Wednesday, September 11, 2024
From Ian:
Clifford D May: Twenty-three years into the long war, the threat matrix keeps expanding
Clifford D May: Twenty-three years into the long war, the threat matrix keeps expanding
In the weeks after 9/11, I sat down with Jack Kemp, a Republican politician who had been close to President Ronald Reagan, and Jeane Kirkpatrick, a political scientist and self-described “AFL-CIO Democrat” whom Reagan appointed as his U.N. ambassador. Also in these discussions: a visionary philanthropist to whom they introduced me.New York City’s Laboratory for Hate
We began organizing a think tank that we named the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. It was our conviction that, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. had taken a “premature peace dividend” and “a holiday from history.”
We correctly foresaw that this would be a long war. We incorrectly believed that, after 9/11, no one in a position of authority would defend terrorists.
Before long, prominent journalists and academics were asserting that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”
That led, ineluctably, to what we now see: Herds of ignorant students, tenured activists and professional agitators are trampling over American campuses in solidarity with murderers and rapists who are torturing hostages at this very moment.
On Sept. 20, 2001, President George W. Bush announced the Global War on Terrorism, which he said would not end “until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”
Before the year’s end, the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan and had hosted al Qaeda, would be ousted from power. Two years later, Saddam Hussein would be toppled in Iraq.
In 2011, President Barack Obama withdrew all U.S. military forces from Iraq, leading to the rise of the Islamic State group, aka ISIS, and further opening Iraq to Iran’s influence.
In 2021, President Biden withdrew all U.S. military forces from Afghanistan. That proved that Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, planner of the 9/11 attacks, was correct when he told his CIA interrogators that jihadis can be confident of victory because “we only need to fight long enough for you to defeat yourself by quitting.”
For many years, Americans hoped that Russia and China would side with us in the Global War on Terrorism.
Surely, the arc of post-Soviet Russian history was bending toward liberal democracy. In June 2001, Mr. Bush said he found President Vladimir Putin “very straightforward and trustworthy.”
Near the end of 2001, China was welcomed into the World Trade Organization in the hope that as China grew wealthier, its rulers would moderate.
It soon became apparent that this experiment failed — though many influential Americans and Europeans still refuse to see that.
In March 2023, Waller R. Newell, perhaps the world’s leading expert on the history of tyranny from ancient times to the present, joined me in writing a column on what we called the “Axis of Tyrannies.”
Xi Jinping, China’s Communist ruler, and Mr. Putin, Russia’s neo-imperialist dictator, had agreed to a “no-limits” partnership in February 2022, just days before Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Both went on to establish close relations with Ali Khamenei, the Islamist “supreme leader” of Iran.
Mr. Khamenei has begun sending ballistic missiles to Russia. There are numerous other examples of military cooperation among the members of what is often called the Axis of Aggressors. North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela are also members.
Beijing, Moscow and Tehran are building their military capabilities as fast as they can. Bipartisan commissions have found the U.S. defense budget and military size inadequate given this expanding threat matrix.
Bratman says the tenor of the violence worsened over the summer, with demonstrators becoming more frustrated and volatile, last week marching outside Hillel with a white sign painted in red letters reading: “Bring the war home,” illustrated with a machine gun. “These people are not just insane,” says Bratman. “They’re criminally insane. We have a lot of insane people in New York on every block. But these people are dangerous. They’re not the regular guy that throws shit at the wall in Times Square.”David Collier: BBC Hamas coverage shows broadcaster must choose between truth and misinformation
A seasoned Army veteran who saw action in Iraq, Bratman is naturally cool, engaging, and funny—a genuine hail-fellow-well-met. But his instincts now tell him that violence is coming. It’s the very beginning of the school year and everyone is distracted, and he desperately needs more press coverage to get the attention of the CUNY administration.
“What’s new about this round of protests?” I asked Bratman. To propose a story to my editor, I’ll have to say what’s new. Bratman just about lost it. “Protesters stalked, menaced, harassed, and followed Jewish students to a kosher restaurant, like they would have done on Nov. 9, 1938, and blocked the entrance, screamed obscenities, and banged on windows calling for violence against Jews,” he told me. “They not only terrorized students, but also other Jews, random New York Jews having dinner. The cops came, didn’t do anything, even though they heard distinct, specific threats against the lives of the Jews inside.”
Bratman grew up in the Soviet Union, so he believes that he understands where all this is headed if brave and well-intentioned people don’t step up and insist on what should not require saying: Jewish people enjoy the same rights as any other citizen of the U.S. “This is not a freedom of speech story,” he states. “These people are breaking the law. Free speech rights end when the speech is menacing, threatening, or intimidating—or when the speaker prevents me from moving freely through a public space. For whatever reasons,” he says, “the police are not enforcing the law.”
A lawyer and Navy SEAL named Bill Brown, who is trying to help Jewish students fight hate on campus, happened to be visiting Baruch College just as the protests began. He told Tablet, “These were not demonstrators. Demonstrators do not follow students to a restaurant and spew racial hatred and use derogatory language. These were criminals who wore kaffiyehs over their faces to intimidate, and they blocked the entrance to the restaurant so the victims felt trapped.” He praised the “bravery” of the Hillel students “who did a good job staying together in a group and looking out for each other.” He encouraged them to continue to document the violence and urged others both inside and outside the Jewish community to “stand up and peacefully make their voices heard.” He encouraged everyone to document all incidents via video, because it “helps others see just how bad things are” and provides evidence to support possible legal action.
The day after the restaurant melee, CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez issued a statement: “I was deeply disappointed to learn demonstrators disrupted a Hillel welcome dinner for students from CUNY and universities across the City, turning an event designed to help freshmen acclimate to college life into a disruptive hate-filled display that has no place in our city.” He affirmed that he was investigating the “incident” and said the school “will not hesitate to enforce CUNY disciplinary actions, as appropriate, if any of the demonstrators are members of the CUNY community.”
Bratman reported several students and one faculty member he saw at the protest. The ADL called on Baruch College President David Wu to condemn the violence. Wu did not return a request from Tablet for comment. William C. Thompson Jr., the chairman of CUNY’s Board of Trustees, responded to Tablet via his press spokesman on Sunday, calling the protesters’ behavior “deplorable.” He said, “We will not condone hateful rhetoric and any member of the CUNY community who participates in any actions that intimidate, threaten, or promote hate and violence, will face disciplinary consequences.”
Bratman believes that the large Jewish organizations like ADL and AJC should put their money where their mouths are and hire teams of lawyers to sue the colleges and students and faculty who are breaking the law—often repeatedly, and for months on end. He says that he’s tired of hearing excuses from the funders like: “the wheels of justice turn slowly.” In response, he says “we need to make the wheels turn faster. I guarantee you, if it was about a merger of two financial firms, lawyers would make that happen quickly.” The famed Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Right Under Law “is great,” he says, but its capacity is too limited to help the numerous colleges that are in need.
The British public should not be forced to fund an organisation that, through its reporting, legitimises a group like Hamas and in turn strengthens Iran’s hand. This is not what the BBC was created for, nor is it what the British public expects from a publicly funded broadcaster.
There is a moral duty here, not just to Israel, but to every British citizen whose money has unwittingly contributed to the dissemination of this warped narrative.
And so, the BBC must be held accountable. This is not merely about restoring journalistic standards — it is about confronting the very real consequences of media complicity in the rise of antisemitism and the legitimisation of terror.
The Asserson Report lays out in forensic detail the extent of these failings, and yet, even now, the BBC refuses to reckon with the full gravity of its actions. Instead, it doubles down, insisting that it has maintained impartiality, even as the facts tell a different story.
There must be an independent inquiry — one that does not allow the BBC to hide behind platitudes of “due impartiality” while it continues to advance a narrative that serves the interests of those who would see Israel destroyed.
And unlike the decades-long hidden "Balen report", the 20,000-word document that assessed anti-Israel bias at the BBC back in 2004 and has been gathering dust in a secret filing cabinet ever since, the findings of the newly proposed one most certainly needs to be released without qualification. The British public deserves transparency, and the Jewish community as well as Israel deserve justice.
History has taught us what happens when powerful institutions turn a blind eye to the consequences of their actions. During the Second World War, it was all too easy for some to excuse or ignore the dangers of aligning with an ideology that sought the eradication of Jews. Today, the BBC must not be allowed to fall into the same trap. It is time for the BBC to face the reality of its failures, to confront the consequences of its reporting, and to restore the trust it has so grievously betrayed.
This is not just about the BBC. It is about the broader moral question of how we as a society respond to the forces of hatred and terror. The BBC must decide whether it stands for truth or for the kind of dangerous misinformation that fuels violence and division. It is time to choose.
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