By Jim Geraghty
Tuesday, December 05, 2023
On today’s Wall Street Journal op-ed
page, under the headline, “Higher Ed has become a threat to America,” University
of California Santa Cruz professor emeritus John Ellis concludes, “The biggest
threat to our future isn’t climate change, China or the national debt. It is
the tyrannical grip that a hopelessly corrupt higher education now has on our
national life. If we don’t stop it now, it will eventually destroy the most
successful society in world history.”
That’s an awfully big accusation. Hyperbolic, probably;
let’s not hand-wave away the threats of our runaway $33.8 trillion national debt or Beijing’s
aggressive buildup of the People’s Liberation Army. But it’s not completely
inaccurate, either. Leftist professors and administrators have cultivated an
environment where whoever can organize the biggest, angriest mob wins;
left-wing violence is forgiven as de facto speech while right-of-center-speech
is restricted for being de facto violence; and your constitutionally protected
rights can be completely abrogated without warning or review. And that
mentality has spilled out from campuses into our legislatures, courtrooms,
newsrooms, and the public square. The politically motivated violence we see in our country today is
not all driven by backwoods yokels marching through the streets of
Charlottesville with Tiki torches.
I’m sorry, I can’t just drop the topic of that angry mob
that gathered outside a Jewish-owned restaurant in downtown Philadelphia Sunday
night. I know that a whole lot of people might think it was just an ugly, dumb
thing that happened, but it’s over now, damage to the restaurant was minimal,
and even the owner, renowned Israeli-born chef Michael Solomonov, doesn’t want
to comment on Sunday’s incident. I can’t begrudge him the desire to move on and
get back to business.
I have only the most tenuous connection to the city of
Philadelphia, and yet hearing this story about the angry mob outside Goldie,
accusing the owner of committing genocide, left me seething and spitting mad
that these snot-nosed punks thought it was okay to harass a Jewish business
because they deemed it a de facto extension of the Israeli government. I
mean, just crack a history book. I’m begging you.
This is America. We’re not supposed to have angry mobs forcing Jewish students to hide in a college library.
We’re not supposed to have people running around telling others to boycott a
business just because the owner, manager, or staff is Jewish. And we’re not
supposed to have people wondering if it’s safe to visit a falafel restaurant on
a Sunday night, for fear that some angry mob might come along and accuse them
of assisting genocide through their dining choices.
From this morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer:
The Philly Palestine Coalition
refuted the allegations of antisemitism, defended the practice of boycotting
businesses, and accused elected officials of ignoring the underlying demand of
the protest: a cease-fire.
Did the organization “refute,” as in disprove the
allegations of antisemitism, or did they “rebuke,” the allegations, as in reject?
You’re a major newspaper staffed with professionals. Word choice matters. If
the organization did refute that their choice to bring an angry mob outside the
restaurant was antisemitic, how did they do this?
I suppose the argument is that that crowd wasn’t
antisemitic because it made a similar chant outside a Starbucks:
Goldie is one of several eateries
in the CookNSolo restaurant group, co-owned by renowned Israeli-born chef
Michael Solomonov. Protesters contend that Goldie was not targeted for simply
being a Jewish business, as some elected officials alleged, but rather because
CookNSolo fundraised over $100,000 for the Friends of United Hatzalah, an
Israeli nonprofit that describes itself as volunteer EMS organization. The
organization provided emergency relief services to Israeli Defense
Forces soldiers after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. Sunday’s demonstration included
a near-identical chant outside a local Starbucks, due to what the coalition
described as the corporate coffee giant’s support for Israel.
You see, this group couldn’t possibly be antisemitic
because it also made a similar chant outside a giant coffee chain founded and
built by Howard Schultz, Zev Siegl, Jack Benaroya, Herman Sarkowsky, Sam
Stroum, Leonard Maltz, Jeff Brotman, Howard Behar, and Dan Levitan. It’s
just entirely coincidental that every establishment they accuse of genocide was
founded and built by Jews!
Except . . . the belief that Starbucks has some sort of
ties to the Israeli government, or that it supports the Israeli government, is itself an antisemitic
conspiracy theory: “Neither Starbucks nor the company’s former chairman,
president and CEO Howard Schultz provide financial support to the Israeli
government and/or the Israeli Army in any way.”
What the current management of Starbucks did do
is sue the union Starbucks Workers United after the union posted “Solidarity with Palestine!” two days after the Hamas
massacre. The argument from Starbucks management is that because Starbucks
Workers United is using the Starbucks name, logo, and intellectual property,
people think that Starbucks the company called for solidarity with Palestine
two days after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
(If you’re a unionized Starbucks employee, how thrilled
are you that your union is taking a public stance that is functionally
pro-Hamas? Also notice that Starbucks Workers United is telling customers
to not buy Starbucks gift cards this year.)
You can tell that the organizers of the Philly Palestine
Coalition have the vaguest recognition that they did something they shouldn’t
have, because they’re emphasizing how brief their harassment of Goldie
was. Relax, everyone, it was just a little bit of Kristallnacht vibes, not a long stretch of
it!
“We made a two-to-four-minute pit
stop,” Natalie Abulhawa, a coalition organizer, said Monday. “We
are marching to call for an end to a genocide to Palestinians. We’re calling on
our reps to do something — to stand up for what’s happening.”
Take a good look at why the Philly Palestine Coalition
considers these Philadelphia-area restaurants a legitimate target for boycotts
and protests:
According to a Philly Palestine
Coalition, [sandwich shop] Huda was “raising money for the Zionist State,”
which owner [Yehuda] Sichel considers an unfair characterization of his
fundraiser for the southern Israeli town of Sderot, which was severely affected
by the October attacks. His business raised $3,000 to pay for children’s
therapy there.
I’m sorry, these people are psychopaths. If you contend
helping traumatized children is “raising money for the Zionist state,” you’re
declaring those traumatized kids to be your enemy.
We live in a world with no shortage of things to be angry
about. You can find injustices and misfortunes of every kind. You can
find highly rated charities that tackle every imaginable social
problem: hunger, homelessness, domestic abuse, paralyzed veterans, poverty,
educational opportunity, the unemployed, animal rescue. We all need some sense
of purpose, some cause to fight for, and some sense that we’re trying to make
the world a slightly better place.
You have probably heard some version of that old quote, “You can judge a man by the
quality of his enemies.”
And these folks in the Philly Palestine Coalition are
really, really angry that a sandwich
shop is raising money for children traumatized by the Hamas
attack. That’s the enemy it has chosen to fight.
Finally, in a demonstration that some people will put out
disinformation like chaff countermeasures from a fighter jet, by Monday
morning, there was a new rumor that the protesters — who mentioned Goldie in
their chant — weren’t really there to protest the restaurant, but “the Embassy for Israel is right above the restruant. [sic] idk
why that information was withheld in the posts last night.” First, the
Israeli embassy is in Washington, D.C.; what’s in Philadelphia is a consulate, and that consulate was three blocks away from
the location of the restaurant. That information “was withheld in the posts
last night” because it’s made-up horsepucky.
Following up on a point in yesterday’s newsletter, at around 10:15 a.m. Eastern
Monday, White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates issued this statement:
It is Antisemitic and completely
unjustifiable to target restaurants that serve Israeli food over disagreements
with Israeli policy, as Governor Shapiro has underlined. This behavior reveals
the kind of cruel and senseless double standard that is a calling card of
Antisemitism. President Biden has fought against the evil of Antisemitism his
entire life, including by launching the first national strategy to counter this
hate in American history. He will always stand up firmly against these kinds of
undignified actions.
Now, that’s a perfectly appropriate statement. But that
is, apparently, all we will be getting from this White House with a semi-Philadelphia-based president and “proud Philly girl” first lady and the first Jewish Second
Gentleman, and it just feels so pro forma and check-the-box.
By Monday afternoon, Axios was reporting, “1 big thing: Biden
condemns Philly antisemitism.”
Except . . . there wasn’t any new statement from Biden,
just the statement from Bates.
Is it too much to ask that a headline that includes the
words “Biden condemns” be above a news story that includes a statement
attributed to the president himself? Was it absolutely impossible for the
president — with
no public events on his Monday schedule — to make some on-camera
statement about this?
Or was Monday one of those days where Biden just doesn’t
feel up to making on-camera appearances? Is he still tired out from attending
the Kennedy Center Honors Sunday night?
The president is fine, everyone. It’s entirely normal
for a president
to have one public appearance between Thursday night and 1:45 p.m. on
a Tuesday afternoon at a reelection-campaign reception.
ADDENDUM: Polish government official
Stanisław Żaryn wrote in National Review
today:
The bottom line is that the
Kremlin plans to change the world order, especially in terms of security, and
the conquest of Ukraine is a first step in that plan. If the West abandoned
Ukraine now, it would be further exposing NATO to Russian aggression in the
years to come. Instead, in order to avert the danger from Russia, NATO and the
EU must hold strong in their support for Ukraine and continuing developing
their military capabilities. The Russian threat must be neutralized, and this
is the only way to do it.
Some idiot out there is going to say, “If this is so
important to him, then Poland should pay for it.” Poland has contributed $4.5
billion in total aid to Ukraine, ranking it seventh in total amount and sixth as a percentage of
gross domestic product.
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