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ANTI-SEMITISM

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Anti-Semitism’s Signature Moment Tony Thomas

By on December 18th, 2023

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/the-universities/2023/12/anti-semitisms-signature-moment/

Australian pro-Hamas petitions are swelling to a torrent. For example, “Historians for Palestine” signed by 120 academics, on top of one from 720 academics nationally. That loopy one begins:

As scholars, academics and students in Australia, a settler colony built on the dispossession of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, we stand in solidarity with Palestinians in their struggle for liberation and against Israeli settler colonialism.

There’s old petitions like the journos’ multiple efforts since 2021, the most recent garnering 320 names and continuing to amass new activist signatures. Then there’s is the arty crowd of nearly 4,000 arts “creatives” signing their own effusion.

There is even a ceasefire petition under way from “Current and Former Elected Representatives” at local, state and federal level. It says, “We stand with Palestine, the Palestinian people, including Palestinian Australians and for truth and justice.” This petition blasts Israel for rights “violations” dating to 1948 and “occupation” of Gaza since 1967 via blockades. It has just one weak phrase about “the acts of Hamas on 7 October 2023″ requiring investigation. For the real thing on October 7, see here (warning – extremely graphic).

Most sinister of all is the pro-Palestine open letter from 700 Victorian school teachers and staff, as reported today (December 18) in The Australian. The letter says that it is within teachers’ “professional and ethical duty to model an anti-violence position”. They are pressuring federal and state education ministers to advise principals that Palestinian advocacy is in line with the public sector code of conduct. (It isn’t). They claim this is required to “protect children’s and young people’s wellbeing” in regards to Palestine:

Our own students are also witnessing the catastrophic devastation unfold, which will have short and long-term effects on their social, emotional and cultural wellbeing, impeding their capacity to live and learn well,” it says. “In response to the indefensible actions causing catastrophic harm, it is essential for people and governments to take an ethical stand, including those who remain accountable to the responsibility of caring for children and young people.

The Australian quoted Teachers Professional Association of Australia secretary Edward Schuller that the group “vehemently oppose any attempt to push political agendas onto children”.

But the daddy of all rows is convulsing Australia’s top-rated Melbourne University, with 2,050 pro-Hamas staff, students and alumni slugging it out with embattled Vice-Chancellor Duncan Maskell. His offence was to issue a statement on October 25 correctly blaming the war on the Hamas terrorism of October 7. He called for civilised behaviour at the university “as a diverse, multi-cultural and multi-faith community”. He urged for no anti-Semitism, no Islamophobia and no racism.[1]

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Huge Majority Of Voters Say U.S. Has ‘Serious’ Antisemitism Problem: I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

By on December 18th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/12/18/large-majority-of-voters-say-u-s-has-a-serious-problem-with-antisemitism-ii-tipp-poll/

While the big media might not be worried about the wave of antisemitism that emerged after Israel was attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7, average Americans are. A hefty majority now call antisemitism in the U.S. a “serious” problem, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

Following the recent disturbing outbreak of antisemitism across the country, ranging from an upsurge of antisemitic demonstrations on college campuses to a spate of ugly harassment incidents against individual Jewish Americans, a majority of Americans agree there’s a big problem.

In our latest national online poll, taken Nov. 29-Dec. 1 from among 1,464 registered voters, we asked the following question: “Generally speaking, how serious is the problem of anti-Semitism, or prejudice against Jewish people, in the U.S. today?”

The overwhelming response was not comforting for those who might have hoped that antisemitism was a relic of the past. Some 76% of all Americans called the problem either “very serious” (43%) or “somewhat serious” (33%). A mere 14% said it was either “not very serious” (10%) or “not serious at all” (4%).

Another 10% said they were “not sure.” The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.6 percentage points.

Differences among the three major political groupings in America – Democrats, Republicans and independents – were not great. The share of Democrats (83%) and Republicans (77%) responding that antisemitism was a “serious” problem in the U.S. were, statistically speaking, basically even.

Independents, at 67%, were the lowest of the 36 demographic groups regularly tracked by I&I/TIPP, but even that was still a strong majority. Plainly, average Americans are worried.

But this raises a question: Who do Americans think are the groups most afflicted with antisemitic ideas?

I&I/TIPP asked a follow-on question: “Generally speaking, how serious is the problem of anti-Semitism, or prejudice against Jewish people, among the following groups, in the U.S. today?” The choices were liberals, conservatives, young adults and universities.

Recall that, overall, 76% in the poll thought America overall suffered from antisemitism. None of the individual groups listed in the preceding paragraph get close to that level, though all are above 50%. They range from conservatives (51%) and liberals (54%) to young adults (61%) and universities (61%).

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We Were Taught to Hate Jews ‘It’s like asking me how often I drink water. Antisemitism was everywhere.’ Apostates, former Islamists, and an almost-terrorist on how they changed their minds. By Madeleine Rowley

By on December 17th, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/we-were-taught-to-hate-jews?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The following five ex-Muslims grew up in Canada, Europe, and the Middle East, but they were all indoctrinated, they say, with the same views on Jews and Israel. They remember a childhood shot through with antisemitic moments ranging from the mundane (one woman recalls her aunt claiming Jews put cancer in her vegetables at the market) to the deadly (a former extremist went as far as to pick a location in London for a terrorist attack he planned to carry out at 17).

These hateful ideas, repeated by their family members, religious leaders, and teachers, are part and parcel of the same animus, they say, that fueled Hamas’s attacks on October 7.

Some of the people you will hear from below have received death threats for speaking out on issues like antisemitism and sexism in the Muslim world. One uses a pen name to protect herself and her daughter from her terrorist ex-husband, who is currently jailed in Egypt. All of them came to reject their loathing for Jewish people and the West, and have rebuilt their lives in the wake of their realizations. Here are their stories, which you can read or click to listen to each author recite in the audio recordings below.

“To enter our classroom, we had to step on a painting of the Israeli flag on the ground.”

When I was born, Iran was still free. You could drink and dance, and women could wear whatever they wanted. I’ll never forget my first day of school after the Islamic Revolution. I was six, and my mother entered my room with a long, dark, and formless manteau and a piece of fabric for my hair and neck.

“My darling,” she said, “this is your uniform.”

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A History of Feminist Antisemitism The story of how activists and academics exchanged the struggle for universal female improvement for a politics of division and hatred. Kara Jesella

By on December 16th, 2023

https://quillette.com/2023/12/15/a-history-of-feminist-antisemitism/

I. It Wasn’t Always Like This

In my academic life, I was fortunate to have my rabbi teach my first Women’s Studies course and Angela Davis teach my second. At Vassar during the multiculti-and-identity-obsessed 1990s, I learned from Rabbi Shirley Idelson about intersectionality and black feminism, and I was taught that if I didn’t understand the Spanish in the now-canonical anthology This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, I had to find someone who did to translate it for me. I also learned that I could be a Jewish feminist, parsing my own complicated personal and communal history for theoretical insights, in the manner of my favorite theorist, Adrienne Rich.

During my 13 years as one of the only Jews in the Catholic schools I attended, the boy I sometimes thought was my boyfriend drew swastikas on my book covers. The boss at my summer job was delighted to learn that I was going to Vassar, “even though there will be a lot of JAPs there” (a JAP, she explained, is a Jewish American Princess). I didn’t write about the panic of coming-of-age at a time—and in a city—where Operation Rescue picketed abortion clinics and screamed at “baby-killers” every weekend. (A 1990 story in the Jewish feminist journal Lilith was headlined, “The Anti-Choice Movement: Bad News For Jews.”) The year after I graduated—I had already fled to New York City—Barnett Slepian, a local Jewish doctor who performed abortions, was assassinated by a member of a Catholic anti-abortion group upon his return from shul.

Nevertheless, in my first paper for Rabbi Idelson’s class, I compared my own experience of racism to that of black Americans and concluded that American blacks had it worse. “I think you mute the terror of the swastika,” Rabbi Idelson remarked as she awarded me an A-/A. Later, in Professor Davis’s class, I learned that the term “women of color” wasn’t about melanin, it was an imaginative political formation. Those two classes informed everything I have done since: my undergraduate degree in Women’s Studies; my years as a feminist journalist and book author; and the doctorate I received two years ago, when I finally completed my dissertation on feminist historiography.

May 2021 was a sad and scary month to be a Jewish feminist, as violence escalated in the Middle East and in New York City, where I still live. Friends from graduate school and the feminist internet posted anti-Zionist infographics on social media and a counterterrorism unit kept watch in front of my daughter’s Jewish nursery school. The morning of my graduation, I awoke to a petition circulating on Twitter titled, “Gender Studies Departments in Solidarity with Palestinian Feminist Collective.” It informed me that Jews are colonizers not indigenous to Israel and rejected the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. Two days later, I received an email from my department with news of an award, and another professing solidarity with the Palestinian people. It was hard to understand exactly what that meant—who doesn’t want a better life for Palestinians?—but given the department’s politics, I could guess. 

But this was only a prelude of what was to come after the atrocities committed by Hamas against the kibbutzim of southern Israel on October 7th.

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An Antisemitic Occupation of Harvard’s Widener Library Claudine Gay promised to prevent ‘disruptions of the classroom experience.’ How’s that working out? By Dan Sullivan

By on December 16th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-antisemitic-occupation-of-harvards-widener-library-politics-anti-israel-bias-e4cea52a?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Mr. Sullivan, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Alaska and a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve.

I was in Boston last weekend for the Army-Navy game. The day after the game, five days after Harvard President Claudine Gay’s disastrous testimony before Congress, I decided to walk the campus to reminisce about my time at Harvard, where I earned my undergraduate degree in 1987, and reflect about what had gone wrong at this once-great university.

I visited places that held significance to me while I was there: St. Paul’s Catholic Church, my freshman dorm and, of course, Widener Library—a monument to learning, study and contemplation that sits like a temple in the middle of Harvard Yard.

As I did during my undergraduate years, I spent several minutes staring up at the powerful mural by John Singer Sargent, “Death and Victory.” It’s one of two Sargent paintings memorializing the men of Harvard who sacrificed their lives for our country in World War I. I’ve thought about the painting often throughout the years—including when I made the decision to join the Marine Corps.

When I walked upstairs to the famous Widener Reading Room, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Nearly every student in the packed room was wearing a kaffiyeh. Fliers attached to their individual laptops, as well as affixed to some of the lamps in the reading room, read: “No Normalcy During Genocide—Justice for Palestine.” A young woman handed the fliers to all who entered. A large banner spread across one end of the room stated in blazing blood-red letters, “Stop the Genocide in Gaza.”

Curious about what was going on, I was soon in a cordial discussion with two of the organizers of this anti-Israel protest inside of one the world’s great libraries—not outside in Harvard Yard, where such protests belong. They told me they were from Saudi Arabia and the West Bank. I told them I was a U.S. senator who had recently returned from a bipartisan Senate trip to Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. I mentioned the meetings I had. I expressed my condolences when they told me their relatives had been killed by Israeli military action in Gaza.

One then asked whether I supported a cease-fire in Gaza. I said I didn’t, because I strongly believe Israel had the right both to defend itself and to destroy Hamas given the horrendous attacks it perpetrated against Israeli civilians on Oct. 7.

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Niall Ferguson: The Treason of the Intellectuals Anyone who has a naive belief in the power of higher education to instill morality has not studied the history of German universities in the Third Reich.By Niall Ferguson *****

By on December 13th, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/niall-ferguson-treason-intellectuals-third-reich?utm_medium=email&_hsmi=286155294&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-

In 1927 the French philosopher Julien Benda published La trahison des clercs—“The Treason of the Intellectuals”—which condemned the descent of European intellectuals into extreme nationalism and racism. By that point, although Benito Mussolini had been in power in Italy for five years, Adolf Hitler was still six years away from power in Germany and 13 years away from victory over France. But already Benda could see the pernicious role that many European academics were playing in politics. 

Those who were meant to pursue the life of the mind, he wrote, had ushered in “the age of the intellectual organization of political hatreds.” And those hatreds were already moving from the realm of the ideas into the realm of violence—with results that would be catastrophic for all of Europe.

A century later, American academia has gone in the opposite political direction—leftward instead of rightward—but has ended up in much the same place. The question is whether we—unlike the Germans—can do something about it.

For nearly ten years, rather like Benda, I have marveled at the treason of my fellow intellectuals. I have also witnessed the willingness of trustees, donors, and alumni to tolerate the politicization of American universities by an illiberal coalition of “woke” progressives, adherents of “critical race theory,” and apologists for Islamist extremism. 

Throughout that period, friends assured me that I was exaggerating. Who could possibly object to more diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus? In any case, weren’t American universities always left-leaning? Were my concerns perhaps just another sign that I was the kind of conservative who had no real future in the academy?

Such arguments fell apart after October 7, as the response of “radical” students and professors to the Hamas atrocities against Israel revealed the realities of contemporary campus life. That hostility to Israeli policy in Gaza regularly slides into antisemitism is now impossible to deny. 

I cannot stop thinking of the son of a Jewish friend of mine, who is a graduate student at one of the Ivy League colleges. Just this week, he went to the desk assigned to him to find, carefully placed under his computer keyboard, a note with the words “ZIONIST KIKE!!!” in red and green letters.

Just as disturbing as such incidents—and there are too many to recount—has been the dismally confused responses of university leaders. 

Testifying before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce last week, Harvard President Claudine Gay, MIT President Sally Kornbluth, and University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill showed that they had been well-briefed by the lawyers their universities retain for such occasions.

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Crossing the Jordan: The New Antisemitism and How it Will Destroy the West By Janet Levy

By on December 13th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/12/crossing_the_jordan_the_new_antisemitism_and_how_it_will_destroy_the_west.html

As Israel deals with a multi-pronged Hamas-led invasion from the Gaza Strip amidst unwarranted international pressure, Canadian writer David Solway’s scholarly collection of essays, Crossing the Jordan: On Judaism, Islam and the West, comes as a timely reminder of how multiplicity in self-identification is undermining Jewish unity.  The book, to be released today, December 12, also addresses the idiosyncratic position of Israel among the nations of the world, the threat to liberal Judeo-Christian values posed by Islam, and the Left’s catalysis of the subsuming of Western culture.

Solway is a man of many parts – poet, scholar, teacher, chess enthusiast, education theorist, and literary critic.  Born Jewish but not particularly religious or identity-conscious, he underwent a transformation post 9/11.  He began to question his rejection of Jewish kinship and asked himself difficult questions that rid him of his Leftist inclinations.  Among other things, the book speaks of his epiphanic recognition that the fate of Israel is the fate of every Jew, regardless of nationality or political view.  In the light of the October 7 attack – Israel’s 9/11 (equivalent proportionately to seven 9/11s) – this exploration of personal change along with the impersonal twists of history makes for poignant reading.

Why, Solway asks, is Israel the only nation whose right to exist is questioned and threatened?  Why is it labeled an occupier and a colonizer when Eretz Yisrael and Judah predate any Arab presence in the Holy Land by more than a thousand years?  Why is it the only country that has been pressured to return captured territory after winning wars started by Muslim neighbors who have vowed to eradicate it?  Why are its defeated enemies allowed to dictate terms of peace? 

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Antisemitic Mob Shows Up for Biden Fundraiser, Vandalizes Jewish Neighborhood Stephen Green

By on December 12th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2023/12/11/antisemitic-mob-biden-fundraiser-n4924649

It was like a scene in downtown Tehran orchestrated by Iran’s ruling mullahs, one of those “spontaneous” protests in Ramallah on the West Bank, or from 1938 Germany as the Nazis whipped up antisemitic hate in preparation for Kristallnacht — and worse.

But it was modern-day Los Angeles on Friday night, the second night of Hanukkah, when a mob marched through a largely Jewish neighborhood chanting death threats to Jews.

According to StopAntisemitism, the mob also defaced several buildings, including synagogues. 

Here’s a short clip of the mob in action.

People who still rely on the mainstream media for their news missed scenes like these.

Remember, comrades — no peaceful protest is complete without at least a little property damage.

The mainstream media was largely silent on the mob and its death threats. FoxLA 11 reported it as part of its story on Presidentish Joe Biden’s fundraising sweep through Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Daily News gave it a brief mention way down in the 16th paragraph of a similar report on Biden’s trip.

To be fair, a similar mob of between 1,200 and 1,500 people showed up at Biden’s Holmby Hills fundraiser with chants of “Free Gaza” and “Ceasefire now.” They even accused Biden and his donors of supporting Israeli “genocide” against Gaza Arabs. There were about 1.5 million Muslim Arabs in the Gaza Strip when Israel unilaterally left the region in 2005. There are more than 2 million there today, and Gaza women have one of the highest fertility rates in the world.

Some genocide, eh?

“Literally, I believe, the future of American democracy is at stake,” Biden said during his fundraising speech in reference to Donald Trump. “We will be one of those generations that can say, ‘We saved democracy.”‘

That he said all that while a Nazi-like mob chanted outside is an irony too rich for fiction — it’s an absurdity that could only happen in reality. 

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Merry Christmas! Hanukkah Is Canceled By Gidon Ben-Zvi

By on December 12th, 2023

https://www.newsweek.com/merry-christmas-hanukkah-canceled-opinion-1850487

Anyone still clinging to the belief that there is a difference between hating Jews and wanting Israel to disappear now needs to explain away another inconvenient truth. Scheduled Hanukkah celebrations across the United States, Canada, and elsewhere have been scrapped. The reason cited over and over is that hosting such holiday events would imply support for Israel in its war against the Gaza-based Hamas terrorist organization.

A Hanukkah candle lighting that was due to take place at a music and arts festival in Williamsburg, Virginia, was canceled by the festival’s founder because the lighting of a menorah ‘seemed very inappropriate’ given current events in Israel and Gaza.

Let us conduct a quick thought experiment. Even supposing that holding Jewish people everywhere accountable for Israel’s actions since the Oct. 7 massacre was somehow valid, at what point did a country’s right—obligation—to defend itself against a group that invaded its territory, murdered 1,200 people, kidnapped over 200 men, women, and children, and drove over 200,000 citizens from their homes become ‘inappropriate’?

Moreover, this fear of being seen as siding with Israel over Hamas has not extended to Muslim-themed events and ceremonies in the United States and Canada, which continue to be held. When it comes to Muslim communities residing in these countries, there is a clear line being drawn between Hamas in Gaza and law-abiding citizens in Los Angeles, New York, Virginia, and Toronto exercising their right to worship and assemble as they see fit.

Despite this discrepancy between how two minority groups are being treated, Washington has repeatedly equated the plight of American Jews to that of Muslims living in the United States. Responding to a question about soaring rates of antisemitism and the wave of cancelled Hanukkah celebrations, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre said this week, “We have seen an uptick in hate, just more broadly, in different communities—obviously, also in the Muslim community. And so, we will do everything that we can to make sure that these communities feel safe.”

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The Ivy League Mask Falls Antisemitism is one example of a much deeper rot on campus.

By on December 11th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-ivy-league-mask-falls-antisemitism-higher-education-4592d0c0?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

The furor over antisemitism on campus is a rare and welcome example of accountability at American universities. But it won’t amount to much if the only result is the resignation of a couple of university presidents.

The great benefit of last week’s performance by three elite-school presidents before Congress is that it tore the mask off the intellectual and political corruption of much of the American academy. The world was appalled by the equivocation of the academic leaders when asked if advocating genocide against Jews violated their codes of conduct. But the episode merely revealed the value system that has become endemic at too many prestigious schools.

The presidents of MIT, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania hid behind concerns about free speech. But as everyone paying attention knows, these schools don’t protect speech they disagree with. They punish it.

Harvard President Claudine Gay has presided over the ouster of professors for speech that violated progressive orthodoxy. As Elise Stefanik wrote on these pages on Friday, Harvard’s Title IX training says using the wrong pronouns qualifies as abuse. Harvard was 248th out of 248, and Penn was 247th, in the annual college ranking by the free-speech Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

But because Jews in Israel are seen in the progressive canon as white oppressors and colonizers, it’s not a clear campus violation to call for murdering Jews because it depends on the context.

The three presidents have apologized for or moderated their comments before Congress, but that was only after the political consequences became clear. Believe what they said the first time. That is what their institutions now stand for.

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