British Jewry’s Fight against Anti-Semitism, and Its Opponents

Recently Britain’s Union of Jewish Students has been urging universities to adopt the “working definition of anti-Semitism” proffered by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which includes guidelines for distinguishing between mere criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism disguised in anti-Zionist clothing. Of course, the IHRA definition has its detractors, including David Feldman, himself the director of an academic center for the study of anti-Semitism. David Hirsh writes:

Anti-Semitism is commonplace in UK universities. Last week I was contacted by a student whose lecturer taught that IHRA was a pretext to silence criticism of Israel and by another whose dissertation was failed because she wrote in the “wrong” framework about Israel and the Palestinians. This kind of anti-Semitism is harder to sustain in institutions that have adopted IHRA.

But Feldman characterizes the universities which make a point of not allowing IHRA to be part of their official armory against anti-Semitism as “refusenik.” The refuseniks were overwhelmingly Jews in the Soviet Union who were refused permission to go to Israel, although there were others too who were refused permission to leave. They . . . were victims of anti-Semitism at the hands of a totalitarian state that . . . demonized Zionism as the enemy of mankind. Feldman turns this upside down. Today, for him, the refuseniks are the ideological descendants not of the Soviet Jews but of their oppressors, the apparatchiks . . . who denounced Jews as particularist, pro-apartheid, and privileged.

It is said that Palestinians should be allowed to describe their own oppression in whatever ways they see fit. And they are so allowed. But if some Palestinians choose to describe their own oppression in anti-Semitic ways then we, and our universities, have the right to say so.

Read more at Fathom

More about: Anti-Semitism, British Jewry, United Kingdom, University

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF