RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/law-enforcement-must-act-against-antisemitism-fueled-violence-and-intimidation/

Charlie’s post on the rising tide of antisemitism, as well as the indifference (and worse) to it in the media and on American college campuses, should be required reading. Until perusing it, I had missed the sleight of hand in the New York Times’ coverage of the appalling incident Wednesday at the Cooper Union, where Jewish students were barricaded in a library to protect themselves from a pro-Palestinian mob (many of them, as ever, young white radical leftists). Here’s the part of the Times’ report that stopped me in my tracks:

The tensions inflamed by the Israel-Hamas war that have roiled university campuses in the United States spilled into the Cooper Union in New York on Wednesday, with pro-Palestinian protesters pounding on one side of locked library doors and Jewish students on the other. [Emphasis added.]

In his superb news post on this incident, our reporter Zach Kessel includes the relevant video clip (from a post on X/Twitter by Jake Novak). Have a look at it.

I’ll wait — the clip is just six seconds long.

Now, if you just read the report in the Times, you would naturally assume that there was a locked door separating the pro-Palestinian “protesters” and the Jewish students, with both groups pounding on it. But that’s not what happened. The mob pounded on the door. The Jewish students were, as the Times states, “on the other [“side of the locked library doors”]. But they were not pounding. They were huddled and undoubtedly frightened that the mob was going to break through.

How long do you figure the Gray Lady’s reporters and editors agonized over how to frame the story so that it was literally accurate but still utterly mendacious — the “both-sides garbage” that Charlie aptly describes.

When Rich and I recorded the podcast this morning, I repeated an argument I made on X/Twitter yesterday (here): It’s not good enough for government officials (such as President Biden) to rhetorically condemn the shocking incidents of antisemitism-fueled intimidation and violence. The federal and state governments have civil-rights laws on the books that empower them to prosecute. I discussed one of them on the podcast, Section 241 of the federal penal code, which states in pertinent part:

If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person . . . in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States . . . they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

The statute has been held constitutional because there is no free-speech right to threaten and intimidate people out of the enjoyment of their basic rights. That kind of incitement, that type of extortionate and intimidating speech, is an inextricable part of mob violence — such that Section 241 provides for potential death-penalty charges or a sentence of life-imprisonment if death results from the threatening conduct, as it sometimes does.

It is atrocious in the United States of America in 2023 that Jewish people are made to live in fear and be intimidated out of enjoying the basic rights we all take for granted — to walk the public streets, move about school and attend classes, attend religious services, wear clothing that signals their adherence to their faith, and so on.

https://www.thefp.com/p/tgif-it-got-worse?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Campus has fallen: Normally TGIF feels like whack-a-mole, in a fun way. The truly crazy things that the left and right do are rare enough, and we can visit them, laugh, and move along to the weekend. These days? It feels like walking through the aftermath of an earthquake. That’s especially true when it comes to American college campuses, which are now just smoking piles of rubble. Like, here’s where the library used to be and oh my god, we’ve lost the entire field of sociology. Which we have. Read on:

Nearly 2,000 sociologists signed a letter that Israel was committing “genocide” and anything Hamas does is justified by the “context.” The University of California, Berkeley Ethnic Studies Faculty Council released a statement condemning anyone who describes what Hamas did as “terrorism,” which is offensive. The student leader of a Wellesley residential house wrote to the entire dorm she oversees: “We firmly believe that there should be no space, no consideration, and no support for Zionism within the Wellesley College community.” Harvard launched a task force to help ensure the pro-Hamas protesters feel safe and can get jobs while also berating any Jews they might find. At George Washington University, students projected onto the side of the school library: GLORY TO OUR MARTYRS and FREE PALESTINE FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA. At Stanford, students are asking the school to pay for round-trip tickets for Muslim students to visit home: “Full round trip covered by University upon the signing of a ceasefire for students to visit their family and friends and grieve properly.” (Okay, fine, that one’s funny; just think of the Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine president calmly trying to explain preferred pronouns to a jihadi upon arrival. On second thought: TGIF will personally sponsor any queer activist who wants to fly to Iran. Honestly, I’m curious what would happen.)

At Cooper Union, pro-Hamas protesters chased a clutch of Jewish students into the library. Video from inside shows the young Jews standing, frightened, as the protesters pound on the doors. What exactly would they have done if they got in? Librarians reportedly offered to hide the students in the attic. The joke writes itself. 

The protesters trying to ram through those doors to beat up the Jewish students might even be up for some extra credit. Professors are starting to offer it to anyone who joins a pro-Hamas protest. 

Here’s Berkeley professor Victoria Huynh: “Hi everyone, We’re offering a field trip and/or extra credit opportunity: (1) Students can attend the national student walkout tomorrow against the settler-colonial occupation of Gaza (info attached below) OR (2) Students can watch a short documentary on Palestine and call/email your local California representative using this linktree. Doing so will either count as a field trip or an extra 5 points on the field trip category of your grade.” First of all: Who talks to college students about “field trips?” Anyway, UCLA professors are also offering extra credit for students who go to pro-Hamas rallies. 

And after graduation, the future that awaits these students trying to ram through the doors also looks golden: here are some of the hundreds of academic job postings for roles in various normal-sounding departments that say they’re only looking for people who want to push for “decolonization.”

Sensing the vibes weren’t right, Columbia postponed its annual Giving Day, which usually raises tens of millions for the school. It’s really hard to shake down Jewish alumni when your faculty and students are also trying to do a pogrom. The list of donors who are pulling their gifts keeps growing: the latest is billionaire Leon Cooperman, who declared on television: “I think these kids at the colleges have shit for brains.”

Hats off to Marc Rowan and everyone who has finally realized that the only response here is to stop funding the Ivy Intifada. Write to tips@thefp.com if you know of more. And to college students reading this: campus has fallen, you’re on your own, good luck!

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/the-wests-monster-within?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Many in Britain and the west have been looking aghast at a monster within that has reared up and bared its fangs. They have suddenly realised that they are staring at a civilisational crisis.

After the October 7 Hamas pogrom, with the barbaric slaughter of 1,400 men, women and children in southern Israel and the kidnapping into Gaza of more than 220 souls, decent people in the west have been horrified by the massive displays of jubilant bloodlust on the streets of London, New York, Sydney and elsewhere.

They have suddenly realised that there are thousands of their citizens who support Hamas and who call genocide against the Jews “resistance”.

Every day has brought fresh signs of an anti-Jewish psychopathy within their own societies. Countless thousands don’t appear to recognise that Jewish victims of genocidal attack are entitled to human sympathy.

In Britain and America, young people have been tearing down posters bearing pictures of  some of the kidnapped Israeli children.

Over the tannoy on a London Tube train, a driver led a chant of “Free Palestine” among cheering passengers on their way to demonstrate against an Israel that is being targeted by genocidal attack.

At George Washington University in Washington, D.C., messages including “Glory to Our Martyrs,” “Divestment from Zionist Genocide Now” and “Free Palestine from the River to the Sea” were projected for two hours on to the side of a library building.

Police and other authorities have been struggling to protect Jews from the rampant antisemitism that is now brazen, open and ubiquitous.

At Cooper Union College in New York, security officers had to lock Jewish students in the school library against threats from pro-Hamas students, eventually using tunnels to smuggle them out.

In Australia, where a mob chanted “Gas the Jews” in front of the Sydney Opera House, the police advised the Jewish community to “stay home” for their own safety.

In Germany, there have been mass arrests of pro-Hamas demonstrators. In France, President Emanuel Macron is threatening to deport Muslim demonstrators with dual nationality.

Those who are shocked and appalled by this savage support for Hamas observe that it is mainly coming from Muslim fellow-citizens but is also echoed by western “liberals”.

Even though Hamas is committing war crimes by using Gazan civilians as human shields, western “progressives” are accusing Israel of war crimes. Even though Israel has been warning Gazan civilians to flee for their own safety as required by international law, Israel is being accused of breaking international law.

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/4279277-joe-biden-fights-the-fed/

That’s the takeaway from the most recent report on the economy, showing that the third quarter grew more rapidly than expected in spite of rising interest rates. One reason is obvious: the president and his Democrat allies continue to pump up government spending, boosting growth, even as the Federal Reserve says a slowdown may be necessary to tame inflation “sustainably.”    

Investors are not happy. Stocks are nearing correction territory, down roughly 10 percent from the highs of the summer. There are concerns that interest rate cuts, which might propel another earnings surge and another market rally, are not likely any time soon. 

Simply put, soaring government spending has put the economy on a sugar high.  

In the third quarter, total real GDP grew 2.9 percent year-over-year; federal outlays accelerated, growing 5.5 percent over the year-earlier quarter. It was the largest jump since the height of the pandemic, when Congress and the Trump administration threw everything possible into the economy to stave off a deep recession. It worked; the U.S. experienced a very sharp downdraft when the government decreed that businesses had to shut down, but then it bounced back quickly, thanks to enormous government stimulus spending.  

What has gone so very wrong under President Biden is that federal and local government spending is still growing dramatically, even though the crisis has passed. Some of the increase in the most recent quarter stemmed from national defense spending, reflecting the war in Ukraine, which climbed 4.9 percent year-to-year in real terms. But more consequential was a 6.3 percent boost in nondefense spending. State and local government spending expanded 3.9 percent.  

None of this is surprising. Joe Biden has a singular approach to every issue: spend more money, even as inflation eats away at real incomes.