Wiesenthal’s Rabbi Marvin Hier praises Trump for being only US leader to deliver
Rabbi Marvin Hier has a busy schedule. The Los Angeles-based founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center was in New York for a few days late last month, but he was able fit me in right between a meeting with The New York Times editorial board and lunch. Where he’d have lunch was something he’d figure out over the phone in the middle of our conversation.Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha Reviewed by Jonathan Schanzer
The late Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, who lived in Vienna, was more of a figurehead to the Simon Wiesenthal Center than an active leader. It has always been Hier’s show. Today the organization works as a monitor of anti-Semitism and arm of Jewish advocacy. It has produced over a dozen films, and maintains its Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance. (A controversial branch has been in the works in Jerusalem since circa 2005.)
Hier, a two-time Academy Award winner for the documentaries “Genocide” and “The Long Way Home,” is regularly spotted on cable news. He is an opinionated (and sometimes funny) man, and it takes about 11 seconds in his presence to feel completely at home. Eighty-year-old Jews who are extremely ready to share their opinions are, perhaps, my favorite people of all.
He’s also someone who still refuses to apologize for leading a prayer at US President Donald Trump’s inauguration. (Read on, as I offer him another opportunity here.) While he does condemn the president’s comments on Charlottesville and did rebuke Trump’s Muslim travel ban (with some commentary), the rabbi is clearly someone who, while not taking sides, has definitely taken sides.
In February 2019, two Israelis found a 1,900-year-old coin from the time of the Jewish Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans (132-35 C.E.) in an area southwest of Jerusalem. Inscribed on one side of the coin were the words the "second year to the freedom of Israel."
This kind of evidence connecting the Jewish people to the land of Israel is exactly what Nur Masalha seeks to undermine in his new book, a dense and redundant effort to undercut what he calls "the foundational myths of Zionism."
As an anti-Zionist historian, Masalha exhibits typical contempt for "Zionist settler colonialism," but he distinguishes himself in one important way. He also endeavors to challenge "the fictional narratives of the Old Testament." In other words, he seeks to deny the Jewish connection to the Holy Land.
For example, he asserts that "there is no empirical historical evidence or facts to corroborate positively the Old Testament Exodus text." He further finds a "lack of material or empirical evidence for a 'United Kingdom of David and Solomon.'" He sneers at what he calls Jewish "myths of 'exile and return' and 'return to history.'" When he does acknowledge Jewish connections, he claims that the Jews were "Palestinians"—seemingly with no claim to the land.
In contrast, he posits that "Palestine and its local heritage have survived across more than three millennia through adaptation, fluidity, and transformation." In disjointed, repetitive, academic language, he labors to draw a continuous arc from the Late Bronze Age to the current day. Of course, Arabs have connections to the land they today call "Palestine." But to assert a continuous four thousand-year history is absurd. The territory has changed hands countless times, as Roman, pre-Islamic, Islamic, and modern empires came and went.
At Oberlin, a Tipping Point
The fact that Gibson’s had been serving the community for more than 100 years meant nothing. Nor did the fact that it was Aladin, not Gibson, who broke the law. As the Weekly Standard reported, Oberlin officials even suggested to local businesses that if students were caught shoplifting in the future, the school should be called, not the police, so that the thieves could be given one free pass for their actions.
According to the Legal Insurrection blog, which has followed the case since the beginning, all three of the assailants eventually “would plead guilty to shoplifting and aggravated trespassing, and would avow that Gibson’s was not engaged in racial profiling.” None served any time in jail. Even that non-punishment was too much for Oberlin’s administrator-activists. As Legal Insurrection noted, when news broke that Aladin and his accomplices would receive only probation, “Toni Myers, Oberlin College’s Multicultural Resource Center Director then, send [sic] out a text which said, ‘After a year, I hope we rain fire and brimstone on that store.’”
In 2017, after taking a significant hit to their profits because of the protests, Gibson’s decided to hold Oberlin and its officials accountable for their kowtowing to student protestors. The bakery filed a civil lawsuit against the school (including Raimondo) for “libel, slander, interference with business relationships, interference with contracts, deceptive trade practices, infliction of emotional distress, negligent hiring and trespass.” This week, a jury agreed with the bakery’s claim that the school and its officials had acted irresponsibly and awarded Gibson’s $11 million in damages (if you’re concerned about runaway tort judgments, this might seem like a disturbingly high number for a small bakery, but considering that Oberlin claimed Gibson’s was worth less than $35,000, it’s not surprising the jury responded with a large damage verdict).
During the trial, Gibson’s lawyer argued, “When a powerful institution says you’re racist, you’re doomed.” As anyone who has witnessed the mob mentality among campus progressive activists can attest, student mobs only thrive because administrators allow them to do so. With their courtroom victory in Ohio this week, the Gibson family put college officials across the country on notice that people unfairly victimized and libeled by campus activists are done acquiescing to the mob’s demands. (h/t MtTB)