THE POWAY SYNAGOGUE MURDERER ALSO MADE CRAZY CLAIMS OF JEWS ENGAGING IN GENOCIDE: Williams College Students: Why we opposed WIFI [Williams Initiative For Israel]: Challenging WIFI’s complicity in state violence.

There are few nuttier claims out there than the allegation that Israel, with one of the strongest militaries in a world, that could easily wipe out tens of thousands a in few hours, is engaging in genocide against an ever growing Palestinian population that has never suffered anything like tens of thousands of deaths, even over the course of a decades-long conflict with Israel. In the bloodiest years of Palestinian-Israeli conflict since the 1948 partition, 2000-2014, which included the Second Intifada and two wars in Gaza, a grand total of around seven thousand Palestinians were killed (and over 1,000 Israelis), mostly terrorists on the Palestinian side, mostly civilians on the Israeli side.

Nevertheless, the Williams students in question–Yousef Al-Amassi, Joseph Moore, Omar Kawam, Jesus Payan, Soban Mehmood, Kai Soto-Dessen, Mohazzab Abdullah, Ted McNally, Max Wu, Eliza Klein, and Seynabou Diop, for the record–double and triple down on the allegation of genocide, putting them in the intellectual company of the Poway murderer, who complained of Jews’ alleged propensity for “genocidal” behavior.

I’m guessing, perhaps charitably, that these students have no idea that are mimicking centuries of antisemitic blood libels against Jews, including among those from contemporary violent white nationalists. But with Yom HaShoah just ending, someone ought to let them know.

WILLIAMS COLLEGE HAS A “STUDENTS FOR JUSTICE IN PALESTINE” BUT: CC [Student Council] rejects Williams Initiative for Israel. “WIFI was the first club in over a decade that complied with all CC bylaws for recognition but failed to gain RSO status, according to archived CC minutes.”

A special award for spouting nonsensical propaganda goes to Williams student Joseph Moore. Anti-Israel activists frequently claim that Israel has engaged and is engaged in “genocide” against Palestinians, despite the fact that Arabs in Israel and the contested territories  have had among the fastest population growth rates in the world for many decades straight. Moore’s response to this irrefutable retort to the charge of genocide:

“Even when you consider the fact that the Palestinian population is rising, it’s because they have a high fertility rate,” Moore said after the meeting. “Generally, populations in war zones have higher fertility rates because they don’t know if all of their children will make adulthood.”

It should be noted that the total number of Palestinians who have been killed in clashes with Israeli forces since 1967 is somewhere in the high four figures, mostly terrorists, amounting to maybe a week’s worth of killing from the recent Syrian civil war. If Moore doesn’t understand that a massively rising population combined with a few thousand killed during armed hostilities doesn’t add up to anything remotely like genocide, then it’s remarkable if he got into Williams. If he does understand it, then he’s just malevolent for claiming otherwise.

Relatedly some other Middle Eastern populations have in fact declined rather dramatically since Israel was established:

HERO OF THE DAY–OSCAR STEWART: From a paywalled Wall Street Journal article about yesterday’s synagogue shooting: “Mr. Stewart, 51 years old, said he shouted and charged at the shooter. ‘As he saw me, he dropped his weapon, turned and ran,” Mr. Stewart said. “He may have been trying to change a magazine, or he just panicked….’ Mr. Stewart and a Border Patrol agent who is a member of the congregation were pursuing the shooter… As the gunman got into his car, Mr. Stewart heard the agent shout for everyone to clear away…. and the agent fired five shots at the car, hitting it four times.” Every mass shooter eventually pauses to switch weapons or reload. Few have the presence of mind and guts to take advantage.

UPDATE: Some reports of the incident suggest that a female congregant, Lori Kaye, was killed when she stepped between the rabbi and the gunman to protect the rabbi, but other accounts, including the rabbis, differ. Either way, my heartfelt condolences to Ms. Kaye’s family. May her memory be for a blessing.

ANOTHER UPDATE: “Get down!” Stewart yelled, according to his wife and others who were at the scene. “You motherfucker! I’m going to kill you!” The heroic border patrol agent’s name is Jonathan Morales.

Daily Caller:

Stewart said he chased him all the way out to his car, and began pounding on it — the shooter had managed to lock himself in. When Stewart saw him reach for a rifle, he punched the side of the car as hard as he could, intending to figure out a way to drag him out of the car — that’s when a Border Patrol agent  who attends the synagogue came running out to the parking lot, yelling for Stewart to get down because he had a gun.

Stewart says this man may have saved his life, and pointed to his use of a civilian gun — he was off-duty and was apparently handed the weapon by someone else on the scene — as evidence that gun control isn’t the answer to these kinds of tragedies.

EVER NOTICE THAT STUDENTS WHO SPEND THEIR TIME ON SJW PROTESTS TEND TO BE THE STUDENTS IN NEED OF SPENDING MORE TIME ON THEIR EDUCATION?: Consider this gobbleygook from students at Williams College protesting the potential adoption of the pro-free speech Chicago Principles:

In their rebuttal, the students, who called themselves the Coalition Against Racist Education Now, or CARE, wrote that the faculty petition “prioritizes the protection of ideas over the protection of people  [because ideas come from animals? plants?] and fails to recognize that behind every idea is a person with a particular subjectivity [what?]. Our beliefs, and the consequences of our actions, are choices we make [umm, no, many consequences of our actions are unintended and unpredictable]. Any claim to the ‘protection of ideas’ that is not founded in the insurance [assurance?] of people’s safety [you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means] poses a real threat — one which targets most pointedly marginalized people. An ideology of free speech absolutism that prioritizes ideas over people [again: because ideas come from animals? plants?], giving ‘deeply offensive’ language a platform at this institution, will inevitably imperil marginalized students.”

A greater threat to these students’ future than the imagined threat from having the occasional “offensive” (read: conservative?) speaker on campus is that they are going to one of the best colleges in the United States, where tuition costs almost $57k  a year plus room and board, and yet can’t competently write and edit several sentences of argument.

PEOPLE WITH GLASS INHERITANCES SHOULDN’T THROW STONES: Roy Disney’s granddaughter thinks Bob Iger’s paycheck is ‘insane’.

Iger is rich because he creates wealth for Disney shareholders, and creates value for the public at large. Roy Disney’s granddaughter is rich ($500 million net worth!) because she’s Roy Disney’s granddaughter. I know who I think is less deserving of the money.

UPDATE: The fact that Iger, unlike the Disney granddaughter, actually worked for his money doesn’t necessarily mean that he “deserves” his full and immense salary. But it’s worth noting that since Iger took the helm at Disney in 2005, its stock has beaten the (tech-heavy!) S&P 500 by about 50%, or an extra $80 billion or so for Disney shareholders.

ILYA SOMIN SAYS NO, BUT I’M NOT SO SURE: Does Yale Law School’s Antidiscrimination Policy on Subsidies for Student Employment Discriminate on the Basis of Religion?

Here’s the thing: a neutral antidiscrimination rule that happens to impinge on religious organizations isn’t “discrimination” against religion. However, its is religious discrimination when you are enforcing or expanding such a rule because of hostility to religion (as may be the case at Yale), and being deliberately indifferent to the interests of religious people in a way that you wouldn’t be for any other group with a minoritarian perspective also would be (as may be the case at Yale). Yale hasn’t provided detailed guidance on how it’s going to apply its antidiscrimination policy and what exceptions if any will be made, so we will just have to see how it works out. Meanwhile, the Law School, like all law schools, discriminates on the basis of race in admissions, so I’m not buying the line that principled opposition to discrimination allows for no accommodations for perceived social needs.

DON’T WORRY, HE’S JUST “ANTI-ZIONIST”: New Mexico coffee shop closing after backlash to owner’s anti-Semitic rant.  “Michael Palombo, owner of V Roast Bistro, admitted to writing a since-deleted Facebook post in which he referred to Jews as ‘f–king animals that deserve everything that has happen to them and don’t deserve our sorrow for what has happen to them.'”

Then there’s this: “Palombo’s Facebook page shows that he’s not shy about his political opinions and he does have opinions about Israel. ‘I haven’t spoken out against Jews but I’ve spoken out against Israel and their occupation of Palestine,’ he said.”

It’s a remarkable coincidence how many people who hate Israel turn out to also be raging antisemites. Which is one reason why very few people who claim to be pro-Palestinian actually seem to care about the welfare of actual Palestinians, but only in using them as a propaganda tool against Israel.

NO GREATER LOVE HATH ANY MAN FOR HIS FELLOWS: Beto O’Rourke could be living the high life in El Paso, but he’s sacrificing *everything* to run for president.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): It’s easy to mock Beto — and you probably should — but in his defense, not every charitable act shows up on your tax return. One thing I do is overtip, or tip people who don’t usually get tips, because that way I know where my money’s going and it’s helping someone who’s actually trying. Yesterday while my mom was in surgery, I tipped the maid who was cleaning the waiting room. She seemed surprised and at first didn’t want to take it, but I told her that what she did was important. My only regret is that I gave her a ten (it was the first bill I saw when I opened my wallet) and I wish I’d given her a twenty. And what she does is important, as anyone who’s been in a waiting room that wasn’t cleaned regularly can attest.

I especially like to tip cleaning people because one complaint a lot of them have is that people act like they’re invisible. Even when I don’t tip them I always try to smile and say hello, and if the circumstances are right to thank them for their work.

“ANTI-ZIONISM” REVEALS ITS TRUE FACE AGAIN (LINK FIXED): Open antisemitism at Duke/UNC conference.

So I tend to be a skeptical of videos like this, which take hours of interviews and splice them down to a few minutes. But with that caveat, this looks very, very bad.

IF THIS SORT OF RHETORIC DOESN’T GIVE YOU CHILLS, YOU DIDN’T PAY ATTENTION IN YOUR “MODERN WORLD HISTORY” CLASS (OR YOU HAD A COMMIE TEACHER):

THEY SHOULD LEAVE IDENTITY POLITICS TO THE DEMOCRATS: Over at Volokh, I argue that Republican Senators are Skating Awfully Close to White Christian Identity Politics.

TASKRABBIT “HAPPINESS PLEDGE?”: Readers may recall that I had a negative experience with TaskRabbit. A “Tasker” broke my treadmill, and TR declined to pay for its repair or replacement. I thought about filing a small claims court action, but a friend suggested I file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, and try to resolve it informally. So I did. TR responded:

TaskRabbit offers the TaskRabbit Happiness Pledge (pledge.tr.co) as a customer service offering to encourage continued use of the TaskRabbit Platform in the event that a user may have a negative experience. In this particular instance, TaskRabbit provided the Client with a resolution that was in line with our Happiness Pledge (pledge.tr.co), and the Client agreed to accept the offer. He later chose to retract his acceptance, and we are sorry that he did not want to move forward with the process. 

Let’s see. I didn’t “retract my acceptance.” I reluctantly agreed to a proposed resolution, until TR sent me the actual agreement to sign, and I discovered that (a) TR wasn’t actually agreeing that my treadmill would be repaired or replaced; and (b) the agreement had a severe “gag” clause that prohibited me from telling anyone about my negative experience with TR. Does TR understand that one can’t really “agree” to a settlement until one sees the actual, exact terms of the settlement? In any event, caveat emptor.

WHICH IS WHY THE LEFT SEEKS TO DESTROY IT: Good News, AIPAC Remains Bipartisan.

Readers have likely heard of O’Sullivan’s Law: “any organization or enterprise that is not expressly right wing will become left wing over time.” The corollary is that the left seeks to destroy the unusual organization that successfully resists this evolution. The left is going after AIPAC precisely because it cooperates with Republicans and Democrats, and because it cooperates with the Israeli government whether its led by the left or the right. In fact, if anything, to maintain bipartisanship AIPAC has to bend over backwards to placate Democrats, given that the Republican Party is far more instinctively pro-Israel these days than are the Democrats.

The felt need to destroy AIPAC is why JStreet exists; JStreet claims to be pro-Israel, but it will cooperate far more readily with those who want Israel destroyed than with pro-Israel forces to its right. It’s also why MoveOn is going after AIPAC, and so on. I have my own issues with AIPAC, but the constant refrain on the left that AIPAC is “right-wing” in fact should be translated to “it’s not left-wing, and anything not left-wing is implicitly right-wing and must be destroyed.”

PHARAOH’S GREEN NEW DEAL: With Passover coming up next month, it’s time to reflect on whether Pharaoh gets a bad rap. After all, no fossil fuels were used in building the pyramids with Hebrew labor. Indeed, when Pharoah withheld straw from the Hebrew slaves (according to rabbinic commentaries), he was preserving natural resources! And he surely took measures, though perhaps a bit extreme, to limit the Hebrews’ population growth.

I’M SHOCKED, SHOCKED, THAT LINDA SARSOUR IS A TOTAL HYPOCRITE: But that’s different because Jews.

REMEMBER, THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT THE PALESTINIANS, THEY JUST HATE ISRAEL: There have been street protests against Hamas in Gaza for the last several days. How many “pro-Palestinian” activists are out there protesting on behalf of those fed up with with Hamas’s disastrous, dictatorial rule? “None” is a reasonable approximation.

NOT QUITE FRAZIER-ALI, BUT THIS IS WHAT ACADEMICS DO FOR FUN: Senator Josh Hawley and I Debate “Substantive Due Process”

AND THEN HE ANNOUNCED HE WAS RUNNING FOR THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINATION FOR PRESIDENT: Vermont town swears in goat as new mayor — who immediately defecates.

Insert your “at least the goat isn’t totally full of ____” joke here.

IF I WERE ADVISING ELIZABETH WARREN, I’D ADVISE HER TO KEEP HER MOUTH SHUT ABOUT CRITICIZING *OTHERS* FOR USING PHONY CREDENTIALS TO ADVANCE THEMSELVES IN THE ACADEMY: Sen. Elizabeth Warren says she has ‘zero’ sympathy for parents caught in college admissions scam.

WHY IS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY SUCH A CESSPIT OF RACISM? Sanders’s deputy press secretary apologizes for questioning American Jews’ ‘dual allegiance’ to Israel.

While Jews have rightly been worrying about antisemitism from “white nationalists,” who are a small group but are prone to deadly violence, they shouldn’t be entirely preoccupied with them. It’s worth keeping in mind that the two most antisemitic demographic groups in the U.S. are Muslims (I can’t find data separating U.S.-born and immigrant Muslims, but antisemitism is almost certainly much higher among immigrants) and Hispanic immigrants. Ilhan Omar is the former, Sanders’ deputy press secretary the latter.

That’s not to impugn either of these groups, as I know many lovely people from both of them, a majority aren’t antisemitic, and assimilation will reduce the rates significantly, as a vast gap in rates of antisemitism between U.S. and foreign-born Hispanics shows. But meanwhile, we shouldn’t be shocked if views that are at least unremarkable in certain strong Democratic constituencies are repeated unashamedly in public. And the least the Democratic Party could do is make clear they are unacceptable, as opposed to hedging as the Democrats did with Omar.

UPDATE: As several people have noted to me, the purported apology wasn’t actually an apology: “In a conversation on Facebook, I used some language that I see now was insensitive. Issues of allegiance and loyalty to one’s country come with painful history.” And what white nationalist violence? Have you already forgotten Pittsburgh?

IF YOU THINK FACEBOOK HAS TOO MUCH POWER, WAIT TILL YOU SEE WHAT PRESIDENT WARREN DOES WITH THE FBI, CIA, AND NSA AT HER COMMAND:

BECAUSE OF INTERSECTIONALISM, PROMOTING RACISM AGAINST JEWS DOESN’T COUNT: The ACLU’s Shameful Role in Promoting Antisemitism.

“By spreading the false meme that no-boycott certifications amount to not just loyalty oaths, but loyalty oaths to a foreign government the ACLU has spread the canard that the pro-Israel (read, overwhelmingly Jewish) organizations and their members want to use the force of the state to require everyone to be “loyal” to Israel.”

(MOVED TO TOP to note that two days after this post first appeared, the Times’s story is still up, without even a correction posted. “Fake news,” anyone?)

NEW YORK TIMES EXPOSE ON AIPAC RELIES ON “AIPAC ACTIVIST” WHO HASN’T BEEN A MEMBER OF AIPAC FOR SEVERAL YEARS: You can’t make this stuff up.

Fiske’s role as the chairman of a pro-Israel political action committee — unaffiliated with AIPAC, which is not a PAC — was the centerpiece of The Times article…. AIPAC would not comment for the story, but I heard from insiders that Fiske has not been associated with the lobby for five years. In a telephone interview Fiske, a South Florida realtor, told me it was more like three or four years, but confirmed that he is no longer a member.

Read the whole thing.

THE CHUTZPAH OF THE ADL’S JONATHAN GREENBLATT: Twitter: “Those who truly care about the Jewish community shouldn’t politicize #antiSemitism.”

The ADL under former and long-time president Abe Foxman was liberal-leaning, but overall was a reasonably fair and nonpartisan broker in antisemitism controversies.

Former Obama staffer Greenblatt, who had no prior experience in Jewish communal work, has spent the last several years making the ADL more and more partisan, culminating in early 2017, when various ADL officials publicly blamed Trump for bomb threats to Jewish institutions that turned out to have nothing to do with him or his supporters. To my knowledge, no one at the ADL was fired or otherwise disciplined for this remarkable display of partisan bias that undermined the organization’s credibility.

The ADL also exaggerated its antisemitism stats last year to create a false impression of a massive increase in antisemitic incidents under Trump, in particular by including the bomb threats in its tally even though it knew by then that they were not antisemitic in origin.

Greenblatt is nevertheless right that we shouldn’t politicize antisemitism. But to suddenly announce that conclusion when Democrats are under fire, after wildly politicizing antisemitism in opposition to Trump, takes some chutzpah.

DEMOCRATS FAIL THE TOLERANCE TEST: Josh Krasuhaar: Make no mistake: Omar and her progressive allies won this battle. 

With any luck, this will turn out as well for the Democrats as the McGovern campaign.