August 13, 2014 Religion and the Discourse of Human Rights LDB President Kenneth L. Marcus contributes a chapter on “Three Conceptions of Religious Freedom” to Hanoch Dagan, Shahar Lifschitz and Yedidia Z. Stern’s newly released volume on Religion and the Discourse of Human Rights (Jerusalem, Israel: Israel Democracy Institute, 2014) (downloadable here). The volume marks the inauguration of an important human rights program at the Israel Democracy […] Anti-Semitism Blog
August 11, 2014 Obama Through the Wormhole Everyone who hasn’t should read President Obama’s interview with Tom Friedman of the “New York Times,” See http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/09/opinion/president-obama-thomas-l-friedman-iraq-and-world-affairs.html Here, I translate it to an alternative universe in which Israel is the superpower and the U.S. is a small ally under existential threat, and change accordingly who gives the uncensored answers: Tommy Friedman of the “New […] Blog
August 11, 2014 George Orwell and the Gaza War—Pro-or Con Israel ? George Orwell, author of “1984” (1949), was already dead for over a third of a century when the date of that sardonic classic came and went. Yet you would not know it from contemporary broadsides about the Gaza War invoking Orwell and his ideas, pro- and con-Israel. There has been a back-and-forth in the “Forward” […] Blog
August 10, 2014 The Murder of a Rabbi in North Miami Being Handled CAIRfully Orthodox Rabbi Joseph Raskin was shot dead in North Miami Saturday morning while walking to synagogue by two young assailants who escaped on motorbikes or motorcycles in a crime that one would not be surprised by if it occurred in Paris. Days earlier, two cars outside a house in Miami Beach were smeared with eggs […] Blog
August 9, 2014 Giving Nameless Humanitarianism a Name President Obama has failed to give a name to his “humanitarian” mission to relieve Iraqi religious minorities, the Kurds, and possibly four U.S. soldiers sent to a mountain to give the Iraqi military Alpine lessons. I think he should name it Operation Pointless Proportionality. The U.S. airstrikes are also difficult to characterize exactly. Are they […] Blog
August 8, 2014 A New Champion is Proclaimed Read “The Last And First Temptation Of Israel” for confirmation that blogger Andrew Sullivan is the most vicious, maybe the most dangerous American anti-Jewish demagogue since Father Coughlin in the 1930s was listened to by tens of millions of Americans for his monstrous rants against Jewish wealth, conspiracy, and power. Like Coughlin, Sullivan is a […] Blog
August 8, 2014 UC Santa Barbara: The Brandeis Center Helps Reverse a Hostile Environment for Jewish Students As the University of California Santa Barbara’s student senate voted down an anti-Israel divestment measure in 2013, this campus seethed with anti-Semitic activity. The Student Advocate General – whose job is to educate students about their rights as members of the campus community – said on the floor of the student senate: “Israel is harvesting […] Anti-Semitism Anti-Zionism Blog
August 7, 2014 Updating Agathie Christie: It Was Twelve Jews on the Orient Express Who Murdered Cinderella, Presumably to Make Her Blood Into Matzah From the “Forward”: French Senator Nathalie Goulet of the Union of Democrats and Independents party made the endorsement on Twitter earlier this week, Europe1.fr reported, in posting on her account the images of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bludgeoning a dying Pinocchio. The picture also showed Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni stabbing Cinderella and former […] Anti-Zionism Blog
August 6, 2014 Prof. Dawinder S. Sidhu Joins LDB Academic Advisory Board The Brandeis Center is pleased to announce another important addition to its advisory committee. Professor Dawinder ‘Dave’ S. Sidhu, a distinguished scholar of constitutional law and civil rights, is the newest addition to LDB’s Academic Advisory Board. Professsor Sidhu, who teaches law at the University of New Mexico, is known for his work in constitutional law, […] Blog
August 6, 2014 Post-Mortem New polls confirm that the Israeli public—most of whom are not fools—have come to the conclusion that Israel, though perhaps not losing the latest Gaza War, certainly has not won it. Now comes the next phase in “the long war” with a shift to diplomacy and lawfare. The odds here are really stacked against the […] Blog