Tag Archive for: Brandeis University

Brandeis University Roiled by anti-Police and anti-Zionist Radicals

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At 10:03 PM Saturday, December 27, 2014  Americans for Peace and Tolerance (AP&T) sent an email containing a petition requesting the President of Brandeis University, Frederick Lawrence and the 29 university trustees,  to protect the free speech rights and person of intrepid student, Daniel Mael.  So far it has garnered 2,337 signatures. This writer was among the earliest to sign it. More should, as the circumstances warrant it.

Mael had published an expose in on-line publication Ben Shapiro’s Truth Reports   about scurrilous anti- police tweets sent by Khadijah Lynch, a junior and African and African American studies department major at the Waltham, Massachusetts elite campus. Lynch’s provocative tweets were hateful to police in general, specifically suggesting how pleased she was about the assassination on December 20th of two NYPD officers, Felix Ramos and Wenjian Liu. They were shot from behind by convicted felon, Ismaaliya Brinsley, without warning while seated in their patrol car at the troubled Tomkins House in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Brinsley subsequently took his life with the murder weapon at a nearby subway platform after a chase by responding officers. The irony was these downed NYPD officers were protecting minorities from the depredations by the likes of Brinsley and drug gang bangers at the Tompkins Houses.

Earlier on Saturday,  a literal ”sea of blue” composed of  25,000 uniformed police from across the U.S. and Canada attended the funeral services  for  downed NYPD officer Ramos at Christ Tabernacle in the Glendale section of Queens New York. Eulogies were given by Vice President Biden, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and NYPD Commissioner William Bratton. When controversial New York Mayor William DiBlasio turn came to eulogize Officer Ramos, NYPD officers in the multitude outside the church turned their back on the large video screen in a demonstration of contempt. They were expressing their anger  regarding his promotion of protests against  grand jury actions upholding police conduct in the shooting death in July 2014 in Ferguson , Missouri of Michael Brown and the August 2014 Staten Island death of former convicted felon Eric Garner under NYPD physical restraint in Staten Island, New York.  They were called to the scene by African American shop owners in the vicinity regarding Garner’s continual violation of the law.

A  Gatestone Institute article by Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz was posted at 1:30 AM EST, Sunday morning, “A Brandeis Student Refuses to Show Sympathy for Assassinated Policemen — and Her Critic Is Attacked.”  Dershowitz drew attention to Lynch’s hate-filled tweets:

As I watched, with tears in my eyes, the funeral of police officer Rafael Ramos who was ambushed along with fellow officer, Wenjian Liu, in revenge for the deaths of two black young men who were killed by policemen, I could not help thinking of the following horrible words tweeted by a bigoted young woman named Khadijah Lynch, on the day the police officers were murdered in cold blood, and the day after:

“i have no sympathy for the nypd officers who were murdered today.” (December 20, 2014)

“lmao, all i just really dont have sympathy for the cops who were shot. i hate this racist f…ing country.”(December 21, 2014).

Nor was this her first bigoted tweet. She has apparently described her college as “a social themed institution grounded in Zionism. Word. That a f…ing fanny dooly.” And she cannot understand why “black people have not burned this country down….” She describes herself as “in riot mode. F… this f…ing country.” She has apparently said that she would like to get a gun and has called for an intifada: “Amerikkka needs an intifada. Enough is enough. ” “What the f… even IS ‘non-violence’. “

Ms. Lynch is certainly entitled to express such despicable views, just as Nazis, Klansmen and other bigots are entitled to express theirs. But when another Brandeis student, named Daniel Mael, decided to post her public tweets on a website, Lynch threatened to sue him for “slander”. Republishing someone’s own published words could not possibly constitute slander, libel or any other form of defamation, because you can’t be slandered by your own words. You can, of course, be embarrassed, condemned, ostracized or “unfriended” due your own words

Brandeis, you should  recall was founded under Jewish auspices as a living memorial to revered  US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, a vigorous defender of free speech rights, something that Mael was exercising. Lynch’s comments, while inflammatory and hateful, as Dershowitz  had referenced, would be regarded as ‘protected speech’  under Supreme Court rulings , such as the  landmark 1969 Brandenburg v. Ohio  decision in a matter involving a Klu Klux Klan leader.

Dershowitz went further to point out Mael’s rights under the law:

Mael had the right — and was right — to expose Lynch’s words for public assessment and criticism. Now hard left students at Brandeis are calling for Mael’s head — or at least his expulsion — for exercising his freedom of expression. He has been accused of “stalking”, “cyberbullying” and “inciting racial hatred and oppression” for merely republishing what Lynch published.

Dershowitz also pointed to the irony that  Lynch comments   was  supported by the Brandeis Asian American in view of downed NYPD officer Liu, who was Asian.

The Algemeiner revealed more about Mael’s earlier efforts to expose Lynch’s support for the violent Students for Justice in Palestine eviction notice campaign posted on Jewish student dorm doors across the country that involved  the attacks by SJP against Jewish  university students, Brandeis Radical Who Insulted Murdered NY Cops is Backed by Students for Justice in Palestine. The Algemeiner reported:

When Lynch ran for student office in 2013, she gushed that she “fell absolutely in love with Brandeis”… The two organizations that endorsed her manifesto, which included a commitment “to make Brandeis a safer, more tolerant, and friendly environment,” were the Brandeis Black Student Organization and the Brandeis chapter of SJP.

“An apathetic attitude toward the murder of innocents and calls for violence are entirely in-line with the actions of Students for Justice in Palestine chapters across the country,” Mael told The Algemeiner. “Unfortunately the vicious rhetoric of Ms. Lynch is echoed by many other student activists across the country. This language helps fuel a disturbing atmosphere of hatred and fear.”

Mael’s own expose of SJP, published last October in The Tower magazine, detailed a number of violent attacks on pro-Israel students by members of that organization.

Since Mael’s article about Lynch appeared, both he and members of his family have been targeted for abuse. Lynch herself tweeted “i need to get my gun license asap” after Mael contacted her for comment regarding her tweets.

Meanwhile, Brandeis University President Fred Lawrence weighed into the controversy today, releasing a statement in which he confirmed, “We have no greater concern than the safety of our students at Brandeis.” Lawrence did not, however, specifically address the threats made against Mael and his family, nor the involvement of hate groups like SJP in the verbal attacks and threats made against him.

 APT’s petition campaign to Brandeis  President Lawrence  may have forced  him to act. Unfortunately , this was what we have come to expect under his leadership at Brandeis.  Witness, his acceding to demands  from  Muslim Brotherhood front groups CAIR and the Brandeis Muslim Students Association  and Near Eastern and Judaic  Studies faculty members  to withdraw  the honorary doctorate to Ayaan Hirsi Ali  that was to be awarded her at  commencement this past  June. We noted in an April 9, 2014  Iconoclast post  the circumstances under which  Brandeis President Lawrence withdrew her honor:

Tuesday evening [April 8, 2014]  Brandeis University President Fred Lawrence rescinded an honorary doctorate that was to be conferred on Somali American women human rights advocate and author, Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the June 2014 Commencement.  He succumbed to outcries of Islamophobe and Fatwas from the Waltham, Massachusetts campus Muslim Students Association chapter supported by a letter signed by 86 members of the university’s Near Eastern and Judaic studies faculty.

[…]

Lori Lowenthal Marcus, US correspondent for The Jewish Press, herself an honored graduate of Brandeis, Class of 1980, declared in an email:  “there is no justice for Hirsi Ali” at her alma mater. In her Jewish Press article, on this latest example of dhimmitude at Brandeis, she noted the campus furor that forced the decision of President Lawrence:

 The Brandeis students issued a fatwa: the invitation to Ali had to be rescinded. The school newspaper, The Justice (yes, the irony!) ran both a “news article” and an editorial denouncing the decision to give Ali an honorary degree.

Sic ignominia transit Brandeis.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. Featured image courtesy of Americans for Peace and Tolerance.

Islamists are rising in America while we sleep by Allen West

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This week we covered two key stories that I’m quite certain aren’t getting much play: the rejection of Muslim women’s advocate Ayaan Hirsi Ali by Brandeis University and the Muslim Brotherhood forming a political bloc in America.

We are indeed witnessing the rise of Islamists in America. How has it come to this, that such a small minority has gained such a powerful political voice and influence? How is it that an organization like the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) is even allowed to exist in our Republic?

It’s simple, we have become so damn politically correct that a vile organization that was an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest Islamic terrorist funding case in America can thumb its nose and by intimidation and coercion deny free speech and freedom of expression in our country. We have fallen under the spell of the bumper sticker “coexist” and have failed to heed the lessons of history.

What is even worse, we have failed to even take this enemy — yep, I mean it –enemy to heart for what they have openly stated their objective to be. Just read the Strategic Memorandum discovered in 1991 if you still have any doubts.

However, most importantly, we have seen a class of political cowards who castigate those of us who recognize this enemy as “Islamophobes” and “extremists.”

And why is that possible? Because we refuse to develop our own energy independence so that we can tell OPEC and the 56 nations of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to get bent. Instead, they use our petrodollars to hold us hostage, fund their Islamic terrorism, export their materiel propaganda, and worst of all, buy off American political cowards.

We need to follow the money in America from these Islamist organizations to any politician and defeat them. We then need to find courageous men and women who will be relentless in identifying these Islamist infiltrators and their enablers, and ban them from operating in our country. If the Egyptians can categorize the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group, so should the United States of America. And in turn, classify those groups associated and listed in the Strategic Memorandum of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations and cease their operations in America.

This is no laughing matter. It is not about “freedom of religion” — as a matter of fact, Islam stopped being a religion in 622 when Muhammad decided to undertake the “”hejira” (migration) and departed Mecca for Medina.

When he returned to Mecca in 628 it was after breaking the Treaty of Hudaibiya and massacring the occupants of Mecca in the Battle of the Trenches. Thus began the violent march of the theocratic-political totalitarian system, a global scourge for the past 1400 years known as Islam. America battled this enemy in the Barbary Wars, first from 1801-1805, and then in 1815. The specter of the past has returned, but do we have a Jefferson and Madison who will give the order to crush this enemy — or will we continue down the path with feckless, accommodating, and acquiescing leadership which offers the throat of our Republic to this rabid barbaric foe?

If there is one thing that is bipartisan it is the failure of Democrat and Republican senior elected officials to confront this enemy — and therefore they exploit this weakness.

I cannot say this often and enough: When tolerance becomes a one-way street, it leads to cultural suicide.

Sorry, I ain’t going down this way, and to Nihad Awad, Ibrahim Hooper, and all the other Muslim Brotherhood facilitators and Islamists in America — enjoy it for now, but your dawg don’t hunt!

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on AllenBWest.com.

Brandeis Cancels Honorary Degree for Ayaan Hirsi Ali at 2014 Commencement

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AayanHirsiAli.jpg

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Tuesday evening Brandeis University President Fred Lawrence rescinded an honorary doctorate that was to be conferred on Somali American women human rights advocate and author, Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the June 2014 Commencement.  He succumbed to outcries of Islamophobe and Fatwas from the Waltham, Massachusetts campus Muslim Students Association chapter supported by a letter signed by 86 members of the university’s Near Eastern and Judaic studies faculty.

Ali is currently embroiled in the lambasting by CAIR of the Clarion project film, Honor Diaries.   Hirsi Ali, a former Dutch political figure was  colleague of the late Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was murdered on the streets of Amsterdam by a Dutch Moroccan. She wrote the script for the short film, Submission about the oppression of women under Islamic Sharia doctrine.  Ali is the author of the acclaimed biographies, Infidel and Nomad.  She has been a vigorous opponent of political Islam’s totalitarian oppression of women’s human rights, and culture espousing female genital mutilation and honor shame killings.

Honor Diaries trailer:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/9WijI2U7dKY[/youtube]

Lori Lowenthal Marcus, US correspondent for The Jewish Press, herself an honored graduate of Brandeis, Class of 1980, declared in an email:  “there is no justice for Hirsi Ali” at her alma mater. In her Jewish Press article, on this latest example of dhimmitude at Brandeis, she noted the campus furor that forced the decision of President Lawrence:

The Brandeis students issued a fatwa: the invitation to Ali had to be rescinded. The school newspaper, The Justice (yes, the irony!) ran both a “news article” and an editorial denouncing the decision to give Ali an honorary degree.

Marcus noted:

The Facebook Page denouncing Ali and the decision to honor her at Brandeis’s 2014 Commencement decried her for her “hate speech.” The Muslim Students Association claimed that honoring her “is a direct violation of Brandeis University’s own moral code as well as the rights of all Brandeis students.”

Most chillingly, while the students acknowledged Ali had experienced “terrible things in her life,” their bottom line was “we will not tolerate an attack at our faith.”

And so they issued a fatwa: the invitation to Ali had to be rescinded. The school newspaper, The Justice (yes, the irony!) ran both a “news article” and an editorial denouncing the decision to give Ali an honorary degree.

Brandeis University president Fred Lawrence echoed the students (and a large number of faculty members, including the Women’s Studies professors) in his statement:

Following a discussion today between President Frederick Lawrence and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ms. Hirsi Ali’s name has been withdrawn as an honorary degree recipient at this year’s commencement. She is a compelling public figure and advocate for women’s rights, and we respect and appreciate her work to protect and defend the rights of women and girls throughout the world. That said we cannot overlook certain of her past statements that are inconsistent with Brandeis University’s core values.  For all concerned, we regret that we were not aware of these statements earlier.

Commencement is about celebrating and honoring our extraordinary students and their accomplishments, and we are committed to providing an atmosphere that allows our community’s focus to be squarely on our students. In the spirit of free expression that has defined Brandeis University throughout its history, Ms. Hirsi Ali is welcome to join us on campus in the future to engage in a dialogue about these important issues.

In other words, Ali’s decades of devotion to helping women enslaved by misogynistic practitioners of the Muslim faith – who dominate the governments of Muslim countries – was neutered by the pronunciamento by students that they “would not tolerate an attack on [their] faith.” And in still other words, on American campuses criticism of religion – which has been a fixture of campus life – is no longer permitted. What words, what thoughts will be deemed unacceptable next?

This on a campus in leafy Waltham, Massachusetts established by secular Jewish interests in furtherance of one of America’s leading Supreme Court justices, Louis Brandeis. Brandeis was  a vigorous defender of free speech under the US Constitution,   He commented  in a 1913 Harper’s Weekly article saying , ”sunlight is  said  to be the best  of disinfectants”.

Marcus also noted the hypocrisy of a member of the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department, posted on the Facebook page by Prof.  Bernadette Brooten, requesting withdrawal of the honorary doctorate for Ali, “a group of 86 faculty members has signed a letter to President Lawrence, asking him to rescind the invitation.”

Marcus noted that Brandeis had conferred honorary doctorates on anti-Israel Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, Tony Kushner (2006) and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu (2000). Tutu is an alleged anti-Semite who supporting the notorious Durban I and II UN Human Rights Conference accusing Israel of a Nazi –like occupation of the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria, denying Palestinian statehood.

The withdrawal by force majeur of Muslim Students and supporting Brandeis faculty is the latest in a series demonstrating dhimmitude at the suburban Boston campus.  In a June 2006 Israpundit post, “Dhimmitude at Brandeis”, we wrote about the controversial honorary degrees conferred on Kushner and Jordan’s Crown Prince Hassan:

Lori Lowenthal Marcus, Honors graduate of the Brandeis Class of 1980,  finally got her message out in an American Thinker article about the mindless and dangerous Brandeis partnership with al Quds University: “The Strange Partner of Brandeis.“ On top of this was the cancellation of a controversial Palestinian children’s art exhibit at Brandeis.

President Reinharz on the other hand was feeling the brunt of all this accumulated criticism when he cataloged his and the Brandeis University woes reflected in a letter exchange with Brandeis faculty captured in a Ha’aretz weblog commentary:

“As you may know, the university (i.e. the president’s office) has been under a steady barrage of complaints these last months… because of my defense of (1) Dr.Khalil Shikaki, a Senior Fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, against uninformed allegations that he is a supporter of terrorists, (2) Al Quds University President Sari Nusseibeh… (3) Al Quds University itself in the face of the uninformed allegation… and (4) Mr. Tony Kushner, one of this year’s honorary degree recipients, who has been accused by some as being an enemy of Israel…”

As regards the taqiyyah in Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan’s acceptance speech at the 2006 Commencement, we wrote:

That was a backdrop to the sinuous sophistry spread by Prince Hassan of Jordan about religious universalism capsuled in his remarks about the “dear Moishe dear Ibn” correspondence of Maimonides and ibn Rushd in his Brandeis commencement address.

[…]

Prince Hassan persisted in misinforming his Brandeis commencement listeners that somehow, Maimonides, Averroes and St. Thomas Aquinas were intellectual “buddies.” A fiction. This all smacks of dhimmitude, the field of study pioneered by Bat Ye’or author of “Eurabia” concerning the subjugation of all infidels under the Islamic Shariah laws. All Brandeis trustees had to do to complete this transformation was to pay the jizya or “poll tax.”

So, if Muslim taqiyyah isn’t bad enough there is the EUrabian anti-Zionist mindset of students at the Brandeis Middle East Studies Crown Center program.

When the atrocities and barbarities of Islamofascist Ba’athist leader and monster, Saddam Hussein was discussed students said in rebuttal, “how can you chastise Saddam Hussein, when we have the monster Sharon.” This is moral equivalency of the most abysmal sort and patent pro-Palestinian propaganda.

In a controversial Brandeis student newspaper column by Matt Brown in April [2006] he complained about the university being “too Jewish.” This gave rise to accusations of “self loathing” by the Jewish community in a recent Boston Globe article entitled “A Question of Culture” by staff writer Sarah Schweitzer. I guess Brown would complain if Brandeis was a Jesuit university, right?

Our conclusion in the Israpundit 2006 post on the prior Brandeis Commencement episode seems prescient given what occurred last night with the withdrawal of the honorary doctorate for Hirsi Ali:

Perhaps the Brandeis trustees should change its name to something nondescript like Dhimmi U to complete the transformation. Then wouldn’t the late Supreme Court Justice, the iconic Louis Brandeis, whom President Reinharz referred to in his commencement exercise comments as “a Zionist and a proud Jew,” spin in his grave.

RELATED STORY: Ayaan Hirsi Ali: “They Simply Wanted Me to be Silenced”

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.

Documentation on Palestinian Incitement of Hatred

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The late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had two instructive quotes on peacemaking with the Palestinians:

You don’t make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies.

I believe that in the long run, separation between Israel and the Palestinians is the best solution for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israel has plenty of unsavory enemies in the roiling Middle East and elsewhere, these days. However, when your enemies disavow your existence, let alone your legitimacy as a sovereign power, you cannot make peace even the one defined by Rabin. This is why Israeli PM Netanyahu has pushed the importance of recognition of Israel as a Jewish nation.  The current diplomatic shuttle campaign for a final status agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA)  by US Secretary of State  Kerry is grappling with this issue.

Today’s release  by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office of documented evidence of PA leader Mahmoud Abbas orchestrating a propaganda campaign  to incite hatred towards Israel and Jews.  There is evidence of Abbas” duplicity of saying comforting things about peace at the UN versus anti-Semitic blood libel to his fellow Palestinians at home.

However, the evidence of Palestinian promotion of Jew hatred is just one of a number of issues that ultimately could bring the current round of final status negotiations crashing down.   An example  is  the issue of UN Res. 242 of November 1967 ensuring Israel is entitled to secure and defensible borders. Instead,  Kerry  offered  up a hoary proposal of the current US Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power  placing a detachment of US and international troops in the strategic Judean hills overlooking the Jordan Valley approaches to enforce  a final status agreement between the PA and Israel. Then there is questionable matter of ‘sharing’ Israel’s eternal capital of Jerusalem, a fact recognized by the US Congress in a law passed in 1995 requiring a move of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.     That move has  been avoided by a succession of US Presidents; Clinton, Bush and now Obama on the grounds that a final status agreement hasn’t been reached between the PA and Israel.  Then there is the matter of so-called land swaps to establish borders based on the pre- 1967 June War, the 1949 Armistice Line.  No other sovereign nation has entered into such negotiations that threaten its existence.

The evidence of Palestinian incitement to hate is reflected in documentation released by Israel’s PM Netanyahu,  a reflection of Islamic Qur’anic doctrine. A doctrine  that states  Allah has endowed the world as a Waqf or trust for Muslims  in perpetuity for all conquered lands. Hence the argument that the Jewish nation of Israel is illegally occupying the space between “the river and the sea”.  That is evident in the propaganda imagery  of the late Yassir Arafat wearing his checkered kaffiyeh allegedly  draped in the shape of Palestine. It is also reflected in monuments of the Palestinian Authority, one of which was cloaked to hide it from the view of President Obama during a visit to Ramallah in  March 2013, while police restrained hundreds of protesters.  There is also evidence of hatred reflected in PA  videos of preschool children being indoctrinated in hatred, spouting classic Qur’anic suras depicting Jews as pigs and sons of apes or an EU-sponsored PA youth TV program  saying that Israelis in Jerusalem are ‘crows and rats”.   Palestine Media Watch (PMW) has documented much of this over the past decade.  PMW published a  a video, today,  of a Syrian TV interview  with Zaki Abbas, a close associate of PA President Abbas,   discussing a plan for the destruction of Israel saying:

Even the most extreme among us, Hamas, or the fighting forces, want a state within the ’67 borders. Afterward, we [will] have something to say, because the inspiring idea cannot be achieved all at once. [Rather] in stages.

Prime Minister Netanyahu drew attention  to this defining  issue on Sunday in his remarks following a two hour cabinet meeting on Palestinian incitement towards Israel in a Jerusalem Post report, “Netanyahu: Palestinian incitement spurs Mideast conflict”:

This is a very grave phenomenon. True peace cannot exist without stopping the incitement against Israel and educating for peace. The refusal of the Palestinians to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish People and declare the end of national demands – this is the root of the conflict. This is also the reason why we are insisting on significant security measures, so that we will be able to defend ourselves by ourselves in any situation.

Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz, whose agency is responsible for maintaining an “incitement index”, drew attention to the role of PA leader Mahmoud Abbas:

We must not ignore the fact that the Palestinian educational system and media, under the patronage of Abu Mazen [PA President Mahmoud Abbas] and during the negotiations, are educating and inciting – on a daily basis – for the destruction of the State of Israel.

Watch this IMRA Youtube video containing the Israeli Government report  on Palestinian leadership and schools inciting hatred of the Jewish nation of Israel:

Notice the hateful Qur’anic catechism from Palestinian pre-school children, the adulation and quotations from  Hitler, and the Nazi-style salute by members of the PLO Al Aqsa Brigade . Then there was  a similar event at Al Quds University in November 2013.  The last event  caused Brandeis University President Frederick Lawrence to suspend its  partnership with  Al Quds University and its Harvard educated Chancellor, Sari Nusseibeh. Nusseibeh allegedly during the First Gulf War in 1991 was caught passing target information to the regime of the late Saddam Hussein for launch of SCUD missiles against Tel Aviv.

Why would any rational person persist in trying to reach a peace agreement  in the face of the duplicitous taqiyyah by the PA leadership and its educational system perpetuating hate against Israel. With not the merest scintilla of likelihood that a final status agreement between Israel and the PA could be achieved in the remaining four months, why is the Administration persisting in this effort when the Middle East is aflame with fundamentalist Jihad warfare on all of Israel’s borders.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.