August 1, 2014 “Health Care” from Hamas and its Friends From “Commentary”: Yesterday three young Israeli soldiers, all in their early twenties, were killed by an explosion in one of Hamas’s many booby-trapped tunnels. This is just one example of the terrible price Israelis are paying as part of their efforts to keep their families safe from Islamist terrorism. But there is more to yesterday’s […] Blog
August 1, 2014 Undelivered Mail from the Vicinity of the Caliphate of “Dearbornistan” This reminds me of slavery times when Southern postmasters refused to deliver “abolitionist” mail. Now, postmasters in certain zip codes may be looking for an excuse to treat in the same way mail with the taint of “Zionism.” From the “Forward”: The metropolitan Detroit regional office of the U.S. Postal Service issued a clarification to […] Blog
August 1, 2014 A Special Place in Hell . . . is reserved from contributors to the “New York Review of Books” who write about Israel. Jonathan Freedland concludes a new piece on the “liberal Zionist” dilemma with the pontification: “They will have to decide which of their political identities matters more, whether they are first a liberal or first a Zionist.” No place for Jewish […] Blog
August 1, 2014 Kerry’s Ceasefire Our Secretary of State is off to India to teach Hindus and Muslims how to live together. The fruits of his peacemaking in the Mideast according to the “Jerusalem Post”: A Hamas attack on IDF soldiers in southern Gaza, which occurred an hour and a half after the start of a humanitarian truce, ended with […] Blog
August 1, 2014 U.S. Holocaust Museum Decries Recent European Anti-Semitism Yesterday, here in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) issued a timely and cogent statement on the alarming recent spike of anti-Semitism in Europe: In the first half of the 20th century, the nations of Europe failed to protect their Jewish communities, leading to the murder of six million Jews. The United States […] Anti-Semitism Blog
August 1, 2014 What a Year for the Launch of Our Law School Chapters The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law launched law student chapters that will fill an important gap in American legal education, offer the opportunities that members seek, and provide a resource to other members of the university community. Many law students are eager to combine their legal training with their interest in […] Anti-Semitism Anti-Zionism Blog
August 1, 2014 “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” New Gallup poll shows church-going Americans significantly more pro-Israel. Among denominations, Jews lead followed by Mormons followed by Protestants followed by Catholics (I suspect because of strong anti-Israel bias among Hispanics, possibly Hispanic immigrants, as revealed by other polls). See http://www.gallup.com/poll/174266/religion-plays-large-role-americans-support-israelis.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=syndication&utm_content=morelink&utm_term=All%20Gallup%20Headlines Blog
August 1, 2014 Can Humpty Dumpty Put the Ceasefire Back Together Again? From the “Jerusalem Post”: While Obama suggested neither the US, nor the Israelis, are sure of exactly who perpetrated the attack– Hamas, so far, has denied holding an Israeli soldier in its custody – he said that Hamas’ ability to enforce a cease-fire relies on its ability to monitor the tunnels it has built to […] Blog
August 1, 2014 Sacrificed on the Altar of “Civilization” The conservative columnist Ramish Ponnuro suggests Palestinian civilians are not “bad guys.” He erects a straw man by selectively quoting some speakers at pro-Israel rallies revving up the crowd, and then sort of accuses historian Benny Morris of being a barbarian for suggesting that Israel, somehow, sometime, will have to crush Hamas for the Jewish […] Blog
July 31, 2014 Benny Morris Predicts the Next Gaza War An important, depressing piece by Benny Morris, founder of Israel’s Revisionist historians who no longer subscribes to pro-Palestinian Revisionism. I fear he’s right that Israel has already lost the current war politically, no matter the military outcome. I disagree only in that I think that the next war will involve a second front with Hezbollah–and […] Blog
July 30, 2014 Congratulations Are In Order Congrats to Batya Ungar-Sargon in “The Tablet” for demolishing the agitprop widely circulating on the Internet absolving Hamas from responsibility for the kidnap-murder of the three Israeli boys that started the current Gaza War. See “Did Israel Say Hamas Didn’t Kidnap Its Teens? No,” http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/180617/did-israel-say-hamas-didnt-kidnap-its-teens-no?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=0abbc40465-Tuesday_July_29_20147_28_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-0abbc40465-207025897 Postscript: See on Hamas’ links of the kidnap-murderers, see the […] Blog
July 29, 2014 Tilting at the Windmills of John Kerry’s Mind I suggest that Barbra Streisand, no doubt a John Kerry admirer, be invited to the State Department to sing her version of “The Windmills of Your Mind” (English lyrics by Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman). No need to update the lyrics: “Like a tunnel that you follow To a tunnel of it’s own Down a […] Blog
July 29, 2014 Apologies to the “New York Times” To paraphrase the Quran, if you hit a donkey over the head with a thick board, even that benighted creature will eventually see the light. For recent examples from the “New York Times”: Jodi Rudoren, “Tunnels Lead Right to the Heart of Israeli Fear,” http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/29/world/middleeast/tunnels-lead-right-to-heart-of-israeli-fear.html?_r=1 Rukmini Callimachi, “Ransoming Citizens, Europe Becomes Al Qaeda’s Patron,” July […] Blog
July 28, 2014 UC Davis: The Louis D. Brandeis Center Approach to Preventing Threatening, Anti-Semitic Behavior When three Jewish students tried to speak at a November 2012 protest against Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense on the University of California, Davis campus, they were silenced with shouts of “Leave our space!” “Shame on you!” and “Long live the intifada!” The harassment only got worse. The protesters then started chanting “F**k Israel” and […] Anti-Semitism Anti-Zionism Blog
July 27, 2014 The Horror of War and the Stench of Hypocrisy The “Wall Street Journal” recently ran what might be called a “war is hell” op edit page. The top half was devoted to Peggy Noonan’s reflections on WWI which ended forever “gentlemen’s wars”—first on the Western Front where Germany unconscienceably invaded neutral Belgium and “raped” its civilian population (though the numbers were paltry by WWII […] Blog
July 26, 2014 Gay Paree As the foreign ministers of the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Qatar, and Turkey meet in Paris to discuss possible extension of the Gaza humanitarian cease-fire, nobody has remarked that Turkey’s participation–given Prime Minister Erdogan’s recent characterizations of Israel as “worse than the Nazis”–is about as fair and helpful as Mussolini’s participation in Munich. Reports […] Blog
July 25, 2014 Mideast History According to John B. Judis In the latest “New Republic,” Judis explains that the Palestinian leadership has wanted peace since 1973, but peace was spurned–not only by the Israelis–but by “the American Secretary of State,” i.e., the Jew Kissinger. Blog
July 24, 2014 Marcus to Testify on Before Civil Rights Panel Tomorrow Tomorrow morning, LDB President Kenneth L. Marcus will testify on “Fighting Sexual Harassment in American Higher Education” before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights at a federal briefing on “Enforcement of Sexual Harassment Policy at Educational Institutions by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and the Civil Rights Division of the […] Anti-Semitism Blog
July 23, 2014 LDB Urges Supreme Court to Protect Rights of Jerusalem-born Earlier today, the Brandeis Center presented the U.S. Supreme Court with an amicus curiae brief in support of Menachem Binyamin Zivotofsky, the petitioner in the so-called Jerusalem passport case, Zivotofsky v. Secretary of State. LDB, joined by several of the nation’s leading legal and foreign affairs scholars, defended the legality of the statute permitting persons born in Jerusalem […] Anti-Zionism Blog
July 23, 2014 Did FAA, State Department, and White House Coordinate Ban on U.S. Airlines Flying into Ben Gurion Aiport? Consult Lois Lerner’s Missing E-Mails State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters she “would wholly disagree with that argument” that the moves are intended to put pressure on Netanyahu. “We issue travel warnings because one of our top priorities is protecting U.S. citizens overseas. I would note that in 2012, the department also issued travel warnings for Israel, the West […] Blog
July 23, 2014 Gianni Vattimo, Martin Heidegger’s Italian Spawn, Embraces Hamas’ Genocide Against Israel Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo urges Europeans “to buy Hamas some more rockets” to “shoot those bastard Zionists” because Hamas’ current arsenal is limited to “toy rockets that don’t really kill anyone.” A self-styled gay-Catholic-Communist, Vattimo’s existentialist philosophy —rooted in that of Hitler’s favorite philosopher, Martin Heidegger—emphasizes “weak thought” as superior to “objective truth.” Vattimo also […] Blog