It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that we live in an age when almost every headline story has become a Rorschach Test for spin doctors on cable news or in cyberspace. Their purpose is not to promote dialogue leading to some sort of shared understanding but to further fuel current political polarizations with wildly different, ideologically driven interpretations.

A case in point: Elliot Rodger who went on a killing spree near UC Santa Barbara. He was a product of America’s misogynist culture. Or he was a gun fanatic acting out violent video games or shock films like “American Psycho”—the moral: censor pop culture and more gun control. Or he was a psychotic loner driven by homicidal-suicidal delusions—the moral: more mental health spending. Prepackaged, often contradictory theories were offered up almost before the crime scenes were roped off.

Another dynamic fueling polarization is built into the psychic economy. Across the political spectrum, there seems to be a compelling need to prove novelist Charles Dickens’ at least half right when he wrote: “These are the best of times. These are the worst of times.” Our current updates of Voltaire’s arch-optimistic Dr. Pangloss believe that—despite the last century’s calamitous wars and economic depression—human life has never been healthier, longer-lived, or more literate and economically advanced than today. But we also have our Doomsayers who see Apocalypse around the corner because of climate change or the next pandemic or a new nuclear-chemical-biological-cyber world war triggered by global inequalities. (more…)

Credit: Herr Wolf via Wikipedia Commons

Credit: Herr Wolf via Wikipedia Commons

The following article by LDB President Kenneth L. Marcus is distributed via JNS.org.

JNS.org — In a recent issue of Time magazine, Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, former president of the Union for Reform Judaism, writes that anti-Semitism is “not a threat to American Jews.” He could not be more wrong.

Let us start with the obvious. Any threat to world Jewry is a threat to American Jews.

According to the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) important newstudy, there are now one billion adult anti-Semites in the world. As Rabbi Yoffie acknowledges, this is fully a quarter of the world’s adult population. Can American Jewry shrug this off?

One can quibble with the ADL’s methodology, but it is not far-fetched. ADL considers a person to be anti-Semitic if they give a positive response to six out of 11 survey questions like these: “Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars,” “People hate Jews because of the way Jews behave,” and “Jews have too much control over the United States government.”

Consider the magnitude of this finding. In 2012, according to the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University, there were 686 reported incidents of physical violence, direct threats, and major acts of vandalism against Jews and Jewish institutions worldwide. This is bad enough on its own, representing an increase of approximately 30 percent over the prior year.

Worse, these figures understate the problem. According to the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency, 64 percent of European Jews who have experienced physical violence or threats do not report even the most serious incident.  If this holds true for Jews elsewhere, the actual incident rate is approximately three times higher than reported, reaching 2,000 serious incidents annually.

But it gets worse. Even the adjusted figures suggest that Jews and Jewish institutions are enduring only one serious anti-Semitic incident per 500,000 anti-Semites annually. This means that in any given year, the overwhelming majority of anti-Semites are not acting on their aversions. Their reasons may be lack of opportunity, want of courage, fear of consequence, or adherence to convention. Economists call this “pent-up demand.”

As the post-Holocaust taboo against anti-Semitism erodes, the ramifications are troubling. Suppose that one in ten thousand anti-Semites should physically harm or threaten Jews or Jewish institutions in a given year. Under this scenario, serious anti-Semitic incidents would increase to 100,000 per year, even if anti-Semitic attitudes remain constant. In other words, things can get much worse. (more…)

Eric Cantor

The resurgence, now on both sides of the Atlantic, of what is usually interpreted as extreme conservative politics—but might better be called right-wing populism—is likely to spark a new debate about present and future threats posed by political extremism to Jews.

Since the Revolution of 1848—when according to a story an Orthodox rabbi with a long beard who preferred to sit on the left side of the Frankfurt Assembly was asked “why” and answered “because Jews have no Right”—the predilection of Jews to believe that they have enemies only on the Right has been demonstrated and documented. Sometimes, it has had disastrous consequences as with the Old Left’s blind spot to Stalin’s anti-Semitism and the New Left’s flirtation with Stokely Carmichael’s.

But the history of Jews in relation to right-wing politics has yet to be fully written. The reflexive anti-Semitism of the European Right—from France’s Dreyfus Affaire to the Russia’s “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” to the pre-WWII French Right’s declaration “Better Hitler than Blum”—is of course well known. There is even an American parallel in the propensity to anti-Semitism of late nineteenth-century American Populists obsessed with the world’s crucifixion on “a cross of gold,” though New Left historians are still arguing that Populists like William Jennings Bryan (who wanted the U.S. declared “a Christian nation”) were somehow immune to anti-Semitism because their “progressive” economic nostrums somehow cancelled out their right-wing religious and racial prejudices. (more…)

Western Washington University

Western Washington University

StandWithUs is reporting that the student government at Western Washington University unanimously voted yesterday not to consider boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) based on national origin.  The Student government’s “Resolution Regarding International Divestment, Boycott, and Sanctions” is an extraordinary response to the BDS resolutions adopted at other schools.

In a powerfully written statement, the Western Washington student government heavily criticized the discriminatory and divisive features of the modern BDS movement.  In particular, the students lambasted “boycott, divestment, and sanction measures rooted in national origin or other identity-based features” on the grounds that they “can cause students to be targeted on the basis of nationality.”  In addition, the unanimous resolution observed that “isolation of student groups can lead to the perpetration of disrespectful bias, hostility, hate, or harassment, against those groups…”

For this reason, the Western Washington student government, known as ASWWU, resolved that they “shall not take positions advocating divestment from, boycott of, sanctioning, or ceasing collaboration with companies, products, or organizations due to their nation of origin.”  StandWith Us reports that WWU Student Alysa Kipersztok, a StandWithUs Emerson Fellow, initiated the anti-BDS because:

 “I’ve seen how divisive anti-Israel BDS campaigns have been on campuses across the country. Western is a warm, respectful, inclusive community. Our mission statement states that WWU ‘brings together individuals of diverse backgrounds and perspectives in an inclusive, student-centered university.’ BDS has been a source of disconnect and resentment among students, creating a hostile environment. It divides students, marginalizing those who support Israel. I want to thank our ASWWU for unconditionally supporting this process and for working closely with me to represent the desires of students to keep our campus safe.”

The Western Washington University student government, StandWithUs, and Ms. Kipersztok deserve congratulations.