I read or listened to several competent analyses of Israeli strategy in Gaza and concluded that it has been tactically brilliant in achieving a sweeping military victory against an entrenched enemy rather quickly and with relatively few IDF casualties. BUT 1/ It seems like it was predicated on Hamas being a relatively normal military enemy that would concede once it had been militarily decimated, along the lines of Arafat in Beirut in 1983. /2

In the followup tweet, I have a link to the letter from the government finding Harvard out of compliance with its Title VI obligations to protect Jewish students from discrimination. There's a lot to take in from the letter, but my big takeaway is: 1/ Harvard could have been in compliance if it (a) enforced preexisting, content-neutral behavioral regulations; and (b) had a mechanism by which Jewish students on the receiving end of discriminatory treatment could file complaints and have them taken seriously. 2/ hhs.gov/sites/default/…

Evidence that even many elite Westernized middle easterner hostility to Israel is based on humiliation that the Jews, once ruled and at the mercy of Islamic rulers, now have a strong independent state that defeats such rulers. At least that’s the best sense I can make from this delusional post. Note that Israel has, in fact, had cordial relations with Muslim majority states that sought cordial relations with it—Azerbejan, Albania, Turkey and Iran before the islamists took over, and more recently Kosovo and Chad (and Chad before 1972)

@GeneSohoForum @PeterBeinart given the way Jews have been welcomed historically and in the last century especially in the Christian and Muslim worlds, of course there is no good reason to have a state with a Jewish majority. 1/ @GeneSohoForum @PeterBeinart And given the incredible tolerance, Arab Muslim majority countries have shown notches for their Jewish minority, but for all minorities, there’s no reason whatsoever that Jews would reasonably fear being a minority in an Arab Muslim state 2/

@NYTimes ha a piece on fired Muhlenberg professor Maura Finkelstein. I don't have personal knowledge of exactly why she was fired, but I do know that as long as a decade ago, a Jewish student I know who was attending Muhlenberg was warned by more senior students that as a Jewish student she should stay away from Finkelstein 1/ because Finkelstein was so hostile to Jewish students, especially if she had any inkling that they supported Israel. Admittedly third hand, but the kind of thing you will find in the Times' piece. 2/

Harvard Divinity School just appointed a Jewish Studies professor. You won’t be surprised to learn he’s hostile to Israel’s existence, making him wildly out of the Jewish mainstream… but I don’t think he supports Hamas, do he’s probably “right-wing” for HDS. Still, if I were running the most antisemitic unit at a university under federal pressute for antisemitism….

James Carville goes on a wild antisemitic rant, apparently because he believes that (a) the Democrats are entitled to collect limitless funds from Jewish donors; and (b) legitimate concerns about how the Democrats have handled post-10/7 antisemitism are not legitimate 1/2

https://twitter.com/dansenor/status/1930626149559799966

He asks, "what does the Democratic Party have to do with Columbia?" How about, for starters: (a) there are practically no Republicans on the faculty or in the student body at Columbia; (b) Both Biden and Harris said nice things about Hamasnik demonstrators; 2/

Putting aside the issues of anti-Semitism and so forth, we should be gradually shifting scientific funding away from universities. To get ahead as a professor at a University, you need to bring in research grants from the government. 1/ The safest way to get a grant is to promise incremental research based on existing paradigms. A good way not to get a grant is to come up with something daring and original. 2/

When people suggest that Harvard would be moving faster on antisemitism, but it just has a sluggish bureaucracy, it's a lie. Consider the contrast with Harvard's reaction to a past incident involving former president Larry Summers. 1/ Summers noted that some believe that innate differences between men and women might help explain the underrepresentation of women in science and engineering. This led to widespread outrage, even though Summers himself didn't endorse that position. 2/

Courts and administrative agencies have consistently held that same-sex marriage is so closely associated with gay people that discriminating against people seeking services for same-sex marriages is discrimination based on sexual orientation, even if
1/

https://twitter.com/MarkGoldfeder/status/1930141766067319198

the person seeking the service isn't gay (eg, father of one of the brides goes to a florist...). Of course, not every gay person is interested in marriage. Based on those precedents, Zionism is similarly so closely related to Jewish identity that discrimination against "Zionists" 2/

From my forthcoming article on campus antisemitism and free speech: Are students who attend "Palestine solidarity" rallies supported by groups that support Hamas morally blameworthy, even though they personally don't support Hamas? Yes, as I explain.. 1/ Many of these students do not support Hamas, but that does not relieve them of moral responsibility for participating in demonstrations sponsored by organizations that support Hamas and expressed support for the October 7 massacre. To take a relevant analogy, in 2017 white supremacists sponsored a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, VA. 2/

A response I just wrote brought to mind the fact that while the average useful idiot sees the war in Gaza as "Israel vs. the Palestinians," not only is the Hamas Islamist dictatorship not "the Palestinians," but Israel has been at war since Oct. 7 with the entire Shi'ite axis. 1/ Israel has faced attacks from Shi'ite militaries in Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and from Hamas terrorists in the West Bank. The Shi'ites have also had the implicit support of Turkey and especially Qatar, which uses Al-Jazeera as a propaganda outlet for Hamas. 2/

I don't recall a single progressive suggesting that the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter wasn't antisemitic because he was angry about HIAS and more general Jewish support for immigration. Yet somehow 1/ many of the same people are arguing that shooting up a Jewish event isn't antisemitic because the shooter was angry about Israel. And don't get me started on how the same people would never, ever, suggest that shooting up a Muslim event was anything but Islamaphobic 3/

Contrary to some of the commentary I'm seeing, selective enforcement of civil laws, as the US government is doing re Harvard, isn't inherently unconstitutional. In fact, even selective enforcement of criminal laws isn't inherently unconstitutional. 1/ See WAYTE v. UNITED STATES, 470 U.S. 598 (1985), in which SCOTUS found that prosecuting people who wrote to the government and declared their intention not to register for the draft was not a violation of the First Amendment. 2/

The event at the Jewish Museum where two young people were murdered had to theme of getting aid in difficult circumstances to civilians, including how certain private aid groups have learned to get aid to Gazans without Hamas stealing it. 1/ I haven’t seen this reported elsewhere, but I heard this directly from an attendee who heard the presentation. A murderer flew to DC from Chicago specifically to target this event. 2/

Among the most vile people on X are Americans who have since 10/7 reacted to any concerns about antisemitism, not short of murder, with "that's not nearly as bad as what Palestinians are going through." 1/ As if antisemitic violence against fellow Americans is somehow ok because someone somewhere else is suffering (putting aside who's to blame for that suffering)? But what makes it worse is that this is coming from self-styled progressives. 2/

I just learned that my relative who was at the Capitol Jewish Museum last night was friends with one of the victims, Sarah Milgrim, and almost left with her and Yaron. So she easily could have been murdered.
1/ Don't give me any crap about how it's Israel's fault that Jews can't exist safely in Washington, DC. China is one of the worst human rights abusers in the world.

Chinese Americans, or even Chinese nationals here on student and other visas, aren't getting murdered on the street. 2/

Here's something knew I heard from two different sources today, though I don't have a link to give you. The IDF's legal advisors are *blocking* the IDF from allowing Gazans to leave Gazan, on the theory that such migration would be "involuntary" so long as the war continues. 1/ So a Gazan can't leave unless (a) he has foreign citizenship; (b) there is a humanitarian emergency; or (c) a foreign government or NGO requests is with reasons acceptable to the lawyers. This is nuts. It's not just that it's contrary to Israel's own interests (though it is). 2/

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/