RUTHFULLY YOURS

Following the forced resignations of the President and Provost of the University of Missouri, demonstrations against campus administrators has spread across the country. Students — many of whom are Black, gay, transgender and Muslim — claim that they feel “unsafe” as the result of what they call “white privilege” or sometimes simply privilege. “Check your privilege” has become the put-down du jour. Students insist on being protected by campus administrators from “micro-aggressions,” meaning unintended statements inside and outside the classroom that demonstrate subtle insensitivities towards minority students. They insist on being safe from hostile or politically incorrect ideas. They demand “trigger warnings” before sensitive issues are discussed or assigned. They want to own the narrative and keep other points of view from upsetting them or making them feel unsafe.

Someone has to ask the question: is it ignorance or is it malevolence?

The U.S. State Department justifies hiding behind a claim that a new European effort at ethnic labeling for Israel is something other than an effort to force the Jewish State to capitulate to the world’s demand it welcome yet another neighbor Arab state committed to her end. And to claim that this latest European effort is merely a new consumer information initiative? Really?

You decide.

In the lead up to the announcement by the European Union that it would require ethnic labeling of Israeli goods made or produced beyond the so-called “Green Line,” reporters repeatedly peppered spokespeople for the U.S. government regarding the position it would take on this EU effort.

As of Tuesday, at the daily press briefing, spokesperson Mark C. Toner was completely unprepared to respond to questions about the government’s position. Instead, Toner repeatedly responded that yes, the U.S. is completely opposed to the “settlements” – Jewish communities situated in Judea and Samaria, the historic heartland of the Jewish people – but also, yes, the U.S. is opposed to boycotts.

The Germans are angry with the Greeks for retiring at age 50 and counting on Germans to keep working until they are 65 so as to have enough cash to lend to Greece. The French are angry with the Germans for demanding such harsh and humiliating terms from the Greeks in return for a few billion more euros. The Greeks are angry with the Germans for once again in effect telling them how to levy taxes and to organize their economy. Italy is angry with every other EU country for refusing to relieve it of the flood of refugees fleeing Africa. Britain is angry with the entire EU for denying it the right to control its borders and snatching from it large portions of its sovereignty. There’s more, lots more. But on one thing they all, or almost all, agree: products made in “occupied Palestinian land” must be labeled as such, rather than as “made in Israel.” Nothing to do with any anti-Israel attitude, of course. And horrors at the thought that the rule might have anything to do with anti-Semitism. Merely a clarification of existing rules, which are along the lines of those already issued by Denmark, Belgium and Britain—yes, Britain, home of the Balfour Declaration, but that was long before the Muslim population soared and academics began their drumbeat of criticism of Israel.