Appropriate or Delete: How to Rewrite Jewish History and Steal the Holocaust 80 Years Later
On January 1, 2025, the name Hugo Valentin was removed from an interdisciplinary research center at Uppsala University’s Faculty of Arts in Sweden. The Hugo Valentin Center was established on January 1, 2010, to conduct research and offer teaching in the field of Holocaust and genocide studies. Valentin was a Swedish historian, scholar, and leading […]
UCLA Law Review “Special Issue” on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Scholarship or “Collective Liberation?”
On December 23, 2024, the editors of the UCLA Law Review released a “Special Issue” of the review, apparently the first such special issue in at least the past 24 years. The issue is devoted solely to various aspects of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. [1] None of tumultuous events of the 21st century, including 9/11, the […]
Appropriation of the Late Jewish Lawyer’s Name As a Tool of Anti-Israeli Propaganda
The use of Jewish narratives, particularly the Holocaust, for propaganda purposes by various states is not a new phenomenon. However, certain cases demonstrate an even more troubling trend: some groups not only exploit these narratives for their own agendas but actively appropriate them, erasing their intrinsic connection to Jewish history and identity. In recent years, […]
Why Are Women in America Cheering for Hamas and Iran?
Have you noticed that young women all across America are demonstrating for Hamas, Iran, and Palestine? Why would such privileged and educated women, the heirs to the #MeToo movement and to Second and Third Wave Western feminisms, cheer for male rapists and male killers, arguably the most blood-thirsty and sadistic misogynists this side of Ghenghis […]
A “Palestinian State” as a Prize for Antisemites and Other Absurdities of Our Times
In April and early May 2024, four Latin American states—St. Kitts and Nevis, Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Bahamas—officially recognized the Palestinian Authority (PA) as an independent state. On May 28, they were followed by three EU members—Ireland, Spain and Norway—which were joined a week later by Slovenia. Two weeks after that Armenia […]
Antisemitism and the Islamophobia Libel
Very often, when the leaders of our various institutions address the problem of antisemitism, they are quick to invoke the dangers of Islamophobia, as if it were on a par with centuries-old antisemitism. In an audit of antisemitic incidents in 2019, the Anti-Defamation League makes little mention of Students for Justice in Palestine, the Boycott, […]
India and Israel: The Need for a Nuanced Understanding
In the post-WWII bipolar world order, two countries emerged facing similar problems – India (1947) and Israel (1948). Both had to fight wars immediately. While for India it was about the accession of a territory (Kashmir), for Israel it was about survival, following an attack by seven Arab nations (Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, […]
International Human Rights Law Needs a Review
In 1998, a diverse group of South African professionals/public servants (myself included) spent a year studying International Human Rights Law at the Raoul Wallenberg institute at the University of Lund, in Sweden. This was a partnership between the Centre for Human Rights and the Raoul Wallenberg Institute. The last part of the course was hosted […]
Realism and Morality: What Is Really Stopping a Forever Ceasefire?
A point of principle and a forever war A number of commentators on the conflict in what was for centuries called the region of Palestine cast it in terms of a forever war. After all, it has been going on for more than a hundred years, which certainly seems like forever. It started when the […]
False Witness: What the Israel-Hamas War Teaches Us About Defining Antisemitism
While Hamas terrorists were still massacring “peacenik” kibbutz-members, young people dancing in the desert, and farmers in Israel’s arid South on October 7, 2023, American newspapers and media worried loudly about the evils of Israel’s retaliation. Hamas videos of terrorists in action revealed: “terrorists torturing a pregnant woman and removing her fetus,” and “bodies of […]