Anti-Zionism

The insanity displayed by the pro-Hamas crowd never ceases to amaze. But the latest salvo feels extreme even by the extremist standards that have come to define the global political climate post-October 7. According to some of the most vocal online anti-Zionists, the raging inferno now overwhelming much of Los Angeles is not the result of government neglect or poor urban planning or even climate change. No, the thousands of homes and tens of thousands of acres now destroyed across Southern California are the handiwork of Jews and Zionists and Israel.  There are many streams leading to this nonsensical conclusion — all rooted in time-worn tropes of nefarious Jewish alliances and global domination.

A big part of the social contract for a modern society is an agreement that citizens will grant the state a monopoly on the use of legitimate violence in exchange for that state protecting its subjects, including from mobs within the state and other illegal behavior. The expectation is that the rules will be enforced fairly and equally, or the contract loses legitimacy.  The United States has a First Amendment that protects speech to a level that doesn’t exist in other countries, including speech that is openly supportive of terrorism and mass murder. In this regard, the groups organizing campus protests are putting on a fine civics lesson for everyday Americans exhibited by the main groups behind many of the current college protests we are witnessing.

One of the key critiques of DEI — the identity-based preference system better known as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — is that it places workers in professional positions they’re clearly unqualified for. Often with devastating outcomes. Boeing, for instance, has been accused of favoring race and gender when hiring for its factory floor — factories that have turned out airplanes that have literally fallen from the skies. Disney, too, has seen its quest for race- and gender- and sexuality-based inclusiveness come at a cost — a steep slide in its stock price.  But no area of public life has been more fully infiltrated by DEI than the academy — and the results have been disastrously on display since the Hamas attack against Israel nearly seven months ago.