The flaw here is that we are talking about non-citizens. The 350 million American people doesn't include non-citizens. We have to tolerate all sorts of awful people who are our fellow citizens. We don't have to import more of them. If we take FIRE's position here literally, we would not be able to ask green card holders to take an oath as part of the naturalization process. After all, we don't ask "Americans" to take an oath, right? Now, one could argue that we don't want to give the US government *too much* authority to exclude aliens for ideological reasons for fear the government will abuse that power. But that's different than saying that it's somehow *forbidden* by the First Amendment to in any way screen visa holders and potential immigrants, which is absurd.

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky of Berkeley Law exemplifies the paradoxes of freedom of expression in the current era. /1 He is a strong, principled, civil libertarian. Most recently drafting a letter signed by 79 law school deans denouncing attempts to punish law firms for the clients they represent. /2

I've seen many postmortems on how the public health establishment botched Covid, but none of them mentioned what I think was the most obvious error, discouraging the use of pulse oximeters. 1/ Once doctors recognized that big doses of steroids could combat Covid-induced pneumonia, it was critical for Covid sufferers to get treatment before the pneumonia had become too severe. 2/

I'm an adjunct scholar @CatoInstitute, this post, "Nonprofit Tax Code Weaponization Alert," is ridiculous Yes the proposal to give the Treasury Department broad authority to revoke tax-exempt status from nonprofits that support terrorism raises civil liberty concerns. 1/

(cont.)cato.org/blog/nonprofit… Serously? The author, Patrick Eddington, is "a senior fellow in national security and civil liberties" and is entirely unaware of, just for example, the allegations, backed by a lot more than mere assertion, of ties between Students for Justice in Palestine, American Muslims for Palestine, and Hamas? 2/ cont.

When pieces of rope vaguely resembling nooses occasionally appear on campuses, pandemonium ensues, including cancelling classes for teach-ins and calling in the FBI. This, actual threatening behavior, is being met with a relative yawn.

https://twitter.com/Jeff_Jacoby/status/1856701171680895479

Just eg. clarksvillenow.com/local/display-…

The JStreet poll of American Jewish voters, a thread. Topline result: 79% of American Jews voting for Biden according to JStreet's 2020 poll, 71% for Harris. So there was a significant, but not huge, decline in support for the Democratic candidate.
jstreet.org/wp-content/upl… The poll's survey sample skews a bit to the left. The pollster purports to match the population to Pew's 2013 sample, but that 2013 sample had 10% Orthodox (the most-right leaning constituency) and 20% Jews, but not by religion (the most left-leaning). JStreet has 8% and 24%, respectively.

The answer is that the most important issue to Jewish voters is abortion, and specifically Jewish issues like Israel and antisemitism aren’t high priority, and even when they are Jewish voters filter their understanding of candidates on those issues through their prior partisan biases. The more religious Jews are, and the more they care about specifically Jewish issues like Israel, the more likely they are to be Republicans and conservatives. Thus, the Orthodox are most Republican, the secular with marginal ties to the community most left-leaning. That said, the recent Manhattan Institute poll, showing 67-31 in Harris's favor, also showed, for the first time I've ever seen, that Jews, despite being 2-1 Democrats, are as concerned about antisemitism in the Democratic Party as in the Republican Party. If you strip away partisan bias, there is now more concern about the Democrats in that regard. That's a huge shift. Note: if you had a Jeremy Corbyn-type as the Democratic candidate, or Pat Buchanan-type as the Republican that would change things. But so long as the Democratic and Republican parties seem basically friendly to Jews, each side just filters negative stuff on Jewish issues through their partisan priors.

@ZaidJilani I'm just laughing at the notion that people in Lebanon are "brown". Here, for example, is Lebanon's PM. @ZaidJilani Gebran Bassil, leader of the Free Patriotic Movement.

This sort of vitriol leveled at the two organizations serving Jewish students at Harvard would be unacceptable at a civilized university. It also speaks to either ignorance or a deliberate lies about both groups. E.g., no one who is familiar with any Chabad, anywhere in the world, would argue that Chabad is "first and foremost Zionist."

I don’t know about lying, but the poll showed 57 pc self-identified Jewish Democrats vs 14 pc Republicans, a 4-1 ratio, whereas more typically the ratio somewhere around 2.5 to 1. So if the ratio was more typical, extrapolating from this poll would give Trump more like 37 pc. At a 3-1 ratio, Trump gets 31 pc. For example, Pew shows 71 pc Democrat or lean Democrat, 26 pc Republican or lean Republican in 2021, probably a low point for the GOP after 1/6 but before 10/7.

This is insane antisemitism. Note that the book in question has nothing to do with Israel, this is just a boycott of a Jewish author. @citylit_books

https://x.com/ProfDBernstein/status/1815183133450309855

@eric_knowles @ShibleyTelhami MIT:

https://x.com/AGHamilton29/status/1787229073124560897

@eric_knowles @ShibleyTelhami Harvard:

https://x.com/ShabbosK/status/1757167703524339793

The Dean of Students at Northwestern University, Mona Dugo, attended a rally protesting Hillel, the international Jewish college student group. Let me repeat that. The DEAN OF STUDENTS joined a protest of the campus student group. There is already a government antisemitism investigation at NW, but this calls for a lawsuit. freebeacon.com/campus/northwe… The only plausible mitigating factor I can imagine here is that she was *really* there to make sure the antisemitic students didn't do anything that would force NW's hand, but she couldn't say that publicly so instead she claimed to be there to support their right to free speech. But since their right to free speech wasn't in jeopardy, the presumption is that she was there to lend moral support.

"With so may serious people accusing Israel of genocide, how can you not take it seriously?"

Because these are not, in fact, serious people, and many of them have been accusing Israel of "genocide" since well before 10/7. In case you don't believe me, I did a google search for Israel Gaza Genocide for 2016, 17, 18, 19, 20 and 21. Below are the top results from these searches, the tip of the iceberg. Let's start with 2016.

1/6 2017

This really may be the dumbest thing I’ve read in the Jewish American media all year. In ch. 9 of the Book of Esther, Jews, given the right to defend themselves by the king, gather in self defense and kill 75k enemies who were prepared to kill every Jew in the kingdom. And…. A bunch of left-wing rabbis find this objectionable. So, the Jews should have what? Let their enemies murder them? jta.org/2024/03/15/rel… I should note that some if the rabbis quoted don’t seem to understand the story. Haman’s decree to kill all the Jews had already gone out to the kingdom, it could not be revoked. But the king could and did send a new decree allowing the Hews to defend themselves from the onslaught.

Orthodox Jews are 17% of Pew's sample 2021 sample of American Jews aged 18-34. If you limited the sample to active Jews (Jews that are in some way practicing or affiliated with the community) it would be higher. Of committed Jews, those to whom Judaism is an important part of their lives, it would be even higher. OTOH, far leftist jews of the same cohort are less than 17%, and then diminish once you get to practicing, and even more for committed. But you can't tell me that JTA gives attention proportionally... Every obnoxious rally/disruption by the second group gets a story. How many massive mitzvah projects are going on right now to help Israel are going on, and how many have you covered? Of course, they don't send out press releases, which brings me back to my earlier point about how much modern journalism is just regurgitating press releases from interest groups. @kampeas @JTAnews @NYJewishWeek Just the past month: jta.org/2024/02/25/ide…

It's kind of horrifying that the loudest voices bemoaning Palestinian civilian suffering in Gaza will harshly criticize everyone and anyone--Israel, the US, the EU, the UN, American Jews, you name it--except for Hamas, and the one thing they won't do is suggest Hamas surrender, even though that would immediately end the war, and also end Gazans being ruled by an oppressive medieval theocracy that steals aid money to build weapons and villas for its leaders. In short, no matter how much they purport to care for Palestinians, their biggest priority is that Israel not emerge victorious over Hamas. I won't go so far as to claim that they don't care about the Palestinians. I will claim, strongly, that they hate Israel much more. (A perfectly good example is @KarenAttiah, who has a sufficiently influential position as world opinion editor at the @washpost that someone like her deciding that hey, maybe Hamas should just surrender and release the hostages could help move the needle.)

According to their press release, they seem to mostly be complaining about outside actors "doxxing" them, criticizing them, denying them job opportunities, etc. I doubt Harvard has any responsibility/liability for "protecting" students from non-Harvard affiliates. Perhaps the full complaint has allegations involving people at Harvard. @steveplotnicki @OrinKerr mlfa.org/mlfa-files-fed…

I've learned from "X" that the "pro-Palestine" movement lives in a fantasy world where, putting mythology regarding 10/7 aside (for the uninitiated, please note that every single one of these beliefs is utterly false)...
--There was a country called Palestine, where Muslims and a small Jewish minority lived in peace and harmony, as they did throughout the Arab Muslim world
--Every Palestinian is indigenous to Palestine going back to the Canaanites, every Jew is not
--Zionists "invaded" Palestine
--The UN, trying to compensate Jews for the Holocaust, "gave" the country to the Zionists, even though Palestinians were stalwart opponents of the Nazis
--Israel, entirely unprovoked, proceeded to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population because of Zionist racism
--Israel then duped the happy Jewish populations of Yemen, Iraq, Egypt, etc to leave for Israel
--Israel, entirely unprovoked, proceeded to seize the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 as part of its imperialist agenda
--The PLO arose spontaneously as a national liberation movement, with no help from East bloc secret services
--Hamas though a national liberation movement, also was created and funded by Israel
--Palestinian governments in the West Bank and Gaza somehow arose spontaneously, Oslo never existed
--Israel made no legitimate peace offers in 2000 or 2001
--Israel started the war that became known as the Second intifada
--Israel's reaction to the Second Intifada involved indiscriminate murder of Palestinians, part of a broader campaign of genocide
--After Fatah was defeated militarily Hamas became the focus of the "resistance," while simultaneously being funded and supported by Israel
--Under Hamas rule, Gaza was both a paradise and the world's largest open-air prison
--Palestinians in Israeli jails who were duly convicted of various crimes including murder, after trials in which they were represented by counsel, are "hostages," while actual hostages held by Hamas are all guilty of something or other. And if you believe any of these things, read some actual history and use whatever critical thinking skills God has given you.

Hamas's plan on 10/7 went well beyond their terrorist atrocities. They planned to make it all the way to the West Bank, where they would link up with fellow terrorists there and start an "uprising," and once that commenced Hezbollah would join in from Lebanon. IOW, the plan was all out war. The WB part was thwarted by the IDF, and the Hezbollah part by the US stationing naval forces in the Mediterranean. (I'm basing this on interviews with Hamas officials and reports of intelligence gathered by the IDF. And it makes a lot more sense than "let's just kill and torture a bunch of people and see what happens.")

I will tell you why anti-Israel sources are currently throwing away their credibility by being sympathetic to Hamas after its murderous rampage, spreading obvious lies, or both. This is the Flight 93 conflict for them. They don't want peace, they don't want two states, they want the Jews to back up and go... somewhere. 1/ The underlying theory is that if you make life sufficiently difficult for Israelies, they will pack up and leave like the French in Algeria. Moreover, if you sway world public opinion enough against Israel, other powers like the US will stop Israel from dealing a mortal military blow to its enemies. Thus, all Israel's enemies need is patience. 2/