Wednesday Potpourri

First, it’s a rather obvious point, but Omri Ceren makes it well:

American colleges and universities spent the last decade censoring conservatives - canceling events, punishing teachers, etc. - because they said they wanted to ensure their students never felt unsafe. They spent uncountable millions institutionalizing leftwing diversity programs and staff, with the same pretext. Either they were lying or Jewish students don't count for them. Or both.

Second, when you’ve lost Alan Dershowitz…. The emeritus law professor has broken with the Democratic Party. Hmmm. He cannot belong to a political party that countenances anti-Semitism.

During an interview on the “Just the News, No Noise” show, Dershowitz expressed profound disappointment in his party's failure to address the pro-Palestine demonstrations at Columbia University that have been ongoing since last Wednesday.

Remember when Sen. Chuck Schumer denounced Israel for defending itself against Hamas. 

I am sure that you do. Now, however, when much worse is going on across academic America, these fearless opponents of the radical right have nothing to say. Dershowitz continued:

“We're hearing nothing from Democrats. We are hearing nothing from Chuck Schumer,” Dershowitz explained. “We're hearing nothing really direct from President Biden. He made a very disappointing statement. In the same breath, he talked about the demonstrators in passing and he said, ‘but you have to understand the Palestinian situation.’ No, you don't have to understand the Palestinian situation. When people are calling for rape and murder and beheading. The Democrats are an extraordinary disappointment."

The result, one less Democrat:

"I am no longer presumptively voting for Democrats," he added. "I'm gonna vote for whoever is the best candidate, that may include Democrats, but I have no loyalty anymore to the party.” 

And Dershowitz connects the current campus anti-Semitism with diversity admissions programs:

“Many of the students [protesting] today are unqualified students,” Dershowitz said. “They were admitted because of DEI. They were admitted because Qatar and other Arab countries are paying for foreign students. These are not the best and the brightest students, they are the loudest students, but they're certainly not students who are looking out for the best interests of America.”

As for the comparisons with Carlotteesville and January 6, Dershowitz debunks them:

“What we're seeing is something that I believe, and this is going to be very controversial, I believe is potentially more dangerous than January 6, which was terrible, and than Charlottesville, which was terrible,” Dershowitz said. “Because those didn't involve as many students, not as many elite people, as many future leaders. We're hearing the future leaders of America chanting ‘We are Hamas.’ In other words, ‘we are rapists. We believe in raping Jewish women. We are beheaders. We are kidnappers. We are murderers.’ That's what they're chanting. And these are people who will run for Congress ... 10 years from now, who will be partners at law firms, and who will be working in the editorial rooms of CNN, and the New York Times.”

Of course, if foreign student nationals are participating in the rioting, they are here with student visas.

Would it be too much for our State Department to cancel their visas and deport them?

Third, Randy Barnett counters the notion that what is happening in blue cities and on college campuses represents America. It is a useful qualification:

This is important. What’s happening is not “America.” It is Democrat-governed cities, generally in blue states, and on college campuses. Focus your concerns on the “root causes” of Jew hatred and intimidation in these venues.

Fourth, on the other side of the pond, anti-Semitism is alive and well. To the point where the British police allow pro-Hamas rallies, while warning Jews to stay away from such rallies. Julie Burchill comments:

Every week the British police tolerate the pro-Hamas rallies which have defaced and disgraced the capital since the 7 October pogroms in Israel. We’ve seen the gallantry displayed by the boys in blue towards the boys with the black flags; we’ve seen policemen watch helplessly as Palestinian protestors clamber onto war memorials, and stand by amiably as the genocidal slogan ‘From the river to the sea’ is beamed onto the Houses of Parliament. This led the Conservative MP Andrew Percy to state: ‘It’s the pathetic response we’ve come to expect from the Met – a force that has at times appeared to act more like a PR arm for the protesters than a law enforcement agency.’ So protective are they of their team that a young Iranian man was arrested after carrying a poster which read ‘Hamas is terrorist’. He was wrestled to the ground by five police officers.

She concludes:

I would venture that ‘anti-Semitism’ doesn’t cover what’s going on right now – ‘Judeophobia’ says it better. For this really is an irrational neurotic ailment. Why are people so hostile to such a loyal, productive, well-assimilated, un-criminal, non-violent immigrant group, who have often driven me into sullen silence when they insist on singing the National Anthem of the UK at every public meeting? Why are we treating them so badly and – in the case of the police – assisting other groups in tormenting them? Why, for the first time last year, when figures on hate crimes against Jews hit a record high, was there for the very first time at least one incident in every police region in the UK, which means that anti-Semitism now exists in regions even where there are no Jews? No one with any sense believes that this is about the number of deaths taking place in Gaza; the big giveaway is that the first London rally took place before Israel fought back. It was a simple celebration of Jew-killing, the oldest hatred dressed up in fashionable new clothes.

Fifth, do you believe that migrants, especially the illegal variety, are more prone to commit crimes? Statistics appear to suggest that such is not the case in America, but, then again, one suspects that the statistics are being systematically falsified.

So, to find more accurate and honest statistics, we look to Germany. Guess what? Germany is seeing a migrant crime wave.

Ben Bartee reports for PJ Media:

 

The number of foreign suspects soared to around 923,000 last year, representing a massive 18 percent increase in just one year nationwide, according to crime statistics from the German Interior Ministry released on Tuesday. However, the even more shocking number may have to do with violent crimes, which soared to record levels in 2023.

The data from the interior ministry shows that 41 percent of all crime suspects are foreigners, with 2.246 million people in the country suspected of a crime in 2023, which is 7.3 percent more than in 2022. Overall, foreigners only represent 15 percent of the population.

This corresponds to an increase of almost 18 percent, reports Die Welt, citing the as yet unpublished crime statistics for 2023 from the Federal Ministry of the Interior. They now account for almost 41 percent of all suspects. A total of 2.246 million people in Germany were suspected of a crime – 7.3 percent more than in 2022.

So, to recap: 15% of the population commits 41% of all crime — and that’s relying on the government’s numbers, which we can only take with a boulder of salt given the inconvenience that migrant crime poses to the preferred policy of replacement migration.

Sixth, Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman seems to have conquered his depression and even his brain damage. 

He said this about protest demonstrators:

If you show up in a Starbucks with a bullhorn and start yelling at people, that doesn't make you noble; it just makes you an asshole.

Seventh, regarding the notion of military proportionality, recently introduced into books about warfare in order to score propaganda points against the Israeli military’s Gaza operation, NYU Professor Scott Galloway had this to say on the Morning Joe show:

2,200 American servicemen killed at Pearl Harbor. We go on to kill 3.5 million Japanese, including 100,000 in one night. 2,800 Americans in 9/11. We go on to kill 400,000 people in Afghanistan and Iraq. We weren’t accused of genocide.

While the Biden administration insists that it supports Israel, it has just put that nation on a list of the most egregious human rights offenders, that is, of Iran and Russia.

This shows, among other things, that the current wave of anti-Israeli protests are designed to open a new front in the Gaza war, the better to restrain Israel and to save Hamas. 

Eighth, the bloom is coming off the rose. That means, the current rash of demonstrations in favor of Hamas atrocities is damaging more than the education of the students, Jewish and otherwise, on these campuses.

They are damaging the reputations of these schools, to the point where more and more parents are looking to send their children to schools that do not belong to the Ivy League.

Famed pollster Nate Silver tweeted this:

 “Just go to a state school. The premium you’re paying for elite private colleges vs. the better public schools is for social clout and not the quality of the education. And that’s worth a lot less now that people have figured out that elite higher ed is cringe.

Ninth, following the money, we discover, by reading Jonathan Pidluzny in the City Journal, that much of the anti-Semitism on college campuses is being funded by foreign governments, like the government of Qatar.

He explains:

Centers dedicated to the study of the Middle East, many receiving lavish foreign financial support, do more to promote anti-Zionist and pro-Hamas narratives than virtually any other force on campus. Even a small number of biased faculty can have an outsize influence because the dominant intersectional ideologies leave students primed to embrace anti-Semitic attitudes.

He recommends the following steps:

Universities should refuse all gifts from entities with interests antithetical to this country’s, especially gifts related to academic programs. Programs built on foreign donations should be dismantled unless they are obviously worth supporting from the general fund. State lawmakers can pass legislation to forbid, or at least carefully scrutinize, partnerships and contracts at public institutions with countries of concern.

And this, from the Daily Mail:

Top American Ivy League universities including Cornell and Harvard have received over $8 billion in the last 35 years from Arab countries, a report has revealed. 

According to a report by the Executive Director of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, Cornell University received over $1.5 billion from the Middle East. 

The report, authored by Dr. Mitchell Bard, was originally released in 2021 and showed how the Ivy League school received 127 gifts totaling $1,513,778,660. 

I hope you found this potpourri to be informative. To receive more like it, just subscribe to my Substack.