Let’s state something openly and clearly: “Anti-Zionism” deserves to be in quotation marks. Israel exists. It is not a theory. Being “anti-Zionism” is anti-Israel, so be clear.
Under this framework of anti-Israel feelings and behavior, “anti-Zionists” claim they are just against the government of Israel or policies of the government of Israel. That’s fine. Many people dislike their own government and some policies. However, it is a curious thing to be consumed by hatred of government policies far away from your own shores, flagging something deeper like a potential hatred of Jews, but let’s just put a pin in that observation for now.
The ongoing deliberate mislabelling of Jews as something other than Jews – say “colonists” or “settlers” – is part of a vilification campaign and clearly antisemitic.
It is true on college campuses, in the media, at the United Nations and of course, from the Palestinian Authority itself.
When Jews – whether from Israel, east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL), or around the world – visit the Jewish Temple Mount during regular visiting hours, it should not be news. Yet it is for the supposedly moderate Palestinian Authority.
Wafa, the official media of the PA, repeatedly stated that a handful of Jews were “colonists” because they dared to step over the 1949 Armistice Lines. Walking around the Temple Mount was called “storming Al- Aqsa compound.” Their presence disturbed “Palestinian worshippers,” a.k.a. Muslims.
The blatant antisemitism was marketed under a political struggle. Jews were transformed into a combative illegal horde under a political monicker. The PA is not antisemitic, just anti-colonists. It is a mere coincidence that all Jews are considered colonists (Israeli Arabs are called Palestinian citizens of Israel to shed them of potentially being called “settlers.”)
Concealing the word “Jew” does not hide the antisemitism. They are not illegal people and they are not doing anything nefarious. The veneer of United Nations-sanctioned political obfuscation does not wash the religious animus nor absolve the antisemitic hatred.
The “al aqsa flood” being waged by the popular jihadi extremists of Hamas is being vanquished by the Israeli army. It is time to terminate the political and libelous “al aqsa storm” fought by Fatah and the PA, by all people of good conscience.
In an ongoing insult to Jews around the world, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said at the 32nd Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) Central Council meeting on April 23, 2025 that the two Jewish “Temples were in Yemen.”
PA President Abbas claiming the Jewish Temples were in Yemen, April 23, 2025
Abbas falsified history in an attempt to deny Jews any rights or privileges at their holiest location. The fact that it was an insult to over 2 billion Christians who believe that Jesus was in Jerusalem and not Sanaa was a slight he was willing to make to claim the site as purely Islamic.
The United Nations adopted the same position. In a 1949 map of the holy places in Jerusalem, the Temple Mount was marked as only holy to Muslims, while the Western Wall was marked as holy to both Muslims and Jews.
1949 UN map of Jerusalem’s holy places
The United States should therefore adopt a resolution called “Status of the Temple Mount,” similar to the twisted United Nations resolutions called “Status of Jerusalem,” to correct the wrong. Its passage in Congress will serve as a template for other countries to adopt before being submitted to the United Nations General Assembly.
Key phrases should be included in the resolution, to combat the disgraceful UN remarks about Jewish rights:
The United States abhors the “aggressive and dangerous” comments made by the president of the Palestinian Authority which “could inflame tensions and lead to a religious war that has no boundaries.”
Comments made by the PA president “serve the forces of extremism around the world.”
Incendiary remarks that deny Jews their heritage and history “do absolutely nothing to improve the lives of Palestinian Arabs,” and simply “push back the Middle East peace process.”
“The Temple Mount built by King Herod two thousand years ago has been and will always be the holiest location of Judaism.”
On December 9, 2021, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) expressed his disgust with a December 3 UN General Assembly resolution about Jerusalem saying “The recent vote by the United Nations disavowing Jewish historical ties and exclusivity to the Temple Mount—the holiest and most sacred Temple in Judaism—is an outrageous act of religious persecution. This is a transparent effort, supported by 129 nations but opposed by the United States, to rewrite history, cleanse the holy area of its religious ties to the Jewish faith and deny that Israel has roots to the Middle East…. The Jewish Temple, located in the heart of Jerusalem’s Old City, is holy ground to Jews and it belongs solely to their faith. I object to any effort to ethnically cleanse the Jewish people from their sole historic claim to this land and temple.”
It is time for U.S. Congress to endorse a resolution to correct the shameful religious persecution and ethnic cleansing of Jews, by passing the “Status of the Temple Mount” resolution.
ACTION ITEM
Write Paul Gosar (if you are in his district), your representatives in Congress and the White House (comments@whitehouse.gov) to clearly stand by historic truth and correct the ongoing slander and religious persecution of Jews. “In light of the ongoing antisemitic insults by the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations, please pass a resolution which clearly states that the Jewish Temples stood on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem and that the site has been the holiest site for Jews for 3,000 years. https://primarybowman.com/2025/04/29/resolution-recognizing-the-jewish-temples-stood-on-the-temple-mount-in-jerusalem/“
Liberal media has rallied to liberal universities.
Newspapers like The New York Times call the Trump administration’s investigations into campus antisemitism as a targeted attack on institutions of higher learning, with over-sensitive Jews acting as useful pawns. The Times reporting actively omits and whitewashes the calls for violence against Jews to frame the discussion as impinging on minority rights for its remaining readers.
Consider the story of Kehlani, an anti-Israel singer who called “Long live the Intifada” in one of her music videos. She was invited and then disinvited to sing at Cornell when Jewish students found out about her coming to a campus-wide event. Under the banner “Campus Crackdown,” the Times headline was that her “support for Palestinians” and “her stance on the war in Gaza” led to her cancellation, leading to students being disappointed.
The article did not shy away from her call for intifada, and provided context that while some Jews might infer it as a call for violence, pro-Palestinian voices “regard it as a cry for liberation and freedom from oppression.”
At no point in the article did the Times discuss the 1,000 Jews slaughtered in the Second “Intifada,” including babies blown apart in pizza stores by Jew-haters like “journalist” Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi who lives freely in Jordan.
At no point did the Times describe the environment at Cornell, where a professor celebrated the slaughter and rape of people in Israel on October 7, 2023, saying he has “exhilarated” because “Hamas has punctured the [Israel’s] illusion of invincibility” during a student-led protest a week later off-campus. Russell Rickford was invited back to campus to teach this 2024/5 academic year according to Insider Higher Ed, because his comments were made “in his free time.”
The Times did not write about student Patrick Dai who threatened to kill Jews (in his free time), who was sentenced to 21-months in jail in August 2024.
Instead, the article highlighted “a queer person of color” who was “disappointed” at the cancellation of Kehlani’s performance. It listed a “Gambian-British citizen” who left the country, fearing “possible deportation.”
Why omit the targeting of Jews in the story about antisemitism?
Because the media wants to define antisemitism by its own distorted lexicon, and to shield the systemic Jew-hatred on campus from the Trump administration. If Jews are intimidated, harassed or unable to enjoy campus life, that’s too bad because any modifications might strip fun and opportunities from victims of preference.
According to the ADL, antisemitic attacks in the US reached record levels in 2024. Campus antisemitism jumped 84% from 2023 to 2024, accounting for 18% of all incidents, also an all-time high.
The Times would not write about that either.
Americans are fed distorted media which sanitizes institutions rife with Jew-hatred. The Times raises alarms about “campus crackdowns” because Trump is shattering universities’ “illusion of invincibility,” of tramping Jewish rights with billions of taxpayer dollars.
There really may be only one solution: a revolution to intifada the universities.
Protest outside of AIPAC conference in Washington, DC in June 2023, months before the October 7, 2023 massacre
This year’s Passover excursion kept us in the United States. American programs tend to be much larger and more expensive since the law of large numbers doesn’t seem to apply to matzah. This one was the same: 1,300 people spending $25 million, while complaining about the yeshiva tuition and shidduch crises.
Despite the price tag for a single room which could have purchased a small car (pre-tariffs), my family couldn’t pass up the opportunity to spend ten days with 33 extended family members, including 14 children under 10 years old. The challenge of migraines versus memories was too enticing to pass over.
Our small tribe descended on the destination “resort” nestled 47 minutes from civilization in desert foothills with panoramic views of ugly sand and rocks. The 99 degree heat baked every living thing except for snakes which blended into the brown landscape. We ran inside to escape the sun and scenery.
The hotel “lobby” had a couch and two chairs, insufficient for my immediate family let alone 1,300 other guests. It appeared that we were going to be left with few choices for hanging out together: either in the dining room, tea room, shul or our own rooms.
We grabbed keys and programs and headed to our rooms to unpack 75 outfits.
All of the rooms were essentially “suites” with a small living room which looked great for late night reading. However, the bathroom was so small that the door bumped into the toilet seat, so one needed to shimmy around the door and place a foot in the bathtub to enter. As I extended my hand to grab the shower door for balance, I actually grabbed a fistful of curtain. I let out a small shriek and heard someone next door do the same. A chorus of “a shower curtain?!” could be heard echoing through the halls.
Our horde unpacked and changed for the first of forty meals. On American programs, people seemed extra intent on getting their money’s worth by gorging non-stop. It was especially true at this location, as rooms normally go for $109 per night.
The first dinner was set up as a barbeque outside. The pieces of steak were larger than our plates to make us forget that the program lacked vegetables. It was delicious and set the stage for a carnivorous vacation theoretically focused on small tasteless pieces of flatbread.
We awoke early the next day and rapidly learned who was going to attend prayer services and who was tasked with looking over small tykes while their wives slept. We created a mini-WhatsApp group apart from the broader family chat to notify each other about minyan times and where to grab a nosh. There was a short back-and-forth about whether to label our chat “The Minyan 7” or “Tallis Toters” and settled on The “XYs” as none of the women attended other than for yizkor.
The conference room turned shul could seat 500 people, so the 70 men and 3 young women who came home from seminary in Israel had plenty of room, if not heat or decent lighting. The first ba’al tefillah launched prayers with “she asani aved” thanking God for making him a slave, dropping the important “not” in the blessing, making people wonder whether he had sold a kidney to pay for the program or was trying to set the mood for the Passover story of liberation.
The hashkama minyan flew by quickly, allowing people to enjoy another four hours of breakfast. It was our chance to see our family’s designated table for the holiday which occupied one-third of the dining room, a behemoth square of 28 feet a side. We had the staff reconfigure the table for the other meals so we could hear each other, but the reality of eating in a room with 1,000 other people including screaming children made a conversation beyond five feet impossible anyway.
The buffet in the center of the large hall was arranged as follows: wine table, omelet or carving station depending on the meal, various hot dishes, omelet/carving, hot dishes, omelet/carving, hot dishes, omelet/carving, hot dishes, and at the very back of the room, a small salad table with hearts of palm and shredded carrots. Perhaps the caterer didn’t want to check vegetables or wanted all-brown meals like the desert outside.
On rare occasion, there was plated food when we arrived, once consisting of gefilte fish with horseradish together with seared tuna and wasabi. If it was intended to placate both the Ashkenazi and Sephardi crowds it didn’t work as my Syrian niece threw up at the sight.
For some reason, despite the enormous quantity of cooked animal flesh at lunch and dinner, the dessert table only had 20 cookies. Everyone assumed we were being encouraged to head to the tea room for sweets so the staff could set up for the next meal.
We obliged and ran over to see what was in store.
Regrettably, it seemed that some guests had paid off staff to seize all the Bisli for their entourage. The rest of the attendees made due with “tropical” ices that tasted like antifreeze and various chocolate snacks that varied more in shape than flavor.
When snack time was over we were at a loss for what to do. We went to one of the pools to watch the water evaporate before our eyes. We then hunted for shade and were informed that the indoor cabanas were already reserved by guests for $12,000 for the week, a pretty penny to watch White Jews combust but many seemed content to do so.
My wife went looking for one of the shadchanim “matchmakers” to discuss our boys and various single friends. The boys refused to engage in the “meat market” and opted to sit at the poolside barbeque and talk to girls there.
People were kvetching that the program last year in the Caribbean was much nicer in terms of hotel and food quality. As one person voiced her disagreement, she was cut off by a loud thump of an older couple tripping on the broken cobblestone pathway, crashing to the ground. It would be the first of seven hospital calls during the holiday. By the last day of chag, thirteen orange cones dotted the heavily-trafficked walkway.
For shabbat, we were handed a few velcro strips to disable the electronic door locks. Later in the week, I saw some men using them to extend their belts to accommodate their bulging waists.
During shabbat and yomtov prayers, the program auctioned off aliyahs for different charities. It got more people to attend the earlier hashkama minyan in hope for a better deal. Az Yashir went for $5,000 at hashkama, but the winner didn’t realize he had to hand the aliyah over to the program’s rabbi. It crushed the fundraise for the next much larger minyan and people wouldn’t go above $100. I suggested bridging the tzedakah gap by bidding out the right to be the sole person to yell “ka’eleh” during the second torah reading, as the masses cannot keep themselves from drowning out the ba’al koreh.
The night activities alternated during shabbat and yomtov on talks about Israel at war, antisemitism and rabbis put into herem for heresy. Very uplifting and spiritual. During chol hamoed, the nights alternated between unfunny young comedians ripping off older comics’ material, to a couple of Sephardic singers singing the same popular four songs that they didn’t write. The band behind them pretended to play various instruments while their prepared music mix blared for the stablehands six miles away. It was the Israeli version of Milli Vanilli.
And the kids loved it. They cheered their Instagram star despite his lack of stage presence and joined the 45 year old bearded male singer when he asked for girls under 14 years old to join him on stage.
For some reason, I think I was the only one to find the spectacle creepy.
As the three-day shabbat-yomtov continued, people bemoaned their Wordle streaks ending. The various right-wing speakers suggested to all that it was a perfect time to terminate their New York Times subscriptions.
People slowly became aware that the entire hotel was not reserved for the Passover guests. Loaves of bread were in the hallways and a Christian wedding party which booked the second weekend created a stir. A ruckus broke out when the hotel insisted that all Jews leave the pool area for the wedding. Fewer men complained the following day when tall blonde women came out in their bikinis.
The Latin staff seemed nonplussed by everything and kept smiling. The Jewish staff looked perpetually perturbed by the incessant demands of one thousand over-entitled kvetches from friends and neighbors.
Overall, the holiday was a win. Getting so many family members together for a week is an accomplishment in itself, and there were no major blowouts. We had a chance to meet some nice new people and collectively discover why Jews left the desert over 3,300 years ago.
Mike Huckabee, the new U.S. Ambassador to Israel, landed in the holy land to assume his new role and immediately went to the Western Wall of the Jewish Temple Mount. It is the holiest site where Jews can pray today, so he used the opportunity to address Jews in a call for peace.
Huckabee carried a small paper note from U.S. President Donald Trump praying for peace, which Huckabee inserted into a small crack in the ancient wall. He told those gathered that he and the president prayed that all the hostages violently taken by Gazans would be released to their families soon.
Mike Huckabee speaking at Western Wall about the “Judeo-Christian understanding that every life has worth and value.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said that Huckabee’s appointment as ambassador to Israel will “undermine the rights and safety of Muslim and Christian Palestinians, including American citizens living in or traveling to the region.” Somehow, a man devoted to peace for everyone – including Jews – and freedom for everyone – including hostages – is a threat to radical Muslim groups like CAIR and the Islamic Waqf.
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, wearing a hostage support yellow ribbon pin, places a note into the Western Wall of the Jewish Temple Mount, during Passover 2025
On the same day, Israel increased the number of Jewish visitors onto the Temple Mount to 180 at a time to accommodate demand. These were the largest sized groups according to the Islamic Waqf coming to “al Aqsa Mosque.” Aouni Bazbaz, head of international affairs for the waqf told Middle East Eye that the scene was “frightening” and portended Jews seeking to divide the holy compound into Jewish and Muslim sections like the Cave of the Jewish Matriarchs and Patriarchs in Hebron.
To put the 180-person Jewish group in context, during Ramadan last month, Israel banned Jews visiting the site while 90,000 Muslims visited for prayers without putting anyone into a “group” for security. No one in Israel called the massive number of Muslim visitors “frightening.”
To add insult to the waqf’s smear, Bazbaz said Israel’s allowing both Jews and Muslims to pray in Hebron was “apartheid” and likely to happen in Jerusalem.
Islamic extremists want a purely Muslim holy land in the Jewish homeland, without basic human rights like prayer for non-Muslims. Dignity for other faiths is labeled “apartheid” in slurs likely to be adopted by the United Nations and “human rights” groups.
Radical Islamists and their supporters have attempted to enlist the world in banning Jews.
They have attempted to ban Jews from living in certain locations.
They have attempted to ban Jews from praying at their holiest locations.
They have attempted to ban Jews from having “normal” interactions with other groups under the banner of “BDS.”
They do this by placing Jews under concocted banners such as “illegal settlers” and “colonists.”
And they do this, whether Jews live in Jerusalem or not, in the “West Bank” or not, or in Israel or not.
If Jews want to visit their second holiest site of the Cave of the Jewish Matriarchs and Patriarchs in Hebron, the anti-Jewish media bannerizes Jews regardless of the location of their homes.
The radical socialist-jihadi horde bannerize the Jewish holy site under their colonized name “Ibrahimi Mosque” because all of the other Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs buried at the site prove it is a site especially holy for Jews. They recharacterize Jews walking around as “storming” and “forcing” their way into places they do not belong.
Anti-Jewish organizations and governments label any Jew who wants to visit their holiest sites as “extremists,” while Muslims visiting the same sites which are less holy than for Jews receive no such callout.
Bannerizing Jews happens in the Jewish diaspora as groups block Jews from attending classes under the banner that Jews are “Zionists” and consequently “enemies” who must be confronted everywhere. People may just call Jews “they” under the banner “from Gaza to Detroit” or a complicit component of “the ownership class” and “empire.”
The blatant discrimination against Jews is happening with alarming frequency as people rename Jews and Jewish sites to mask the antisemitism. Bannerizing Jews is rank Jew hatred and must be confronted.
In the world of archaeology, there is nothing as prized as finding something in situ, meaning in its original place. The location helps provide archeologists with clues as to the surroundings’ age and usage, who lived in that location and the nature of society. Once an item moves, critical details of the environment are lost forever.
From that moment, the provenance is often a curiosity. Who owned the item and for how long? How did it come to find its way into this collection or that museum and what happened to the artifact over this time? These matters are often used to prove the subject’s authenticity, by tracing it back without interruption to the point of discovery.
When it comes to works of art (rather than archeological finds), provenance is less of a curiosity. Experts and viewers mostly focus on the art itself as well as the artist. The visual and message are the primary matters, not the journey of the art onto a museum’s wall.
Yet there are stories too remarkable to ignore. Sometimes the provenance is as much of the subject as the art itself, even reorienting the very perception of the artwork to modern viewers.
A Dutch Masterwork, As Seen By A Jew, A Nazi And Complicit Government
Consider the painting A River Landscape with a Waterfall (1660) by Jacob van Ruisdael (1628-1682).
A River Landscape with a Waterfall (1660) by Jacob van Ruisdael (1628-1682).
Van Ruisdael was considered among the greatest landscape painters of the Dutch Golden Age. While his peers Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) and Rembrandt (1606-1669) mostly painted people, Van Ruisdael painted scenes of nature.
In A River Landscape with a Waterfall, we see the artist’s work with contrasts. The right side of the painting is illuminated by the setting sun, with a solid house on a hill set under clouds. To the left is dark scene in the shadow of the sun. Broken branches lay on the rocks and a hint of a house protrudes from the standing leafy trees. A barely perceptible person makes his way towards that house before sunset. A stream separates the two sides of the painting with a small waterfall.
This is one of many waterfall paintings by Van Ruisdael during the middle of his life. Of them all, this one is the most serene, with the title’s inclusion of “river” and “waterfall” seemingly an exaggeration of a modest calm landscape.
The story of the painting’s journey to the Phoenix Art Museum where it is exhibited today was anything but calm.
In the mid-1930s, the painting came into the collection of Jacques Goudstikker (1897-1940), a Jewish Dutch art dealer who was among the foremost collectors of Old Master works. When the Germans invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, Nazi military leader Hermann Göring confiscated Goudstikker’s collection. Over the course of the war, Göring is estimated to have amassed over 4,000 works of art. Most of the art was taken from France, including from the Rothschild family. Goudstikker’s collection made up a sizable part of the non-French collection, as he was partial to landscapes and the Old Masters.
Jacques Goudstikker (1897-1940), a Jewish Dutch art dealer
As the war started, Goudstikker fled Holland with his wife and one year old son. They first went to England and then caught a boat to the United States. On the ship to America, Jacques accidentally walked into an open hatch and plummeted to the ground below, dying instantly. His wife and son made it to America without him.
At the end of the war, the Dutch government confiscated the looted Nazi art. Most of the paintings did not find their way back to the rightful owners as there were few notes about the provenance of each work. However, because Goudstikker was a leading arts dealer, he had ledgers with each work, including this Van Ruisdael painting. Despite the clear markings on the back of the painting with Goustikker’s seal, and Goustikker’s wife and family showing records of being the proper owners, the Dutch government would not release the painting to the family until 2002, 57 years later. The family sold the painting in 2007 to a doctor in Phoenix, Arizona who donated it to the Phoenix Art Museum in 2022, where it hangs today.
During World War II, private art collections like Goustikker’s were often seized by the Nazis, while those from public museums were better able to protect the most prized works.
To mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands, the Mauritshuis public art museum in The Hague is having an exhibition until June 29, 2025 called “Facing the Storm – A Museum in Wartime.” It relays the efforts taken by the museum to hide its most valuable art from the Nazis. As described by the museum, “The exhibition will devote attention to the travels of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring during the war. The Mauritshuis had a bombproof ‘art bunker ’ in which it would store all its masterpieces overnight, bringing out a few – including the Girl – during the day…. During the course of the war, the most important works of art were taken to the various ‘National Storage Facilities’, where they remained until the war ended. During this time, the gallery walls at the Mauritshuis were a sorry sight, lined as they were with empty frames.” During some of the public showings during the war, Hitler featured his personal paintings and his book Mein Kampf alongside the museum’s Dutch masters.
Moving paintings from Dutch museum to hide from Nazi theft and bombings
There was a split dynamic between public and private museums as well as viewing art during the day and night during the war in Holland. Private collections were seized and public collections were hidden at night. When collections made it to the light of day, they were used as propaganda for Dutch residents and the enjoyment of Nazi officers who were able to walk the streets freely. Empty frames were like the disappeared Jews of Holland, perhaps hidden away like Anne Frank and her family, or shipped to Nazi concentration camps for liquidation.
Empty frames at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, July 1944
The background story and provenance of the Van Ruisdael painting is very much part of viewing the painting today. The pastoral scene of light and darkness owned by a Dutch Jewish family on the eve of World War II was seized – and enjoyed – by Nazi criminals. After the defeat of the Nazis, the Dutch government held onto the artwork and would not return it to the Jewish family which had to flea across the ocean to survive the Holocaust, even as the man who owned the painting did not survive.
To view the painting with such knowledge, the stream becomes an ocean which the Goudstikker family crossed to save themselves. They left their open, illuminated and public house on a hill for an unknown future. Indeed, Jacques’ untimely death during the journey is like the broken branches in the foreground of the painting.
The home and art the Goudstikkers left behind became a showcase for Nazi propaganda, like the house on the right side of the painting enjoying the full setting sun and completely exposed to the world. The dark left side of the painting are the works of art and the Jews of Holland who were hidden and transported to death camps, or perhaps they were lucky to leave the war early like the Goudstikkers, attempting to find a new uncertain home across the ocean. And even when they made it safely to the other side, did they get to enjoy their freedom, or were they fighting for their basic rights and property, such as against the Dutch government who would not surrender their art?
A painting made in the 17th century can be understood anew hundreds of years later because of its provenance. Journeys can shape the subject.
That is most certainly true of Jews, especially on Passover.
Passover Seder As Seen By A Guest
It is a tradition for hundreds, if not thousands of years to invite someone to a Passover seder. Inviting a guest unfamiliar with the story of the Jewish Exodus from Egypt over 3,000 years ago – especially for meals that do not have any children present – provides an opportunity to tell the story of the Jewish journey from slavery to freedom, and from Egypt to the Jewish Promised Land.
The seder uses a Haggadah, a standard text used by Jews around the world, which not only discusses the Exodus, but prior generations telling the story of the Exodus on Passover. The seder is both a story FROM 3,000 years ago at the point of origination, as well as the journey of that story over the intervening years until today.
The guest at the seder is not only learning about ancient Jewish history but seeing and hearing the provenance of that history.
A person can read the bible at any time of year to get a clinical understanding of the Exodus from Egypt. However, to sit at a seder is to see the redemption of Jews in a new light, incorporating the journeys they have taken over the centuries.
The story of the Exodus and the journey of Jews for millenia are too remarkable to ignore. Viewing both simultaneously is the magic of Passover, a gift for everyone attending a seder.
Well before the brutal October 7 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel, antisemitism in the United States had reached horrific levels. Jews were shot in synagogues and supermarkets. Held hostage and hacked with machetes. Vilified by famous athletes and entertainers. Accused of being too powerful in the news and told by the leading powers in the country to hide their Jewishness.
“Experts” said that the antidote was to teach people about the Holocaust. If only potential Jew-haters saw what results from “big” antisemitism they would avoid smaller antisemitic acts.
The author Dara Horn scoffed at the idea in April 2023 and now in April 2025. She argues that a narrow focus on the Holocaust limits people to thinking that Jews were wiped out as a people in the past. Israel is framed as a consolation prize awarded by Europe to appease their guilt in the genocide. Lost is the rich history of Jews.
In fact, Jewish history is not passively lost but actively obliterated and vilified. To attend universities in America about “Palestinian Studies” is not a review of any positive history of Arabs in the small slice of the Middle East that Jews view as holy, rather a demonization of Jews.
Visit the University of California, Davis website regarding reading materials on “the Situation in Palestine and Israel,” last updated on October 18, 2023, right after thousands of Gazans massacred people in Israel. The materials are completely anti-Israel, whether books, blogs or articles. Israel is condemned as a “colonial project” over again, tied to “imperialism” and “militarism.” The boycott, divest and sanctions (BDS movement) is advanced everywhere. People are urged to “revolt” against Zionism and Zionists.
Nowhere is there an iota about the thousands of years of Jewish history in the land, nor about the centrality of Jerusalem in Judaism. Rather, it includes links to articles by groups like Palestinian Youth Movement which the Israeli government has tied to U.S.-designated terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Palestineism is not a study about Arab culture or history but a rank course in antisemitism, denying thousands of years of Jewish history and the centrality of the land – and Jerusalem in particular – in Judaism.
Jewish History In Israel and Judaism
There is over 3,000 years of history of Jews in the land of Israel. Well before the modern idea of countries was formulated, Jews lived throughout their holy land. They had kings and kingdoms. They had holy temples which Jews would visit at least three times every year, ensuring they remained close to Jerusalem.
Jews have been a majority of Jerusalem since the 1860s, before the advent of modern Zionism. For hundred of years, Jews have ended their passover seder with a call “Next year in Jerusalem!” The Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah, was written in 1878, well before the First Zionist Congress, in a song about Jews being in Jerusalem and Zion. Israel is the only country in the world whose national anthem is all about its capital city.
There are certain religious Jewish practices that can only be observed in the land of Israel. Jews are the only religious group with a diaspora, defined as those Jews living outside of the land of Israel, because it is the only religion tied to a specific land.
A field in Israel with a sign that it observes “shmita,” meaning the land is resting, a Jewish tradition only observed in Israel in keeping with laws in the bible (photo: First One Through)
Whether one likes the current government of Israel and its policies is irrelevant. The LAND of Israel is the Jewish homeland. That fundamental fact is not only omitted but deliberately erased in socialist-jihadi schools like UC Davis.
It is time to rethink education and focus more on the land of Israel and its centrality to Jews and Judaism, than Holocaust studies. We need to prevent anti-Jewish lessons and teach Jewish education. To prevent another genocide of Jews, start with thousands of years of Jewish history and culture in the holy land, instead of classes about the European Holocaust.
The latest “Pro-Palestinian protest” at Columbia University, as liberal media likes to call it, included a series of chants to murder Jews and destroy the Jewish State.
Jewish students – almost all unmasked and sporting kaffiyehs to show solidarity with Gazan Arabs – chained themselves to Columbia’s gates and chanted to free Mahmoud Khalil and demanded the names of university trustees who handed over the names of students to the New York Police Department and federal immigration services.
It was a curious spectacle: Jewish students showed their faces as they demanded clarity regarding university due process and protections for fellow students, while students wearing masks for whom they were advocating, yelled antisemitic slogans as defined by the university.
If ever there was a group that took free speech arguments to the extreme, it is Jews that chain themselves to a fence to advocate for rights of students who despise them.
The Columbia chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) were suspended by the university on Nov. 10, 2023, after the groups “repeatedly violated University policies related to holding campus events.” That has not kept them from storming the gates of the university, partnering with not-soon-enough-designated-terrorist group WithinOurLifetime.
Columbia’s chapter of JVP was more explicit about violence “by any means necessary,” like the October 7 massacre.
Somewhere in the middle of the pro-Palestinian Jewish community at Columbia is J Street U, which is an officially recognized student group on the university’s undergraduate website. The group is worried about antisemitic incidents and chants of “Pro-Palestinian protesters” but also wants to protect their speech and keep them from getting kicked off campus without due process.
SJP appreciates that sentiment but demands more of Jews, specifically calling for the end of Israel. The Tufts chapter of SJP said “While SJP recognizes that many Jewish people begin their anti-zionist political journey through J Street U and appreciates that J Street U’s Tufts chapter agrees that antisemitism and anti-Zionism are not synonymous, it is crucial for students to refuse half-measures that condemn occupation while normalizing colonization.”
The Columbia and Barnard Hillel houses J Street U. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has called Hillel and other Jewish groups “enemies of the Muslim community” for supporting Israel. It is seemingly lockstep with SJP and JVP that only Jews that call for destroying Israel “by any means necessary” can be considered allies.
There is a spectrum of left-wing Jews at Columbia and Barnard, ranging from virulently anti-Zionist, to modestly pro-Israel. Many are pro-Israel too, although they tend to be more centrist and right-leaning. The vast majority are targets of the pro-Palestinian gang. All of them are being ranked on an Israel litmus test for judgement, like no other diaspora community in the world.
Amid the rampant antisemitism at universities and claims of suppression of free speech, another troubling dynamic is emerging: the “al Aqsa-fication” of federal research grants to universities.
For background, the al Aqsa Mosque sits in the Old City of Jerusalem atop the Jewish Temple Mount. It is considered by Muslims to be its third most holy site. Muslims – and the United Nations – insist that the site is purely Islamic and prayer is only permissible to Muslims, despite the fact that it is the holiest site for Jews. The site’s religious matters are managed by a Jordanian Islamic waqf which insists that the “status quo” of barring non-Muslims from praying be maintained. They warn of violence and death should the status quo be altered.
Thousands of Jews praying at the Western Wall Plaza on Passover, beneath the Temple Mount which has a ban on Jewish prayer
And so it has begun for university federal grants, amid Hamas’s genocidal war which it named the “al Aqsa Flood.”
Americans are being schooled by liberals and scientists about the absolutely critical nature of the research work that universities perform. People are learning from the elite that people will die if their essential work stops due to a lack of funding. The academics bemoan any oversight that is not purely from within the academy, despite being funded by taxpayers.
Both al Aqsa (for Muslims) and federal research grants (for universities) see the root of the threat coming from Jews.
When Jews visit their holiest site on the Temple Mount, Islamic radicals claim they are desecrating it with “filthy feet.” University officials similarly think the government should be banned from any involvement in their work under the banner of “academic freedom.”
“Al-Aqsa is ours and so is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They [Jews] have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet. We won’t allow them to do so and we will do whatever we can to defend Jerusalem.” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, September 2015
When Islamic radicals promote violence at the Temple Mount to block any non-Islamic presence, their leaders shout “we welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem.” We are now witnessing professors rallying around universities, ripping up diplomas, locking arms with anti-Israel protestors and demanding that the universities not give an inch to the government’s demands to protect Jewish students.
University research is the academy’s al Aqsa Mosque. The liberal administrations are the waqf which demand absolute control. They are warning everyone that should the status quo change because Jewish human rights and dignity are trampled with impunity, people will die.
Universities are bemoaning the “Judaization” of their research, as they feel under assault by unholy people in their sacred domain. When Israel introduced metal detectors onto the Temple Mount after Islamic radicals started to stockpile weapons on the site, the faithful rioted and managed to get Israel to remove the protective measures. The universities are now engaged in similar protests seeking the same goal: purity without oversight and guardrails.
Liberals see the Trump administration seizing grants like Jews moving into homes in Jerusalem’s Old City. A governmental audit of the purpose of research is vilified like archeological excavations near the Temple Mount. All are condemned as acts of sabotage which threaten the very stability of society.
The discussion of the government’s oversight and control of billions of dollars of research grants is inflaming passions. Like the Islamic faithful who rally when they see Jewish presence near al Aqsa, the global academy is outraged at the challenge to the “status quo” of unfiltered money. The Mourabitoun (men) and Mourabitat (women) on university campuses have taken up positions both physical and ideological.
University of Illinois professors protesting cuts to federal funding, February 2024Al Aqsa faithful in Karachi, Pakistan, April 2022. (AP Photo/Fareed Khan)
As the world watches Jews being routed from universities without basic protections, we are witnessing the emergence of a new blood libel, that Jews will be the root cause of millions of deaths as medical research is cut.
There is the holy and profane. The world is normalizing and entrenching antisemitism by placing the Islamic waqf and elite universities on the side of the angels, while simultaneously accusing Jews of being aligned with the underworld for the audacity of demanding basic human rights.
First One Through 