Now, That's Fast Service!
07/02/2011
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From Slate this afternoon:
Yale's New Jewish Quota
The university's shameful decision to kill its anti-Semitism institute.
Ron Rosenbaum | THE SPECTATOR | Friday, 4:55 PM ET
Then, one minute later:
Left Behind
Yale solved its anti-Semitism crisis, but a deeper problem remains.
David Greenberg | HISTORY LESSON | Friday, 4:56 PM ET
The folks I feel sorry for in this controversy over the study of anti-Semitism are the staffers at the Israeli government's Jewish People Policy Institute ("Action Strategies for the Jewish Future"), who last year issued the single most authoritative and relevant quote on how much the Jewish people currently suffer from anti-Semitism.

Think tankers live to get quoted in the papers, but the JPPI folks can't buy a quote in the American mainstream media, outside of the Jewish ethnic press.

In reality, the JPPI is one of most sensible, centrist, and moderate think tanks active in any field. The JPPI is currently headed by American diplomat Stuart E. Eizenstat, former chief domestic policy adviser to Jimmy Carter, and was previously headed by American diplomat Dennis Ross until he left to join the Obama Administration, where he is currently at the National Security Administration as (according to Wikipedia) "Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for the "Central Region" with overall responsibility for the region. That region includes the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Pakistan and South Asia."

In other words, the JPPI's chairmen have always been heavyweight Washington insiders who represent mainstream liberal Washington-Tel Aviv thinking.

Under the direction of first Ross and then Eizenstat, the JPPI staff, led by Avi Gil, chief of staff to the Israel Labour Party former foreign minister Shimon Peres, and Einat Wilf, who is in the Knesset in former Labour Prime Minister Ehud Barak's new centrist party, wrote a very interesting and intelligent book. It is called 2030: Alternative Futures for the Jewish People and you can download this 2010 book for free from JPPI's very helpful website JPPI.org.il. I gave it a glowing review here.

On p. 113 of 2030, the JPPI authors state that a "neutral" future for the Jewish people would be one in which anti-Semitism "Continues more or less as now, as a moral problem and an irritant, but not having any serious consequences."

Now, we can debate whether the Jewish People Policy Institute's assessment of anti-Semitism is accurate. I don't know. But I would certainly suggest that the JPPI's expertise should have a voice in the discussion.

But, when I go to look up on Google

anti-Semitism "not having any serious consequences"

I find six webpages.

Obviously, there will be seven shortly after I post this. But, you get the point. The American mainstream media ignores the poor JPPI as if they were the Elders of Zion, as if they were dreamed up by some Czarist anti-Semitic propagandist.

(By the way, in case you are wondering, they recently shortened their name and acronym from the unwieldy Jewish People Policy Planning Institute or JPPPI to the more convenient Jewish People Policy Institute or JPPI.)

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