It is easy to oppose Israel's massacre in the Gaza Strip. Just watch a few horrifying videos. What is not easy is understanding the price system, its prerequisites -- private property and free exchange -- and its benefits for mankind, including civil peace.
Pre-Zionism and pre-Israel, Arab-Muslims, Arab-Christians, and Arab-Jews (yes!) got along in many places as neighbors and friends. Compare that to Europe. Arab and Jewish nationalism messed it up. See Avi Shlaims's Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew.
People go on quite a bit about self-determination these days. Some decry the denial of self-determination to "the Palestinians." Others insist that only "the Jewish people" can have the right to self-determination between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Israel passed a law declaring that principle in 2018. Unfortunately, I see too little thought behind the term self-determination. What is it? What self are we talking about? What is determination? This and the related issue of nationalism are big topics with an unsurprisingly big literature. I will resist talking about nations and...
House Speaker Mike Johnson speaking on Holocaust Remembrance Day: We remember what happened then [in Nazi Germany], and today, we are witnessing American universities quickly become hostile places for Jewish students and faculty. The very campuses which were once the envy of the international academy have succumbed to an antisemitic virus. Students who were known for producing academic papers, are now known for stabbing Jewish peers in the eyes with Palestinian flags. Faculty who once produced cutting-edge research are linking arms with pro-Hamas protestors calling for a “global intifada.”...
The point of the House-passed (and misnamed) Antisemitism Awareness Act is not to empower the Education Department to sue and defund colleges under civil rights law. It is to make lawsuits unnecessary by chilling expression.
From the start, political Zionists identified their program with Judaism the religion (despite their secularism, even atheism). Also from the start, Jews -- including the most tradition-bound Jews -- vigorously disavowed that identification. They were shamed as self-hating traitors to "their people." As a consequence, many went silent and eventually acquiesced in the creation of Israel, the self-identified "Jewish state." Some even converted to Zionism. So don't blame non-Jews for being unclear about the relationship between Zionism and Judaism.
Tom Woods and I discuss alleged antisemitism on U.S. college campuses:
I've been watching and thinking about the nationwide campus antiwar demonstrations in support of the suffering Palestinians of Gaza, and the appalling reaction to and "coverage" of those events. Something important needs to be addressed. I won't be concerned here with the violence committed by anyone, including the police, or by lesser misconduct, such as occupying and damaging buildings and other violations of university rules. It's also irrelevant whether the demonstrations stand any chance of ending Israel's onslaught or ending U.S. and university complicity in it, or whether most of the...
