Poison Ivy League (Josh Namm)

Guest post by Josh Namm:

The Ivy Is Still Poison

We all remember the disastrous testimony of three presidents of the Ivy League when testifying before Congress at the end of last year about their schools’ dismal response to the recent, massive rise of campus antisemitism. Two of them, the University of Pennsylvania’s Liz Magill, and Harvard’s Claudine Gay, have since resigned. The primary reason was their uniquely repulsive remarks regarding the safety and status of Jews at their respective schools. Magill resigned quickly. Gay refused to resign, doing so only after repeated revelations about her total lack of qualifications for the post, and her tendency (some would say “need”) to plagiarize.

This followed weeks of antisemitic incidents on campuses across the nation, many occurring across the Ivy League. I wrote about it back in December.

I can’t help but think, based on what I’ve personally observed, that for most Americans it was the end of the issue. Or, at the very least, the perception is that the two sacrificial resignations (both Magill and Gay remain as faculty, both retaining HUGE salaries), must have been the beginning of an end to such open toleration of Jew hatred.

If that is what you think: you think wrong.

Every single day, there are reports of incidents against Jewish students at universities across America. But recently, there were two that really caught my eye. One is egregious, and the other is egregious, heinous, and a lot of other really negative adjectives.

The nation just celebrated another Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I’m old enough to remember one of my elementary school teachers playing the “I Have Dream” speech on vinyl during class (this was in the very old days, before vinyl had any kind of retro cache). It, literally, gave me chills. The ideas that this great man so charismatically espoused, like the idea that people should be judged by the content of their character, not their skin color, pierced my elementary school consciousness. That was true of the other lofty ideals the speech is correctly revered for.

Little did I know that decades later, in another century, a prestigious, elite university would be giving something called the “MLK Jr. Social Justice Award” to someone that hates Israel, and would absolutely judge me by my religion, ethnicity, and undoubtedly for the color of my skin.

In fact, in his speech, King expressed longing for the day when “God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands…”

So giving an award to an antisemite would seem to be the opposite of King’s message. That’s obvious.

At least it’s obvious if you have a functioning mind, capable of critical thought, and aren’t suffering the brain decaying condition known as “wokeness.” That condition robs you of any ability to be intellectually honest and substitutes any sense of honor, integrity, or aversion to hypocrisy, with a cultish devotion to its contradictory dictates. 

The University of Pennsylvania gave this award to a woman named Dorothy Roberts. She is a professor of sociology and law.

 

Dorothy Roberts (Wikimedia Commons)

The announcement for the event said that “The 23rd Annual Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Lecture in Social Justice proudly presents Dorothy Roberts as she reflects on the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” Among others, it was sponsored by the Center for Africana Studies and the Penn Program on Race, Science & Society.

You can guess the ideological leanings of the organizers.

Roberts, just 11 days after the Hamas massacres of 10/7, tweeted:

’Collective punishment of two million civilians, nearly half of them children, is a moral catastrophe to which current U.S. policy critically contributes.’ I was morally compelled to sign this US legal scholars’ letter.

What was this letter?

Signed by 178 members of the faculties of America’s law schools, it claimed that Israel was committing “internationally supported genocide,” referred to Israel as “an apartheid regime whose occupation is in clear violation of international law," claimed that Gazans "face genocide and ethnic cleansing,” and repeated the lie that the population of Gaza was being deprived of the “basic means of survival,” including water, food and electricity.”

Amazingly, this letter was written on October 16, 11 days before Israel’s ground offensive against Gaza began.

If you’re the kind of person who is fascinated by stupidity, you can read the full letter here. 

Previously, Roberts had expressed her support of the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions idiocy (BDS) movement (even if she can’t spell, see the link), and claimed that Jews are white because we supposedly all have power, or run the world, or the banks…or something.

The bottom line is that this obvious bigot hates Jews and shouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near anything with MLK’s name on it. Or be allowed near any classroom in the future.

Oh, and she opposes adoption because she thinks…wait for it… it’s “racist”!

Of course she does.

The entire thing was, as I said, egregious.

Another one is, also as promised, egregious and heinous.

Heinously disgusting.

Cornell University has a PhD student instructor named Alyiah Gonzales. I am sure that the irony, and cultural appropriation, of her first name escapes her completely.

This fine specimen of intersectionally driven achievement said recently that Israelis should "rot in the deepest darkest pits of hell.”

More recently, she cancelled her “English” class in “"race, writing, and power” (of course).

Why?

In her words it was: “in solidarity with collective calls for a Global Strike for Palestine.” She went on to say that she "mourn[s] the fact that all universities in Gaza have been destroyed or demolished by Israeli military forces." In lieu of class, she asked her students to write an essay on "the relationship between writing, power, and systems of oppression."

Blah, blah, blah. They all sound exactly the same.

This is the same Cornell at which a junior was arrested for posting messages saying that he was going to "bring an assault rifle to campus and shoot all you pig Jews." That was in October.

Another Cornell professor named Rusty Rickford, a history teacher, praised the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, while saying that it was “exhilarating” and “energizing.”

Rickford was not formally punished, but instead “went on leave.”

Will the same thing happen to Gonzales? I would say no. She is higher up the DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) hierarchy. I don’t think they will touch her. I hope that I am wrong.

In fact, the only recognition of Gonzales’ behavior came from the provost of Cornell, Michael Kotlikoff. He issued the usual weak, meaningless, jargon laden, uselessness saying “Canceling classes as a political call to action, or using one's role in instruction to promote a personal or political belief, diminishes our role as educators."

Once again, the statement has nothing to do with Jews, Israel or “hate speech,” and instead is about their own narcissism and fear that they will be pressured to go the Liz Magill route (again, she resigned but is still on salary, and teaching at the school).

Alyiah Gonzales (Cornell University English Department) - Of course she is holding a book by known Israel hater Toni Morrison. Resembling Little Richard does nothing to change her odiousness.

Even more concerning than her call to cancel class, and Cornell’s refusal to treat it as what it is: an attempt to draw her students into her own web of antisemitism, is the fact that Gonzales was ever hired in the first place, and wasn’t fired long before this point.

Just since Oct. 7 she has posted a series of deeply antisemitic posts. These include saying "Me, personally, I think the fuck ass settler state of Israel and all those complicit in genocide and occupation can rot in the deepest darkest pits of hell…”

Remember, this person is teaching English.

In November she said “If you've been silent and wallowing in ignorance … wake up and stand tf up, I will forever stand in solidarity with the Palestinian peoples—land back means LAND BACK, period. … WHERE IS YOUR RAGE? RESIST. RESIST. RESIST.”

Gonzales also has a history of posting antisemitic words/images on Instagram. Two examples, of many, are below.

In one she refers to the worst attacks on Jews since the Holocaust as “decolonization.” In the other, she posted an image of a Hamas paraglider, the type used on Oct. 7, and said “Freedom has only ever been achieved through resistance. Stand with the Palestinian resistance.”

I don’t know about you, but I am so sick of these little twerps referring to the mass murder of Jews as “resistance.” They are narcistic, arrogant, pretentious people playacting at adulthood.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, Gonzales’ Cornell bio claims that she is “dedicated to the queer, coalitional, and transformative possibilities of literature written by, for, and about Black womxn,” and her “research” is in "Black feminism," "Black womxn's literature," "queer theory," and "intersectionality studies."
 
Note the absurd, cultish, use of the letter “x” in women.

In her spare time, again according to her own bio, she likes to write “fantasy novels” and also write about herself in the third person. She says that she is “an unhinged zillenial who spends most of their time escaping into fantasy through both reading and writing,” and that “Iced Coffees, mean cats, and colorful hair make up the bulk of Alyiah's life.”

Most of “their” time. It's all so insufferable.

These are not intelligent people.

The only valid resistance here is forceful resistance to people like Roberts and Gonzales, their insanity, their bigotry, their dishonesty, and their ability to spread ideologically driven crap through our schools, turning kids across America into antisemitic, unthinking, ignorant members, not of a productive society, but of a dangerously obedient cult.

Never give in. Never give up.

Am Yisrael Chai. 

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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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Chanukah: Independence & Defiance, Not Tolerance (Josh Namm)

(Guest post by Josh Namm)

Every year article after article (after article) appears telling the world that Chanukah is the Jewish holiday of “religious freedom” or “religious tolerance.” Neither is even close to true. In fact, both of those ideas, related, but not identical, are both as far away from what Chanukah is as is possible.

Another thing Chanukah is not, is a “minor holiday.”

And more than anything else, Chanukah is not some kind of Jewish Christmas. At all. Proximity on the calendar does not make one thing identical to another thing. It doesn’t even make it related to that other thing.

This year, possibly more than any other in our lifetimes, the message of Chanukah resonates in powerful ways.

The basics of Chanukah are easy to understand. The word itself means “dedication.” The reason for that is that, at its most basic level,  the holiday celebrates the re-dedication of the “Beit HaMikdash” (The Holy Temple). Why did it need to be re-dedicated? Because at the time, the second century BCE, Syrian Greeks called the “Seleucids” tried to force us, the Jews, to assimilate and adopt Greek culture. Meaning: they tried to force us to become pagans, turn away from Torah based observance and Judaism’s foundational belief in one G-d.

For that reason, a small band of religious Jews, starting with Judah Maccabee (son of Mattathias the High Priest), defeated one of the mightiest armies on earth, drove the Greeks out of Judea (Israel), and reclaimed the Temple. Because it had been defiled by the idol worshipers, Jewish law required that it be re-dedicated. Part of that purification process was the lighting of its famous, seven branched, menorah with untainted oil. The Jews only had enough pure oil for one day, to get more would take seven days and, miraculously, the one day of oil lasted for eight days.

Pretty cool.

But - what does all that mean beyond latkes, sufganiyot, and (possibly) gifts for the kids?

So much more than most people realize.

The first lesson is of this important holiday is: NEVER be afraid to be Jewish.  Be a proud Jew, be unapologetically Jewish, and always do what’s right as a Jew. We light the menorah publicly, or place it in a window facing the outside, precisely for that reason. It is an expression of defiance, and pride in our Jewishness.  Judah fought a massive army, and defeated it, because he, and the Jews of that time, did not compromise. At all. Their faith in Hashem and their unity as Jews made them undefeatable.

On a deeper level, we light the candles at night not for the drama of it, but because it demonstrates that even a little bit of light can penetrate the darkness. We add a candle each night to remind us that more mitzvot, increased Jewish observance, brings more light into the darkness.

Also very cool.

The confrontation between our Jewish ancestors and the pagan Greeks set up a confrontation between our fundamental belief in one G-d, and His mitzvot (commandments) on one side, and Greek paganism on the other. Which meant the choice between the world of Torah, of the elevated vision of mankind it represents, and the pagan view of humanity in which aesthetics and self-indulgence were the primary goals, absent any higher, refining, elements.

The Greeks had their own philosophy, but it was an empty vision, one in which there was no ultimate obligation to G-d. Pleasing the self was, in their view, the pinnacle of existence. That view was, and is, diametrically opposed to Judaism because it placed man, and not G-d, at the center of the universe.

And we all know what man is capable of without any limiting principles, or a framework for spirituality.

We saw that very clearly on October 7^th.

So why isn’t Chanukah a holiday celebrating religious tolerance? After all, the Greeks were trying to force us to live as they did, and we fought back to worship as we please.

Isn’t that a quest for freedom?

Every Jewish holiday has its own associated mitzvah (commandment). Passover has matzah, Rosh Hashanah has the shofar, and Chanukah has the lighting of the menorah, etc. Each of these has a unique “extra” component in the Jewish prayer service for that holiday.

During Chanukah that component is called “Al Hanissim.”

In it we thank G-d for the “miracles, for the redemption, for the mighty deeds, for the saving acts, and for the wonders which You have wrought for our ancestors in those days, at this time.” It also describes how “In the days of Matityahu, the son of Yochanan the High Priest, the Hasmonean and his sons, when the wicked Hellenic government rose up against Your people Israel to make them forget Your Torah and violate the decrees of Your will…You waged their battles, defended their rights, and avenged the wrong done to them. You delivered the mighty into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the impure into the hands of the pure, the wicked into the hands of the righteous, and the wanton sinners into the hands of those who occupy themselves with Your Torah.”

It seems to me that is not a declaration of religious tolerance, but a statement of total dedication to Jewish values, a complete repudiation of a foreign culture’s influence on our own, and a call to return to Torah. Far from “tolerance,” or “freedom,” the “many” were “delivered into the hands of the few.” Those few lived very Jewish lives, and their actions led to the entire nation’s return to Torah observance.

Today those who invoke “tolerance,” and the equally “woke” ideas of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” do so very selectively. As we’ve seen every single day since October 7, those ideas never include Jews. While I absolutely abhor their hypocrisy, and find it repugnant, we should be totally okay not being included in their formulation of “inclusion,” or anything else they advocate.  

Chanukah teaches us that are under no obligation to “fit in,” to “please the world,” or to be anything but proudly Jewish. While they are telling us to take off our kippahs, our Magen Dovids, our tzitzit,  our mezuzahs, and anything else that makes us identifiably Jewish (G-d forbid), Chanukah comes along and teaches us to be proud. To look and behave as Jews.

In fact, they would love it if we stopped identifying as Jews, because they don’t want to be reminded of what being Jewish means. Our very presence is a threat to their, Hellenized, way of life. We remind them that pleasing the self is not the ultimate goal.

Outward, and inward, Jewishness represents a defiance in which we tell the world that we will not back down just because we make those who wish to destroy us uncomfortable.

Israel is at war right now for that exact reason. And like Judah and the Maccabees, today’s Jewish army will also defeat our enemies and in a massive victory. The Greeks also poked the Lion of Judah a few too many times and found out that we never back down, ever, when we’re threatened and have the means to fight back. Especially in our own land.

In the end, confidence in who we are, and what we represent, always brings ultimate Jewish unity. When we have that: we are undefeatable.

So is this holiday mainly about latkes, dreidels, sufganiyot, and gifts? No, it is about publicly and proudly living as Jews, no matter the odds, no matter what the rest of the world would have us do. It is about being Jewish with unwavering confidence, with the understanding that Hashem is always with us, and that our Jewishness is, literally, embedded in our souls. Chanukah reminds us to bring the light of Torah into the world, and when that world is at its darkest, that light shines its brightest.

This is NOT a “minor” holiday.

Happy Chanukah, a freilichen Chanukah, and Chanukah samayach.

Never back down. Never give up.

Am Yisrael chai.

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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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Would They Tear Down Anne Frank Too? (Guest post by Josh Namm)

Kita Anne Frank, Tangerhütte,

Guest post by Josh Namm

When I was growing up, two to three decades after the Shoah, it was assumed that you would read The Diary of Anne Frank, and you understood that, in a way, she represented every victim of the Holocaust. Just invoking her name engendered each emotion every Jew feels when thinking about what had happened to our people. In fact, coming from a secular leaning family in the Los Angeles of the 70s and 80s, there were very few things that connected me, and those like me, to our Jewishness.

This is before Chabad had a shul in every single Jewish (or Jewishy) neighborhood in L.A. (and the rest of the planet).

The list was fairly short: Fiddler on the Roof, whatever deli our family went to on Sundays, Hebrew school, the observance of some Jewish holidays, but always Chanukah, my father’s unshakeable Jewish pride, Jewishy books like My Name Is Asher Lev, Jewish humor, some Yiddish, the occasional playing of “Hava Nagila,” and The Diary of Anne Frank.

That last one was the bedrock of my initial understanding of the Holocaust. That was true of almost everyone in my age group. I knew Holocaust survivors, and the book is what gave me my first real insight into what they had gone through. That was also the case for almost every other kid I knew. It was synonymous with the entire concept of “Never Again” and Holocaust education.

We all assumed that the memory of Anne Frank was inviolable. The depth and emotional resonance of her short life was something that any human, at any time, would find deeply moving. Her story would always be cautionary shorthand for the pure evil that is antisemitism. As Jews, her story is our story and, we thought, would always be the best way to communicate the horror of the Shoah to the rest of the world.

Right?

This Monday (November 7), I woke up to the news that a place called the Anne Frank Daycare Center, in Tangerhütte, Germany, was being renamed. Why? (The Orwellian Newspeak ahead appears in quotes) According to the school, it caved to the demands of “migrant” parents, because the name “Anne Frank” caused a “controversy,” in which those parents felt “uncertain” about the school’s name.

Not to be outdone in the grotesque display of woke absurdity, the city’s mayor said: “The renaming is part of a broader concept that aims to celebrate the diversity of the children attending the daycare center.”

Once again we see that leftism is poison and is a favorite tool of antisemites. We also see that the West, and especially Europe, is intent on committing societal suicide. Apparently, with as much alacrity as it can muster.

Obviously “diversity” doesn’t include Jews. Which should surprise exactly zero Jews because we have never been included in the Left’s diversity calculus.

So, what is really happening here?

A few things, chief among them is that this is yet another avenue for Holocaust denial. Jew-haters hate to be reminded of the Shoah because they hate to be reminded of anything that causes the world to be sympathetic toward us. That is why it has become trendy among the pink haired, but physically puny, hordes of wokesters across the United States to tear down posters of missing Jewish children.

In fact, the favorite pastime of people who hate us is to inflict everything on us they can think of, so that they can then claim to be the victims of that very behavior. They murdered 1,500 innocent Israelis, and then claimed victimhood. That was even before Israel did what every other nation would do in the same situation. Now that Israel is taking care of business, and their business is keeping Jews safe at all costs: the whining has expanded exponentially.

But you can’t “tear down” Anne Frank like the hostage posters. Her face, her story, and in a weird way, even her voice, are embedded in the Western psyche. She can’t just be wished away. So instead, they are attempting to erase her name.

The school’s new name is to be “World Explorers.” That’s as catchy as tangling with the IRS. It reminds me of when a certain Washington DC football team was renamed the “Commanders,” and a certain Cleveland baseball team was renamed the “Guardians.” The fact that the previous names were rooted in both teams’ history, and related to the warrior quality valuable to the psyche of competitive sports, or that the new names were related to…nothing…was meaningless. The point was that the few had deemed the thing loved by the many to be “offensive.”

The trend is to rename anything that is deemed “distasteful” (or inconvenient) to some non-descript, non-threatening, generic name. Doing so allows the re-namers to pretend that they vanquished some imaginary evil.  They feel virtuous, while the rest of us lose a piece of our shared culture.

Which is the entire point. They diminish, demonize, and destroy, while the replacement is ALWAYS something deemed “acceptable,” i.e. generic and boring. Because generic is always boring and boring is harmless. Boring doesn’t cause people to think, feel, or to be curious. Boring is non-threatening.

The memory of the Shoah is threatening. Or, let me put it this way, if you  are threatened by the memory of the Shoah, you are an antisemite.

I am NOT comparing the names of sports teams to Anne Frank. But what we can learn from those incidents is that Arab Islamists, Jew haters, have learned the language and tactics of Western leftists to become more effective at marginalizing Jewish communities. Part of that strategy is to always play the victim. No longer content with committing heinous acts of terror, they have internalized the lessons of these Orwellian tactics, lessons which have taught them that language controls not just thought, but feelings. And when you control thoughts and feelings, the inversion of reality become possible. So, the Jews become evil colonizers, while Hamas terrorists are their righteous victims.

Stripping the Anne Frank Daycare Center of the name of the most famous Jewish girl in history, is then shifted from a heinous act of despicable Holocaust revisionism, to a “sensitive” act of “inclusion,” designed to satisfy the needs of “migrant” parents.

That this is allowed to happen in Germany should be like a sudden hard punch to the face. But it is not. We have been watching the West travel down this road, with intent, for decades. But it’s hard to imagine that a few decades ago this would have been possible. Not because antisemitism had been eliminated in Germany (I almost fell over laughing just typing that), but because the West, particularly Germany, still felt enough shame about the Shoah to at least PRETEND to still try to be atoning for it.

(Spoiler alert Germany: there is no atoning for it).

In a final note of woke idiocy, also relayed in Orwell’s Newspeak, the town newspaper said this:

“Ultimately, the parents and employees wanted a name that was more 'child-friendly' and 'better suited to their concept.' Their needs are more important than the global political situation.”

Which, of course, makes no sense. Anne Frank is one of the most famous children ever to have lived. Their true “concept” is for the facility to be judenrein. And it can only be “in concept” because there are so few Jewish children in Germany today, I doubt that there are any Jewish kinderlach within 50 miles of the place. The daycare center must be free of actual Jewish children, and free of anything that humanizes the Jewish people.

The reason for why there are so few of us in Germany, the Holocaust, and why Jews, an obvious minority, don’t matter in the “diversity” calculation is exactly why erasing Anne Frank’s name should be seen as a major cultural capitulation by a weak, pathetic, and feckless West.

As for their mention of the “global political situation,” that just proves again that what is happening in Israel was never about land, imaginary occupations, or any other fake grievance: it is about us, the Jews.

All of us.

This definitely has all of the ingredients of 1933 part deux.

Or should I say “part zwei”?

No. What I am going to say is: WAKE UP. The West can’t afford to remain complacent once more while evil is allowed to grow unchecked. Never again is now.

Never give up. Never give in.

Am Yisrael Chai.

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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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