Category: anti-semitism

Pro-Palestinian protestors demonstrate illegally, cops do nothing; kids learn antisemitic slogans in Philadelphia

January 7, 2024 • 11:10 am

All over the Western world, aggressive pro-Palestinian protestors are breaking the law, blocking traffic and shouting slogans. Yes, this is a form of civil disobedience, but it differs from the classic civil disobedience of the civil rights movement of the Sixties—a movement that was actually effective—in three ways.  First, the pro-Palestinian protestors do not want to get arrested, and certainly don’t want to get hurt, but that was the explicit aim of Martin Luther King’s nonviolent protests. For it was the sight of peaceful protestors having police dogs attack them, getting bashed with billy clubs, and being drenched with fire hoses, that outraged the world and eventually bent the moral arc towards justice.

Second, the pro-Palestinian protestors break the law by deliberately inconveniencing people by blocking traffic—a tactic that won’t make anybody sympathetic towards them, either on the scene or watching their antics from afar. In contrast, the civil rights protestors marched peacefully alongside the road, sat in at lunch counters, or tried to get black people to vote—tactics that outraged racists but didn’t inconvenience anyone.  As far as I can see, these pro-Palestinian demonstrations are attempts to intimidate people by being loud, aggressive, and shouting threatening slogans (The well known “From the river to the sea. . . ” chant was always intended to call for the end of Israel and the expulsion and/or death of Jews. The “river to the sea” phrase is in fact in the original charter of Hamas.)

Third, in many of these pro-Palestinian demonstrations, the police stand by and allow the protestors to demonstrate illegally, often blocking traffic.  In one case, below, the cops even brought coffee to the protestors! (Granted, the movement paid for it, but, like employees of Uber Eats, the cops had to carry it from Tim Horton’s over a blocked bridge to the bawling keffiyeh-clad miscreants.)

Here’s one in Seattle (sound up). Cops do nothing.

Here they block the airport in Portland. (I don’t endorse the opening cartoon, which immediately segues into the video):

Below is the kicker: Toronto cops bring Tim Horton’s hot coffee (and it looks like donuts, too!) to the pro-Palestinian protestors.  The cops act are acting like Saint Bernard dogs and of course do nothing to break up an illegal demonstration.

Here’s an article from Canada’s conservative National Post about the reaction to the cops acting as waiters. Click to read:

An excerpt:

Facing mounting criticism for an alleged tolerance of a series of road-closing anti-Israel protests, Toronto police members have sparked renewed outrage thanks to a video showing them delivering coffee to said protestors.

Posted to social media platform ‘X’ at 2 p.m. on Saturday by Toronto lawyer and online commentator Caryma Sa’d, the video shows a Toronto police constable — his face concealed behind a black neck gaiter — delivering a cardboard urn of Tim Hortons coffee and a stack of cups — to anti-Israel protestors occupying the closed Avenue Road bridge over Highway 401.

The bridge, located within Toronto’s largest Jewish area, was the site of numerous demonstrations by anti-Israel activists.

That prompted Toronto police to close the bridge during the protests, prompting criticism of police kowtowing to protestors over enforcing the law.

Toronto police tweeted at 1:16 p.m. on Saturday that the bridge would against be closed, and that officers would be on scene to “keep demonstrators and passing traffic safe.”

When questioned by Sa’d’s videographer, the protestor who received the coffee said that somebody had bought the coffee for them, but were unable to bring it to the bridge protestors as police were restricting access.

“The police are becoming our little messengers,” said the grinning man wearing black jacket and keffiyeh.

. . .The National Post reached out to Toronto police for comment, but spokesperson Const. Laurie McCann told the Toronto Sun that officers at the scene of the protest were “managing a dynamic situation,” and insisted that the gesture wasn’t a sign of support.

“Their top priority is maintaining order in a tense environment on the Avenue Road bridge,” she said. “In performing a helpful act today, our officer’s motivation was to help keep tensions low and should not be interpreted as showing support for any cause or group.”

Sorry, but that doesn’t wash. The cops should be enforcing the law, and someone must have given them orders not to. Such is Justin Trudeau’s new Woke Canada. One more excerpt and a tweet:

Liberal MP Marco Mendicino — whose Eglinton-Lawrence riding is home to these ongoing anti-Israel protests — urged police to start enforcing the law.

“Good intentions aside, police serving coffee and food to protestors will just embolden more deliberate obstruction of traffic, undermine public safety, and add to local frustrations,” he posted on X.

“Laws exist to prevent this. They need to be enforced!”

Right on, Mendocino!

I asked a Canadian friend about this situation, and here’s the reply:

I tend to agree with the politicians that say the cops need to enforce the law. I compare this to protests in British Columbia by people stopping clear-cutting of old growth forest. There, the federal cops (the Mounties) violently arrested people, sprayed them right in the face with pepper spray when they were being peaceful, dumped out their water so they had nothing to drink. It goes on. I have seen some of this happen with indigenous protests but that is because there is a history where indigenous people have been killed unjustifiably and the cops are now extra careful. This, I think, is a bit much and I’m frankly tired of all the coddling of these protestors. My Jewish friends in Toronto are pretty sick of it and feel unsafe.

Oh, but it’s fine when those who feel unsafe are merely Jews! Note that the Mounties actually took drinks away from the protestors. 

Below is a recent protest in London in which the protestors are pro-Houthi, which is worse than being pro-Palestinian, as the Houthis are a purely terrorist group now trying to block all ship traffic (and not just Israeli or American ships) in the Red Sea.  Yes, they’re anti-Semitic, but who cares about a bunch of Jews?

I don’t know if this demonstration is illegal, or whether, if so, the cops tried to stop it. They’re not doing that here, at any rate. “Yemen, Yemen make us proud; how many ships have you turned around?” Oy gewalt!

And this is a clearly illegal demonstration in my own town, with pro-Palestinian protestors blocking Lake Shore Drive, close to where I live. The cops did nothing. What’s worse, this happened after some prominent Illinois Democrats for whom I voted, like Senator Dick Durbin, helped raise funds for CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic relations), an Islamist organization that was designated as a terrorist group by the UAE.

From Wikipedia:

The White House disavowed CAIR on December 7, 2023, after the director Nihad Awad said in a speech “The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege, the walls of the concentration camp, on Oct. 7,” he said. “And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege…” he continued “And yes, the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense, have the right to defend themselves, and yes, Israel as an occupying power does not have that right to self-defense,” referring to the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.

And this is the worst one, though not a protest. It is a video of Muslim children in Philadelphia being indoctrinated in martyrdom (Jew killing) and Jew hatred, just like their young counterparts in Palestine. (MEMRI is a very reliable source.) Sound up, though there are English subtitles.

What chance do these kids have? They’ve already been propagandized to hate and approve of killing.

h/t Orli

Antisemitism in America as displacement behavior

January 1, 2024 • 9:20 am

It’s likely that most or all of today’s posts will be about the antisemitism in America and the world, a form of hatred revealed and exacerbated by the war between Israel and Hamas.  There are no other worthy items to post about, so if you’re tired of the war, or of discussions about Jews, just skip today’s posts.

If not, here’s part of an op-ed from the Wall Street Journal—horrors! But it will do you good, even if you’re a liberal, to have a look at the opposition once in a while.  In fact, this editorial is not really conservative, but proffers an explanation for the recent spike in antisemitism—an explanation that seems correct to me.  Click to read; the author is one of the paper’s editorial writers:

The question, in brief, is why Jews, who, like blacks, used to be seen as oppressed (and indeed, the groups worked in harmony during the civil rights movement of the Sixties) are now viewed as oppressors, while blacks remain in the class of those oppressed. In fact, Jews are at the very top of the oppressors pile. How did that happen?

Swaim’s answer, in brief, is that the failure of American society to bring about a near-equality of blacks and whites over the past sixty years has led liberals to search for a scapegoat, and the Jews are always handy scapegoats.

Now, the quotes from the op-ed, which I’ll divide into “The Problem” and “The Explanation”.  There is no section on “The Solution” because Swaim doesn’t really suggest one. Quotes from the piece are indented.

THE PROBLEM

Here we’re not talking about the problem of why blacks remain behind whites in indices of well being and success. That itself is a huge discussion!  We’re talking about the problem of the rise of Jew hatred or milder antisemitism in the West.

. . . Yet here we are. Over the past 2½ months, Jew-hatred has rocked elite college campuses. Tony neighborhoods in blue cities have witnessed marches calling for the elimination of the Jewish state and protests outside Jewish-owned businesses—this in response not to the accidental killing of a Palestinian by an Israeli soldier, but to the systematic butchering and kidnapping of Israeli Jews by terrorists.

. . . The Biden administration itself, though so far pursuing a broadly pro-Israel policy in the Middle East, responded to the rash of antisemitic marches and assaults on Jews by announcing a “National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia.”

Do note that the Biden administration also instituted “U.S. National Strategy to Combat Antisemism,” even though this was in May of 2023. So an antisemitic program was already in place, and I don’t think it unseemly to institute a similar strategy about Islamophobia (though I don’t like that word) given that Muslim hate crimes also rose after October 7. But let’s go on:

So far there have been no pogroms in the U.S., only venomous semiviolent protests, individual assaults, libelous social-media onslaughts and willfully misleading news coverage. But the motivation driving today’s Jew-hatred bears some resemblance to those earlier episodes of antisemitic violence. Elite American society has failed in the one aim that gave it definition for more than a half-century: the realization of racial equality.

And that brings us to the next section.

THE EXPLANATION

To Swaim, American liberals, immensely frustrated, strike out at the Jews as a “displacement behavior” for whites’ failure to realize racial equality. (Swaim’s really talking more about equality in income, well being, and so on rather than in the law, as there are no anti-black federal laws and few state ones.)

The term “displacement behavior” first arose in ethology, the study of animal behavior.  It covers behaviors in which, for example, animals who can’t achieve their aims, are frustrated, are conflicted, or are being bullied or attacked, respond by showing a ritualized behavior as a response. For example:

Displacement behavior includes SDBs  [self directed behavior] such as self-grooming, touching, or scratching, displayed when an animal has a conflict between two motivations, such as the desire to approach an object while at the same time being fearful of that object. Many, perhaps most, birds and mammals groom in similar ways when faced with a conflict between approaching and avoiding another animal (Figure 4.5). In social hierarchies, lower ranking animals groom more frequently than do higher ranking animals, possibly reflecting the conflict between attraction to the social group and avoidance of the higher ranking animals in the group.

In these terms, white adoption of antisemitism or generalized blaming of Jews (as is happening in Gaza) is their response, born of frustration, at not achieving their admirable but difficult aim of bringing about greater equality between whites and blacks. Below you can displacement behavior occurring during elephant aggression, and I give the Vimeo caption:

Two males are engaged in a long Escalated-Contest. In this section the male with the longer tusks has the upper hand. He makes several Advances-Toward the male with the shorter tusks and adopts Periscope-Trunk three times. During this clip both males engage in Displacement-Behavior – the male on the left Displacement-Feeding and the male on the right Displacement-Grooming.

Well, I had to slip some biology in there. Back to the op-ed.  Here’s the frustration:

The trouble started in the mid-1970s, when the reality became clear that the liberal answer to racial inequality—the modern welfare state inaugurated by the Great Society—wasn’t working. With each passing decade since, black economic improvement has stalled. As Stephen and Abigail Thernstrom make clear in their book “America in Black and White” (1997), the black poverty rate declined dramatically from 1940 to 1960, less dramatically but still significantly from 1960 to 1970, and hardly at all after 1970. Yet decade after decade, the prescription from right-thinking liberals—elected Democrats, social-welfare agency heads, academic experts in urban studies, liberal intellectuals, entertainment-industry glitterati—remains the same: Double down on ’60s-style social-welfare policy, liberalize crime laws, and vilify whites other than themselves.

. . . In the 2000s, as black economic prospects improved little, the terms became more absurd—and more openly racialist. Liberals complained of “colorblind racism,” the idea that disregarding race exacerbated race relations and was, in effect, racist. The terms “unconscious bias” and “microaggression” are premised on the idea that well-meaning people can spread racial animus by using seemingly innocuous words and phrases. In the 2010s, “equity” and “inclusion” joined “diversity” to form an entire industry of consultants and corporate officers whose stated purpose is to foster equality in the workplace but who go about encouraging everyone to think constantly about racial identity.

All these coinages can fairly be understood as attempts by American liberals to explain to themselves why the beliefs on race they had presupposed for decades remained unimpeachable. At each stage, the effort to avoid rethinking the problem and to cast the blame for continuing racial inequality on somebody else—anybody but themselves—began to look and sound like another version of racism. . .

Note that it is both the Left rather than the Right which more fully embraces the aim of racial equality, and it is the “progressive” Left which has in the last few years demonized the Jews, counting them among the oppressors. Not only that, but Jews are now lumped with whites, even though Palestinians (many with similar genes) are seen as people with color, for Jews are not only oppressors, but generally successful.  And all whites,according to race activists like Kendi and DiAngelo, are oppressors, even if they don’t realize it.

While there are causes of antisemitism beyond this form of displacement behavior, they used to be different: they were seen as Christ-killers, as those who controlled banking and the world’s moneyu, and as powerful people set out to rule the world (see the “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” embraced by Hamas in its 1988 charter).  As Douglas Murray states, antisemitism is a “shape-shifting hatred”, making Jews the Eternal Other:

For several years a variety of academics and writers had argued that Jews are “white” or “functionally white” or “white passing.” “White,” in this usage, has nothing to do with national or religious identity or genetic characteristics. It signifies allegedly unjust privilege and legacies of oppression. Calling Jews “white” was a way of depriving them of any cover as a racial minority and classifying them with persecutors and exploiters.

As Liel Leibovitz writes in a 2021 essay for Commentary magazine: “The creative genius of Jew-hatred has always been its ability to imagine the Jew as the embodiment of whatever it is that polite society finds repulsive. That’s why Jews were condemned as both nefarious bankers controlling all the world’s money and shifty revolutionaries imperiling all capital; as both sexless creeps and oversexed lechers coming for the women and the girls; as both pathetically powerless and occultly powerful. . . . And if you decide that there’s such a thing as ‘whites’ and that they are uniquely responsible for all evils perpetrated on the innocent and downtrodden, well, the Jews must be not only of them but nestled comfortably at the top of the white-supremacist pyramid.”

Leibovitz, I think, has hit the nail on the head (you can read his essay here). Swaim has a hint of a cure here:

In 2021, when Mr. Leibovitz wrote these words, few detected the Jew-hatred smoldering beneath the surface of progressive thought. The perverse refusal to rethink obviously failed policies on race and crime, or to reconsider shopworn assumptions about why African-Americans had not achieved economic parity with whites, had created the need for scapegoats. To blame whites qua whites worked well enough for a time. But exhibitionist self-hatred is plainly disingenuous and emotionally unsatisfying. The left needed real scapegoats.

What about the Jews? Successful, capitalist, hated by much of the Arab and Muslim world, the Jews—especially Israeli Jews but Jews generally—met the need for a blameworthy Bad People. It was as though the phrase “Never Again,” enunciated endlessly to proclaim the West’s rejection of all the sentiments and ideas that had led to the Final Solution, had become so ingrained in liberal thought that liberals felt they were incapable of embracing the oldest hatred. Never Again . . . but maybe just this once.

. . . The American left, shameful exceptions aside like members of “The Squad” in Congress, has mostly abstained from openly siding with Hamas in the way its counterparts abroad have. But progressives in this country appear paralyzed, unable to condemn the Oct. 7 attack without also condemning “all forms of hatred” and the like. . . .

Note that “we condemn all forms of hatred” is something customarily mouthed when the hatred is mostly from the Arab side, as before Israel responded to the events of October 7.  And liberals should condemn it as much as they condemned “all lives matter,” the both-sideist response to “Black Lives Matter.”  But liberals can’t force themselves to condemn only antisemitism; they have to condemn all forms of hatred so they don’t look like Jew lovers. The condemnation of “hatred” is an apolitical, anodyne, and designed to avoid taking a political stand while flaunting one’s virtue. It’s like condemning crime in America.

More:

Before Oct. 7, if you had predicted this sudden explosion of Jew-hatred in elite American institutions, you would likely have been called a crank. But you could have made a cogent case for your prediction by noting the many ways in which the nation’s progressive cognoscenti, over the course of the past 50 years, have steadily embraced more preposterous and menacing ideas to explain their failure in the one area they believed themselves both competent and righteous: the creation of racial equality and harmony. Those ideas no doubt appeared edgy and romantic because their target was white people, and what’s the harm in white people condemning themselves? But like amateur wizards playing with incantations, the magic got away from them and produced devilry.

So ending this cause of antisemitism must be to create racial equality and harmony, a good end in itself, and one that, as we all know, is immensely difficult. But real solutions to racial disparities—not just words—must be suggested and implemented, and they must be solutions that haven’t been tried and failed.

And on that day, when the gap between black and white is no longer very large, antisemitism will vanish.  Of course, I’m just kidding! For another reason to hate Jews will always arise.

Jon Haidt on the rise of antisemitism on campus

December 24, 2023 • 11:30 am

On his Substack site “After Babel,” social psychologist Jon Haidt, most of you know of, explains the rapid rise of antisemitism on American campuses. The piece is long and a bit repetitious, but well worth reading of a Christmas Eve.

Click to read:

I’ll just summarize his thesis and give some quotes. First, the problem:

Why is the culture of elite higher education so fertile for antisemitism, and why are our defenses against it so weak? Don’t we have the world’s most advanced academic concepts and bureaucratic innovations for identifying hatred of all kinds, even expressions of hatred so small, veiled, and unconscious that we call them “micro-aggressions” and “implicit biases”?

Yes, we do, but it turns out that they don’t apply when Jews are the targets,1 and this was the shocking hypocrisy on display in that Congressional hearing room on December 5. Congresswoman Elise Stefanik asked the President of the University of Pennsylvania “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s rules or code of conduct, yes or no?” President Magill was unable to say yes. When the question was asked in various ways to all three presidents, none could say yes. All said variations of “it depends on the context.”

The question, then, is this: given that persecuted minorities are at the top of progressive’s “admiration pile”, why are the Jews, perhaps the most persecuted group in history, at the bottom? Part of the answer lies in one of the three “great untruths” presented in Lukianoff and Haid’s book The Coddling of the American Mind:

“life is a battle between good people and evil people”

And this came from the increase among the young in “safetyism”, described by Wikipedia this way: “a culture or belief system in which safety (which includes ’emotional safety’) has become a sacred value, which means that people become unwilling to make trade-offs demanded by other practical and moral concerns.”

And so this form of Manichaeism developed:

The new morality driving these reforms was antithetical to the traditional virtues of academic life: truthfulness, free inquiry, persuasion via reasoned argument, equal opportunity, judgment by merit, and the pursuit of excellence.  A subset of students had learned this new morality in some of their courses, which trained them to view everyone as either an oppressor or a victim. Students were taught to use identity as the primary lens through which everything is to be understood, not just in their coursework but in their personal and political lives. When students are taught to use a single lens for everything, we noted, their education is harming them, rather than improving their ability to think critically.

This leads to what Haidt calls “common enemy identity politics” (opposed to its virtuous twin, “common humanity identity politics):

[Common enemy identity politics] teaches students to develop the oppressor/victim mindset and then change their societies by uniting disparate constituencies against a specific group of oppressors. This mindset spreads easily and rapidly because human minds evolved for tribalism. The mindset is hyper-activated on social media platforms that reward simple, moralistic, and sensational content with rapid sharing and high visibility. This mindset has long been evident in antisemitism emanating from the far right. In recent years it is increasingly driving antisemitism on the left, too.

And the oppressor/victim mentality, says Haidt, comes from evolution: it’s a way of thinking that was presumably adaptive competition between the small groups of our ancestors. In those groups, “us-versus-them” thinking presumably led to greater reproduction of those who were wary of “the other.” (This hypothesis makes sense to me, though it’s very hard to test. But the universality of tribalism demands some kind of explanation. Fortunately, one of the increases in morality emphasized by Pinker involves the disappearance of this tribalism, which is maladaptive in a modern world of widespread interaction.)

Still, why the Jews?  Because they fit neatly into the slot of “oppressor.” (I’d add that Jews, as well as Asians, have done quite well compared to other minorities, which makes them less likely to be seen as oppressed. Jews, like Asians, are considered “white adjacent”!)

So, how well does our analysis from 2018 hold up in 2023? Does chapter 3 help us to understand the recent explosion of antisemitism on campus?

Unfortunately, the analysis works perfectly. Many students today talk about Israel as a “settler-colonialist” nation That is straight oppressor/victim terminology, from post-colonialist thinker Frantz Fanon. It treats Israel as if diaspora Jews were 19th century England or France sending colonists to take over an existing society, motivated by monetary greed. Once that frame is applied, students’ minds are closed to any other understanding of a complicated situation, such as the view that Jews are the original (or indigenous) inhabitants of the land, who had a continual presence there for 3,000 years, and whose exiled populations (many in Arab lands) had nowhere else to go after being decimated by Hitler’s version of common enemy identity politics.7 The French in Algeria could return to France, but if these students get their wish and Hamas gains control of all the territory “from the river to the sea,” it’s not clear where seven million Jews would go, other than into the sea.

Haidt then gives some polling data showing that members of generation Z (those born roughly between 1997 and 2012, making them 11 to 26 years old) are far more antisemitic than older folks. This is presumably because Gen Z has been subject more often to safetyism and the oppressor-victim narrative. Here are some data from Haidt’s paper:

As you can see below, all older generations favor disciplinary action as the proper response to students who publicly call for the mass killing of Jews. Only Gen Z does not.

The big difference between generations is that only Gen Z endorses this kind of identity politics. One survey item asks: “There is an ideology that white people are oppressors and nonwhite people and people of certain groups have been oppressed and as a result should be favored today at universities and for employment. Do you support or oppose this ideology?” [p. 56]

Gen Z, and only Gen Z, agrees with the “ideology that white people are oppressors.” The direct line linking this explicit form of common enemy identity politics to antisemitism is found in the responses to the next item: “Do you think that Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors or is that a false ideology?”

The summary (Haidt’s bolding):

In other words: While all generations agree that race-based identity politics now dominates on campus, only Gen Z leans toward (rather than away from ) endorsing such politics, applying it to Jews, and agreeing that we should treat Jews as oppressors—that is, treat them badly and not protect them from hate and harassment because they deserve what’s coming to them. 

One of the noxious results of this trend, which of course is jumped on by the Right-wing media—Left-wing media barely touches the issue because they perpetuate the victim-oppressor narrative—is that it makes Americans lose trust in higher education; and the more Right-wing you are, the faster you lose trust. But even the Left is losing confidence in higher education, as seen in the graph below (caption from Haidt):

Figure 1. Percent of U.S. adults with “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education. Source: Gallup (2023).

It is in fact appropriate to lose faith in higher education given what is happening here. It’s not just antisemitism, but the rise of “studies” departments that are based on identity politics, the proliferation of DEI bureaucracy, increasing self-segregation in universities, the tendency of universities to make ideological statements that chill the speech of many (especially conservatives), and the infection of academic discourse with ideology.  The consequence is that both Left and Right, who see Biden as the embodiment of “progressive” and elitist politics, are going to turn more towards Republicans, with the ultimate disastrous possibility that Trump will be re-elected.  Universities are hoist with their own petard.

Haidt’s argument for the rise of antisemitism makes sense, and I do recommend you read The Coddling of the American Mind. But of course people like me who live on campus are more concerned with quelling this kind of hatred than understanding its philosophical roots. How can you preserve free speech and the First Amendment on campus while at the same time preventing speech (especially now) from creating at atmosphere of fear, mistrust, and self-censorship? That is a huge problem, and one that brought woe to those three university presidents who testified before a House committee, eroding their and their schools’ reputations through an inability to discuss this issue coherently.

Haidt gives some references to organizations “that can help universities” (i.e., FIRE, Heterodox Academy, and so on), and adds a list of books and essays that suggest reforms for colleges. Have a look at that list.  As for me, I’m a hard-core free speecher, but I deplore the atmosphere of intimidation that’s arisen at the University of Chicago, particularly with the Jewish students strongly intimidated by aggressive and loud pro-Palestinian groups. I’m doing what I can to keep my principles but to try to dispel that atmosphere. But that’s something I’ll discuss another day.

Doctors Without Borders accused of complicity with Hamas

December 20, 2023 • 10:15 am

When Kelly Houle and I sold a copy of Why Evolution is True that had been autographed by many in the science/atheist/skeptic community (including several Nobel Laureates), and which had been illuminated with Kelly’s artistic flair, we decided to donate the proceeds to Doctors Without Borders (DWB, founded as Médecins Sans Frontières), an NGO that goes around the world with its doctors and nurses helping people in distress, particularly during tragic events like hurricanes and civil wars. It even won a Nobel Peace Prize.

All this sounded great to us, and we donated the $10,500 the book brought on eBay to DWB. (Have a look at the book here.) We thought it would do a lot of good, which was the sole object of our auction.

Later, however, I heard a rumor that DWB was somewhat anti-Israel and didn’t use Israeli doctors, although it does use doctors and nurses from many other countries. I emailed the organization asking about this, and never got a reply. I found accusations of DWB being antisemitic and anti-Israel (and pushing pro-Palestinian propaganda) on the internet (see here, here, here, and here, for example), and was distressed, as such an organization should not be taking political stands or engaging in political advocacy, which it was reported as doing. If they really don’t use Israeli doctors, and those doctors are willing to be used, then it’s guilty of antisemitism, for help is help, regardless of where it comes from or the religion of the medic.

You can find other and similar accusations on the web, but here’s a new one, written by Alain Destexhe, who used to be a big shot in the organization. He’s identified this way:

Alain Destexhe, Medical Doctor (MD), a Gatestone Institute distinguished senior fellow, is an Honorary Senator in Belgium, former secretary general of Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) and former president of the International Crisis Group. Author of Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century.

I think that gives his words sufficient credibility! And the Gatestone Institute has published an article by Destexhe article that accuses DWB of complicity with Hamas. Click the headline to read, and judge for yourself:

The piece is based on a new investigation of the organization, a group is loosely organized so that members can say what they want on social media. Check out the link to the report as well as the accusations given in the excerpt below:

The public statements since October 7 of Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF) and its employees, on the ground in Gaza, show a systematic bias in favor of Hamas and hostility to Israel. MSF has failed in its humanitarian purpose and violated its own charter, which proclaims “assistance… irrespective of race, religion, creed or political convictions.”

MSF has been present in the Gaza Strip since 1989. It now plays a leading role there, with at least 300 staff members, and works closely with local hospitals on a number of projects, either directly or indirectly with the Hamas “Ministry of Health”.

MSF is often quoted by the international media and is seen by public opinion as an objective, neutral and independent observer of the conflict in the region. Because of the history of the organization, which in 1999 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the French and international media have blind faith in MSF when it comes to reporting what it states.

However, a new investigative report on the social media posts of MSF and its employees has seriously called this reputation into question. The tweets and the Facebook posts of MSF and around 100 of its employees in Gaza were scrutinized.

Despite being subject to the MSF Charter, a significant proportion of its staff seem to share the Hamas point of view and support the terrorist attacks of October 7. For example, from October 7:

  • “Always remember that Gaza has done what all Arab armies have not done… !! It dug tunnels with its own hands. It built its weapons with its own hands…!! She sacrificed her sons, her women, her youth, her elderly, her homes and her mosques for the dignity of this land…!!” — MSF nurse (see Appendix 1).
  • “oh my God, we love you” — MSF doctor (see Appendix 1).\

. . . MSF’s biased analysis of events can also be found among MSF’s official spokespeople, who — usually quick to communicate — are completely silent on the atrocities of October 7.

. . .MSF repeated the false claim that Israel bombed Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza. In a tweet dated October 17, MSF France wrote in French:

“We are horrified by the Israeli bombing of the Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza, which treated patients and housed displaced people. Hundreds of people were killed according to local authorities. This is an unacceptable massacre.”

MSF did not specify that these “local authorities” are part of Hamas.

Here’s the DWB Twitter (“X”) site logo, followed by a couple of tweets:

This is their pinned tweet, and there are repeated calls for a ceasefire.  Their concern for healthcare “on both sides of the conflict” rings hollow in the face of their complete lack of concern for what happened in Israel.

A DWB Facebook post decrying the US’s veto of a ceasefire in the Security Council, which accuses the US of giving “diplomatic cover for the ongoing atrocities in Gaza”.  Surely not an institutionally neutral pronouncement, and misguided as well. One could just as easily say that “the U.S. is trying to allow Israel to defend itself so that the tiny country can continue to exist.”

DWB picketing for a ceasefire at the UN:

Much of the article above was taken from the 47-page report, which gives examples of DWB and MSF’s tweets and other comments on social media supporting  also this from the investigation report, written by Destexhe; it’s 47 pages long and gives lots of examples.  Some quotes are blow, bolding is theirs:

MSF has had a large presence in Gaza for a long time. Moreover, in a series of tweets, MSF provides precise information on the situation at the Al Shifa hospital, showing its perfect knowledge of the premises and the staff. Is it possible and credible that MSF and its employees knew nothing and saw nothing of Hamas’s violations of humanitarian law?3

To date, MSF has not once denounced the violation of these “sanctuaries” by the Hamas belligerents, even though on 7 October it asked: Health facilities must not be targets. MSF calls on all parties to respect health facilities, which must remain sanctuaries for people in need of care.\

. . .MSF has had a large presence in Gaza for a long time. Moreover, in a series of tweets, MSF provides precise information on the situation at the Al Shifa hospital, showing its perfect knowledge of the premises and the staff. Is it possible and credible that MSF and its employees knew nothing and saw nothing of Hamas’s violations of humanitarian law?3

To date, MSF has not once denounced the violation of these “sanctuaries” by the Hamas belligerents, even though on 7 October it asked: Health facilities must not be targets. MSF calls on all parties to respect health facilities, which must remain sanctuaries for people in need of care.\

And the report’s conclusion:

Since 7 October, MSF, which is very active on X, has not tweeted a single word denouncing the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by Hamas on 7 October, the hostage-taking of dozens of civilians and the use of hospitals as barracks or human shields. MSF has denounced Israel on numerous occasions, but never these violations of humanitarian law committed by Hamas.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) regularly refers to international humanitarian law, but its interpretation of this law varies widely. MSF has seriously failed in its humanitarian purpose.MSF’s Charter asserts the organisation’s neutrality, impartiality and independence from any political, economic or religious power. MSF must be irreproachable and neutral in its work. This is clearly not the case in Gaza.

The proximity of some MSF staff to Hamas raises questions about possible links between MSF and extremist groups.

Now one could argue that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is worse than Israel, and DWB is simply reflecting different levels of crisis. But in the face of their long history of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli propaganda, and apparent failure to use Israeli doctors (I still haven’t found out whether they do, but suspect not), I think DWB is guilty of injecting political and anti-Israel bias into their actions. Plus there’s their complete silence on the activities of October 7, and of course don’t mention that Hamas and IJ are still firing rockets at civilians in Israel. Apparently Israeli lives simply aren’t worth mentioning. No call to stop firing rockets?

One thing is for sure: I deeply regret having given this organization $10,500 a while back, and they’re not going to get dime one from me any more. I put them in my will as getting a substantial amount of money, but I struck them out. There are organizations that aren’t reported to be allied with terrorism that deserve my money more.  Read not just the report above, but the linked article, and perhaps google “Doctors Without Borders” Israel to see more.  Then judge for yourself.

Bari Weiss on why DEI must be dismantled

December 19, 2023 • 9:15 am

In this 20-minute video, Bari Weiss makes two points. First, the testimony of the MIT, Harvard, and Penn Presidents before a House committee was antisemitic and reprehensible, and reflects a widespread lack of “moral leadership” in universities. Second, this moral leadership requires the elimination of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives in higher education.

Weiss points out what was really reprehensible in the Presidents’ testimony, which was their arrant hypocrisy in having a history of enforcing lesser violations of speech codes, not the fact that their speech codes apparently called for First Amendment-style freedom of speech (I’m not sure that they do). Insofar as such codes should reflect the First Amendment, then, yes, calling for the genocide of Jews is allowed in most cases, though the courts’ interpretation of the Amendment deems such speech impermissible on some occasions, like promoting predictable and imminent violence. (And of course real violence violates all university behavior codes. But you can’t start enforcing freedom of speech right at the moment that it’s calling for genocide of Jews.

In that sense, then, the Presidents were right in answering “it depends” when asked whether their speech codes permitted calls for genocide of the Jews. It’s unfortunate that their answers were given in such a  wooden and stiff way—probably the result of coaching by lawyers—and that adherence to institutional neutrality may have prevented them from expressing their own personal opinions, though in such a forum I think that giving their personal take would be okay. And, of course, they all have to fix their speech codes so that permitted speech not only comports with how the courts construe the First Amendment, but that speech regulations are enforced uniformly.

Where Weiss goes amiss, I think, is when she pronounces that Liz Magill and the other Presidents really did “do something wrong.”  What was that? Magill, says Weiss (and presumably the other Presidents, though they’re not mentioned here), failed in this way (7:53):

“failed the very basic duties that [Magill’s] role and responsibilities required of her, because the job of a university president is not merely to point out the basic Constitutional rights of student to scream for a violent uprising against Jews or anyone else—and of course the students have those legal rights—but is pointing out obvious legal rights why we have university presidents? Is their job simply to remind us that people are allowed to shout terrible things,  and that the First Amendment protects them from doing so?. . .

“The job of a university president is not merely to point out what is and isn’t legally permissible.  The job of a university president is to offer leadership—intellectual leadership, of course, but also moral leadership.

“. . . Can anyone look at these three people and say that they offer the kind of inspiring leadership and moral clarity that the country so desperately need at this moment. I think that those questions answer themselves?”

Weiss offers as her remedies “committing to  intellectual freedom, not ideology. . hiring based on merit. . .doing away with double standards based on speech”, and not sending your kids or checks to schools that betray truly liberal values.

This is all good stuff, except that if one expects college presidents to exert moral clarity leadership by condemning speech that they find reprehensible, or making political pronouncements—something that Weiss implies but doesn’t state directly—then that violates an important principle for promoting free discourse: intellectual neutrality. That is, schools should not make any official pronouncements on moral, ideological or political issues.

That principle, which is the opposite of universities providing “moral clarity,” is embodied in the Kalven Principle of the University of Chicago, a principle embraced by only two other of the several thousand American colleges.  We should not expect college Presidents to condemn Hamas or offer similar “moral leadership” as part of their regular jobs, for that violates institutional neutrality, chilling the speech of those who disagree.

You can’t fix a free-speech problem by placing more limits on speech. (Those limits, of course, will change over time, and are largely subjective.) The administration of the University of Chicago has made no public pronouncement on the morality involved in the Middle East war (see here for our statement), and we’ve come to no harm because of that.

Real moral leadership should be exercised by getting university to adopt those principles that promote the functions of a university: teaching, learning, and the free discourse that promotes these things. The other day I described Steve Pinker’s Fivefold Way: five principles that, if adopted by a school, can create the kind of climate that Weiss wants. These five are free speech, institutional neutrality, the prohibition of violence (already in place and already illegal), viewpoint diversity, and disempowering DEI.

These last two principles have not been enacted, but are necessary for The Good University.  Weiss doesn’t mention viewpoint diversity, but at 11:58 she does begin her clarion call for dismantling DEI, for she argues it imposes an injurious ideology on universities.  Pinker shares her views, as do I: DEI is divisive, sucks up lots of money without producing results, reduces viewpoint diversity, is racist in some ways, values ethnicity above merit, and quashes dissent.  Those are not liberal principles.

Here’s what Pinker said about DEI in his Boston Globe op-ed, as of the five parts of his Fix the Universities plan (I’ve given a screenshot since it’s impossible to cut and paste):

With the exception Weiss’s call for university presidents to exercise “moral clarity and leadership”, then, her discussion is eloquent and correct. I hasten to add that she doesn’t really specify how “moral leadership” is to be exercised.  The best way is to put in place and then adhere to the five principles outlined by Pinker.

Will that happen? I’m not confident that universities will launch policies of institutional neutrality, start dismantling DEI, and begin enforcing viewpoint diversity.  Very few are moving in even one of these three directions. But they’ll never do so unless people like us press for these changes.

 

h/t: Rosemary

They won’t even let Jews celebrate Hanukkah

December 12, 2023 • 12:45 pm

Nor surprising it’s from Yale University. This comes from Tom Gross’s weekly newsletter, and is example #174 of Things that Pro-Palestinian Students Do that Pro-Israeli Students Wouldn’t Do.  (Caption from Gross.)

The entitlement and hatred of these students is shameful.

And of course there’s this, which happens to be true:

Three University Presidents testify in Congress about antisemitism

December 6, 2023 • 9:45 am

A ton of readers and friends have sent me videos of the interrogation of three University Presidents (Harvard, MIT, and Penn) yesterday by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Yes, some of the Presidents waffled or seemed unprepared for the Congressional grilling (they should have had a mock “interrogation” beforehand at their schools), but, except for Harvard’s Claudine Gay, who seemed pretty much out of it, they did okay. (A video of the entire hearing is at the bottom of this post.)

Where the Presidents apparently failed, at least in the eyes of the House members who interrogated them, was in their unwillingness to affirm that their universities unequivocally condemned antisemitism, especially calls for genocide of the Jews. But I think the representatives were misguided.

Calling for genocide of Jews, or saying stuff like “gas the Jews” is, in fact, nearly always speech that is legal under the First Amendment. The only time it isn’t is when it constitutes personal harassment of someone, creates a hostile atmosphere in the workplace, or is meant to incite imminent and predictable violence.  Thus, a group of Students for Justice in Palestine standing on campus in a permitted demonstration and chanting “Gas the Jews” or “Another intifada,” or even (I haven’t heard this), “Genocide against Israel!” is in conformity with the courts’ interpretation of the First Amendment.

Repeated harassment of a Jewish person is of course illegal, as is any form of harassment, and is properly against university rules. Likewise, creating an atmosphere in the classroom designed to intimidate or harass Jews is also illegal, though the line between teaching one’s opinion and what Jewish students see as harassments could be tenuous.

Finally, it’s hard to imagine a situation in which calling for genocide of the Jews in an on-campus speech could -lead to imminent and predictable lawless violence against Jews. Even if you say this in front of Jewish students, that would incite violence only if there were people there prepared to commit violence if they heard such a statement. I have not seen this on any campus, but it’s conceivable.

Because I believe that all universities should have speech codes like Chicago’s, which conform to that Amendment, I think the only way to answer the question “Do the values of your university unequivocally condemn calls for genocide of the Jews?” is “It depends.” That is what the three Presidents tried to say. And for that they were universally condemned. Apparently the Representatives (and some people who wrote me) don’t understand their own Constitution.

Here’s an example, but first the YouTube notes:

Harvard University President Claudine Gay, the University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on Tuesday about the universities’ response to antisemitism incidents that have occurred on campuses since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Below: New York Republican Congresswoman Else Stefanik bullying (there’s no other word for it) the three college Presidents, mocking their responses and saying that there’s only one right answer: a college must condemn calls for genocide of the Jews no matter what the circumstances.  She is relentless and clearly interested only in humiliating the Presidents.

Below Stefanik goes after President Gay further, but also mentions racist comments as well as antisemitic ones.

Gay responds that calls for genocide against Jews, “is against the values of Harvard.” She screwed up here, for Harvard does not (or should not) have values, and I doubt that there is even a “Harvard code of conduct” that stipulates such a value. (If it does, it quashes free speech.) This is one example of where Gay should have been better prepared. Likewise, she doesn’t handle very well Stafanik’s question about why Harvard was dead last on FIRE’s ranking of colleges’ policies on freedom of speech.

But Gay does say that odious speech is allowed under many circumstances, and in that case she’s right. But her handling of the pro-Palestinian statement blaming October 7 on Israel, in which she had to issue not only an initial statement, but then two subsequent corrections, was hamhanded.

My own prediction is that Gay won’t be President of Harvard much longer. She just doesn’t seem to have the composure or judgement to hold such a position.

Below is a statement from Harvard’s Hillel chapter criticizing President Gay for refusing to ban calls for genocide against the Jews. (h/t Mark). The statement reads in part:

A call for genocide against Jews is always a hateful incitement of violence. President Gay’s failure to properly condemn this speech calls into question her ability to protect Jewish students on Harvard’s campus.

While highlighting the conflict between free speech and intimidation or offense by Jewish students, this misunderstands the First Amendment.  Yes, these calls are calls for violence, but they aren’t (and shouldn’t be) illegal since they aren’t intended to produce imminent and predictable violence Here we see how organizations abandon adherence to freedom of speech when it leads to speech considered odious.

Dear Harvard Hillel Community,

Earlier today, Harvard President Claudine Gay testified before Congress about rising antisemitism at Harvard. When pressed during her testimony, President Gay repeatedly equivocated, refusing to characterize calls for the genocide of Jews as a breach of Harvard’s code of conduct, instead saying the offense “depends on the context.”

President Gay’s refusal to draw a line around threatening antisemitic speech as a violation of Harvard’s policies is profoundly shocking given explicit provisions within the conduct code prohibiting this kind of bullying and harassment.

We are appalled by the need to state the obvious: A call for genocide against Jews is always a hateful incitement of violence. President Gay’s failure to properly condemn this speech calls into question her ability to protect Jewish students on Harvard’s campus. Chants to “globalize the intifada,” an endorsement of violent terrorist attacks against Jewish and Israeli civilians, and “from the river to the sea,” an eliminationist slogan intended to deprive Jews of their right to self-determination in Israel, have become tragically routine at Harvard. President Gay’s testimony fails to reassure us that the University is seriously concerned about the antisemitic rhetoric pervasive on campus. We call on President Gay to take action against those using threatening speech that violates our community standards.

We do agree with President Gay’s testimony that education on antisemitism is urgently needed at Harvard. Harvard Hillel is ready to work with the administration to bring robust education and training on the history of the Jewish people and the evolution of antisemitism to every audience at Harvard — administration, faculty, staff and students.

We will continue to hold the University administration accountable to make Harvard a place that Jewish students can learn, live, and thrive without fear and intimidation.

Sincerely,
Jacob Miller

Harvard Hillel President
Rabbi Getzel Davis

Harvard Hillel Campus Rabbi

Below is a clip (h/t Al) in which Representative Tim Walberg (Republican, Michigan, though the nametag says Representative Thompson) asks Harvard’s Claudine Gay how non-odious views—like accepting the sex binary or having heterodox opinions on sex and abortion could lead to professors being fired (he’s referring to Carole Hooven, who I had dinner with last night) and to Tyler Vanderweele)—while having reprehensible views like calling for genocide of Jews is okay.  He’s trying to paint Gay as a hypocrite. Gay doesn’t handle the question well: another example of her hamhandedness.

Carole Hooven corrects the record; she was not fired by Harvard, and she links to a piece that explains what happened to her.

VanderWeele wasn’t fired either: here’s his story (he’s still at Harvard).

The whole interrogation seems to me an attempt of Republicans to flex their muscles by humiliating the elite: the Presidents of three high-class colleges.  Yes, there is a hard problem to deal with: how to maintain freedom of speech while preventing an atmosphere of hate from pervading their campuses. I have no solutions to offer, but the Republicans here seem to be bullying the Presidents. That said, the Representatives do highlight this conflict, which has led to difficulties on campuses.  But they could have been less hostile!

Someone pointed out Gay’s hypocrisy on Twitter (“X”), contrasting her words on George Floyd with her reluctance to condemn antisemitism (Harvard has no policy of institutional neutrality), and I retweeted it with a comment:

Finally, here is the full hearing: nearly 5½ hours:

Antisemitism march in Paris

December 4, 2023 • 8:15 am

For some reason I find it hard to post travel photos here after my journeys are over; I guess part of the fun of being overseas is documenting the trip as it happens.  When I recently visited Paris, the world’s most beautiful city, I was pretty good about posting as I traveled, though it’s often hard because you want to travel more than you want to write about it.

Here is the last batch of photos I took in Paris—at the antisemitism march on November 13.  It was not a pro-Israel march, but designed to bring the French together by dispelling hatred of Israel, but also of Muslims. There were thus many French flags and other tricolored items on display, but few Israeli flags. It was heartening to experience the feeling of togetherness.

Similar marches occurred in other French cities, with the total attendees estimated at 180,000.

About 105,000 people showed up near the Invalides, coincidentally the number of people estimated at the antisemitism march in Washington, D. C.

Some photos:

Part of the crowd, with Les Invalides in the backroom.

The VIP arrival spot, including the right-wing Marine Le Pen. I didn’t see her, as I was squashed by the crowds (note all the media microphones).

I was told that this guy was head of the French Socialist party, but I can’t be sure. Readers?

Some made their statements in a subtle way, like this lady with a tricolor in her hat.

This serious woman seemed to me to be our Marianne. I was told that those who wore tricolored sashes were some kind of officials:

This was the banner that, I was told, was used at the beginning of the march.

The crowds were so dense that there was a traffic jam on the stairs up to the bridge over to the Invalides from the Right Bank.  The cops made it very hard to even get to the demonstration, continually diverting us until we found that this was the only way in from the Left Bank:

Les flics. There were tons of cops around, though the demonstration was peaceful (and much less numerous than the pro-Palestinian demonstrations):

Somehow this statue, which I saw while walking back after the gathering, seemed appropriate: “The bird of peace“, sculpted by Mirza Moric. It will be exhibited until February.