Jessica Seinfeld, wife of Jerry Seinfeld, just donated $5,000 (more than anyone else) to the GoFundMe of the pro-Israel UCLA rally. At this rally, participants yelled “I hope they rape you” & spat on and used the N-word towards pro-Palestinian students. pic.twitter.com/74G7QG5SVR
thedailybeast | Jessica Seinfeld, cookbook author and wife to comedian Jerry Seinfeld, is funding a pro-Israel counterprotest at UCLA—where violence broke out Tuesday night after a mob attacked demonstrators inside a pro-Palestine encampment.
A GoFundMe for the effort, which Seinfeld promoted in an Instagram story this week after contributing at least $5,000,
has since made the majority of its donations anonymous. The fundraising
page has raised more than $93,000 as of Wednesday and also changed its
organizer name and description since launching over the weekend.
The Daily Beast left messages for reps for the Seinfelds.
“I
just gave to this GoFundMe to support more allies like yesterday’s at
UCLA,” Seinfeld wrote this week. “More cities are being planned so
please give what you can. Donations are annonymous [sic]. We will continue to share our light and love, as proud American Jews.”
It’s
unclear whether Seinfeld coordinated with the GoFundMe to make
donations anonymous after they’d been public earlier in the week. Nor is
it clear whether supporters or organizers of this fundraiser were among
the 100 or so counterprotesters, some wearing masks, who ripped down
barricades or tossed objects including fireworks into the camp opposing Israel’s war on Gaza.
Still, it hasn’t stopped X users from roasting Seinfeld.
One observer, who shared video of a mob violently attacking the encampment, wrote, “Jessica Seinfeld must be elated seeing her 5k donation come to fruition.”
A University of California president parody account posted
that campus cops were “ready to step in and continue the assault once
the counterprotesters tuckered out but Jessica Seinfeld’s Zelle payments
kept their fighting spirits high into the wee hours!”
Other
celebrities—including actors Melissa Barrera and John Cusack—have
shared footage on social media of Israel supporters ambushing the UCLA
protest camp.
Billionaire hedge-funder Bill Ackman
has taken to X to repost UCLA protest footage, including one account
claiming a Jewish woman was beaten during a confrontation, and donated
$10,000 to a separate GoFundMe financing a similar video-based effort to
be held at the George Washington University.
Despite the chaos,
police and campus security didn’t intervene as the counterprotesters
moved in around 11 p.m., according to eyewitness accounts from
journalists on scene.
UCLA’s student-run newspaper, the Daily Bruin,
revealed that a counterprotester with a megaphone shouted, “If they can
be there, so can we. You guys are going to want to get this. This is
history being made.”
Biden, at today's Holocaust Remembrance Ceremony, denounces the "anti-Semitic" student protests in his strongest terms yet. He recalls there were also "anti-Semitic demonstrations" and "organized riots" in Nazi Germany. He proclaims that his defense of Israel will be "iron-clad" pic.twitter.com/NWIGqTwoEp
NYTimes | President Biden on Tuesday condemned a “ferocious surge of antisemitism” in the United States following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack against Israel and said people were already forgetting the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
Speaking at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Days of Remembrance, Mr. Biden tied the anti-Jewish sentiment that led to the Nazi effort to exterminate Jews directly to Oct. 7.
“This ancient hatred of Jews didn’t begin with the Holocaust,” he said. “It didn’t end with the Holocaust, either.”
For Mr. Biden, a self-described Zionist, the speech was a clear assertion of his support for Jewish Americans as he struggles to balance his support for Israel with increasingly forceful calls for the protection of civilians in Gaza.
Mr. Biden’s address also comes as protests against Israel’s war in Gaza roil college campuses, with students demanding that the Biden administration stop sending weapons to Israel. In some cases, the demonstrations have included antisemitic rhetoric and harassment targeting Jewish students.
“I understand people have strong beliefs and deep convictions about the world,” the president said. But, he added, “there is no place on any campus in America, any place in America, for antisemitism or hate speech or threats of violence of any kind.”
Sign up for the Israel-Hamas War Briefing. The latest news about the conflict. Get it sent to your inbox. Mr. Biden also denounced attempts to minimize the Hamas attacks, which killed 1,200 people in Israel and sparked a war that has killed an estimated 34,000 people in Gaza.
“Now here we are, not 75 years later, but just seven and half months later, and people are already forgetting,” Mr. Biden said. “They are already forgetting. That Hamas unleashed this terror. It was Hamas that brutalized Israelis. It was Hamas who took and continues to hold hostages.
“I have not forgotten, nor have you,” he told the crowd of more than 100, including Holocaust survivors. “And we will not forget.”
Since the outset of the war, Mr. Biden has faced criticism from Arab Americans and Palestinians who have said they don’t hear Mr. Biden talk about the plight of their people with the same empathy and emotion that he uses to describe Israel and the Jewish people.
Our politics reporters. Times journalists are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. That includes participating in rallies and donating money to a candidate or cause.
Learn more about our process. The leader of the World Food Program has said that parts of Gaza are experiencing a “full-blown famine,” in part because of Israel blocking humanitarian aid.
Jewish groups have been pressuring the administration to take firmer policy steps to combat antisemitism on college campuses, in particular. On Tuesday, the Biden administration fulfilled some of those requests.
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights released new guidance to every school and college outlining examples of antisemitic discrimination, as well as other forms of hate, that could lead to investigations for violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
The law prohibits discrimination based on race, color and national origin, and the department has interpreted it as extending to Jewish students. Since the Oct. 7 attack, the department has opened more than 100 investigations into complaints about antisemitism and other forms of discrimination. The administration also announced that the Department of Homeland Security would also offer new resources, including an online campus safety resource guide.
Nathan Diament, executive director for public policy for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, one of the groups that has been lobbying the administration for more measures for weeks, said that the Jewish community “need them implemented rapidly and aggressively.”
“President Biden’s speech today was an important statement of moral clarity at a time when too many people seem to be morally confused,” Mr. Diament said. “Just as important as the president’s words today is the announcement that his administration is taking more steps to counter the surge of antisemitism in the U.S.”
The president promised that his commitment to the security of Israel “and its right to exist as an independent Jewish state is ironclad. Even when we disagree,” a reference to the arguments his administration has had with Israel’s right-wing government about the toll the war is taking in Gaza. The speech came against the backdrop of Israel’s plans to move forward with a ground operation in Rafah, which Mr. Biden opposes. More than 1 million Palestinians are sheltering in Rafah.
Mr. Biden made a tacit acknowledgment during his speech that the pro-Palestinian cause has resonated with other minority groups with histories of violence and oppression.
“We must give hate no safe harbor against anyone — anyone,” Mr. Biden said in his speech, adding that Jewish people helped lead civil rights causes throughout history.
“From that experience,” he added, “we know scapegoating and demonizing any minority is a threat to every minority and the very foundation of our democracy.”
Billionaire Zionist @sherylsandberg is confronted with a @TheGrayzoneNews takedown of the report she cites to bolster the narrative of her propaganda doc alleging mass r*pe by Hamas on Oct 7
Sandberg tacitly admits that she interviewed zero survivors, claiming without evidence… pic.twitter.com/Xa7W840QOJ
NYTimes | There is a scene in “Screams Before Silence,”
the harrowing documentary about the rape and mutilation of Israeli
women on Oct. 7, that I can’t get out of my head. It’s an interview that
the former Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, the
documentary’s presenter, conducted with Ayelet Levy Sachar, the mother
of 19-year-old Naama Levy, whose kidnapping that morning was filmed by
Hamas. The sight of her pajama bottoms, drenched in blood at the back,
was one of the earliest indications that sexual brutality was part of
Hamas’s playbook.
“They’re grabbing
her by the hair, and she’s all, like, messed up and like, and I’m
thinking of her hair, and like, in my mind I’m stroking her hair, like
I’m always doing,” Levy Sachar said of the video of her daughter’s
kidnapping. “We would like to think that this couldn’t be possible. That
nobody would harm a young girl. But then you just see it there.”
To
have a child seized, savaged and paraded this way goes beyond a
parent’s worst nightmare. Here it is compounded by an additional horror:
the combination of indifference and outright denial with which much of the world has treated these sexual atrocities.
Why?
“People are so polarized that they want every fact to fit into a
narrative, and if their narrative is resistance, then sexual violence
doesn’t fit into that narrative,” Sandberg told me when I met her in New
York last Thursday, hours before the documentary’s premiere at The
Times Center. “You can believe that Gaza is happening because Israel has
no choice; you can believe that Gaza is happening because Israel wants
to kill babies. You can hold either one of those thoughts. And you
should also be able to hold the thought that sexual violence is
unacceptable, no matter what.”
To watch “Screams
Before Silence” is to be disabused of any lingering doubts about what
Hamas did. The personal testimonies of victims, survivors and witnesses
are clear and overpowering, as is the photographic evidence Sandberg was
shown of mutilated corpses. And some of them have scarcely been heard
about outside Israel.
Sign up for the Israel-Hamas War Briefing. The latest news about the conflict.
There
is Tali Binner, a partygoer at the Nova music festival who hid in a
small camper as other women were raped outside: “I heard a girl that
started to yell for a long time. It was like, ‘Please don’t. No, no,
stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. No. No. No’. It was like, she was asking someone
to stop. What can they stop? Someone is abusing her. Someone touching
her. Someone is doing something.”
There
is Raz Cohen, who witnessed a rape as he hid with a friend in the
brush: “Shoham, who was next to me, said, ‘He’s stabbing her. He’s
slaughtering her,’ or something like that, and I didn’t want to look.”
Cohen added, in Hebrew: “When I looked again, she was already dead, and
he was still at it. He was still raping her after he had slaughtered
her.”
There is Rami Davidian, who
rushed to help people at the Nova site: “I saw girls tied up with their
hands behind them to every tree here. Someone murdered them, raped them
and abused them, here on these trees. Their legs were spread. Everyone
who sees this knows right away that the girls were abused. Someone
stripped them. Someone raped them. They inserted all kinds of things
into their intimate organs, like wooden boards, iron rods. Over 30 girls
were murdered and raped here.”
There is Amit Soussana,
who was kidnapped to Gaza for 55 days and raped by her captor when she
was trying to bathe: “He came toward me and just pointed a gun really
hard at my forehead, screaming at me, ‘Take it off. Take it off,’ and
punching me until I could not hold the towel anymore. And he started
touching me, and I resisted, and then he dragged me to the bedroom. And
then he forced me to commit a sexual act on him.”
americanconservative | ong after the current administration passes from
the scene, President Joseph R. Biden and Secretary of State Antony
Blinken will be remembered not for their bumbling, embarrassing encounters with the Chinese, nor for their steadfast refusal
to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the Russians, which set off a
disastrous war that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.
Instead, they will likely be remembered as the abettors of Israel’s
transformation of Gaza into an abattoir, and will leave a legacy as bloodstained as Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s.
But, to be fair, Nixon and Kissinger knew which country was theirs;
they understood that the United States and Israel have distinct and vastly different interests. Indeed, it is little remembered today that as Secretary of State, Kissinger once ordered a reassessment of this so-called “special relationship.”
Lacking the sheen of Kissinger’s not inconsiderable wit and
intellect, Tony Blinken, a protege of Marty Peretz, erstwhile publisher
of the New Republic and an ideological Zionist, may one day be remembered as his generation’s Robert McNamara: a bland bureaucrat carrying out the obscene orders of his commander-in-chief.
As if more were needed to bolster such a judgment, this week, after
acknowledging that five Israeli military units had engaged in gross
human rights abuses, the Biden administration signaled it will not apply
the Leahy Law—which
prohibits aid to militaries that have committed human rights abuses—to
Israel. It would be hard to improve upon the following headline from the
Hill: “US finds Israeli military units violated human rights; withholds consequences.”
In an incredible performance this Monday at Foggy Bottom, the State Department spokesman Vedant Patel (yet anotherforeign-born bureaucrat who clearly knows little about the country he is paid to represent) ran cover for the Israelis once again, claiming that the IDF was now in line with Leahy and all is well.
Yet, given Israel’s widespread, heavily documented crimes, including the deployment of AI systems such as Lavender AIsystematically
to terrorize the Palestinian population, the application of Leahy would
seem a mere slap on the wrist. Yet Blinken and Biden have deemed even
symbolic measures of disapproval of Israel’s rampage as too great a
burden on Tel Aviv.
If Blinken and Biden were serious about stopping the carnage, they
could have applied section 6201 of the Foreign Assistance Act, which
prohibits security assistance to countries blocking humanitarian aid. In
late March, a group of Democratic senators and congressmen called on the administration to do just that, writing, in a letter to the President,
Federal law is clear, and, given the urgency of the crisis in Gaza,
and the repeated refusal of Prime Minister Netanyahu to address U.S.
concerns on this issue, immediate action is necessary to secure a change
in policy by his government.
If Biden and Blinken were serious, they would have applied Leahy and enforced the terms of the Arms Control Export Act, the U.S. War Crimes Act and the Genocide Convention Implementation Act;
if they were serious, they would have supported South Africa’s case
against Israel in the International Court of Justice; if they were
serious, they would not have instructed UN Ambassador Linda
Thomas-Greenfield repeatedly to veto
measures in the UN Security Council calling for a ceasefire; if they
were serious, they would call for the International Criminal Court to
issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and others.
AP | The House passed legislation Wednesday that would establish a broader
definition of antisemitism for the Department of Education to enforce
anti-discrimination laws, the latest response from lawmakers to a
nationwide student protest movement over the Israel-Hamas war.
The proposal, which passed 320-91 with some bipartisan support, would codify the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism
in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a federal
anti-discrimination law that bars discrimination based on shared
ancestry, ethnic characteristics or national origin. It now goes to the
Senate where its fate is uncertain.
Action on the bill was just
the latest reverberation in Congress from the protest movement that has
swept university campuses. Republicans in Congress have denounced the
protests and demanded action to stop them, thrusting university
officials into the center of the charged political debate over Israel’s
conduct of the war in Gaza. More than 33,000 Palestinians have been
killed since the war was launched in October, after Hamas staged a
deadly terrorist attack against Israeli civilians.
If passed by the Senate and signed into law, the bill would broaden
the legal definition of antisemitism to include the “targeting of the
state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity.” Critics say the
move would have a chilling effect on free speech throughout college
campuses.
“Speech that is critical of Israel alone does not constitute unlawful
discrimination,” Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said during a hearing
Tuesday. “By encompassing purely political speech about Israel into
Title VI’s ambit, the bill sweeps too broadly.”
Advocates of the proposal say it would provide a much-needed,
consistent framework for the Department of Education to police and
investigate the rising cases of discrimination and harassment targeted
toward Jewish students.
“It is long past time that Congress act to protect Jewish Americans
from the scourge of antisemitism on campuses around the country,” Rep.
Russell Fry, R-S.C., said Tuesday.
The expanded definition of
antisemitism was first adopted in 2016 by the International Holocaust
Remembrance Alliance, an intergovernmental group that includes the
United States and European Union states, and has been embraced by the
State Department under the past three presidential administrations,
including Joe Biden’s
Previous bipartisan efforts to codify it
into law have failed. But the Oct. 7 terrorist attack by Hamas militants
in Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza have reignited efforts to
target incidents of antisemitism on college campuses.
sportspolitika | On Sunday, however, the mood turned ugly when thousands of
demonstrators, including students and non-students, showed up on campus
to protest their cause. Some joined the Palestinian solidarity
encampment that was set up earlier in the week, while pro-Israeli
counter-protestors demonstrated across from the encampment.
Some
of those demonstrators reportedly broke through the metal barricades
that had been placed to separate the two factions, leading to skirmishes
between the opposing groups. One video showed groups of protesters and counter-protesters clashing, with at least one person punching someone else.
Among
the assailants was David Kaminsky, an Israeli boxer and gym owner who
was caught on camera using racial insults and spitting on protestors.
Kaminsky was further recognized by Israeli MMA fighter Haim Gozali, who expressed approval of Kaminsky’s actions in a post on Telegram. Meanwhile, Gozali himself has been garnering attention for inscribing the names of individuals he considers adversaries on artillery shells destined for Gaza. My name was among those inscribed.
The boxer holds a 6-1 professional record,
which includes three knockout victories. He has not fought since 2020,
when Clay Collard handed Kaminsky his first professional loss following a
split decision on the Gabriel Flores Jr.-Josec Ruiz undercard in Las
Vegas.
Kaminsky has shifted his attention to managing his gym in LA’s
San Fernando Valley. In the previous year, the gym gained attention when
news surfaced of rapper Blueface being stabbed during a confrontation on
the premises. Security footage suggested Kaminsky intervened, trying to
separate Blueface from the attacker, who was able to stab the rapper in
the leg before fleeing the scene with his Rottweiler.
Kaminsky
may be the only professional fighter to have been identified among the
converging protestors at UCLA, this is not the first example of combat
sports athletes attempting to intimidate peaceful demonstrators.
Neo-Nazi MMA fighter Robert Rundo and his white supremacist Rise Above Movement (RAM) were notorious for attacking protestors during tense demonstrations
in the US following Donald Trump’s election in 2016. Three years later,
a mob of MMA fighters from a gym owned by an oligarch with ties to
Vladimir Putin chased away local protestors
who opposed the building of an Orthodox church in the Russian
hinterlands. The church was being sponsored by the same oligarch who ran
the fight club.
While Kaminsky has not been seen
since being caught on camera hurling racial slurs earlier this week, the
UCLA Gaza solidarity encampment continues to face various acts of
aggression. Truthout reported
that pro-Israel protestors were “hurling fireworks at the structure and
beating demonstrators as campus security and city police stood by.”
Such inaction from UCLA and local police contrasts sharply with the
fierce crackdown on pro-Palestinian demonstrations at universities
across the US, including Columbia University in New York City, where
police arrested hundreds of students late Tuesday.
Just
before midnight, a large group of counterdemonstrators, wearing black
outfits and white masks, arrived on campus and tried to tear down the
barricades surrounding the encampment. Campers, some holding lumber and
wearing goggles and helmets, rallied to defend the encampment’s
perimeter. The violence occurred hours after the university declared
that the camp was “unlawful and violates university policy.”
Videos
showed fireworks being set off and at least one being thrown into the
camp. Over several hours, counterdemonstrators threw objects, including
wood and a metal barrier, at the camp and those inside, with fights
repeatedly breaking out. Some tried to force their way into the camp,
and the pro-Palestinian side used pepper spray to defend themselves.
A
group of security guards could be seen observing the clashes but did
not move in to stop them. Authorities cleared the area around 3 a.m.
Some
in the camp were being treated for eye irritation and other wounds. The
extent of the injuries was unclear, though The Times saw several people
who were bleeding and needed medical attention. At least one person, a
26-year-old man suffering from a head injury, was taken to the hospital
by paramedics, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.
UCLA
administrators and law enforcement are facing scrutiny from students,
professors and the broader community for not intervening faster.
“The
limited and delayed campus law enforcement response at UCLA last night
was unacceptable — and it demands answers,” Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office
said in a statement.
UCLA officials decried the violence and said
they had requested help from the Los Angeles Police Department. It is
not clear whether police made any arrests. UCLA police did not
immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
“Horrific
acts of violence occurred at the encampment tonight and we immediately
called law enforcement for mutual aid support. The fire department and
medical personnel are on the scene. We are sickened by this senseless
violence and it must end,” Mary Osako, vice chancellor for UCLA
Strategic Communications, said in a statement.
A law enforcement
source told The Times on Wednesday that the LAPD reached out to campus
police shortly after the violence broke out. They were told not to bring
in anti-riot police, but eventually UCLA agreed to accept help from the
larger police force. The discussion unfolded over several hours until
officers with the LAPD and California Highway Patrol were given the
green light to intervene around 1 a.m., the source said.
At
around 1:40 a.m., police officers in riot gear arrived, and some
counterprotesters began to leave. But the police did not immediately
break up the clashes at the camp, which continued despite the law
enforcement presence.
One representative of the camp said the
counterdemonstrators repeatedly pushed over barricades that outline the
boundaries of the encampment, and some campers said they were hit by a
substance they thought was pepper spray. As counterprotesters attempted
to pull down the wood boards surrounding the encampment, at least one
person could be heard yelling, “Second nakba,” referring to the mass
displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948
Arab-Israeli war.
Daily Bruin News Editor Catherine Hamilton said
she was sprayed with some type of irritant and repeatedly punched in
the chest and upper abdomen as she was reporting on the unrest. Another
student journalist was pushed to the ground by counterprotesters and was
beaten and kicked for nearly a minute. Hamilton was treated at a
hospital and released.
“I truly did not expect to be directly
assaulted. I know that these individuals — at least the individual who
initiated the mobilization against us — knew that we were journalists,”
she said. “And while I did not think that protected us from harassment, I
thought that might have [prevented us from being] assaulted. I was
mistaken.”
At around 3 a.m., a line of officers arrived at the
camp and pushed the remaining counterprotesters out of the quad area.
The police told people to leave or face arrest.
“What we’ve just
witnessed was the darkest day in my 32 years at UCLA,” said David Myers,
a professor of Jewish history at UCLA who is working on initiatives to
bridge differences on campus. He called the situation a “complete and
total systems failure at the university, city and state levels.”
“Why
didn’t the police, UCPD and LAPD, show up? Those in the encampment were
defenseless in the face of a violent band of thugs. And no one,
wherever they stand politically, is safer today,” Myers said.
Ananya
Roy, a professor of urban planning, social welfare and geography,
echoed concerns about the university’s lack of response when faced with a
violent counterprotest.
“It gives people impunity to come to our
campus as a rampaging mob,” she said. “The word is out they can do this
repeatedly and get away with it. I am ashamed of my university.”
slate | The ADL is arguably the most prominent organization in the country
dedicated toward countering antisemitism. It is not that the ADL has not
faced criticism
before (earlier this year, a report from the Intercept charged that the
ADL had “lobbied for counterterror legislation that singled out
Palestinians”). Nor is it the case that the ADL has never before chosen
to cooperate with law enforcement or authority over forging solidarity
with left-wing Jews. (Indeed, it did so during the Red Scare.)
Still, the group is the go-to American organization on antisemitism,
and it also played a prominent role in championing civil rights historically.
It has also been a resource for me personally: I have, over the years,
interviewed and been greatly informed by various ADL staffers, and have
turned to the organization’s research in my own writing and thinking on
antisemitism. I believe that a civil rights organization “to stop the
defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair
treatment to all,” the founding principle of the ADL, remains necessary
in this country.
But
the ADL, under the leadership of Greenblatt, is insisting on conflating
anti-Zionism and antisemitism, and it has made this conflation central
to the ADL’s work. This has not only muddied the waters of its own
antisemitism research, it has also undermined the safety, security, and
pluralism of American Jews.
For example, the ADL reportedly mapped
protests for a cease-fire led by the Jewish groups Jewish Voice for
Peace and IfNotNow as antisemitic incidents. The ADL also, in its report
on antisemitism this year, updated its methodology to include
certain anti-Israel incidents in its calculation of how much
antisemitism had risen. This not only makes it more difficult to see
what the actual year-over-year change in antisemitic incidents was—of
course an increase will seem more dramatic if you are now counting
incidents that you weren’t before—but it also arguably undermines the
rest of the ADL’s reporting on antisemitism. If the group tracking
antisemitism considers pro-Palestinian speech or differences in foreign
policy preferences to be motivated by antisemitism, how seriously will
those who disagree with the ADL on foreign policy take its calls to
tackle antisemitism?
At
least as troubling as the new research methods, though, are the
statements and posture of Greenblatt himself. Some observers thinking
that he privileges support for Israel over civil rights is not new; a
Jewish Currents story from 2021 revealed
that former ADL employees felt Greenblatt was choosing defense of
Israel over protecting civil liberties, one of the group’s stated
missions. In March of last year, the same publication published a report on internal dissent over Greenblatt comparing pro-Palestinian groups to the extreme right.
But if this had been a running undercurrent, the past six months have thrown it to the surface. In November, mere days after X boss Elon Musk called an antisemitic conspiracy “the actual truth,” Greenblatt praised Musk’s suggestion of banning the terms “from the river to the sea” and “decolonization” from the platform.
In a speech at Brown University in February, Greenblatt reiterated
that he thought anti-Zionism was antisemitism, and said he wanted to
define the terms before “activists who participate in ‘BrownU Jews for
Ceasefire Now’ start to object.” The next month, addressing the Never Is
Now Conference, Greenblatt similarly dismissed
“the editors at left-wing Jewish magazines that very few of us actually
read,” and said, “I must say, I have to share: What amazes me is that
when ADL says that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, or when the Hillel
director says that the mob chanting ‘from the river to the sea’ [is], …
journalists at major newspapers don’t listen to the victim. Instead,
they literally go looking for an alternative point of view. … You’ve all
read these paragraphs: ‘To be sure, Professor So and So says’ or ‘the
head of Jewish Voice for Peace counters …’ ”
These students and professors
and activists are also Jewish. Again, historically, the ADL has had as
its mission not only to protect Jews, but also to protect civil
liberties for Jews and all Americans; on its website today, one can
still read that the ADL stands up for
religious freedom and against discrimination. It is thus theoretically
Greenblatt’s job to defend these ostensibly little-read journalists and
Professors So and So, too, even if he disagrees with them on Israel.
Instead, he has repeatedly used his platform not to defend their right
to expression even as he disagrees with their definition of
antisemitism, but to undercut them. That isn’t just abandonment of part
of the ADL’s mandate, but an abandonment of some of the people who are
at risk of antisemitism.
In the past week, this dynamic has intensified. Speaking outside Columbia University last week, Greenblatt suggested that the National Guard may need to be called to ensure the safety of Jewish students.
NC | Today’s demonstrations are in opposition to
the Biden-Netanyahu genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. The more
underlying crisis can be boiled down to the insistence by Benjamin
Netanyahu that to criticize Israel is anti-Semitic. That is the
“enabling slur” of today’s assault on academic freedom.
By “Israel,” Biden and Netanyahu mean
specifically the right-wing Likud Party and its theocratic supporters
aiming to create “a land without a [non-Jewish] people.” They assert
that Jews owe their loyalty not to their current nationality (or
humanity) but to Israel and its policy of driving the Gaza Strip’s
millions of Palestinians into the sea by bombing them out of their
homes, hospitals and refugee camps.
The implication is that to support the
International Court of Justice’s accusations that Israel is plausibly
committing genocide is an anti-Semitic act. Supporting the UN
resolutions vetoed by the United States is anti-Semitic.
The claim is that Israel is defending
itself and that protesting the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza and
the West Bank frightens Jewish students. But research by students at
Columbia’s School of Journalism found that the complaints cited by the New York Times and other pro-Israeli media were made by non-students trying to spread the story that Israel’s violence was in self-defense.
The student violence has been by Israeli
nationals. Columbia has a student-exchange program with Israel for
students who finish their compulsory training with the Israeli Defense
Forces. It was some of these exchange students who attacked pro-Gaza
demonstrators, spraying them with Skunk, a foul-smelling indelible
Israeli army chemical weapon that marks demonstrators for subsequent
arrest, torture or assassination. The only students endangered were the
victims of this attack. Columbia under Shafik did nothing to protect or
help the victims.
The hearings to which she submitted speak
for themselves. Columbia’s president Shafik was able to avoid the first
attack on universities not sufficiently pro-Likud by having meetings
outside of the country. Yet she showed herself willing to submit to the
same brow-beating that had led her two fellow presidents to be fired,
hoping that her lawyers had prompted her to submit in a way that would
be acceptable to the committee.
I found the most demagogic attack to be
that of Republican Congressman Rick Allen from Georgia, asking Dr.
Shafik whether she was familiar with the passage in Genesis 12.3. As he
explained” “It was a covenant that God made with Abraham. And that
covenant was real clear. … ‘If you bless Israel, I will bless you. If
you curse Israel, I will curse you.’ … Do you consider that to be a
serious issue? I mean, do you want Columbia University to be cursed by
God of the Bible?”[1]
Shafik smiled and was friendly all the way through this bible thumping, and replied meekly, “Definitely not.”
She might have warded off this browbeating
question by saying, “Your question is bizarre. This is 2024, and America
is not a theocracy. And the Israel of the early 1st century
BC was not Netanyahu’s Israel of today.” She accepted all the
accusations that Allen and his fellow Congressional inquisitors threw at
her.
Her main nemesis was Elise Stefanik, Chair
of the House Republican Conference, who is on the House Armed Services
Committee, and the Committee on Education and the Workforce.
Congresswoman Stefanik: You were asked were there any anti-Jewish protests and you said ‘No’.
President Shafik: So the protest
was not labeled as an anti-Jewish protest. It was labeled as an
anti-Israeli government. But antisemitic incidents happened or
antisemitic things were said. So I just wanted to finish.
Congresswoman Stefanik: And you
are aware that in that bill, that got 377 Members out of 435 Members of
Congress, condemns ‘from the river to the sea’ as antisemitic?
Dr. Shafik: Yes, I am aware of that.
Congresswoman Stefanik: But you don’t believe ‘from the river to the sea’ is antisemitic?
Dr. Shafik: We have already issued
a statement to our community saying that language is hurtful and we
would prefer not to hear it on our campus.[2]
What an Appropriate Response to Stefanik’s Browbeating Might Have Been?
Shafik could have said, “The reason why
students are protesting is against the Israeli genocide against the
Palestinians, as the International Court of Justice has ruled, and most
of the United Nations agree. I’m proud of them for taking a moral stand
that most of the world supports but is under attack here in this room.”
Instead, Shafik seemed more willing than
the leaders of Harvard or Penn to condemn and potentially discipline
students and faculty for using the term “from the river to the sea,
Palestine will be free.” She could have said that it is absurd to say
that this is a call to eliminate Israel’s Jewish population, but is a
call to give Palestinians freedom instead of being treated as Untermenschen.
Asked explicitly whether calls for genocide
violate Columbia’s code of conduct, Dr. Shafik answered in the
affirmative — “Yes, it does.” So did the other Columbia leaders who
accompanied her at the hearing. They did not say that this is not at all
what the protests are about. Neither Shafik nor any other of the
university officials say, “Our university is proud of our students
taking an active political and social role in protesting the idea of
ethnic cleansing and outright murder of families simply to grab the land
that they live on. Standing up for that moral principle is what
education is all about, and what civilization’s all about.”
Slate |What do you mean by the “weaponization of safety”?
The language is about wanting to make Jewish students feel safe. But there isn’t that other side of the conversation, which is: Are Palestinian students feeling safe? Some students are afraid of doxing, and there aren’t conversations about that.
OK, so the school policies have changed. Are there any other ways things have changed in recent years for student activists?
I
do think that one of the things that has changed is that there are ways
universities are, for example, deactivating access cards, taking
students out of dorms, and rapidly creating material
consequences—consequences relating to housing, tuition, fees, expulsion,
etc. Those move much faster, in large part because of technology.
You can, by a click of a button, deactivate students’ cards. It’s
increased the speed at which universities can respond.
And
then, for example, with things like Twitter or TikTok now, there’s the
difference between a university president making a statement that’s
posted online, versus in the past, when that might have just been an
email or in a student newspaper.
What does that conversation occurring publicly mean for this whole dynamic?
It
allows for more scrutiny. So when colleges and universities, for
example, created statements in 2015 and 2016 about anti-Blackness and
police brutality, a lot of those statements were about standing against
hate, etc. And then in 2020, as colleges and universities were once
again creating the statements, there were student groups that brought up
the 2015, 2016 statements being like, What have you done since then? Students are able to say, “You posted about this, and we’re trying to hold you accountable to that.”
What
do you think drove schools like Columbia to take such a dramatic
disciplinary step in these cases? Do you think this situation was
specific to the Israel-Palestine conflict, or standard for any kind of
protest?
I
think colleges and universities feel like this is very complicated.
There’s less of a desire to make a stance, and colleges and universities
are wary of making statements; often, statements are 500 words or less,
and there needs to be, like, a book. So, I think that that’s part of
what makes universities nervous.
Looking
at Columbia, as an example, this is a PR nightmare for them. To arrest
students now, when there’s so much scrutiny, and then to do it in such a
cruel way—students have been talking about only having 15 minutes to
collect their belongings, that their belongings were thrown in the trash
immediately. And to do that on a scale of 100 students, and then to
double down on that, and then say that they’re doing it for safety,
doesn’t make a lot of sense. So what that tells you is that Columbia is
likely facing a lot of pressure from people who do not want students to
be protesting. To the point where they’re making what seems like a very
irrational decision.
nakedcapitalism | This measures is so far under the radar that so far, only Friedman and Matthew Petti at Reason seem to have noticed it. And Petti has pointed out that the Secretary of the Treasury can designate any organization to be “terrorist-supporting organization,” so the does not think, as Friedman seems to, that any other measures are needed to allow an Administration to try to financially cripple not-for-profits engaging in wrong speech.
Note that the messaging depicting Hamas as somehow behind the campus protests has increased:
And Aljazeera has already produced evidence of Zionist groups trying to stoke confrontations at the demonstrations (hat tip Erasmus):
Mind you, not-for-profits are already subject to mission and censorship pressures by large donors, witness the billionaires who loudly said they would halt donations to Ivy League schools if they “tolerated anti-Semitism,” as in did not quash criticism of Israel. But as you will see, this is a whole different level of censorship.
First, we are hoisting Friedman’s entire tweetstorm. She stresses that not only does this bill create a star chamber when existing laws allow for crackwdowns on terrorist supports, but that it could be easily extended to other types of establishment-threatening speech.
A bipartisan bill would give the secretary of the treasury unilateral power to classify any charity as a terrorist-supporting organization, automatically stripping away its nonprofit status….
In theory, the bill is a measure to fight terrorism financing…
Financing terrorism is already very illegal. Anyone who gives money, goods, or services to a U.S.-designated terrorist organization can be charged with a felony under the Antiterrorism Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. And those terrorist organizations are already banned from claiming tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(3) of the tax code. Nine charities have been shut down since 2001 under the law.
The new bill would allow the feds to shut down a charity without an official terrorism designation. It creates a new label called “terrorist-supporting organization” that the secretary of the treasury could slap onto nonprofits, removing their tax exempt status within 90 days. Only the secretary of the treasury could cancel that designation.
In other words, the bill’s authors believe that some charities are too dangerous to give tax exemptions to, but not dangerous enough to take to court. Although the label is supposed to apply to supporters of designated terrorist groups, nothing in the law prevents the Department of the Treasury from shutting down any 501(c)(3) nonprofit, from the Red Cross to the Reason Foundation.
Petti explains that an initial target appears to be Students for Justice in Palestine, which he says have not had enough of an attack surface to be targeted under current law; in fact, Florida governor DeSantis had to shelve a plan to shut down Students for Justice in Palestine when confronted with a lawsuit.
Petti explains that his concerns are not unwarranted:
Under the proposed bill, murky innuendo could be enough to target pro-Palestinian groups. But it likely wouldn’t stop there. After all, during the Obama administration, the IRS put aggressive extra scrutiny on nonprofit groups with “Tea Party” or “patriot” in their names. And under the Biden administration, the FBI issued a memo on the potential terrorist threat that right-wing Catholics pose.
The Charity and Security Network, a coalition of charities that operate in conflict zones, warned that its own members could be hindered from helping the neediest people in the world.
“Charitable organizations, especially those who work in settings where designated terrorist groups operate, already undergo strict internal due diligence and risk mitigation measures and…face extra scrutiny by the U.S. government, the financial sector, and all actors necessary to operate and conduct financial transactions in such complex settings,” the network declared in November. “This legislation presents dangerous potential as a weapon to be used against civil society in the context of Gaza and beyond.”
I urge readers, and particularly donors, to alert the fundraising and executive staff at not-for-profits, particularly the journalistic sort, so they can object to this legislation. It would likely not survive a Supreme Court challenge in its current form, but that’s an awfully heavy load to have to carry, plus the legislation might not be subject to an injunction in the meantime.
APNews | “Jews are scared at Columbia. It’s as simple as that,” he said.
“There’s been so much vilification of Zionism, and it has spilled over
into the vilification of Judaism.”
The protest encampment sprung up at Columbia on Wednesday, the same day that Shafik faced bruising criticism at a congressional hearing from Republicans who said she hadn’t done enough to fight antisemitism. Two other Ivy League presidents resigned months ago following widely criticized testimony they gave to the same committee.
In
her statement Monday, Shafik said the Middle East conflict is terrible
and that she understands that many are experiencing deep moral distress.
“But we cannot have one group dictate terms and attempt to disrupt
important milestones like graduation to advance their point of view,”
Shafik wrote.
Over the coming days, a working group of deans,
school administrators and faculty will try to find a resolution to the
university crisis, noted Shafik, who didn’t say when in-person classes
would resume.
U.S. House Republicans from New York urged Shafik to resign, saying in a letter Monday that she had failed to provide a safe learning environment in recent days as “anarchy has engulfed the campus.”
In
Massachusetts, a sign said Harvard Yard was closed to the public
Monday. It said structures, including tents and tables, were only
allowed into the yard with prior permission. “Students violating these
policies are subject to disciplinary action,” the sign said. Security
guards were checking people for school IDs.
The same day, the
Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee said the
university’s administration suspended their group. In the suspension
notice provided by the student organization, the university wrote that
the group’s April 19 demonstration had violated school policy, and that
the organization failed to attend required trainings after they were
previously put on probation.
The Palestine Solidarity Committee
said in a statement that they were suspended over technicalities and
that the university hadn’t provided written clarification on the
university’s policies when asked.
“Harvard has shown us time and again that Palestine remains the exception to free speech,” the group wrote in a statement.
Harvard did not respond to an email request for comment.
At
Yale, police officers arrested about 45 protesters and charged them
with misdemeanor trespassing, said Officer Christian Bruckhart, a New
Haven police spokesperson. All were being released on promises to appear
in court later, he said.
Protesters set up tents on Beinecke
Plaza on Friday and demonstrated over the weekend, calling on Yale to
end any investments in defense companies that do business with Israel.
In
a statement to the campus community on Sunday, Yale President Peter
Salovey said university officials had spoken to the student protesters
multiple times about the school’s policies and guidelines, including
those regarding speech and allowing access to campus spaces.
School
officials said they gave protesters until the end of the weekend to
leave Beinecke Plaza. The said they again warned protesters Monday
morning and told them that they could face arrest and discipline,
including suspension, before police moved in.
A large group of
demonstrators regathered after Monday’s arrests at Yale and blocked a
street near campus, Bruckhart said. There were no reports of any
violence or injuries.
Prahlad Iyengar, an MIT graduate student
studying electrical engineering, was among about two dozen students who
set up a tent encampment on the school’s Cambridge, Massachusetts,
campus Sunday evening. They are calling for a cease-fire and are
protesting what they describe as MIT’s “complicity in the ongoing
genocide in Gaza,” he said.
“MIT has not even called for a cease-fire, and that’s a demand we have for sure,” Iyengar said. ___
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