Antisemitism is personal—even when it’s only on Facebook (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Antisemitism is personal. Like snowflakes—no wokeness intended—no two Jews experience antisemitism the same way. Even the same Jew will experience antisemitism differently when there are multiple incidents or when exposure to antisemitism is ongoing.

Social media antisemitism is probably the safest kind of antisemitism, because the antisemite hides behind a keyboard. An ugly comment, it must be acknowledged, is not the same as being beaten by gangs. Still, there is always the possibility that the online antisemite will doxx you, or use what you write to identify you to people who could do you real harm IRL (in real life).

The comments themselves range from brainless to so ugly that you gasp out loud from the shock of it. One particular antisemitic barb will make you giggle for its stupidity, while another will make you tremble, and your eyes well up with tears. Sometimes you feel a wry sense of the familiar. This is what it is. This is our lived experience, to be hated for false reasons or for no reasons at all.

Sometimes the hurt is compounded by the attitude of the people at the top. People like Mark Zuckerberg who has made his community standards such that horrific antisemitic comments and memes are left up, while our innocent pro-Israel memes and comments are removed when reported by Arabs and their supporters.

A pattern has developed wherein I report the offensive, antisemitic post and Facebook says no, it doesn’t violate its community standards. I then appeal where they allow it, and they say no again, and the vile antisemitic post stays up.

Here are some antisemitic comments and memes that I have reported over the past several weeks. Facebook has refused to take action:

 

In my personal experience of social media however, the worst offender in allowing antisemitic comments and online calls for genocide, is Quora. It’s all anti-Israel, antisemitic lies and propaganda posed as questions. Sure, you can report antisemitic questions and comments and they’ll be collapsed or deleted, but repeat offenders are never banned. I think about leaving or even muting Quora all the time, but I stay, mostly to encourage those still interested in learning the truth about the Jewish people and Israel.

Here’s a selection of 26 antisemitic Quora questions that have accumulated over the past 12 days and are awaiting my attention—for me to either reply or pass:

1.      With the utmost respect intended, how is it possible for so many average Israelis on sites as this to defend their state's ongoing assault on Gaza, when even such mainstream " Western " sources like Oxfam attest to its singular level of brutality?

2.      Why did Hamas commit terrorism against Israel which can annihilate itself entirely?

3.      Does Satan support Israel victory over the people of Palestine?

4.      Has Trump asked Netanyahu to cause maximum embarrassment for Biden, with Israel's assault on Gaza, by completely ignoring Biden's pleas for restraint?

5.      Would there have been more outcry against Israel's actions if any major Fortune 100 companies had been headquartered in Gaza?

6.      Would people who oppose Yemen's blockade of Israel-linked ships also have opposed the partisans who blew up Nazi train lines?

7.      Why is Palestine more pro-American and trustworthy than Israel?

8.      Are Israelis going to give the stolen land back to the Palestinians and stop their thieving ways?

9.      Why doesn't Israel just give back the land it won and pretend the war never happened and we get a 2 state solution?

10.   Why are Israelis basically flat out admitting to genocidal intent by calling approximately 1.15 million minors (including children) terrorists and "the enemy" when asked why Israel was withholding water, food and medicine from them if not genocide?

11.   It’s only a matter of time until our generation is elected to office, and the rogue terrorist state of Israel will cease to exist, but what can we do in the meantime to stop Israel's bloodbath?

12.   What is the reasoning behind Israel refusing to embed journalists to show the world Hamas is still aggressive and leaving the world to only see civilian suffering? [untrue]

13.   It was just last year that Israel was funding Hamas millions of dollars in cash and weapons. What happened that made Hamas attack the people that support them?

14.   Do you think Israel will rebuild Gaza for the Palestinians, or do you think they will just steal the land?

15.   Why does Africa love Hamas so much, should Israel start a war with them?

16.   Why do the Zionists in the social media persistently seek to dehumanize the Palestinians, despite having themselves been subjected to similar dehumanization tactics by Hitler that led to genocide against them?

17.   Why does America seem unable to influence or control Israel, while other countries supporting Palestine exert more control over the situation?

18.   Is Israel’s attack on Gaza legitimate?

19.   Why am I seeing so many Israeli propaganda posts in my feed?

20.   Polls show Israel has completely lost younger Americans with 74% or more disapproving of how it has handled the Hamas-Israel war. Has Netanyahu and his right wing government permanently damaged the US - Israel relationship or can it come back? [false]

21.   Why was the USA disturbed by the disruption of navigation in the Red Sea and not disturbed by genocidal crimes committed by Israel in Gaza, but rather supported it in that?

22.   Is the only way of stopping Israel's slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza for ten [sic] USA to withdraw all support from Israel? If so, isn't it morally incumbent on them to do so?

23.   Why is Western media calling the Palestinian genocide a war, and censoring people in support of Palestine?

24.   Is Israel using artificial intelligence to deny humanity and wage war?

25.   Is someone who supports both Israel in Gaza and Russia in Ukraine a pawn of the Likud?

26.   Is it true that the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th was relatively hilarious?

That last query was actually older, from early December 2023. I leave it in my inbox as a future reminder of a time when the world was once again overrun by masses of people rejoicing at Jewish suffering while too many watched on, indifferent. Atrocities are never hilarious. Good people know this. Yet Quora, as powerful as it is, with its 400 million active monthly users, leaves this question up on its website where it has sat now for seven weeks. Is Quora’s indifference to antisemitism evidence of malfeasance? Is Mark Zuckerberg’s refusal to ban evil antisemitic memes and comments, evidence of his malfeasance?

Which leads to another question: Are antisemitic evil, hate, and depravity still real if they exist only in the virtual halls of Quora and Facebook? The answer depends on your personal experience of antisemitism. One Jew will laugh off an antisemitic comment, or block it from their consciousness, while others may feel hurt or anger. But no matter how a Jew experiences antisemitism, some damage is done, even if the “damage” consists of absorbing the bitter lesson that not all, or even most people are good.  

It’s a lesson that Jews have been forced to learn and relearn over millennia, a lesson that perhaps even Anne Frank was forced to learn in the end. We’ll never know, because Anne Frank was murdered before she could tell us, because she was a Jew.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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12/14 Links Pt2: No, Zionism isn’t out of date: Why the US arrests some terrorists but ignores others; Professor reveals pervasive antisemitism at University of Toronto Medical School

From Ian:

No, Zionism isn’t out of date

Ha’aretz columnist Anshel Pfeffer does not believe in Zionism. He doesn’t oppose it, he just thinks talking about it is a category mistake:

You cannot be either a Zionist or an anti-Zionist, he says, just as you cannot be a veteran of Iwo Jima unless you were born at least 90 years ago and fought in that battle. Zionism isn’t an ideology. It’s a program, or an ideological plan, to establish a state for Jews in the biblical homeland. And that program was fulfilled on May 14, 1948, when David Ben-Gurion declared Israel’s independence at the old Tel Aviv Museum. That’s it. Done.

"…believing that on the whole, founding the State of Israel was the right thing to do, doesn’t make you a Zionist any more than thinking that Oliver Cromwell was right to overthrow King Charles, makes you a Roundhead. It simply doesn’t matter what you think about long-ago events you didn’t take part in. Israel is a reality and it’s not going anywhere."

He’s wrong. There absolutely is such a thing as Zionist ideology, a set of basic principles that Zionists believe. And here they are:
-There is an am Yehudi, a Jewish people. You might think this is obvious, but Mahmoud Abbas denies it, and so do the “[insert nationality here] of the Mosaic persuasion” crowd, which includes the American Reform Movement.

-The survival of the Jewish people requires the Jewish state, a state that is more than just a state with a Jewish majority. The precise meaning of “more” differs according to the faction of the Zionist movement to which one belongs, but the Nation-State Law that was passed by the Knesset in 2018 is an example of a secular attempt to explicate that.

-Only in the Jewish state can a person fully realize his Jewish identity. You can still be a Zionist if you don’t believe that all Jews ought to live in the Jewish state, but Zionism includes the idea that diaspora life is sub-optimal even when it is not actively dangerous.

-One needn’t be a Jew to be a Zionist. Agree with the principles above and you are a Zionist, regardless of your own religion or ethnicity.

Pfeffer points out that there were religious and secular, socialist and revisionist Zionisms. This was true before 1948, and it’s still true today. But all of them affirm the principles above. The existence of factions doesn’t negate the truth behind an ideology. After all, these are Jews we are talking about!

Tom Stoppard and the Failure of ‘Diasporism’

As much as the contributions of Diaspora Jews should inspire pride and celebration, it has become clear that there has emerged no serious alternative other than Israel for those who would sustainably perpetuate specifically Jewish achievement and inquiry. Those of us in the Diaspora will not all move there—although Stoppard is here to remind us that Jews will always require a refuge from the forces of hatred that now seek Israel’s destruction. But we are called upon to support the Zionist project not only as a form of self-defense but also to continue providing the wider world with the fruits of Jewish labors. Leopoldstadt’s invocation of a potential Jewish state at the play’s beginning, and Israel’s existence at its end as the tiny remnant of the Merz and Jacobowicz families gathers in the once-grand apartment of assimilation in 1955, mark it as one of the most profoundly Zionist documents of our time.

It is a reflection of the durability and power of anti-Semitism that, even if the playwright had uncovered the facts of his own Jewish past in 1955 the way his young British character does, rather than in the 1980s, he would have risked a great deal by writing Leopoldstadt as a young man in the wake of his career-making success with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in 1966. He likely would have become known as a Jewish, rather than a British, playwright—a dramatist making a special pleading due to the tragedy visited upon his own family. No, it was his established reputation as the greatest living English dramatist that has enabled this unlikely production—among other things, Leopoldstadt has a cast of 38, the largest any play on Broadway has seen in generations. Therein lies yet another lesson about the limits of Diasporism.

The Hanukkah Queen Who Saved the Jews

A generation after the Hanukkah miracle, in the midst of great turmoil, Salome Alexandra defended Judaism and restored Jewish practice.

The story of Hanukkah is one of the best-known in Jewish history: how a small group of faithful Jews, led by the Maccabees, revolted against their Hellenist Greek rulers during the years 167-160 BCE, and restored the Temple in Jerusalem to Jewish worship once again.

Their unlikely military victory and the miracle of a single jug of oil burning in the Temple’s golden Menorah for eight days are celebrated during the holiday of Hanukkah. Less known is what came next.

The “Maccabee” brothers (named after one brother, Judas Maccabeus) established the Hasmonean royal dynasty that ruled the Jewish kingdom of Judea for over 200 years. Far from presiding over a peaceful nation, the Hasmonean rulers were mercurial, autocratic, and ruled a land continually on the brink of civil war. It fell to Queen Salome Alexandra - also known as Shlomit Alexandra and as Shlomzion - to stand up to some of the most terrifying dictators imaginable, champion traditional Judaism, and restore peace to Judea.

A key fact that’s often ignored in telling the Hanukkah story is that many Jews at the time embraced a Hellenist lifestyle, worshiping Greek deities and embracing Greek values. Within a generation of the Hanukkah miracle, the Jewish community was again riven into factions, most notably the Sadducees, who rejected the Talmud and many Jewish elements of a traditional Jewish lifestyle and who dominated the ruling classes, and the Pharisees who clung to Jewish traditions and lifestyles.

Queen Salome and her Wicked Husband
Queen Salome was born into a prominent scholarly family and married into royalty. She possessed incredible courage and calmness. Salome’s brother was Shimon ben Shetach, one of Judea’s most renowned rabbis and a champion of the Pharisee cause. When it became too dangerous for her brother to remain in Judea because of Sadducee persecution, Queen Salome hid him, as well as other rabbinic allies of traditional Judaism.

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How many of these far-Right Republican figures have dabbled in antisemitism?

Haaretz has two articles about extremism in today's Republican party, and many of the examples include what they claim is antisemitism. 

Armed with my definition of antisemitism, do their examples fit the bill?

Law professor David Schraub says that the GOP is now as antisemitic as Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party was. Let's look at what he says.

After years of largely futile efforts by Jews to raise the alarm bells on ascendant antisemitism in the GOP, 2022 finally has made the problem too obvious to ignore. Republican candidates up and down the ballot are cavorting with open white supremacists, attacking their opponents for sending their kids to Jewish schools and eagerly elevating the conspiratorial Jew-baiting of celebrities like Kanye West.

My definition is precise, so I need precise examples. I am unaware of any candidate attacking opponents for sending kids to Jewish schools, for example, but the specific language would be important - i.e., if the point was attacking their record on public schools  but having nothing to do with the "Jewish" part of the schools they sent their kids to.

The only link given to a specific event is here:

The faux-populist rage at “globalists” and cosmopolitan “elites,” at what one far-right judge sneeringly dubbed “the Goldman rule”– that is, "the guys with the gold get to make the rules" – would be perfectly at home in the Corbynist social media milieu.

He points to a concurring opinion in a legal case by circuit judge James Ho, who quotes "The Goldman Rule:" "He who has the gold makes the rules."

That really sounds antisemitic. But Judge Ho includes a source for this "rule," and it comes from the book "Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam" by Vivek Ramaswamy, about an unwritten rule at Goldman Sachs that the employees would joke about. It has nothing to do with Jews - it has everything to do with corruption at Goldman Sachs.

Now, Judge Ho was tone deaf to mention this without further context, and it opened him up to the appearance of antisemitism. It was stupid. But antisemitism is malicious, and when you follow the source, there is no indication of malice; it was tone deaf in the sense that Ho did not seem to recognize that without context, Goldman was not referring to a generic Jew. 

The cases where apparent stupidity cross the line into antisemitism is when the person saying the statement is either knowingly engaging in antisemitic dog whistling, or when any normal person would recognize that the trope is antisemitic. Such is one case in the other article, by Ben Samuels, "Meet 10 of the Most Extreme Republicans Running for Congress." 

I am certainly not trying to promote these candidates' nutty opinions, many of which include QAnon conspiracy theories. Conspiracy  theorists very often fall into antisemitic tropes. I just want to look at the specific examples of antisemitism given and determine if, indeed, they are.

One of those Republican candidates in the article is Marjorie Taylor-Greene, whose most famous episode is when she claimed the Rothschild family worked with a California utility to redirect the sun's rays to start wildfires to clear land for a rail project. The conspiracy theory is insane enough but adding the Rothschilds makes it cross the line into antisemitism. The article also mentions that she, like many far-Right figures, promotes conspiracy theories about George Soros - and without specifically mentioning his Jewishness, I am reluctant to consider those inherently antisemitic (as my linked article on the topic notes.) Yet the clearest evidence of her antisemitic attitudes comes from her promoting a video in 2018 that said “Zionist supremacists have schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation.”

The article says that Rep. Lauren Boebert "notably asked a group of kippa-wearing visitors at a U.S. Capitol building last January if they were doing 'reconnaissance.'" Again, at first glance, this appears to be a clear example of antisemitism. But a little research shows that this is a case of being clueless rather than antisemitic - Boebert had been accused a year earlier of bringing groups of people to the Capitol to engage in "reconnaissance" ahead of the January 6 riots. She was making fun of herself, and assumed (like most political blowhards) that everyone, especially religious Jews who generally lean Republican,  follows her life obsessively and would get the joke. 

Again, tone deaf and stupid, but not antisemitic in itself. 

Candidate J.R. Majewski is not specifically quoted on antisemitism in the article, but it does quote him as referring to himself as a "superfan of Gab," the social network that hosts many white supremacists and antisemites. It seems highly unlikely that someone who is a fan of Gab is unaware of the antisemitism on the platform. You might argue that Twitter also is filled with antisemitism, but who refers to themselves as a superfan of Twitter? This, to me, strongly indicates that at the very least, Majewski is tolerant of antisemitism. 

The article notes that  in 2016, candidate John Gibbs defended an antisemitic Twitter account that regularly promoted Nazi-era propaganda. That account, "Ricky Vaughn," was a cesspool of antisemitism and racism; there is no way to defend that account without defending antisemitism. 

Republican candidate from Texas Johnny Teague leaves little doubt:

[Teague has] written a novel fictionalizing Anne Frank’s final days, in which he writes that she embraced Christianity just before being murdered by the Nazis. As reported by JTA, the book continues Frank’s diary entries, where she aimed to learn more about Jesus by trying to obtain a copy of the New Testament, reciting palms and expressing sympathy for Jesus’ plight. His version of Frank writes: “Every Jewish man or woman should ask questions like ‘Where is the Messiah? … Did He come already, and we didn’t recognize Him?’”   

This is incredibly offensive and antisemitic, effectively saying that Jews who do not accept Christianity are wrong.  

Two other candidates that engage in George Soros conspiracy theories - Jo Rae Perkins and Mike Cargile - also engage in other truly nutty conspiracy theories. Cargile also has been linked to white supremacists, which would indicate that his Soros theories include a Jewish component that would make them antisemitic, Perkins is obsessed with QAnon which as far as I know has not trafficked in antisemitism, so she appears to just be an idiot. 

I am generally of the opinion that if accusations of antisemitism must include mind-reading, without any other evidence, we should err on the side of caution. I say this knowing that some antisemites will consciously hide their hate for Jews, or wink at that hate with dog-whistles (I don't see evidence of that in these cases except for MJT.) There is also the strong possibility that some of these candidates have said other things not mentioned in this article that could add the context that would tip their ambiguous statements into full blown Jew-hate.

Yet even with that caution, too many of these candidates appear to fall on the antisemitic side of the fence. 

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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11/01 Links Pt2: Hatred of Israel drags us back to the Middle Ages; Radical social justice ideology is fueling US antisemitism; Edward Said’s Jews

From Ian:

Hatred of Israel drags us back to the Middle Ages

Since it was established in 1948, Israel has endured numerous wars and hundreds of bloody terrorist attacks. It has been forced to defend itself against continual attempted invasions by its neighbors.

Most importantly, it has sought a peace agreement with the Palestinians many times. Each time, it has been rejected by the Palestinians, who hope Israel will simply disappear.

But there is an even more important reason for Magni to consult with history: Today, there is a large alliance of forces that former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer has called “medievalist.” They are autocratic, confessional and terroristic. Many of them have Iran has a primary sponsor. They persecute women, homosexuals, ethnic and religious minorities and others. They almost uniformly back Russia’s violently anti-Western policies.

Aligned against this unholy alliance are the forces of modernity. Today, they are united more than ever in the need to defend democracy, the rule of law and coexistence in the face of brutal aggression, whether by Iranian terrorism or the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

At the U.N. last week, however, many nations—including Italy—defended Israel from the anti-Semitic U.N. Commission of Inquiry into the May 2021 Israel-Hamas conflict, which is dedicated solely to condemning Israel.

In other words, times are changing. Those members of the Italian parliament who hate Israel should realize they are on the wrong side of history. Indeed, when will the left understand that, especially since the signing of the Abraham Accords, embracing hatred of the Jewish state only drags us back to the Middle Ages?

Radical social justice ideology is fueling US antisemitism

Even while many Jews back social justice movements calling attention to police abuse and mass incarceration, some worry that rhetoric characterizing America as a white supremacist society and demonizing whiteness has and will continue to spill over into hostility toward Jews. As proponents of this ideology tend to view Jews as white, how could it not?

We worry that supposedly white adjacent groups with higher average incomes and educational achievements, such as Jews and Asians, are being implicated in white supremacy for allegedly succeeding on the backs of marginalized communities.

Moreover, it strikes us that the new social justice activism is not just a call for a much-needed shift in policy priorities but a fundamental challenge to the liberal order, which would render everyone, Jews especially, more vulnerable. The ideologues in the movement often don’t seek to fix institutions but to tear them down, as was evident in the campaign to defund the police. Those of us who have studied the history of antisemitism know that when illiberalism sets in, whether on the political right or the left, resurgent antisemitism is never far behind.

The hypothesis that radical social justice ideology foments antisemitic sentiment on the Left is supported by a new survey of 1,600 likely voters. The survey shows that self-described progressives and very liberal Americans who believe that America is a structurally racist nation also tend to see Jews and Asians as white adjacent to the tune of 80%. That same subset views Jews as having too much power and privilege by nearly 2-1 over comparable groups, such as Black, Asian or LGBT Americans. These percentages on both questions steeply decline among moderates and conservatives.

The survey also indicates that on the far Left of the American political spectrum, Israel is being increasingly viewed as a colonizer, which calls into question the country’s very right to exist. A plurality of progressives now views Israel in these very extreme terms. While the new data is not a smoking gun that the spread of radical social justice ideology is driving antisemitic sentiment on the left, it comports with what many of us have observed with our own eyes.

Adam Levick's London talk on Critical Race Theory and antisemitism

The inevitable course of the CRT understanding of the West also includes a likely antisemitic outcome:

Ibram X Kendi’s “How to be an anti-racist” (a dumbed down version of CRT) promotes the ideology’s belief that racial disparities in outcomes are, by definition, evidence of systemic racism – bigotry that, in his rejection of liberalism, must be combated by “anti-racist discrimination” against ‘whites’ (including, it follows, against Jews) – that is, the institutionalisation of preferential practices based on overtly racial and (per such racial essential-ism) antisemitic criteria.

Equality under the law and colour-blind admission standards in education, for Kendi, insofar as such traditional liberal expressions of anti-racism don’t produce equal results, is in fact racist.

While liberalism seeks traditional justice, CRT proponents seek what Thomas Sowell calls “Cosmic Justice”, a Utopian concept that, by demanding not just a fair and transparent process, but the desired result, is irreconcilable with personal freedom based on the rule of law.

CRT turns the Greek saying “character is destiny” on its head, and posits instead that “colour is destiny”.

CRT embraces fatalism and cynicism over liberalism’s agency and optimism.

CRT is obsessed with identity, while liberalism’s project has always sought to transcend identitarianism and the obsession with who we are as the result of mere accidents of birth.

The CRT inspired myth of the white-adjacent, white or even hyper-white Jew helps explain why some anti-Zionists obscenely characterize Israel as a “white supremacist state”, which brings us to a powerful observation by the Israeli writer Yossi Klein Halevi:
Anti-Semites have typically “turned Jews into the symbol of whatever it is a given civilization finds as its most loathsome quality.
Under early Christianity, the Jew was the Christ killer. Under communism, the Jew was the capitalist. Under Nazism, the Jew was the ultimate race polluter.
Now we live in a civilization where the most loathsome qualities are racism, and, lo and behold, Jews have become “white people” oppressing “people of colour”.

This represents, Halevi concludes, a “classical continuity of thousands of years of symbolising the Jew”.

Moreover, the message of Jewish tradition is that none of us are at the mercy of qualities or characteristics that can never change. Our message has always been one of action and hope—each one of us is a work in progress, even kings and great leaders.

CRT nullifies this powerful and liberal idea—that we are individuals with the power to make a difference in our own lives.

Equality before the law, regardless of class, colour, or creed, is not just the only answer that has worked for Jews, and the greater good, over the long run, it’s also the only solution with any moral authority – the only idea that has proven itself to be most likely to result in human flourishing.

It is not by chance that Jews in particular tend to thrive in societies in which liberalism is enshrined in law and civic culture:
The veneration and codification of individual as opposed to group rights, which are protected via the neutral application of laws.
The idea that we should judge each person not by their station or their family lineage, but by their decisions, actions and achievements.
The sacredness of the individual over the group.
Human agency over fatalism.

It is the idea that all men are created in the image of God, that freedom is a natural self-evident right which precedes the state, and is shared by all individuals—revolutionary ideas originating in the Torah, but ushered into the West by Locke, Mill, Montesquieu and the drafters of the US Constitution – which offer the only real protection against increasing threats to Jewish freedom and the liberal values that serve as a bulwark against racism and tyranny throughout the world.

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10/29 Links: Biden Admin Probed Over ‘Illegal Efforts to Undermine Israeli Sovereignty Over Jerusalem’; What the Kanye West scandal can teach the UN

From Ian:

Biden Admin Probed Over ‘Illegal Efforts to Undermine Israeli Sovereignty Over Jerusalem’

A legal advocacy group says the Biden administration is violating U.S. law by funneling more than half-a-billion dollars to the Palestinian government and is demanding the administration release a slew of internal documents that the group believes will reveal an illegal effort "to undermine Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem," according to a copy of the Freedom of Information Act request provided to the Washington Free Beacon.

America First Legal, a group of conservative lawyers and activists, hit the State Department this week with a FOIA request that instructs it to furnish a slew of internal documents about U.S. funding for the Palestinian Authority, which was frozen under former president Donald Trump but resumed when President Joe Biden took office.

The legal group suspects that a portion of this taxpayer aid is being used to support Palestinian-led projects in Jerusalem that could undermine Israel’s control of its capital city. The Trump administration recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital, but the Biden administration, while formally upholding the policy, has moved to open a Palestinian Affairs unit in the city, fueling concerns that the consulate is working with the Palestinian government to erode Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem.

The Biden administration’s funding may also violate a bipartisan U.S. law that prevents taxpayer funds from reaching the Palestinian government until it ends a terrorist payment program known as "pay-to-slay," in which imprisoned militants and their families receive stipends. The Free Beacon reported earlier this month on a non-public State Department report to Congress that determined the Palestinian government is still paying terrorists, even as U.S. aid dollars flow.

"Make no mistake—the purpose here, contrary to U.S. law, is creating facts on the ground to undermine Israel’s borders and sovereignty and to reverse the United States’ recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city," Reed D. Rubinstein, America First Legal’s senior counselor and director of oversight, said in a statement. "The Biden administration is pumping hundreds of millions in U.S. taxpayer dollars into ‘projects’ that directly benefit both the corrupt Palestinian Authority and the terrorist Hamas dictatorship."

The organization’s FOIA centers on a State Department fact sheet from March that outlined projects run by the United States’ Palestinian Affairs Unit, which was opened to increase diplomacy with the Palestinian government. The State Department says this office is responsible for partnering "with Palestinian and American organizations to support projects in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza [Strip] that increase exchange between our two peoples and advance shared goals on topics such as education, entrepreneurship, environmental protection, English language learning, science and technology, art and culture, gender equality, human rights, and democracy, among others."

These programs also include "university linkage projects connecting American and Palestinian universities directly for exchange and collaboration for students and faculty," according to the State Department.

US Democrats Oppose Israel’s Admission to Visa Waiver Program

A group of 20 Democratic members of Congress called on the Biden administration this week to oppose Israel’s membership in the US Visa Waiver Program, Haaretz reported Friday.

The program would waive the current onerous requirements faced by Israelis when they want to visit the United States and would instead automatically authorize 90-day visits for business or tourism purposes.

But Representative Don Beyer sent a letter Thursday – signed together with 19 other Democrats – telling Secretary of State Antony Blinken, “It is clear that Israel cannot and should not be admitted into the visa waiver program under the status quo.”

Israel has been negotiating with the United States over this issue for more than a year.

Israel Among Candidates Being ‘Considered’ for US Visa-Waiver Status
Last month Knesset lawmakers voted to approve the first reading of a bill that would allow Israel to join the program. Under the bill, sponsored by the Justice Ministry, passenger data gathered by airlines during the reservation process are coded into a “passenger name record” (PNR) which would then be transferred to a national center to be set up at the Israel Tax Authority – and is a condition set by the US for Israel’s entry into the visa waiver program.

Last month Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs Alice Lugo said Israel “does not currently meet all [program] designation requirements, including extending reciprocal visa-free travel privileges to all US citizens and nationals.”

Lugo was referring to Israeli security personnel at Ben Gurion International Airport who pay close attention to Palestinian Authority Arabs who hold US citizenship and others, particularly so-called “peace activists” and supporters of the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

Ben Cohen: What the Kanye West scandal can teach the UN

The Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Gilad Erdan offered a telling quip during a debate last week at the international body concerning the latest report of its Commission of Inquiry into Israel and its apparently irredeemable offenses against international law. (The fact that the commission’s formal name is “The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel” itself suggests that its conclusions are hardly likely to be favorable, let alone neutral, towards the Jewish state.)

Referencing the viscerally anti-Zionist and often anti-Semitic utterances of the commission’s members—the canard the Israel is an “apartheid” state, the assertion that Israel shouldn’t be permitted to participate in the U.N. system—Erdan told the assembled delegates that “maybe the U.N. could learn from Adidas when it comes to hiring blatant anti-Semites!”

That, of course, was a reference to the decision of the sportswear company to sever ties with Kanye (“Ye”) West over the rappers’ revolting anti-Semitic comments. But Erdan didn’t have to cite Adidas alone; Foot Locker, Gap, Balenciaga, Def Jam and a host of other companies in the music, sports and fashion spaces have all cut links with West because of his hateful outbursts, while an unauthorized visit to the headquarters of Skechers in Los Angeles last Thursday resulted in him being escorted out of the building. “We condemn his recent divisive remarks and do not tolerate anti-Semitism or any other form of hate speech,” declared a gratifyingly clear statement from the footwear manufacturer, adding for good measure that “we again stress that West showed up unannounced and uninvited.”

In the space of a fortnight, West’s image has shifted from that of a hip-hop artist and fashion mogul with eccentric, often unpalatable opinions to an out-and-out racist and bigot who dresses models in “White Lives Matter” shirts, ostentatiously celebrates his violently anti-Semitic views and flirts with neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideology. In the process, West has lost all of the sponsorships mentioned above and many more on top, at one point piteously crying out that he had netted a loss of $2 billion in one day. One can only hope that particular claim is true.

The contrast between the speed with which the private sector moved to condemn West’s anti-Semitism and the stubborn persistence of outdated, unhelpful and anti-Semitic notions about Israel at the U.N. is frankly painful to observe. And it compels us to ask why it is that established multinational companies with thousands of employees are nonetheless nimble enough to call out anti-Semitism in a timely manner, while the governments gathered at the U.N. building in Manhattan either enthusiastically endorse or turn a wearily blind eye towards that body’s long-established, hard-wired hostility towards the world’s only Jewish state.

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