Becket Adams Sept. 13, 2018 Washington Examiner Speaking truth to power in the age of Trump apparently means downplaying anti-Semitism. At least, that’s the takeaway from an indefensibly ugly article published this week by the New York Times. In a story titled “ Education Dept. Reopens Rutgers Case Charging Discrimination Against Jewish Students,” the article’s author goes to great lengths to characterize Kenneth Marcus, who heads the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, as a puppet of Jewish influence. The article declares him a “longtime opponent of Palestinian rights causes.” The story also downplays the anti-Semitic elements of certain campus groups. The author calls Marcus’ decision to review the Rutgers complaint “not as a case of religious freedom but as possible discrimination against an ethnic group,” meaning that the Education Department has now “embraced Judaism as an ethnicity” and “adopted a hotly contested definition of anti-Semitism.” What the author doesn’t mention is that this supposedly “hotly contested” definition of anti-Semitism follows the working definition laid out by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. This “hotly contested” working definition includes “hotly contested” examples such as, “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination,” “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” and, “Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” The Times report also refers to the Rutgers student organization Belief Awareness Knowledge and Action merely as a “liberal, pro-Palestinian group.” This is an awfully generous description of a group whose 2010 anti-Israel blockade fundraiser helped fund the Turkey-based organization Insani Yardim Vakfi, “which has long been associated with support for Hamas-led terrorist activities,” as noted by Commentary’s Noah Rothman. Then there’s this line in the Times report: “Mr. Marcus … was tapped to lead the Office for Civil Rights from his job leading the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a nonprofit advocacy organization that Mr. Marcus used to pressure campuses to squelch anti-Israel speech and activities.” There is no evidence presented in the story to back the claim that Marcus used the Center for Human Rights Under Law to “squelch” anti-Israel speech. The author merely hangs the allegation out there as if it were fact. The Times report also mentions frequent campus speaker Omar Barghouti, who founded the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement. The story does not mention that he is a proponent of a one-state solution in Israel (or perhaps we should call it Palestine), which he says can happen only after the “ de-zionization” of Israel as the Jewish state. And so on and so forth. This article is almost as bad as the paper’s 2015 “ Jew Tracker,” which, funnily enough, was edited by the same Times staffer. The real problem here is that the article obviously doesn’t take anti-Semitism on U.S. campuses seriously. The article acts as if the problem were merely a right-wing bogeyman, scoffing at the very real bigotry of anti-Israel activists. Honestly, the article’s author is so dedicated to her narrative that she goes so far as to say that the definition of anti-Semitism shared by both the Education Department and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance is “hotly contested.” By whom? Jeremy Corbyn? Original Article