The Tik Tok Ban Is Exclusively Intended To Censor And Control Information Available To You

Mises |  HR 7521, called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, is a recent development in American politics. TikTok has been in the news for the past few years, after the public became aware of its connections to China. The popular social media mobile app is currently owned by ByteDance Ltd, a Chinese company. China and the United States currently have a rocky relationship, leading to fears that the Chinese government could potentially use this app to spy on American citizens. Several states and counties voted to restrict the usage of the app in some ways, mostly disallowing government employees from using it on government-owned phones. Earlier this month, the United States Congress passed a piece of legislation that would restrict the app’s availability if certain requirements are not met by ByteDance.

Putting aside the idea that politicians rarely have pure motives, this act has the potential to be just as dangerous as the Patriot Act. With a supposed goal of protecting American national security, the Patriot Act granted sweeping permissions to the federal government and the National Security Agency to spy on American citizens, with far less due process. In addition to having the potential to violate privacy rights and the Fourth Amendment, this new act is a blatant attack on property rights. Mobile device manufacturers and owners have every right to install whatever software they would like, as it is their property. Any illusion of a right to national security is immediately contradicted as collective rights are positive in nature and thus not rights at all.

When looking through this act, several parts stick out. It begins by restricting any entity from distributing, maintaining, or updating any application that is controlled by a foreign adversary. As skeptics of the state would point out, this is already problematic. It should be obvious that one cannot adequately trust the American national security regime to determine which countries or entities are adversarial. A recent egregious example would be when the United States was determined to paint Iraq, and Saddam Hussein, as a uniquely evil power that assisted with the events of 9/11. Additionally, one can point to how the Trump and Biden administrations supported covid lockdowns, thus making Americans who understood the Constitution and property rights look like enemies in the eyes of many. The state has proven itself to be incapable of telling Americans who or what they should fear.

The act then goes on to even ban the hosting of internet services that enable the use of these apps, furthering the state’s control over the internet. In addition to these fears of further government censorship, Senator Rand Paul has pointed out that many Americans own a stake in ByteDance; this restriction would mean that the government is taking away American property without suspicion of a crime. The act does not just restrict companies that are directly controlled by a foreign government but even companies that are owned by private citizens of an adversarial state. When it comes to government censorship, the Chinese government is the gold standard. The American government would be following in the steps of the Chinese Communist Party if President Joe Biden chooses to sign this piece of legislation. The Constitution and the natural-law-based rights that the United States was founded upon conflict greatly with this level of state censorship.

Setting aside any pretense of national security, this act will restrict competition in the American marketplace, if not incidentally. Companies such as Alphabet and Meta will benefit greatly from a huge decrease of competition in the social media marketplace. Additionally, foreign cooperation in the global marketplace serves to spread the values of capitalism and free expression. It is understood that free trade greatly reduces the risk of traditional warfare between states, resulting in greater global competition. Further alienating states that are considered adversarial is shown to diminish peace. This is seen in how Iran reacted to the end of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, how North Korea positively reacted to President Donald Trump’s brief attempts to normalize diplomatic relations, and how Russia reacted to the expansion and aggression of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

While not quite as wide-ranging as the Patriot Act, this recent act is dangerous in multiple ways. The natural rights to free expression, property, and privacy are at further risk with legislation such as this. One can point to how this will greatly support very large companies such as Alphabet and Meta in the American marketplace, companies that have spied on American citizens on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Additionally, already-estranged nations are less likely to come to any sort of reasonable agreement as they are continually backed into a corner by the global community. Skeptical Americans who are knowledgeable of history should not trust the American national security regime to properly determine who their enemies are, or the best way to keep Americans safe. This legislation will only give increased power to the expansive state, power that the state has proven itself unable to use judiciously.

Self-Proclaimed Zionist Biden Joins The Great Pretending...,

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

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) May 7, 2024

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.”

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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.”

Sheryl Sandberg Lies, The NYTimes Lies, None Of This Shit Happened....,

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

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) May 4, 2024

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.

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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.”

 

Why Are Biden And Blinken Complicit In The Ethnic Cleansing Of The Palestinians From Israel?

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 another foreign-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 AI systematically 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.

But they are not serious.

Feds Want To Turn Student Protests Into A National Security Crisis

kenklippenstein  |   The U.S. government hears the student protests and is responding — but not in the way you might hope.

For the feds, it is all about turning protests into a national security crisis, with imagined foreign influence, sympathy for Hamas and other terrorist groups, and a threat to the government itself.

It’s widely known that local law enforcement agencies like the NYPD have been responding to the Gaza protests sweeping across the country; but less well known are the federal agencies that are quietly watching and preparing. Instead of addressing the issues raised – civilian casualties and the plight of the Palestinian people, divestment from Israel, demilitarization of universities and colleges – President Biden himself bluntly dismisses the students.

“Mr. President, have the protests forced you to reconsider any of the policies with regard to the region?,” a reporter asked at Biden’s press conference on Thursday. Without hesitation, Biden answered: “No.”

Those are the marching orders. So while the students continue to speak out, and so many are clearly unhappy with American policy, the federal government has wasted no time in surging resources from all across the country as it colors the students as threats to national security.

Here are just some of the federal agencies that have now become involved:

• Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),

• Federal Protective Service (FPS) – the Department of Homeland Security law enforcement agency that protects federal buildings and other assets, and

• Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the Department of Homeland Security’s investigative arm.

Under the Biden’s administration’s 2023 National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, a gaggle of additional agencies are called upon to take action. These include the Department of the Interior, whose rangers and guides are directed to “identify and counter antisemitism and other forms of hate”; and the Department of Agriculture, through its law enforcement agents assigned to the Forest Service, who have been directed “to learn how to identify and counter antisemitic, Islamophobic, and related forms of discrimination.”

The Pentagon, through its various investigative arms – Army CID, Navy NCIS, Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) – and other agencies, also manages FBI-run Joint Terrorism Task Forces which are active throughout the country.

Politicians Owned By The Tiny Minority Pass Bill To Protect Zionism

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.

 

Trash Israeli Professional Boxer Spitting On And Beating On Kids At UCLA...,

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 quickly identified on social media and has since deactivated his personal Instagram, as well as the account belonging to his Kaminsky Boxing Gym. 

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.

 

UCLA And The LAPD Allow Violent Counter Protestors To Attack A Pro-Palestinian Encampment

LATimes |  University administrators canceled classes at UCLA on Wednesday, hours after violence broke out at a pro-Palestinian encampment set up on campus.

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.”

These IDF Trained PoPo's Are Going To Hurt Or Kill The Wrong Kid - Then It's ON!!!!

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.

 

 

Protesting The Ethnic Cleansing Of Palestinians In Gaza Frightens Jews In America

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 1^st 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.”

DEI Is Dumbasses With No Idea That They're Dumb

Tucker Carlson about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Karine Jean-Pierre: "The marriage of ineptitude and high self-esteem is really the marker of our time. I've nothing against dumb people at all. My dogs are dumb and I love my dogs....I'm not attacking her for being dumb but the… pic.twitter.com/aL9PyyWyyf

— Camus (@newstart_2024) April 26, 2024

twitter  |  Tucker Carlson about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Karine Jean-Pierre: "The marriage of ineptitude and high self-esteem is really the marker of our time. I've nothing against dumb people at all. My dogs are dumb and I love my dogs....I'm not attacking her for being dumb but the idea that dumb person has no, and the White House Press Secretary is in the same category, who's no idea she's dumb, she really thinks like she won the prize, she's the most impressive, like: "I'm White House Press Secretary because I'm the best talker in America." It's so crazy and yet the smartest people I know are very often sort of, they have humility."

The Weaponization Of Safety As A Way To Criminalize Students

 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.

 

 

H.R. 6408 Terminating The Tax Exempt Status Of Organizations We Don't Like

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.

Petti at Reason is more pointed. From This Bill Would Give the Treasury Nearly Unlimited Power To Destroy Nonprofits:

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.”

Recall how the US has fired on Médecins Sans Frontières staff who were according to the US, assisting bad guys in their relief efforts? Financial sanctions are so much tidier.

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.