ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Jewish students at MIT blocked from attending classes by ‘hostile’ anti-Israel protesters By Patrick Reilly

Posted By on November 12th, 2023

https://nypost.com/2023/11/10/news/jewish-students-at-mit-blocked-from-attending-classes-by-hostile-anti-israel-protesters/

Jewish students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say they were prevented from attending classes by a “blockade” of hostile anti-Israel students — and fear the school is “not safe for Jews.”

An open letter penned by the MIT Israel Alliance alleges that Jewish and Israeli students were “physically” obstructed from classrooms by a “hostile” pro-Palestinian group called the Coalition Against Apartheid (CAA).

“This is after students from the CAA harassed MIT staff members in their offices for being Jewish and interrupted classes in the past few weeks,” the letter read.

“Many Jewish students fear leaving their dorm rooms and have stated that they feel MIT is not safe for Jews,” the letter continues.

“This message is compounded by the public and private warnings of Hillel [the school’s graduate Jewish community] and many faculty that Jewish students should not enter MIT’s main lobby today.”

Four hours after the CAA protest began, the administration told students to leave the lobby and threatened them with suspension — but only the Jewish students who were there to counterprotest left, according to the group.

“Indeed, the CAA proceeded to invite more students and non-MIT protestors to join them in calling for a violent uprising (“Intifada”) and justifying the terror attacks of Hamas on Israeli civilians,” the alliance said.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Jews Get Kicked Out of the Progressive Club By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on November 11th, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/11/jews-get-kicked-out-of-the-progressive-club/

To sustain the alliance between leftists and Islamists, something had to give. And that something was Jews.

After a while, it became a parody worthy of classic comedy skits: the Biden administration’s reflexive need to launch into a condemnation of “Islamophobia” every time the discomfiting topic of antisemitism came up — which, you may have noticed, it does quite a bit these days.

Progressives hate antisemitism. Not, unfortunately, the concept . . . the word. It holds a mirror up to their internal contradictions.

Jews have been among the most consequential, cutting-edge progressives in history. A few months back, I reviewed Democratic Justice, Brad Snyder’s biography of Felix Frankfurter, who may have been as responsible for forging the dominance of American progressivism as Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president he zealously served. Alas, Frankfurter would not be welcome today in what’s become of his movement — not least because of another project on which he collaborated with his mentor and fellow Supreme Court justice, Louis Brandeis: Zionism. That project is anathema to today’s progressives. It honors the old order and the uniqueness of a people reified in their ancestral homeland, one in which they dwelled for millennia — before Islam existed and, 14 centuries later, the notion of “Palestinians” was conceived.

Moreover, to highlight antisemitism is intolerably inconvenient to the collaboration of highest priority for modern progressives: Their partnership with sharia supremacists — so-called Islamists, adherents to “political Islam.”

MY SAY: Comments turned off

TODAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2023 IS VETERANS DAY

Posted By on November 11th, 2023

September 2, 1945; At the conclusion of the Surrender Ceremony, General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, broadcast this speech:
“Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won. The skies no longer rain death — the seas bear only commerce -men everywhere walk upright in the sunlight. The entire world is quietly at peace. The holy mission has been completed. And in reporting this to you, the people, I speak for the thousands of silent lips, forever stilled among the jungles and the beaches and in the deep waters of the Pacific which marked the way. I speak for the unnamed brave millions homeward bound to take up the challenge of that future which they did so much to salvage from the brink of disaster.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Kristallnacht Anniversary and Surge in Anti-Semitic Hate Crimes Catherine Salgado

Posted By on November 11th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2023/11/10/kristallnacht-anniversary-and-surge-in-anti-semitic-hate-crimes-n4923805

Today marks the anniversary of the devastating anti-Jewish Nazi rampage of Kristallnacht. As we see anti-Semitic hate crimes rising both here in America and abroad, we have to ask ourselves — could Kristallnacht happen again? And are we ready to stand with our Jewish friends and neighbors (as we must) if it does?

Kristallnacht (“Crystal Night” or “Night of Broken Glass”) happened on Nov. 9 and 10 in 1938 in Nazi Germany. The rioting Nazis “torched synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses, and murdered close to 100 Jews,” according to History.com. 

Of course, tragically, the Nazi hatred for Jews led to the Holocaust, in which between 5.8 million and 6.6 million Jews were murdered. “Never again,” was the slogan that museums used about the Holocaust. But it’s starting to happen again, both in the heinous Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and in the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protests around the world.

Hamas, its funders in the Palestinian Authority (PA), and multiple Muslim countries that back it (including Iran and Qatar) are just as determined to commit genocide against the Jews as ever the Nazis were. The thousands in America and other countries who marched cheering the “martyrs” (i.e. terrorists) and endorsing the violent and unjust seizing of Israel’s land (“from the river to the sea…”) are in sympathy with that bloody anti-Semitism. 

As we see anti-Semitic hate crimes on the rise, we have to wonder if Kristallnacht could happen right here in America. And if it does, we must be ready to take a stand against it, even at risk to ourselves. The global Jewish population never recovered from the Holocaust. We cannot allow such a staggering massacre to happen a second time.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Scenes of Genocide I Saw in Israeli Morgues This wasn’t an emotional frenzy of killing like the pogroms of the 1880s. It was methodically planned. By Qanta A. Ahmed

Posted By on November 11th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-scenes-of-genocide-i-saw-in-israeli-morgues-hamas-oct-7-77d45c23?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

A fetal heartbeat flutters and then stills, a bullet lodged in the embryonic heart. The mother survives the shooting and her child’s stillbirth. A body that has been decomposing for almost three weeks lies on the autopsy table, riddled with knife and bullet wounds. Another is nearby, the man’s bluetooth receiver still clipped onto his shirt. Death came as a surprise.

This is Israel. I arrived on Oct. 19 to spend 10 days as a human-rights observer with the permission of the nation’s Foreign Affairs Ministry and help from Israel Defense Forces officer Kobi Valer. As an observant Muslim, I felt a duty to come and bear witness. What I saw will remain with me forever.

Hamas waged its attacks in the nation’s south, but hundreds of its victims have since been moved north. I encountered many of them at the morgues at the Shura military base near Ramle, some 15 miles southeast of Tel Aviv. I toured the Sammy Ofer Fortified Underground Emergency Hospital in Haifa, visiting the neonatal units whose tiny patients had recently been relocated in anticipation of further conflict. I examined bodies and ashes, incinerated teeth and bones. I saw toddlers, teens and adults, young and old, many of them bound, tortured and burned alive.

One word continually came to mind: genocide. No matter how it emerges, the monster is easy to recognize. As a doctor, I had a rare and panoramic view of the aftermath: the targeted people’s long, agonizing journey to death.

This isn’t the first time I have seen Islamist jihadism or even Islamist genocide. I’ve been to northwestern Pakistan and met child Taliban operatives groomed for suicide missions. I still attend to 9/11 first-responders in New York. I’ve been to post-ISIS Iraq to meet with Kurdish and Yazidi survivors of genocide. I’ve spoken with former ISIS child soldiers and the Peshmerga veterans of that brutal and bloody three-year war.

The Oct. 7 genocide was different, more barbaric than anything before it. The attacks were cloaked in the language and metaphors of Islam, yet corrupted with cosmic enmity for the Jewish people, Judaism, global Jewry and the Jewish state.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden Keeps the Billions Flowing to Iran Choosing not to enforce oil sanctions finances Tehran’s terrorism.

Posted By on November 11th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-administration-iran-oil-hamas-israel-gaza-df192c53?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

You’d think the Biden Administration would have realized by now that enriching the Iranian regime is a dangerous mistake. You’d be wrong. Relaxed U.S. enforcement of oil sanctions continued through October, refilling Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s coffers even after the Oct. 7 slaughter and the more than 40 attacks on U.S. troops by Iran’s proxies in the weeks since.

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.

The Iranian surge in oil exports since President Biden took over has brought Iran an additional $32 billion to $35 billion, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The calculations are tricky, but the cause of the Iranian windfall is clear: As part of Mr. Biden’s quiet diplomacy with Iran, the U.S. has curtailed sanctions enforcement. Customers and middlemen have concluded the risk is low and the discount on Iran’s oil is too good to pass up.

This transfer of funds to Iran is cumulatively more significant than the President’s recent $6 billion ransom payment in return for five hostages. And it keeps growing, even as the money fails to moderate Iranian behavior. Instead it finances Iran’s aggression abroad via proxies such as Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and the front groups in Iraq and Syria that shoot at American bases almost daily.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Jianli Yang Hong Kong’s Deteriorating Academic Freedom A call to action for international academia

Posted By on November 11th, 2023

https://www.city-journal.org/article/hong-kongs-deteriorating-academic-freedom

Hong Kong’s once-vibrant academic environment, known for its commitment to free thought, critical discourse, and intellectual inquiry, has experienced a troubling erosion of academic freedom in recent years, as Beijing tightens its grip on the city’s autonomy. The recent case of Rowena He, an associate professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) known for her research on the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, illustrates the growing restrictions on Hong Kong’s academic institutions. The scholar was fired from her professorship after Hong Kong authorities rejected her visa renewal application, preventing her from returning there from the U.S., where she was on an academic fellowship.

He’s scholarly contributions include her book Tiananmen Exiles: Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in China and numerous articles on China’s democracy movement. Her work exemplifies the rich intellectual tradition that Hong Kong once represented.

The persecution of academics in Hong Kong is not new. Benny Tai, a former law professor at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), is a well-known activist and scholar who played a prominent role in the 2014 Umbrella Movement, which called for universal suffrage and fair elections in Hong Kong. In July 2020, HKU’s governing council voted to dismiss him after the Hong Kong government convicted him of charges related to his involvement in the Umbrella Movement. Unlike with He, however, the charges against Tai stemmed from his role in organizing and participating in pro-democracy protests, not from what he taught or researched as a professor. He’s case thus signals Beijing’s growing censorship of, and control over, academic output in Hong Kong.

He’s dismissal also fits into the broader context of the rapid erosion of freedom in Hong Kong. Just a few weeks earlier, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee delivered his annual policy address, in which he vowed to enact Article 23 of Hong Kong’s Basic Law by the end of 2024. This bill is Hong Kong’s version of the Beijing-imposed Hong Kong National Security Law of China, enacted in 2020, which has been used to destroy freedom of speech, press, and expression in the bustling city.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

It Is Time Biden Publicly Acknowledged This Is Iran’s Mullahs’ War Against Israel and the United States by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on November 11th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20133/iran-war-against-israel-us

Sadly, the Biden administration has yet to come out and publicly acknowledge Iran’s role in Hamas’s October 7 invasion of Israel, in which the terrorist group murdered over 1,400 Israelis and at least 31 Americans, and wounded over 4,500 Israelis. Hamas also abducted more than 240 people and took them back to Gaza, where they are being held as hostages.

Iran provides roughly $100 million a year to Palestinian terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and $700 million a year to Hezbollah.

Iran and its proxies have clearly been waging a war against Israel, Jews and the United States. It is incumbent upon the Biden administration at least to publicly acknowledge this fact. Or is the US still hoping for some disastrous “nuclear deal” in which the Iranian regime would promise not to use its imminent nuclear weapons — “on my watch” — during just the Democrats’ time in office?

The Biden administration continues to turn a blind eye to Iran’s involvement in the war against Israel, the Jews and in fact all “infidels” — not least of which is “the Great Satan,” the United States.

In recent weeks, Iranian proxies have attacked not only Israel and the Jews, but also at least 41 strikes against US forces in Syria and Iraq, during which 46 US servicemen were wounded and one was killed by a drone; and with more than 83 attacks on US troops since Biden became president.

These assaults came in addition to an attempted assassination on US soil by the Iranian regime of a foreign diplomat in 2012, and threats to assassinate former US officials, complete with a $1 million bounty, in 2022.

The US responded to these attacks by cancelling sanctions on Iran, thereby enabling it to reap close to $60 billion by exporting its oil and gas – and comfortably to finance its terrorist proxy war on Israel and attacks on US forces in the Middle East.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Houthis have become a dangerous rogue nation. The US Navy could crush them Marines, SEALs and hundreds of thousands of tons of haze gray steel are in the Red Sea Tom Sharpe

Posted By on November 11th, 2023

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/10/iran-houthis-red-sea-missiles-israel-hamas-us-navy-carriers/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-onward-journey

Six days ago, the US aircraft carrier Dwight D Eisenhower – Ike – transited the Suez Canal southbound and headed into the Red Sea as part of her pre-planned but accelerated deployment to the Gulf Region. En route she joined USS Ford and her carrier battle group in the Eastern Med for some interoperability training and the obligatory formation photo. 

It is impossible to say for certain that this overt display of around two hundred thousand tons of nuclear-powered naval firepower – to say nothing of all the escorts – is what has kept Hezbollah relatively quiet over the last few weeks but it’s bound to have influenced their thinking. It is also risky to say that this effect will endure, but for now, it appears to be a win for carrier-based deterrence. Given how many predicted a region-wide escalation by now, this is one piece of good news alongside the horror of Gaza.

Aside from sporadic attacks on US troops inland in Iraq and Syria, there is one other Iranian-backed terrorist group in the region which hasn’t got the memo yet, and that’s the Houthis. They overthrew the legitimate government of Yemen in 2014, and Saudi Arabia and her allies have been engaged ever since trying to restore some semblance of order there with varying degrees of success. That the Saudis are often painted as the villain of this piece baffles me, although that is an article for another time. This year at least has seen fighting in Yemen slowing with talks between Saudi and Iran, mediated by the Chinese, apparently making some progress despite al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)’s best efforts to derail them. 

However, as one would expect of Iranian proxies who see disruption and fear as endstates in themselves, the Houthis didn’t wait long after the Hamas incursion to start firing missiles up the Red Sea at Israel. USS Carney intercepted four in one go but there have been more since, forcing the US and Israeli navies to station destroyers and corvettes to intercept further firings. 

What is clear is that Saudi and US efforts to prevent Iranian-supplied arms from entering Yemen over the last few years haven’t entirely worked and that the Houthis are still able to move and fire them without being detected and destroyed prior to launch.

But it’s possible that this might be about to change.

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Intolerant bigots have seized control of our universities Jewish students are under attack. It’s time for donors to demand action Charles Lipson

Posted By on November 11th, 2023

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2023/11/10/university-college-campus-culture-war-anti-semitism/

The surge of open hatred of Jews on college campuses is unprecedented in modern American life. We saw it outside universities in the 1930s, when it was openly preached by Detroit’s Father Coughlin and published by Henry Ford. We saw it from the KKK during the civil rights revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. The Klan targeted Jews, as a marginal group, as allies of black equality, and as vehicles to build solidarity in their target audience: poor, angry, Christian whites.

At universities we saw a different kind of prejudice. That bigotry was exemplified by quiet restrictions on Jewish students and faculty, referred to as “Gentleman’s Agreements”. Those agreements excluded Jews from fraternities and sororities at most schools. Harvard began the practise and stated their goal openly, while others followed in secret. This practice changed only when it was prohibited by civil rights laws.

These practices were obviously prejudiced, but they were a far cry from the open hatred, intimidation, and speech suppression we now see on campus. Some of that is an old mask stripped away, some is an increase in underlying hatred, and some is a collapse of any restraints on its public expression. The old mask was emblazoned with the coda, “We don’t hate Jews. We don’t hate Israel. We just oppose Israeli policies and support Palestinian rights.”

Well, if recent demonstrations are any guide, it turns out they do hate Israel. They want to see it wiped off the map. That’s the meaning of their constant chant, “From the river to the sea.” A Palestinian state that occupies all that territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean would extinguish Israel. That’s their “final solution” for the Jewish state.

Chilling as that goal is, the activists don’t stop there. They extend their hatred to all Jews, and they say so openly in campus meetings and demonstrations. That is led by extremist Muslims, who are part of the dominant coalition on campus. But it is embraced by their political allies. More on that coalition in a moment.

Decent Americans know something has gone badly wrong at our universities. This wider public recognises, quite accurately, that the attacks on Jews are only the latest, most visible examples of a more pervasive problem: the rise of intolerant, illiberal ideology on the far-Left. That has always been a problem on the far-Right, but they were never major players on campus or in elite media. The Left is.