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/

Thread: My right-wing friends in Israel who were involved in judicial reform efforts, who really cared about reform instead of politics and culture wars, think they totally lost. Instead of significantly restricting the power of the Supreme Court and overhauling the judicial selection process, they think "their side" has given up and will settle for the symbolic victory they got today, which won't actually accomplish what they are after. My friends on the left, however, think that rather than giving up, the right has moved to a frog-in-the-boiling-

Here is what Lithwick considers "ethics violations." Wrongly decided cases (from her perspective), Senate refusing to confirm Garland (well within its authority) and conservative intellectual ferment reflect in (horrors!) amicus briefs. This is so, so lame.

https://twitter.com/Dahlialithwick/status/1654434510765785088

She's liberal. The Court's conservative. She'd prefer a liberal Court. Conservatives and liberals have fought like cats and dogs over this since Bork and especially since Bush II. Conservatives won, mostly by happenstance. (If HRC wins in 16, as everyone expected...)

Now that the hubub has died down, I should pont out that I can say with some confidence that Scalia Law School becoming a top-30 US News law school has essentially nothing to do with it having 3 SCOTUS Justices teaching classes. The only way that could significantly affect US News would be if it improved our reputation scores. But those scores are stagnant, as they are for all schools, all the time, unless they get bought out by a more famous university. They are just incredibly sticky. Check out instead, e.g., our median 166 LSAT.

As the father of a high school senior, I can attest that of essays, extra-curriculars, and letters of recommendation, and grades, SAT scores are the least amenable to gaming. The first 2 especially favor kids who can know how to, and can afford to, play the game.

https://twitter.com/robkhenderson/status/1633246670996623361

There are kids out there who hire admissions "coaches" in middle school to plan out their e-cs for high school to look attractive to elite colleges, and there is a whole industry of people who will "help" with your college essay for the right price.

The goal of "eradicating" any ideology, even when there is broad consensus that the ideology is bad, always sounds authoritarian to my ears. It's worse when the ideology in question is associated with a discrete group of people who are subject to scapegoating and potentially violence. So with that in mind, perhaps it's a good time to consider not using "eradicate" about ideologies you don't like any more. I've seen "eradicate" used commonly before Zionism, Christianity, Trumpism, and more...