The Obama Administration is concerned about random acts of violent extremism done by no group in particular and for no reason that we can discern

Child in Prayer

After this latest Jihad attack at Ohio State University, president Barack Obama took the bull-by-the-balls and trotted out White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest to tell us:

There’s still a lot of information to review and collect but obviously this is a difficult situation and our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Columbus and OSU at this time.

This is, indeed, a difficult situation and, speaking strictly for myself, I am just pleased that it had nothing whatsoever to do with "radical Islam" or "political Islam" or "Jihadism" or "Islamism" or the "Qu'ran" or the "Koran," or anything whatsoever do to with Islam or what President Barack Obama calls "violent extremism."

Like 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing, the gay nightclub murders in Orlando, the shooting up of US military personnel at Fort Hood, TX, the San Bernardino attack, or the beheading in Oklahoma - and on and on and on and on - we should be grateful that the OSU misunderstanding was either completely accidental, the act of a random psychopath, or the direct result of our own shameful behavior as a people and a nation.

We have to understand that when goodhearted folk are morally aggrieved by the United States (if not Americans, more generally) that they have every reason to feel this way because we earned their contempt due to our own misbehavior. It is for this reason, sadly, that we deserve whatever beating they wish to give us, our children, and our family and friends.

According to Time Magazine, the innocent attacker, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, a young Somali immigrant-student oppressed at Ohio State:

drove a car over a curb and into a crowd of people on campus, then got out and attacked students with a butcher knife. Authorities later added that Artan (who was shot and killed by a police officer at the scene) was a student at the school.

“[The] only thing that we can say based on common knowledge is that this was done on purpose,” Ohio State University Police Chief Craig Stone said at a press conference Monday afternoon.

Time magazine mimics the typical angry white American male Islamophobic response by assuming that the incident was either intentional or without just cause. Chief Stone claims, with only the flimsiest of evidence, that it is "common knowledge" that Artan acted with intention. He may have exited the vehicle wielding a machete - which he introduced to a few people - but this is no reason for white American racists to assume unkind thoughts on the part of Mr. Artan.

In a previous interview Artan told the OSU Lantern:

I wanted to pray in the open, but I was scared with everything going on in the media,” he said. “I’m a Muslim, it’s not what the media portrays me to be. If people look at me, a Muslim praying, I don’t know what they’re going to think, what’s going to happen… I was kind of scared right now. But I just did it. I relied on God. I went over to the corner and just prayed.

This was a young man, shot dead before his prime, who wanted nothing more than to pray.

He wanted to commune with God and the fascist cops at Ohio State shot him down in cold blood in much the same way that the insidious Zionists in Apartheid Israel conduct extra-judicial assassinations of innocent Palestinian-Arabs... who also sometimes lose control of their vehicles.

If anyone is to blame for this accident it is clearly Donald Trump and the Neo-Nazi brigade over at Breitbart News.

The bottom-line, however, is that until the United States ceases its racist, imperialist, and militaristic behavior then people of good-will may continue, through no fault of their own, to accidentally run us down with their vehicles.

If we have not learned that lesson by now, I am afraid that we never will.

This week on NOTHING LEFT (Nov 29, 2016)

Michael Lumish

Hosts Michael Burd and Alan Freedman tell us:

Here is this week's episode of NOTHING LEFT (29 Nov 2016), and apologies for the lack of FM transmission this morning which was caused by an external internet problem.

4 min Editorial: Avi Yemeni & One Nation controversy

10 min David Southwick MP

33 min Avi Yemeni, Independent Jewish Council of Aust

51 min Nonie Darwish, former Muslim activist

1 hr 43 min Asra Nomani, Muslim journalist

Jews and our "Special" Obligation

Michael Lumish

{Also published at the Elder of Ziyon, Jews Down Under, and The Jewish Press.}

A recent opinion piece for the Washington Post by Rabbi Jill Jacobs, author of Where Justice Dwells: A Hands-On Guide to Doing Social Justice in Your Jewish Community, and Daniel Sokatch of the allegedly pro-Israel New Israel Fund, is entitled, "Why Jews have a special obligation to resist Trump."

Jacobs and Sokatch claim that:

Donald Trump’s winning platform includes pledges to ban Muslims from entering our country, to forcibly deport millions of people, to remove legal protections from vulnerable minorities and to reinstate the use of torture. The president-elect has threatened massive attacks on human rights and constitutional freedoms. Just last week, he appointed to the highest advisory position in the White House Stephen K. Bannon, a former publisher of Breitbart News, which the Southern Poverty Law Center calls the “media arm” of the white supremacist alt-right movement.

The idea behind the article is that because Trump is essentially a Nazi, Jews have a particular obligation to join with other "threatened" minorities in political opposition.

I always find it interesting, though, when people tell Jews that we have "special" obligations.

It reminds me a bit of when they say that Jewish people have failed to learn the lessons of the Holocaust - a "special" obligation if ever there was one - with the implication that Jews are not nearly as ethical as we need to be in order to prove our moral worthiness. It is one of those obligations that we can never seem to master in the eyes of others, including many other Jews.

The false and exaggerated claims toward Trump, however, are not intended to create insight, but to spread fear of the individual and loathing toward Americans who voted for him. The absolute terms within which they are presented also leave no wriggle-room for actual discussion of the issues raised by the authors.

Is it really Trump's policy to simply "ban Muslims from entering our country"? No, of course it is not. This is a lie. But making such a claim, with its implication of implacable racism, serves to shut down the much needed national discussion around immigration policy.

In this way, Jacobs and Sokatch frame the argument in much the manner that the hard-left always frames virtually any argument; one is either in agreement with them or exiled as a deplorable monster. In either case, there is no discussion to be had, nor disagreement allowed.

Jacobs and Sokatch would have us believe that Jews are extra-special and that as the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors - not to mention the inheritors of Talmudic scholarship and ethics - we have a distinct moral obligation not incumbent upon others. We are, thus, never allowed to be just normal Israelis or Brits or Aussies or Americans. Instead we are told by our ethical superiors, sometimes Jewish and sometimes not, that we have special obligations and if we fail to carry out those obligations then we are something other than kosher.

Now, at the dawn of the Days of Trump, some on the battered left are doubling-down on the kind of relentless moral narcissism that helped bring us Trump in the first place. Throughout the Obama administration, and the reign of the baby-boomers since Bill Clinton, the progressive-left relentlessly pounded issues of racism, sexism, and homophobia into the atomic protoplasm of every living creature from Bridgeport, Connecticut to San Francisco, California. We even had poor Hank Hill, of King of the Hill fame, prior to Obama, wondering if his dog was racist.

Nonetheless, Jacobs and Sokatch warn American Jews that, "Trying to conduct business as usual with the Trump administration could prevent us from joining with other threatened groups to protect our neighbors."

Jacobs and Sokatch represent one small Jewish example of the mass hysteria whipped like a meringue into the general population over the last six months. The ceaseless and ever-increasing rhetorical churning of alleged racism, sexism, and homophobia that set the rhythm for the Obama administration turned into a crescendo as we got closer and closer to November 8. By November 9, instead of peaking and then sliding into its natural level, Trump Hatred became a discordant howling that continues until this very moment.

Jacobs and Sokatch, in service to this cult of victimhood, combine the spreading of raw fear with a cloying form of religious outreach that seeks to exploit the famous Jewish sense of guilt.

They write:

Even if Jews were not personally threatened as Jews, it would still be imperative for us to call upon all of the communal strength we have and all of the institutions we have fought to create to oppose threats to other people. This is an obligation that comes from our tradition. In the Torah, one of God’s first commands to the Jewish people after our liberation from slavery is to protect those who are most vulnerable, as we, too, know the experience of being strangers.

I have no reason to doubt Jacobs and Sokatch's sincerity or intentions.

Like many millions of Americans they have succumbed to the constant media yammerings of how regular working-class white Americans are creatures ruled by hatred and fear of the Other. Despite the fact that the United States is actually one of the very least racist or sexist countries on the entire planet many in the Democratic Party insist that we are among the worst.

In the final months heading into the election the progressive-left, the Democratic Party, and the traditional media conjured an apparition from hell which they called the "alt-right." In truth, it was there all along, but with little national or cultural significance until Hillary and the anti-Trumpeteers saw some use for them as a club with which to smack around the Deplorable Cheetoh.

The alt-right, a creature that virtually no one had even heard of prior to this election, seems to have taken over the country almost entirely out of the blue. The manner in which it went from being on the utmost political fringe to front-and-center within a matter of weeks is an amazing testament to the power of group-think, public relations psychology, and the political manipulation of normal human fears for electoral purposes. If the progressive-left didn't have any actual Klansmen or Nazis to shadow-box with then, by God, they'd conjure it up themselves, which is precisely what they did.

As it happens, however, Steve Bannon and Breitbart News, whatever else we may make of them, are friendly toward Jews, friendly toward Gay people, and Breitbart senior editor - and "dangerous faggot" - Milo Yiannopoulos, happens to be both.

I am sorry, but pro-Jewish and pro-Gay does not for white supremacism make.

That the so-called "alt-right" contains some racists is undoubtedly the case, as does - in no particular order - the Democratic Party, the Obama administration, the progressive-left, the EU, the UN, Black Lives Matter, western feminist leadership, and any media outlet that tells Jewish people where we may, or may not, be allowed to live within our own homeland.

Do Jacobs and Sokatch believe that we have a "special" obligation to resist them, too?

Somehow, I doubt it.

Is this alt-right?

The so-called "alt-right," as conjured by the Hillary campaign and the national media, is a boogey-man.

A ghost from the past.

A golem.

The resultant mass hysteria and toxic national group-think would be funny, were it not so dangerous.

In and out of the traditional media there are constant dire warnings of the mask finally dropping from the true racist face of America. The alternative right, clustered around Breitbart News, is said to be the vanguard of rising American fascism.

What flabbergasts me is how - practically with the snap of a finger - the media conjured this ghost into reality. Virtually no one talked about this alt-right whatever-it-is until just prior to the election... which brought so much rage and tears and acrimony and blood into the hearts of sad progressives denied.

We are told that Breitbart is a white nationalist cauldron unleashed by the forces of Trump.

But just who are these people that virtually no one ever heard of until the final months of the election?

What is the alt-right, really?

It wasn't until they stamped "ALT-RIGHT" onto Donald Trump's forehead that I even knew that this transgressive right-leaning, Gay-friendly, Israel-friendly, political trend even existed.

My understanding, from listening to Breitbartians and their interlocutors, like Sam Harris, Dave Rubin, Ben Shapiro, and the anti-feminist "Dangerous Faggot" Milo Yiannopoulos - who refers to Trump as "Daddy" by the way - and some of the people clustered around Horowitz's FrontPage Mag, like Daniel Greenfield, is that the alt-right is, in fact, nationalistic.

They are Jewish-trending cultural libertarians, democratic nationalists, free speech advocates, religious and atheist, Gay and Straight, opposed to mass immigration, open borders, and the kind of globalism represented by the United Nations and the European Union. Thus they tend to oppose Islam, because they oppose Sharia Law, and they oppose Sharia Law because they do not want to see Milo thrown from a high place and then stoned upon his arrival on the ground. By the end of the interview below Dave Rubin might... but that's neither here nor there.

But are these people white supremacists?

On a daily basis we are now told that people around Breitbart are white supremacists. It's the rise of the new Klan. The forces of Old and Ugly are returning to the United States and led by Donald Trump, the Monster, himself.

Nonetheless, I feel almost positive that anyone looking into the writings and speakings of the people named above will not find white supremacism.

Actual American white supremacists have no meaningful presence within American political discourse. Their current display before the public is as a political avatar created to misrepresent Trump and the Republicans.

Below is a conversation between Dave Rubin and Milo.

Rubin is a classical liberal.

Milo is a brilliant lunatic and an anti-feminist.

You tell me if these are white supremacists.

James Mattis

Sar Shalom

In assessing president-elect Trump's selection of retired General James Mattis to be the next Secretary of Defense, many supporters of Israel are pointing to statements that Mattis has made regarding the contribution of America's support for Israel to security threats in the Middle East. Not having access to anything directly on Mattis, I'll turn to his co-author of one of the drafts of the 2006 Army-Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual, David Petraeus. Similar charges have been leveled at Petraeus, and the Palestinianists have similarly used Petraeus' supposed endorsement of that position to argue against American support for Israel. In the following video, Petraeus, clarifies that statement, a clarification which would likely apply to anything Mattis may have said concerning Israel (apologies for the sound quality of Petraeus' voice).

This week on NOTHING LEFT (Nov 22, 2016)

Michael Lumish

Nothing Left - Episode 125 - with Martin Sherman, Toby Greene, Simon Plosker and Isi Leibler and hosts Michael Burd and Alan Freedman.

Democrats Rediscover anti-Semitism

Michael Lumish

{Also published at the Elder of Ziyon and Jews Down Under.}

The poster on the left represents a bit of anti-Zionist propaganda that has been around for decades and is among the negative images of Jewish self-determination that today's college kids grew up with.

Although the hard-left generally supports anti-Zionism, American Jews still cling to the Democratic Party despite the fact that so much of the party and the movement believes it has every right to tell Jewish people where we may, or may not, be allowed to live within our own homeland.

About 80 percent of American Jews, including me, voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and about 70 percent, not including me, did so in 2012. In the current cycle, American Jews voted for Hillary Clinton in similar numbers.

Given the fact that the western progressive-left has made a home of itself for malicious anti-Semitic anti-Zionists it becomes rather difficult to understand why American Jews continue to support a political movement, and its adjacent political party, that hold them in contempt.

The Washington Post has a piece from last September entitled, In the safe spaces on campus, no Jews allowed by Anthony Berteaux. Berteaux relates the story of Arielle Mokhtarzadeh, an Iranian-Jew who was made to feel unwelcome by the UCLA progressive community due to her caring for the Jewish people through caring for the Jewish State of Israel. As a student of Jewish-Persian background she therefore attended the annual Students of Color Conference in search of answers.

Mokhtarzadeh tells us:

Over the course of what was probably no longer than an hour, my history was denied, the murder of my people was justified, and a movement whose sole purpose is the destruction of the Jewish homeland was glorified. Statements were made justifying the ruthless murder of innocent Israeli civilians, blatantly denying Jewish indigeneity in the land, and denying the Holocaust in which six million Jews were murdered,” she said. “Why anyone in their right mind would accept these slanders as truths baffles me. But they did. These statements, and others, were met with endless snaps and cheers. I was taken aback.

The truth is that many Democrats despise the lone, sole Jewish state as a human rights monstrosity even though it has a far better record on human rights than any other country throughout the Middle East. This little fact, in itself, reveals the anti-Jewish racism within BDS and, therefore, embedded within the Democratic Party.

It is for this reason that progressives often support Hamas and the Palestinian Authority when they call for the murder of Jews in the streets of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa. Every time Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) or the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) meet on some campus to call for yet another intifada they are, in fact, calling for the murder of innocent Jews in Israel.

Such calls for anti-Jewish violence tend to be supported not only by other progressive-left students, but also by sympathetic university administrators who could hardly care less that students are calling for violence against Jews on their very own campuses. They even provide thumb-sucking "safe-spaces" where those very same students can rest their heads on university provided pillows without having to deal with the richly deserved ramifications of their own behavior. Since no one is allowed to even question their judgment in these "safe spaces" they need not even consider the possibility that calling for violence against Jewish people - as a matter of social justice, no less - might actually be something other than liberal.

In fact, San Francisco State University president, Leslie Wong, is so enamored of anti-Semitic anti-Zionism that he even praised GUPS as representing "the very purpose of this great university."  He did so despite the fact that, in their cries for intifada, they literally call for the murder of Jews in Israel. Sometimes they even call for bringing the intifada home, by which they mean support for the political murder of Jews in the United States. None of this fazes the progressive-left because offing Jews - particularly of the Israeli variety - is considered a rational and perfectly normal human response to alleged Jewish aggression against the bunny-like "indigenous" population in the Land of Israel.

And this is why Arielle Mokhtarzadeh was treated like filth at UCLA.

Berteaux writes:

The ramifications of ignoring the normalization of anti-Semitism cannot be understated: The most recent FBI hate crime report found that 58.2 percent of hate crimes motivated by religious bias were targeted at Jews. Jews make up 2.2 percent of the American population, so the FBI’s statistics make it clear that Jews are the most disproportionately attacked religious group in America. It should be troubling to everyone that an SJP member at Temple University physically assaulted a pro-Israel Jewish student two years ago, calling him a “Zionist baby killer.” But it should be far more troubling that the SJP chapter at Temple (like all SJP chapters) promotes itself as a progressive organization, claiming solidarity with movements such as Black Lives Matter.

The Democratic Party just got its ass kicked by a crude businessman-entertainer who they accuse of being everything short of the Devil and now they are not only screaming from the rafters about racism and white supremacy, but they even have the chutzpah to suddenly start whining about the alleged anti-Semitism of conservatives and Republicans.

The truth is that the Left and the Democratic Party are enemies of the Jewish people to the extent that they make a homes of themselves for anti-Semitic anti-Zionism. American Jews are, essentially, being told that they may contribute to the progressive movement but the price of admission is sitting across the Democratic Party table from anti-Zionists who have no respect for our history, no respect for the Holocaust, and who think that we are undeserving of self-determination and self-defense within our own homeland.

Requiring that Jews accept anti-Semitic anti-Zionism as part of the larger Democratic Party coalition is no different from asking black people to kindly accept Klansmen as part of that coalition. No self-respecting black person would ever do so and neither should any self-respecting Jew.

The progressive-left and the Democratic Party fling around charges of racism like they're confetti. Throughout the recent American presidential campaign they lambasted Trump and his supporters as Neanderthal fascists representing the very worst of all humanity, which is why some of their devotees are beating the hell out of white people in the streets. But if the Democratic Party has suddenly rediscovered anti-Semitism it is strictly out of political convenience, nothing more.

There's something eerily familiar about this moment.

Israel-Bashing Profs At UC Berkeley Play Victim

Michael Lumish

I have a piece sponsored by my friends at Campus Watch entitled, Israel-Bashing Profs At UC Berkeley Play Victim, published at the Daily Caller.

Here is a tid-bit:

Are University of California academics who engage in anti-Israel activism subject to “silencing”? Such were the strident cries on October 27, when about one hundred students gathered on a cloudy morning outside of Sproul Hall at the University of California, Berkeley for the 3rd Annual International Day of Action for Palestine.

Organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Bears for Palestine, the rally featured Israel-bashing, BDS-promoting professors Hatem Bazian and Rabab Abdulhadi, who insisted over loudspeakers that they were being repressed by the UC system.

It's frankly astonishing that anti-Zionist activists entrenched within academia believe that they are being "silenced."

What's even more disturbing, I think, is that they sell anti-Semitic anti-Zionism under the names of "social justice" and "human rights."

All I can say is that seeking to deprive the Jewish people of self-determination and self-defense on the very land that we come from has zero to do with either of those things.

On the contrary, anti-Zionism represents the up-ending of social justice and human rights.

In any case, you guys should check it out.

And a Big Tip 'O the Kippa to Campus Watch West Coast Representative, Cinnamon Stillwell.

Facebook Notes: "The Concept is Very Simple."

Michael Lumish

It still amazes me that people refuse to understand the simple concept that opposition to Islam as a political movement is not "racist" toward, or prejudicial against, Muslims.

Why is this concept so hard to grasp?

My suspicion, of course, is that it is not difficult to grasp but socially and politically inconvenient sufficient to disallow many people from even thinking about the question.

In any case, this is my response to a gentleman on a pro-Israel Facebook page who is concerned about anti-Muslim bigotry within the Jewish community.

It's not a matter of "all Muslims." 

In truth, the concept is very simple. 

Sharia law claims non-Muslims as infidels and those of us (Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians) who are considered "people of the book" have the choice of conversion, submission, or death. Gay people are forbidden entirely and women are chattel. 

Thus political Islam has emerged as the foremost threat of non-Muslims, Gay people, and women throughout the world. 

Furthermore, Muslims throughout the Middle East are anti-Semitic in rates that go from the mid-70th percentile (in the more liberal countries) to th mid-90th percentile in the so-called "Palestinian territories." 

And, needless to say, the foremost victims of Islam as a political movement are Muslims who are not sufficiently devout according to their persecutors. 

Christians may have been the foremost persecutors of Jews in the past, but today the primary culprit is political Islam as it seeks to undermine, and eventually destroy, the well-being of Jewish people throughout the world, via undermining the well-being of Israel. 

In Europe, mass Muslim immigration is turning that continent into a bloody mess because the Muslim immigrants generally refuse to assimilate and maintain a perpetually hostile stance toward their hosts, complete with indifference to the authority of the state or the dignity of non-Muslim women, who are generally considered something akin to whores. 

Does this mean "all Muslims" are bad people? 

Of course, not. 

Condemning Islam as a political movement (Political Islam, Islamism, whatever you want to call it) is no more "racist" than opposing Nazi Germany was "racist" toward Germans. 

Further, it becomes difficult to understand how anyone can consider themselves "progressive" or "liberal" or concerned with universal human rights if they refuse to make a stand against a massive and growing political movement that hangs Gay people from cranes, holds non-Muslims as second and third non-citizens under the rule of dhimmitude, and keeps women quite literally under wraps. 

All true progressives stand up for the rights of the oppressed and, yes, that includes when Muslims are doing the oppressing.

On the CTRL-L and the Conjuration of Demonic Political Golems

Michael Lumish

Since the recent election of entertainer and businessman, Donald Trump, to the Presidency of the United States, the American CTRL-L has rampaged through the streets of America's largest cities.

The CTRL-L is a combination of various racist, non-democratic, violently-inclined leftist groups - including Black Lives Matter, the Occupy Movement, the ANSWER coalition, and BDS - that infect the True Believers within the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party, of course, is a party in disarray where members are at one another's throats because of their recent defeat at the hands of a world-famous gazillionaire "outsider" who refuses to speak in the tired politically-correct jargon of the school-marmish, safe-space-seeking, yet semi-fascistic, Obama coalition.

What the various anger-driven misfits of the CTRL-L have in common is a shared contempt for the USA as a liberal democracy, for Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people, and for the American people, in general, who still seem rather fond of the United States as a society grounded in liberal democracy and regulatory capitalism.

Since the CTRL-L has infected the Democrats it has - like everything it touches - turned that party into the realm of anti-American, anti-White, anti-Jewish "racists" who demand inclusivity with one another via the exclusivity of wrong-thinking Jews and right-thinking white people.

The CTRL-L is, needless to say, the ALT-R inside-out and backwards.

What they both have in common, however, is that neither is real as a distinct political movement... although one, it must be said, is considerably more materialized than the other.

As David Haggith put it in a piece entitled, Liberals Scared to Death by Their Own Caricature of Trumpettes:

Liberals are afraid of their own shadows right now. That’s because they’ve created anti-matter, Mr. Hyde caricatures of the Trumpettes — the average little guys who support Trump. These shadows that liberals have cast by their own self-deceit now surround them, and they believe the grotesquely exaggerated images they have created.

This false belief like any phobia is taking on its own life by creating mass hysteria in the streets of America. By that step, belief becomes reality. While the initial description that liberals painted of Trumpettes is false — they’re all misogynistic, homophobic racists — the hysteria is real, and that causes people to react with violence against whatever they fear. Those violent reactions become very real horrors that are not just painted in the imagination, and they divide the nation deeper, creating  fears that are now based on real horrible events that came about due to the original false beliefs. It’s like a panic attack that feeds on itself.

Just as there is no CTRL-L, so there is no ALT-R.

That racists, sexists, and homophobes live in the United States is unquestionably true.

That racists, sexists, and homophobes live in Paraguay, Papua New Guinea, and Pakistan is also true.

The so-called ALT-R appeared on the national stage directly before the election is obviously not a coincidence. It astonishes me, in fact, that the magickians who conjured up this monstrosity did not seem to think that we might notice. Prior to this most recent election virtually no one had ever even heard of any such creature as the ALT-R aside, perhaps, from a few pissed-off nincompoops banging their heads against their laptops.

Just as the CTRL-L is a recent conjuration of the imagination designed for political purposes, so is the ALT-R.

The progressive-left, the Democratic Party, and the Hillary Campaign, conjured up the virtually non-existent American fringe of White Supremacists, Klansmen, and other such cultural relics, in order to breathe life into them as a single menacing golem. They turned this fantastical zombie-like monstrosity onto the neck of Donald Trump but - as anyone familiar with the literature around golems will tell you - they have a tendency to turn on their creators.

For months, now, the ALT-R golem has stalked the countryside scaring the holy hell out of perfectly normal Americans. It is even responsible, in some measure, for the violence and broken glass in the streets of Chicago and Portland among those fighting the chimera-like demon.

In the end, however, the thing turned on its master and is now being chased through the streets by townsfolk with pitch-forks and torches and actual human beings are being seriously harmed, if not killed, as a result.

The irony, sadly, is that while both the ALT-R and the CTRL-L, as distinct political movements, are creatures of the imagination, the individual body parts have reality. However, the parts comprising the CTRL-L are considerably more real than the parts comprising the ALT-R.

For example, the ALT-R has the Klan and virtually everyone in the United States despises the Ku Klux Klan. We despise the Klan like we despise the Nazis. The Klan is so hated, in fact, that it doesn't even exist any more outside of the fringiest of the fringe-fringe.

The same cannot be said of the Black Lives Matter movement, with its Jewish problem and inspiration for highway overpass shootings of cops for political purposes.

Among extreme political groups, BLM is important enough to warrant the attention and appreciation of both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

The Klan, however, has all the contemporary significance of a filthy white hood rotting beneath some porch in the Arkansas hills.

This week on NOTHING LEFT (Nov 15, 2016)

Michael Lumish

Michael Burd and Alan Freedman (hosts) tell us:

This week we discuss the US election and the Middle East with academic and expert on political Islam, Greg Barton; we catch up again with Ron Jontof-Hutter in Berlin; and we speak with Aaron Langmaid, Herald-Sun journalist who attended the recent Rambam trip to Israel. 

We also hear from Zenobia Ravji, a journalist who was invited to participate in a discussion on the BDS movement and a resolution supporting it proposed the New York City council, and of course we hear from Isi Leibler in Jerusalem who has his thoughts on the Trump victory ,you will be surprised .

6 min Editorial: Trump’s victory and the Palestinians

14 min Greg Barton, academic and expert on political Islam

38 min Ron Jontof-Hutter, Berlin commentator

51 min Aaron Langmaid, Herald-Sun journalist on his Rambam Israel visit

1 hr 9 min Zanobia Ravji, journalist on NY anti-BDS motion

1 hr 25 min Isi Leibler, on why Donald Trump is a Postive.

Conquest of the Deplorable Cheese Doodle

Michael Lumish

{Also published at the Elder of Ziyon and Jews Down Under.}

As I write these lines, anti-Trumpers are protesting and, in some cases, rioting, throughout America's largest cities. In Chicago two young black men beat the holy hell out of a 50-year old white guy because he allegedly voted for Trump.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party is in big trouble and many of us are still quietly processing the gravity of the current political moment.

Much to my astonishment, the day after I went onto the Nothing Left radio show to discuss the meaning of Hillary's likely win, Donald Trump handed the Democratic Party a big can of whoop-ass.

My suspicion is that the Brexit Effect befuddled the pollsters, the majority of whom indicated the strong likelihood of a Clinton win.

The Brexit Effect

It is probable that many Trump voters, like many Brexit voters, were intimidated into believing that their political sensibilities represent the very worst of human failings and therefore they misled pollsters concerning their positions. These would have been among the very large numbers of people who represented Trump's soft base.

In the months leading into the election Trump-leaning voters were told - over and over again - that they are racist, sexist, homophobic, bigots. The victory of Hitler-cum-Trump, therefore, is said to reveal an American political-social consciousness rolling in the muck of barbarism, stupidity, and the unjust prejudices of earlier times.

And who gets the blame for this insidious state of affairs? Why, racist, sexist, homophobic, bigots who refused to support those who called them racist, sexist, homophobic, bigots, of course.

Many throughout Britain felt much the same way concerning Brexit voters. EU supporters, much like Hillary supporters, believed that the opposition was (or is) comprised of backward-looking, low-life Neanderthals who - when they aren't feeding the pigs or banging their heads against rust-belt walls - are out spreading hatred and racism toward people "of color" in order to gratuitously satisfy irrational anachronistic prejudices.

Therefore, because the "deplorables" were constantly told how deplorable they are, they sometimes lied about their true electoral intentions and thereby skewed the polls. In other words, both Trump and Brexit had the kind of quiet support that tends to hamstring pollsters, or so goes the theory.

Broken Glass in the Streets

Some of the angry are out in the streets breaking windows in American cities, today, because they believe that the United States is a horribly racist country and the conquest of The Deplorable Cheese Doodle (or is he a Cheetoh?) represents a confirmation of their worst fears.

They revel in the alleged ugliness of their fellow Americans because they have been encouraged to do so by much of the media, much of academia, and by politicians looking to divide the electorate for personal political gain.

Thus we end up with this surreal political moment wherein people are in the streets spitting hatred at haters for the purpose of ending hatred in America. It is apparently through breaking store-front windows and the bones of middle-aged white guys that Love Trumps Hate.

The Democratic Party assumption of anger or racial malevolence as a primary motivating factor for Trump voters points to a serious problem in the ways that we have come to see ourselves as a people and a country.

While the United States is a flawed democracy, it is nothing like the fascistic hell-hole that some make it out to be. From a human rights perspective, in fact, the US is one of the most decent countries on the entire planet and that is not going to change anytime soon, Trump or no Trump.

Furthermore, while the man can obviously be boorish, there is little to indicate racism in his policy propositions around issues of immigration.

Trump wants immigration into the United States to take place through a legal and tightly-controlled process which, during a period of rising Jihad, emphasizes security measures. Given the spread of Political Islam throughout the Middle East and Europe, and the unfortunate European experience with mass Muslim immigration, this is merely commonsense. It has nothing whatsoever to do with "race" hatred and everything to do with people who are eager to blow up the infidel in the name of Allah. It is not about skin color or ethnicity. It is about the spread of a theofascistic ideology that holds women in contempt and that encourages the throwing of Gay people off of tall buildings as an expression of religious justice.

It is one of the great ironies of recent western political history that the movement most associated with social justice and universal human rights, i.e., the progressive-left, is also the political movement least likely to stand up for the minority rights of hundreds of millions of people living under al-Sharia throughout the Muslim world.

America does not hate - and neither does the West, in general - but the world is not lacking for countries that do.

R.I.P Leonard Cohen

Doodad

He will be missed.

This week on NOTHING LEFT (Nov 8, 2016)

Michael Lumish

(Please note that I speak at the 52 minute mark. - ML)

Michael Burd and Alan Freedman (hosts) tell us:

This week we hear from Greek journalist and newscaster Maria Polizoidouon Greek attitudes to Israel and immigration into Europe; we speak with Maj-Gen Yaakov Amidror from the Begin-Sadat Centre in Israel; blogger and journalist Mike Lumish joins us live from San Francisco to give us the latest on the US election, and Isi Leibler joins reports from Jerusalem.

 3 min Editorial: Obama’s legacy

10 min Mary Polizoidou, Greek journalist, her countries invasion by Asylum Seekers and Greek Gov anti- semitism.

26 min Maj-Gen Yaakov Amidror, Begin-Sadat Centre

52 min Mike Lumish, blogger and commentator speaking Live from West Coast latest on US elections.

1 hr 33 min Isi Leibler on what surprises does Obama have for Israel before he leaves office?

Pity the anti-Zionist Snowflake

Michael Lumish

{Also published at the Elder of Ziyon, Jews Down Under, and The Jewish Press.}

One of the most pathetic and hypocritical aspects of contemporary western campus politics is the Crybully / Snowflake phenomenon.

University administrations throughout the West have brought back en loco parentis in a manner that would have absolutely disgusted - in its treacly infantilization of young adults in "safe spaces" - college students from the 1960s and 1970s.

Young radicals from that period would not have demanded common spaces where they could suck their collective thumbs, while instigating hatred toward white people and Jews who stand with Israel.

Whatever they may have thought about allegedly insidious white-anglos, radical students from the 1960s - who were mainly middle-class white-anglos, themselves - emphatically did not want the university administration's parental embrace. What they wanted, frankly, was for the administrations to get the hell out of their faces and to stop enabling the "war machine."

The late 1960s, and the early 1970s, saw the emergence of a hodge-podge of radical types ranging from the Panthers to the psychedelic-counterculture people to the variety of hard political types, blending criticisms of race and gender with economic class, to those like the Weathermen who wanted to burn the "system" down entirely.

But whether these young people wanted social and economic justice for non-white people or women or Gay people, or whether they wanted to end the Vietnam War or to float away into a haze of smoke and acid, the very last thing on this planet that they wanted was to be treated like small children by parental university help-mates.

What they wanted, more than anything else, actually, was the freedom to be who they are.

And it is this that makes the Crybully / Snowflake phenomenon on today's university campuses pathetic. It is not merely that the university infantalizes these students, but that the students infantalize themselves when they go into such rooms, sometimes containing coloring books and stuffed animals.

At Brown University, or so Judith Shulevitz tells us in the New York Times, the "safe spaces" are:

intended to give people who might find comments “troubling” or “triggering,” a place to recuperate. The room was equipped with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma. Emma Hall, a junior, rape survivor and “sexual assault peer educator” who helped set up the room and worked in it during the debate, estimates that a couple of dozen people used it. At one point she went to the lecture hall — it was packed — but after a while, she had to return to the safe space. “I was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs,” Ms. Hall said.

When did the university experience become kindergarten?

Why do university administrators insist upon treating young adults, who are old enough to fight and die in war, as 8 year olds? And why are so many students eager to avail themselves of their own dimunition?

But this is just why the Crybully / Snowflake Phenomenon is pathetic.

If it were merely pathetic I would not bother writing about it because, so what? If students who think of themselves as on the cultural cutting-edge wish to be pathetic, who am I to say "no"?

The thing is, of course, they aren't children and many of them carry anti-white and anti-Zionist hatred which they wield with abandon. That is, many of the the same people who require safe spaces are also the same people who spit hatred at whiteness, defame those Jews who refuse to toe their political line, and encourage violence toward cops.

Here, for example, are a bunch of student racists, just days ago, refusing to allow white kids through the main gate of UCAL, Berkeley:



And this is what makes this creepy campus political trend hypocritical and entirely toxic.

A student activist cannot, after all, be racist and anti-racist, both, at the same time.

A student activist cannot call for the blood of random Jews in Jerusalem (in calls for intifada) while simultaneously requiring that the university provide a special place to rest their head from trauma if the mayor of that town drops in for a chit-chat.

If today's crop of college radicals wish to spit fire at white people, and Jewish supporters of Israel, for our decadent and evil ways, that is their right, but one cannot inspire hatred toward others while also demanding child-like coddling from public universities.

And why would any self-respecting young political activist want such coddling, anyway?

Coddling, after all, is not the stuff that young rebels are made from... or is it?

What Donald Trump and Uncle Bernie Apparently Have in Common

Michael Lumish

"Because something is happening here. But you don't know what it is. Do you, Mister Jones?" - Bob Dylan

Michael Totten has an exceedingly interesting article (Hat Tip to Sar Shalom) published at City Journal entitled, Children of the Revolution: the Rise of the alt-Left.

The alt-Left?

It was only about a quarter past last Tuesday that I started hearing about some great new enemy-of-all-humanity called the "alt-Right."

Now we also have the "alt-Left"?

The alt-Right

My initial assumption was that the so-called alt-Right fills the same political role as Emmanuel Goldstein in George Orwell's classic 1984. That is, my assumption was that the Hillary campaign, along with the Democratic Party, blew life into the image of a dying enemy for political reasons. 

By stitching together various largely irrelevant and fading hard-right tendencies into a single menacing whole, Hillary and her supporters could point the trembling finger of blame at Trump (for racism, sexism, and homophobia) in order to rally the troops around a common enemy.

There is nothing particularly abnormal in this. It's just politics, as usual, but I did not think that the so-called alt-Right had much reality to it. There are, of course, individual racists, sexists, and homophobes in the US, but compared to much of the rest of the world, the United States is a regular civil rights Shangri-la. 

Totten's argument, however, is that if something called the "alt-Right" gathered around the Trump campaign, so something called the "alt-Left" gathered around the Sanders campaign. He describes the alt-Right as a "ragtag crew of white nationalists, xenophobes, anti-Semites, Muslim-haters, neo-Confederates and “birthers.”"

Now, that is definitely a Mötley Crüe of haters to hate upon. He left out homophobes and misogynists. I am sure, nonetheless, that Totten would include them in the ugly crowd.

I am not certain what he would do with anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, anti-Zoroastrian, anti-everything-non-Muslim, Jihadi Bigots. I guess they would have to get docketed onto the alt-Left, though.

The alt-Left and Hillary

Among the alt-Left, Totten finds "assorted Marxists, 'safe-space' activists, cop-haters, anti-Zionists, anti-vaxxers, and blame-America-firsters." (What is an "anti-vaxxer," you may ask? Well, you're just going to have to look it up, as I did.) In any case, while the semi-mythical alt-Left does not seem quite as devoted to sheer hatred as does the semi-mythical alt-Right, it nonetheless has more than its fair share of hate mongers. The anti-Zionists, after all, are veiled anti-Semites and the alt-Left despises white people... for being racist. They are so opposed to racism that students at UCAL, Berkeley, refused to even allow white people through the main gates of the university just a few days ago.

They even dislike some black people for not being "authentically black," whatever that means, exactly.

Thus, "Sanders and Trump are flip sides of the same populist coin." According to Totten:

Both promised to kick over the garbage cans in Washington. Both railed against money in politics. Both claimed that immigration depresses working-class wages. Isolationists in economics and in war, they bucked mainstream Republicanism and Clintonism. And, as Troy Campbell put it in Politico earlier this year, they are both “enabling dissenters” who have “legitimized for discussion ‘fringe beliefs’ that millions of Americans beforehand had been unsure of or too shy to fully embrace, but nonetheless felt strongly about.”" 

But where does Hillary fit in with all this?

Totten argues - and who would disagree? - that Hillary represents the status quo. It must be understood, however, that this "status quo" is trending Left, not Right.

Since 2008, the political status quo in the United States has moved toward Brussels and Angela Merkel, not toward Main Street and Pat Buchanan. It is moving toward what some are calling a "global elitist" perspective characterized by open borders, non-democratic centralized authority in foreign capitals, and mass Muslim immigration from North Africa and the Middle East into the West, particularly Europe.

This, I would argue, is very much a political trend that comes out of the western-left and that incorporates Totten's "alt-Left" within it.

Whatever else the alt-Left might be, it definitely has its share of young people.

Totten tells us:

According to an exhaustive report by political scientists Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk in the Journal of Democracy, young people today are considerably more authoritarian and antidemocratic by attitude and temperament than any other generational cohort, especially baby boomers. Only 30 percent think that it’s “essential” to live in a country with a democratic system of government, and a terrifying 24 percent actually think that a democratic system of government is a bad thing. Only 32 percent of millennials think that it’s “absolutely essential” that “civil rights protect people’s liberty.” According to a Pew Research Center report, 40 percent of millennials want the government to ban “offensive” speech.

If this is true, it means that young college activists are not committed to the ideals of social justice and universal human rights that animated their radical-activist forebears.

Their contempt for free speech is a stunning reversal of the Free Speech Movement on university campuses in the 1960s led by young boomers who fought hard to topple institutional censorship. Many of today’s young adults, by contrast, want to impose institutional censorship—not just on college campuses but across the nation.

And what could possibly be more "progressive" than that?

"Insert pithy quote about war, here"

Empress Trudy

Bernie and the Bernouts were more than likely an astroturfed fake candidacy engineered by the DNC to 1) lend truth to the lie that there's a legitimate primary process with a choice and 2) give a platform to the fringe elements of the democratic party for things Hillary can't say. Almost all of them were never NOT going to vote for whomever the DNC choice was and there's always 6-9% of the voting public who vote or who claim to vote 3rd party. McMullin in Utah is an anomaly who might take Utah and Idaho but that's it. In fact given the air time Fox gives him they appear to have special interest in him.

In any case, I have yet to hear a direction for national strategic policy that interlocks with plans goals and objectives for the DoD from either Trump or Hillary. One is going to smash ISIS while the other is going to smash ISIS. But

Why?
How?
And then what?

Whether we have a 250 ship navy or a 350 ship navy - what objectives will they be used to forward and if need be, aggressively prosecuted? If we modernize and build down our nuclear arsenal 50% by 2022 to ~3,500-3,600 warheads who or what will they be aimed at and what do we hope to accomplish with that nuclear posture? Is there a plan, posture, policy, goal, or set of success criteria? Do we even know what the difference between success and failure look like?

We seem very unclear and unsure who our friends, enemies, colleagues, allies, fair weather friends are. We seem unsophisticated almost ignorant about what their drivers are. We are mired in chaos where our policy, such as it is, is either non-existent or an even more troubling mess of goat rodeo of standing-around-ism.

For all his victory lapping, Obama has what is essentially a small to mid sized MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit) freely engaged in combat operations in Iraq and Syria, today. Right now. After 15 years of non stop operations we know how to avoid casualties but it translates into slow or no progress along the lines of objectives which are never cleanly articulated. If this is Non-War, then what does success look like? How do we know we're done?

14 years ago Max Boot published "The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power" which set out to define what it means to fight wars in the furtherance of American policy in war where the age of massive mechanized armies facing off each other is over. This thinking and the thinking of others lead directly to the US's obsessive reliance on special forces as the go-to tool. The problem with this approach is 5-fold.

1) it's not designed for protracted fights that drag on for decades,

2) it's only successful in the context of narrowly defined objectives lest it descend into tribal butchery,

3) it's just as taxing as large wars if taken on a global scale. It takes time, training, money to develop special forces,

4) it negates one massive advantage the US has in prosecuting any large war - the vast economic capacity to churn out limitless numbers of tanks, planes, guns, bombs that the US has been able to use since 1865 to defeat anyone anywhere and

5) it hides the brutish core of conflict. Civilians are more outraged not less with mounting casualties and more incensed with collateral damage It's sold as a clean surgical solution but it's anything but.

Those are tactics and logistics. The key is why you are fighting in the first place. Why are we ‘advising’ the Iraqi army? What American interests are bolstered? In Syria, if we don’t know who the good guys and the bad guys are then what are we doing there? We’re fighting against Iranian proxies in Yemen but alongside Russians and Iranians in Syria. And Syrians and the people we’re aiding in Yemen are opposed to each other. Meanwhile in Africa we have a very murky deployment related to South Sudan. The US had a large role in creating South Sudan, the country and Obama extolled it as another victory for his legacy. Now we’re calling them war criminals for doing what we helped them to do. The French army is deployed in the C.A.R. protecting people we call insurgents and terrorists who massacre people in the Congo in order to maintain French control over Coltan deposits. But our ‘advisers’ work with some of the same people in Mali to help the Muslims there throw out the even more horrible Muslims of al Qadea of Africa so that a third group, the Tuaregs can continue fighting a century long separatist movement against the French and the Mali central government. We helped overthrow the popular president of Nigeria to replace him with an Islamist who we call a moderate but who is now running a scorched earth program against Boko Haram. We have close relations with Kenya – who in the past few years/elections actively massacred all political opponents and waged ethnic cleansing against them...for reasons we’re not sure of. We support albeit reluctantly, Ethiopia because it has one of the largest standing armies in Africa so it’s supposed to maintain order which it does, when it likes, except when it’s helping Somali pirates and Sudanese al Qaeda terrorists.

In the grandfather of all American conflicts of the 21st century so far, on year 15 of ‘Afghanistan’ we’re no closer to figuring out why to stay there and why we should leave let alone a plan to get there. Our coalition partners have mostly gone home, there’s still no conventional central government there. The Taliban seem to be un-conquer-able, the opium still flows and the sole reason we haven’t admitted complete failure and the disintegration of the nation is because it was never much of a coherent nation at all since 1979. Let’s not forget for a moment that except for 1941 – the British army occupied Iraq from 1917 to 1954 through de jure independence and several coups all for no result or stability. Is the US prepared to put another 20 years into Afghanistan before we admit it’s hopeless?

I have to chalk all this up to willful naivete or intentional cynical idiocy. What does either Trump or Clinton offer us to proceed? What IS pacifism in the age of not calling war a war? I suppose one out is to proclaim a War On-. A war on terror, a war on drugs, a war on misogyny, a war on global warming. We can fight these amorphous boogey men forever. Trump proclaims he will kick ISIS ass. Ok, how, where and then what? They kill far more of each other than they do us. What if we just ignore then and let the chips fall where they may? Hillary for her part says the same thing except her version is to say Trump is too nice to Russia - - - who her boss is working WITH, today and who she herself tried to create a Nixon Goes to China Moment with. I can’t see a way forward unless we cut our losses, radically narrow our objectives, reign in our tactics and timetables and deploy force in a way that makes sense. We lost the theme of why and how you wage small wars. It’s not enough to employ as small a force as you can politically defend and excuse, you also have to deploy the largest force you need to get the job done as ruthlessly and as quickly as possible. And then when you’re done you have to be able to leave as rapidly as possible in a way that doesn’t force you to return. Unless you can do all of that then you have no business getting involved at all.

On pacifism

Sar Shalom

Michael Totten has an excellent post from a week ago that I just got around to reading. He describes the supporters of Bernie Sanders as the alt-Left, holding many views in common with the alt-Right. One of the topics highlighted from Totten's conversations with the Sanders supporters was their attitude towards America's military strength, in which "at least two Sanders delegates said that the United States should completely disarm and have no military at all."

The best response to calls to dismantle our military comes from Scott Adams in the 1980s. There are a lot of unsavory players on the international arena who bully their way through international affairs if a butter knife were adequate to impose their will and that dismantling the US military would mean that those unsavory players would need just a butter knife.

A Word with the University of California

Michael Lumish

{The following is from Tammi Benjamin of the ACHMA Initiative. - ML}

Dear Friends,

This morning, the following letter was sent from 47 organizations and 176 faculty members to University of California President Janet Napolitano, urging her to ensure that UC faculty are not permitted to use the classroom as a pulpit for anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist political advocacy and activism.

Best regards,

Tammi

Begin forwarded message:

Subject: Serious concerns about political advocacy and activism in classrooms in violation of UC policies

Date: November 1, 2016 at 7:14:22 AM PDT

To: President <president@ucop.edu>

Cc: regentsoffice@ucop.edu, chancellor@berkeley.edu, chancellor@ucdavis.edu, chancellor@uci.edu, chancellor@ucla.edu, chancellor@ucmerced.edu, chancellor@ucr.edu, henry.yang@ucsb.edu, chancellor@ucsd.edu, Chancellor@ucsf.edu, chancellor@ucsc.edu, eddie.island@ucop.edu, Aimee.Dorr@ucop.edu, chesse@berkeley.edu, Robert.Powell@ucop.edu, senator.liu@senate.ca.gov, assemblymember.medina@assembly.ca.gov, assemblymember.weber@assembly.ca.gov, senator.block@senate.ca.gov

President Janet Napolitano

Office of the President, 

University of California

1111 Franklin St., 12^th Floor

Oakland, CA  94607

Dear President Napolitano,

We are 47 religious, civil rights, education and research organizations, as well as 176 individual faculty members on campuses across the country.  Many of our members are part of the UC community, including UC alumni.  We write to express our grave concern at what we believe to be the improper behavior of anti-Zionist faculty and student instructors, who use the classroom as a pulpit for political advocacy and activism in violation of UC policies and conventional academic ethics designed to curb exactly such abuse. 

An examination into the vetting process for the student-taught course “Palestine: A Settler-Colonial Analysis,” at UC-Berkeley, revealed that the Regents Policy on Course Content was either ignored or breached by the course’s sponsoring department, Ethnic Studies.  Even after Dean Carla Hesse asked Ethnic Studies to re-review the syllabus in light of the Regents Policy, the department chair approved the course, denying that it had any particular political agenda or that it crossed the line from education to indoctrination.  We find it hard to believe that a course with an obviously one-sided anti-Israel reading list, exclusively anti-Israel guest speakers, and a clear intent to justify the elimination of the State of Israel is considered to be consistent with Regents Policy.  

This course at UC-Berkeley is not an isolated case.  In a similar case a year ago, an almost identical course at UC Riverside, “Palestine & Israel: Settler-Colonialism and Apartheid,” was proposed by a student instructor under the supervision of an openly anti-Zionist faculty advisor in the English Department. When confronted with similar concerns about an inadequate vetting process that did not ensure the course’s compliance with the Regents Policy on Course Content before its approval, UCR officials there, too, claimed after the fact that the unambiguously one-sided, proselytizing course was in compliance with all UC policies. In stark contrast, Verity Educate, a non-partisan, non-profit group that analyzes the educational accuracy and objectivity of classroom curricula, determined that the UCR course “reflects a singular interpretation” and cautioned that the purposeful lack of political balance will result in students “com[ing] to see one argument as the mainstream or accepted view.”

We are deeply troubled that courses like these receive approval, despite the fact that they are blatantly politically-motivated and intended to indoctrinate students and are thus in violation of the Regents Policy on Course Content. We suggest that the faculty members responsible for overseeing course content, particularly at the departmental level, are failing to exercise due diligence in reviewing and approving courses either because they share the anti-Zionist political perspective of the proselytizing instructors and faculty and condone the promotion of that perspective in the classroom, or because they hope to avoid the controversy that rejecting the courses could initiate. 

On at least four UC campuses, entire departments are dominated by faculty who have publicly endorsed a boycott of Israeli universities and scholars, and several department chairs and program directors have publicly endorsed an academic boycott of Israel.  These departments have misused academic programming on their campuses to promote the political program of BDS.

We firmly believe in and strongly support the protections provided by the Constitution’s First Amendment for extramural expression by all university faculty members, even their right to express opinions and support causes that we find morally reprehensible or even antisemitic.  We object, however, when faculty members use their university positions and taxpayer resources to recruit for an antisemitic political movement, indoctrinate their students to support the elimination of the Jewish state, or allow their colleagues to do so.  As the UC-wide Committee on Academic Freedom has made abundantly clear, professors “who abuse their position to indoctrinate students cannot claim the protection of academic freedom.”

The effects of this abuse extend beyond corruption of the academic mission. Recent studies show that anti-Zionist expression, particularly the promotion of BDS, whether found on the campus quad or in the lecture hall, is strongly correlated with acts of anti-Jewish hostility, including assault, harassment, discrimination, suppression of speech, and displays of antisemitic graffiti and flyers (such as those seen recently at UC- Berkeley).  Tellingly, these studies also show a very strong correlation between faculty who have endorsed an academic boycott of Israel and acts of anti-Jewish hostility.  Schools with one or more faculty boycotters are four times more likely to be the scene of incidents targeting Jewish students for harm.

In 2014, your office issued two statements reaffirming that faculty and student instructors are bound by the Regents Policy on Course Content.  However, as evidenced by the recent examples at UC-Berkeley and UC-Riverside, it is clear that the Regents Policy is being disregarded on UC campuses.  And, with the notable exception of Dean Carla Hesse at UC-Berkeley, it seems that UC administrators are not reminding faculty of the vital importance of safeguarding academic freedom from abuse and of the faculty’s obligation to be diligent in enforcing the Regents policy.

Therefore, we urge you to take the following steps:

1. Issue a statement that describes and re-asserts the Regents Policy on Course Content and the UC Policy on Academic Freedom (APM 010), and that clarifies that the “advance of personal interest” and “political indoctrination” constitutes serious misuse of the classroom.

2. Charge each of the UC Chancellors with urging their respective academic senates to ensure that all courses are explicitly and carefully evaluated for their compliance with the standards of academic propriety as spelled out in the Regents Policy on Course Content.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. We look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Organizations:

Academic Council for Israel

Accuracy in Academia

Aggies for Israel 

Alpha Epsilon Pi Fraternity (AEPi)

Alums for Campus Fairness

AMCHA Initiative

AMCHA UCLA Alumni

American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists

American Institute for Jewish Research

Americans for Peace and Tolerance

American Truth Project 

BEAR: Bias Education, Advocacy & Resources

Chabad Jewish Student Group at UC Berkeley

Club Z

Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA)

Davis Faculty for Israel

Eagles Wings

Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET)

Fuel For Truth

Hasbara Fellowships

Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel

Iranian American Jewish Federation

Israeli-American Council (IAC)

Israel Peace Initiative (IPI)

JAM - Jewish Awareness Movement

Jerusalem U

Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (JIMENA)

Middle East Forum

National Conference on Jewish Affairs

National Council of Young Israel

NCSY

Middle East Political and Information Network (MEPIN)

Proclaiming Justice to the Nations   

Roc4Israel

Scholars for Peace in the Middle East

Simon Wiesenthal Center   

StandWithUs   

Stop BDS on Campus

Students and Parents Against Campus Anti-Semitism

Students Supporting Israel 

Students Supporting Israel at UC Irvine

Students Supporting Israel at UCLA

Students Supporting Israel at UC Santa Barbara

The Israel Christian Nexus

The Israel Group

The Shofar Project

Zionist Organization of America

Faculty:

* indicates faculty at a University of California campus

* Alex Groisman, UC San Diego, Associate Professor of Physics 

Alexander Kogan, Rutgers University, Professor 

* Alexander Shukolyukov PhD, UC San Diego, Project Scientist 

* Alexei A. Maradudin, UC Irvine, Research Professor 

* Alvin Sokolow, UC Davis, Emeritus 

Amalia Kessler, Stanford University, Professor 

* Amina Harris, UC Davis, Director, Honey and Pollination Center 

* Ana Kasirer-Friede, UC San Diego, Project Scientist 

Andrea Greenbaum, Barry University, Professor 

* Andrew Lowy, UC San Diego, Professor 

* Andrew Viterbi, UC San Diego Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Professor Emeritus 

* Arnold Felsenfeld MD, UC Los Angeles, Professor of Medicine Emeritus 

* Avi Yagil, UC San Diego, Professor 

* Barbara Weiser MD, UC Davis School of Medicine, Professor Emeritus 

Barry R. Chiswick, George Washington University, Professor 

* Barry Weissman, UC Los Angeles, Professor Emeritus 

* Benjamin Grinstein, UC San Diego, Distinguished Professor and Departmental Chair 

* Boaz Arzi, UC Davis, Associate Professor 

* Brian Kaye, UC San Francisco, Clinical Professor of Medicine 

* Brian Keating, UC San Diego, Professor 

Bruce A Phillips, University of Southern California & Hebrew Union College, Professor 

Bruno Chaouat, University of Minnesota, Professor 

Carmel Chiswick, George Washington University, Research Professor 

* Daniel Arovas, UC San Diego, Professor of Physics 

* Daniel Cole, UC Los Angeles, Associate Professor 

* Daniel J.B. Mitchell, UC Los Angeles, Professor Emeritus 

* Daniel Neuhauser, UC Los Angeles, Professor 

Daniel Palanker, Stanford University, Professor 

* Daniel Selden, UC Santa Cruz, Professor 

Daphne Desser, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Professor 

* David Bensimon, UC Los Angeles, Professor 

* David C. Rapoport, UC Los Angeles, Professor Emeritus 

* David Feifel, UC San Diego, Professor 

* David Goodblatt, UC San Diego, Professor 

* David H. Gershuni, UC San Diego, Professor Emeritus 

* David Kleinfeld, UC San Diego, Distinguished Professor 

* David Kliger, UC Santa Cruz, Professor Emeritus 

David Orzech PhD, San Francisco State University, Professor Emeritus 

David Patterson, University of Texas at Dallas, Professor 

* David Savar MD FACS, UC Los Angeles, Associate Professor 

* Dennis Carson, UC San Diego, Professor 

Dennis Rutledge, George Mason University, Professor 

Dr. Bernice Stone, California State University, Fresno, Professor 

* Dr. Ivan Schuller, UC San Diego, Distinguished Professor 

Dr. Jonathan Roth, San Jose State University, Professor 

Dr. Robert O. Freedman, Johns Hopkins University, Visiting Professor 

* Edward Rabin, UC Davis, School of Law, Professor of Law Emeritus 

* Edwin M. Epstein, UC Berkeley, Professor Emeritus 

* Ehud Greenspan, UC Berkeley, Professor of the Graduate School 

* Eli Yablonovitch, UC Berkeley, Professor 

* Elijah Polak, UC Berkeley, Professor Emeritus 

Ellen Cannon, Northeastern Illinois University, Professor of Political Science and Public Administration 

Elliott Bloom, Stanford University, Professor Emeritus 

* Eric Gans, UC Los Angeles, Distinguished Professor Emeritus 

* Ethan Miller, UC Santa Cruz, Professor & Veritas Presidential Chair in Storage 

* Eyal Raz, UC San Diego, Professor of Medicine 

* Flor Feldman, UC Berkeley Extension, Mathematics Instructor 

Franck Salameh, Boston College, Associate Professor of Near Eastern Studies 

* Fred Milstein, UC Santa Barbara, Professor Emeritus 

* Gabe Vorobiof MD FACC FASE, UC Los Angeles, David Geffen School of Medicine, Associate Professor 

Gabriel Brahm, Northern Michigan University, Associate Professor 

* Gary Fouse, UC Irvine Department of Continuing Ed, Adjunct Lecturer 

* Guershon Harel, UC San Diego, Professor 

H. C. Tenenbaum DDS Dip. Perio. PhD FRCD(C), University of Toronto, Tel Aviv University, Professor 

* Harold Burger, UC Davis, Professor of Medicine Emeritus 

* Harry Pellman MD, UC Irvine, Clinical Professor of Pediatrics 

* Harry Rubin, UC Berkeley, Professor 

* Howard Taras, UC San Diego, Professor 

* Ilan Benjamin, UC Santa Cruz, Professor 

* Ilan Roth, UC Berkeley, Retired 

* Ira Monosson, UC Los Angeles and University of Southern California, Asst Clinical Professor, Emeritus 

Irving Biederman, University of Southern California, Professor 

Itzhak Bars, University of Southern California, Professor 

J. Edward Wright, University of Arizona, Professor 

* Jack F. Kirsch, UC Berkeley, Professor of the Graduate school 

* Jascha Kessler, UC Los Angeles, Professor 

* Jason Sicklick, UC San Diego School of Medicine, Associate Professor 

Jay D. Amsterdam MD, University of Pennsylvania, Professor Emeritus 

* Jay Rosenheim, UC Davis, Professor 

Jeffrey D. Ullman, Stanford University, Professor of Computer Science Emeritus 

Jeffrey Herf, University of Maryland, College Park, Distinguished University Professor 

* Jeffrey Jacobs, UC Los Angeles, Director of Psychological Services 

Jeffrey Koseff, Stanford University, Professor 

John Riskind, George Mason University, Professor 

John Rothmann, University of San Francisco, Fromm Institute, Professor 

* Jon Schuller, UC Santa Barbara, Professor 

* Joseph L. Witztum MD, UC San Diego, Distinguished Professor of Medicine 

* Joshua Feder MD, UC San Diego, Associate Clinical Professor 

* Judea Pearl, UC Los Angeles, Professor 

* Karen L. Fox-Asraf, UC Irvine Extension, Academic Appointee, Retired 

Karen Petersen, Middle Tennessee State University, Interim Dean of Liberal Arts & Professor 

Kent Harber, Rutgers University at Newark, Professor 

* Larry Yelowitz, UC Irvine, Professor Emeritus 

* Leeka Kheifets, UC Los Angeles, Professor 

* Leila Beckwith, UC Los Angeles, Professor Emeritus 

Leonard Saxe, Brandeis University, Professor 

Linda Zwang-Weissman, Santa Monica College, Adjunct Professor 

* Louis Bouchard, UC Los Angeles, Associate Professor 

Louis Steinberg, Rutgers University, Associate Professor 

* Marc Lerner, UC Irvine, Clinical Professor 

* Marci Reiss, UC San Diego, Lecturer, Staff 

Mark Levine, University of Denver, Professor 

* Marvin Alkin, UC Los Angeles, Professor Emeritus / Research Professor 

* Melvin Scheinman, UC San Francisco, Professor 

Mervin F. Verbit, Touro College and University System, Professor 

* Michael J Saxton, UC Davis, Research Chemist Emeritus 

* Michael Kaback MD, UC San Diego School of Medicine, Professor Pediatrics & Reproductive Medicine 

* Michael Pollak, UC Riverside, Professor Emeritus 

Michael Rockland, Rutgers University, Professor of American Studies 

Michael Schuffler, University of Washington, Professor Emeritus 

Miriam Bailin, Washington University in St. Louis, Professor of English 

Miriam Elman, Syracuse University, Associate Professor 

Mohammed Al-Azdee, University of Bridgeport (UB), Associate Professor, Chair Mass Communication 

Monica Osborne, Pepperdine University, Visiting Assistant Professor 

* Morton Denn, UC Berkeley, Professor of Chemical Engineering Emeritus 

* Neil Levine MD, UC San Diego, Professor 

Nina Sabghir, York College, Assistant Professor 

Nir Yakoby, Rutgers University, Associate Professor 

* Nora Laiken PhD, UC San Diego School of Medicine, Lecturer, Asst. Dean Educational Support Services 

* Norma Landau, UC Davis, Professor Emerita 

Ofer Ben-Amots, Colorado College, Professor and Department Chair 

P. Darin Payne, University of Hawaii, Associate Professor 

* Pamela Cosman, UC San Diego, Professor, Associate Dean for Students 

* Paul J. Feldstein, UC Irvine, Professor of Health Care Management and Policy, Emeritus 

Peter Golden, Rutgers University, Professor Emeritus 

Philip Carl Salzman, McGill University, Professor of Anthropology 

* Philip Lubin, UC Santa Barbara, Professor of Physics 

R. Amy Elman, Kalamazoo College, Professor 

* Ralph Brindis MD MPH, UC San Francisco, Clinical Professor of Medicine 

* Ralph Lachman MD, UC Los Angeles and Stanford University, Professor Emeritus/Clinical Professor 

Ralph Rabkin, Stanford University, Professor of Medicine Emeritus 

* Raphael Zidovetzki, UC Riverside, Professor  

* Raya Feldman, UC Santa Barbara, Associate Professor 

* Richard Kaner, UC Los Angeles, Professor 

Robert B. Levy, University of Miami, Professor 

Robert Friedmann, Georgia State University, Professor Emeritus 

* Robert H. Cole, UC Berkeley, Professor of Law Emeritus 

Robert Levine, Ohio State University, Professor of Linguistics 

Robert Phillips, Ball State University, Professor 

* Robert Winer, UC Irvine College of Medicine, Adjunct Professor of Medicine, Retired 

* Robert Zeiger, UC San Diego, Clinical Professor Pediatrics 

* Robin Morris, UC Santa Cruz, Associate Adjunct Professor 

Ronald Mehler, California State University, Northridge, Professor 

* Russ Kino, UC Los Angeles, Assistant Professor Medicine 

* Ruth Covell, UC San Diego, Clinical Professor 

Ruth Weisberg, University of Southern California, Professor 

Samuel Edelman, University of Miami, Miller Center Fellow and Adjunct Professor 

Sandor Reichman, California State University, Northridge, Professor of Chemistry Emeritus 

Sara Reguer, Brooklyn College, Professor/Chair 

* Sarale Cohen, UC Los Angeles, Professor Emeritus 

* Sheldon Rothblatt, UC Berkeley, Professor Emeritus 

* Sheldon Wolf, UC Los Angeles, Professor 

* Shimon Weiss, UC Los Angeles, Distinguished Professor 

* Sonia Ancoli-Israel, UC San Diego, Professor Emeritus 

Spencer Pack, Connecticut College, Professor of Economics 

* Stanley Brandes, UC Berkeley, Professor 

Stanley Dubinsky, University of South Carolina, Professor of Linguistics 

Stanley Messer, Rutgers University, Distinguished Professor 

* Stephen C. Bondy, UC Irvine, Professor 

* Stephen White, UC Davis, Professor 

* Steven P. Segal, UC Berkeley, School of Social Welfare, Professor of the Graduate Division 

* Steven Schwartz, UC Los Angeles, Assistant Professor 

* Steven Tadelis, UC Berkeley, Professor 

* Steven Weinbaum, UC Davis, Professor Emeritus 

* Stuart Schweitzer, UC Los Angeles, Professor 

Susan Trencher, George Mason University, Professor 

* Svetlana Jitomirskaya, UC Irvine, Professor 

* Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, UC Santa Cruz, Lecturer 

* Vladimir Mandelshtam, UC Irvine, Professor 

Wendy Mulcahy, CSU Chico, Faculty 

* William Newman, UC Los Angeles, Professor 

* William Schwartz MD, UC San Francisco, Clinical Professor of Medicine, Retired 

Yakov Eliashberg, Stanford University, Professor 

* Yehuda Bock, UC San Diego, Distinguished Researcher 

* Yitzhak Tor, UC San Diego, Professor 

* Zev bar-Lev, San Diego State University, Professor Emeritus 

Cc:   UC Regents

        UC Chancellors

        Regent Eddie Island, Chair Academic and Student Affairs Committee UC Board of Regents

        Aimee Dorr, UC Provost and Executive Vice President

        Carla Hesse, Executive Dean of the College of Letters and Science 

        Robert L. Powell, Chair Academic Senate UC Berkeley

        Senator Carol Liu, Chair California Senate Standing Committee on Education

        Assembly Member Jose Medina, Chair California Assembly Higher Education Committee       

        Assembly Member Shirley Weber, Chair Assembly Select Committee on Campus Climate

        Senator Marty Block, Chair California Legislative Jewish Caucus