Very expensive and highly rated US universities have been accepting growing numbers of Middle Eastern students for the past 20 years or more. These are students able to afford the wildly expensive full tuition required at top institutions. They make it possible for universities to offer scholarships to Americans who could not possibly pay the tuition themselves.  

Faculty who showed up as a group during protests on the Columbia University campus were praised for standing in solidarity with their students, and for supporting the protests taking place at Columbia and on many university campuses. However, faculty were not standing in solidarity so much as taking a victory lap. They had taught their students well. A student at Columbia or another highly rated university who might want to learn about the Middle East will be hard-pressed to find academic scholarship that is not extremely critical of and hostile toward the Jewish State. Indeed, it is increasingly uncommon to read scholarship that even calls Israel the Jewish state. More often, a student will read about an invented place named “Israel-Palestine.”

Certainly, if one takes a course that relates in any way to the Middle East, or if Israel is mentioned in a class that actually has nothing to do with Israel or the Middle East, the student is very unlikely to hear anything remotely positive about Israel. At the same time, a growing percentage of students arrive on campus with anti-Jewish and even pro-Hamas support already well established. These are both foreign students and Americans.

Very expensive and highly rated US universities have been accepting growing numbers of Middle Eastern students for the past 20 years or more. These are students able to afford the wildly expensive full tuition required at top institutions. They make it possible for universities to offer scholarships to Americans who could not possibly pay the tuition themselves.

However, many students from countries that are not democracies and where Jews no longer live, that is, countries of the Middle East outside of Israel, do not arrive on campus with the values of Western democracies. At the same time, faculty whose anti-West and anti-Israel ideology has become standard fare, especially in departments of Humanities and Social Sciences have helped create extreme bias against Israel. As we have seen on many campuses, this has led to exclusion of, as well as violence against, Jewish students. Before arriving at college even some American students have already been taught that Israel is an illegitimate country and that Jews are “oppressors.” The diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in some US schools result in antisemitic and anti-American ideology that is then reinforced and elaborated on in college.

Certainly, what we have been seeing on university campuses cannot be described as reasoned, well-informed concern for lives in the Middle East. More accurately, we are witnessing blatant antisemitism and well-funded chaos. Thousands of similar tents and thousands of students shouting similar slogans on hundreds of campuses across the US do not represent a spontaneous, grassroots movement.

Nor does the response of faculty and administration whose campuses have been overtaken by protesters suggest that any major change will occur. Of course, when this semester ends, there may be quiet for a while. But the ideology that considers both Israel and America as evil, and that allows for antisemitism and anti-Americanism to be normalized is a systemic problem, one that is not going away. There are other schools available for students besides the highly rated and highly problematic ones. And for Jewish students, there are a number of Jewish schools. And there is Israel.

Originally published in Israel Hayom.

The post Can anything be done about campus antisemitism? first appeared on Cherryl Smith.

Israel is experiencing a wave of new immigrants. A previous surge of immigration to Israel occurred in the early months of the Russia–Ukraine war when Israel accepted thousands of new arrivals from both countries trying to get away from the conflict. This time, however, Jews are choosing to move to Israel when Israel itself is at war.

Why would someone living in the US, Canada, or an EU country make this decision when people who had planned even a visit to Israel have canceled their trips and most tourists left immediately after the war began?

There are many people coming to Israel specifically to help the war effort, the largest group being Israelis who were living abroad. Within a little more than a week, Israel was able to call up thousands of reservists. Many others have come on their own to help the country any way they can. Individuals and groups are making trips to Israel to work in the fields and farms where foreign workers have left and Israeli workers are now serving in the army. Celebrities, too, have visited Israel creating a statement of solidarity by their presence. Yet, there is also a surprising number of people who not only want to help out as tourists but who have decided this is actually the time to move to Israel.

Even before the war, Israel had become the country where more Jews live than anywhere else in the world.  Around 75% of Israelis are Jewish, making a population in Israel of about six and a half million; about half a million fewer Jews live in the US which has the largest Jewish population outside of Israel.  Communities in Britain, France and other European countries, in Canada, Australia, Argentina and elsewhere make up the other two million Jews around the world.

But antisemitism in the US, Canada, and Europe has been steadily rising for many years and has actually increased dramatically since the war began. So too has antisemitism at many universities.

Is it possible that a country at war, next door to terrorists who state outright that they want to kill all Jews and destroy Israel and who have recently enacted that goal with horrific attacks on civilians, with rapes, kidnappings, and rocket fire aimed at population centers, could actually be safer for Jews than other countries? To think so seems counterintuitive.  Yet, many Jews seem to have made this calculation.

Of course some new immigrants were already planning to move to Israel and simply continued with their plans in spite of the war. And safety is only one issue to consider when making such a move; Israel is a beautiful, dynamic country with much to recommend it in non-war times. Yet even moving within one’s own city or country is stressful. Moving across the world even more so, and to a country with a required draft for both women and men seems an especially daunting prospect.

However, for some new immigrants, the reality that Israel is endangered and fighting for its existence is actually a reason to immigrate.

In the two millennia during which they were called the “wandering Jews,” intolerance, violence and humiliation plagued the Jewish people in many parts of the world, first from Christian and later from Muslim Jew hatred. Although there were always Jews living in the land of Israel throughout the centuries, it was only in the 1800’s that the possibility for significant immigration began, and only after the end of the Ottoman Empire and the beginning of British rule were larger numbers of Jews allowed to immigrate.

Yet, nowhere near enough immigration was allowed by the British to save Jews from the horrors of the Holocaust. Perhaps this history has been forgotten in the midst of the current war on Israel. Nevertheless, those who know history support the survival of Jews in their homeland. And they respect that when Israel is attacked, as it has been most horrifically starting on October 7, the IDF will defend the country.

That the United States does not have a state religion created an especially successful home for Jews. Let us hope that rising antisemitism in the US and in other countries will not continue; for Jews, like other citizens, should be able to live in their countries safely.

At the same time, it’s worth noting that for perhaps a surprising number of Jews, Israel, even in the midst of ongoing war is the most welcoming home.

Originally published in The Times of Israel.

The post Why Would Anyone Move to a Country at War? first appeared on Cherryl Smith.

When Russia started bombing Ukraine, were there calls for Ukraine to create a humanitarian corridor for Russians? Were world leaders flying to Ukraine to tell Volodymyr Zelensky that he must make sure that the Russian population is protected by Ukraine?

How about 9/11? Did the US announce it would protect the non-terrorists from harm? Or the Japanese after Pearl Harbor?

Are there any other countries who must provide proof in order to be believed that they were attacked and their children butchered? Israel needed to take journalists on tours of the carnage.

And why were world leaders suddenly flying into Israel? They could have offered their support from their home countries without taking up the time of Israel’s war cabinet or by their presence possibly causing delay to the IDF’s ground operation. Didn’t this simply ensure that the leadership of Hamas would be harder to locate and destroy?

An exceptionally moral military that has been called the most moral in the world is facing terrorists who murder, rape, kidnap, and torture children, young people, and families.

It is Hamas who blocked the roads and shot at their own people who were trying to move south as Israel had asked them to do for their safety.  Israel is trying to get Gazans out of harm’s way, as the IDF always does when it must go into hostile cities and towns, while Hamas uses its own people as human shields.

The Hamas surprise attack on Simchat Torah, the beautiful holiday when Jews around the world celebrate the giving of the Torah, was perpetrated in part by Gazans whom Israelis had trusted to work on their kibbutz. The kibbutzim that were attacked are next door to Gaza and the terrorist/workers secretly made precise drawings of ways to enter the homes of the people who live there. They and other terrorists were the murderers of Israeli families.

By the end of the week of the Simchat Torah attack the terrorists were so emboldened by their successful murder and kidnapping of Jews that they called for a world-wide Day of Jihad. The Hamas Charter is very specific about what it means by jihad. To them it means the killing or subjugation of Jews and other “infidels.” Large marches and rallies took place around the world in support of Hamas.

Do Americans, Europeans, British, Canadians and others, who live in democratic countries yet march and carry signs supporting Hamas, not understand that Israel is just the front line, an outpost in the Middle East, of freedom, diversity, and democracy? Do they not realize that their freedoms and their lives are also at stake?

Originally published in The Times of Israel.

The post What is at stake in the war against Israel? first appeared on Cherryl Smith.

Current antisemitism claims that, unlike any of the other peoples of the world, Jews should not be allowed a country in which they are a majority, even in their indigenous land.

For more than two decades, it has been clear to those who study antisemitism that its most prevalent current form is anti-Zionism.

Jews were hated first for keeping to their belief in their one God and following their distinct traditions. They refused to convert, and for this, they were denigrated, exiled, and murdered. Later they were hated for their ethnicity, for not having the same bloodlines as the majority in countries where they lived. They were confined to ghettos, hunted down, and murdered.

In our current era, hatred of Jews for their religion or bloodline is most often considered to be beyond the pale. There are still those who traffic in an old form of antisemitism but, in the main, they are ostracized. However, Jews today are openly and violently hated for having a Jewish-majority country.

Unsurprisingly, there has never been a time when antisemites believed they were being hateful or irrational. When Jews were murdered or exiled for not becoming pagan, Christian, or Muslim, this behavior seemed appropriate, even honorable, to the perpetrators. 

And when the Jews were slaughtered in the world’s only industrialized murder machine, the Nazis told themselves they were purifying their lands from the evil of Jewish ethnicity.

Jews are now a problem for the world because Israel exists

Today, again, Jews are a problem, not because of ethnicity or religion, but because there is now a Jewish majority country in the original Jewish land.

Establishing the modern State of Israel entailed an entirely legal process during more than 100 years of internationally recognized agreements; purchases of land at exorbitant prices; approvals of the United Nations and its forerunners; and the building of infrastructure and the legal foundations for a new, democratic country. 

It continues to be the only democracy in the Middle East, home to Muslims, Christians, Druze, Bedouin, and other groups, all of whom are full citizens freely practicing their religions, serving in all professions, and engaged in Israeli life.

UNTIL THE founding of the state of Israel, Jews continued to live in what is now called the Middle East from the time of their first exile from Israel nearly 2000 years ago. Lyn Julius’ book Uprooted, is a comprehensive study of how “Jewish civilization in the Arab world vanished overnight.” 

Within a few years of the establishment of modern Israel, 850,000 Jews who had lived in the Arab world for generations were forced out. Many were murdered in the attacks of the Farhud. Forced from their workplaces and then from their homes, most Jews lost everything they had. Now, most of these countries have no Jews at all.

Current antisemitism claims that, unlike any of the other peoples of the world, Jews should not be allowed a country in which they are a majority, even in their indigenous land. In this antisemitism, it is Jewish peoplehood that is maligned. 

After centuries of being considered a unique ethnicity and being ostracized for it, suddenly the Jews are considered only a religious group, one that should not be allowed its own country. If there is only one country in the world that “deserves” to disappear and this just happens to be the world’s only Jewish majority country, certainly this is antisemitic.

Attacks on Jews now take place in many of the countries where Jews still live and they are shocked by the violence against them. Certainly, it is shocking. Clearly, there should be no attacks on synagogues, Jewish stores, homes of Jews, or Jews on college campuses.

Recently there was hope that the US government would create a plan for tackling antisemitism. Sadly, the 60-page document does not focus on attacks against Jews that occur nearly daily in New York City, in Los Angeles, and on college campuses, nor does it clearly address anti-Israelism or antisemitism. Instead, the focus is on hate in general. Bizarrely, the anti-Israel organization CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) is included in the task force.

IT IS our responsibility to accept reality. Anti-Israelism/antisemitism is not going away. This is not the fault of Israelis any more than it was the fault of Jews in the past. Nor is it the fault of Jews living in the US. 

The current iteration of antisemitism, as anti-Israelism suggests, is that you can say “I’m a Jew but I don’t like Israel” and then you will not be harmed or discriminated against. But this is not the case. 

None of the recent attackers of Jews have stopped to ask their victims about their views on Israel or anything else. Orthodox, Reform, and Conservative congregations have been vandalized and attacked. Jewish sports clubs have been attacked. Jewish grocery stores. Jewish-owned cafes. Jewish students and professors have been denigrated and treated unfairly.

Although there are more attacks against Jews than any other group, Jews are not the only ones experiencing violence. Clearly, there is an uptick in violence generally in the US, Canada, UK, and EU countries – places where Jews still live. People feel unsafe, especially in the big cities, and working with these like-minded people will help. Certainly, the vast majority of Americans are not promoters of violence; they, too, fear and are angry about rising chaos in the US.

And we must protect ourselves. Krav Maga, legal weapons training, and neighborhood watch are important. Every synagogue, Jewish school, and Jewish-owned business must have security. We cannot depend on police arriving in time or there being enough police to handle confrontations.

Of course, Israel is not always safe, either. But it is safer and more protected than big cities in the US. The major difference is that when Israel is attacked, the IDF can fight back, even if much of the world still seems to object to us Jews standing up for ourselves.

Originally published in Jerusalem Post.

The post Jews need to protect themselves against modern antisemitism – opinion first appeared on Cherryl Smith.

EARLY in the semester in my Composition Theory seminar at California State University, we were reading a scholarly text on “black English” and “students’ right to their own language.” That week, two students in the course came to see me during office hours and, with some hesitation, politely told me that the book we were discussing was ridiculous. Both of them had gone to historically black colleges as undergraduates; they said they would never have been told to write papers or participate in class discussions in the way the authors advised, by using their familiar “home dialect” rather than standard English.  Although “students’ right to their own language” is explained as honoring different dialects and traditions by encouraging students to communicate in any way they find most comfortable, often as a transition to writing in “standardized English,” the two students in my office objected that this was a condescending idea and a colossal waste of time. 

They had a point. Our campus was certainly diverse, with many speakers not only of different dialects but different languages. Yet, in my own writing courses in which I always had students revise drafts of their papers, I had never suggested that they write in a “home” language or dialect. Of course, there’s a difference between theory and practice. Yet, my seminar was a prerequisite for teaching a first-year writing course and these theories, which I found interesting as theories, were meant to guide and influence future teachers. 

Looking back, that seminar was an early step in my own coming to terms with the direction the humanities had already been taking for some time as it moved away from liberal and liberatory education and scholarship toward the almost completely politicized situation we have now. We can argue that education has always been political, that I became concerned when I didn’t like the political direction in which we seemed to be going. Yet, I do think there is more to it.  The goals themselves have changed. Rather than educating to build an informed citizenry, we have entered an era of constraining dogma in which there is little to no room for free thought; where everything is political; where the goal of building an informed citizenry has been replaced by an environment in which thinking for oneself is not promoted.

Evidence of this distressing and often Orwellian situation abounds. Asian Americans began taking universities to court when they realized that admission practices had for years made it more difficult for Asians than for any other group to be accepted by top universities—because Asian students did so well in high school.  According to the ideology of “equity,” Asians are “overrepresented” and therefore their admission to universities should be limited to their percentage of the population. Such maneuvers used to be called discrimination. 

Jews are also an overrepresented group at universities, but they have been labeled “white” and are facing a different form of discrimination. They are pretty much under siege at many universities where anti-Semitism is becoming normalized, often in the name of anti-Israelism. 

Anti-Semitism at the City University of New York has gone unchecked in spite of many complaints and vast evidence while any sign of bias against a “protected group” is  quickly addressed. Ironically, until the 1960s Jews were not allowed into some of the Ivy League schools and consequently contributed mightily to the CUNY system. 

For many decades, Ethnic Studies courses taught at universities expanded the curriculum in positive ways. They added more choices for assigned readings, developed new topics to be studied, and gave attention to a wide range of ideas and cultures. But academic scholarship is always pushing at whatever boundaries are currently in place. And the current iteration of Ethnic Studies that is grounded in Critical Race Theory (CRT) and enforced by offices of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) actually advocates against inclusiveness. It sets up an antagonistic environment focused on race that Martin Luther King Jr. would have decried. And the training and curriculum demanded by DEI are never ending. It never arrives at a stage where racism can be diminished. 

However, all may not be lost.  Many objections have been raised by teachers, parents, and students to the educational and societal harm of requiring courses based on Critical Race Theory in public school classrooms. As of this writing, seven states have actually banned CRT,  and in another 16 states legislative bills have been introduced to do so. At the same time, for those who live in states where such measures are extremely unlikely to appear, we still have a (secret) resource for preserving liberal education: our own classrooms. 

This ray of optimism comes from my years directing our campus Writing Center. The Writing Center gave me a window into course assignments in many academic disciplines as well as experience navigating conflicting views of what it means to educate. The extent to which the following strategies are useful may depend on your teaching situation, on how much job security you have, on your own temperament, and on the degree to which DEI is influencing your campus. At the same time, I do not think it is possible to teach effectively unless we believe that what we are teaching is helpful and true.  

Closing the door

The Writing Center offered help and advice to any student working on a paper in any discipline. I trained new tutors in a semester-long seminar, and these students began tutoring two weeks into the term. Along with tutoring, the paid, experienced tutors managed the logistics of making appointments, keeping the center open, and helping new tutors.  I did not think that our goals were controversial: to encourage critical thinking; to help students learn what counts as evidence in different fields; to use the act of writing as a way of making sense of complex issues; and to understand that writing requires revision and rethinking. 

And yet, our goals conflicted with what both students and some faculty expected of the Writing Center: an error-free paper. At first, I advertised our goals letting faculty know that tutors did not rewrite or edit papers. Instead, students and tutors talked over the assignments, read through drafts aloud, and discussed a plan for the student’s continued work on the paper. Although tutors did address what we called “surface features” of a text, they kept the focus on the content of the writing. 

My explanations only made the situation worse and even led to a temporary drop in faculty recommending students to make use of the Writing Center. In time, I learned simply to listen to complaints and then carry on as usual. 

Likewise, classrooms are still under the leadership of the teacher. And, while Critical Race Theory may be required in a school, our classrooms are likely to be more under our control than DEI trainings want us to believe. In the tutor training course, I made a ritual of closing the classroom door and saying something like “Ok, tutors. The door is closed. Lets talk about what’s really happening in the Writing Center.” 

A sense of community

The Writing Center thrived in part because it belonged to the students. No faculty conducted tutoring sessions, and I had managed to work around the idea of some professors that students should be required to come to the Writing Center. We made efforts to advertise the availability of tutoring to departments across the campus but we kept attendance voluntary. And the Center itself became a meeting place for tutors and students. Several times during the semester we held events in the Writing Center. Always, there was a lot of food; sometimes we had poetry readings or music performances, and tutors from past semesters also came to the parties.  During regular teaching days, the tutor staff room was usually crowded with “off duty” tutors visiting with each other or working on their own assignments. On a commuter campus like ours, it was a special privilege to be part of the Writing Center.

Clearly, a writing center, especially one where students came for tutoring voluntarily, differs in significant ways from a classroom.  Yet, creating a sense of community in a classroom, as we were able to do in the Writing Center, may be more important now than ever before.  A major objection many have to CRT is that it is divisive, that it pits groups against each other based on immutable categories of race, and that such divisiveness has been given new life and even status. 

Classrooms can certainly foster positive interaction among students. Many disciplines lend themselves to collaborative student research and to group projects. And even in a lecture course, a few moments devoted to some interactive and community-building activities can mitigate against divisiveness that may be occurring in other parts of the curriculum. One of my favorite, very quick exercises at the beginning of the semester was to ask students to turn to someone sitting nearby and see how many things they could find that they had in common. A few minutes more spent hearing some of their findings was time well spent. K-12 teachers have many such strategies for classroom engagement that university faculty can also use as a way of mitigating against divisiveness. 

Making a risk assessment

Although students came to the Writing Center expecting tutors to fix their papers for them, they were quite willing to return for subsequent sessions because the tutors did give useful advice. Yet students’ biggest concern, one that has only become more extreme with the demands of DEI, was to make sure they were taking the correct position in their papers, that they said whatever it was they were supposed to say.  Although this concern actually conflicted with the ethos of the Writing Center to help students think through the ideas of assigned texts for themselves, when we looked at the required readings, at the assignments, and at times even at course descriptions, it was clear that often students were right. There was an expected political point of view inherent in many of the assignments. Now a political position is inherent in entire disciplines. 

If students wanted to write against what appeared to be the expected dogma, we recommended a kind of risk assessment of their situation in the course. How many more papers would there be that could offset a possible low grade? How open-minded did the teacher seem to be? How well are you doing in the course so far? How important is this issue to you? We didn’t encourage or discourage but tried to help the student decide. 

At this point, unfortunately, teachers may also need a version of the risk assessment as well, a way of choosing our battles strategically. Long before Critical Race Theory, faculty had been limited by set goals of required courses, clearly more so in public schools than at universities. And yet every discipline is interpreted by individual instructors and taught within our own teaching styles, based on our own decisions about how to teach and what to emphasize.  

The Writing Center I have just described is decidedly old-school. Writing Center scholarship and therefore tutor training have included and promoted CRT for some time. For Critical Race Theory is in no way limited to single courses; rather, it is a strategy to be used in every discipline and at every grade level. Can we offer an old-school, more positive classroom to our students? I believe we have to try.

Originally published in White Rose Magazine.

The post Our Secret Resource For Liberal Education first appeared on Cherryl Smith.

Now that demonstrations against the current Israeli government have inspired demonstrations in support of the government, there appears to be some confusion about what is and what is not at stake in this debate. The ostensible issue that triggered the anti-government demonstrations is the government’s plans for judicial reform.

Professor Alan Dershowitz describes Israel as “the most vibrant democracy in the world today.” And even though he has been skeptical of some of the government’s proposals for judicial reform, he writes that even if all the reforms are put in place, “Israel will remain a vibrant democracy.”

Anti-judicial reform protesters in the tens of thousands have been demonstrating at least once a week for nearly three months. The pro-reform demonstrations began only two weeks ago. Both groups march carrying Israeli flags. Most of the protesters on both sides seem to be enjoying a festive, protest atmosphere; they don’t shy away from causing traffic jams and road closures, and generally causing a huge amount of noise. They are emblematic of democracy in action.

With the Passover holiday impending and the long school holiday that goes with it, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for a legislative pause last week on the reforms. This pause period would be a good time to reflect on what is actually at stake—and why the government has proposed reforms to the status quo. The reasons may surprise you. Evelyn Gordon has a helpful, thorough summary in Mosaic Magazine. The relevant points are as follows.

Israel is the only democratic country where judges have veto power over the appointment of their own successors.

It is the only democracy in which legal advisers to the government—who are themselves appointed by judges—are vested with authority to determine the legality of the government’s legislative actions, and possibly to put a complete stop to them.

It is the only democracy where a plaintiff need not demonstrate judicial “standing” in order to contest the legality of an action in court.

It is the only democratic country where judges issue rulings that entail no actual legal issues; that is, they can rule that a purely political or economic matter seems “unreasonable,” and thus should be disallowed.

It is the only democracy where the highest court can even strike down a constitutional provision—or at least, the closest thing it has to constitutional provisions. (Israel has Basic Laws that collectively function as a “quasi-constitution.”)

These unusual features were inserted into Israel’s judiciary during the long chief justiceship of Aharon Barak. He set out to remake the judiciary with what he himself called a “constitutional revolution.” It was a “revolution” that allowed the other branches of government to be ruled and overruled by an unelected and self-appointed judiciary. Over time, all of the aforementioned unique aspects of the Israeli Supreme Court were established.

In the U.S., by contrast, the president nominates and the Senate confirms Supreme Court justices. The Court does not involve itself at all in the political proceedings. As a result, the Court is made up of an ideological mix of justices because majorities change hands in U.S. elected government. But Aharon Barak’s “constitutional revolution,” under which the Court selects like-minded successors and like-minded government legal advisers (who themselves can bind the duly elected legislature), features no ideological mix. The Israeli Supreme Court is completely one-sided—in this case, favoring the Left. Furthermore, members of the current opposition, including head of the opposition MK Yair Lapid, have argued as recently as last year for many of the very reforms they now protest.

Obviously, in a democracy citizens vote for their leaders—or in the case of Israel, for a political party—and the judiciary is also vital, as it must rule on cases in accordance with the law. The current separation of powers in Israel simply does not conform to that of other democracies, in which the judiciary is limited to ruling on disputed legal issues.

However, it is not at all clear that the protests against the current government are actually about judicial reform. The new government won the most recent election decisively—or at least decisively for a country whose previous four elections had so narrow a winning margin that the elected governments were toppled and new elections were quickly needed. But this time, Netanyahu had little trouble forming a coalition. With Israel’s hand-counted, carefully monitored election practices, election results are not doubted. And it is likely that the opposition would have protested whichever major policies the Netanyahu government proposed.

We might even say that the protests are really about the elections themselves. The anti-judicial reform protesters really do want the judiciary to retain all of its unusual powers, so that it can block this government’s programs—even if, when these same Knesset legislators are in the majority, they may well agree that the judiciary needs reform. They are protesting, in short, because they lost the election.

The other side finds it now needs to counter-protest to remind everyone that they are the majority that won the election. How this all ultimately ends is anyone’s guess.

Originally published in Newsweek.

The post Israel’s Judicial Reform Protests: The Messy Process of Democracy first appeared on Cherryl Smith.

After nine students and a teacher were murdered at Santa Fe High School in 2018, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton published this plea: “Use Israel’s Approach to Fighting Terror to Stop School Shootings.” Apparently, no one listened. Schools in Texas and in the rest of the U.S. far too often remain easy targets for an unhinged person with weapons, like the recent murderer who slaughtered 19 fourth-graders and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

If the aftermath of this catastrophe unfolds like those of previous school shootings, the very pragmatic and concrete issue of security for children and their teachers is likely to be overshadowed by long-term societal issues related to weapons. Should certain guns or accessories be outlawed? What kinds of psychological problems are not being treated? What are the causes of gun violence? Who can be held responsible?

But Attorney General Paxton and others who have advocated following Israel’s approach did so because Israel’s response to its first school shooting focused specifically on bolstering school security.

In 1974, at a school in the northern Israeli town of Ma’alot, three terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine murdered 22 children. After the Ma’alot Massacre, Israel put into place a nationwide system to fortify and protect all schools of 100 students or more. There have been no other school shootings in Israel since then.

The first thing the country did after the Ma’alot Massacre was to make certain that each school had a perimeter barrier and guarded entry points. This in itself makes a school an unattractive target for a deranged would-be murderer.

All Israeli schools have a metal fence around them; these fences are high enough that they would be very difficult to climb over. At the entrance to the school, furthermore, there is a guard. The guard is well-trained and is not a teacher or other staff person, since teachers and staff also must be protected. The guard does not let anyone enter the school premises who is not a student, school personnel or someone else who is clearly supposed to be visiting. Before the school day starts, the guard checks the grounds and the buildings to ensure that no one who does not belong there has somehow entered the school. At larger schools where there are several entrances, each entrance has a guard. Larger schools also have more exits than entrances, with the use of gates that open only from the inside.

Guards are very carefully vetted—police provide their training, which includes frequent testing of the guards’ skills. They are armed with a gun and with a direct line to school administration and the local police. Students know their school’s guard and know he is there to protect them. At the same time, the whole school has a clear system in place in the case of an attacker on the premises. Similar to fire drills, there are drills for what to do if there were an attack. All the students, faculty and staff know where to go, how to respond, whether to throw objects at an attacker or to run for the exits, and so on. There is close coordination with local police, and police drive past the schools several times during the day when schools are in session. Like the police, the guard is fully empowered to use his firearm to stop an active shooter.

One might object to using Israeli methods of school security because of differences between the two countries. Israel has in place more restrictions on gun ownership than does the U.S.; a majority of Israelis serve in the army, and so have training with weapons; Israel is only the size of New Jersey, and constantly deals with terrorism threats. But the need to protect children is the same in every country.

It is critical to focus on the issue of school safety on its own, even while discussion of other firearms-related issues continues. Put simply, it is urgent to prevent these sorts of disasters in our schools. If implemented by local communities, ensuring that schools have high perimeter fencing, well-trained armed guards, direct coordination with local police and a predetermined and practiced school-wide protocol in case of attack will deter potential attackers and save lives.

Cherryl Smith is professor (emerita) of English, California State University Sacramento and author of Framing Israel, a Personal Tour of Media and Campus Rhetoric.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.

Originally published in Newsweek.

The post What If American Schools Were Protected Like Israeli Schools? first appeared on Cherryl Smith.

The accusation of apartheid requires pretending that Gaza, controlled by Hamas, and the Palestinian territories under the control of the Palestinian Authority, are actually controlled by Israel.

You’ve asked me how to respond to your close friend who says Israel is an apartheid state, just as Amnesty International has claimed. You’ve visited Israel and you’ve read my book, which is why you wrote to me, but you feel that since you don’t live here you can’t know for sure that your friend isn’t right.

In the book I included the charge of apartheid among the ways that Israel is accused of being the worst place in the world. It’s nothing new, as you know, for Jews to be maligned like this. At different times in history we were considered responsible for deicide, plagues and all the evils of the world. Now the Jewish state, where more Jews live than in any other country, is perceived as the world’s worst place. The United Nations, much more influential than Amnesty International, treats Israel this way. Every year the UN censures Israel far more than any other country.

There’s a very detailed and accurate analysis by NGO Monitor that explains all that is false in the Amnesty International report. One of the most striking observations of their analysis is that Amnesty International chose not to compare Israel in any way to apartheid South Africa. Yet, the term apartheid has only been used to describe what life was like in that one country. Amnesty International simply applies the label without having to acknowledge that there is no comparison possible.

In fact, people who lived under apartheid in South Africa are outraged that apartheid is trivialized by mislabeling Israel in this way. The terms Amnesty International used such as apartheid and occupation were ways of denigrating Israel without having to provide evidence. In fact, since Jimmy Carter published his book, Peace, Not Apartheid and since apartheid weeks began on campuses in the US, UK, Canada, and EU, apartheid has been the favored accusation against Israel. It’s the current worst thing in the world, the modern version of considering Jews to be the murderers of Jesus, the cause of the black plague, or responsible for all the evils afflicting Germany during the time of the Holocaust.

But, what can you say to your friend? Telling her about the Israel you experienced when you visited here probably won’t help. She may already know that Israel is actually the only country in the Middle East where Jews, Muslims, Druze and Christians are living together with full rights and freedom, where all professions and buying property are open to any citizen. She’s likely aware that members of all these groups serve in the Knesset and that everyone can freely practice their religion or not practice any religion. Why would Israel be rated the ninth happiest country in the world, and why would Arab Israelis report such high degrees of life satisfaction and belonging if it were an apartheid country?

I’ll take a guess that when your friend talks about Israel she is simultaneously talking about Palestine, and that she is really referring to all the area “from the river to the sea.” I’m sure you’ve heard the anti-Israel slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Have you heard the newer slogan? “We don’t want two states; we want all of it.” This one is not as catchy as the first, but it is less ambiguous.

The accusation of apartheid requires pretending that Gaza, which is controlled by the Palestinian government of Hamas, and the Palestinian territories that are under the control of the Palestinian Authority, are actually controlled by Israel. 

But, no Jews live in or can visit Gaza. No Israelis live in or can visit Area A of the Palestinian territories, where all the Palestinian towns in Judea and Samaria (also called the West Bank) are located. The other areas are Area B, which is under full Palestinian civil authority and militarily managed jointly by Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and Area C where there are Jewish towns managed by Israel.

These three areas were set up during the Oslo Accords in order to lead to a full Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank. But, the requirement for an end to terror was not kept. And although many Israelis still hope that there will be a time when Palestinian leadership will choose to have a peaceful country next to Israel, many are not hopeful that this will happen any time soon. The Hamas government of Gaza is very clear that they will never accept the Jewish state next door.

I think you will need to ask your friend whether or not she is okay with the existence of the Jewish-majority State of Israel. Sadly, you may find that she is not.

Originally published in Jpost.

The post Is Israel an apartheid country? first appeared on Cherryl Smith.

The two-state solution is a popular mantra of world leaders including the current US and Canadian administrations as well as the Chinese government and the United Nations. It is  touted by American Jewish organizations as the answer to The Conflict. Indeed, the modern world is divided into nation-states; a peaceful two states, one Palestinian and the other Jewish, ought to be an attainable goal. Yet, a majority of people who actually live in the areas of the imagined two states have no such illusions.

Recent reliable polling of Palestinians living in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) found that 60% oppose two states and agree with Hamas that Israel has no right to exist. 74% of those polled believe that Hamas was “victorious” in the 11-day war with Israel last May and consider “Hamas’s performance/position positive.” Only 11% support Fatah over Hamas. In journalist Khaled Abu Toemeh’s analysis, “The results of the survey are clear. Many Palestinians have been so successfully radicalized by their leaders that they want to see Israel removed from the face of the earth.”

That survey will not surprise a majority of Israelis who are well aware that every proposed two-state solution has been rejected by Arab and Palestinian leaders. From the first two-state plans accepted by Jews but not by Arabs in 1937 (Peel Commission) and 1947 (United Nations), through the demand by the five Arab countries who had tried to eliminate the new state of Israel (1948-1949) that no permanent borders be set, to the declaration by the seven countries Israel defeated in the Six Day war (1967) promising “no peace with Israel; no recognition of Israel; no negotiations with Israel,” truly, Israelis have had peace only as a pause between attacks.

Peace talks themselves have given way to violence.  The hopeful peace process brokered by Bill Clinton in 2000 ended with no counter offer from Yasser Arafat and with the start of the Second Intifada.

Attempting to move toward two states unilaterally has also resulted in increased attacks on Israelis. The complete withdrawal of Israel from Gaza in 2005, a move forced on the nearly 9,000 Jews living there but supported by a majority of Israelis at the time, led to the takeover of Gaza by Hamas. The rocket attacks on Israeli civilians that were expected to stop after the Gaza disengagement instead escalated. This past May alone, over 4000 rockets able to reach every part of Israel were fired by Hamas at Israeli civilians.

A Rand Corporation study conducted this year found that 60% of Israelis “across the political spectrum” find the status quo “preferable to the risk of other alternatives.” An analysis of several other recent polls is titled “Americans Favor a Two-State Solution More than Israelis and Palestinians Do.”

There are a number of reasons why this is the case. One is that both Israelis and Palestinians know that the Palestinian Authority does not have authority to make a peace agreement even if it were to want one. Hamas is far stronger and declares openly that its goal is the complete end to Israel, a goal for which it has plenty of support from Iran, Syria, and other terrorist led countries.

Another is that when Israelis report that they prefer the status quo, they are speaking from their lived experience. Addressing EU Foreign Ministers a few weeks ago, Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said “It is no secret that I support a two-state solution…However, there is one thing we all need to remember. If there is eventually a Palestinian state, it must be a peace-loving democracy. We cannot be asked to take part in the building of another threat to our lives.”

Although Israel is a Western democracy, it is located in the Middle East, with Hamas on one border, Hezbollah and the Asad regime on another, and the biggest terror funder, Iran, boasting of its plans for destroying Israel. The Israeli frame of reference necessarily differs from an American, Canadian, or European one in spite of shared values.

However, there is a recent, hopeful trend, one that suggests the status quo rather than pushing for an as yet impossible two-state solution may actually facilitate regional peace.  When four Middle Eastern countries that have never had connection to Israel before signed on to normalize trade, travel, peace and cooperation with the Jewish state, they demonstrated that the goals of terrorists will not deter them and do not interest them. It is likely that other countries will follow suit. As the Abraham Accords continue and more countries join in, they may provide support for an authentic normalization between Israelis and Palestinians.

Originally published in The Times of Israel

The post The Current Two-State Illusion first appeared on Cherryl Smith.

It often feels impossible to talk to colleagues, fellow students, neighbors, and even friends and relatives whose trusted news sites distort and malign Israel, or who are influenced by the commonplace yet thoroughly bizarre alignment of progressive, campus social justice with the repressive, totalitarian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). Even when we have the facts, it doesn’t seem to matter.

The recent Hamas war on Israelis revealed how high the stakes are for Jews outside Israel. The 500% percent uptick in antisemitic acts in Britain, the 251 hate crimes against Jews in the US in less than three weeks, the verbal and physical attacks on Jews in Canada, and the underlying assumption of so many news stories that Israeli self-defense is indefensible, if nothing else, have given the lie to “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.” When thugs burst into restaurants to assault Jews; or chase Jews through the streets to beat them up; when synagogues and Jewish businesses are vandalized with anti-Israel graffiti; or Jews are harassed by keffiyeh-clad marchers shouting threats and obscenities from loudspeakers in Jewish neighborhoods; when police protection at Jewish schools and community centers is routinely needed, we’re far outside the realm of political discourse. Indeed, this has been true for a long time.

Jews, who have been at the forefront of every social justice movement in America, who are overwhelmingly open-minded, well-educated, and humanitarian, lose social standing if they stand up for fellow Jews, for their relatives in Israel, or for themselves. University students attest to this situation most dramatically. See here and here and the Amcha Initiative that has been tracking antisemitic activity on college campuses since 2015.

So, while a course in krav maga and good security at Jewish sites are needed, we also need a strategy for a verbal response. There may be some settings in which dialogue is possible but more urgently we need ways simply not to be silenced.

Although you’ll hear outrageous lies about Israel, you’ll rarely be given space to unpack the falsehoods and, while history and current events are complex and fascinating, the accusations you’re most likely to hear about Israel are reductionist ones.  These slanders show up repeatedly. They coalesce into soundbites for shouting through a megaphone or for framing an academic article.

It’s time for our own, and truthful, soundbites.

Here’s my try at one-liners addressing familiar accusations against Israel. Each is followed by a few lines of simple explanatory statements for the occasions when there’s space to say more. And of course, there is much more to say. Although I’ve included the specific accusation that prompts each soundbite, notes that those accusations against Israel are often leveled at random, regardless of specific events.

#1   Hamas controls Gaza 100%

No Jews are allowed in Gaza. No Jews have lived there since 2005. Hamas is a terror organization that rules the people who live in Gaza. They force children to be soldiers. They shoot their own people who don’t follow their rules. Over one hundred children were killed while working to build Hamas terror tunnels. Hamas hides their weapons in schools and mosques and fires rockets at Israeli civilians. Many Palestinians are killed by Hamas rockets that land inside Gaza. Although it is Hamas that controls Gaza, you will hear “Free Gaza” as if Israel rather than Hamas is in charge there.

#2   Hamas fires rockets at Israel to kill Jews.

Hamas leaders say clearly in their speeches and in their charter that their goal is to rid the world of Jews. Israel tries to protect its citizens and tries to respond to attacks by targeting terrorist leaders and their weapons. The population of Palestinians and Arab Israelis has grown exponentially since 1948 and yet Israel is accused of committing “genocide.”

#3   All Hamas rockets are aimed at civilians.

It is a war crime to attack civilians. It is also a war crime to launch rockets from civilian neighborhoods. It’s a war crime to use children as soldiers. Terrorist organizations are ok with committing war crimes. And yet the Israeli Defense Forces, a citizen army defending its population, is accused of war crimes.

#4   The Iron Dome saves lives.

The Iron Dome does not attack; it is a shield. It intercepts an incoming rocket before it can land. Shrapnel can still fall and cause injury and about 10% of the time the Iron Dome is too late to stop the rocket. The Iron Dome is a nonviolent way to respond to the rockets, all of which are aimed at Israeli civilians: Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Druze are killed by Hamas rockets. But you will hear that the Iron Dome is an “unfair advantage.”

#5   The IDF takes extreme measures not to harm civilians.

Israel uses precision calculations to target Hamas leaders and their weapon sites. Because Hamas stores weapons in civilian areas, the IDF warns residents with text messages, knocks on rooftops, loudspeakers, and phone calls so that people can leave the area if they may be in harm’s way. Richard Kemp, commander of the British forces in Afghanistan, considers the IDF to be the most moral army in the history of warfare. But Israel is accused of using “disproportionate” force.

#6   Israel is a 100% legal, democratic, sovereign nation.

About 100 of the world’s countries are newer than Israel. The existence of none of these countries is questioned.  The Jewish State was established in the way that many other Middle Eastern countries were established. But it’s the only one accused of being “colonialist.”

#7   Jews are an ethnic group.

Jews have been scattered to all parts of the world over the centuries. Skin color is not relevant to being Jewish as Jews are every skin tone. They are culturally, religiously, and genetically a distinct ethnic group. They have been persecuted for their difference, for not being white, or for not being Christian or Muslim. In spite of this reality, they are being called “white oppressors.”

#8   Jews are indigenous to Israel.

By every measure of what it means to be indigenous, Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel. Jews were sovereign in the land of Israel in ancient times and continued to live there throughout the centuries. Although many others held sovereignty for various periods of time, only the Jews made Jerusalem their capital. The archaeological, written, and historical record and the Jewish religious traditions maintained by Jews wherever they were living, including those who never left the Middle East, all tie them to the land of Israel. Yet they are called “European.”

#9   All Israelis have the same rights.

Israel is a pluralistic, free, and democratic country. It is a multicultural country with a Jewish majority, the only Jewish majority country in the world. It has a free press, religious freedom, and a democratic government.  Yet Israel is bizarrely accused of “apartheid.”

#10   Palestinian leaders don’t want a two-state solution.

Arab and more recently Palestinian leaders have repeatedly rejected the opportunity for a Palestinian (or additional Arab) state. This is because they do not agree to the existence of one Jewish majority state. They want the whole area for a 23rd Arab majority state. That’s the meaning of “from the river to the sea.”

Admittedly, we’re at a rhetorical disadvantage. Anti-Zionist soundbites are well-established and much catchier than the Zionist ones I’ve suggested here. More importantly, the accusations to which we need to respond are treated as common knowledge and are repeated in classrooms and on news sites.

Whether online or in person, we’re unlikely to convince the accusers.  But we will be heard by many lurkers or passersby. The middle-of-the-roaders, or those afraid of being canceled, and others who know they’re being lied to by the media and on campus may listen. As a result, some who are now silent may begin to feel they too can speak out. And they’re the ones who most need to be reached.

Originally published in The Times of Israel

The post This is the time for Zionist soundbites first appeared on Cherryl Smith.