Jew Exclusion Zones

Nazis block Jews from entering the University of Vienna. Austria, 1938.

They say the best way to think is to write. I write these brief weekly columns not to be provocative but to refine my thinking process and to invite our members’ feedback so we can learn from each other. Here is what got my attention this week:

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT. CENTRAL DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

YITZCHOK FRANKEL et al., Plaintiffs, v. REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA et al., Defendants.

ORDER RE: MOTION FOR PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION

“In the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, in the City of Los Angeles, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith. This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom that it bears repeating, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith. UCLA does not dispute this. Instead, UCLA claims that it has no responsibility to protect the religious freedom of its Jewish students because the exclusion was engineered by third-party protesters. But under constitutional principles, UCLA may not allow services to some students when UCLA knows that other students are excluded on religious grounds, regardless of who engineered the exclusion.”

Jews are the canaries in the mine. If the enraged far left or right political fringes can block Jewish students from entering a university and demand that Presidential candidate Joe Biden elect a black woman as Vice President even as they seek to disqualify Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro because he is Jewish, then it’s no wonder they feel empowered to form over 150 groups like Black Lives Matter, Students for Justice in Palestine, and Behind Enemy Lines; protest/disrupt/threaten the Democratic convention in Chicago; and demand “direct action” on a dizzying array of unpopular issues like disinvestment in a geopolitically crucial ally like Israel, race, gender, climate change, open borders, price control, and more.

President Biden said in his convention speech that the Palestinian protesters outside “have a point.” Well, I wonder what that point might be since all I heard were chants of “Down with racist America; death to Zionist Israel; from the River to the Sea. Infitada!”

— Sina.