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Rising Antisemitism and Choosing Freedom
The Free Press ^ | 22 Apr, 2024 | Bari Weiss

Posted on 04/23/2024 5:45:48 AM PDT by MtnClimber

This weekend at Columbia and Yale, student demonstrators told Jewish students to “go back to Poland.” A Jewish woman at Yale was assaulted with a Palestinian flag. And an Orthodox rabbi at Columbia told students to go home for their safety.

Demonstrators on these campuses shouted: “Say it loud and say it clear, we don’t want no Zionists here.” In one chant at Columbia, the protesters were heard saying “Go Hamas, we love you. We support your rockets, too.” and “We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground.”

These campus activists are not simply “pro-Palestine” protesters. They are people who are openly celebrating Hamas and physically intimidating identifiably Jewish students who came near. We published the accounts of two of those students—Sahar Tartak and Jonathan Lederer—today.

Students—all of us—have a right to protest. We have a right to protest for dumb causes and horrible causes. At The Free Press, we will always defend that right. (See here and here, for example.) It is not, however, a First Amendment right to physically attack another person. It is not a First Amendment right to detain another person as part of your protest.

The institutions that are supposed to be dedicated to the pursuit of truth have not only abandoned their mission—they have stood by and done nothing meaningful to condemn students who support terrorism, or to stop the horrific scenes of the past 48 hours.

In fact, at Columbia they have done quite the opposite: on Monday morning the president announced that she is moving classes online. If that’s not cowering to the mob, I don’t know what is. Meanwhile, the NYPD has offered to help secure the safety of Jews on campus, but so far the president of Columbia has refused to let them on campus.

Since the very founding of America, this country has been a unique place for the Jewish people. That is because of America’s exceptional ideals and our willingness to defend them.

But in the past six months these core American beliefs, once deemed immutable, have been challenged in ways that were previously unimaginable, as a rising wave of antisemitism and illiberalism have swept the country—a wave that was put on full display over the last few days, at the country’s most elite and prestigious universities.

Jews around the world are about to celebrate the holiday of Passover—otherwise known as the festival of freedom. But what does it mean this year to commemorate our freedom, when our freedom feels like it is contracting before our eyes? How can we defend the original principles that underpin our society? How can we find the courage to do so?

A few months ago, I gave a speech at the 92Y called “The State of World Jewry,” where I addressed these very questions. I argued that the state of world Jewry depends on the state of the free world. Right now, its condition is in jeopardy. Our holiday from history is over.

For those celebrating Passover, Chag Sameach. And as we say at the Passover seder, “Next year, may we all be free.”


TOPICS: Society
KEYWORDS: leftism

1 posted on 04/23/2024 5:45:48 AM PDT by MtnClimber
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To: MtnClimber

The left is showing their true colors.


2 posted on 04/23/2024 5:45:59 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page. More photos added.)
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To: MtnClimber

You don’t suppose the Jewish folk will take a look around and come to the realization that voting for the demoncrats all those years just may have been a BAD idea.. (?)


3 posted on 04/23/2024 5:59:54 AM PDT by unread (I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the REPUBLIC..!)
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To: MtnClimber

BTTT


4 posted on 04/23/2024 6:20:12 AM PDT by nopardons
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To: MtnClimber
So it's not just about the State of Israel. And never really was.

The most hateful anti-Jewish screed (previous to the rise of the Nazis) was Karl Marx's World Without Jews.

Marx had a Jewish family background and it was not a National Socialist racial theory. He attacked Jewishness as a social phenomenon. This gets right to the core of socialism as such.

Synopsis: The survival of the Jews as a distinct people is an anomaly caused by capitalism.

5 posted on 04/23/2024 6:27:23 AM PDT by Salman (It's not a slippery slope if it was part of the program all along. )
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To: MtnClimber

Imagine in 1938 demonstrators cheering for the Nazi’s “Kristallnacht”, waving swastika banners and having teach ins at Ivy League colleges to study Mein Kampf. While there were significant numbers of Nazi sympathizers in the US in the 1930s the war and especially the horrors of the Holocaust quickly ended the popularity of Nazism. Apparently this generation is ignorant of history and anti semitism.


6 posted on 04/23/2024 7:33:10 AM PDT by The Great RJ ( )
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To: MtnClimber

bump


7 posted on 04/23/2024 1:48:33 PM PDT by Albion Wilde (Either ‘the Deep State destroys America, or we destroy the Deep State.’ --Donald Trump)
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