Setting the Record Straight about the Anti-Semitism Bill

Last week, the House of Representatives passed a measure that, if approved by the Senate, would more fully extend the protections of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to Jews. The bill prompted backlash from the left, the far right, and civil libertarians, mostly based on claims that it would stifle free expression. David E. Bernstein explains that, contra these critics, the bill “has nothing to do with criminal law, does not ‘ban’ anything, and thus does not criminalize speech.” Nor does it prohibit any kind of speech under civil law.

In Bernstein’s view, the uproar from the left is connected to its commitment to the campus diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) regime:

Currently, there is a double standard, with anti-Semitic speech that might contribute to a hostile environment treated with much more equanimity than speech hostile to other groups. This is illegal discrimination against Jewish students, and is essential to the entire DEI edifice. If . . . new laws incentivize universities to treat members of all protected classes (including white students discriminated against based on race) equally, then the whole ideological structure of DEI as we know it, which depends on preferences for favored groups, collapses.

Read more at National Review

More about: American law, Anti-Semitism, Freedom of Speech, Israel on campus

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023