Friday, November 01, 2024

11/01 Links Pt2: The Freedom to Be Sharansky; Chuck Schumer’s Ultimate Betrayal; Thom Yorke vs the anti-Israel bigots; Sally Rooney’s anti-Israel intolerance

From Ian:

Gil Troy: The Freedom to Be Sharansky
Historians rarely write in collaboration with those who make history. A few years ago, I was fortunate to do just that.

Natan Sharansky at 76 starts his workdays at 5:30 a.m. He has been married to Avital for 50 years, although she adds “minus 12” because she refuses to count the ones during which the Soviet authorities forcibly kept them apart as they dared to defy the Communist system and seek emigration to Israel. Those years of separation include the nine from 1977 to 1986 when he was trapped inside the Soviet prison system, including stays in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo jail and Perm 35 in the Gulag archipelago.

In 2018, as he completed another nine years—his near-decade leading the Jewish Agency for Israel, the Jewish world’s largest nongovernmental organization—Sharansky felt compelled to recount some key episodes and lessons of his life in his effort to balance the twin goods of freedom and identity, thoughtful patriotism and civil dialogue. He asked me to co-author that book.

We made an odd couple. I was raised with my name, “Gil Troy,” to fit in as an American while being a proud Jew, living in one of the most Jew-friendly countries; he was forced to stand out despite his perfectly Russian original name, “Anatoly,” because he was a Jew living in one of the most Judeophobic countries. I spent most of the 1980s at Harvard, learning to be an American historian. He spent most of the 1980s in the Gulag, fighting to stay alive as a political prisoner. When I first noted our Harvard-Gulag ’80s gap, without skipping a beat, Natan quipped, “That means I have moral clarity, and you don’t.”

Miraculously, Avital’s unlikely but determined campaign of persuasion—during which she crisscrossed the globe and lobbied Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, François Mitterrand, and many others for years seeking their assistance in securing the freedom of her husband—finally paid off. In 1986, many of us watched Sharansky zigzag across the Glienicke Bridge connecting East and West Berlin after a KGB agent had told him to “walk straight” to freedom, a final act of defiance.

But that’s not actually what we saw. In fact, after landing in East Berlin, it was on the airport tarmac that the then-named Anatoly Shcharansky (note the Russian letter “shch” he bore as the opening sound of his surname rather than the softer Hebrew “shin”) zigzagged away from his Communist captors into a waiting car. In a 1988 speech, Ronald Reagan said of that moment, “It was one of those moments when laughter and tears commingle, and one does not know when the first leaves off and the second begins. It was a vision of the purest freedom known to man, the freedom of a man whose cause is just and whose faith is his guiding light.”

By the time he had reached the bridge, he was already free and no longer had Communist masters to disobey. Nevertheless, people keep telling him, and me, how they are still inspired by that moment, which I’m sure they are, only it wasn’t on the bridge!

Although we wrote the book collaboratively, the most pressing question I was trained to ask as a biographer stayed with me: What made this man tick? There were 250 million Soviet citizens, including 2 million Jews. Why did he become not just a refusenik—a Jew who sought and was then refused permission to emigrate from the Soviet Union to Israel—but one of the few Jewish activists who also worked as a dissident with Andrei Sakharov and the Soviet human-rights movement? That synthesis made him the regime’s most famous political prisoner. And how did he endure nine years of solitary confinement, punishment cells, hunger strikes and forced feeding, yet then emerge with a ready smile and quick wit?

Sharansky explains, matter-of-factly, that in 1967, when he was 19, the anti-Semitic jibes he had grown up enduring suddenly changed form. After Israel won the Six-Day War, even close friends started joking about his being a bully and not a coward. Fascinated that something that happened in a country he had never visited could change people’s impressions of him, he started learning more about the Jewish state and his Jewish identity.

“Once I discovered my identity, I then discovered my freedom,” he explains. Still, discovering your freedom is not the same as fighting for it.
Editor's Notes: The dilemma of raising children during the war is almost like 'Life is Beautiful'
Beyond the tragedy, we also witness the incredible resilience of our people – thousands of initiatives aimed at bringing light into these dark days.

People reach out with stories of kindness, courage, and unity, hoping we can give them a platform, a voice in this storm. And while we long to honor each one, the hard truth is that we can’t.

We don’t have enough time, enough staff, or enough space on our pages to truly do justice to every single story. It’s a painful compromise, one that eats at us, but it’s the reality we’re up against.

In the end, though, we keep going because that’s what we’ve always done. In a way, being Jewish has always meant living on, pushing forward, and finding light amid the darkness.

We may be shaken, but we are not broken. We have no time to fall into despair because our purpose keeps us grounded.

Getting the news to you – truthful, fast, and clear – is our mission, even as our own hearts are sometimes weighed down by it all.

There’s an unbreakable resolve in us. We won’t allow ourselves the luxury of crumbling.

We keep going, keep telling the stories, keep bearing witness, because it’s our role.

As a father, as a journalist, and as a Jew, I look at these challenges, these daily battles, and realize they are woven into who we are. And, as always, we’ll endure.
When Jews Lived Under Muslim Rule
The Land of Israel is Different
As we mentioned, yes, there were golden eras in the history of Arab-Jewish relations. However, a claim put forward by some ardent anti-Zionists is that things were actually better for Jews in the land of Israel under Islam and before Zionism came on the scene. It is saying that Zionism changed the dynamic. And in that sense, they are correct, but only insofar as it introduced a Jew who fought back – not in terms of antisemitic attacks and persecution.

First, let’s begin with the basic fact that the Muslim Arab conquest of the land of Israel in 636-37 was a settler-colonial enterprise. And they are proud of it, calling it the “Palestine Conquest” - Fatah Filastin (yes, the same word Fatah, “Conquest”, is used as the name of the movement currently in charge of the Palestinian Authority). After the occupation, the majority of Christians in the land of Israel adopted Islam and Arabized and the building of new synagogues was banned.

With the construction of the Dome of the Rock in 691 and the Al-Aqsa Mosque in 705, the Muslims established the Temple Mount as an Islamic holy site. Jews were banned from it for the next 1,000 years. Periodic social and economic discrimination in the following centuries caused substantial Jewish emigration from the land of Israel.

Other notable events under Muslim rule include:
- The expulsion of the Gaonate – the main Jewish academy of learning and religious authority – in 1071, after Jerusalem was conquered by the Seljuq Turks.
- The imposition of a dhimmi tax on Jews and Christians and the curtailment of their rights, with more intense enforcement in the 10th and 11th centuries. In the Mamluk period (13th-16th centuries), the dhimmi laws were cranked up to include additional discriminatory practices intended for humiliation. Jewish and Christian communities declined precipitously.
- The Mamluks also banned Jews (and Christians) from the Cave of Our Patriarchs in Hebron. To this day, you can still see where Jews had to stop for about 700 years, on the seventh step leading into the building, until Israel put an end to the ban after the Six Day War in 1967.
- In the 18th century, Jewish communities throughout Israel were extorted and oppressed by local tribal and regional chiefs. In Jerusalem, Ottoman authorities restricted the number of Jews allowed to live there and expelled all Ashkenazi Jews from the city due to a debt some of them owed to Muslims.
- In 1831, Muhammad Ali of Egypt took over the land of Israel. In 1834, there were 33 days of looting and murder targeting Jews in Tzfat (Safed) and Hebron. More than 500 Jews were murdered, unknown numbers of women were raped, property was ransacked and looted, and synagogues were set on fire.

That’s all before the Zionist movement as we know it was a thing.

Then there’s this inconvenient fact, which is worth noting even though it does relate to a time after the Zionist movement was already well established: there are more than a dozen Jewish communities in the land of Israel that were destroyed by Arabs before 1947. But not a single such Arab community.

This partial review is a corrective to manipulative misinformation promoted by anti-Israel terror-apologists on US campuses, in European streets, and in the international media. It is admittedly far from comprehensive. However, an honest and open-eyed review of Arab-Jewish relations can provide a new perspective on our history as Jews, on the Middle East generally, and on the State of Israel’s struggle for survival.

Of course, this does not mean that Israel is always right. Just a reminder that views on current events should be grounded in reality – however complex it may be.


Seth Mandel: Chuck Schumer’s Ultimate Betrayal
It turns out that Chuck Schumer really is a shomer. The first Jewish Senate majority leader and decades-long Democratic Party big shot from New York has always told the Jewish community that he is Schumer the shomer, which means guardian in Hebrew. He didn’t just have their back—he had their front. Schumer would stand sentry before the Jewish community.

Well, he was kind of right. Schumer is a guardian. But in a reversal of his self-serving narrative, Schumer offers his protection not to his fellow Jews but to those pursuing the Jews with intent to do harm. Schumer’s attic is for the anti-Semite, should he ever need a place to crash.

That’s just one of several key takeaways from the House Education Committee’s report on anti-Semitism on campus and the role that Congress has played in it since Oct. 7. It is a congressional document of immense historical significance. And it is infuriating.

The background to this report is straightforward. The Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre catalyzed the long-simmering anti-Semitism at elite American universities into a full-blown breakdown of societal norms around Jew-baiting and institutional discrimination the likes of which have not seen since the 1920s. That crisis exploded onto the streets of major American cities as well as the quads of college campuses and major arts and cultural institutions. It became clear that schools were widely violating the civil-rights protections of Jewish students, necessitating the federal government’s involvement. The Biden administration balked, and the GOP-led Education Committee stepped in.

The hearings that followed led to the resignations of the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and, eventually, Columbia. The committee hearings were responsible—primarily, but not solely—for the only cases of real accountability.

That run of accountability, as well as further investigation into the plight of Jews on campus, was exactly what Chuck Schumer tried to stop dead in its tracks. The leaders of Columbia, where the anti-Semitism was and is among the worst in the country, eventually came before Congress in April. Three months earlier, President Minouche Shafik met with Schumer, and the supposed shomer told her that Democrats had no problem with her and that only Republicans cared about the anti-Semitism crisis on campus. His office advised Shafik not to meet with Republicans on the Hill. When Columbia Trustees co-chair David Greenwald texted previous co-chair Jonathan Lavine about the situation, Lavine responded by saying “Let’s hope the Dems win the house back.” Greenwald wrote back: “Absolutely.”

This is the message that Schumer had sent about anti-Semitism on campus and that message came through loud and clear: Investigations into Jew-hatred would only occur under a Republican majority. Putting Democrats in charge would put a stop to the government’s efforts to help Jews on campus.
Chuck Schumer labeled ‘traitor’ after damning report reveals he quietly advised Columbia leaders to ignore criticism of campus antisemitism
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is being slammed as a traitor following damning claims he instructed administrators at Columbia University to dismiss any criticism of the school’s handling of blatant violence and antisemitism on campus in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel.

The GOP-led House Education and Workforce Committee, in a 325-page report, contended the New York Democrat advised then-university president Minouche Shafik that the school would be spared any scrutiny by Democrats, explaining that the elite university’s “political problems are really only among Republicans.”

His staff then encouraged Columbia administrators that the “best strategy is to keep heads down,” according to the report.

“The self-proclaimed protector of the Jewish people. Chuckey Schumer is nothing but a kapo traitor. He should be ashamed of himself,” said former Brooklyn state Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a Democrat-turned-Republican who heads the group Americans Against Antisemitism.

“He is a traitor to America. He is a traitor to the Jewish people. Shame on him! This is what the Democratic Party has become.”

The report came after the committee’s months-long investigation into the handling of anti-Israel protests earlier this year on 11 college campuses, including Columbia, Harvard University, Yale University and Northwestern University.

Private emails and text messages of university leaders, including Shafik, who resigned in August, were among the documents reviewed by the committee.

A spokesman for Schumer insisted the report was “flat-out false.”

“Sen. Schumer regularly and forcefully condemned antisemitic acts at Columbia and elsewhere saying ‘when protests shift to antisemitism, verbal abuse, intimidation, or glorification of Oct. 7 violence against Jewish people, that crosses the line.’ He conveyed this point publicly and to administrators privately,” Angelo Roefaro told The Post Thursday night.

“It’s worthy to note here that Republicans are citing words from someone who is not Chuck Schumer. That is called hearsay,” he added.

According to the report, Columbia trustees ridiculed the committee for reviewing their oversight of the violence and prejudice on campus and texted about how they hoped Democrats would take control of Congress after Shafik’s discussion with Schumer.

In texts with Board of Trustees co-chairs David Greenwald and Claire Shipman in January, Shafik described Schumer as “very positive and supportive (and quite the storyteller).”

University leadership then felt emboldened to avoid any kind of meeting with Republicans after Schumer and his staff indicated that a forum with the political party wasn’t necessary, the report states.

Greenwald then echoed Schumer’s advice, writing: “If we are keeping our head down, maybe we shouldn’t meet with Republicans.”

Since Hamas’ murderous raid on Israel, Jewish Columbia students have received death threats, been spat upon, stalked and pinned against walls as the Ivy League school descended into a cesspool of antisemitic hate, according to a disturbing report released by the university in August.
Commentary: Shameful Schumer and the Election Another nail in the coffin of Sen. Chuck Schumer's reputation for being a voice for the Jewish community was hammered yesterday by the Free Beacon with an earthquake of a story in which he seeks to bury evidence of anti-Semitism on the Columbia University campus. This leads us into a discussion of, what else, the election.

Dov Hikind: Chuck Schumer 'nothing but a traitor and kapo'
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) quietly advised Columbia University's leaders to "keep heads down" and ignore congressional criticism of the school's handling of campus anti-Semitism, the Free Beacon reported.

According to a new House Committee on Education and the Workforce report, Schumer told former university president Minouche Shafik that the school's "political problems are really only among Republicans."

The report explains: "When asked, Schumer and his staff indicated they did not believe it was necessary for the University's leaders to meet with Republican."

"Greenwald echoed this, writing in response, 'If we are keeping our head down, maybe we shouldn't meet with Republicans.'"

This advice differed greatly from his public statements during the anti-Israel encampment months later, when he criticized the "lawlessness" of the protests at Columbia.

New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind responded, "The self-proclaimed protector of the Jewish People, Chuckie Schumer, is nothing but a kapo, traitor. He should be ashamed of himself."

"He advised Columbia University to ignore the antisemitism backlash: 'Keep your heads down.' This is Schumer! What a fraud! This is the same Schumer who in March of 2024 called on the elected Prime Minister of the State of Israel to step down - during a war.

"He is a traitor to America, he is a traitor to the Jewish People. Shame on hm! This is what the Democratic party has become."


Thom Yorke vs the anti-Israel bigots
Matters first came to a head in the summer of 2017. Radiohead were due to conclude their ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’ tour in Tel Aviv. This prompted the BDS campaign, backed by veteran Israelophobes like film director Ken Loach and Pink Floyd musician Roger Waters, to call on Radiohead not to perform in Israel so as ‘to help pressure Israel to end its violation of basic rights and international law’.

But Yorke refused to cave in to their demands. Instead, he told Rolling Stone magazine that he didn’t agree with boycotting, isolating and damning an entire people because of the perceived crimes of their government. As he later put it: ‘We don’t endorse [Benjamin] Netanyahu any more than [Donald] Trump, but we still play in America.’ What’s more, he called out the ignorance of the BDS crowd, who just ‘throw the word “apartheid” around’ despite knowing nothing about the nature of Israel. It was a brave stand, given the intense conformism and allergy to dissent among today’s cultural elites.

Since the start of the war in Gaza last year, the Israelophobia of the ‘progressive’ left has exploded. Yet, much to the chagrin of Western leftists, Yorke and his bandmates have maintained their principled objection to the BDS movement. Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, who is married to Arab Israeli visual artist Sharona Katan, played a gig in Tel Aviv earlier this summer with Dudu Tasa, an Iraqi Jew, before attending a protest the following day calling for the release of the hostages held by Hamas. For this, the BDS campaign accused him of ‘artwashing genocide’, but Greenwood stuck to his guns, arguing that there was nothing ‘progressive’ about ‘silencing Israeli artists’ purely for ‘being born Jewish in Israel’.

It’s a neat summary of the unbridled bigotry of BDS. After all, this is a campaign driven by a disturbing desire to denormalise and stigmatise an entire population – to present Israeli Jews as a tainted people, to be sanctioned, shunned and excommunicated. It’s a campaign that would be roundly condemned were it being levelled against any other nation.

It might not look like much. But just by playing gigs in Israel and continuing to work with Israeli Jews, Yorke, Greenwood and the rest of Radiohead are delivering a righteous blow to BDS. Here’s hoping more musicians pluck up the same courage.


Sally Rooney’s anti-Israel intolerance
As it happens, this is not Rooney’s first foray into BDS activism. In 2021, she infamously refused to sell the Hebrew translation of her third novel, Beautiful World Where Are You, to an Israeli publisher, citing her stance on Israel-Palestine. Yet she has been more than happy to have her novels translated into Mandarin, Russian and Persian. It would be no easy task to summarise the crimes of the CCP, the Iranian mullahs or Vladimir Putin, or the collective misery they have wrought. And yet it is always Israel that’s singled out for special opprobrium.

Worse, BDS doesn’t just target the Israeli state, as its supporters like to claim. The signatories consider any Israeli publisher, literary festival, publication or literary agent to be ‘complicit’ if they haven’t explicitly denounced what they describe as ‘Israel’s occupation, apartheid or genocide’. In other words, an Israeli literary agent could be a staunch critic of the Israeli government and of its treatment of Palestinians, but if she refuses to repeat the bigoted lie that Israel is carrying out a ‘genocide’, then she is deemed complicit and beyond the pale.

Clearly, Israeli cultural institutions are held to a different standard to all others around the world. Many Western literary festivals will have received some state funding. But they do not face boycotts if they fail to denounce their government’s policies. They are not considered ‘complicit’ in their nation’s military misadventures or abuses of rights.

The letter is also a tremendous blow to the spirit of international literary exchange. Israel has a flourishing literary scene. It boasts an array of highly successful female novelists who have made an inordinate contribution to the Western canon. Yet Rooney and Co have turned their backs on these voices.

Meanwhile, Hamas actively thwarts the education of girls and restricts their ability to travel. It throws gay people off buildings. Iran, Hamas’s chief sponsor, beats and sometimes kills young women who refuse to wear the hijab. Would Rooney be praised if she boycotted the Iranian publishing industry, or refused to allow her novels to be translated into Persian? More likely, she would be branded Islamophobic.

These anti-Israel authors may think they’re parading their virtue. What they’re really displaying is their intolerance – and ignorance.
Virginia Foxx: These so-called elite universities have a glaring antisemitism problem
Further report revelations detail the depth of ideological groupthink and emotional incontinence among Hamas-sympathizing faculty at multiple institutions.

When confronted with an opposing viewpoint in a meeting, the executive committee chair of Columbia’s University Senate histrionically ranted, “This is my meeting, my meeting, my meeting.”

At Northwestern, a professor who had chosen to lead negotiations with encampment organizers argued for a boycott of Sabra hummus in the school cafeteria for its association with Israel and touched on “cultural appropriation themes.”

I’m unsure what that even means, but apparently it made enough sense for Northwestern’s provost, Kathleen Hagerty, to approve of a Sabra boycott. ‘Purveyor of hate’

Finally, the report outlines a shared fear of congressional oversight by universities.

In a telling moment among friends in a board meeting, Gay lashed out at Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), whom she described as a “purveyor of hate” and “supporter of proudboys” — a downright slanderous accusation and completely removed from reality.

So-called leaders like Gay disparage oversight on the one hand, while showing extreme bias behind closed doors on the other, a contradiction that only validates the committee’s investigations.

To Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern, UCLA, and every other university that failed to address antisemitism: You are on notice.

The ivory towers are in a perilous position, and they are not beyond congressional action.

Unaccountable leadership, emotionally fragile outbursts, hummus culture wars, and baseless ad hominems — the findings in this report depict so-called prestigious universities as anything but.

Back in April, on the steps of Columbia’s Lowe Memorial Library, I declared, “The inmates are running an asylum.”

Today, I offer a slight addendum: it’s more like the children are running the day care.
House Committee urges state attorneys to review nonprofits for terror ties, ‘illegal
The top prosecutors of six states received letters on Oct. 29 calling for investigations into entities accused of coordinating pro-Hamas protests.

Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, contacted the attorney generals of New York, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Pennsylvania—states, he said, with tax-exempt nonprofit groups that may have broken the law.

“The Ways and Means Committee is committed to holding accountable any tax-exempt organization found to have ties to foreign terrorist organizations, engaged in activity that contradicts tax-exempt purposes, or participated in other illegal activity,” he said in a statement.

Smith had previously contacted the IRS on Sept. 24, calling for investigations of activist groups who may have violated nonprofit laws. “While I have already demanded the Biden-Harris administration stand up to the pro-Hamas wing of their party and revoke the tax-exempt status of these groups, it is now time for state law enforcement agencies to act and bring any organization found to have engaged in illegal activity to justice,” he said.

The legislator said “Congress owes it to the American people to ensure any organization with tax-exempt status is operating for their stated tax-exempt purpose, and more importantly, following the letter of the law.”

The letters urge investigations of the People’s Forum, United Hands Relief, Americans for Justice in Palestine Educational Foundation, Jewish Voice for Peace, the Tides Foundation, American Muslims for Palestine and others.


US Ed Department to probe bias at New Jersey school district, Rugers, Vanderbilt
The U.S. Department of Education initiated three federal reviews in October to determine whether two universities and a New Jersey school district have violated Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights started investigations into Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. (Oct. 18) and Vanderbilt University in Nashville (Oct. 24).

Also underway is a probe of the Caldwell-West Caldwell Public Schools in northern New Jersey, which began on Oct. 21.

The complaints center on a failure to address “national origin discrimination involving religion.”
UCSF professor suspended after controversial comments about Israeli student
In her announcement of her suspension, Marya was critical of the state of Israel and the UCSF administration.

“On the Fall Equinox 2024, I was suspended from my faculty position as a Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) because of my support for the liberation of Palestinians who are suffering genocide,” Marya wrote in the essay.

“”By framing the demonstration of support for Palestinians or the criticism of Israel as threats to Jewish safety, campuses are effectively silencing advocacy for people of color facing genocide,” Marya continued. “This weaponization of fragility to silence marginalized people in the academy became evident after the historic response to George Floyd’s murder.”

“We must understand what we are living through to respond in the correct collective manner, to reclaim the ground gained in the Civil Rights struggle,” Marya stated. “Because we are not going back.”

Marya wrote that her situation is similar to the firing of a professor of anthropology at Muhlenberg College, Maura Finkelstein.

Marya concluded her essay by critiquing the university administration for investing in companies with financial connections to Israel.

“Students nervously watch as their tuition and our tax dollars are used to buy weapons to be deployed against them for protesting the university’s complicity with Israel’s genocide,” Marya wrote.

As the Jewish News of Northern California has reported, the fall equinox (on which Marya says she was suspended) fell one day after Marya posted controversial statements expressing concern about an Israeli student’s presence in class on social media.

“Med students at UCSF are concerned that a first year student from Israel is in their class,” Marya posted on Sept. 21, according to screenshots published online. “They’re asking if he participated in the genocide of Palestinians in the IDF before matriculating into medical school in CA. How do we address this in our professional ranks?”

Campus Reform has previously reported about some of Marya’s other anti-Israel statements.

”The presence of Zionism in US medicine should be examined as a structural impediment to health equity,” Marya wrote in January. “Zionism is a supremacist, racist ideology and we see Zionist doctors justifying the genocide of Palestinians. How does their outlook/position impact priorities in US medicine?”


Charges dismissed against 27 arrested student protesters, 13 to continue legal battle
27 students charged with criminal trespassing for not vacating the pro-divestment encampment in April will pay $90 fines after a judge agreed this morning to lower their charges to simple trespass infractions, while one international student was given 40 hours of community service. Another 13 will return to court on Dec. 4 to continue to fight misdemeanor charges.

41 total Yale students were scheduled to appear in the New Haven Superior Court on Thursday morning six months after their arrests during the pro-Palestinian encampment on Yale’s campus at the end of the spring semester.

“For various functional reasons, some people wanted to be done with it,” said Greta LaFleur, a professor in Yale’s American Studies department who is representing many of the students. “But I still have some skin in the game,” she continued about the students who will appear again before the court.

LaFleur and Abigail Mason of Koch, Garg and Brown represent most of the arrested students. LaFleur said that she and Mason have filed six motions for the release of police body camera footage from the arrests, which they still have not received. Delays acquiring the footage led some of the students to choose to continue to fight misdemeanor charges instead of dismissing their cases, LaFleur said.

Mason, meanwhile, said that her clients for whom she requested continuances — three of the 13 students total who will appear on Dec. 4 — could not make the court date today.

In Lafleur’s group, “there is a group of students that is not going to take the infraction at this time,” Mason said. “For my group, they just couldn’t make it today.”

Week of arrests spawns months of disciplinary unfolding

The Yale Police Department arrested 44 students and 4 non-Yale affiliates on April 22, as they cleared the first protest encampment on Beinecke Plaza. All of the protesters were charged with criminal trespassing in the first degree, a class A misdemeanor that carries a maximum penalty of up to one year in jail, probation and a $2,000 fine.


Hamas Loyalist Professor: Russell Rickford at the Cornell University
Cornell associate professor of history Russell Rickford made national headlines for his enthusiastic and boisterous approbation of Hamas’s barbaric October 7th massacre of Israeli civilians during which over 1200 were maimed, mutilated, and slaughtered, and hundreds more taken hostage.

At a rally hosted by the ironically-named group, Jewish Voice for Peace, in Ithaca, New York on October 15, 2023, barely a week after Hamas’s attack, Rickford lauded Hamas in the highest terms and celebrated the outright slaughter of Israel’s Jews.

“What has Hamas done?,” Rickford asked. “Hamas has shifted the balance of power. Hamas has punctured the illusion of [Israeli] invincibility. That’s what they’ve done…Hamas has changed the terms of debate.”

Rickford continued extolling the virtues of the terrorist group, saying that “Hamas has challenged the monopoly of violence” and that the Palestinians “were able to breathe for the first time in years” thanks to the bloody October 7th massacre.

“[I]t was exhilarating! It was exhilarating! It was energizing! And if they [Palestinians] weren’t exhilarated by this challenge to the monopoly of violence, by this shifting of the balance of power, then they would not be human. I was exhilarated!” Rickford concluded, expressing sheer joy at the extent of Hamas’s slaughter.

Even in the highly anti-Semitic world of higher education, Rickford’s remarks praising the massacre were considered a step too far. The professor requested and was granted a leave of absence from the university but remained an employee and is still listed as a professor on the university’s website.

Unsurprisingly, Professor Rickford has a long history of praising terrorist violence against Israel. At a September 2021 lecture held by anti-Semitic Rutgers Professor Noura Erakat on “Palestine: Settler Colonialism, Sovereignty and Apartheid,” Rickford celebrated the recent escape of several convicted terrorists from the maximum security Gilboa Prison in Israel, citing the incident as “a marvelous example of tenacity and defiance that would live on in the imaginations of people around the world.” The escapees were members of the terror groups Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade who had been convicted of criminal attacks on Israelis during the bloody Second Intifada.
Hamas Loyalist Professor: Huda Fakhreddine at the University of Pennsylvania
An associate professor of Arabic literature at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Huda Fakhreddine has repeatedly voiced praise for the Jew-hating terrorist group Hamas and has specifically lauded their barbaric attack on innocent Israeli civilians on October 7th during which over 1200 were slaughtered and many more raped, mutilated, and taken hostage.

On October 7, 2023, just hours after this massacre, Fakhreddine tweeted in Arabic, “While we were asleep, Palestine invented a new way of life,” clearly celebrating the brutal slaughter of Israeli innocents.

A few days later on October 12, Fakhreddine doubled down on her warped view of the conflict, posting a “Statement of Solidarity with Palestine” which charged Israel with “sole responsibility” for Hamas’s October 7th massacre. The statement claimed that “The Palestinian resistance efforts”—note the whitewashing of mass rape and baby-killing as acts of “resistance”—“are a response to 75 years of occupation, colonization, and apartheid by the Israeli settler colonial regime.”

In a Facebook post one week later, Fakhreddine added: “When we chant, ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ we are calling for a one state, one person=one vote, where everyone living between the river and the sea is free and treated as a human being with rights and dignity. If some see freedom and equal rights for all as an existential threat, then they are the problem. No country should require oppression and apartheid to exist.”

As the anti-Semitism watchdog site Canary Mission notes, “‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free’ is a chant calling to dismantle the State of Israel. It has also been employed by Hamas leader Khaled Mashal to call for the replacement of Israel with an Islamic state.” It is a genocidal call for the annihilation of Israel and the destruction of its entire Jewish population.

So extreme are Fakhreddine’s views that she rejects even the common pro-Palestine descriptor of Gaza as an “open-air prison,” tweeting that, “Gaza is not an open-air prison. Prisoners receive visitors and aid is allowed to be passed to them. Gaza is a Nazi-style concentration camp, a concentration camp under bombardment.” Fakhreddine’s comparison of Israel’s conduct to Hitler’s Nazi regime is a common and widely-used form of Jew hatred.

The professor has repeatedly made clear that she supports Hamas’s attack on innocent Israeli civilians. In a civil rights case filed in U.S. District Court, Jewish students at Penn allege that at a pro-Palestine rally on October 16, 2023, one speaker declared that “all settlers and all settlements are legitimate military targets and they will be targeted.” The same speaker also told Jewish students to “go back to Moscow, Brooklyn . . . fucking Berlin where you came from.” According to the case filing, “Professors, including Huda Fakhreddine, cheered the speaker on and clapped in approval.”
Hamas Loyalist Professor: Rabab Abdulhadi at San Francisco State University
Amongst the litany of Jew-hating faculty currently teaching at American universities, one name rises above all the rest—that of San Francisco State University professor of Ethnic Studies Rabab Abdulhadi who is also the founding director of SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative (AMED), an academic program which flouts its anti-Semitism by openly declaring Zionism to be racism and Israel to be the occupier of Palestine. AMED is known for sponsoring events which feature posters reading, “My Heroes Have Always Killed Colonizers,” referring to Israel’s Jews.

On October 7th 2023, following Hamas’s massacre, mutilation, and rape of over 1200 innocent Israelis, and the taking of hundreds more as hostages, Professor Abdulhadi quote-tweeted Rep. Ilhan Omar—who has her own long record of anti-Semitism—not to agree with the Congresswoman’s remarks but to chastise her for condemning Hamas’s actions. “Seriously @IlhanMN? ‘Senseless’ #PalestineUnderAttack are merely defending themselves. Are you saying that #Palestinians should be exceptionalized from the right to defend themselves against colonial & racist violence? Check your facts! #FreePalestine #IsraeliCrimes” Abdulhadi tweeted. Apparently one of the House of Representatives leading anti-Semites isn’t extreme enough for the SFSU professor.

Also on October 7th, Abdulhadi tweeted, “It’s worth remembering how vicious colonists act when the colonized dare #breakTheirChains from #Palestine, #Algeria #Vietnam … to #TurtleIsland. No innocent bystanders here. Demand Immediate accountability for #IsraeliCrimes. #BDS.” Abdulhadi’s clear support for Hamas and their paratroopers of terror is undeniable, as is her belief that none of the 1200-plus victims of Hamas’s barbaric violence—including children and babies who were beheaded and burned alive—can be seen as “innocent bystanders.”

Professor Abdulhadi’s comments promoting Hamas and their regime of terror should not come as a surprise to anyone who has followed her academic career over the past two decades. Abdulhadi has repeatedly glorified anti-Israel terrorism in public talks.

A letter sent by a coalition of concerned Jewish groups to SFSU President Leslie Wong in 2014 describes in chilling detail how an Ethnic Studies Department event organized by Abdulhadi featured “wild inaccuracies, monstrous distortions, and blatant lies — all intended to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state and promote a boycott that would hasten its demise.”

Professor Abdulhadi’s husband, Jaime Veve, a union activist, also spoke at the 2014 event she organized to exalt anti-Semitic terrorists and murderers. The letter to President Wong describes how Veve “insisted that Palestinians who had injured or murdered Jews were not terrorists but rather ‘heroes or heroines’ who had ‘committed political acts of defiance and resistance,’ and he justified Palestinian terrorism by calling it ‘the cry of a baby calling for the attention of the world.’”


French politicians propose law to make modern antisemitism punishable
Two French politicians have filed a bill aiming to make “renewed forms of antisemitism” illegal, Le Point reported on Wednesday.

The bill was brought by French MP for the Eighth constituency for French residents overseas, Caroline Yadan, and former Equality Minister and National Assembly member Aurore Bergé. Former president François Hollande also reportedly agreed to co-sign the bill.

The bill, which was co-signed by 90 other deputies, proposes a new law that would codify modern manifestations of antisemitism, including comparisons of Jews to Nazis, calls for the destruction of Israel, and the veneration of Hamas.

Yadan told Le Point that the bill stemmed from her desire to fight renewed forms of antisemitism, which manifest in three axes: terrorist apologism, denying Israel’s existence or right to exist, and the comparison of Jews or Israel to the Holocaust.

Yadan said she wants to make all rhetoric like “From the river to the sea,” especially where maps of Israel have been replaced with Palestine, punishable by the law.

“This, so that Rima Hassan can no longer consider Hamas a resistance group and go unpunished or that one could no longer post a Nazi flag accompanied by a Star of David on one’s social networks,” she explained.

Rima Hassan, the French-Palestinian politician with the La France Insoumise party, has propagated the false accusation that “Israeli dogs” rape Palestinian prisoners and called for “Zionists” to return organs she claimed were stolen from Palestinians.

“It is this porosity of hatred that must be denounced,” said Yadan. “Because it is what defines antisemitism in its current form and it has been evolving for millennia.”


Chicago Police announces hate crime, terror charges against man accused of shooting Orthodox Jew
Chicago is adding one felony count each of terror and hate-crime charges to the 14 felony charges it has brought against Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi, 22, who is accused of shooting a 39-year-old Jewish man who was walking to synagogue on Shabbat, Chicago Police superintendent Larry Snelling announced on Thursday.

“Since this shooting occurred, our investigative response team has worked their fingers to the bone to determine a motive,” Snelling said of the probe of Abdallahi, who is also accused of firing at police officers and paramedics on Oct. 26.

Abdallahi’s scheduled appearance in court on Tuesday was delayed, while he remains in the hospital from injuries that he sustained in a two-and-a-half-minute shootout with police officers. He is now slated to appear in court on Nov. 7, Kim Foxx, the state’s attorney for Cook County, Ill., said at a press conference at Chicago Police Department headquarters at 4:30 p.m. local time.

Snelling and Foxx spoke alongside Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who has faced intense criticism from the Chicago Jewish community for issuing a statement days only after the shooting and for not mentioning that the victim was visibly Jewish. Police did not initially announce hate-crime charges among the 14 felony charges.


California leaders speak out against antisemitic discrimination in Oakland
California lawmakers are condemning news that a Jewish resident of Oakland, Calif., and his 5-year-old son were harassed and forcibly removed from a local cafe by its anti-Israel owner for wearing a hat that brandished a Star of David.

Video of the incident, which began circulating online on Tuesday, shows Abdulrahim Harara, the owner of Jerusalem Coffee House in North Oakland, speaking to Jonathan Hirsch and his son over the former’s hat, which has a Jewish star emblazoned on the front. Harara said that Hirsch’s cap was “a violent hat, and you need to leave,” as Hirsch’s 5-year-old son began crying.

Reached for comment on the incident, a spokesperson for California Gov. Gavin Newsom told Jewish Insider that, “No one should be discriminated against for their religious beliefs. Businesses in California are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of religious identity or beliefs. Hate has no place in our state.”

The Newsom spokesperson added that their office was aware of the matter, but referred JI to local law enforcement for more details.

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), who represents the Oakland area, said in a statement posted to X on Thursday that, “Displays of hate and antisemitism should not be tolerated in Oakland or anywhere. We must unequivocally condemn antisemitism and continue to fight against all forms of bigotry and division.”

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) told JI that, “I strongly condemn this vile act of antisemitism against Jonathan Hirsch and his son, who were refused service simply because they are Jewish. Acts of hatred and discrimination are never acceptable.”


‘We don’t need your kind here’
Members of the community have rallied to support an inner Melbourne business owner after he said he was targeted by a campaign of antisemitic harassment.

Tim Cohen, who has run Brunswick East Wine Store for the past decade, revealed in an emotional social media video last week that he will not renew his lease when it expires in August next year, citing ongoing harassment and intimidation he believes is motivated by his Jewish heritage.

“I feel truly broken as a person and as a business owner,” Cohen said in the video, describing a recent incident where a patron allegedly entered his store.

“And yes, they had blue hair, and they entered from the rear, and they’ve just got this glib, smug look on their face. And she just said, ‘We want you gone from this suburb. We don’t need your kind here.'”

His shop had the Hamas red triangle painted on it twice in recent months, one of which was accompanied by a warning not to buy there.

Cohen reported the incidents to police, the Merri-bek Council and the local state MP, Tim Read, Greens MP for Brunswick.

The police did not respond to his report, and while the council promised an investigation, they closed the case after a week without taking action.

Cohen is critical of Read, accusing him of inaction in the face of what he describes as targeted antisemitic behaviour from far-left activists.
Jewish group slams anti-semitic graffiti mowed into grass on a Melbourne sporting field
A Melbourne father has been left horrified after discovering his local park was vandalised to depict an anti-Semitic message in the grass.

The Jewish father, who has asked not to be named, was taking his one-year-old daughter to Mill Park in Melbourne's northwest when he discovered the distressing message.

It's understood someone either burnt or mowed the message 'Zionism = Nazi' into the grass at the popular children's park.

'To be honest, I am still traumatised by the massacre that took place in Israel,' the Israeli- born father said.

'I was thinking about how children my daughter's age were slaughtered a year ago but trying to enjoy quality time with my daughter ... when all of a sudden I see her running around on this hate speech.'

Anti-Defamation Commission chairman Dvir Abramovich said the anti-Semitic graffiti was 'not normal'.

'The monster of anti-Semitism has once again reared its head and delivered a punch to gut of every Jewish Australian,' Dr Abramovich said.

'What should have been a joyful family outing turned into a nightmare.


Seth Mandel: A Holocaust Historian’s Parting Lessons
The just-passed holiday of Sukkot had something of a mournful edge this year because the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre had happened at the tail end of the holiday last year. But this year added a note of sadness all its own with the death on Oct. 18 of Yehuda Bauer, a founding father of Holocaust historians who had fled Prague just as the Nazis had begun swallowing Czechoslovakia. His family made it to Palestine in 1939.

Yesterday, Haaretz published what it said was the self-eulogy Bauer left behind before he died. Apparently the historian wanted to have the last word on his own story. Some of it is modest—his students “may have absorbed some of what I tried to teach them, and perhaps a little more,” he wrote. And some of it is unabashedly proud—“I have met prime ministers, kings, presidents, I made great speeches, because I had the gift of gab, as is evidenced by this eulogy.” But it’s funny, and that itself is revealing. A Holocaust survivor who spends his life excavating the details of the Holocaust can’t live to 98 without a sense of humor.

The obituaries and remembrances continue to trickle out, and on Tuesday the UK Telegraph published one of the best so far. Bauer wrote dozens of books in his career, but two of his insights remain of monumental importance today. The first:
“[Bauer] held that, although there had been other genocides, the Holocaust was unique and distinct. This was, first, because of its global scope — the plan to annihilate every Jew, everywhere; second, because of its ideology in that, unlike other mass killings, which were often pragmatic in nature, the Holocaust was a burden on the German people, who could have used the Jews as slaves, but instead chose to exterminate them.”

And the second:
“Bauer’s contribution to Holocaust studies went beyond academia. In 1998, with European heads of state, Bauer was instrumental in setting up the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), a coalition of more than 35 countries that requires its members to devote government funding to education and commemoration.

“With the IHRA, Bauer also helped establish the ‘working definition’ of anti-Semitism, which many governments and organizations use to help define hate crimes and discrimination against Jews.”
Chutzpah is a #Jewish superpower | EP 15 Julie Silverstein & Tammy Schlossberg
Welcome to the 15th episode of "Here I Am with Shai Davidai," a podcast that delves into the rising tide of antisemitism through insightful discussions with top Jewish advocates.

In this episode, the host interviews Julie Silverstein and Tammy Schlossberg, co-authors of "Chutzpah Girls," a book celebrating Jewish women throughout history. The discussion delves into the inspiration behind the book, highlighting stories of Jewish women who have shown courage and resilience. The authors share personal anecdotes and discuss the significance of Jewish heritage and identity, especially in the context of recent events in Israel. They emphasize the importance of storytelling in preserving cultural history and inspiring future generations. The episode also touches on the concept of "chutzpah" and its role in Jewish women's history, offering insights into how these stories can empower listeners today.






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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

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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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