VOX BEING VOX: Zach Beauchamp credulously quotes a far-left source: “Palestinian leaders have condemned antisemitism publicly and repeatedly.”

The Palestinians have two actual, elected (albeit in 2006) governments, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. Hamas is literally a genocidal antisemitic organization. The head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, is a long-time Holocaust denier, who more lately focuses on denying Jewish history in Jerusalem. The most popular Palestinian leader currently out of power, Marwan Barghouti, is in an Israeli jail for directing several terrorist murders of Israeli civilians–after Israel had offered the Palestinians independence in 2000. The Palestinian public in the Territories is among the most antisemitic in the world. The idea that the tie between antisemitism and Palestinian nationalism has been invented by Jewish organizations to “reinforce lurking anxieties that advocacy for Palestinian rights is inherently antisemitic” is maybe, along with the claim that Palestinian leaders routinely condemn antisemitism, perhaps the most gaslighty thing I’ve read all year. Beauchamp reports it, though, without comment. Of course, Beauchamp also once thought there was a bridge between the West Bank and Gaza.

Even if we are extremely generous, and assume that the source only meant prominent American Palestinians, the claim is still extremely dubious, and it’s also very unlikely that, say, Rashida Tlaib has more influence on pro-Palestinian rhetoric and actions than the actual Palestinian leadership, especially given that the perpetrators of recent antisemitic violence seem primarily to be immigrants.

THEY LIE, AND THEY THINK YOU ARE THAT STUPID: Rep. Mark Pocan lies about Israel having “segregated highways.”

One of the leading Israel-haters in Congress, Pocan told the Washington Post that “when he traveled to the region, he saw segregated highways and ‘that does remind me of an old South Africa, right?'” The South Africa analogy seems to make it clear that he was referring to racial or ethnic segregation.

There are certain roads in the West Bank, mostly near Jerusalem, that drew consistent terrorist attacks on Israeli drivers when they drove near Palestinian towns, resulting in many deaths and injuries. So Israel built bypass roads for cars with Israeli license plates. These cars could be driven by Jews or Arabs (over 20% of Israel’s population), but not by Palestinian drivers who are not residents of Israel, who could still use the old roads. Even that policy was restricted by the Israeli Supreme Court, which held that one major road from Jerusalem could not be restricted because it found that Palestinians did not have a good alternative. A new Jerusalem highway has separate lanes for Palestinian residents of the West Bank who have Palestinian license plates, and for those with Israeli license plates, to allow Palestinians access without providing terrorists an opportunity to attack Israeli drivers.

These are the “segregated roads” Pocan was referring to. Unlike South Africa, they have nothing to do with race, and everything to do with distinguishing between Israeli citizens and residents of all ethnicities, and West Bank Palestinians. Similarly, for security reasons Israel law forbids Israeli citizens from entering Area A of the West Bank, which is under Palestinian Authority security control. There is no racial or ethnic bias behind these rules, only security concerns because of terrorism.

So I called Pocan out on his lie on Twitter.

Pocan easily could have ignored my Tweet. He also could have claimed that when he said “segregated” he simply meant segregated between Israelis and non-Israelis, which is unfair, in his opinion, even if it’s not race-based. As a law professor colleague claimed on Pocan’s behalf, he could have argued he had been imprecise, and clarified that he was not referring to South Africa-style racial segregation.

Instead, he doubled down on the lie, and then, remarkably, accused me of lying.

ALONG WITH THE REST OF LEFTIST ACADEMIA: Jewish Studies Has an Antisemitism Problem. A lot of donors give money to Jewish Studies programs on campus, thinking that they will help attract faculty and students to their alma mater or local university, and give students an opportunity to explore Judaism and Jewish history. They may even think that the programs will be centers for pro-Jewish activism, the way that Women’s Studies advocate on behalf of feminism, or Black Studies on behalf of black activist causes. None of this is the right way to think about academic departments, which should be devoted to scholarship, but it’s no secret that universities attract philanthropists to Jewish Studies by appealing to specifically Jewish concerns. That bait and switch would be dishonest if academic Jewish Studies departments were doing what they should do, which is focusing on scholarly pursuits. But it’s worse than that, as many of these departments have become headquarters for non-scholarly activism targeting Israel, the Jewish establishment, and Judaism itself.

THIS IS WHO THEY ARE, AND THEY OWN IT: Rutgers Students for Justice in Palestine criticizes Rutgers chancellor for condemning “a sharp rise in hostile sentiments and anti-Semitic violence in the United States.” This is who they are, and they own it. UPDATE: OMG, then the chancellor apologized for condemning antisemitism.

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE ABOUT THE PROPAGANDA WAR AGAINST ISRAEL, EVEN IF YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT ISRAEL: Some of the people who don’t want Israel to be able to defend itself are antisemites, or Islamists, or Palestinian nationalists (not that these are mutually exclusive categories). But there is also a cohort of leftists who don’t want any Western-oriented country to be able to defend itself militarily. To them, Israel is small and vulnerable and therefore is an alluring target for a propaganda campaign. The activists can make absurdly tendentious “international law” arguments (that have no real basis in international law) why Israel may not fight back against terrorism. Just for example, I’ve yet to find a single person who claims that Israel’s military response to Hamas violates the international law principle of proportionality who is willing to acknowledge that any level of force would be proportionate. Such arguments are taken seriously only because Israel is small and unpopular; the United States can brush off similar arguments with ease. But once the leftists get the precedents established against Israel, that it violates international law to fight terrorism basically if any civilians get harmed in the process, they will use those precedents against the U.S. and other countries. Israel is the canary in the coal mine here.

IT MUST BE FRUSTRATING BEING A HAMAS SPOKESMAN: “The illegitimate Zionist entity must be forced to end its occupation of all of Palestine, from Tel Aviv to Jericho.” Western Reporter: “So what you’re saying is that you support a peaceful 2-state solution.”

“We will kill the sons of pigs and apes like the great Hitler.” Western reporter: “So what you’re saying is that you object to right-wing Israeli politicians like Netanyahu.”

“We want an Islamic state governed by sharia.” Western reporter: “Democracy, one-person, one-vote, religious freedom for all. Got it.”

“We thank our great friends in Iran for their money, missiles, and bombs.” Western Reporter: “Hamas insists on being a grassroots Palestinian movement not dependent on foreign support.”

And from America’s Newspaper of Record: Hamas Terrorist at Gaza Border Surprised To Hear Media Describe Him as Peaceful Protester.

IT’S THEIR ONLY HOPE FOR POPULARITY OR EVEN ACCEPTANCE ON THE WOKE LEFT: Brendan O’Neill: Why Won’t Israelis Let Themselves be Killed?

DUST AND COBWEBS, MOSTLY: Biden Jewish Heritage Month Proclamation Provides a Peek into the Progressive Jewish Mindset.

BUREAUCRATS ALWAYS HAVE CONTEMPT FOR PEOPLE WHO EVADE GOVERNMENT CONTROL: Emails reveal Montgomery County health department’s contempt for nonpublic schools. After seeing how things went last spring, my wife and I made the wise decision to not trust our local public schools to handle the pandemic with even minimal competence, and put our two younger children in a private school. The school has been open full-time all year with no Covid outbreaks. One of the best decisions we have made, and we can’t imagine going back to public any time soon. Imagine the mess after more than a year of no in-person school, with some kids in pods and having tutoring, and other kids, often from non-English speaking homes, having no real education for 18 months! I pity the teachers come this fall who are going to have to deal with this–assuming that my county doesn’t find a way to evade Virginia law and not open full-time.

JOIN ME AND (RABBI) JONATHAN GREENBERG TONIGHT 8PM EST ON CLUBHOUSE: What Has Gone Wrong With American Judaism?

SOME ADVICE FOR PHILANTHROPISTS WHO SUPPORT JEWISH COMMUNAL INSTITUTIONS: American Jewish philanthropy and continuity. Needed: A plan and the resources to make Jewish camps, schools, etc. better and less expensive than their competition; the opposite is often true now. Not needed: more Holocaust memorials and endowed chairs in Jewish studies that go to leftist professors.

GOVERNMENT KILLS, PART ….: CDC Calls for Halt to J & J Vaccine Due to Blood Clot Risk. The risk appears to be less than one in a million overall, and so far zero for men. We should just inform people of this tiny to virtually non-existent risk and let them decide they think the risk is worth it compared to (a) only having to get one shot and/or (b) not being able to get a shot at all for some indefinite period. It’s extremely likely that more people will die and get ill because of the halt to the vaccine that would have died or become ill from the vaccine.

THE THREE TENORS? THE THREE CABELLAROS? NOPE, IT’S THE THREE DAVID BERNSTEINS: If you are on Clubhouse, join me, David Bernstein, and David Bernstein for a discussion of freedom of expression and wokeness Monday 4/12 at 8:00 pm. [BUMPED]

NOTICE OF NAME CHANGE: I am planning to legally change my name to Infrastructure McInfrastructure. I figure I can get a large check from President Biden, who can in turn claim it’s “an investment” in the future. You know, the way his infrastructure bill contains all sorts of other giveaways disguised as “infrastructure spending.”

A LIMITED BUT SIGNIFICANT VICTORY FOR CHILDREN THE GOVERNMENT DEEMS TO BE AMERICAN INDIANS: Tim Sandefur analyzes the Fifth Circuit’s long, divided opinion on the Indian Child Welfare Act.

I’ve spent the last couple of years researching the modern American law of racial classification, and if you asked me what is the most obviously unconstitutional (or for that matter, immmoral) law that depends on such classification, my answer would be the ICWA. Just for example, under ICWA a child could be zero percent Indian on his mother’s side, 1/256 Cherokee on his father’s side, and not a member of the Cherokee tribe, but eligible for tribal membership. His parents decide to give the child up for adoption to a loving white (or black, or Hispanic) family. Great, right? Wrong. The Cherokee Tribe can veto the adoption, and insist that he be adopted by a Cherokee.

But wait, there’s more. Before a court can allow the non-Indian couple to adopt, it would have to make sure that no other Indian tribe wants to claim the child. In other words, this child’s future is being determined solely based on what amounts to a one-drop rule of racial ancestry, allowing a child that’s never set foot on his ancestral reservation to be adopted against the parents’ judgment by a tribe with which he has no connections at all, other than “racial.” The Supreme Court needs to take this opportunity to get rid of this monstrous law.

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE NARRATIVE: New York Times: Minority Entrepreneurs Struggled to Get Small-Business Relief Loans. Buried in the text: “The vast majority of lenders did not report demographic data on the 3.6 million loans they made this year, but of the 996,000 that included information on the borrower’s race, 71 percent of the dollars went to white-owned businesses.” But over eighty percent of U.S. businesses are owned by whites, and because many of the businesses owned by minorities are owned by immigrants, they tend to be less established. So all things equal, one might expect the baseline to be that more than eighty percent of “the dollars” would go to whites. So how the New York Times concludes that its “analysis of data from several sources” “show that Black- and other minority-owned businesses were disproportionately underserved by the relief effort” is a mystery not explained in the article.

BLEG–ACADEMIC LITERATURE EXPLAINING ASIAN SUCCESS: Several years ago, I posted something, I think on Facebook, asking how Critical Race Theorists and Intersectionalists who believe that white supremacy reigns supreme and largely dictates the fortunes of other groups explain the relative socioeconomic success of Asian Americans. One correspondent responded that some of them argue that whites “allow” Asians to succeed because that way they can justify their oppression of brown and black people by pointing to Asian success as refuting white supremacy. I expressed skepticism that anyone who was an actual academic would publish such an absurd conspiracy theory. My correspondent replied with links to two or three articles in academic journals promoting exactly that theory. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find that Facebook post in my archives, nor did a request on FB turn up anything. But I’m sure that this exchange occurred, and I read the articles arguing that Asians succeed because whites “let” them. So my bleg to Instapundit readers is that if any of you are familiar with any such articles, to please send me links, either in the comments or to my email.

IN THE LATEST EXAMPLE OF “THIS COUNTRY HAS GONE COMPLETELY INSANE”: There was a horrific mass shooting, with ten people murdered. Photos emerged of the shooter, who is obviously Caucasian/white.

Leftist identitarians on Twitter gleefully(!) proclaimed that the shooting was an example of at best white male toxicity, and likely white supremacy. Then in turned out that the shooter was a Muslim immigrant from Syria. The identitarians beat a hasty retreat, embarrassed for jumping to the conclusion he was white, because Muslims from Syria aren’t white. Even when they are.

Digging a bit deeper, note that the Trump Administration had two cabinet officials of Lebanese descent (Azar and Espy) and virtually none of the wokesters suggested that they were non-white members of the cabinet. Jews much swarthier than the shooter are, unlike white Muslims, deemed to have “white privilege” because reasons. And official (legal) racial classifications in the U.S. have deemed Arab-Americans to be white forever.

I wish I could say this insanity was limited to the U.S., but a few years back a white woman of Algerian heritage was deemed (and deemed herself) the “first black president” of the British student union.

It’s all about weaponizing identity for left-wing political ends, of course. But it’s still insane.

REVISITING THE VINCENT CHIN CASE: Most of you have probably heard of the murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese man who was killed in Detroit in 1982. The way the killing was and still is reported in the media, it was several white auto workers who attacked him with a bat because they thought he was Japanese. In light of recent publicity surrounding anti-Asian violence, the Chin case has renceived renewed attention.

The reality, it turns out, is much more complicated than the received story, as I discovered accidentally while researching my forthcoming book on racial classifications. Chin was drinking at a bachelor party at a strip club. He got into a verbal dispute with some white patrons. An eyewitness testified that the whites, auto workers, made racial remarks related to the loss of auto jobs to the Japanese. However, the white men denied it, and the witness who so testified received a lighter sentence for another matter in exchange for her testimony, calling her credibility into doubt.

As for the violence, Chin threw the first punch. When they were all kicked out of the club, he yelled to the white men in the parking lot, “Come on you chickenshits, let’s fight some more.” Eventually, the white guys tracked him down at a McDonald’s and beat him, he became unconscious and died.

That’s enough for me for a second-degree murder charge, which is what they were charged with, though they pled guilty only to manslaughter, and, outrageously, received probation based on their lack of criminal history. In any event, I always find it disturbing when an incident that “I know” turns out to have been nothing like how it was consistently reported. In short, the killers were let off too easily, and that seems to have been a result of the judge giving them undue sympathy. But the altercation itself may have had no racial motivation, and the notion that Chin was set upon randomly by autoworkers, which is how I have seen it consistently reported, is false.

RIPPED-OFF BY SPRINT/T-MOBILE: So I’ve been a Sprint customer for 23 years. I upgraded my Iphone to a 12 last Fall. There were two offers at the time, one for a $200 credit from Apple, one for an additional $200 credit from Sprint for “loyal customers” (over five years) who traded in their old phone. Got the first, sent in my old phone for the second. Got a text that I wasn’t eligible for the credit because my phone wasn’t in working order. This was a lie. I called to complain and they agreed to give me the $200 credit. Never showed up. Contacted Sprint twice. Twice was assured credit would show on my next bill. It didn’t. Contact Sprint’s Twitter team. First they told me the phone I traded in wasn’t in working order. They then gave up on that and claimed there was only one promotion, not two. I managed to find an email showing the two promotions were simulatneous: “Because T-Mobile loves loyal customers like you, we are giving you an extra $200 off,” and an article from the same time stating “The carrier is also giving those who have been with T-Mobile or Sprint for five years or more an extra $200 off ‘any new iPhone’ when you ‘trade or turn in any active iPhone on an eligible plan.'” You would think that would be that. Nope. “Our managers reviewed your information and we would not be able to apply any further credits.” Not only did I not get the $200, I also don’t have my phone, which I could have given to my son who now needs one. And I wasted several hours on this, less for the $200 and more on principle… Caveat emptor. I likely would have kept the records showing exactly what the promised at the time, but I was recovering from Covid and was a bit out of it.

THE MORE A SUSPECT DENIES GUILT, THE MORE GUILTY HE IS: Wisdom from Ibram Kendi, an utter charlatan whose books are now required reading in schools across the country.

STRANGE MANIFESTATIONS OF SOCIAL JUSTICE: My county public library poobahs claim to care a lot about social justice.
Quiz for Instapundit readers: That has manifested itself in:
(1) Doing everything possible to open up the libraries, especially in poorer neighborhoods, and finding creative ways to bring books to poor kids whose schools have been closed, such as bookmobiles;
or
(2) Sending out an email with deep thoughts about Dr. Seuss and the need for the library and parents to ensure kids are reading diverse books.

I suspect you will not be surprised to learn that the answer is (2) (and our libraries remain almost entirely closed).

GETTING ABDUCTED BY ALIENS IS NOT THE ONLY WAY TO GET A MANDATORY ANAL PROBE: Passengers Arriving in Beijing And Shanghai Being Forced To Undergo Covid-19 Anal Swab Testing.

THE REVOLUTION DEMANDS YOUR ACQUIESCENCE: SUNY student suspended for Instagram post saying, “A Man Is A Man, A Woman Is A Woman.” The college’s rationale for suspending the student is that he is an education student, and his professed ideas would prevent him from treating all students appropriately. In cases like this, the question should not be what one’s personal ideology is, but whether one is willing to comply with whatever rules are established. For example, if a school district was to require this young man in the future to call a biologically male transgender boy “he,” and it’s lawful to require him to do so, would he do it? If so, then his personal ideology should matter no more than that of a Communist or libertarian teacher who agrees to use the prescribed textbook and curriculum even though they disagree with it. To suggest that only teachers who buy into the prevailing ideology are allowed to teach is worthy of the USSR, not the U.S.

A “WITCH HUNT” INVOLVING ACTUAL WITCHES: The New York Times and American Communism.

One can certainly debate whether, in the absence of criminal liability, being a Soviet stooge during Stalin’s reign merited blacklisting. One cannot argue, however, that Soviet stooges were not Soviet stooges, but that seems to have become the default assertion about blacklisted Hollywood writers among the cultural elite.