The day after the game, five days after Harvard President Claudine Gay’s disastrous testimony before Congress, I decided to walk the campus to reminisce about my time at Harvard and reflect about what had gone wrong at this once-great university

WALL STREET JOURNAL
An Antisemitic Occupation of Harvard’s Widener Library
US Senator Dan Sullivan
December 15, 2023

…When I walked upstairs to the famous Widener Reading Room, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Nearly every student in the packed room was wearing a kaffiyeh. Fliers attached to their individual laptops, as well as affixed to some of the lamps in the reading room, read: “No Normalcy During Genocide—Justice for Palestine.” A young woman handed the fliers to all who entered. A large banner spread across one end of the room stated in blazing blood-red letters, “Stop the Genocide in Gaza.”… One then asked whether I supported a cease-fire in Gaza. I said I didn’t, because I strongly believe Israel had the right both to defend itself and to destroy Hamas given the horrendous attacks it perpetrated against Israeli civilians on Oct. 7. Their tone immediately changed. “You’re a murderer,” one said. “You support genocide,” said the other. “Excuse me, what did you say?” I asked in disbelief. READ MORE

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Abe Foxman: “DEI is “based on a faulty premise — that racism is a function of oppressed and oppressors and that all white people are oppressors and all people of color oppressed”

JEWISH INSIDER
Former ADL, AJC leaders Abe Foxman and David Harris call for scrapping DEI
Haley Cohen
December 20, 2023

Abe Foxman and David Harris, two former longtime leaders of prominent Jewish communal organizations, called for an end to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy at colleges on Wednesday. In separate statements, the former heads of the Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee argued that DEI efforts on college campuses should be overhauled because of the major challenges it poses to the liberal understanding of societal aims. Foxman and Harris’ stances contrast with their organizations’ current positions on how to deal with DEI. ADL and AJC leaders told JI this week their organizations are urging universities to better incorporate Jews into the DEI infrastructure, instead of calling on them to dismantle the ideology behind DEI altogether. READ MORE

TABLET MAG Bari Weiss: End DEI It’s not about diversity, equity, or inclusion. It is about arrogating power to a movement that threatens not just Jews—but America itself.

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From pre-K lessons on ‘ethnic noses’ to lectures on Israel as an apartheid state, students are learning that Jews are the enemy

THE FREE PRESS
How U.S. Public Schools Teach Antisemitism
Francesca Block
December 19, 2023

…But the ideology fueling these demonstrations isn’t limited to the college campus. It now begins in public high schools and even elementary schools as early as pre-K, according to more than 30 public school teachers, administrators, and parents across four states who spoke to The Free Press. American youths aren’t just encountering the views on TikTok; they’re learning them from teachers and, in some cases, from the mandatory public school curriculum itself. Take California, where a 10th grade history course, approved by the Santa Ana Unified School District, includes readings that call Israel an “extremist illegal Jewish settler population” and accuses the country of “ethnic cleansing.” Or the Jefferson Union High School District near San Francisco, which teaches about the “Palestinian dispossession of lands/identity/culture through Zionist settler colonialism.” READ MORE

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Deputy chair of UN Women’s Sarah Douglas consistently supports online condemnation of Israel including provenly false accusations while her organization reluctantly issues mild criticism of Hamas rapes

YNET
UN official called out for blatant anti-Israel online history
Itamar Eichner
December 19, 2023

Many in Israel were enraged over the thundering silence of UN Women after the brutal rape of Israeli women in the October 7 massacre. After the criticism voiced by women’s group in Israel, the organization issued a limp statement of condemnation. Now the UN Watch, a watchdog based in Switzerland revealed that the UN Woman’s deputy chair, Sarah Douglas, since the start of the war, posted likes for 153 blatant anti-Israel posts on social media and even participated in a conference via zoom from her home, with a Palestinian poster displayed behind her. READ MORE

JEWISH PRESS Shurat HaDin Exposes UNICEF’s Motto: For Every Child, Except in Israel The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF) is responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide, according to its website. The organization’s motto is “For every child” unless you are an Israeli child.

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While American Jews—as if in a time warp—keep wringing their hands over threats from “white supremacists” you’d have to be living under a rock not to see most of the serious threats to Jews today are coming from the left

TABLET MAG
American Jews Need to Stop Being Stupid About Politics and start taking policy seriously
Julia Hahn
December 14, 2023

The argument one now hears from American Jewish liberals searching for an excuse not to have to vote with conservatives is that there are right-wing antisemites, too. While that is obviously true, it amounts to the observation that vile antisemitism exists everywhere, just as it always has. The question is where is it being rewarded, celebrated, and institutionalized. As Yoram Hazony writes in a post on X: “the anti-Semitic right still has only a tiny fraction of the real public presence and political influence that is wielded by the anti-Semitic left and [its] close allies … It is the anti-Semitic left that is flooding the campuses and the streets and inciting to violence throughout the West. Nothing remotely on this scale has been organized by anti-Semitic elements on the right in decades [sic].”. READ MORE

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“Yet it is impossible to want for the Palestinians what they do not want for themselves (an independent state alongside Israel as a Jewish one)”

THE FUTURE OF JEWISH
The So-Called ‘Uninvolved’ Palestinians
Joshua Hoffman
December 14, 2023

Batya, a resident of a kibbutz called Kfar Aza, is a photographer and peace activist. In recent years, she struck a friendship with Mahmoud, a Palestinian photographer from Gaza. He took pictures of the strip and she of her kibbutz. They uploaded them together in a joint exhibition, showcased to more than 10,000 people, and even had plans for a joint exhibit in California. Mahmoud became Batya’s friend, sending her voice messages and promising that they would teach everyone it is possible for Jews and Palestinians to live side-by-side together. “Let’s prove to the world that there are people in Israel and Gaza who love each other,” he told her. READ MORE

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Anyone who thinks that October 7 was a glorious act of justice and resistance, rather than unalloyed barbarism, is cut from the same cloth as Hamas, part of the same cinematic universe — even if they sit in the halls of Congress.

SAPIR
The War Against the Jews
David Hazony
November 2023

Jews around the world have awakened to a new reality of grief, fear — and mobilization. Alongside the horrors of the October 7 terror invasion of Israel, a global antisemitic movement has suddenly emerged, marching through our cities, celebrating the barbaric violation of Jewish bodies, tearing down posters of Jewish victims, blaming Jews for the atrocities committed against them, and unleashing yet more violence against Jews and Jewish institutions. While global Jewry has come together in unparalleled fashion to support Israel in its most difficult hour, there is nonetheless an important truth that many Jews are still finding hard to accept, or at least to articulate. It is this: War has been launched against the Jewish people. The war is not only against Israel — it is against global Jewry. READ MORE

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“President Joe Biden trashed Israel and the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a private fundraiser in Washington, DC, on Friday, after telling guests at the White House Hanukkah party the night before of his admiration for Israel”

BREITBART
Biden Trashes Israel in Private D.C. Fundraiser; ‘Indiscriminate Bombing’
Joel B. Pollak
December 12, 2023

The Times of Israel reported that Biden accused Israel of “indiscriminate bombing” in Gaza. Biden provided no evidence. Biden also said that Netanyahu had to replace members of his democratically-elected governing coalition, and accept a Palestinian state. In July, Biden made similar comments when explaining why he refused to meet with Netanyahu since his election the year before, saying that he had “extreme” Cabinet members. Biden routinely meets with autocrats from a variety of nations across the globe…Netanyahu has publicly opposed the U.S. insistence that Palestinians be rewarded with a state after the October 7 terror attack, and has also opposed the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza. His government is said to be drafting an alternative plan. READ MORE

JPOST ‘Sinwar’s days are numbered’, says senior US official A senior Biden administration official said on Thursday that Hamas’s leader Yahya Sinwar’s “days are numbered” in a press conference regarding US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s meetings in Israel. “I also think it’s safe to say it doesn’t matter how long it takes…justice will be served,” the senior administration official said, adding that Sinwar has “American blood on his hands.” Eight US citizens and permanent residents remain among the roughly 135 hostages currently being held captive in Gaza, while 38 Americans were killed during Hamas’s terror onslaught on October 7.

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Richard Goldberg: “Big ideas for Gaza’s future are being cooked up behind closed doors in Washington. Task forces and blue-ribbon commissions are sure to follow.”

COMMENTARY
After Hamas is destroyed, here are the five things that must not happen in Gaza
Richard Goldberg
January 2024

…If Washington and Jerusalem share an end-state objective of a Gaza that can never again pose a terror threat to Israel, and the president himself has said repeatedly that we do share this objective, the question about the future needs to be reframed. Instead of asking what comes next, leaders in both capitals should be asking: What cannot come next? Answering that question is the only way to establish the parameters for a viable path forward that precludes the known ingredients for policy failure. Let us lay out some of those parameters. First, Gaza has no future with Hamas or  other terrorist groups involved. Perhaps obvious to some but not to all, Hamas and other terrorist organizations cannot be part of Gaza’s future. Demands for a cease-fire in Gaza before Hamas is dismantled would guarantee that the territory remains a base of terror operations indefinitely. READ MORE

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“What the lack of an immediate Israeli victory has done is convince the Jew-haters who were always there that it is safe to come out and say what they really think”

JNS
Let the world know: It’s not 1945
Jerome M. Marcus
December 8, 2023

…The only thing motivating these threats to American, French, British, Belgian and Australian Jews was the image of 1,200 tortured, raped, murdered, burned and mutilated Israeli Jews, whose death had not been prevented by the Israel Defense Forces. The threats to the Jews around the world came then and because of that. What does this mean? It means something very simple: The people who celebrated these deaths and threatened more found them “exhilarating” and “energizing,” and thought them a beautiful thing. They threatened Jews around the world for one reason—because as a result of Oct. 7 and Israel’s momentary weakness, these people smelled Jewish blood…What changed is the ability of this mob to visualize the defeat of Israel and the destruction as a Jewish state. READ MORE

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