Wednesday, December 13, 2023

12/13 Links Pt2: Israel's invisible victims; A feminist group that betrays women; Letter to an Anti-Zionist Idealist; The Jewish Story Is the American Story

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Israel's invisible victims
In a country where every child is a miraculous reaffirmation of Jewish resilience against the attempts over the course of more than two millennia to wipe out the Jewish people, the death of every one of these young Israeli soldiers tears open the historic wound.

This war has many midwives. A reckoning is due in Israel itself for the role played in the October 7 catastrophe by the governing class, from the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu down through the top brass of the IDF and security establishment. And both the Obama and Biden administrations in the US bear a heavy responsibility for having empowered and incentivised Iran, the infernal godfather and patron of Hamas and Hezbollah.

But the fundamental reason for this war is that the world will not permit the Jews to live in peace and security in their own ancestral homeland. There is no other conflict in the world in which the west has encouraged, funded and incentivised those waging a war of annihilation as the west has done with the “Palestinians” for the best part of a century. There is no other conflict in the world in which an indigenous people that is the victim of existential attack is regarded as aggressive interlopers, and their defence against annihilation wickedly misrepresented as deliberate mass killing and even genocide, as much of the west has done with Israel.

More Israeli soldiers are being killed than would otherwise be unavoidable because, in this as in every war in which Israel is forced to fight against an enemy bent on the extermination of the Jews, the west insists that Israel go to lengths to which these countries themselves would never go to protect the lives of its enemy civilians — lengths which cause more IDF casualties than if Israel had a free hand to defend its people.

And unlike the west, which usually wages war from the safe distance of the skies, Israel puts boots on the booby-trapped ground, with its commanders leading from the front and dying heroically alongside their sergeants and privates.

Not only does the west refuse to acknowledge Israel’s desperate plight; not only does it display indifference to Jewish suffering in Israel; but those demanding an Israeli cease-fire or that the IDF put its own forces at risk in order further to protect Gaza’s civilians are also making it shockingly plain that, if there’s a choice between the lives of Israelis defending themselves against genocide and the unintentional killing of Palestinians in a just war waged by Israel for its survival, it’s the Jews who must die.

May the memory of all of Israel’s fallen children in the lion-hearted IDF — Jews, Arabs, Druze and others — be a blessing. And may their sacrifice not be in vain.
Meir Y. Soloveichik: The Jewish Story Is the American Story
The two letters need to be taken in tandem. Washington’s words to Newport’s Jews express the idea of American equality, but it is Washington’s letter to Savannah that reminds us how the Founders revered the Jewish story and sought succor from the Jewish faith. It explains why Jews were so warmly welcomed in America, as well as why so many Americans support Israel today. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks reflected, the Founders’ reverence for the Hebrew Bible reflects the fact that “Israel, ancient and modern, and the United States are the two supreme examples of societies constructed in conscious pursuit of an idea.”

The story of Washington’s letters is instructive as American Jews confront the specter of anti-Israel Jew-hate in the United States. It is right to emphasize, as Lipstadt did, that bigotry toward any community in America is un-American, and to cite Washington in making that case. But it is also vital to stress what is also learned from the words that Washington himself composed: the deep and long-lasting bond between Judaism and the American idea, and therefore the deep antipathy of Israel-haters for America.

The pro-Hamas rallies proclaiming their support for jihad are reflecting not only their hatred of Jewry and of Israel, but also their hatred of America itself. The two hatreds are joined; those seeking the destruction of the Jews living “from the river to the sea” instinctively understand that the bond between American and Israel is more than pragmatic, and the rallies’ defense of utter evil in the name of “decolonization” reflects a set of ideas proclaiming that America itself is a villain and unworthy of existence. There is a reason why the Jewish gathering on the Mall featured countless American flags, while the mobs in New York, Philadelphia, and the quads of the Ivy League raging “long live the intifada” feature nary a one.

Washington famously concluded his letter to Newport’s Jews with the prayer that “the children of the stock of Abraham” dwell in safety and security in America, where “there shall be none to make them afraid.” Unfortunately, the children of the stock of Abraham in America are afraid, and for good reason. But there is still succor and inspiration to be found: from a Jewry that is experiencing more unity than at most points in American history, and in a vast swath of Americans who understand the bond between the Jewish and American stories. It is this that must be emphasized, as we remind our fellow citizens that what is at stake in this battle is not only the future of American Jewry, but of the American idea—and therefore of America itself.
Harvard Is Getting Exactly the President It Hired
The Harvard Crimson, which limply and unenthusiastically substantiated reports of Gay's decades-long record of plagiarism, talked to scholars like Lawrence Bobo—one of the many authors from whom Gay cribbed, er, inadequately cited—who told the paper he was "unconcerned" that Gay quoted him and his colleague, Gary King, without proper attribution.

Sure, Gay violated the standards to which Harvard holds its own students. Sure, she did the same and worse to dozens of other scholars. But Harvard's 30th president isn't a plagiarist. And besides, isn't imitation the highest form of flattery? Take notes, Harvard students. And Princeton students. And Amherst students.

What the Crimson didn't mention is that Bobo, the dean of social sciences at Harvard, was appointed to his role five years earlier by Gay, when she was dean of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She's not just his boss, she's his patron. Gay's dissertation adviser, Gary King, and her former classmate, Stephen Voss, also defended the Ivy League apparatchik who absconded with their work.

What none of them, least of all the members of the Harvard Corporation, want to say out loud is that Gay wasn't tapped for her scholarship, and they aren't about to hold her to the standards of a serious scholar. Obviously.

No, Gay was chosen for a different set of credentials—her race, gender, political views, and religious devotion to DEI—and she is delivering on her promise to rededicate the university to identity politics.

To that end, she engineered the defenestration of Roland Fryer, allegedly on Title IX charges, after the star black economist ruffled feathers by debunking myths of rampant police violence. She helped strip Ronald Sullivan, a black Harvard Law professor, of an administrative post because he served on Harvey Weinstein's defense team. She even dismissed allegations of research fraud against Ryan Enos, a Harvard government professor, who just so happened to find that Republicans are racist—a recurring theme in Gay's own (well, not really) work.

In her disgraceful testimony before Congress, in which Gay was asked whether Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state and responded, "I believe Israel has the right to exist"—not necessarily as a Jewish state—she was doing the job for which she was hired, in the way she was hired to do it. And the Harvard Corporation, in reaping the media whirlwind and tossing standards aside (again) to save its gal, is getting exactly what it asked for.
Claudine Gay Is Why I Never Checked the ‘Black’ Box
Even at that young age, I knew that to check that black box was to move off the merit track and onto the race track, where people like Claudine Gay excel. She is perhaps the most successful black to walk this path, but she is not a free individual.

Throughout her career, Gay has placed emphasis on her skin color and the politics of the black identity, which we are now learning involved a brew of incompetence, racial essentialism, and plagiarism, all emerging now.

As bad as this all is, the worst thing that the Claudine Gays of America did was lead so many people of their race down this dead-end path of racial essentialism.

Today, the focus has been on how Gay hurt Asians and Jews, but it can never be forgotten that people like her hurt blacks far more and for such a sustained period of time, affecting multiple generations.

My refusal to check the race box meant that no one could hold a claim over me. I’m a free individual, and the only thing I owe is gratitude to the many people who helped me as I pursued the path of merit.

But if one really wants to know why I never checked the black box, the true answer lies in my black grandfather’s life. Born to formerly enslaved parents on a dirt floor in Camp Nelson, Kentucky, his parents died when he was just a teen. On his own, he traveled to Detroit and then to Chicago, where he worked odd jobs to fuel his playboy lifestyle. Then one day, he realized his current life would lead to no good. He straightened up and became a founding member of Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), where he met my grandmother. He got a job as a truck driver, became a family man, and educated himself by reading every book he could find. In doing so, he lifted his family from poverty to a solid lower-middle-class life despite living under segregation.

Why, then, would I betray this admirable progress for the empty promise of skin color?


Jonathan Foreman: Hating Jews and Israel: The View from London
Having lived in Britain for much of his life, Jonathan Foreman wasn’t surprised that the current war in Gaza prompted anti-Israel protests and the like. But even he was surprised by their intensity, the fact that they began immediately after the October 7 massacres (rather than after the IDF’s military response), and the way they have drawn in people like his middle-aged neighbors, who on October 10 hung Palestinian flags and banners outside their house:

This felt different, more disturbing. My neighbors—the wealthy, white, haut-bourgeois banner-hangers—were, whether they would admit it or not, celebrating October 7, rejoicing in the targeting of civilians for rape, murder, and mutilation, cheering the murder of Jews for being Jews.

Every Saturday since 10/7, London has endured large anti-Israel demonstrations. At each one, students, Palestine-obsessives, Islamists, and hard-left extremists march shoulder to shoulder with tens of thousands of people from Britain’s Arab and Muslim communities. They wind their way from Parliament through central London to the Israeli embassy in Kensington, where police in riot gear keep them back from the gates. As in past years, some of the demonstrators let off flares, scream anti-Jewish slogans, and break various minor laws that the police choose not to enforce.

As British Jews have begun to realize, it is only a small step from these kinds of selective inaction by the police to turning a blind eye to the beatings of Jews in the street, Weimar-style—if carried out by passionate young men from certain highly sensitive communities. It would be a different story if the assailants came from the miniscule “far right.”
British Jews Call on London Ad Company to Put Back Billboards of Hamas Hostages Removed Due to Complaints
A major Jewish organization in the United Kingdom has lambasted an advertising company in London for removing digital billboards showing the hostages taken by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7 after facing public scrutiny and threats.

“It cannot be right that in Britain, in 2023, an advertising company is intimidated into withdrawing a campaign about hostages taken by a terrorist group,” the Board of Deputies of British Jews said in a statement, calling for the advertisements to be put back up. “The company should reverse its decision and the police should provide support and urgently investigate these threats.”

The nonprofit organization also noted that the advertising company’s actions followed two months of rampant anti-Israel activity in London, where people have been ripping down or defacing thousands of posters of the 240 people kidnapped by Hamas terrorists during their Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel and taken back to the Gaza Strip.

The Algemeiner previously reported that the advertising company in question, London Lites, signed an agreement with an organization called the Hostages Families’ Forum UK to have the digital billboards displayed throughout London. The billboards went up on Dec. 5 but were taken down after six days.

London Lites told the Hostages Families Forum UK, which organized the billboard campaign with help from the Embassy of Israel in London, that because of “an unusual volume of complaints from the public,” as well as personal threats made to the company’s staff, the billboards would be taken down immediately.

“Following discussions with the Metropolitan Police about community safety concerns regarding billboard site advertising this campaign, we have regrettably taken the decision to cease advertising on community cohesion grounds,” London Lites further said, noting that it has previously carried advertising for the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) and “supports freedom of speech.”

“However, we received an unprecedented number of concerns from the public in response to the advertising campaign last week, and the safety of all members of the local communities where we advertise is paramount,” it added.
Did Israel really separate Palestinian mothers from their babies?
If Washington Post reporters had asked Israeli officials, they would have written a very different story.

On November 17, the Washington Post published a front-page article titled “Israel’s war with Hamas separates Palestinian babies from their mothers.” It claimed that the expiration of transit passes that allowed Palestinian women with complicated pregnancies to cross from Gaza to give birth in hospital neonatal wards in Israel or the West Bank compelled those new moms to leave their newborn infants in the care of hospital nurses and that the outbreak of war of October 7 has prevented parents from reuniting with their babies.

Moreover, the article included assertions from unnamed hospital administrators that the newspaper could not print further details — even to name the hospitals where the babies were cared for — out of fear of reprisals from the Israeli government. That fear allegedly was the reason the reporters did not even approach Israeli authorities to ask for their comment on the various allegations made against them.

Four days later, I posted a lengthy critique of the article, highlighting numerous journalistic flaws. The most serious, in my view, was that the Post’s reporters took an essentially good news story about babies being cared for during wartime and turned it into an attack on Israel, based largely on unnamed sources without making any effort to check the claims with the relevant Israeli government agencies.

The original story gnawed at me. It cried out for more details. Could Israeli officials really be so heartless as to separate mothers and their preemie infants just hours after birth? Could Israeli officials really be so cruel as to repeatedly deny those mothers access to reunite with their babies?

So, over the past three weeks, I have done what three Washington Post reporters – Louisa Loveluck, Sufian Taha and Hajar Harb – did not do: I asked relevant Israeli government agencies – including the office of the Israel Defense Force’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT); the Israeli ministry of health; and the Israeli embassy in Washington — for their side of the story. This is what I learned. None of this appeared in the original Washington Post story.
Phyllis Chesler: A feminist group that betrays women
The National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) has, for a long time now, abandoned women in favor of racially marginalized groups supposedly fighting for “liberation” from those who allegedly oppress and wish to destroy them.

Under the leadership of Miriam Elman, together with Corinne Blackmer, the Academic Engagement Network has issued a faculty statement condemning the NWSA for its silence on Hamas’s Oct. 7 rape and murder rampage. The statement calls upon NWSA to denounce Hamas’s atrocities, call for the release of Israeli hostages and “form a Task Force to assess and evaluate antisemitism and anti-Israel bias in the NWSA.”

Elman stated, “At the Academic Engagement Network, for some years we have been hearing from our faculty members that the NWSA was becoming an increasingly hostile space for Jewish women scholars, particularly for those who are already among the most vulnerable in the academy: untenured and contingent faculty and graduate students. Now, its refusal for weeks to speak out to condemn the terror and mass sexual violence perpetrated on scores of women in southern Israel on Oct. 7, or to make any effort to educate its membership about rape as a weapon of war by Hamas, is simply shameful.”

Alas, the NWSA is only mirroring what is being taught in women, gender and sexuality programs at numerous universities around the country.

The NWSA just held their 43rd annual conference in Baltimore, which they titled, “Luta Continua: The Struggle Continues: Resistance, Resilience, Resurgence.” In their “Educational Resources for Meaningful Solidarity,” they highlighted the struggles (not women engaged in struggles) of Native Americans in the United States, as well as groups in Mexico, Hawaii, the Congo, Sudan, China and Myanmar. Not content with all these very real horrors, however, it appears that the NWSA felt the need to make one up: the “genocide of Palestinians.”

In the section titled “The Fight for a Free Palestine,” the NWSA suggested sources that are pure propaganda churned out by racist anti-Israel activists. They include hysterical rhetoric like the false claim that Gaza is “the world’s largest open-air prison.” Among the authors are ferociously antisemitic activist-scholars like Rashid Khalidi, Noam Chomsky and Omar Barghouti.

The NWSA also suggests films and documentaries that support terrorism, such as Hany Abu-Assad’s “Paradise Now,” which depicts suicide bombers as soulful victims and Israelis as ominous, helmeted soldiers. False claims that Israel is “ethnically cleansing” the Palestinians appear again and again.

But the NWSA’s idolatry of the film is also a betrayal of the group’s mission of advancing women’s rights. “Paradise Now” completely whitewashes Palestinian gender oppression and violence. In its depiction of women in Gaza, Judea and Samaria, there is no forced veiling, forced child marriage, woman-battering or honor killing—all of which are endemic among Arabs in the region. The film’s fantasy woman lives alone, drives her own car and entertains male visitors in the middle of the night. In real life, she’d be lucky to escape alive. Arab women have been and are being killed for far less.
Letter to an Anti-Zionist Idealist
One of the greatest human struggles, the writer Joseph Conrad believed, is the struggle of creating an alliance between the two contradictory instincts of egoism, the moving force of the world, and altruism, its morality. For Jews, the tension has been far more acute and persistent, affecting not only the individual but the larger community, too. To fulfill our moral destiny, the Jewish people are commanded to exercise altruism by being “the host to humanity” and opening our homes and lives to receive the stranger and care for him. But there is also Jewish egoism to consider. To end our perpetual persecution, Jews have had to pursue nationalism and build a safe haven, so that victimhood ceases to be our destiny. Altruism and egoism are also the antagonistic instincts that define our challenge. “What is a Jew?” Martin Buber laments. “I shall not attempt to define here the accursed and all-honored question.” The philosopher Edmond Jabès sees the antagonism as surpassing the self: “The idea of a Jewish state is a contradiction in terms. To be Jewish is to be dispersed, to be without a home in the traditional sense.”

The desire to find an equilibrium between the two instincts is, in part, the pursuit that gives depth to our lives and keeps us from the indulgences of undue selfishness or selflessness. But often, we seek to relieve the discomfort by abandoning one for the other. Betraying Jewish egoism — Zionism — and turning one’s back on the only Jewish homeland, pretending that the countless mobs that broke windows of Jewish businesses, set fires to Jewish property, and drove out the Jews from their communities are all bygone offenses, would be one way of coping with rising antisemitism and the vehement attacks on Israel, especially on university campuses. Another is to withstand the tension: to stand by Israel’s founding principles, while also striving to reach peace with the Palestinians, so they can build their lives and thrive, too. The second task may prove impossible, but as the Mishnaic wisdom goes, we do not have a duty to complete it, only to not abandon it.

In the end, dear J, your objection to Israel is about much more than Israel alone. It is also an objection, albeit inadvertently, to the plight of those who are fighting for freedom and democracy in some of the lands from which we fled. Your good intentions notwithstanding, you become an agent in the propaganda campaigns of autocratic nations, like Iran, that claim Israel to be the world’s greatest evil. You become an unwitting party to that deception at the expense of far greater and more dire emergencies, including those of women, secular activists, and the various minorities in the Palestinian territories. As Israel’s violations receive disproportionate attention, those fighting for freedom and equal rights will remain in the shadows. Since September 2022 alone, nearly 20,000 demonstrators have been arrested in Iran and more than 600 have been killed or executed. The demonstrators in Iran have often chanted “Forget Palestine! Think of us!” At a first glance, they may seem to be making a demand from their own government. But they are equally frustrated by an international community, the Western media especially, that seems to quickly move on from every story but that of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Years ago, the founder of Human Rights Watch, Robert L. Bernstein, wrote in an opinion piece for the New York Times decrying the record of the very organization he had created, “The region is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region.” That trend has only intensified. Israel can be criticized. Every democracy should be. But when the criticism begins to have echoes of the calls from autocrats in the region, you must pause and question whether you have become a pawn in a dangerous game in which countless men and women are valiantly fighting, and dying, without a mention.
Christine Rosen: The Showstopping of Mehdi Hasan
Such cancellations happen all the time; cable news is a graveyard of badly performing shows whose hosts failed to right the ratings ship (even Laura Ingraham had a short-lived MSNBC show called Watch It! in the 1990s). The Washington Post claimed the cancellation prompted a “blizzard of backlash,” but this is an overstatement. What it produced was an entirely predictable response from the usual suspects in politics and mainstream media who insist that Hasan was fired because he was a Muslim speaking truth to power.

Representative Ilhan Omar, a member of the left-wing “Squad” notable for her frequent expressions of anti-Semitism (and a regular guest of Hasan’s), was crestfallen. Hasan is “one of the most brilliant and most prominent Muslim journalists in the U.S.,” she posted on X. “It is deeply troubling that MSNBC is canceling his show amid a rampant rise of anti-Muslim bigotry and suppression of Muslim voices.” Omar is, as usual, lying: It is anti-Semitism, not anti-Muslim bigotry, that is disturbingly rampant at the moment.

No matter. She had plenty of help attempting to make Hasan into a symbol of Islamophobia. Hasan’s program “has felt like an oasis on air and more needed than ever,” Noura Erakat, a Palestinian-American activist, posted on X. “He should be amplified, not shut down.” For those unfamiliar with Erakat’s views, in 2022, as part of a program sponsored by anti-Israel group Nonviolence International, she said, “Palestinians will not attack Jews because they are Jewish” but “because they are their military occupiers and oppressors.” On another panel at the University of Illinois, she said, “Zionism is a bedfellow of Nazism and Anti-Semitism.”

Likewise, a representative of IfNotNow—whose main congressional supporter is Squad member Representative Rashida Tlaib, recently censured by the House for her anti-Semitism—called Hasan “a vital voice holding those in power to account, providing a space for those questioning unconditional U.S. support for Israel” and saw the cancellation “as part of the sharp rise in anti-Muslim rhetoric and hate.” Kenneth Roth, former head of the moral rot that is the NGO Human Rights Watch, said the show’s cancellation was “outrageous” and suggested that Hasan was fired for being “an outspoken critic of Israel’s conduct in Gaza.”

Several media outlets argued that, although Hasan’s ratings were consistently poor, MSNBC should have kept him on air. Why? Because they considered him an effective Internet troll on behalf of the left. “Although Hasan was not among MSNBC’s top-rated stars, his segments often went viral on social media, where users celebrated his takedowns of conservatives such as former Trump adviser John Bolton and Israeli government adviser Mark Regev,” the Washington Post noted. This, according to mainstream media’s most elite, is a good thing: “As Americans get more and more of their news from shared posts from news show segments, Hasan’s online amplification of his interviews put him on the cutting edge of the future of journalism.”

Others lamented Hasan as a silenced voice of the people who challenge the Democratic Party establishment. Writing in the Nation, John Nichols, who co-authored a book with multimillionaire socialist Senator Bernie Sanders titled It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, clearly doesn’t understand that cable news is a business, not a nurturing nonprofit drum circle for talkers on the left. “We need more cable hosts who practice accountability journalism, in the way that Mehdi Hasan has so ably done,” Nichols wrote. Perry Bacon Jr. of the Washington Post lamented that the cancellation of Hasan’s show was evidence that even left-leaning MSNBC was becoming a tool of the Democratic Party “as opposed to a news outlet that upholds left-wing values.” He noted that MSNBC had given shows to several former Biden administration officials, including former press secretary Jen Psaki, who is described as taking “an increasingly prominent role” at the network.

How odd to read that by firing Hasan, MSNBC was losing a crucial, independent voice criticizing the administration. After all, in an interview earlier this year, the Guardian characterized Hasan as speaking about Joe Biden “with the zeal of a convert.” Hasan told the paper, “Joe Biden has done a lot, more than any president since LBJ, some might say since Roosevelt.” He added, “I never imagined I would say this—I was born in 1979—I think he’s the most impressive president of my lifetime.”
What ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘Black Lives Matter’ Have in Common
The only problem with these arguments, to put this in the highly technical language of professional wonkery, is that they are stupid and wrong. The key weakness of the contention that black community issues such as high crime are due to contemporary racism (or, for that matter, to genetics) is that most of them did not exist to anywhere near the same extent in the past, despite the fact that the makeup of the black population was largely identical and the ethnic conflict with whites was far worse. As I have documented, the black murder rate roughly doubled during the recent “Black Lives Matter” era alone: It currently stands at an astounding 32/100,000 per year, which is higher than the Caucasian suicide rate.

This tragic final average merely reflects the end-point of a long and disturbing trend. As writers such as Mona Charen have documented, American and particularly black American crime rates began to surge following the liberalization of “blue city” justice systems in the 1960s and 1970s. Astonishingly, murders increased from roughly 8,000 to 24,530 between the years 1963 and 1993, and serious aggravated assaults increased from 174,210 to 1,135,610. While U.S. crime did decline significantly during the post-Giuliani-and-Bratton 2000s, homicides have climbed back to more than 20,000 annually during the past several years. More than half of all recent murder victims have been black, something hardly characteristic even of the Jim Crow era. If we choose to add fatherlessness to this analysis, the African-American out-of-wedlock birth rate stood at just 11 percent in 1938—in contrast to 69 percent today (alongside a rate of 36 percent for whites). Racism is the cause? Not likely.

Same for the Palestinians. In the bluntest possible logical terms, most of the problems of, specifically, Gaza cannot be laid at the feet of Israel…because Israel has not occupied or ruled the Gaza Strip since 2005. Far more of them, in fact, can be laid at the feet of Hamas, the terrorist group that has been in charge of the area since 2007. Among many other objectively insane actions, Hamas’s leaders ordered or allowed the destruction of the great majority of the infrastructure left behind by some 10,000 departing Jews, who fled the region following an Israeli pullback (thus, of course, being “forced to abandon their family lands”)—including the once-legendary floral greenhouses of the Strip.

Since that point, Hamas has systematically looted the potentially rich lands under its control—at one point rather literally beating plowshares into swords by using miles of state-of-the-art sewer pipe sent by the international aid community to make rocket-launcher tubes. Gaza and the other component region of recognized Palestine (the West Bank) have in fact received many billions of dollars in recent humanitarian aid, because of the sympathetic nature of some Palestinian claims, and much of this lucre has simply vanished or been stolen. Quite a bit of it, to judge from viral retrospectives of what Gaza City looked like before the Israel–Hamas war, was diverted into luxury villas for Hamas commanders and their dependents—some of whom could give even BLM lessons on mansion purchase and maintenance.
Ivy-League Anti-Semitism with Bari Weiss, Regarding Henry, and Santa Hats
Failing to unequivocally denounce students’ calls for Jewish genocide has cost one university president her job and raises questions as to whether the current levels of anti-Semitic vitriol and political activism inside America’s elite schools suggests parallels to Nazi Germany. Bari Weiss, founder of the Free Press and host of the Honestly podcast, joins Hoover senior fellows Niall Ferguson, H.R. McMaster, and John Cochrane to discuss when and why America’s universities went astray and how to separate scholarship from political agendas.


Clifford D. May: The lessons of ‘Casablanca’
The United States poses the only potentially serious impediment to the ambitions of the tyrants who rule China, Russia and Iran. This is why those tyrants are collaborating to diminish and, if possible, defeat the United States.

If a significant number of Americans don’t get that, think it doesn’t matter, or maybe even think it’s justified, so much the better for the tyrants.

If you do get it, you also understand why it’s vital that the U.S. become now, as it was under Roosevelt, the “arsenal of democracy” — providing our allies with the means to defend themselves against common enemies.

This isn’t rocket science, but let me remind you that rockets made in Iran are killing Ukrainians. And Hamas, with Tehran’s support, continues to fire rockets at Israel.

The war that Hamas launched against Israel with multiple atrocities and war crimes could end tomorrow if Hamas’ commanders — either those hiding in Gaza’s tunnels or those luxuriating in Qatar’s five-star hotels — were to unconditionally surrender.

The U.N. and many nongovernmental organizations that claim to care about human rights refuse to demand that. Why do you suppose that is?

“If we stop fighting our enemies, the world will die,” Victor Laszlo, the Czech Resistance leader, tells Rick. “Well, what of it?” Rick replies. “It will be out of its misery.”

But in the film’s final scene, Rick shoots Major Strasser and decides to join the fight. “You’ve become a patriot,” Louis Renault observes.

Did the movie have any influence on President Roosevelt? Maybe. I bet President Biden has seen it, but he should watch it again. So, too, should all the Republican candidates for president.

Casablanca, I might point out, translates as White House.
Swiss parliament votes to cut funding for UNRWA amid incitement allegations

Cotton Proposes ‘Woke’ Tax on University Endowments to Pay for Aid to Ukraine, Israel, and the Border

Banks: Cut Off College Donations from China, Defund Schools that Don’t Protect Jewish Students

Report: Foundations provided millions in funding to CAIR

South African Government Fetes Hamas Official Sanctioned by US Administration

Dutch mayor refuses to be photographed with Israeli ambassador at Hanukkah event, setting off media frenzy

Joshua's Tomb in West Bank vandalized with pro-Hamas messages

Alan M. Dershowitz: Woke Cowardice: Wrong University Presidents at the Wrong Time
As Ecclesiastes observed "to everything there is a season". This seems to be the season for woke cowardice

[These administrators] are also insensitive to civil liberties and the rights of those with whom they disagree.

It creates divisiveness on campuses that makes Jewish students and faculty fearful for their safety when their university president seems unwilling to apply the same standard to those who advocate genocide against Jews as they surely would against anyone who advocated genocide against Blacks or the raping of women or the shooting of gay and transgender people.

What these universities need now are principled advocates of a single standard, rather than leaders who base their decisions on outside pressures and the need to pander to extremist students, faculty and administrators.

One thing is clear: [university presidents] should be selected on the basis of relevant, individual meritocratic criteria— not the cookie cutter criteria of the "diversity, equity and inclusion" bureaucracies.
Coverage of Campus Antisemitism Hearing Exposes Media Blind Spot

'Hamas are no freedom fighters': An open letter to Judith Butler
Judith Butler, you completely and utterly fail to practice what you preach in regards to women’s rights and human rights… yet seem to be in love with your theory of terrorists being left-wing social movements… does this make you feel more "liberal" and "free-thinking"? Is it some kind of Academic hubris that blinds you? Or maybe from up there in your academic ivory tower, you can no longer decipher between darkness and light, democracy and terrorism or right from left. Don’t you see you're playing right into the hands of terrorists? That you've made yourself the useful idiot of antisemites, who are using your name to "Jew-wash" their genocidal hatreds?

If you really care about the Palestinians, help to rid them of the terror organizations that are ruling them. But I’m not sure you do care… it smells of pure antisemitism? Old blood libels- with a new story...

So what if you’re Jewish? Being Jewish grants no immunity from being antisemitic.

Are you aware that since your outspoken and one-dimensional analysis of the war, Jewish students at your University – Berkley – are not safe… the university doesn't know "how to protect the Jewish students from violent mobs" that you call "left-wing freedom fighters."

Theories, Judith, become words, and words become actions, and actions can be fatal. If any Jewish student is harmed or, God forbid, killed, then their blood is on your hands.
StopAntisemitism gives ‘F’ grades to Brown, Chicago, Cornell, Pomona, Vermont

Suspended groups at Columbia University continue to hold anti-Israel campus events
Just weeks after Columbia University announced a temporary suspension of the campus chapters of National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) as official student groups through the end of the fall term, both groups have continued organizing on-campus events.

According to witnesses, some of the unauthorized events by the anti-Israel groups have included holding protests featuring chants of “intifada, intifada, long live the intifada” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Deans have done nothing to stop the events the school claimed were canceled, students on campus tell JI.

“It feels like [JVP and SJP] have ramped up more [since the ban],” Alon Levin, a Columbia School of Engineering graduate student, told Jewish Insider. “We’re seeing it now almost on a daily basis,” he said, adding that some of the events are held under different names associated with JVP and SJP, such as a protest he witnessed on Monday that was sponsored by Student Workers of Columbia, held on Barnard’s campus. Barnard College is affiliated with Columbia University and Barnard students are part of Columbia clubs.

“I’ve been to a few of these events so I can document what’s going on, and usually it’s not overtly under SJP or JVP but other groups that are under the banner of Columbia University student organizations that say they will pick up the slack for those groups by doing things like booking rooms,” Levin said.

Other events, such as a menorah lighting held throughout the week of Hanukkah, are still advertised as being sponsored by JVP and SJP, despite the ban, which runs through Dec. 22, the end of the fall semester.
Rutgers U suspends Students for Justice in Palestine amid further campus uproar over Israel

Israeli alumni of Harvard issue letter condemning campus

FACT CHECK: Plagiarist Prez Claudine Gay Has Done 'More Damage to Harvard's Reputation Than Anyone in the University's History'
Claim: Harvard president Claudine Gay, an accused plagiarist widely denounced for her public testimony on Jewish genocide, has done "more damage to the reputation of Harvard University than any individual in [its] nearly 500-year history."

Who said it: Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager and Harvard alumnus who has called on Gay to resign, in a letter to the university's governing board of directors.

Context: Gay's comments on Jewish genocide—made last week during her testimony before the House Education Committee—were indeed "abysmal," as Ackman stated in his letter. Asked if "calling for the genocide of Jews" violated Harvard's bullying and harassment policies, Gay replied: "It depends on the context."

Ackman assessed that Gay's humiliating performance on Capitol Hill had resulted in "billions of dollars of cancelled, paused, and withdrawn donations to the university" from Jewish and non-Jewish alumni. Nevertheless, Harvard faculty and the university's governing board have rallied to Gay's defense.

Analysis: It's clear that Gay has damaged Harvard's reputation. It's less clear whether she has done more damage "than any individual" in the history of the university. Our analysts identified more than a dozen notable Harvard alumni and associates who have also caused significant damage to the university's reputation.

• Ted Kaczynski (Class of '62)—Also known as "The Unabomber," Kaczynski murdered at least three people and injured dozens more by sending bombs through the mail between 1978 and 1995. The deranged nerd killed himself in June 2023 while serving eight consecutive life terms in federal prison.

• Isoroku Yamamoto (Class of '21)—The mastermind of the infamous sneak attack on Pearl Harbor served as Marshall Admiral of the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II.


Harvard secret plagiarism probe into president Claudine Gay

LSE turns ‘blind eye’ to academics accused of supporting Hamas attacks on day of horror

Massachusetts Teachers Union Says U.S. Is Complicit In ‘Genocidal Assault’ In Gaza

After Yale dining erases Jewish state, ‘Israeli’ couscous back on menu

LA Times Op-Ed Gaslights Israelis & Jews on Intifada Violence

'Vice' Arabic Article Defended Hamas Massacre, Called It 'Within International Law'

Media Fabricate Palestinian Deaths To Push ‘Settler Violence’ Smear

MEMRI: The Global Ideology Of Hamas: Islam Will Rule The World, Annihilate The U.S., Conquer Europe – MEMRI Video Compilation – Help SUPPORT MEMRI'S VITAL WORK

MEMRI: Hamas Senior Official Sami Abu Zuhri Calls For Violence Against American And British Interests Worldwide; Adds: Blinken Is An Enemy, Just Like Netanyahu; Both Will Pay The Price

Top PLO official: Israel “killed their [own] civilians, committed all these crimes”
Top PLO official: Israel “killed their [own] civilians, committed all these crimes and burned the bodies”

Director of PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs with the rank of minister Qadura Fares: “This whole [Israeli] outcry and this whole campaign against the Palestinian people (i.e., Israeli response against Hamas) is based on a lie, which it took Israel 24 hours to create and formulate properly. They killed their [own] civilians [on Oct. 7], and they committed all these crimes and burned the bodies (sic., refers to Hamas’ massacre on civilians), and they made up this story and said: “They [the Palestinians] raped, killed, and burned.” ... However, this narrative fell apart quickly … Israel’s lie is no longer tripping anyone up.” [Official PA TV, Nov. 20, 2023]


Fatah calls for terror: “Armed struggle… All types of resistance”
Fatah Ramallah Branch Representative Na’im Morrar: “We are united against this aggression (i.e., Israeli counter-terror operation against Hamas). We call on all our people to unite in the confrontation. Fatah’s promise to its Martyrs and its people is to be at the head of the resistance to the occupier, and it will not abandon the element of the resistance, whether it is armed struggle or popular resistance... We are always calling for an integration between the political efforts that His Honor [PA] President [Abbas] is waging with the national and political leadership, together with [activity on] the ground, together with the resistance on the ground in all its varieties, all types of resistance.” [Official PA TV, Dec. 6, 2023]


Released teen terrorist praises Hamas’ “achievements” releasing terrorists
Released teen terrorist praises Hamas’ “achievements” releasing terrorists for Israeli civilian hostages

Released terrorist prisoner Yazan Al-Hasanat: “We will empty the prisons. The prisoners’ situation requires resistance (i.e., terror) that will release them… The resistance is with blood, with weapons. The prisoners do not want peaceful resistance. They want resistance that will fight so they will triumph. All the prisoners are in favor of the resistance… We are very proud of the resistance (i.e., Hamas), of the resistance’s achievements, and satisfied with what is happening in the Gaza Strip, with the abductions, the abduction of the captives (i.e., Israeli hostages).”

[Quds News Network, Twitter account, Nov. 26, 2023]

Yazan Al-Hasanat - 17-year-old Palestinian member of the PFLP terror organization held under administrative detention from June 22, 2023, until his release in the prisoner exchange deal starting on Nov. 24, 2023, between Israel and Hamas in which Israel agreed to release 150 terrorist prisoners, pause drone surveillance in the Gaza Strip, and allow movement between the northern and southern Gaza Strip, in return for 50 Israeli female and child hostages held by Hamas during the Israeli counter-terror operation against Hamas’ terror war on Israel.




MEMRI: Qatar-Funded International Union Of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) Delegation Meets With Taliban Ministers In Kabul: 'The Islamic Emirate's Mujahideen Achieved Success Against The World's Great Powers – Similarly The Palestinians, With Their Strong Will, Will Definitely Win This War' Against Israel

PreOccupiedTerritory: US Allies Hope To Get US To Address Houthi Threat By Highlighting Group’s Anti-Trans Agenda (satire)

Bret Stephens: Antisemitism: A Guide for the Perplexed
In a season of widespread condemnation of antisemitism, many struggle to define it. I can imagine having this conversation with any number of people trying to understand this age-old phenomenon:

Question: I’m having trouble making sense of some of the claims and counterclaims being made about what is, or isn’t, antisemitic speech and behavior. To be honest, it doesn’t help that so many prominent Jews have sharply different takes on the subject.

Answer: Two Jews, three opinions.

That sounds like a stereotype.

It is. It’s also one of the few things that most Jews agree is true of us as people.

OK, so in your opinion and a half, what is antisemitism?

It’s a conspiracy theory that holds that Jews are uniquely prone to use devious means to achieve malevolent ends and must therefore be opposed by any means necessary, including violence.

Is that the commonly accepted definition?

No, it’s my own. A more widely cited definition comes from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which defines antisemitism, in part, as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.” But the phrase “a certain perception” raises more questions than it answers.

So why do you call antisemitism a conspiracy theory? Isn’t it just simple bigotry against Jews?

Few things are simple about antisemitism because few things are simple about Jews. We are a nation, a religion, a culture, an “other.” At various times we’ve also been thought of, falsely, as a race, most malevolently by the Nazis.

Antisemitism has expressed itself over the centuries as political opposition to Jews, religious hatred, cultural disdain, xenophobia or racism. It’s a shape-shifting virus that has adapted itself to the reigning prejudices of different eras. But a common thread linking one strain to another is that antisemitism typically takes the form of a conspiracy theory.

Such as?

Deicide, for starters — the idea that Jews got the Romans to kill Jesus. Later, in the Middle Ages, came the belief that plagues were caused by Jews poisoning wells. Next, it was Jews using their financial power to start wars. Or their control of media and Hollywood to manipulate public opinion and degrade public morals. Or their influence in Congress and the White House to take America to war in the Middle East and advance Israeli interests.
Detroit police request warrant in murder of Samantha Woll

Kanye West’s album with antisemitic lyrics to debut Friday

American Donors Supplying IDF with Thousands of Bulletproof Helmets and Vests
The "Am Yisrael Chai" project has raised $1.5 million to buy 4,000 tactical helmets, and 25,000 pieces of clothing, including tactical uniforms, fireproof overalls, and winter gear, and is literally saving lives.

The equipment includes ceramic vests, armored backpacks, and telescopic sights.

One Jewish community from the New York area is behind the operation and has already brought 11 shipments to Israel.

The driving force behind the project said, "I've never been involved in donating to Israel or the IDF....But this is about saving soldiers' lives and I can't just sit by and watch."
3 IDF Soldiers Share Their Personal Experiences From the On-Going War Against Hamas
We knew we would go in, our commanders just looked us in the eyes and we understood that no matter what, we are entering Gaza.”Watch as these 3 IDF soldiers share their experiences in the war and what keeps them grounded in combat, reminding them of their mission.






Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!
 

 



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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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