French Lessons

The saga that captured headlines around the world last week came to an end when Mohamed Merah—who had murdered four people, including three children, at the Ozer Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse, France—was shot dead by French police. Before his death, Merah told police negotiators that he was a member of al-Qaeda.

Red Flag  Gerald Warner,  Scotsman.com.  While the left steadfastly clings to the doctrine that high immigration can never lead to social problems, it has lost its stranglehold over public debate.  SAVE

Vive la Jihad!  Michel Gurfinkiel,  PJMedia.  Increasingly frequent anti-Semitic violence, a growing wave of anti-Zionism, and the legal threat to ritual slaughter have left the French Jewish community vulnerable on several fronts.  SAVE

French Muslims Training with the Taliban  Associated Press.  Pakistani intelligence officials are trying to determine whether the Toulouse shooter was among the dozens of French Muslims who have trained with the Taliban.  SAVE

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Scholarship and Anti-Semitism at Yale

Almost a year has passed since Yale University shuttered the five-year-old Yale Interdisciplinary Initiative for the Study of Anti-Semitism, known by the unwieldy acronym "YIISA," and replaced it with the Yale Program for the Study of Anti-Semitism, or "YPSA."

Yale's New Jewish Quota  Ron Rosenbaum,  Slate.  It was a "cowardly, clumsily-executed maneuver," said the columnist, by which Yale abolished the YIISA program.  SAVE

Can Academia Ignore Politics?  Ben Cohen,  Forward.  After YIISA's 2010 conference, the PLO protested to Yale's president that since Arabs are Semites, they can't be anti-Semitic.  SAVE

YPSA Begins Awarding Grants  Jane Darby Menton,  Yale Daily News.  Yale's Jewish chaplain explains that we study anti-Semitism to gain a "better scholarly understanding of other prejudices."  SAVE

Follow the Money  Alex Joffe,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  Between 1995 and 2008, Arab Gulf states gave $234 million in contracts and about $88 million in gifts to American universities. What has their money purchased?  SAVE

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Marching to Jerusalem

Protests, marches, sit-ins, boycotts—all these nonviolent techniques have been employed in support of the Palestinian cause, but violence has remained at the core of the enterprise. For decades, well-meaning people have suggested that a wholehearted embrace of nonviolence would do more for the Palestinians than their continuing resort to terrorism.

The Global March to Jerusalem  Ehud Rosen,  Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.  A history of the eddying anti-Israel currents that gave birth to the March.  SAVE

The Truth About the Global March  CiF Watch.  You can't tell the players without a program: a complete guide to the March and its organizers, funding, and tactics.  SAVE

Hunger Games  Elliot Jager,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  Another nonviolent tactic: the hunger strike of Islamic Jihad operative Khader Adnan, to which Israel recently capitulated.  SAVE

BDS Secrets  Ran Baratz,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  Those Palestinian NGOs from which Western anti-Israel activities take their cues: What are they? Who do they represent?  SAVE

No Springtime for Palestinians?  Sol Stern,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  Don't the Palestinians, at least as much as any of the other peoples of the Middle East, need a new beginning of consensual government?  SAVE

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Martyr in Waiting

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Khader Adnan, currently under administrative detention in Israel, has announced the end of his 66-day hunger strike in exchange for a commitment by Israeli authorities to set him free on April 17. His pending release raises a moral dilemma.

New in the Palestinian Arsenal  Mustafa Barghouti,  New York Times.  The op-ed writer hails Adnan's approach as a breakthrough in the 64-year-long struggle to destroy the Zionist enterprise.  SAVE

Hunger Strike as Blackmail  Samanth Subramanian,  National.  A case in India prompts complaints that "fasting unto death" can be deeply coercive, a kind of moral blackmail.  SAVE

Democracies and Administrative Detention  Yaakov Lappin,  Jerusalem Post.  Ticking bombs, protecting sensitive sources, and buying investigative time—these are the reasons why democracies temporarily imprison suspected terrorists without trial.  SAVE

What is Islamic Jihad?  Alden Oreck,  Jewish Virtual Library.  PIJ was formed in 1979 by a fundamentalist who found the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood and its successor, Hamas, too restrained.  SAVE

Power and Constraint  Jack Goldsmith,  W.W. Norton.  The constitutional scholar explains the process by which many Bush administration policies, including those on preventive detention, became Obama policies.  SAVE

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Cyrus Cylinder postage stamp (Iran).

Cyrus, Ahmadinejad, and the Politics of Purim

At this week's pre-Purim meeting in Washington between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss Iran's nuclear threat to Israel, Netanyahu gave Obama a present: the book (or m'gilah, scroll) of Esther, which tells how the Jewish heroine foiled Haman's plot to kill the Jews of ancient Persia.

The Cyrus Cylinder  British Museum.  An illustrated introduction to a prize object in the British Museum; as the English translation shows, the king addresses himself to his own accomplishments, not the rights of his subjects.  SAVE

2600 Years of History in One Object  Neil MacGregor,  TED.  The director of the British Museum is among those touting the Cyrus Cylinder's inscription as one of the "great declarations of a human aspiration." (Video)  SAVE

Ghosts of Purim Past  Jeffrey Goldberg,  New York Times.  A report on a 2003 visit to Iran and on close encounters with Islamic anti-Semitism.  SAVE

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