US university campuses are the new battlegrounds. Claiming free speech privileges, the pro-Hamas protesters use the language that can only be described as virulently antisemitic. The Voltairean principle implies that even this speech must be tolerated, but have these protesters crossed over into the unlawful territory? Dr. Nir Hoftman, an anesthesiologist at UCLA, went to visit the pro-Hamas encampment on campus. This is a summary of what he encountered there.
Here’s an example of political activism on campus succeeding.
On Wednesday morning, Eytan Israel ’26 and other co-authors sent a letter to University President Peter Salovey in opposition to the calls for divestment from military weapons manufacturing — hours before the University publicly announced its decision to maintain such investments.
In the first 24 hours of its circulation, the letter gained 133 signatures — including students, parents, alumni and professors across Yale College and Yale’s graduate schools.
[… “W]ithout the military jets of Lockheed Martin, the Iron Dome (Raytheon Manufacturing) and Arrow (Boeing Manufacturing) interceptor missiles, and the patriot defense systems (Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing), democratic countries around the world would have no means to defend themselves against the powers that seek to destroy them,” Israel wrote.
[…] “We hope that this is the end of the campaign against the companies that allow Israel and the western world to defend itself, but we are aware that this is likely not the case,” wrote Israel to the News of the University’s decision on investment policies. “We will stand strong by our beliefs, growing our coalition every day, to continue showing the administration that hundreds of their students, faculty, alumni, and parent body support them and their decision.”
Yale university’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department is co-sponsoring a seminar on the failure of the human rights movement to address the sexual violence against the Jewish women on October 7. Right along the lines of what BCAA did last week, thanks to our two wonderful panellists. Except… the WGSS site, or their Facebook page, have no mention of their own event, apparently the electronic poster was distributed through targeted email list only.
The Brock News this morning (April 11) advertised a visit to Brock by the Ontario’s Minister of Agriculture, and used this cover photograph:
Malkie Spodek (left), Entomology Scientist with Brock’s Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute and Adjunct Professor in Biological Sciences, explains her research to Ontario Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Minister Lisa Thompson (right), who looks through a microscope at grape mealybug eggs. The grape mealybug is an insect vector of grapevine viruses.
This Brock News’ article, proudly announced in an email sent out yesterday morning temporarily disappeared from the Brock website, which had us worried, but it has now been restored. The cover image has changed, but the above photo depicting a BCAA member wearing her yellow ribbon to raise awareness of the hostages still held in Gaza, is included in the expanded version of the article.
Perhaps, BCAA advocacy is making a small bit of difference?
We wish our friends at the other co-sponsoring organizations at Yale University: the Yale Friends of Israel and the Yale’s Law Students for Israel (an unofficial unapproved student group, so no link) the best in their efforts to turn around their University.
[Edit: an earlier version of this post was called Missing Links, but happily, the Brock News link has been restored, hence a change in the title and tone of the post.]
The above is a title of a powerful commentary just published in the journal Social Work (April, 2024) by Naomi B. Farber and Maryah Stella Fram from the University of South Carolina. As a J’Accuse of sorts, it left me hopeful: eradication of failure begins with its recognition, in ourselves as in others. Maybe, not all is lost.
As this evidence grows each day, our profession’s continued refusal to condemn Hamas becomes ever more shameful—particularly since we also see each day the growing anti-Semitic movement on our campuses, with students (and some faculty), mired in ignorance and filled with ideological fervor, spewing tropes of blood libel, praising Hamas, and calling for the annihilation of Israel.
[…] decades after the Holocaust, in a time when many thought that “never again” meant something real and substantive, we are troublingly aware that our academic institutions, including schools of social work, have created new spaces rife with indoctrination. Across the social work academy, we see the ebbing of the culture of learning, truth-seeking, intellectual humility, and dialog, and its replacement with a culture of ideological purity, the valorizing of victimhood, and the rewarding of rage. That this indoctrination has now galvanized around hatred of Jews and Israel is shameful, but, given history, it is not surprising.
[…] The replacement of inquiry with ideology is not unique to social work—we see this happening across the academy, and it is in the space of this ideological fervor that anti-Semitism has been nurtured, justified, and so reframed that the torture of children and babies is somehow excusable if they are Jewish children and babies. Because this ideology designates Jews as White, and Israel as an “oppressor” nation, the murder of Jews by terrorists has been imagined as legitimate if not laudatory in the pursuit of “social justice.” This is a terrifying turn away from the humanistic roots of our profession.
I just finished an excellent book, highly recommend it to everyone, written by an imprisoned Soviet dissident, Israeli politician (all the way to the deputy PM), and the head of Sochnut (The Jewish Agency) – in equal measure, 9 years each. A fascinating read in which he argues how important the diaspora is to Israel, and how important Israel is to the diaspora. Which made me think about how our (a broad community of BCAA members) different politics can easily tear us apart, if we let it.
Today, we Jews stand against two powerful tides sweeping the world. One is the tide of illiberal liberalism. It speaks in the name of universal human rights, but in its extreme form denies the value of a nation-state while seeing Israel as the last remnant of colonialism. But Israel, the democratic nation-state of the Jewish people, insists that its strong bottom-up grassroots national identity, consecrated by the will of the people, gives it the strength to be the only island of democracy in the Middle East.
Opposing illiberal liberalism is also the tide of the new nationalism, which appeals to a lost sense of national pride and helps to mobilize the energy citizens get from belonging. But it, in its extreme form, is illiberal. Most members of the progressive Jewish community oppose this extreme, insisting that their strong liberal society preserves their Jewish identity.
Each community is doing what it does naturally to survive. But when the Jewish world works together, as a Jewish democratic state in the Middle East and as a constellation of minority Jewish communities in Western democracies, we can bring out the best in each other. Benefiting from the best of liberalism and the best of nationalism, together we can champion the joint mission to belong and to be free as both central to human happiness. This synthesis could also help moderate some of the extremes afflicting the West and affecting each of us in our respective communities today. This approach requires a conceptual leap in all societies, accepting that we are complementary, not carbon copies of one another.
Natan Sharansky and Gil Troy. Never Alone: Prison, Politics, and My People, 2020.
And this is how Sharansky ends this 2020 book, with these five rules for surviving the COVID epidemic, but I think they transcend that. You may think of them of how to be Never Alone.
• First, remember that you are a soldier in a bigger struggle, and you have an important role to play in determining whether we win or lose.
• Second, don’t try controlling what you can’t control—focus on what you can control. You cannot control when this craziness will finish, but, in the meantime, you can take on ambitious plans to challenge yourself. Learn a new language. Read that thick book. Clean your closets—or finally build that new one. Don’t let corona bring you to despair.
• Third, don’t stop laughing at yourself and the world—it puts everything in proportion.
• Fourth, use your hobbies, like I used chess. This is your time to enjoy life.
• Fifth, always remember that you are part of something bigger than yourself.
A recent decision by the Parliament of Canada to halt exports of weapons to Israel is a significant symbolic gesture, Canada being the first G7 country to do so.
But how significant is it in terms of actual exports? Recently, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) offered a public interface into its database or arms transfers. Here are two examples of export of weapons, from Canada and the USA, to Israel and Ukraine, for the past few years. First, about the units of measure used in the tables below:
SIPRI has developed a unique system to measure the volume of international transfers of major conventional weapons using a common unit, the trend-indicator value (TIV). The TIV is based on the known unit production costs of a core set of weapons and is intended to represent the transfer of military resources rather than the financial value of the transfer.
Where, you may ask, is the Israel line in the second table? There isn’t any, since the numbers are zero across the board. They do show up in a specific “Canada to Israel” query:
It was perhaps inevitable that as the yellow ribbons for hostages are increasing their presence, the counter-symbolism of pro-Palestinian Artists4Ceasefire symbol would show up on the red carpets of the world. Virtue signalling is a basic necessity for the glitterati. But how was the symbol chosen? The official explanation says:
The Artists4Ceasefire enamel pin is composed of a red background to symbolize the urgency of the call to save lives. The orange hand conveys the beautiful community of people from all backgrounds that have come together in support of centering our shared humanity. The heart being cradled in the center of the hand is an invitation for us to lead with our hearts, always, to lead with love. When we lead with love, we understand that all of our fellow beings deserve to be loved and protected.
The colour of the image appears less “orange“, more blood-red on a dark-red background. It was perhaps inevitable that some voices view this as an intentional “bloody hands” reference, and the black heart is an even darker symbol (warning: the provided video link is ghastly):
To some Jewish observers the red hand recalled […] the lynching of two IDF soldiers by Palestinians in Ramallah in 2000. […] In one less famous image, a Palestinian appeared to clutch a heart ripped out of one of the soldiers’ dead bodies.
This is from the State of Israel’s official X account:
“Most celebrities wearing red pins don’t know that the image of red hands is associated with one horrific event imprinted on the minds of Israelis and Palestinians. The 2000 Ramallah lynching of Israelis. This symbolism isn’t a coincidence.”
A bit of a David-against-Goliath story, or more precisely Davidai-against-Columbia story. Shai Davidai shot to prominence with his Open Letter to Every Parent in America: “we cannot protect your children from pro-terrorist student organizations.” In response, Columbia has started what looks like a persecution masquerading as an “internal investigation”.
I would like to make one thing clear: I view this investigation as a clear attempt to silence me. I will not stop demanding that the university enforce its own rules and policies. I will not stop fighting Columbia’s attempts to sideline me, fire me, or make my life even more unbearable.
Shai Davidai, an Assistant Professor in Columbia’s Business School.
![[the pin]](https://brockcaa.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/24bc7-whatsappimage2024-03-11at6.53.45pm.jpeg)
The Artists4Ceasefire enamel pin is composed of a red background to symbolize the urgency of the call to save lives. The orange hand conveys the beautiful community of people from all backgrounds that have come together in support of centering our shared humanity. The heart being cradled in the center of the hand is an invitation for us to lead with our hearts, always, to lead with love. When we lead with love, we understand that all of our fellow beings deserve to be loved and protected.
To some Jewish observers the red hand recalled […] the lynching of two IDF soldiers by Palestinians in Ramallah in 2000. […] 
Brock Coalition Against Antisemitism 