Daily Briefing:Free Speech on Campus Only Becomes ‘Concern’ When Directed Against Jews (December 27,2019)

Table of Contents:

 “Student advocates have protested vigorously, even violently, against invited speakers whose views they consider not just offensive but harmful,” the op-ed claimed. “We must also halt speech that bullies and torments. From the perspective of our brain cells, the latter is literally a form of violence.” Literally.

But Students for Justice in Palestine’s support for terrorists like Rasmeah Odeh, who was literally involved in the murder of two Jewish college students, isn’t violence, it’s free speech. So is disrupting Holocaust memorials, physically assaulting Jewish students, and threatening violence on social media.

In March, President Trump signed an executive order protecting free speech on college campuses. And the New York Timesand the rest of the media were against it. They dismissed free speech on campus as the agenda of “conservative students” who wanted to be free to spread hate. But after Trump signed an executive order extending Title VI protections to Jewish students, the New York Times and the rest of the media are now suddenly worried about its impact on free speech. There is an obvious and easy solution. If Title VI is a threat to freedom of speech, let’s get rid of it.

Now that the media has come around to realizing that Title VI is a threat to freedom of speech on campuses, dying papers around the country should be calling for the elimination of Title VI. A march of furious ex-snowflakes waving banners should demand that Congress immediately repeal Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and restore the right of everyone to be incredibly racist on the campuses of the country.

But the march isn’t materializing.

The odd thing is that Title VI when applied to any and every other minority group isn’t a threat to free speech. There isn’t a damn thing wrong with preventing frat boys from wearing sombreros to Halloween parties. Bias response teams on campuses that exist entirely for the purpose of stifling free speech aren’t the problem. Even when the bias emergency they’re responding to, as at Emory U, is someone chalking “Trump 2016” on the sidewalk and the college’s president promising to hunt down the chalker. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Professors Continue to Advocate for BDS on Campus
Alexander Joffe
Algemeiner, Dec. 3, 2019

BDS activities on campus in November included a number of events sponsored by academic units. Among the most notable was a conference by the “University of Massachusetts Resistance Studies Initiative” at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, dedicated to BDS and its purported ‘silencing.’ In anticipation of the event, the university chancellor condemned the BDS movement, which predictably prompted protests from the faculty.

A stealthier example of faculty supporting BDS was seen at Indiana University, where the Center for Middle East Studies used antisemitic images by the cartoonist Latuff on a flyer for a BDS event. The center’s director issued an apology and claimed he had not seen the flyer before it was distributed.

Another incident saw Boston University considering hiring a BDS supporter who had stated “rape and killing of Palestinian women was a central aspect of Israeli troops’ systematic massacres and evictions during the destruction of Palestinian villages in 1948.” After an uproar that pointed out her overt anti-Israel bias, the hire by the Sociology department was thwarted, but reports indicate she was still being considered for a position by the Women’s Studies program.

In another example that demonstrated how academics use their institutions to support BDS, New York University’s ‘Department of Social and Cultural Analysis’ hosted a leading BDS proponent but then refused a student request for a pro-Israel speaker. This incident is in addition to numerous individual academics, such as Columbia’s Joseph Massad, who routinely endorse violence as “ongoing Palestinian resistance to Israeli settler colonialism and racism.”

The extent to which faculty have assumed leadership of BDS was also seen in the Middle East Studies Association’s (MESA) awarding the keynote address at its annual meeting to Temple University professor Marc Lamont Hill. Best known for his anti-Israel animus, Hill is not a Middle East studies scholar. Reports indicate Hill shouted at the audience that the ‘cause of Palestine’ was more important than their careers and organizations. To compound the matter, MESA also released a statement purporting to be about academic freedom, but which was a defense of the BDS movement.

The pattern of student groups inviting antisemites to campus to antagonize the community over Israel expanded in November. After being condemned for his antisemitic remarks at Princeton, Norman Finkelstein appeared at Oberlin at the invitation of the local Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) chapters, as did cartoonist Eli Valley. BDS supporters at Oberlin also erected a memorial to Palestinians killed during the recent violence in Gaza, most of whom were Palestinian Islamic Jihad members. At Brown University Linda Sarsour appeared beside other BDS supporters at a public event. The secretive National SJP conference was also held at the University of Minnesota over protests from Jewish groups that the organization advocates violence and promotes antisemitism. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Modern Orthodoxy Has a College Problem
Rabbi Dov Fischer
Jewish Press, Nov. 28, 2019

I graduated college with a political science degree from Columbia University. Later, I graduated UCLA School of Law, where I was the chief articles editor of its Law Review. I then clerked in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, followed by practicing complex business litigation for more than a decade at two of the nation’s leading firms. For the past 15 years, I have been a law professor at two major California law schools where I teach advanced torts, civil procedure, and remedies.

I write none of this to brag. Rather, I do so to advise the reader that I am not a cloistered long-bearded rebbe who would not know the difference among “imminent,” “eminent,” and “immanent.” I am the beneficiary of a deep secular education, which I cherish. With it, I have been able to live an interesting life that now includes not only being rav of a Young Israel but also serving as a senior contributing editor at The American Spectator.

I used to define myself as “Modern Orthodox” and now define myself as “Centrist Orthodox.” If I were an Israeli citizen, I would be voting for Smotrich or Bennett-Shaked. That’s my world. And for that reason I’m writing this article primarily for Modern Orthodox parents of teens and pre-teens – because I love the world of Torah Umadda and that world no longer exists in America.
The simple reality is that Modern Orthodoxy is in peril because its leaders in the late 1950s and 1960s never envisioned the current utter debasement of American culture and society. In particular, they did not envision the socialist-brainwashing and reeducation-camp intimidation that has overtaken American colleges.

Modern Orthodox parents try to give their children the best of the secular and Torah worlds. But most of these children simply will not survive four years of contemporary American college (and the vast majority of Modern Orthodox kids attend non-Jewish colleges). That would be the case even if the Modern Orthodox yeshiva high school system were rock-solid, with great rebbe’im and the greatest education in “da mah l’hashiv l’apikorus.”

To the Modern Orthodox parent, I say: Stop looking for a moment at the impressive ben Torah or bat Torah you are successfully rearing. Look instead at what is happening to the kids of other people you know who went to college. Look at the children of non-Jews who were raised with excellent measures of decency and values after they’ve spent four years in college.

The college campuses these children are going to are not the campuses you and I went to. Children today are receiving, not a liberal arts education, but indoctrination. Indeed, the social climate today is so rife with intimidation that kids are essentially being brainwashed. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Hanukah Geography
Yisrael Medad
Jewish Press, Dec.  24, 2019

During the period when the Land of Israel was ruled by the Seleucid dynasty of the Syrian-Greek Empire, Antiochus IV came to be the emperor in 174 BCE. He was known as called Epiphanes. He sought to unify his subjects by forcing upoon them a common religion and culture. For the Jews of Judea this meant a suppression of Jewish law. He also interfered in matters of the Holy Temple worship.

Eventually, a revolt broke out, sparked by the actions a priestly family, the Hasmoneans, in Modiin led at first by Mattityahu and then his sons. They became known as the Maccabees and were quite successful in their tactics of guerrilla warfare. The Syrian-Greek occupiers were defeated.  Returning to liberated Jerusalem and led by Judah, they entered the Temple courtyards, removed the idols placed there by the Syrians, built a new altar and dedicated it on the twenty-fifth of the month of Kislev, in the year 139 BCE.

Seeking oil to light the Menorah, they found only a small cruse of pure olive oil bearing the seal of the High Priest Yochanan. It was sufficient to create light for only one day. By a miracle of God, it continued to burn for eight days.

This is, in concise form, the Hanukah story.

But where did the story take place? Where were the battles? Where was the Temple? What is the geography of Hanukah?
Here is a map of the major sites of the Hanukah story:
Here is another:
Here is a map of the entire period of the Hasmonean reign which continued until 63 BCE or so when the territory controlled expanded across the Jordan River as it was previously from Biblical times:
 
In other words, if we apply contemporary terms, the main site of the miracle we celebrate by lighting candles for eight days, Temple. is now in… “occupied East Jerusalem”.

The major battles the Maccabees waged were:

Battle of Wadi Haramia (167 BCE)
Battle of Beth Horon (166 BCE)
Battle of Emmaus (166 BCE)
Battle of Beth Zur (164 BCE)
Battle of Beth Zechariah (162 BCE)
Battle of Adasa (161 BCE)
Battle of Elasa (160 BCE)
All in what is mistakenly called the “West Bank”.

Of course, this would mean that we would might think that we are celebrating a holiday of occupation. But that would be wrong. In fact, it is the language and rhetoric of “occupation” used today that is what is wrong and incorrect.

What we need is a linguistic revolt, especially among Jews. Jewish control/administration over Judea and Samaria and all of Jerusalem is not wrong, not immoral but a return to the true geography of the Jewish national home, Judaism and Jewish history.
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For Further Reference:

I Just Translated ‘1984’ Into Russian. I’m Gasping for Air.:  Leonid Bershidsky, Bloomberg, Nov. 26, 2019 — This year, I spent a suffocating four months living inside George Orwell’s “1984.”

Only One Even was Cancelled for Safety Concerns after Ontario Post-Secondary Free Speech Directive:  Assessment:  Joe Friessen, Globe and Mail, Nov. 4, 2019– Only one university reported cancelling an event for safety concerns in the eight months after the establishment of mandatory free-speech policies on post-secondary campuses after an assessment delivered to the provincial government.