“Gaza = Auschwitz”

Holocaust inversion—the claim that Israelis are the new Nazis and Palestinians the new Jews—has come to the American university campus.

By Martin Kramer in Mosaic Magazine

Five years ago, during an earlier Israeli operation in Gaza, the British novelist Howard Jacobson explained why “call[ing] the Israelis Nazis and liken[ing] Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto” goes far beyond mere “criticism” of Israel:

Berating Jews with their own history, disinheriting them of pity, as though pity is negotiable or has a sell-by date, is the latest species of Holocaust denial. . . . Instead of saying the Holocaust didn’t happen, the modern sophisticated denier accepts the event in all its terrible enormity, only to accuse the Jews of trying to profit from it, either in the form of moral blackmail or downright territorial theft. According to this thinking, the Jews have betrayed the Holocaust and become unworthy of it, the true heirs to their suffering being the Palestinians.

Experts call this Holocaust inversion. Based in the claim that Israel now behaves toward the Palestinians as Nazi Germany behaved toward the Jews, it originated in post-World War II Soviet propaganda, and from there spread to the Soviets’ Arab clients. It is now fully embedded in the Arab-Muslim world, where it grows and mutates in symbiosis with outright denial that the Holocaust occurred or a radical reduction of its genocidal scale, ferocity, and number of victims. Holocaust inversion has a graphic omnipresence in cartoons all over the Arab and Iranian press, where Israelis are regularly portrayed in Nazi regalia. Elsewhere in the Middle East and beyond, it has surfaced in the rhetoric of populist demagogues and the media. In Turkey’s new president and long-time prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it now has a champion in a head of state. In Europe, Holocaust inversion is busy spreading beyond its original locus of infection and finding a home among intellectuals and activists, especially on the Left.

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Campuses Hone Tactics As BDS Wars Loom

In wake of Gaza conflict, local students, officials expect tense atmosphere as semester begins.

Amy Sara Clark for The Jewish Week

In Gaza, there may be a cease-fire, but for Jewish college students, the war is about to begin.

Groups as varied as J Street U and the Israel Action Network are bracing for what many insiders believe will be the most contentious school year yet.

Rabbi Yehuda Sarna, who directs the Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life at NYU, agreed that pro-Israel students are facing a challenge when they return in the fall.

“I think it’s widely held that this is going to be one of the most difficult semesters for Israel on campus in a long time. It’s not just because of the war over the summer, but it’s also because the BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] moment has been gaining steam over the past few years, and the war over the summer just provides the fodder for the momentum to continue,” he said.

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Non-Jewish College Students Find an Unexpected Home on Campus—at Hillel

Whether they’re drawn by social programs, religious practice, or the food, non-Jews have changed the face of the organization

By Isabel Fattal for Tablet Magazine

Nellie Gayle’s introduction to Jewish life on campus began, appropriately, with bagels. In 2011, during her first week at Barnard College, a Jewish friend mentioned a bagel brunch at Hillel. The event sounded like fun, but Gayle, who grew up in an irreligious household in Eugene, Ore., figured that it would be impossible for her to attend, because she wasn’t Jewish. After some encouragement from her friend, she decided to go. Three years later, she returns to school this week as one of the most active members of Columbia/Barnard Hillel.

“Hillel encouraged me to explore my own spirituality,” said Gayle. She has even begun to incorporate certain Jewish values into her worldview. “Just coming into contact with Judaism has made me really committed to not speaking lashon hara,” or gossip, she said.

Be it bagels or spirituality, there’s something about Jewish communities on the college campus that attracts students who do not personally identify as Jewish. The number is not always sizable, but at many colleges there is a group of students who, while not technically Jewish, become some of the community’s most dedicated members. Often, as in Gayle’s case, it all begins with an invitation from a Jewish friend to attend an event at Hillel. For some students it might end at that one visit, but many others become attracted to Hillel’s wide variety of programs and social events. And so they become fellow travelers.

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Better The Enemy You Know — Gaza's Other Terror Groups

By Ben Sales for JTA

After four weeks of a punishing Israel air and ground campaign that left nearly 2,000 dead and much of Gaza in ruins, Hamas has lived to see another day.

For Israel, that might not be the worst thing. That’s because for all of Hamas’ violent extremism, it also governs a territory, maintains a social service wing and controls smaller, more extremist factions. Through mediators, Hamas and Israel have reached agreements in 2011 and 2012, and are negotiating another one right now in Cairo.

But many of Hamas’ jihadi fellow travelers in Gaza don’t have the same interests. For most, their sole goal is to fight — not just against Israel, but to spread Islamist rule across the whole world. That’s why, in the thick of the conflict on July 28, outgoing U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency head Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn said ousting Hamas could bring on “something like ISIS,” the radical Islamist group now conquering swaths of Iraq and Syria.

“If Hamas were destroyed and gone, we would probably end up with something much worse,” Flynn said, according to Reuters. “The region would end up with something much worse.”

Who are these groups? Here’s a quick rundown of the other major organizations in Gaza that seek Israel’s destruction.

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Top 25 Sororities Who Raised The Most Money For Their Philanthropy

From BetterGreeks.org

When it comes to Sorority life, it isn’t just about partying it up. Sororities love to give back to their town, community, and other 501C (3) Organizations. So which sorority racked up the most money for charities?

The following information is from Newsweek.com for the year 2012. Newsweek noted that, “…the amount of money the sorority’s non-profit fund donated to 501(c)(3) organizations according the most recent public filing (funds were normalized using a per-chapter ratio). Funds donated to individual chapters, classified as a 501(c)(7) non-profit social club, were not considered for this aspect of the ranking…”

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Why is a Nice Jewish Girl Like You Moving to Wyoming?

by Amber Ikeman for newvoices.com

I turned 25 this year. Something about that looming birthday made me evaluate who I was, who I am, and who I want to be. I asked myself if I was happy, if I was fulfilled and doing what I pictured for myself in my mid-twenties. It didn’t take long to realize that the answer was no. I was certain that the apocalypse would come on my birthday, or at least that my world would cave in on my quarter-life crisis.

Two years ago, I landed back in my hometown of Sarasota, Florida after spending 6 months in Jerusalem. It was such an intense experience that afterwards all I wanted to do was retreat to what I knew was safe and comfortable – home. My parents are here, I know my way around like the back of my hand, and who can turn down living 10 minutes from the #1 beach in the country? I wanted to feel grounded.

I thought one of the ways to do this would be with a stable job. No, not with horses in the Wild West, unfortunately (although I do hope something like that will be in my future), I wanted a paycheck every two weeks. I wanted an office and business cards with a title that made me sound important. I thought that was what twenty-somethings were supposed to be working towards. After four months of searching, applying, and negotiating, I accepted a as a Jewish communal professional that I bet all of my happiness on. I moved out of my parents’ house and got my own place. My first apartment out of college, paid for by myself, all to myself! (And my cat, of course.) I had it made – an apartment AND furniture AND a job! And for a while, it was really nice. It was what I needed. Building and rebuilding.

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To the Students for Justice in Palestine, a Letter From an Angry Black Woman

‘You do not have the right to invoke my people’s struggle for your shoddy purposes’

By Chloe Valdary for Tablet Magazine

The student organization Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) is prominent on many college campuses, preaching a mantra of “Freeing Palestine.” It masquerades as though it were a civil rights group when it is not. Indeed, as an African-American, I am highly insulted that my people’s legacy is being pilfered for such a repugnant agenda. It is thus high time to expose its agenda and lay bare some of the fallacies they peddle.

• If you seek to promulgate the legacy of early Islamic colonialists who raped and pillaged the Middle East, subjugated the indigenous peoples living in the region, and foisted upon them a life of persecution and degradation—you do not get to claim the title of “Freedom Fighter.”

• If you support a racist doctrine of Arab supremacism and wish (as a corollary of that doctrine) to destroy the Jewish state, you do not get to claim that the prejudices you peddle are forms of legitimate “resistance.”

• If your heroes are clerics who sit in Gaza plotting the genocide of a people; who place their children on rooftops in the hopes they will get blown to bits; who heap praises upon their fellow gang members when they succeed in murdering Jewish school boys and bombing places of activity where Jews congregate—you do not get to claim that you are some Apollonian advocate of human virtue. You are not.

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