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ANTI-SEMITISM

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Cancel Culture Meets Anti-Semitism at UC Berkeley Cancelation of speaker Dan Kalb shows “how far down the slope we’ve descended.” by Lloyd Billingsley

By on January 6th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/cancel-culture-meets-anti-semitism-at-uc-berkeley/

In the wake of 10/7, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Ivy League universities have been taking heat for campus anti-Semitism. That has also been going on at UC Berkeley, once known as a bastion of free speech. Consider the case of Dan Kalb, an Oakland city councilman and climate activist.

On November 21, Kalb was slated to address undergraduates in an Environmental Problem Solving course, a class he had addressed before. This time, pro-Hamas students responded with a letter stating:

As an Oakland City Council member with a platform advocating for environmental and social justice, affordable housing, and universal access to health care, among other things, it is utterly disappointing and hypocritical for someone of your esteem to be in support of the apartheid state of Israel and the current and ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.

Students attacked Kalb for his “active role in retweeting and spreading pro-Israeli propaganda, which often equates pro-Palestinian voices as ‘anti-Semitic.’” The letter made no mention of Hamas atrocities, now acknowledged even by the New York Times. Adjunct professor Kurt Spreyer, instructor of the course, told Kalb the students might disrupt the class, so it was better that he not appear.

“If someone wants to go speak about climate change — they are an expert on climate change — what the hell does Israel or Zionism have to do with that?” Kalb told the Jewish News of Northern California. “Why not put a yellow star on our sleeve? How about we do that too?”

Kalb had been “condemning the murderous Hamas terrorists repeatedly,” and in his view “Hamas must be unequivocally condemned and, if possible, dismantled so this never happens again.” When Kalb saw people denying evidence of Hamas atrocities, he said, “That’s not anti-Zionism. That’s anti-Semitism,” and that problem “apparently is not exclusive to the law school.” In fact, UC Berkeley is being sued by Jewish groups and students over “longstanding, unchecked spread of anti-Semitism.”

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POSITIVE NEWS FROM ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on December 25th, 2023

Beyond the headlines, there is positive news from Israel brought to us even in wartime from Israel thanks to Michael Ordman.

Here in America, beyond the protests by ignorant and malicious libelers there is interfaith and bipartisan support for Israel. Thank you to all who understand the follies of armistices and cease fires that leave tyrants in power. rsk

 www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

POSITIVE NEWS DURING A WAR
 
Done but not completed. (TY Zena & Cynthia) Emotional scenes in this newly released film from Israel’s Schneider Children’s Hospital, where many (but not all) young hostages released from Gaza have been reunited with their families. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNRfNnvoipc
 
Another Oct 7 hero. Rami Davidian received a phone call on Oct 7 asking him to rescue someone from the Nova party. In his first rescue mission he crammed 15 youngsters into his car and took them back to his house. In another he pretended to be a Muslim from Gaza and convinced a terrorist to hand him a female captive.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/382050   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR–xNP4mGI
 
IDF dog detects bomb and saves soldiers. An IDF canine is saving lives in Gaza, sniffing out explosives and hidden terrorists.  https://unitedwithisrael.org/watch-idf-dog-detects-explosives-saves-soldiers/ https://www.jewishpress.com/multimedia/video-picks/aisha-the-k9-warrior-video-upsets-muslims-on-account-of-muhammads-wife-by-same-name/2023/12/17/
 
Young immigrants making an impact. Aliyah organization Nefesh b’Nefesh has awarded its Maor Youth Prize to ten outstanding young olim (immigrants to Israel) ages 11 to 18, from English-speaking countries, for their exceptional contributions to the State of Israel during current war.
https://www.jns.org/nefesh-bnefesh-awards-10-olim-for-assisting-war-effort/
 
Support for rehabilitation. (TY Ian F) The English-speaking branch of AWIS (Association for the Wellbeing of Israel’s Soldiers) has raised funds (see here) for the IDF’s Rehabilitation Unit, where 100+ brave wounded soldiers are receiving general medical care, physiotherapy and counseling to help them recover and recuperate.
https://www.ufis.org.il/  
 
Fighting on two fronts. In civilian life, Tal is lead R&D engineer at Synchrony Medical (see here previously) developing LibAirty to treat chronic lung disease. Since Oct 7, she has been working 12-hour shifts several days a week as chief sergeant of a control unit that coordinates helicopter evacuations of wounded soldiers.
https://www.israel21c.org/the-medical-engineer-fighting-the-war-on-two-fronts/
 
Volunteers build tech to protect. Israel Tech Guard is an all-volunteer, not-for-profit initiative building tech solutions to help protect Israelis during and after the war. They include Blood Donation Bot (donor eligibility), Rehab Track (locating patients in hospital), and Guardian X (social media identity verification) and more.
https://www.israel21c.org/israel-tech-guard-builds-new-solutions-to-protect-citizens/
 
They couldn’t wait. (TY Laura) A young couple had intended to fly to America to plan their wedding. But Oct 7 changed their plans into a quiet wedding in Israel. Jake was then called up into the IDF and so the wedding ceremony took place next to the Syrian border, with nearly 100 celebrants – the majority in army uniform.
https://aish.com/they-cannot-steal-our-joy-my-son-an-israeli-soldier-just-got-married/
 
From frontlines to fatherhood. When Avi’s wife went into labor early, Avi’s unit pulled out all the stops to get him from Khan Yunis in Gaza to Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek hospital. Avi had been in Kfar Aza on Oct 7 when Hamas attacked.  Avi said their new baby confounded those intent on destroying the Jewish people.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-778415
 
100 Evangelicals in IDF. Juergen Buehler, president of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem says there are around 100 Evangelical Christian volunteers in the IDF, including two of his sons. As one of the Christian soldiers said, “We are willing to give our lives for Israel.” 
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-778494
 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
US approves fiber implants for children. (TY OurCrowd) The US FDA has cleared the bio-integrative technology from Israel’s Ossio (see here previously) to be used in orthopedic surgery for children and adolescents needing bone realignments, fusions or fracture fixation.   
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231206064383/en/OSSIO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7YlwWulwJ0  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMfNVFWx3ls
 
Treatment for asthma. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Teva has bought the rights to complete the development of BD9 – an antibody-based therapy for the treatment of asthma and atopic dermatitis from Israel’s Biolojic Design (see here previously). Biolojic’s AI platform generates antibodies that have predictable functions.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-teva-buys-rights-for-israeli-co-biolojics-asthma-treatment-1001465270
 
3D printer helps remove tumors. UK’s University Hospital Birmingham has reduced the time taken to remove tumors by up to three hours thanks to 3D-printed cutting guides produced on a J5 MedJet printer from Israel’s Stratasys. It is transforming the way tumors are removed from head and neck cancer patients.
https://investors.stratasys.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/872/university-hospital-birmingham-improves-craniomaxillofacial
 
Successful trial for plaque psoriasis treatment. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Scinai Immunotherapeutics has announced successful preclinical trial results of its innovative anti‑IL‑17 VHH antibody (‘NanoAb’) as a local treatment for the large and underserved population of patients with mild to moderate plaque psoriasis. 
https://www.scinai.com/press-releases/scinai-announces-promising-results-in-a-psoriatic-human-skin-model
https://www.scinai.com/  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWz0E_-ogSc
 
Massive deal to revitalize biotech. Israel’s Compugen (see here previously) only had six months’ cash left when it was rescued by Gilead Sciences in a deal worth up to $848 million. Gilead will license Compugen’s pre-clinical cancer antibody COM503 that frees up the peptide InterLeukin 18 (IL-18) to destroy tumors.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/b1ue00g1wa
 

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The year Israelophobia took over In 2023, the world’s oldest hatred returned with a vengeance. Jake Wallis Simons

By on December 23rd, 2023

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/12/23/the-year-israelophobia-took-over/

As the end of the year draws close, it’s clear the oldest hatred is back with a vengeance.

Following Hamas’s pogrom in Israel on 7 October, and Israel’s assault on Hamas in response, every day has brought new examples of Israelophobia. One episode from December that stands out in my mind was a statement from the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols. He said that the Jewish state had shot two women in a church in Gaza ‘in a cold-blooded killing’. But how did the clergyman, from the comfort of his home in London and having carried out no investigation, know with such certainty that it was a ‘cold-blooded killing’?

Similarly, Alex Crawford, Sky News’ most prominent foreign correspondent, tweeted at the start of December that Israel was barring entry for journalists into Gaza in order to hide its ‘war crimes’. Charges of ‘war crimes’ would need to be proven by a court of law. Yet without even being in Gaza, and presumably without any legal training, Crawford felt entitled to place the black cap of the hanging judge upon her head.

The ease with which supposedly impartial observers have unwittingly become activists belies something darker – the willingness to believe the very worst of the Jewish State. It has become commonplace to airily assert that Israel is committing ‘genocide’. And it has become commonplace to talk of its disregard for Palestinian life, especially the life of Palestinian children. Little wonder the fate of neonatal babies has been placed by Hamas at the very centre of its propaganda campaign. Hamas knows this will be lapped up by the world’s media. Why is this? Could it be because there has been a racist association between Jews and the murder of Gentile children since 1144, when the blood libel was invented in Norwich? Whether people realise it or not, the Israelophobia we see today contains dark echoes of an old anti-Semitism.

The rivers of anti-Semitism run deep. Fascinating research by two German economic historians, Nico Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim Voth, has revealed that areas of Germany in which people burned Jews at the stake in the 14th century, blaming them for the Black Death, were more likely to vote for the Nazis 600 years later. This is despite the fact that Jews had been absent from the regions in question for 400 of those years. This illustrates how, once it has taken hold, the potent virus of anti-Semitism can be passed down through the generations, inclining people to believe stories, as George Orwell once put it, ‘that could not possibly be true’.

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The revival of an ancient calumny In response to the genocidal Hamas agenda, churches have turned on its Jewish victims Melanie Phillips

By on December 22nd, 2023

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/the-revival-of-an-ancient-calumny?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

There’s an unmistakable drumbeat to the antisemitism that’s erupted across the west in the wake of the October 7 pogrom. In response to the genocidal Jew-hatred fuelling Hamas and the Palestinian Arabs, an even older form of the oldest hatred has surfaced— Christian hostility to the Jews.

The wholly unwarranted western condemnation of the Israel Defence Forces for causing an allegedly disproportionate death rate among Gaza civilians echoes the ancient Christian calumny that the Jews are killers motivated by revenge and blood lust. The churches themselves are explicitly fuelling this demonisation.

Last Saturday, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem claimed in a statement that “a sniper of the IDF murdered two Christian women inside the Holy Family Parish in Gaza, where the majority of Christian families has taken refuge since the start of the war. No warning was given, no notification was provided. They were shot in cold blood inside the premises of the parish, where there are no belligerents.”

This incendiary allegation was repeated uncritically as fact across the western media.

The following day, however, Fox News reported an IDF statement that an incident took place instead “near the Latin Church in the Shejayia area,” a different church altogether in another part of Gaza where IDF troops had “operated against a threat that they identified in the area of the church”.

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Northwestern University’s Gaslighting on Antisemitism Zach Kessel

By on December 22nd, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/northwestern-universitys-gaslighting-on-antisemitism/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=third

Northwestern University will face off against the University of Utah in its NCAA football bowl game on Saturday. During a commercial break, the Jewish advocacy group Alums for Campus Fairness (ACF) will air an advertisement calling out Northwestern University president Michael Schill for his lackadaisical approach to antisemitism on his campus. 

On Wednesday, the university responded to the news of the ad campaign:

Northwestern University is aware of a planned advertising campaign by an outside, unaffiliated advocacy group alleging that the University and President Michael Schill are not taking a strong enough stand against antisemitism on campus.

These are outlandish claims not based on facts, including the claim that “student and faculty groups ‘resoundingly support’ Hamas Terrorism.”

Moreover, President Schill has been outspoken condemning antisemitism and the terrorist attack on Israel and has taken several proactive steps to address antisemitism on campus, including the establishment of the President’s Advisory Committee on Preventing Antisemitism and Hate.

Acts that violate our codes of conduct will continue to be immediately addressed and individuals will be held accountable under University policies and procedures.

Northwestern does not tolerate antisemitism or discriminatory acts against any members of its community. Northwestern will not stand idly by as outside groups push false narratives to harm the University and our community.

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Direct Action Campaign Calls Out Pro-Hamas Campus Hate Groups Confronting the radicals and Jew-haters on their own turf. by Sara Dogan

By on December 22nd, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/direct-action-campaign-calls-out-pro-hamas-campus-hate-groups/

The barbaric and atrocious Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7 have brought about a pivotal moment in our nation’s self-awareness. For decades, the David Horowitz Freedom Center has been warning of the growing pro-Hamas, pro-Jihadist, Jew-hating sentiment on American college campuses. Suddenly, the depth and breadth of campus Jew hatred, fueled by Marxist ideology that divides us all into oppressors or their victims, is on display for all to witness.

Genocidal cries of “Globalize the Intifada,” “From the River to the Sea,” and “By any means necessary” have echoed as a constant chorus on America’s most prestigious campuses, fueled by faculty members and DEI officials who actively celebrated Hamas’s horrific crimes against innocent civilians.

Sensing our moment, the Freedom Center stepped willingly into this breach. In a stealth campaign to circumvent campus censors and reach students directly, the David Horowitz Freedom Center conducted a direct action campaign on three prestigious campuses that are home to some of the worst offenders: Georgetown University, Florida State University, and Louisiana State University. On each campus we distributed 2,500 newspapers containing our new report naming the “Top Ten Campus Hate Groups in America,” leaving copies in dining halls, student activities centers, attached to bulletin boards, and in other key locations on each campus.

The report exposes and ranks ten campus organizations that have become vehicles of resentment and hatred directed at our nation, at Jewish students and supporters of Israel, and at the founding principles that are supposed to buttress the universities themselves—open discourse and academic freedom.

The three campuses where we distributed our newspapers contain some of the worst hate groups in the nation. Georgetown University is home to the #1 campus hate group, the Black Law Student Association (BLSA) which has promoted racism, advocated for censorship, and destroyed the careers of faculty members who stand for meritocracy and fail to obey the racist orthodoxy mandated by DEI officials.

In January 2022, law professor Ilya Shapiro, who had just been hired as a senior lecturer and to head Georgetown’s Center for the Constitution, was placed on administrative leave after he tweeted his opposition to Biden’s pledge to select an African-American woman to serve as the next justice on the Supreme Court.

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Tevi Troy Why Universities Target Jews Elite schools are increasingly monocultural institutions that reject free thinkers.

By on December 21st, 2023

https://www.city-journal.org/article/why-universities-target-jews

Many Jewish students, parents, and donors are rethinking their allegiance to America’s elite universities. They think that Jewish students are not welcome there.

That message is being sent in two ways. First, these schools aren’t admitting Jewish students at the rates they once did. Harvard used to be about 20 percent Jewish; today, it’s below 9 percent. At the University of Pennsylvania, long considered one of the friendliest campuses to Jewish students, the number of observant Jews admitted has dropped by about two-thirds, from 200 in the early 2000s to about 70 today, according to Inside Higher Ed. Jewish enrollment is down across much of the Ivy League.

Second, the Jewish kids who are admitted increasingly feel uncomfortable on campus. In a now-infamous congressional hearing, the presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT struggled to say definitively whether calls for genocide violated their campus codes of conduct. Schools committed to “safe spaces” are strangely silent about anti-Semitism, and in some cases seem implicitly supportive of acts of intimidation and violent protest.

In response, some top Jewish students are forswearing their dreams of Columbia or Yale and applying elsewhere. Some prominent Jewish donors have publicly condemned the schools’ double standards and begun pulling funding, or they have threatened to do so. The Jewish community had previously been downright devoted to America’s elite educational institutions. These slow, even belated, steps show that the long-honed Jewish knack for sensing danger finally has kicked in.

The current situation facing some Jewish students on college campuses, and the Jewish reaction to these trends, evokes a disturbing historical parallel. Nations that have antagonized Jews, and have seen Jews flee in response, often were experiencing a deeper rot and corruption. History is littered with nations, from Imperial Spain to Czarist and then Soviet Russia to Nazi Germany, whose underlying problems were worsened by government-sponsored scapegoating and driving away of Jews. Persecution of the Jews did not always cause those nations’ decline, but it was a signal that it was coming.

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How U.S. Public Schools Teach Antisemitism From pre-K lessons on ‘ethnic noses’ to lectures on Israel as an apartheid state, students are learning that Jews are the enemy. Francesca Block

By on December 19th, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/how-us-public-schools-teach-antisemitism?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Last fall, Siriana Abboud put a new poster on the wall of her pre-K class at a public school in Midtown Manhattan that, she claimed, would teach her four- and five-year-old students about the human body.

The poster showed four sketches of differently shaped noses—two small, one hooked, and another with a nose ring.

“Why do people have different noses?” a headline above the drawings asked.

Underneath, kids posted their answers:

“I think it’s because of your ancestors,” one wrote.

“Where you are from,” scribbled another, with a smiley face and a heart.

Next to these replies Abboud penned her own answer:

“I think it’s based on your ethnic identity. In art, we can often tell ethnicity from the bridge of your nose.”

One senior educator in the district, who is Jewish, told The Free Press she was “appalled” by the poster. “It’s clearly connected to the ethnic tropes of Jews having big noses. Quite frankly, it reminded me of Nazi comics. I had a visceral reaction to it. It was antisemitic.”

The poster Siriana Abboud put up in her pre-K class last year.
But Abboud, a twentysomething who teaches pre-K at PS 59, Beekman Hill International School, wasn’t punished or disciplined by the Department of Education for the poster, a source who knows Abboud told The Free Press. In fact, last December, she won the Big Apple Award, the highest distinction for a city teacher, for being a “liberation-inspired educator” who “raises societal expectations of the critical work of young children.”

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Crossing the Line: Justifications for Terror Brendan Craig

By on December 19th, 2023

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2023/12/crossing-the-line-justifications-for-terror/

“As a historical scholar once put it: first, they said, You have no right to live among us as Jews; then they said, You have no right to live as Jews; the Nazi regime simply reduced the historical anti-Semitism to its logical endgame: You have no right to live. Once a nation and its citizens cross that line, once they can see the “other” as less human, or simply not human at all, then no atrocity is unthinkable.”

There are no innocent British: I struggled, as a ten-year-old in 1975, to understand the news reports on our television; why my parents were so upset, particularly my English mother. “Disgusting,” they would murmur. “What kind of people could do this?” Every other week, it seemed back then, a new IRA bombing would make headlines. In September 1975 an IRA bomb exploded in the lobby of London’s Hilton Hotel. Two people were killed and sixty-three injured, many suffering limbs blown off and other horrific injuries.

There is an excellent book by a former IRA member, Eamon Collins, called Killing Rage, in which he explains the cold rationale behind the IRA’s terror tactics. The fact was, while there were some attempts to target British soldiers and military targets, the IRA hard-liners argued that all Brits were complicit in the long-running abuse of Irish nationals, and no tears should be wasted on collateral victims. The cause was all. And any means was justified by the end goals.

There are no innocent Chinese: It is unfortunate that the West has learnt almost nothing about Japanese atrocities of the 1930s. Unlike the Holocaust, Japan’s shameful past has been effectively papered over, in part because of the tremendously successful efforts of the US since the war to rebuild Japan as a modern Western ally.

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WHO is None Too Keen on Jews Stephen Buetow & Kira Baccal

By on December 19th, 2023

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/israel/2023/12/who-is-none-too-keen-on-jews/

The World Health Organization (WHO) is a United Nations agency whose primary focus is to improve global public health. It claims to be politically impartial and to use its technical expertise to bring scientific evidence to bear on international issues whose politics impact health. However, the WHO r over-reaches this scope of practice and fails to uphold its founding principles, including egalitarianism and neutrality in global health governance. The 2023 Israel‑Hamas war is the latest reminder that the WHO, in its 75th anniversary year, perpetuates anti‑Israel bias and anti-Semitism.

Like any form of racism, anti-Semitism is an intolerable moral evil of concern to all people who value human dignity and justice. By anti‑Semitism, we mean Jew-hatred, as codified in the 2016 International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition, and not a reasoned debate about or legitimate criticism of Israeli government policy.

Indeed, political divisions are evident in Israel itself. They accommodate calls to increase respect for Palestinians’ right to health without delegitimizing Israel’s right to exist and dehumanizing Jews and Israelis, including the 20 per cent of Israeli citizens who are Arabs. Contemporary expressions of Jew-hatred include anti-Zionism. Amid increased anti-Westernism, it weaponizes the anti‑Semitism  that is surging worldwide.

Anti-Zionism is the new anti-Semitism because, as British commentator Melanie Phillips explained in 2019, to treat Israel “as a Jew among nations to be uniquely vilified, slandered, and exterminated” is anti-Semitic. This article demonstrates how the WHO exemplifies such bias, acts against the sovereign equality of states, and promotes Israel’s disengagement rather than cooperation in confronting health emergencies in crises like the Israel‑Gaza war. We will discuss how WHO’s treatment of, and communications about Israel, differ from its diplomatic response to other states and conflicts. WHO’s condemnation of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and international pressure for a ceasefire serve as a case study.

Differential treatment of Israel

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