Dear California Secretary of Education Thomas,

The “UC Intifada” at UCI – is raging and Chancellor Drake and the University seem unable or unwilling to act in an effective way to protect the best interests of the student body, and keep intimidation, racism, and anti-Semitism off campus.

I have been the campus rabbi at UCI for almost 5 years, under the auspices of an independent Jewish campus ministry. I also serve as the only Rabbi of the UCI Interfaith Center. My concerns are based on long-term, grassroots involvement, which has brought me into contact with thousands of UCI students – Jewish and Gentile.

It is a well established, and sadly, an accepted part of student life at UCI, that Israel and Jews are being singled out, vilified, and targeted for intimidation. It is the same nightmare of previous year’s except much worse and much longer. (more…)

If I’ve tired of discussing Israel, it’s because I can’t seem to write a post I haven’t already written. When I saw Leonard Fein’s excellent article in Dissent explaining what it means to be a liberal Zionist, I was struck by not only the article’s objective truth, but its tragic hopelessless. If you think Israel as a Jewish state is a good thing, even if your ideal Jewish state would be downright communist, you have no place on the left. I’ve said it before, and I appear to be saying it again. Does this make the Dissent crowd Republicans? Conservatives? No, not necessarily. But it’s telling that when do-gooder Nicholas Kristof defines the bad and good Israelis (a nuanced approach), he opposes those who fight for Jews, albeit from the right, and those concerned with the Palestinians, needless to say from the left. It is inconceivable by a mainstream or marginal Western (and I do not include Israel as Western) liberal standard that a good Jewish liberal might be interested in doing good for Jews, or for Jewish and non-Jewish Israelis alike. If you are a Jewish Israeli advocating for gay rights, redistribution of wealth, and less stringent marriage and conversion laws, that is, causes that are not specifically about the Palestinians, you are invisible as far as the left anywhere but Israel is concerned.

Cross posted from What Would Phoebe Do?

I was reading about the selection of Israel as guest of honor at this spring’s International Book Fair in Turin and how that got all the usual suspects pissed off, when I chanced upon a quote from a flier. The flier in question was distributed by a small group of protesters associated with a local pro-Palestinian group who stormed the book fair offices in Turin, demanding that the invitation to Israel be rescinded. The flier stated that “We are appalled to see the world of culture take the side of those who methodically operate to annihilate Palestine and the Palestinians…”

Methodical annihilation of Palestine and the Palestinians, eh? I tried to understand how this made sense given the recent news regarding Palestinian population numbers. It seems that while this methodical annihilation was taking place, the Palestinian population in the West Bank, Gaza and Arab East Jerusalem grew by about 30 percent in the last decade, an increase of about 1 million people, according to a recent population survey.

This can only mean one thing. The Zionists are really, really, REALLY bad at Genocide. I mean, they totally suck! Hitler needed what? Less than 5 years to kill 6 million Jews (assuming you believe that of course)? Even the Rwandan Genocide was able to kill as many as 1 million people in under 100 days – and that was with spears and machetes and stuff! And the Zionist entity? Significant population growth despite active Genocide? Sheesh. Go figure…