ABOUT THE BBC: The BBC did some minor housecleaning, which will surely not resolve its broader problem of being hostile to capitalism, the US, the West, and especially Israel. But I’ve noticed in social media that all manner of British leftists are now arguing that the BBC is actually not just less unfriendly to capitalism, the US, the West, and especially Israel than they are, but that its actually “right-wing” on all things, and especially biased in favor of Israel.

Do they really mean it? No, of course not, as not a single one of them has called for defunding the BBC and allowing a private news market to arise in its stead. They know the Beeb is a huge asset to the Left, but that doesn’t stop them from gaslighting about it to try to get it to move even further left.

HE’S AS PHONY AS A THREE-DOLLAR BILL: I was poking around the internet tonight, and discovered that during Zohran Mandami’s rap career as “Young Cardamom,” he pretended to have grown up in and still live in Kapmala, Uganda. In fact, his family left Uganda for New York when Mamdani was six.

Article 1: “Young Cardamom & HAB are both Ugandans with roots that reach far beyond their borders. Though they represent the sound of their city, Kampala, the duo’s tracks also blend several influences from South Sudan, India, Atlanta, and Lahore.”

Article 2: “HAB and I are both Ugandans with roots abroad, with HAB’s in South Sudan and mine in India…. Our lyrics and choice of language are rebuttals of what Ugandan society expects of us.” “The two grew up in the same part of Kampala, called Buziga, and last year they released ‘Kanda (Chap Chap),’ a song celebrating the East African street food chapati and using it as a way to discuss identity, migration and pride.”

WHY SHOULD NYC VOTERS CARE THAT MAMDANI SUPPORTS HAMAS, AN ISLAMIST TERRORIST GROUP?: I can think of 9112001 reasons.

STUDENTS FOR JUSTICE IN PALESTINE IS A DOMESTIC TERRORIST ORGANIZATION: Man who attacked Jews in NYC becomes cause célèbre for anti-Israel activists: “Anti-Israel activists [led by SJP] in the US have rallied behind Tarek Bazrouk, a New York resident who confessed to carrying out antisemitic attacks against three Jews. In June, Bazrouk, 20, pleaded guilty in a federal court in New York to attacking the individuals because of their Jewish or Israeli identity.”

And he doesn’t seem to have been just the ordinary violent antisemite: “When investigators searched Bazrouk’s room, in an apartment he shared with his family, they found an airsoft gun that appeared to be an actual firearm, bullet casings, brass knuckles, four knives, including a switchblade and $750,000 in cash, the source of which remains unclear.”

HYPROCRISY, THEY NAME IS GREENWALD: Quite a remarkable thing to see “free speech absolutist” Glenn G. calling for journalists he disagrees with to face criminal charges. But I’ve never been fooled by Greenwald’s civil libertarian act, he’s a leftist authoritarian at heart, he just also hates the US government.

UPDATE: By the way, the Free Press is an American publication run by Bari Weis, and Greenwald referring to it as Israeli is his snide way of suggesting that the writers’ loyalties lie elsewhere. Which in turn is quite strange for someone who abandoned his home country of the US to live in Brazil and become a citizen there. But again, don’t expect any consistency from Greenwald.

EVERYTHING I DON’T APPROVE OF IS A “GENOCIDE”: Having spent the rhetorical force of the charge of “genocide” with a phony charge against Israel, henceforth everything the left doesn’t like will be a genocide, replacing racism as the go-to accusation.

IT HELPS THAT THE TRUMP JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, UNLIKE BIDEN’S, IS COMMITTED TO ENFORCING THE LAW: Free Speech and Jewish Safety on Campus Aren’t Incompatible. It’s Time Universities Take Columbia’s Lead and Act Like It.

SPEAKING OF SATIRE BEING DEAD…: Here’s Candace Owens, maybe the dumbest antisemite with any sort of mass audience, denying that Jews were victims of the Spanish Inquisition.

SATIRE IS DEAD, KILLED BY REALITY:

Link to original.

THE ABSURD AMERICAN POLITICS OF RACE: I wonder if I’m the only one who noticed that the “candidate of color,” Mamdani, in the NYC mayoral Democratic primary seems to be (from pics, haven’t seen them in person) significantly fairer-skinned than the “white candidate,” Andrew Cuomo?

THE SILENCE THAT NEVER SHUTS UP: Generally speaking, antisemites aren’t the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, but I nevertheless find it remarkable how often they say that “no one is allowed to say “X” about something related to Jews,” even though there they are, saying it, and no one is arresting or murdering them. It’s particularly illogical when it comes from someone with an audience of millions, like Tucker Carlson. The notion that Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad agent is a baseless conspiracy theory, but yes, Tucker, you are allowed to promote it anyway, because there isn’t some international Jew police stopping you, and it’s not the least bit brave for you to go down this particular road to perdition.

CAMPUS ANTISEMITISM HAS THE SAME ROOTS AND SHOULD BE FOUGHT WITH THE SAME MEANS AS OTHER MANIFESTATIONS OF INTERSECTIONAL WOKENESS: Free speech, antisemitism and the fight for America’s campuses: “What we are witnessing on campus is not just a wave of anti-Israel sentiment. It is part of a larger assault on liberalism [in the broad sense] itself.”

FINAL VERSION PUBLISHED: Supporting Free Speech and Countering Antisemitism on American College Campuses.

My coauthored article makes a number of contributions to the relevant debate, but let me highlight one of them. Many “pro-Palestine” activists have been gaslighting us regarding what’s been happening on campus, portraying it as a conflict between between freedom of expression and censorship attempts by “Zionists.” In fact, as we discuss, most of the controversy over antisemitism has arisen because of violence, threats, intimidation, trespass, assault, disruptions of classrooms and other campus spaces, harassment of individual students, discrimination by university bureaucrats, and other actions that do not reasonably come within a sound definition of “freedom of expression.”

“HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS” ARE A JOKE: The latest idiocy is that it’s purportedly a human rights violation to feed hungry civilians in Gaza unless Hamas gets a large cut.

PROMISE MADE, PROMISE KEPT: I was there when Trump said this last September: “I wanted one thing from Iran, no nuclear weapons. I didn’t want much, no nuclear weapons. And now, they’re very close to getting it, and you can’t let that happen.”

Iran should have taken him seriously and literally.

SORRY AOC, HE’S MARRIED:

WARNING: MAY LEAVE A SMILE ON YOUR FACE ALL DAY: Confirmed video shows the moment Israel hits Iran’s state propaganda channel.

IRGC propaganda arm just hit

Alleged video shows the moment an IDF airstrike hit the headquarters of Iran’s state broadcaster in Tehran. https://t.co/fLLnzag538 pic.twitter.com/5i8WWH3EfR

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) June 16, 2025

I DON’T THINK THE AYATOLLAH IS TRYING TO BRING THE US INTO THE WAR: But some of his subordinates seem to have other ideas. Iran-backed militias in Iraq have tried to attack US bases with drones. And yesterday the US embassy annex in Tel Aviv, which is really our primary building in Israel, was damaged by an Iranian rocket. I am very familiar with the geography there, my wife once did a “detail” for the US government in that building. On one side, you have beach and ocean. On the other, you have mostly low-rise buildings and parking lots. To the north and south, you have a bunch of scattered hotels, with space between them. In short, if you are firing rockets accurate within X meters, but not fully accurate, this is not an area you’d be targeting because you’d be unlikely to hit anything significant, and your rocket might well just fall into the ocean. Which suggests that someone was, in fact, targeting the embassy.

HOW MANY PEOPLE SEE THIS, AND ARE TOO DUMB OR BLINDED BY THEIR PRIORS TO NOTICE THAT HIS SKIN IS ACTUALLY LIGHTER IN THE SECOND PHOTO: It’s an awfully odd form of “Islamaphobic” racism to make your opponent look fairer-skinned.

DOWNLOAD IT WHILE IT’S HOT: My friend and namesake David L. Bernstein–author of the extremely timely book Woke Antisemitism–and I have a new article forthcoming this month, Supporting Free Speech and Countering Antisemitism on American College Campuses.

In short, universities don’t have to, and should not, infringe on anyone’s freedom of speech to crack down on antisemitism. They just need to enforce university policy and the law. This means expelling students who engage in vandalism, harassment, building takeovers, illegal encampments, class disruptions, violence, and so on, firing professors who discriminate against Jewish, Israeli, or “Zionist” students, and ensuring that administrators, including faculty who have administrative roles, don’t play use those roles to engage in antisemitic discrimination.

Also, no ideologically driven double standards: “The basic test for university enforcement of conduct rules should be this: if a group of student white supremacists was engaging in this behavior, are there existing rules that could be enforced and therefore would be enforced to stop them? If the answer is yes,” then just enforce the rules, period, zero tolerance.

For the full argument, read the whole thing.

Bonus fun fact: David L.’s book came out around the same time as my book Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America. We both had the same editor: David S. Bernstein.

THE NY TIMES WILL PROBABLY NEVER FIGURE OUT THE MOTIVE: Also, they were not murdered because they were “embassy aides,” the perp just shot a random couple attending a Jewish event.

GLOBALIZING THE INTIFADA IN DC: Last night’s murder of two Israeli embassy employees outside an event held at a Jewish museum was an attack on Jews, period. A political assassination of Israeli diplomates would be bad enough, but this was simply an antisemitic attack by someone chanting “Free Palestine.”

(1) The event was not an Israeli event or even a pro-Israel event, it was an event for young Jews interested in foreign affairs sponsored by the American Jewish Congress (AJC). A close relative of mine, who is not Israeli and has nothing to do with Israeli politics was there.
(2) The couple murdered were not Israelis, one was American, the other German. The Israeli embassy employed them as foreigners, embassies typically have local staff. [Correction based on ne reporting: One victim grew up in Germany, but later became an Israeli citizen.]
(3) They were randomly targeted after attending the Jewish event.

This is what Globalize the Intifada and similar rhetoric means, those who have apologizing for it, or worse justifying it, are morally culpable.

UPDATE: Thank you for the New York Times today, for informing us about the debate over whether extremist rhetoric at Hamasnik rallies is inciting violence against Jews.

NOTHING SAYS IMPARTIALITY AND NEUTRALITY LIKE UNRWA’S LONG COLLABORATION WITH HAMAS: What a clown show the whole UN/NGO complex is.

EVEN YALE (MY LAW SCHOOL ALMA MATER) IS LOOKING RELATIVELY GOOD (BUT ONLY RELATIVELY): I Don’t Mean to Brag, but I Didn’t Go to Harvard. Money quote: “It’s almost like certain Harvard affiliates want to give the Trump administration ammunition in its war against the university.”

NEWS YOU WON’T FIND IN THE NEW YORK TIMES: Potential deportee and Columbia grad student Mohsen Mahdawi won a habeas hearing yesterday. That perhaps temporary victory should not obscure the truly blockbuster revelation in the judge’s opinion, that Mahdawi was reported to the authorities and investigated by the FBI in 2015 after he told a gun store owner that he was involved in murdering Jews in Israel, and telling another individual that he liked to kill Jews, all why eyeing various firearms. The judge, seemingly intent on teaching the Trump administration a lesson did not take these statements very seriously, but (a) Mahdawi should have been referred to ICE for deportation in 2015; and (b) if he can’t be deported now, something is very wrong with our immigration system. Meanwhile, I won’t bother linking to the Times’ story on the habeas ruling but, no surprise, no mention of Mahdawi’s love of Jew-killing.