Anti-Semitism

The trouble with Dennis Ross

Featured image Dennis Ross is a scholar and diplomat of unmatched experience in the vagaries of “the peace process.” His 2005 memoir The Missing Peace: Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace runs to 880 closely printed pages. He served in both the Bush (41) and Clinton administrations. He also served as special assistant to President Obama and worked on National Security Council in both the Reagan and Obama administrations. »

An SOTU Postscript

Featured image Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech began almost a half hour behind schedule. The reason apparently was that his route to the Capitol was blocked by an illegal “kill the Jews” protest. So an official government proceeding was delayed by protesters who were violating the law. Doesn’t that sound familiar? Blocking an official proceeding. I think we have recent precedent on this. https://t.co/fxOZ9vxc74 — Josh Holmes (@HolmesJosh) March 8, »

Longing for Auschwitz

Featured image As a guest of the Jewish Community Relations Council I attended a private showing of the atrocity video compiled by the IDF in the aftermath of the October 7 massacre this past December. Several of the clips compiled in the video had previously been posted to social media. The sadistic glee of the Hamas savages is apparent throughout the 45-minute video. They shriek in ecstasy as they perform their barbaric »

Artists Try to Ban Israelis

Featured image The Venice Biennale is one of the world’s biggest art shows. The show has a national focus: Held since 1895 and considered the world’s top art event, the Venice Biennale, which starts in April, gives nations the chance to show off their best artists at national pavilions. That is the hook for pro-mass muder artists to try to boot Israel out: A petition to kick Israel out of the Venice »

Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement, 1964-2024. RIP

Featured image This fall will mark the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the famous “free speech” movement at UC Berkeley. You can find my account of it, written in the aftermath of the Milo Yiannopoulos riot of February, 2017, which I was present for, at this link. The Yiannopoulos riot was bad enough, but last night there was a sequel at Berkeley. As loyal readers may know, I am not around »

Giving Rational Ignorance a Bad Name

Featured image More evidence that the Biden Administration is largely staffed by morons and ignoramuses. A couple days ago I drew a contrast between the late UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Biden’s UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who gives Kamala Harris a run for her money in the word-salad platitudes sweepstakes. Thomas-Greenfield outdid herself when, after the Algerian cease-fire resolution was defeated a few days ago, she concluded her statement as follows: »

When Democrats Actually Defended Israel Without Reservation

Featured image I’ll have more to say very shortly about the UN Security Council resolution dance that Scott wrote about this morning, as I agree that it looks like Biden is positioning himself to turn on Israel at a moment’s notice. For the moment, I want to note the contrast between Biden’s UN ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a career foreign service officer who was likely picked for the post for the obvious reason, »

Hostage to Hamas

Featured image The Hamas war on Israel is criminal and barbaric. It is genocidal in the the old-fashioned sense — the sense with which Final Solution familiarized us. The support for Hamas that has emerged in the Democratic Party, on campus, and elsewhere around the country is therefore appalling. The latest news on the fate of Israeli hostages provides a somewhat striking twist in this respect. Drawing on a New York Times »

American Miseducation

Featured image The Free Press has just posted the 20-minute documentary American Miseducation (video below). The documentary is reported by the Free Press’s Oliva Reingold, who provides background on it here. The video is posted on YouTube with this explanation: In October last year, when Hamas attacked Israel, a new form of violent antisemitism instantly exploded onto American streets. This newest strain of the oldest hatred comes not from far-right extremists, but »

Long day’s journey into “Shoah”

Featured image Yesterday TCM played Claude Lanzmann’s nine-hour documentary Shoah in observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day. I saw it when it was released in 1985 and took the opportunity to watch it again yesterday. It’s a powerful film. Over a period of 12 years Lanzmann compiled the testimony of Holocaust victim/survivors, perpetrators, bystanders, and a few who don’t fit those categories. All in all, Lanzman filmed some 230 hours of footage and »

Harvard is dead

Featured image Roger Kimball’s New Criterion editorial on “DEI’s dangerous lies” is titled “Gay science,” in honor of sacked Harvard president Claudine Gay. Roger’s editorial lacks only some accompanying reference to Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, which I actually read under the tutelage of my political philosophy teacher last year. It was in The Gay Science that Nietzsche announced “God is dead.” I thought Roger’s editorial might have announced that Harvard is dead. »

Treason of the intellectuals, American edition

Featured image Reading the eminent historian Niall Ferguson’s great Free Press column “The treason of the intellectuals” last month, I was struck by this passage: It might be thought extraordinary that the most prestigious universities in the world should have been infected so rapidly with a politics imbued with antisemitism. Yet exactly the same thing has happened before. A hundred years ago, in the 1920s, by far the best universities in the »

United Auto Workers for Genocide [Updated]

Featured image Private sector unions in the U.S. have been in decline for a long time. Currently, only around 6% of all private sector employees are union members. And most of those union members are not left-wing; on the contrary, they tend to vote for Republicans and especially for Donald Trump. Their leaders, nevertheless, are mostly throwbacks: socialists if not outright Communists. And in today’s world, being left-wing means being in favor »

Legislatures Are Coming For DEI

Featured image It is slowly dawning on liberals across America that DEI is, in most contexts, illegal. The whole point of DEI is to discriminate against disfavored groups, and in favor of preferred groups. Liberals have a hard time understanding that there is anything wrong with this, but the courts–most notably, recently, in the Harvard and UNC cases–are beginning to set them straight. In many states, legislators aren’t waiting for litigation to »

A word from Ritchie Torres

Featured image Rep. Ritchie Torres is a Democrat whose district sits in the Bronx. He is an outspoken supporter of Israel and the Jewish people. This past Friday he gave the sermon at Manhattan’s Central Synagogue Shabbat service commemorating the life and legacy of MLK. Rep. Torres has posted the video below on his YouTube channel. The video seems to have gone viral among supporters of Israel on X. In his remarks »

Jewish Students Sue Harvard; MIT Up Next

Featured image A group of Jewish graduate students at Harvard, including several from the law school, have sued that university alleging rampant anti-Semitism in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The complaint is embedded below, and I encourage you to at least skim it–it is 77 pages long. What is striking about the complaint is the breadth and depth of its factual allegations. If they are true, »

Gaza comes to San Francisco

Featured image San Francisco supervisors wrapped their resolution in a shroud of evenhandedness as they approved a resolution calling for a “sustained ceasefire” in Gaza that condemns Hamas as well as the Israeli government and urges the Biden administration to press for the release of all hostages and delivery of humanitarian aid. You, Mr. Hitler, you have a good point, and you, Mr. Churchill, you do too. Those in the audience did »