Friday, December 22, 2023

12/22 Links Pt2: The racism of the intellectuals; Obama privately lobbied on Harvard President Claudine Gay’s behalf; Vox Worried That Antisemites Make DEI Look Bad

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The revival of an ancient calumny
There’s an unmistakable drumbeat to the antisemitism that’s erupted across the west in the wake of the October 7 pogrom. In response to the genocidal Jew-hatred fuelling Hamas and the Palestinian Arabs, an even older form of the oldest hatred has surfaced— Christian hostility to the Jews.

The wholly unwarranted western condemnation of the Israel Defence Forces for causing an allegedly disproportionate death rate among Gaza civilians echoes the ancient Christian calumny that the Jews are killers motivated by revenge and blood lust. The churches themselves are explicitly fuelling this demonisation.

Last Saturday, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem claimed in a statement that “a sniper of the IDF murdered two Christian women inside the Holy Family Parish in Gaza, where the majority of Christian families has taken refuge since the start of the war. No warning was given, no notification was provided. They were shot in cold blood inside the premises of the parish, where there are no belligerents.”

This incendiary allegation was repeated uncritically as fact across the western media.

The following day, however, Fox News reported an IDF statement that an incident took place instead “near the Latin Church in the Shejayia area,” a different church altogether in another part of Gaza where IDF troops had “operated against a threat that they identified in the area of the church”.

The Elder of Zion website reported that this didn’t stop The Christian Post from claiming the IDF had “confirmed” it had shot and killed the two women “on the grounds of Gaza City’s only Catholic church”. Yet confusingly, the paper also said the IDF had “confirmed” to Fox News that the incident took place near the church in the Shejayia area of Gaza during an operation against Hamas terrorists.
The racism of the intellectuals
‘Anti-Semitism is a symptom of ignorance, and the cure for ignorance is knowledge.’ These words were spoken by Harvard University president Claudine Gay during her congressional testimony about anti-Semitism earlier this month. This may seem like a simple, comforting homily, but parse that sentence and you will find a thin layer of self-serving hubris. Implicit is the message that because we are Harvard, we cannot be ignorant. So we can’t be anti-Semitic.

History teaches a different lesson. Gay would be well served by reading the speech delivered by late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia at the 1997 Day of Remembrance commemoration for Holocaust victims. It included these words: ‘The one message I want to convey today is that you will have missed the most frightening aspect of it all, if you do not appreciate that [the Holocaust] happened in one of the most educated, most progressive, most cultured countries in the world.’

Recent events in Cambridge, Massachusetts support that insight. Like other prestigious universities, Harvard is currently mired in anti-Semitism. Any doubt of this was dispelled by Rabbi David J Wolpe, an esteemed visiting scholar at the Harvard Divinity School. Wolpe recently resigned from the university’s anti-Semitism advisory group over ‘events on campus’ and Gay’s maladroit congressional testimony. The kinds of changes necessary at Harvard, Wolpe said, ‘are really deep and fundamental, and I’m not sure that my being on the anti-Semitism committee is, in one way or another, going to accelerate the pace of such change’.

Wolpe is right to be concerned about the extent of Harvard’s anti-Semitism problem. On the day of the 7 October Hamas attacks – while murderers, rapists and kidnappers were still active in Israel – 34 campus groups at Harvard signed a statement that declared: ‘We, the undersigned student organisations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.’ Take note: entirely responsible. And this was before Israel had even responded with an incursion into Gaza.
Call Me Back PodCast: An insider’s account of the Harvard Antisemitism Committee — with Rabbi David Wolpe
Hosted by Dan Senor
Understanding where and how antisemitism has come to exist at an institution like Harvard is the focus of today’s conversation. We will hear the perspective of Rabbi David Wolpe — visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School — who tried to advise Harvard’s leadership on how to address it; after October 7, he joined Harvard’s Antisemitism Advisory Group.

Rabbi Wolpe is also the inaugural rabbinic fellow at the Anti-Defamation League, and he was the long-time rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. He is the author of eight books, including the national bestseller “Making Loss Matter: Creating Meaning in Difficult Times”. His book “David: The Divided Heart” was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Awards.
Obama privately lobbied on Harvard President Claudine Gay’s behalf amid antisemitism controversy: Report
Former President Barack Obama went to bat for Harvard President Claudine Gay amid backlash she received following her testimony on antisemitism before Congress.

A confidential source familiar with the matter told Jewish Insider on Tuesday that Obama, a Harvard graduate, had privately lobbied on Gay's behalf following her congressional appearance about antisemitism and threats against Jewish students on the Ivy League campus.

"It sounded like people were being asked to close ranks to keep the broader administration stable—including its composition," the source said of Obama's involvement.

In early December, Gay sat before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, where she was asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews on campus violates the university's codes of conduct related to bullying and harassment.

Her claim that the alleged conduct would only warrant a response from the school based on the "context" drew criticism across social media and even prompted a response from the White House.

Gay issued an apology after the hearing and the fellows of the Harvard Corporation, the university's highest government body, released a Dec. 12 statement backing the Harvard president despite widespread calls for her resignation. The board also addressed allegations of plagiarism regarding Gay's academic writing first flagged in October.
Harvard controversy casts spotlight on Penny Pritzker, former Obama official atop university board
Even as Harvard continues to stand behind its embattled president, Claudine Gay, amid mounting backlash over her handling of campus antisemitism and new accusations of plagiarism, Penny Pritzker, who helms the university’s highest governing body, has so far remained conspicuously silent, drawing fresh scrutiny to her role atop the administration.

Pritzker, the billionaire Chicago hotel scion and former Obama administration official, was elected senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation last year, months after she had donated $100 million to the university. In her new position, she personally led the search committee that named Gay as president last December, praising her in an announcement at the time as “a remarkable leader who is profoundly devoted to sustaining and enhancing Harvard’s academic excellence.”

Notwithstanding her initial enthusiasm, Pritzker has in recent weeks avoided personally defending the newly installed president, who has faced calls to resign, instead joining a statement signed by the 11 members of Harvard’s top board, which has been criticized for a lack of transparency.

In their unanimous decision to back Gay last week, the board members affirmed their “confidence” in the university president, dismissing the plagiarism charges and accepting her apology for widely criticized comments at a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism earlier this month, where she equivocated on whether calls for the genocide of Jews would violate Harvard’s code of conduct.

Before the Harvard Corporation had released its statement, however, Pritzker had dodged repeated questions from a reporter for the school’s student newspaper on whether she would ask the president to step down, even as Gay had claimed to have her support.


Col Kemp: Hamas's antisemitism influence is even bigger than the Nazis'
Hamas is by far the most successful antisemitic entity in the world today.

Beyond all competition, it has mobilized Jew-hatred around the world, using the State of Israel both as its target and its primary weapon. By waging war against Israel over many years, Hamas has inspired and energized international organizations such as the UN and the EU; governments and parliaments; the Western media; university authorities, professors, and students; human rights groups; businesses; and large sectors of the general population.

All dance to its pernicious tune: some out of malevolence, some out of ignorance, and others blindly jumping on the virtue-signaling woke bandwagon.

Consequently, the global scope and scale of Hamas’s antisemitic influence dramatically exceeds even the Nazis from whom it takes much of its own inspiration. The foundations of Hamas's successful antisemitic influence

The foundations of Hamas’s success lie in the Soviet Union. Back in the 1950s and ’60s, when Israel aligned with the West rather than the USSR, the Soviet leadership decided to undermine American and British influence in the Middle East by fomenting a war of national liberation against Israel. Moscow invented a Palestinian national identity in order to turn religious malice against the Jews of Israel into a struggle over land, a cause it correctly understood would gain much greater traction and support in the West than a religious war.

That developed into the most successful slur campaign in history, giving rise to accusations of land theft, unlawful occupation, illegal settlement, apartheid, and all the other lies and distortions that are now accepted as undisputed facts by so many around the world. Decades of this anti-Israel propaganda have taken us to the dangerous position we are in today.

That means that whatever is done to Israel and its Jews is justified as legitimate resistance. I’ve even heard some saying that the people of Israel brought upon themselves the undiluted evil and savagery of Oct. 7. They had it coming. By the same token, any action taken by Israel to defend its people is unjustified, unlawful, and unacceptable. Like so much else in our post-truth world, facts and reality don’t matter. If the “oppressed” Palestinians are doing anything, it’s justified and understandable. If Israel is doing anything, it’s intolerable and wrong.


Vox Worried That Antisemites Make DEI Look Bad
The Left makes progress as long as it can obscure the horrors the ideology imposes on people.

Talk to most liberals, and they blithely accept the assurances that Leftists make about how following their policies will make the world nicer, more equal, and more just.

Those of us who see through the deceptions of the Left can find this naivete occasionally infuriating and always frustrating because it seems obvious to us that the Left’s promises are false. But there it is. Liberals want to believe that there are no trade-offs, that utopia is possible, and that when people promise all good things, they really mean it.

Silly, I know, but they are like Charlie Brown trusting Lucy with the football. They never learn.

There are critical moments, though, when the mask comes off and the demonic nature of the Left is visible for all to see, and the reaction of Leftists to the attacks on Israel on 10/7 is one such moment.

The glee with which the Left embraced terrorism was shocking, and no amount of rewriting history can erase the fact that, well before Israel struck back, Leftists celebrated Hamas’ brutality. It wasn’t horror at Israel’s military actions that motivated their outbursts of hate; they were just haters. It is who they are.

It was also impossible to ignore that the most vile antisemites have been adherents of DEI ideology, and it’s also clear why: they see Jews as part of the oppressor class, and the oppressed are justified in doing anything they want to oppressors. It is a corollary to the claim that no oppressed person can be a racist because racism is prejudice + power. Power is the key to the moral hierarchy.

Americans noticed and recoiled, and DEI is under threat. Fear not, Leftists, Vox is on the beat.


‘Too Few Consequences’: ADL Tells US Colleges to Protect Jewish Students’ Civil Rights, Crack Down on Antisemitism

Chelsea Handler Combats ‘Misinformation’ About Israel With Noa Tishby, Says She’s Pro-Palestinian but Anti-Hamas

Former African slave leads solidarity march, meets with hostage families in Israel
Simon Deng, an escaped slave from South Sudan, flew to Israel on Dec. 17 to express the solidarity of the South Sudanese and many Africans with the Jewish state.

“During the terrorist assault on my people in southern Sudan, in which millions of black Africans were slaughtered and enslaved by jihadists, only one nation—the Jewish State of Israel—helped us—with arms, tactical and military support,” Deng said. “This was done secretly at the time, but has become public more recently.”

“In the end, with this help from Israel,” Deng continued, “along with help from Jewish abolitionists in America who helped liberate thousands of black slaves in Sudan, South Sudan was liberated and became the world’s newest country.”

“I, on my own behalf and that of many Africans, am coming to Israel to express my solidarity with the Jewish people of Israel, who suffered on Oct. 7 an assault that is almost exactly what happened to Africans in Sudan, has happened to African villages for centuries, and is happening now by Boko Haram in Nigeria and by jihadists in Darfur, Western Sudan.”

In fact, Deng said, the Oct. 7 pogrom in Israel eerily resembles the Arab onslaughts against black Africans. Unlike the Nazis, who sought to hide their mass murder and depersonalize the killing through mechanized systems, the very up-close-and-personal nature of Hamas’s actions more closely resembles what jihadists have been doing to Africans since the seventh century. “Jihadists shot our men, raped and tortured our women and children, and took them into captivity.”
'We feel isolated. We feel scared': What life is like for Canadian Jews after Hamas attack
Georganne Burke brought her family to Canada from the U.S. decades ago, picking Toronto because it was a demonstrably great place to be Jewish.

“We wanted to be able to have the stores and the restaurants and things that would make it easy for us to be observant,” says Burke, who now lives in Ottawa. “It was a wonderful, amazing place to … raise kids in a Jewish environment. It was fantastic.”

Toronto, still home to some of her six children, no longer feels the same, she says. Since the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, and the response to it at home, she says Toronto no longer feels safe. “Honestly now, the way things are there, I don’t know, I don’t think I would move there again at this point in time,” Burke says.

A series of antisemitic incidents — from vandalism to assaults to an alleged terror plot in Ottawa — have discomfited Canadian Jews, in Toronto and elsewhere. In cities across Canada, there have been massive protests, on streets and in shopping malls, with chants of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a phrase taken as a call for the elimination of Israel. A handful of demonstrators have been seen waving green Hamas flags.

Shortly after the Oct. 7 massacres, a former Hamas leader called for a “Day of Rage” around the world, and many Jewish parents in Toronto decided to keep their kids home from school that day. One father said he took his child to daycare, but he stuck around, to help provide security.

“I was terrified to do it,” he says. “But also I was like, I’m not not going to be there in the case that something happens. It’s insane that we feel like we need to do that.”

Members of the Jewish community say their hearts ache for the Palestinians killed as Israel tries to root out Hamas terrorists. But the earliest rallies celebrated the Oct. 7 attacks as “acts of resistance.” On that day, Hamas launched assaults on border kibbutz communities, a music festival and other targets. Around 1,200 people were killed, including children and babies, and a further 240 taken to Gaza as hostages. Many women were sexually assaulted.

Last week, in an unusual move that took Canada out of step with Israel and the United States, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government joined 152 other nations in calling for a ceasefire. “We must recognize that what is unfolding before our eyes will only enhance the cycle of violence,” said Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly.

For many Jews, this was an abject betrayal. Already feeling under assault by the politics of friends, family or colleagues, fearful for relations in Israel or for their own safety, they felt as if they had finally, explicitly, been abandoned by their government.

“So, we feel isolated. We feel scared,” says Darryl Singer, a lifelong Torontonian.
Does Biden Want Israel to Lose the War?
Have any demands been made on Hamas's patrons, Iran and Qatar, to tell their Hamas beneficiaries to stop? Have any demands been made on them to do anything? Why is only the victim of the October 7 invasion being asked to make concessions, and not the aggressor?

"I will not replace Hamastan with Fatahstan.... According to a poll that was carried out a few days ago, 82% of the Palestinian population in Judea and Samaria justifies the horrific massacre of Oct. 7." — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Unfortunately, the October 7 massacre proved beyond a doubt that both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority actually mean it when they say that they want to annihilate Israel. According to a November 14 poll by the Arab World for Research and Development, 75% of the Palestinians polled support the October 7 massacre and 74.7% support the creation of a single Palestinian state "from the river to the sea"... This is what the Biden administration wants to reward with a Palestinian state?

Trade tangible land in Israel for intangible promises from Lebanon -- protected by a military that might wilt at the first shot?

Perhaps Biden could please reconsider?
They Justified Hamas Terrorism. Now Biden Is Letting Them Dole Out Taxpayer Dollars.
In the aftermath of Hamas's Oct. 7 terror attack against Israel, left-wing nonprofit Climate Justice Alliance expressed "unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle" and blamed the attack on Israeli "settler-colonialism." Now, the Biden administration is entrusting the group to distribute $50 million in taxpayer funds.

President Joe Biden's Environmental Protection Agency announced the move in a Wednesday press release, which named Climate Justice Alliance as one of several "national grantmakers" tasked with doling out $50 million to local organizations in the name of "environmental justice." In order to receive the taxpayer funds, those organizations will primarily work with the alliance, not the Biden administration. As a "grantmaker," the left-wing nonprofit is tasked with awarding "subgrants"—which range from $150,000 to $350,000 each—and implementing "tracking and reporting systems."

The decision raises questions as to how Biden's EPA landed on Climate Justice Alliance for the program, given that the group has publicly condemned the administration over its support for the Jewish state. Climate Justice Alliance, a network of nearly 90 left-wing environmental groups from across the country, issued an Oct. 20 statement accusing Biden of using "US taxpayer dollars … to support a policy of genocide."

"With this newest round of genocidal attacks by Israel on the civilian population … the Israel government has defied international law," the group said. "President Biden must oppose this."

In addition to its criticism of Biden over the Democrat's handling of the war, Climate Justice Alliance has worked to justify Hamas's terror attack on the Jewish state.

The "Free Palestine" section of the group's website includes a statement from its sister organization, It Takes Roots, which calls the attack "the most recent escalation in the 75-year history of settler-colonialism and violence across historic Palestine" and expresses "unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle for self-determination and to live freely with their human rights fully intact on their lands."

Climate Justice Alliance has also made clear that it cannot separate its environmental activism from the Palestinian cause. One week ago, the group released a video titled, "The path to climate justice travels through a free Palestine," which "uses an anti-colonial framework to show how Climate Justice and the liberation of Palestine are connected."
The Biden Administration’s Sinister Deal With Venezuela
On the surface it appears President Joe Biden inked a sweet deal with Venezuela’s tyrant leader, Nicolas Maduro, on Wednesday. Caracas will release 10 Americans and 20 members of Venezuela’s opposition in exchange for a single scumbag businessman.

Thirty for one is not bad as far as hostage negotiations go, but the math tells only part of the story. Just ask the Israelis who traded 1,072 terrorists for the freedom of Gilad Shalit in 2011.

The Biden deal will free a dangerous man at a dangerous time. Alex Saab is an operative for Hezbollah’s external security organization, known as Islamic Jihad. A jury convicted him in May of receiving training from Hezbollah and making false statements, and he was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

According to the Justice Department, Saab surveilled sites in New York City as possible targets for terrorist attacks, focusing on "the structural weaknesses of locations … in order to determine how a future attack could cause the most destruction."

In addition to providing photos back to his bosses in Lebanon, Saab sent technical information on the structures of potential targets including Rockefeller Center, the United Nations, and Times Square. He attempted to murder a man he believed to be an Israeli spy, only to find his handgun would not fire.

It’s worth asking why a Lebanese terrorist was such a high priority for a Venezuelan dictator. Maduro has pursued a strategy of selling out to more powerful rogues in order to keep his disastrous regime afloat. First Russia, then China, and now Iran, Hezbollah’s patron.
Dem Senator calls for cease-fire shortly after meeting with group pushing to cut aid to Israel
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., called for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war just days after meeting with a group pushing for cuts to military aid to the Jewish state.

Baldwin held a meeting with World Beyond War in the second week of December, where activists reportedly pressed Baldwin to "call for a ceasefire in Israel and Palestine now, work to cut military aid to Israel, and call on Israel to lift the siege on Gaza," according to the anti-war group's website.

When asked about the meeting, Baldwin initially told the Washington Examiner, "We know that Hamas will not agree to a cease-fire. So you’re really asking Israel to unilaterally stop, and we know Hamas won’t, both through words and actions."

Despite stating Hamas will not agree to a cease-fire with Israel, Baldwin is changing her tune, saying Israel's "indiscriminate bombing and military approach has led to unacceptable bloodshed."


Fury Over Belgian Senator’s False Accusation That Israeli Rabbis Order ‘Rape’ of Palestinian Women

German police raid pro-Palestinian feminist group

Spanish Police Arrest Over a Dozen Would-Be Jihadists

Alan Dershowitz: The Harvard Crimson refuses to publish my letter critical of President Claudine Gay
The Harvard Crimson has refused to publish a letter I wrote critical of president Claudine Gay’s testimony in Congress.

The paper published an article Dec. 12 by law Professor Charles Fried providing a legalistic defense of her claim that those who call for genocide against Jews cannot be disciplined without considering “the context.”

Here’s my response:
The problem with Charles Fried’s defense of President Gay’s “Context matters” statement is he fails to acknowledge that for Gay, context apparently matters only for genocidal threats against Jews.

Context does not matter for microaggressions against blacks, gays and other minorities protected by the diversity, equity, inclusion bureaucracy that she has long championed.

Under the DEI regime, admissions have been withdrawn, lectures canceled and students admonished — at Harvard, Penn, MIT and other universities — for their speech without regard to the context in which they were said.

Fried fails to see the broader context of the double standard employed by so many universities — including Harvard — against Jews and other minorities that are excluded by DEI.
From Harvard to Hamas: How coverage of Israel impacts Jews on campus
Levine lamented that when Jewish students see their peers, their professors, and celebrities attack Israel, it gives them the illusion that everyone is against them and makes them believe the echo chamber.

He said student newspapers have also become a battleground, with many editors aligning themselves with anti-Israel movements. That has made it harder to get pro-Israel opinion pieces printed.

“Our goal is to teach pro-Israel students to make alliances with other student groups and be proactive,” Levine said. “They can’t afford to wait for a crisis, like a war or a vote on BDS in their student senate. They must be engaged and show that there is another side.”

One key goal on campus nowadays is to make students realize that while antisemitic tropes about Jews controlling universities with money are false, that accusation is actually true of Qatar.

Qatar, which as Hamas’s top donor gives the terrorist group $1.8 billion, also gives huge amounts to dozens of American universities, according to US Department of Education statistics. For instance, the Qataris have given Cornell University some $600 million, Carnegie Mellon $300 million, and Northwestern $129 million.

There is also endless money from Qatar supporting SJP and anti-Israel influencers on social media.

The era of intersectionality has labeled Jews “the oppressor” and Palestinians “the oppressed,” even though it is the Jewish community that is under constant attack in Israel and around the world. Amid confusion over intersectionality, students need to realize that it is the anti-Israel movements that are actually “privileged,” while Jews are the victims and the minority that has suffered from the most discrimination.

It is not too late for October 7 to be the historic turning point it needs to be in reinforcing that important message. With proper education and accurate media coverage about what happened on that horrible, fateful day, everyone but the fringes on campuses could potentially understand the truth about what Israel is facing.

“October 7 can still be an opportunity,” Levine said. “It has not been lost. It is up to us to educate the students.”
‘Daily Mail’: 56% of likely US voters say Harvard, MIT heads should resign over Jew-hatred policies

The Harvard Scandal is Bigger Than Claudine Gay
The 11 men and women of the Harvard Corporation are titans of business, academia, and law: the American elite. They include Penny Pritzker, the billionaire hotel heiress and former Obama secretary of commerce, and the former presidents of Princeton University, Shirley Tilghman, and Amherst College, Biddy Martin. Ken Chenault, the former CEO and chairman of American Express, Tino Cuéllar, the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Ted Wells, the chairman of the litigation department of Paul Weiss, are also part of the crew.

The group learned about the accusations of plagiarism against Gay on Oct. 24 through an inquiry from the New York Post. They responded by hiring the "leading defamation firm in the United States," which repped noted defamation victims like the NBC News pervert Matt Lauer and Putin crony Oleg Deripaska, to threaten and intimidate the Post. (It worked.)

In a Kafkaesque move, the corporation then circumvented the university’s well-established procedures for investigating academic misconduct and appointed an "independent" panel of scholars to review Gay’s work. They will not disclose the members of that panel, which—surprise!—found "no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct." This wasn’t plagiarism, a capital offense in academia, but "duplicative language without appropriate attribution," which sounds an awful lot like plagiarism to those of us who didn’t go to Harvard.

That "independent review" did not consider all of Gay’s work. Given her thin academic record, it would not have been a heavy lift. When new plagiarism allegations emerged on Dec. 10 and Dec. 19, the corporation waived them off. In a statement to the Chronicle of Higher Education on Wednesday, the corporation indicated that a subcommittee of 4 of its 11 members determined that "no further action is required." So long, secret "independent" review board!

The fish rots from the head. After they inevitably drop the hammer on Gay, the members of the Harvard Corporation should see themselves out too.


VIDEO – Campus Antisemitism Crisis: Cornell, The Ivies, and Beyond
On Tuesday night, December 19, 2023, the Legal Insurrection Foundation and Cornell Free Speech Alliance held a joint online webinar, Campus Antisemitism Crisis: Cornell, The Ivies, and Other U.S. Universities. The event was a big success, with almost 400 people online. The panelists were:
- William Jacobson: William A. Jacobson is a Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Securities Law Clinic at Cornell Law School. Professor Jacobson was the founder of Legal Insurrection website in 2008.
- Amanda Silberstein: Amanda Silberstein is a sophomore at Cornell University pursuing a degree in Hotel Administration with a minor in Law & Society. She recently testified before the House Judiciary Committee, addressing the alarming rise in antisemitic rhetoric at Cornell. Through various media appearances, she exposes the pervasive expressions of antisemitism among Cornell professors and students.
- Susan Price: Susan Price graduated Cornell with a Bachelor of Science in urban and regional studies and a Master of Regional Planning. Her father, husband, brother-in-law, and one of her son’s graduated Cornell and her niece is a current student. Susan has been an active member of the Cornell Free Speech Alliance for two years.
- Kemberlee Kaye: Kemberlee Kaye serves as the Operations and Editorial Director for the Legal Insurrection Foundation. Kemberlee is the Senior Contributing Editor of Legal Insurrection website, where she has worked since 2014. She also serves as the Managing Editor for CriticalRace.org, a research project of the Legal Insurrection Foundation.


University of Minnesota professor who denied Hamas atrocities on Oct. 7 a candidate for school’s top DEI job
A University of Minnesota professor who denied Hamas terrorists committed rape and sexual violence against Israeli women on Oct. 7 is being considered for a top administrative position in the college’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) department.

Sima Shakhsari is an associate professor in the department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies, and has been seen on campus attending pro-Palestinian rallies chanting “Globalize the Intifada.” Shakhsari, who uses they/he/she pronouns, also has a long history of aligning with radical groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

Shakhsari’s denial that Israeli women were raped by Hamas came during the professor’s testimony last Thursday to the university review panel, part of the application process in being considered for the associate dean of the DEI office in the College of Liberal Arts position.

“I cannot be silenced in the face of this genocide, and I’m not gonna argue whether it’s a genocide or not,” Shakhsari said in a one-hour speech, which almost entirely focused on Israel and Gaza.

In the speech, she volunteered she hadn’t seen any evidence of Hamas’ sexual violence against Israelis — which has been well-documented by testimony from victims, video footage and forensic evidence. “Of course, any person who has been raped, I am a rape crisis counselor, I believe the survivors. I am yet to see Israeli rape survivors of Hamas come and speak,” Shakhsari said.
Once unthinkable, discrimination against Jews now a given on campus

Checkbook shut Another billionaire joins growing list to yank donations to Harvard over antisemitism, plagiarism scandals

University of California Professors Organize ‘Faculty for Justice in Palestine’

Inside Students for Justice in Palestine’s Pro-Terror Protests
Attempting to maintain scrupulous neutrality, Emma Green takes a close look at the campus anti-Israel movement, focusing on the branch of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Hunter College in Manhattan:
If someone were looking for clichés about achieving peace in the Middle East, they would not find them here. “It is right to rebel!” the students shouted. “Israel, go to Hell!” Their politics did not follow the 1990s script of calling for Palestinian statehood within limited borders. “We don’t want no two states! We want ’48!” they yelled. “Settlers, settlers, go back home. Palestine is ours alone!” One student wore a bumper sticker on her vest: “Resist colonial power by any means necessary.” Many student groups have adopted the same tone on social media.

On October 7th, after Hamas attacked Israel, Hunter’s Palestine Solidarity Alliance posted an image of bulldozers breaking through the Gaza fence, overlaid with a cartoon of a person wearing a keffiyeh over his mouth and nose. “The resistance movement has initiated ‘al-Aqsa Flood,’” the post said. “This initiative, led by Mohammed Deif, the commander-in-chief of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, marks a significant moment.” It went on, “Similar to Deif, we demand ALL educational institutions to stand up against the occupation and actively support the al-Aqsa Flood Initiative.”

The Hunter students I talked to agreed that Palestinian resistance against Israel is justified, including Hamas’s attack on October 7th. “I have a human sympathy and understanding for people who were killed and deemed innocent,” [one] said. “But innocence is only so limited when you are occupying land.”

The other quotes Green elicits from students she interviews are equally revealing, as is the fact that the Jewish professor who spoke to her about the anti-Semitic environment on campus declined to be named.


CAMERA Report Brown University’s Choices Curriculum is a Platform for Anti-Zionist Narrative

Antoinette Lattouf: Sacked ABC presenter alleges unlawful termination in Fair Work Commission application ABC headquarters in Melbourne comes under graffiti attack by Palestine supporters after host Antoinette Lattouf was sacked for anti-Israel posts



MEMRI: Hamas Leader In Gaza Yahya Sinwar, Israel's Most Wanted – In His Own Words: 'We Support The Eradication Of Israel Through Armed Jihad And Struggle; This Is Our Doctrine'; 'The Brothers In Iran And Hizbullah Spared Us Nothing'; 'Al-Jazeera Has Been The Best Pulpit To Give Accurate Voice To Our Position'

MEMRI: Shocked And Dismayed By The Arrest And Detention Of Egyptian Female Activist Ghada Naguib In Turkey, Pro-Erdogan Egyptian Dissidents, Including Muslim Brotherhood Islamists, Appeal For Her Release

Family of autistic Jewish teen who had swastika carved on his back by classmates sues school
The family of an autistic Jewish high school student who had a swastika carved on his back in a cruel antisemitic attack by classmates is suing his Las Vegas school.

The abused teen and his mom, identified only as S.K. and C.K. in court papers, claim the Clark County School District not only failed to protect the 18-year-old, but dropped the ball on providing him a proper education.

“At the outset, the district failed to provide [the student] a safe school environment that was free from harassment, intimidation and bullying,” according to the complaint filed Nov. 13 with the Nevada Department of Special Education.

“Specifically, on March 9, 2023, [the student] came home from school with a swastika physically carved into his back and the service dog bag was broken and re-sewn,” it said. “[He] refused to enter that specific bathroom after that day. The district denied any knowledge of the incident occurring.”

The teen has since been homeschooled.

“This horrific act against a defenseless Jewish student is a stark reminder of the deeply rooted issue of antisemitism that persists in our society,” Ziporah Reich, director of litigation at the Lawfare Project, which filed the complaint, said in a statement.

According to the complaint, the district has also failed to provide the student with a proper education under the Individuals with Disability Education Improvement Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, despite his years in the schools.
Creepy scrawler NYC tenant who displayed Hitler images in lobby now charged with writing 'Kill Hamas Condo Board' on building

What the Pope Knew
Whether or not such a policy was in the best interests of Catholics and Jews under Nazi domination inside Italy is not a question with an easy answer. However, it is certain that the pope’s silence did no damage to the Nazis.

What is clear, however, is that Nazi reprisals in Italy and elsewhere were brutal. For the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office, the SS wiped out the Czech town of Lidice. On June 9, 1942, 173 men and boys were gunned down, while the women and children of the town were deported to concentration and death camps. Eighty children were gassed, most likely at Chelmno, and 53 women died, probably at Ravensbruck. On March 24, 1944, in Rome, 10 Italians were murdered for each SS officer killed in an ambush carried out by the Resistance in the center of the city. On June 10, 1944, a Waffen-SS reprisal razed the town of Ouradour-sur Glane in France, killing 642 villagers. The Nazi reprisals in central Italy, at Sant’Anna di Stazzema and Monte Sole, only two of many such Nazi massacres, resulted in over 1,200 civilian deaths, most of them women and children. Thus, it seems clear that papal policy, while frustrating and perhaps morally reprehensible, had a solid grounding in reality.

But the monsignor could not stop himself from saying one more thing to the Fascist general: The Church “does not, and cannot, remain neutral between good and evil.” Again, the monsignor chose silence instead of identifying who was good and who was evil (even if, in a face-to-face meeting between a Vatican emissary and a representative of Mussolini, that is not a realistic expectation). But at the same time, the monsignor’s statement can be read as a veiled threat by the Vatican to a Fascist official: The pope would not countenance bloody retaliations against civilians.

Was this threat an empty one? In hindsight, we know that it was. The pope had few resources at his disposal to back up such threats. Accordingly, a policy of silence, or even of veiled threats, could only be based on the hope that someone else, not the pope and not the Vatican, would step up to alleviate the suffering of Jews and other innocents.

Nevertheless, if the pope believed he could not take concrete action to save lives, individual priests found a way. At many (but not all) churches, convents, and monasteries throughout Rome and Italy, churchmen and churchwomen did not “remain neutral between good and evil.” And thousands of innocent and Jewish lives were saved.

Was any of that intended by the pope’s statements or Monsignor Marchioni’s threat? It is difficult to know. When the policy is silence, the intent of the policy cannot be certain. What we are left with is an uncertainty that may accurately reflect a flawed yet deliberate response to an excruciating dilemma.
When a Broader Religious Pluralism Began to Flower
Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) and Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-72) were two of the greatest American religious figures of the last century—as well as unlikely friends.

Niebuhr’s sometimes controversial emphasis on the limitations in human nature was widely influential among groups as diverse as religious scholars and foreign policy strategists. His resulting Serenity Prayer, asking God to grant us serenity for things we can’t change, courage to change what we can and should change, and wisdom to know the difference, has been popular for decades as a day-at-a-time recipe for living.

Niebuhr’s influence has declined slightly since his death, whereas Heschel’s has increased. Heschel’s stand-out, passionate embrace of the Civil Rights movement and his friendship with Martin Luther King Jr., also somewhat controversial then, are uniformly celebrated today. And his spiritual orientation has attracted an interfaith audience across the religious spectrum.

Heschel was a leading Jewish theologian who said he sometimes thought Christians understood him better than Jews did. Niebuhr, one of the 20th century’s dominant Protestant theologians, had some interesting Jewish affinities, such as a steady focus on the Hebrew prophets.

Niebuhr grew up speaking German, and initially pastored German-speaking immigrant congregations in the Midwest. Heschel, though originally from a Hasidic dynasty in Poland, lived and taught in Germany, and wrote his doctoral dissertation in German. But that did not prevent his mother and three sisters from being killed during the Holocaust. And yet, remarkably, shortly before he died, Niebuhr chose Heschel to deliver the only eulogy at his funeral—despite a heritage that was very different from Heschel’s and despite Niebuhr’s worldwide prominence among Protestants.

The unexpected closeness between Niebuhr and Heschel is partially explained by not-always-obvious similarities between them, such as each being the son of a cleric and each striving to move beyond a provincial upbringing. The easiest similarity to decipher was physical proximity: Heschel taught for two decades at the Jewish Theological Seminary on the Upper West Side of Manhattan near Columbia University. Niebuhr taught for more than three decades at Union Theological Seminary, situated on the very next block diagonally across Broadway from JTS. The area is called Seminary Row, and each became perhaps the most famous teacher at his respective institution.

Two other similarities deserve greater attention; first, the ways in which both thinkers flourished in an American religious environment that seems quite different from our own, and second, the contributions of both theologians to a broader American religious pluralism at a time when it was only beginning to fully flower.

The period just after WWII was a time that was both less fully pluralistic but also more outwardly religious than now. The opinions of Heschel and Niebuhr mattered more than they would today, when American liberal and moderate religious affiliation—as well as enrollment in mainline (that is, nonevangelical) Protestant seminaries and the more liberal (that is, non-Orthodox) Jewish seminaries—has been in decline. Last year the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, where Heschel taught for five years after being rescued from the Holocaust, announced closure of its rabbinical program begun in 1875 in favor of its East and West Coast branches.

The seminaries on Seminary Row and elsewhere exist, in important part, to build religious communities, and the sense of religious community in America has withered somewhat. A recent Gallup poll found fewer Americans—just 47%—now belong to a house of worship than at any time since Gallup began keeping track in 1937, a trend that this post-pandemic period has not improved. And among millennials, that demographic cohort born between 1981 and 1996, many now with young families, about 1 in 3 are religiously unaffiliated “Nones,” a high-water mark according to data from the General Social Survey.
Torah scroll, hidden during Holocaust, brought to Yad Vashem
A Torah scroll hidden in the attic of a synagogue in Poland that was ransacked on Kristallnacht was placed in the Holy Ark at Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust remembrance center on Thursday.

The event was part of the General Kaddish Day, held by the Council of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel on the 10th of Tevet, during which the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust without a clear date of death is honored by reciting the Jewish prayer of the dead.

Israel’s Chief Rabbis, Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef and Rabbi David Lau, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan and the family of Holocaust survivor Haim Tuvia Gerbowitz, who had brought the Torah scroll to Israel, attended the event.

During the ceremony, a special prayer was recited for the safe return of hostages and the well-being of IDF soldiers fighting in the Gaza war.

“We thank the Gerbowitz family for donating the Torah scroll to Yad Vashem’s synagogue, where it will be preserved for future generations and serve congregants,” said Dayan. “Every item entrusted to us not only tells the personal story of the donor, their family, or community but also completes another piece in the vast puzzle of the history of the Jewish people during the Holocaust.”
‘I went from a life of luxury to a straw bed in Stoke-on-Trent’: As new Anthony Hopkins film tells story of Sir Nicholas Winton’s bid to save children from Holocaust, one of the last Kindertransport survivors relives her incredible tale
THE card is faded and yellowed with time, but the smile of the little girl in the black and white photograph is still bright.

She was just three when it was taken, wearing her Sunday best, with her hair neatly parted and smoothed down in a wave.

Beside the picture someone has written her name, date of birth, parents’ contact details and identification number: 5097.

Eighty-four years have passed since Dr Lisa Midwinter, then Liesa Dasch, arrived in Britain – 1,000 miles from her home in the Czech Republic and wearing the document on a string around her neck.

She has kept it, tucked away in a special place, all this time, fondly calling it her ‘ticket to life’.

For Lisa, now 88, was one of the 669 children who escaped the Nazis on the Czech ‘Kindertransport’, a network of trains that helped young refugees from Jewish families flee central Europe and set up new lives in the UK, organised by humanitarian Sir Nicholas ‘Nicky’ Winton.

Sir Nicholas, who died in 2015, was known as ‘Britain’s Oskar Schindler’ for his tireless efforts to save lives in the six months between the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 and the outbreak of war that September.

Thanks to him, an estimated 6,000 people across the world – the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who escaped – are alive today.

But Sir Nicholas, who was just 26 when he staged the remarkable rescue mission, was a humble man and his role remained unrecognised until 1988, almost 50 years after the event, when a now-famous episode of BBC programme That’s Life paid tribute to his heroism.

On live TV, host Dame Esther Rantzen told his story before turning to viewers and asking: ‘Is there anyone in our audience tonight who owes their life to Nicholas Winton?’

In scenes that moved millions across Britain to tears, including Sir Nicholas (who’d been invited on the show but had no idea who else would be present), almost everyone in the studio audience stood up in response.

That heart-wrenching moment, and the inspirational tale of the man himself, is the subject of a new film, One Life, starring Sir Anthony Hopkins (as Winton), Helena Bonham-Carter and Romola Garai, which will be released in cinemas on New Year’s Day.

For Lisa’s family, it’s a timely reminder – not only of what she went through all those years ago, but of the moment they first found out about it.




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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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