In August, Poland’s Cabinet approved a bill that would criminalize using the phrase “Polish death camp” or “Polish concentration camp,” with punishments ranging from fines to imprisonment. It’s one of several recent government reforms that critics have called anti-democratic. The bill also raises questions about Poland’s role in the Holocaust. It echoes the country’s communist-era…
Milan Chatterjee, the former president of the UCLA Graduate Students Association who’s been ensnared in an explosive controversy over the boycott movement of Israel, said he hadn’t thought too much about Mideast politics until last year. In fact, he’d hoped to steer clear of it as a student leader. “This is the first time I’ve…
Michelle Obama absolutely blew the nation away with her front-and-center speech at the Democratic National Convention on Monday night. In a convention fraught with stressors like the Debbie Wasserman Schultz fiasco and lingering Bernie supporters in the throes of their histrionics, FLOTUS’s speech offered some much-needed unifying sentiments that the vast majority of people tuning…
A debate over race and free speech is roiling my beloved alma mater, and in it I find unmistakable parallels to the fraught conversation about Israel that is the subject of so much Sturm und Drang — and so much communal spending — on college campuses across the country. The analogy isn’t exact. The harassment…
A Jewish pro-Palestinian group has issued a report claiming that Israel advocates are using “false charges” to silence criticism of Israel on U.S. campuses. The Jewish Voice for Peace report was released on Wednesday, the same day that Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights issued a separate report making similar arguments. Called “Stifling…
We’ve all been there, —eying the assembled crowd, swallowing a dry throat, and shuffling cue cards. Wendy Shanker knows the difficulties of public speaking better than most. As a longtime corporate speechwriter, she has worked with many clients to craft a perfect speech. Her specialty is award shows, charity events, and other public venues. But…
The Jewish community, here and in Israel, is having a First Amendment moment, struggling with what is acceptable speech and who are acceptable speakers. It’s not quite as bad as 1656, when the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza was expelled from his community because of his then-radical views. But communal and governmental mechanisms are at work…
A BBC journalist defended his claim that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exploited the Holocaust to further his agenda. Jeremy Bowen, the Middle East editor for the British Broadcasting Corporation, made the claim on Twitter on Tuesday, during Netanyahu’s speech to the U.S. Congress decrying nuclear talks with Iran. Netanyahu pointed to Holocaust memoirist and…
אַמאָל זענען די פּייטנים, מיסטישע דיכטער־וויזיאָנערן, געווען אויבן־אָן בײַ די פֿראַנצויזישע און דײַטשישע ייִדן.
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