You Don't Know Me

Ray Charles' groundbreaking 1962 album, Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, spawned four hit singles.  The album was Charles' reworking of country and western songs into a new vocabulary.  In an interview years later Ray remarked about the album, "You take country music, you take black music, you got the same goddamn thing exactly."

The album went to the top of the charts, while I Can't Stop Loving You topped the singles chart.  You Don't Know Me, composed by country artists Eddy Arnold and Cindy Walker in 1955, hit number two. Beautiful arrangement by Ray and his vocal perfectly conveys the pathos of the lyrics.  

Rainbow Effect

Landscape with a Rainbow Effect is one of the last painting of Joseph Wright (1734-1797).  I enjoy the use of light and contrast.  Wright lived in Derby and among his patrons were some of the early manufacturers of the Industrial Revolution, which he also depicted in his art.

 

They Will Never Reform Themselves

I've commented frequently on the deterioration of academia and its inability to reform itself, most recently in An Urgent Problem.  Here's another example.

In March of this year, Yale Law School terminated the contract of Helyeh Doutaghi, an Iranian-Muslim, after it was alleged she was associated with a terrorist network.  An embarrassed Yale then did enough investigation to decide to terminate her. The Law School hired her to be Deputy Director the Law and Political Economy Project and an Associate Research Scholar. But here are the bigger questions.  Below is Doutaghi's Yale bio.  Why would anyone hire someone with this resume?  What need did it fulfill?  What intellectual contribution would be made to a law school by someone with this background?  Who did they reject in the hiring process?

The Yale bio: 

Her research explores the intersections of the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), encompassing Marxian and postcolonial critiques of law, sanctions, and international political economy.  Helyeh's doctoral dissertation draws on the mechanisms, harms, and beneficiaries of the sanctions regime imposed on Iran, centering questions of value transfer and wealth drain. Additionally she is interested in International Humanitarian Law (IHL), having written about its history, practice, and the production of knowledge (and ignorance), particularly in the context of the U.S. military. 

Doutaghi received a Doctorate in Legal Studies from Carleton University in Canada.  She came to Canada because her father worked at the Islamic Republic's embassy in Ottawa before being expelled in 2012 by the Canadian government because “the Islamic regime is using its mission here to monitor the activities of Iranian-Canadians.”  He is currently acting head of the Iranian consulate in Hong Kong.  His daughter remained in Canada after he left. She does not appear to be an American citizen.

Just within the past few days, Doutaghi tweeted in response to a tweet saying "Iran has a right to defend itself":

"including targeting all US military bases in the region, the occupied Palestinian territories, and any state that enables aggression by allowing its airspace or territory to be used for attacks on Iran." 

When Doutaghi was let go by Yale, many "scholars" came to her defense, claiming she was "an internationally recognized and published scholar of international law, political economy, and armed conflict" and that "she has always advocated for the rights and self-determination of oppressed people, including Palestinians".

Doutaghi is indeed internationally recognized and published, which is an indictment of the extent of corruption in the disciplines of international law and political economy. 

This is how the Yale Law and Political Economy Project describes itself, using all the usual cliche phrases of progressive thought:

The Law and Political Economy (LPE) Project brings together a network of scholars, practitioners, and students working to develop innovative intellectual, pedagogical, and political interventions to advance the study of political economy and law. Our work is rooted in the insight that politics and the economy cannot be separated and that both are constructed in essential respects by law. We believe that developments over the last several decades in legal scholarship and policy helped to facilitate rising inequality and precarity, political alienation, the entrenchment of racial hierarchies and intersectional exploitation, and ecological and social catastrophe. We aim to help reverse these trends by supporting scholarly work that maps where we have gone wrong, and that develops ideas and proposals to democratize our political economy and build a more just, equal, and sustainable future. 

And this is its Manifesto:

This is a time of crises. Inequality is accelerating, with gains concentrated at the top of the income and wealth distributions. This trend – interacting with deep racialized and gendered injustice – has had profound implications for our politics, and for the sense of agency, opportunity, and security of all but the narrowest sliver of the global elite. Technology has intensified the sense that we are both interconnected and divided, controlled and out of control.

New ecological disasters unfold each day. The future of our planet is at stake: we are all at risk, yet unequally so. The rise of right-wing movements and autocrats around the world is threatening democratic institutions and political commitments to equality and openness. But new movements on the left are also emerging. They are challenging economic inequality, eroded democracy, the carceral state, and racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination with a force that was unthinkable just a few years ago.

Meet the Executive Director of the Project:

Corinne Blalock is the Executive Director of the Law and Political Economy Project and a Lecturer and Associate Research Scholar at Yale Law School. Her research draws on her education in both law and critical theory to explore how our political economy and market logic transform and limit the ways we imagine our society and the role of government in it. 

In other words, the Law and Political Economy Project is designed to expand the role of government so that people like Blalock and Doutaghi and their acolytes can dictate how we should live our lives and ensure no one has "bad" ideas.

Ah, now I know why they hired Doutaghi.  She's now gone but the LPE Project is still there. Yale Law School is fundamentally anti-American.  Why should it receive one dollar of public funding?  Not seeing much diversity in thought in this corner of academia. 

This is also a reminder of the need for a strict vetting process for visas.  Doutaghi, who appears to have entered the country in 2023 when hired by Yale, should never have been admitted to the United States. 

Gonna Miss This

The NBA on TNT was a joy to watch.  This is one of my favorite segments.  A Shaq-Kenny Smith colloquy on the strategy of filling a gas tank.  Ernie Johnson can only shake his head while, astonishingly, a stunned Charles Barkley remains silent for the entire two and a half minutes, a rare occurrence.

And a fun NBA Finals between the Pacers and Thunder.  Too bad Tyrese Haliburton went down in the first quarter of Game 7, but Indiana gave it a good try before running out of gas.  Had not seen much of Haliburton before the playoffs but was really impressed by him.  Unfortunately, an Achilles injury means he may miss all of next season.  

This is on my Mount Rushmore. Shaq was deadass lmfaooo 😂😂😂😂😂pic.twitter.com/XB7LFfV8Zr https://t.co/lrCTRzbC1r

— Lion (The System) (@Champ_Lion) June 1, 2025

The Raiding Zone

Came across this map of Comancheria, the homeland of the Comanche, showing the extent of the tribe's raiding areas into the 1870s.  The tribe dominated this region for almost two centuries, holding off the Spanish, Mexicans, and Anglos.  Their arrival in the early 18th century also drove the Apaches off the plains and into the mountains of New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico.

The deeper red area, covering the Texas panhandle, the Midland-Odessa area, and slices of New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Kansas was the heart of Comancheria, a no-go zone for outsiders.  The raiding area is much larger, in the east extending to Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio.  In the 1840s, a Comanche raid even reached the Gulf Coast near Corpus Christi.  Comanche raids also extended well into Mexico.

In 2018 we visited the homestead of Lyndon Baines Johnson's parents and grandparents, about 60 miles west of Austin, and learned how family members narrowly escaped capture during a Comanche raid in the early 1870s. 

 

An Urgent Problem

The entire New York Times Editorial Board published an opinion piece on anti-semitism in the June 14 issue of the paper.

It is welcome to see the Times address this issue, but how the Board chose to do so illustrates the shortcomings of its blinkered worldview and why, at the end of day, it amounts to a bunch of meaningless words because of the Board's refusal to even mention the underlying causes in today's America, including the role of the Times in fomenting that hate among its heavily progressive readership.

I also see that the structure of the editorial which, as always with the Times, starts with an attack on Trump, is done in the hope that their left-leaning readers will pay attention to what follows. 

For these reasons, the Board uses tortured language and phrasing throughout.

My interests are not in defending either party.  I've voted in every presidential election since 1972, but in 2024 left the presidential line blank because both Trump and today's Democratic Party were unacceptable to me, albeit for very different reasons.  A former long time reader, I've written about my own discouragement with the Times here.

Below is the editorial in full, with my comments entered in brackets and boldface. 

 

Antisemitism Is an Urgent Problem.  Too Many People Are Making Excuses. 

The list of horrific antisemitic attacks in the United States keeps growing. Two weeks ago in Boulder, Colo., a man set fire to peaceful marchers who were calling for the release of Israeli hostages. Less than two weeks earlier, a young couple was shot to death while leaving an event at the Jewish Museum in Washington. The previous month, an intruder scaled a fence outside the official residence of Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and threw Molotov cocktails while Mr. Shapiro, his wife and children were asleep inside. In October, a 39-year-old Chicago resident was shot from behind while walking to synagogue.

[Important to note that all of these incidents were by supporters of Hamas, who are also linked to the Left, a fact admitted by the Times later in this article.] 

The United States is experiencing its worst surge of anti-Jewish hate in many decades. Antisemitic hate crimes more than doubled between 2021 and 2023, according to the F.B.I., and appear to have risen further in 2024. On a per capita basis, Jews face far greater risks of being victims of hate crimes than members of any other demographic groups.

American Jews, who make up about 2 percent of the country’s population, are well aware of the threat. Some feel compelled to hide signs of their faith. Synagogues have hired more armed guards who greet worshipers, and Jewish schools have hired guards to protect children and teachers. A small industry of digital specialists combs social media looking for signs of potential attacks, and these specialists have helped law enforcement prevent several.

[The Jewish population of the U.S. was at its peak in 1940 when Jews constituted about 3.7% of the nation's population. Relative to America's overall population, the Jewish population has been shrinking which has societal and political consequences.  Even with this decrease in relative population, demographic changes since WW2 have resulted in 80-85% of the world's Jews living in just two countries, the U.S. and Israel, with about equal populations.  The next three largest populations, about 400,000 each in the UK, Canada, and France, constitute about 7-8% of the world's Jews. The first two countries are governed by political parties hostile to Jews.  In France, the governing party is not hostile but although Jews constitute less than 1% of the population they are the objects of more than 60% of hate crimes.  And all three countries have large and rapidly growing Muslim populations, which the governing parties are desperate to placate.  It looks like the Jewish population will become even more concentrated in Israel and the U.S.  Overall, since the Holocaust, the global Jewish population has, at best, been restored to its pre-1940 numbers even as the world's population has more than tripled.]

The response from much of the rest of American society has been insufficient. The upswing in antisemitism deserves outright condemnation. It has already killed people and maimed others, including an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor who was burned in Boulder. And history offers a grim lesson: An increase in antisemitism often accompanies a rise in other hateful violence and human rights violations. Societies that make excuses for attacks against one minority group rarely stop there.

Antisemitism is sometimes described as “the oldest hate.” It dates at least to ancient Greece and Egypt, where Jews were mocked for their differences and scapegoated for societal problems. A common trope is that Jews secretly control society and are to blame for its ills. The prejudice has continued through the Inquisition, Russian pogroms and the worst mass murder in history, the Holocaust, which led to the coining of a new term: genocide.

In modern times, many American Jews believed that the United States had left behind this tradition, with some reason. But as Conor Cruise O’Brien, an Irish writer and politician, noted, “Antisemitism is a light sleeper.” It tends to re-emerge when societies become polarized and people go looking for somebody to blame. This pattern helps explain why antisemitism began rising, first in Europe and then in the United States, in the 2010s, around the same time that politics coarsened. The anger pulsing through society has manifested itself through animosity toward Jews.

The political right, including President Trump, deserves substantial blame. Yes, he has led a government crackdown against antisemitism on college campuses, and that crackdown has caused colleges to become more serious about addressing the problem. But Mr. Trump has also used the subject as a pretext for his broader campaign against the independence of higher education. The combination risks turning antisemitism into yet another partisan issue, encouraging opponents to dismiss it as one of his invented realities.

[What the Times describes as a "pretext" for a "campaign against the independence of higher education", is actually an attempt by the administration to stop blatant violations of the Civil Rights Act by academic institutions, violations that have led to the outbreak of antisemitic incidents at the most progressive universities in this country.  It's not Donald Trump that created a partisan issue. The partisan issue was created by progressives turning much of academia and other institutions into platforms where only their opinions are considered legitimate, where dissent is suppressed, and where discrimination is rampant against disfavored groups.  In fact, the Supreme Court case that gave birth to "diversity" used the term because of the perceived importance of diversity of opinion, which is not allowed today on most campuses. Without addressing these violations, which the Times apparently supports, antisemitism in academia will never be effectively curtailed, because it is embedded in the very essence of academia.  I discussed this at exhaustive (and probably exhausting) length in The Danger Within: Equality or Equity, Which Side Are You On?]

[Donald Trump can be, and has been, reckless and careless at times in his actions and rhetoric, as I've pointed out at length in numerous posts, but it is his administration that has tried to dismantle the ideological framework leading to the increase in antisemitism.  In contrast, while a number of Democratic politicians have voiced support for Israel and/or opposition to antisemitism, I don't know of any prominent figure in the party who objected to the Biden administration's goal of embedding this hateful ideology into the federal government and American society as a whole.]

Even worse, Mr. Trump had made it normal to hate, by using bigoted language about a range of groups, including immigrants, women and trans Americans. Since he entered the political scene, attacks on Asian, Black, Latino and L.G.B.T. Americans have spiked, according to the F.B.I. While he claims to deplore antisemitism, his actions tell a different story. He has dined with a Holocaust denier, and his Republican Party has nominated antisemites for elected offices, including governor of North Carolina. Mr. Trump himself praised as “very fine people” the attendees of a 2017 march in Charlottesville, Va., that featured the chant “Jews will not replace us.” On Jan. 6, 2021, at least one rioter attacking the Capitol screamed that he was looking for “the big Jew,” referring to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, Mr. Schumer has said.

["Even worse, Mr Trump had made it normal to hate".  Doesn't the Editorial Board read its own newspaper?  According to the 1619 Project, which the Times published to much fanfare, America from its inception has been a nation founded on the principle of whites hating others.  According to the Times, we've always been a horrible country.  And, if you don't accept the Times characterization of this country, let's look at another indicator of hate and race relations.  Since the early 1970s the Gallup organization has been regularly polling white and blacks on the status of race relations, asking whether they are good, okay, or bad.  Over four decades, starting in 1972, those of both races responding good or okay had slowly but steadily climbed, reaching in 2012 to 72% of whites and 67% of blacks.  And then the trend began reversing, well before Trump's appearance on the scene.  By 2022, the figures were 42% for whites and 33% for blacks.  You can now look at numerous surveys of use in the media of terms like "racism", "white supremacy", and see an enormous upturn in their use during the second Obama administration.  Fomenting racial tension and resentment has been part of the declared mission of the Times over the past decade.] 

[The term "Since he entered the political scene" is doing a lot of work here.  According to the FBI data there was no increase in hate crimes for much of Trump's first term.  There is a huge surge during the George Floyd riots of summer 2020 (make of that what you will), and while it is followed by a rapid decrease, hate crimes during the Biden administration occur at a rate of about double that of the Trump administration.  The increase in Asian attacks is, uncomfortably, attributed to a highly disproportionate number of assaults by blacks, which is why it has attracted less attention after an initial outburst aimed at alleged white anti-Asian hate. Perhaps the Biden administration's relentless emphasis on race essentialism and promoting the conspiracy theory that whites and Jews have plotted to maintain White Supremacy may also have had something to do with the increase.] 

[By citing the Charlottesville quote, the Times shows it is a prisoner of its own false narrative.  It is part of the "unexamined life" of those that work at the Times.  The full transcript of Trump's remarks show that right after he says "very fine people", he goes on to state he is not talking about neo-nazis and white nationalists.  Later in the same ramblings, he restates he is not talking about neo-nazis and white nationalists, adding "they are bad people".  In the context of his remarks it is clear Trump is referring to the debate over what to do with the Lee statue and clear he condemned those the press explicitly and repeatedly  said he refused to condemn.  In 2024, the leftist "fact checker" Snopes finally acknowledged that the prevailing media use of the term was misleading and false. Nonetheless, President Biden, VP Harris, and former President Obama all used the false accusation during the 2024 campaign, with Biden saying it was the reason he decided to run in 2020.

The Charlottesville incident also demolished the last bit of lingering respect I held for the traditional news media.  While, by 2017, I mistrusted most of what I heard and read from those sources, I still felt that they could get the basics right.  My mistake.  When I first heard about Trump's Charlottesville remarks my reaction was "Well, the guy's an idiot" and assumed he said it and meant exactly what the media told me he meant.  It was only a couple of years later when I came across a full transcript of the press conference that I realized I had been lied to.] 

["On Jan. 6, 2021, at least one rioter attacking the Capitol screamed that he was looking for “the big Jew,” referring to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, Mr. Schumer has said."  Oh, my God, one rioter!!  And the source is Chuck Schumer?  The Times is really reaching here for examples.  Here's something we do know about Senator Schumer.  In 2024, confident that the Dems would hold regain the House, and hold the Senate and the Presidency, he reassured Columbia University, in an email obtained by a Congressional committee, that it could ignore all those Republicans pestering the school about antisemitism because it would all go away after the election.  I don't think the Times wrote a story about that email.]

The problem extends to popular culture. Joe Rogan, the podcaster who endorsed Mr. Trump last year, has hosted Holocaust conspiracy theorists on his show. Mr. Rogan once said of Jews, “They run everything.” In the Trumpist right, antisemitism has a home.

It also has a home on the progressive left, and the bipartisan nature of the problem has helped make it distinct. Progressives reject many other forms of hate even as some tolerate antisemitism. College campuses, where Jewish students can face social ostracization, have become the clearest example. A decade ago, members of the student government at U.C.L.A. debated blocking a Jewish student from a leadership post, claiming that she might not be able to represent the entire community. In 2018, spray-painted swastikas appeared on walls at Columbia. At Baruch, Drexel and the University of Pittsburgh, activists have recently called for administrators to cut ties with or close Hillel groups, which support Jewish life. In a national survey by Eitan Hersh of Tufts University and Dahlia Lyss, college students who identified as liberal were more likely than either moderates or conservatives last year to say that they “avoid Jews because of their views.”

["Progressives reject many other forms of hate even as some tolerate antisemitism."  Can we please stop with this progressive self-congratulation?  How many articles has the NY Times published in the past decade about white people, that had it been done regarding any other race would be promptly denounced as racist?  Answer: A google search in October 2023 on 'NY Times Whiteness" came up with 5.6 million results. The Times supported continuing the documented Ivy League practice of discriminating against Asians in admissions and denounced the Supreme Court decision banning the practice. And have you read the outpouring of hate by some progressives against Hispanics because of their increased support for Trump in 2024?] 

[And progressives don't just "tolerate antisemitism", they encourage it with the ideology they promote.]  

[Notice how all the college examples they give are of students, none of administrators or the institutions themselves, despite many well-documented incidents.  There is no mention of the recent report on Harvard's blatant anti-semitism.  That's because mentioning antisemitism condoned or practices by the institutions would be seen as pro-Trump and lead to bigger questions about what is happening more broadly in education.  Both college and K-12 education is failing on many fronts, but regarding Jews, unless there is radical reform soon, the doctrines being taught to our children will increase antisemitism, making this country increasingly hostile to Jewish life, a point the Times refuses to address.] 

One explanation is that antisemitism has become conflated with the divisive politics of the current Israel-Hamas war. It is certainly true that criticism of the Israeli government is not the same thing as antisemitism. This editorial board has long defended Israel’s right to exist while also criticizing the government for its treatment of Palestinians. Since the current war began, we have abhorred the mass killing of civilians and the destruction of Gaza. Israel’s reflexive defenders are wrong, and they hurt their own cause when they equate all such arguments with antisemitism. But some Americans have gone too far in the other direction. They have engaged in whataboutism regarding anti-Jewish hate. They have failed to denounce antisemitism in the unequivocal ways that they properly denounce other bigotry.

[There are many Jews, including me, who don't like Netanyahu and think at least parts of the settlements policy in the West Bank are bonkers.  But there are vanishingly few Jews who do not support the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.  The small cadre of anti-Zionist Jews can be found primarily in academia or the NGO community where their real religion is Progressivism.  We see a recent example in the proud announcement of Harvard Divinity School regarding its first Professor of Modern Jewish Studies, Shaul Magid, an anti-Zionist Jew.  A reviewer accurately calls his most recent anti-Zionist book "an intellectual crime". The school boasts of Magid, “His disciplinary range stretches from Hasidic mysticism and American Judaism to critical Black studies and political theology".  We know what that phrasing really means.  This is Harvard Divinity School saying to those protesting Harvard's antisemitism, "screw you Jews, you better know your place." It also illustrates why institutions like Harvard are incapable of reforming themselves without outside pressure being brought to bear.  Otherwise they will succeed in their strategy of waiting things out until a Democratic administration, tolerant of their discrimination, is back in power.] 

["This editorial board has long defended Israel’s right to exist while also criticizing the government for its treatment of Palestinians."  This is a joke.  Yes, the Times defends Israel's right to exist but it opposes both editorially and, more importantly, in its news sections, anything Israel does to ensure its continued existence.  The slant of the Times news section regarding Israel has been evident for years.  Remember when one of their most experienced reporters wrote an article casting doubt on whether a Jewish temple ever existed on the Temple Mount, endorsing an outrageous claim made by the Palestinians?  I do. More recently, since October 7, the Times news staff credulously reports any claim made by Hamas and continues to do so no matter how many lies Hamas is caught in, while treating any Israeli claim cautiously, inserting every possible caveat and doubt.  The Times problem is not just with Israel.  The Sulzberger family have always been uneasy around "Jewish" Jews and Jews who dress "funny" and in recent years the paper launched a full scale assault on those "embarrassing" Jews, starting a jihad against Hasidic Jews, based on alleged defects in the education provided to Hasidic children.  The Times campaign is illustrative because it combines several elements.  

It targets distinctively Jewish looking Jews.  They seem odd even to many other Jews.

The created narrative is those greedy Jews (Oppressors) are stealing state education funds from black kids (Oppressed).  Well, what else do you expect from privileged Jews? (Let's ignore that the Hasidic community is poorer in general than non-Hasidic Jews).

State support should be reduced and Hasidim schools must be made to conform their instructional programs to state requirements, which include equity.  In other words, Hasidic children must be taught their parents are racist White supremacists and they should be ashamed of them and of their religion.

To allow educational flexibility by these schools would make other children feel unsafe, cause harm, and encourage racism.  It's why the progressive state must control every aspect of life.

Bigger message - all private schools must be either abolished or under close State control to ensure conformity.

Everything within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.

Looking at the support for the allegations made by the Times, I would have sent the reporters back to answer a dozen questions about methodology and have them do a comparison with the performance of New York City public schools before proceeding with publication.  The Times, interested only in creating narratives to support its preferred policies, would not take the risk of finding anything that would disrupt that narrative.] 

Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident, has suggested a “3D” test for when criticism of Israel crosses into antisemitism, with the D’s being delegitimization, demonization and double standards. Progressive rhetoric has regularly failed that test in recent years. “Americans generally have greater ability to identify Jew hatred when it comes from the hard right and less ability and comfort to call out Jew hatred when it comes from the hard left or radical Islamism,” said Rachel Fish, an adviser to Brandeis University’s Presidential Initiative on Antisemitism.

["Hard right" and "hard left" are false equivalencies. The "hard left" includes the most progressive universities in this country, as well as publications like, well, like the New York Times.  And all of this antisemitism is nested within the broader race essentialism promoted as its top domestic priority by the Biden administration and embraced by many of our leading institutions. These are power centers within our country.  There is also a growing and very disturbing trend towards antisemitism in the "hard right".  Some of it from those who've gone insane over the past few years like Tucker Carlson, some from grifters like Candace Owens, some from nasty pieces of work like Nick Fuentes, among others.  They do have a lot of followers but where do they rate against the institutional strength of the "hard left"?  Another way to look at it is polling data regarding Jews and Israel, which demonstrate a lot more support from Republicans and conservatives, with less and rapidly eroding support from Democrats and progressives.] 

Consider the double standard that leads to a fixation on Israel’s human rights record and little campus activism about the records of China, Russia, Sudan, Venezuela or almost any other country. Consider how often left-leaning groups suggest that the world’s one Jewish state should not exist and express admiration for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis — Iran-backed terrorist groups that brag about murdering Jews. Consider how often people use “Zionist” as a slur — an echo of Soviet propaganda from the Cold War — and call for the exclusion of Zionists from public spaces. The definition of a Zionist is somebody who supports the existence of Israel.

[Glad for the Times to say that last sentence clearly.  On the other hand, why does the Times consistently refer to Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia student the administration seeks to deport, and who enthusiastically supports the murder of Zionists, as simply "a Columbia pro-Palestinian activist"?  To be fair, Khalil is consistent as he also supports the destruction of the U.S. as a settler-colonist entity.  A good example of why it is important to rigorously review people before they are admitted in to this country.]

Historical comparisons can also be instructive. The period since Oct. 7, 2023, is hardly the first time that global events have contributed to a surge in hate crimes against a specific group. Asian Americans were the victims in 2020 and 2021 after the Covid pandemic began in China. Muslim Americans were the victims after Sept. 11, 2001. In those periods, a few fringe voices, largely on the far right, tried to justify the hate, but the response from much of American society was denunciation. President George W. Bush visited a mosque on Sept. 17, 2001, and proclaimed, “Islam is peace.” During Covid, displays of Asian allyship filled social media.

Recent experience has been different in a couple of ways. One, the attacks against Jews have been even more numerous and violent, as the F.B.I. data shows. Two, the condemnation has been quieter and at times tellingly agonized. University leaders have often felt uncomfortable decrying antisemitism without also decrying Islamophobia. Islamophobia, to be clear, is a real problem that deserves attention on its own. Yet antisemitism seems to be a rare type of bigotry that some intellectuals are uncomfortable rebuking without caveat. After the Sept. 11 attacks, they did not feel the need to rebuke both Islamophobia and antisemitism. Nor should they have. People should be able to denounce a growing form of hatred without ritually denouncing other forms.

["University leaders have often felt uncomfortable decrying antisemitism without also decrying Islamophobia".  This is a misunderstanding about why university leaders are uncomfortable.  They are uncomfortable because the principles of critical race theory are so embedded in curriculum and the very ethos of progressive universities that antisemitism cannot be denounced unequivocally because it would undermine the entire oppressor/oppressed analytical structure the universities have embraced without reservation.]

Alarmingly, the antisemitic rhetoric of both the political right and the left has filtered into justifications for violence. But there has been an asymmetry in recognizing the connections. After a gunman murdered 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, observers correctly noted that he had become radicalized partly through racist right-wing social media. There has been a similar phenomenon in some recent attacks, this time with the assailants using the language of the left.

The man who burned marchers in Colorado shouted “Free Palestine!” and (awkwardly) “End Zionist!” The man charged with killing the young Israeli Embassy workers in Washington last month is suspected of having posted an online manifesto titled “Escalate for Gaza, Bring the War Home.” His supporters have since published a petition that includes “Globalize the Intifada.” The demonizing, delegitimizing rhetoric of the right bore some responsibility for the Pittsburgh massacre; the demonizing, delegitimizing rhetoric of the left bears some responsibility for the recent attacks.

Americans should be able to recognize the nuanced nature of many political debates while also recognizing that antisemitism has become an urgent problem. It is a different problem — and in many ways, a narrower one — than racism. Antisemitism has not produced shocking gaps in income, wealth and life expectancy in today’s America. Yet the new antisemitism has left Jewish Americans at a greater risk of being victimized by a hate crime than any other group. Many Jews live with fears that they never expected to experience in this country.

[These sentences reveal the Times worldview; "It is a different problem — and in many ways, a narrower one — than racism. Antisemitism has not produced shocking gaps in income, wealth and life expectancy in today’s America".  In other words, racism is America's real problem while antisemitism is a problem for Jews and one that distracts from America's real problem which is why antisemitism needs addressing.  This means that Times has learned nothing, or wants to learn nothing, about the ideology and fake history, as in the 1619 Project, it has promoted in recent years.  In that respect, the Times continues to endorse a racist ideology in which the only reason for any discrepancy between races and ethnic groups in our society is because of white and Jewish supremacy.  The Times will never escape its contradictions until it repudiates racial essentialism.]

No political arguments or ideological context can justify that bigotry. The choice is between denouncing it fully and encouraging an even broader explosion of hate.

The position of the Times reminds me of the recent book, Original Sin, by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson in which they breathlessly report how the media, including Tapper, were hoodwinked by the Biden administration into believing Joe Biden was actually functioning as president.  The truth, as anyone observing Biden during the 2020 campaign and his presidency could see, was that he had severe difficulty in functioning, leading many of us to wonder who was really running the White House.  The legacy media including Tapper, wanted to be mislead because reporting honestly would have helped the Republicans and avoiding that was much more important than the truth, and that part of the story is ignored in Original Sin.

Same thing with the Times.  This editorial studiously avoids examining the paper's role in its reporting, and that of progressive institutions, in support of the poisonous ideology of critical race theory in leading to the eruption of antisemitism among those who share the beliefs of the Times own staff.  Instead it is all attributable to this mysterious "hard left", about which the Times gives us no details as to constitutes this faction.

The closing words of the Times editorial are meaningless.  Just words.  I guess it now allows them to say they denounced antisemitism even on the left and now they can go back to doing exactly what they've been doing all along.

You can read all of my reporting on the Times here.