𝗝𝗘𝗪𝗜𝗦𝗛 𝗖𝗢𝗟𝗟𝗘𝗚𝗘 𝗦𝗧𝗨𝗗𝗘𝗡𝗧 𝗧𝗘𝗦𝗧𝗜𝗙𝗜𝗘𝗦 𝗕𝗘𝗙𝗢𝗥𝗘 𝗦𝗘𝗡𝗔𝗧𝗘 𝗝𝗨𝗗𝗜𝗖𝗜𝗔𝗥𝗬 𝗖𝗢𝗠𝗠𝗜𝗧𝗧𝗘𝗘 𝗔𝗕𝗢𝗨𝗧 𝗔𝗡𝗧𝗜-𝗦𝗘𝗠𝗜𝗧𝗜𝗦𝗠 𝗪𝗜𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗡 𝗠𝗔𝗚𝗔~𝗕𝗥𝗢𝗪𝗡𝗦𝗩𝗜𝗟𝗟𝗘'𝗦 𝗗𝗔𝗡𝗜𝗘𝗟 𝗟𝗘𝗡𝗭 𝗔𝗚𝗥𝗘𝗘𝗦

                                                                           

From the editor: This blog has chronicled the anti-semitism at Charlottesville when Donald Trump referred to white supremacists as "good people," also the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a group coming as close to neo-Nazism as humanly possible without declaring themselves Nazi.

We submit for your consideration an article below by Meirav Solomon, a Tufts University student who happens to be Jewish. Ms Solomon testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee March 10.

Following the article, we've posted a response by Brownsville's Daniel Lenz, an expert in the bus industry who's politically conservative.

First of all, Ms. Solomon:

                                                              

Meirav Solomon

"Last week, I testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee as they held a hearing on antisemitism in America. As the only Jewish college student to participate, I was disheartened by the spin Republican senators pushed at me despite having not stepped foot on campuses themselves.

We know that the MAGA movement will ignore the antisemitism in their own ranks – the Nazi salutes, the conspiracy theories and the history of hate-fueled mass shootings – to push a warped narrative that the real threat to the Jewish people is higher education.

Here’s what I told senators: The majority of my classmates aren’t Hamas-aligned radicals. They’re students whose perspectives may differ from ours, but who must be welcome as long as they voice them respectfully. I told them that we must protect higher education. That institutions must safeguard dialogue.

As the daughter of two rabbis, with both Israeli and Palestinian friends, I learned the hard way what it feels like to be caught up in fierce, partisan politics playing out on campus – to be ignored or even exploited by the very institutions that pledge to keep us safe.

My friends and I have experienced the increase in antisemitic incidents that you’ve read about. Since October 7, we’ve seen some rhetoric at anti-war protests cross the line into ugly stereotyping, hateful vitriol on social media and violent threats against Jewish students. It’s true that too many protesters have embraced antisemitic tropes or conflated the government of Israel with Jewish people around the world.

But we cannot give up on the colleges and universities we call home. We have no common cause with those who want to discredit or defund higher education. Protecting education, civil rights and open dialogue is vital to my future and to the ability of Jewish students to succeed and thrive.

The past few days have seen the Trump Administration escalate their attacks on campuses by zeroing in on Columbia University – justifying threats to student visas and cutting hundreds of millions of dollars of federal funding by claiming antisemitism while in reality doing nothing to protect Jewish students.

It’s chilling. And it’s just the beginning.

The MAGA movement seems determined to sacrifice resources that keep Jewish students safe at the altar of their culture war, and we – Jewish Americans – cannot allow it.

By attacking higher education, Trump and his allies are threatening to abandon the most effective tools the government has to fight antisemitism in all its forms – and I won’t stand idly by while they do it."

                           

Daniel Lenz

Now, a response from Mr. Lenz:

"She's not wrong. President Trump and VP Vance are too naive to realize some of the groups in other countries that they support fit into these categories. If they realized that and had done their research, they would not support those groups.

One of the things in the United States is that our elected leaders and people in government go out and support a group or faction, in other countries, thinking they're on the right side of things. I don't have numbers, but so many times they have gotten it totally wrong and ended up regretting it. There are plenty of examples over the years."