Monday, November 13, 2023

From "The Atlantic"

The following link is to an excellent piece from the website of The Atlantic, by staff writer Tom Nichols, titled "The Juvenile Viciousness of Campus Anti-Semitism." Its subtitle is: "Some of America's students are embracing an ancient evil."

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/11/campus-anti-semitism-hamas-war/675991/

Mr. Nichols writes, for example, that at George Washington University,

activists projected pro-Hamas slogans on the sides of buildings, including “Free Palestine from the river to the sea,” a call for the eradication of Israel. Spare me the sophistry—most recently plumped by Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan—that “From the river to the sea” is merely an anodyne call for freedom and equal rights, or that it somehow can be detached from Hamas’s genocidal meaning...

Mr. Nichols writes:

Good for Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, for denouncing this slogan (despite immediate campus backlash for doing so); better late than never. Some protesters insist—and many with undeniable honesty—that they are objecting only to Israeli policy. But even the sincerest among them often resort to the backbreaking mental gymnastics required to dismiss the obvious anti-Semitism that is woven into so many of these protests.