Zadie Smith has failed the Palestine purity test The novelist has been monstered by the anti-Israel mob for daring to recognise the humanity of Jews. Tim Black

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/05/07/zadie-smith-has-failed-the-palestine-purity-test/

So the ‘pro-Palestine’ mob has now rounded on author Zadie Smith. ‘Shibboleth’, an essay on American students’ protests against the war in Gaza, has been loudly denounced as a genocidal tract.

Published in this Saturday’s New Yorker, Smith’s essay is, at first glance, an unlikely target for the keffiyeh-sporting crowd. She explicitly expresses support for a ceasefire in Gaza, calling it a ‘potential reality and an ethical necessity’. She also celebrates those sons and daughters of privilege currently draped in Palestine flags and encamped on lawns across America’s universities. These protesters are the heirs of the student radicals of the late 1960s and early 1970s, she (wrongly) claims. Apparently, for their willingness to put their own bodies and futures on the line in support of a just cause, ‘they deserve our support and praise’.

But Smith does something else in the essay, too. Something that far too many ‘pro-Palestine’ types refuse to do. She dares to acknowledge the fear felt by many Jewish students right now, faced by hostile mobs calling them ‘Zionists’ and telling them to keep their distance. She also dares to express ‘concern for the dreadful situation of the hostages’ who were taken from Israel seven months ago by Hamas. And she dares to challenge those who minimise the rape of Israeli women during Hamas’s pogrom on 7 October last year.

For this – for gently drawing attention to the anti-Semitic elements of the pro-Palestine campaign, and for expressing sympathy with Israelis as well as Palestinians – she has been monstered by academics, authors and leftists.

Book Workers for a Free Palestine, a group of activists working in publishing, decided on Sunday that Smith’s essay warranted a public denunciation: ‘We profoundly disagree with the positions that Zadie Smith has taken in the New Yorker.’ A books editor at New Left publishers Verso joined in, calling it a ‘really bad essay’, written in ‘bad faith’. Cambridge professor of postcolonial studies Priyamvada Gopal also slammed Smith, denouncing her ‘white elite politics’ and claiming her ‘precious pomposity’ and sense of ‘rightness and superiority’ were all too typical of the ‘gaslighting’ that goes on at Smith’s alma mater, the University of Cambridge. Kettle, meet Professor Gopal.

Some of the reaction has been positively sinister. Author Monisha Rajesh said that she sees Smith ‘every morning on the school run’, and will now wear a ‘keffiyeh and carry a picture of Refaat Al Areer [a Palestinian writer killed during the war] and tell her, “It’s complicated”’. Elsewhere, one widely retweeted comment claimed that the mixed-race Smith uses ‘black aesthetics’, from her ‘head wrap’ to her ‘kente cloth’ earrings, in order to ‘conceal her deeply pedestrian, white, middle-class politics’. Apparently, expressing reservations about aspects of the pro-Palestine protests means that Smith is betraying her ethnic identity.

Stormy Testimony Shows: Trump’s Humiliation Is the Point of Bragg’s Prosecution Andrew McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/stormy-testimony-shows-trumps-humiliation-is-the-point-of-braggs-prosecution/

As porn star Stormy Daniels’s testimony unfolds, what has always been obvious becomes even more explicit: The point of this trial is to bruise Donald Trump politically — to humiliate him with a tawdry sexual episode from nearly 20 years ago that is utterly unnecessary to prove the charges in the indictment (even as those charges have been distorted by Alvin Bragg, Manhattan’s elected progressive Democratic district attorney); and to brand Trump a “convicted felon” so that his Democratic opponent, President Biden, can refer to him that way in the run-up to the 2024 election, after which — probably a year or more after which — any convictions from this kangaroo court will be overturned on appeal.

Bragg’s prosecutors have elicited from the porn actress — she was 27 and Trump 60 at the time of their 2006 hotel-suite encounter — that Trump assured her that he and his wife did not sleep in the same bedroom; that she (Stormy) reminded him of his daughter Ivanka; that she told him to his face he was “rude,” “arrogant,” and “pompous”; that the now-former president and de facto Republican presidential nominee became more polite after she “spanked” him with a rolled-up magazine.

The slew of riveted New York Times star reporters assigned to cover the trial dutifully chimed in: “One of the undercurrents of this testimony is how mocking and derisive Stormy Daniels is of Trump. In her telling, she was experiencing him that same way in real time during that evening in 2006.”

Normal people will find the accounts of this spectacle nauseating, even if they are catnip for a certain kind of Trump obsessive. The big concession Bragg made, with the endorsement of his cat’s paw, Judge Juan Merchan, is that prosecutors would not ask Daniels to describe Trump’s genitalia. I kid you not.

Judge Merchan, natch, has admonished Daniels to slow down the pace of her recitation. He’s afraid she’s speaking too quickly and the jury might miss some of these, er, nuggets.

A Palestinian State Will Lead To More Massacres, Final Nail in Coffin Torpedoing Biden Legacy by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20622/palestinian-state-massacres

If the Saudis were really interested in normalizing their relations with Israel, they could have done so long ago. Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is delaying the move, in part, reportedly, out of fear of facing a backlash from his own people. He may, however, also have serious reservations that he would prefer not to talk about in public.

Like most Arabs, the Saudis could not care less about a Palestinian state and might secretly prefer not to have one at all. They are no doubt aware that the Palestinians themselves are the biggest obstacle to the establishment of a state of their own. During the past half-century, they have acted as a serial wrecking ball to every peaceful place they set foot.

The last thing most Arabs want is a Hamas-controlled Palestinian state. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain justifiably regard Hamas and other Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood as a threat to their national security, most likely the main reason they all have refused to take in Gazan refugees.

Blinken’s claim that a Palestinian state would “isolate” Iran and its proxies is pure nonsense. The opposite is the case. Qatar, the Iranian regime and its proxies would doubtless be extremely happy if the Biden administration would allow them to establish a terrorist state on Israel’s doorstep. This state would be used by Iran and its terrorists as a launching pad for more October 7-style massacres of Israelis to further their goal of destroying first Israel, then the Arab States.

It is Israel — not Iran — that will find itself “isolated” and surrounded by Iran-backed Islamist groups….

A Middle East that includes a Palestinian state controlled by Iran and Islamist terrorists will be a less secure region, especially after Iran acquires nuclear weapons.

First, Biden, by reconfirming that terrorism “works,” would embolden all the other terrorists. Just keep on terrorizing everyone, and, when your demands are met, keep on upping and hardening them.

More significantly, by appeasing Iran, Qatar and potential voters in Michigan by creating a Palestinian State, the Biden administration will in fact be inviting Iran to initiate still more attacks – not only on Israel but also on US forces in the region….If Iran finally coerces the US to withdraw from the area, as reports indicate it might be doing, the regime will finally be able to take over its neighbors’ oil fields and holy sites without worrying about the US interfering.

Meanwhile, as the Biden administration, busy trying to win re-election in November, seems to have no idea how to end all the conflicts it ignited, directly or indirectly, in Gaza, Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific. The US has been backing both sides of all of them. Iran, presumably taking advantage of these distractions, and perhaps as a consolation prize for losing Hamas -– has been moving to take over Sudan. It is a country rich in oil, gold, rare earth minerals and terrorism — and felicitously positioned to help Iran fire unlimited combat drones – the planet’s new “cheap, instant air force” — at both Israel and US forces, and enable Iran to use Sudan’s port on the Red Sea to continue obstructing maritime traffic.

After all, if terrorism “works,” why stop?

Biden’s pause of weapons shipments to Israel is another misstep The president is standing confused in the middle of the road, losing moderates while attempting to appeal to Arab Americans and the young- Charles Lipson

https://thespectator.com/politics/joe-biden-pause-weapons-shipments-israel-misstep/

President Biden just made a strong move against Israel, ordering the US government to stop shipping weapons supplies to the Israeli Defense Forces. It was his fine strategic mind at work, once again. 

Usually the public defers to the president and his advisors on foreign policy, unless the issues become very prominent or the president forfeits their trust. Those are the two problems now facing the Biden administration. The war in Gaza is a major issue — and the public has zero confidence in Joe’s strategic wisdom. He lost the public’s confidence on that score after the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and the failed attempts to appease Iran. Now, they are unlikely to defer to his judgment in distancing himself from Israel, America’s greatest ally in the region. 

It’s an exaggeration to say the Biden administration is abandoning Israel outright. It isn’t. Rather, it is Joe’s latest, “on the one hand, on the other hand” policy move, and it is entangled with the riots and encampments on college campuses. A couple of weeks ago, Biden issued a brief condemnation of campus antisemitism, then remained silent as campus after campus erupted — and finally read a brief speech condemning the hatred. It was the least he could do.  

Biden’s immediate goal is to put visible American pressure on Israel to stop an invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah and to squelch the prospect of resuming major military operations. Biden would like to stop them at least until the November election is over. After that, who cares? 

The People Setting America on Fire An investigation into the witches’ brew of billionaires, Islamists, and leftists behind the campus protests By Park MacDougald

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/people-setting-america-on-fire-soros-tides-wespac

Over the past several weeks, Americans have witnessed what has seemed like a mass outpouring of support for terror on elite college campuses. At Columbia, Yale, Princeton, NYU, UCLA, Northwestern, Texas, and elsewhere, masked mobs have occupied schools with tent encampments, established self-proclaimed “autonomous zones,” clashed with police, harassed and threatened visibly Jewish students, and issued demands for their universities to divest from Israeli “genocide.” Politically, moreover, the protests have displayed an incoherent mix of campus progressivism, hardcore Islamism and Arab nationalism, and revolutionary anarchism and communism, including open praise for North Korea. The only unifying thread would appear to be opposition to Israel and its alleged imperial patron, the United States.

Have America’s college students suddenly converted en masse to anarcho-communist-jihadism? Not quite. Many are far left and anti-Israel. Some are foreigners, or the children of foreigners, who have imported the conspiracies and hatreds of their homelands. More, admitted under relaxed pandemic-era admissions standards and proudly ignorant of both American and world history, are taking the “decolonial” half-knowledge pushed by their elders to its logical conclusion.

But students are not the only, and perhaps not even the most important, faction active in the campus protests. As in the “mostly peaceful” Black Lives Matter protests of the summer of 2020, “outside agitators”—professional radicals and organizers, black bloc antifa thugs, Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries, and Palestinian and Islamist radicals—have played a central role in organizing and escalating the campus protests, just as they have organized and escalated the wider anti-Israel protest campaign that began almost immediately after Oct. 7. This largely decentralized network of agitators is, in turn, politically and financially supported by a vast web of progressive nonprofits, NGOs, foundations, and dark-money groups ultimately backed by big-money donors aligned with the Democratic Party.

Pro-Hamas movement has roots in ‘60s radicalism Now as then, the goal is to bring America down Don Feder

https://www.washingtontimes.com/staff/don-feder/

I spent the 1960s fighting the New Left on the college campus as a leader of Young Americans for Freedom. For me, the pro-Hamas mobs are deja vu all over again.

The poisonous seeds of the current crisis were sown in anti-Vietnam War agitation. Who knows what the next bumper crop will bring.

Chants of “Ho, ho. Ho Chi Minh, the NLF [National Liberation Front] is sure to win” have become “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

In the ’60s, the vanguard of the revolution was Students for a Democratic Society and the Weathermen. Today, it’s Students for Justice in Palestine — with over 200 college chapters in the U.S. and Canada — supported by far-left philanthropist George Soros, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and money from the Middle East.

The American withdrawal from Southeast Asia was followed by a bloodbath, including the Cambodian killing fields where an estimated 2 million died. If Hamas ever gets its terrorist state, the Oct. 7 genocide will be endlessly repeated.

Like Vietnam War protesters, the pro-Hamas youth are composed of hard-core communists and useful idiots. Now, add a contingent of Islamists, many here on student visas.

The fifth columnists of today have their counterparts in every war we’ve fought in the last hundred years.

Ongoing Jihadist Infiltration into America By Eileen F. Toplansky

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/05/ongoing_jihadist_infiltration_into_america.html

Alleged pundits scratch their heads in puzzlement and ask: how did all these pro-Hamas outbursts suddenly appear on American universities?

They are, in fact, not some spontaneous eruption, but clearly the product of an ongoing jihadist campaign to infiltrate America’s school system.  Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, and Yasser Arafat before them have for decades educated American universities to jihad.  Recent events attest to their disturbing success.

One such group, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) was established in 2005 by University of California Berkeley lecturer Hatem Bazian.  AMP “is a major promoter of the Hamas-inspired Boycott, Divestment, & Sanctions (BDS) movement.”  Additionally, AMP is a major supporter of the pro-Hamas campus group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

SJP is “a highly influential campus organization with chapters based at approximately 200 American colleges and universities, where it organizes and sponsors anti-Israel events and campaigns more actively than any other student group in the nation.”

Several of AMP’s recent board members and key officials … worked closely with, now-defunct Islamic extremist groups that funded terrorist activities, i.e., the Islamic Association for Palestine (which, until its dissolution in 2004, served as the chief U.S. propaganda arm of Hamas); the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (which from 1995-2001 contributed approximately $12.4 million in money, goods, and services to Hamas); and KindHearts for Charitable Humanitarian Development (whose assets were frozen in 2006 by the U.S. Treasury Department because of its fundraising activities on behalf of Hamas).

Moreover, “American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) provides speakers, training, printed materials, a so-called ‘Apartheid Wall,’ and [financial] grants to Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) activists.”  As the Investigative Project on Terrorism notes, “AMP routinely engages in anti-Israeli rhetoric, sponsors conferences that serve as a platform for Israel bashers, and openly approves ‘resistance’ against the ‘Zionist state.’”  In fact, “[a]n Arabic-language poster on display in its Chicago headquarters in 2016 included the phrase, ‘No Jew will live among them in Jerusalem.’”

Where is the money coming from to support Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)?

The DEI Jihad How campus Jew-hate and DEI evangelism are cut from the same cloth. by Larry Sand

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-dei-jihad/

It’s no secret that the nation’s college campuses are ground zero for the current outpouring of Jew hatred. At Columbia, a mob recently taunted Jewish students, telling them to “go back to Europe” and “you have no culture.” At Yale, a Jewish student was stabbed in the eye with a flagpole.

As Ben Shapiro explains, this enmity has been fostered by left-wing college administrations for two generations, which believein “the intersectional hierarchy of victimhood, in which Muslims outrank Jews.”

Shapiro is, of course, correct. U.S. universities are invariably run by leftists who unapologetically espouse beliefs that are radical and revolting – in several senses of the word.

An article from Inside Higher Ed in 2017 cited a study showing that just over 9% of faculty surveyed identified as “conservative.” A more recent piece from the American Institute for Economic Research points out that this trend has becomeeven more one-sided over the past few years, with the number of faculty who identify as “far left” more than doubling. Non-leftist voices have been “squeezed out of the academy due to a combination of retirements and an emerging bias in faculty hiring that appears to privilege progressive political beliefs.”

In addition to colleges, anti-Semitism is omnipresent at the K-12 level. In government-run schools, Jews are often portrayed as privileged whites and oppressors, with Israel branded as an example of “settler colonialism” and the oppression of “indigenous people.”

Syre Elementary School, a highly-ranked public school in Shoreline, WA, near Seattle, teaches children as young as sevenyears old to chant “Free Palestine” and “From the River to the Sea” and instructs them to hold mock anti-Israel protests.

In November, hundreds of students rampaged through the hallsof a New York City high school for nearly two hours after they discovered a teacher had attended a pro-Israel rally, forcing the terrified educator to hide in a locked office as the mob tried to push its way into her classroom.

The Oakland Unified School District faces a federal investigation after 30 Jewish families removed their kids from school due to rampant anti-Semitism.

Thirteen Federal Judges Pledge Not to Hire from Columbia, Call It an ‘Incubator of Bigotry’ James Lynch

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/thirteen-federal-judges-pledge-not-to-hire-from-columbia-call-it-an-incubator-of-bigotry/

Thirteen federal judges say they will no longer hire Columbia University students as law clerks due to their behavior and the school’s handling of anti-Israel protests that drew nationwide attention, writing that “Columbia has disqualified itself from educating the future leaders of our country.”

The judges wrote a letter on Monday to Columbia president Minouche Shafik informing her of their decision to boycott the university because of the anti-Israel encampment and what they see as the school’s lack of viewpoint diversity.

“Columbia University has become ground zero for the explosion of student disruptions, anti-semitism, and hatred for diverse viewpoints on campuses across the Nation,” the judges wrote, according to a copy of the letter obtained by National Review. “As judges who hire law clerks every year to serve in the federal judiciary, we have lost confidence in Columbia as an institution of higher education. Columbia has instead become an incubator of bigotry.”

The judges called for Columbia leaders to administer “serious consequences” to students and faculty members who participated in the encampment, which featured antisemitic incidents and pro-Hamas chanting on campus.

“Universities should also identify students who engage in such conduct so that future employers can avoid hiring them. If not, employers are forced to assume the risk that anyone they hire from Columbia may be one of these disruptive and hateful students,” the letter says.

The poison of Islamic sectarianism Councillors chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ and defending Hamas reveal how Muslim identity politics has infected our democracy. Fraser Myers

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/05/06/the-poison-of-islamic-sectarianism/

The UK Green Party’s Mothin Ali had just been elected to Leeds City Council in the Gipton and Harehills ward, when he punched his fist in the air and yelled out: ‘Allahu Akbar!’ Draped in a Palestinian keffiyeh, he told his supporters in his victory speech on Friday: ‘We will raise the voice of Gaza. We will raise the voice of Palestine!’

Ali’s fiery victory speech spoke to a broader trend. In last week’s elections, voters in vast swathes of England were essentially asked to pass comment on the Israel-Hamas war, rather than local issues like bus routes and bin collections. In many wards with large Muslim populations, this turned out to be a successful gambit. Akhmed Yakoob, an independent endorsed by George Galloway, put Palestine at the front and centre of his campaign for the West Midlands mayoralty. He secured 69,000 votes – which was almost enough to deprive Labour’s Richard Parker of his victory over Tory incumbent Andy Street. Labour lost control of Oldham Council for the first time in 13 years, thanks partly to a surge in support for independents who campaigned on Palestine. Activists in Bradford celebrated their city’s apparent rejection of ‘Zionism’ (even as Labour retained control of the council). A BBC analysis of 58 local-council wards found that in areas where more than one in five voters is Muslim, Labour’s share of the vote plummeted by 21 percentage points compared with 2021. In typical Keir Starmer fashion, Labour has flip-flopped over Gaza, angering many previously loyal supporters in the process. Party strategists are terrified that this could undermine Labour’s chances of a landslide at the next General Election.

What all this confirms is that Islamic identity politics, in which Palestine now plays a pivotal role, is becoming a significant electoral force in the UK. Of course, you do not have to be a Muslim to take an interest in the Gaza war, but polls show that one in four British Muslims names Palestine as his or her most important election issue, compared with just three per cent of the public as a whole.

It seems the victory of George Galloway in the Rochdale by-election in February – a contest he described as a ‘referendum on Gaza’ – was a foretaste of this new sectarianism.