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The Old and New Terrorists Speak the Same Words
Israeli troops overlook Jerusalem’s Old City, during the Six-Day War, June 1967. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
JNS.org – In the aftermath of the Oct. 7 massacre, the radical left unabashedly aligned itself with Hamas. Many were shocked by the wave of genocidal antisemitic propaganda that followed, but the tropes employed by the leftist antisemites, from talk of a “global imperialist conspiracy” to the “perfidy of the Zionists” were not new. They were yet another iteration of the unfortunately successful combination of classic Jew-hatred and Soviet antisemitism.
This explosive mix was present in Europe throughout the 20th century but, following the 1967 Six-Day War, it was vigorously embraced by the European left. The left drenched itself in Soviet propaganda that depicted Israel as a colonial outpost of Western imperialism and Jews as bourgeois capitalists. Over time, a culture of systemic antisemitism developed on the European left that today has come into its own.
In Italy, where I live, a terrorist group called the Red Brigades committed atrocities throughout the 1970s. It was responsible for numerous kidnappings and murders, including the leader of Italy’s Christian Democratic Party and former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978.
The Red Brigades pretended to be a new kind of radical group, but in an article published in 1978 in the leftist newspaper Il Manifesto, the former communist politician Rossana Rossanda wrote, “Anyone who was a communist in the 1950s recognizes the new language of the Red Brigades at first glance. It’s like leafing through the family album: There are all the ingredients that were proposed to us in the Stalin and Zhdanov courses of blessed memory.”
The present surge in antisemitism is exactly the same. It claims to be new and dedicated to new principles, but it is nothing but the family album of classic Soviet antisemitism.
It would be enough to take any of the Red Brigades’ manifestos and replace words like “Christian Democracy,” “state” or “our country” with “Israel,” “Zionism” and “Palestine” to see this. One would produce rhetoric like: “Israel and its accomplices have taken on the task of keeping Palestine under the imperialist yoke and unleashing terror and massacres by Zionist killers whenever the Palestinian struggle has called their power into question”; or “The essence of the Imperialist State, of which Israel has always been the maximum representative, is now before our eyes in all its evidence, without the misleading veil of a formal ‘democracy’ with which it had clothed itself: mass roundups and arrests, siege, special laws, special courts and concentration camps.”
It is also instructive to examine the attitude the Italian Communist Party held towards the Red Brigades, as it is remarkably similar to the attitude taken by the moderate institutional left towards radical-left antisemitism and Hamas.
While some members of the Italian Communist Party condoned the Red Brigades’ terrorism, the majority downplayed it. Their ignorance was willful. It was necessary to avoid recognizing that that the left was capable of fostering and committing acts of horrific violence. This is uncannily similar to the Western left’s refusal to recognize antisemitism in its own camp, denying and downplaying it as acceptable “anti-Zionism” in order to avoid facing it head-on.
Even more striking is that some Italian communists claimed that a conspiracy led by American imperialism, fascists or the intelligence services was behind the atrocities attributed to the Red Brigades. We see exactly the same conspiracy theories today, with some even denying the Oct. 7 massacre happened at all. Other claim that the massacre was perpetrated by Israel as an excuse to attack Hamas or that Israel’s defensive war against the terror group is controlled by American “imperialism.”
Italian left-wing intellectuals also spoke of the Red Brigades as “comrades who are wrong.” In effect, they considered terrorism a tactical error but agreed with the totalitarian ideology that caused it. This is the same stance taken by those who today condemn Hamas and its atrocities but endorse the idea of destroying Israel. The old communists declared that they were “neither with the Red Brigades nor with the state,” effectively creating a moral equivalence between the two, just as leftist antisemites seek to put a terrorist organization on par with Israel’s democracy.
Western nations must take this threat seriously. A society in which students speak about Jews and Israel the same way a 1970s Marxist-Leninist terror group spoke about its own targets is diseased. When we hear educators, politicians or intellectuals speak this way, we know this disease is potentially terminal. The democracies must respond to this infection with the vigor required to eradicate it, if only for the general good of a society that wants to protect its intellectual and political liberties.
The post The Old and New Terrorists Speak the Same Words first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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A pro-Israel rally at the University of Toronto was headlined by Columbia University professor Shai Davidai
Around 200 people gathered for a pro-Israel demonstration at University of Toronto’s downtown campus at King’s College Circle—which was the site of one of Canada’s largest pro-Palestinian encampments during May […]
The post A pro-Israel rally at the University of Toronto was headlined by Columbia University professor Shai Davidai appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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‘Not Welcome’: New Pro-Hamas Campaign Aims to Abolish Hillel Campus Chapters
A statue of George Washington tied with a Palestinian flag and a keffiyeh inside a pro-Hamas encampment is pictured at George Washington University in Washington, DC, US, May 2, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Craig Hudson
The campus group National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) is waging a campaign to gut Jewish life in academia, calling for the abolition of Hillel International campus chapters, the largest collegiate organization for Jewish students in the world.
“Over the past several decades, Hillel has monopolized for Jewish campus life into a pipeline for pro-Israel indoctrination, genocide-apologia, and material support to the Zionist project and its crimes,” a social media account operating the campaign, titled #DropHillel, said in a manifesto published last week. “Across the country, Hillel chapters have invited Israeli soldiers to their campuses; promoted propaganda trips such as birthright; and organized charity drives for the Israeli military.”
It continued, “Such actions reveal Hillel’s ideological and material investment in Zionism, despite the organization’s facade as being simply a ‘Jewish cultural space.’”
DropHillel claims to be “Jewish-led,” although only a small minority of Jews oppose Zionism, and the group has been linked to and promoted by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters.
Hillel International has provided Jewish students a home away from home during the academic year. However, NSJP says it wants to “weaken” it and “dismantle oppression.”
The idea has already been picked up by pro-Hamas student groups at one college, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, according to The Daily Tar Heel, the school’s official student newspaper. On Oct. 9, it reported, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) unveiled the idea for “no more Hillel” during a rally which, among other things, demanded removing Israel from UNC’s study abroad program and adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Addressing the comments to the paper days later, SJP, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, proclaimed that shuttering Hillel is a coveted goal of the anti-Zionist movement.
“Zionism is a racist supremacist ideology advocating for the creation and sustenance of an ethnostate through the expulsion and annihilation of native people,” the group told the paper. “Therefore, any group that advocates for a supremacist ideology — be it the KKK, the Proud Boys, Hillel, or Heels for Israel — should not be welcome on campus.”
The #DropHillel campaign came amid an unprecedented surge in anti-Israel incidents on college campuses, which, according to a report published last month by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), have reached crisis levels.
Revealing a “staggering” 477 percent increase in anti-Zionist activity involving assault, vandalism, and other phenomena, the report — titled “Anti-Israel Activism on US Campuses, 2023-2024” — painted a bleak picture of America’s higher education system poisoned by political extremism and hate.
“As the year progressed, Jewish students and Jewish groups on campus came under unrelenting scrutiny for any association, actual or perceived, with Israel or Zionism,” the report said. “This often led to the harassment of Jewish members of campus communities and vandalism of Jewish institutions. In some cases, it led to assault. These developments were underpinned by a steady stream of rhetoric from anti-Israel activists expressing explicit support for US-designated terrorists organizations, such as Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and others.”
The report added that 10 campuses accounted for 16 percent of all incidents tracked by ADL researchers, with Columbia University and the University of Michigan combining for 90 anti-Israel incidents — 52 and 38, respectively. Harvard University, the University of California – Los Angeles, Rutgers University New Brunswick, Stanford University, Cornell University, and others filled out the rest of the top 10. Violence, it continued, was most common at universities in the state of California, where anti-Zionist activists punched a Jewish student for filming him at a protest.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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‘Muslim for Trump’ Launches Initiatives in Key Battleground States, Says Candidate Will Bring ‘Peace’ to Gaza
Former US President Donald Trump is seen at a campaign event in South Carolina. Photo: Reuters/Sam Wolfe
The “Muslims for Trump” organization has officially launched initiatives to help elect Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to the White House, arguing that he would be more likely to end the war in Gaza than Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
In a statement released on Monday, the group said it will focus on recruiting Muslim voters in key battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina. The organization both praised Trump for his supposed “peace-focused” approach to ending the war in Gaza and condemned Harris for helping facilitate a so-called “genocide.”
“After meeting with President Trump, it was clear to me he is the right leader for Muslims to get behind,” Rabiul Chowdhury, co-founder of Muslims for Trump and former co-chair of the “Abandon Harris Movement,” said in a statement.
Chowdhury added that during his discussions with Trump, the former president vowed to “ending the escalation of wars and bringing peace to war-torn regions.” In contrast to Trump’s promise to stop the “bloodshed” in Gaza, he claimed, Harris has “recklessly pushed us toward World War III.”
Chowdhury, a self-described “peace advocate,” urged the Muslim community not to fall victim to supposed “misinformation” campaigns by the media and Democrats that paint the former president as hostile to immigrants. He claimed that the former president’s focus is on “ending war, not dividing families through false immigration claims.”
Samra Luqman, chair of the Michigan chapter of Muslims for Trump, underscored the need to punish the Biden administration for what he described as supporting a “genocide” in Gaza.
“The goal of this election is to hold the Biden administration accountable for a genocide. No amount of fear mongering or scare tactics will persuade my community into forgiving the mutilation, live-burning, and genocide of over 200,000 people,” he said.
According to data produced by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, roughly 40,000 people have died in Gaza since the war began last October. Israel has said that its forces have killed about 20,000 Hamas terrorists during its military campaign.
Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication.
On the organization Muslims for Trump’s official website, it claims that the Abraham Accords, a series of historic, Trump administration-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several countries in the Arab world, helped stabilize the Middle East. It also says that had Trump not lost the 2020 presidential race, the so-called “genocide” could have been prevented.
“Under Trump’s leadership, the Abraham Accords were brokered, fostering peaceful relations between Israel and several Arab countries. Supporters might argue that Trump’s diplomacy prioritized peace and stability in the Middle East, reducing the likelihood of large-scale conflicts like genocide,” the group wrote.
Over the course of his campaign, Trump has repeatedly touted his support for the Jewish state during his singular term in office. Trump has boasted about his administration’s work in fostering the Abraham Accords, promising to resume efforts to strengthen them if he were to win November’s US presidential election.
Harsh US sanctions levied on Iran under Trump crippled the Iranian economy and led its foreign exchange reserves to plummet. Trump and his Republican supporters in the US Congress have criticized the Biden administration for renewing billions of dollars in US sanctions waivers, which had the effect of unlocking frozen funds and allowing the country to access previously inaccessible hard currency.
Trump also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria, and also moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as the Jewish state’s capital.
Despite Harris’s repeated efforts to woo Muslim voters, polling data indicates that the demographic has made a dramatic swing away from the Democratic Party. Polling data from the Arab American Institute reveals that Trump slightly edges Harris among Muslim voters by a margin of 42 to 41 percent. A report from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) shows that Green Party candidate Jill Stein leads Harris and Trump with Muslim voters in the key swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona.
The post ‘Muslim for Trump’ Launches Initiatives in Key Battleground States, Says Candidate Will Bring ‘Peace’ to Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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