RUTHFULLY YOURS

A college education is meant to expand ones freedom of thought and stimulate curiosity in a safe environment. Unfortunately most parents and grandparents are not aware that this is not the case in many schools

College campuses across the country have become a hotbed for anti-Israel activism. like never before. Anti-Semitism is on the rise , in the form of hate speech, harassment and intimidation by the student body as well as in the class room by the indtrrictor.

According to a nationwide survey conducted by Trinity College and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, It found that Jewish students are saying they are being targeted on the basis of their religion,

The survey interviewed 1,157 self-identified Jewish students at 55 U.S. colleges, found that 54 percent experienced or witnessed “anti-Semitism on campus during the first six months of the 2013-2014 academic year.”The report found evidence of anti-Semitism across the country strongly suggesting it is a nationwide problem.

As a historian of the Holocaust I have always recognized its uniqueness. But without the ability to correctly read warning signals of looming catastrophes, history may repeat itself.

As a historian of the Holocaust I have always recognized its uniqueness. But without comparisons and the ability to correctly read the warning signals of looming catastrophes, such knowledge remains sterile and liable to paralyze timely action. Hence I respectfully disagree with The Jerusalem Post’s April 17 editorial, “Bad Comparisons,” which targets the “conflation” of Nazi Germany and contemporary Iran, allegedly made in my book A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (2010).

The quotation from the book which is offered is not an assertion of identity between Nazism and Shi’ite fundamentalism.

It points rather to the similarity between Iran’s “apocalyptic anti-Semitism” (a term I coined 30 years ago) and the Nazi fixation on the annihilation of Jews as a necessary prologue to the “liberation of humanity.” This hideous project is now focused on the Jewish state in the Middle East and once again, six million Jews find themselves at risk. Not only that, but the Iranian leadership still uses a familiar Nazi language – describing the Jews of Israel as a “cancerous tumor” that must be totally excised. From ayatollah Khomeini through president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the present supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, the “Zionist entity” has been repeatedly dehumanized as a “filthy microbe,” a “deadly virus,” a “cancer,” or as an “agent of Satan.” The supposedly “moderate” President Hassan Rouhani is no different in this regard, having referred to Israel on July 31, 2014, as this “festering Zionist tumor.”

The writer, an engineer living in Toronto, Canada is co-founder of Canadians for Israel’s Legal Rights – CILR www.cilr.org.

How can there be peace and reconciliation without acknowledging fundamental historical and legal facts?

Ninety five years ago, prime ministers, ambassadors and other dignitaries from Europe and America gathered in the Italian Riviera. Journalists from around the world reported on the upcoming San Remo Peace Conference and the great expectations the international community placed on this event, just a year after the Paris Peace Conference had settled the political map of Europe at the end of World War One.

On Sunday, April 25, 1920, after hectic deliberation, the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers (Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the U.S. acting as an observer) adopted the San Remo Resolution — a 500 word document which defined the future political landscape of the Middle East out of the defunct Ottoman Empire.