Phyllis Chesler: Behold the 21st-century boycott
Some 73 years after Adolf Hitler fired Jewish professors from German universities—and burned and banned Jewish books—British academics were leading the pack against Israelis.Seth Mandel: Media Revive the Classic ‘Jewish Oppressor’ Stereotype
The American Association for the Advancement of Science condemned the British boycott, as did one of my groups, the Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. We launched our own petition. Many who signed were professors of physics, medicine, math and computer science who were not as “politicized” as those in the social sciences and humanities. And many of them described the British boycott as “shameful,” “repugnant,” “indefensible,” “anti-academic” and “dangerous group thinking.”
By 2010, the leading British journal of medicine, The Lancet, published a scurrilous article that blamed indigenous gender apartheid practices (wife-beating, etc.) among Middle Eastern Arabs on the so-called “Israeli occupation.” Their so-called study was funded by the Palestinian National Authority and was collected by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. No control group based in Egypt, Jordan or Saudi Arabia (where similar violence against women was normalized) was used. The Lancet did it again in 2014, by publishing an Open Letter that accused Israel-only of crimes it had not committed. This letter had also been funded by known Palestinian terrorist organizations.
The Lancet has long been viewed as a distinguished journal of science. Increasingly, their work descended into political propaganda which, no doubt, has influenced (or bullied) the coming generations.
Recently, I have been told about some authors in the West who were discouraged from writing—or submitting—anything “Jewish,” be it about Judaism or Israel. Publishers are shying away from this topic.
This is where it all started—in the academy. It influenced two or three generations of professors and students, journalists and international organizations, and is now flourishing in the streets, jihad-style, at loud and aggressive anti-Israel demonstrations all across America and Europe. Cheers for Iran after it attacked Israel with missiles and drones. Remember, there were similar shouts of joy for the Hamas demons on Oct. 7.
I must note that each successive wave of Israel-blaming took place when the Jewish state was under attack and fought back to save itself. That is again the case now.
So here’s how the Washington Post frames the Rutgers situation: Pro-Hamas people are having their lives ruined by Jews who highlight their public comments, and this Rutgers fellow is an example not only of that but of essentially doxxing. (Doxxing means to reveal personal identifying information that is either nonpublic or requires enough effort to find that it is, in a practical sense, nonpublic.)Congress must pass Define to Defeat Act as definitive stand against antisemitism
Here’s what actually happened. Members of the Student Bar Association sent their group chat anti-Semitic and pro-Hamas messages after the Oct. 7 massacre, and an Orthodox Jewish law student in the chat, Yoel Ackerman, responded. He shared the messages with the Rutgers Jewish Law Students Association. For this, the law school opened disciplinary proceedings against Ackerman, with the law school dean telling her colleagues “we have a Jewish law student seeking to take and publish the names of those he deems to be supporting Hamas.” He was then subject to a Sovietesque impeachment hearing from the Student Bar Association. Ackerman, without receiving sufficient explanation, was berated for three hours in what amounted to administrative harassment. In order to dispense of their troublesome Jew, the SBA then moved to suspend its own constitution in order to expel Ackerman.
That’s when Rutgers University stepped in, and briefly suspended the SBA while it could sort out the mess that Hamas propagandists and their enthusiastic supporters among the deans had made of the school. The SBA was soon reinstated.
This, the Washington Post tells us, is an example of a Jew oppressing the poor gentile.
This is not biased reporting. It is Jew-baiting propaganda with a long and very disturbing history. The rest of the article, meanwhile, is biased reporting: Verma simply launders the exterminationist language of domestic extremists into legitimate criticism of a foreign government.
The whole article is science fiction. But the apology the paper owes Ackerman is very real.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance has been embraced by President Biden, former Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, 36 U.S. states, and dozens of other countries — not to mention the vast majority of Jews across every spectrum. It underwent a comprehensive, decade-plus-long review conducted by a multitude of experts and is the only definition with an actual track record of demonstrable effectiveness in curbing anti-Jewish hate and bigotry.
As it relates to this act, the IHRA definition of antisemitism also contains the appropriate caveats and carefully balanced safeguards that take into account the importance of nuance and context in situations that involve allegations of discriminatory intent.
For example, the definition makes clear that criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic and that all of the examples are not meant to be dispositive but rather are the types of things that could, taking into account the overall context, be evidence of antisemitism.
The Define to Defeat Act builds on the bipartisan momentum created by Rep. Mike Lawler’s Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would codify Executive Order 13899 and require the Department of Education to make use of the IHRA definition when assessing unlawful discriminatory behavior under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
Mr. Lawler, who has long been a leader on this issue, was working on that bill well before Oct. 7. Since that time, however, it has unfortunately only become clearer that the Jewish community needs the protections clarified in other contexts as well. Hopefully, that bipartisan support will continue; it is hard to imagine someone being supportive of Jewish people being properly protected under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act but not, for example, under Title VII of that same law.
According to the FBI, the majority of religiously motivated hate crimes in the United States are committed against Jewish people. That number is on the rise despite the fact that Jews make up only about 2% of the population. This trend is terrifying, and there is much work to be done to defeat it.
That work starts with defining the problem, and God willing, Congress, led by the members from New York, will now do that.