Tag Archives: Jews

October 7: The First Pogrom from the Global South In the Modern Era

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For centuries, antisemitic violence has been a grotesque feature of Jewish history—pogroms in Tsarist Russia, inquisitions in Catholic Europe, and, ultimately, the Holocaust engineered by Nazi Germany. These atrocities were largely confined to the Global North, where much of world Jewry lived and where the modern tools of mass murder were industrialized.

Global North in blue, Global South in red

But on October 7, 2023, the locus of mass antisemitic violence shifted decisively. The massacre orchestrated by Hamas, the ruling authority of Gaza, against Israeli civilians was not merely another terror attack—it was the first state-sponsored pogrom to originate from the Global South on the Global North in centuries. It marked a turning point in the nature of antisemitic violence: no longer the work of loosely organized mobs in the South or repressive imperial regimes of the North, but the deliberate, systematic assault by a democratically-elected government in the Muslim world, targeting Jews as Jews, and Jews and “colonizers.”

A Historic Shift

Historically, Jews living under Muslim rule experienced discrimination and periodic violence, but the scale of the bloodshed never approached that of Christian Europe. Pogroms in places like Fez (1912), Constantine (1934) and Baghdad (1941), were undeniably horrific, but they typically resulted in the deaths of dozens, not thousands. In most cases, these events were local eruptions of violence, not centrally planned exterminations.

That changed dramatically in the 1950s. The rise of Arab nationalism, fused with pan-Islamic identity and antisemitic European ideologies, led to the near-total ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Muslim world. From Iraq to Egypt, from Yemen to Libya, ancient Jewish communities were uprooted. Between the late 1940s and 1970s, over 850,000 Jews were forced to flee Muslim-majority countries. They resettled primarily in Israel, France, and North America. But while the Jews left, the hatred remained. For Jews, and for Western “imperialism.”

Hamas and the Theology of Erasure

Hamas is not just a terrorist organization; it is the elected governing body of Gaza, a polity not recognized by much of the Global North but very much embraced within the Global South. Its 1988 charter is steeped in genocidal antisemitism. It doesn’t distinguish between Israeli combatants and civilians. It doesn’t merely call for “resistance” against Israeli policy—it calls for the annihilation of Jews in the land, whom it labels foreign interlopers and infidels contaminating Muslim soil.

On October 7, 2023, this ideology became mass action. Roughly 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered—women, children, the elderly—tortured, raped, and mutilated in their homes and at a music festival, and 250 people were taken captive. The violence wasn’t spontaneous. It was premeditated, coordinated, and state-executed. It echoed the darkest moments of European Jewish history, but this time the origin was a Muslim-ruled territory in the developing world.

Hamas had launched many wars against Israel since it took over Gaza in 2007, most notably in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021. But it never did a mass coordinated invasion of Israel. It never took hundreds of hostages. It never counted on regional allies of Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Islamic Republic of Iran to join the jihad.

While Muslims are a minority in the Global North, they are the plurality on the Global South

A Government Pogrom

What separates October 7 from prior attacks is its nature: it was not a riot nor mob action. It was not a fringe group operating in defiance of authorities. It was the government. Hamas planned the massacre for years. It diverted foreign aid and resources meant for schools and hospitals to build tunnels, train fighters, and manufacture weapons. And then it unleashed them— on civilians.

The western world has been slow to reckon with this fact. The idea of a pogrom—an antisemitic mass killing—carried out by a government of the Global South against the Global North challenges dominant narratives in international politics, which often frame power dynamics as North exploiting South, not the other way around. But facts do not bend to ideology.

The Silence and the Hypocrisy

Western voices that once said “Never Again” have hesitated to name October 7 for what it was. Some have even rationalized it as “resistance,” blurring the line between anti-Zionism and rank Jew hatred. But no cause justifies the butchery of innocents. No political grievance legitimizes the burning of children or the beheading of elderly Holocaust survivors.

October 7 was a pogrom. Not the first in Jewish history, but the first of its kind, launched from the Global South by a sitting government, acting with genocidal intent against a Jewish population it deems foreign and expendable.

It will not be the last. Members of the Global South have been moving to the Global North post de-colonization. The numbers have ramped considerably over the past decade, as the poorly named “Arab Spring” and civil wars launched tens of thousands of people from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) into Europe and North America.

The First Pogrom from the Global South was greeted in western city streets with chants to “Globalize the Intifada,” because this war of annihilation is infused with radical Islamism and nationalism. The first battle is against the perceived island of the Global North inside the Muslim Global South: Israel. Europe and the United States are to follow.

Antisemitism is not bound by geography or ideology; it infects the right and left around the world. But the Muslim Crusade of colonizing the Global North is very much a function of region and philosophy. It is coming for a broad redistribution of power and wealth from North to South, and indoctrination of Islamic principles from South to North. It will achieve its aims through force of arms and diplomatic cover of an altered United Nations.

“the Jewish people suffering the worst and most murderous pogrom since the Holocaust.

–UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron

Thinking of October 7 in terms of the worst slaughter of Jews since the European Holocaust blinds people to the tectonic earthquake that is taking place. History is not simply repeating itself in killing Jews. A new chapter of crusades is upon us in which Jews are the first victims but will not be the last.

Related:

Global South’s Beachhead On American Universities (March 2025)

Globalize The Intifada With Socialists (May 2024)

Most Palestinians Are For Hamas. Most Israelis Are Not European Jews. (April 2022)

The New York Times Thinks that the Jews from Arab Countries Simply “Immigrated” (October 2016)

Jewish Trifocals Assess Toxicity And Proximity

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Orthodox Jews grabbed their phones after Shabbat ended to see what happened in Israel over the prior day. There was mixed news which had already been absorbed by the rest of the planet.

  1. Europe and the United States held firm that the Global North cannot allow Iran to get nuclear weapons.

At the United Nations Security Council – and on X – western nations affirmed that Iran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism, cannot be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons. The UK, France, Denmark, Slovenia and Greece stated that Iran’s level of uranium enrichment is inconsistent with a peaceful civilian program, and that Israel has a right to defend itself from a regime which has stoked a war to eradicate the only Jewish State.

This support for Israel was far from given, considering the strident tones taken by some of these governments about Israel’s prosecution of the war from Gaza.

2. The Global South – including China, Algeria and Pakistan – rallied to Iran and called Israel the aggressor.

Russia went so far as to claim that Israel coordinated with the UK on the attack and used bases in Cyprus to support the Jewish State, seemingly trying to widen the aperture of the war. The UK strongly denied the allegation and condemned Russia for “spreading disinformation”.

3. Palestinians stayed bizarrely mum on the conflict.

Wafa, the Palestinian Authority news agency, said virtually nothing about the latest escalation between Israel and Iran. While it normally cheered attacks by Houthis and Hezbollah over the past 600+ days, it would appear that the PA is focused on separating itself from the Iranian axis of evil which includes Hamas, to position itself as a credible government for the day after the Hamas War.

4. Iranian nuclear capabilities remain intact.

From initial reports, it appears that only surface facilities were destroyed and that much of the hardened below ground nuclear infrastructure is still functional. It means that the war effort is unlikely to end soon, and Israel may turn to the United States to either supply the weapons to destroy the underground infrastructure or to compel Iran to dismantle it.

5. Iranian missiles kill Israeli civilians.

While Israel targeted Iranian military commanders and infrastructure, Iran fired over 100 missiles and drones at Israel, hitting apartment buildings and killing several people. The country remains locked down as the battle with Iran continues.

6. U.S. politicians gunned down.

In an ongoing disgraceful trend of targeted attacks, local politicians in Minnesota were shot and killed by a man who seems to have had a targeted list of people who supported abortion. On both the right and left, people with opposing views have come to view the other side as existential threats for which they are willing to kill and be killed.

7. Affable Democratic Socialist extremist closes on winning New York City Democratic primary.

Zohran Mamdani, a smiling radical backed by the antisemitic fringe group Democratic Socialist of America, is rallying far-left progressives as early voting commenced in NYC. His appeal to make busing and childcare free and freezing rent on rent-controlled apartments is too enticing for many to even consider the destruction he will do to the city.

DSA arguing that all Israeli Jews are fair game for annihilation, backed Mamdani for mayor of NYC

New York Jews are forced to consider multiple layers of threats. The furthest away and most violent is the antisemitic Islamic Republic of Iran which still has the means to kill millions in Israel, Europe and the North America. A step closer, around the U.S., left-wing and right-wing radicals are using guns and Molotov cocktails to kill people with whom they disagree, and Jews are often the favored target. In the immediate backyard, the city with the greatest number of Jews is set to have a mayor backed by modern day non-White Nazis, just as lethal to Jews as the White Nazis of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.

Disgraced former Congressman Jamaal Bowman hugs his DSA comrade, Zohran Mamdani, as he tries to rally New Yorkers to vote for the fellow extremist

American Jews are buying guns. They are demanding that the government provide funds to harden Jewish centers and combat domestic terrorism. They are urging fellow Americans to prioritize law enforcement and peace over unsustainable giveaways.

And they are being forced to consider their own priorities: sending monies to organizations in Israel which are exhausted in fighting a multifront war, or to focus efforts here on electing centrist politicians, fighting toxic ideologies being instilled in schools, and preparing their community for a life lived in fear.

The violence is getting closer and Jewish trifocals are attempting to simultaneously assess the levels of threat and proximity. Two thousand years of collective trauma have often proven insufficient for the challenge.

Related:

David Duke, Ilhan Omar and the Three Lenses of Anti-Semitism (September 2020)

The March of Silent Feet (January 2020)

The Holocaust Will Not Be Colorized. The Holocaust Will Be Live. (May 2019)

Colorful Antisemitic Manifestos Are At Your Lips

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America is now home to a deadly literary genre: the antisemitic manifesto. Each one is a twisted cocktail of conspiracy, borrowed slogans, and rage—crafted by individuals from vastly different backgrounds but united by one target: Jews. The authors shoot in synagogues, storm kosher markets, take hostages, and justify it all in screeds that dress up genocidal hatred as “resistance.”

These murderers come from various corners, dressed as isolated incidents. But the actors aren’t truly lone wolves when they borrow from a common playbook, one that has now become widespread and familiar to everyone.

White in Pittsburgh: “All Jews Must Die”

In 2018, a white supremacist stormed the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh during Shabbat services and gunned down eleven worshipers. His manifesto was steeped in the “Great Replacement theory” accusing Jews of orchestrating a “white genocide” by bringing immigrants into the U.S. through humanitarian organizations like HIAS. His worldview was that Jews are global saboteurs, aiding an invasion. His solution was simple: exterminate them.

Memorial outside Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA

Black in Jersey City 2019: Killing the “Infiltrators”

A year later, in 2019, two Black extremists of the Black Hebrew Israelite ideology shot up a kosher grocery store in Jersey City, NJ killing three people. They believed that Jews were economic infiltrators and exploiters, encroaching on Black communities. In their eyes, a Jewish storefront was a symbol of oppression and they turned it into a morgue.

Islamist in Colleyville 2022: Jews As Power Brokers

In 2022, a British Islamist traveled to Texas and held four Jews hostage inside a synagogue. He wanted the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a convicted al-Qaeda operative being held in prison. Siddiqui believed that Jews control the government, the banks, the courts. So if you want America to listen, best to grab some Jews. This wasn’t about a local grievance. It was international antisemitism dressed up as activism.

Leftist in Washington, D.C. 2025: Killing International “Genocide” Enablers

In 2025, another Jewish cultural center was targeted. Two people believed to be Jews (one was a Christian Israeli) were murdered by a man whose manifesto was saturated with the language of international NGOs. He wrote of Israeli “genocide,” and declared himself a soldier for Palestinian justice. Except he didn’t go to Gaza. He went to Washington. And he didn’t shoot soldiers. He shot civilians under the framework that “the perpetrators and abettors have forfeited their humanity.”

Two people killed outside Jewish event in Washington DC, May 2025 (photo: Rod Lamkey, AP)

Their Common Delusion: Jews as the Evil Power Behind Everything

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: every single one of these killers thought they were acting in defense. Of their race. Of their people. Of the oppressed. And in each case, they believed that Jews were behind their suffering. The puppet masters. The infiltrators. The warmongers. The colonizers. The landlords. The cabal. It’s the oldest lie in the world—crafted for modern rage packed in a holster.

Our Common Delusion: They are not Identical. Some of Them Are Right

These attackers may look like lone wolves, but they aren’t howling alone. They are members of ecosystems—8chan threads, Telegram groups, Reddit subs, Twitter/X echo chambers. They are fed a steady diet of Holocaust inversion, “Zionist” conspiracies, blood libels, and genocidal memes. And increasingly, they’re finding validation from public-facing NGOs and international institutions whose language about Israel normalizes antisemitic tropes.

PBS did in depth documentaries about “White Supremacy” groups and their echo chambers on Telegram. When a killer shot a synagogue in Poway, CA in 2019 killing someone, the media reviewed his White supremacy manifesto, as it did when a shooter in Texas in 2023 killed eight people, covering the shooter’s extensive “antisemitism, misogyny and White Supremacy” rants on social media.

But one couldn’t find such analyses or scathing rebukes of non-White Supremacy groups. Black Israelites were pardoned by the Southern Poverty Law Center as merely having a few bad apples. Islamists and leftists were criticized – but rationalized – as being upset about the bleak situation of Muslims around the world.

The media had two principle reasons for the soft coverage of non-White killers: protecting those racial and ethnic groups, and agreeing with the underlying grievance. In the first, the SPLC and other liberal groups make the argument that highlighting violence from minority groups leads to their being over-policed and ultimately police violence against them. In the second, the media are the disseminators of the anti-Jewish and anti-Jewish State narrative so why self-incriminate.

Internationally Approved Manifestos

White supremacist “lone wolves” crafted manifestos and called out fellow “martyrs” designed to inspire followers and provoke copycat attacks, like Brenton Tarrant, Anders Breivik, Dylann Roof and Patrick Crusius. Non governmental groups like Amnesty International and the United Nations publish their own scathing reports (more official sounding than “manifesto”) to initiate action against Israel.

The non-White supremacist antisemites worship from these third party bibles. They can read The New York Times that tells them about the “Powerful” Jew and listen to liberal politicians list reasons why Jews don’t deserve to be defended. They can cite the International Criminal Court about Israel committing a “genocide” of Gazans, or Amnesty’s report on Israel practicing “ethnic cleansing.” These antisemites are spared the slog of penning a long manifesto like the Poway shooter about the “tyrannical and genocidal Jew.”

The antisemitic forgery “Protocols Of the Elders Of Zion” is no longer only being quoted in the Hamas Charter and sold at shadowy flea markets. It is retold in officially approved manuscripts quoted on global platforms with the same conclusion about Jews.

Jew Hate into the Vernacular

The steady diet of Jew bashing has become fully normalized. Rep. Rashida Tlaib calling out global Jewry “from Gaza to Detroit… [operating] behind the curtain… to profit off of racism,” could have been lifted from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Yet it got no pushback. It did not take long for Kanye West to publish a song called “Heil Hitler.”

The hatred that was once peddled in the shadows of 8chan and Telegram to hundreds of people is now in the open to millions. Their conspiracy theories and Jew hatred remain the same but the taboo of enlisting in the pogrom has been lifted.

Antisemitism isn’t coming from one direction anymore. It’s everywhere. The right, the left, Islamist circles, anti-colonial extremists. They may appear different but they end up with the same conclusion: Jews are causing a genocide of my favorite group. They must die.

Their manifestos, colorful as they may be, all write the same sentence in the end.

Related articles:

No Israeli Good Deed Goes Unpunished For Amnesty International and NY Times (May 2023)

Conspiracy Theories About Jewish Power and Control (November 2022)

The Heartwarming Story of My Guilty Demise (January 2020)

The Holocaust Will Not Be Colorized. The Holocaust Will Be Live. (May 2019)

This Should Be The Final World Zionist Congress

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There. I said it.

The title of this article will likely throw off readers who are familiar with the articles on First One Through, a pro-Jewish, pro-Israel, pro- American and pro-fact site. Ending the World Zionist Congress (WZC) would appear at first blush to to be a call from anti-Zionists who want to end the Jewish State, whether groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, or left-wing journalists like Peter Beinart.

There are a number of reasons that the WZC should end which I will review here, a mixed bag of positive and negative realities.

Background of WZC

The WZC began in 1897 in Basel, Switzerland, with Theodore Herzl presiding. He called on Jews around the world – and a few Christian Zionists like Henri Dunant, the winner of the first Nobel Peace Prize – to assemble to develop a plan to solve the problem of global antisemitism. He called for Jews to return to their homeland in the land of Palestine, then a province in the Ottoman Empire, and gain self-determination there.

Every five years or so since that time, the WZC has held elections for Jews around the world, even post-1948, after the establishment of the modern State of Israel. At the time, the nascent country was surrounded by enemy forces and struggling to survive. Israel desperately needed Jews and support from around the world and used the WZC to entice people to move to the reestablished Jewish State.

The latest WZC election ran from March 10 to May 4, 2025. In the United States, 22 slates were vying for votes among American Jews who subscribed to the “Jerusalem Program.” The U.S. was allocated 152 seats of the 525 seats at the congress (29%), even though it makes up over 40% of global Jewry. Israel gets 38% of the seats and the rest of the world gets one-third, even though many countries with Jews didn’t have elections.

The pitch to get people to vote is to have an influence on how Israel allocates over $1 billion a year. Slates from the religious left and right, as well as the political left and right lobby members of their communities about how their participation in the elections will shape the future of Israel over the next five years.

Voting was open to all Jews over 18 years old who subscribe to the “Jerusalem Program.” It is a series of points that many members of the Israeli parliament don’t even believe, but it is meant as a guiding principle to include global Jewry in making decisions that BENEFIT Israel. For example, people who subscribe to the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanction) of Israel are not invited to participate in the elections.

The turnout in the United States this year was great. Over 211,000 people voted, with results not yet finalized as of now while mail in ballots are being counted. This was the largest turnout in the United States ever, amidst the war from Gaza, and terrible spike in global antisemitism.

Shouldn’t that point to the tremendous NEED for the WZC? Jews in Israel make up a plurality of world Jewry and global antisemitism is at a level not seen since World War II. In the aftermath of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, people turned out in droves to this WZC election, with Israel and antisemitism at the center of people’s consciousness.

So what are the arguments for this to be the final World Zionist Congress?

Zionism Was A Dream. Israel Is A Reality

At its core, Zionism was an ideology while Israel is a reality. When Herzl assembled the first WZC, he was looking to pitch a solution to global antisemitism. That solution was realized in 1948 with the establishment of modern Israel. It reached the next level of success when Israel became the country with the greatest number of Jews in 2008. Israel will likely surpass the 50% threshold of global Jewry over the next decade.

Zionism was successful. It is time to retire the word.

The pro-Israel community – those who subscribe to the “Jerusalem Program” – do not appreciate that “Zionism” is a living and dangerous word among a great many people. Anti-Israel people see its continued use as an expression of the ongoing desire for “greater Israel,” to take more land and push out local Arabs. They see global Jewry playing an active part in those efforts under the banner of “Zionism,” rather than supporting a country fighting a just defensive war or wanting to see the Jewish State thrive. Influential left-wing Jewish journalists like Peter Beinart are marketing that “Zionism” means “Jewish Supremacy.” Rather than fight the stupid notion, we should lock its definition in the past, and not let it morph into new twisted interpretations.

The retirement of the word “Zionism” into an important slice of history is critical, like “New Amsterdam,” “Continentals” or Essenes. A company has an IPO and becomes public; it does not stay in active IPO status. Similarly, the name WZC is dated and reflects the goals of a different time which have become realized.

But more than its name must change; the congress should be retired.

All Jews Are Not Israelis

Israel has matured into a country which is a leader in technology, economy, the sciences and culture. It should be treated as an independent sovereign country, especially as it relates to local decisions and its budget.

Yet the WZC explicitly is about influencing the direction of monies INSIDE OF ISRAEL. Consider statements from various WZC slates about the election like Mizrachi: “development of border and peripheral Israeli communities in the Golan, Galilee, Negev, Judea and Samaria,” Reform: “curb funding for and prevent de facto/de jure annexation of the West Bank or the resettlement of Gaza” and ShirAmi worried about the right gaining power to “Advance policies that weaken democracy and the Israeli judicial system,” which are policies for the government of Israel to make, not Jews in Hendon.

I can appreciate the WZC spending money on programs in the Jewish Diaspora. Israel education and sending shinshinim to Jewish communities and schools helps establish strong bonds between Israel and Diaspora Jewry. But why should Diaspora Jewry make decisions impacting Israeli policy, like whether ultra- Orthodox Jews should serve in the army or building new communities east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL/ West Bank)? These are matters for the citizens of Israel to decide – Israeli Jews and non-Jews – not Diaspora Jews.

Antisemitism

Antisemitism around the world was still raging in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Jews migrated to new countries including the United States, Canada and France from Europe and the Arab world from which they were routed. Israel successfully made the case for it to be the destination for Jews: at its founding, there were 590,000 Jews in Israel, or 5% of global Jewry, and today there are roughly 7.7 million, about 48% of global Jewry.

The nature of antisemitism has changed dramatically over this time. While Diaspora Jews still suffer from discrimination because they are Jews, Israeli policies have become the leading cause for antisemitism.

One may agree or disagree with how Israel is carrying out its war against genocidal jihadists from Gaza. The plain fact is that global Jewry is paying a steep price for Israeli actions for which they play absolutely no part.

While the WZC was launched over a century ago to solve global antisemitism with Jewish self-determination in its homeland, today, Israel is the leading cause of antisemitism around the world. The WZC cannot seriously be viewed as a continuation of the fight against global Jew-hatred when its actions indirectly promote global Jew-hatred.

At its most fundamental, Israel is a conflicted actor in the current fight against antisemitism. While it may have the means to help Jews around the world, it is a biased and conflicted participant. Like a woman deciding whether to terminate a pregnancy, Israel has the agency to make a decision while the fetus does not. Israeli actions may be good policy for Israel but terrible for Diaspora Jewry.

Pro Israel Is Different Than Israeli

I am and encourage others to be pro-Israel. The country is a remarkable achievement in the midst of a tumultuous Middle East.

That has nothing to do with sunsetting the World Zionist Congress.

I like the New York Mets baseball team and you might like the Brazilian soccer team. We cheer them on and hope they win but we don’t expect to influence the budget or hiring of players. We’re not owners or coaches who run and manage operations. We’re fans.

We should acknowledge and internalize that even while we are welcome to move to Israel and become citizens, we are not. Diaspora Jews – and everyone – should not have undue influence on the budget or policy of an established sovereign country for which they are not citizens.

Global Jewish Congress

There is a benefit for global Jewry to assemble to address common concerns like kosher meat which is under assault in many countries, including in “liberal” Scandinavia. There are issues of Jewish education, writing torahs and many other matters – including Israel – which should encompass Jews everywhere. The continuation of shinshinim, making the process of aliyah streamlined and similar matters between Israel and the Diaspora must continue to be addressed but under a new framework.

The headquarters of the new Global Jewish Congress should be in the capital of the Jewish Diaspora, New York City. The United States accounts for roughly three-quarters of the Jewish Diaspora, is Israel’s largest trading partner and has a permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council. The GJC should interface with the government of Israel as a complementary pillar of world Jewry, and not an assembly operating under the wing of the government of Israel like the WZC.

It is time to recognize and adapt to the significant changes that have happened in Israel and global Jew hatred, to sunset the World Zionist Congress and launch the Global Jewish Congress with a new mission for new realities.

Related articles:

Standing Divided (February 2025)

The New Low Of Antisemitism In The West (November 2024)

An Open Letter To Israel’s Diaspora Minister (March 2023)

Members of Knesset and the Jerusalem Program (March 2020)

Facts and Stats about the World Zionist Congress Elections (February 2020)

25,000 Jews Remaining (March 2019)

On The Education Of Jewish Jerusalem

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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.

Hundreds of ancient mikvehs, ritual baths, are found in the Jewish holy land. One of the oldest and largest Jewish cemeteries in the world is in Jerusalem. Professors at universities like UC Davis would likely call the corpses, “settlers.”

Centrality of Jerusalem For Jews Today

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.

Related articles:

It’s Jerusalem Stupid. Duping The Christian World To Join The Jihad Against The Jews (November 2024)

The Noxious Anti-Semitism Of “European Settler Colonialism” (September 2022)

The Lies Conflating the Holocaust and The Promised Land (January 2021)

Antisemitism Includes the Denial of Jewish History (January 2020)

Palestineism is Toxic Racism (August 2019)

The Holocaust Will Not Be Colorized. The Holocaust Will Be Live. (May 2019)

The Jews of Jerusalem In Situ (April 2019)

The New York Times will Keep on Telling You: Jews are not Native to Israel (October 2017)

The Holocaust and the Nakba (July 2014)

The Al Aqsa-fication Of Federal Research Grants

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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 2024
Al 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.

Related articles:

The Disappearing Jew (July 2024)

The Big Lie About Al Aqsa Mosque Access Is Really About Jews (March 2024)

Considering Campus Antisemitism (November 2023)

Oh Abdullah, Jordan is Not So Special (August 2017)

Tolerance at the Temple Mount (November 2014)

Two Democratic Senators Gaslight Jewish Attorney During Confirmation Hearing

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Reed Rubinstein is a Senior Vice President of America First Legal and a former Deputy Associate Attorney General, U.S. Department of Education General Counsel (acting and delegated), and Senior Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury. He was nominated to be a Legal Advisor to the State Department by President Trump and had a confirmation hearing on March 25, 2025 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

During the hearing, only a handful of Democratic senators asked Rubinstein any questions, preferring to spend their time on Mike Huckabee who is nominated to be the US ambassador to Israel. Astonishingly, TWO of those senators – Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) accused Rubinstein of believing in and promoting false anti-Israel and antisemitic conspiracy theories about the State Department and public school education.

Sheehan On Obama Administration Funding Group To Oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “Conspiracy Theory”

At 49:30 of the hearings, Sen. Shaheen said to Rubinstein “I’ve heard these conspiracy theories before. But I have been here through the Obama administration, the first Trump administration, through the Biden administration, and I can tell you that I never heard anybody at any of those administrations talking about a multi-front war trying to overthrow the Israeli government. I don’t believe it and I hear you saying that and try to justify that as a conspiracy theory.”

Sen. Shaheen gaslighting Reed Rubinstein during confirmation hearing, March 2025

One would hope that Shaheen, a ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has heard about the Obama administrations efforts to oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu through a group called OneVoice Israel (OVI), as there was a formal investigation.

The Senate performed a review of almost $350,000 which were granted by the State Department to OVI in 2014. The grant was quite large for an international NGO, as most State Department overseas grants average around $15,000. OneVoice built a large database of Israeli voters and then “absorbed and funded an Israeli group named Victory15 or “V15” and launched a multimillion-dollar grassroots campaign in Israel. The campaign’s goal was to elect “anybody but Bibi [Netanyahu]” by mobilizing center-left voters,” according to the report.

OVI originally got its State Department grant in September 2013 to “execute a grassroots campaign in conjunction with Secretary of State John Kerry’s effort to sustain negotiations
between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.” The outreach effort was to run from October 15, 2013 to July 15, 2014, and the State Department made its final payment of grant funds to OVI on August 25, 2014, with the grant period ending on November 30, 2014. In addition to the $350,000 handed to OVI, the State Department gave the group $40,000 for outside consultants and another $115,000 to OneVoice Palestine, a sister NGO. It is estimated that over 1.3 million Israelis were exposed to OVI’s campaign, about 16% of the population.

By the end of the targeted grant period in July 2014, the Kerry Israeli-Palestinian peace plans were in shambles. By August, OVI leadership decided to use its now large infrastructure for direct political purposes, to “SHIFT SUPPORT WITHIN THE KNESSET AWAY FROM LIKUD/RIGHT WING COALITION BY ADVOCATING TO ‘SWING’ CENTRIST VOTER’S [sic] POLICIES AND SUPPORT POLITICAL CANDIDATES WHO EMBRACE AN EXPEDITED NEGOTIATION TOWARD A [TWO-STATE SOLUTION] AND THE END OF SETTLEMENT EXPANSION.” When Netanyahu announced new elections in December 2014, OVI quickly absorbed the “anybody but Bibi” V15 into its organization to oust Netanyahu.

The Senate initiated an inquiry into this funding matter in February 2015. It found that “OneVoice did inform at least two State Department officials of its political plans, and it did so during the grant period. The Department took no action in response.”

To summarize the facts in Sheehan’s dismissal of the “conspiracy theory,” the State Department handed roughly $500,000 in total to organizations which built up a large infrastructure inside Israel which was used to try to replace Netanyahu in the 2015 elections. It is unclear whether this was directly at the behest of the Obama Administration or was simply a byproduct of the anti-Netanyahu left-wing US State Department’s animus towards Netanyahu, engaging in election tampering against an American ally.

To put that $0.5 million in perspective, the entire Israeli budget for the 2015 election was $62 million.

Kaine On K-12 Public School Anti-Israel, Antisemitic, Woke Education “Conspiracy Theory”

At 1:24:45 of the hearing, Sen. Kaine took aim at a post that Rubinstein made on LinkedIn saying “‘K-12 teachers are almost all products of extreme left teachers’ training programs in the colleges, then the same leftist antisemite professors provide training on MENA [Middle East and North America] and other issues. The system is not fixable.'” Kaine continued “A lot of us on the committee have parents, spouses, kids who are K-12 teachers who work in education programs, training K-12 teachers. A lot of us like me were governors appointing boards of universities with intimate knowledge of teacher training programs. There can be a bad apple in any organization but I got to say I read a comment like that – and it strikes me along the lines of what Senator Shaheen was asking – a kind of political fantasy or conspiracy that doesn’t really seem like the kind of thing that a careful lawyer offering narrow advice would say.”

Sen. Kaine gaslighting Reed Rubinstein during confirmation hearing, March 2025

Perhaps Kaine is ignorant or has put on blinders about the hatred being instilled by public school teachers into the next generation of students. Here are just a few:

The non-partisan American Jewish Committee (AJC) issued a report in December 2024 that “Leaders and activists within the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) have waged an aggressive campaign that has encouraged K-12 teachers to become pro-Palestinian activists and bring anti-Israel propaganda into their classrooms.” The documented MTA initiatives included “promoting multiple one-sided anti-Israel resolutions,… Sponsoring programming, including a webinar that purported to address “anti-Palestinian racism” which was dedicated to attacking the legitimacy of the world’s only Jewish state,” and “curating and promoting on its website anti-Israel educational resources that it encourages members to bring back to their schools.”

In October 2023, right after the Hamas October 7 massacre in Israel, the Oakland Education Association, a teacher’s union, condemned “apartheid” and “genocidal” Israel. The OEA handed out material from Teach Palestine, with curriculums for educators. It suggested that in situations that get “pushback from Zionist parents,” to pivot the conversation to “compare youth incarceration in the U.S. and Palestine.”

In November 2023, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT 59) union produced a resolution which “condemn the role our government plays in supporting the system of Israeli occupation and apartheid, which lies at the root of the Palestinian Israeli conflict.”

Teacher union in Minnesota calling Israel an “apartheid” country and at fault for the Hamas-initiated war

In February 2025, the  Santa Ana Unified School District of California settled a lawsuit for using “courses that were developed in secret and infected with anti-Semitism.” Committees at the school said “Jews are the oppressors,” and “racist” and worked with outside groups who decried “Zionist control.”

There is a new group called The Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism (founded mostly by professors of the University of Santa Ana) which is trying to decouple the study of Zionism from Jewish Studies program in universities, and place it in “settler colonial studies” and put it in the context of “repressive work and solidarities” since “Zionism’s project extends beyond the borders of Palestine.” These efforts are being pushed in the University of California school systems and at New York University. The organization markets a “toolkit” for use by anti-Israel protestors.

In May 2024, Teachers Unite and a handful of other groups including NYC Educators for Palestine took their high school students out of class to protest Israel at the Department of Education headquarters in Lower Manhattan.

Also in May 2024, Portland Oregon’s teacher union, the Portland Association of Teachers, had a meeting about how to teach students both inside and outside of the classroom how to be anti-Zionists, complete with a website to disseminate propaganda.

In August 2024, United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) leaders and Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) teachers hosted a panel on how to teach the “struggle for Palestine” to young students and best practices to bring the minors to political protests.

In September 2015, third grade students in Ithaca, NY heard from anti-Israel activists Bassem Tamimi and Ariel Gold about the supposed evils of Israel.

Professors all over the country have given “extra credit” to students who participate in anti-Israel protests. Students for Justice in Palestine are encouraging it on social media.

There are cases all around the country. In addition to Teach Palestine, teachers are encouraged to use materials from “Decolonize Palestine,” which is designed with animation for young students. It vilifies Israel as a racist colonial endeavor always designed to oppress local Arabs.

In July 2024, the National Education Association (NEA), the largest labor union and teachers union with around 3 million members held its annual meeting. It included resolutions to boycott Israel and praise the October 7 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel (NBI 8). NBI 9 urged the NEA and other trade unions to “pressure governments to stop all military trade with Israel, and in the case of the US, to stop funding it.” NBI 74 sought to publish a list of government officials who accept money from groups supporting Israel.

In April 2021, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) which has roughly 1.7 members said that “American Jews are now part of the ownership class,… who want to take that ladder of opportunity away from those who do not have it.” Herself a Jew, her large base got the message that Jews are the 1% who are coming to steal opportunities from the 99%. In AFT’s July 2024 annual convention, there were seven anti-Israel resolutions.

If Senator Kaine doesn’t understand the deeply antisemitic nature of teachers unions, he should be removed from the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

While Jews are suffering a horrible spike of antisemitism in the United States in the aftermath of the worst slaughter of Jews in Israel in 1,000 years, two Democratic senators took public aim at a Jew for supposedly promoting “conspiracy theories” about anti-Israel and antisemitic activity. It was gaslighting at the highest level, an affront to Jews everywhere.

ACTION ITEMS

Contact Sen. Shaheen and Sen. Kaine about your extreme disappointment with their public gaslighting of Jews about antisemitism and anti-Israel activities in the United States today.

Related articles:

A Democratic-Majority Congress Would Not Investigate Antisemitism At Colleges (July 2024)

Ignoring Columbia’s – And The Education Industry’s – Systemic Antisemitism (July 2024)

Gaslighting Gas Chambers and Indigenousness (September 2023)

Follow the Money: Democrats and the Education Industry (November 2020)

The Democratic Party is Tacking to the Far Left-Wing Anti-Semitic Fringe (January 2017)

The Democrats’ Slide on Israel (July 2014)

The World Zionist Congress Is Ideological, Not Regional

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The World Zionist Congress is holding elections now through May 4, 2025.

To read the news, one would think that this is a matter of Jews around the world getting to vote for Jewish and Israel-related matters, with each country getting a vote based approximately on the percentage of the Jewish population in that country. For example, the United States which has roughly 40% of global Jewry gets 152 of the 525 delegates at the WZC (29%) and Israel get 38%. There are only 13 other countries which are participating in the elections which will get 33% of the delegates: Romania, Canada, Argentina, South Africa, Venezuela, Sweden, Spain, France, Peru, England, Hungary, Brazil, and Uganda. Israel gets the majority of delegates.

The allocation based on country would suggest that countries represent a unit but that is far from the case. The 22 US slates are competing aggressively AGAINST each other with religious right and left attacking the other, as well as political left and right. The handful of centrist parties tout unity to appeal to the middle swath of Jews.

The reality is that religious and political affiliations and philosophies are driving the delegates, not their countries of origin.

Consider Jamie Geller, an American influencer who moved to Israel several years ago. Despite not living in the US, she is using her platform from Israel to try to get the vote out for Aish Ha’am in America, in which she says she chairs the advisory committee.

The surprising big winner of the 2020 WZC US election was Eretz Hakodesh which had over 20,000 votes and secured 16.2% of the American delegates. The enormous slate of delegates in 2025 – multiples larger than any of the 22 slates – is packed with ultra-Orthodox rabbis and influencers who are directing their communities to vote for that slate. Much of the community is opposed to the secular nature of the State of Israel and look at local rabbinic positions that support (like Rav Avrohom Gurwicz, Rosh Yeshivas Gateshead) and oppose (like Rav Malkiel Kotler from BMG in Lakewood) participating in the election, but also look at international opinion (like Rabbi Dov Landau of Bnai Brak who opposes voting).

The center and right in Israel are not the only influencers on the American votes. The left-wing flank, consisting of A New Union, Hatikvah, Arza-Reform and Jewish Future, have gotten Israelis like Yair Golan of the Democrats Party, to lobby votes for left-wing slates.

The global nature of lobbying makes sense. After the elections, all 525 delegates will be together for votes regarding priorities and allocation of resources. The country of origin makes much less difference over the next five years.

Which leads one to conclude that the enormous effort placed on the US elections is misplaced tactically.

While Israel and US Jewry account for over 80% of world Jewry, they get only two-thirds of the delegates. Most of the rest of world Jewry doesn’t even hold elections. That leaves one-third (174) of the delegates getting an outsized impact relative to the Jewish population in the 13 countries holding elections or some sort of convention: Romania (9,000), Canada (393,000), Argentina (175,000), South Africa (75,000), Venezuela (6,000), Sweden (15,000), Spain (13,000), France (490,000), Peru (2,000), England (292,000), Hungary (47,000), Brazil (92,000), and Uganda (2,000). That’s a total Jewish population in these 13 countries of roughly 1.611 million. That equates to roughly 108 delegates per million Jews compared to only 27 per million for the United States, FOUR TIMES THE IMPACT.

Influencers should target international markets, not the United States to get real influence at the WZC. The aggressive marketing in the US may get more followers on Instagram but yield much less than focusing on Jews in Brazil and Hungary.

Many people discussing the election are not that concerned about the outcome and are using this time to engage millions of Jews with Israel. Some slates, like Israel365, are using the election to further engage Christian Zionists who cannot vote in the WZC elections but are very influential in US politics. The left-wing Israeli Policy Forum is showcasing new voices whom they hope will become emerging leaders.

The election is a tool to enlist people in preferred ideologies, even more than having influence on policy.

Related articles:

Unpacking The Ignored “Jerusalem Program” (March 2025)

Facts and Stats about the World Zionist Congress Elections (February 2020)

25,000 Jews Remaining (March 2019)

Unpacking The Ignored “Jerusalem Program”

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The World Zionist Organization amended its Jerusalem Program in February 2024, not long after the horrible massacre of around 1,200 people in Israel by thousands of Gazans. The original WZO platform was the “Basel Program” of 1897, adopted at the First Zionist Congress convened by Theodor Herzl. It has been amended through the years, including in 1951 (after Israel was established), 1968 (after Jerusalem was unified) and 2004 (amidst the “Second Intifada”).

The current Jerusalem Program states:

  • The unity of the Jewish people, its bond to its historic homeland Eretz Yisrael, and the centrality of the State of Israel and Jerusalem, its capital, in the life of the nation;
  • Aliyah to Israel from all countries and the effective integration of all immigrants into Israeli society.
  • Strengthening Israel as a Jewish, Zionist and democratic state and shaping it as an exemplary society with a unique moral and spiritual character, marked by mutual respect for the multi-faceted Jewish people, rooted in the vision of the prophets, striving for peace and contributing to the betterment of the world.
  • Ensuring the future and the distinctiveness of the Jewish people by furthering Jewish, Hebrew and Zionist education, fostering spiritual and cultural values and teaching Hebrew as the national language;
  • Nurturing mutual Jewish responsibility, defending the rights of Jews as individuals and as a nation, representing the national Zionist interests of the Jewish people, and struggling against all manifestations of anti-Semitism;
  • Settling the country as an expression of practical Zionism.
  • Encouraging recruitment and service in the Israel Defense Forces and the security forces and strengthening them as the protective force of the Jewish people living in Zion, as well as encouraging full National Service for anyone exempted in law from service in the IDF.

The various statements above can be unpacked into three general categories: Global Jewry; the Land of Israel; and the State of Israel. It echoes Gil Troy’s definition of Zionism: Jews are a nation; Jews have ties to their particular homeland in the land of Israel; and that Jews have a right to establish a state in that homeland.

Global Jewry

“The unity of the Jewish people”: Global Jewry likely appreciates and believes in the concept of unity, whatever that term means.

“Aliyah to Israel from all countries and the effective integration of all immigrants into Israeli society.”: The statement lacks an introduction – is this encouraging and supporting aliyah or physically making aliyah? Whether they move to Israel or not, diaspora Jewry likely wants to see new immigrants absorbed into Israel effectively.

“Ensuring the future and the distinctiveness of the Jewish people by furthering Jewish, Hebrew … education,”: Most of diaspora Jewry attends public school and has assimilated into the local culture. In the United States, this is particularly true of Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism. While many diaspora Jews may appreciate Jewish and Hebrew education, they do not necessarily want to be viewed as “distinct” from their fellow countrymen. “Zionist education,” is perhaps even more foreign to Reform and Reconstructionist diaspora Jews. Using Zionist education as a tool for “distinctiveness” likely rings hollow for many, especially if “Zionism” relates more to a country or government, rather than the land.

“Nurturing mutual Jewish responsibility, defending the rights of Jews as individuals and as a nation” and “struggling against all manifestations of anti-Semitism”: Antisemitism in the diaspora is against Jews as a people, while antisemitism in Israel is against Jews as both a country and a people.

Land of Israel

“bond to its historic homeland Eretz Yisrael”: The land of Israel is the Jewish homeland. It is part of what binds Jewish people together, the common inheritance from our forefathers.

“Aliyah to Israel from all countries and the effective integration of all immigrants into Israeli society.”: As above, making “aliyah” is about the holiness of the land. Jews have made aliyah for thousands of years before there was the modern State of Israel.

“Ensuring the future and the distinctiveness of the Jewish people by furthering Jewish, Hebrew and Zionist education”: Zionism, as it relates to the land of Israel would not be controversial to even unaffiliated Jews.

“Settling the country as an expression of practical Zionism”: The phrasing here is interesting. It refers to settling the “country,” not the land. Does that mean only within the internationally recognized borders rather than the entirety of the land of Israel which would include east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL / Judea and Samaria / West Bank)? The clause describes “practical Zionism.” Does that limit where Jews move or does it encourage Jews moving to certain parts of the land? This clause is very open to interpretation.

State of Israel

The statements in the Jerusalem Program as they relate to the State of Israel are arguably difficult for a few slates in the 2025 World Zionist Congress (WZC) election in the United States run by the American Zionist Movement (AZM), based on public statements to date. This is true of the Hatikvah slate which includes Reconstructionist and Renewal branches of Judaism, and progressive groups like New Jewish Narrative (merger of Americans for Peace Now and Ameinu), T’ruah and J Street, as well as Vote REFORM.

“centrality of the State of Israel and Jerusalem, its capital, in the life of the nation”: Several members on the slates mentioned above have openly stated that they believe that Jerusalem is NOT the capital of Israel and not central to Judaism or the Jewish nation.

“Strengthening Israel as a Jewish, Zionist and democratic state”: There is arguably little for diaspora Jews to do regarding the internal workings of the state of Israel. How and why should Jews from around the world get involved with Israel’s political dynamics and rules put in place to strengthen or weaken its democratic character. People would not want Israeli Jews messing with their own government structure.

“representing the national Zionist interests of the Jewish people”: It makes sense for Israel to represent “Zionist interests” as it is the embodiment of the Zionist goal. The statement seems self-evident, unless there is a movement to create a second Jewish state somewhere else.

“Encouraging recruitment and service in the Israel Defense Forces and the security forces and strengthening them as the protective force of the Jewish people living in Zion, as well as encouraging full National Service for anyone exempted in law from service in the IDF.”: This sentence was added in the latest 2024 Jerusalem Program as a reaction to the October 7, 2023 massacre. The military conscription policies of the sovereign State of Israel are only matters for the government of Israel and its citizens, and should not be a matter of diaspora Jewry influence. Therefore, this language must be a call to encourage diaspora Jews to join the IDF. While many people do volunteer service even if not a dual-citizen, the statement is problematic. While it is not inherently illegal to serve in a foreign armed service, it could be construed as a step to relinquishing citizenship in the home country, and particularly problematic as governments and situations change.

One must be amazed that there are many current members of the Israeli Knesset who could not affirm this Jerusalem Program which is being demanded of American Jewry to participate in the WZC elections.

AZM rules for eligibility in the 2025 WZC elections

As detailed above, the Jerusalem Program has continued to evolve with pivotal changes to the State of Israel. It suggests that Zionism has morphed with and for the State of Israel, while it may or may not have changed for diaspora Jewry.

Consider Troy’s definition of Zionism referred to above: that Jews are a nation with ties to the land of Israel and have a right to sovereignty in that land. The current Jerusalem Program extends Zionism to encourage diaspora Jews to join the Israeli army to fight for that country. That is a long way from believing in the right of a Jewish State.

The calls for Jewish unity have been consistent and not controversial. The statements related to the Land of Israel get a tad more thorny as the text is ambiguous about the borders of the land, and whether they reflect the full holy land or just internationally recognized borders. Lastly, the State of Israel text is the most difficult for many diaspora Jews.

Many Jews participate in the WZC election who do not believe in the Jerusalem Program. Rabbi Alissa Wise, co-founder of the Rabbinical Council of the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace ran on a progressive slate some years ago as did Peter Beinart. Today, the Reform Movement is attempting to get out the vote deliberately not telling people about the Jerusalem Program. It does this to funnel monies – over $1 billion per year – to advocate for THEIR causes, not the causes outlined in the Jerusalem Program.

The Vote Reform site makes no mention of affirming the Jerusalem Program as a condition to vote

Voting for the World Zionist Congress runs from March 10 until May 4, 2025 and people are lobbying to get people to vote for their slates without knowing the incorporated affirmation. People should read the Jerusalem Program before they vote, and see whether they are comfortable with the 2024 amended language, and believe that people on the slates really endorse such program as well.

Related articles:

Judaism Is Uniquely Tied To The Land Of Israel (December 2023)

A Core Tenet of Zionism Is Combatting Anti-Semitism (January 2022)

American Jewry is Right on Israel (March 2020)

Members of Knesset and the Jerusalem Program (March 2020)

A Review of the Fifteen US Slates for the World Zionist Congress (February 2020)

Facts and Stats about the World Zionist Congress Elections (February 2020)

Losing the Temples, Knowledge and Caring (July 2015)

Global South’s Beachhead On American Universities

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American universities are in trouble.

Fewer people are going to college and graduate schools. Some of the drop-off relates to people having fewer children so the absolute number of people going to school has been declining. But the percentage of students going from high school to advanced degrees has also fallen considerably. Even in the years before the pandemic, the decline in high schoolers going to college dropped from 70% in 2016 to 63% in 2020. The figure dropped to 61.4% in 2023, with men being the most likely to skip college with only 57.6% opting for that education. The rates for Whites and Blacks were roughly the same at 59.9% and 59.6%, respectively, with Hispanics being lower at 51.8% and Asians surpassing every group at 84.7%. The overall impact can be seen in 2010 college enrollment of 10.2 million women and 7.8 million men, dropping to 8.9 million (-12.7%) and 6.5 million (-16.7%), respectively in 2021.

The reasons that most Americans are skipping college include a strong job market paying good wages, the desire to avoid college debt, people pursuing jobs that don’t require advanced degrees, and the ability to learn many skills online.

To address the declining enrollment, universities are taking many more international students. In the 2023/24 academic year, U.S. universities had over 1.1 million foreign students, a record. These students mostly came from the “Global South,” the emerging, principally non-White economies. The majority of students came from southeast Asia including India (331k), China (277k), Nepal, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Taiwan. No European country was in the top ten. The only countries in the top ten which are part of the Global North were South Korea and Canada. The countries with the largest spike in students over the past year were all from the Global South including Ghana (+45%), Bangladesh (+26%), India (+23%), Iran (+15%) and Nigeria (+13%).

Global North in blue and Global South in red

The student exchange is not reciprocal. Only 280,000 Americans studied abroad and the majority (64%) went to Europe, with Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, and France dominating the destinations. Two-thirds of those students identified as White.

The Americans abroad tended to go during their undergraduate years, spending just a few months away (only 2.4% went for a year). They tended to be women (67%), and studied business and management (20%) and social sciences (18%). This is in sharp contrast to international students coming to the United States who were typically graduate students pursuing a degree in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) at 56%.

The international students are older and come for longer periods of time. They often marry and have kids while pursuing their degrees, establishing a foothold in America, while Americans-in-Europe simply have a quick experience away from home.

The universities are very happy to have these paying students fill their classrooms which are being abandoned by Americans. In 2019 and 2020, 49% of all STEM master’s degrees and 57% of all STEM doctorate degrees were conferred to international students. The economics of running courses and an institution without half the students would have required eliminating courses and teachers, and perhaps shutting whole departments.

Technology companies want and need these skilled students as future employees. Google, Apple and Microsoft count on new STEM graduates to fill their ranks each year and lobby the government accordingly. Open Doors estimates that these international students contribute roughly $50 billion to the U.S. economy, or about $5,000 per student.

The U.S. government plays a heavy hand in all of this, not only seeking to salvage American university programs and building feeders to the American technology landscape, but on a political level as well.

Two situations highlight U.S. politics driving international students to these shores: Saudi Arabia and Israel.

As the United States ramped up pressure on the Islamic Republic of Iran regarding its nuclear program from 2007 to 2015, the U.S. sought to reassure its ally, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia which is a foe of Iran. During those years, the number of Saudi students in American universities climbed from just a few thousand to over 61,000. The Saudi students learned courses like petroleum engineering to better extract and process oil, as well as nuclear physics to be able to build nuclear power on their own. Just after the nuclear agreement was signed, the number of Saudi students dropped significantly, down to under 15,000 in the 2023/24 academic year.

To highlight the insanity of the figures above, consider that there are roughly 5.5 million Saudis between the ages of 15 and 24. That means that the 61,287 Saudi students in American colleges in 2015/6 equalled one out of every 90 young Saudis studying in America. By comparison, the same calculation yields one out of 4,400 young people from Bangladesh and one out of 700 young Vietnamese studying in the U.S. Clearly the U.S. was trying to allay Saudi fears by delivering American technological know-how.

American politics playing out for international students from Israel is more explicit, and targets high school students, as long as they are Arabs.

On September 12, 2023, the U.S. embassy in Israel posted an advertisement that the U.S. State Department “is seeking a group of Arab citizens of Israel secondary school students to participate in a Study- in-the-USA initiative for high school students during the 2024-2025 school year.” (bold in original) It is backed by the YES Program Scholarship which gives “many countries with significant Muslim population an opportunity to study at American high schools and live with American host families for one academic year,” funding “all expenses in connection with the study tour including airfare, room and board, pocket money and most other costs.” It is part of the broad U.S. policy to make amends for the “War on Terror,” and selected only non-Jews from the Jewish State to learn in America.

The cherry-picking of certain types of international students demands a deeper exploration of the segments of the Global South that are in American schools.

The Global South has two principal regions as it relates to American immigrants: Latin America and everywhere else.

The United States was primarily populated by European migration from 1840 to 1920. World War I, the Great Depression and World War II stemmed immigration for several decades before it picked up with the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. Since that time, 49% of immigrants have come from Latin America and 27% from Asia. These groups are very different. The typical immigrant from Latin America had little formalized education (only 9% of Mexicans in the US in 2022 had a college degree). That compared to those from South Asia where 72% had a college degree, 55% from Central Asia and 49% from East and Southeast Asia.

Those coming from Latin America typically came for jobs not requiring a college degree while those coming from Asia came with degrees or obtained them at American universities.

The demographics between Latin America and Asia are also very different regarding religion.

About 50 million Muslims live in the Global North which has a population of roughly 1.6 billion, or about 3% of the population. It is even lower in Latin America which has roughly 4 million Muslims out of a population of 665 million, or about 0.6%. That is is sharp contrast to roughly 1.8 billion Muslims living in the Global South with a population of 6.4 billion, or roughly 28%, or 31% x-Latin America. If one were to exclude China as well which has around 25 million Muslims, the Global South is over 41% Muslim (x-China and x-Latin America).

While China does not resemble much of the Global South in both religious demographics and not having a history of European countries on its soil, it is now in an aggressive competitive battle against the Global North for power. As such, China is leveraging its regional position alongside the Global South to wage a cultural and economic war against the West.

China and the Global South have advanced efforts to promote anarchy in the United States alongside far-left non-White movements like Justice Democrats. The calls to Defund the Police and Abolish ICE were designed to tear down walls of protection and flood the United States with people from the Global South. The chants to “Globalize the Intifada” on American campuses and streets are calls to dismantle Western civilization’s capitalism and support for the Jewish State, with a broad redistribution of wealth and power to the preferred people in the Global South.

“Intifada” protest at Columbia University streets

When people in the Global North hear the chants of “Intifada,” they recognize the vile terrorism of Palestinian Arabs blowing up buses and pizza stores in the Second Intifada. However, the Global South considers it an Arabic term meaning “shaking off” the colonialism and imperialism of the West. The South’s overriding desire of taking on western civilization overwhelms the facts that Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel and that the Intifada is a premeditated violent attack on civilians. The Islamist Global South rallies to its coreligionists.

Banner with “Intifada” hung outside Columbia University

The population on America’s campuses does not resemble the rest of America. The disproportionate number of Asians and Muslims enrolled at America’s universities come from regions which are in active competition with the West, and embrace the Stateless Arabs from Palestine’s (SAPs) jihadi war against the Jews. The universities which enroll the international students of the Global South, attempt to tie them with American minority groups whose ancestors originated from those regions. Remarkably, a cause like Black Lives Matter which has nothing to do with the Global South, becomes hitched to the Israeli Defense Forces.

These international students principally come to a few states led by California, New York, Texas, Massachusetts, Illinois and Pennsylvania. It is not a coincidence that Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is launching an investigation against 60 colleges and universities which principally are located in those states.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) on hearing about antisemitism at universities showcasing “Intifada”

The declining enrollment at American universities has led to them being taken over by international students from Asia and Africa. This has led directly to antisemitism on campuses and in the streets. It was true before the October 7 massacre and has only accelerated since then.

New York City march to “Globalize the Intifada” in September 2021, two years before the October 7 massacre by Gazans

Americans and the Global North are watching the initial battles of the Global South on the beachheads of American universities and are dumbstruck. The West would be well served to reevaluate those international students admitted to study here, and use this time to prepare for the battles to come.

ACTION ITEM

Contact the White House to vet international students coming to study at American universities, trimming the numbers coming from the Global South and making their visas conditional to peaceful behavior.

The Global South in downtown New York City taunting Jews and Israelis attending an exhibition about music lovers slaughtered by Gazans on October 7, 2023

Related articles:

Globalize The Intifada With Socialists (May 2024)

Hamas, CAIR, DSA, Within Our Lifetime, SJP Are All Gunning For Jews (May 2024)

The Normalization Deformity: No To Zionism and Peace; Yes To Massacres and Terrorism In a Global Intifada (January 2024)

Considering Campus Antisemitism (November 2023)

The Problem With Antisemitism On College Campuses Stems From Where Jews And Arabs Focused Their Donations (October 2023)

Biden Enables Anti-Semitism On College Campuses (July 2022)

The Wide Scope of Foreign Interference (November 2020)