Anti-Semitism
December 7, 2023 — John Hinderaker

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, masquerades as a civil rights organization and is taken seriously as such by the liberal press. In fact, however, it is a front for jihadists. CAIR was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism case. It has a long history of anti-Semitic agitation and propaganda. It added to that ignominious history on November 24, at the 16th Annual Convention for Palestine in
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December 7, 2023 — Lloyd Billingsley

Ivy League college presidents and congressional Democrats aren’t the only ones having difficulty escaping a false moral equivalence between anti-Semitism and supposed “Islamophobia.” It’s a longstanding problem. Let’s revisit: As Americans, we are unified in our commitment to protect our country from terrorist attacks, and we must seek justice for those who lost their lives in the recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino. That was California attorney general Kamala
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December 6, 2023 — Scott Johnson

Bill Ackman is the founder and chief executive officer of the Pershing Square Capital Management hedge fund and an alumnus of Harvard College as well as the Harvard Business School. I’m sure he has generously supported the university in the past, but he has now taken a position of leadership urging alumni to oppose the campus intifada. Yesterday Ackman watched the testimony of the university presidents before the House Committee
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December 5, 2023 — John Hinderaker

Today the presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT were summoned before a House committee for questioning about anti-semitism on their campuses. I haven’t watched the whole testimony, but this clip is getting a lot of attention. Elise Stefanik asks each president whether calling for genocide of the Jews would violate that school’s code of conduct with regard to bullying or harassment. None of the witnesses had a clear answer to
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December 4, 2023 — Scott Johnson

I offered 10 notes on Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts in “In Larson’s garden.” The book tells the story of United States Ambassador William E. Dodd as he witnessed the rising terror of Hitler’s rule. Larson gives us Hitler and the Nazi regime through Dodd’s eyes in Berlin in mid-1933 when the future was an open question. In my tenth note I asked: if you had been an
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December 1, 2023 — John Hinderaker

Elon Musk provoked a firestorm by agreeing with a tweet that many construed as anti-Semitic: Musk subsequently described his tweet as “foolish” and “literally the worst and dumbest post that I’ve ever done.” Nevertheless, it, together with a smear by Media Matters that purported to show prominent advisers that their ads were showing up adjacent to neo-Nazi content (they were, but only on Media Matters’ computers, having twisted the X
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November 30, 2023 — Steven Hayward

This week’s peak demonstration of leftist anti-Semitic madness comes to us courtesy of the Oakland City Council, where a resolution endorsing a permanent cease-fire in the Israel-Gaza war was met with this parade of insane people: Last night the Oakland City Council voted on a resolution to call for a ceasefire. A city council member tried to insert language condemning Hamas. This was the reaction… pic.twitter.com/r7aTb2mkrQ — Yashar Ali 🐘
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November 28, 2023 — Lloyd Billingsley

The 10/7 attack, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, has revived debate on the nature of Islam. Is it true that “Islam is peace,” as President George W. Bush said after 9/11? Or is it basically a jihad against all non-Muslims, starting with the Jews? Fortunately, these questions have been explored in an accessible and entertaining way. I could hear the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer but
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November 28, 2023 — John Hinderaker

On Sunday there was a major demonstration in London, in opposition to anti-Semitism. It was peaceful and dignified, and stood in stark contrast with the pro-Hamas, pro-genocide demonstrations that engulfed the city on previous Saturdays. But the anti-anti-Semitism demonstration was controversial; too controversial for BBC employees to attend. Some did anyway. Dozens of Jewish BBC staff defied a ban on attending last weekend’s march against antisemitism, it has been revealed.
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November 27, 2023 — Steven Hayward

With each passing week since October 7, the outbursts of anti-Semitism in America have become more brazen, more widespread, more ferocious, and with fewer attempts to disguise its true character with academic jargon about colonialism. The Jew-hatred is completely out in the open now. The most shocking example this previous week occurred at Hillcrest High School in Queens, New York, where students rioted in the hallways against a teacher who
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November 27, 2023 — Lloyd Billingsley

On October 9, two days after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, a pro-Hamas mob in Massachusetts trampled on the American flag. If this leaves observers puzzled, the principle at work has been dramatized in popular culture. In Fort Apache the Bronx, police toss an innocent Puerto Rican to his death from the roof of a building. Leftist critics viewed the 1981 film as cinéma vérité about conditions
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November 26, 2023 — John Hinderaker

Are journalists, as a group, the least intelligent of any profession? I think they may be, and the war between Israel and Gaza is bringing out the worst in them. Check out this exchange, in which a clueless reporter floats the theory that the ratio of terrorists to innocent hostages released under the recent agreement is evidence of Israeli racism: The first question that left me speechless (but only for
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November 26, 2023 — Scott Johnson

In this morning’s Weekend Beacon email Vic Matus directs the attention of readers to Andrew Roberts’s “monumental essay comparing Hamas with the Nazis. In many ways, Hamas comes out worse.” However, President Biden is doing his best to complicate Israel’s effort to eliminate Hamas and impose his “two-state” fantasy on the Israelis despite the glaring absence among Palestinian Arabs of a market for peace. Take Hamas — please: The sheer
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November 25, 2023 — John Hinderaker

Hundreds of students rioted at Hillcrest High School in Queens on Monday, trying to assault a teacher who posted a photo on Facebook of herself with an “I Stand With Israel” sign: Hundreds of “radicalized” kids rampaged through the halls of a Queens high school this week for nearly two hours after they discovered a teacher had attended a pro-Israel rally — forcing the terrified educator to hide in a
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November 24, 2023 — Scott Johnson

The historian Jeffrey Herf is the Distinguished University Professor emeritus at the University of Maryland. Among the books he has written is Nazi Propaganda in the Arab World (published by Yale, now out of print). Professor Herf takes up the deep meaning of the Hamas charters of 1988 and 2017 in his learned American Purpose column “From the river to the sea.” He concludes: There is no precedent in modern
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November 24, 2023 — Scott Johnson

Mark Tapson covers the Candace Owens/Ben Shapiro controversy. Candace is apparently bidding to expand her market while otherwise exposing herself as something of an ignoramus. A cat has her tongue on precisely whom she was talking about in the tweet below. No government anywhere has a right to commit a genocide, ever. There is no justification for a genocide. I can’t believe this even needs to be said or is
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November 20, 2023 — Scott Johnson

Michael Oren is the prominent historian and Israeli ambassador to the United States. His 2015 memoir Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide remains timely and illuminating. He writes in his Free column “A war against the Jews” (November 20): This war is not simply between Hamas terrorists and Israelis. It is a war against the Jews. The insight began with the international media’s coverage of the conflict. Again, it
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