Wednesday, September 11, 2024

09/11 Links Pt2: Twenty-three years into the long war; New York City’s Laboratory for Hate; Kamala’s Islamists; Unpacked: Is Zionism Dead?

From Ian:

Clifford D May: Twenty-three years into the long war, the threat matrix keeps expanding
In the weeks after 9/11, I sat down with Jack Kemp, a Republican politician who had been close to President Ronald Reagan, and Jeane Kirkpatrick, a political scientist and self-described “AFL-CIO Democrat” whom Reagan appointed as his U.N. ambassador. Also in these discussions: a visionary philanthropist to whom they introduced me.

We began organizing a think tank that we named the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. It was our conviction that, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. had taken a “premature peace dividend” and “a holiday from history.”

We correctly foresaw that this would be a long war. We incorrectly believed that, after 9/11, no one in a position of authority would defend terrorists.

Before long, prominent journalists and academics were asserting that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”

That led, ineluctably, to what we now see: Herds of ignorant students, tenured activists and professional agitators are trampling over American campuses in solidarity with murderers and rapists who are torturing hostages at this very moment.

On Sept. 20, 2001, President George W. Bush announced the Global War on Terrorism, which he said would not end “until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”

Before the year’s end, the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan and had hosted al Qaeda, would be ousted from power. Two years later, Saddam Hussein would be toppled in Iraq.

In 2011, President Barack Obama withdrew all U.S. military forces from Iraq, leading to the rise of the Islamic State group, aka ISIS, and further opening Iraq to Iran’s influence.

In 2021, President Biden withdrew all U.S. military forces from Afghanistan. That proved that Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, planner of the 9/11 attacks, was correct when he told his CIA interrogators that jihadis can be confident of victory because “we only need to fight long enough for you to defeat yourself by quitting.”

For many years, Americans hoped that Russia and China would side with us in the Global War on Terrorism.

Surely, the arc of post-Soviet Russian history was bending toward liberal democracy. In June 2001, Mr. Bush said he found President Vladimir Putin “very straightforward and trustworthy.”

Near the end of 2001, China was welcomed into the World Trade Organization in the hope that as China grew wealthier, its rulers would moderate.

It soon became apparent that this experiment failed — though many influential Americans and Europeans still refuse to see that.

In March 2023, Waller R. Newell, perhaps the world’s leading expert on the history of tyranny from ancient times to the present, joined me in writing a column on what we called the “Axis of Tyrannies.”

Xi Jinping, China’s Communist ruler, and Mr. Putin, Russia’s neo-imperialist dictator, had agreed to a “no-limits” partnership in February 2022, just days before Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Both went on to establish close relations with Ali Khamenei, the Islamist “supreme leader” of Iran.

Mr. Khamenei has begun sending ballistic missiles to Russia. There are numerous other examples of military cooperation among the members of what is often called the Axis of Aggressors. North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela are also members.

Beijing, Moscow and Tehran are building their military capabilities as fast as they can. Bipartisan commissions have found the U.S. defense budget and military size inadequate given this expanding threat matrix.
New York City’s Laboratory for Hate
Bratman says the tenor of the violence worsened over the summer, with demonstrators becoming more frustrated and volatile, last week marching outside Hillel with a white sign painted in red letters reading: “Bring the war home,” illustrated with a machine gun. “These people are not just insane,” says Bratman. “They’re criminally insane. We have a lot of insane people in New York on every block. But these people are dangerous. They’re not the regular guy that throws shit at the wall in Times Square.”

A seasoned Army veteran who saw action in Iraq, Bratman is naturally cool, engaging, and funny—a genuine hail-fellow-well-met. But his instincts now tell him that violence is coming. It’s the very beginning of the school year and everyone is distracted, and he desperately needs more press coverage to get the attention of the CUNY administration.

“What’s new about this round of protests?” I asked Bratman. To propose a story to my editor, I’ll have to say what’s new. Bratman just about lost it. “Protesters stalked, menaced, harassed, and followed Jewish students to a kosher restaurant, like they would have done on Nov. 9, 1938, and blocked the entrance, screamed obscenities, and banged on windows calling for violence against Jews,” he told me. “They not only terrorized students, but also other Jews, random New York Jews having dinner. The cops came, didn’t do anything, even though they heard distinct, specific threats against the lives of the Jews inside.”

Bratman grew up in the Soviet Union, so he believes that he understands where all this is headed if brave and well-intentioned people don’t step up and insist on what should not require saying: Jewish people enjoy the same rights as any other citizen of the U.S. “This is not a freedom of speech story,” he states. “These people are breaking the law. Free speech rights end when the speech is menacing, threatening, or intimidating—or when the speaker prevents me from moving freely through a public space. For whatever reasons,” he says, “the police are not enforcing the law.”

A lawyer and Navy SEAL named Bill Brown, who is trying to help Jewish students fight hate on campus, happened to be visiting Baruch College just as the protests began. He told Tablet, “These were not demonstrators. Demonstrators do not follow students to a restaurant and spew racial hatred and use derogatory language. These were criminals who wore kaffiyehs over their faces to intimidate, and they blocked the entrance to the restaurant so the victims felt trapped.” He praised the “bravery” of the Hillel students “who did a good job staying together in a group and looking out for each other.” He encouraged them to continue to document the violence and urged others both inside and outside the Jewish community to “stand up and peacefully make their voices heard.” He encouraged everyone to document all incidents via video, because it “helps others see just how bad things are” and provides evidence to support possible legal action.

The day after the restaurant melee, CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez issued a statement: “I was deeply disappointed to learn demonstrators disrupted a Hillel welcome dinner for students from CUNY and universities across the City, turning an event designed to help freshmen acclimate to college life into a disruptive hate-filled display that has no place in our city.” He affirmed that he was investigating the “incident” and said the school “will not hesitate to enforce CUNY disciplinary actions, as appropriate, if any of the demonstrators are members of the CUNY community.”

Bratman reported several students and one faculty member he saw at the protest. The ADL called on Baruch College President David Wu to condemn the violence. Wu did not return a request from Tablet for comment. William C. Thompson Jr., the chairman of CUNY’s Board of Trustees, responded to Tablet via his press spokesman on Sunday, calling the protesters’ behavior “deplorable.” He said, “We will not condone hateful rhetoric and any member of the CUNY community who participates in any actions that intimidate, threaten, or promote hate and violence, will face disciplinary consequences.”

Bratman believes that the large Jewish organizations like ADL and AJC should put their money where their mouths are and hire teams of lawyers to sue the colleges and students and faculty who are breaking the law—often repeatedly, and for months on end. He says that he’s tired of hearing excuses from the funders like: “the wheels of justice turn slowly.” In response, he says “we need to make the wheels turn faster. I guarantee you, if it was about a merger of two financial firms, lawyers would make that happen quickly.” The famed Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Right Under Law “is great,” he says, but its capacity is too limited to help the numerous colleges that are in need.
David Collier: BBC Hamas coverage shows broadcaster must choose between truth and misinformation
The British public should not be forced to fund an organisation that, through its reporting, legitimises a group like Hamas and in turn strengthens Iran’s hand. This is not what the BBC was created for, nor is it what the British public expects from a publicly funded broadcaster.

There is a moral duty here, not just to Israel, but to every British citizen whose money has unwittingly contributed to the dissemination of this warped narrative.

And so, the BBC must be held accountable. This is not merely about restoring journalistic standards — it is about confronting the very real consequences of media complicity in the rise of antisemitism and the legitimisation of terror.

The Asserson Report lays out in forensic detail the extent of these failings, and yet, even now, the BBC refuses to reckon with the full gravity of its actions. Instead, it doubles down, insisting that it has maintained impartiality, even as the facts tell a different story.

There must be an independent inquiry — one that does not allow the BBC to hide behind platitudes of “due impartiality” while it continues to advance a narrative that serves the interests of those who would see Israel destroyed.

And unlike the decades-long hidden "Balen report", the 20,000-word document that assessed anti-Israel bias at the BBC back in 2004 and has been gathering dust in a secret filing cabinet ever since, the findings of the newly proposed one most certainly needs to be released without qualification. The British public deserves transparency, and the Jewish community as well as Israel deserve justice.

History has taught us what happens when powerful institutions turn a blind eye to the consequences of their actions. During the Second World War, it was all too easy for some to excuse or ignore the dangers of aligning with an ideology that sought the eradication of Jews. Today, the BBC must not be allowed to fall into the same trap. It is time for the BBC to face the reality of its failures, to confront the consequences of its reporting, and to restore the trust it has so grievously betrayed.

This is not just about the BBC. It is about the broader moral question of how we as a society respond to the forces of hatred and terror. The BBC must decide whether it stands for truth or for the kind of dangerous misinformation that fuels violence and division. It is time to choose.


What September 11 Revealed, A writer looks back at a portent of the future.
Twenty-three years ago, not long after the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent Americans on September 11, The New York Times Magazine asked me if I would write about antisemitism. They had noticed the explosion of Jew hatred that seemed to have ridden in on the contrails of the airplanes that jihadists had turned into weapons of mass destruction and aimed at the heart of American civilization. The editors wanted to know what I made of it.

At the time, I was grieving a national wound. The gaping pit where the Twin Towers had stood 110 stories high was still smoldering, and when the wind shifted the smoke reached me uptown. This was the worst attack on American soil since the founding of the country; I wasn’t eager to examine it with the binocular vision of double consciousness, but I’m grateful I was asked to write what I was seeing.

The piece I produced in reluctant haste is reprinted here as it appeared in the Times on November 4, 2001. There are things I would express differently now, but it captures something of the mood of that moment, along with my own astonishment at finding so much conspiratorial hatred of Jews and Israel braided into hatred of the United States, and the thinking of those who allowed themselves to believe that the United States had been punished for something Jews had done. A woman reacts in terror as she looks up to see the World Trade Center go up in flames on September 11, 2001. (Spencer Platt via Getty Images)

As the German sociologist Matthias Küntzel observed in 2002: “The legend, invented and circulated by the Hezbollah television station Al-Manar, that, following warnings from the Israeli secret service agency, the Mossad, four thousand Jews had not gone to work at the World Trade Center on September 11, reached untold millions around the world with lightning speed.” Indeed, it was a lie I encountered often writing my essay just weeks after the event.

Despite its inadequate, archaic name, antisemitism remains a useful tool for summoning aggrieved groups with disparate conspiracy theories, ideologies, and hatreds, including self-hatred, and binding them together. True, those who put it on and wield it willingly, like the Ring of Power, tend to be destroyed in the end. But the end can take a long and catastrophic time. More than 50 million people died in the Second World War.

What has renewed its potency and warped utility, and to what ends? Since September 11, the answers have become a little clearer.

There is, alas, no nutshell version, though it would only help to read “Killing in the Name,” an essay by the historian Jeffrey Herf about radical Islamism, which “seeks to benefit from the pathos of Third Worldist rhetoric,” as Herf explains, though “its ideological themes have more in common with fascism and Nazism than with Marxism-Leninism.” Hussein Aboubakr Mansour has also written with great subtlety about the interplay of Marxism, nationalism, Islamism, and antisemitism in the Arab world.

There is also Küntzel’s short book, published in 2002, Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11. It was revised in 2007 with an introduction by Herf, whose own Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World is one of several indispensable books, and which has become even more relevant since October 7. The two appeared together earlier this year, along with Israeli historian Benny Morris, as part of a superb webinar “The Origins and Ideology of Hamas,” which is also a good place to start.
Kassy Akiva: 23 Years After 9/11, Terrorism Is Back On The Rise, With More Support Than Ever
Hamas, which killed 43 Americans, still holds seven captive. Hamas originally took eight American hostages, but last month executed Hersh Goldberg Polin by shooting him in the back of the head at close range.

It’s unclear precisely what’s driving this rise in terrorist sympathy. But perhaps one answer can be found in the actions of Democrats and their media allies.

Biden has virtually halted former President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure campaign” to destroy Iran’s ability to support destabilizing terrorism in the region and instead has helped Tehran pad its coffers, allowing the regime to have access to $6 billion in a prisoner swap.

The Biden-Harris administration’s lax border policies have allowed 250 individuals on the terror watch list to enter the country, a congressional report found. Under “Border Czar” Kamala Harris, the administration released 99 of them.

Harris, who boasted that she was the “last person in the room” when Biden made his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, did not attend a memorial service for the 13 servicemen killed in Afghanistan, and then attempted to use Trump’s attendance as a political attack.

At Tuesday night’s debate, moderators asked Harris if she stood by Biden’s withdrawal decision, but did not press her when she not-so-subtly dodged the question.

In Biden and Harris’s wake, the Taliban has grown stronger than ever and has implemented draconian policies against women including banning them from speaking or showing their faces in public.

Today, Biden and Harris, along with Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, are together at the 9/11 memorial. That is, perhaps, a good sign. But the fact remains that Americans’ attitudes towards Islamic terrorism would have shocked anyone who remembers how they felt on September 12th, 2001.

As the nation reflects on the 23 years since 9/11, we must ask ourselves: How will the U.S. stand against terror in the future as the younger generation’s fading memory emboldens America’s enemies?
Report: Austin’s Reversal of Plea Deal for KSM and Others May Not Hold Up
Defense secretary Lloyd Austin’s reversal last month of a plea deal for the accused masterminds of the 9/11 terrorist attacks may not hold up in court, as defense lawyers argue that he acted too late, the New York Times reported.

The judge, Col. Matthew N. McCall, will determine whether Austin had the authority to revoke a Department of Defense plea deal that would have left the death penalty off the table for Khalid Sheikh-Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin 'Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi—three terrorists accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people and brought down the Twin Towers in New York City.

Defense lawyers argue that Austin acted too late in revoking the signed plea agreements, which they contend are still valid contracts. They further claim that Austin’s reversal, made two days after retired general Susan Escallier signed the deal, was politically influenced, citing its widespread backlash from lawmakers and victims’ families.

Austin defended his decision to withdraw the deal, saying that his only motivation was to make sure that the three terrorists would face a full trial. The judge now must decide whether Austin’s reversal stands given that the Defense Department already signed the agreement.

While pretrial hearings are scheduled to begin Monday, the plea deal may not come up for weeks, as the judge has set an October 1 deadline for the prosecution and defense to respond to the plea deal filings, and initial hearings will focus on witness testimony related to another challenge, according to the Times.

The widow of a 9/11 victim scolded the Biden-Harris administration for signing the widely criticized plea deal in remarks at the 23rd anniversary memorial at ground zero on Wednesday.

"It is outrageous that our government would ever entertain the thought of granting the terrorists a plea deal. If not for the outcry of the 9/11 community, who knows what might have transpired. It's been 23 years and the families deserve justice," the widow said.


Daniel Greenfield: It’s Not Over
On September 11, some of us opened our eyes. Others closed them as hard as they could.

The passengers on Flight 93 who took the lead were in their thirties. But the two firefighters who made it to the 78th floor of the South Tower, Ronald Bucca, who did duty in Vietnam as a Green Beret, and Orio Palmer, a marathon runner, were in their forties. Those men and women had the most meaningful answers to the old question, “Where were you when it happened?”

The great lesson of that Tuesday morning was that it wasn’t over. It wasn’t over when we understood that we wouldn’t find anyone alive in that twisted mass of metal and death. It wasn’t over when the air began to clear. It wasn’t over when the President of the United States spoke. It wasn’t over when the planes began to fly again and the TV switched from non-stop coverage of the attacks and back to its regularly scheduled programming. It wasn’t over when we were told to mourn and move on.

It still isn’t over.

After every attack, Boston, Orlando, San Bernardino, New York, Paris, Manchester, London, Barcelona, we are encouraged to mourn and move on. Bury the bodies, shed a tear and forget about it.

Terrible things happen. And we have to learn to accept them.

But Tuesday morning was not a random catastrophe. It did not go away because we went back to shopping. It did not go away with Hope and Change. Appeasing and forgetting only made it stronger.

“Where were you?” is not just a question to be asked about September 11, 2001. It is an everyday question. What are you doing today to fight the Islamic terrorists who did this? And tomorrow?

Our enemies wake up every day wondering how to destroy us. Their methods, from demographic invasion to WMDs, from political subversion to random stabbings, are many.

A new and terrible era in history began on 9/11. We are no more past it than we were past Pearl Harbor at the Battle of Midway. Its origins are no mystery. They lie in the last sound that came from Flight 93.

“Allahu Akbar.”

We are in the middle of the longest war in American history. And we still haven’t learned how to fight it.

September 11 has come around again. You don’t have to run into a burning building or wrestle terrorists with your bare hands. But use the day to warn others, so you can answer, “Where were you?”


Seth Mandel: Why Democrats Won’t Listen to Reason on Michigan
Slotkin joined a congressional letter to Biden that portrayed the conflict as Benjamin Netanyahu’s war more than Israel’s war and legitimized Hamas’s false statistics about civilian casualties. She used Iran’s killing of three American servicemembers in Jordan as an opportunity to push for a “pause” in Israel’s pursuit of victory over Hamas.

It is in this context that Slotkin’s Facebook ad strategy is notable. Her campaign, according to the Free Beacon, is pouring over $1 million into such ads in a 90-day period. She’s also targeting users interested in “State of Palestine” and “Gaza Strip.” But again, it’s not so much who she’s targeting the ads to but who she doesn’t want to see them. Slotkin is confident that voters with an interest in the “state of Palestine” and in Hamas-allied propaganda channels will find the campaign’s portrayal of the candidate a good fit. She is not so comfortable with Jewish-interested voters meeting this particular version of “Elissa Slotkin.”

Democrats are fretting over their slight lead in Michigan in both the presidential race and down the ballot. But the numbers have never given them good reason to think they must cater to Hamas’s supporters in that state or elsewhere. In the presidential primary, a movement to get Democrats to cast a protest vote for “Uncommitted” instead of Biden received slightly more than Uncommitted garnered against Barack Obama in his reelection campaign—and even that slight improvement, coming after a concerted organizing effort, could have been the result of the same problems that were dragging Biden’s polls down nationally. There was nothing in the numbers to even suggest the Arab vote would cost Biden the state, which he won narrowly in 2020.

It is even less likely that Harris faces a threat from so-called Uncommitted voters, since she has improved on Biden’s numbers. But to compensate for its lack of raw numbers, Uncommitted has simply gotten louder. The closely watched Democratic National Convention saw Uncommitted make demands that were covered extensively by the press, while other stories detailed the way Harris’s campaign was trying to tamp down any public conflict with Uncommitted that week because of the way it could derail the campaign’s momentum and the narrative of a unified Democratic Party. Tim Walz was nominated as Harris’s ticket mate at that convention in large part because anti-Israel elements of the party threatened to revolt if Harris picked Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who had criticized pro-Hamas mobs in Philadelphia and frequently referred to his Jewish observance and upbringing.

The fact that Harris backed down in that important fight means her campaign still clings to the unfounded fear that Arab voters in Michigan can cost her the state by single-issue voting in the general election and withholding their support from the Democrats over Gaza. And despite the paucity of evidence for it, belief can be a hard thing to shake. Just ask Elissa Slotkin.

Or perhaps these candidates simply agree with the Gaza protesters they are catering to.
Kassy Akiva: Muslim-American Group That Celebrated Hamas Attack Hopes To Have 40+ Members in Congress In 10 Years
The head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), who publicly praised Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, outlined a plan to help elect 40-50 members to Congress in a sermon last month, MEMRI reported.

CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad said his vision is the “next phase” in dedicating “professional resources to inform the public systematically about this faith,” adding that he recommends a “scientific approach.”

“If we commit to do this, four years from now, the Muslim community will have 4,000 new journalists, we will have 4,000 filmmakers, 4,000 lawyers, 4,000 students of political science, 4,000 students of history,” he said.

In 15 years, Awad said the numbers will continue to grow, creating “an army” of 50,000 in such fields, many of whom will “most likely” run for office.

“We can have in ten years, at least 40-50 members of Congress — in the U.S. Congress,” he said.

In the August 30th sermon at the East Plano Islamic Center in Texas, Awad said CAIR has been fighting to eliminate Islamophobia that is “deeply rooted” in American culture, academia, and Hollywood. “For hundreds of years, Islam has been denigrated, the Prophet has been smeared and defamed in books and textbooks that were taught in public schools, that Allah be praised, we have been working to eliminate and change,” Awad said in the sermon live-streamed on YouTube.

Awad said it’s time for the Muslim community — which he called affluent, vibrant, educated, and well-to-do — to move to the next phase.

While CAIR, founded in 1994, positions itself as the top American Muslim civil rights organization, it has a troubling record that led the Biden administration to distance itself in the fallout of Hamas’ brutal massacre, rape, and kidnapping of Israeli civilians on October 7.
Daniel Greenfield: Kamala’s Islamists
Kamala’s pose with the record number of Muslim staffers, estimated to be over 100, in the Biden-Harris administration was also a measure of her personal relationships with some of them, like Nasrina Bargzie, one of her “fabulous four” staffers who had stayed with her throughout her time in office, as well as others, like Brenda Abdelall, with whom she had a developing relationship that would make her part of her future presidential campaign.

As the attorney general of California, Kamala had developed longstanding ties with CAIR, whose founder has since endorsed the Oct 7 attack, along with other Islamist groups linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. In Congress, she defended Rep. Ilhan Omar’s antisemitic remarks and her sympathy with activists who assailed Israel during her remarks after Oct 7 was not feigned.

The Kamala campaign continues to cultivate ties with extremist figures including a reported private meeting between the candidate and Mayor Abdullah Hammoud of Dearborn, known as the nation’s Jihad Capital, who had told a pro-Hamas rally after Oct 7 that this was “the city of resistance”.

Before a rally in Detroit, Kamala spoke with Layla Elabed, Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s sister, and Abbas Alawieh, a former Tlaib staffer, running an anti-Israel movement and told them, according to a New York Times report, that she was open to discussing an arms embargo on Israel. (The paper and her campaign later claimed that she was only open to speaking to them.)

And while Kamala’s opposition to Israel has often been seen as a response to the necessities of winning Michigan, her solidarity with Islamists is not a response to the 2024 election.

Kamala has built a Muslim team whose views are extreme and whose hostility to America and Israel, as well as their ties to foreign governments and Muslim Brotherhood groups, raise troubling questions, especially as some figures, like Maher Bitar, are expected to rise further in her administration, while others we may not yet know about will arrive on the scene.

Vice President Kamala Harris is not a critic of Israel’s campaign against Hamas because of the pressure out of Dearborn, but because she has built up relationships with terrorism supporters.


A University Guide to Doing Much about Anti-Semitism and Accomplishing Nothing
After last spring’s sickening displays on college campuses, and the resultant congressional hearings, this school year many universities are seeking to do more to protect Jewish students, or at least to appear to do more. Northwestern University saw some especially ugly student protests, which included a poster depicting the school president Michael Schill with horns and with his face dripping blood. But Northwestern’s newest policies, writes Tal Fortgang, are unlikely to make much of a difference, although they are likely to serve as a model for other schools:

Schill announced that Northwestern would provide “expanded resources” and “educational opportunities” to combat “anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of hate.” At the heart of the plan: “Mandatory trainings on anti-Semitism and other forms of hate will be used in September at incoming student orientation and over the fall quarter for all returning students.”

Even leaving aside Northwestern’s inability to admit that it has a specific and ongoing problem with Jew hatred, the plan demonstrates that the school, like so many others, fundamentally misunderstands or refuses to confront the particular brand of anti-Semitism now infecting elite institutions. Consider the students or faculty responsible for caricaturing Schill as a bloodthirsty demon. They may or may not have known that they were invoking anti-Semitic tropes. But their motives were ideological: they believed no one, in good faith, could support what they believe is a “settler-colonialist” and “genocidal” Zionist entity.

To the vandals, no good-faith disagreements could be had about the history of the region and competing claims to the land. Rather, they believed that Schill is an apologist for colonialism and genocide, who sides with the oppressors out of sheer venality.

The best way for colleges to deal with their anti-Semitism problem—aside from having a zero-tolerance policy for students who engage in organized rule-breaking—is to stop teaching that all conflict should be viewed through the lens of oppression analys
A Stupid Cartoon and the University Ideology
I wrote this essay in the spring of 2024, and it ran in the summer issue of Liberties, the American print quarterly. By the time the issue came out, though, which was in July, the difficult topic that my essay addressed had swollen into something still more difficult. This was the wave of virulent anti-Zionism that had arisen in the American universities and in the art-and-literary world and a few other places in the immediate aftermath of the 7 October 2023 massacre. Liberties is a brilliant magazine, issue after issue, but it was never designed to reach more than a narrow readership. And, under those circumstances, the editors of Quillette proposed to give my essay a second life, this time by presenting it to the wider reading public that exists online, and to a listening public, too, via a forthcoming audio version and a podcast.

The editors and I have tidied up a handful of phrases and misprints, and I have corrected a couple of factual errors (e.g., I have clarified that my late friend and comrade Todd Gitlin attended high school one year ahead of Stokely Carmichael, instead of one year behind). But mostly I have left the essay as it was, in the belief that, while the wave of virulent anti-Zionism is bound to change shape in the future, as waves do, and may even subside for a deceptive moment now and then, its underlying strength is destined sooner or later to reassert itself, maybe with a vengeance. And my commentary will remain pertinent, even without major emendations and updates. Or so I judge. Quillette readers will see if they agree.

Do you have friends who prefer to read in Spanish? The essay will shortly appear, as well, in the literary magazine LetrasLibres.com in Mexico and Spain.

I.
Among the thousand currents of the university turmoil during these last several months, the tiny ripple that most securely caught my eye was a distinctly minor scandal at Harvard back in February 2024, which caused not a single broken window or student riot or mass invasion by agents of the state. This was a scandal over a cartoon. The minor scandal had the virtue, however, of casting a retrospective light on an earlier scandal at Harvard, the original scandal, which was pretty much the founding moment of what eventually became the enormous tide of university protests and controversies.

This was a statement signed by more than thirty Harvard student groups in the first days after the 7 October 2023 massacre blaming Israel (“entirely responsible”) instead of Hamas (unmentioned) for the atrocities—after which came the clumsy dithering of Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, to speak up in a sufficiently articulate fashion about the massacre and the student statement, which led to her notorious failure in testimony to Congress to find anything condemnatory to say about students calling for genocide of the Jews (“depends on context”), which led to everything else, not just in the United States.

In Paris, Sciences Po, aka the Institut d’études de politiques de Paris, which is more or less the Harvard of France, generated its own scandal, beginning in March. The Sciences Po students held a pro-Palestine meeting. A Jewish student got up the courage to enter the amphitheatre. And the Jewish student was greeted in a manner that was sufficiently obnoxious to attract the attention of Emmanuel Macron himself, who thought it his duty to underline the “unspeakable and perfectly intolerable” behaviour—which led, by late April, to a student occupation of a stairwell, the intervention of riot police, indignation over the menace to academic freedom, and generally the turmoil that any number of universities and arts organisations have come to know. In this fashion, the enormous and sometimes scandalous wave of protests against Israel and Zionism that got started at Harvard has turned out to be, well, maybe not universal. Problems and protests like these seem not to have occurred in the Latin American universities, which is curious. Nor in various other regions. But the wave has been very large.

The cartoon scandal—the mini-event at Harvard in February—was brought on by two student organisations, the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and the African and African American Resistance Organisation, with the unfortunate support of still another organisation called Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine. The two student groups set out to show and acclaim the historical origins of African-American solidarity with the Palestinian cause. This reached back, in their interpretation, to 1967 and the rebellious young activists of the civil-rights movement. The Harvard student groups wanted to explain that, in adopting the Palestinian cause, the young rebels of those long-ago times took a major step in advancing the larger struggle for black liberation. The students composed an infographic making those points, and the graphic within the infographic was a charcoal-line cartoon by an artist named Herman “Kofi” Bailey, which the students lifted from the young rebels’ newsletter from 1967.

The cartoon showed blacks and Arabs being jointly oppressed by their enemy, the Jews. A black man and an Arab man (who might have been Muhammad Ali, the boxer, and Gamal Abdel Nasser, the president of Egypt) gazed helplessly upward from the cartoon with nooses draped around their necks. At the top of the cartoon a white hand, bearing on its back a Star of David tattoo encasing a dollar sign, held the two nooses loosely in its fingers, ready to give the fatal yank. But salvation was in sight. This was a scrawny arm brandishing a machete, with the arm and machete labelled “Third World Liberation Movement,” ready to slice the ropes and liberate the doomed. The cartoon was, in short, a melodrama of victimhood (blacks, Arabs), victimiser (Jews), and saviour (Third World Liberation). The Harvard student groups saw sufficient value in the cartoon to post it on their Instagram site. Someone at the Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine was sufficiently impressed to repost it, signalling approval (even if, in reality, the faculty-and-staff group had little idea what was being reposted). And the mini-scandal was at hand.
McConnell urges Columbia, elite schools not to tolerate ‘tantrums of campus radicals’
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) called on Columbia University and other elite academic institutions to tackle the “great deal of work to do to earn back the trust of students, parents and alumni, alike” over the handling of last year’s anti-Israel campus protests.

Speaking on the Senate floor on Tuesday, McConnell urged university faculty and administrators not to tolerate “the tantrums of campus radicals” this fall that “made some elite schools so inhospitable to learning – particularly for Jewish students.” The top Senate Republican said that “[a]s students head back to school, college campuses across the country are hoping this academic year begins more calmly than the last one ended.”

“Unfortunately, what used to be a reliable path to the middle class appears to have turned into breeding ground for childish radicalism,” McConnell said.

McConnell said he welcomes the resignations last month of Columbia University President Minouche Shafik and three deans who were placed on leave after exchanging antisemitic text messages, describing them as “steps in the right direction for an Ivy League institution that professes a commitment to thoughtful, rigorous debate and a campus culture free of bigotry, intimidation, and harassment.”

Still, McConnell expressed concern that Columbia was taking counterproductive measures, citing the school’s decision to allow a Marxist doctoral student to teach contemporary Western civilization to undergraduates despite her role in occupying Hamilton Hall alongside violent anti-Israel protesters.

“The decline in the Ivy League’s academic rigor is well-documented,” McConnell said of Columbia doctoral student Johannah King-Slutzky. “But it would seem that at a bare minimum, its instructors ought to be able to distinguish between civilization and barbarism, and to act accordingly.”
Indiana attorney general advocates for Title VI to protect college students
Todd Rokita, attorney general for the state of Indiana, released a 13-page advisory opinion warning schools to abide by federal and state laws dictating their obligations to safeguard students from bigoted attacks based on antisemitism or targeting other forms of shared ancestry.

“The Indiana Code and various federal civil-rights laws prohibit discriminatory conduct based on one’s religion, shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics in, among other places, educational settings,” states the document released on Tuesday. “Those laws apply to Jewish individuals as much as they do other protected classes.”

The advisory opinion points to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Indiana Civil Rights Act. It states that “educators may in many cases be required to take affirmative steps to end harassment, intimidation and violence against Jewish individuals.”

Rokita, a Republican who formerly served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Indiana from 2011 to 2019, said that “antisemitism is an evil that spreads beyond the confines of college campuses into the fabric of general society” and that “we must deal with this ugliness wherever it arises.”
University of Sydney side-lines staff member handling complaints from Jewish students after anti-Israel advocacy exposed
The University of Sydney has side-lined a member of staff previously responsible for handling complaints from Jewish students on campus after it emerged she had apparently posted anti-Israel content online.

Interim student affairs unit manager Sophie Carruthers had been tasked with managing complaints relating to the pro-Palestinian protests and alleged anti-Semitism on campus.

Sky News first revealed in May documents from the Student Affairs Unit within the Deputy Vice-Chancellor’s office showed the university did not accept the chanting of “intifada” was inherently violent.

Now it can be revealed Ms Carruthers was behind the comments, writing to at least one complainant: “it is not unlawful to use the word ‘intifada’ and, on its own, it cannot be classified as hate speech.”

Calls for “intifada” are widely interpreted as references to the waves of Palestinian terror attacks on Israelis beginning in the late 1980s.

A complaint from a Jewish staff member citing the chants as well as other allegations of bullying and harassment was dismissed by Ms Carruthers who wrote on April 26: “Our students and staff have a long history of using the campuses for political debate and protest, and we strongly support their right to express their opinions and political views as long as it is done safely and in accordance with the law.”

Students later discovered Ms Carruthers had been posting anti-Israel content online while in the role.

In screenshots obtained by Sky News of an Instagram account in Ms Carruthers’ name, she shares posts accusing the Israeli government of carrying out a “genocide” and “blocking Palestinians’ access to healthcare in the West Bank”, calls for an “arms embargo and permanent ceasefire now”, and has saved a series of “Stories” under a highlight called Free Palestine.


‘Sky News’ anchor departs after Gaza-Holocaust comparison
Belle Donati, a presenter for Sky News, has left the Comcast-owned network following a contentious interview with Danny Danon, then a Likud lawmakers and now Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., in which she likened Israel’s actions in Gaza to Nazi Germany’s during the Holocaust.

The incident occurred during a January interview discussing an op-ed Danon, then a Likud Knesset member, and Yesh Atid MK Ram Ben-Barak wrote in The Wall Street Journal in November 2023. Donati characterized the piece by stating, “You suggested the ethnic cleansing of some of Gaza’s population to Western countries that would accept the refugees.”

Danon swiftly rejected this interpretation, responding, “I will not allow it. Ethnic cleansing, that’s a word you used. If you read my article, I spoke about voluntary immigration.”

The exchange escalated when Donati said, “The sort of voluntary relocation of many Jewish people during the Holocaust, I imagine.”

This prompted an angry response from Danon, who accused the presenter of antisemitism, saying, “Shame on you for that comparison. You should apologize for what you just said.”

Following the interview, Danon took to X to express his outrage.

“This insolent interviewer from @SkyNews disgracefully drew comparisons between the situation in Gaza and the Holocaust. Shame on her,” he wrote.

In a subsequent tweet, Danon revealed that he had submitted a letter to Sky News Group requesting Donati’s immediate termination, stating, “In 2024, there should be no tolerance for news anchors who propagate antisemitism and draw inappropriate parallels between the democratic State of Israel and the Nazis.”


UK, Germany, France to sanction Iran’s national airline over Russia missile transfers
The governments of France, Germany and Britain strongly condemn Iranian transfers of ballistic missiles to Russia and will work toward imposing sanctions on Iran Air as a result, the German Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

“This act is an escalation by both Iran and Russia, and is a direct threat to European security,” said a joint statement from the three countries shared by the ministry.

The three countries will take immediate steps to cancel bilateral air services agreements with Iran, it added, calling on Iran to immediately halt all support for Russia in its war with Ukraine.


Comedian Reginald D Hunter tells Zionist he ‘will see you and your kind ended’
Comedian Reginald D Hunter has told a Zionist and antisemitism campaigner on social media he wanted to see her “and [her] kind ended”, a comment that was reported to the police.

The London-based American stand-up, who joked about “typical f***ing Jews” after a British-Israeli couple were hounded out of his Edinburgh Fringe show in August, has frequently posted inflammatory comments about Jews and Zionists on social media.

Writing to Gaza hostage campaigner Heidi Bachram on Tuesday, he said: “Hey sugar. I don’t hate you for being an agent of evil. Not new. Not even uncommon.

“You being a liar, a persistent liar KNOWING the truth, is why I will see you and your kind ended, even if it costs me EVERYTHING. You are not even a JEW. Run tell that”, adding a kiss emoji.

Sussex Police told Bachram the tweet “does not meet the threshold for malicious communication and therefore will be closed as a civil matter” after she flagged it to them on Tuesday night. They suggested Bachram contact X to have the post removed.

Speaking to the JC, Bachram said Hunter’s message seemed to be a personal threat and frightened her.

“It was late at night and I was the only person tagged and named,” she said, “He said it wasn’t about Jewish people – and I’m not Jewish – but using the phrase ‘your kind’ implied an ethnicity or identity. The word ‘ended’ felt deeply sinister. I was scared.”

In another, now-deleted message, also posted on Tuesday night, Hunter tagged Bachram, the JC, the Campaign Against Antisemitism and comedian Josh Howie and proclaimed he was “committed” to the destruction of people whom he accuses of “being European Nazis pretending to be JEWS”.


Swastikas and white supremacist slogan mar YMCA in North Carolina
Vandals spray-painted racist rhetoric and swastikas on Sunday at the Morrison Family YMCA of Greater Charlotte in Charlotte, N.C.

The phrase “save the white race” was scrawled outside, and a swastika was graffitied onto a YMCA bus. “Matthew 23:13-36” was written on the sidewalk, also with a swastika.

“We were deeply disheartened to find that our property had been vandalized with hate speech and symbols,” the YMCA said in a statement. “We immediately notified law enforcement, and our team is working diligently to remove the graffiti as quickly as possible.”

The Jewish Federation of Greater Charlotte released a statement saying that it “condemns these actions in the strongest of terms” and remains committed to fighting “antisemitism and preventing incidents like these from happening in the future.”


Photonic quantum computer co Quantum Source raises $50m
Israeli startup Quantum Source, which is developing technologies for practical photonic quantum computers announced today that it has raised $50 million in a series A financing round. The round was led by Eclipse with participation from Standard Investments, Level VC, Canon Equity, as well as existing investors Pitango First, Grove Ventures, 10D, and Dell Technologies Capital. This brings the total amount raised by Quantum Source to $77 million.

The company said that the capital will be used, "To expand its R&D team, and achieve significant technology targets that will allow effective use of quantum computers possessing millions of qubits."

Quantum Source was founded in 2021 by semiconductor industry veterans and serial entrepreneurs CEO Oded Melamed, and chairman Dan Charash, who previously founded and sold a chip company to Broadcom for $300 million. Other cofounders are Gil Semo, a former Apple senior executive and Professor Barak Dayan. The company currently has 44 employees, according to IVC.

Last May, the company which was a relatively anonymous startup, hit the headlines when former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett joined its board of directors. At the time "Globes" reported that Bennett had met with several startups before deciding to joint Quantum Source after a two hour meeting.

Quantum Source is developing a quantum computer, which is a computer that utilizes natural chemical processes of light particles to produce computing operations at a rate and power millions or billions times greater than supercomputers - which are themselves considered extremely powerful computers.
At summit, African lawmakers declare faith-based support for Israel
A group of three dozen African parliamentarians on Wednesday affirmed Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital and pledged to enhance diplomatic, economic and security cooperation with the Jewish state.

The burst of faith-based diplomacy at the two-day inaugural Africa-Israel Parliamentary Summit in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa comes amid a diplomatic tug-of-war in the region between supporters and opponents of Israel.

A resolution signed by the legislators representing some 25 African nations at the culmination of the event emphasizes their commitment to support Israel, condemns Islamic terrorism and pointedly opposes legal action, spearheaded by South Africa, against the Jewish state.

The lawmaker from Sierra Leone noted that their nation’s ties with Israel date back to 1960 when Israeli contractors built their parliament as well as other historic buildings in the African country, including the national bank and the general post office.

“We cannot sit in the House where laws are enacted and built by Israel yet fail to support Israel,” Parliament member Rebecca Yei Kamara told JNS. “We will raise awareness and lead advocacy for Sierra Leone to open an embassy in Israel, and specifically in Jerusalem.”

Diplomatic tug of war in Africa
The landmark gathering in the Ethiopian capital comes as South Africa has emerged as one of the fiercest critics of the Jewish state worldwide, having taken Israel to the International Court of Justice, a U.N. entity, on charges of genocide.

Israel’s African allies had successfully thwarted an attempt by African countries led by South Africa and Algeria earlier this year to oust Israel from its observer status at the 55-member African Union, alongside other countries such as China, Greece, Kuwait, Mexico, “Palestine,” the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.

The African lawmakers attending the event come from Angola, Botswana, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Two Israeli parliamentarians from the Knesset’s Christian Allies Caucus also attended the summit.


More friends than we think’: Global allies converge on J’lem for confab
On Oct. 7, János Lastofka was enjoying an autumnal break with his family on the banks of picturesque Lake Balaton in his native Hungary.

As news of the Hamas invasion trickled in, some friends of Lastofka reached out to say they were relieved that he was no longer in Israel, where he had recently finished a five-year stint as the No. 2 man at Hungary’s embassy in Tel Aviv.

Lastofka wasn’t relieved.

“I wanted to support my friends in Israel, to huddle in the shelter with my neighbors, ensure the safety of our staff and citizens, and show solidarity,” Lastofka, who now heads the Hungarian Foreign Ministry’s Middle East Department, said at The October Effect conference in Jerusalem on Monday.

Often overshadowed by the diplomatic assault and alienation that Israel has endured from some of its supposed allies since Oct. 7, such steadfast support for the Jewish state emerged as a central theme of Monday’s conference about E.U.-Israel relations.

“We have many more friends than we tend to think, and we’ll have more if we reframe our message in unapologetic terms that embolden our allies,” said Or Yissachar, vice president for content and research at the Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF), a think tank that co-organized the conference with Hungary’s Danube Institute.

The conference brought together diplomats, lawmakers, former leaders, and officials from several European and Western countries. They pledged their support for Israel in its conflict with Hamas and Iran and its proxies at a time when many of Israel’s allies have either turned against it or remained silent on attempts to isolate it.

Israeli conference participants included senior retired IDF brass such as former Military Intelligence Directorate head Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, director of research for the IDSF, and Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen, a member of IDSF’s Board of Directors. They advocated a bolder and unapologetic approach by Israel, militarily and diplomatically, to its conflict with Iranian proxies.

The strength of the case for Israel proper is only part of the reason for the counter-stream in support of it, said Tony Abbott, a former prime minister of Australia who spoke at the conference via a live video broadcast.


The Israel Guys: Meet Israel’s Oldest IDF Soldier And 1948 War HERO - Ezra Yakhin
We had the immense privilege to sit down and interview Israel’s oldest reservist and absolute legend inside of Israel. Ezra Yakhin was born in Jerusalem in 1928 and fought for Israel’s independence in the years leading up to and in 1948.


Unpacked: Is Zionism Dead?
Zionism sparks much debate, but at its core, it’s simply the belief that Jews have the right to govern themselves in their ancestral homeland.

From ancient prayers to modern-day Israel, Zionism has been a cornerstone of Jewish identity for centuries. But with a Jewish state firmly established, is it still relevant

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:52 Judaism is inherently Zionist
03:42 Modern nationalist movements
04:05 Antisemitism in 19th & 20th century Europe
05:38 Theodor Herzl and the modern Zionist movement
07:26 Streams of Zionism
12:35 The necessity of survival
13:29 Zionism today
14:25 Antisemitism vs anti-Zionism
15:31 The victories of the streams of Zionism
17:20 Advice to anti-Zionist protesters
18:11 Do we need Zionism today?




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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 20 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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