From Jerusalem with Love

Greetings from Israel! After an epic trip (caused by Lufthansa extending its cancellation of flights to Israel), we have been enjoying warm, sunny weather, amazing food, and quality time with old and new friends in Tel-Aviv, Rehovot, and now Jerusalem. But the news keeps coming, so here comes a Jerusalem edition of our newsletter.

A biker cat in Tel Aviv.

Pardon Me? (TGIF, The Free Press, December 6, 2024)

We begin with a recap this week’s news from The Free Press by Nellie Bowers:

→ And how are the Jews? I haven’t checked in on the Jews in a bit because it’s too dismal, but a few updates this week, are, I’m sorry, funny. The head of the Cultural Affairs Commission (CAC) at UCLA—Alicia Verdugo—allegedly is running a little judenrein office over there. Noticing some unsavory applicants to the team, she reminded her employees (per a great Commentary story): “please do your research when you look at applicants” because “lots of zionists [sic] are applying.” According to a new lawsuit, applicants who indicated any Jewishness were rejected. And Alicia promised at an upcoming retreat that she would share a “no hire list.” Honey, you don’t need to go through all the trouble of making a list of every lefty Jewish student at UCLA who wants to get involved in the diversity team! Just start playing the Wicked soundtrack and see who sings along with Elphaba the loudest. There you go.

Source: Ha’Am

Anyway, the official policy of the UCLA Cultural Affairs Commission is: “We reserve the right to remove any staff member who dispels antiBlackness [sic], colorism, racism, white supremacy, zionism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, misogyny, ableism, and any/all other hateful/bigoted ideologies.” I don’t know that it’s legal to ban “Zionists” at a state-funded school. But it’s the word dispel that kills me. It’s so cute and tells you everything. Groping around, trying to use big-ish words but not knowing what they mean, propped up by government funding, the new movement can’t articulate and yet the point comes across. Because the inability to articulate is a sign of the movement’s success. Words, after all, are violence.

Speaking of words we can no longer define, Amnesty International declared that Israel is doing a genocide. The 300-page report begins: “On 7 October 2023, Israel embarked on a military offensive on the occupied Gaza Strip (Gaza) of unprecedented magnitude, scale, and duration.” Yes, Israel just randomly embarked on an offensive. Anyway, this is a serious charge and to call the war a genocide, Amenesty changed their own definition of it entirely. The new line is that anytime Israel is fighting, it’s doing genocide. And so even in fighting against Hezbollah, which has been lobbing rockets at Israel for years, what is Israel doing? Say it with me: genocide. Meanwhile, in the British Museum, we get this curious history lesson: “By the beginning of the first millennium BC the Israelites occupied most of Palestine except for the southern coastal strip, which continued to be held by the Philistines.” Yes, the Israelites occupied Palestine even before Christ! Where, pray tell, do they imagine Israelites came from?

More Coverage of the “Zionist” Ban at UCLA

• The Codification of Anti-Jewish Hiring Policies, Seth Mandel, Commentary, November 29, 2024.

• Evidence Suggests Jewish Students Denied from Cultural Affairs, Judicial Board Petition Claims, Benjamin Katz, Ha’am, December, 2024.

• Additional coverage in The Daily Bruin, The Jewish Journal, Jerusalem Post, Fox News.

The Rot In Britain—and the Remedy Also, Niall Ferguson, The Free Press, December 6, 2024

Niall Ferguson describes the recent debate at Oxford Union, in which their scholarly tradition gave way to anti-Israel political activism. Ferguson sees the incident as a symptom of a deeper problem plaguing universities and the United Kingdom.

Something is rotten in the state of Britain. It was epitomized by a recent event at the Oxford Union, the 201-year-old debating society that is such a distinctive and admirable part of Oxford life. It was at the Union that, 40 years ago, I spoke as freely (and indeed as irresponsibly) as I ever have, discovering in the process that I was not cut out for politics. It was there that I saw great debaters of the past, present, and future.

But I never saw anything like the events of November 28.

The motion for debate was in itself a provocation: “This House Believes Israel Is an Apartheid State Responsible for Genocide.” But what was truly shocking was the conduct of the president of the Union, an Egyptian student named Ebrahim Osman-Mowafy, who appears to have abused his position by openly siding with those proposing the motion and treating the opposing speakers with contempt.

According to the broadcaster, Jonathan Sacerdoti, who was arguing for Israel’s side, Osman-Mowafy canceled the traditional pre-debate group photographs, but posed alone for private photos with the anti-Israel team. During the debate, the pro-Israel speakers were repeatedly heckled by the crowd. At one point, a young woman stood up and screamed at Sacerdoti: “Liar! Fuck you, the genocidal motherfucker!”

Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a senior Hamas leader who defected to Israel, who was arguing alongside Sacerdoti, was met with jeering derision and cries of “traitor” and “prostitute” (in Arabic). Yousef asked the audience to indicate by a show of hands how many of them would have reported prior knowledge of the October 7, 2023, atrocities to Israel. Not even a quarter of the crowd raised their hands.

For the other side, Miko Peled, an Israeli general’s son turned radical anti-Zionist, described the murders, rapes, and kidnappings of October 7 as “acts of heroism.” The Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd, who has equated Zionism with genocide, began his speech by announcing that there was “no room for debate” and ended it by walking out of the chamber. The motion passed by 278 in favor to 59 against.

Reading reports of this shameful fiasco at my alma mater, I found myself wondering: Where are the Thought Police when you really need them? After all, the Oxford Union’s latest debate sounded a lot like one of those “noncrime hate incidents” that currently consume so much of the British police’s time.

Ferguson then goes on to analyze the current state of the U.K. and the political scene, suggesting ways the country can escape its downward spiral. In spite of the differences in politics between the U.K. and the U.S., there is a lot to learn from their experiences, including how once-honorable institutions—such as Oxford—have been taken over by woke ideology.

Among the debaters was the brilliant barrister Natasha Hausdorff, whose fiery opposition to the motion can be viewed here:

BDS Monitor Monthly Newsletter (SPME, December 2024)

The newsletter is rather long, but worth your time—as it is very data-rich. It begins by analyzing Trump’s proposals to curb antisemitism:

Issues related to BDS and antisemitism, which Trump continually referenced during his campaign as part of his strong critique of left wing institutions including universities and ideologies such as ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion,’ have now become actual policy goals. In a Washington, D.C. rally against antisemitism Trump stated that to “defeat antisemitism and defend Jewish citizens in America,” college presidents would be told to “end antisemitic propaganda,” otherwise their institutions would lose accreditation and federal support. He added “It’s very important Jewish Americans must have equal protection under the law and they’re going to get it. At the same time, my Administration will move swiftly to restore safety for Jewish students and Jewish people on American streets.”

Forcing foreign students and others to register as foreign agents, and enforcing Federal laws protecting places of worship, are among the reported policies being explored by the Trump Administration. Adding Jews to the list of minorities protected under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act is another concrete step which has been promised along with deportations of foreign students who lead or take part in demonstrations.

One analysis suggested that Columbia University could risk $3.5 billion in Federal grants for Title VI violations, including $1.33 in Federal contract, $800 million in research grants, $318 million in student aid, and $785 million Medicare/Medicaid payments. The figure amounts to 55% of Columbia’s operating budget. Other promises, such as seizing or taxing university endowments for the amount of money spent of “wokism,” remain difficult to visualize but have been regarded as real threat by the institutions.

Many of Trump’s other promised governmental reforms aimed at the administrative state have direct bearing on BDS and antisemitism, among these abolishing the Department of Education, which includes the Official of Civil Rights which is charged with investigating complaints regarding campus antisemitism. How the new administration would accomplish this remains unclear.

The newsletter contains a long list of attacks against Jews from the month of November. We highlight several examples relevant to university campuses:

The home and car of University of Washington president Ana Marie Cauce were vandalized.

Tunnels at the University of Rochester were covered with ‘wanted posters’ depicting Jewish faculty. Four students were later arrested but the student government passed a resolution condemning the university’s response,

An Israeli restaurant across the street from Columbia University was vandalized with the words ‘free Palestine.’

In an especially bizarre incident, at the University of Manchester a bust of Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first president and a noted chemist, was ‘abducted’ and then ‘beheaded’ by the domestic terror group Palestine Action, who filmed the entire episode. The bust of another university faculty member was also stolen and destroyed. The theft was intended to highlight the Balfour Declaration which, as the group put it, “began the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by signing the land away.”

Most seriously, two individuals were arrested in Pittsburgh, including one self-described “Hamas operative,” and charged with vandalizing a local Jewish facility and collecting explosive materials for a mass casualty attack. Mohammad Hamad’s accomplice is Talya Lubit, a Dickinson College graduate in Middle East studies.

The newsletter also has a list of examples of antisemitic faculty activism:

Warnings regarding the escalating rhetoric advocating violence have been heard from university faculty and analysts examining relationships between campus groups such as SJPs and outside actors particularly Muslim organizations such as the Muslim American Society and the Islamic Circle of North America, which in turn have operational relationships with far left groups such as the National Lawyers Guild, ANSWER, anti-policing groups, and many others.

Explicit calls to support Hamas have become more frequent on campuses as has evidence of individual radicalization, such as a manifesto written by an MIT student which called for an end to the strategy of nonviolence. Outside the US the Amsterdam pogrom has prompted warnings including from Berlin’s police chief that Jews and gays are not safe in the city’s Arab neighborhoods.

On student protests, including those co-organized by the various pro-terror organizations such as SJP, BDS, CAIR, FJP, and supported by their sympathizers—the ACLU, labor unions, and now the AAUP:

The overall volume and intensity of student protests against Israel have been more subdued in the fall semester, alternately attributed by pro-Palestinian students and faculty to exhaustion and repression, but continue unabated. Several student strike days saw walkouts and building occupations, in part as a response to the National SJP’s ‘Take a Building Challenge,’ including at the University of Arizona and Sarah Lawrence College. A building at Sarah Lawrence remains occupied with little university reaction.

An ‘International University Day of Action’ organized by SJP saw walkouts at the Harvard University, University of Michigan, and other institutions. Some 85,000 students in Quebec reportedly walked out including at Concordia University, (where a woman was filmed shouting at Jews about a “final solution coming your way”).

Campus Jewish institutions are increasingly frequent targets of protests. At Columbia University protestors anger at the presence of an Israeli journalist at the university Hillel demanded the university “sever all ties with Hillel,” At Harvard University the appearance of a former Israeli soldier prompted calls of “Zionists not welcome here,” while at Brooklyn College protestors outside the Hillel chanted “We don’t want no Zionists here” and “You support genocide.” Pro-Hamas protestors also harassed donors at a fundraising dinner hosted by the Harvard University president.

Walkouts were also held as unionized students and employees continued to conflate ‘Palestine’ with campus labor issues, for example at UCLA where students rallied for a strike as well as for ‘Gaza.’ An ‘anti-Veterans Day’ protest was also held at Columbia University by pro-Palestinian students to ‘honor the martyrs’ and reject the ‘American war machine.’ Pro-Hamas protestors outside the gates of Columbia University advocated for students to join the banned PFLP support group Samidoun. At Yale University and UCLA Jewish students were harassed and prevented from crossing areas of campus.

Despite the almost uniform repudiation of BDS by university administrations and trustees, including in November Trinity College and Macalaster College, student governments continue to pursue these mechanisms, either in earnest or as means to undermine social cohesion on campus. Pro-Hamas students, including at Yale University and Princeton University employ the tactic of aiming divestment at ‘weapons manufacturers’ rather than Israeli companies as a whole. At Binghamton University a ‘judicial board’ overturned parts of two student government resolutions that would have prohibited BDS resolutions from being brought in the future.

Efforts by student governments to directly boycott Israel also continue. Following a student referendum the Clark University student government has pressured campus organizations to avoid Israeli-related products and companies including Amazon. The Tufts University student newspaper has also called for students to individually boycott Israel-related products and to eschew employment with firms doing business with Israel.

In an ironic turn of events, however, the University of Michigan student government leaders who held the organization hostage and demanded that it support BDS and Gaza have now been impeached for dereliction of duty, incitement of violence, and seizing control of social media accounts. They will now face trial by a student judiciary panel.

Student governments were also the scene of complaints regarding invitations to outside speakers opposed to Hamas, especially Mosab Hassan Yousef, son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef. At Rutgers University a coalition of Muslim, Arab and Third World student groups condemned Yousef’s appearance, calling him Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian. A group of ‘progressive Jews’ at Princeton University complained similarly about Yousef.

Finally, CAIR and other Islamist organizations continue to file complaints and lawsuits alleging ‘Islamophobia’ of various universities. This is a continuation of a legal strategy aimed at harassing institutions and overwhelming the Department of Education’s investigation abilities. Targeted institutions include the University of Chicago and, quite unbelievably, Swarthmore College, which is alleged to have a widespread culture of anti-Muslim discrimination.

A variety of ‘human rights’ groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA and Human Rights Watch also issued an open letter complaining that some 20 colleges and universities have employed ‘excess force’ against pro-Hamas protestors. A letter to Pomona College from ‘civil rights’ groups similarly complained that the suspension of students involved in a protest was a violation of rights under California law….

‘Faculty for Justice in Palestine’ (FJP) continue to stake out the most extreme positions possible. University of California FJP chapters, comprised of faculty from the UC San Diego Ethnic Studies Department and the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies program at UC Santa Cruz, testified before the university regents as the University of California ‘People’s Tribunal.’ Among other things they charged the university with "genocide and ongoing Nakba" on the grounds of its investments, ‘complicity’ with Israeli universities, and “by upholding and defending Zionism, UC leaders have normalized the settler-colonial, apartheid, genocidal Israeli state, the root cause of Nakba and genocide.”

In an interview the president of the American Association of University Professors struck a defiant tone regarding the profession and its involvement with political issues including boycotting Israel. Complaints also continue from particularly from left wing faculty regarding what is claimed to be a growing atmosphere of repression and self-censorship on campus.

But the news isn’t all bad. The newsletter also offers examples of institutional pushback against the most odious of student excesses:

• Tufts university has suspended its SJP chapter until 2027 citing its promotion and celebration of violence. The SJP chapter then announced its had disaffiliated itself from the university,

• The University of Pennsylvania has suspended a business school fraternity for posters mocking Israeli hostages,

• The University of Michigan has begun disciplinary proceedings against its student anti-Israel coalition which may result in up to a four year suspension,

• Harvard Divinity School issued a two week suspension to students who conducted a ‘pray-in’ in the school’s library,

• The New York State Supreme Court upheld Columbia University’s suspension of its SJP and JVP chapters, ruling the school’s decision was “neither arbitrary or capricious, irrational or in violation of clearly established University policies.”

• At the same time, Columbia University has agreed to a $395,000 settlement to two Israeli students who were suspended after being falsely accused of using a “chemical weapon” against pro-Hamas protestors in the spring semester. The chemical was in fact a novelty fart spray purchased through Amazon.

Cornell Interim President Accused of Violating Academic Freedom After Email Leaks, Ryan Quinn, Inside Higher Ed, December 5, 2024

We wrote previously about the radical antisemite Cornell professor Eric Cheyfitz and his class that teaches a “plausible genocide in Gaza.” Cornell’s president, Michael Kotlikoff, discussed concerns about Cheyfitz using his classroom for political indoctrination by private email with a colleague. But the email exchange was leaked to the press, and now Kotlikoff is being accused of suppressing Cheyfitz’s academic freedom.

The fracas started with a Nov. 6 email from a Cornell adjunct law professor, who wrote to interim president Michael I. Kotlikoff that a course set for the spring was antisemitic and could cause violence against Israeli and Jewish students…. Cheyfitz, the Ernest I. White Professor of American Studies and Humane Letters and an indigenous studies professor, wrote in his course description that the class would examine the idea that Indigenous people have been involved “in a global resistance against an ongoing colonialism.” He wrote that the course would also “present a specific case” of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war as “settler colonialism in Palestine/Israel with a particular emphasis on the International Court of Justice finding ‘plausible’ the South African assertion of ‘genocide’ in Gaza.”

In the private email exchange that followed, Kotlikoff expressed concerns about the course, saying “I personally find the course description to represent a radical, factually inaccurate, and biased view of the formation of the state of Israel and the ongoing conflict.”

After the emails were leaked, Kotikoff has been accused of all sins by radical faculty organizations including the AAUP—the formerly respectable organization that lost its way and is now carrying water for Hamas:

The Middle East Studies Association’s president and its Committee on Academic Freedom have condemned his comments. Cornell’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors piled on Wednesday, releasing a lengthy statement that said Kotlikoff’s comments were an “egregious threat to bedrock principles of academic freedom.”

Risa Lieberwitz, president of that AAUP chapter, told Inside Higher Ed that Kotlikoff violated both Cheyfitz’s individual academic freedom and a broader facet of academic freedom. Kotlikoff’s email had not only criticized the course but the faculty who had supposedly approved it. Lieberwitz—who’s also a member of AAUP’s national Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, though she said she wasn’t speaking in that capacity—said AAUP principles also protect the “intramural” speech that’s part of faculty governance at universities.

“The content of that email is extremely important because it is the university’s president weighing in about whether a faculty member’s course should be offered,” Lieberwitz said. She said that could have a “chilling effect” on what and how other faculty teach….

Kotlikoff told Inside Higher Ed that his email “was a private communication to a colleague, not a public statement, it was not meant for public distribution.”

“I had no expectation that this would be made public,” he added. “I would not publicly comment on the decision of a curriculum committee or a colleague’s choice of course material.”

However, Kotlikoff, said that “if there are antisemitic, racist, other incidents that are directly related to Cornell, I certainly reserve the right to comment on those and reassure the community around those issues” or “events.” He did not exclude what’s said by a professor in a classroom.

Cheyfitz, for his part, shared with Kotlikoff an email he received on the day the Jewish Telegraphic Agency article came out.

“Hope the women in your life experience the brutal rape Israeli women experienced and your children and grandchildren are burned to death before your eyes,” the email said.

Cheyfitz added to Kotlikoff, “The attached is the kind of email your ill-considered comments on my course in JTA provoke.”

From the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR)

The University of California may soon require students to take a high school liberated Ethnic Studies (LES) class for admittance—even though the State of California is not requiring students to take this course to graduate.

That means the State of California most likely won't cover cash-strapped districts' costs to offer this course. CA school districts are struggling with limited funds already.

As a result, some are pushing back. Please sign our petition to help stop the UC LES admittance requirement proposal.

For more information on why FAIR opposes Liberated Ethnic Studies requirements in California, see a letter we sent to the UC system here.

“Ethnic Studies” is nothing but the Woke indoctrination in K–12, with its obligate anti-semitism, anti-Zionism, and Jewish conspiracy theories. They must be abolished altogether.

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And, to end on a happy note, a picture of a recent lunch we ate while visiting the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot:

Israeli hummus masabacha