RUTHFULLY YOURS

Despite the substantial funds that have been devoted to fighting anti-Israel forces on campuses, they have not been diminished.
The foundations of American Jewish life are under assault today in ways that were unimaginable a generation ago. Academia is ground zero of the onslaught. The protest movements on campuses are first and foremost anti-Jewish movements.

For the past decade or so, Jewish communal leaders and activists have focused on just one aspect of this anti-Jewish campaign. Jewish leaders have devoted themselves to helping Jewish students combat the direct anti-Semitism inherent to the anti-Israel student movements.

Despite the substantial funds that have been devoted to fighting anti-Israel forces on campuses, they have not been diminished. To the contrary, with each passing year they have grown more powerful and menacing.

Consider a sampling of the anti-Jewish incidents that took place over the past two weeks.

Two weeks ago, Daniel Bernstein, a Jewish student at University of California Santa Cruz and a member of the university’s student government was ordered not to vote on a resolution calling for the university to divest from four companies which do business with Israel.

Progressive Jews leverage their political power and funding outside of Israel in order to change Israeli policies, but they ignore the consequences.Cheers for US vice president Joe Biden’s criticism of settlements at the Reform movement’s recent convention reflect a long-standing position of the organization and a controversy that has divided Jewish communities and undermines support for Israel and Zionism: Are Jewish communities built beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines – the “settlements” – legal, legitimate, and part of the Zionist vision? Unfortunately, Israeli administrations and leaders have not addressed this question.

Recently, two American professors who claim to be Zionists wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post supporting campaigns to boycott Israel because of “Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.”

Although criticism of Israel by Jews and Israelis is not unusual, few have crossed the red line of what is considered legitimate criticism.

Poor Paris. Less than three weeks ago, the scene of carnage; this week, the venue for saving the planet. Because of security after the Isil atrocities, the City of Light was spared a planned climate change march, but London had one on Sunday, attended by what the ever-Green BBC optimistically described as “tens of thousands”. One of the march’s leaders, the fashion designer Dame Vivienne Westwood, said: “Global warming is at a tipping point. If we go past it we can’t stop it. We are there right now.”
In this view, Dame Vivienne accords with the Prince of Wales, who predicted in Rio de Janeiro in March 2009, that there were “less than 100 months to act” to prevent “catastrophic climate change”. In other words, it’s all over by July 2017.

The Hijab is not a choice. It’s something Muslim men enforce on women. While Obama has done a great deal to force employers to accommodate Hijabs even where inappropriate, he has done nothing to protect Muslim girls from being abused for not wearing a Hijab. Just as he has done nothing about honor killings or any of the real civil rights issues facing Muslim women in America.

This story is another reminder of the reality that goes on, mostly out of public view, while the administration and its media allies blather on about Islamophobia.

An assistant professor at the University of Missouri was arrested after allegedly pulling a young girl out of school for not wearing a Muslim headscarf according to the Columbia Tribune.

Youssif Z. Omar, 53, noticed his 14-year-old relative was not wearing the traditional hijab as he drove by Hickman High School in Columbia on Tuesday.