Contrary to a gloomy column pining that anti-Semitism cannot be fought, as of now it seems plain sailing. The Task Force to Combat Antisemitism has notched up three kinetic victories in rapid order. Two student cheerleaders for Hamas are in detention. Khalil Mahmoud kicks his heels pending deportation while his Palestinian Arab compatriot, Mohsen Mahdawi was detained in the act of applying for citizenship. Their alma mater –Trump’s most emphatic win– caved in to stiff conditions for restoring $400 million in federal funding pulled to punish Columbia for being soft on anti-Semitism.
It can’t be long before Harvard, as primitive a cauldron of pro-Hamas ideology as any Ivy League school, succumbs, despite its pitiful lawsuit. On top of massive financial depravations, the government has given it notice that it will lose the right to enrol foreign students. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, giving Harvard President Alan Garber a piece of her mind, picked out the Jew-hating barometers: spineless leadership; cesspool; extremist riots; threat to national security; anti-American and pro-Hamas ideology; poisoning campus and classrooms; entrusted with taxpayer dollars.
The parts encapsulate Trump’s method for prosecuting the, “Treason of the Intellectuals”, as Julian Benda described the Nazification of German academia in the 1920’s . The government is teaching higher education that pro-terrorist rallies are not a civil right. They are anti-American. And “repugnant to this Nation’s ideals,” in the words of Leo Terrell head of the muscular Task Force.
So much for the message. The method for embedding academia with it is profoundly simple: “Hit them where it hurts.” This does not mean treating academia like a monolith. Rather it involves segmenting targets according to shared characteristics. My exact toolkit for segmenting was explicit – look at their different vulnerabilities. Targeting various bad actors with a pinpoint strategy follows as a matter of course.
Take violence-stirring students. They are susceptible to expulsion or suspension or degree revocation or deportation.
Faculty and administration, on the other hand, are vulnerable to diverse punishments. Grants frozen, contracts cancelled and revoking tax exempt status will be punishments that fit the ‘crime.’
Compare such pinpoint tactics to the shotgun approach favoured by Biden’s National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, as sordid in origin as it was in execution. It allowed “Crooked Joe” to both fight antisemitism (so placating Jewish Democrats) and to let it rip (so placating anti-Jewish Democrats).
The Biden playbook neutered the official IHRA definition of anti-Semitism by making it share the load with ‘Nexus’ – a sham code that allowed the likes of pro-Hamas NAIR to vent unfettered hatred. Hence also the bravado of Ivy League schools to refrain from combating antisemitism while defending pro-Hamas campus mobs as having, to all intents and purposes, ‘very fine people’, borrowing Trump’s infamous Charlottesville phrase.
Consciously or not, Trump’s cabinet has been clever in avoiding the pitfalls when the concept, “antisemitism” is put into practice. A war in its own right erupts over the meaning of this confetti term. It stands to reason that because it means different things as you go along the political spectrum, the outcome will be mayhem and mischief. To be clear, the spelling of ‘antisemitism’ alone can draw ire.
In combating mankind’s oldest and most destructive hate, confusion is the soul mate of ambivalence. In 2024 the ADL effectively accused Elon Musk of being antisemitic. On a later occasion it pronounced Musk innocent of making what many claimed was a ‘Heil Hitler’ salute. What’s it to be? Who better to pronounce on this than Professor Deborah Lipstadt, at the time Biden’s ‘Anti-Semitism tsar’. Alluding to ‘classic tropes’ the woman who took on a Holocaust denier and won, passed down a foolish guilty verdict on Musk, a most ardent Zionist.
In the deportation case involving Khalil, the DOJ avoided this quagmire. It did not accuse him of being antisemitic. Or breaking any laws. It accused Khalil of fraud, of failing to disclose on his residency application that he had worked in the UN Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA. It argued that his involvement in protests at Columbia proved that he lead 'activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization'. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this meant that Khalil should be “removed because his presence has potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”
It was only when the application brought in the man’s participation in “antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which foster a hostile environment for Jewish students”, that Khalil grabbed at his breakout chance. He recited the familiar escape line that, “Criticism of the US government's support of Israel's military occupation of Palestinian territories is being wrongly conflated with antisemitism”.
Fortunately, the Louisiana judge determined that the government had submitted evidence enough for deporting Khalil, as a “threat to US foreign policy.”
The segmentation tool is adaptable to foreign policy. Rife antisemitism in the international community threatens US interests. For punitive action, the segments again are differentiated by their vulnerabilities. The ICC and ICJ are vulnerable to sanctions. Antisemitic NGOs can’t exist without grants. UN agencies UNWRA or the Human Rights Commission depend on member contributions. Governing elites in South Africa, who made mischief at the ICJ for Israel a US ally, fear targeted sanctions.
If other countries followed suit, if they applied this practical and simple toolkit, they too could put antisemitism to the sword.
Steve Apfel is a combat veteran in the war against antisemitism. Apart from being a prolific author, since 2002 he has singlehandedly exposed and put paid to antisemites in the media, academia, government and the church.