The Activists Who Raise Havoc over the Cultural Appropriation of a Taco Ignore or Justify Anti-Semitic Violence

Sept. 30 2021

According to a recently released survey of Jewish college students, 70 percent of those queried said they had experience anti-Semitism, and 50 percent reported having hid their identity to protect themselves from harassment. Bari Weiss sees in these results evidence of rapidly growing hostility toward Jews in America:

My own inbox is a microcosm of this acceleration: I used to receive a note every other week of a story that deserved to be told. Now I sometimes get word of several in a single day. Some of those stories have made headlines. The machete attack at a rabbi’s home in upstate New York during Hanukkah. The attack outside a sushi restaurant in West Hollywood during the recent war between Hamas and Israel. [The rapper and record producer] P. Diddy hosting Louis Farrakhan on Revolt TV for an Independence Day address last July.

But you probably missed the story of Rose Ritch, a young Jewish woman who was hounded out of her role as a student vice-president at the University of Southern California. “Impeach her Zionist ass,” her fellow students proclaimed, echoing Communist-party apparatchiks of another time. Or the book, published by Hachette, called In Defense of Looting, in which the author argues that Jews and Koreans are “the face of capital.” . . . Or the swastikas drawn on schools in Georgia in the days just before this Yom Kippur.

In . . . an era in which the past is mined by offense-archaeologists for the most minor of “microaggressions,” the very real “macroaggressions” taking place right now against Jews go ignored. Assaults on ḥasidic Jews on the streets of Brooklyn, which have become a regular feature of life there, are overlooked or, sometimes, justified by the very activists who go to the mat over the “cultural appropriation” of a taco. It is why corporations issue passionate press releases and pledge tens of millions of dollars to other minorities when they are under siege, but almost never do the same for Jews.

Read more at Common Sense

More about: American Jewry, American politics, Anti-Semitism, Political correctness

What Iran Seeks to Get from Cease-Fire Negotiations

June 20 2025

Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister flew to Geneva to meet with European diplomats. President Trump, meanwhile, indicated that cease-fire negotiations might soon begin with Iran, which would presumably involve Tehran agreeing to make concessions regarding its nuclear program, while Washington pressures Israel to halt its military activities. According to Israeli media, Iran already began putting out feelers to the U.S. earlier this week. Aviram Bellaishe considers the purpose of these overtures:

The regime’s request to return to negotiations stems from the principle of deception and delay that has guided it for decades. Iran wants to extricate itself from a situation of total destruction of its nuclear facilities. It understands that to save the nuclear program, it must stop at a point that would allow it to return to it in the shortest possible time. So long as the negotiation process leads to halting strikes on its military capabilities and preventing the destruction of the nuclear program, and enables the transfer of enriched uranium to a safe location, it can simultaneously create the two tracks in which it specializes—a false facade of negotiations alongside a hidden nuclear race.

Read more at Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs

More about: Iran, Israeli Security, U.S. Foreign policy