#JewsFlex, and don't take Qatar's blood money

Only cowards hide behind illusions of righteousness when their bullying brings a bigger guy to beat the living hell out of them.

Oh now they want to be neutral. Well-heeled university administrators read The Chronicle of Higher Education, which published an editorial this morning begging these people to “embrace neutrality” due to the divisive nature of when a group these folks reflexively drool over beheads babies and murders grandmothers, posting the act on her Facebook page.

They cited a 1967 University of Chicago committee report as the model, because U Chicago indeed remains neutral. But Harvard, NYU, Columbia and Stanford do not subscribe to a policy of neutrality. And now wealthy donors—Jewish donors—are beginning to flex in response.

It’s one thing when students, who at a young age are inflamed with passions they later regret, unwisely put their names to missives like “This week, I want to express, first and foremost, my unwavering and absolute solidarity with Palestinians in their resistance against oppression toward liberation and self-determination.” That’s what Ryna Workman published in a newsletter from NYU Law, ending with “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life.” That cost her a job with Winston & Strawn, which withdrew their offer.

It’s another thing when school administrators and advisory boards pussyfoot around the issue, giving cover to overt antisemitism on campus. This happened at the University of Pennsylvania, where alumni have risen up to demand the resignation of the school’s president, Lizz Magill, and chairman, Scott Bok. “Law and Order” producer Dick Wolf joined CEO Marc Rowan, who runs Apollo Global Management. Between them, they have donated many tens of millions to UPenn. Wolf endowed the Wolf Humanities Center that hosted a Palestinian literary conference packed with antisemitic speakers like Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, and Marc Lamont Hill, who was fired from CNN after calling for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea.”

These donors have pledged to cut off funding. Harvard has lost several members of its executive boards and trustees, including hedge fund baron Bill Ackman and Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer. “Unfortunately, our faith in the University’s leadership has been broken and we cannot in good faith continue to support Harvard and its committees,” Ofer and his wife Batia told CNN. An open letter signed by more than 350 faculty members at Harvard criticized the school’s administration for “condoning the mass murder” of Israelis.

Writing in Bari Weiss’ Substack “The Free Press,” Jacob Savage asked “Can a Donor Revolt Save American Universities?” He cited the same examples above. I don’t know if the universities can be saved, but they can be taught a lesson. #JewsFlex should be a thing, because for decades, we’ve allowed terrorist mouthpieces to frame the story, which makes antisemitism mainstream. Antisemitism should never be normalized, and it’s a shame that it takes a cowardly act like murdering families, young rave attendees, babies, and grandmothers to expose these cowards in our schools.

Another den of cowards can be found in the tiny gulf state of Qatar. The sheiks like to play both sides of the issue in Doha, playing host to Ismail Haniyeh, who reportedly lives at the Four Seasons hotel, where he—the head of Hamas—watched his people slaughter innocents a week and two days ago. When Israel rolls into Gaza, he won’t be there to greet them, or to face any danger at all.

Qatar pays blood money to the United States in cooperative agreements with the State Department and the military.

“The United States works with Qatar and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council to increase cooperation on border security, maritime security, military preparedness, cybersecurity, and counterterrorism. The access, basing, and overflight privileges granted by Qatar facilitate U.S. operations against al-Qa’ida and its regional and global affiliates.” — From a Fact Sheet by the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, U.S. Department of State.

The DOD website boasts, “Qatari troops say they are grateful for the partnership and have created a lifelong trust with U.S. service members.”

Qatar agreed to “freeze” the unfrozen money it got from the U.S. government (which was safely frozen in Korea), the $6 billion that President Biden traded with Iran for five Americans held in an Iranian prison (along with releasing five Iranians we convicted of actual crimes, violating the sanctions against Iran). Meanwhile, Qatar funds Hamas (and fêtes the Taliban, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt).

The money Qatar pays to U.S. corporations and our government is blood money. We should not take blood money paid by cowards who want to ride the fence and then claim they can negotiate the release of American and Israeli hostages.

America’s only demand should be that Qatar deliver Haniyeh to us, and we can transport him to Jerusalem. If Hamas wants to negotiate with Israel over the status of hostages, let Haniyeh do it in Jerusalem—or I suppose Israel could airdrop him into Gaza City to join the cowards who murdered babies and the innocent human shields who live there.

One last comment. In my last piece, I heavily quoted Sam Kriss, who supports the Palestinians but condemned the killing of Israeli civilians. He wrote another piece, and I very much question his scholarship (though his writing is effortlessly magnificent).

Just over a hundred years ago, a group of European Jews decided that our little tribe of mystics and merchants and strange interesting men would not be safe unless we had a state of our own; so now, halfway across the world, white phosphorus rains from the sky, sticks to the skin, burns through the living flesh of screaming people down to the bone.

Nice prose. But European Jews were just Jews living in Europe. Just like Jews living in Russia, or Iran, or Egypt. One day they’d be expelled, or rounded up to be killed. Why did these Jews become Zionists? Perhaps the believed the Bible, which says God promised Abraham the land “for all time.” Perhaps they were drawn by the Holy Spirit to return to the land.

Also, these Jews paid for the land. They didn’t take it, they bought it, at a premium price, from Arabs who gladly took the Jews’ money for what was believed to be worthless desert and swampland. These Jews had deeds to the property they bought. They made the desert bloom (as the prophet Isaiah wrote). Then the Arab leaders decided they didn’t want the Jews to have the land they paid for. So the Jews had to fight for the land.

Why did hundreds of thousands more Jews decide to go to the Holy Land in 1946 through 1948? I don’t think we need to ask that, but Kriss just ignores the Holocaust. Those “strange and interesting men” were right, even prophetic. And Israel’s bombing of Gaza, far from being a “national tantrum,” is just an expression of how the business of war is conducted in the neighborhood of bullies known as the Middle East. As Thomas Friedman wrote in a New York Times op-ed, “We may look Western, but the modern Jewish state has survived as ‘a villa in the jungle’” — which is how the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak described it — “because if push comes to shove, we are willing to play by the local rules. Have no illusions about that. You will not outcrazy us out of this neighborhood.”

Friedman called it “Hama rules,” coined after Hafez al-Assad in 1982 turned a neighborhood in Hama ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood into a literal parking lot, killing 20,000 Syrians in the process. “People live, people die,” the Syrian dictator shrugged, when asked about it. Israel is very capable of playing by the same rules the Muslim Brotherhood (i.e. Hamas) uses.

Only cowards hide behind illusions of righteousness when their bullying brings a bigger guy to beat the living hell out of them.