Prostitution may be the world’s oldest profession, but anti-Semitism is probably the world’s oldest bigotry. It’s come and gone and come and gone and then come and gone again since the days of the pharaohs.
Well, maybe it was never really gone, but, like cancer, it was in remission. Born at the end of World War II, I was one of those lucky Jews to be born in a period of remission as never before seen, particularly in the United States.
It’s over. And how it’s over. You don’t need a poll to tell you that, but a new one just conducted by Trinity College and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law tells us that 54 percent of self-identified Jewish students in 55 college across the country experienced or witnessed anti-Semitism during the 2013-2014 school year. Whoa! Welcome to the University of Berlin.
At the same time, the David Horowitz Freedom Center has published a “Top 10” academic institutions for Jew hatred with two Ivies — Columbia and Cornell — at the top. Representatives of Columbia are already crying foul, but with Rashid Khalidi director of their Middle East studies department, what do they expect? He’s not exactly an impartial academic, more like Mahmoud Abbas with better credentials. (Abbas got his PhD in Moscow for a thesis denying the Holocaust.)
I can understand why the university would be concerned, however. A lot of parents, not to mention alumni and donors, are probably a bit perturbed to see the institution at the top of such a list. More importantly, how about prospective students? If I were a young person, I wouldn’t want to apply at this point. The idea of Columbia with a judenrein student body, given the overwhelming contribution of Jews to the university’s past, is as tragic as it is hard to fathom.
But then, as we all know, American academia is just part of the global zeitgeist, albeit a shameful and especially dangerous part. And the manner in which Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before Congress is being treated by the administration gives cover to this kind of behavior, even enhances it. The recent statements of Susan Rice, who has turned into a kind of all-purpose, prevaricating hatchet woman for Barack Obama, are astonishing. The thought that the woman who serially lied to us about Benghazi is condemning Netanyahu while herself about to speak in front of AICPAC gives a new fascist spin to the word “chutzpah.” The slogan of the German Communist Party in the early thirties was “Nach Hitler Uns!” (After Hitler us). Perhaps the new slogan for a third Obama term should be “Nach Benghazi Uns!”
So is there anything new about the new new new new anti-Semitism? No, there isn’t. As usual the Jews are the canaries in the proverbial coal mine. And you all know what comes next.
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