Jewish History

U of Washington should not have Cancelled Israel Studies over Professor’s Criticism of Israel (MESA)

Committee on Academic Freedom, Middle East Studies Association Letter to the President of the University of Washington Ana Mari Cauce President, University of Washington Dear President Cauce: We write to you on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our grave concern about […]

Antisemitism

Why Putin’s claim to rid Ukraine of Nazis is especially Absurd given its History

The Conversation

By Jeffrey Veidlinger | – Russian President Vladimir Putin justifies his war on Ukraine as a peacekeeping mission, a “denazification” of the country. In his address to the Russian people on Feb. 24, 2022, Putin said the purpose was to “protect people” who had been “subjected to bullying and genocide … for the last eight […]

Antisemitism

My Life with Maus: Or How I Was Banned (Even If in a Second-Hand Way) by a Trumpian World

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Sometimes life has a way of making you realize things about yourself. Recently, I discovered that an urge of mine, almost four decades old, had been the very opposite of that of a rural Tennessee school board this January. In another life, I played a role in what could be thought […]

Donald Trump

Race, Religion and Whoopi Goldberg: Her Mistake on Judaism Pales before that of Trump

H. Scott Prosterman

Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment) – It’s time to stop flogging Whoopi Goldberg, and re-examine the semantics of Judaism as a race or religion. She is NOT anti-Semitic. She said something reckless, but her mistake was not explaining herself well, on a complex topic that most people are ill-informed about to begin with. On […]

American Jews

The Lingering of Trumpian anti-Immigrant Hate, and Commemorating victims at Tree of Life Synagogue

H. Scott Prosterman

Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment) – The “3rd Commemoration” of the 2018 Pittsburgh, Tree of Life Synagogue massacre occurs on October 27. When one Jew is mourned on the anniversary of passing, we call it a yahrzeit (Yiddish). When eleven are mourned from the same act of violence, it is a commemoration. The Pittsburgh […]

astronomy and outer space

Did a Cosmic Airburst inspire the Myth of Sodom and inadvertently Spark millennia of Homophobia?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In a new paper in Nature archeologists Ted E. Bunch and Malcolm A. LeCompte et al. present their findings that a cosmic airburst destroyed an ancient city in 1650 BC (about 3600 years ago) at the site of today’s Tell el-Hammam in western Jordan near the mouth of the Jordan […]

Jewish History

Startling Discovery of New Dead Sea Scrolls sheds light on Jewish Revolts against Imperial Rome

The Conversation

By Gareth Wearne | – On Tuesday news broke of the discovery of fresh fragments of a nearly 2,000-year-old scroll in Israel. The fragments were said to come from the evocatively named Cave of Horror, near the western shore of the Dead Sea. The finds were announced with attention-grabbing headlines that these were new fragments […]

Antisemitism

How to fight Holocaust denial in social media – with the evidence of what really happened

The Conversation

By Adam G. Klein | – One in four American millennials believe the Holocaust was exaggerated or entirely made up, according to a recent national survey that sought to find out what young adults know about the genocide of nearly 6 million Jews at the hands of Nazis some 80 years ago. That startling statistic […]

Antisemitism

From Kristallnacht to the Berlin Wall: The Tragedies and Triumphs of Nov. 9 remind us of the Dangers of Racism and the Beacon of Liberty

Adrienne Redd

Philadelphia, Pa. (Special to Informed Comment) – November 9 is momentous. We move forward with new hope. However, we must not forget to be humble and compassionate, to remember that of which people are capable, both the evil and the triumphant. On November 9 and 10, 1938 (called Kristallnacht), mobs rampaged through Germany, smashing windows, […]