Category: anti-semitism

The National Secular Society (and the UN) literally erase the Jews from Holocaust Memorial Day

January 27, 2024 • 8:15 am

UPDATE: The NSS says that the hamhanded tweet-changing was done without the society’s usual vetting, with a tweeter panicking and taking out the Jewish part.  They have corrected the tweet now to what’s below, which is what they should have posted in the first place:

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It’s not often that I devote a post to a single tweet, but this one deserves it. It was put up by the British National Secular Society to “commemorate” Holocaust Memorial Day—the day in 1945 when Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army.

Here’s what you see now:

But here’s the original, which I can’t find on the site. . . .

Clearly, the Holocaust, originally described as “the murder of 6 million Jewish children, women, and men” has been replaced simply by “the atrocities”, as noted by the reader below.

Now why on earth would they do that? I can think of only one explanation. Actually two, but the alternative explanation—it’s a “secular” society so it can’t name a religion—doesn’t make sense.

Working hypothesis: the word “Jewish” has become pejorative. Even to the National Secular Society!

 

 

h/t: Jez, Orli

Harvard sued for Title VI violations and antisemitism

January 13, 2024 • 10:50 am

Several Jewish students at Harvard, and an organization called “Students Against Antisemitism” (SAA), have brought suit against Harvard University for its antisemitic behavior.  While the plaintiffs aren’t going after Harvard on First Amendment Grounds (and wouldn’t have a leg to stand on if they tried to), the allegations in their suit involving genuine violations of federal law.

First, Harvard is accused of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which says this:

No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

As the suit establishes (click below to read the long 77-page document), Harvard does indeed receive federal monies, most notably through grants to faculty.

Second, the suit asserts that the antisemitic activity at Harvard, involving students, faculty, and off-campus groups, did indeed deny Jewish students the full benefits of an education at the University, as they were intimidated to the point of finding it hard or impossible to study; some were denied access to study spaces by vocal pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel students; some classes included a huge dollop of antisemitic material, including canceling classes so students could go to pro-Palestinian demonstrations (these are invariably anti-Israeli and often antisemitic); and, finally, at least one Jewish student was attacked. This seems to add up to to “discrimination” under Title VI.

Further, and this is shocking, Harvard did little or nothing when Jewish students complained to the administration about the disruption of their education. In response, the administration invariably said, “We’ll look into it and get back to you,” eventually doing nothing. One sees this over and over again in the complaint.

Two more items are singled out. As I’ve discussed before, Harvard did not enforce its speech code uniformly: while mandating punishment for things like “fatphobia,” “ableism”, and “racism” (but not against Jewish students!), they ignored bigoted behaviors that, if directed against blacks instead of Jews, would have been punished. (Harvard does not have a First-Amendment-based speech code, and so it’s been irregular or even hypocritical in enforcing speech “violations.”)

Finally, Harvard allowed its own students (and outside organizations, who aren’t given the same license as registered student organizations), to engage in illegal violations of University rules of conduct, including sit-ins and prohibited demonstrations. In perhaps the most ridiculous demonstration of this kind of hypocrisy, Harvard not only allowed pro-Palestinian demonstrators to illegally occupy a University building, but even bought the demonstrators candy and burritos! (Jews, of course, never got burritos, as they don’t engage in sit-ins.)

As one of my friends wrote me after having read the complaint: “If even a fraction of this is true, the place has become a cesspool.”

I’m afraid he’s right.

I read the entire document, and it’s pretty shocking. You can access it by clicking below. Unlike most lawsuits, it makes pretty absorbing reading, as the degree of antisemitism that Harvard allowed, without punishing prohibited behaviors, is fascinating.  No doubt a lot of this is due to the DEI mentality that infests Harvard (ex-President Gay was infected with DEI-ism), so that Jewish students are perceived as oppressors who aren’t worthy of much protection. But perhaps I was just intrigued because this was where I got my Ph.D., and I was once proud of that (However, going to Harvard was, for me, a complete accident, and some day I’ll tell that story.)

The suit:

The plaintiffs include Students Against Antisemitism (described in the lawsuit as “a not-for-profit corporation organized under the laws of the State of Delaware, formed for the purpose of defending human and civil rights, including the right of individuals to equal protection and to be free from antisemitism in higher education, through litigation and other means”, as well as Alexander Kestenbaum, a Jewish student at Harvard, and five other Jewish students who wished to remain anonymous for obvious reasons.

Before I give excerpts from the lawsuit, here’s an article on it from Thursday’s Boston Globe. Click on the headline to see it, though it’s probably paywalled. I give an excerpt below it, but reading the complaint above tells you a lot more.

From the article:

Several graduate and law students at Harvard University filed a federal lawsuit against the Ivy League school this week, accusing the administration of failing to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment on campus during the Israel-Hamas war.

The 79-page civil complaint, filed Wednesday in US District Court in Boston, alleges that antisemitism at Harvard has become especially “severe and pervasive” after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks against Israel, which killed about 1,200 people, with militants reportedly raping and torturing civilians. Israel retaliated with a bombing campaign and ground invasion that has killed more than 23,000 people in Gaza.

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“Harvard, America’s leading university, has become a bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment,” the complaint reads.

Only one of the six plaintiffs is named; Divinity School master’s degree candidate Alexander Kestenbaum.

The others are identified as members of Students Against Antisemitism, as is Kestenbaum. The other plaintiffs are enrolled at Harvard Law School and the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, according to the complaint.

A Harvard spokesperson said Thursday that the university has no comment “on pending litigation.”

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Now for the lawsuit. itself.  I’ll give my own brief summaries (flush left) to bits of the suit (indented).

The gist of the complaint:

Harvard, America’s leading university, has become a bastion of rampant antiJewish hatred and harassment. Since October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and slaughtered, tortured, raped, burned, and mutilated 1,200 people—including infants, children, and the elderly—antisemitism at Harvard has been particularly severe and pervasive. Mobs of pro-Hamas students and faculty have marched by the hundreds through Harvard’s campus, shouting vile antisemitic slogans and calling for death to Jews and Israel. Those mobs have occupied buildings, classrooms, libraries, student lounges, plazas, and study halls, often for days or weeks at a time, promoting violence against Jews and harassing and assaulting them on campus. Jewish students have been attacked on social media, and Harvard faculty members have promulgated antisemitism in their courses and dismissed and intimidated students who object. What is most striking about all of this is Harvard’s abject failure and refusal to lift a finger to Case 1:24-cv-10092 Document 1 Filed 01/10/24 Page 1 of 77 2 stop and deter this outrageous antisemitic conduct and penalize the students and faculty who perpetrate it.

The prohibited participation of unrecognized student groups in demonstrations:

44. The Student Organization Policies also provide that unrecognized student organizations are not permitted “to conduct any activity at Harvard even though their activities involve Harvard” students, except under “special circumstances,” that Harvard will not provide “access, support, or benefits” to unrecognized student organizations, and that students may not use the “Harvard” name or marks in organizations’ activities without permission from a dean or the provost.

45. Harvard nevertheless regularly permits unrecognized student groups such as Harvard Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (“Harvard BDS”) and Harvard Afro to conduct, while using Harvard’s name, disruptive antisemitic protests inside Harvard buildings and on Harvard grounds without consequence. These unrecognized groups have, in recent months, extensively engaged in discrimination against, and harassment of, Jewish and Israeli students and continue to violate numerous Harvard policies by holding unauthorized events in which they recruit hundreds of students to interrupt classes with calls for “globaliz[ing] the Intifada” and violence against Jews and Israelis, among other disruptive and harassing conduct. Harvard takes no action to prevent these organizations from regularly harassing Jewish and Israeli students in violation of Harvard’s policies.

This also happens at the University of Chicago, in which an unrecognized group called “UChicago United for Palestine” regularly participates in demonstrations and sit-ins, both legal and prohibited. The University doesn’t do anything about it.

Disruption and deplatforming of study groups and classes by pro-Palestinian demonstrators (again, this is prohibited under Harvard University regulations):

63. Harvard Out of Palestine (“HOOP”), another student group, led a relentless campaign against retired Israeli Major General Amos Yadlin, a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School of Government (“Harvard Kennedy”). For example, on February 1, 2022, HOOP organized a disruptive rally outside Yadlin’s first study group of the semester. As HOOP posted on its Instagram page, the harassment “continue[d] despite [the study group’s] efforts to change rooms every week.” HOOP also shared a video that showed its members standing in two parallel rows just outside the open door of Yadlin’s classroom, holding large banners and flags, so that anyone entering or exiting would be forced to walk through the gauntlet. The video also depicts protesters chanting and disrupting Yadlin’s discussion with students in the classroom.

64. On April 7, 2022, HOOP marched through campus, including in and out of buildings, banging on drums and using a megaphone to shout further accusations at Yadlin, charging him with personal responsibility for alleged “genocide.” Throughout the semester, Harvard did nothing to prevent HOOP from severely and pervasively harassing Yadlin and his students, notwithstanding, among other policies, Harvard’s Statement on Rights and Responsibilities proscribing such conduct as “unacceptable” violations of Harvard policy.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators storm Harvard Law school in violation of student regulations, terrorizing Jewish students. Cops stand by and do nothing, nor does the administration:

99. During this upheaval, SAA Member #1, SAA Member #2, SAA Member #3, and SAA Member #5 were in a study room on the first floor of Harvard Law’s main building, attending a small discussion session with a former assistant to the president during the Trump administration, Jason Greenblatt. At the session, the students heard drumming outside the study room and found a mob at the entrance to Harvard Law with a giant banner reading “Stop the Genocide in Gaza.” SAA Member #2 watched as HUPD officers observed, but took no action against, the hundreds of protesters, including non-HUID cardholders, who were bypassing card scanners and infiltrating the building. The group stormed Harvard Law’s main building, marched down the length of the building’s primary first-floor hallway, and blocked the hallway outside the study room where the SAA members and Greenblatt were hiding. Fearing a violent attack, students in the study room removed indicia of their Jewishness, such as kippot, or hid under desks.

101. SAA Member #2 emailed Assistant Director of Student Life Jeffrey Sierra after the mob stormed Harvard Law to describe what happened. In two previous meetings with Sierra, she had asked him what could be done to stop the rampant antisemitism on campus and explained its impact on her. In both of these meetings, and in response to her email regarding the October 19 incursion, Sierra directed SAA Member #2 to CAMHS for mental health services and, on several occasions, said he was “not in a position to do more.” When SAA Member #2 asked whom she could contact instead, Sierra said he would speak with more senior administrators, but SAA Member #2 never heard from anyone else about her concerns.

Burritogate!:  In this one, students sitting in and violating the campus code avoid discipline.  Instead of removing the students, the administration allowed them to stay overnight, and the deans brought the trespassing students candy and burritos! It seems that nobody was ever disciplined.

119. The utter inadequacy and clear unreasonableness of Harvard’s response to antisemitism on campus was further exemplified on November 16 and 17 when, for twenty-four hours, students took over University Hall, demanding that “Harvard administrators release a call for a ceasefire in Gaza,” announce that “antisemitism [is] not the same as anti-Zionism,” and “investigate Islamophobia and suppression of pro-Palestine speech on campus.” Rather than eject or otherwise penalize those students, nine hours into the takeover, Dean Khurana and Adams House Faculty Dean Salmaan Keshavjee brought the occupying students burritos and candy. After twelve hours, Dean Khurana gave them the chance to leave without disciplinary action; when the students refused, he allowed them to remain overnight. When questioned at the House Antisemitism Hearing why the deans provided food to unlawful protesters and promised them no consequences, President Gay evaded the question, stating, “where conduct violates our policies . . . we have processes underway.”

122. On November 29, Harvard PSC, Harvard BDS, and Harvard Afro again organized self-proclaimed “disruptive” mass walkouts from classes across campus, targeting major lecture halls to disrupt the largest number of students and took over the Science Center’s classrooms and lobby, among other locations. During their takeover of the Science Center lobby—conduct prohibited by Harvard’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities—protesters surrounded and intimidated Jewish students, using megaphones to shout genocidal antisemitic chants, including “globalize the Intifada,” “long live the Intifada,” “from the river to the sea,” and, in Arabic, “water to water, Palestine will be Arab.”

123. The disruption, like many before it, was led by a student recognized by Jewish students as among the primary instigators of antisemitic abuse on campus, whose presence causes considerable fear and alarm among the Jewish students who live in the same dormitory, Adams House, which he has turned into a base of operations for anti-Jewish activism. Adams House Faculty Dean Keshavjee—who supplied burritos and candy to the University Hall occupiers—has done nothing to ameliorate the situation.

Harvard cancels festival that partly celebrated Judaism, fails to stop students from disrupting a Divinity School event:

125. On December 6, rather than prevent protesters from disrupting Harvard Divinity’s Seasons of Light celebration that evening—a “beloved annual multireligious service” and Harvard Divinity’s only annual event that includes a celebration of the Jewish faith—Harvard canceled it. That same day, Harvard GS4P students took over Harvard Divinity’s “Holiday Tea,” interrupting the Harvard administrators, faculty, staff, and students who had gathered there by unfurling a large banner alleging “genocide in Gaza,” yelling about a “Zionist genocidal campaign,” shrieking “there can be no peace without justice,” “free, free Palestine,” and “shame!” The Harvard administrators did nothing to stop the students. Kestenbaum, who was present, emailed the Antisemitism Advisory Group to report this blatant violation of Harvard policy—which occurred after President Gay publicly declared that Harvard would discipline this type of violation—but has not received a response.

Harvard asks students to remove an outside menorah at night instead of the campus police protecting it. The University allows a banned protest at Widener Library. 

126. Rather than take steps to protect Jewish students, Harvard has thus required that they limit or conceal their activities. For example, as Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi revealed, Harvard requires that he remove the Chabad Hanukkah menorah from the campus at night so that it would not be vandalized. Rather than ensuring the safety and success of the Case 1:24-cv-10092 Document 1 Filed 01/10/24 Page 46 of 77 47 Seasons of Light celebration and making it unequivocally clear that vandalizing the menorah was unacceptable and would be met with harsh punishment, Harvard addresses antisemitism by canceling events that include celebrations of Jewish culture and warning celebrants to hide Jewish symbols.

127. At the same time Jewish students were being cautioned by Harvard to abandon or conceal their identity, students celebrating the October 7 massacre and advocating death to Israelis and Jews were free to do so on campus and over social media, not deterred or punished by Harvard in any way. On December 10, 2023, during final exam week, Harvard PSC, Harvard BDS, and Harvard Afro oversaw a disruptive, aggressive, flag- and banner-waving takeover of Harvard’s Widener Library, and then marched to Massachusetts Hall, where students chanted “from the river to the sea.” Kestenbaum had intended to study at Widener but abandoned his plan, as he was concerned that his religious clothing would make him a target for abuse or violence. Harvard took no action to stop the Widener protest or discipline the students or organizations that participated in it.

Professors allow students to leave class to attend a general anti-Israel strike “in solidarity”:

136. On October 20, Professor Clio Takas emailed her students stating, “[a]s many of you know, [Harvard PSC] and [Harvard GS4P] are organizing a class walk-out and general strike . . . . I have decided to cancel section today in solidarity.” Similarly, Harvard Public Health Professor Nancy Krieger accommodated students who wanted to participate in the October 20 global strike by permitting the vast majority of students to leave class to protest. Krieger then excused the remaining seven (which included several Jewish students) and asked them to return along with the protesting students at noon. As it turned out, Krieger and the protesting students returned to the classroom some forty minutes earlier than the professor had said class would resume and, in the absence of the Jewish students, Krieger resumed her lecture.

And a section on hypocrisy taken from the lawsuit:

Harvard Only Embraces Free Expression Principles When It Can Use Them to Protect and Permit Antisemitic Harassment

154. At the heart of Harvard’s double standard is its discriminatory application of free expression and other principles. Harvard’s campus is a safe space for students of all protected minority groups other than Jews.

155. Harvard’s invocation of free expression principles to justify permitting antisemitic harassment is both hypocritical and false, especially given that Harvard is ranked dead last on free speech, ranked “abysmal,” out of the 248 colleges assessed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Harvard protects speech only when it espouses positions Harvard supports and prohibits speech adverse to the interests of other groups Harvard deems worthy of protection. Harvard’s double standard is apparent when one compares Harvard’s failure to discipline anti-Jewish harassment with its warning to freshmen—during the Title IX training— that “sizeism,” “fatphobia,” “cisheterosexism,” “racism,” “transphobia,” “ageism,” and “ableism” are prohibited because they “contribute to an environment that perpetrates violence.”

156. Harvard also has no problem censoring controversial speakers or discussions— unless they espouse antisemitic views, in which case Harvard insists it is obligated to permit them on free expression grounds. In 2021, for example, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences canceled a course on a policing strategy involving military tactics after student organizations expressed concerns about the subject matter. And in 2022, the Harvard English Department disinvited Dr. Devin Buckley from speaking on campus because she is on the board of an organization that opposes incarcerating biological males with biological females or permitting them to participate in women’s sports. But, as alleged above, Harvard readily permitted El-Kurd and Hill to appear on campus spewing anti-Jewish rhetoric, Holocaust denial, and calls for Israel’s extermination.

Below is the relief that the suit is asking for.  I have no idea whether the plaintiffs will win, but the document, if it allegations are true, makes a compelling case against Harvard.  What bothers me most as an alum is the University’s abject failure to do anything about the Jewish students’ complaints. Even Claudine Gay was guilty of that non-responsiveness. Right now, Harvard looks pretty bad.

If this suit goes through—and it could be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court—Harvard could no longer violate Title VI. In practice, that means that they’d have to enforce campus rules about demonstrations, and would have to be evenhanded in enforcing the University speech code. Fingers crossed.

The BBC and its Hollywood movie erase the words “Jew” and “Jewish” from the story of Nicholas Winton, a hero who saved Jewish children from the Nazis

January 10, 2024 • 9:40 am

The story of Nicholas Winton (1909-2015) is about as heartwarming as it gets, but also has, as I’ll claim, a double overtone of sadness. Born in London in 1909 to Jewish parents who had immigrated from Germany, Winton was a broker and stockbroker, but in 1938 moved to Prague to work with the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia. (The country was at that time already occupied by the Nazis).  And he became a man on a mission: to save Jewish children from falling into the hands of the Nazis.  It was tough, and he had to get the kids through the Netherlands, where they could board a ship to England.

In the end Winton saved 669 children, nearly all of them Jewish, though, sadly, their parents remained in Europe because only children younger than 17 could be rescued. Nearly all their parents later died in the camps or ghettos.  Here’s the account from Wikipedia.

Alongside the Czechoslovak Refugee Committee, the British and Canadian volunteers such as Winton, Trevor Chadwick, and Beatrice Wellington worked in organising to aid children from Jewish families at risk from the Nazis.Many of them set up their office at a dining room table in a hotel in Wenceslas Square. Altogether, Winton spent one month in Prague and left in January 1939, six weeks before the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. Other foreign volunteers remained, such as Chadwick, Warriner and Wellington. In November 1938, following Kristallnacht in Nazi-ruled Germany, the House of Commons approved a measure to allow the entry into Britain of refugees younger than 17, provided they had a place to stay and a warranty of £50 (equivalent to £3,397 in 2021) was deposited per person for their eventual return to their own country.

Netherlands

An important obstacle was getting official permission to cross into the Netherlands, as the children were to embark on the ferry at Hook of Holland. Following Kristallnacht in November 1938, the Dutch government officially closed its borders to any Jewish refugees. The Royal Netherlands Marechaussee searched for them and returned any found to Germany, despite the horrors of Kristallnacht being well known

Winton succeeded, thanks to the guarantees he had obtained from Britain. Following the first train, the process of crossing the Netherlands went smoothly. Winton ultimately found homes in Britain for 669 children, many of whose parents perished in the Auschwitz concentration camp. His mother worked with him to place the children in homes and later hostels.Throughout the summer of 1939, he placed photographs of the children in Picture Post seeking families to accept them. By coincidence, the names of the London and North Eastern Railway steamers which operated the Harwich to Hook of Holland route included the Prague and the Vienna; the former can be seen in a 1938 Pathé Newsreel.

Back in Britain, Winton lived to the ripe old age of 106, and the children he saved had become middle-aged.  Many of them, unknown to him, were in the audience during a 1988 episode of the BBC show “That’s Life”. At that time Winton was 79.  He knew the show was celebrating his life, but had no idea that the audience consisted not only of the children he saved (now grown up) but of their own children and grandchildren. When they stood up to identify themselves, seen in the clip below, the magnitude of what he’d done became clear, and he wept.  I always do, too, when I see this video. I challenge you not to mist up when you watch this!:

Winton was modest and didn’t flaunt his achievements. In fact, they were unknown to his wife, who discovered them only when she found a scrapbook in their attic with the names of the children and of their parents.  She gave the scrapbook to a Holocaust researcher, who tracked down many of the children, finding 80 of them in Britain.  Many of them are in the video above. The rest is history.

Winton eventually accrued the honors he deserved, and got a knighthood in 2003 for “services to humanity, in saving Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia”.

As the old Jewish proverb goes, attributed to Hillel the Elder, “Whosoever destroys one soul, it is as though he had destroyed the entire world. And whosoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved the entire world.”  I interpret this to mean that “the entire world” refers to the world apprehended by the person who lives or dies. (I often think of this when saving ducklings.) Well, Winton saved 669 entire worlds, and that’s something to marvel at.

Recently the BBC made a movie about Winton, using the title “One Life” taken from the proverb above. It stars Anthony Hopkins as Winton—an excellent choice—and has been critically acclaimed,  garnering a 89% critics’ rating and a 96% public rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Well worth seeing, I’d think. (It also features Helena Bonham Carter and Lena Olin.)

But watch this 2-minute trailer, which includes a version of the scene above. But you may notice that one thing is missing: the trailer doesn’t use the words “Jew” or “Jewish.” They say “the children” and refer to them several times, but you’d have no idea from this trailer that they were Jewish children. The only sign of what’s happening is one scene in which there are a few Nazi flags.

Is this omission an accident?  I tried to convince myself that it was, but after seeing the video and reading the articles below, I decided that it was no accident. They left “Jewish” out because they thought it might turn off the prospective audience. (Of course, once the audience has their butts in the theater, the movie can use the word more often.) But I’m not sure how often they use it. Can you imagine “Schindler’s List” having a trailer that doesn’t use the word “Jew”? It is, after all, about another man who saved Jews. (Winton is often called “The British Schindler”). And sure enough, it does: it mentions the word several times and shows lots of people wearing yellow stars, a Jewish wedding, and other tropes.  What’s going on is very clear. Things sure have changed in the last thirty years (“Schindler’s List was released in 1993.)

Now, what about “One Life?” Here’s “Israeli filmmaker, director, and activist Yuval David [speaking] about the antisemitic environment in Hollywood and the purging of Jewish references in marketing of ‘One Life.’” David, who knows what he’s talking about, has absolutely no doubt that the omission was deliberate, engineered by the progressive ideology that pervades Hollywood (I’m starting to wonder if “Jew” or “Jewish” even appears in the film!). Have a look:

And below is an article from the popular entertainment magazine Variety that discusses how, in the movie’s promotion, they omitted mentioning the religion of the children who were saved, which of course is why they had to be saved.  Click the headline to read.  And here’s an excerpt from that piece about how they erased “Jewish” from the marketing materials, using instead the words “Central European.” That is shameful:

The marketing materials for Anthony Hopkins latest feature film, a Holocaust biopic titled “One Life,” are set to be amended after controversy ensued over the lack of reference to Jews.

“One Life” tells the story of Nicholas Winton (played by Hopkins), better known as the British Oscar Schindler. Winton helped save the lives of over 600 children – the majority of them Jewish – from the Nazis during World War II.

But there has been disquiet over marketing for the movie after it was claimed Jews had been erased from the synopsis.

The furore started after British media retailer HMV tweeted about the film and referred to the children saved by Winton as “Central European” rather than Jewish. A number of independent cinemas also used the term “Central European” instead of “Jewish” while describing the film on their websites. [JAC: This makes no sense: children who were “Central European” but not Jewish weren’t usually endangered.]

See-Saw Films, who produced “One Life,” and Warner Bros. Pictures., who are distributing it in the U.K., subsequently also came under fire for omitting the word “Jewish” from their marketing materials when describing the children saved by Winton, although they did not use “Central European.”

Warner Bros. in the U.K. declined to comment but Variety understands that following the criticism all Warner’s official marketing for the film will be amended to describe the children as “predominantly Jewish,” which reflects the fact that while most of the 600+ Czechoslovakian children were Jewish, a handful of them were non-Jewish political refugees.

Click:

At least they fixed the materials, but it’s clear that they left Judaism out of the materials on purpose. It’s the progressive Zeitgeist: Jews aren’t exactly the world’s most popular group.

The BBC itself, however, continues to omit any mention of Jews in its article below (click to read). There is not a single mention that the children were Jewish, which of course drives the whole movie. In case the BBC has a social-media promoted “change of heart,” you can find the original BBC article archived here.

Click to read:

I’ve put the entire text of this article below the fold, and you can do a search for “Jew” or “Jewish”. You won’t find it.  That has to be a deliberate omission, for the reason the kids were saved simply must be part of the story. 

Finally, there was a series of tweets about whether the BBC used the word “Jewish” in stores about the Holocaust. Their score: 50% (2 out of 4). Given the history of the BBC’s antisemitism, I call the omission deliberate, especially for the Winton movie. And, as you saw, I’m not alone,

Here are the tweets. Reader Jez says this about the first Tweeter:

Cath Leng, whose tweet alerted me to it, is a former BBC employee herself. She just posted a piece about how the BBC broadcast an unbalanced piece about the man who won a recent women’s pool competition – the woman he was going to face in the final politely declined to take part, forfeiting the prize. The BBC didn’t even interview her, and just focused on the man’s feelings.

As Vonnegut said, so it goes.

h/t: Jez, Malgorzata

Click “continue reading” to see the BBC story:

Continue reading “The BBC and its Hollywood movie erase the words “Jew” and “Jewish” from the story of Nicholas Winton, a hero who saved Jewish children from the Nazis” →

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.