Grant Newman

The Harvard Crimson’s cheap ploy

By Grant Newman

On April 29, 2022, the Harvard Crimson published an editorial by the Crimson Editorial Board in support of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement in general, and of the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee in particular.  In the editorial, the Board offered “support to those who have been and continue to be subject to violence” in Judea and Samaria and condemned “unlawful killings that victimize Palestinians day in and day out.”

The editorial has not aged well. Within a week of its publication, on May 6, two Palestinian terrorists wielding an axe and a knife murdered three Jewish fathers in the Orthodox town of Elad as Israeli Independence Day celebrations came to a close. The murdered Jewish fathers left behind 16 orphans: Yonatan Habakkuk, father of five; Boaz Gol, father of five; and Oren Ben Yiftach, father of six. This act of terror makes clear that Jews, even in Israel, “have been and continue to be subject to violence” and are victims of “unlawful killings . . . day in and day out,” to use the Board’s phrasing.

The contrast between the imaginary world that the Board depicts in its editorial, on the one hand, and the real world in which Jews live, on the other, is stark.  Indeed, after comparing the two worlds, one cannot help but conclude that the Board genuinely lives in a bubble that extends not one foot beyond Harvard Yard.  The questions posed to the Board in this article are an attempt to pierce that bubble (impenetrable though it may be) and in so doing facilitate the same “civil discourse and debate” called for by the Board.

In its editorial, the Board wastes no time explaining to the reader that, despite maintaining its anonymity in the editorial, its support of BDS is in fact a truly brave act. The reason for this, according to the Board, is that “for journalists, openly condemning [Israel’s] policies poses an objective professional risk,” and so by supporting BDS, the members of the Board are supposedly risking their professions, and opening themselves up to “online harassment” — again, in each case despite the fact that the members of the Board write anonymously and as a group.

For the sake of argument, let us assume that the allegations of professional risk and online harassment of journalists who support BDS are true. Firstly, are we to believe that Harvard students are actually going to be punished for supporting BDS?  Given that Harvard College has a Palestine Solidarity Committee, one must conclude that Harvard is at least accommodating to (and perhaps even encouraging of) supporters of Palestine.  Secondly, are we to believe that being harassed online for supporting BDS is on par with, say, being punched in the back of the head in Brooklyn for wearing a kippah?  It appears that the Board is unable to comprehend that Jews in Brooklyn — let alone Elad — are subject not simply to being mocked in a virtual forum, but to actual violence and physical injury for no other reason than they have decided to wear a kippah and thereby present themselves as Jews to the physical world.  Equating even the most vitriolic online harassment with random acts of bloody violence against religious persons is naive at best, deranged at worst, and in any event indicative of the Board’s distance from physical reality.  Moreover, it appears that the Board has a distorted understanding of bravery:  Bravery is not anonymously writing as a group an editorial with which the vast majority of fellow Harvard students, faculty, and staff will agree; on the contrary, bravery is openly wearing a kippah knowing that there is a material chance that doing so will result in being punched in the back of the head in one’s neighborhood while walking home from work (if not from school).  The very fact that the Board draws attention first and foremost to the supposed sacrifice its members are making by anonymously supporting BDS, while ignoring, for example, antisemitic violence against religious Jews in Brooklyn, shows both the self-interest with which the Board published its editorial and how out of touch the Board’s members are from the reality in which Jews live in Brooklyn, Elad and beyond.

But the assumption made at the beginning of the preceding paragraph regarding professional risk and online harassment is far from certain.  For example, during Operation Guardian of the Walls in May 2021 it was discovered that AP News was allowing Hamas to hide in its headquarters in the al-Jalaal Building in Gaza, believing that Israel would not strike the headquarters of AP News.  (AP News was wrong and Israel liquidated the al-Jalaal Building on May 15, 2021, citing its use as a hideout by Hamas.)  Given that AP News not only acted as a cheerleader of Hamas during the conflict but even went so far as to have its journalists act as human shields for Hamas, are we to believe that members of the Board are at risk professionally for supporting BDS?  If members of the Board are at any professional risk, then it likely is that merely supporting BDS is insufficient, as it seems that journalists who work for the likes of AP News now must not only write articles in support of Hamas but also must be prepared to die to protect Hamas and further its interests.

One must conclude that the Board lives in an imaginary world where online harassment and professional risk represent the outer limits of comprehensible pain and suffering.  Unknown to its members is the pain and suffering experienced in the real world that exists beyond the bubble that is Harvard Yard, whether such pain and suffering are felt and experienced in Brooklyn or Elad. As such, one must seriously discount the editorial of the Board and take it for what it is:  A cheap ploy by insular college students to signal their virtue and position themselves on the “right” side of history (as the term “history” is understood in Harvard Yard, if not beyond).

Grant Newman graduated from Harvard Law School where he was an executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. Grant was the recipient of the Federalist Society’s James Madison Award in 2019, and was active in the Alliance for Israel. Prior to law school, Grant graduated from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, with a degree in Business Strategy. Read full bio here.

Ceasefire Agreements and the Question of Israel's Sovereignty

By Grant Newman

The current conflict between Israel and Hamas raises not just the question of whether Israel has the right to defend itself — and more specifically whether the State of Israel has the duty to defend its citizens from terrorist attacks — but also raises the question of Israel's sovereignty as it pertains to developing state policy.  The only party in the current conflict between Israel and Hamas that genuinely has Israel's interest in mind is the State of Israel and its citizens.  Even the United States is conflicted, as the Biden Administration attempts to juggle America's historic support for Israel with a Democratic Party succumbing more and more to anti-Semitism.  Israel must stand firm in the face of global anti-Israel sentiment and not allow such anti-Israel sentiment to influence its domestic decision-making mechanisms in order to ensure that Israel’s future remains in Israel’s hands.

The past week has seen protests around the world supporting Hamas and condemning Israel.  A pro-Hamas protest in front of the Consulate General of Israel in Midtown Manhattan resulted in the closure of 2nd Avenue.  Hamas supporters in London cried profanities and curses repugnantly aimed at Jews (and, even more repugnantly, their daughters), while their compatriots in Los Angeles attacked diners at a restaurant after asking them whether they were Jewish (they were).  Similar occurrences and mass protests were seen across the United States, Great Britain, and Europe.  For all the talk of anti-Israel sentiment and anti-Semitism being entirely separate categories, such events indicate that there is an alarming level of cross-pollination occurring between these two supposedly separate categories.  Nevertheless, these non-Israeli protesters undoubtedly have sway over their own non-Israeli political leaders, and these non-Israeli political leaders in turn are trying to influence Israel’s political leaders.

Meanwhile, in the diplomatic realm, these same non-Israeli political leaders, who are beholden to the protesters at home, are increasingly calling for a deescalation of the conflict, and talks of negotiating a ceasefire are reportedly ongoing, with the United Nations holding votes on the matter.  As with everything the United Nations does, these votes serve no legitimate purpose, lack any binding effect whatsoever on Israel, and should be entirely ignored by serious individuals.  Likewise, mutual efforts between the United States and Russia to find solutions to the conflict should be viewed with skepticism, as the two powers look to the Middle East not so much for the sake of the Middle East, but rather as a proxy situation through which they can sort out their own relations which have effectively been put on life-support since Biden entered the White House and called Putin a “killer”.  Indeed, the United States and Russia are self-interested parties on issues pertaining to Israel, and any efforts to assert pressure  on Israel have undoubtedly been calculated according to an algorithm meant to benefit first and foremost the United States and Russia, respectively.

Whatever the global consensus regarding the Israel conflict might be, a substantial portion of Israelis — the backbone of the nation of Israel — appear committed to continuing military operations against Hamas.  Polls by the Times of Israel and Channel 9 suggest that between 70 percent and 80 percent of responding Israelis support a continuation of Operation Guardian of the Walls, with many residents of Israel's southern regions voicing support for a continuation of military operations if doing so will result in an extended period of peace.  Whether the Times of Israel and Channel 9 polls are representative of Israel's population as a whole is perhaps debatable.  But these polls do suggest that significant portions of Israelis — who, unlike the protestors in the United States and Europe and their political leaders in Washington and Paris, are in Hamas' line of fire — are in favor of continuing Operation Guardian of the Walls.

In the face of such worldly influences, Israel must act in such a way that will enable it to maintain its sovereignty and ensure that Israel's domestic mechanisms are making the decisions that affect Israel, and not allow outside forces to influence those decisions.  For example, if Israel were to decide to a ceasefire at this moment in the conflict after the aforementioned wave of anti-Israel protests and anti-Semitic attacks, then Israel risks setting a dangerous precedent whereby it is willing to make such decisions based on outside pressure from foreign streets.  In other words, a ceasefire now could signal to the rest of the world that if enough protesters take to the streets and maintain their presence there long enough, then international media outlets will promote an information campaign against Israel, foreign political leaders will be influenced to pressure Israel's political leaders, and Israel will ultimately acquiesce to the demands of the protesters.  This would be a massive hit to Israel’s sovereignty as it would effectively cause Israel to become a hostage to anonymous protesters marching on foreign soil.

This is not necessarily to suggest that Operation Guardian of the Walls should continue solely for the purpose of showing the world that Israel will not give in to external street pressure.  It would likely be unjust for a state to bomb an enemy simply to teach the world a lesson in sovereignty — even if the enemy were a terrorist organization and even if the world desperately needed such a lesson.  Rather, Israel should enter into a ceasefire with Hamas only because it has concluded that doing so is in its national interest, and not because supporters of Hamas flooded the streets of foreign cities.

Oftentimes the means by which a decision is made are just as important as the decision itself.  It is essential for Israel to make known to the world that, whatever decision it makes regarding the continuation of military operations against Hamas, such a decision was made without even the slightest bit of influence from Hamas' supporters in the West. By doing so, Israel can ensure that its future remains in its own hands.

Grant Newman graduated from Harvard Law School where he was an executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. Grant was the recipient of the Federalist Society’s James Madison Award in 2019, and was active in the Alliance for Israel. Prior to law school, Grant graduated from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, with a degree in Business Strategy. Read full bio here.

Does the Israel-UAE Deal Presage a New Era of Limited American Involvement in the Middle East?

By Grant Newman

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Normalization between Israel and the United Arab Emirates is arguably one of the most significant events in Middle East politics since the establishment of the State of Israel. The deal itself is a victory for Middle East peace; that this deal could lead to more such agreements between Israel and other Arab nations is a victory for world peace. Within a month of the Israel-UAE deal, Kosovo and Bahrain have both followed the example of the UAE and agreed to open relations with Israel. Surely, more of Israel’s regional neighbors will follow: It is difficult to see Bahrain recognizing Israel without Saudi permission, and so perhaps Saudi Arabia is in line to recognize Israel as well—a crowning achievement after decades of tension. 

To the extent that the Trump administration played a role in the Israel-UAE deal, this is arguably the biggest foreign policy accomplishment for an American president in decades. Indeed, in a different era, the Israel-UAE deal would likely be grounds for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Trump and his Israeli and UAE counterparts. By comparison, it would be difficult to argue that Trump does not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize now for facilitating an actual normalization of ties between Israel and an Arab state, but that Obama did deserve the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, just one year after being elected president and one year before the Middle East entered its most bellicose decade in recent memory. If Obama’s legacy is an award without the peace, then Trump’s legacy might very well be a peace without the award.  It is now the duty of the Norwegian Nobel Committee to determine which of these two variations is the more noble preference.

Comparing the Trump and Obama presidencies suggests that an American president can have a tremendously beneficial influence on Israel’s relations with its neighbors, or he can have an equally detrimental influence. The role of the American president in the Middle East peace process is a tool and, as with any tool, it can be used for good or evil: A hammer is just as necessary to drive a nail as it is to remove one, and just as necessary to build a house as it is to demolish one; what matters is the intent of the carpenter holding the hammer.

In geopolitical terms, with the support of the Trump administration, Israel has built a model for normalizing relations with its neighbors. The UAE is the first country to follow that and by doing so has set an example for other Arab nations to emulate. But the gains witnessed during the Trump presidency could be wiped away by a future American president who derails the peace process—even with the best of intentions. It is not difficult to see how this could happen: The Israel-UAE deal undermined at least two tennets of Washington establishmentarian thinking about Middle East peace, namely that peace in the region would require (1) concessions to Iran, and (2) concessions to the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria and to Hamas in Gaza. As the Israel-UAE deal suggests, resolving disagreements with the Palestinians is not a necessary condition to peace with other Arab nations, and combating the threat from Iran is of much greater importance to nations in the region than establishing a Palestinian state. However, it is possible that a future American president could revert back to establishmentarian thinking and (1) make efforts to strengthen Iran (perhaps by resurrecting the Iran nuclear deal), and (2) demand that Israel make concessions to the Palestinians as a condition for American support for any future Israeli-Arab peace deal. Such a reversion to the Washington foreign policy establishment's conventional wisdom could derail the broader peace process.

This possibility causes one to pause and think: Inasmuch as the role of the American president in the Middle East can still be used for ill purposes, the question must be asked whether it is in Israel’s interest in particular—and in the interest of Middle East peace in general—to diminish the role of the American president in Israel’s relationships with its neighbors. Now that there is a roadmap to regional peace, Israel must minimize any risks that could hinder progress towards that goal. A model has been developed and a permission structure has been established in the form of UAE, Kosovo, and Bahrain recognizing Israel. The model must now be implemented and replicated. Perhaps this will require less involvement from future American presidents.

Just as the Israeli president plays a mostly symbolic role in Israeli politics, with the executive powers of the state delegated to the prime minister, perhaps it is wise to modify the role of the American president in the Middle East peace process to a mostly symbolic one that serves to guarantee any peace deals entered into by Israel and its Arab counterparts, with Israel retaining the power to conduct negotiations and enter into deals.  Reducing the role of the American president in this way is perhaps one method for (1) preserving the peace achieved over the past four years and (2) protecting against any changes in Middle East policy from a future American president; a limited role would curb a future American president’s ability to derail the peace process. 

Nevertheless, it is possible that the current peace process will proceed according to plan regardless of what a future American president does. Indeed, if a future American president were to, say, resurrect the Iranian nuclear deal, then this change in policy might only serve to hasten a normalization of relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors as they work to fortify their region against a resurgent Iran. With Israel and its regional neighbors entering into deals without American involvement, this undoubtedly would have the effect of reducing America’s role in the region. So, after decades of American omnipotence in regional politics, perhaps the Middle East is entering into a new era of limited American involvement, with the regional players themselves dictating the terms of their own peace.

Grant Newman graduated from Harvard Law School where he was an executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. Grant was the recipient of the Federalist Society’s James Madison Award in 2019, and was active in the Alliance for Israel. Prior to law school, Grant graduated from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, with a degree in Business Strategy. He worked for several years at a major university in Moscow, Russia, and spent two years in Siberia dedicated to church service.

Is love for the people of Israel sufficient to overcome hatred of the state of Israel?

By Grant Newman

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All of Christendom fasted this year on Good Friday for relief from the Coronavirus, and Providence responded with an Israeli research institute based in Galilee that is working on a vaccine for the virus and with the release of the third season of “Fauda” on Netflix.  And Christians once again found salvation in Israel.

The Recent Increase in Anti-Semitism.

Alas, not all communities are similarly philo-Semitic.  Indeed, the past six months have seen a spike in anti-Semitism in the New York Metro Area.  In early December 2019, two members of the Black Hebrew Israelites murdered a police officer before entering a kosher delicatessen in Jersey City and killing five patrons.  There is reason to believe that their initial target was actually the Yeshiva next door.  In late December 2019, a man entered a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New Jersey, and began stabbing people gathered for Hanukkah celebrations.  These two events took place amidst a broader uptick in anti-Semitic attacks in Brooklyn.  Most notably was an incident where a woman assaulted three Jewish women while spewing anti-Semitic slurs.  Because of recent reforms to the criminal justice system in New York, the woman was released from police custody without bail, whereupon she immediately proceeded to assault another woman.

A chilling aspect of these attacks is the response of neighboring communities.  Rather than condemn the attackers, local residents instead cited reasons why an individual might be understandably angered unto violence against the local Jewish community and expressed sentiments that have been common whenever anti-Semitism has been en vogue throughout history.

New York City’s municipal government has been anything but philo-Semitic.  In late April 2020, after learning that Orthodox Jews had gathered in Brooklyn at a rabbi’s funeral, Mayor Bill De Blasio publicly threatened the Jewish community with arrests for violating social distancing guidelines.  During New York’s darkest hour, De Blasio identified a scapegoat and characterized the entire Jewish community as lawbreakers who are unconcerned with public health, as though the Jewish community alone — and not De Blasio’s own failed leadership — should be blamed for New York’s prolonged Coronavirus pandemic.  As Ronald Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, noted, “Every time a leader like [De Blasio] stereotypes the ‘Jewish community,’ he feeds into the dangerous agenda of white supremacists and anti-Semites around the world.”

The Need for Philo-Semitism.

It is on this background that Robert Nicholson and Rabbi Meir Y. Soloveichik introduced the need for philo-Semitism.  According to Nicholson, anti-Semitism grows from a resentment of “chosennes” — resentment that G-d chose the nation of Israel to play a special role in history.  Anti-Semitism “turns Jewish chosenness on its head and assigns to the people of Israel responsibility for all the world’s ills.”  Nicholson suggests that calling out anti-Semitism is not enough and posits that the best response to anti-Semitism isn’t anti-anti-Semitism, but rather philo-Semitism — or love of the Jewish people.  Rabbi Soloveichick cites the welcoming of public displays of the menorah and other public celebrations of Jewish chosenness as examples of philo-Semitism among gentiles in America.  Surely philo-Semitism, including acknowledgement of the contribution that the Jewish community and its members make to society, can do much to change the hearts and minds of local residents who might otherwise harbor anti-Semitic animosity.

The Limits of Philo-Semitism.

However, regardless of its capacity to do good at a local level, it is unlikely that philo-Semitism is sufficient to reverse institutionalized anti-Semitism at a global level.  Commenting on the difficulty of changing a global institution with anti-Semitic tendencies, John Podhoretz recently said of the United Nations, “I am skeptical that you can fix what’s broken in an endemically anti-Semitic institution simply by dint of the fact that it is endemically anti-Semitic and therefore in its DNA has a conspiratorial and conspiracist worldview that will distort every decision that the institution makes.”

Examples of institutionalized hatred towards Israel abound.  For instance, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which is a founding legal instrument of the African Union, includes as an organizing principle the elimination of “colonialism, neo-colonialism, apartheid, [and] zionism.”  That a founding document of a political union encompassing 1.2 billion people includes zionism as an existential threat against which the union and its subjects must organize their resources suggests the extent to which hatred of Israel has become normalized in global institutions.  Anti-Semitism has become yet another piece of furniture in the moral universe of international governing bodies.

Furthermore, just as a general must tailor an army’s attack to match the enemy’s defense, so too the methods used to eradicate anti-Semitism must be tailored so as to effectively combat anti-Semitism in the places where anti-Semitism lives.  The case of the African Charter indicates that anti-Semitism lives not just in the hearts and minds of anti-Semites, but also in the founding documents of global organizations.  Thus, displaying a menorah in an American neighborhood and otherwise promoting philo-Semitism, while undoubtedly having a positive impact in that neighborhood, will probably do little to remove hatred of Israel from the founding documents of global institutions.  As such, purging anti-Semitism from these institutions will require instruments that have a legal effect that is at least as legally binding as the instruments used to institutionalize anti-Semitism in the first place.

Still another example of institutionalized hatred can be seen in the response of the BDS movement to news that Israel is developing a vaccine for the Coronavirus.  According to Omar Barghouti, cooperating with Israel to fight Coronavirus does not constitute a normalization of Israeli evil and therefore one may take advantage of a future Israeli vaccine without violating tenets of the BDS movement.  But at no point does Barghouti express gratitude towards Israel for working to develop a vaccine.  In other words, the development of a vaccine is neither a normalization event nor a reason to shed even the smallest amount of anti-Semitism.  Creating a vaccine to save the world from the worst health pandemic since the bubonic plague is perhaps the most tangible and irrefutable philo-Semitic argument one could ever hope to make, and yet even the production of this life-saving nectar is not enough to cure certain institutions of their institutionalized anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism must be attacked at both the local and international levels, and philo-Semitism should play an important role in a broader strategy to do so.  However, if implemented on its own, it is unlikely that philo-Semitism will be enough to effectively fight anti-Semitism at international levels, especially where such anti-Semitism is legally institutionalized.

Grant Newman graduated from Harvard Law School where he was an executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. Grant was the recipient of the Federalist Society’s James Madison Award in 2019, and was active in the Alliance for Israel. Prior to law school, Grant graduated from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, with a degree in Business Strategy. He worked for several years at a major university in Moscow, Russia, and spent two years in Siberia dedicated to church service.