Photo: Cantavestrella/Wikimedia Commons On Wednesday 17th March, I attended a public Zoom event hosted by SOAS Palestine Society as part of their Israel Apartheid Week 2021 series. The discussion was chaired by Youth Against Settlements (YAS), a Palestinian activist group based in the city of Hebron, situated in the southern section of the...
Campus Group Urges Rejection of IHRA Definition of Antisemitism
Photo: Philafrenzy/Wikimedia Commons The Palestine Society (SOASPS) at SOAS University of London released an open letter earlier this year demanding that the university’s academic board reject the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism that the British government has asked universities to accept. Co-signed by a coalition of 50-plus SOAS...
Ha’aretz Op-Ed Misleads to Defend SNL “Joke”
Photo: U.S. Secretary of Defense/Wikimedia Commons Satire is meant to be funny. Many popular, long-running comedy shows relentlessly caricature and mock almost every imaginable group. But there’s a difference between playing on a stereotype—as characters in “The Simpsons” do, for example—and accusing people of murder. Saturday Night Live (SNL) comedian...
The Libelous Claims on National SJP’s Panel
On February 19, 2021, the Institute for Policy Studies’ Middle East Fellow Khury Petersen-Smith and the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) organization shared their latest iteration of antisemitic libels and hypocrisy during “Freedom Intertwined: Organizing for Collective Liberation,” a virtual panel hosted by NSJP. The event framed Palestinian self-determination...
Jewish Populations are More Diverse Than Many Believe
The Farhud was a violent pogrom and massacre waged against the Jews of Iraq in 1941, in which about 180 Jews were murdered and many more injured. Raging during the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, the Farhud was the climax of a creeping antisemitic zeitgeist — anti-Jewish graffiti such as, “Hitler...
Academic Antisemitism: In the Name of Palestine, Let’s Fail Some Jews
Photo: John D’Alembert/Wikimedia Commons Surprise, surprise: another case of academic discrimination against Jewish students. This time, the culprit is a chemistry teaching assistant at Johns Hopkins University named Rasha Anayah. It seems her hatred for Israel has morphed into the potential abuse of her academic power. In late November, she posted a...
IfNotNow Smears IHRA Definition as a ‘Threat’ to Progressivism
The self-proclaimed Jewish-American “progressive” organization IfNotNow hosted a discussion on Jan. 27 about “how the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism has been destroying the progressive movement.” The word “discussion,” may, in fact, be too generous a term for what was, in reality, a diatribe of misinformation. An address by Taher Herzallah, associate director of outreach...
UCL Student Union Sidesteps Jewish Students (& Reality) on IHRA
Photo: Steve Cadman/Wikimedia Commons On February 3rd, the University College London Students Union’s Welfare & Community Zone held a special session on a proposal calling to support the UCL Academic Board Working Group’s December 2020 ‘Report on Racism and Prejudice. ‘ The report advised the College to rescind the International Holocaust Remembrance...
