EDUCATION Comments turned off

‘More Federal Contractor than Educator’: Universities Allowing Antisemitism on Campus Rake in Taxpayer Dollars

Posted By on November 16th, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/more-federal-contractor-than-educator-universities-allowing-antisemitism-on-campus-rake-in-taxpayer-dollars/

Several candidates in the 2024 Republican presidential primaries have threatened to enforce consequences for colleges and universities that allow antisemitism on their campuses. Former president Donald Trump said he would revoke visas of international students celebrating Hamas. North Dakota governor Doug Burgum said he would “fully enforce” Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which mandates that institutions receiving federal assistance refrain from allowing discrimination “on the ground of race, color, or national origin.”

Florida governor Ron DeSantis directed public universities in his state to “deactivate” Students for Justice in Palestine chapters (though he is now facing pushback from state education officials). Former United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley vowed to revoke tax-exempt status for colleges and universities that are ignoring antisemitism.

A new report from Open the Books, a nonprofit organization focused on transparency in government spending, demonstrates how much money these elite educational institutions receive from American taxpayers.

During the past five years, ten universities — the Ivy League, plus Northwestern and Stanford universities — received $33 billion in federal contracts and grants. These universities are subject only to an excessive endowment tax, which has them pay 1.4% of their net investment income on endowment assets exceeding $500,000 per student. Of the ten, Stanford came in with the highest total since 2018 at just over $7 billion, while only Dartmouth, with about $755 million, was under the billion-dollar mark.

Open the Books CEO and Founder Adam Andrzejewski told National Review the tax code and federal aid have been distorted beyond their initial purpose.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Charles Fain Lehman The Paradox of Jewish Liberalism What use is a Jewishness that blinds you to hatred of Jews?

Posted By on November 16th, 2023

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-paradox-of-jewish-liberalism

After the October 7 terrorist attack, many American Jews have stomached two shocks: the shock of Hamas’s brutality, and the shock of their putative political allies’ support for the brutes. Liberal Jews are not only horrified by campus chants of “there is only one solution: Intifada, revolution.” They are also surprised.

Less surprised are those of us among the one in six American Jews who are conservatives. The anti-Semitic elements of the American Left, from funders to campus activists, have been obvious for years, even decades. It is at turns refreshing and off-putting, therefore, to see other Jews wake up to what we already knew.

At this moment, Jewish conservatives should resist any compulsion to tell their liberal brethren “I told you so.” This is an opportunity, rather, for making hard truths plain. Many American Jews are liberals out of a profound, identity-level connection between their Judaism and their liberalism—a connection that developed alongside Jewish-American identity. It is this association that consistently blinds them to the anti-Semitism of others on the left; only by unearthing this tension can they overcome it.

American Jews, it should be emphasized, are remarkably liberal. In Pew’s 2020 survey of Jews, 71 percent identified as Democrats, versus 26 percent as Republicans. Half of Jews describe themselves as “liberal” compared with 16 percent “conservative” and the remainder “moderate.” By these proportions, Jews are more Democratic than Hispanics, Asians, and Muslims; they are more liberal than blacks. Jews are also more Democratic than those who earn as much as the average Jewish household does. As Milton Himmelfarb, the longtime research director of the American Jewish Committee, famously put it, “Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans.”

Most Jews, in fact, express their Jewish identity through liberal values. Asked by Pew which aspects of Judaism were “essential” to what it means to be Jewish, Orthodox Jews said leading an ethical and moral life, observing Jewish law, and continuing family traditions—all of which are, if not the same, then highly related for observant Jews. For the non-Orthodox, though, the top slots went to remembering the Holocaust, leading an ethical and moral life, working for justice and equality, and being intellectually curious. These last two, especially, identify Judaism with liberal values of intellectual independence and commitment to social justice.

This association between Judaism and liberalism is not new. Since Jews first immigrated to the United States, they have articulated their identity in the language of liberalism. Indeed, Jewish ethnogenesis—the process by which Jews became Jewish-Americans—has often entailed making Judaism synonymous with progressivism.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Secularism vs. Theocracies: Bangladesh – and the West – Under Threat by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on November 16th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20148/bangladesh-secularism-islamism

Bangladesh’s first constitution, adopted in 1972, the year after the war for independence, created the legal foundation for secular governance. Secularism was declared one of the fundamental principles of the state, and the use of religion for political ends was prohibited.

“The rise of violent extremism and militancy not only in Bangladesh, but also in the South Asia region and the worldwide phenomenon of religious extremism is one of the greatest contemporary threats to global security that can lead to violence and terrorism, and which can permeate all sovereign borders.” — European Bangladesh Forum, Voice of European Bangladeshis.

It is thus critical to neutralize such radical Islamist forces, as Israel is now doing to Hamas, for both ideological and security-related reasons.

The 1971 Bengali genocide is an urgent reminder of the depths to which political ideologies can lead, and why, if one wants to preserve freedom in the West, it is essential to confront them.

As Bangladesh, a nation that is majority Muslim, prepares for January elections, its secular government has come under increasing pressure from Islamists.

The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), and their allies are holding rallies regarding a single demand: the resignation of the secular government. They insist that the prime minister step aside for an “impartial caretaker administration” to oversee January’s polls.

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Biden Administration’s Dangerous Solutions For Gaza by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on November 16th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20150/biden-gaza-solutions

If Abbas cannot and does not want to fight Hamas in the West Bank, there is no reason to believe that he will do otherwise in the Gaza Strip, where terrorist groups enjoy widespread support…

The assumption that the Palestinian Authority would fight terrorism in the Gaza Strip is completely incorrect and terribly dangerous. As he has already proven in the West Bank, Abbas has no intention of disarming any Palestinian armed group or arresting any terrorist. His preferred policy has always been to try and win over Hamas and other terrorist groups by offering them jobs and handouts as part of a reconciliation agreement that would result in the formation of a Palestinian unity government — in addition to being a perfect reason to ask the international community for money.

If Abbas is allowed to return to the Gaza Strip, he will undoubtedly continue with his policy of appeasement toward Hamas. He is not going to order his security forces to crack down on Hamas: he knows that his people would condemn him to death as a traitor who collaborates with Israel, just as they did with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who was assassinated in 1981.

The Biden administration should think very carefully before floating dangerous ideas. Before talking about the day after the Israel-Hamas war, the administration should first allow Israel to finish the job of eradicating Hamas and other terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian Authority, which pays salaries to terrorists who murder Jews and engages in anti-Israel incitement day-in and day-out, cannot be entrusted with any role in the Gaza Strip.

Biden administration officials believe that the Palestinian Authority (PA), headed by Mahmoud Abbas, should be brought back to the Gaza Strip after the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group is removed from power.

The officials, including US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, appear convinced that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank should be unified in the post-Hamas era. On November 9, Blinken was quoted as saying that after the current Israel-Hamas war, the solution must “include Palestinian-led governance and Gaza unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Still Delusional After All These Years Obama, Hamas and the venerable doctrine of Islam. by Bruce Thornton

Posted By on November 16th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/still-delusional-after-all-these-years/

Recently Barack Obama opined on Israel’s war with Hamas, and predictably reprised all the received wisdom that our politicians on both sides of the aisles have indulged since 9/11. One comment in particular evoked one of the more dangerous takes on the conflict with modern jihadism––that this venerable doctrine of Islam is some sort of heresy or extremism that doesn’t represent Muslims worldwide.

In the context of the current war with Hamas, according to ABC news, Obama said of Israel’s campaign,  “‘There are people right now who are dying who have nothing to do with what Hamas did,’ Obama said, making the distinction between Palestinians who live in Gaza and the militant group Hamas, which the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization.”

We’ll pass over the mendacious euphemism “the militant group Hamas,” and the implication that the accurate description “terrorist organization” is merely a prejudiced slur by U.S. security agencies. More important is Obama’s variation on the cringing and dishonest phrase “nothing to do with what Islam,” an echo of the Western apologists after 9/11 who regularly chanted this lie.

The use of this duplicitous formula transcends political party. After 9/11, the Bush administration no doubt thought that such rhetorical distortions would pacify Muslims and show them that we’re “not at war with Islam.”  Verbal preemptive cringes abounded in Bush’s speeches, such as the following: “Our enemy [al Qaeda] doesn’t follow the great traditions of Islam. They’ve hijacked a great religion . . . All Americans must recognize that the face of terror is not the true face of Islam . . . It’s a faith based upon love not hate.”

Anybody even vaguely familiar with traditional Islamic doctrine and history knows that this flabby ecumenicalism is at best well-meaning wishful thinking, at worst a talking-point for malignant apologists. Listen to Ibn Khaldun (d.1406), one of Islam’s most significant and revered historians and philosophers: “In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the [Muslim] mission and [the obligation to] convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.” So too, Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328), another important Muslim theorist of jihad: “Since lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is God’s entirely and God’s word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought.” Are these titans of Islamic thought “hijackers” or “heretics”?

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Profiles in Cowardice at Harvard The fallout of brainwashing and propaganda. by Alan Joseph Bauer

Posted By on November 16th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/profiles-in-cowardice-at-harvard/

The sometimes violent anti-Israel/pro-Hamas protests on many US campuses are the outcome of failed educational policies going back decades. The failure is no more pronounced than at Harvard.

I read last night that Hamas fans blocked Jewish students from entering their classes at MIT. That kind of behavior, which included disrupting classes taught by Jewish professors, sounds a lot like Germany circa 1938. Many US campuses are overrun with antisemites demanding genocide of Jews minimally in Israel and ostensibly everywhere. An unholy alliance of Islamists and liberal women to whom they would deny education and the homosexuals whom they would eagerly throw off of the nearest rooftop march together because their common enemy—the Jew—is at the apex of the intersectional bad guy hierarchy. I don’t know how a Jewish student who holed up in her dorm room goes back in a few weeks or months to the dining hall to eat with her “friends” who marched by her window with a sign demanding her death and the death of her family.

Below is one of several letters I have written to the president of my alma mater, Harvard. President Gay answered one letter but no more. President Gay was chosen to do what Harvard presidents do: raise billions and avoid controversy. She was not chosen, nor is she prepared for Harvard in crisis, where Jewish students are physically threatened, and Palestinian students and their supporters have moved beyond free speech to demanding genocide of the Jewish people. She needs to take decisive action, which she appears incapable of doing. Instead, she appointed a committee whose report will undoubtedly come well after the news cycle has moved to another subject. Her failure is not just for the students at Harvard. If she had acted decisively from day one, she could have significantly reduced campus protests throughout the US. She is like the lead pilot of the Blue Angels: college presidents look to her to know what their next move will be. She is not a leader but someone who filled in the right boxes when the time came to replace her undistinguished predecessor. She is the most recent figurehead to run what was once America’s greatest university. In the 1940s, then-President James Conant was essential in getting the Manhattan Project to its successful conclusion by ensuring that General Leslie Groves had everything he needed. The days of great Harvard presidents are long gone, ending with Derek Bok in the early 1990’s.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Hamas Götterdämmerung Stephen Green

Posted By on November 16th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2023/11/14/hamas-gotterdammerung-n4923881

They must have felt like gods, the Hamas terrorists who invaded southern Israel on October 7. Indeed, they enjoyed almost godlike powers, first blinding Israel’s remote-control border cameras and then bulldozing through the security fence as though it were hardly there.

All so they could lord their powers over Israeli civilians — raping, torturing, murdering… and not always in that order. The “lucky” Israelis survived long enough to be dragged back to Gaza to be used as human shields and worse.

Hamas even had the ambitions of gods.  A report earlier this week claimed that captured maps and reconnaissance indicated that Hamas had hoped to reach the West Bank, cleaving Israel in two, and sparking a wider war — Armageddon, to borrow a local word with global currency. “If that had occurred, it would have been a huge propaganda win — a symbolic blow not only against Israel but also against the Palestinian Authority,” a U.S. official told the Washington Post.

What a difference a few weeks make because now it’s Israel’s turn.

“Proportionality” is the diplomat’s word for “fair.” “How do we fight this war fairly?” is a question no victor ever asked, and one not being asked by Israel’s government or military. 

IAF jets roam the skies at will, raining death and destruction on the terrorists who briefly fancied themselves as gods. Once thought to be impregnable, Hamas tunnels — dug under hospitals, civilian apartment buildings, and mosques — are now killing grounds for IDF and Hamas alike.

PJ Media’s own Richard Fernandez — or as I like to call him, The Smartest Man in the World™ — tweeted Monday that current reports from Gaza “appear to confirm my earlier estimate that Hamas is collapsing and increasingly focused on individual survival. IDF infantry probably shifting to pursuit and raiding in deeper forays.” 

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Shock of Facing American Anti-Semitism Jews thought America was a safe haven, but Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities revealed hatred here at home. By Joel Engel

Posted By on November 16th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-shock-of-facing-american-anti-semitism-00acc234?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

It’s a long story how I came to be standing some years ago in Archbishop’s Palace in Naples alongside six Italian-Americans from New York—four academics, a monsignor, and a New York Supreme Court judge—to meet with the cardinal. Each of the others kissed his ring as he went down the line. I, at the end, turned his hand vertically and shook it. His eyes widened. Someone explained that I was Jewish, which delighted him, and for the next hour he directed all his answers to me, regardless of who had posed the questions.

Outside afterward one of the academics asked why I didn’t kiss the cardinal’s ring. Before I could explain that we kiss liturgical objects, not men, the judge shouted: “They only kiss a—.”

They.

Two of the others physically restrained me from drop-kicking his family jewels into the Bay of Naples. I was in my 40s, and this was my first authentic, unambiguous anti-Semitic comment from the mouth of another American.

I assumed that it was a one-off and rarely thought of the judge for years. But now I can’t stop thinking about him—that is, how much company he has and apparently always did. How could I have missed that? How had we all?

There isn’t an American Jew I know whose worldview wasn’t trampled by the anti-Semitism that has been displayed in this country with such fervor and pride since the barbaric attacks in Israel on Oct. 7. Millions more Americans than we ever imagined consider us less than human and would like to see us dead. That’s a lot to deal with so suddenly and unexpectedly.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Joe Biden Faces a Deep State Revolt On Israel, hundreds of federal workers try to undermine his policy.

Posted By on November 16th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-executive-branch-anonymous-letter-joe-biden-israel-ceasefire-gaza-hamas-f22374d0?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

President Biden has been learning lately what life is like for Republican Presidents. Parts of the deep state, to borrow a phrase, are revolting in opposition to his support for Israel against the Hamas terrorists responsible for the Oct. 7 massacre.

News reports say that no fewer than 500 appointees and staff from 40 agencies, including the National Security Council and the Justice Department, have sent Mr. Biden a letter demanding that he call for a cease-fire and “de-escalation” between Israel and Hamas: “Americans do not want the U.S. military to be drawn into another costly and senseless war in the Middle East.” The signatories are bravely anonymous.

The same is true of more than 1,000 employees at the U.S. Agency for International Development, who have reportedly signed a similar letter. “We believe,” it says, “that further catastrophic loss of human life can only be avoided if the United States Government calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.” The letter adds that its backers are withholding their names out of “concern for our personal safety and risk of potentially losing our jobs.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

DIANE BEDERMAN:IF TRUMP HAD BEEN PRESIDENT ON OCTOBER 7

Posted By on November 14th, 2023

https://dianebederman.com/if-trump-had-been-president-october-7-2023/

If Trump had been President of the USA on October 7, 2023, there would never have been the October 7 Massacre of 1200 Jews in Israel, and the taking of more than 220 hostages: Israelis and from many other countries. And there would be no talk today about a possible Middle East war or God forbid WWIII. Then again, the elites across America love war. Trump didn’t.

If Trump had been President, Iran would have been a mere shell of itself. A country living in poverty where the women freedom fighters would have encouraged the men to fight back and get rid of the evil Khamenei. Iran would have been poor because Trump placed sanctions on her and stopped the sale of oil; the source of billions of dollars in income; particularly to China. China is principally responsible for keeping the Iranian regime in business through oil purchases that have totaled more than $80 billion since President Biden assumed office in January 2021 to September 2023. Iran exported nearly 1.4 million barrels of oil per day in October, sustaining its average for 2023. This is up 80% from the 775,000 barrels per day Iran averaged under the Trump Administration’s “maximum pressure” strategy, according to United Against Nuclear Iran, the group of former U.S. Ambassador Mark Wallace and Sen. Joe Lieberman, whose Tanker Tracker generates the best public data we have.

Iran would have been on her knees with Trump as President. There would never have been money to buy armaments for Hamas or Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. And now the Biden administration is considering a sanctions waiver on Iran that would free up 10 billion dollars.

“Why should Iran have any access to more than $10 billion after sponsoring one of the worst terrorist attacks against American citizens and the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust? It would make more sense to freeze all of these accounts and keep every penny out of Tehran’s hands.”