia janitors recently filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in which they allege that they were not only routinely forced to scrub swastikas from campus walls, but were assaulted during the occupation of Hamilton Hall [by anti-Israel radicals]. When they raised concerns about the graffiti, the two claim, they were told that “the trespassers and vandals were exercising their First Amendment rights.”

There is, of course, no interpretation of the First Amendment that protects the freedom to trespass or to destroy property. All that being said, there are serious concerns that can be raised about the effects of current federal policy on freedom of speech, and Keith Whittington provides a rare good-faith formulation of these concerns here.

Seth Mandel: Speechless in London

Britain’s contribution to the debate over free speech is to constantly remind Americans what it looks like when someone is actually punished for mere speech.

In the U.S., we’re currently locked in a debate over whether activists who trespassed and occupied a building after-hours and then assaulted a janitor and took two people hostage are being disciplined by Columbia University for their speech. Perhaps it is the legacy of the progressive Covid policy that disallowed all close gatherings except if the gathering in question was a protest for a righteous cause. Whatever the reason, Americans seem to genuinely believe that if you call your behavior a “protest” then you have a First Amendment right to smash the windows of a Jewish-owned shop.

Explaining to activists why this is wrong gets you nowhere, so perhaps it’s easier to understand if we use examples. Luckily for us (and unluckily for Brits), the UK routinely has such examples at hand.

In the Telegraph today, Brendan O’Neill writes of the latest trend in which the speech police (sometimes in the form of actual police) seek to cast out from the public square anyone who calls Hamas a terrorist organization.

O’Neill mentions two instructive cases. The first is that of Damon Joshua, who lost his job at a sewage company for calling Hamas “disgusting terrorists” in a group chat. Other employees complained and the post was taken down. But that wasn’t the end of it: Joshua was fired. “You would think that the least controversial thing you could say is that Hamas are bad people,” O’Neill writes. “It’s the law of the land, after all: Hamas is designated a terrorist organization in the UK.”

Indeed, it’s illegal in the UK to support Hamas. But to even things out, it is apparently strongly frowned upon to not support Hamas. Just maybe don’t say anything at all.

The grand deception on American campuses

Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor emeritus of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, wrote a book, Resurrecting Empire, in which he describes what Israel offered at that Camp David summit as “so miniscule, it isn’t even worth referring to.”

That book, with its grand deception about the summit, is used as a textbook in college classes throughout the United States. Total lies and distortions of the truth are footnoted, indexed and passed along as well-accepted dogma.

Columbia University has had a huge antisemitism problem for decades. And it is not limited to simply one professor.

On Oct. 8, 2023, Joseph Massad, Columbia professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history, wrote in the “Electronic Intifada” of his “jubilation and awe,” that the “sight of resistance fighters storming Israeli checkpoints separating Gaza from Israel was astounding, not only to Israelis but especially to the Palestinian and Arab peoples who came out across the region to march is support of the Palestinians against their cruel colonizers . . .. No less awesome were the scenes witnessed by millions of jubilant Arabs who spent the days watching the news of Palestinian fighters from Gaza breaking through Israel’s prison fence or gliding over it.”

This one-sided agitprop has gravitated away from the Middle Eastern study programs and infiltrated the humanities, social sciences and even schools of education.

This is not limited to Columbia. Cornell University’s Russell Rickford, an associate professor of history, called the Oct. 7 attacks “exhilarating” and “energizing.” Reminder: Oct. 7 was when thousands of Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and tortured, murdered and raped more than 1,200 people, taking 251 others hostage and parading them through the streets of Gaza for people to jeer at.

Osman Umarji, an adjunct professor at the University of California, Irvine’s school of education, stated on Nov. 10, 2023, “The Zionists have been exposed for the criminals and blood-thirsty animals that they are. This is a gift from Allah to the world.”

Zareena Grewal, associate professor of American studies, ethnicity, race and migration, and religious studies at Yale University, wrote on Oct. 7, “Settlers are not civilians. This is not hard.” In another tweet that day, she wrote, “Palestinians have every right to resist through armed struggle, solidarity.”

Assistant professor of law at Albany Law in New York, Nina Farnia, wrote on the morning of Oct. 7, “Palestinians are tearing down the walls of colonialism and apartheid” and “Palestinians are a beacon for us all.”

What sort of hatred motivates these comments? Is there no empathy for the other side?

We know that the minds of students are like sponges, and that is why, in 2008, I, together with scholars and writers Martin Kramer and Stanley Kurtz, worked successfully with Congress to amend Title VI of the Higher Education Act to have regional and area studies demonstrate “a diversity of viewpoints” and “wide range of perspectives.”

The amendments to this law have been overlooked and ignored by the universities. The trickle-down effect has exploded, and our nation’s youth are being brainwashed by professors who sympathize more with brutal, barbaric terrorists than with the courageous survival of the people of Israel.

It is our younger generation of Americans that are losing out. If these are the educators they respect, what does that tell us about their academic inquiry, their integrity, their sense of justice, of truth, and of their basic values?

03/24 Links Pt1: Want to fight Jew-hate, Dems? Reject the ICC’s Bibi blood libel; Northern Ireland Is Not Gaza; Hamas Terrorists releases footage of hostages Elkana Bohbot and Yosef-Haim Ohana

From Ian:

Resistance is terror

In a recent pronouncement, the Iranian foreign minister re-emphasized the Islamic regime’s mandate for the Palestinians to continue their “resistance” against Israel.

The term “resistance” is used to sound like a noble pursuit, but in this context, it has long been a euphemism for something far more sinister: Terrorism.

What Palestinian leaders, like Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, refer to as resistance is, in reality, a call for violence and bloodshed targeting civilians. The devastating effects of such venom are observable as each call for resistance translates directly into murderous acts of hatred.

Statements such as “resistance in all forms, by all means,” are not calls for peaceful protests or diplomatic efforts. They are calls for assaults, stabbings, hostage-takings and rocket launchings, plain and simple. The message is clear, the only option is to fight Israel by all means, no matter the consequences for innocent people on all sides. It is a rallying cry for those who claim free-speech protections to morph their civil disobedience into physical attacks, assaults and unfettered violence.

Let’s be clear: Resistance that targets civilians is terrorism. Calls for a “holy war” against Israel tacitly endorse the murder of innocents. When Palestinian and radical Islamic leaders glorify attacks like Oct. 7 claiming them to be justifiable resistance, they are applauding, incentivizing and instigating each act of terror. And when leaders who are supposed to represent their people in pursuit of peace use their platforms to advocate for violence, they make peace impossible.

This rhetoric of violence is not confined to the Middle East. On college campuses and in communities across America and throughout the world, we increasingly hear the chant: “When people are occupied, resistance is justified.” While this phrase might sound like a defense of oppressed peoples, its meaning becomes aborted and hijacked when we examine how it’s being used. The “resistance” in this chant is not a call for peaceful protest or civil disobedience—it promotes, attempts to justify and encourages further violent actions endorsed by the Palestinian and radical Islamic leaders who are determined to destroy Israel, America’s only democratic ally in the Middle East, often referred to as “Little Satan.” When these slogans are shouted in support of groups that engage in terror, such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in their targeting of Israeli civilians and state infrastructure, Jewish students know that they themselves are being targeted and threatened, which is part of the intended purposes of the haters.

The resistance mantra is cloaked in the language of human rights advocacy, while it ignores the reality of the violence being perpetrated in its name. When resistance means the murder of innocent civilians—whether in Hebron, Tel Aviv or at a music festival—it is no longer about freedom; it’s about terror. The moral justification implied by “resistance” is rendered meaningless when it involves bombings, rocket attacks, rape and the abduction of civilians. These are not acts of a people striving for liberation—they are crimes against humanity and specifically against Jewish human rights.

Northern Ireland Is Not Gaza

Just how ridiculous this scenario sounds illustrates the chasm separating Hamas from the Provisional Republican movement in terms of political culture, methods, and aims.

Regular readers of this Substack will be aware of the depths of my hatred for the Provisional Republican movement and all its works but it is and always has been very different from Hamas.

It never called for the extermination or forced removal of the Protestant majority, nor did it claim that London was Ireland’s rightful capital. It was not driven by an ideology of religious or racial supremacy.

More broadly, the Provisional IRA did not see itself as part of a larger religious war against Protestants in Northern Ireland. Unlike Hamas, it never had the backing of a powerful state like Iran or Qatar to provide steady financial and military aid. There was no worldwide network of militant Catholic fundamentalists willing to commit acts of terrorism in support of their cause. Nor did it enjoy support among progressive circles in Western democracies. The only significant external support it received was occasional weapons shipments from Libya’s dictator, Muammar Qaddafi, and donations from sympathetic Irish Americans in the pubs of Boston and New York.

Furthermore, modern Irish nationalism in all its forms is largely a Protestant invention. Its roots go back to Wolfe Tone and the Society of United Irishmen. They looked towards an Irish identity which included all religious expressions in the country and though they betrayed it with horrendous acts of sectarian violence that was also the stated aim of the Provisional Republican movement.

The Provisional IRA never fostered a cult of martyrdom or resistance as ends in themselves. Suicide bombings were entirely alien to it in practice and principle. Even the 1981 hunger strikes in which seven Provo prisoners died were not acts of suicidal fanaticism but rather a calculated battle of wills with the British government. Had the British government conceded to their demands, they would have ended their strikes immediately.

The oversimplified, feel-good narrative of the Good Friday agreement offering a model for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does more harm than good.

It tempts Israeli progressives to believe that they are faced with an enemy comparable to the Provisional IRA and treats Hamas as a bunch of colourful, hot headed natives incapable of meaning what they say, indeed of meaning the very opposite of what they say.

So, please, no more hawking the Good Friday Agreement as a one-size-fits-all solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Instead, let’s see a bit more humility from British and Irish politicians, diplomats, and so-called “peace activists”, those guys don’t hold the secret formula for resolving every conflict.

Let’s hope for reality based negotiations focused on reducing harm and, one day, a settlement reached by the parties themselves.

NYPost Editorial: Want to fight Jew-hate, Dems? Reject the ICC’s Bibi blood libel

If Democrats ever care to show they actually do stand against antisemitism, they’ll offer some plan of action for standing up against the moral stain on the Western world that is the International Criminal Court.

Senate Democrats weeks ago used the filibuster to kill a bill sanctioning the ICC for its morally hideous arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense chief Yoav Gallant.

The ICC warrant is based on utterly specious allegations of war crimes brought over Israel’s legitimate self-defense in its multi-front war with Iran and its proxies — a struggle for existence.

It’s a blood libel, in other words, and any American elected seriously interested in fighting Jew-hate would start there.

That Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the self-described shomer (Hebrew for “guardian”) of the Jewish state, played stage manager in killing the bill is doubly shameful.

Beyond its propaganda value, the warrant has real-world impact: It required Netanyahu, on a recent US trip, to fly a circuitous series of detours, to be sure he could safely land in case he needed medical attention.

That’s because many of the 27 European Union nations back this sick weaponization of international law against Israel.

Unified Field Theory of Antisemitism: Supersessionism in Islam and the Arab world

I am continuing to discuss my "Unified Field Theory of Antisemitism" to explain the virulence of antisemitism compared to other hates. As I summarized it:

My theory is that all the major strains of today's antisemitism - Muslim/Arab, progressive, and others I plan to examine - point back to updated twists of Christian supersessionism. In short, all major antisemitic groups feel that they are the rightful heirs to the Jewish people, but the actual reality and continued success of the Jews is not just an obstacle to their success but a personal challenge to their worldview. This dissonance causes hate.

Christian supersessionism is a well studied phenomenon. Islamic supersessionism is not nearly as popular a topic, but a little thought shows that it is foundational.

Muslims venerate, above all, their prophets. Their major prophets are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, David, Solomon and Jesus, leading up to Mohammed who is the last prophet.

It is clear that the bulk of Islamic prophets are Jews or are prominent figures in the Jewish Torah.

The Quran is filled with stories and teachings that come from the Jewish Scripture as well as midrashim and Talmud. Like Christianity, it admits that the Torah is a sacred text. But instead of grappling with how to reconcile Torah laws with Islam, it declares that the Torah text has been corrupted from the original divine message and the Quran is the only uncorrupted divine guide available today. Only the laws and stories written in the Quran are trustworthy, everything else is wrong.

The Quran considers all the previous prophets to be Muslim, not Jews. Surah 3:67 says, “Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian, but he was one inclining toward truth, a Muslim [submitting to Allah]. And he was not of the polytheists.” Surah 2:140 says, “Do you say that Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Descendants were Jews or Christians? Say, ‘Are you more knowing or is Allah?’”

Whether the prophets were formally considered Muslim in the religious sense, the Quran is taking them out of any other religious category and claiming them as their own.

Later on, the literal replacement of Jews with Muslims is made clear. Surah 3:110 says, “You [Muslims] are the best nation produced for mankind. You enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong and believe in Allah. If only the People of the Scripture had believed, it would have been better for them…” The theology says that Jews were favored by Allah, but they broke their covenant and therefore they lost their exalted status - and now the Muslim nation ('umma) are the ones who gained Allah's favor.

This is pure supersessionism. But it not only applied to Jewish people but to physical space as well.

Places holy to Jews are considered to have always been Muslim - and exclusively so. Solomon's Temple is claimed by Islam to have been a Muslim place of worship, and the site of the Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem was claimed to be the Al Aqsa ("furthest") Mosque by Quranic interpreters years before the physical structure itself was built.

In fact, every single Jewish holy place is considered by Islam to be theirs. The Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron was converted to a mosque around 637 CE. Under Muslim rule, Jews were no longer allowed to visit the "Ibrahimi Mosque."

Similarly, tombs ascribed to other major Jewish figures are also claimed by Muslims as their own, exclusive, places of worship. Not only the Al Aqsa Mount was considered Muslim but the surrounding area including the Western Wall. Other sites considered to be the burial places of Jewish prophets and prominent figures were claimed as Muslim shrines.

To be sure, Islam was also supersessionist to Christianity as well, claiming Jesus as its prophet (not divine) and repurposing churches.

Muslims made sure that Jews and Christians were constantly reminded of their loss of exalted status, labeling them "dhimmis" and enacting laws to show Muslim superiority over them. Jews were subservient and accepted the humiliating dhimmi laws, paying a jizya tax for the privilege of not being attacked. Like in Christian Europe, Jews in Muslim lands were treated largely with contempt commensurate with the status of a no-longer Chosen People.

This remained the status quo for well over a thousand years. In some places Jews were treated somewhat better and in others markedly worse, but their status as a despised class never changed. Islam teaches that Jews are breakers of covenants and killers of prophets, themes that are found daily in today's Arab and Muslim media.

As mentioned, the rebirth of Israel was a theological earthquake to Christian supersessionists whose scripture assures them that Jews would disappear and for whom the Holocaust was regarded as a fulfilment of the prediction in Hebrews of that prophecy. It was no less momentous for Muslim supersessionists, which ties Allah's previous favor of the Children of Israel with their owning the land of Israel, believing that their loss of the land was a consequence of their loss of favor. Having Jews back in a controlling role in Israel was not supposed to ever happen in Quranic thought.

Beyond that and much more catastrophic for Muslims was the psychological devastation at losing a war to the weak, despised, dhimmi Jews. The profound shame at the loss of the land magnified the theological challenge. It was not only how could the Jews win - it was how could the brave, strong Muslims lose?

All the more so was the shame in 1967, where Israel took over effective control of the Temple Mount, allowed Jews to pray at the Kotel, reopened the Tomb of the Patriarchs to Jews and gave Jews religious freedoms that they never had under Muslim rule.

Honor and shame is the prism through which all Palestinian and Arab actions must be viewed. Jewish military might is by itself a terrible pill for Islamic supersessionists to swallow. The sword is part of their self-image, and losing to Jews who were doctors and farmers is a psychic pain whose only solution is to take the land away again,

Politically, perhaps a way can be found for peace. But psychologically and theologically, that seems impossible. Neither the shame nor the supersessionism can be accepted.

Meanwhile, Israel keeps getting stronger and more successful, mocking the Quran's claims that Jews are forever marginalized and are out of favor with Allah. Israel normalizing relations with Arab nations like the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco add more insult to injury. For a faith that attributes everything to Allah, seeing Allah give victories to the hated Jews causes painful dissonance.

In fact, Muslims have been trying to scratch back the Jewish victories and source of their shame in any way they can think of. They have been squatting on lands controlled by Israel, they tell international bodies that they have the right to flood Israel with descendants of 1948 refugees, they openly cheer every terror attack.

Most emblematic of the attempt to reinstate supersessionism is Rachel's Tomb.

For centuries, Muslims accepted that Rachel's Tomb was indeed a Jewish holy place. Then, in the 1990s, Muslims created a new story that the site was really the ancient Bilal ibn Rabah Mosque, making a religious claim on the Jewish site. They are rewriting history for the cause of replacing Jewish spaces with Muslim spaces.

For Muslims, the existence of Jews isn't what makes them irrationally angry. It is Jewish success. From the dawn of modern Zionism, with the first indication that Jews are trying to live outside of the dhimmi paradigm, through 1948 and 1967and the Abraham accords, Jewish success has been a psychic pain for Islamist supersessionists and Arab supremacists. That success - a strong, independent Jewish state on what they consider Muslim lands - is what fuels today's crazed Muslim antisemitism.

This is why they embrace the discredited Khazar myth, that today's Jews are not really Jews but European converts. It is not enough for Islamic supremacists to claim that Jews no longer have Allah's favor; they need to say that the Jews aren't really Jews at all, which is the only way they can imagine being defeated by them. Fake Jews will run away and go home to Europe or America.

For this reason, religious Jews are a special challenge to Muslim supersessionists and cause the most vitriolic hate.

In general, the Muslims of the region look upon themselves as patient, taking the long view. The main way that Arab supremacists rationalize their military losses is by remembering that the Crusaders controlled Jerusalem but ultimately lost it again - holding onto the hope that the Jewish control of Israel is a temporary aberration. Most of all, they look down at Israeli Jews as being secular Westerners who have no staying power; privileged people who will flee at the first sign of trouble; Europeans with no true emotional ties to the land. This myth comforts them.

Religious Jews upset them to no end.

They know that the religious Jews have been around longer than Islam has. They know that these Jews do have a long-standing attachment to the land and an institutional memory that dwarfs that of Muslims. As much as Muslim media insults Israeli leaders and the IDF, they go ballistic at stories of "fanatic Jewish settlers" who peacefully visit the Temple Mount. The supersessionists think that the secular Israelis will run away with the first rocket, but they know the religious Jews will not.

Just as with Christians in the Middle Ages who could not stomach committed Jews following the laws that they said were too onerous for ordinary people, today's Muslims hate the idea of a people with a stronger historic and emotional connection to the land - people who they know would fight to the death for Eretz Yisrael. These are the people who have not broken Allah's covenant - the ones who did not turn into apes and pigs for violating the Sabbath.

The practicing Jews who live in Israel, with their increasing power in Israeli society, causes the most pain, the biggest challenge to Islamic supersessionism - and the most hate.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

A fatwa in Gaza shows that there is no famine: "Do not give poor people food packages because they might throw them out"

Hamas mouthpiece Felesteen has an article about how Gazans should fulfill the obligation of zakat, charity, during Ramadan with all of the challenges there. The questions have been asked to the Mufti of Khan Younis, Sheikh Muhammad Ihsan Ashour.

There are questions such as about whether one may transfer money to the recipient's bank account where they would have to pay high fees to withdraw it, or whether a widow who receives vouchers to get goods for her children can use them to help her mother.

This one opinion from Ashour is noteworthy:

Sheikh Ashour pointed out that it is not permissible for the zakat payer to purchase food parcels for the poor from his zakat money, lest the poor person be forced to sell the food parcels for a low price or throw them out into the streets due to their large number among the people, as we saw previously.

He's saying there was so much food aid in Gaza that poor people didn't know what to do with it all, so they either threw the aid into the streets or they sold them for next to no money since no one needed it.

A famine zone would not have this problem. The fatwa shows that there is no food shortage in Gaza today - in fact, there is a surplus, even after weeks of Israel's closure.

_______________________

One other very interesting fatwa was published, about whether outsiders supporting Gazans are fulfilling their zakat obligations:

The truth is that the people of Gaza are deserving of zakat from multiple perspectives, not just one, as follows: The people of Gaza are entitled to zakat from four of the eight categories of zakat expenditure, which are: poverty, neediness, debt, and jihad in the cause of Allah.

This jihad part of zakat is not usually mentioned in the West. The category it falls under, "Fi Sabilillah," is a more generic category that means "In the Cause of Allah" which could mean education, outreach - or, according to Hamas and others, violent jihad.

Hamas is saying that funding their attacks on Israel is considered a zakat obligation.

How many Western Muslim charities agree with that interpretation? How much funding is Hamas receiving during Ramadan as zakat?

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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The @Guardian's criticism of @TheIHRA definition of antisemitism is offensive, deceitful propaganda

At this point, it is almost laughable.

Someone writes an op-ed against the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism. They accuse the definition of defining all criticism of Israel as antisemitic. For good measure, the writers are often Jews. Voila! It must be true!

The Guardian follows the pattern to a T, with a featured essay, "The new definition of antisemitism is transforming America – and serving a Christian nationalist plan." It was written by two Israeli law professors, Itamar Mann and Lihi Yona.

The entire essay is riddled with falsehoods and deception.

They write:

Back in his first term, Donald Trump issued a 2019 executive order directing federal agencies to consider the IHRA definition when enforcing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in federally funded programs, cementing this problematic standard. It has been formally adopted in multiple federal and state statutes, in which it is used to equate criticism of Israel or Zionism with antisemitism. These laws have been applied in a range of legal and policy contexts – restricting free speech, shaping civil rights protections and even influencing the classification of hate crimes in state criminal codes.

This paragraph alone contains two lies.

The first is to claim that the IHRA Working Definition "equate[s] criticism of Israel or Zionism with antisemitism." It explicitly says the opposite: "criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic."

I’ve yet to see an anti-IHRA rant quote this line. Funny how they always skip the part that sinks their entire argument.

The second lie is the claim that the US laws referring to IHRA quash free speech. The 2019 Executive Order they refer to says, again explicitly, "agencies shall not diminish or infringe upon any right protected under Federal law or under the First Amendment."

So do all the other US laws that link to IHRA as a guideline. None of them contradict the First Amendment or any other US laws.

The authors are law professors. They've read the original texts. This isn't sloppiness - this is deliberate deception.

And it hardly ends there. Mann and Yona make this astonishing assertion:

We need to recognize something distinctive about Jewish identity: it has always been deeply political. Unlike modern Christianity, which developed alongside a strong liberal separation of church and state, Judaism has never drawn such a sharp line. Jewish identity has long resisted the tidy categories that liberal theory prefers – religious or secular, ethnic or political, private or public. From biblical times through the diaspora and into modernity, Jewish communities understood religious life not just as a set of spiritual beliefs but as the foundation of a political community. Jewish religious leadership traditionally held legal and political authority – issuing binding rulings on property, taxation, even criminal law. This isn’t a historical anomaly – it’s a defining feature of Jewish tradition. Zionism, despite the secular aspirations of many of its founders, built on this legacy by channeling the political dimension of Jewish identity into the framework of a modern nation-state.

Note how the authors compare "modern" Christianity with 3,000 years of Judaism. They simply ignore the political history of the Catholic Church, the Holy Roman Empire. The Inquisition extended into the 19th century.

Moreover, modern Christianity remains as political as it can be within the framework of modern nation-states. The King of England is also the leader of the Church of England. Other Western European nations still have official state churches. The clear separation of church and state is not a feature of Christianity, but of the United States - almost uniquely so. Yet even in the US, some 28 states still have some "blue laws" limiting commerce on Sundays. The US Presbyterian Church and others have devoted thousands of hours in the service of anti-Israel advocacy - is that not political?

The essay paints Judaism as somehow uniquely political, darkly implying that there is something wrong with that, yet it is Jews who have been in the forefront of separating church and state for their own rights.

There is a great deal more in this essay that is not just deceptive, but consciously deceptive. For example, it repeatedly characterizes the IHRA definition as something "new," implying it is a kneejerk reaction to recent events, not mentioning that its roots go back to 2005 and it has been adopted by over 40 nations. It claims that somehow the IHRA definition imposes a “straitjacket of Zionist identity” on Jews, which is frankly insane. It even insists that the IHRA definition redefines Judaism itself, something beyond the imagination of the most creative fantasy writers.

An accompanying graphic shows an Israeli flag with its pristine Star of David ripped out and sliding off, implying that Zionism has nothing to do with Judaism. For the vast majority of Jews for whom Israel is a critical part of their identity, it is profoundly offensive.

Unfair criticism of Israel is indeed antisemitic, as explained by Natan Sharansky's "3-D" test for when it crosses the line, or my own algorithmic definition of antisemitism:

Antisemitism is
hostility toward,
denigration of
malicious lies about or
discrimination against

Jews

as individual Jews,
as a people,
as a religion,
as an ethnic group or
as a nation (i.e., Israel.)

My wording is meant to show that legitimate criticism of Israel - just like legitimate criticism of Judaism or Jews themselves - is not antisemitic. Only when it becomes hostile, denigratory, malicious or discriminatory does it become antisemitic. Legitimate criticism does not require malice, and comparing most Jews today to Nazis is about as malicious as it gets.

The critics of IHRA know they are lying. Law professors or not, Jewish or not, Israeli or not, this isn’t critique: it’s pure propaganda, and they know it.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

"Mindless: What happened to universities?", by Cary Nelson, is the March issue of Jewish Quarterly, which dedicates each issue to a single essay.

The 120-page book is essentially both a distillation and an update of Nelson's last book, Hate Speech and Academic Freedom: The Antisemitic Assault on Basic Principles. it covers much of the same ground as to the deterioration and subversion of the academy largely at the hands of the anti-Israel crowd.

This has huge ramifications on the future of the university. As Nelson describes it, the very places that are meant for free enquiry have betrayed their core values.

Nelson is a previous president of the American Association of University Professors, and he looks on with dismay how the AAUP has been hijacked by anti-Israel leaders and is now passing resolutions that go against the basics of academic freedom.

His last book was completed right before October 7, and this one centers on everything that has happened since. It is a very ugly picture. The attacks on Zionist faculty, students and ideas are relentless, and they are succeeding in ridding entire academic fields of proud Jews. Students used to study fields, now too many of the fields have become nothing more than advocacy and the only things that are studied are what is acceptable to say.

What used to be anomalous, like a professor refusing to write a letter of recommendation to a student who wants to join an academic program in Israel, is now widespread and largely unreported: Israeli universities are reporting a silent boycott, where papers are rejected unread and no one wants to partner with them. It isn't s principled BDs stance, rather it is a result of no one wanting the hassle of dealing with campus agitators.

The overwhelming feeling one gets is that while many fields in many universities have been completely subverted, a great deal more have been notable for their cowardice.

Nelson makes an excellent point about how identity has become a minefield for students who enter college and are trying to define themselves. They may have their own personal identity already defined by the time they enter a university, but there are also social identity (who they identify with,) identity ascribed to them by others, and identity as formulated in identity politics. These latter types threaten to hurt students psychologically when they are slotted in categories that they do not see themselves as belonging to. Worse, in today's charged environment, everyone is encouraged to identify as victims to gain sympathy - students do not have any identity they can be proud of, only competing to who can be the most oppressed. Who knows the long term effects that this does to teenagers?

Nelson also has horror stories, both on his own campus and outside. He knows one person who had good reviews and was on track to reach tenure. His speaking out against Hamas actions on October 7 destroyed any chance he may have had to gain tenure. Colleagues who privately supported him now urged he be fired.

Nelson has some recommendations, but they feel like too little, too late. I'm afraid that soon Jews will have to respond to antisemitism in the university the way that they responded to antisemitism in the medical and other fields over a century ago: Create their own parallel system.

I don't think we are there yet. Nelson doesn't mention it but there are several excellent schools, mostly in the Midwestern US, that have reputations of being very welcoming to Jewish students. If the smartest Jewish students abandon the universities with active Students for Justice in Palestine chapters, this may become a self-correcting problem over time as recruiters will look elsewhere for the best and the brightest.

Mindless is a sobering but important book.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)