A fifth of Americans ages 18-29 believe the Holocaust was a myth, according to a new poll from The Economist/YouGov. While the question only surveyed a small sample of about 200 people, it lends credence to concerns about rising antisemitism, especially among young people in the U.S. Another 30 percent of young people said they didn’t agree or disagree with the statement, while the remaining 47 percent disagreed. Only 7 percent of Americans overall believe the Holocaust is a myth, according to the poll. READ MORE
A viscerally antisemitic member of the Polish parliament was expelled from the chamber on Tuesday after he extinguished the candles of a lit Hanukkah menorah with a fire extinguisher. The incident occurred in a hallway of the Sejm, Poland’s legislative assembly, where a menorah was on display celebrating the annual Hanukkah holiday. The MP, Grzegorz Braun of the far right Confederation Party, grabbed a fire extinguisher to spray the menorah, filling the area with smoke. Dozens of people who attended the candle lighting ceremony, including several children, were immediately evacuated by security officers. READ MORE
…The ultimate privilege in America is not being born white or straight or male. The ultimate privilege, as Melissa Kearney argues, is being born into a household with two parents. Melissa Kearney is an economist at the University of Maryland and her new book, The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind, argues that declining marriage rates in America—and the corresponding rise in children being raised in single parent households—are driving many of the country’s biggest economic problems. In the 1950s, fewer than 5 percent of babies in this country were born to unmarried mothers. Today, nearly half of all babies in America are born to unmarried mothers. Most surprising—and worrisome—is how this trend is divided along class lines, with children whose mothers don’t have a college degree being more than twice as likely—compared to the children of college-educated mothers—to live in a single parent home. READ MORE
Marking the start of Hanukkah Thursday evening, the families of Israeli hostages held by Hamas held a candle-lighting ceremony during a rally in Tel Aviv calling for the release of their loved ones, while soldiers fighting against the terror group lit menorahs in Gaza to celebrate the first night of the Jewish holiday. The ceremony in Tel Aviv was held in an area called Hostages Square, where relatives and friends of those abducted in the Hamas-led onslaught on October 7 lit Hanukkah candles. The display included at an empty table set for the festival that featured menorahs with photos of hostages. READ MORE
NEWSWEEK Merry Christmas! Hanukkah Is CanceledAnyone still clinging to the belief that there is a difference between hating Jews and wanting Israel to disappear now needs to explain away another inconvenient truth. Scheduled Hanukkah celebrations across the United States, Canada, and elsewhere have been scrapped. The reason cited over and over is that hosting such holiday events would imply support for Israel in its war against the Gaza-based Hamas terrorist organization. A Hanukkah candle lighting that was due to take place at a music and arts festival in Williamsburg, Virginia, was canceled by the festival’s founder because the lighting of a menorah ‘seemed very inappropriate’ given current events in Israel and Gaza.
FOR HANUKKAH, SEND A MESSAGE OF HOPE TO ISRAELISIsraelShalom.org gives you the chance to send your personal message of support, and solidarity to Israelis. A few words of encouragement can go a long way. Messages are being collected from around the world and sent to Israel. They will be distributed to hospitals, soldiers, first responders, schools, community centers, and beyond. We will distribute as many as possible. Let Israelis know that they are not alone – especially during this horrifying time of terror and war.CLICK HERE TO SEND A MESSSAGE
In my 11th grade American Literature class at a private school in the Philadelphia suburbs, our first assignment was to bring an object to class that represented America. Setting aside the inanity of having 16-year-olds perform show-and-tell—and presenting it as “education”—that day stuck with me for another reason. One of my classmates, a fellow member of the student orchestra, held up a baseball card, explaining: “This is the first African American player to play professional baseball: Doug Glanville.” Glanville is indeed Black and was an excellent centerfielder for the Philadelphia Phillies in the 1990s. But he was, as anyone who is familiar with the history of the baseball can tell you, not the first African American to play baseball professionally. READ MORE
Israel was aware about plans for Hamas’ terrorist attack more than a year before the planned assault on October 7, reports say. The New York Times (NYT) reported Israeli officials had a 40-page Hamas battle plan called ‘Jericho Wall’ which outlined a hypothetical attack by the terror group on southern Israeli communities. It was not clear how Israel obtained the document, but it had been translated, indicating it could have originally been written in Arabic and come from Hamas.The document stated Hamas would target Israel with rockets and use drones to disable security systems at the border wall, allowing the terror group to take control of IDF military bases. Hamas’ plan, according to The NYT, also called for automated machine guns along the border and gunmen to pour into Israel en masse in paragliders, on motorcycles and on foot – which occurred on October 7.READ MORE
The leading UK newspaper The Times featured a comprehensive report on the front page of its Sunday issue, shedding light on the horrifying stories of victims who were raped by Hamas terrorists during the October 7 massacre. Yoni Saadon, a 39-year-old father of four, who attended the Supernova music festival in Re’im, shared a heart-wrenching account of a young woman who sought refuge from the terrorists next to him under the stage. “I saw this beautiful woman with the face of an angel and eight or ten of the fighters beating and raping her,” he recounted. “She was screaming, ‘Stop it — already I’m going to die anyway from what you are doing, just kill me!’ When they finished they were laughing and the last one shot her in the head.” READ MORE
STEYN ONLINE Diversity Rape of the DayHave you ever been to Hamburg’s Stadtpark? They call it the “green heart” of the city, over 350 acres of woods and lakes and meadows, playgrounds and sports fields and concert stages, plus Germany’s largest planetarium. It’s also a great place to rape someone. So a fifteen-year-old girl gets dragged into the bushes by a gang of four “youths”. They rape her, and take the trouble to film themselves doing so. Because, after all, if you gang-rape someone, you want to have something to show to the lads who weren’t able to make it.
AT A CONGRESSIONAL HEARING ON TUESDAY, the presidents of three formerly great institutions—Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT—demurred on the question of whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated their universities’ codes of conduct. Not a single one replied yes. Nor could they state unequivocally that calls for the elimination of Jews constituted harassment. This question was phrased baldly. It was not about pro-Palestine protests. It was not about calls for a two-state solution. Or criticisms of Israel. “The genocide of Jews” was the exact phrase, stated over and over. This three minutes and thirty-one seconds is worth watching in its entirety, lest you understandably believe my interpretation is spin or hyperbole…Let us imagine the question rephrased: “Does calling for the genocide of blacks constitute bullying and harassment?” “Does calling for the wholesale slaughter of gays constitute bullying and harassment?” READ MORE
AXIOS Penn loses $100 million donation over antisemitism hearing A University of Pennsylvania donor is withdrawing a gift worth around $100 million to protest the school’s response to antisemitism on campus. The final straw for Ross Stevens, founder and CEO of Stone Ridge Asset Management, was Tuesday’s widely criticized congressional testimony by Penn president Liz Magill…Stevens, in a letter from his lawyers to Penn, alleges that the school has violated the terms of the limited partnership agreement, including its anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies.
DAILY PENNSYLVANIAN Wharton Board of Advisors calls for change in Penn leadership after Magill testimony uproarThe Wharton Board of Advisors is calling on the University to change leadership with “immediate effect,” according to a letter to Penn President Liz Magill first obtained by The Daily Pennsylvanian. The letter describes the Board’s concern about “dangerous and toxic culture” at Penn that they said the University leadership has allowed to exist. The letter adds that the University leadership “does not share the values of our Board.
THE FREE PRESS Safety First on Campus. Except for JewsSafety first. That’s the approach taken by university administrators these days. On campuses across the country, “safety first” has birthed a whole new moral framework—one that treats rhetorical “microaggressions” as acts of violence. It’s safety first when it comes to edgy Halloween costumes. It’s safety first when a professor writes an email in which she says, “Black Lives Matter but also, Everyone’s Life Matters.” And it’s safety first when a professor fails too many students in his class. But when it comes to threats and calls for genocide against the Jews, it’s a different story. Not safety first, but anything goes.
One-third of the reported Palestinians deaths in Gaza — some 5,000 out of 15,000 killed — are Hamas terrorists, according to leaks Monday from an off-the-record briefing by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for foreign journalists. According to the Times of Israel, as in previous conflicts, the overall figure of deaths given by the Hamas-run Gaza ministry of health is fairly accurate, but also misleading, since Hamas does not distinguish between civilian and terrorist deaths. The Times of Israel reported: “An unnamed IDF official cited by AP says that at least 15,000 Palestinians in Gaza have died since the outbreak of the war on October 7. The army says it estimates more than 5,000 of the Gaza deaths to be Hamas terrorists.” READ MORE
ArchitectGuy on Israel 