Category Archives: Opinion

The UN Has a Day Against Islamophobia. Why Not Against Jihadism?

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After 51 Muslims were murdered in Christchurch, the UN established an international day against Islamophobia. Jihadists have murdered thousands more, including Muslims, yet there is no equivalent day dedicated to combating jihadism.

On March 15, 2019, a white supremacist murdered 51 Muslims praying at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Three years later, the United Nations General Assembly designated March 15 the International Day to Combat Islamophobia. Pakistan introduced the resolution on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the General Assembly adopted it by consensus.

Consider the terrorist atrocities of recent decades:

  • On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda murdered 2,977 people in the United States.
  • Jemaah Islamiyah murdered 202 in Bali in 2002.
  • Islamist terrorists killed 193 commuters aboard Madrid trains in 2004.
  • Lashkar-e-Taiba murdered 166 people in Mumbai in 2008, including six Jews at the Chabad House.
  • In 2014, ISIS massacred approximately 1,700 Iraqi military cadets at Camp Speicher.
  • That same year, the Pakistani Taliban murdered 149 people, including 132 schoolchildren, at a school in Peshawar.
  • In 2015, al-Shabaab murdered 148 people at Kenya’s Garissa University, separating Christian students from Muslims before killing them.
  • Months later, ISIS murdered 130 people across Paris.
  • In 2019, Islamist suicide bombers murdered approximately 269 people at churches and hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday.
  • On October 7, 2023, Hamas-led terrorists murdered approximately 1,200 people in Israel, including families in their homes and young people attending a music festival.

These were different countries and different jihadist movements. The victims included Muslims, Christians, Jews and of other backgrounds. Every attack killed more people than Christchurch, sometimes by orders of magnitude.

The United Nations has established annual observances for victims of terrorism generally, on August 21, and victims of religious violence, on August 22. None of these massacres has its own comparable UN international day tied to its anniversary.

Yet Christchurch received something these other massacres did not: a permanent place on the UN calendar dedicated to combating the hatred behind the attack.

The contrast is especially striking because jihadists have slaughtered so many fellow Muslims. The victims at Camp Speicher and Peshawar were overwhelmingly Muslim. ISIS, al-Qaeda, the Taliban and their ideological counterparts have terrorized Muslim populations for decades, murdering those who resisted their demands for religious submission.

The UN created an International Day to Combat Islamophobia. It is long past time for an International Day to Combat Jihadism. Its victims include the very Muslims the UN claims to protect.

Ramifications: Teaching Antisemitism and Whitewashing Antisemitism

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This is going to be part of a new series of articles under the header “Ramifications.” We often see and hear the news but we don’t often consider the underlying consequences of the information, as well as the lack of it.

The News:

Guangtian Ha earned his doctorate at Columbia University and spent eight years teaching religion at Haverford College, the elite Pennsylvania liberal arts institution. His courses included Introduction to Islam, Blackness in Islam, Gender and Sexuality in Islamic Texts and Practices, and studies of Islamic culture in China.

On October 6, 2026, federal authorities arrested Ha on charges of cyberstalking a Jewish colleague. Prosecutors allege he operated at least four anonymous social media accounts, sending approximately 50 threatening messages between October 2025 and May 2026. The messages invoked Hitler, the Holocaust, the extermination of Jews and the victim’s children.

The indictment describes a campaign of terror directed at a Jewish family. Ha allegedly published photographs of the colleague’s mailbox, identified his home and referenced his children by name. The colleague’s wife and three children fled their home twice. The children were prevented from playing in their front yard or waiting outside for the school bus.

The messages attributed to Ha included:

  • “Jew, get the fuck out of my country.”
  • “Lower Merion will be cleansed of the jew filth.”
  • “If jews are so special then they should also be placed in special camps.”
  • “Eliminate the jewish cockroaches.”
  • “Give it another 10 years, and you shall see a true Holocaust.”
  • “The jews are angry because the world has woken up and realized Hitler was right all along.”
  • “the end of American Jews is close.”
  • To Sen. Ted Cruz “You are a slave to the rapist, bloodsucking jews,”
  • In a post directed at Jewish Columbia professor Shai Davidai, Ha allegedly asked what flavor of gas he would prefer.
  • Another post directed at Jewish congressman Randy Fine invoked making candles from his body fat.

Clearly horrible. Clearly anti-Jewish and not anti-Israel.

But what you didn’t see or hear is worse.

Ramification: Teaching Antisemitism

Over eight years, potentially hundreds of students passed through his classrooms, learning about religion, race, culture and society from a professor whom Haverford granted tenure in February 2024. Jewish students were aghast as Ha had long promoted a hateful and divisive environment on campus and filed a lawsuit against the university in May 2024.

In June 2025, the House Education and Workforce Committee specifically asked Haverford president Wendy Raymond whether the college had investigated Ha’s statements equating Zionists with Nazis and advocating their exclusion. Eventually, the college settled the students’ lawsuit in August 2026.

Consider that this vile antisemite wasn’t an irrelevant lunatic ranting on the streets of Times Square.

  • He is a Columbia-trained professor.
  • He was hired at a leading liberal arts school.
  • He taught religion.
  • He was granted tenure.

His students relied on him to explain unfamiliar histories, cultures and beliefs. And he used his credentials, his tenure and his position to teach his rabid antisemitism to over a thousand students over his teaching career. Ha taught that Jews are “filth” as fact, not noxious opinion.

And like all students know, to get a good grade, they needed to parrot the poisonous professor.

CONCERN: Extremist ideas circulate through American academic institutions under the authority of scholarship, tenure and “political expression.” Your tax dollars go to support this student indoctrination in Jew-hatred to poison society.

Ramification: Whitewashing Antisemitism

The New York Times covered the story – and minimized the vicious Jew-hatred.

In the three Ha quotes the Times decided to showcase, none said the word “Jew.” None described his deep hatred – instead they pointed to making the targeted person feel unwelcome with language of “Get out of my country,” “you scums have had it too easy” and “Run. Flee. Leave.” Note that according to court filings, the end of the second post was “Goyim are taking America back, blood-guzzling demons,” which the Times omitted.

To further confuse the Times readers, the article said the targeted “person is a Jewish faculty member, according to three people who know the person.” A reader had to INFER that the get-out-of-town comments were about the person being Jewish – or maybe Ha just had a general beef with this other faculty member.

Were the “jew filth”, “jewish cockroaches” and “rapist, bloodsucking jews” comments too clear that this professor is a vile antisemite?

The New York Times has twisted itself for years to say that hating the Jewish State doesn’t mean hating Jews. Is it also trying to whitewash plain Jew-hatred into a squabble between two faculty members in which one of them could be Jewish according to people who know him?

CONCERN: If even clear and blatant broadcast Jew-hatred cannot be called out clearly and explicitly in leading mainstream media (perhaps because the Jew-hating professor is a minority teaching Islam), there is no chance that more subtle forms of antisemitism will be reported.

RAMIFICATIONS

Americans are being educated in their colleges and in left-wing media that hating Jews is appropriate, and if Jews complain – especially if the actions come from so-called minority groups – they are overly sensitive and should make room for victims of preference. That is a movement of systematic exclusion and expulsion of Jews from the American promise, a much bigger story than a “professor being accused of harassing a colleague.”

ACTION ITEMS

Haverford College. Please read the statement by President Wendy Raymond. She is upset that a professor was harassed. By what about the Jewish students on campus? What about the thousand students who were taught by this evil person? Demand a full audit and review of all class materials that the professor used over his time at the university, and interview the students who took his classes to learn more about how antisemitism might have infused his lectures. president@haverford.edu (610) 896-1021

The New York Times. Demand the paper be more explicit that Jew-hatred is Jew-hatred. corrections@nytimes.com letters@nytimes.com

Who Gets to Name Evil?

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From Cain and Abel to the Third Anniversary of October 7

The first murder in the Bible takes place in the fourth chapter of Genesis. Cain kills his brother Abel, and God asks him a simple question: “Where is Abel your brother?”

God already knows the answer. The question gives Cain an opportunity to acknowledge his crime. Instead, Cain replies, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”

With those words, the first murderer in human history also becomes the first to attempt to redirect the narrative away from his victim. God asks about Abel. Cain makes the conversation about himself, challenging the very notion that he bears responsibility for his brother.

God refuses to follow him.

“What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground.”

Abel is dead. He cannot describe his suffering, challenge Cain’s account, or defend his memory. Cain remains alive, free to explain himself and change the subject. But God insists that the victim’s blood speaks louder than the murderer’s words.

Cain and Abel by Marc Chagall (1960)

There is an extraordinary detail in the Hebrew. God refers to demei achikha, literally “your brother’s bloods,” in the plural. Rashi, drawing on rabbinic tradition, explains that the words encompass Abel’s blood and the blood of all his descendants who would never be born.

The first murder extinguished generations of possibilities. Children, grandchildren, families, and entire futures disappeared with Abel.

Combine these two ideas – the living control the narrative and the dead include generations – and one can see that the murderer will attempt to frame history for all time.

These opening chapters of Genesis offer a striking perspective on the third anniversary of the October 7 massacre.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, murdered 1,195 people, and abducted 251 hostages. Families were slaughtered in their homes, young people were murdered at a music festival, and entire communities were devastated.

Three years later, the struggle over how to commemorate the massacre has become a struggle over whose story is being told.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani acknowledged the Hamas killings in his anniversary statement before shifting substantial attention to Israel’s subsequent military campaign and Palestinian suffering. Several leading democratic politicians did the same.

And just two days after the October 7 massacre anniversary, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the United Nations’ Navi Pillay, the woman who helped spread the genocide libel about Israel’s defensive war against jihadi terrorists. Seen together, the world is establishing the narrative that will prevail into the future, where the Bibas babies’ descendants who will never be born, will not be able to counter the charge.

The Bibas brothers with their mother, slaughtered by Gazan terrorists

Cain asks, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” as a diversionary tactic to invert the subject.

God never answers that question directly. Instead, He demands, “What have you done?”

Three years after October 7, the United Nations and too many politicians have learned to answer questions about the murdered by changing the subject.

Jihad Jane

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In the 20th century, the term “G.I. Joe” was meant to describe the average American serviceman. He was the embodiment of a regular patriot fighting for America and American values.

Alas, today’s generation has Jihad Joe.

Pro-Palestinian man heading to protest Israel in front of City Hall in Manhattan on October 7, 2026 (photo: First One Through)

Jihad Joe celebrates the murder of Americans and American allies. He/ she uses anniversaries of the massacres of civilians – like 9/11/01 and 10/7/23 – to mock the death of thousands of innocent civilians. The Jihad Joes cheer ISIS, Hamas and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Anti-Israel protestors at City Hall in NYC on October 7, 2026 with posters mocking Mayor Zohran Mamdani as a Zionist and “Keep up the good work Iran! Down with U.S. Imperialism!” (photo: First One Through)

The crowd that gathered on October 7, 2026 at City Hall in New York City was mixed, with religious Muslims and anti-Israel Neturei Karta posing for the media. But there were also many White people in their 20s to 40s sporting Hamas headbands, chanting for the destruction of Israel, and that Jews are pedophiles.

Woman with press credentials sporting a keffiyeh walking to anti-Israel protest at City Hall on October 26, 2026, ahead of group from Neturei Karta holding a Palestinian flag (photo: First One Through)
Woman getting ready to join the anti-Israel protest, pulling out her keffiyeh at City Hall on October 7, 2026 (photo: First One Through)

A group of students from nearby Pace University came by with placards to “Free Palestine” and “Zionism is not Judaism.” They joined crowds yelling things much more violent:

  • “Intifada revolution!”
  • “Zionism will fall!”
  • “Liberation is near!”
  • “We don’t want two states. We want ’48!”
  • “Mobilize the Intifada!”
Students from Pace University join an anti-Israel protest at City Hall on the anniversary of the slaughter of roughly 1,200 people in Israel and seizure of 251 hostages, on October 7, 2026 (photo: First One Through)

Today’s Jihad Joe doesn’t put his life at risk for America, American allies or American values. He mocks all of those things. Jihad Joe wishes them vanquished, celebrates their setbacks and chants for the jihadi vision for the U.S. and Israel, all from the quiet and comfortable streets that affords the freedom of speech and assembly not found in Islamic republics.

Jihad Joe sees G.I. Joe as an old and racist dead White man.

Two young men covering faces and sporting headbands with Hadiths for Mohammed
Young men waving flag of armed Arab before Dome of the Rock

Imagine Canadians holding a march on September 11, 2026 cheering the work of the jihadists who killed nearly 3,000 people in the U.S., calling for the destruction of America. Yes, it is protected speech; but so what? It is repulsive and sick.

More, it reveals the depravity of a significant swath of Americans.

Crowd of people scream support for the antisemitic genocidal jihadists of Hamas, on third anniversary of the October 7 massacre (photo: First One Through)

Eighty years ago, America produced the Greatest Generation. G.I. Joe was its everyman: the ordinary American who put on his country’s uniform, crossed an ocean and fought against fascism and tyranny. Today we see a very different American archetype walking the streets of New York. He puts on the keffiyeh, embraces the symbols and slogans of foreign jihadist revolutionary movements, and mocks America, its allies and the rape and slaughter of its citizens.

In less than a century, we have descended from G.I. Joe to Jihad Jane.

UK Parties Countermeasure on Israel

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The Green Party charted a new course in British politics, calling for an end of the Jewish State of Israel and demanding a boycott of the country until it allows millions of Arabs into the territory and become a binational state. The alt-left group was immediately rebuked by members of the other British political parties.

Labour’s Bridget Phillipson, the equalities minister said the Green vote “crosses a line” and was “fundamentally wrong.” She explicitly connected her objection to the two-state solution saying “It is shameful to vote against a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.”

David Pinto-Duschinsky, centre, and Bridget Phillipson, right, meet with Jewish school in London with the school’s headteacher

Conservatives shadow home secretary Chris Philp said of the Green vote “I think that’s completely wrong.” He called the resolution a “stereotypical and potentially antisemitic characterisation” and said the Greens needed to do more to combat antisemitism in their ranks. The Conservative Party subsequently issued an even more directly relevant statement through Philp: “British Jews should not have to disclaim a belief in Jewish self-determination and the existence of Israel.”

Liberal Democrats MP Luke Taylor MP said “This is a divisive motion that pours fuel on the fire of tensions in the UK,” and said it would leave many British Jews feeling less safe. Lib Dem foreign-affairs spokesman Calum Miller called the Green vote “deeply wrong” and a “deeply harmful failure of judgement.” Former leader Tim Farron said the Greens had been “captured.”

Green councillor Hau-Yu Tam (centre) pictured alongside Green Party deputy leader Zack Polanski (left). Photo Credit: London Green Party

“Zionism is pure evil and must be abolished.”
“Zionism was undoubtedly and unquestionably the Nazism of our time.” – Green Party’s Hau-Yu Tam

Perhaps it is therefore time to move beyond making statements about the Green Party vote and push forward clear countering platforms: one that unequivocally expresses support for British Jews and their heritage and history in the Jewish Promised Land. And a second that declares that every country – including Israel – has an unambiguous right to decide who to permit into its country and to admit as citizens. As such, there is absolutely no so-called “right of return” of descendants of Arabs who once lived in the territory of Israel.

The Greens put their position to a vote. Now Labour, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats should do the same. At their next party conferences, each should introduce resolutions affirming these two simple principles.

Condemning the Greens is easy. Put the alternative on the ballot and let British political parties tell the country – and British Jews – where they actually stand.

The Palestinian Authority Calls Your Jews Terrorists

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The Palestinian Authority has a problem with Jews praying at Judaism’s holiest site.

Its Western supporters have a different problem. They keep telling us the Palestinian Authority is moderate, peaceful and reformed.

This week provides a useful test of both claims.

Sukkot is one of Judaism’s three ancient pilgrimage holidays. Jews have traveled to Jerusalem for Sukkot for thousands of years. They still do, including from around the world.

The United States is by far the largest source of foreign tourists to Israel. In August, Americans accounted for roughly 35 percent of foreign tourists, followed by France at 13 percent and Britain at 8 percent. Together, those three countries supplied about 56 percent of Israel’s foreign tourists.

Sukkot brings Jews to Jerusalem to do what Jewish pilgrims have done for generations: celebrate the holiday, carry the Four Species and pray.

This week, 1,731 Jews visited the Temple Mount in a single day. They carried lulavim and etrogim. They gathered together. They prayed. They sang.

The Palestinian Authority’s official news agency called Jews doing this “terrorist colonists.”

WAFA’s own account described the supposed terrorism: they “performed Talmudic rituals and prayers, sang in groups, and engaged in clapping.”

Praying. Singing. Clapping.

Now consider what the political leaders back home have been saying about the Palestinian Authority.

French President Emmanuel Macron has pointed to Mahmoud Abbas’s commitment to fighting hate speech and placed a renewed Palestinian Authority at the center of his vision for a Palestinian state.

Britain says a Palestinian state should be led by a “reformed Palestinian Authority.”

The European Union has praised the PA’s reform agenda and backed it with substantial financial support.

American politicians have joined in.

Senator Chris Van Hollen has said the Palestinian Authority “seeks to accomplish its goals through non-violent means.”

Nineteen Democratic senators—including some of the Senate’s most progressive members—called for a Palestinian state governed by a “revitalized and reformed Palestinian Authority.” Their proposed framework specifically demanded that the PA combat “incitement to violence” and that its senior officials commit to nonviolence.

Perhaps they should read its official news service.

Senator Chris Van Hollen

Western governments have constructed the Palestinian Authority as the moderate alternative to Hamas: secular rather than Islamist, peaceful rather than violent, reforming rather than inciting.

Meanwhile, its official news agency looks at Jews celebrating Sukkot at Judaism’s holiest site and calls them “terrorist colonists.”

Jews travel to Jerusalem for Sukkot from America, France, Britain and elsewhere. They pray together. They sing. They carry their lulavim and etrogim. Then they return home.

They are your Jews. Your citizens.

Yet their own governments are actively aligning themselves with an authority whose official media labels Jews terrorists for peacefully practicing their religion at Judaism’s holiest site.

Macron should be asked whether this is the hate speech Abbas promised to fight. Britain and the European Union should explain how it fits their description of a reformed PA. And the American senators who specifically demanded that a revitalized PA combat incitement should decide whether calling Jewish worshippers terrorists qualifies.

These leaders now have a choice.

They can condemn the Palestinian Authority for calling Jews peacefully practicing their religion “terrorist colonists.” Or they can continue embracing it as moderate and reformed.

Governments cannot proclaim their opposition to antisemitism at home while ignoring it in the Palestinian Authority they champion abroad.

If Western leaders still call the Palestinian Authority moderate after it calls Jews “terrorists” for praying, they are no longer describing moderation. They are excusing jihadi antisemitism.

When Jewish Prayer Became “Terrorism”

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For the Palestinian Authority, Jews who visit Jerusalem during Sukkot, one of Judaism’s three pilgrimage holidays, are “terrorist colonists.”

What did these Jewish “terrorists” do? According to WAFA, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, they prayed, sang and clapped together. They gathered among themselves for peaceful Jewish worship at Judaism’s holiest site during a Jewish pilgrimage holiday.

This is terrorism?

This is the language of jihad. It begins by transforming ordinary religious practice into aggression. A Jew praying becomes a provocateur. A group singing together becomes a threat. A religious pilgrimage becomes an invasion. Once worshippers have been labeled “terrorists,” hostility toward them has already been given a vocabulary of supposed self-defense.

That is radical Islam applied to one of the most contested religious sites in the world: not simply insisting upon Muslim rights, but denying equivalent Jewish religious rights and portraying their exercise as an attack.

Every global leader taking the podium at the United Nations should condemn this screed. So should political leaders around the world asking voters to believe they oppose antisemitism and religious extremism.

The question is simple: Do you condemn the Palestinian Authority calling Jews engaged in prayer at their holiest site “terrorist colonists”?

Ignoring this rhetoric while rallying to the defense of the Palestinian Authority encourages the targeting of Jews around the world. The people WAFA describes are not firing weapons or fighting soldiers. They are Jews praying, singing and observing Sukkot.

Islamic supremacy does not only call for expelling every Jew. It also means insisting that Jews remain religiously subordinate – that Muslim prayer is a right while Jewish prayer is a provocation.

Calling Jewish worship terrorism is where the demand for Islamic domination becomes even darker. It turns Jews practicing Judaism into the enemy and fuels a global jihad.

The Mayor Is Not the Audience

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On Friday morning, students from SAR, Ramaz, Kehilath Jeshurun and other Jewish institutions will gather outside Gracie Mansion for Shacharit. They will pray, sing and speak about their love for New York, their love for Israel and their right to feel safe in the city where they were born.

Rabbi Binyamin Krauss, principal of SAR Academy, explains that the gathering is both prayer and statement. Its location is intentional: many Jewish New Yorkers believe that the mayor’s rhetoric about Israel and not condemning the phrase shouted at city universities “globalize the intifada” has made them easy targets. Prayer outside his residence ensures that the message cannot easily be ignored.

Yet Friday falls within the Ten Days of Repentance, when Jews should be especially clear about whom they are addressing. Gracie Mansion may be the location, but the mayor is not the audience. God is.

Prayer expresses the Jewish belief that political power is never the highest power. During these ten days, Jews repeatedly say Avinu Malkeinu – Our Father, Our King. They gather before God.

The Torah reading the following morning makes that message unmistakable. Haazinu is Moses’ final song, delivered as the Jewish people prepare to enter the Land of Israel. It calls heaven and earth as witnesses and describes the entire movement of Jewish history: God finds Israel in the wilderness, protects it, brings it to a fertile land and warns that prosperity can produce complacency.

Then comes one of the song’s most famous lines:

“Jeshurun grew fat and kicked.” – Deuteronomy 32:15

Jeshurun is an affectionate name for Israel. The warning is directed at successful Jews who have become so secure that they mistake comfort for permanence. They enjoy the land’s bounty, forget its source and abandon the Rock of their salvation.

The presence of Kehilath Jeshurun and Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz makes the verse impossible to miss. The very congregation joining the prayer bears the name invoked by Moses. This week, the children of Jeshurun will walk from their schools and shuls in one of the most prosperous Jewish neighborhoods in the world and pray in the public square.

Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz of Kehilat Jeshrun lighting Chanukah candles next to Gracie Mansion in December 2025 before a crowd and reporters, alluding to the new mayor’s anti-Jewish opinions and statements (photo: First One Through)

These Jews are heirs to what may have been one of the greatest Diaspora golden ages in Jewish history. New York Jews built synagogues, schools, hospitals, charities, businesses and cultural institutions. They rose to the highest levels of civic life and came to regard their acceptance as a permanent feature of the city. Their children could be openly Jewish, openly Zionist and fully American without perceiving any contradiction.

Recent attacks and an increasingly hostile public climate have shaken that confidence. Rabbi Krauss writes that students returned to school carrying both fear and a need to answer it. That answer should not be a plea for acceptance from a mayor. It should be a declaration that Jewish identity does not depend upon a mayor’s approval.

Haazinu does not teach that Jewish survival rests upon the favor of rulers. It teaches that the Jewish relationship with God, Torah and the Land of Israel survives the rise and fall of political powers. Moses delivers the song while standing outside the land he will never enter, yet he speaks of the connection between Israel and its land as something deeper than temporary possession or political recognition. Governments may contest it, enemies may attack it and Jews themselves may neglect it, but the covenant remains.

That should be the meaning of Friday’s public prayer. The students should not perform Judaism for the mayor. They should show New York what Judaism looks like: children praying openly, affirming their faith, facing Jerusalem and refusing to sever their attachment to Israel in exchange for political comfort.

When Equal Protection Becomes “D.E.I. for Jews”

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James Loeffler is a professor of modern Jewish history at Johns Hopkins University and the author of a book about antisemitism and free speech. That makes one sentence in his New York Times essay especially bewildering.

The Trump administration, he writes, has demanded “what amounts to D.E.I. for Jews.”

What he means is antisemitism training and measures intended to ensure that Jewish students can attend classes, use campus facilities and participate in university life without harassment or intimidation.

That is not D.E.I. It is equal protection.

D.E.I. programs may use identity-conscious policies to pursue representation or other preferred outcomes. On the other hand, civil-rights law imposes a simpler rule: institutions receiving federal funds may not discriminate against students because of their race, ethnicity or shared ancestry.

Preferred outcomes and equal protection are not just not the same thing. They are opposites.

If Black students are targeted, the law protects them. If Muslim or Arab students are targeted, the law protects them. If Jewish students are targeted, the law protects them. Applying the same rule to Jews does not create a Jewish preference.

Loeffler nevertheless describes Jews as having been selected for special protection. That is absurd. Title VI has long covered antisemitic discrimination, just as it covers comparable discrimination against other groups. Whether a particular penalty is proportionate is a separate question from whether protecting Jewish students constitutes D.E.I.

Loeffler avoids that basic distinction by reducing the conduct surrounding Gaza protests to “excesses.” But the issue was not criticism of Israel or a few offensive placards. Jewish students faced ongoing intimidation, exclusion, celebrations of Hamas murderers and rapists, and chants invoking violence while universities failed to enforce their own rules.

The relevant question is whether universities tolerated treatment of Jewish students that they would have confronted had another minority been targeted. Instead, Loeffler makes the government’s response the scandal. His essay moves away from the students suffering harassment toward theories about Trump, demographic change, white panic and “Jewish donors.” The people seeking protection disappear into an argument about the motives of those enforcing the law.

That this comes from a professor of modern Jewish history is difficult to understand. Loeffler is not an uninformed commentator stumbling over the difference between a preference and a right. His credentials rest on Jewish history, antisemitism and civil liberties. He is a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute which promoted the article on its website.

How does a scholar with that background look at the present condition of American Jews and identify their protection as the suspicious development? How does he see Jewish students threatened and excluded, yet reserve his strongest language for the government finally acting? How does an authority on antisemitism mistake equal treatment for Jewish favoritism?

The New York Times paraded an “As A Jew” with Trump Derangement Syndrome to encourage students coming back to school to come after their Jewish classmates once more and vote against Republicans in the mid-term elections.

Disliking the administration enforcing the law does not transform the law into D.E.I. Equal protection does not become preferential treatment when the people receiving it are Jews.

Upon further investigation, it appears that Professor Loeffler received his doctorate from Columbia University. The scandal may also be revealed as a broken and anti-Jewish educational system which cannot place Jews within the framework of victims of preference.

ACTION ITEM

You can reach Professor Loeffler at jloeffl6@jhu.edu

You can also share your thoughts with the Shalom Hartman Institute for having Loeffler be an ongoing research fellow and promoting his article at 212-268-0300.

Related:

New York Times Whitewashes Grotesque Antisemitism At Columbia In Wave Of Articles This Weekend (March 2025)

The Permission Slip Macklemore Got in 2014

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In May 2014, Macklemore walked onto a Seattle stage wearing a large prosthetic nose, dark wig, beard and black suit. Then he performed “Thrift Shop,” a song about being cheap.

Macklemore in Jewface in 2014, singing about being cheap

It would be difficult to construct a more recognizable antisemitic spectacle: the exaggerated Jewish nose, the beard, the dark clothes, all while singing about bargain hunting. Actor Seth Rogen mocked Macklemore’s explanation that it was merely a random disguise: if someone were instructed to assemble an antisemitic Jewish costume, Rogen wrote, “they’d have that exact shopping list.”

As criticism mounted, Macklemore apologized. He acknowledged that the outfit could be understood as a Jewish caricature but maintained that no Jewish stereotype had crossed his mind.

Yeah, right. That should have been a simple moment for the Anti-Defamation League to clearly denounce the spectacle.

Instead, the ADL chose absolution.

“We take him at his word that he did not have any ill intent,” then-ADL director Abraham Foxman said, “and unreservedly accept his apology.” And then Macklemore gave the ADL a promotional shout-out. “Through this situation I’ve got hip to some incredible groups like the ADL,” he wrote, encouraging people to check out their “great work.”

The country’s best-known antisemitism organization publicly and “unreservedly” accepted his apology and also his advertisement. It is unclear whether there was a quid-pro-quo and whether the ADL was trying to promote its antisemitism study it released the week before.

As they say in text-land: “WTF?”

Twelve Years Later

It is now 2026, and antisemitism is raging through American public life. Much of it no longer arrives wearing a fake nose and beard. It travels under political banners, frequently through rhetoric about Zionists and Israel.

And Macklemore is back on a concert stage.

Opening for Ed Sheeran at MetLife Stadium, he told tens of thousands of people why he had joined the tour: so that he could stand in stadiums and say, “Free Palestine.” He accused Israel of genocide, performed “Hind’s Hall” against a backdrop of footage from pro-Palestinian campus encampments and turned part of the concert into a political demonstration.

This time, the ADL wasn’t offering absolution.

“They came for a concert, not performative, biased and hateful anti-Israel ‘activism’ from his opener, Macklemore,” the organization declared. It pointed to what it describes as his record of demonizing Israel and Israelis, falsely accusing Israel of genocide and engaging in antisemitic rhetoric and behavior.

When Macklemore was subsequently removed from the remainder of Sheeran’s tour, head of ADL Jonathan Greenblatt applauded the decision, saying that “for years, Macklemore has pushed antisemitic tropes and demonized Israel and Israelis.”

What a difference twelve years makes.

The Permission Slip

The problem in 2014 wasn’t only that the ADL accepted an apology. It was that it seemingly confused forgiving the man with minimizing the act.

America’s leading antisemitism organization effectively told the public that Macklemore’s updated and revised intentions settled the matter. A concocted and forced apology after multiple attempts to satisfy the offended, became another chip on the accused – I’m sorry you were offended, not I’m sorry that I have done something terrible that offended you.

Jews are the subject. Always. The antisemite is a victim of Jewish sensitivity.

The ADL granted a permission slip of sorts to this vulgarity and inanity. Permission for American culture to treat an astonishingly recognizable Jewish caricature as something that could be quickly explained away if the right person said he hadn’t meant it.

Now, the ADL that once took Macklemore at his word is no longer particularly interested in his assurances about what he means. It considers impact. The false charge of “genocide” against Israel in Israel’s defensive war is a common pretext to attack Jews today. Macklemore’s appeal to thousands wasn’t a call for peace but incitement to pogrom.

But that was precisely the lesson the ADL could have taught in 2014.

There is an important role for forgiveness in fighting hatred. People must be allowed to recognize mistakes, apologize and change. That is what the Ten Days of Repentance we are in right now is about.

But forgiveness without the party internalizing the matter coupled with contrition is meaningless. It is actually much worse. It is a wink with a get-out-of-jail card. Carry on with spreading antisemitism; we’ll only call it out when the situation becomes intolerable.

Neither October 7, 2023 nor October 8 appeared magically. First One Through has been writing about this phenomenon nearly every day since those same days in May 2014, when it wrote about the UN’s Richard Falk stating that Israel’s “criminal intention [toward Palestinians] is genocidal.”

Does that word have a familiar ring to it? The UN has been using it constantly for well over a decade; before the wars of 2014, 2021 or 2023.

Antisemitism is now systemic. It has been fed into the bloodstream of western education, the arts, jihadi education and the United Nations. And for far too long, it was given a permission slip by the very organizations tasked with confronting it.