History Repeats Itself
History Repeats Itself
And Not in a Good Way
But first, a comment on the election:
Antisemitic Propaganda in Classrooms
We continue documenting the role of radical faculty in fomenting antisemitism on university campuses by indoctrinating students, encouraging anarchism, and abusing their positions to disseminate anti-Israel propaganda (for more-USC-specific examples, see here). Even courses dedicated to Jewish history can be hijacked, as is possibly the case with the Genocide Studies at USC program. The examples below shows how widespread this practice has become.
TGIF: Our Campaign Was Perfect (The Free Press, November 8, 2024)
→ Texts of terror: A man who was convicted last year of a terror attack in France is teaching a course called “Social Justice in Action” at Carleton University in Canada. Not kidding. Long a suspect, Hassan Diab was finally convicted last year in a 1980 bombing of a synagogue in France that left four dead (Diab apparently planted the bomb). Carleton University has been fighting France’s attempts at extradition—a professor who planted a bomb in a synagogue? In academia these days, that’s what we call an endowed chair.
Joseph Massad, who celebrated October 7, as “astounding” and “astonishing,” has a new course at Columbia teaching “The History of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskala) in 19th century Europe and the development of Zionism through the current peace process between the state of Israel and the Arab states and the Palestinian national movement.” I know this isn’t the point but that’s way too long a course description. Cornell is keeping it simpler and has a new class just on how Israel is a settler-colonial state. And Queens College, City University of New York is offering a class about how vile the Torah/Old Testament is:
The main thing about Genesis is the problematic female narratives, surely. Oh, they updated the course description online, by the way. The original version spells out that they mean “the Hebrew Bible.” I mean, guys, I figured.
A Jewish Emigré from Russia Experiences Deja Vu at an American University
Writing for Commentary, Irina Velitskaya tells her family’s story and relates her personal experience in an American University in the essay—titled appropriately—The Gulag Academia (November 2024). She explains the extent of the antisemitism in Russia and how she and her family navigated it in their daily lives.
Hiding our Jewishness was a family tradition. This was an understandable response given that my Ukrainian paternal grandfather, Danil Fyodorovich Bykoder, served 15 years, beginning in about 1923 at the age of 19, in the Solovki labor camp, whose anguishing cruelties were vividly described in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s epic work, The Gulag Archipelago. My grandfather’s tripartite crime was criticizing Stalin, being an intellectual, and being Jewish….
My father, who is circumcised, has never gone to the public baths, not even once, for fear of being found out. Circumcision among Jewish men is not universal in Russia, so his status would be even more noticeable.
Despite their efforts to hide their Jewish background, Velitskaya was routinely bullied and abused as a Jew in school in the small town of Sinegorskiy. Her family story and her experiences are but typical. To escape that life, Velitskaya immigrated to the USA in 2012. She felt safe in the U.S. and thought she had left antisemitism behind. Then she enrolled in the University of California.
I had always been interested in Judaism and the ancient Near East, but this finding galvanized me. After some years spent learning English and saving money, I became a midlife undergraduate student, winning a full scholarship to Berkeley—in the city where Hersh Goldberg-Polin was born—for a double major in classical languages and Near Eastern studies.
It was the best thing, and the worst thing, that has ever happened to me.
If I had done more intensive research before enrolling, I would have come across the testimony of Jewish faculty members such as Ron Hassner, the Chancellor’s Professor of Political Science and Helen Diller Family Chair in Israel Studies. He has told me that an unknown person sprayed graffiti on a Berkeley street corner, personally accusing him of “terrorism” and “genocide” and displaying his phone number and email. After it was erased, the graffiti reappeared. Later, after delivering a talk on the University of California San Francisco campus, two UCSF staff members alleged on X that Hassner had personally tortured and killed Palestinians.
Back in Sinegorskiy, I had had to take the long way to and from school to avoid my anti-Semitic classmates. Now, as a student in good standing at Berkeley, one of the world’s most distinguished universities, I must take a detour many days, both ways, to get to my classes at Dwinelle Hall and other locations, because Berkeley’s famous main gate is effectively closed to free passage for students by pro-Hamas demonstrators. I sometimes am forced to avoid the Bancroft Library as well because of the intimidating protests there. Hassner’s symbolic protest of these judenrein blockades (he slept in his office for a time) was what led to the doxxing and slander he has endured.
I find myself feeling as though I am a leper.
The detour that I and other students use requires us to step from stone to stone across a little creek. It’s no big deal (except, I assume, for disabled students), and I’m used to it. But when it rains and the creek rises, students must take a longer detour that adds 25 minutes to our morning and evening trips.
I’m used to a great many things. Recently, a friend asked me whether I wore a Star of David proudly. “Of course,” I said—but I had forgotten that I tuck my Star of David inside my top when I ride the BART subway system to campus from my apartment in a nearby city. As I later explained to my friend, “If someone attacks me on campus, I can scream and run. But on the BART, I’d be trapped, and no one would help me.”
Then my friend asked me whether I display a mezuzah. Again, I said, “Of course,” but then I was forced to acknowledge that I have placed it on my inside door frame, not on the outside where it belongs, so that my apartment will not be targeted.
Velitskaya also experienced antisemitic propaganda in the classroom:
I did object when a guest lecturer in one of my classes claimed that Netanyahu once said, “I wish death to all the Arabs.” When I pointed out that this was a fabrication that was subsequently disseminated by the Jordanian media, she doubled down, saying we “would have to agree to disagree.” No, we didn’t; I wrote a letter of complaint. But I don’t object when certain other professors take certain anti-Semitic actions, for fear of jeopardizing my grades and my future as an academic. In the same way that I tread carefully from stone to stone across that small creek to get to my classes, I must navigate cautiously (here at Berkeley and, perhaps in the future, at the graduate school that accepts me) around those professors—even some professors of Hebrew language and Jewish studies!—who have well-documented reputations for anti-Semitic or virulently anti-Israel rhetoric.
She returns to her family story and pledges to do something different—not to bend to antisemitism, but to fight it:
My father was a math and physics professor at another great university, the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, up until the day he was attacked by a group of Chechen students. They beat him severely, demanding a better grade for one of their number, and called him a “gorbonosyy” and a “zhidyara” (you can look up these viciously anti-Semitic terms if you want to, but I am quite certain they won’t brighten your day). After that, my father resigned and has lived a quiet life in the village of Kholmskaya, nine kilometers from Sinegorskiy. He is an unassuming, mild-mannered man who steps carefully wherever he goes.
But I am different. I live in America. I don’t have to hide. Or, to be more accurate, sometimes I do hide, but I shouldn’t have to. Not even in the belly of the beast at Berkeley. Not even in a network of great but deeply compromised universities across America that I have come to think of as the Gulag Academia.
I won’t be afraid. I am afraid. But I won’t be afraid.
Her story is jarring, but her determination to fight back is an inspiration. We need to be strong. We need to fight, not hide.
A Clarion Call by Natan Sharansky
Writing for Tablet, the famous Soviet dissident Nathan Sharansky calls on American Jews to fight against the ideology of antisemitism (“The 500,” May 27, 2024). The essay is long but it worth the time to read. Sharansky explains the genesis of the current explosion of antisemitism, and his analysis points again to radical faculty from certain “Studies” departments.
Twenty years ago, just after the second intifada, I went on a tour of American and Canadian campuses. Shaken by what I saw and heard, I told (then) Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that the major battle for the future of American Jewry will be fought on campuses. So disturbed was I by this visit, that I titled the article I wrote about it in the Hebrew press “a journey into occupied territory.”
The “occupiers” in my metaphor were the centers for Middle East studies that had sprouted like mushrooms in American universities to spread anti-Zionist propaganda. Their influence was palpable, not only in events they organized, but also in their effect on the Jewish students I met. While many expressed deep solidarity with Israel and support for its struggle against terror, a few young men and women told me that for them, as liberal Jews, it would be better if Israel didn’t exist. “Then,” they told me, “I won’t be perceived as responsible for such awful crimes.”
Sharansky observed many examples of complacency and cowardice on campuses:
The statements that concerned me and led me to speak of occupation and battlefields were the many variations I heard on one young woman’s quietly spoken and regretful admission that she would very much like to speak against divestment and other anti-Israel measures, but she couldn’t. Her professors won’t like it, she told me. It would harm her future career.
Against this backdrop of conformism, Sharansky discusses an open letter from 500 Jews at Columbia University (“The 500”). He praises it as “a landmark in the struggle to escape a stifling regime of doublethink and ensure the American Jewish future through proud and open dissent.”
The ideological regime of antisemitism that has entrenched itself in America’s universities will only collapse when enough Jews stop being afraid and stop unwillingly aiding it by hiding and self-censoring.
We can take inspiration from this great man. Enough with complicity—stand tall and speak up.
History Corner: Remembering Kristallnacht
The Shoah Foundation presents a new mixed-media exhibit about Kristallnacht:
November 9 and 10 mark the 86th anniversary of the November Pogrom, also known as Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass). On these nights in 1938, Nazis and sympathetic supporters orchestrated a coordinated assault on Jewish communities across Germany, Austria, and Czech Sudetenland. This systematic attack marked a devastating escalation of antisemitic violence and set in motion policies under the Nazi regime. During Kristallnacht, approximately 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. The violence resulted in the destruction of an estimated 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses and the burning of more than 1,000 synagogues. The shattered glass from Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues that littered the streets gave this night of terror its infamous name.
To educate about this pivotal moment in history, the USC Shoah Foundation has partnered with the Claims Conference, makemepulse, Meta, and UNESCO to create Inside Kristallnacht, an innovative mixed-reality experience detailing Kristallnacht through the eyes of Holocaust survivor and activist Dr. Charlotte Knobloch.
Inside Kristallnacht integrates archival footage, photographs, music, and audio of Kristallnacht, along with meticulously researched historical context, into the hand-drawn world of Dr. Knobloch’s story. Viewers can also engage in an interactive Q&A with Dr. Knobloch that uses natural language processing technology to match her prerecorded answers to the questions.
“By embracing technology in ways that are responsible and engaging, we have the potential to enhance our collective memory and ensure that we honor the survivors, the victims and the immeasurable loss suffered during some of the twentieth century’s most tragic years of antisemitic violence,” said our Executive Director Dr. Robert J. Williams.
The exhibit is a bit difficult to navigate, but once we figured out that you need to look for yellow arrows and click on them to move on, we enjoyed it very much.
The pogroms are not a thing of the past, as we were reminded just this week by the events in Amsterdam (Last Night’s Pogrom in Amsterdam, David de Brujn, The Free Press, November 8, 2024):
As the Amsterdam Jewish community joined with local officials to commemorate the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht at the city’s Portuguese-Jewish synagogue—established by Jews who escaped the Inquisition—a pogrom was taking place outside. Following a soccer match between the Dutch club Ajax and the visiting Maccabi Tel Aviv, Jewish and Israeli fans of the visiting club were ambushed and beaten in the city’s streets and alleys.
Footage shows an Israeli soccer fan being struck by a car, cartwheeling across the windshield. More footage shows the scene in downtown Amsterdam, where Israelis are pleading with their assailants, “not Jewish, not Jewish.” And they are beaten mercilessly.
The article contains videos documenting the violence. Who are the perpetrators? All the familiar actors:
Much about the origins of the attack are still unclear, but early reports suggest that it was carried out by youth gangs from the Dutch Moroccan and Dutch Turkish community, and was orchestrated in advance. Visiting Israelis report being ambushed by groups of 10 to 15 masked assailants in various alleys. Fleeing Israelis told Channel 12’s Elad Simchayoff that “Amsterdam police instructed [Israelis] not to go by taxis. Police officers told fans that taxi drivers in the city are helping organize the riots and assisting the gangs.”
This pogrom did not come out of the blue. It is the result of many years of flawed policies. In his weekly column for The Free Press, Douglas Murray revisits the story of Ayaan Hirsi Ali (“Things Worth Remembering: Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the ‘Strange Death’ of Europe”, November 10, 2024).
On November 2, 2004, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered in the city center, in the morning, while bicycling to work. His killer, Mohammed Bouyeri, then 26, explained in a note stabbed into van Gogh’s stomach that van Gogh’s film Submission was guilty of “blasphemy”—it criticized Islam’s treatment of women—and he threatened that van Gogh’s colleague Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Jews, and other nonbelievers would meet a similar end.
Van Gogh’s murder came two years after that of gay right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn—shot to death nine days before a general election, which the party he led looked likely to win. His killer, Volkert van der Graaf, said he killed Fortuyn, who had called Islam “backward” and supported ending immigration, as a favor to the Netherlands’ Muslim community….
[The last week pogrom] was a reminder that, despite the early warning signs, the Dutch have done less than nothing to sort out their problems.
In fact, as I described in my 2017 book The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, they have actually turned on the people who identified those problems—principally, Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
I remember the atmosphere back then, and the way Dutch politicians and other elites seemed to blame the likes of Fortuyn, van Gogh, and Hirsi Ali for the issues they were trying to bring attention to. There was this implication that, if they had just kept their heads down and not been so provocative—if they hadn’t been so intolerant as to suggest that Islam and liberalism might be incompatible—things would have been different. For them and for the country.
The murders, and the reactions to them, were an early sign of Europeans’ mounting cognitive dissonance—their refusal to acknowledge troubling facts about their Muslim neighbors that undermined their core beliefs about inclusivity and multiculturalism.
It got nastier. Hirsi Ali, then serving in the Netherlands’ parliament, was forced to surround herself with bodyguards. So were her fellow parliamentarian Geert Wilders and the Iranian-born, ex-Muslim academic Afshin Ellian, among others….
Years before, Hirsi Ali had fled her native Somalia to escape an arranged marriage, and apparently there were some inconsistent details on her immigration paperwork. It was an utterly specious, politically motivated inquiry targeting a woman whom progressives had, by then, convicted of wrongthink. Hirsi Ali had been a model citizen who had worked hard, learned Dutch, graduated from university, and been elected to the parliament—all within a decade of having arrived. She had put her faith and trust in the liberal values that the Netherlands, like many European countries, embodied.
The bottom line is that Europe, too, has been subverted by the ideology of Critical Social Justice, and last week’s pogrom is just one manifestation of many years of flawed, self-destructive policies.
The parallels between today’s Jew-hatred and the Nazi and Soviet times are undeniable. The satirical magazine Babylon Bee comments on the irony in its article “Anne Frank Museum Closed To Tourists As 1000 Jews Currently Hiding In Attic” (November 8, 2024):
AMSTERDAM — The Anne Frank House, a historic landmark with attached museum, announced today that it was currently closed to tourists following a slew of anti-semitic attacks in the area, leading to a sudden influx of approximately 1,000 Jews hiding in the building's attic.
“Sorry, folks, the museum is closed,” Museum Curator Ezekiel Steinberg said. “We are, uh, beyond capacity. But don’t worry, as soon as it's safe for Jews to come out of hiding again, we’ll open back up.”
Dispatches From US Campuses
As reported in the Hillel International’s newsletter, the violence and harassment of Jewish students on American campuses continues:
Two Jewish Students Attacked at DePaul University in Chicago
Two Jewish students at DePaul University in Chicago were attacked on campus Wednesday afternoon while showing their support for Israel. Chicago police are investigating the attack as a hate crime, saying the suspect “made antisemitic remarks before repeatedly striking the victim.” In a message to students and staff, DePaul President Robert L. Manuel said, "We are outraged that this occurred on our campus. It is completely unacceptable and a violation of DePaul's values.”
Get the DetailsAEPi Students’ House at Temple University Vandalized For Third Time
Temple University President John Fry addressed students Monday following the vandalism of an off-campus row home that houses members of Jewish fraternity AEPi. Fry condemned the incident and reiterated Temple’s zero-tolerance policy for hate. The Philadelphia Police and Temple University Police are investigating the incident, with disciplinary actions promised for any student found to be involved.
Read President Fry’s Letter to the Temple University Community
The newsletter also reported on the new policies against antisemitism at University of Washington
University of Washington’s President and Provost Announce New Policies to Address Antisemitism on Campus
The University of Washington (UW) responded to antisemitism and Islamophobia task force reports by announcing new measures aimed at protecting Jewish and Muslim students, including creating a Title VI Coordinator position and a Civil Rights Compliance Office to improve bias tracking and responses. UW leaders said they are committed to training, educating, and fostering connections with Jewish and other communities to support a safer, inclusive campus environment for all students.
See the University’s New Policies
From the SPME Weekly Newsletter (November 8, 2024)
The newsletter has three interesting reads:
The current version of antisemitism is a result of the neo-Marxist DEI "social justice" ideology that dominates North American universities, having been mandated by President Biden in the US and Prime Minister Trudeau in Canada. Dividing all of humanity into "oppressors" and "victims," Jews, along with whites and males, are assigned to the "oppressor" category, as is Israel. Whites and males are punished and partially excluded in our universities, but there are too many of them to victimize directly. Jews are few, so are ideal targets of abuse and extermination. Attacking Jews is "virtue"-signaling, for it is acting on behalf of the victims of the world. (An exception is Muslim students, whether local citizens or visiting students, who attack Jews as a religious duty. But they are good at drawing on Western discourse to camouflage their actions.) A necessary step in blocking antisemitism and Jew-hate is crushing DEI "social justice" ideology. Some of our political leaders--not in California, of course--have made efforts to suppress it. We should support this effort.
All these situations remind us that elections matter as they determine which policies get implemented on campus and in society. Let's be honest here...you see this rampant antisemitism in the West in spaces occupied and controlled by Progressives...NOT Conservatives. Those who systematically vote for open borders, increased immigration from countries with large antisemitic populations and continued support for critical race theory should not be shocked to see the rise of antisemitism in their communities. They need to take a good hard look in the mirror and ask themselves, can I really vote for a candidate from a political party that celebrates politicians who espouse rampantly antisemitic views? The same applies to hiring on college campuses for which faculty are entirely responsible.