As the old line from astronaut lore would have it, “Houston, we have a problem.”
The problem in this case, as vividly illustrated by the controversy swirling around the anti-Semitism charges against the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the systemic anti-Semitism that has infected vast areas of the American Left.
All the way back in the stone age of 2021, Commentary’s Christine Rosen headlined this of certain Democrats in Congress:
Rosen wrote:
In 2019, after public outcry over anti-Semitic remarks made by Rep. Ilhan Omar, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to mete out any consequences to the Democratic “Squad” member. Instead, she and the House Democratic Conference passed a weak resolution condemning any “hateful expressions of intolerance” and including a laundry list of racial and ethnic groups among those who should be protected. Not surprisingly, Omar saw the resolution as a victory. She issued a statement that said, “It’s the first time we have voted on a resolution condemning anti-Muslim bigotry in our nation’s history.”
If you’re wondering why many of us criticized Pelosi for her cowardice at the time, this week offers more proof: Omar and other Squad members such as Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and Cori Bush, clearly understood Pelosi’s inaction as giving tacit approval for them continuing to make anti-Semitic statements. And so they have.
They have indeed.
But alas, this problem is still bigger than the Squad or two Ivy League university presidents. (READ MORE: Harvard President Faces Uproar Over Refusal to Punish Students for ‘Intifada’ Chants)
There was, for example, this recent headline at Fox News:
White House interns mocked for issuing anonymous anti-Israel ‘demand’ letter to the president
The interns demanded the president and vice president push for a ceasefire in Gaza
This jewel of a story about the internals of the Biden White House reported:
The White House interns who sent an anonymous ‘demand’ letter to President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for a ceasefire in the Israel war were mocked online.
A group of 40 interns, who did not put their names on the letter, made headlines after they demanded the president and vice president push for a ‘permanent cease-fire’ in the war between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas.
“We, the undersigned Fall 2023 White House and Executive Office of the President interns, will no longer remain silent on the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people,’ the interns’ letter begins. ‘We are Palestinian, Jewish, Arab, Muslim, Christian, Black, Asian, Latine, White, and Queer.’”
Notice anything?
In describing themselves, the very last descriptor is that in their midst some are self-identifying as “Queer.” And in their illustration of flagrant ignorance, they simply appear to be unaware that it is a crime in Palestine to be “Queer.” And that Palestine’s biggest backer — Iran — had this reported of its treatment of gays in Iran, per the Times of Israel:
The story explained:
Iran has executed two gay men who were convicted on charges of sodomy and spent six years on death row, a rights group reported.
Homosexuality is illegal in Iran, considered one of the most repressive places in the world for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
According to a report on Sunday by the Human Rights Activists News Agency, the two men were identified as Mehrdad Karimpour and Farid Mohammadi.
They were sentenced to death for “forced sexual intercourse between two men” and hanged in a prison in the northwestern city of Maragheh, some 500 kilometers (310 miles) from the capital, Tehran.
Last July, two other men were executed on the same charges in Maragheh, the group said. It added that last year, Iran executed 299 people, including four convicted of crimes committed as children. Also in 2021, Iran sentenced 85 people to death.”
So, in other words?
There are the interns in Joe Biden’s White House standing up — anonymously, of course — for the anti-Semitism that is running through the veins of Joe Biden’s Democratic Party. And to top it off, they proudly note that among them are those who are “Queer” — utterly unaware that if, instead of being in the White House, they were in Palestine or Iran, they would be summarily executed precisely because they are “Queer.” (RELATED: Anti-Israel White House Interns Publicly Rebel Against Joe Biden)
And has anyone in the Biden White House put out a statement calling the president’s interns to account for their ignorance — much less their anti-Semitism? Of course not.
Be it the Democrat Squad in Congress, the Democrat Biden White House interns, or leftist universities, anti-Semitism is clearly flowing free in leftist-run institutions.
Recall as well this story from the 2012 Democratic Convention, here reported by the Guardian:
Democratic convention erupts over reinstatement of Jerusalem to policy
Row over Israel mars second day of convention as party moves to add back ‘God’ and ‘Jerusalem’ language to platform
The story reported this of the convention that was in the process of renominating President Barack Obama:
The Democratic national convention in Charlotte has been plunged into chaos with a row over Israel threatening to overshadow Bill Clinton’s speech as the second day of business was mired in a clumsy and embarrassing climbdown.
Barack Obama intervened personally to try and head off a mounting clamour from Jewish donors and pro-Israel groups who objected to the dropping of a line supporting Jerusalem as the capital of Israel from the Democratic policy platform.
A day after the platform was published without the recognition of Jerusalem, the line was reinstated. Pressure had been building over not only the dropping of that statement – which was part of the Democratic party platform in 2008 – but also the removal of any reference to God in the document. Those omissions threatened to alienate both Jewish Democratic supporters and Christian swing voters.
But the reintroduction of the lines was equally controversial; its clumsy handling resulting in a confusing vote and booing on the convention floor.
At the formal opening of the day’s business, the convention chairman, Antonio Villaraigosa, proposed a vote to return to the document its past commitment to Jerusalem as the Israeli capital as well as a reference to God.
He called for those in favour of the change to shout ‘Aye’ and those against ‘No’. It was a hard to tell, with the two sounding evenly-divided. Villaraigosa called the vote a total of three times to no certain result but eventually called it for the Ayes.
In fact, the change required a two-thirds vote in favour and it definitely did not sound anywhere close to that. But Villaraigosa pushed it through anyway, determined to try to bring a speedy end to an awkward row. There was loud booing in the hall when he announced the changes had gone through….
“We welcome the amendment referencing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and we applaud the DNC for listening and for being responsive to the concerns raised by supporters of Israel,’ said Abraham H Foxman, ADL national director. “But we are still troubled that it was removed, and it should never have happened in the first place. This has been a longstanding policy statement on the DNC platform going back decades.”
All of which is to say that this increasingly rabid anti-Semitism may have once been a trickle on the left, but, as now seen on television screens across the nation, with thousands of leftists on college campuses and in America’s streets protesting the very existence of Israel, the trickle has become a flood.
Now it has forced the resignation of Penn’s president, Elizabeth Magill, and the chairman of the board of trustees, Scott L. Bok. Controversy over the fates of the Harvard and MIT presidents, both of whom testified with Magill, swirls on.
As we head into the 2024 presidential election, one can be certain that the anti-Semitism that has become so flagrantly at issue in various leftist institutions will not be going away.
Buckle in.
