On Thursday, November 2, Samidoun, the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, was set to hold a webinar with Husam Badran, head of the National Relations Office of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement.
The webinar, which was going to be in Arabic and translated into English and other languages, was supposed to focus on the media’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza War. A description of the event stated, “PALESTINE MEDIA EPISODE 1: You’ve heard what the media has to say. We think it’s critical that you also have the opportunity to hear what the Palestinian resistance has to say, directly.”
After the event was posted, it came to light that Badran, its featured speaker, is the former leader of Hamas’ military wing in the northern West Bank. Additionally, Samidoun is affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terrorist group in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank that was known for aircraft hijackings and attacks worldwide in the 1960s and ‘70s.
Israel War Room, a pro-Israel group with 250,000 followers on X, posted about the webinar and on November 2, before it could be held, telling Zoom about it.
“Hey @Zoom, your platform is being used by @SamidounPP (a front for the PFLP terror organization) to host a webinar with Husam Badran, a member of Hamas (a designated terrorist organization),” Israel War Room posted. “Pretty sure this violates your T&Cs.”
A number of commenters posted below the status, urging Zoom to reply, and within two hours, they were notified that the event was cancelled.
“We have determined that the webinar featuring Husam Badran is in violation of our Acceptable Use Guidelines, and as a result, we have shut down this specific meeting,” Zoom replied. The link to the webinar could then not be found.
A number of Israel War Room followers praised Zoom, while one pro-Hamas commenter wrote, “Everyone Bycott [sic] @Zoom. Delete Zoom.”
In Zoom’s Acceptable Use Guidelines, the company specifically bans using the platform to promote terrorism and violent extremism, writing, “We believe terrorist organizations are those groups subject to national and international terrorism designations … We will examine a group’s activities both on and off Zoom to determine whether they engage in and/or promote violence against civilians to advance a political, religious and/or social cause.”
Since the Israel-Gaza War started with the massacre on October 7, Hamas has been using technology to spread videos of the carnage as well as propaganda. Hamas livestreamed murders and posted them on Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, and sent some to family members of the victims as well. Telegram, a messaging app, is being used by Hamas for communication and to spread propaganda; as of October 31, Telegram was limiting Hamas activities on it by removing Hamas channels.
Israel War Room’s X and Instagram accounts existed long before the war started, but have been posting constantly about it since October 7.
Israel War Room’s X and Instagram accounts existed long before the war started, but have been posting constantly about it since October 7. It retweets news as well as holds people, companies and groups that are supporting Hamas accountable for their actions.
Recent posts showed people ripping down posters of the kidnapped Israelis in Gaza and Jewish New Yorkers being attacked on the street. It frequently tweets at law enforcement and governmental groups to get them to take action and, with round-the-clock coverage, fulfills its promise found in its X bio: “Israel’s enemies do not sleep. Neither do we.”
Asif: Culinary Institute of Israel is a nonprofit organization in Tel Aviv, dedicated to Israel’s diverse and creative food culture.
“We promote, nurture, research [and] encourage the Israeli culinary story, ecosystem, players, industry, all of it,” ASIF CEO Chico Menashe told the Journal.
A partner organization of the Jewish Food Society (JFS) in New York City, this unique center has a library of 2,000 books, a gallery with rotating exhibitions and a very nice restaurant with a deli, promoting and presenting Israeli ingredients and Israeli dishes.
“Not Jewish, but Israeli,” Menashe clarified. “We have all cultures of the Israeli society [and] we have many public programs, meetups, summits [and] pop ups; a very wide variety of content and activities.
In October, ASIF shifted their focus. “From the second day of the war we identified the needs that came from the communities from all over,” Menashe said.
For instance, the municipality of Tel Aviv reached out. “They tell me, ‘We have a group of 400 people [who] came to a hotel here. They get breakfast, but we don’t have any solution for hot meals. Can you assist?’”
Then, he got a call from the municipality of Ashkelom. Residents at a home for the elderly, who used to cook for themselves, cannot go out shopping.
‘Is there a chance you can assist us with 500 meals per day?’ they asked.
ASIF went from preparing 100 to 150 meals a day to 1,300 hot meals for evacuees and others.
ASIF went from preparing 100 to 150 meals a day to 1,300 hot meals for evacuees and others. While they got even more requests in the early days of the war, things have settled out a bit. They are currently providing restaurant-quality meals for two elderly care homes/centers in Ashkelon, independent elderly in Tel Aviv and 800 evacuees from the South.
“We had to recruit more cooks immediately,’ Menashe said.
They posted on social media their request for volunteers; around 300 people registered. On a daily basis, between 20 and 30 volunteers come in to assist with prepping, cooking and packing the food. Menashe has seven employees; the rest of their help comes from volunteers.
“People who come here to volunteer — and our employees — are saying again and again, how important it is as part of the healing process,” Menashe said. “They feel really privileged, and … I personally feel privileged for the ability to assist others.”
Since JFS has been fundraising, ASIF is able to pay their suppliers, rather than rely on donations of ingredients.
“We told them, ‘We know you give many donations to other places — vegetables and other ingredients — but we insisted to keep paying,” Menashe said.
He has also been able to offer work in an unexpected manner.
“We had to find a way to distribute the food,” Menashe said. “We know how to make food, but we have no experience with transportation and logistics,”.
A tour guide explained to Menashe how he and his colleagues are out of work.
“‘I said, ‘’Wait a second: your colleagues are tour guides. They have cars, right?”
A day later, a group of six tour guides, around 60 or 70-years-old, arrived with their Mercedes vans, which ASIF loaded up and sent on their way. They are doing the food delivery throughout Israel, every day,
“They are part of the team now, really by accident,” Menashe said.
Menashe, who sends thank yous to volunteers on WhatsApp throughout the week, recently took them to visit the communities for which they are preparing food. He wanted them to see how much they are appreciated.
“When you meet the people that you assist, it makes your neshama, your soul, even more committed than before,” he said.
He continued, “From time to time, I come [to ASIF], to this huge factory, this emergency kitchen, this emergency hub that we built … I stand sometimes with tears in my eyes, because it is a privilege to do this sort of giving.”
Learn more at asif.org. Those interested in nourishing Israel can donate here.
The late German-born, American-trained Canadian rabbi and biblical scholar Gunther Plaut once asked an audience: “Who is the most tragic figure in the Hebrew Bible?” Among the many answers were, Moses, Job, Sarah, Jeremiah, Rachel and Saul — all worthy of the title. Plaut’s response … God. He argued that at every turn of the page in the holy writ, God is ignored, used as justification for nefarious acts, or willfully rejected. God had such high hopes for humanity, only to be constantly disappointed.
Though the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament as it is also known, was canonized not later than the second century CE, God remains the most tragic figure in our time as well.
Not uncommonly the notion of God, if it’s at all considered, is spurned, trivialized, or worse, spoken of in absolute terms. Theists believe with certainty that God exists; to them, there are no doubts. Atheists are convinced with equal certitude there’s no such thing as God, often likening the very notion to that of Santa Claus.
Both the theist and atheist lack humility; they claim to know something that is inscrutable. Without reservation, they hold either God exists or doesn’t. No middle-ground, no Pascal’s wager, just yes, or no.
Among the theists, there are those who hold God is nothing more than a deistic perception; God creates the world and watches from above, never to involve Himself in the affairs of humanity; analogous to the Aristotelian notion of the unmoved mover, or prime mover. The problem with such a view is that it gives God all of the credit for having created the universe, and none of the blame.
The deist, at least, has solved the problem of God-caused suffering — God is not involved with the world and all its pain, He tuned out long ago.
Those who hold that God works in history, and knows us, have a much greater burden explaining suffering in the world. How could a loving Creator allow for incurable diseases and malformed babies, earthquakes and plagues that, let’s be honest, often desecrate human dignity and life? One wants to scream and raise one’s fist in anger to the heavens for such occurrences.
God-caused suffering is a theological challenge without a knowable, let alone a satisfying, answer. An ancient rabbinic aphorism acknowledges the conundrum: “If I knew Him, I’d be Him.”
God-caused suffering is a theological challenge without a knowable, let alone a satisfying, answer. An ancient rabbinic aphorism acknowledges the conundrum: “If I knew Him, I’d be Him.”
Human-caused suffering, on the other hand, is a different issue. If human beings possess free will, then human-caused evil, the greatest source of suffering on the planet, is the result of human choice.
One cannot blame God for the butchery of Pol Pot, Adolf Eichmann, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and pathetically, innumerable other rotten souls. God is not a cosmic valet who, when called upon, intervenes every time a human being behaves wickedly. If there is any blame to be leveled at God, it’s for having created this flawed creature — the human being — with the capacity to commit unimaginable evil.
If one believes that human beings have free will, then God cannot be blamed for Hamas.
The monsters of Hamas are one such example. If one believes that human beings have free will, then God cannot be blamed for Hamas.
Followers of Hamas have chosen to exert their own free will to bulldoze hothouses that once grew flowers, fruits and vegetables for European export when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
One cannot blame God for Hamas, who out of their own free will chose to dig tunnels in order to infiltrate Israel and despoil innocent Jewish life. One can only imagine had those resources been used for life-affirming purposes, Gaza could have become a Mideast “Mecca.”
One cannot blame God for Hamas terrorists who use innocent civilians as human shields, when Israel militarily responds to Hamas terror.
One cannot blame God for the barbarism carried out by Hamas, the result of their own free will, torturing, decapitating, raping and murdering Jews with orgiastic pleasure.
If anything, God ought to be pitied. To think, this is how a sizeable number of His creations choose to use their God-given free will.One has to wonder if God cries along with all of us who despise the evil that humans like Hamas freely choose to commit.
After Hamas’ unprovoked, murderous attack on the Jews of Israel on October 7th, belief in God may be difficult, understandably so. But, belief in humanity ought to be far more difficult, perhaps impossible. The wise Rabbi Gunther Plaut was right. God is the most tragic figure in the Hebrew Bible. What’s worse, that depiction of God remains unchanged to this day.
Michael Gotlieb is rabbi of Kehillat Ma’arav in Santa Monica.
Sometimes I’m fine. I go to the grocery store, wash the dishes, and do my work. Then, from nowhere, comes the thought of what might be happening to the hostages in Gaza; what could happen if the Israeli Arabs rise up; what will happen to the soldiers in the ground invasion; and most of all, what could happen to my children and grandchildren who live in Israel. When the fear strikes, it is like a demon has seized my brain. My breathing is shallow and fast. My eyes are wide. Fear rides through me like a wild donkey, trampling my equilibrium.
Then I think, “I’ve got to get hold of myself!” I know that my freaking out is not going to win the war in Israel, and can only harm whatever small good I can provide to my family and friends. And yet. When the fear rushes in, it is running the show. This is an unsustainable way to live.
I remember Franklin D. Roosevelt’s saying, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”This does not help me.The truth is that we have plenty of real dangers to fear, not only in Israel but worldwide, as the Hamas attacks embolden antisemites everywhere. I don’t think I am able to not experience fear. Fear is here to stay for the foreseeable future. What I need is a way to manage it.
Solutions come from many sources. Today, I remembered the “Litany Against Fear”from “Dune,” by Frank Herbert:
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Many years ago, I printed out this “Litany Against Fear” and taped it to my wall. I don’t remember now what I was afraid of — certainly not terrorists — but it calmed me to remember that I must face my fear, and that if I allow it to pass through me, my core self will endure.
Other solutions help, too. To manage my own bouts of dread, here are four tools that have helped me:
Take a positive action. Fear breeds powerlessness. The best antidote is to take back our power by acting positively. I have written to elected officials, publicized media bias, and spent many hours playing online mini-golf with my grandchildren who are stuck at home in Jerusalem. The action need not be grand: Mustering a smile for a loved one might be enough.
Breathe. When fear strikes, the fight-or-flight nervous system kicks into gear. Our bodies prepare for battle and our breathing becomes fast and shallow. We can override this impulse by taking a deep belly breath, holding it for a moment, and exhaling completely. No matter how unnerved I am, a few deep breaths return me to calmness.
Talk. My friends and family are a lifeline. Hearing about others’ challenges and solutions gives me the strength to deal with my own. As the proverb says, “A trouble shared is a trouble halved.”
Pray. Our Creator wants to hear from us. I was never much on reciting Psalms (Tehillim), but lately, I’ve been amazed at how relevant they are. A friend in Israel says that when the anxiety becomes intense, she repeats Psalm 116, verse 7: “Return, my soul, to your rest, for the Lord has been good to you.” She prays that her spirit returns to a restful place, and it usually does. Prayers don’t need to be in Hebrew or take a special form. We can simply follow Stevie Wonder’s advice to “Go and have a talk with God.”
We owe it to ourselves, our families, our communities, and our brethren in Israel to manage our fear so that we can continue to support those we love.
We have been afraid in the past few weeks, and we are likely to feel fear again. We owe it to ourselves, our families, our communities, and our brethren in Israel to manage our fear so that we can continue to support those we love and repel our enemies. Fear is the mind-killer, but we can face it and overcome our foes.
Elizabeth Danziger is the author of four books, including “Get to the Point,” 2nd edition, which was originally published by Random House. She lives in Venice, California.
Things don’t last for long. Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy has been ousted, and Nancy Pelosi was evicted from her office. Last year U.K. newspapers ran “lettuce watch” stories, to see whether the British Prime Minister Liz Truss would last longer in office than a wet lettuce. The lettuce beat the English politician. American produce would have been better, since there is a long-lasting tenacity to the vegetables that continue to fill the bowls of VP Kamala Harris’s word salads.
The only thing that needs replacing more regularly than freshly-cut garden greens is this sentence: “The dating world has just become more crazy.” Demands on dating app profiles now include the statement that “you can only date me if you have NOT been vaccinated.” The belief is that the COVID vaccine decreases fertility. I had tried to be a good citizen and had my two jabs and a booster shot, but when it comes to dating, it’s turned out to be more of a jab-jab-knockout.
The no-vax dating preference has become a point of unity in America, since it’s become favored in both the liberal and conservative states, albeit for different reasons. Some liberals see it as a fertility issue, whilst some conservatives see it as a “don’t tell us what to inject in our body,” issue. It was strange that during the pandemic we would see Pfizer adverts sponsoring news channels like CNN, who would show a Pfizer ad and then follow it with a news broadcast promoting the Pfizer vaccine. This was definitely, probably, possibly a complete coincidence.
Unjected’s tagline is that “serious men pay the bill,” and caters to women who are sick of the phrase ‘toxic masculinity,’ and want men to be men, with a healthy masculine outlook.
There is now a dedicated dating site called Unjected, which is based in the Red state heartlands of Boca Raton, Florida, and only open to people who have not had the COVID vaccine. It is completely free for women to join, but charges men a sign-up fee of $69 (seriously.) Unjected’s tagline is that “serious men pay the bill,” and caters to women who are sick of the phrase ‘toxic masculinity,’ and want men to be men, with a healthy masculine outlook. They guarantee that “we verify [birth] gender, so you can be confident that Unjected women … are women.” As a nod to the aftermath of the Dylan Mulvaney/Bud Light trans-PR-fiasco, Unjected.com adds that “If finding your woman isn’t worth $69, then enjoy your Bud Light.” L’Chaim.
Meanwhile, in the blue state of Virginia, 25-year-old housewife Estee Williams recently became an internet sensation with her “Tradwife” videos on TikTok that even got featured on “Good Day LA.” Williams’ approach embraces and promotes the concept of being a “traditional wife,” and her homemaking videos share how she cleans, launders, irons, ensures her makeup is on and she looks great for him, and has dinner ready when he gets home from work. She has a distinctly nonfeminist approach to life, and the couple seem to be happily married. It must be some kind of cult.
Elsewhere on the web there is a growing wave of female Gen Z and younger Millennial conservative commentators, including Billie Rae Brandt, Isabel Brown and Brett Cooper, all of whom lean towards traditional values. Meanwhile the infamous “Whatever” podcast, recorded in Isla Vista, California, features twice-weekly conversations discussing morality and relationships with guests who appear on OnlyFans.com and are often engaged in sex work. People discuss their “body count,” i.e. how many people they have slept with, and often lament on how hard it is to find a life partner. Maybe the OnlyFans workers would find more direction at a site like OnlyRabbis.com (the URL is still available).
It feels like the moral landscape is in chaos right now, although the good news for single people is there is a big enough population on all sides for everyone to find a possible match. Whether you’re injected, unjected or dejected, just make your move quickly; the only guarantee is that things are going to keep changing.
Brandeis University banned their Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter from campus on November 6.
Jewish Insider obtained a letter from the university to the SJP chapter; the letter stated: “The National SJP has called on its chapters to engage in conduct that supports Hamas in its call for the violent elimination of Israel and the Jewish people. These tactics are not protected by the University’s Principles. As a result, the University made the decision that the Brandeis chapter of the National SJP must be unrecognized and will no longer be eligible to receive funding, be permitted to conduct activities on campus, or use the Brandeis name and logo in promoting itself or its activities, including through social media channels.”
The Brandeis SJP chapter announced in an Instagram post that they had been “de-chartered” from the university. “We recognize that such a decision is purely racist and goes against the values of Brandeis University, an organization that was built to fight racism in higher education,” the post stated.
Pro-Palestinian Protesters Surround Jewish Student at Harvard While Shouting “Shame! Shame!”
A group of pro-Palestinian protesters can be seen surrounding a Jewish student at Harvard while shouting “Shame! Shame!” at him in video footage that has gone viral on social media.
The protesters can be seen holding their keffiyehs in front of the student and try to prevent him from leaving. The footage is reportedly from an October 18 “die-in” held by pro-Palestinian protesters on campus that was dubbed as “Stop the genocide in Gaza.” The Harvard Crimson reported at the time: “During the die-in, a man began to film demonstrator’s faces. Within minutes, he was escorted out by protest organizers, who blocked his camera with their keffiyehs — traditional scarves worn by Palestinians that have come to symbolize Palestinian nationalism. Demonstrators yelled ‘shame’ at the disruptor as he left.”
Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar addressed the incident in an October 24 statement that said in part: “The pro-Palestinian demonstration that crossed from Cambridge onto our campus last Wednesday, which included a troubling confrontation between one of our MBA students and a subset of the protestors, has left many of our students shaken. Reports have been filed with HUPD [Harvard University Police Department] and the FBI, the facts are being evaluated, and it will be some time before we learn the results of an investigation.”
UMass Amherst Student Arrested for Allegedly Punching Jewish Student Holding Israeli Flag
A student at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst was arrested on November 3 for allegedly punching a Jewish student holding an Israeli flag.
The victim, Dylan Jacobs, told Jewish Insider (JI) that he was helping set up a vigil by UMass Hillel to honor those being held hostage by Hamas when the suspect came and started giving people the middle finger. At one point, the suspect started waving a Palestinian flag, so Jacobs responded by waving an Israeli flag. The suspect responded by allegedly punching Jacobs in thehead and kicking him in the chest multiple times; the suspect also allegedly destroyed the Israeli flag with a knife. The suspect, who pleaded not guilty, was released on bail on the condition that he is barred from campus.
Columbia University Announces Antisemitism Task Force, Doxing Resource Group
Columbia University announced the creation of an antisemitism task force and a Doxing Resource Group on November 1.
Columbia President Minouche Safik, Barnard College President Laura Rosenbury and Teacher College President Thomas Bailey said in a statement that the task force will be headed by a handful of professors and “will identify practical ways for our safety and inclusion work to enhance support for all members of the Columbia, Barnard, and Teachers College communities, particularly our Jewish students. Longer term, it will recommend more ambitious changes related to academic and extracurricular offerings and student, faculty, and staff training programs.”
In a separate statement, Safik and Rosenbury said that the establishment of the Doxing Resource Group is in response to “disturbing incidents in which trucks have circled the Columbia campus displaying and publicizing the names and photos of Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian students.” The group will be operational until the end of month, at which point Columbia and Barnard “will reassess our efforts to ensure that our work meets your needs.”
Secretary of Education Warns Schools They Could Lose Federal Funding If They Don’t Address Antisemitism, Islamophobia
Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told CNN on November 6 that his department is sending guidance to schools and colleges reminding them that they must fight against antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of discrimination or else lose federal funding under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
He also said that since October 7, the department has received “eight or nine” Title VI complains regarding antisemitism and Islamophobia and is asking for more money to deal with the backlog. “If we have to withhold dollars from a campus refusing to comply, we would,” Cardona told CNN.
We have all read enough. We are exhausted. Yet the war against the Jews is only getting worse. So it needs to be said outright: The Woke-Hamas alliance in the academy and in social justice circles is real. I will illustrate this through three examples from recent weeks and then briefly explain how this is possible and how such a vision of social justice in the United States can lead to a war against “global Jewish supremacy.”
If a picture is worth a thousand words then I give you a Tweet that’s worth a million, issued from Black Lives Matter Chicago.
For BLM Chicago “Free Palestine” means supporting Hamas’s murder of 1400 Jews, including the decapitation and butchering of women and babies, a goal espoused in their 1988 Islamist genocidal charter. BLM Chicago’s endorsement of Jewish genocide is made abundantly clear with their image of the Hamas paraglider, the method by which many of the terrorists crossed into Israeli territory.
One Cornell professor seems to concur. Dr. Russell Rickford, who specializes in African-American political culture after World War II, the Black Radical Tradition, and transnational social movements declared at a pro-Palestinian rally on October 15 that:
“Hamas has challenged the monopoly of violence. And in those first few hours, even as horrific acts were being carried out, many of which we would not learn about until later, there are many Gazans of good will, many Palestinians of conscience, who abhor violence, as do you, as do I. Who abhor the targeting of civilians, as do you, as do I … Who were able to breathe, they were able to breathe for the first time in years. It was exhilarating. It was energizing. And if they weren’t exhilarated by this challenge to the monopoly of violence, by this shifting of the balance of power, then they would not be human. I was exhilarated.”
Dear Professor Rickford, if you were exhilarated by the butchering of children then you do not abhor violence. You seem to enjoy it. Against Jews at least.
Both BLM Chicago and Rickford later apologized, but only because of massive pushback.
In a similar gesture of violence toward Jews, a Tweet from UC Davis American Studies Professor Jemma Decristo blatantly invites violence toward “Zionist” (Jewish) journalists and their families.
Decristo does not merely endorse Hamas. She wants to bring their terrorism to American soil. She is enjoining her followers to hunt down “Zionist journalists” (I suppose that includes me as I am a Zionist exposing antisemitism in the press) and their kids in their schools. That she ends her tweet with a knife, an axe and blood emojis leaves little doubt she is calling for the mass murder of Jewish children. Remarkably, she is still employed, but under investigation. I fail to understand why her threats of violence have not put her in jail. Decristo’s academic work focuses on music, race and gender, particularly regarding Black musical traditions and artists, which hardly makes her an expert on middle eastern affairs and Jewish history.
Why are BLM activists and professors of African-American studies apparently supporting Hamas? Why do they consider Israel so evil that it allows them to prioritize the murder of Jews?
The answer lies in intersectionalist social justice, what I will call the theology of wokeness, because it is far more an infallible fundamentalist religion than a model of scholarly analysis. They found the Truth and the Truth has engendered the Woke-Hamas alliance in the academy and in the public sphere.
Intersectionalist social justice today posits that all oppressions are linked. If you are for the liberation of one victimized people, be it African Americans or Latino/a immigrants, then you must support the liberation of all peoples wherever they may be. However if you are a Zionist, then you must support Palestinian oppression and, it follows, you cannot support justice for African Americans. If this sounds simplistic to you then you are paying attention, because they have constructed a simplistic theology based, like many theologies, on a binary and involves an eschatological battle between good and evil.
Writing in the Jewish, Monica Osborne tracks the evolution of intersectionality from a useful and legitimate lens for theorizing the multiple layers of oppression to a crude political cudgel that is now weaponized to target groups deemed excessively and unjustifiably powerful, regardless of the historical and cultural context of the time and place in question. Osborne maintains that “intersectionality suddenly became a weapon to be used against anyone who has a connection to Israel or is sympathetic with its existence—and that meant Jews, all of them, even the ones who are highly critical of Israeli policies because, in the intersectionality war, identity trumps ethical intention.”
But the logic of intersectionalist social justice goes far beyond the conflation of Jews with Israel. Global Jewry is stereotyped as privileged and undeservedly privileged at that. Jews are by definition oppressors in the West as well and, accordingly, the left has woven them into their theology of social justice.
Jews are by definition oppressors in the West as well and, accordingly, the left has woven them into their theology of social justice.
As David Bernstein writes in “Woke Antisemitism,” “Woke ideology insists that Jews not only benefit from white domination but also are complicit in it. It demands that we declare ourselves white because the power structure – the ideology tells us – thinks of us that way: we took advantage of the privileges and opportunity whiteness afforded us, so now we must acknowledge and disavow those attendant privileges. By accepting the notion that Jews are white, we not only downplay antisemitism (“white people cannot really be victims”), we allow others to define us and impose upon us a pseudo-consciousness, and we denigrate and erase the unique qualities endowed by our heritage and the Jewish condition through the ages.”
All premises stemming from this model are inherently flawed. And these flaws have fueled a resurgence of antisemitism in the United States today, justifying the celebration of violent “Palestine liberation” on campuses coupled with a witch hunt for the proponents of Jewish supremacy. This is how the “powerless” shall be freed. This explains why BLM Chicago can celebrate decapitating babies; this explains why a Cornell professor can find terrorism against Jews exhilarating; this explains why a professor of African-American music and art wants her followers to hunt and kill Jewish babies in America.
I fully support the idea that Black lives matter as a principle and an objective insofar as its agenda is to create a more secure, prosperous future for Black Americans after centuries of slavery, segregation and white supremacist terror. That I even need to state this in writing is absurd. But I do need to state it, lest I be branded a “racist,” a “fascist,” a “Jewish supremacist” who is “targeting people of color.”
People can vilify me however they see fit, but I remain firm in my convictions: When Jewish security is threatened by an allegedly domestic social justice movement, then I stand with my people and will not remain silent. Nobody has the right to target me, my family and my friends because we are “Zionists,” because their ideology—their religion—posits that the liberation of Palestine and the attendant murder of Jews is necessary for their own liberation on American soil.
It should go without saying that there are two sides to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, both with layers of complexity. But the Woke have simplified this conflict into a simple binary; they see only colonizers (Jews) and victims (Palestinians). The former commit genocide, and the latter have had no historical agency in shaping their current predicament. And, according to this equation, because the Palestinians have been historically oppressed, they cannot be held accountable for their terrorism: It cannot be their fault. Understanding an ethno-national conflict is beyond the intellectual horizon of intersectional social justice warriors. They refuse to see past an ahistorical American-centered, oppressor-victim binary. I have no interest in arguing whether or not their framework is useful for understanding the history of race in America since it is not my academic field. But I will state with certainty that it has no applicability when it comes to understanding Jews, Israelis or Palestinians. Labeling Israelis (and all Jews in many cases) “white oppressors” and Palestinians “brown victims” needs to be outed for what it is: garbage couched in academic jargon.
If such garbage is being taught in the classroom, then the professors in question are brainwashing our children with false information. They are teaching students to hate Jews because their methodological framework paints the Jew as a global threat and Israel as the embodiment of this genocidal supremacist agenda.
Jewish lives matter, at least they do to me. But it has become abundantly clear that they no longer matter in the academy. I cannot imagine this happening to any other minority community that simply wishes to live with dignity and to support its ancestral homeland as an independent state, recognized by the United Nations since 1948.
And yet again, the discipline of Jewish Studies has largely either remained silent or indulged these activists by stating that “terrorism is evil, however … genocide and Jewish supremacy.” The harassment of Jews on college campuses does not seem to trouble most faculty in Jewish Studies programs. Perhaps this is why we have seen very little condemnation of Hamas atrocities or celebrations. Jewish Studies faculty are compelled to go along with the logic of social justice, even if it means the demise of their people. Perhaps this is why a recent statement claiming to speak on behalf of Jewish Studies faculty insists that “Many of us have spent our academic careers fearful of the consequences we may face for criticizing the Israeli state and Zionism. The bloodshed over the 18 days – all entirely preventable – is a direct consequence of our silence.” In their own words, Jewish Studies scholars claim responsibility for Israeli “genocide.” In other words, the massacre of innocent Israeli men, women, children and babies is the fault of Jews. Perhaps this is why Professor Jemma Decristo believes that calling for our murder is justifiable.
The Woke-Hamas alliance is real. And it seeks our elimination.
Jarrod Tannyis an associate professor and Charles and Hannah Block Distinguished Scholar in Jewish History at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. He is the author of “City of Rogues and Schnorrers: Russia’s Jews and the Myth of Old Odessa” (Indiana University Press) and the founder of theJewish Studies Zionist Network.
The Lawfare Project held a webinar on November 2 explaining the legal rights that Jewish students have on campus to fight antisemitism.
Brooke Goldstein, who heads The Lawfare Project, began the webinar by calling the current climate “unprecedented times” and saying that the warnings for 10 years about terror-affiliated groups on campus and professors are “materializing in ways that we could only imagine in our worst nightmare.”
“We are all very concerned,” she said.
Goldstein said that “now is the time for a Jewish civil rights movement” and pointed out that “litigation is always the last resort.” She also argued that a lot of university administrators want to help so it’s “important to work with them to guide them on what to do.” The Lawfare Project works with 680 major lawyers who provide pro bono work for the Jewish community.
Ziporah Reich, director of litigation for The Lawfare Project, said that they have received “an overwhelming amount of calls” from students “suffering” in current campus climate. “People are livid with what’s going on,” she said. But there might not always be legal action available in these circumstances, Reich explained, comparing instances of antisemitism on campus to a terrible headache. A doctor may not be able to provide surgery to cure a bad headache, but sometimes a mild headache could turn out to be a tumor that a doctor can remove.
As it pertains to antisemitism on campus, the law in question is Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which states that any institution receiving federal funding cannot discriminate based on race, ethnicity or national origin. “That applies to every college in this country because almost every college … receives some sort of federal funding,” Reich said. Under the law, schools have to allow all the students on campus to have an equal opportunity to avail themselves with whatever the college has to offer, Reich said, so if college has a gym on campus, you have a right to use that gym. If college has a tabling policy, you have a right to table.
“The key is that if the school itself deprives you of the right or another student deprives you of the right … then it’s actionable,” Reich said. For instance, in a scenario in which pro-Palestinian protesters are standing outside the school gym which signs accusing Israel of genocide, then it is not legally actionable if you can still walk into the gym. But if those protesters try to block you from entering the gym by forming a human chain, then it becomes actionable, Reich explained. In such a scenario, you have to alert the school since they don’t always know what’s going on, at which point it becomes the school’s responsibility to remove the human chain blocking you from entering the gym. If they don’t, then you truly have a valid legal case against the case, per Reich. A more murky scenario would be if you’re using the school’s gym equipment and pro-Palestinian protesters are waiting to the machine and are whispering anti-Israel rhetoric into your ears.
Other legally actionable examples would include pro-Palestinian protesters disrupting a pro-Israel speaker’s speech by using loud megaphones to drown them out, pro-Palestinian students ripping down posters and if someone touches you without your consent, such as pushing you away. Reich also put forth an example of someone shouting pro-Hamas rhetoric, such as calling Hamas’ actions on October 7 “heroic” or calling the terror organization “freedom fighters,” in the university quad as “potentially” actionable, but Reich cautioned that “this particular point has not really been litigated in court when it’s this nuanced.” But The Lawfare Project is prepared to litigate it if it happens, she said.
Reich stressed that it’s important to understand the policies of a school, particularly if they’re private schools, which she says have more leeway than public schools. If the schools aren’t equally enforcing their policies, then that is legally actionable.
Lawfare Project Senior Counsel Gerard Filitti proceeded to discuss pro-Palestinian student groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Within Out Lifetime-United for Palestine (WOL Palestine). Filitti said that it’s for the FBI to decide if these student groups have ties to terror organizations, but did point out that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ (R) decision to ban National SJP (NSJP) was based on the argument that NSJP was providing material support to a terror organization by saying “we are all part of the resistance.” However, Filitti viewed DeSantis’ action as a “political stunt,” as DeSantis’ language was careful enough to where members of NSJP chapters could simply reapply to have a new pro-Palestinian group on campus, so long as it’s not under the NSJP umbrella.
Filitti did say there are “connections between these student groups and other terrorist affiliates,” as they have invited Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) member Leila Khaled to speak remotely on numerous occasions. But Filitti pointed out that it’s not illegal to speak to bad people, it’s only illegal when you support them and fundraise for them.
Filitti also argued how there’s a correlation between funding from Middle East countries and antisemitism on college campuses, although he acknowledged that there’s no proof of causation. That said, if colleges are receiving billions in dollars from countries like Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the “question becomes what is that money paying for.” The law currently requires universities to disclose foreign money––although Filitti said this law is not being enforced properly––but doesn’t require universities to disclose where it’s going. There are “at least a dozen bills” in Congress right now that are working to ameliorate this situation, Filitti said, and that The Lawfare Project is doing their own work to try and expose where such money is going.
The Lawfare Project senior counsel went onto address the viral video from Harvard University showing a Jewish student being surrounded and cornered by pro-Palestinian protesters; Filitti argued that the video shows evidence of false imprisonment and that the protesters laid their hands on the Jewish student without the student’s consent. “These are things you follow police reports for,” Filitti said.
Filitti urged people to document what’s happening because “if it’s not in writing it didn’t happen.”
Reich later told people not to be concerned about speaking out or taking legal action out of fear of retaliation, pointing out that retaliation in and of itself is illegal.
The Lawfare Project members were asked during a Q&A session about what can be done about anti-Israel curriculum being taught in class; Reich replied that such curriculum is “what laid the fertile ground for what is happening now.” However, academic freedom protects the right of anti-Israel teachers to teach what they want in class. “The school may have to let the anti-Israel prof spew her rhetoric, but they are breaking the law if they don’t allow the pro-Israel professor to say his thing,” Reich said.
The problem, in Reich’s view, is that too many Jewish professors are afraid to speak up due to a hostile campus environment. The best way to combat this, Reich argued, is for Jewish students to “rally around” these professors.
Reich also said during the Q&A that it is usually within universities’ interests to settle when faced with a legal claim because if they lose, they are forced to pay attorneys’ fees, so it works in the favor of the plaintiff to get what they want.
Benjamin Ryberg, chief operating officer and director of research for The Lawfare Project, addressed questions regarding legal ramifications of doxxing. Doxxing, Ryberg said, is when somebody posts “personally identifiable information online.” Around 11 states have laws against doxxing, though California’s broad if some personal information was posted with the intent of putting someone’s safety in jeopardy, whereas other states have anti-harassment laws that are triggered from doxxing. Ryberg argued that the trucks that have gone around identifying people who signed anti-Israel statements like the infamous Harvard letter are not examples of doxxing because that is simply bringing to light publicly identifiable information.
Asked about filing complaints to the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) vs. bringing something to a court of law, Goldstein argued in favor of the latter, as in her view OCR is “politicized.” Goldstein pointed to an “outstanding complaint” they filed on behalf of a client at Columbia University who was allegedly spat on and called a “dirty Zionist” in the university quad; this happened four years ago, Goldstein said.
October 7, 2023 will forever be a defining moment in my life. It’s one of those days you can point to and show a before and after version of yourself, a day where I became a different person in just a few hours.
That morning, I woke up to dozens of texts and news alerts: Israel had been invaded by land, sea, and air by Hamas, a Palestinian terror group in the Gaza Strip, and already hundreds had been ruthlessly and systematically murdered, injured, and others taken hostage.
I felt an indescribable fear.
My first thought was my family.
Half of my very large family lives in Israel: Aunts, uncles, a great aunt, cousins — so many cousins — second cousins too. I contacted some of them via Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. “Are you okay? What is happening? What can I do?”
Thankfully, my family lives in the north of Israel – Kiryat Shmona – a small town right on the border of Lebanon. Although Israel is only the size of New Jersey, they were far enough away from the Hamas invasion in the south. But despite their location, they were still holed up inside — unable to leave their homes — because no one in the country had any idea what was happening.
In the weeks that followed, my family and my friends in Israel had been in and out of bomb shelters as rockets were being fired on them at all hours. All my cousins have relocated several times now that Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim political party and militant group located in Lebanon, has also begun firing rockets into the country.
Every day since October 7, I wake up inundated with alerts about rocket-fire all around the country. The country of Israel, and its people, are at fighting for their lives and right to exist.
At one point, one of my cousins returned to Kiryat Shmona with his wife, toddler, and newborn son because they could no longer afford the place where they were taking cover. They stayed at their home briefly, visiting with their two cats they had to leave behind. (One of their friends who hadn’t left yet has been taking care of them.)Finally, they found another “safer” location they could afford, gathered more belongings, and headed out again. Shortly after they departed, a rocket from Lebanon struck a nearby home that went up in flames. Thankfully, no one was injured.
A similar incident happened to my other cousin who had returned to Kiryat Shmona with her husband and three young children to pick up a few things. Except, they were still there when rockets struck right down the street.
Aside from the perpetual looming physical danger and violence and relocating, most of my family members haven’t been able to work and have been living off their savings. Some of them have also been relying on the kindness of other family members and strangers at various kibbutzim — communal living situations unique to Israel — to get by.
Every day, I check on them, and every day, they tell me all they want is for this nightmare to be over and to go home. All they want is for their friends and colleagues drafted back into the Israel Defense Forces to come back safely; all they want is for the over 200 hostages who are Israeli, American and from around the world to come back alive. All they want is to live in their country in peace.
The silver lining in this situation is that I feel closer to my Israeli family than ever before. Since October 7, it’s become part of my daily routine to check on them. Once I find out the latest updates on their situations, we typically spend time chatting. One of my cousins and I exchange photos of our cats; my other cousin and I exchange voice messages where I often hear birds in the background as warplanes fly overhead. Some of my other cousins and I share videos and pictures, both informational, in regards to the war but also of their children and grandchildren, and sometimes I’ll share memes in hopes that I make them smile while they live through war.
Chatting with my family in Israel every day is a new experience because I wasn’t fortunate enough to grow up with them. In fact, I didn’t meet many of them until 2017, when I was already 27. My father was born and raised in Kiryat Shmona. He and my mother, a Jewish American, met in Israel. They came back to the U.S., got married, and eventually had my sister and me. But they got divorced when I was four, and I didn’t have much of a relationship with my father until I became a young adult.
I grew up with a lot of self-hatred — specifically around being Jewish.
Although my mother’s family were proud Jews, my struggle with my Jewish/Israeli identity began in second grade when I was mocked by two Arab American classmates for being Jewish. I was seven at the time and didn’t quite have an understanding of why someone would tease and ridicule me for my ethnicity and religion. I looked like them, but I wasn’t one of them. I was an ‘other.’
I went home from school that day distraught, and that’s when my mother had “the talk” with me. She said something like, “Be careful of who you reveal you are Jewish to — because, unfortunately, some people won’t like you.”
After this incident, I experienced years of microaggressions. When people would find out I was Jewish, I would often hear, “You’re Jewish!? … You don’t look Jewish”; “You’re too pretty to be Jewish”; “Didn’t you guys kill Christ?” And so on.
In college, in my sophomore year dorm, I was living next to a person I now consider an antisemite. He constantly made money/Jew jokes, which I laughed off because I had no self-esteem. One day, our entire floor was at a party, and unprovoked, he turned to me and said, “Go back to the oven where you belong.”
I walked home by myself, in the dark, hysterical.
For most of my life, I hid my Jewish identity when I could; it helped that I am racially ambiguous and often pass for other cultures, including Arab, Italian, or Greek. For my entire life, I grappled with the realities of what it means to be Jewish and Israeli despite not being a religious person, coming from a secular home, and being friends with mostly non-Jewish people.
And then, in 2017, I went to Israel with my father for the first time. It was also the first time I slept under the same roof as my dad since I was four years old. It was a profound and deeply emotional experience.
My father is the youngest of six children, and I met all of his siblings except one of his older brothers, who died when I was a child. I was introduced to many of my dozens of first cousins and some of their children. I even got to meet my great-aunt, my grandfather’s sister. Everyone cried — especially my dad’s siblings — who had never gotten to know their baby brother’s daughter.
I saw the small town and house where my father grew up and the fields where he used to pick fruit and work. I learned about my family’s immigration history from Iran to Israel because of the rise of the Islamic Republic of Iran — they soon would no longer be welcome. I got to know my grandparents through stories translated by my cousins.
I spent quality time with my Israeli family — time I missed out on as a child born in America to divorced parents. I traveled the land of Israel with them — a powerful and spiritual experience. Being there caused a visceral physical and emotional reaction that I can’t fully explain with words.
I found a part of myself I didn’t realize was missing in Israel.
I returned to America with a newfound love and appreciation for my Israeli and Jewish identity. I would be proud, and I would never hide again.
I returned to America with a newfound love and appreciation for my Israeli and Jewish identity. I would be proud, and I would never hide again. And then in May of 2021 the latest large-scale escalation between Israel and Hamas — before this year — occurred. I was a digital journalist at the time, working on a piece, when I received a text message from a friend that said, “What are your people doing?” I spiraled into shock, anger, sadness, and confusion. The little girl inside of me wanted to “go back into the closet” and hide my identity, as I often did in the past.
But I didn’t, and instead, as someone who felt ignorant of the history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and didn’t know anything about the Palestinian perspective, I began investigating. I wrote a series for Forbes highlighting Israeli and Palestinian women in Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, America and Canada, who were all working for peace and coexistence. I spent months conducting interviews, doing research, and writing. I also wrote about Israeli and Palestinian musicians working for peace and change.
Allison Norlian and her father Yitzhak Norlian in Israel
Writing these articles was illuminating, and after it was over, I had Palestinian friends and understood much more of their perspective on the situation. So much so that whenever something happened, and Israel was thought to be in the wrong, I spoke out about it. In my circle, I became active in speaking up for Palestinian human rights, and on social media continued to break down walls, build bridges, and prove people who are pinned as enemies can, in fact, be friends. I wanted desperately to create lasting positive change between our communities, so much so that I sacrificed friendships with other Israelis and Jewish people who disagreed with my advocacy. I also surrendered my own sanity and self when I saw some of the Palestinian people I befriended making comments online that I disagreed with and found inflammatory. However, I said nothing and kept scrolling, because I believed keeping their friendship was more important. Just as I saw their humanity, I hoped and felt, despite their posts, that they saw mine.
And then October 7 happened —one of the worst days of my life.
I spent the majority of the day communicating with my family in Israel, doom-scrolling on social media, watching both American and Israeli news, and trying to make sense of the situation. Thankfully, I heard from many concerned family members and friends — both Jewish and non-Jewish — asking about my family and well-being.
But the people I didn’t hear from were the Palestinian American friends with whom I had created relationships. Instead, while Hamas murdered Holocaust survivors, kidnapped, raped, and tortured women, brutally obliterated entire families and burned and mutilated babies, they shared posts about “resistance.” Instead of reaching out to me, as I have done for them, to see if my family was alive and I was OK, they shared posts on social media to “stop talking to Zionists” and called Hamas “martyrs.” (A Zionist is a person who believes in Israel’s right to exist and the self-determination of Jewish people. It is not a dirty word as so many have been led to believe. During the Cold War, Soviet propagandists rebranded the word as a slur to encompass multiple antisemitic tropes and it has taken hold in anti-Israel discourse.)
And then, when I finally did hear from one of these so-called friends, it was to accuse me of Zionist propaganda (at this point, all I had posted was the news of what was happening in Israel and quotes from peace organizations, including Women Wage Peace), and to inform me that they had been trying to “decolonize my mind and have me appreciate my Iranian Jewish identity.” Basically, in so many words, our friendship was conditional on me rejecting my Israeliness — an integral part of my identity.
To be an Israeli or a Jew in Israel and around the world is to be part of a tribe, or ethno-religion, of people that have survived pogroms both in outside the Arab world since Jews lived in the Kingdom of Israel in 10th and 9th centuries BCE. We’ve been pushed out and persecuted by the Romans, the Ottoman Empire, the Greeks, the Arabs, etc. — a persecuted minority in the land where we began and in every land we’ve ever settled in since.
The “Free Palestine” propaganda, which I believe is wildly different from the Palestinian human rights cause, is feeding the world lies about “decolonization,” the history of Israel, and the history and connections of Jews to Israel. And the propaganda is working and can be seen by the thousands of people shouting to “gas the Jews” and “free Palestine from the river to the sea,” even before Israel had counted its dead and retaliated.
What I have learned since October 7 is that this is not about land at all; this is about Jews and ridding the world of us. I should have known based on the history, but I didn’t want to believe this was true.
What I have learned since October 7 is that this is not about land at all; this is about Jews and ridding the world of us. I should have known based on the history, but I didn’t want to believe this was true.
Since October 7, the news has just continued to somehow get worse, including the fact that one of the women, a peace activist named Vivian Silver, who I interviewed for my Israeli/Palestinian series, was captured and taken hostage by Hamas. Most of the innocent Israeli civilians they murdered and captured were peace activists trying to improve the lives of Palestinians.
I have lost friends. I have unfollowed and blocked people I once respected and I have never felt so alone and isolated in the world. I have never felt so much fear in my life for my safety and the safety of my family and friends.
I have lost friends. I have unfollowed and blocked people I once respected and I have never felt so alone and isolated in the world. I have never felt so much fear in my life for my safety and the safety of my family and friends.
All the while, I still grieve for the innocent Palestinians inside Gaza who were born into horrific circumstances in many ways beyond their control. I will always condemn violent acts by traumatized Israelis against innocent Palestinians in the West Bank. I still yearn for a solution where both people can feel safe in this seemingly nonstop cycle of bloodshed. I can still hold space for my anger and grief and that of the innocent people on the other side suffering as Israel defends itself from the daily ceaseless barrage of rockets all around the country. But how does Israel negotiate with terrorists? How do the Jews of this land negotiate with people who not only don’t want to compromise, but want every Jewish person — in Israel and beyond — dead?
I believe most people calling for a ceasefire want to end the suffering. It is an ignorant statement. An unconditional ceasefire from Israel will not do that — it will result in the destruction of the only Jewish country in the entire world.
While the world shouts about “genocide” and “apartheid,” in Israel it forgets to look at actual statistics that show the Palestinian population rising over the last several decades, and the reality that Israel is the ONLY country in the Middle East where people actually do coexist. Jewish people in Arab lands were pushed out after Israel’s independence; today, there are almost no Jews left in Arab countries in the Middle East.
Israel is where I found a piece of myself, a country where I hope to go again soon to create more memories with my beautiful family – to make up for all that lost time.
Israel is the only democracy in the middle east and home to not only Jews, but Arabs, Bedouins, Druze and other minorities who are Israeli citizens. Israel is the only place in the entire world where Jewish people are fully accepted for who they are; it’s our haven in a perilous world that has always and continues to try to destroy us.
Israel is here to stay. And I will forever support the Jewish state.
Am Yisrael Chai.
Allison Norlian is a three-time Emmy-nominated filmmaker, journalist, and screenwriter who co-owns BirdMine, a production company focused on elevating stories about underrepresented populations like the disabled and Jewish community.
