Palestine

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Finding religion ghosts in the Ivy League wars, with help (sort of) from Andrew Sullivan

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Finding religion ghosts in the Ivy League wars, with help (sort of) from Andrew Sullivan

If you have been following the horror shows at Ivy League schools, you know how agonizing this situation has become for old-school First Amendment liberals.

Are the tropes of anti-Semitism still protected forms of speech? Back in the 1970s, ACLU lawyers knew the painful answer to that question when Nazis wanted to legally march through Skokie, Illinois, a Chicago-area community containing many Holocaust survivors.

America has come a long way, since then. Today, the illiberal world considers a stunning amount of free speech to be violence, except in myriad cases in which speech controls are used to prevent “hate speech” and misinformation/disinformation in debates when one side controls the public space in which free debates are supposed to be taking place.

Clearly, death threats, physical intimidation and assaults are out of line. But what about a slogan such as, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”? Is that automatically a call for genocide? The Associated Press has this to say:

Many Palestinian activists say it’s a call for peace and equality after 75 years of Israeli statehood and decades-long, open-ended Israeli military rule over millions of Palestinians. Jews hear a clear demand for Israel’s destruction.

Ah, but what does Hamas say? The same AP report notes:

“Palestine is ours from the river to the sea and from the south to the north,” Khaled Mashaal, the group’s former leader, said that year [2012] in a speech in Gaza celebrating the 25th anniversary of the founding of Hamas. “There will be no concession on any inch of the land.”

The phrase also has roots in the Hamas charter.

The key is that Hamas opposes a two-state solution allowing Israel to continue as a Jewish homeland. How is Israel eliminated without the eliminating, to one degree or another, millions of Jews?

This brings us back to the Ivy League. At this point, I think that it’s time for someone to ask if other minorities on Ivy League campuses have — in recent decades — experienced severe limitations on their free speech and freedom of association. To what degree are other minorities “ghosts” on these campuses? Do they barely exist? Has the rush to “diversity” eliminated many religious and cultural points of view?

Ah, but the Ivy League giants are private schools. They have rights of their own.


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Why editors in legacy newsrooms struggle with calling members of Hamas 'terrorists'

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Why editors in legacy newsrooms struggle with calling members of Hamas 'terrorists'

It’s been a little more than a week since Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israeli civilians, killing more than 1,300 people. Many of those killed were children, some even babies, on the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

Since then, the situation in that part of the world has become a full-blown war. Israel has responded by attacking Gaza, with Hamas leaders (and even hostages) mixed among civilians who, in some cases, have been prevented from evacuating by Hamas.

Palestinians now face a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions.

Not surprisingly, many in the elite media have gotten — and continue to get — this story wrong. For too many years, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was treated like a political story. It was a story about land. It was about colonization. It was about human rights.

It may be about all those things, depending on whom you ask, but it’s also a story about about Jews. It’s about Muslims. It’s about sacred sites in the Holy Lands.

In other words, it’s a religion story.

As someone who covered the 9/11 attacks and the years that followed, I am well versed and experienced when it comes to news about terrorism. I know what terrorism looks like when I see it. So do most reporters and editors.

However, not everyone seems to have open eyes these days.

Let’s start with the BBC, one of the biggest and most influential news organizations in the world. The British state broadcaster came under pressure last week when its leaders refused to call Hamas terrorists. In an explanation posted to the BBC website on Oct. 11, John Simpson, who serves as World Affairs editor, defended the decision this way:

Government ministers, newspaper columnists, ordinary people — they're all asking why the BBC doesn't say the Hamas gunmen who carried out appalling atrocities in southern Israel are terrorists.

The answer goes right back to the BBC's founding principles.


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New probe of origins of Islam's Quran resembles 200 years of New Testament conflict

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New probe of origins of Islam's Quran resembles 200 years of New Testament conflict

Muslims -- and religion writers -- will want to ponder these quotations:

“There is not much reason to place a great deal of confidence in the Islamic tradition’s account of the Quran’s origins” in light of “the bewildering confusion and complexity” of early Muslim memories about this. Yes, “at least some, and perhaps much” of the holy book does have roots in the Prophet Muhammad’s actual preaching career in Arabia.

However, the book as Muslims know it is a “composite and composed text” that was “altered significantly” and “reimagined, rewritten, and augmented” during a half-century or so after the Prophet’s lifetime and finally standardized under Damascus-based Caliph Abd al-Malik (685–705 CE).

What Muslim tradition tells us about Muhammad’s career may contain factual “nuggets” but much of it is “little more than pious fiction” with “no basis in any genuine historical memories.”

There could be trouble. All that will certainly offend believers in the orthodox view that between 610 and his death in 632, Muhammad, guided by the angel Gabriel, received God’s verbatim words, memorized them, dictated them to scribes, and confirmed the entirety of the Quran’s revelations as they exist today.

This sort of dispute will be familiar to educated Christians, since similar western “historical criticism” or “higher criticism” has been aimed at their New Testament for 200 years.

Now that outlook is being applied to Islam’s holy book in “Creating the Quran.” Author Stephen J. Shoemaker, a prolific scholar of Christian and Muslim origins at the University of Oregon, asserts that experts have been too timid or reverential in promoting a revisionist viewpoint.

“Creating” was published last July but languished in academic obscurity until Baylor University historian Philip Jenkins boosted it as an eye-opener in a recent Patheos.com article. The University of Chicago’s Fred Donner blurbs that this is “a milestone in Quranic studies” and “the most comprehensive and convincing examination” of the issues currently available.


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What's a hot take on Israel worth? Depends on one's media celebrity status (Hello Seth Rogen)

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How do you tell the difference between a Jewish pessimist and a Jewish optimist?

Easy. The pessimist says, “Things just can’t get any worse. The optimist says, “Sure they can.”

Well, they certainly have — as far as the fraught connection between Israel and liberal American Jews goes.

The latest stressor is a predictably nasty media exchange over high-profile liberal commentator Peter Beinart’s recent declaration that he no longer backs a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A single bi-national, or perhaps a confederated, state, said Beinart, is the best remaining equitable option. This, he concluded, is because of Israel’s deeply entrenched West Bank settlement project. Further undermining the two-state option, he said, is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s threat to annex much of the occupied West Bank that Palestinians want to include in their own independent state.

Beinart detailed his thoughts in this New York Times oped and, in much greater detail, in this Jewish Currents essay.

For liberal Jews — who have long argued that two independent states coexisting side by side, one Jewish-run and one Palestinian, is the best and only realistic option — Beinart’s abandonment of full Jewish nationhood was nothing less than Zionist heresy.

Naturally, given today’s insatiable 24/7 media universe — in which all who dare venture are but a tweet away from “woke” fame or “cancel culture” renunciation — the verbal warfare started immediately.

Beinart’s, you may be wondering, is but one voice in a cacophony of voices claiming to know what’s best for Israel-Palestine, so why the fuss? Moreover, he lives in the United States, not Israel, so to what degree does his opinion even matter?

The answer, of course, is his American media prominence. His frequent talking-head appearances, (he’s a CNN regular) and voluminous writings have won him a place in the liberal Zionist media firmament, where he’s long been a harsh critic of Netanyahu and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. That’s not Hollywood famous, but it’s a start.


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Editors should pay attention when King David bursts into news 3,000 years later 

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Merriam-Webster’s definition 2(b) of the term “peg,” as a noun states: “something (such as a fact or issue) used as a support, pretext, or reason,” for example “a news peg for the story.”

When it comes to media peg-manship and the Bible, it certainly appears that any old pretext will do.

The Religion Guy toiled on several of those Time magazine Bible history cover stories pegged to Christmas or Easter, often analyzing the pros and cons of the latest sensations sent aloft by skeptics in academia and elsewhere.

The Guy successfully used a new book as the peg to sell Time on the 1997 cover “Does Heaven Exist?” What could be more “off the news” than that?

Yet news pegs of any kind are remarkably absent with the most recent example of the genre, in The New Yorker dated June 29. The 8,500-worder by Israeli freelance Ruth Margalit consumes 10 pages of this elite journalistic real estate.

The cute headline announces the pitch: “Built On Sand.” Subhed: “King David’s story has been told for millennia. Archeologists are still fighting over whether it’s true.”

Was David the grand though flawed monarch the Bible depicts, or merely some boondocks bandit or sheik?

The debate affects current Israeli-vs.-Palestinian settlement politics, but in archaeology the last major news peg on David occurred 15 years ago while this pretext-free article appears in most news-crazed year imaginable.

That should tell media strategists something. Margalit’s reputation as a writer and skill at story pitches presumably helped, but the magazine’s editors knew that multitudes gobble up this stuff. The New Yorker’s long-form journalism is well suited to exploring such matters.

Pegs from the past? Any claims that David never even existed were all but eradicated by the 1993 discovery of the “House of David” inscription within a century of the king’s reign.


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There are religion angles with a presidential run by Michigan Libertarian Justin Amash

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U.S. Representative Justin Amash is making a bid to shake up this oddly socially-distanced U.S. presidential campaign with last week’s announcement of an exploratory committee to seek the Libertarian Party nomination. He becomes the first avowed Libertarian in the U.S. House after being its first Palestinian-American. Due to Covid-19, plans for the party nominating convention, originally planned for May 21-25, are in flux.

The Michigan maverick is by far the best-known of the Libertarian hopefuls. He won headlines last year by quitting the Republican Party to protest Trump-ism, became the House’s only Independent, and was the lone non-Democrat voting to impeach the president.

Reality check. No third party has taken the White House since the Republicans in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln won with only 39.8 percent of the popular vote in an unusual four-way race.

The Libertarians’ best-ever showing was only 3.3 percent in 2016. Amash "uh-MOSH") got only 1 percent support against Biden (46 percent) and Trump (42 percent) in a mid-April Morning Consult poll. But he claimed to Reason magazine that he’s no “spoiler” and has a shot because “most Americans” think that Joe Biden and Trump “aren’t up to being president” and want an alternative.

Despite his anti-Trump credentials, Politico.com thinks it’s unclear whether Amash “would do more damage to Biden or Trump.” Showing the potential for conservative support, the Washington Examiner’s Brad Polumbo championed Amash against what he sees as the incompetent, “fundamentally indecent” Trump and the “frail,” too-leftist Biden.

Amash is also free of the sexual misconduct accusations against the two major party candidates — which they deny.

Religion reporters will note that Amash is one of only five Eastern Orthodox members of Congress. His Palestinian father and Syrian mother came to the U.S. as immigrants thanks to sponsorship by a pastor in Muskegon. He attended Grand Rapids Christian High School, where he met his wife Kara, later an alumna of the Christian Reformed Church’s Calvin University.

On the religiously contested abortion issue, Amash’s “pro-life” stand agrees with Orthodox Church teaching, and the National Right to Life Committee gives him a 100 percent rating.


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Category: Game shows. Question: How did Jeopardy! stumble into the Israeli-Palestinian quagmire?

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The mega-hit TV game show “Jeopardy!” is not my thing; I can’t recall ever watching it for more than a few minutes. But chances are that more than a few GetReligion readers are fans. Some undoubtedly were among the approximately 15-million viewers who tuned in to the show’s prime time “The Greatest of All Time” competition.

In the world of TV game shows this was, I understand, a big deal. As such, it constituted legitimate entertainment news and has been extensively covered the past several days. Some of this is, of course, linked to legendary host Alex Trebek and his battle with stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

The wave of news about “The Greatest” has not been the only recent “Jeopardy!” encounter with the news. And while the headlines generated by “The Greatest” episodes were a public relations gold mine, the show’s second news media spotlight was anything but.  

Rather, the second “Jeopardy!” story was a public relations disaster on an international scale. (I’m guessing here, but I figure the old show business adage, “say anything you want about me as long as you spell my name right,” longer boosts ratings in the #MeToo era.)

Why was it a global downer? 

Because the show was caught rewarding an incorrect answer to a geopolitically fraught question. And because the error concerned the always incendiary Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the incident went viral. 

As is the norm these days, the flub ricocheted around the web, garnering attention way beyond any rational measure of its real-world importance. 

Here’s the top of a Washington Post story on the brouhaha to get those of you who need it up to speed.

The “Jeopardy!” category was “Where’s that Church?”

The clue, for $200, was about an ancient basilica, “built in the 300s A.D.," in the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

And the answer? That might depend on whom you ask.


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Palestinian BDS movement: Getting a handle on a complicated story ahead of deadline

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Palestinian BDS movement: Getting a handle on a complicated story ahead of deadline

So you're taking a group of art students to Paris and you want to sign them up in advance for a group tour of the Louvre.

No problem.

Unless the students are Israeli. Then, unexpectedly, the world's most visited museum is too busy to accommodate 17 more visitors. Ironically, it seems not to matter one bit that the Louvre relies on Israeli technology for its in-house security.

This incident is one of a slew of similar situations reported daily in Israeli and American Jewish media and ascribed to the impact of the Palestinian-led "Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions" movement. BDS, as it's commonly known, is designed to pressure Israel to ... well ... just what is its intent is the subject of this post.

What are BDS's tactical and strategic goals? What motivates its leaders? How do journalists keep from getting lost in the rhetoric clouding this issue?

As in most places, but perhaps even more so in the largely dysfunctional and terribly sad Middle East, the answers are highly subjective. Is BDS a nonviolent effort to help Palestinians gain an independent nation? Or is it a tactic designed to help isolate, undermine and eventually destroy Israel?

As I said, the answer depends upon the speaker. Here's a link to Wikipedia's exhaustive attempt to address the issue in an even-handed manner, -- to the degree that's actually possible.


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Post-Zionism seems to baffle The Washington Post

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It comes as no surprise that Jordanian officials believe that Israel bears responsibility for tensions over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. But is it proper for The Washington Post to believe it, too? 

The Post is well within its rights to make this assertion on its editorial page. I may disagree with its arguments, but opinion journalism is designed to offer these arguments. The classic model of Anglo-American journalism, however, mandates a news story offer both sides of a story equal time.

I have my doubts about a recent article by the Post’s Jerusalem bureau chief entitled “Relationship between Israel and Jordan grows warier amid tensions in Jerusalem." My reading of this piece leaves me wondering if it is unbalanced, incurious, incomplete or lacking in context. Could it have been written from an editorial mindset that blames Israel first?

Or is there something more at work here?


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