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ANTI-SEMITISM

Never forget: Never again: When will we ever learn? Diane Bederman

https://dianebederman.com/never-forget-never-again-when-will-we-ever-learn/

For centuries, for millennia we have always had Jews who believed if they just lay low, acculturate, assimilate, they would be liked and respected.

Today, those Jews are found in the Democrat Party in America.

When will we ever learn?

Let’s go back to recent history and take another look at Nazi Germany and the Jews.

Jews had lived in Germany since the Middle Ages. And, as in much of Europe, they faced widespread persecution there for many centuries. It was not until the 19th century that Jews in Germany were given the same rights as Christian Germans. By 1933, when the Nazis came to power, Germany’s Jews were well integrated and even assimilated into German society. Despite their integration, Germany’s Jews still maintained a discernible identity and culture.

In 1933, the Jewish population of Germany numbered about 525,000. This was less than one percent of the total German population at the time.

Most Jews in Germany (about 400,000 people) held German citizenship. Many of these Jews came from families who had been in Germany for centuries. These families spoke German as their primary language. Most considered themselves German. In some cases, they had intermarried with non-Jews.

Many Jews saw themselves as a religious group. They were Germans who practiced Judaism. Others saw themselves as an ethnic group. They were Jews who lived in Germany.

Despite being integrated into German society, Jews faced discrimination in Germany. For example, not all Germans believed that Jews could be German. Some groups, including many university student clubs, banned Jews from membership. Some political parties, including the Nazi Party, were openly anti-Jewish. Negative stereotypes of Jews appeared in the press. 

Trump Shuts Down Antisemitic Activism at Columbia The times they are a-changin’. by Mark Tapson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/trump-shuts-down-antisemitic-activism-at-columbia/

Columbia University, where student protesters in 1968 stormed and occupied many university buildings, forcing the resignation of the university’s president, is again at the center of the news for campus radicalism.

As FrontPage Mag has reported, Columbia grad student and green card-holding alien Mahmoud Khalil, spokesman for the pro-Hamas student group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), has become what The New York Times called “the public face of protest against Israel” at Columbia. In addition to participating in a takeover of the library at Columbia affiliate Barnard College, he has referred to the October 7 attacks as a “moral, military, and political victory” and asserted that CUAD is fighting for nothing less than the “total eradication of Western civilization.”

To the shock and outrage of Jew haters on the Left, the Trump administration stepped in where the complicit Biden administration never would have, and arrested this terrorism-fomenting alien with possible deportation to follow.

“This is an individual who organized group protests that not only disrupted college campus classes and harassed Jewish American students and made them feel unsafe on their own college campus, but also distributed pro-Hamas propaganda, flyers with the logo of Hamas,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at last week’s briefing. “This administration is not going to tolerate individuals having the privilege of studying in our country and then siding with pro-terrorist organizations that have killed Americans.”

And that’s not all. Trump also threatened to cancel $400 million in federal research contracts and grants to Columbia unless the school tightened disciplinary procedures and asserted greater control over academic departments to stem antisemitism at the school, particularly in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Christopher F. Rufo Exporting the Columbia Prototype The Trump administration should leverage its successful approach to the troubled Ivy League university to fight anti-Semitism and racialism elsewhere.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/exporting-the-columbia-prototype

Last week, the Trump administration won a high-stakes showdown with Columbia University. Following the October 7 terrorist attack against Israel, Columbia has been ground zero for pro-Hamas agitation on America’s campuses. It has seen marches, occupations, vandalism, and violence. In response, the White House threatened to withhold $400 million in public funding unless the university enacted meaningful reforms.

The administration’s hardball approach paid off: Columbia has now acceded to virtually all the administration’s demands. The university has banned masked protests, boosted campus security, and established administrative oversight over its radical “post-colonial” academic departments, which have been hotbeds of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel activism. The relationship between the White House and American universities now enters a new phase, and the Columbia episode could serve as a prototype for the administration’s approach going forward.

The administration should understand that anti-Semitism is just part of the Left’s ideological nesting doll. For campus activists, the Jews are the Middle East’s oppressors, while the Palestinians are the oppressed and are therefore justified in violent revolution. The narrative is attractive because it can be scaled symbolically: in the progressive imagination, Israel is to the Palestinians as white America is to black America and as Western society is to the Third World. Anti-Semitism is a stand-in for anti-whiteness and, ultimately, for anti-Western ideologies.

Antisemitism: History & Myth An important new masterpiece from Robert Spencer. by Mark Tapson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/antisemitism-history-myth/

One would have thought that, in the wake of the barbaric massacre of over 1200 Israelis on October 7, 2023 by Hamas savages, not to mention the ongoing hostage crisis, that there would have been a worldwide outpouring of sympathy for the victims and condemnation of the terror organization’s war crimes. If so, one would be horribly wrong. Instead, the world has witnessed a tsunami of support for Hamas and a virulent hatred for the kidnapped, raped, tortured, and murdered Jews.

What explains this surge of Jew-hatred, manifested in violent demonstrations on the campuses of prestigious universities and in the streets of major Western cities worldwide? What are the roots of this murderous bigotry and how has it been sustained over the course of millennia? Why do demonstrably false blood libels and conspiracy theories – such as fiendish Jews kidnapping Christian children for macabre rituals, or a secret network of Jews running the world – continue to thrive? What is the truth about Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

To answer these questions and more, one cannot do better than to pick up a copy of the latest book from Freedom Center Shillman Fellow and Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer – Antisemitism: History & Myth. Of this book, no less an authority on the subject than Dennis Prager has said, “I do not believe a more important book on anti-Semitism has ever been written.” Considering what we have seen since the October 7 attacks, Prager could have added that a timelier book on antisemitism has never been written, as well.

Joe Lonsdale Jews and Christians Must Fight Anti-Semitic Conspiracies Ancient lies about Jews are gaining traction again in Western discourse.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/jews-christians-anti-semitic-conspiracies

Last month, for the first time in my life, many of my successful Jewish friends—names you likely know—called me, worried. They asked what they need to do to protect their families, and who will have our back if attacks on Jews keep spreading.

Ancient libels, banished from polite society after the horrors of World War II, are reentering the mainstream, shared to millions on social media and podcasts. In recent months, Tucker Carlson has suggested that the Jewish State and American “neocons” are actively targeting Christians in the Middle East and manipulating American foreign policy to start a war with Iran. They “invariably destroy ancient Christian communities, from Iraq to Gaza and in many places in between,” Carlson said. “Can this be an accident? You wonder.”

Podcaster Candace Owens, whom Carlson calls a friend, has repeatedly attacked Jews and Israel, blaming “Zionists” for the chaos in Syria and downplaying the persecution of Christians by Islamist forces. “Israel is implicated in Syria,” she said. “Remember when Zionists were applauding the fall of Assad? Well, us Christians knew then that Israel-funded Islamists in the territory would start mass-murdering Christians.”

I do not know the motivations or intentions of these influencers. What I do know is that they are repeating claims that historically have led to deep suspicion and persecution of Jewish communities. And they are trying to drive Christians and Jews apart—damaging a vital relationship that must be preserved.

When I first posted about this trend, I received a flurry of disturbing replies:

“Tldr: jew crying over nothing because people are exposing them for being genocidal psychopaths”

Democrats Go All In On Killing Jews What the support for Mahmoud Khalil, Hasan Piker and Rasha Alawieh really shows. by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/democrats-go-all-in-on-killing-jews/

A few days after the anniversary of Oct 7, the New York Times reported that Columbia University Apartheid Divest officially endorsed terrorism against Jews and withdrew an apology by one of its members for threatening to kill Jews.

Over the past weeks, the paper and the entire Democratic Party, including 103 members of Congress, the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senate Minority Leader Chuck. Schumer, the Jewish Democratic Council of America led by Kamala’s former foreign policy advisor, went all in on fighting for Mahmoud Khalil, a leader in CUAD who had defended terrorism, from being deported.

The signatories to a letter standing up for a Syrian national who had taken part in a pro-terrorist group’s harassment of Jewish students and faculty included half of House Democrats, not only extremists like AOC and Rep. Ilhan Omar, but Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking House Judiciary Democrat, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, along with multiple House Democrats of Jewish ancestry and those who represent large Jewish districts including Rep. Jerrold Nadler in New York, as well as Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove and Rep. Laura Friedman who holds down Sen. Adam Schiff’s old seat, in the LA area. The same Democrat politicians who had remained silent when Jewish students and faculty were being terrorized on campuses in their areas now rushed to the barricades for a member of a group that had openly celebrated the murder of Jews.

Columbia University Apartheid Divest is a front group for the college’s suspended Students for Justice in Palestine chapter which reacted to the first anniversary of Oct 7 by promoting a statement from a Maoist publication, “October 7th was Not ‘Barbaric’ or ‘Unfortunate’—It was Strategic and Anti-imperialist” and hailed the “moral, military, and political victory of the Operation”. This is what the Democrats who condemn Trump’s proposed deportation of a CUAD leader as “authoritarian” now support. Not just terrorism: but the mass murder of Jews.

Now, Democrats rallied once more in support of Rasha Alawieh, a Lebanese Hezbollah supporter, traveling to America on a visa who was refused entry into the United States.

British police are letting pro-Palestine vandals run riot An activist who destroyed a historic painting of Lord Balfour has faced zero repercussions.Nicole Lampert

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/03/17/british-police-are-letting-pro-palestine-vandals-run-riot/

This time last year, a female pro-Palestine activist took a blade and a can of red spray paint to the 100-year-old painting of Lord Balfour in Trinity College, Cambridge. The perpetrator targeted the painting because Balfour was a signatory of the Balfour Declaration – the British Empire’s 1917 recognition of the aim to establish a Jewish state.

The crime was filmed and posted online for all to see. The perpetrator had a distinctive hairstyle (two plaits), as well as what looked like a £1,400 Mulberry backpack – something your average criminal usually doesn’t sport. She was also very clearly part of an outfit called Palestine Action, which claimed responsibility for the attack. With just a tiny bit of police work and some political will, uncovering the identity of the perpetrator would not have been a monumental task. And yet, a year after the historic painting was destroyed, Cambridgeshire Police have ended their ‘investigation’. They said only that they hoped new information may one day come to light.

Palestine Action seems to attack anything to do with Israel – including charities, banks, arms factories and even a bust of Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann. The group was founded in the UK in 2020 by Huda Ammori and serial activist Richard Barnard. A recent Sunday Times investigation found that, since then, it has claimed responsibility for 356 direct actions. It has ram-raided factories with vans, broken into offices and smashed up equipment.

Palestine Action has vowed to continue its violent behaviour. Just this week, three activists occupied part of the Allianz offices in central London and covered the windows in red paint. They scaled the building to unfurl a banner demanding that Allianz ‘drop Elbit’, an Israel-based defence contractor, as an insurance customer. Police stood around for hours, apparently helpless to do anything, until the protesters were finally brought down and arrested.

The Israeli Jew kidnapped by British jihadi thugs The horrific ordeal suffered by Itay Kashti reveals a sickness at the heart of our society. Tom Slater

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/03/17/the-israeli-jew-kidnapped-by-british-jihadi-thugs/

‘My own personal October 7.’ That is how Itay Kashti describes his violent ordeal at the hands of three Jew-hating kidnappers in Wales last year. In a crowded field, Kashti’s kidnapping is easily among the most chilling acts of anti-Semitic violence we’ve seen perpetrated on these isles since Hamas’s pogrom in Israel 18 months ago.

This grotesque tale begins last August. Kashti, an Israeli Jewish music producer based in London, received an email from a man claiming to be a Polydor Records executive, inviting him to a songwriting retreat in Carmarthenshire. Kashti did a bit of due diligence, even speaking to the organisers, but didn’t notice anything unusual. An Airbnb was booked for him, along with a taxi to drive him there from his London home.

When he arrived at the rural cottage, he was jumped by three men wearing rubber masks and armed with an imitation pistol. The cabbie, who had helped Kashti in with his bags, was also attacked but managed to run away and call the police. Kashti, meanwhile, was handcuffed to a radiator, beaten and bloodied. Thankfully, his kidnappers’ amateurishness would save his life. They left him alone, and Kashti noticed he was chained to an unconnected pipe. He slipped free, found his phone and escaped into the shrubbery outside. He called his wife, and then the cops, who descended on the cottage and apprehended his tormentors.

Last week, the kidnappers were sentenced to eight years apiece at Swansea Crown Court. During their trial, the full, calculated horror of what had taken place was unfurled. Faiz Shah, 23, Mohammad Comrie, 23, and Elijah Ogunnubi-Sime, 20, were trying to extort money.

Columbia Now Faces an Expensive Day of Reckoning A cost to the Jew-haters and brownshirts. by Hugh Fitzgerald

https://www.frontpagemag.com/columbia-now-faces-an-expensive-day-of-reckoning/

On many American campuses, antisemitic nitwits have ever since the beginning of the war in Gaza storm-trooped around, calling for the disappearance of Israel and its replacement by a 23rd Arab state (“From the river to the sea/Palestine will be free”), expressing a wish for homicidal violence against Jews (“Intifada Forever”), and accusing the Jewish state of “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” (“Stop the Genocide”). The worst of these offenders have been the pro-Hamas demonstrators at Columbia University, who have created that awful mess — physical and moral — on Morningside Heights, whom Columbia’s administrators have until now been treated with kid gloves, creating an environment where anti-Israel and antisemitic behavior goes largely unpunished.

Now the Trump administration wants Columbia’s tolerance for antisemitism to be investigated. Columbia, after all, receives $5 billion from federal contracts and grants, and that money which be at risk if Columbia is weighed and found wanting in its failure to protect Jewish students and faculty from the antisemitic bullyboys and brownshirts who threaten them, harass them, surround and hold some of them prisoner, while attacking others, and interrupt, in order to shut down, the classes taught by Israeli and Jewish professors. More on the Trump administration’s investigation — by three different federal agencies — of Columbia, and the possible action by the government to be taken against the university, can be found here: “Columbia’s Choice: Hamasnik Anarchy or Taxpayer Cash,” by Seth Mandel, Commentary, March 4, 2025:

The biggest myth regarding the campus anti-Semitism crisis is that it’s about speech. It is a self-serving myth: Institutions and activists that want to disregard their abuse of Jewish students will fall back on the claim that any attempt to hold them accountable for their actions is actually an attack on free speech.

Columbia University is learning what happens when that disingenuous trick starts to backfire: Students and professors take it as a license to do whatever they want, people end up in the hospital, and the government steps in to say this cannot continue to be done on their dime.

How Trump’s Anti-Semitism Crackdown Has Already Changed Education by Seth Mandel

https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/how-trumps-anti-semitism-crackdown-has-already-changed-education/

The Trump administration’s deportation proceedings against Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia student active in the anti-Zionist tentifada movement, is getting most of the attention regarding the president’s fight against campus anti-Semitism. That’s understandable—put a human face on something and it becomes a lone streetlight around which every media moth will flutter.

But that attention should not crowd out coverage of the fact that university administrative culture is already changing in significant ways thanks to the White House’s focus on combating campus anti-Semitism. Khalil’s case will develop more this week as court hearings begin, so at the moment nobody really knows where it’ll lead. Such uncertainty no longer applies to the colleges themselves.

Last week, the administration cancelled $400 million in federal funding to Columbia and announced it was undertaking a review of billions more in grants. Finally, we had the answer to a lingering question: Would there be any tangible consequences for the schools that allowed their campuses to descend into prolonged bouts of anti-Semitic hysteria?

Universities clearly took President Biden’s passivity as a reason to bet against being held to account for their flagrant violations of Jewish students’ civil rights. If they were right, that meant that the only students they had to placate were the anti-Zionists: There was no reason to protect Jewish rights or Jewish safety on campus because the Jews would never cause anywhere near the same amount of trouble for them. In contrast, there were a thousand scrawny segregationists in keffiyehs with nothing to do but wait for orders from their Hamasnik organizers.

But now the playing field has changed entirely. A source at Columbia told the journalist Steve McGuire that the Trump Education Department’s threats weren’t empty: “Grant cancellation notices flowing in now. Labs shutting down. Layoffs imminent. Faculty apoplectic at Katrina Armstrong for letting it get to this point. She has to fix this fast.”