THIS IS AMERICA, AND THIS NEEDS TO BE STOPPED, NOW: Elderly Jewish Man Murdered by Mask-Wearing “Pro-Palestinian” Thug.

AND THIS IS WHY I CAN’T STAND GLENN GREENWALD: I know some folks have been pleased that Greenwald’s hatred for the American political establishment leads him to sometimes deviate from the left’s party line, but I’ve long noticed that he tends to make broad, provocative claims unsupported by the evidence. Today brings a good example: Putting aside that “Josh” isn’t calling for “extinguishing all life in Gaza,” Josh is some rando on X with 60 followers. Glenn cites this to support the claim that not just “Josh” but people at all pro-Israel rallies are calling for killing everyone in Gaza. But he doesn’t cite even one example from an actual pro-Israel rally, just one tweet from Rando Josh. This is typical.

THE WOKE DICTIONARY, ISRAEL-HAMAS EDITION: To follow the debate, you need to understand that words and phrases lose their ordinary meanings in favor of Orwellian ones when used by the woke. Thus:

Israeli occupation of Gaza before 10/7: Not a single Israeli soldier or civilian in Gaza

Indiscriminate bombing” Any bombing by Israel. Even the most precision bombing by Israel is always “indiscriminate.”

Innocent civilians: Any Palestinians, including armed terrorists.

The resistance: Armed terrorists.

Settlers: All Israelis.

Colonialists: See settlers.

Genocide: Any military action taken by Israel. Also, Israel just existing.

War Crime: See Genocide.

OUT: BRAGGING ABOUT GOING TO HARVARD; IN:

RACIAL CLASSIFICATION in Higher EDUCATION ADMISSIONS BEFORE AND AFTER SFFA: That’s the title of my forthcoming article, which you can download here. Some readers are old enough to remember when the “Hispanic” classification was “Mexican American” or “Spanish surname,” and when Asian Americans were sometimes eligible for affirmative action preferences in higher education, rather than facing discrimination. How and when did these things change? Read the article and find out.

IT’S ALMOST LIKE UNIVERSITIES ARE BEING RUN BY THE AUTHORITARIAN LEFT: Aaron Sibarium reports: “The only student on [Stanford] law school’s search committee, Matthew Coffin is the co-president of Stanford OutLaw, the LGBT student group that led efforts in March to disrupt a Federalist Society event featuring Fifth Circuit appellate judge Kyle Duncan.”

THE ANTISEMITISM IS CONSIDERED A FEATURE NOT A BUG: Wall Street Journal: Democrats Risk Long-Lasting Rift Over Israel-Hamas War

To liberal Jews devastated by scenes of the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust, the ensuing weeks have shattered illusions of solidarity, says Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and director of the Anti-Defamation League. College students and faculty, as well as local chapters of Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Socialists of America, have justified or even celebrated Hamas’s actions, while many others have emphasized the Palestinians’ plight and criticism of Israel over sympathy for the victims of the terrorist attacks.

“It has been an incredibly clarifying and terrifying moment at the same time for many progressive Jews,” Greenblatt said. “They’re calling me, tweeting, messaging, expressing shock and sadness that the people they marched with, the causes they marched for, have abandoned them in their hour of need.”

What left-leaning Jews Jews need to understand that the antisemitism they are seeing is partly but not solely ideological. While some Jews have drunk the far-left Kool-Aid, American Jews are an overall moderating influence on the left and the Democratic Party. In 2020, for example, Jewish Democrats supported Bernie Sanders at the lowest rate of just about any demographic, around 10%.

Jews were once much more drawn to the far left, but those days are gone—because Jews (and of course I’m generalizing here) thrive in meritocracy, because Jews are grateful to be Americans and see the US as a force for good in the world, because Jews can’t accept ideologically driven binaries that make Jews, in Israel and otherwise, into the inherent aggressors and because such binaries are secularized products of god/devil theology that is not part of Judaism, because societal instability is almost always bad for Jews, and because Jews are well-represented in the establishment that the far left wants to tear down.

So rather than try to extinguish antisemitism in their ranks, many on the far left want to fan it, to drive Jews out, so they can be replaced by Kendi-ites. The fact that Jews are repelled by antisemitism spewing from the far left is not a bug but a feature. It’s not a coincidence, for a while, that everyone of the “antiracist heroes” in Kendi and Reynolds’ Stamped: A Remix has a history of making antisemitic comments.

It might be possible to change people’s minds about ideology. But given that the far left thinks that the quest for political power runs through tossing all but the most extremist Jews from the movement, Jews need to understand that they are facing an implacable enemy, not the sincere but misguided. Once they recognize that, those who thought these folks were their “allies” should start to consider what else they got wrong…

I GUESS SOME PEOPLE DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW RIDUCLOUS THEY SOUND:

Well, we certainly don’t want “violence and extremism” to break out among Palestinians. That might lead to decades of terrorist violence, and the rejection of peace offers. Oh, wait.

THERE ARE STILL POCKETS OF SANITY IN THE ACADEMY: My law school is one of them. Law Professors Protest University’s Silence on Genocidal SJP Rally.

A few of my colleagues declined to sign because they thought the letter should focus on calling for the university to adopt the Kalven Report, which advises universities not to take official position on issues of public import. I agree that my university, and other secular universities should adopt this principle. But so long as they do not, I think it’s appropriate to call them out when they comment on certain things, even when they have nothing directly to do with the university, but stay silent on others, even when they occur at the university.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE FAR LEFT:

When conservatives were being canceled over ‘micro-aggressions.’

When genocidal antisemites supporting Hamas get canceled now.

THIS IS CALLED “REAPING WHAT YOU SOW”: And the hypocrisy charge is obvious projection.

I’LL TAKE A HEADLINE YOU WON’T SEE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES FOR $1,000, ALEX: What is, “Palestinian terrorists bomb own hospital, lie and blame Israel.”

U. PENN FACULTY SENATE CHAIRS TO BIG DONORS: Go fuck yourselves. For all the talk of academic freedom, Penn is number 227 out of 228 on FIRE’s academic freedom rankings. It is, shall we say, interesting how many academics have suddenly discovered the virtues of academic freedom, institutional neutrality on political issues, and opposition to cancel culture only when the question is whether it’s okay or even admirable to slaughter hundreds of Jews.

OUR ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS HAVE BECOME DERANGED: Quoting Chris Rufo: “A group of prominent academics have signed a letter justifying violent struggle against Israel, including: Adhy Kim (Harvard), RH Lossin (Harvard), Eman Abdelhadi (UChicago), Sophie Lewis (Penn), Marty Cain (Cornell), Maz Do (Cornell), Addie Tsai (William & Mary), Aaron Aceves (UT), Joshua Nguyen (Tufts). Our academic institutions have been deranged.”

Deranged is putting it mildly. If you read this letter, you will have a hard time believing anyone sane signed it. Maybe no sane person did. It’s far worse than any of the pro-Hamas student letter I’ve seen, and that’s saying something.

UPDATE: Just to give you a flavor. Here’s the entirety of how the letter describes the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel: “the resistance bulldozed part of the fence around Gaza and some Gazans set foot outside the boundaries of their besiegement for a moment.”

SELECTIVE LAW ENFORCEMENT: Below is a picture that a friend forwarded to me from a Students for Justice in Palestine rally at my university’s Fairfax campus. The organizers advised students to wear face coverings to hide their identities.

Like many states, Virginia has a law, aimed at hate groups like the KKK (and, for that matter, SJP), prohibiting the wearing of face coverings in public, except for theatrical or medical reasons or during a state of health emergency (which does not currently exist in Virginia): “It shall be unlawful for any person over 16 years of age to, with the intent to conceal his identity, wear any mask, hood or other device whereby a substantial portion of the face is hidden or covered so as to conceal the identity of the wearer, to be or appear in any public place, or upon any private property in this Commonwealth without first having obtained from the owner or tenant thereof consent to do so in writing.” Virginia statutes § 18.2-422.

Are such laws a good idea? Are they constitutional? I am ambivalent on both counts. There is significant value in allowing for anonymous protest, and also significant value in not allowing masked hate groups to intimidate others and potentially cover up criminal behavior by masking their identities in public.

Regardless of my views, however, the law is on the books, creates a felony, and the police should not get to pick and choose which laws they enforce and against whom. I know from my friend that several people called the George Mason University police in advance to inform them that a masked rally was scheduled to occur, that wearing a mask at such a rally is a felony, and that they want the police not to arrest the students or quash the rally, but only to require them comply with the law and not wear masks. Obviously, the police did nothing, apparently telling people that since the rally was peaceful, they weren’t going to interfere. Surely, however, if a KKK or neo-Nazi rally was taking place on campus, no matter how “peaceful,” the police would have enforced the law. That’s what’s known as selective enforcement, and it’s a real problem.

If you are interested, GMU has a form to complain about police misbehavior. And the phone number of the state AG’s office, run by a sound AG is 804-786-2071.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Eagerly awaiting the “Klansmen for Palestine” march on the GMU campus.

“THEY” SEEM LIKE A DANGER TO OTHERS AND PERHAPS “THEMSELVES”:UC DAVIS professor threatens “Zionist” journalists and their kids. This is crazy and serious enough to warrant a police investigation. Meanwhile, how did someone get a tenure-track job at a prestigious state university who says that “their” scholarly focus is “on the interplay between sound, race, gender, and embodiment.” They must’ve written a heckuva DEI statement.

IT’s NOT JUST HARVARD: Defense of Hamas Brutality By University of Michigan Law Student Organizations. For the uninitiated, Michigan is considered one of the top ten law schools in the country.

ONE THING THE MEDIA HOPES YOU WILL FORGET, AND ONE THING THEY NEVER REPORTED: They hope you will forget that Hamas still holds around 200 people, including babies, children, women, and the elderly, hostage. They have never reported, except in Israeli media, that 300,000 Israelis living near the conflict zones in Gaza and south Lebanon have been displaced and are living in temporary locations all over Israel.

IN OTHER NEWS, HUNDREDS OF THOUSAND OF ARABS KILLED IN ONGOING YEMEN CIVIL WAR, FOUR MILLION DISPLACED: Various news report suggest 150,00 killed directly, 300,000 indirectly by disease, famine, etc. brought about by war, and four million refugees.

As with Assad’s brutal war in Syria a few years back, the “Arab Street” has been almost entirely silent about this. Apparently, deaths from war only become meaningful when you can hold Israel responsible, whether it’s true or not, and regardless of who started the hostilities.

Why would that be? The most obvious answer is the most logical one. The “Arab Street” cares little about the welfare of Palestinians, or of other Arabs more generally. They just hate Israel, because Israel is run by Jews, and their religion, history, and culture tell them that Jews are supposed to be dominated by Arabs and Muslims, and it’s humiliating when instead the Jews turn out to be more powerful than their Arab enemies.

And of course leftists don’t care either, because Arab victims don’t interest them unless some Western-oriented country can be blamed.

UPDATE: If you’re interested in the latest on the Yemen situation, check out StrategyPage.

YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP: Huff Post spreads misinformation, then changes headline on story to make it about the spread of disinformation. Hat tip: Jon Sutz.

WE HAVED RAISED A GENERATION FILLED WITH IMBECILES:

FREEDOM OF SPEECH FOR GENOCIDAL HAMASNIKS, BUT NOT FOR THESE:

Shot: [Harvard President] Gay added that Harvard “rejects the harassment or intimidation of individuals based on their beliefs” and “embraces a commitment to free expression. “That commitment extends even to views that many of us find objectionable, even outrageous. We do not punish or sanction people for expressing such view. But that is a far cry from endorsing them.”

Chaser: Despite Harvard’s reputation for excellent scholarship, the university has consistently failed to meet standards in one area: free speech.

According to FIRE’s 2024 College Free Speech Rankings, Harvard University ranked dead last at 248 out of 248 institutions. Students reported their discomfort expressing ideas, lack of confidence in the administration’s support for speech, and acceptance of students shouting down speakers.

A SMALL DISSENT ON “PROGRESSIVE” REPLACING LIBERAL: I was a college student in the Boston area from 1985-1988. At my school, the lefty activists did not have the standard liberal-moderate-conservative understanding of politics. Rather, they called themselves, stationed on the far left, “progressive”; liberals and moderates were “conservative”; and conservatives were “reactionaries.”

In this environment, Gov. Michael Dukakis chose to call himself a “progressive” rather than a “liberal,” to station himself, at least rhetorically, on the far left of his party. When he ran for president, however, the media consistently reported along the lines of “Dukakis calls himself a progressive, not a liberal, to try to appear more moderate to voters.” The truth, as noted, was the opposite, but it served Dukakis’ political prospects as he wrapped up the Democratic nomination, so he went with it.

Thus, the media took the term “progressive,” meant to convey leftist radicalism, and turned it into a more palatable, more moderate version of liberal. But the activist “progressive” left always understood their agenda to be stripping the American left of its vestiges of classical liberalism–free speech, some respect for property rights, belief in color-blindness–in favor of a totally illiberal agenda.

ANTISEMITISM IS/AS A POLITICAL STRATEGY: I’m planning to elaborate on this further, hopefully soon, but briefly more antisemitism goes beyond ordinary religious or ethnic hatred in that it manifests itself so often as a political tool. In the university context, it does two things. First, it allows “intersectional” groups that base their identities on victimhood that would otherwise be at odds with each to ally. How do you get feminist and LGBTetc groups to ally with Islamists? Shared hostility to Jews. Second, how do you overthrow the mainstream, white-dominated squishy liberal establishment that has run universities since the 1960s in favor of the hard-left? Well, secular establishment Jews largely replaced establishment Protestants as the heart of the university establishment–recently, eight of eight Ivy League presidents were Jews. By “excluding Jews from progressive spaces,” as liberal campus Jews now frequently complain about, you ensure that all the roles Jews have played in the university hierarchy will be replaced by the hard-left coalition, among whom Jews radical enough to be allowed to join are a small minority. My namesake David Bernstein’s book Woke Antisemitism is very good on the subject of how woke ideology fosters and foments antisemitism (buy it!) But I think even David wildly underestimates how much of this antisemitism is not merely a natural outgrowth of wokeism, but part of its political strategy. You can’t make an omelet (overthrowing the mainstream liberal establishment) without breaking a few eggs, and Jews are among the eggs.