There is a famous photograph that has been circulating amongst our friends since people started to wake up to the fact that the West is largely communist now. In it, A large group of people are raising their arm in a Roman salute to Adolph Hitler. All except for one man who refuses to raise his arm.
It turns out this man’s name was August Landmesser. And this photo has made him a folk hero in freedom circles and rightfully so.
On Sunday at Parliament Hill, I met his spiritual twin. Amongst 5000 people screaming for the total destruction of Israel with chants of “From the River to the Sea”, and the current iteration of Heil Hitler, “Allah hu Ackbar”, there was a single man who stood amongst the crowd answering the calls calmly with facts. When the crowd chanted, “Free Free Free Palestine” he would answer: “From Hamas!”.
He also wore a Star of David on his coat with the German word, Jude in the centre. So no one could mistake what side he was on. It didn’t take long till he was surrounded by taunting leftists, police and at least a few people, likely Muslims, wrapped in the now-fashionable Palestinian scarves that Yassir Arafat, the first actual Palestinian in fact, made so famous.
Please listen to him tell his story below:
There is a great deal more detail about who this extraordinary man is at RAIR Foundation.
He mentions he’s Givati. Good stuff!
https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/idf-brigades/givati/givati-brigade/
Some of its history:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/givati-infantry-brigade
The virus that’s been roiling Harvard was low-key at MIT till Friday. Then things escalated and got kinetic. It was bound to happen. Besides academic cross-registration, the institutions share informal community ties. The Peoples’ Republic of Cambridge is what it is.
Friday’s violent confrontation got minimal public attention.
Readers here might be familiar with Prof. Retsef Levi who blew the whistle on the Israeli coverup of vaxx injuries. He blasted the unspeakable corruption.
Well, he wrote a powerful letter Friday. When he says “unsafe”, he isn’t using snowflake jargon:
“This is the reality that MIT President wants to hide. A letter from Israeli & Jewish MIT students:
To all students at MIT,
Today, Jewish and Israeli MIT students were physically prevented from attending class by a hostile group of pro-Hamas and anti-Israel MIT students that call themselves the CAA.
This is after students from the CAA harassed MIT staff members in their offices for being Jewish and interrupted classes in the past few weeks. All of this has occurred with no clear response from the administration. With each passing day, MIT admin’s silence makes Jewish and Israeli students feel unsafe at MIT.
[…]This message is compounded by the public and private warnings of Hillel and many faculty that Jewish students should not enter MIT’s main lobby today, November 9th, 2023.
Instead of dispersing the mob or de-escalating the situation by rerouting all students from Lobby 7, Jewish students specifically were warned not to enter MIT’s front entrance due to a risk to their physical safety…
Some Jewish students who saw the administration’s failure to respond… came together to support each other and peacefully together stand against this threat to their safety.
Four hours after the blockade started, at 12 pm, the MIT administration passed a letter to all students, threatening their suspension if the crowds did not disperse from Lobby 7. Only the Jewish students left immediately. The CAA protesters did not cooperate. Indeed, the CAA proceeded to invite more students and non-MIT protestors to join them in calling for a violent uprising (“Intifada”) and justifying the terror attacks of Hamas on Israeli civilians.
At 5 pm, all students on campus were warned through MIT’s emergency notification system to “avoid Lobby 7” -officially recognizing the danger present to students as a result of this violent protest. No Jewish or Israeli students were present at this point.
As of 10:30 tonight MIT has officially decided not to academically suspend CAA students who repeatedly violated the administration’s guidelines and threats… Additionally, in an email to DUSP students, the Department Head indicated that he would protect any DUSP students involved in violating MIT’s rules today by protesting with the CAA. Not only do Jewish students feel unsafe on campus, but now they also feel excluded from and unsafe in DUSP.
Today, on the 9th of November, on the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, which marked the beginning of the Holocaust, Jews at MIT were told to enter campus from back entrances and not to stay in Hillel for fear of their physical safety.
We are seeing history repeating itself and Jews on MIT’s campus are afraid.
Signed,
The MIT Israel Alliance and its supporters
https://twitter.com/RetsefL/status/1722852140245254559
Bill Ackman@BillAckman
This is a math class this morning at @MIT.
This is the state of learning and ‘free speech’ at our top universities. It would not be happening without a failure leadership at MIT.
Imagine being a student who borrowed $250k to attend MIT or a professor who is trying to do research in this environment.
https://twitter.com/billackman/status/1723079163714658425?s=46
Jewish MIT Students Warn Campus ‘Not Safe for Jews,’ Describe Hostile Environment Amid Anti-Israel Protests
Jewish and Israeli students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have warned in a new letter to university president Sally Kornbluth that radical anti-Zionism and intimidation of Jewish students on campus has become intolerable and reminiscent of Nazi Germany on the eve of the Holocaust…
When asked for comment, an MIT spokesperson told The Algemeiner that the school is closed in observance of Veterans Day, but MIT President Sally Kornbluth addressed the incident… after the MIT Israel Alliance issued its letter. Her statement did not mention antisemitism.
“I am deliberately not specifying the viewpoints, as the issue at hand is not the substance of the views but where and how they were expressed,” Kornbluth said, noting that Jewish and pro-Israel counter-protesters were also present in Lobby 7 and that all students were recently reminded of guidelines forbidding holding protests in the building.
“Today’s protest – which became disruptive, loud, and sustained through the morning hours – was organized and conducted in defiance of those MIT guidelines and polices. Some students from both the protest and counterprotest may have violated other MIT policies, as well.”
Kornbluth added that protesters who remained after being told to leave will receive a non-academic suspension.
https://www.algemeiner.com/2023/11/10/jewish-mit-students-warn-campus-not-safe-jews-describe-hostile-environment-amid-anti-israel-protests/
……….
Haaretz:
MIT Explains Why It Didn’t Suspend pro-Palestinian Students Threatening Jews: ‘Visa Issues’
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has acknowledged that the reason it did not follow through with threats to suspend students participating in an unauthorized anti-Israel protest this week was its concern that they could face deportation because they were not U.S. citizens…
According to the statement issued by Kornbluth, a confrontation between protesters and counter-protesters erupted and “we had serious concerns that it could lead to violence.…”
According to the MIT website, last year, international students accounted for close to 30 percent of the total number of students enrolled at the elite institution.
There has been considerable speculation in recent weeks that many of the students at the forefront of the anti-Israel protests on campuses across the country are not U.S. citizens. The MIT statement appears to be the first time a university has acknowledged that this may be the case.
https://archive.ph/tkGqK#selection-1123.0-1123.302
The Soviet influence on anti-Semitism
The extent to which the contemporary “left” has appropriated its criticisms of Israel from the old Soviet Union is remarkable. Although it is over three decades since the country’s mainly unlamented demise its motifs and tropes in relation to Israel live on. It paved the way for presenting anti-Semitism in an anti-Zionist form.
However, the relatively small number of commentators who recognize this continuity typically fail to recognize an important discontinuity. The contemporary left is fundamentally different from that which existed during Soviet times. Although the poisonous rhetoric may be similar the character of the movement is entirely different.…
[T]here are many key differences between the old left and the contemporary woke left. One of the most important is that the central concept of the old left was social class whereas the woke are wedded to identity politics. These are directly contrary premises.…
Woke identitarians tend to see society as locked in a hierarchy of privilege which is unlikely to disappear. Those regarded as at the top of hierarchy, which includes whites and often Jews, are generally seen as in a strong position of supremacy. The best possible outcome is generally seen as taking from one group to give to another. That is why the woke typically favor equity over equality…
So in relation to the anti-Zionist form of anti-Semitism the tropes and motifs may be the same but the context is entirely different. Indeed if anything the woke left is even more attached to such ideas than the old left. It becomes all too easy to slot the notion of hyper-privileged Jews into the new woke framework.
To understand contemporary anti-Semitism these differences must be recognized. It is necessary to understand the discontinuities as well as the continuities.
https://www.radicalismoffools.com/the-soviet-influence-on-anti-semitism/
………..
Of course a Jeffrey Nyquist or think-tankers at places like Nato’s Atlantic Council miss this important distinction. During the Cold War Sovietology was a prestigious field of studies. Always narrowly focussed, the Red Devil was the beginning and end, a thousand years of Russian history vanished. Willful ignorance: bugs in amber, locked in a beautiful past of the once-upon-a-time “expert”.
The failure to reconcile pre-Communist and post-Communist Russia explains in part why we failed so miserably in Ukraine. Exact same blood-soaked territory – every hill, every stream – repeating strategies that had proven disastrous for a couple hundred years. We underestimated the potential of a baited Bear. We projected intent – domino theory – that kept us from making decisions appropriate to the current circumstances.