RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/08/26/there-are-dark-days-ahead-for-the-jewish-diaspora/

Jews around the world, particularly outside the fortress of Israel, are threatened in a way not seen since the 1940s. A fundamentally unstable world, with rising class and racial animus, creates a perilous environment for history’s favourite target, as seen previously in such periods as the fall of Rome, the Crusades, the Black Death and the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Faced with rising anti-Semitism, Jews lack a leadership that is focused squarely on this challenge. Instead, the bulk of the community leadership concentrates largely on attacks from the right – on the shadowy white nationalists who, however small their numbers, most closely resemble the worst anti-Semites of the past, and who sometimes even use Nazi symbolism for inspiration.

Yet as noxious as the far right is, it is a fairly marginal force in places like the US. There are far-right brutes with guns, so the right can be lethal when stirred. But compared with the anti-Semitism of the ‘progressive’ left, the far right’s anti-Semitic agenda has little influence on Congress, academia or the mainstream media. Indeed, in the media, anti-Jewish hate crimes are consistently underreported, even though crimes against Jews are the highest per capita among any minority group. To the legacy media, these anti-Semitic crimes – unless they are committed by white nationalists – are simply less important than those against Muslims, Hispanics and African Americans.

To be sure, Jews still have reasons to fear the far right, which has long been infected by anti-Semitism. This threat has been exacerbated by the polarisation of US politics, which has pushed many more people to the extremes than usual, and by the popularity of conspiracy theories among ultra-conservatives. The serially disgraced Trump’s growing reliance on truly reactionary political movements has enhanced the far right’s position far beyond its actual numbers.

Indeed, some Republican Party spokespeople adopt tones that should make many Jews uncomfortable. Rightist media star and Trump ally Candace Owens, for example, once stated that Hitler would have been ‘fine’ if confined to Germany. Trump-backed gubernatorial candidates, likely losers in both Illinois and Pennsylvania, have also made statements that would make most Jews cringe. The fact that neo-Nazis have turned up outside right-wing meetings, like the Turning Point USA conference this summer in Florida, is a source of total embarrassment for the right – even though Turning Point denounced the Nazis and wanted nothing to do with them.

In at least one case, during last year’s gubernatorial race in Virginia, Democrats sent fake white supremacists to Republican campaign rallies in order to embarrass the GOP. But some Trumpians don’t need to be fooled in order to embrace extremist memes. Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Don Mastriano, for example, has embraced far-right activists who claim he will lead Pennsylvania into ‘the glory of God’. Trump may have Jewish grandchildren and only a short, opportunistic affinity to the cultural right, but last week Trump loyalists hurled hateful and anti-Semitic rhetoric at the judge who approved the search warrant for the raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.

The bigger challenge, albeit still less lethal, comes from the left. Throughout the world, this is where the demonisation of Israel and its anti-Semitic implications have found their strongest support. We have seen hints of anti-Semitism in the UK Labour Party, in La France Insoumise, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, as well as in the ‘Squad’ of far-left US congresspeople. These leftists often adopt conspiracy theories about Jewish money and influence, embracing what German social democrat August Bebel famously described as the ‘socialism of fools’.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/calling-death-jews-campus-richard-l-cravatts/

Anti-Semitism, disguised as anti-Zionism, is still Jew-hatred.

In their zeal to create “safe” campus environments, universities have attempted to create an educational environment where students from approved victim groups are coddled, nurtured, and shielded from any criticism or intellectual or emotional challenges.

So-called hate speech—which now includes any expression that contradicts the prevailing progressive orthodoxy on campuses—is said to be harmful, even violent, by those forced to listen to others’ ideas.

Not content with simply acknowledging disparities between races, the orthodoxy on campuses now forces everyone to confront racism—including their own—with talk of implicit bias, invisible racism, “white privilege,” and microaggressions, together with a consequential battery of programs and initiatives to protect minority students from this alleged bigotry: mandatory sensitivity training for all faculty and students, publicly announced, school-wide solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, and campus-wide initiatives to increase the recruitment of minority students and faculty. Anyone who questions or challenges these sweeping, unproved allegations of systemic racism can be accused of white supremacy and the promotion of injurious hate speech which further marginalizes and harms a victim group.

Conservative speakers or faculty who challenge issues such as illegal immigration, abortion, gay rights, race-based admissions quotas, or even radical Islam can find themselves vilified, shouted down at lectures, censured and denounced by their academic departments or the university administration, or even purged from campus—all as a result of the belief that chosen student victim groups—LGBTQs, Hispanics, Muslims, blacks—have to be shielded from any critique and that anyone who “harms” these groups with alleged hate speech is unwelcome at the university.

There is, however, one victim group that is rarely protected from vilification and ideological assault, namely, Jewish students who are supporters of Israel.

I am out of town…..rsk

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18768/here-i-am

As every commander knows, you do not train a soldier to fight when he is in the middle of a battle, you do it before he gets anywhere near the combat zone.

Victimhood culture, too often the corrosive first resort of those who face injustice or feel wronged, is not in Club Z’s creed. Students are taught that an individual’s character is defined not by what obstacles are thrown in their path but by how they have overcome those obstacles and turned them to advantage.

Club Z teens are not aggrieved victims but active and proud defenders. They know that weakness incites while strength deters, that keeping quiet about antisemitism, meeting the bullies half way or compromising with calumnies does not protect them, does not make the problem go away and does not diminish the diatribe against them.

Courage cannot be taught but it can be fortified, and that is fundamentally what Club Z does. It is what empowers these teens to say, as the finest soldiers say when there’s a perilous task to be done: “Here I am; send me”.

The Hebrew expression “hineni” means “here I am”, most famously used by the great Biblical defender of Israel, Isaiah, who responded to a heavenly call to duty with the words: “Here I am; send me”. Hineni encapsulates the spirit of Club Z (for Zionism), a network of Jewish American teens that are standing up for their people and their Zionist identity against the scourge of antisemitism that is on the rise across the US, with the latest FBI figures showing Jews — 2.4% of the population — were the target of nearly 60% of religious hate crimes in 2020.

Jew hate is at its most virulent on campus. A complaint filed last week against City University of New York includes a recorded 150+ incidents of antisemitism on their premises since 2015, more than 60 directly targeting Jewish students with the intent to harm them.

https://www.newsweek.com/adl-has-corrupted-its-mission-betrayed-jewish-community-opinion-1728500

The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, founded in 1913, originally declared, “The immediate object of the League is to stop, by appeals to reason and conscience, and if necessary, by appeals to law, the defamation of the Jewish people. Its ultimate purpose is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike, and to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens.”

It was established, that is, to combat Jew-hatred. If and only if the Jewish community is secure, it would then be appropriate to extend organizational resources to helping others in need. Put another way, a Jewish rights organization, founded by Jews, should rightfully focus on the plight of…Jews.

But for several decades at least, what is now called the ADL does not prioritize Jews. Its new mission is “To stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.” The ADL has elevated efforts to serve what it perceives as marginalized communities to equal or higher priority than the Jewish community, as though it has already eradicated antisemitism.

It has not. Recent FBI statistics show Jews are subject to more hate crimes per capita than any other group of Americans; twice as likely to be targeted as Black Americans, more than twice as likely as Muslims, and 50% more likely than those who are targeted for their sexual orientation or gender identity.

https://jns.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=20b32ab0e3215f9f006699472&id=42b89222f4&e=286aa78331

The filing from the American Center for Law & Justice calls for a U.S. Department of Education investigation into pervasive discrimination against Jews at the City University of New York.

A new federal complaint last week to the U.S. Department of Education is accusing the City University of New York of becoming a “pervasively hostile environment for Jewish students” over the last 10 years.

The July 19 filing from the Washington D.C.-based American Center for Law & Justice cites a laundry list of harassment of Jewish students and faculty, as well as other violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, across the CUNY system and dating back nearly a decade.

Jeffrey Lax, the Orthodox Jewish business department chair at CUNY’s Kingsborough Community College and founder of S.A.F.E. (Students and Faculty for Equality) CUNY, told JNS that this is at least the third known—and to date the broadest—federal complaint lodged on the matter. “I think the point of this filing is to show how pervasive and systemic the anti-Semitism is across the board throughout CUNY,” Lax told JNS.

https://henryjacksonsociety.org/

The first duty of any parent is – and must always be – keeping their children safe. 

Whether from misadventure, bad influences, or just plain old childhood bumps and bruises, most parents will be the first to admit they have their hands full.   

For Jewish parents, however, there is another danger from which children must be protected.   For as most of us know and recognise, the scourge of Antisemitism afflicts Jews everywhere.  Sadly, that includes children. 

This week, the Jewish Chronicle devoted its front page, as well as a double-page spread, to new and terribly sad research from The Henry Jackson Society. 

HJS submitted 3,337 separate freedom of information requests to every high school in England to ask them about the volume of Antisemitism in their schools, as well as what – if anything – they were doing about it.  

Of these, 1,315 schools – about 40 per cent – responded.

One question asked how many incidents involving pupil misconduct, bullying, harassment, or similar events in which the term “Antisemitism” was recorded had taken place over the past five years. 

Alarmingly, the research revealed that instances of Antisemitic bullying at schools has almost tripled in the last five years.  We identified over 1,000 instances of such bullying. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/no-arrests-made-in-brutal-beating-of-orthodox-jewish-brooklyn-man/

An Orthodox Jewish man was brutally attacked Wednesday afternoon in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, after getting into an argument about a supposed car accident — adding to the growing number of attacks on Jewish people in the racially diverse neighborhood.

Yosef Hershkop, a 31-year-old community activist in Crown Heights, claimed he was attacked Wednesday in front of his 5-year-old son.

Video footage shared on Twitter appears to show four suspects, two getting out of a white car and two running from down the street, approaching Hershkop’s car before punching him in the face.