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‘Shofar’s Call to ‘Rehabilitate’ Zionism
The blowing of the shofar, traditionally done on Rosh Hashanah. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
JNS.org – Shofar, an interdisciplinary journal of Jewish studies whose editors are committed “to publishing a diversity of beliefs, ideas and opinions,” is a project of cooperation with Purdue University. The academic institution was beset, as were many campuses, last year with pro-Palestine rallies and demonstrations, and even set up a “Liberation Zone,” although it would seem none for any Israeli hostages. I have no information that those events had a direct influence on the publication of an issue dedicated to anti-Zionism, but it exists.
Shaul Magid of Dartmouth College led that Shofar special issue, which was devoted to “Zionism and Its Jewish Critics.” He claimed that “while some scholars argue that the concept [of Zionism] has biblical origins, most acknowledge that it is a modern Jewish iteration of Western European nationalism that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century.” Who are these “most” scholars who champion perverse purposeful ignorance? What is their academic weight? Are these the instructors properly suited to lecture university students, Jewish and non-Jewish?
Magid and fellow travelers would have us believe that the many dozens of Torah commandments, hundreds of verses of Tanach, thousands of Midrashic, Talmudic and Second Temple literature pieces, as well as thousands of rabbinic dicta and responsa spanning some 2,500 years of Jewish core religion, culture and ritual revolving around Zion, Jerusalem, the Land of Israel and a Jew’s obligations to the same are to be erased and ignored. Similarly, the constant presence of Jews residing in the Land of Israel—immigrating and traveling to it, and sending charitable dollars to those living there all during the 1,800 years of our Exile, not to mention the Return to Zion during the sixth-century BCE—is to be disregarded.
In a follow-up response, Lior Sternfeld of Penn State University addresses the topic of “Settler Colonialism, From the River to the Sea, and the Israeli Case After October 7.” He intends “to offer a way to unpack some of the volatile concepts often used to analyze the Israel-Palestine conflict.” Nevertheless, he promptly engages in a volatile position and, as if objectively, observes that “well-meaning scholars and activists have sought to rehabilitate the concept of Zionism.”
And what is the need for that? Sternfeld knows and suggests that “Zionism, at least in its twenty-first-century form, negates the very existence of Palestinian identity and Palestinian nationalism. As such, the peaceful existence of the two peoples, enjoying freedom, independence, and self-determination, could never be achieved.” All the fault of the Jews. Sorry, the Zionists. For what is Zionism if not, according to Sternfeld, “settler-colonialism”?
As Sternfeld asserts—and we could assume teaches his students—the nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”) that refers to the creation of the modern-day State of Israel in May 1948 was an “attempt … to eliminate the native people.” The next stage of his paradigm came with the influx of immigrants—Holocaust survivors from Europe and Jews who came from the Middle East, North Africa and many other locations. As he puts it, these “settlers became indigenous.” The next stage followed the Six-Day War in June 1967, when “the definition of colonial power became much more apt.”
Israel after 1967, Sternfeld insists, “became a colonial state.”
Why, supposedly, did it become such a state? His reasoning is that “Israel sought to control the land by sending settlers and exploiting the indigenous population and the resources to the benefit of Israel proper.” Moreover, the “native population did not get citizenship, any political rights, or equal legal status.” If one starts out without knowing the basics, like Sternfeld, then it will be no surprise that his conclusions and assertions are not only erroneous but dangerous.
Israel sent no one post-1967 to Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Yes, there were soldiers and even Nachal units, but it was the “settlers”—those of Gush Emunim and other groups, some not at all religiously motivated—who forced upon the government an extensive civilian Jewish residential presence there. Moreover, there was no exploitation of the population (and as for being “indigenous,” that requires another article altogether). Why should a group of people demanding to be separated from Israel deserve, in Sternfeld’s mind, to gain Israeli citizenship or political rights such as voting for Knesset representation?
What truly irks Sternfeld is the criticism voiced to the slogan chanted by pro-“Palestine” protestors that that presumed country should extend “from the river to the sea.” He ignores its eliminationist purpose in doing away with Israel altogether and probably a majority of its Jewish residents, preferring to highlight a parallel Israeli version of that slogan, an overlooked Israeli map covering the land “from the river to the sea,” unlike the pro-Palestine one “has political practice and military power.” That is an irrational presentation.
First of all, the Palestinian Authority maintains a political practice as well as military power. In addition, its educational system and media propaganda arms inculcate its population much better than Israel’s government does regarding territorial and legal heritage not to mention that in the P.A. area, there are no parallel Peace Now/B’Tselem groups that argue against land expansionism.
More importantly, historically speaking, the area of the “river to the sea” possesses an international Jewish legal status in that the League of Nations Palestine Mandate decision, Article 25, specifically awards that area for a reconstituted Jewish state. In addition, that was the territory left over after a fictitious “Transjordan” was created for a Saudi ruler expelled from his own country and received all of what was to be eastern Palestine—an Arab state. Does not Sternfeld know basic Zionist history, not to mention post-Oslo Accords diplomatic history?
One other of Sternfeld’s nonsensical arguments is that “the left must stop collaborating with the blame game of the right wing and stop seeking approval (that would never come) for disavowing any kind of resistance, especially the nonviolent one.” Especially? As that word means “more than usual; more than other people or things,” are we to understand that Sternfeld could permit a non-blaming of a less than non-violent resistance? Or is it just that his writing is obtuse at this point?
Sternfeld has a vision. It is one of a “time to move beyond Zionism into Israelism … to build a thriving Israeli society for the entirety of its population, next to an equally thriving society of dependent Palestine.” I admit to harboring a suspicion that Sternfeld’s grasp of the Israel-Arab conflict requires rehabilitation.
The post ‘Shofar’s Call to ‘Rehabilitate’ Zionism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote
Demonstrators holding a “Stand Up for Internationals” rally on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, California, US, April 17, 2025. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.
The University of California (UC) Faculty Assembly has rejected a proposal to establish passing ethnic studies in high school as a requirement for admission to its 10 taxpayer-funded schools for undergraduates.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the campaign for the measure — defeated overwhelmingly 29-12 with 12 abstaining — was spearheaded by Christine Hong, chair of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department at UC Santa Cruz. Hong believes that Zionism is a “colonial racial project” and that Israel is a “settler colonial state.” Moreover, she holds that anti-Zionism is “part and parcel” of the ethnic studies discipline.
Ethnic studies activists like Hong throughout the University of California system coveted the admissions requirement because it would have facilitated their aligning ethnic studies curricula at the K-12 level with “liberated ethnic studies,” an extreme revolutionary project that was rejected by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023. Had the proposal been successful, school officials of both public and private schools would have been forced to comply with their standard of what constitutes ethnic studies to qualify their students for admission to UC.
Being indoctrinated into anti-Zionism and “hating Jews” would essentially have become a prerequisite for becoming a UC student had the Faculty Assembly approved the measure, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, executive director of antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative, told The Algemeiner on Friday. AMCHA Initiative first raised the alarm about the proposal in 2023, calling it “a deeply frightening prospect.”
“Ethnic studies never intended to be like any other discipline or subject. It was always intended to be a political project for fomenting revolution according to the dictates of however the activists behind the subject defined it,” Rossman-Benjamin explained. “And anti-Zionism has been at the core of the field, and this became especially clear after Oct. 7. Most of the anti-Zionist mania on campuses that day — the support for the encampments, the Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapters — it was a project of Ethnic Studies. At UC Santa Cruz, 60 percent of Faculty for Justice in Palestine members were pulled from the ethnic studies department.”
Founded in the 1960s to provide an alternative curriculum for beneficiaries of racial preferences whose retention rates lagged behind traditional college students, ethnic studies is based on anti-capitalist, anti-liberal, and anti-Western ideologies found in the writings of, among others, Franz Fanon, Huey Newton, Simone de Beauvoir, and Karl Marx. Its principal ideological target in the 20th century was the remains of European imperialism in Africa and the Middle East, but overtime it identified new “systems of oppression,” most notably the emergent superpower that was the US after World War II and the nation that became its closest ally in the Middle East: Israel.
UC Santa Cruz’s Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) department is a case study in how the ideology leads inexorably to anti-Zionist antisemitism, AMCHA Initiative argued in a 2024 study.
Following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, CRES issued a statement rationalizing the terrorist group’s atrocities as political resistance. Additionally, the department days later participated in a “Call for a Global General Strike,” refusing to work because Israel mounted a military response to Hamas’s atrocities — an action CRES called “Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” Later, the department held an event titled, “The Genocide in Gaza in our [sic] Classrooms: A Teaching Palestine Workshop,” in which professors and teaching assistants were trained in how to persuade students that Zionism is a racist and genocidal endeavor.
Imposing such noxious views on all California students would have been catastrophic, Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner.
“The goal of admissions requirements is to make sure that students are adequately prepared for college,” she noted. “Their goal was to use their power to force students to take the kind of Critical Ethnic Studies that is taught at the university, with the goal of revolutionizing society. The idea should have been dead on arrival, being rejected on the grounds that there is no evidence that it is a worthwhile subject that should be required for admission to the University of California.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations
Paraguayan President Santiago Peña praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Dec. 12, 2024. Photo: The Western Wall Heritage Foundation
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar praised Paraguay’s decision to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, and to broaden the country’s previous designation to include all factions of Hamas and Hezbollah.
The top Israeli diplomat congratulated the South American country and described President Santiago Peña’s decision as a “landmark move” in addressing security challenges and fostering international peace.
“Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens regional stability and global peace,” Sa’ar wrote in a post on X. “More countries should follow suit and join the fight against Iranian aggression and terrorism.”
I commend Paraguay and @SantiPenap for the landmark decision to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hamas, and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations.
Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens… https://t.co/OzWACbWcno— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) April 24, 2025
On Thursday, Peña issued an executive order designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization “for its systematic violations of peace, human rights, and the security of the international community.”
The executive order also expanded Paraguay’s 2019 proscription of the armed wings of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades, and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group in Lebanon, to encompass the entirety of both organizations, including their political wings.
“With this decision, Paraguay reaffirms its unwavering commitment to peace, international security, and the unconditional respect for human rights, solidifying its position within the international community as a country firmly opposed to all forms of terrorism and strengthening its relations with allied nations in this fight,” Peña wrote in a post on X, emphasizing the country’s strategic relationship with the United States and Israel.
Iran is the chief international backer of Hamas and Hezbollah, providing the Islamist terror groups with weapons, funding, and training. According to media reports based on documents seized by the Israeli military in Gaza last year, Iran had been informed about Hamas’s plan to launch the Oct. 7 attack months in advance.
Last year, Peña reopened Paraguay’s embassy in Jerusalem, making it the sixth nation — after the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea — to establish its embassy in the Israeli capital. During the same visit, he condemned the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, calling the perpetrators “criminals” in a speech at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
The Trump administration also praised Paraguay’s decision to officially label the IRGC as a terrorist organization, describing it as a major blow to Iran’s terror network in the Western Hemisphere.
“Iran remains the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world and has financed and directed numerous terrorist attacks and activities globally, through its IRGC-Qods Force and proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas,” US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.
The US official said Paraguay’s action will help disrupt Iran’s ability to finance terrorism and operate in Latin America — particularly in the Tri-Border Area, where Paraguay borders Argentina and Brazil, a region long regarded as a financial hub for Hezbollah-linked operatives.
“The important steps Paraguay has taken will help cut off the ability of the Iranian regime and its proxies to plot terrorist attacks and raise money for its malignant and destabilizing activity,” the statement read.
“The United States will continue to work with partners such as Paraguay to confront global security threats,” Bruce added. “We call on all countries to hold the Iranian regime accountable and prevent its operatives, recruiters, financiers, and proxies from operating in their territories.”
During his first administration, Trump designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), citing the Iranian regime’s use of the IRGC to “engage in terrorist activities since its inception 40 years ago.”
At the time, Trump said this designation “recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a state sponsor of terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft.”
“The IRGC is the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign,” he continued.
The post Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’
Yale University students at the corner of Grove and College Streets in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S., April 22, 2024. Photo: Melanie Stengel via Reuters Connect.
As darkness fell over Yale University on Wednesday evening, Jewish students faced intimidation that echoed history’s darkest chapters. The following day, as the sun rose on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the world solemnly reflected on the devastating consequences of unchecked hatred.
Yet, disturbingly, at Yale, the shadows of that same hatred linger once again.
For several nights now, radical anti-Israel activists, primarily organized by “Yalies for Palestine,” an anti-Israel hate group, have targeted Jewish students at Yale — in many cases, based solely on their outwardly Jewish appearance.
On Wednesday, protestors blocked walkways, physically intimidated Jewish students, and hurled bottles and sprayed liquids at them — all while campus police stood by and did nothing.
One Jewish student described her chilling encounter with the protesters the night before, on Tuesday: “When I tried to get through, they blocked me, ignored my requests to pass, and handed out masks to those obstructing me. Yale security told me they couldn’t help.”
The immediate trigger for this harassment is the invitation extended by Shabtai, a Yale Jewish society, to Itamar Ben-Gvir, an Israeli government minister. Whether one supports or opposes Ben-Gvir’s politics is beside the point. Notably, Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister, was also protested and disrupted during a separate campus event in February, underscoring a broader trend of hostility toward Israeli speakers regardless of their political affiliation.
These events signal more than isolated protests; they constitute a redux of hatred that historically escalates when met with institutional silence or indifference.
Yale’s administration, under President Maurie McInnis and Dean Pericles Lewis, has failed to adequately respond. Though Yale revoked official recognition from Yalies for Palestine, its tepid actions have not halted the dangerous slide toward overt hostility. The silence — from both the university and the Slifka Center, Yale’s center for Jewish life — is deafening.
This isn’t the first troubling instance at Yale. A year ago, similar demonstrators disrupted campus life with vitriolic anti-Israel rhetoric, silencing dialogue and fostering an atmosphere hostile to Jewish students.
Earlier this year, CAMERA on Campus documented Yale’s Slifka Center pressuring students to erase evidence of anti-Jewish harassment during a pro-Israel event, effectively whitewashing antisemitism and emboldening extremists.
As CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander has powerfully documented, the rhetoric of anti-Zionism today often revives the antisemitic patterns of the past, particularly those propagated by the Nazi regime in the 1930s. These tactics, she explains, echo Nazi-era propaganda that portrayed Jews as subhuman, sinister, and uniquely malevolent — a narrative used to justify marginalization and, ultimately, genocide.
These dynamics — scapegoating, dehumanizing, and ostracizing Jews under the guise of “anti-Zionism” — are not relics of history. They are alive and active across elite American campuses. And now, unmistakably, they have taken root at Yale.
McInnis must break the silence and condemn the open harassment and assault of Jewish students. She must also hold the perpetrators of the heinous actions and those responsible for the safety of students accountable for their inaction.
This week has revealed a grave failure of moral and institutional duty on many fronts. When law enforcement stands by as Jewish students face intimidation and assault, it sends a chilling message: their safety matters less.
We must demand a full investigation and real accountability. Condemnations of antisemitism are not enough. Policies must be changed to ensure Jewish students and organizations can freely exercise their right to free expression without being subject to harassment and assault. Anything less would betray Yale’s stated values — and the promise of “never again.”
Douglas Sandoval is the Managing Director for CAMERA on Campus.
The post Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.