RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/05/31/where-have-all-the-jews-gone/

The killing of two young Israeli embassy staffers, allegedly by a college-educated, left-wing activist earlier this month, provided yet more evidence – if any were needed – of the perilous situation in which Western Jews now find themselves. Almost a century after the early rise of the Nazis, it seems anti-Semitism is on a roll again. And it is energised increasingly by campus-minted radicals in academia, the media and the culture at large.

Elias Rodriguez, the suspected assassin, is a case in point. He attended the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois, where he studied English, a shrinking discipline largely captured by ‘progressives’ and their narratives. Rodriguez, as a Hispanic, no doubt felt part of those supposedly ‘oppressed’ by the oppressor white establishment, which now includes Jews.

After his education (or perhaps indoctrination), Rodriguez worked for leftist non-profits, supported Black Lives Matter and later enjoyed a dalliance with the communist Party for Socialism and Liberation, a vehemently anti-Israel group. He epitomises the shift in the sociology of anti-Semitism, from the ill-educated far right to left-leaning college graduates.

Once the beloved object of Jewish ardour, universities are now one of the principal sources of anti-Semitic inculcation. Countless courses actively promulgate anti-Jewish and Israelophobic tropes. This is hardly a surprise given the generous funding leading universities have received from brutal Islamic states, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Given the extent of ideological indoctrination it’s no surprise that young Americans are far more likely than older cohorts to side with the Palestinians than with Israel. Indeed, the longer young people stay in education, notes a recent Anti-Defamation League study, the more likely they are to adopt anti-Israel and anti-Semitic views. Further research shows that this trend is particularly pronounced among minorities.

The growth of anti-Israel sentiment among young people is not based on any increase in knowledge about the situation in the Middle East. Indeed, the majority of people under 25 wrongly think Israel, not Hamas, has controlled Gaza over the past decade.

Whatever one thinks of Donald Trump’s assault on academia in the name of combatting anti-Semitism, there’s little doubt that elite Ivy League schools have a serious problem. In the immediate aftermath of the 7 October atrocities, Harvard student organisations openly excused Hamas and blamed Israel for the rape and murder of its own citizens. At Cornell University, one professor called Hamas’s pogrom ‘exhilarating’ and ‘energising’. And since then, across campuses, professors and students alike shout about ‘globalising the intifada’ – a cry that justifies the harassment, and even murder, of Jews everywhere.

There has been some pushback. This May, Jewish students filed a lawsuit against George Washington University in Washington, DC, not far from the site of the alleged murder of the two Israeli embassy staffers. They accuse GWU of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by allowing a ‘hostile educational environment’ for Jews to develop over several years, particularly since 7 October 2023.

Similarly, the Louis D Brandeis Centre for Human Rights Under Law and Jewish Americans for Fairness have filed a lawsuit against Berkeley, alleging ‘longstanding, unchecked’ anti-Semitism. This includes attempts by 23 student organisations at UC Berkeley’s School of Law to mandate support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which demonises Israel as an ‘apartheid state’ and calls for its economic and cultural isolation. The student organisations also called for ‘Palestine 101 training’, and the banning of speakers with Zionist views.

The takeover of universities by the Israelophobes bodes ill for the future. Self-righteous authoritarianism has often attracted academics, as was clear in Nazi Germany and among the supporters of Communism throughout the West well into this century. And what is nurtured in universities does not stay there. The frothing violent fringe of campus activism is becoming increasingly mainstream.

It means that Hebrew schools and synagogues, including my own in California, are now routinely patrolled by private police. At local community events, we count on the Orange County sheriffs much as Rome’s Jews have to rely on the carabinieri to guard their own cities’ famed Jewish ghetto.

https://www.commentary.org/john-podhoretz/terrorist-attack-on-jews-in-washington/?utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-

Unspeakable news out of D.C.—a man named Elias Rodriguez of Chicago yelling “Free, Free Palestine” opened fire at an event at the entrance to the Capital Jewish Museum. Two Israeli Embassy officials—a young couple about to be engaged next week in Jerusalem, according to a powerful and teary-voiced statement by Israeli ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter—were murdered. The invaluable Josh Kraushaar of Jewish Insider notes the discovery of the pseudonymous Xer AG that Rodriguez is part of a group called “The Party of Socialism and Liberation.”

This is a different kind of event from the attacks on synagogues in Pennsylvania and California in 2018, which were the work of white supremacists. It happened at a secular Jewish site, and targeted an event sponsored by the American Jewish Committee for young diplomats. And it was self-evidently an act of anti-Semitic terror in the nation’s capital—which raises similarities to the 2015 attack on the Hyper Casher supermarket in France’s capital, Paris. The only analogue here I can think of was the invasion of the headquarters of the B’nai Brith in D.C. in 1977 by Hanafi Muslims, during which 104 staffers at the Jewish organization—including my wife’s cousin, William Korey, an expert on Soviet Jewry—were held hostage for three days and repeatedly threatened with execution and torture. Two other buildings in D.C. were invaded as well, and a security guard at one of them was shot in the head and killed.

The terrorist leader was a convert to Islam critical of the Nation of Islam whose family was murdered in 1973—and who chose to blame the “Jewish judge” in charge of the conviction of the Farrakhanites who actually committed the killngs. He also demanded the suppression and burning of a movie called Mohammed, Messenger of God on the grounds that any depiction of the founder of Islam was a sacrilege—an eerie foreshadowing of the killing of the staffers at Charlie Hebdo magazine for publishing cartoons making fun of Muhammad, which took place in Paris two days before the attack on the supermarket in 2015. The leader gave up after three days; Bill Korey told me 30 years later that he still had nightmares about his captivity, a classic case of PTSD.

https://www.jns.org/domestic-terror-is-the-inevitable-next-step-for-hamas-sympathizers/?utm_campaign=Daily%20Syndicate%20Emails&utm_medium=email&_

The murders at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., are a warning that “pro-Palestine” activism is leading to antisemitic violence.

For the past 19 months, angry mobs have taken over college campuses and the streets of major American cities. These demonstrations, tent encampments and building takeovers have not just been expressions of opposition to Israel’s efforts to eradicate the Hamas terrorists who led the Palestinian Arab assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. They have also often been indicative of the protesters’ support for Hamas and the embrace of terrorist goals, as well as their antisemitism—something that was made obvious by the way they have targeted Jews during the course of their “activism.”

Yet rather than being isolated and widely condemned, these pro-Hamas activists and demonstrators have been cheered by many in the media and even rationalized by former President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as their party’s left-wing leaders, who spoke of them as idealists who “deserved to be heard” and validated, even if they disagreed with some of what they were saying.

In doing so, they were ignoring the warning signs that the pro-Hamas movement was more than just mainstreaming Jew-hatred in discourse. As has been the case throughout history, those who speak of their support for terrorism elsewhere often wind up committing it at home.

After the tragic murder on Wednesday night of two young Israeli embassy staffers outside an American Jewish Committee event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., it’s obvious that this is also the case with those who embraced the war against Israel’s existence.