Thursday, December 14, 2023

12/14 Links Pt2: There are wolves in my house; For Israel, the Existential Question Returns; Poison Ivy League; I Was Wrong About John Fetterman

From Ian:

There are wolves in my house
By this point the sentiment has become pervasive among Jews everywhere: There is not one but two wars being fought at this moment.

The first is being fought literally in Gaza and, as we saw recently with the Hamas stabbing attack in Jerusalem—not to mention the endless rockets fired at Israel from Gaza—often bleeds over into Israel. The second, which some believe is the war we are less likely to win, is the war of disinformation and Jew-hatred taking place in cities and on university campuses all over the world and especially in the United States.

Jewish stores, restaurants, schools and places of worship have been attacked. People who are visibly Jewish have been subjected to both verbal and physical threats. The hysterical and frenzied screams of “Globalize the Intifada” and worse are the tell-tale characteristics of so-called pro-Palestinian rallies. This second war is nebulous and far-reaching, a speeding car without breaks—that much is true.

But there is yet another war taking place. It is the war in our own lives, with families, friends and communities. Our inner circles are no longer safe spaces, but even worse, we wonder if they ever were. Why? Because there are wolves in our houses: people we considered close friends and allies, many we have known intimately for years, who have materialized into antisemites seemingly overnight.

In the wake of Oct. 7, these people have shown their teeth, razor sharp and poised to bite, fangs glistening in the light of each new accusation against Israel, a country trying to bring its hostages home and end, once and for all, the threat of Hamas. Those of us who were paying attention saw that, even before Israel began to strike back and to hunt down Hamas terrorists, the fangs were sharpened and ready.

On Oct. 11 I published one of the first pieces to call attention to the systematic rape and mutilation of Israeli women on Oct. 7. “Where are the feminists?” I asked. The countless messages I received on social media ranged from insults like “Zionist propagandist b—h” to threats including “I see you have a son.” But the creators of these insults are not the wolves. They are the rot that always bubbles and festers under the surface of any society in which there are Jews—the ones that search relentlessly for an opening, an opportunity to release their filth into the mainstream. I’m not so worried about those.

What concerns me are my friends. In the summer of 2007, I attended the Cornell School of Criticism and Theory (SCT). I felt, for the first time in my life, that I had found my people. The friendships I developed were deep and special and continued even though we were spread across the world. I look back on that summer as one of the best in my life. In the years since, there have been times when our conversations about Israel and the Palestinians have been tense, but they were always grounded in mutual respect for the other perspective, or so I thought. But on Oct. 8, the tenor of the discourse had already changed.

I watched as a few of my SCT friends began to post anti-Israel rhetoric. Not one of them mentioned the massacre of Israelis or the hostages taken into Gaza, and not one of them reached out to me to ask if I had family or friends in Israel. In those days and weeks after Oct. 7, I thought I would die of heartbreak. I watched endless videos of horrific footage because, as a Holocaust scholar, I understand the importance of bearing witness. I, like many others, will never be the same after watching these atrocities. But how can we look away?
Seth Mandel: Why Are We Talking Only About Speech?
Is a university president’s only job to manage speech codes? If not, then why is that all we’re talking about?

It would be great if the reason Claudine Gay kept her job as president of Harvard was that she drew up a comprehensive plan to change the lunatic atmosphere of the institution over which she presides. That would mean the “elite” institution was grappling even superficially with its obligations. But it appears she kept her job because the university wanted to spite Harvard grad Bill Ackman, head of Pershing Square Capital Management and an energetic critic of the current administration.

Political leaders aren’t exempt from the crisis either. Pennsylvania officials recently pointed out that a mob action taken against a Jewish-owned falafel joint in Philly was a baldly anti-Semitic act and one with expected material effects on the business that was targeted. What is being done to address the fact that the City of Brotherly Love has a mob-action problem in the first place? What is being done to make sure Jewish-owned restaurants that have been protested against and vandalized survive in this environment?

The blasé attitude of politicians and university leaders is disturbing at this point. We all agree that 40 physical assaults isn’t a speech issue. But… we all agree it’s an issue, right? Nine-hundred anti-Semitic rallies is a sign of social fabric coming undone. Do our leaders have any desire to see that fabric stitched back together?

If you’re a government body or a university bureaucracy, there is an endless list of things you absolutely should not do. I don’t need to hear you recite them. But please stop pretending that physical assaults and Kristallnacht-redolent attacks on Jewish establishments are proof of a robust culture of speech and debate.
Jewish Privilege?
The first took place at Williams College in the late 1980s when, as a faculty member, I attended a lecture titled “When Jews Became White.” The talk left a lasting impression on me. The presenter argued that the stature of Jews in America changed in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Some of it resulted from the valiant service of Jewish soldiers during World War II; some from the shame among non-Jews about ignoring the murder of the Six Million; some from the ascendancy of Jews in business, the arts and virtually every field imaginable. What especially stood out to me was when the lecturer spoke about how transformational it was that arguably the two most iconic women in post-war America, Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor, proudly converted to Judaism. Now that was a stamp of approval.

But I witnessed the downside of this broadened social acceptance at a second event around a decade ago, when I was president of Northwestern University. I was part of a group of administrators who invited students to discuss how we could work together to make the university as welcoming as possible in light of our rapidly diversifying student body. One of the student leaders began her remarks by telling us to “check our privilege at the door,” an expression I had never heard at the time but would hear often in the years that followed. At first I thought she was asking all of us to do so, since not only were we all fortunate to be associated with such a highly regarded institution, but also many of the people in the room were raised in households with considerable wealth. It was immediately clear from the reaction of the other students, however, that they didn’t own up to having any privilege whatsoever. While I almost blurted out that as a practicing Jew who grew up in a family with very modest means and who faced covert and overt antisemitism throughout my life and career, I have never felt particularly privileged, I kept silent. As with most such sessions, the intention wasn’t to engage in collaborative dialogue, but rather simply to shame.

Taken together – Jews over time becoming accepted in American life, and so-called campus progressives focusing on “elites” as the source of all societal ills – I can better understand how we got to the harrowing moment we are in today.

But the critics are right about one thing: it is indeed a privilege to be Jewish. How wonderful to be part of a group that contributes so mightily to the welfare of others. While history suggests that some will always use Jews as scapegoats, I know how blessed I am to be a Jew. It is both a privilege and an obligation that I will never check at anyone’s door.




For Israel, the Existential Question Returns
In 1948, Israel's population consisted of roughly a million Jews. In 2022, the population had burgeoned to nearly 10 million, over seven million of them Jews. The Israel of 1948 was poor. It is now one of the technology powerhouses of the world. And it did this while absorbing millions of immigrants from around the world, of all skin colors, languages and traditions, while fighting chronic campaigns against its neighbors and terrorist groups committed to its extermination.

The uncertainties of the moment are immense, but a few things are clear. The first is the striking resilience of Israeli civil society. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis fled not abroad, but home, many of them to don uniforms and join reserve units. Civil action groups have filled in all kinds of gaps - from supplying soldiers to replacing labor on Israeli farms.

For nearly half a century, the existential question hasn't been on the table for Israel. After Oct. 7, however, Israelis live under the constant threat of an unshakably hostile and eliminationist coalition led by Iran and including Hizbullah, Hamas, Yemen's Houthis and kindred groups that will use any means to weaken and eventually destroy their state.

Once again, as in Israel's first quarter-century, they may have to live under perpetual siege, building a society while keeping one wary hand ever on the sword, for at least the foreseeable future. The first Israelis accepted that challenge and still managed to thrive. Their spirit thus far suggests that one should not doubt that their grandchildren and great-grandchildren are capable of doing the same.
Arabs in Israel: More Israeli, more Palestinian
These countervailing winds have been in evidence ever since October 7. On that day, the Nazareth-born actress Maisa Abd Elhadi posted support for the Hamas onslaught to her 30,000 Instagram followers. She has since been indicted for incitement to terror.

And yet days later Mansour Abbas called on Hamas to release its women and children hostages, and this month went further still, condemning the group’s attack as “inhumane” and “against the values of Islam.” More than 20 Arabs were among those murdered by Hamas on October 7, and at the time of this writing, several Bedouin kibbutz workers remain among its captives in Gaza. A relative of those captives, the minibus driver Yosef Ziyadne, raced to the scene of Hamas’s music-festival massacre, packing 31 people into his 14-seater van and speeding through fields to save their lives.

In short, like so much of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it’s complicated.

That extends to terminology as well. Are they Arab Israelis? Israeli Arabs? Perhaps, as some say in Arabic, “’48 Arabs,” deliberately omitting the word “Israel”?

A recent German-Israeli academic survey found that the most widely favored term – adopted by some 40 percent of respondents – remains “Arab in Israel” or “Arab citizen of Israel.” Another quarter identified as just plain “Arab” or “Palestinian,” omitting the word Israel. But more and more, particularly among the more educated and politically engaged, a hybrid identity is ascendant, one stressing both national and civil affiliations, such as “Palestinian citizens of Israel.”

Such is the term favored by Ayman Odeh, head of Hadash, the predominantly Arab socialist party in Knesset. “The ‘Israeli Arab’ is detached from his roots and his identity is drained of meaning,” he has written. “He’s like a hybrid creature that does not belong to the Palestinian people but is also not fully Israeli in the Jewish state.”

The article was written in Hebrew, and the original word was not “hybrid” but kilayim, or “mixture” – an arcane prohibition in Jewish scripture against grafting seeds, crossbreeding animals and combining certain fabrics in clothes. An Arab citizen employing an esoteric term unknown to most diaspora Jews exemplifies the crosswinds pushing against Odeh’s community.

Moreover, his protestations notwithstanding, it is precisely a hybrid identity that is on the ascendant within his constituency.

The “most growing identity is a hybrid identity, which is ‘Palestinian in Israel’” or a similar combination,” said Prof. Sammy Smooha of the University of Haifa, who coined the concept of “ethnic democracy” to refer to Israel. “I think that’s what’s going to take over.”

Abu Rass told me his two identities are in constant conversation, and in times of peace, complement each other well. However, in times of crisis — like now — it is clear which takes precedence.

“My Palestinian-ness is very strong; it has the upper hand on my Israeli citizenship, yes,” he said. “On an everyday basis I’m Israeli – I work, I teach at the university. But I always return to my Palestinian-ness. It’s my home, my culture, my collective.”

Identity is a difficult business, and few identities are knottier than that of those people, call them Arabs or Palestinians, who are citizens of the Jewish, democratic State of Israel. There are obvious benefits to citizenship in a country that is considerably more developed, economically and politically, than any of its neighbors. There are equally obvious pitfalls to being associated with a people with whom that country has been locked in conflict for most of a century.

Internationally, the moment is not congenial to nuance. The Hamas-Israel war has demonstrated, yet again, just how simplistic and tribalistic is the state of commentary, above all on social media, on matters Israeli and Palestinian.

It is perhaps those in between – those inextricably linked, for good or ill, to both their state and nation – who may remind the rest of us what it means to live with contradictions, to coexist with complexity.
NYPost Editorial: The story of Hanukkah’s not about ‘hiding,’ Doug: It’s about winning
An embarrassing, ahistorical howler for a quasi-official White House-adjacent account to put out.

That fact that Emhoff has (allegedly) been helping Team Biden combat antisemitism adds another layer of sad irony.

But this blunder is a deeply revealing one.

In fact, the post shows exactly how vast swathes of Biden’s administration — to say nothing of the wider Democratic Party — would like modern Jews to behave.

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I.e., when confronted with an existential threat, they musn’t bravely battle and defeat it.

No: The proper response for Jews (and Jews alone, in the woke martyrology) is to run, hide, and cower.

How else to explain Biden’s thuggish threats this week — as Jews around the world celebrate not hiding but fighting and winning — that Israel must change its tactics or risk losing support?

Or his administration’s bad-faith calls for restraint in Israel’s justified counterattack against Hamas terrorism?

Or its endless, Obama-style appeasement of Iran?
‘We Write Jokes and God Laughs’
Lee Kern, who co-wrote the sequel to Borat and the Showtime series Who Is America, had a recent guest credit on the November 14 episode of Eretz Nehederet. “I’m more proud of that than my Oscar nomination,” he told me. “I’ve become very jaded and cynical about comedy. About its purpose and all the vanity around it,” he added. “But now it feels different. I feel for the first time that my comedy makes sense. These are the people I want to make laugh.”

He says comedy, in the wake of October 7, is “spiritual first aid,” adding that the best strategy when it comes to bullies is “taking the piss out of them.”

But how far is too far? The show skewered Israel’s far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir last year with a parody of Springtime for Hitler—and in 2016, it mocked ISIS as a jaunty, jihadist boy band at Eurovision. Since the war, the writers are carrying extra weight on their shoulders. “It’s like a normal day,” mused Shay, the staff writer, of their process. “We have creative meetings. We throw ideas. But now it’s much more intense.”

The writers are constantly exploring what’s kosher to joke about—and what’s out of bounds. “What’s most sensitive?” Shay posed. “What’s most important?”

“You must cross the line. You must cross it to discover the line,” Shay said.

Fans of the show say watching it lately has been like a national Prozac pill. “Their humor allows us to start processing the trauma,” says Yarin Singolda, an Air Force reservist living in Tel Aviv. “Otherwise, it would have taken us ages to figure out how to start a conversation about Israel’s darkest moment. Even with ourselves.”

Taking it a step further, Australian Israeli journalist Gabbi Briner says the show is giving Israelis what the flailing government has failed to provide since October 7: support, assuredness, and a sense of unity.

“I swear,” said Briner, “Eretz Nehederet is the Israeli institution with the highest level of public trust right now.”
I Was Wrong About John Fetterman
Then, unexpectedly, along comes John Fetterman, who was supposed to be a ruse, a sleight of hand manufactured by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, but who turns out to be his own man.

I have no idea where this comes from. He’s not Jewish. He grew up, as most everyone knows, in an affluent family in York, in south central Pennsylvania, and he studied finance at Albright College, earned an MBA at the University of Connecticut, and was on track to become his father—an executive in the insurance industry. Fetterman in his trademark working man duds on Capitol Hill. (Photo by Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

But then he did something that, in retrospect, looks like foreshadowing: he left all that and became an organizer and the mayor of a dilapidated, ex-steel town. He surprised everyone.

In the fall of 2022, at the height of the Senate campaign, it looked opportunistic, and it may have been that at the time. He made it clear on the campaign trail that he was a friend of Israel, which wasn’t surprising: there are 434,000 Jews in Pennsylvania, almost all of them in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and supporting Israel plays well with the Republicans and evangelicals in the interior of the state. It’s smart electoral politics.

But in the wake of the Hamas attack, it would have been smarter to have gone along, equivocated, embraced a fuzzier patois, one that different constituencies could interpret differently. But he took a straighter, clearer path.

He will, of course, pay for this somehow. Progressives will not forgive him for defending the “colonial-settler state.” Former campaign staffers haven’t. In October, they wrote an open letter to Fetterman criticizing him for supporting the “collective punishment” of Palestinians.

“You can’t be a champion of forgotten communities if you cheerlead this war,” the letter declared.

When Fetterman’s term is up in 2028, it’s possible that the left wing of his party will try to primary him out of office. A primary would deplete his war chest, and it would leave him more vulnerable in the general. He definitely wouldn’t be a Democratic celebrity like he was in 2022.

But apparently the new senator from Pennsylvania doesn’t care about that. He appears to care about something else, something that will extend far beyond John Fetterman and his tenure in the United States Senate: the principle of self-determination. For all of his faux-thuggishness, there is, about Fetterman, an insistence on truth and integrity.

“They could be protesting Hamas,” he tweeted December 4, after demonstrators massed outside an Israeli restaurant in Philadelphia. “They could be protesting Hamas’ systematic rape of Israeli women and girls or demanding the remaining hostages be immediately released. Instead, they targeted a Jewish restaurant. It’s pathetic and rank antisemitism.”

I wish more of our leaders would be so surprising.
Batya Ungar-Sargon: The DEI delusion will never serve American Jews
The presidents’ refusal to condemn chanting for genocide had a lot less to do with the fact that the aggrieved parties on their campuses are Jews and a lot more to do with the fact that they are on the wrong side of the woke binary. Classified as proximate to whiteness, Jews are marked as oppressors rather than oppressed and thus deserving of the kind of power-reversals that the progressive movement has replaced justice with. Everyone who supported the descent of our universities into this moral rot is complicit – as is the fact that billionaires have sway over higher education at all.

Of course, it’s undeniably true that in the case of any minority group except Jews, universities would be doing much more to protect them from the kind of political activity that’s become the norm since Hamas’s butchery on Oct 7. No trans or black student would be asked to put up with the kind of political organising against Jews that the universities have come to specialise in.

And yet, denying Jewish students the safetyism that has become the hallmark of the elite American university – what happens when students become the consumers of a luxury good that costs $100,000 – is not the result of anti-semitism, or at least, not mainly due to anti-semitism. While it’s true that Jews aren’t getting the same protection as trans students or other minorities, it’s more accurate to say that Jewish students are getting the white treatment.

That’s what Elizabeth Magill’s by now infamous smirk represented: not a person openly expressing bigotry against an ethnic and religious minority, but a person being forced to answer to a Republican for the first time in her life.

Put another way, the woke left isn’t incapable of denouncing calling for the genocide of Jews because some of them are anti-semitic, though they are; it’s primarily because they are anti-American. While their sneering and loathing may be more visible to us as Jews in this moment, we are hardly alone in being on the wrong side of the oppressor/oppressed divide of those who hate America. It would be an epic mistake for Jews to insist that we’ve been classified wrong, that we belong with the oppressed.

We don’t: We belong with all the other enemies of the woke elites – with those fighting for America.


Why Fighting Antisemitism is Good for America
DEI is the ubiquitous social engineering movement that stands for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. This movement, which is anything but diverse or inclusive, has infiltrated every corner of our society, especially on college campuses. It revolves around one core principle: Social status is a fixed construct. You’re either the oppressor or the oppressed and that is how you shall stay.

That kind of binary clarity is crucial to secure power. The DEI edifice would implode if it ever embraced the aspirational idea that status is fluid, not static; that one’s victim status can improve based on individual agency. That would force it to relinquish its power and return to the America it hates.

This is why Jews are such a threat. We represent the aspirational America that DEI hates.

We can see this in the failure of American universities to protect Jewish students. Seen as a fixed group, Jews are stereotyped as white oppressors who must remain white oppressors, regardless of how many Jews were murdered on October 7 or how many Jews are bullied on campus. Once Jews move over to the oppressed side, even temporarily, the whole static logic of the movement crumbles.

The solution is not to become oppressed victims but to dismantle the DEI machinery. Certainly, protection from intimidation and harassment is a must, and we should continue to fight for the physical safety of Jews everywhere. But we can aim higher.

We can help resuscitate the American Dream.

The corrosive DEI bureaucracy has undermined that dream by putting people into small boxes. It’s time to liberate them. It’s time to bring back the ideals of meritocracy, excellence, individual agency and the courageous pursuit of truth. It’s time to let victims of microaggressions know that they are really victims of a power-hungry DEI regime that wants to keep them as permanent victims.

Dismantling DEI would help revive the American Dream, which would revive America and empower all of its minorities, including the Jews.

In sum, as much as the anti-America movement aims to dismantle America, we must aim with equal force to dismantle the anti-America movement.

Who better to do that than the descendants of the ancient Hebrews who overcame tyranny to rejoice in the blessed lands of America and Israel?
Catholics Against Anti-Semitism Mary Eberstadt First Things
On Tuesday, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution demanding an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” in Gaza. As the UN website itself admits, “the resolution does not condemn Hamas or make any specific reference to the extremist group.” Likewise, the text speaks of “the suffering of the Palestinian civilian population,” but makes no equivalent comment about Israelis. No fewer than 153 in favor countries voted in favor.

In her speech at an October conference on the Catholic Church and anti-Semitism, Mary Eberstadt recounted her exposure to anti-Semitism while working at the U.S. mission the United Nations in the 1980s, under Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. There, she explains, she learned that hatred of Jews wasn’t merely “some harmless outpouring of ineffective malevolence,” as she had previously assumed:

Anti-Semitism, usually but not always under the guise of anti-Zionism, was the central theme sounded through that vaunted institution’s marble halls. To judge by what the representatives of many governments at the United Nations maintained in one venue after another, the most ominous problem on earth was not, say, nuclear weapons. Or the Gulag archipelago that still existed, imprisoning millions. Or that so many people around the globe knew nothing but crushing poverty and ill health. Or that terrorism was once more ascendant.

No: according to the sententious declarations of not one, but sometimes a majority, of foreign representatives, the pre-eminent threat to what was incomprehensively dubbed the “international community” was something else. One small nation—the longest-running functioning democracy in that area of the world. Which just happened to be the one and only nation run mostly by Jews.
JINSA: ‘American Jews deserve to feel safe’
The Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) has put out a new statement from police and sheriffs across the country, both those who are currently serving and those who are retired.

“Vicious antisemitism has re-emerged, both around the world and here at home, following Hamas’s barbaric attack against Israel on Oct. 7,” JINSA’s assembled group writes. “American Jews deserve to feel safe in their homes, schools, university campuses and places of worship. Local, county, state and federal law-enforcement officers can and should make sure that they are.”

The letter notes FBI director Christopher Wray’s Oct. 31 testimony before Congress with the statistic that Jews represent 2.4% of the American public but 60% of all religious-based hate crimes.

The law-enforcement leaders further point out that antisemitic incidents “increased fivefold in the two weeks immediately after Hamas’s attack, compared to the same period last year” and that a recent poll reveals that “10 million adults in the United States—more than the total number of Jews in America—have ‘both high levels of antisemitism and express support for political violence.’”

The sheriffs and police officers call on their peers to “acknowledge the distinct threat growing antisemitism poses to Jews in America, and, if allowed to fester, to all Americans. … As the oldest ideology of hatred in the world, antisemitism is a threat not only to the Jewish people, but to all Americans—their safety, their values, and their way of life. It is critical that we take the threat of antisemitism seriously and stand united in confronting it.”
Major UN human rights figure seeks to target NGOs that criticize Francesca Albanese
The Chairwoman of a committee dealing with all UN Human Rights Council-appointed experts, known as "Special Procedures," has called for critics of United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese to be punished for calling out Albanese's outrageous statements and behavior in the aftermath of the Hamas massacre of October 7.

Coordination Committee of the Special Procedures Chairwoman Isha Dyfan, in a letter dated December 4, 2023, to UN Human Rights Council President Václav Bálek, called for organizations that have criticized Albanese over the last two months to lose their UN accreditation.

"Some of my colleagues have been facing intimidation and baseless accusations about their integrity and motivations, which I find deeply regrettable," Dyfan wrote. "Lately, these attacks concerned, among others, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Eritrea, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Burundi, the Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression and the Special Rapporteur on the impact of unilateral coercive measures on human rights."

According to Dyfan, "claims of partial and unprofessional conduct" against Albanese are "designed to damage reputations, including publicly involving family members, thereby potentially creating insecurity."

She further stated that it is "unacceptable that mandateholders are insulted, publicly or otherwise, or personally attacked or threatened for discharging their mandates."
House Votes to Condemn Testimony by University Presidents over Antisemitism
The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday voted 303-126 to condemn antisemitism on college campuses and testimony from three university presidents over antisemitism at a congressional hearing.

The resolution was put forward by House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY), along with House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ).

During the hearing, none of the university presidents explicitly said that calling for the genocide of Jews would necessarily violate their code of conduct. Instead, they said it would depend on the context.
Congressman Raskin: Find your moral conscience
For years, Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin has been admired for his service and leadership roles that positively represented both his constituents and the American Jewish community. However, recent actions by the congressman unfortunately reveal him to be not a reliable friend of Israel or the Jewish people in a time of great peril.

On November 17, Raskin joined 23 Progressive and radical Democrats calling for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. His insistence on effectively stopping Israel’s military campaign in Gaza contradicts President Biden’s own carefully-considered stance.

More critically, the Congressman’s call to stop the operation reveals a profound failure to appreciate Israel’s current existential crisis. The war to dismantle Hamas is not a battle of choice; if the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are blocked from carrying out their mission, Hamas will survive, proclaim victory, and maintain its vice grip on Gaza. Much of Israel, including Tel Aviv, will remain vulnerable to missile attack; the kibbutzim and towns immediately adjacent to Gaza, including the city of Ashkelon, will become uninhabitable due to fear of renewed Hamas incursions, including by tunnel.

Yes, Israel’s very existence could be called into question. As an American Jew who also happens to be a member of Congress, Raskin’s stance that would effectively cripple the modern State of Israel is both shocking and inexplicable. The few Jews who participate in anti-Israel protests and loudly demand an immediate ceasefire represent an extreme minority of the overall American Jewish community, thus placing the Congressman well outside the mainstream of his own constituents.

Another distressing incident to many Jews this week was the Congressman’s curve ball condemnation of New York Representative Elise Stefanik.
Kamala Harris pushes White House to be more sympathetic toward Palestinians
Vice President Kamala Harris has been telling colleagues in the administration that she wants the White House to show more concern publicly for the humanitarian damage in Gaza, where Israel is locked in a bloody and prolonged battle with Hamas, according to three people familiar with Harris’ comments.

President Joe Biden is among the officials Harris has urged to show more sensitivity to Palestinian civilians, these people said.

In internal conversations about the war in Gaza, Harris has argued that it is time to start making “day after” plans for how to handle the wreckage of the war once the fighting ends, one senior administration official said.

One person close to the vice president’s office said she believes the United States should be “tougher” on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; she has called for being “more forceful at seeking a long-term peace and two-state solution,” this person said.

The people characterizing Harris’s role and comments from the vice president and her team were granted anonymity in order to discuss private conversations.

Harris’ private push to shape the White House message about the war reflects the extent to which Democrats — even the top two officials in the country — are struggling to walk a careful line about the Israel-Hamas war, amid a gruesome conflict that has rattled the Democratic political coalition down to the local level.
Congressman Probes White House Communications With Anti-Israel Group
A Republican in Congress is probing the Biden administration's communications with an anti-Israel group that is known to promulgate anti-Semitic propaganda and whose leader celebrated Hamas's Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs and Judiciary Committees, opened a probe earlier this week into the White House's relationship with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), asking the White House to turn over all internal correspondence with the group.

The Biden administration enlisted CAIR earlier this year as part of its efforts to combat anti-Semitism, an alliance that drew criticism from pro-Israel groups that say CAIR is one of the leading purveyors of anti-Israel agitprop. CAIR executive director Nihad Awad drew a firestorm of criticism last week after saying he "was happy to see" Hamas "break the siege" on Oct. 7, leading the White House to delete mentions of CAIR from its National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism.

Issa says the White House is engaged in "obvious attempts to both conceal the truth and erase it from public view" and is asking the Biden administration to turn over "any and all text messages, emails, and formal correspondence between all White House personnel and CAIR," according to a copy of the letter obtained by the Free Beacon. The lawmaker is also seeking "all visitor logs to the White House that include any official or affiliate of CAIR—as well as all White House staff who coordinated, approved, or met with—any official or affiliate of CAIR."

The Biden administration has been under fire for its outreach to CAIR in light of the group's years-long dissemination of materials that watchdog groups, such as the Anti-Defamation League, characterize as "antisemitic and anti-Zionist." Watchdogs have also criticized the group for its leader's celebration of the Hamas attack on Israel.
Biden’s ‘Historic’ Muslim Judicial Nominee Served on Board of Anti-Israel, Terrorist-Loving Think Tank
President Biden’s "historic" nominee for a federal appellate court served on the board of a Muslim advocacy group that has blamed Israel for provoking Hamas’s terrorist attack and hosted an event with a convicted terrorist fundraiser on the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

Adeel Abdullah Mangi, Biden’s nominee for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, served on the advisory board of Rutgers Law School’s Center for Security, Race and Rights from 2019 until earlier this year. During his time on the board, the think tank feted anti-Israel college students and marked the anniversary of the September 11 attacks with an event featuring a terrorist fundraiser. If confirmed, Mangi will be the first Muslim to serve on a federal appellate court, a fact highlighted by Democrats at Mangi’s confirmation hearing on Wednesday. Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), who faces federal bribery and foreign agent charges, called the nomination of a Muslim to the prestigious judicial post a "milestone we should have reached many years ago."

But Mangi’s affiliation with a staunchly anti-Israel think tank could prove a roadblock for that "historic" nomination.

In 2021, the Center for Security, Race and Rights hosted an event on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that featured Sami al-Arian, a former professor who helped fund the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It promoted an event, "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS): Globalized Palestinian Resistance to Israel’s Settler Colonialism and Apartheid," with Hatem Bazian, the founder of Students for Justice in Palestine, an anti-Israel group that has pushed pro-Hamas rhetoric.

Last year, the center held an event with the activist group Palestine Legal to provide "legal strategy" to anti-Israel college students. An official from Palestine Legal has a history of praising Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

The center has maintained its anti-Israel views in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack. The think tank said that to condemn Hamas was to "ignore over 75 years of colonial violence and the horrific consequences born out of these decades of oppression and attempted erasure."


GOP picks Mazi Melesa Pilip, Ethiopian-born Israeli-American, to run to replace George Santos
Long Island Republicans selected Mazi Melesa Pilip, an Ethiopian Jewish Nassau County legislator, to run in the special election to replace George Santos, who was expelled after he was exposed for alleged fraud and lies, including that he was Jewish.

Pilip emerged as a likely contender to replace Santos when his lies were exposed soon after his election last year, and she was officially named Thursday as the candidate, nearly two weeks after Santos’ expulsion. She will face Democrat Tom Suozzi, who is hoping to get his old job back after quitting the seat in an unsuccessful bid for governor. The special election is Feb. 13.

Pilip, 44, is an Orthodox Jewish mother of seven who served as a paratrooper in the Israeli army and campaigned in Israel for better representation of Ethiopian Jews. She has also taken a prominent role in campaigning against the spike in antisemitism in New York since Hamas terrorists massacred 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7, launching Israel’s current war in Gaza.

Pilip was 12 during Operation Solomon, the 1991 airlift that brought Ethiopian Jews to Israel. After a stint in the paratroop division of the army, she studied occupational therapy and diplomacy at Israeli universities, where she met her Ukrainian-American husband who was then a medical student.

In Israel, she led the Ethiopian Student Union for two years. “I was a voice of so many young kids who wanted equal opportunity and really my main focus was especially education, because I do believe through education, you can achieve a lot and you can integrate into the society,” she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in January.

Pilip ran for her seat on the Nassau County legislature in 2021 in part because of the antisemitism she said her son faced in middle school. She ousted a Democrat to win her spot in 2021 after asking Jewish supporters to put her up over Shabbat so she could visit synagogues. She was handily reelected last month.


Pro-Hamas Turkish MP Who Collapsed and Died Moments After Delivering Anti-Zionist Rant Is Buried With Honors

MEMRI: Algerian Author: Only When The Muslims Espouse The Values of Pluralism And Coexistence Will They Be Cured of Their Sick Thoughts Of Reconquering Andalusia And Be Able To Revive The Flourishing Civilization Of The Muslim Golden Age In Their Own Countries

MEMRI: Column In Pakistan's Urdu Daily Promotes Antisemitism, Details Expulsions Of Jews From European Nations: 'The Jews Financially Supported England In WWII... The British Pushed This Satanic Force To The Land Of Palestine'

MEMRI: British Political Commentator Sami Hamdi Speaking At London Mosque: Don't Pity The Palestinians – Celebrate The Victory; How Many Of You Felt Euphoria When You Got News Of October 7?

Poison Ivy League
End or Transform DEI
Campus DEI bureaucracies function as an ideological authority, reinforcing political orthodoxies on campus. The National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education describes itself as “a leading voice in the fight for social justice” by “creating a framework for diversity officers to advance anti-racism strategies, particularly anti-Black racism, at their respective institutions of higher education.” Sprawling bureaucracies in major universities now have on average more than 40 paid staff members who reinforce the overall illiberal ideological environment. A 2021 study conducted by Jay Greene at the Heritage Foundation reviewed the social media output of campus DEI officers and found that a high percentage had hostile views toward Israel. One can only imagine what such a study would show today.

Bari Weiss, among others, argues that “it is time to end DEI for good.” “The answer,” she states, “is not for the Jewish community to plead its cause before the intersectional coalition, or beg for a higher ranking in the new ladder of victimhood. That is a losing strategy—not just for Jewish dignity, but for the values we hold as Jews and as Americans.” Another approach proposed by interfaith leader Eboo Patel is to replace DEI with a less ideological form of diversity built on the traditional American model of pluralism. New York Times columnist David Brooks argues that such an approach is more likely to succeed than an effort to do away with DEI altogether. Whether we try to ban it or change it, as long as the current model of DEI reigns supreme, we won’t be able to substantially shift university culture.

Cut Middle Eastern Sources of Funding
There is no reason that the U.S. must continue to allow foreign funding of American university programs. In the aftermath of October 7, efforts to expose Qatari funding of American university programs have picked up steam. Hearings have been held on Capitol Hill detailing the failure of universities to disclose sources of funding. Now is the time to redouble such efforts. We should not forget that Saudi Arabia was once the major funder of anti-American academic programs but, under the scrutiny by lawmakers and the U.S. Administration, the Saudis largely pulled back. Qatar filled the vacuum. Like Saudi Arabia before it, Qatar has much at stake in its relationship with the U.S. Last year, the U.S. designated Qatar a major non-Nato ally, undoubtedly owing in large part to the role the Gulf state played as an intermediary with Iran. Until recently, however, the Biden Administration has shielded Qatar from scrutiny over its funding of universities. Turning up the heat on the Biden Administration to hold Qatar accountable will be critical.

Such a long-term, strategic approach to changing university cultures will not be easy. But unless we are successful in affecting such a change, the radicalism in the classroom, the genocidal chants, and the outrageous double standards will just continue and worsen.
A Different Standard for Jews
For the woman who has been subjected to objectifying verbal harassment, for the member of an ethnic community who is the subject of demeaning stereotypes, the standard for offense is not the attacker’s supposed intent but rather the meaning that the target attaches to those repugnant words. If the misogynist were to defend himself by suggesting that he was merely expressing esthetic appreciation of a woman’s appearance or the bigot tried to justify his prejudice by feigning unawareness of the connotation of hateful language, we would not stand for it.

But those standards do not exist for Jews. That was painfully evident during last week’s now-infamous congressional hearing, in which the presidents of the nation’s most prominent universities attempted to explain why calls for genocide of Jews might be permitted on their campuses. One of them has since resigned and another has apologized. But their insensitive and legalistic answers betrayed their instinctual distinction between other victims of oppression on their campuses and the Jewish students who have been facing verbal and physical assault.

Similar to most contemporary hot-button cultural battles, the new realities are most apparent on college campuses. Most of us older Jews can isolate ourselves during difficult times, retreating into our neighborhoods, offices and favorite restaurants where the ugliness is kept at a safe distance. We see the news stories about protests and marches and violence, but we’re usually able to maintain our own safety by limiting our exposure to those who would wish us harm.

By contrast, Jewish and other pro-Israel college students are provided no such protection. Their campuses are petri dishes of discord and they have no choice but to be directly exposed to their critics’ threats and denigrations. They see and hear the ugliness at close range every day, and they know that the same university officials who closely monitor microaggressions against other students are much less motivated to offer them similar protections against much more egregious conduct.

Antisemitic double standards are pervasive, much more than we would have wanted to believe back on Oct. 6. The fight to confront and eliminate these practices will be long and difficult — but doable. And nowhere is this challenge more urgent than in our colleges and universities. The work must begin on campus – we owe our children that much.
Why the Woke Are More Outraged By Pronouns Than By Hamas | The QuadThis week, the Quad talks with family coach and founder of Hi, Fam! Avital Schreiber Levy about how woke ideology
has created a generation of terrorist sympathizers. Where did parents go wrong? What can parents do to take control back?

They also delve into the educational system in the West Bank and Gaza that has created generations of Palestinians who are trapped in a victimhood mentality and hatred of Jews.

Last, but not least, the Scumbags and Heroes of the Week!


It's not just the Ivies: Public universities must answer for their moral rot too

CAMERA REPORT: ANTI-ISRAEL EXTREMISM AND CORRUPT SCHOLARSHIP AT BROWN UNIVERSITY

Stefanik shreds Harvard over 'complete moral failure' after allowing Claudine Gay to remain president

Speaking to President Gay, Harvard Chabad rabbi blasts school’s handling of antisemitism

NAACP President: Opposing Jewish Genocide is “White Supremacist”

1619 Project founder Nikole Hannah-Jones unleashes on critics of Harvard President Claudine Gay and says 'it's racist' to call for her to be ousted over her diabolical performance during anti-Semitism congressional hearing

Columbia University urged to permanently banish anti-Israel groups for staging rogue protests

Billboard truck blasts GWU faculty who excused Hamas atrocities, praised terrorists’ ‘right of resistance’

Columbia: Suspended anti-Israel groups’ Barnard protest not on Columbia’s campus

China: Antisemitism on U.S. Campuses Will End if America Stops Supporting Israel

German Foundation Withdraws From Awarding Jewish Journalist Hannah Arendt Prize Over New Yorker Essay
The Heinrich Böll Foundation, aligned with Germany’s Green Party, has abruptly withdrawn from awarding the prestigious Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought to Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen.

The foundation’s decision, made in concert with the Bremen Senate, stems from Gessen’s recent New Yorker essay, titled In the Shadow of the Holocaust.

Gessen’s piece, published on December 9th, boldly critiques Germany’s policies towards Israel, including a scathing review of the Bundestag’s BDS resolution that brands the Israel boycott movement as anti-Semitic.

The journalist also raises the German crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism and freedom of expression within Germany’s cultural sphere. This suppression has led to the cancellation of various cultural events, including museum exhibitions, book awards, and artistic commissions.

The essay notably draws a stark parallel between the current plight of Gazans and the Jews confined in Nazi-era ghettos in Eastern Europe. Gessen graphically describes Gaza as a “hyperdensely populated, impoverished, walled-in compound” like those seen under Nazi German occupation. The journalist’s vivid portrayal of the ongoing Israeli onslaught in Gaza, highlighting the daily perils and death toll, including children, stirred backlash as well as praise.

The Bremen branch of the German-Israeli Society (DIG) made clear that it vehemently opposed Gessen’s views on Gaza in a pointed open letter. The DIG argued that awarding Gessen, a Jewish writer with a personal familial history intertwined with the Holocaust, would be a direct contradiction to the imperative fight against rising anti-Semitism.

The DIG’s call to suspend the prize, named after the renowned political theorist Hannah Arendt, itself has been critiqued as clashing with Arendt’s legacy as an activist against authoritarianism.
BBC Bowen’s Insidious ‘Analysis’ of Israel’s Media Battlefield

Montreal Gazette Article Gives Extended Coverage To Anti-Israel Group To Rehabilitate Itself After Praising Palestinian Terrorism

Global News Removes Pro-Palestinian Activist’s Denial Of Israel’s Right To Exist From Report After HRC Complaint

IS THE FINANCIAL TIMES SUGGESTING A MORAL EQUIVALENCE BETWEEN ISRAEL AND HAMAS?

Billboard Truck Puts Spotlight on LA Times Reporter Who Covered for Hamas

Actress-Comedian Spews Anti-Israel Rhetoric Daily on Instagram, Accuses Israel of Practicing ‘White Supremacy’

PMW: PA Oct. 7 massacre denial: Israelis “killed their civilians, committed all these crimes, and burned the bodies” PA Oct. 7 massacre denial: Israelis killed their civilians

Missile fired by Yemen’s Houthis misses container ship in Bab el-Mandeb Strait

US deputy Iran envoy silent on cause of Malley clearance review

MEMRI: Iranian Regime Mouthpiece 'Kayhan': 'The Most Important Strategy Of The Resistance Front... Must Be To Create Horror In All [Global] Relationships And Commerce With The Zionist Regime... By Means Of Reinforcing And Expanding The [Attacks By The] Resistance At Sea, With Missiles And Drones, And All Other Possible Ways'

Lawmakers Push Canada To Designate Iranian Guard Corps as Terrorist Group

Michael Jackson-Bolanos charged in murder of Jewish Detroit leader Samantha Woll

Arrested teen had ‘detailed plan’ to attack Reform temple in Canton, Ohio

Shocking moment orthodox Jewish man is punched in the head by thug on a bike in North London in latest 'antisemitic' assault in the capital - as police hunt attacker

American Jewry raised $1 billion for Israel in first month of war, scholars say

Artists Host Unique Auction to Support Antisemitism Education on College Campuses
A diverse group of artists is sponsoring an auction and fundraiser with more than 400 one-of-a-kind items, services, and experiences, with proceeds going to an organization that aims to educate students on US college campuses about antisemitism.

The online auction, sponsored by Artists Against Antisemitism, begins on Friday, the last day of Hanukkah, and extends until Dec. 22 “to keep the light [of Hanukkah] going” for another week, according to a description for the fundraiser. Proceeds will support Project Shema, an organization that tries to build bridges and fight antisemitism through education and understanding. Project Shema will use proceeds from the auction “to subsidize essential training on select college campuses to help students understand anti-Jewish harm and allyship in this difficult moment.”

Artists Against Antisemitism was founded by 33 contemporary Jewish women writers from the US who were seeking a sense of support and community following Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel. The group has since expanded to include more than 100 actors, playwrights, creators and others in the artistic community.

Some of the items and experiences up for bid as part of the auction include a 15-minute Zoom meet-and-greet with actress and former Big Bang Theory star Mayim Bialik, a separate Zoom call with actor Henry Winkler, lunch in New York or Los Angeles at a kosher deli with actor and former Royal Pains star Mark Feuerstein, and a set of signed books titled She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World by Chelsea Clinton.

Other signed books are also available for auction, as well as artwork, jewelry, vacation packages, naming rights for characters in novels, and a personalized recorded message from the voice actor who plays the Looney Tunes animated character Porky Pig, who is also offering a Zoom call with a fan or coaching lessons.

Martin Fletcher, the former Middle East correspondent and Tel Aviv bureau chief for NBC News, is offering a 30-minute talk with a fan about Israel, the Middle East, or one of his books. There are also VIP concert ticket packages available for New Kids on the Block, Bruce Springsteen and Sister Hazel. Fiction and non-fiction authors have additionally offered to participate in virtual classroom visits via Zoom.


Empowering Heroes: Physical Therapists Volunteering for Soldiers' Well-being
Bianca Brower, a massage therapist, and Ariel Weinstein, an acupuncturist at the Tikva Unit, share their stories with i24NEWS


Hollywood actor on importance of fighting Antisemitism
Emmy award-winning actor, director and filmmaker Yuval David on the importance of fighting antisemitism.

What Tel Aviv looks like during Operation Iron Swords ⚔️ As the battlefront predominantly rages in Israel's northern and southern regions, the heart of the nation continues to endure relentless rocket barrages.

In the city, you'll also witness a strong sense of unity as the entire nation firmly supports the hostages and their families.






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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