Wednesday, October 30, 2024

10/30 Links Pt2: The betrayal of literature; The warnings from history are piling up for ‘non-Zionist’ Jews; Jewish Man Severely Wounded in Brooklyn Stabbing

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The betrayal of literature
It’s a fair bet that the authors and publishing professionals who have called for a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions didn’t anticipate the scale of revulsion and outrage they have caused.

After all, given the current tsunami of hatred and insanity directed at the Jewish people throughout the west, they may well have thought they were merely going along with the overwhelmingly accepted narrative in “progressive” circles — in other words, anyone whose opinion was worth bothering about — that Israel should be shunned as a pariah because of the war in Gaza.

Hundreds supporting a campaign organised by the Palestine Festival of Literature, alongside Books Against Genocide, Book Workers for a Free Palestine, Publishers for Palestine, Writers Against the War on Gaza and Fossil Free Books, have signed a letter calling for a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions which they claim have been “obfuscating, disguising and art-washing the dispossession and oppression of millions of Palestinians for decades” and have thus been “complicit in genocide”.

“We cannot in good conscience engage with Israeli institutions without interrogating their relationship to apartheid and displacement,” they write.

Among the signatories are award-winning authors Sally Rooney and Arundhati Roy, Guardian columnist Owen Jones, children’s author Michael Rosen and actress Miriam Margolyes.

The reaction to this letter from within their own creative world has been seismic. More than 1000 leading names in the entertainment industry have hit back. A counter-letter has been published by the Creative Community for Peace, signed by writers such as Lee Child, Bernard Henri-Lévy, Herta Müller, Sir Simon Schama, Howard Jacobson, Simon Sebag Montefiore, David Mamet, Lionel Shriver and Elfriede Jelinek as well as names from film and TV.

Howard Jacobson said he was “staggered” that the boycott signatories could dream they had a right to silence other writers, while Lionel Shriver said they had sought to “intimidate all authors into withdrawing their work for consideration at Israeli publishing houses and refusing to participate in Israeli festivals”.

Let’s remind ourselves against whom Israel is currently fighting: genocidal enemies who carried out the worst single set of atrocities against the Jews since the Holocaust and who openly declare their aim to annihilate Israel and the Jewish people. Instead of supporting the resistance to such evil, Rooney, Roy, Rosen and their fellow signatories are actively pumping out the propaganda lies being invented to promote that unspeakable cause.

The Guardian reports:
Institutions that have never publicly recognised the “inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law” will also be boycotted.

But there are no “inalienable rights of the Palestinian people” in international law. The only inalienable legal rights to the land belong to the Jews.

These much-garlanded authors and hangers-on aren’t targeting people because of what they are said to have done. They are attempting to silence Israelis because they have failed to express the only approved opinion by opposing their own government’s actions. That’s a totalitarian impulse to crush all dissent. And there’s worse still. As Lionel Shriver has written:
But the intention is not only aimed at punishing Israel’s tiny cultural institutions. The boycott seeks to go well beyond the signatories and intimidate all authors into withdrawing their work for consideration at Israeli publishing houses and refusing to participate in Israeli festivals. That includes writers who disagree with the organisers and do not believe that the IDF’s effort to root out Hamas qualifies as genocide as well as a range of Jewish writers in and outside of Israel whose views on this war may be tortured or finely nuanced. Because we must all speak as one.

The tactic Shriver is aptly describing is designed to set one Jew against the other, to act as a kind of proxy assassin on behalf of the Jew-basher who can thus claim to have clean hands.
Sir Simon Schama, Simon Sebag Montefiore and Howard Jacobson lead 1,000 intellectuals in open letter against boycott of Israel
Over 1,000 literary and entertainment stars from around the globe have signed an open letter in support of freedom of expression and against discriminatory boycotts.

The signatories of the letter include Lee Child, the creator of Jack Reacher, philosopher Bernard Henri-Lévy, Nobel Prize winner Herta Müller, actor Jeff Garlin, historians Sir Simon Schama and Simon Sebag Montefiore, novelist Howard Jacobson and musicians Ozzy Osbourne and Gene Simmons of Seventies rock band Kiss.

This broad and united call from prominent members of the literature and entertainment world to unequivocally voice support against boycotts represents the first of its kind.

Last week, an online petition was launched calling for a boycott on Israeli publishers, book festivals, literary agencies, and publications, organised by the Palestine Festival of Literature, attracting support from authors Sally Rooney and Arundhati Roy.

The letter in response, published on Tuesday, states that regardless of one’s own view on the war in the Middle East, “boycotts of creatives and creative institutions simply create more divisiveness and foment further hatred.”

It adds, referencing October 7, that the signatories “continue to be shocked and disappointed to see members of the literary community harass and ostracise their colleagues because they don’t share a one-sided narrative in response to the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.”

The motivation behind cultural boycotts, it argues, is “illiberal and dangerous”, and contrary to the “liberal values most writers hold sacred”.

“In fact,” the letter continues, “we believe that writers, authors, and books – along with the festivals that showcase them – bring people together, transcend boundaries, broaden awareness, open dialogue, and can affect positive change.”

It concludes by calling on “our friends and colleagues worldwide to join us in expressing their support for Israeli and Jewish publishers, authors and all book festivals, publishers, and literary agencies that refuse to capitulate to censorship based on identity or litmus tests.”

Other signatories of the letter, rejecting boycotts against authors and literary institutions, includes essayist Adam Gopnik, Pulitzer Prize winner David Mamet, actresses Mayim Bialik, Debra Messing and Julianna Margulies, investor Haim Seban and Nobel Prize Award winner Elfriede Jelinek.
Aviva Klompas: Time for a Reckoning With Antisemitism in the U.S.
Hate, once it is unleashed and legitimized, will spread and mutate, targeting other minorities and vulnerable groups and, eventually, anyone who dares to question the mob mentality. Antisemitism in America isn't just a Jewish struggle; it's a fight for America's future.

But it's a fight that we are failing to recognize, address, and commit to winning.

How do we change course? One piece of encouraging news is that Americans are actually paying attention to the Middle East. Recent polls show that 62 percent are closely following the Israel-Hamas war, and 81 percent express greater sympathy for Israel than Hamas.

The reason is clear: most Americans understand that Israel is fighting for its very survival against terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, whose explicit mission is to annihilate Israel. But what many may not fully grasp is that these groups' ideologies aren't limited to the Middle East. Their virulent strain of hate, deeply rooted in antisemitism, has spread beyond the region and found fertile ground in Western democracies, including the United States.

So even as Americans recognize the high stakes in Israel, there remains a troubling disconnect to what they recognize at home. Only six percent of voters consider the Israel-Hamas war a top priority for the country, and a mere two percent list antisemitism as a pressing issue. These figures highlight a dangerous gap between perception and reality.

For Americans, supporting Jewish communities should be reason enough to confront antisemitism. But if more is needed, we must also recognize that the foundational principles that underpin American democracy cannot survive in a society where hate and intolerance are given space to flourish. When bigotry takes root, what follows is a breakdown in the social contract that binds us as a nation.

American Jews are under attack. If antisemitism continues to fester unchecked, it won't be long before other groups face the same threats.

How we respond today will define the nation we are tomorrow.
The warnings from history are piling up for ‘non-Zionist’ Jews
The protest was at the JW3 community centre on the Finchley Road last week. JW3’s offence was to host a conference sponsored by Haaretz, the left-wing Israeli newspaper that reliably covers Palestinian despair in Gaza and the West Bank. It was convened to discuss the future of the region, including the questions: How do allies committed to liberal democracy relate to a hard-right Israeli government? Who are the Palestinian partners for building a common future?

The insinuation of these question is that a hard-right Israeli government is to be feared and there is, potentially, a common future for Israelis and Palestinians. Delegates included Rula Hardal, a Palestinian and CEO of A Land For All, a Palestinian-Israeli NGO dedicated to a two-state solution; and Ayman Odeh, an Arab-Israeli member of the Knesset.

But answering these questions did not tempt the protesters who gathered outside the gates. These questions, it seemed, should not be answered. They should not even be asked. Instead, again, slogans – we should have learnt to fear slogans – and laughter. The laughter troubles me particularly: for people apparently agonised by war, they seem to be enjoying themselves.

“You look like pigs,” said one to the assembled Jews. “No one likes you. You lot reek.” “We are protesting against the Zionist entity which is well-known to be prolifically based in London,” said another, “and this is one of the venues that likes to host the Zionist entity and those who are complicit in the genocide against the Palestinians by the Israeli settler-colonial state.” “There is only one solution,” sang the rest. “Intifada revolution.” (The police stood by, but that is for another column.)

The second thing was a rebuke offered by David Miller, notorious on these pages, to non-Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews in a series of posts on his X/Twitter page. It was designed, perhaps unconsciously, to mimic a trial.

“Exhibit C,” he typed, “on the problematic status of some of the progressive Jewish milieu.” He named, for instance, Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky.

Surely these are immaculate comrades? Chomsky, who considered Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians in the West Bank “much worse than apartheid?” Finkelstein, author of The Holocaust Industry?

But in 2012, Miller reminds us, Finkelstein wrote this, on the two-state solution: “The flaw in the BDS movement is that it selectively upholds only Palestinian rights, and ignores Palestinian obligations. Under international law, Israel is a state. If you want to appeal to public opinion on the basis of international law, you can’t suddenly become an agnostic on the law when it comes to Israel.”

It seems that even non-Zionist Jews will be soon be required to leave the community of the good. The warnings from history are piling up.


Jonathan Tobin: Existential elections against ‘fascism’ and ‘Hitler’ are bad for democracy
For Democrats, the use of an insult comedian as a warm-up act at former President Donald Trump’s political rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden was heaven-sent. They had already blasted the event in advance as somehow a rerun of a 1939 rally of the pro-Nazi German American Bund. But some of the tasteless and offensive jokes uttered by Tony Hinchcliffe about the island of Puerto Rico and a wide array of ethnic groups seemed to justify the claim that the Trumpist extravaganza was a hate fest that justified the assertion that, as so many Democrats have been arguing, a vote for Trump is a vote for “hate.”

And that is the way the election is being framed in much of the corporate mainstream media.

While I can’t understand the reasoning that led to Hinchcliffe’s appearance at the rally in the first place, I think focusing so much on this framing of the election is a mistake for supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris for five specific reasons.

One is that it’s unlikely to persuade anyone to vote for Harris who is not already part of her left-wing base.

While Trump’s alleged incredible awfulness seems so obvious to half of the country that already hates him, his supporters have long since tuned out what has been a nonstop series of similar bouts of liberal outrage about something he or a supporter might have said.

Hypocritical outrage
They view such episodes as profoundly hypocritical since similar outrage is rarely directed at anything like that said by Harris or her backers. For example, her latest instance of validating antisemitic smears uttered by left-wing haters of Israel was ignored by the same media that treated Hinchcliffe’s bad jokes as front-page news. As liberal comedian and hyper-partisan Democrat Jon Stewart has pointed out, outrage about edgy jokes is never a good look for those seeking public support.

It also hasn’t escaped Trump supporters that it’s not just their candidate who is accused of being haters or fascists but everyone who votes for him. It’s not dissimilar to the Democrats’ partisan congressional investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot that seemed mostly focused on transforming a genuine disgrace into a vast conspiracy on the part of Trump and most Republicans. Trump voters are not wrong to think that as much as the “bad orange man” is being targeted by the left, so are they because of concerns about illegal immigration and the impact of racist woke ideologies that treat all those who are not part of certain groups as “white” oppressors.

Since 2016 when Hillary Clinton called Trump voters “deplorables” to this week when President Joe Biden called them “garbage,” the contempt for Trump backers on the part of their political foes has been painfully obvious. The realignment of American politics as Democrats have become part of the credentialed elites, Wall Street and the very poor while Trump’s GOP has become the defender of the interests of working-class voters is the most underreported political story of the last decade. It is best illustrated by the party’s respective stands on illegal immigration—which hurts working people the most while benefiting major corporations—which is usually ignored or downplayed by the liberal corporate media that tries to cast the election as one between fascism and democracy.
‘Free Gaza’ message linked to ballot box attacks in Washington and Oregon: source
Ballot boxes in Oregon and Washington may have been set on fire by an anti-Israel protester, as investigators found a note that said “ALL DROP BOXES WILL BURN. FREE GAZA,” The Post has learned.

Between 3 and 4 a.m. on Monday, fires caused by incendiary devices were discovered in ballot boxes in Vancouver, Wash. and neighboring Portland, Oregon.

A built-in fire suppressant stopped most of the flames at the Portland location, but hundreds of ballots were destroyed at the drop box at Fisher’s Landing Transit Center in Vancouver.

The FBI is now heading the investigation into the two Monday fires, which are believed to be linked and also connected to a third attempted arson attack earlier in the month in Vancouver.

Election officials and law enforcement have remained largely mum about their investigation.

They’ve directed those who used the ballot boxes over the weekend to track their ballots online and to contact the local auditor’s office for replacement ballots if needed.

But according to an election official with knowledge but not authorized to speak on record, a political letter was discovered in a ballot box at the Vancouver Mall Parking lot location just a few hours after the fires were put out.

According to the source, a white piece of paper folded in half had been deposited in the box.

It is not confirmed if the message came from the suspect involved in the arson fires, but the New York Times reports that all three incendiary devices themselves had the message “Free Gaza” written on them.

The shopping center drop box is less than 15 minutes by car from the Fisher’s Landing Transit Center, where one of the fires occurred.
‘Metaphorical, literal’ anti-Israel arsonists burning ballots, Rep. Ritchie Torres says
Despite finding devices that state “Free Gaza” at the scene of arson attacks on ballot boxes in Washington state and in Oregon, police have said that the motive of the attackers is not yet known.

“Investigators are trying to determine if the perpetrator was actually a pro-Palestinian activist or someone using that prominent cause to sow discord,” The New York Times reported, citing an unnamed official.

The message appeared on devices that police found on Monday at ballot boxes that were burnt in Portland, Ore., and across the state line in Vancouver, Wash., and on a third device near a Vancouver ballot box earlier in the month, per the Times.

“Devices with ‘free Gaza’ messages were found at the ballot box fires in Oregon and Washington. Yet, despite the obvious answers right in front of them, the police are somehow struggling to determine the motive for the arson fires,” wrote Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.).

“The anti-Israel extremists behind the fires are metaphorical and literal arsonists, intent on burning down America itself,” the pro-Israel Democrat stated. “Anti-Americanism is not merely a byproduct of anti-Zionism. It is the product.”

“We’re continuing to monitor this incident in which incendiary devices marked with ‘Free Gaza’ and ‘Free Palestine’ exploded and damaged ballot boxes in Portland and Vancouver,” the Anti-Defamation League stated. “As we await more details, we condemn this attempt to sow fear and disrupt the electoral process.”


Majority of Chicago City Council calls for education board president’s resignation following antisemitic posts
Twenty-six aldermen on the Chicago City Council are calling for Rev. Mitchell Johnson to resign from his position as president of the Chicago Board of Education due to his lengthy history of making antisemitic remarks online.

“We call on Rev. Johnson to apologize and step down from his position immediately,” the 26 aldermen, representing more than half of the body’s members, wrote in a joint letter. “The thousands of Jewish families who send their kids to Chicago Public Schools deserve representation who values them and does not express hate towards the Jewish community.” Johnson’s comments, including a statement saying his “Jewish colleagues appear drunk with the Israeli power,” were first reported in Jewish Insider.

Johnson did not respond to a request for comment. But on Tuesday evening, soon after the report was published, he went on Facebook to share a quote indicating he will not apologize and that he does not regret writing the antisemitic posts: “I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence,” the post said, attributing the quote to abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

The 26 aldermen calling for Johnson’s resignation called the situation “a failure of leadership and judgment on the part of Mayor [Brandon] Johnson and his executive team.” Mayor Johnson — who appointed Rev. Johnson to the role in early October amid a leadership crisis at the school board — “told reporters his appointees would be thoroughly vetted before they were sworn in. It was clear that did not take place,” the aldermen wrote.

“His continued role on the school board is non-negotiable. Both he and Mayor Johnson must act now to correct this terrible mistake,” wrote the aldermen, including Debra Silverstein, the city’s lone Jewish alderman.

Mayor Johnson’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment from JI. He has not weighed in on Rev. Johnson’s antisemitic posts.


Israel wins court fight to participation in French Euronaval exhibition
A Parisian court ruled that Israeli companies will be allowed to participate in the French Euronaval exhibition on Wednesday.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz congratulated the Israeli petitioners in the French court for “the significant victory” in a post on X/Twitter.

He called French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to exclude Israeli companies from the French Euronaval exhibition “undemocratic and unjust.”

“This is an important victory for justice and a clear message against attempts to weaken Israel in its fight against forces of evil,” the foreign minister noted.

The Manufacturer’s Association of Israel (MAI) announced on X on Monday that it had filed a joint petition with Israel Shipyards and the France-Israel Chamber of Commerce the previous week against the organizers of the Euronaval exhibition for barring Israelis from entry.

“This decision by the French government directly hinders Israeli companies’ ability to participate and compete in the European defense market,” MAI stated.
Starmer refuses to call Israel’s war in Gaza ‘genocide’
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer refused to call Israel’s actions in Gaza “genocide”, despite pressure to do so at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday.

The pressure came from Green Party’s co-leader Carla Denyer, who was attacking the decision of Israel’s Knesset to back legislation to curtail the activities of Palestinian UN agency Unrwa.

She told MPs: “The ICJ (International Court of Justice) has mandated that Israel ensures access to life saving aid in Gaza under Article Two of the Genocide Convention, yet the Israeli government has voted to effectively block its delivery. As a human rights lawyer, does the Prime Minister agree that banning Unrwa is a breach of international law?”

She continued: “How much more evidence does need before calling out what is happening as a genocide and acting in line with the UK's responsibilities as a signatory of the Genocide Convention.”

Starmer said that he “never described the what's going on in Gaza as genocide” but said that “all sides should comply with international law”.

On the Knesset’s votes to restrict Unrwa’s activities, he told the Commons that he was “very worried and concerned about the decision that's just been taken by the parliament in relation to Unrwa, there's a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, and that decision will only make it much worse” and said the decision “needs to be reversed.”

The Prime Minister had already publicly criticised the Knesset’s vote and said in a statement on Monday night that “under its international obligations, Israel must ensure sufficient aid reaches civilians in Gaza” and that “only Unrwa can deliver humanitarian aid at the scale and pace needed.”


Antisemites should be deported from Sweden, refused citizenship, says MEP
People who incite violence against Jews must be prosecuted or deported from Sweden without pardon, Swedish politician and MEP Alice Teodorescu Måwe argued.

Writing in a blog post on her Substack this weekend, Teodorescu said that any Swedish citizen who threatens Jews should face prosecution, and if they lack Swedish citizenship, they should be made to leave the country.

“With the right to live one’s life in peace and freedom, with all the rights that come with living in Sweden, obligations and responsibilities also follow,” she continued.

Teodorescu also advocated for Sweden to adopt a ruling similar to the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, where citizens must recognize Israel’s right to exist before becoming citizens.

An individual wanting to become Swedish must “embrace the Judeo-Christian values that Swedish democracy rests on,” she wrote, particularly values of equality, tolerance, and secularism.

Citizenship is a privilege
She added that anyone who acquires Swedish citizenship but later acts in contravention of the commitment to these values should have it revoked.

“Swedish citizenship is a privilege, something to be grateful for,” Teodorescu wrote.

Making a comparison to Kristallnacht, when the Nazis destroyed Jewish businesses and houses while German citizens looked on, Teodorescu said that Sweden is similarly allowing today’s Jews to be targeted.

Last week, Swedish journalist Sofie Löwenmark reported on a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Gothenburg in which a large crowd chanted “Khaybar, Khaybar, ya yahud,” which means “Khaybar, Khaybar, Oh Jews! “The army of Muhammad will return!”

This refers to the Battle of Khaybar, during which a Muslim army besieged an area with a prominent Jewish community in 628 CE. The rallying cry, coined during the First Intifada, has often been chanted at anti-Israel rallies.
Austria heading for stormy Kristallnacht ceremony with new parliament president
A new political precedent was added to the history of post-WWII Austria: for the first time, a candidate representing the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), Walter Rosenkranz, was elected president of the newly elected Nationalrat (National Council) of the Austrian Parliament.

Out of the 183 members of Parliament, 100 voted for Rosenkranz’s candidacy. His party, which won the last general election on September 29, has only 57 seats.

In a secret ballot, Rosenkranz received votes from MPs belonging to parties that a few days before his election rejected forming a government with the FPÖ under its current leader, Herbert Kickl, considered by them a “threat to democracy and rule of law.”

Rosenkranz, until recently the public prosecutor, has thus become the No. 2 authority in Austria after the president.

However, Rosenkranz’s career has not been free of controversy, relating mainly to his membership in a nationalist student fraternity – Libertas – and alleged contacts with extreme-right-wing bodies and activists.

Rosenkranz, 62, was criticized in the past for writing a text to a festive brochure of his fraternity in which he hailed old Nazi members of the group as “top performers.”

One of them was the jurist Johann Stich, who joined the Austrian Nazi Party in 1930 and, after the annexation of Austria to the Third Reich (Anschluss), became attorney-general in Vienna.

Rosenkranz has since admitted regret over writing the text and stated that he wouldn’t have written it today. At the same time, he declared that he wished Austrian public opinion to be more informed about the history of student fraternities and their contribution to democracy and freedom.

These student fraternities (Burschenschaften) appeared in Germany and Austria in the second half of the 19th century, in light of the oppression caused by the anti-monarchist and nationalist revolutions of 1848.

These fraternities supported the idea of Greater Germany and often became later antisemitic.
Why Are Ivy League Schools Quietly Rewarding Student Anti-Israel Protest Leaders?
The past academic year saw an unsettling rise in antisemitism on American college campuses as anti-Israel protests swept through some of the nation’s most prestigious universities. Initially, college administrations, seemingly paralyzed by indecision, justified these disruptions under the guise of protecting students’ rights to express themselves—even as protesters commandeered campus spaces with “anti-Zionist” encampments that effectively ostracized Jewish students.

The situation reached a breaking point after disastrous congressional hearings led to the resignations of Harvard President Claudine Gay and Penn’s Liz Magill, casting a harsh light on university leadership’s ineffectual handling of protests. At institutions like Harvard and Columbia, these demonstrations escalated into aggressive actions, prompting reluctant administrators to call in police and impose disciplinary measures on some student protest leaders.

While these resignations and official responses might have signaled a potential turning point, evidence suggests little has truly changed.

Harvard University, for example, has long grappled with allegations of campus antisemitism, from the Cornel West tenure controversy to recent scenes of blatant hostility toward Jews. Last year, one of the most disturbing incidents unfolded at the Harvard Business School during a “Stop the Genocide in Gaza” protest, where a pro-Israel student attempting to film the event was reportedly surrounded and assaulted by a crowd chanting, “Shame, shame, shame.”

While Claudine Gay’s resignation marked an official acknowledgment of the crisis enveloping Harvard, other troubling signs remain. The university has quietly backtracked on some disciplinary measures imposed on student agitators. A prominent example is Prince Aviunce Williams, a Harvard class of 2025 student and co-founder of the African American Resistance Organization (AFRO), who received a full academic scholarship to attend Harvard. After leading campus rallies where the Hamas slogan “From the River to the Sea”—a call for Israel’s destruction—was chanted, Williams faced suspension.

However, he announced in July that Harvard had reversed its decision, releasing a video in which he declared, “Make no mistake, the reversal of these charges is not a reflection of the good nature of the institution but a demonstration of the power of our organizing. When I rejoin my peers this fall, we must understand our movement is working, that our momentum is growing, and that Palestine will be free from the river to the sea.”

At Columbia University, there was a similar surge in antisemitic incidents with even faculty joining in. Among the most disturbing was tenured professor Joseph Massad’s article for Electronic Intifada, in which he lauded Hamas’ October 7 massacre of Israeli civilians as “astonishing” and “incredible.” This appalling endorsement of terror sent shockwaves through Columbia’s Jewish community, yet the administration chose not to act, signaling a worrying tolerance for such extremism.

The administration’s stance toward faculty echoes its inaction on student-led protests. Johannah King-Slutzky, a doctoral student and prominent activist, epitomized protesters’ sense of entitlement when she led a press conference demanding “humanitarian aid” for students occupying campus buildings. King-Slutzky, despite her role in leading the disruption, now teaches a required undergraduate course, “Contemporary Western Civilization,” in Hamilton Hall—the very building she helped occupy, leading to the arrest of 22 students during the 2024 fall protests.

And while Columbia had promised firm disciplinary action, an August congressional report reveals that 18 of those arrested remain in good standing, underscoring the administration’s reluctance to impose meaningful consequences.

Columbia student Khymani James made headlines after he was banned from the university for inciting violence against “Zionists,” declaring that they “don’t deserve to live.” Following his suspension in April, James acknowledged in a since-deleted post on X that he had indeed made the inflammatory remarks, but defended them by stating, “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.”

However, just six months later, the coalition of anti-Israel groups that initially apologized on his behalf reversed course and doubled down on support for violence against Israel. Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) posted a statement on Instagram retracting their previous apology: “Last spring, in the midst of the encampments, [CUAD] posted a statement framed as an apology on behalf of Khymani James,” the post read. “We deliberately misrepresented your experiences and your words, and we let you down.” CUAD’s message reaffirmed its endorsement of armed “resistance.”
Australia opens inquiry into 'disturbing' antisemitism at universities, Jewish groups skeptical
The Australian government has referred the issue of antisemitism at Australian universities to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights for an in-depth inquiry.

However, the Shadow education minister and the Australian Jewish Association criticized the move as “inadequate.”

The move was announced in a joint statement by the education minister, Jason Clare, and the attorney-general and cabinet-secretary, Mark Dreyfus.

The Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee recommended the inquiry after being “deeply troubled” by the experiences of Jewish students and the way Australian higher education institutions have responded to antisemitism.

“Every Australian deserves to feel safe and supported in our community,” the statement said. “There is no place for hatred or racism.”

The inquiry will take into account the prevalence and incidence of antisemitism at universities and will explore whether the frameworks for preventing antisemitism and the current support given to staff and students is sufficient.

The committee has until March 31, 2025, to submit its findings.

Dreyfus said that “all around Australia, Jewish students and staff tell me they don’t feel welcome on campus, and they don’t think their universities care.”

He called the situation “intolerable” and “disturbing” and one that requires urgent action.

Clare added that nothing is more essential than students feeling safe on campus and praised the existing measures of the Albanese government.

Others call inquiry inadequate
The shadow education minister, Sarah Henderson, called the decision “shockingly inadequate and a farce.”

“The inquiry is a gross insult to Jewish Australians because it ignores the advice of the government’s antisemitism envoy, Jillian Segal, and representatives of every major Jewish organization who strongly back an independent judicial inquiry into antisemitism at Australian universities,” she wrote.

She also criticized the choice of date by which the findings must be published (March 2025), which she said is likely to come after a federal election and therefore the dissolution of Parliament.

“The reporting date is a grubby attempt by Labor to ensure the committee’s report never sees the light of day,” Sen. Henderson said.

She added that the reason so many Jewish students feel unsafe on campuses in Australia is because the Labor government has failed repeatedly to take action to combat antisemitism.
Gil Troy: Dear students, this is how to resist the academic intifada
In letters adapted from a new book, US academic Gil Troy explains why celebrating Zionism is the best way to counter the anti-Israel movement on campuses

Letter One: WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?
Dear Students,
These letters call on you to resist the “Academic Intifada”, the anti-Zionist movement on campus and elsewhere, which includes professors, administrators and students.

By crying “Globalise the Intifada,” this movement endorses violence – “by any means necessary”; terrorism – “burn, burn Tel Aviv” and “we are Hamas”; and Israel’s eradication – “from the river to the sea”. These activists attack what Israel is, not what Israel does. In its actions and implications, the movement is anti-Jewish, anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-intellectual. It is addicted to black-white binaries, especially those of “oppressor-oppressed” and “coloniser-decoloniser”.

It also turned personal this year. There were calls such as “we know where you live” and attacks by professors on students and dormmates on their neighbours.

Many of the movement’s leaders seek to turn your campus against you, treating universities as propaganda camps pushing one nihilistic political view that is unacademic and illiberal.

The movement is obsessively anti-Israel. It focuses disproportionate energy and blame on Israel and Zionism, while ignoring bad actors worldwide, from Iran’s genocidal mullahs to China’s and Russia’s imperialistic autocrats. Such one-sidedness and such double standards are inherently antisemitic. In slogans such as “There is only one solution, intifada, revolution,” activists repeat a term – “intifada” – popularised in the early 2000s when Palestinian terrorists, rejecting the Oslo Peace Process and seeking Israel’s destruction, murdered more than 1,000 innocents.

The movement is also obsessed with race and identity politics, erroneously framing the nationalist conflict between Israelis and Palestinians as racial, despite the fact that there are light-skinned Palestinians and dark-skinned Israelis. Overlapping with many other academic trends today including postmodernism, identity politics, critical race theory, antiracism, DEI regimes, Social Justice Warriors, and the “woke” movement, the Academic Intifada fixates on Israel, Jews and Zionism. .............
Letter Two : Why I Am a Zionist
Dear Students,
We Westerners are the luckiest people in history, living in thriving democracies. And we Western Jews are among the luckiest Jews ever. In my lifetime, both Western Jews and Israelis have flourished – defying the odds and the grievance junkies, justifying Zionism and liberal democracy.

Yet today, many students mindlessly call for the destruction of Zionism – and Israel – “from the river to the sea”. Zionist has become a curse word. Reeling, many Jewish students ask me: “Why keep using the word ‘Zionist’? Shouldn’t we find a term that’s not toxic?”

My American-infused Zionism is a hopeful, second-stage, Zionism. If I tried building it reactively, on scars, on my personal trauma from Jew-haters, it would rest on a thin foundation. Instead, it evolved proactively, on bedrocks of Americanness, Jewishness, liberalism, truth-seeking, and meaning-seeking.

It’s a dreaming Zionism anchored in rootedness, not homelessness, plunging ahead towards an identity adventure, not fleeing persecution and poverty. It’s a communal Zionism of “never alone because we are one”, not a defensive Zionism of “never again”. It’s a romantic Zionism of perfecting Israel, not just defending it, and no longer needing to establish the Jewish state. It’s a fearless Zionism that resists our enemies doggedly, while living life passionately.

And it’s an identity Zionism that, with respect to President John F Kennedy, doesn’t just ask “What can you do for your country?” but asks, and answers, “What can that country do for you?” – by being yours, giving inspiration and identity, wherever you live.

While I am happy to redefine, revitalise, and even revive Zionism, I won’t surrender to our enemies by abandoning this successful movement’s Jerusalem-based name, honouring Mount Zion in our eternal capital. Feminists teach us to “take back the night”, defying the haters. We Jews get to define our own national liberation movement. No one can sully it for me or take it from us. I encourage you to hear in Zionism the joyous sounds of King David dancing in the hills – the Bible mentions Mount Zion nine times – of Jews from all over walking up to the First, then Second, Temples on the three pilgrimage festivals, of Jews wailing worldwide as they remembered Zion, of archaeologists digging as they discover the layers of Jewish connection to this place, and of Israelis singing “Jerusalem of Gold” to celebrate Jerusalem’s reunification in 1967.
Twenty-five attorneys general sign letter to Armstrong expressing concerns about antisemitism on campus
Attorneys General Alan Wilson of South Carolina and Tim Griffin of Arkansas penned a letter to interim University President Katrina Armstrong on Wednesday raising concerns about antisemitism on campus and calling on Armstrong to resist calls to divest from Israel.

The attorneys general of 23 other states signed the letter in support, including those from Florida, Texas, and Virginia. All 25 contributing attorneys general are members of the Republican Party. Wilson and Griffin cited “an escalation in antisemitic rhetoric” from pro-Palestinian organizations on campus since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

“As the Attorneys General of South Carolina and Arkansas, we are joined by the Attorneys General of the 23 undersigned states to raise grave concerns about antisemitism on the campus of Columbia University, and to encourage your administration to hold the line against demands to divest from Israel,” Wilson and Griffin wrote. “This issue is a matter of special concern to the states because students from across the country attend Columbia University.”

The Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing rejected on Feb. 29 Columbia University Apartheid Divest’s Dec. 1, 2023, proposal for University divestment from Israel. On April 29, former University President Minouche Shafik announced that “the University will not divest from Israel.” Several pro-Palestinian student groups, including Columbia University Apartheid Divest and the recently formed Columbia Palestine Solidarity Coalition, continue to push for divestment.

A University official confirmed that Columbia has received the letter.

“We always appreciate the opportunity to hear from public officials on a range of topics,” University spokesperson Millie Wert wrote in a statement to Spectator.

The letter highlights CUAD’s apology to Columbia College student Khymani James, in which the student group wrote it does “support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance.” CUAD had previously condemned James’ comments that the University should be grateful that he wasn’t “going out and murdering Zionists,” but rescinded that statement in its formal apology to James, who was suspended in August for one academic year.

“[CUAD] marked the one-year anniversary of the October 7 attacks by distributing a newspaper with a headline reading ‘One Year Since Al-Aqsa Flood, Revolution Until Victory,’ while showing a picture of Hamas fighters breaching the security fence to Israel,” Wilson and Griffin wrote. “The group also praised a Tel Aviv attack by Palestinian militants that killed seven people on October 1 of this year, including a mother who died while shielding her 9-month-old baby. And it voiced support for Iran’s missile attack on the Jewish state that began that same evening.”

The letter wrote that CUAD’s coordination with the citywide pro-Palestinian group Within Our Lifetime, which called for protesters to “Flood New York City For Palestine” on Oct. 7, is an example of “extreme activity” and “antisemitic rhetoric.”


Jewish Man Severely Wounded in Brooklyn Stabbing Attack as Perpetrator Remains at Large
A visibly Jewish man was slashed in the face as he was walking through downtown Brooklyn, New York on Tuesday morning.

The victim, a resident of Crown Heights in his late 20s, was approached by a black male in a ski mask who stabbed him without any provocation, according to a report from COLlive.com, an Orthodox Jewish news outlet. The victim survived and was taken to a local hospital in serious but stable condition.

“This is a very serious incident, and the Jewish Future Alliance is deeply concerned about it,” said Yaacov Berman, a liaison for Chabad Headquarters, on X/Twitter. “Witnesses at the scene testified that it was unprovoked. I just spoke to the family; he is hospitalized and requires surgery. The attacker allegedly yelled hateful rhetoric.”

Crown Heights Shmira, a public safety organization, is assisting the New York City Police Department (NYPD) in making sure the perpetrator is apprehended, according to COLlive.

Tuesday’s attack came two months after New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli released an analysis showing that antisemitic incidents accounted for a striking 65 percent of all felony hate crime incidents in New York City last year. Across the entire state, meanwhile, nearly 44 percent of all recorded hate crime incidents and 88 percent of religious-based hate crimes targeted Jewish victims.
Chicago mayor under fire days after antisemitic shooting
Days after the shooting of a Jewish man in Chicago’s West Rogers Park, critics blasted Mayor Brandon Johnson for his lack of support and understanding of the Jewish community.

“No one has heard from either him or anybody in his administration, which is shameful,” David Goldenberg, who is the regional director at Anti-Defamation League Midwest, said during a Tuesday morning news conference.

“We’ve been saying it over and over again since October 7. We need our mayor to step up, do more, and acknowledge what is happening here in Chicago,” said Yossi Held, the executive director of Stand With Us in the Midwest region.

By the end of the day, the Mayor’s Office posted a statement on the social media platform X/Twitter: “On behalf of Chicago, our heartfelt thoughts and prayers are with the victim and his loved ones from this weekend’s shooting incident that took place in Rogers Park. This tragic event should have never happened, and we recognize the dedication of our first responders who put their lives on the line during this shooting.

“The Mayor’s Office is in close communication with the Chicago Police Department as the investigation continues. All Chicagoans deserve to feel safe and protected across the city. There is more work to be done, and we are committed to diligently improving community safety in every neighborhood.”

Chicago’s Jewish Community Relations Council quickly responded, also on X:
“You failed to identify that the victim was a Jewish man, in a densely populated Jewish neighborhood, going to synagogue for Shabbat morning prayers. What will it take for you to acknowledge the Jewish community?”

In contrast to Johnson’s comments, Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois posted a midday statement via X showing deep compassion for the Jewish people: “This attack on a Jewish man in Chicago during the Jewish holidays is unacceptable. Antisemitism is on the rise in America, and we must remain laser-focused on rooting it out. I stand with the Jewish community in Chicago and across the country.”

This dialogue came days after Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi, 22, from Chicago, allegedly shot a 39-year-old man in the shoulder as he walked to synagogue on Saturday morning.

“[The victim’s] a friend. He’s going to be okay by literally a miracle, but he has a road ahead of him,” said Shlomo Soroka, the director of government affairs at Agudath Israel of Illinois, who suggested the outcome could have been worse.

“Every single week he goes to synagogue, he takes his girls with him, his little girls. This weekend he decided to go by himself. Could you imagine if those little girls were with him?” Soroka asked.
Jewish community slams Chicago Mayor Johnson after shooting of Jewish man
Chicago’s Jewish Community Relations Council, Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee chapters slammed Mayor Brandon Johnson on Tuesday for failing to “acknowledge the Jewish community” in a statement after a Muslim man shot a Jewish man walking to synagogue on Saturday in West Rogers Park, home to one of the city’s largest Orthodox Jewish populations.

Three days after the shooting, in which the suspect allegedly yelled “Allahu Akbar” as he exchanged fire with police officers responding to the initial shooting, Johnson wrote on X, “Our heartfelt thoughts and prayers are with the victim and his loved ones from this weekend’s shooting incident that took place in Rogers Park. All Chicagoans deserve to feel safe and protected across the city. There is more work to be done, and we are committed to diligently improving community safety in every neighborhood.”

The JCRC responded to Johnson in a tweet saying, “You failed to identify that the victim was a Jewish man, in a densely populated Jewish neighborhood, going to synagogue for Shabbat morning prayers. What will it take for you to acknowledge the Jewish community?”

Sarah van Loon, regional director of AJC Chicago, also condemned Johnson’s omission in an interview with Jewish Insider. “I’m deeply troubled that Mayor Johnson can’t name that the victim was visibly Jewish and walking to synagogue on Shabbat,” van Loon said. “It just feels like one more opportunity that would have been so easy for him to recognize the Jewish community of Chicago that has been hurting so much this past year, and yet again our pain is invisible to him [even though] the Jewish community is super active in Chicago.”

David Goldenberg, regional director of ADL Midwest, noted that Johnson’s statement “came more than 48 hours after the incident and only after he was criticized.”

“Mayor Johnson’s statement was empty and falls flat in the Jewish community,” Goldenberg told JI.

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) also denounced Johnson’s statement on Tuesday. “Any Mayor who cannot be bothered to acknowledge the antisemitism of a hate crime against a Jewish man heading to a synagogue is unworthy of the office he holds,” Torres wrote on X.

Chicago’s Jewish leaders have also expressed disappointment that the shooting has not yet been charged as a hate crime.


Teenage thugs in Paris ‘try to rape’ Jewish man after they ‘find image of Israeli flag on his phone’
A Jewish man in Paris was attacked by two men who attempted to rape him after discovering a photo of the Israeli flag on his phone, the alleged victim and his lawyers have claimed.

Prosecutors in Seine-Saint-Denis, a northeastern suburb of the French capital, have reportedly opened an investigation into a 16-year-old and a 19-year-old, both said to be Algerian.

The 22-year-old was only able to escape thanks to the intervention of passing strangers who heard him scream, he told Le Parisien.

Noam, whose name has been changed, said he had left work and was going to the tobacconist's when he was approached by the two men when they asked him for a cigarette.

The men, he claimed, had been hanging around by the bank of a nearby canal.

After he handed them a pack of cigarettes, they reportedly pushed him aside and grabbed his phone.

The teenagers then scrolled through his Instagram feed until they discovered an image on an Israeli flag and a rainbow, posted by Noam to represent his Jewish and gay identies respectively.

The men then began shouting "dirty f*ggot" and "dirty Jew," Le Parisien reported.

The 16-year-old is alleged to have then pinned his victim to a truck.

“He pulled down my pants, then my underwear. He had an erection, he wanted to penetrate me,” Noam said. “I begged them to stop. I was waiting for it to end, I was afraid they were armed.”


'A Real Pain' film presents the parallels of generational struggle
Jesse Eisenberg created the film “A Real Pain” to depict the emotional distress between two Jewish American cousins touring modern-day Poland as they learn more about the trauma of the Holocaust.

“I wanted to talk about that pain (between cousins) but set against the backdrop of something so much more objectively worse, like World War Two trauma,” Eisenberg said.

He wanted to pose an important question to both the audience and to himself.

“What pain is valid? Are we supposed to take these two young men seriously, even though their pain could not compare to massive, mass-scale terror, or are we supposed to dismiss them because their lives are irrelevant against the backdrop?” he added.

“A Real Pain” is distributed by Searchlight Pictures, a unit of Walt Disney, and arrives in theaters on Friday. The film follows different-tempered cousins David, played by Eisenberg, and Benji, played by Kieran Culkin, as they reunite for a group tour of Poland to learn more about their grandmother and Jewish history.

The movie also stars Will Sharpe as James, the group tour guide, along with Jennifer Grey, Kurt Egyiawan, Liza Sadovy, and Daniel Oreskes, who play members of the tour group.


Los Angeles Jewish museum installation contains ‘physical testimony’ of Oct. 7 attack
An installation related to the Sukkot holiday transforms the courtyard of the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles into an immersive, somber world.

The artist Jonathan York created a sukkah using more than a ton or reinforced steel and some 6,000 pounds of wood that he burnt, as well as charred pieces that he secured from homes that Hamas terrorists set ablaze during their Oct. 7, 2023 terror attack. A soundscape evokes 10,000 bees and a market near Tel Aviv beaches.

The entire installation, titled “Force Majeure,” which is on view until Nov. 3, “invites viewers into a space where nature, history and memory converge,” the artist and lawyer told JNS on a recent visit.

The title of the work, which is the sixth iteration of York’s Sukkah Project, is a nod to his job as an attorney. The concept refers to parties breaking an agreement due to unforeseen circumstances, such as an “act of God.”

The French term means “superior force,” York told JNS. “What is the force majeure of the last 12 months? I leave that up to you.”

York etched two Hebrew poems by the medieval Spanish thinker, physician and writer Judah Halevi inside the sukkah walls. The poet pined for the Holy Land, and traveled there at the end of his life, dying in Jerusalem in 1141.

“Zion, do you not ask about the wellbeing of your captives?” one of the quotes reads. “Those of your flock that ensue thy peace? And peace from him that in captivity longs for you, and cries tears like Hermon’s dew, and years to shed them on your hills.”

York told JNS that his transformation of the museum’s concrete courtyard is about centering the organic.

“At the end of the day, nature knows what to do,” he said. “We can learn from nature how to come back from tragedy just like a forest does.”
Freed hostage Mia Schem says she was kept in cage with 5 other women still in Gaza
Freed hostage Mia Schem said Monday that she was held underground for five days in a tight cage with five other young women who are still in captivity in Gaza.

Speaking in Hebrew at the Israeli consulate in New York, Schem said that, injured and weak after 50 days in captivity, she was marched for two hours through Gaza’s tunnels, with “an armed terrorist in front [and] an armed terrorists in back” taking her 60 meters (197 feet) underground to a 1.5-meter (5-foot) -tall cage “without air, without light.”

“There I met five young women, each with their own horrific abduction story,” she said. “We spent five days in that dark cage, with two armed guards changing shifts every 12 hours.”

Schem said she tried to encourage the other hostages.

“I told them we would soon get out,” said Schem. “We were injured and shocked by what had happened to us. Just a few weeks before, we had been innocent girls.”

“On the fifth day, I was released,” said Schem. “I was able to hug them and promise them that they’ll be released tomorrow, that we’ll meet again in our country and pick up the pieces.”

“It’s been a year. I’m here in body, but my innocence remains in the fields of blood, and my heart remains hostage in Gaza with five young women still held there, tortured and abused, without air, in the chambers of hell,” she said.

It was unclear who the five other hostages were or where in Gaza the cage was located.




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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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