Category: Published

Originally published in Townhall

On Tuesday, the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law publicly demanded the University of Massachusetts address an antisemitic incident that the university has tried to keep under wraps since June. Per the Brandeis Center, a reporter was “accosted, spat at, shoved and called a Nazi and a pig solely based upon his perceived identity as a Zionist.” The culprits were local affiliates of a group familiar to anyone studying antisemitism on campus: Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

Not long ago, idealistic young students gathered at college to promote human rights causes around the world. Fighting for truth and justice, they called international attention to Apartheid in South Africa, and genocide in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur. No more.

It is not as if the world has less need for their voices. According to Freedom House, home of an annual global survey of political rights and civil liberties, 2020 was the fifteenth consecutive year of decline. Yet during that same period, virtually all of the campus bumper stickers, placards, digital campaigns, and de-platforming protests fixated upon one imagined culprit: Israel.

The first-ever International Religious Freedom (IRF) Summit convened this past summer in Washington, DC. Government officials and activists from around the globe gathered to highlight and address repression and persecution.

They studied Nigeria‘s ongoing war against Christians, with over 50,000 murderedover the past two decades. They reviewed the ISIS-led massacre of Yazidis and Christians in Northern Iraq, where well over one million Christians have been slaughtered or ethnically cleansed since 2003, such that only 250,000 remain. Meanwhile, 3,000 Yazidis remain missing, believed to be enslaved by Islamist captors. And, of course, they highlighted China’s ruthless occupation of Tibet, Southern Mongolia, and East Turkestan—where minority Uygher Muslims by the millions are herded into concentration camps for “re-education.”

With all eyes upon ongoing repression, forced labor, sexual violence and genocide, the IRF Summit featured no plenary address, breakout session or even resource table regarding the purported plight of Palestinians.

How could it be otherwise? Freedom House reports that Israel is the only free country in that part of the world. Arabs in Israel and its territories enjoy longer lifespans, superior healthcare, greater access to higher education, and dramatically higher respect for their human rights and personal dignity. Israel is the only Middle Eastern country with both Jews and Arabs in its government, and the only one where Ahmadiyya Muslims practice without persecution.

Thus going onto a college campus is akin to stepping through the looking glass into an inverted reality, where words like “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid” mean no more than the verses of Jabberwocky. America’s future leaders are being coopted into an antisemitic campaign thinly disguised as a human rights movement.

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) was founded at University of California, Berkeley, where Israel is less respected than ISIS and Hamas. It celebrates those who commit antisemitic atrocities, such as Dalal Mughrabi, who murdered 38 civilians, including 13 children, on a bus in 1978, and Rasmeah Odeh, who orchestrated terror bombings resulting in the murder of a pair of college students. One searches in vain for an honoree at any of SJP’s over 200 campus chapters who is not a murderer, terrorist, or a promoter of antisemitic tropes.

The organization’s vision of “peace” is that of Iran, Hamas, and Hizbollah: a Middle East rendered Judenrein—”free” of Jews. Yet despite the obvious, this hate group is commonly granted college recognition and funding.

As it diverts attention from genuine atrocities, SJP incites students to commit their own. At the University of California, Davis, SJP pushed an unconstitutional “divestment” from Israel through the Student Senate in 2014, shouting “Allahu Akhbar!“ at Jewish students and their allies. Two separate Jewish organizations at UC Davis were defaced with swastikas and graffiti calling to “grout out the Jews” in succeeding days.

In 2018, SJP members committed vandalism and physical assault against Jewish students at New York University. Outrageously, the university conferred the President’s Service Award upon the organization a year later; a Jewish campus leader correctly likened this to giving a humanitarian honor to the Ku Klux Klan. The university later reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Education after having “mishandled“ incidents of antisemitism.

In 2020, the three highest elected officers of the University of Southern California’s Undergraduate Student Government were intimidated into resigning by ruthless antisemitic attacks and online harassment incited by the local SJP. Two of the three were explicitly targeted for their affiliation with Hillel International, a non-partisan Jewish student organization. USC’s President eventually condemned the outrageous behavior, but it was too little, too late. And these are merely a sampling, documenting the direct connection between SJP’s “Anti-Israel” activism and overt antisemitism.

The fall semester is well underway. But there are no “die-ins” for Nigeria’s Christians, no mock Uygher concentration camps, no “Sharia Apartheid Week” for the Islamic world’s embattled minorities—including American allies and Christians endangered by Afghanistan’s new rulers. Rather, SJP is planning the 2022 installment of “Israel Apartheid Week,” agitprop protests supporting freedom for suicide bombers that routinely and unsurprisingly descend into antisemitic harassment and violence.

Make no mistake: the myopic focus on Israel engendered by SJP is not merely antisemitic. It delights tyrants and emboldens perpetrators of human rights abuses, diverting attention from their crimes as their victims suffer and die in what should be plain sight. Too few on American campuses possess the will—or the moral clarity—to notice or even care.

America desperately needs future leaders who will champion universal human rights and call out actual human rights abuses, unperturbed by antisemitic distractions. We could begin by quelling SJP’s Jew-hatred now poisoning their minds.

Photo Credit: Ariel Hayat, Flickr

Originally published in Fox News

And criticism of Soros is legitimate.

Soros and his Open Societies Foundations have been working to elect left-wing district attorneys whose focus on “criminal justice reform” has resulted in the failure to prosecute even violent offenders, targeting of police, and unsafe streets for millions of Americans. In 2020, he started the Open Society University Network to “transform” higher education by integrating “civic engagement,” meaning left-wing indoctrination, into academics.

Regarding children’s schooling, a Soros priority for decades, the Open Society Foundations are backing the “1619 Freedom School,” started by Nikole Hannah-Jones, the New York Times journalist responsible for the “1619 Project” that slanders the United States as founded to promote racism and slavery, rather than freedom.

Not incidentally, the foregoing are also not the worst of Soros’ activities.

Open Society funds groups like the Arab American Institute, which condemned Israel for protecting civilians by placing barriers in the way of suicide bombers; Ilam, a propaganda network blaming Israel for Arab terrorism; Gisha, which aims to give terrorists from Hamas-run Gaza free rein to enter Israel; and the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), which lobbies on behalf of the murderous, theocratic Iranian regime.

NGO-Monitor, a respected research institute promoting transparency and human rights, concluded in a 2013 report that Soros-funded groups exacerbate tensions throughout the Middle East, while pretending to promote peace.

These Soros investments make life less safe for everyone, especially for Jews. Criticizing him for these reasons is not anti-Semitic. In fact, it is absolutely fair and right and just.

In the Book of Isaiah [5:20] we read, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” In other words, call it like it is.

Unfortunately, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) sometimes doesn’t do that. The ADL, founded to combat anti-Semitism a century ago, was taken over in 2015 by CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, an ex-Obama appointee with no background in Judaism or Jewish causes, much less in fighting anti-Jewish hatred. It released a report in 2018 dismissing criticism of Soros’ targeted investments in left-wing causes as “conspiracy theories” spread “in far-right circles.”

Given that he previously directed a program funded by Soros, it is unsurprising, though distressing, that Greenblatt would leverage the ADL’s credibility to protect his former patron. But if criticizing wealthy Jews for funding political causes is anti-Semitic, why did the ADL not defend the late Sheldon Adelson, a wealthy supporter of conservative causes, with equal vigor?

Hatred of Jews is too real and too dangerous to be utilized as a partisan cudgel. It makes the charge of anti-Semitism more likely to be dismissed on the occasions when the danger is, in fact, real.

Fighting anti-Semitism is obviously a Jewish value, but it is also an American value. As George Washington wrote in his letter to the Jews of Newport in 1790, the government of the United States “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

When people use their wealth to promote partisan causes, that is certainly their right. Similarly, it is not illegitimate, much less anti-Semitic, to criticize them and the organizations they back. In fact, when their efforts result in less civility, increased tension and danger to our very lives, this condemnation is an expression of both Jewish and American values.

Originally published in Townhall

By now, most public figures have commented on the tragic situation in Afghanistan, and the members of “the Squad” are no exception. But what is most notable about their statements is what is left unsaid. These purported advocates for Muslims, women, and People of Color are displaying no concern for the Afghan people as living, breathing human beings. Instead, they are exploiting a humanitarian crisis to further their partisan agenda.

The Squad displays concern for those few Afghans able to reach the United States, 7,400 miles from home, to the near-total exclusion of the 38 million Afghans in Afghanistan. In other words, its members care less about Afghans than their own “open borders” agenda, which falsely portrays America as racist and lacking empathy. Every member of the Squad is demanding entry of Afghan refugees into the United States before considering the fate of those left behind with the maniacal Taliban, which despises notions of equality and individual liberty.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) tweeted that “the United States has a singular responsibility in extending safe refuge to the Afghan people.” She elaborated, “We must waste no time or expense in helping refugees safely & swiftly leave Afghanistan. We must immediately welcome them to the U.S. & provide real support.”

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) echoed, “The US—and the rest of the international coalition—must provide shelter to *all* fleeing the Taliban,” and “Let’s start by opening our country to shelter refugees fleeing the consequences of our actions.”

Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) said, “we must welcome many, many more refugees as quickly as possible.”

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) added that “we should reassess the humanity and viability of the White House’s limit on refugee arrivals—and exceed that limit if necessary.”

And Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) called for the US “to provide refuge for the huddled masses yearning to breathe free in Afghanistan and around the world.”

Rep. Ayanna Pressley’s tweet, while proclaiming humanitarian concern, summarized the blindness of the Squad’s approach. She wrote, “The U.S. should do everything in our power to safely evacuate advocates, refugees, and journalists alongside U.S. personnel and allies. Each person in harms [sic] way matters deeply.” Her only suggestion was that refugees be evacuated, mentioning no destination other than the United States. Her obvious and egregious failing is to imagine that the tens of millions of Afghans left under Taliban rule are not in harm’s way.

For those few who did not make individual statements, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) spoke on behalf of the full Congressional Progressive Caucus. She demanded, first and foremost, that “The United States must ensure refugee processing moves forward without bureaucratic delay.” Only then did she add a call for “humanitarian aid to support civilians who fled to Kabul and provincial capitals” and “urge” Biden to “to continue engaging diplomatically with the Taliban.”

It is astounding that not one member of the Squad emphasized those with U.S. citizenship or Special Immigrant Visas, given to those individuals who helped the United States, and whose lives, thus, are particularly at risk. They said nothing, in fact, about the need for the United States to maintain some degree of presence in Afghanistan until people at risk are evacuated.

Rep. Omar, to her credit, is the exception in that regard. She said that “we must hold the airport in Kabul and lead a multinational airlift operation” in order to “evacuate every Afghan citizen who is fleeing for their lives.” But she said that while praising “the largest evacuation in US history,” failing to note that the need for such a large and rapid evacuation was the direct result of American malfeasance, mendacity, and abandonment, and that it was certain to leave tens of millions behind under Taliban oppression.

Rep. Omar is apparently unaware that the United States abandoned large numbers of Americans and Afghans. She claimed instead that the airlift has gone off “without hostages or causalities [sic].” She should try explaining this to Americans attacked and driven off trying to reach the airport, now in fear for their lives—much less the millions of Afghan women left begging to be freed. If they are not hostages, it is only because the United States has abandoned them entirely.

The Squad seems to display no interest in the oppression of Muslims, or anyone else, unless the United States—or Israel—can be blamed. America’s true failure here was deserting Afghans to live under totalitarian repression, rather than continuing to protect their natural and civil rights.

The Squad must distract our attention from that simple truth, because it contradicts their ongoing demonization of the militaries and law enforcement of first-world democracies. During what AOC described as “20 years of war and occupation,” and Bowman called “the most recent example of American interventionism gone wrong,” Afghans voted for their leaders for the first time in history. Women were able to go to school, gain advanced degrees, and run businesses. Now those women unable to flee for their lives are more likely to be taken as Taliban sex slaves than to enjoy the human rights and civil liberties that they had under U.S. military control.

It took years of American involvement in Germany, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, El Salvador, and elsewhere for democracy to flourish. But the freedoms and opportunities granted to the citizens of those nations were immediate and extensive. America’s greatest failure in Afghanistan was abandoning 38 million Afghans to the Taliban. The Squad, whose narrative depends upon depicting the U.S. military as evil occupiers, would prefer that you not notice.

Rabbi Yaakov Menken is managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values.

Photo Credit: Brad Sigal, Flickr

Originally published in Jewish News Syndicate

America has long been a welcoming home for minority religious groups, observant Jews being a notable example. In addition to synagogues, day schools and yeshivahs, growing demand is such that most sizable Jewish communities support at least one kosher grocery store with larger ones having multiple supermarkets carrying exclusively kosher foods.

Shoppers will find baked goods, produce, soda and so on, as they would in a Kroger or Publix supermarket, or Whole Foods Market, except that all items are kosher. But here’s what they will no longer find: Ben & Jerry’s. In response to the company’s announcement last month that selling ice-cream to Jews in Judea is “inconsistent” with its “values,” there isn’t a kosher supermarket or grocery store in the country willing to carry its products.

The Orthodox community clearly does not regard this corporate decision as a mere political matter. Few would go out of their way to boycott ice-cream if this were, in fact, solely about a geopolitical conflict, let alone one occurring thousands of miles away. What the Orthodox community instead perceives, rightly so, is a manifestation of the millennia-old hatred that we now term anti-Semitism.

Revealingly, a plethora of increasingly influential left-wing Jewish organizations disagree. The views of Moriah Richman, who is part of the national communications team for J Street U, are emblematic. She claims that Ben & Jerry’s actions are “principled and commendable,” a brave stand to combat “the systemic injustice of occupation.”

J Street is far from alone in adopting a stance foreign to that of the Orthodox community. Dozens of proudly progressive Jewish groups signed a letter claiming that AIPAC falsely accused Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) of supporting hate. The more than 1,500 observant rabbis of Coalition for Jewish Values, for which I serve as managing director, attest that there was nothing false whatsoever about AIPAC’s “accusation.”

How, then, do we explain this split in the Jewish community? Why do self-proclaimed “progressive” Jews defend Ben & Jerry’s policy and Omar’s rhetoric when practically all observant Jewish Americans, like the vast majority of Israelis, consider them anti-Semitic?

The difference between the Orthodox community and the secularist (and increasingly anti-Zionist) Jewish left can be summed up in one word: education—meaning, the Jewish sort. What the leaders and members of groups like J Street, IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace share in common is an unwillingness to seriously engage with Jewish history, Jewish ideas and Jewish texts. In short, they have little connection to anything authentically Jewish.

No one imagines that a person can gain expertise in, for example, medicine, mathematics or literature by accident of birth. Yet these progressive groups lay claim to Jewish wisdom—and, specifically, “Jewish morality”—simply because many of their members were born to Jewish parents. This is, in essence, a racialist appeal for credibility.

“Anti-Semitism” is a German euphemism for a much, much older form of hatred. In every generation, it has found a new, socially acceptable facade. To combat it honestly and effectively, one must be educated in its underlying signs and symptoms. For thousands of years, observant rabbis have educated themselves to pierce the veil and identify the hate festering beneath. No one is born with this knowledge or the ability that attends it.

Here, however, is a brief primer: Anti-Semitism has always begun from the false belief in a vast Jewish conspiracy to steal, defraud and harm. The same bigoted myth of Jewish control of banks found in the fabricated The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Hitler’s Mein Kampf is at the core of accusations that Jews are “occupiers” for moving back into the vicinity of the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, and the Old City of Jerusalem where King Solomon built the Temple, after they were ethnically cleansed from these holy sites by Arab mobs and the Jordanian army in the early 20th century. Anti-Semitism today involves, as it always has, a hateful inversion of reality.

Since economics are at the root of the imagined crimes of Jews, they provide the first “reprisal” as well. This is why Jews were herded into ghettos and prohibited from owning property outside them during the Middle Ages. It is also why the first Nazi edict, in 1932, was a boycott of Jewish businesses, which the Arab League then adopted as a boycott of Palestinian goods in 1945. (In 1945, “Palestinians” referred exclusively to Jews.)

Proponents of the anti-Semitic Ben & Jerry’s boycott, subsumed under the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” movement, believe that reprising this ancient animus and Nazi tactic will eventually force Israel to abandon its defensive posture. Omar Barghouti, the founder of BDS, has declared that “no Palestinian … will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.” BDS’s goal is to deny Jews self-determination. As a result, BDS, contrary to its stated purpose, drives Israel away from the negotiating table not only because it demands Jews compromise their safety and the safety of their children, but because it is redolent with Jew-hatred.

In other words, none of this is complicated, but it requires adequate grounding in the nature of anti-Semitism and the way that it mutates to hide in plain sight.

Those without a substantive Jewish education cannot understand this. Nor can they speak for Jewish morality; their words are liable to do more harm than good. As the late Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said, “Most anti-Semites do not think of themselves as anti-Semites.” This is all the more true when the anti-Semites are of Jewish ancestry.

Rabbi Yaakov Menken is managing director of Coalition for Jewish Values.

Photo Credit: Bundesarchiv
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en

Originally published in Washington Examiner

Since the Anti-Defamation League’s founding in 1913, its declared mission has been “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people.” Thus, many were concerned when Jonathan Greenblatt took over as CEO of the esteemed organization in 2015: While his resume was long on efforts for social good, including a stint in former President Barack Obama’s Office of Social Innovation, it conspicuously lacked positions combating antisemitism or serving a Jewish cause. Most of all, they worried that Greenblatt would fail to check his well-established liberal political leanings at the door of the nonpartisan organization and, in turn, inadequately address the new wave of Jew-hatred growing on the Left.

It took little time for Greenblatt to prove his skeptics correct; it took much longer for the crisis to reach the point at which his silence was no longer tenable. Writing in Newsweek earlier this month, Greenblatt finally conceded what should have been among his first priorities, saying that it’s “time to admit” that the Left has an antisemitism problem. His real admission was that he had been reluctant, and thus inexcusably tardy, to recognize what was already obvious to everyone not compromised by ideological blinders.

Under Greenblatt’s leadership, the ADL has grievously harmed its own image, employing a clear double standard on hate. Greenblatt, for example, recently used a gross distortion of Tucker Carlson’s remarks to demand that Fox News fire him. The attack seemed less focused upon any genuine bigotry on Carlson’s part than that he’s conservative — and popular to boot. By comparison, Greenblatt had no comment when a Michigan Democrat, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, echoing lies about Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and access to COVID-19 vaccines, called the world’s only Jewish state a “racist country.”

Greenblatt rushed to call for Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s removal from her committee assignments, repeating the false claim that she had referred to “Jewish space lasers.” Yet, he has never made any such demand regarding Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has dispensed classically antisemitic themes and tropes since at least 2012 and continues to do so in Congress. On the contrary, the ADL swiftly accepted Omar’s halfhearted apology for blatantly antisemitic remarks in 2019, and Greenblatt even lauded her “commitment to a more just world.” It is clear that party affiliation, rather than poisonous expression, has driven Greenblatt’s determination of whose rhetoric endangers Jews.

Only now, in 2021, does Greenblatt finally acknowledge that it is Omar’s bigoted speech, rather than Greene’s nonsensical meanderings, that directly feeds the “anti-Israel animus” that has led to attacks upon Jews on campus and in major cities. Let’s be clear: Omar espoused Jew-hatred in Congress from the day she was elected and has done so without consequence — and the ADL’s ideologically motivated paralysis has allowed this hate to fester, endangering Jews across America.

In his Newsweek op-ed, Greenblatt tacitly acknowledges that overlooking left-wing antisemitism has been a long-term failing. He described the tone of this year’s Chicago Dyke March, which included “queers for Palestine” flags featuring machine guns, as a sign of “dangerous” bias. Yet the same rally ejected marchers carrying Star of David flags four years ago, in 2017, and the ADL said nothing.

In his op-ed, Greenblatt condemns Minnesota Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum’s current false assertion that Israel is “bombing Gaza into oblivion.” Yet he was silent when she offered up a depiction of AIPAC’s “agenda” a bit over a year ago that, as the Coalition for Jewish Values immediately averred, was “antisemitic rhetoric cloaked in ‘Palestinian rights’ advocacy.”

The ADL has even spent its energies assailing clear allies of the Jewish people, including, but not limited to, the Zionist Organization of America, ACT! for America, and Proclaiming Justice to the Nations. It is not as if our enemies need the ADL’s help.

But now, after confessing that he failed to pursue his organization’s mission for years, Greenblatt offers no road map for rectifying the problems that he overlooked and allowed to incubate. Other CEOs have tendered their resignations for far less serious shortcomings.

Without a plan, there is no indication that Greenblatt’s admission will lead to true change at the ADL. Just last week, Ben and Jerry’s, a unit of Unilever — which does business in Northern Cyprus, China, and Crimea, among other locations of occupation, dispossession, and persecution — announced that it would boycott Jews who returned after 1967 to lands from which they were ethnically cleansed at gunpoint in 1948. For this blatantly antisemitic action, every kosher supermarket in the country immediately pulled Ben and Jerry’s ice cream from its freezers, while the ADL said merely that it was “disappointed” before turning to the burning question of “gender-affirming” surgery in Arkansas. How is the ADL going to halt “defamation of the Jewish people” if it does less to combat it than a grocery store?

The ADL must begin issuing statements and making demands that are both focused upon antisemitism and devoid of political bias. For example, having already demanded that Greene be removed from her committee assignments for mostly incoherent ramblings, the ADL must join our call, now signed by more than 300 traditional, observant rabbis, that Omar face at least the same consequence for consistent demonstrations of Jew-hatred.

Left-wing antisemitism has gone unchallenged for too long and is spreading too quickly for Greenblatt not to pair his changed attitude with a change of direction at the ADL. Let us all hope he and the ADL have sufficient courage.

Rabbi Yaakov Menken is the managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values.

As published in Newsweek

The Supreme Court has the chance this month to protect religious freedom, religious minorities and foster families. In Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, the Court will determine whether Catholic Social Services (CSS) will be permitted to resume providing foster care services, as it did for more than 200 years.

The city of Philadelphia shuttered CSS because, hypothetically, a same-sex couple could approach CSS for a “home study” (an intimate, detailed family evaluation) that the agency could not complete in a way that both affirms same-sex marriage and remains consistent with its Catholic beliefs. CSS stated that it would help such couples find a different agency (there are dozens across the city) that could complete the “home study,” and noted that no same-sex couple has ever approached it. Yet the city refused all compromise.

Although the Fulton case specifically involves the Catholic Church, freedom of religious practice for all is at stake. If Philadelphia gets its way, the Court will have handed governments a legal tool to use against minority religious communities.

Some argue that, on the contrary, a decision favoring CSS is more likely to enable discrimination against religious minorities. This claim rests upon the same illogical—and profoundly dangerous—distortion activists use to claim anti-LGBT discrimination: misrepresenting freedom of association and pursuit of a religious mission as a “license to discriminate.”

Another agency, South Carolina’s Miracle Hill Ministries, has become a national focal point due to its religious limitations. Like CSS, Miracle Hill is a religious ministry, committed to serving foster children in accordance with its beliefs. But unlike CSS, Miracle Hill makes evangelism part of its mission, and requires those who wish to provide services under its auspices to sign a statement affirming its doctrine.

Two things are immediately obvious: first, the aforementioned requirement entirely precludes, for instance, a Jewish family from providing services through Miracle Hill; second, this is in no way discriminatory. Miracle Hill does not prevent Jews—or anyone else—from serving as foster parents. Nor does it impinge upon anyone else’s religious expression. The public square is big enough for everyone.

Ignoring this reality, some tarnish Miracle Hill (and separately, CSS) as engaging in “government-funded discrimination.” This is both wrong and misleading. No government funds are provided to Miracle Hill for administration, advertising, recruitment or evaluation of potential foster care families. CSS receives no payment for carrying out home studies. Private agencies and families receive partial reimbursement for the costs of caring for each individual child successfully placed, while relieving government of providing the same service at far greater taxpayer expense.

As all children requiring foster care go through state-operated social service departments, what is at stake for religious foster agencies is their very ability to participate in public life. There is no credible argument that eliminating faith-based foster and adoption agencies expands availability of loving homes for children. On the contrary, eliminating those agencies means eliminating their public outreach, and removes from the adoption pool any families that would choose to work with those agencies because of their shared religious creed. Given the severe shortage of foster care homes for needy children, closing these agencies causes clear and demonstrable harm.

For the Jewish community, foster care and adoption are deeply connected with our most basic beliefs. We regard it as a religious obligation to place Jewish children in Jewish homes, where they will receive a Jewish education and participate in our observances. Were it to be deemed “discriminatory” for Miracle Hill to limit its providers to those who share its beliefs—or for CSS to step aside and allow other agencies to perform home studies for same-sex couples—our own religious obligation to place a Jewish child with a Jewish family could likewise be infringed.

This threat to religious freedom has real implications for children. Because Philadelphia refuses to work with CSS, children in need of foster care are being kept in institutional settings, rather than being placed with loving foster parents. Both the city and LGBTQ activists claim that this flagrantly inhumane outcome is good for society.

Furthermore, we see a clear and compelling pattern of harassment. Philadelphia prohibits CSS from operating due to what the city admits is an entirely hypothetical concern. Miracle Hill’s threat comes from a woman whose own religious authorities say that she could affirm its doctrine—but who refuses to do so, simply to give lawyers at Americans United for Separation of Church and State a case to prosecute. And in other cases across the country, from small businesses to major universities, institutions which have served the public for decades if not centuries are being told to choose between abandoning religious principle, refusing funding available to all others, or closing down outright.

The idea that minority religious groups will benefit if success is granted to this tactic could hardly be more ludicrous.

Originally published in The Federalist

While Hamas, the openly genocidal terror organization ruling the Gaza Strip, launches missiles at Israeli civilians in hospitals, schools, and homes, even closing its airport, the members of “The Squad” are hard at work pointing fingers at the “real” culprit: the Jews.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., announced what “precipitated this cycle of violence” was “the expulsions of Palestinians and attacks on Al Aqsa.” Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., castigated the White House for failing to refer to “Sheikh Jarrah … the al-Aqsa raid … the 13 innocent children killed.” Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., likewise protests “forcing Palestinians out of their homes,” the “root causes of violence,” and “violence and oppression.”

A joint statement by Omar, Tlaib, and fellow Rep. Andre Carson brought these themes together, with references to “forced evictions in the predominantly Palestinian East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah,” “the violent assault by Israeli forces on the Al Aqsa mosque,” and “the Israeli military [having] launched airstrikes into Gaza” — appending “Hamas fired rockets into Israel,” as if this unprovoked attack on kindergartens, hospitals and homes were the response, rather than the cause, of the neutralization of the terrorists behind it.

As is typical for the “Squad,” reality is rather different.

When the Jordanian Army occupied Judea and Samaria in 1948, it forced all Jews from their homes at gunpoint. That is how the Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood, named after the holy Jewish teacher buried there 1,800 years ago, became “the predominantly Palestinian East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah”: via antisemitic violence and ethnic cleansing. The Squad omits all of this, claiming instead that it is a “violation of international law” for Jewish property owners to go to court to reclaim property (purchased in 1875) from those who squatted on it after the Jewish owners were expelled.

In Rabbinic literature, the counterfactual accusation that Jewish property is somehow “stolen” is identified as the first hallmark of antisemitic bias. Put it this way: has the Squad — or anyone else — omitted such salient details when the rightful owners were not Jews?

The truth of the “attacks on Al Aqsa” is no more subtle. Israeli control of the Old City of Jerusalem, beginning in 1967, brought with it freedom of worship for all three major religions that revere the Holy City for the first time in 2,000 years. After the Jordanian Army rendered the Old City Judenrein, do we imagine they let Jews back in to pray at their holiest site?

Although Al-Aqsa Mosque was deliberately constructed upon the site of the two Holy Jewish Temples, the Temple Mount, Jews commonly worship today at the base of the Western Wall of the Mount, while Muslims worship on the Mount 100 feet above them — the mosques being under the administration of the Islamic Waqf. It is Jews and Christians who are often denied access to the Temple Mount, as happened this past Monday on Jerusalem Unification Day.

As a seminary student in Israel, I prayed at the Western Wall many times, including special occasions during the year when tens of thousands flock to the site. On one such occasion, about 15 minutes after the crowds had left, there was a rainfall of large stones onto the empty Western Wall plaza from the Mount 100 feet above.

Rioters on the Temple Mount had attempted mass murder, and I, as a Jew, was one of the targets. Had they not mistimed their barrage (I don’t call this “coincidence”), hundreds of innocent worshipers would have been injured or killed, and I might not be here to write this.

We are told not to rely on miracles. Al-Aqsa Mosque has been repeatedly misused as a repository for stones, Molotov cocktails, and other weaponry, and rioters have repeatedly thrown those stones down at Jewish worshipers 100 feet below. That is why Israeli police must maintain peace at the site, confronting rioters before they launch another bloodthirsty attack upon innocents.

The blame for the conflict on the Temple Mount lies with those who bring in weaponry, attack police, and attempt to get past them to kill Jews praying 100 feet below. The Squad demonizes Israeli police for preventing a massacre. Jews are quite familiar with this sort of inversion of reality: the Jews were blamed for the violence of Kristallnacht, the Nazi rampage against Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues, and forced to clean up the damage.

Any true humanitarian would decry bringing weapons onto the Temple Mount, a religious sacrilege that also violates the laws of armed conflict, and initiating race riots at holy sites. The Squad is interested in one thing, and one thing only: blaming Jews.

While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claims to be very concerned about antisemitism, there seems to be a grave disconnect between Pelosi’s statements and her true commitment to expunging antisemitic bias from the chamber she leads. Congress, and the American people, deserve better.