It will be OK

Posted on June 25, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

Israelis are sometimes criticized for saying “yehiye b’seder” [it will be OK] without sufficiently considering the consequences. But there is such a thing as decision paralysis, when you can’t act because you never feel that you have enough information. Sometimes that’s worse than a less-than-perfect decision. I think the opponents of Israel’s application of civilian law to parts of Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley are trying hard to induce decision paralysis.

Today (Wednesday) there is supposed to be a meeting in the White House at which Trump Administration officials reportedly will decide whether to green-light the move. Of course it will be a good thing if the US recognizes Israel’s action, especially if that means that it will issue an official statement that Jewish communities outside the Green Line are part of Israel.

But on the other hand, there is a feeling that the US is trying to micromanage Israel’s behavior. Perhaps, it is suggested, the “green light” will only include several communities near Jerusalem. Or maybe a phase-in that will take several months. Or maybe the US will require Benny Gantz’ explicit agreement. Or – who knows?

Gantz, incidentally, is remarkably unclear about his position, if he indeed has one. Here is how Noa Landau, a left-leaning journalist for Ha’aretz, describes it:

Not unilaterally, yes unilaterally. Only with the international community’s (unobtainable) consent, only with Jordan’s (unobtainable) consent. Only the Jordan Valley, only the settlement blocs. Only as part of the broader Trump plan, only a limited symbolic step. Only with a gesture to the Palestinians – but who needs the Palestinians anyway? Just don’t ask us to elaborate.

There is great pressure being applied from many quarters, both against PM Netanyahu and against Trump, to oppose this step, which is almost universally referred to as “annexation of [part of] the ‘West Bank’”.  As Eugene Kontorovich argues [$], it is not “annexation” because the territory in question

…isn’t legally the territory of any other state, nor has it been since Israel’s independence in 1948. Neither the U.S. nor the European Union recognizes the existence of a Palestinian state, and Israel’s sovereign claim to the territory is superior to any other country’s. Putting this move in the same category as Russia’s seizure of Crimea is entirely misleading.

The Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) in the US is asking its members to lobby Congress against the plan, “out of a concern for Israel’s safety and security, for the preservation of Israel’s democratic character, and for the place of Israel among the nations of the world.” Its talking points come directly from the Israeli Left, which has been consistently defeated at the polls since the disasters wrought by the government of Ehud Barak in 2000. But don’t liberal American Jews know better than Israeli voters?

The Obama Gang has weighed in as well. Here’s Gangster Susan Rice: “So when it comes to annexation, I think the obvious argument against it is that it all but makes that objective of a two-state outcome impossible…”

What she means, of course, is that it makes impossible the Gang’s version of a two-state solution, in which Israel, including Jerusalem, is divided along the 1949 armistice lines. But that was always so, because it would render Israel indefensible, precisely the opposite of their contention. The Gang also envisioned the expulsion of tens of thousands of Jews from the territory in order to make a Jew-free Palestine possible, and Israel giving up control of Judaism’s holy places – which worked so well [not] under the Jordanians.

But a demilitarized Palestinian autonomy in less than all of the territory is far less dangerous. It does not require expelling Jews (or Arabs), and  very few Palestinians are incorporated into Israel. That’s the Trump Administration version of the two-state solution.

Opponents of the move worry a great deal about the response of the Arab countries, especially Jordan, and the Europeans. I must note that if I have misgivings about the US micromanaging Israeli policy, I am even less likely to be influenced by the public pronouncements of Arab leaders who have been pumping anti-Israel venom into the veins of their subjects for decades, and now – when they depend on us for their security – are afraid that they will be overthrown if they don’t show sufficient enmity toward us. Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states all know who will help them when they are in trouble, and who wants to hurt them.

The intersectional Left is fond of asking people to “check [their] privilege.” To the Europeans, I say “check your history,” you who practiced viciously exploitative colonialism for hundreds of years, who started world wars, and who either participated in the genocide of the European Jews, prevented their escape (Britain, I am looking at you), or turned a blind eye. It hasn’t been long enough to give any weight to your moral pronouncements.

Returning to President Trump, I think that moving this deal forward is of great importance to him, to show both his allies in the Middle East and his pro-Israel domestic supporters that he keeps his promises. The fact that his political enemies are mobilizing against him in force – particularly the Obama Gang – shows the importance of this issue. This gives Israel some leverage, which should be applied to keep the initiative from being watered down. We don’t have to agree on anything other than the map, and certainly not to a sovereign Palestinian state.

I think time is very short. The American election campaign will soon begin to absorb all the energies of the administration. Any gradual phase-in of sovereignty will not survive a change of administration, if it should occur. I am convinced that if Mr. Biden is elected, his administration will be dominated by the Obama Gang, which has proven itself an enemy of the Jewish state.

A Biden Administration could reverse an American position established by Trump – as Obama did with respect the Bush-Sharon letters – but it can’t undo Israeli decisions, which can and should be translated into facts on the ground.

It’s imperative that Israel move ahead and extend civilian law to communities in Judea and Samaria and to the Jordan Valley, in July as planned. If the map that will delineate the lines isn’t complete, it should be completed, unilaterally if necessary. I don’t see Trump objecting to unilateral action. Why should he? The details, essential to us, are unimportant to him.

There’s one week left in June. If not now, when?

Posted in 'Peace' Process, Israel and Palestinian Arabs, US-Israel Relations | 1 Comment

Now is the Time to Break the Israeli-Palestinian Stalemate

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

For decades, some people have been calling for a “two-state solution.” The Israeli Left, the American establishment, even the leaders of the Palestinian Authority claim to want it. Some were fond of saying that “everyone knows what the solution is,” and just a few details need to be ironed out – how, precisely, to divide Jerusalem; how to reward the Arab “refugees” (who are mostly not refugees) that have been promised that they will “return” for all these years; how to divide the land as closely as possible to the armistice lines that were never supposed to be borders; and how to ethnically cleanse the so-called “West Bank” of Jews for the second time since 1948.

Before the advent of the UN, when a country acquired territory in a war, it got to keep it unless the other side (or someone else) took it back. But the founders of the UN thought that humanity needed to become more mature. Acquisition of territory by aggression was forbidden, and although national self-defense was permitted, changing borders even in a defensive war was frowned upon – even when it could be argued that the “acquisition” was actually the restoration of illegally seized land to its rightful owner. And especially if Jews might benefit.

After the Six Days War, the UN Security Council proposed a compromise, the famous Resolution 242. The great powers that dominated the UN in those days thought that it would be unfair to allow the Arabs to suffer the complete defeat they deserved, so they suggested that Israel should give up territory it had conquered in return for “peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.” As if we didn’t deserve those things from the start!

At first, the Arabs refused to even talk. But ultimately, after the Palestinians replaced Jordan as the proposed recipients of Judea and Samaria, they agreed. No problem, they said: just reverse the decision of the war, give us every centimeter of [your] land that was under Jordanian control for 19 years including eastern Jerusalem, and [by the way] allow millions of Arabs who are supposedly descended from the refugees of 1948 to change the demographic balance in your country so that it will have an Arab majority.

This was the “two-state solution” that the Palestinians would accept. Not a compromise, but a complete reversal of the outcome of the war, plus what would quickly become a reversal of Israel’s War of Independence as well. This is what Mahmoud Abbas means today when he talks about a “two-state solution.”

The responsible parts of the Israeli Left and some of the other two-staters have enough sense to oppose the demand for a right of return. But they more or less accept the rest of the Palestinian program.

So why was it never implemented?

The main reason was that the Palestinians, noting the success of their propaganda efforts in the West, believed that time was on their side, and ultimately the “international community” would force Israel to give them everything they wanted, including even the right of return. They held out against Israeli demands for a security presence in the Jordan Valley, Palestinian demilitarization, recognition of a state of the Jewish people, and of course for the right of return.

They probably would have succeeded but for two things: the change in the energy markets that reduced the worldwide dependence on oil from the Gulf, and the realization by the Sunni Arab states that only Israel – and not the US or Europe – would stand up to expansionist Iran. Suddenly, much of the air went out of the Palestinian balloon.

And that is a good thing, because the kind of two-state solution that the Obama Administration wanted to impose, even without a right of return, would have put Israel in a box, with indefensible borders and – ultimately if not immediately – next door to a terrorist state ten times as dangerous than Hamas-ruled Gaza. The ethnic cleansing that Israel would have been obliged to perform on herself, even if she could have kept the main “settlement blocs” near the Green line, would have torn the country apart.

Just at the right time, along came Donald Trump with his “Deal of the Century.” It is nothing other than a different “two-state solution,” one that is closer to what was envisioned by the drafters of UNSC 242, and an arrangement that would at least create defensible borders. The two-staters should love it, but they don’t.

Of course the Palestinians oppose it, but what I find interesting is why the Israeli Left, the American Reform Movement, and so many supposed moderates find it so objectionable. They oppose “annexation,” but they can’t explain why the armistice lines, which both sides agreed would not have political significance, somehow gained it when Jordan illegally occupied Judea and Samaria and ethnically cleansed the region. They oppose “unilateral action” but the roughly 30 years that Israel has been talking to the PLO should have amply demonstrated that there will not be mutual agreement. And I don’t think it’s occurred to them what it would be like to expel 100,000 Jews from their homes.

Right now there is enormous pressure being placed on PM Netanyahu not to apply Israeli law to the Jordan Valley, or to the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. The Hashemite King of Jordan is strongly opposed, or pretends to be. He knows that if he appears to be weak, the violently anti-Israel Palestinians that form the majority of Jordanians might destabilize his government (and kick him out). But at the same time, he would far rather have Israel at his back than a Palestinian state that would stab him in it, as Arafat tried to do in 1970. The other Sunni Arab states are required to make the correct noises as well, but they do not particularly love the PLO, which they remember supported Saddam Hussein in Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and attacks on Saudi Arabia. I am sure that if Iran vanished tomorrow, they would go back to trying to eliminate Israel, but for now they need us.

The European Union opposes Trump’s plan too. But legally, morally, and practically there is little that they can say or do. This is a curse we have to bear for Europe’s history of colonialism and genocide.

The Palestinians have threatened another intifada. But the IDF will be prepared, and the Palestinians understand that. Anyway, ordinary Palestinians are sick and tired of the corrupt Palestinian Authority. They are not going to go out and put their lives on the line for the ones that are stealing them blind (video), especially when it is to respond to an Israeli action that has little real effect on them.

Iran and Hezbollah have threatened us as well. But this is not connected to what we do in Judea/Samaria. The Iranian regime is committed to try to destroy Israel. It will attack us whenever it believes that it can succeed (unless we strike it first; but that’s another story).

The Trump plan as a whole has many problematic aspects. Still, it is really a conceptual framework more than a concrete plan. Israel does not have to “sign on the dotted line” and agree to all of it, especially when so much is undefined. Unilateral action to extend Israeli law to the Jewish communities and the Jordan Valley would take the Jordan Valley off the table as well as make it harder for a future government to agree to expel Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria. It might protect some  communities from demolition at the hands of the Supreme Court.

Would the US agree to recognize our action without firm commitments to the rest of the program? Well, in a legal sense, there is nothing to “recognize.” We are not declaring a state, and we are not “annexing” anything that we are not already in justified possession of. This is an internal Israeli matter.

But in any event, why would the US disapprove of Israel taking the first step to implement the plan, proposed by its president, that represents the first real crack in the stalemate that has existed since 1967?

Posted in 'Peace' Process, Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Israeli or Jewish History, Middle East politics, US-Israel Relations | 1 Comment

Obama’s Last Minute Plot Against Israel

Posted on June 18, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered
I’ve seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen. – Woody Guthrie

On 23 December 2016, lame-duck President Barack Obama struck back at Israel for her insouciant refusal to acquiesce to the empowerment of her deadly enemy, Iran; and at the same time at least partly kept his promises to pro-Palestinian activists, who had been disappointed by what they saw as his insufficient firmness toward Israel.

On that day, the US abstained on a vote and allowed the UN Security Council to pass resolution 2334, which declared all “settlements” outside of the pre-1967 lines – including eastern Jerusalem – “illegal under international law,” and “call[ed] upon all States … to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967,” a provision which has been used to justify discriminatory labeling and boycotts of Jewish products from the territories. The resolution asserted that Israel was in violation of the 4th Geneva Convention and demanded that she “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities…”

This was the first anti-settlement Security Council resolution that the US had not vetoed since the Carter Administration. It directly contradicts the position of the Israeli government, which views the territories as disputed, not occupied, and the Jewish communities there as entirely legal (see here and here).

While creating dangerous precedents (e.g., for the prosecution of Israeli officials in the International Criminal Court and for the justification of BDS activity), the resolution was passed under Chapter VI of the UN Charter and not Chapter VII, which would justify the application of economic sanctions or even military action against Israel.

Although the resolution was introduced by Malaysia, New Zealand, Senegal and Venezuela (it was originally proposed by Egypt, but Israel persuaded the Egyptians to withdraw it), a spokesman for PM Netanyahu said that Israel received “ironclad information” via Arab countries that “this was a deliberate push by the United States and in fact they helped create the resolution in the first place.” Netanyahu said that he had asked Russian President Putin to veto resolution 2334, but Putin (although Russia apparently did try to delay the vote) would not do so.

Recently, PM Netanyahu told the Israel Hayom newspaper that Obama had planned to go even further:

He and his staff began working on another UNSC resolution, which would have forced Israel to agree to a Palestinian state based on the 1948 borders. Israel’s UN ambassador at the time, Danny Danon, sounded the alarm.

At the time, the US administration denied the Israeli claim that another resolution, in addition to UNSCR 2334, was going to be brought before the UN Security Council.

Did Bibi exaggerate? Hardly. A clue to the details of this second resolution was provided by a contemporaneous article by Nathan Thrall, who described, on the basis of interviews with “top US officials” what such a resolution might look like:

…to set down the guidelines or “parameters” of a peace agreement—on the four core issues of borders, security, refugees, and Jerusalem—in a US-supported UN Security Council resolution. Once passed, with US support, these Security Council-endorsed parameters would become international law, binding, in theory, on all future presidents and peace brokers.

Top US officials see a parameters resolution as Obama’s only chance at a lasting, positive legacy, one that history might even one day show to have been more important to peace than the achievements of his predecessors.

As we know, Obama’s position on borders was that permanent ones had to be “based on” the 1949 armistice lines, with only small swaps to accommodate some settlement blocs, requiring that the Palestinians be compensated for the swaps with land from the pre-1967 state of Israel. In contrast to the Israeli view that Israel held title to the territories (although she would consider ceding some of the area in return for a peace agreement), Obama saw all of the land across the Green Line as “occupied Palestinian territories.”

Any agreement that would result in Israel losing control of the Jordan Valley and the high ground of Judea and Samaria would render the country indefensible. Israel cannot afford to allow those borders to be imposed under any circumstances.

Obama’s view was at odds with the 1949 armistice agreement as well as UNSC 242, the grandmother of all UNSC resolutions concerning the Israeli-Arab conflict, and the Oslo Accords. The armistice agreements clearly stated that the cease-fire lines simply represented the areas under control of the sides at the time of the cessation of hostilities, and that they had no political significance. UNSC 242 called for “secure and recognized boundaries” that would be arrived at by negotiation between the parties (at that time Israel and the Arab nations). Oslo replaced the Arab nations with the Palestinian Authority, but also made the question of borders a final status issue to be settled by negotiation.

Obama wished to upend all that and reward the Palestinians with the whole enchilada prior to negotiation. Whether such a resolution would indeed have “become [binding] international law” is not at all clear, but there is no doubt that it would be used as justification for continued pressure on Israel. If it had passed, it would have been used as an argument against the Trump plan, which is in essence a 2-state solution that is not based on the 1949 lines.

According to Netanyahu, when he heard about Obama’s intention, he called “his friend” Vladimir Putin, and convinced him that it was a bad idea. And Putin agreed to veto it if it came up. The Obama administration realized that this would be an embarrassment which would hurt the Democrats domestically without gaining anything, and so decided not to push it.

If Netanyahu’s story is true – and the Thrall article, which obviously represents Obama Administration thinking suggests strongly that it is – then what lessons can be drawn from it?

The main one is that Israel should beware of Obama and his gang, who have not gone away and will be very influential again if the Democrats win the coming election. We should think about this very carefully when considering when to apply Israeli law to the strategic Jordan Valley.

Another is that if indeed Putin intervened, it is evidence that Israel cannot afford to become a ward (or a satellite!) of one of the great powers. It must maintain friendly connections with all sides. A small country in the Middle East won’t survive otherwise.

And one more: Woody Guthrie was right. Not every enemy comes at you with a gun.

Posted in 'Peace' Process, American politics, Diplomatic warfare, The UN, US-Israel Relations | 3 Comments

Why Transgenderism is Illogical and Dangerous

Posted on June 14, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

This is a very long article on a subject that is far from my usual topics. I wrote it because I felt compelled to strike back at one of the most dangerous trends in today’s increasingly strange postmodern intellectual climate (it’s interesting to consider why so many of these strange beliefs seem to go along with anti-Zionism). Also my situation is such that I’m protected from the consequences of my heresy. If someone with an academic position in the USA or Canada (I am not sure about Israel) were to write something like this, they would almost certainly lose their job.

The transgender movement has come into existence only recently, but it has been flexing its muscles in a most alarming way. An academic or public person who expresses even mild disagreement with its radical pronouncements is vilified as “transphobic,” threatened with physical harm, subjected to online bullying (viz. J. K. Rowling), often forced to apologize abjectly, and sometimes fired or simply hounded from their job. “Transphobia” is defined as a form of “bigotry,” a sin which in many circles is considered the nadir of human depravity, the precursor to murder or genocide.

It is becoming more common for children to be encouraged to “transition” to a different gender role, or even to have puberty-blocking drugs administered, on the basis of the child’s questioning the gender role implied by their biological sex to overeager parents, doctors, or teachers. In some cases, this can happen against the wishes of parents.

This is unfortunate, because transgenderism (I am using the words “transgenderism” and “transgenderist” to refer to the doctrine and its proponents, not to individuals who are transgender) is logically incoherent. One danger is that it is being incorporated into administrative rules of educational, business, or media organizations, resulting in the punishment of those who don’t accept the new orthodoxy. A worse danger is that politicians will write nonsense into law. In the case of children, permanent psychological or physical damage can result from their manipulation by parents, teachers, counselors, or doctors, who have jumped on the bandwagon of this ideological fad.

The doctrine of transgenderism is a complex of metaphysical, epistemological, moral, and political beliefs. It rests on a mistake that I hope to expose in what follows.

First, we need a few definitions and explanations.

Everybody (I hope) agrees on what biological sex is. Except in very rare cases (the exact definition of “intersex” and  its frequency are unclear, but it is probably a fraction of one percent), the sex of a human can be determined by inspection. It is easier to do for humans than for kittens.

Gender (or “gender role”) is the social and cultural package of customs, rules, expectations, and behaviors that are associated with maleness or femaleness. Gender is an important part of a person’s identity – possibly the most important – since it strongly influences how one interacts with other humans, and more broadly one’s role in almost every aspect of every human society. Until recently, it was assumed that a normal person’s gender role would be the one correlated with their biological sex.

Gender Identity is a person’s perception of the gender role that is appropriate for them to adopt in society.

There have always been people who wished that they were of the opposite gender, either because they felt that the other gender had more social advantages or for various other reasons. A much smaller number believed that in some sense they were the other gender: their biological gender seemed wrong to them. People who suffer distress because of such a feeling of wrongness have gender dysphoria. Prior to the advent of transgenderism, gender dysphoria was considered a psychological disorder.

Homosexuality is an entirely different issue. A person can be homosexual without being gender-dysphoric, or vice versa, although sometimes homophobic attitudes in society can influence a person who is homosexual to become gender-dysphoric.

I’ve broken the claims of made by transgender theorists into five propositions:

1) Everyone has a gender identity which may be different from the one usually associated with their biological sex.

2) Gender identity is a real property of the human organism (that is, not just a feeling or desire).

3) One’s own gender identity is directly perceptible by introspection. A person’s gender identity is epistemologically private; it is not directly observable by others, and therefore a person’s declaration of gender identity can’t be refuted.

4) Gender identity ought to be the sole determinant of the individual’s gender role – how one fits into the gender roles defined by the society.

5) An individual has an inalienable human right to choose their gender identity, which can be male, female, variable, “non-binary,” etc. and to be treated in accordance with that choice.

Anyone who does not respect another person’s gender choice, by referring to them with incorrect pronouns (“misgendering”) or insisting that they conform to a social role that does not agree with their gender identity, such as insisting that they choose a restroom or compete in sports based on their biological sex rather than their gender identity, is guilty of bigotry and denial of a basic human right.

In order to understand some of the consequences of this theory, note that language is a social activity, and proposition 4) implies that all references to gender in language must be understood in terms of gender identity rather than biological sex. So for transgenderists, the words “woman” and “man,” for example, now refer to people who identify as such, and not people with wombs and people with penises, as was previously the case.

This is why transgenderists can say that “men can get pregnant.” Obviously only a person with a womb can get pregnant, but if that person identifies as a man (a “transgender man”) then one has a pregnant man. And therefore such things as medical insurance policies must be changed to reflect the fact that men can become pregnant, women can get prostate cancer, and so on. This is why a serious debate can be held over whether one is obligated to tell someone their biological sex when asking them out on a date (a consistent transgenderist will say no, because it violates the transgendered person’s right to be considered a woman or man in every respect).

Transgenderism, if it turns out to be false, has the potential to do a great deal of harm, particularly to children, who are sometimes raised by overeager parents as though their “true” gender is different from their biological sex on the basis of flimsy evidence (children often display a temporary desire to be a different gender, or even a different species).

The coercive behavior of the transgender movement is also damaging to individuals who are publically targeted for their heresy and accused of bigotry and human rights violations.

Finally, the social changes demanded by transgenderists are quite far reaching, much more than just the need to modify public restrooms to add urinals to the ladies’ rooms and tampon dispensers to the men’s rooms. The complexity of the theory, which insists that there are numerous genders in addition to “male” and “female,” combined with the insistence on proper speech – and the severe punishment for improper speech – would add layers of complexity to our social intercourse. Already, although only a small minority of the population actually accepts the theory, it is destroying women’s sports, a cultural structure established at great cost by women athletes fighting misogynist prejudice.

In analyzing the logic of transgenderism, we note that propositions 4) and 5), the basis of the social and political content of the theory, depend on proposition 2): “Gender identity is a real property of the human organism (that is, not just a feeling or desire).” If this proposition is false, and gender identity is not something real and inherent in the person, then the radical changes in the social structure implied by propositions 4) and 5) are not justified.

The transgenderists are correct in noting that everyone has a self-concept of gender that describes their own relationship to their culture’s gender roles. But simply saying that everyone thinks of themselves in such-and-such a way does not establish that there is something real that corresponds to their self-image. And in order for their argument to persuade us that this gender identity must be respected in the person’s social interactions, gender identity must be objectified, given an ontological status separate from the person’s feelings, wishes, desires, whims, needs, and yes, delusions. After all, I can think of myself in all sorts of ways, attributing rights, powers, or abilities to myself that I do not possesses, or even think of myself as a god. But society is not obligated to recognize my opinion.

Unless you insist that a person is a Cartesian ghost in the machine, a soul, spirit, or mind that is independent of but in some unexplainable way connected to a body, and which itself has a gender, there is no room for this additional entity, the “real” gender identity. There is a body with its biological characteristics, there are the social gender roles in the culture outside, and there are the person’s feelings and desires with respect to their place in society. Where is the “real” gender?

The fallacious argument is only persuasive because it equivocates between the existence of an idea of one’s gender, which is easy to establish but doesn’t imply that society is obligated to recognize it, and a “real” gender (analogous to biological sex but incorporeal) belonging to a person that can be perceived or discovered by introspection. The latter, if it existed, might arguably be a basis for the individual to be treated differently in society – but there is no reason to believe that such an entity exists, and the transgenderists cannot begin to prove that it does.

There is also a problem of verification. Science (including medicine) and law must be based on public, objective facts which can be agreed upon by multiple observers. Since transgenderists believe that a person’s “real” gender is epistemologically private (proposition 3), it does not meet this criterion. It is only directly observable by the individual in question and no outside observer has a right to disagree with or falsify a declaration of gender.

If a person goes to a doctor and says they have a pain in their back, the doctor can’t feel the pain, which is a private, subjective phenomenon. But the doctor can look for various objectively-verifiable physiological conditions that are known to cause back pain. In the case of transgenderism, there can be no evidence except the person’s word.

There is a phenomenon called “stolen valor” in which a person claims to have a military background that they are not entitled to. Valor thieves often convince themselves of the truth of their made-up history, and can speak persuasively about their experiences in combat. But because there is such a thing as military records, claims can be verified. Nobody thinks that just because someone tells war stories they should be eligible for veterans’ benefits. In the case of gender identity, however, there is in principle no way to verify a person’s declaration.

That is not to say that a person might not believe very strongly that the appropriate gender role for them in society is different from the one implied by their biological equipment. A person in this gender-dysphoric condition might be very unhappy and be unable to adjust to the social role that is (as the transgenderists say) “assigned” to them. Their belief could be an obsessive certainty which might dominate the person’s thoughts and cause them to behave in ways that would be problematic for their social relationships. I don’t want to minimize the seriousness of such a situation, but at the same time, the strength of such a belief does not establish that its subject has an objective existence.

If gender identity is not objective, then the project of redefining terms like “woman” or “man” is misguided. Rather than saying that a biological female can be a “transgender man” who can become pregnant, such a person would more correctly be referred to as a woman who chooses to adopt some of the aspects of the gender role usually assumed by men in a particular society (although hormones and surgery can go a long way toward changing an individual’s biological sex, and at some point it would be correct to use the language associated with the new gender).

I do think that there are some individuals who are gender-dysphoric to a degree that transitioning to a different gender, even including medical intervention, is the best course to ensure that they can live a fulfilling life. But I would understand this as a person changing their biological characteristics, to the extent possible, to make it possible for them to play a different gender role in society. I would not say that this person’s situation implies that the definition of “man” and “woman” needs to change.

The question becomes to what extent society should change in order to accommodate gender-dysphoric individuals. And here I think that the position of the transgenderists is wildly exaggerated. I suspect that the number of truly gender-dysphoric individuals is smaller than the number of biological women who would be very unhappy if women’s sports were allowed to disappear as a separate category as a result of being dominated by transgendered athletes.

Particularly in the case of children, who often play with the idea of having a different gender with greater or lesser degrees of seriousness, the assumption of transgenderism and the rush to begin living a new gender role – and even more so, to intervene medically – is dangerous.

The idea that it is a civil or human right to define one’s gender, and that violation of that “right” – for example, by using the wrong pronoun – is equivalent to racial or sex-based discrimination, even violence, can’t be justified logically. Further, the social approbation, sanctions, and even legal action taken against those who do not automatically accept an individual’s pronouncement of gender are destructive to society.

The idea of a “real” gender detectable only by introspection and unverifiable by public, objective criteria, is a logically and scientifically unsound fad. Using it to justify social, medical, and legal decisions is logically wrong, and unjust and dangerous as well.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Being an Ally Works Both Ways

Posted on June 11, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

In a recent column, Hen Mazzig takes some Jews to task for failing to support “Black Lives Matter.” Just because a few “fringe activists” have tried to inject the Palestinian issue into the justified cause of black people being disproportionately the targets of police violence, he thinks, is not a reason for us to become unsympathetic to it:

The black community in America needs and deserves our voice and support. We must not allow the few activists trying to turn this important cause into an anti-Israel campaign to succeed. The way to do this is simple. Our ancestors already did it. When he saw the injustice the black community faced, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr. He put his life on the line for the cause, and in turn, King became an unapologetic advocate against anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Instead of worrying about minority groups turning against Jews, we should be asking how can we show we haven’t turned our backs on them.

Hen Mazzig doesn’t have to prove that he’s a Zionist who has dedicated himself to the Jewish people and the Jewish state. He is an effective voice, especially to young people. But I think he misses the mark here.

I feel compelled to say that BLM’s primary cause is just. I don’t know if proportionately more blacks are killed by law enforcement than whites, because there are persuasive statistical arguments made on both sides. But every black American that I’ve ever talked to about this – and they have been primarily well-educated, middle-class black people – can recount numerous anecdotes about harassment, humiliation, and fear at the hands of police officers.

I grew up in a lower middle-class white family which improved its status to middle-middle by the time I left. Only once in my life did I fear the police, and that was in 1970 when I participated in an antiwar demonstration, and the club-swinging Pittsburgh police tac squad charged the demonstrators. Much later, two of my own kids were stopped by police for “engaging in a speed contest” on  a public street. The cop brought them home and was more worried that my wife would kill them than anything else. This is more or less the experience of most members of the white middle class. The black experience is different.

But these aren’t the days of Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel. These days visibly Jewish pedestrians in New York City are beaten for looking Jewish, primarily by blacks. And there aren’t just a few “fringe activists” that are responsible for adding the Palestinian issue to the mix of intersectional issues that all progressives are required to sign onto. Sure, the people who added accusations of Israeli apartheid and genocide to the BLM platform were anti-Israel activists, but who else would they pick to write that section of the document? The whole document was approved by the leadership. And for a long time, this view of Israel has been prevalent among the rank and file of the broader Left. It isn’t just BLM. Remember the “Occupy” movement?

The black Left is, if possible, even more extreme. Anti-Zionism became part of the Black Power movement of the late 1960s and 70s, as militants distinguished themselves from more moderate (and pro-Israel) leaders like King, seeing themselves as part of a worldwide revolutionary struggle against colonialism and imperialism. Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) was strongly anti-Zionist and considered Arab terrorism against what he called a “settler colony” justified. Huey Newton of the Black Panther Party met with Arafat in 1972, and wrote an essay “On the Middle East” in which he argued that Israel was an outpost of American imperialism that persecuted Palestinians. Angela Davis also met Arafat, has always taken the Palestinian side, and today supports BDS. Now we have Marc Lamont Hill and Cornel West, the “intellectual” voices of Israel-hatred. All this is added to the antisemitism that has been rife in the black community since the 60s, and which is fed by those like Louis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton, Jeremiah Wright, and others.

As was famously said about a different group, the black Left “imbibed Jew-hatred with their mothers’ milk.” It’s not accidental that accusations of Israeli apartheid and genocide were included in the BLM platform; it is essential.

So how are we to respond? Mazzig thinks that we must support BLM despite its anti-Israel position:

Attacking Black Lives Matter only fuels anti-Semitism, making it easier to paint Jews as racists willing to reject the modern civil rights movement just to defend Israel.

“Just to defend Israel?” Did he actually write that? I would argue that a Jew is obligated to defend our homeland, and that takes priority over concern for other peoples. Even if it were necessary to “reject the modern civil rights movement” to do it, it would be so. But of course nobody is rejecting it. An overwhelming majority of Jews strongly oppose anti-black racism.

What we are rejecting – what we must reject – is the hijacking of every social justice cause on behalf of some of the least just people on the planet, the misogynist, homophobic, antidemocratic, terrorist-paying, murder-inciting, child-soldier-abusing, corrupt leaders of the PLO and Hamas. You’d think social justice activists would have noticed.

Worrying that our antisemitic enemies might call us “racists” is a symptom of severe Oslo Syndrome. Nothing is more Sisyphean than to try to obtain the approval of those who hate us for being Jewish by modifying our behavior. Indeed, the more abject our apologies, the more we kneel in recognition of our guilt over white and/or Jewish privilege, the more we will be held in contempt. It’s not what we do, it’s who we are that they have a problem with.

What we are required to do as Jews is to stand unequivocally against those that libel the Jewish state. It doesn’t matter how good the rest of their cause is, they deserve zero support from us if part of their program is the destruction of our homeland and the death or dispersal of its Jewish population. That is precisely what supporting BDS and the “liberation movements” in “Palestine” means.

The sight of Jews abasing themselves before a movement that wishes to return them to the time that there was no Jewish state is embarrassing, but more importantly, demonstrates that there is no downside to joining the anti-Israel parade.

“If you want to change Black Lives Matter Israel agenda, you need to show up for them,” says Mazzig. He has it backwards. If they want our help, they need to stop supporting those who want to kill us. We understand that American blacks have a legitimate problem with racism. They want “allies.” But being an ally works both ways.

Posted in American Jews, Information war, Jew Hatred | 5 Comments

Dear Americans,

Posted on June 7, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

Where to start?

I’ll take September 11, 2001. In some ways it’s an arbitrary date, but it’s one that will appear in whatever serves as history books 500 years from now, if there are such things.

That was the day that the enemies of the United States of America took and held the initiative. That was the day that it became clear that the American Century was coming to a close.

This was not because the attack was so painful. It was painful enough; the loss of more than 3,000 mothers, fathers, children, brothers, and sisters was excruciating. The firefighters and police who were aware of the danger, but charged into the buildings because it was their job, and were swallowed up, that was excruciating. But the American economy survived the initial blow. Buildings that were destroyed were rebuilt. Financial institutions strengthened their backup systems. Life went on for the bereaved.

It was because around that date, more and more Americans stopped believing in the fundamental goodness of their country.

In the aftermath of the attack there were warning signs. Osama bin Laden wrote a “Letter to the American People” in November of the next year in which he purported to explain his reasons for the attack. He said that it was because of American support of Israel; actions against Islamist insurgencies in Somalia, Chechnya, and other places; sanctions on Iraq; and other offenses against Muslims. But more important, I believe, was his call for Americans to accept Islam and to end the “oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you.” And he went on to say that “…you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind.”

And there were some Americans who agreed with him. On September 16, the first Sunday after that awful Tuesday, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, so controversial that Barack Obama had to stop going to his church, gave a sermon which famously included this:

We took this country by terror, away from the Sioux, the Apache, the Arowak [sic], the Comanche, the Arapahoe, the Navajo. Terrorism. We took Africans from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism. We bombed [Grenada, Libya, Panama, Sudan, Hiroshima, Nagasaki]. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and Black South Africans and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost!

Wright agreed with bin Laden: America got what it deserved. And so did historian Howard Zinn, who wrote very similar words on November 1. But Zinn had been complaining about America for a long time. In “A People’s History of the United States” (1980), he presented the story of the nation from the point of view of marginalized groups: slaves, native Americans, workers and union organizers, immigrants, women, and civil rights activists. Instead of the usual history in which political and military leaders and capitalists were the heroes and ordinary people mostly ignored, Zinn turned it on its head. Many of the “heroes” in the history I learned in school came out as villains in Zinn’s book.

It was and is a well-written book. You should read it. But it cannot be the only American history book you read. Certainly the groups he wrote about were oppressed in various ways, but by focusing only on their suffering, one might miss the fact that America provided a secure life with great opportunity for many, including blacks, immigrants, and working class people. Zinn’s explanations of historical events follow orthodox Marxist class-struggle lines, and (for example) one might miss the fact that if the United States had not entered WWII, the Germans and Japanese would have successfully completed their conquest of Europe and Asia. Zinn was admittedly a Marxist who was associated with a number of Communist front groups (but he denied being a member of the Communist Party).

The book, however, was adopted by the educational establishment in the US, and is required reading in many schools and universities. More important, the world-view it expresses seems to have taken over the teaching of American history in schools, in part due to the sophisticated propaganda offensive that the Soviet Union waged against the US since the 1930s, and that continues from Russia today.

Americans were told, over and over, that their country was built on two great sins – the genocide of the native Americans and slavery – and that the nation continues to commit one crime against humanity after another: racism, war-mongering, capitalist exploitation, and aggression against weaker nations all over the world. The implication has been that these crimes are inherent in our system, and only radical action can end them and provide justice for their victims. The left-leaning bent of many intellectuals made the universities where teachers were trained fertile beds for their seeds.

The good things about America – especially the commitment to the ideals of liberty and justice, even if it took a major civil war and an almost 100-year struggle to begin to realize them for all Americans – have gotten lost among the complaints. Sadly, even the previous President of the US saw America through this lens.

Since the 1973 oil shock, and even more aggressively since 2001, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states have pumped oil money into American universities, establishing departments of Middle East Studies, and endowing chairs for Arab- and Islam-friendly professors. Their line is similar, although here it is primarily the Arabs (especially Palestinians) who are the victims of American crimes, directly in some cases (e.g., the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) or indirectly via American support for Israel.

The American radical Left has been nourished from both of these sources, and has very effectively connected them, relating the situation of American blacks to that of Palestinian Arabs. One of its most successful memes has been the “deadly exchange,” the idea that American police officers have been trained in Israel to apply techniques of oppression, developed in Israel to hurt Palestinians, to American blacks. The facts that 1) there are almost no similarities between the racial conflict in America and the national/religious one here, and 2) any police training in Israel has been related to counter-terrorism, and certainly does not encourage the use of excessive force against minorities, have been ignored. The meme fits perfectly with the anti-Zionist (and anti-Jewish) themes that are part and parcel of the messages sent from both Russia and the Arab states.

If 9/11 was the beginning of the decline, it accelerated even more rapidly after February 4, 2004, although no one was immediately aware of it. That was the date that Facebook came into being, and social media, the most powerful weapon of cognitive warfare ever created, was placed in the hands of the Russian regime, and indeed anybody else who cares to use it.

The Russians, who are the world’s greatest experts in propaganda and information war, immediately understood its potential. By the use of automated bots and “social media farms” they set about to destroy their historic enemy, the US. They did this by nurturing extremism of all kinds. They riled up the extreme Right against the Jews, and they encouraged the revolutionary Left against the establishment. They posted memes designed to infuriate blacks over racism and police brutality, and to incite whites against black “thugs.” These were injected into the social media bubbles inhabited by the various groups. They may or may not have tried to influence elections, but it is certain that they tried to create chaos.

And they succeeded, possibly beyond their dreams. The idea that America is fundamentally defective because of its original sins has become part of the ideology of American progressives, and even traditional liberals. Indeed, two major media – the NY Times with its “1619 project” and NPR with its “Code Switch” – explicitly argue that the heritage of slavery and issues of race, respectively, are the most fundamental factors making America what it is. Several middle-aged Americans whom I would have called “liberals” a few years ago recently surprised me by claiming to be “revolutionaries.” The fact that most revolutions are co-opted by the most brutal and ruthless factions and often bring about worse regimes than the ones they replaced doesn’t seem to matter to them.

The present crisis was set off by the brutal killing of George Floyd, but if that hadn’t happened, something else would have. The ground has been carefully prepared.

America, as seen by the angry blacks, the white radicals, and even the former liberals, is not worth saving. The blacks are frustrated, the radicals see their chance, and the ex-liberals have internalized the anti-American perspective of Howard Zinn and the rest.

I’m writing this for the ones who still love their country, my former home. Don’t let the others wreck it.

Posted in American society, Information war, Terrorism | 2 Comments

Timidity is no Virtue

Posted on June 4, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

You annex foreign land, not your own country. – Menachem Begin

Right now Israel is facing a momentous decision to do something that is practically nothing.

That is to extend Israeli civilian law to some parts of Judea and Samaria, specifically the Jordan Valley and other areas where Jewish communities are located.

Why do I say it is practically nothing? Because the official position of our government, although it often does a rotten job of explaining it, is that those areas are already part of Israel. Nothing is being “annexed” as the EU insists (here is why). And while the areas are currently governed by a military government, little will change in most practical legal matters.

Of course it is a big deal for the Palestinians, for the Europeans, and indeed for anyone who wishes that the Jews did not have a sovereign state. This is because it symbolizes the end of the pretense that was so dear to them, that the “West Bank” (as they prefer to call it) is not part of Israel and ultimately will need to pass into Arab hands. It means that any “two-state solution” that could happen in the future will happen according to a map more like the map found in the Trump Plan – one that is consistent with UNSC 242 that called for “secure and recognized boundaries” – rather than the very insecure boundaries that would result from basing them on the 1949 armistice lines, as previous US administrations wished to do.

It is also a big deal for us, for the same reason. It is a recognition that justice is on our side. It is a repudiation of the idea that we are holding onto something that belongs to someone else. It is an affirmation that Eretz Yisrael is the land of the Jewish people.

Let me dismiss the objection that the Palestinians will react violently. What else is new? The Palestinians will always be as violent as they think they can get away with. If they see that we’re prepared, they will content themselves with verbal complaints.

And King Abdullah of Jordan won’t abrogate his treaty with us. He can’t afford to, and in addition he probably would prefer not to have a border with any future Palestinian entity.

Most Israelis favor this step. But some have objected that the map in the Trump plan would leave numerous Jewish communities cut off, enclaves in the Palestinian entity without the ability to grow and difficult or impossible to secure. It would be, de facto, as much an abandonment of those communities as the withdrawal from Gaza was for Gush Katif. They also point out that any Palestinian state in the center of Israel’s heartland would be dangerous.

The US has said that it would “recognize” Israel’s action only if Israel offered to negotiate with the Palestinians on the basis of the Trump plan, coordinate the map with the US, and agree to freeze construction in parts of Area C that are not included in the area to which Israeli law will be applied. This implies that Israel would actually lose territory as a result.

I don’t want to minimize their concerns. But I think we need to step all the way out of the “peace processing” box and take a different approach. I propose that:

  1. We announce that we agree in principle with the Trump plan, although we do not sign onto any specifics. We offer to talk with the Palestinians.
  2. We draw a map that meets our security needs and provides for access to and expansion of all the existing Jewish communities.
  3. We present it to the Americans and explain that this is our interpretation of the Trump plan, and we hope that they will be able to agree that it is reasonable.
  4. We take the needed steps to extend civilian law to the areas indicated in the map.

Note that American “recognition” of Israel’s action is meaningless. We are not declaring a state that needs to be accepted into international organizations. We are making a change that is an internal matter, consistent with the principle that Judea and Samaria are part of Israel in accordance with international law.

I’m confident that the US will accept our action. It is not in its interest to reject it: whether the map is closer to what the American officials who originally drew it envisioned or to what the people who today live in Judea and Samaria prefer, the negative reactions from Europe and the Palestinians, as well as the (disingenuous) complaints of the Arab nations, will be the same. So why make the details a sticking point?

Keep in mind that the US has other concerns. It seems to me that the position of President Trump is precarious. I also believe – though I hope I’m wrong – that the disturbances that we are seeing now in cities across the country are not a short-term phenomenon but mark the beginning of a prolonged state of instability. And the Coronavirus is not going away.

We are an ally, not a vassal of the US. It may be that in the long run we may be able to do more for it  than it can do for us.

Western Europe, with its history of colonialism, antisemitism, and genocide against the Jews and others, is not a moral exemplar; its politics are politics of interest larded with a large measure of Jew-hatred. At the same time that we extend civilian law in Judea and Samaria, we should take the strongest possible steps to eliminate EU influence there, as well as in various areas of Israeli politics and society.

We can and should take this step. Even though it is practically a very small step, it is psychologically and spiritually important. It may not be possible, even in a few months. Don’t wait until it’s too late.

Posted in 'Peace' Process, Europe and Israel, Israel and Palestinian Arabs, US-Israel Relations | 1 Comment

They Still do Witch Hunts in Massachusetts

Posted on May 30, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

Louis Shenker is, or was, a Jewish student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (UMass). He is no longer a student there, because after allowing a campaign of defamation, harassment, and threats of physical harm orchestrated by members of the faculty and administrators to force him to flee, the university has expelled him.

Louis Shenker is admittedly guilty of several thought-crimes. He is a conservative. He is a Zionist. And (has vehalila) he is a Trump supporter. Who knows, he may even enjoy trolling his progressive political opponents. Still, I don’t believe any of this is illegal in the US.

What is illegal (or at least grounds for civil penalties), and what the university may pay dearly for – $27 million if Shenker’s lawyers get what they are demanding – is trying to wreck someone’s life by spreading false information about him, and inciting violence against him.

His troubles began in December 2018, when he tried to protest an anti-Trump march, wearing a “MAGA” hat and carrying a sign. He was roughed up by the marchers, and a graduate student, Barucha “Beth” Peller, snatched his hat and refused to return it.

Peller turned out to be his teacher in a required course, but she did not recognize him without his MAGA hat, and so he received an A in the course.

In May 2019, the “Resistance Studies Initiative” at the university planned an anti-Israel event featuring Roger Waters, formerly of Pink Floyd, who of late has dedicated his efforts to attacking Israel. Shenker and two other Jewish students sued the university, demanding that the event be held off-campus. They lost, but apparently some graduate students and faculty were moved to act against what they perceived as the Zionist (and Trumpist) menace.

Louis Shenker had started to bother them. He had a popular podcast and a presence on Twitter (account since suspended) and other social media, which he used to promote his conservative views. They decided that he had to go.

In November 2019, when Louis stood up to challenge the speakers at yet another anti-Israel event, he put on a (new) Trump hat. And Peller recognized him. According to his lawyers, “He told her he knew who she was – that she was the person who had stolen his MAGA hat, and that he still wants it back.” But Peller, a long-time leftist/anarchist activist, went to the police and falsely claimed that he was a “white nationalist” and had physically threatened her. She got a protective order, and when he defended himself on Twitter, he was jailed for two days.

What he didn’t know (and what his lawyers found out only recently) was that a trap had been laid for him. Let me quote from the demand letter sent to the University by his lawyers:

…on October 13, 2019, UMass Amherst Associate Professor of Political Science Maryann Barakso, Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Political Science Lauren McCarthy, and Assistant Dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences Kelly Gray, acting within the scope of their employment, came to an agreement that Louis’s “views are not the kind that we want to cultivate at the university.” They formulated a plan to terminate Louis’s contractual relationship with the university by defaming him as a racist. The faculty and administrator employees then recruited graduate student employees active in the Graduate Employee Union (GEO) to help with the plan.

Within a month, the faculty, administrator, and graduate student employees set their plan in motion after Louis’s counter demonstration at the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) event, held at the UMass Amherst Fine Arts Center on November 12, 2019. University employees Barakso, McCarthy, Gray, Tyler Alan, Anna-Claire Simpson, and Beth Peller used Louis’s peaceful expression of his political and religious beliefs at the BDS event as a pretext to incite a violent harassment campaign against him, to file false charges of hate crimes against him, and to call for him to be expelled from the university.

In a series of emails obtained by Louis’ lawyers, the conspirators planned their campaign:

Barasko: We need to talk about Louis. He is becoming a major problem to a faculty member at our department and his views are not the kind we want to cultivate at the University. As you know he is Jewish.. so we have to be very careful and smart in how we deal with this problem.

McCarthy: I agree Louis is becoming increasingly hostile and threatening. We’ve dealt with other problem students in the past successfully and you know nobody likes a racist so we can handle it. I have a contact in UP that can make this work.

Barasko: Update. 1st step. Let campus know Louis is a problem, with the truth about his name out…any subsequent protest about him will lack credibility. The right RSO [registered student organization] has been inspired to post flyers 🙂

When Louis returned to the campus, he found the campus plastered with hundreds of posters with his picture, accusing him of being a “white supremacist.” He became the subject of social media incitement to “smack the dogshit out of him.” Mass emails denouncing him were sent. A campaign of legal harassment was waged against him; on several occasions his lawyers saved him from being jailed on fabricated complaints of stalking Peller (actually, the reverse was true). His tires were slashed when he was due in court for a hearing.

In December 2019, the Campus Anti-Fascist Network published an online petition accusing Louis of being “an extreme alt-right personality who uses incel* language,” and demanding that the UMass Amherst administration “move swiftly to take protective action to protect the campus from Shenker – including expulsion and a no-trespass order.” Almost 500 professors and 650 students nationally have signed it, as well as Roger Waters, Linda Sarsour, and Cornel West. Many other leftist organizations and social media “influencers” picked up the story, accusing him of being a violent and dangerous fanatic, and in some cases inciting violence against him.

His address (he lived at the Chabad house on campus) was made public.

Louis fled from the campus and was unable to take final exams. The university did not respond to his complaints, but, acting on a complaint from Peller, informed him that he was being investigated. And then it expelled him permanently for not taking his exams.

This was a criminal conspiracy to deny this young man a future, aided and abetted by a major university. To quote Justice Clarence Thomas in another context, this was a “high-tech lynching.”

American universities have become fertile ground for outbreaks of mob psychosis, in which the victim, who has somehow transgressed the increasingly extremist progressive ideology – especially in regard to Israel – is hounded from the campus. One high-profile case which comes to mind is that of Andrew Pessin, Professor of Philosophy at Connecticut College, who was forced to leave his post for a year after a social media comment of his that was critical of Hamas was misinterpreted as a racial slur against Palestinians. The college did nothing to protect him when the discourse took an antisemitic turn. After receiving death threats, Pessin took medical leave. To add insult to injury, the college gave a “scholar activist award” to the student, an activist in Students for Justice in Palestine, who initiated the witch hunt. Pessin, unlike Louis Shenker, is the opposite of provocative and even apologized for his comment (in my opinion, he shouldn’t have – the misinterpretation was deliberate, intended to attack a pro-Israel advocate). There are numerous similar cases.

UMass has about a week to respond to the demand letter that was sent by Louis Shenker’s lawyers. If it knows what’s good for it, it will agree to a settlement that justly compensates him for the maltreatment he received at the hands of its employees.
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* “Incel” stands for “involuntary celibate.” Incels are men who blame their lack of a sexual partner on women, and express themselves in violent and misogynist language. Several mass murderers have been characterized (or self-identify) as incels.

Posted in Academia, American society | 5 Comments