01/03 Links Pt2: FBI Says Violence Against Jews Is in Decline. Jews Aren’t Buying It; Sweet success in Ben & Jerry’s-MDA blood donor project; Bret Stephens: Jews and Cancel Culture

From Ian:

FBI Says Violence Against Jews Is in Decline. Jews Aren’t Buying It.

The FBI’s latest annual report shows a decline in violence against Jews, findings that are at odds with Jewish watchdog groups who say anti-Semitic hate crimes have hit their highest levels in history during the past two years.

The FBI’s 2021 findings, released at the end of last year, have sparked accusations the federal law enforcement agency is deflating these statistics at a time when the American Jewish community is facing an unprecedented wave of anti-Semitism. At least one watchdog group is calling on Congress to investigate how and why the FBI underreported anti-Jewish hate crimes.

"At a time of record anti-Semitic hate crimes, it is appalling that the FBI's data-gathering has been so badly botched," said Kenneth L. Marcus, chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a watchdog group that combats Jew hatred. "This massive failure has undermined the purposes of hate crimes data precisely when we most need the data. If the FBI doesn't quickly correct this problem, congressional committees will need to ask some serious questions."

Marcus said the FBI’s 2021 statistics on hate crimes against Jews are "essentially useless" due to new reporting procedures that omitted statistics from organizations typically included in the federal agency’s yearly assessment. While the FBI claimed that violence against Jews decreased last year, groups such as the Anti-Defamation League reported that 2021 saw the highest levels of anti-Semitic violence on record. A report from the AMCHA Initiative, a Jewish advocacy group, last year found that assaults on Jewish students and their identities doubled in the 2021 and 2022 academic year.

Marcus, an attorney and former staff director of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, said the FBI’s inaccurate reporting is likely to prompt congressional oversight.

"In my experience overseeing federal civil rights data collections, congressional committees have historically taken a keen interest in the completeness and accuracy of governmental information provided to the public," Marcus told the Washington Free Beacon. "It is hard to imagine that a failure of this scope would escape the notice of congressional oversight staff."

"I am hopeful that the Department of Justice and FBI will clean up this mess on their own," Marcus said. "If DOJ and the FBI do not fix this problem, however, by providing corrected and complete data to the public, we should not be surprised if Congress should get involved."

Sweet success in Ben & Jerry’s-MDA blood donor project

Ben & Jerry’s Israel and Magen David Adom have begun a joint project to raise awareness and encourage young people to join MDA’s regular pool of blood donors in Israel.

To sweeten the project, Ben & Jerry’s set up ice-cream carts at four blood donation stations across the country where anyone who donated blood received free ice cream.

Locations included the Dizengoff Center, where 71 units of blood were donated; in Rishon Lezion, which collected 119 units; at Rupin Academic College, where 80 people donated units of blood; and at the Knesset, which collected 120 units. The donated blood can conceivably help save the lives of about 1,000 people in less than two months.

Able to save the lives of around 1,000 people in under 2 months
MDA vice president of blood services Prof. Eilat Shanar said, “In order to maintain a proper blood supply in the State of Israel, MDA’s blood services are required to collect about 1,000 blood units from volunteer donors every day. We are very happy about the cooperation with Ben & Jerry’s and we hope to continue this activity in other places throughout the country and encourage more and more people to donate blood and save lives.”

Is the UK Turning into Something Extremely Different?

On December 1, 2022, Britain’s Office for National Statistics released the latest 10-yearly census, carried out in 2021, showing that the fastest-growing population in England and Wales is Muslims. According to the census:
“For the first time in a census of England and Wales, less than half of the population (46.2%, 27.5 million people) described themselves as ‘Christian’…”

“It’s not a great surprise that the Census shows fewer people in this country identifying as Christian than in the past,” the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, said in response to the findings, “but it still throws down a challenge to us not only to trust that God will build his kingdom on Earth but also to play our part in making Christ known.”

The Muslim community in Britain reacted otherwise. Zara Mohammed, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said:
“Whilst the Census does look at religion, the lack of wider religion-specific monitoring prevents us from fully understanding how acute the issue of under-representation of Muslims is in British society.

“These initial figures give us an opportunity to now make meaningful change and create a better Britain for all.”

In 2013, British journalist Vincent Cooper wrote: “By the year 2050, in a mere 37 years, Britain will be a majority Muslim nation.”

The census taken 2021 has revealed that while fewer than half of people (27.5 million) in England and Wales now describe themselves as Christian, those claiming “No religion” rose by 12 points to 37.2% (22.2 million). Those identifying as Muslim rose from 4.9% in 2011 to 6.5% (3.9 million) in 2021. The next most common responses were Hindu (1.0 million) and Sikh (524,000), while Buddhists overtook Jews (273,000 to 271,000).

Religion seems a far more important part of life for Muslims than for other Britons: it appears central to their sense of identity. According to a report from 2006:
“Thirty percent of British Muslims would prefer to live under Sharia (Islamic religious) law than under British law…. Twenty-eight percent hope for the U.K. one day to become a fundamentalist Islamic state.”

An article by Abdul Azim Ahmed, published by the Religion Media Centre in September 2021, admitted that within Britain all the divergent schools of Islam are present — although Salafism has grown in recent years, particularly among younger Muslims.

Trevor Phillips, former head of Britain’s Commission for Racial Equality and Equality and Human Rights Commission, found that the followers of Islam hold very different values from the rest of the society; many apparently want to lead separate lives. “Muslims are creating nations within nations,” he said.

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100 years ago: When Harvard's president said that discrimination against Jews was GOOD for the Jews

In 1922, a Jew who graduated from harvard in 1900 wrote a letter to the president of the university Lawrence Lowell about newspaper reports that Harvard was limiting the number of Jews who would be accepted at the university.

Lowell's response was that limiting the number of Jews at universities was good for Jews.

The logic is convoluted and recognized at the time as being absurd, but this is how antisemites who don't consider themselves antisemites think.

The exchange of letters was published in the New York Times and various Jewish publications in June of that year. Here is Lowell's initial reply:

Dear Mr. Benesch: There is no need of cautioning you not to believe all that you see in the newspapers. As a colleague said to me yesterday, there is perhaps no body of men in the United States, mostly Gentiles, with so little anti-Semitic feeling as the instructing staff of Harvard University. But the problem that confronts this country and Its educational institutions is a difficult one, and one about which I should very much like to talk to you. It is one that involves the best interests both of the college and of the Jews, for I should feel very badly to think that these did not coincide. 

There is most unfortunately, a rapidly growing anti-Semitic feeling in this country, causing—and no doubt in part caused by—a strong race feeling on the part of the Jews themselves. In many cities of the country Gentile Clubs are excluding Jews altogether, who are forming separate clubs of their own. Private schools are excluding Jews, I believe, and so, we know, are hotels. All this seems to me fraught with very great evils for the Jews, and very great perils for the community. 

The question did not originate here, but has been brought over from Europe—especially from those countries where it has existed for centuries. The question for those of us who deplore such a state of things is how it can be combated, and especially for those of us who are connected with colleges, how it can be combated there —how we can cause the Jews to feel and be regarded as an integral part of the student body. The anti-Semitic feeling among the students is increasing, and it grows in proportion to the increase in the number of Jews. 

If their number should become 40 per cent of the student body, the race feeling would become intense. When, on the other hand. the number of Jews was small, the race antagonism was small also. Any such race feeling among the students tends to prevent the personal intimacies on which we must rely to soften anti-Semitic feeling. 

If every college in the country would take a limited proportion of Jews, I suspect we should go a long way toward eliminating race feeling among the students, and, as these students passed out into the world, eliminating it in the community. 

This question is with us. We cannot solve it by forgetting or ignoring it. If we do nothing about the matter the prejudice is likely to increase. Some colleges appear to have met the question by indirect method,  which we do not want to adopt. It cannot be solved except by co-operation between the college authorities and the Jews themselves. Would not the Jews be willing to help us in finding the steps best adapted for preventing the growth of race feeling among our students, and hence in the world? 

The first thing to recognize is that there is a problem—a new problem, which we have never had to face before, but which has come over with the immigration from the Old World. After the nature of that problem is fairly understood, the next question is how to solve it in the interest of the Jews, as well as of every one else. 

Very truly yours, 

A. LAWRENCE LOWELL.

Lowell is saying that hating Jews is a natural part of being human. The more Jews, the more hate. If only there would be fewer Jews, then antisemitism can be limited. 

In fact, as Mr. Benesch pointed out in his response, if there were no Jews at all, then that would solve the problem, right?

The last paragraph says it all. Too many Jews on campus is the problem, and Harvard was looking for a solution - and it found one: discriminate against them.

People use similar convoluted logic to justify bigotry today, and they are just as certain that there is no prejudiced bone in their bodies. And in a hundred years, we will marvel at how today's intelligent people accepted today's version of antisemitism as normal. 

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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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Yet more proof that "pro-Palestinian" is a codeword for "inciting against Israel"

The "Adalah Justice Project," an influential American group that claims to be "pro-Palestinian," tweets:

The  Executive Order was against antisemitism, which includes treating the Jewish state as a proxy for traditional antisemitism (by subjecting it to double standards, false accusations and analogies meant to hurt the feelings of Jews such as comparing it to Nazis).

In no way does it cover "advocacy for Palestinian rights."

But Adalah, as well as any so-called "pro-Palestinian" organization you can name, cannot even imagine advocating for Palestinian rights - which no one is against - and attacking the Jewish state. The two are one and the same.

Well-meaning people are saying that the IHRA definition of antisemitism may be used to chill free speech. There is no proof for this. There is also no proof that existing Title VI legislation, which could be used to attack free speech that could be descried as racist or xenophobic, is problematic. But for some reason the Adalah-style argument - that antisemitic speech must be protected on campus while anti-racist and anti-immigrant speech cannot be - has resonated with the liberal media and organizations.

This is quite worrying for those who actually care about antisemitism.

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A critic of Israel comes face to face with leftist antisemitism at Bard College

Forward opinion editor Batya Ungar Sargon came face to face with the ugliness of leftist antisemitism when she was invited to speak at Bard College last week.

She was going to participate in a few sessions in a conference on "Racism and Antisemitism" at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard.  One of them were about how to work with people with different opinions on President Trump, and another was about "Racism and Zionism: Black-Jewish relations."

Her first session, though, was called "Who Needs Antisemitism?" with Ruth Wisse and Shany Mor. This session wasn't about Israel or Zionism, but purely about antisemitism today. It was the only session where Jews discussed antisemitism.

That was the only session that was targeted by protesters from Students for Justice in Palestine.

Ungar-Sargon was mystified, and spoke to the protesters: "I told them that I respected their passion and commitment to what they thought was right, but asked why they had picked this panel.

"'Come to my panel tomorrow,' I said. 'Come protest my comments on Zionism. I’ll be talking about the occupation. Bring your signs.'"

Ungar-Sargon tried to explain to them that they can come and protest at her session on Zionism the next day, that she would let them ask all the questions they want. She tried to explain to them that they were undercutting their own cause by targeting a session on antisemitism when they always claim that they are merely anti-Zionist.

She kept trying logic on people who were animated by hate not for Israel but for Jews. Yet she couldn't quite believe it - these were people she often agrees with about Israel, couldn't they see that protesting three Jews talking about Jew-hatred was antisemitic?

Her biggest shock, though, came from her fellow speakers and other academics who defended the obviously antisemitic protest.

“I disagree with what she is saying,” Shahanna McKinney-Baldon, who was to be part of Batya's panel on racism and Zionism the next day, told the SJPers. “I support what you’re doing. I think you should protest.”

When the session began, students started their planned interruption when Ruth Wisse spoke. Ungar-Sargon noticed that several of the conference speakers were applauding the students.

Not one person apologized to her for these interruptions. No one from the conference denounced the attempts to shut down a session on antisemitism by antisemite. Academics seemed to welcome the explanation given by one of the protesters that any discussion of antisemitism is really about supporting Israel.

Worse yet, at a party afterwards for conference speakers, Etienne Balibar, a French philosopher  at Columbia University, told Batya he supported the protesters. “Why are you silencing Palestinians?” he demanded. “There should have been a Palestinian discussing anti-Semitism. They have many thoughts about it!”

This was a session about antisemitism in America.

 To Batya's credit, she had enough. At her planned session on Black-Jewish relations the next day, she gave a short speech about what she had experienced. She noted her bona-fides at publishing more Palestnian voices in her opinion pages than all major media combined, how she convinced Jews to vote for the Arab parties in Israel - but that what she experienced wasn't anti-Zionism but antisemitism, and her fellow panelists who she used to idolize as luminaries were cowards who egged on pure antisemitism when it appeared right in front of them.

And she walked off the stage.

If anyone claims that there is no such thing as leftist antisemitism, this proves they are just as craven and complicit as the academics that applauded the supposedly "pro-Palestinian" SJP when they interrupted a session on antisemitism - just because talking about antisemitism might get people to be more sympathetic to Jews.

Will Ungar-Sargon be more aware that a lot of the people she proudly publishes in The Forward are also antisemites in "anti-Zionist" clothing, no better than the academics she called out? I don't know, but at least here she recognized antisemitism when she saw it, and she acted in the most effective way she could.

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"Jewish Voice for Peace" supports hate speech

At the "Jewish Voice for Peace" anti-Israel site, they urge their fans to lobby to defeat Proposition 76:

The California Assembly is considering Resolution 76, which opens the door to condemning advocacy for Palestinian human rights in California campuses. Arab, Muslim and progressive students of all identities should not be in fear of censure, discipline or reputational smear for criticizing injustice and demanding Palestinian equal rights. Defend campus freedom of speech. Tell your legislator in Sacramento to vote NO on Resolution 76!

Does Proposition 76 curtail anyone's right to demand equal rights for Palestinian Arabs?

Not at all. It mentions multiple times how important freedom of speech is, and it really only seeks to stop hate speech on campus.

Here are operative parts of the latest draft:

Be it

Resolved by the Assembly of the State of California, the Senate thereof concurring, That the Legislature recognizes the supreme importance of the right to freedom of speech , as protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and its rightful place on college campuses as a mechanism for the sharing and discussion of diverse ideas and opinions, including those that challenge a person to consider the merits of his or her own positions; and be it further

Resolved, That the Legislature hereby condemns biased, hurtful, and dangerous speech intended to stoke fear and intimidation in its listeners speech that promotes discrimination based on a protected characteristic, such as race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability, age, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation and identity, medical condition, or political activities or affiliations ; and be it further

Resolved, That the Legislature encourages public post-secondary institutions to ensure that they provide a safe, encouraging environment for exercising the right to freedom of speech and for the vibrant discussion of ideas and opinions from people of all walks of life; and be it further

Resolved, That the Chief Clerk of the Assembly transmit copies of this resolution to the author for appropriate distribution.

Which means that the so-called Jewish Voice for Peace is saying that anti-Israel activists should have the right to stoke fear and intimidate Israelis, Zionists and Jews on campuses.

There is really no other way to read it. JVP cannot figure out a way to be "pro-Palestinian" without using thuggish, intimidation techniques - and they seek to protect their right to use hate speech to make their point.

Which tells us everything we need to know about JVP.

(h/t Nitzan, Ian)

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