Caroline Glick: American Jews have forgotten what freedom means
More and more, every day we see American Jews embracing intellectual bondage. We see American Jewish leaders embracing the intolerant, who seek to constrain freedom, and shunning those who fight for freedom and the rights of Jews and other threatened peoples and groups.
To a large degree, this rejection of the lessons of the Exodus among the American Jewish community reflects the growing intolerance and tyranny of the political Left, to which most American Jews pledge their allegiance.
With increasing frequency, leftist groups and leaders in the US are openly acting to deny freedom of expression to their political and ideological foes, and to destroy the lives of people who oppose their dogma.
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In Israel, the public understands that boycotts are about mainstreaming hatred and bigotry just as much as they are about economic strangulation. That is why in 2011 the Knesset passed the anti-boycott law which allows all Israeli entities to sue groups calling for boycotts against them for civil damages, and bars such groups from participating in state tenders.
But in the American Jewish community, these groups are defended and legitimized.
Disgusted at their community leadership’s double standard of tolerance and support for foes of Israel and intolerance for supporters of Israel, a consortium of organizations and synagogues organized a protest against the inclusion of anti-Israel organizations in the Israel Day Parade.
After weeks of protests in the press and on social media sites, on Tuesday some 200 people demonstrated outside the UJA-Federation building in New York and demanded that the boycott supporters and abettors be shunned.
It was an important act of defiance.
The group includes such stalwart organizations as Americans for a Safe Israel, Americans for Peace and Tolerance, the Endowment for Middle East Truth, JCC Watch, the National Conference on Jewish Affairs, and the National Council of Young Israel.
These groups have joined together in the past to protest against UJA-Federation funding of institutions such as the 92nd Street Y and the New York JCC, which have provided platforms for Jew-haters and BDS supporters.
Their protest was vital. It would be a tragedy if the thuggish behavior of the Jewish community leaders went unopposed. But it is hard to see how the protesters can change the situation.
The rot runs deep.
Consider Brandeis University’s craven and intolerant administration.
Brandeis was founded as a traditionally Jewish university in 1948, the year that Israel was established.
But whereas Israel has remained faithful to its sovereign duty to cultivate and defend Jewish freedom and engender a liberal democracy, over the years, Brandeis has largely abandoned its mission of standing up to intolerance, and protecting Jewish rights and those of other threatened groups.
Case in point is its obscene treatment of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Hirsi Ali is a former Muslim who suffered genital mutilation as a child in Somalia and at age 21 fled to Holland to avoid a forced marriage.
After liberating herself, Hirsi Ali could have settled into a quiet European life. Instead, she dedicated her life to championing the rights of women and girls in Islamic societies.
For the past decade, Hirsi Ali has lived under an Islamic death sentence for her work. She can go nowhere without bodyguards.
In 2006, despite her membership in the Dutch parliament, Hirsi Ali was forced to flee to the US, when the Dutch government refused to continue to protect her.
In the US, as in Holland, she continues to campaign for the rights of women and girls in Islamic society.
Most recently, she was the executive producer of a new documentary film called Honor Diaries, which describes the plight of Muslim women and girls living in societies where they risk murder at the hands of their family members if they refuse to live in abject humiliation and submission to the misogyny of Islamic law.
Several months ago, Brandeis offered to confer an honorary doctorate on Hirsi Ali for her work on behalf of women and girls.
When the leftist and Muslim thought police in the Brandeis student body and faculty got wind of the university’s plan to honor her, they joined forces with the Council on American-Islamic Relations to force the administration to cancel the honorary degree.
CAIR claims to be a Muslim civil rights group. And yet, the group that purports to care about the civil rights of Muslims is waging a nationwide campaign to bar screenings of Honor Diaries, at universities around the country.
When Fox News’s intrepid host Megyn Kelly asked CAIR leaders this week how they can object to a film that seeks to help Muslims, they said they don’t have a problem with its content. They object to the fact that it was produced by Jews (also known as “Islamophobes”).
Far from being a civil rights group, CAIR is a pro- Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood organization. It was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Hamas financing trial against the Holyland Foundation.
And yet, on Wednesday, Brandeis sided with CAIR and the thought police, against Hirsi Ali. Brandeis canceled its plan to confer its honorary doctorate on her.Read the whole thing.
Labels: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, BDS, Brandeis University, New York Jewish Federation, Salute to Israel Day Parade
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:25 AM
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