It may seem perplexing that anybody would criticize Israel's rescue of four hostages from Gaza. But in 1976, there was criticism of Israel's rescue of hostages from Entebbe, too.

While Israelis celebrated the June 8 rescue of hostages held by Arab terrorists and civilians in Gaza, United Nations special rapporteur Francesca Albanese accused the Israeli commandos of "perfidiously hiding in an aid truck" in order to enter the neighborhood where the hostages were imprisoned. MSNBC host Ayman Mohyeldin asserted that the rescuers' tactics "raise(d) moral and ethical questions," while former MSNBC host Krystal Ball denounced celebrations of the rescue as "depraved."

In June 1976, Palestinian Arab terrorists hijacked a French plane on its way to Israel, and forced it to fly to the Entebbe airport in Uganda. There they released the non-Jewish passengers, and held the remaining 106 passengers and crew hostage, demanding the release of terrorists who were imprisoned in Israel. Ugandan dictator Idi Amin was deeply sympathetic to the terrorists, and Ugandan soldiers helped the hijackers guard the hostages. On July 4, Israeli commandos raided the airport and freed the hostages. All seven terrorists, and several dozen Ugandan soldiers, were killed. The only rescuer killed was the raid's leader, Yonatan Netanyahu, brother of Israel's current prime minister. Mrs. Dora Bloch, an elderly passenger who had been taken to a local hospital, was murdered there by Ugandan soldiers.

Most of the world celebrated the rescue raid on Entebbe. But not everybody. The Organization of African Unity, consisting of several dozen African countries, accused Israel of "wanton aggression" and demanded reparations for damage to the airport. The Soviet and Chinese governments denounced what they called "the Zionist aggression." United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim charged that Israel had committed a "serious violation of the sovereignty" of Uganda. A few years later, Waldheim's past as a Nazi war criminal was exposed. (However, that did not prevent his election as president of Austria in 1986.)

The Mexican government criticized Israel's "flagrant violation" of Ugandan sovereignty, and declared its "firm rejection of the use of armed force by any state as a means of trying to solve conflicts." The Mexican position was especially surprising because just months earlier, it had explicitly promised to refrain from anti-Israel policies. That promise was made in order to secure an end to the boycott of Mexico announced by Jewish organizations following its support of the infamous Zionism-is-racism resolution at the UN in 1975.

The French government's response to the Entebbe rescue was particularly troubling, given the fact that it was a French plane that was hijacked, and French crew members who were held hostage. The French Foreign Ministry issued a brief statement which expressed satisfaction at the rescue, but emphasized its condemnation of the casualties, almost all of whom were the terrorists or the soldiers who assisted them. A spokesperson for the Air France crew read a statement hailing President Amin for his "constant care to ensure our safety, our material comfort and even our health." The statement appeared to have been dictated by French officials.

The US government publicly praised the Israeli rescue mission, but it also introduced an "even-handed" resolution at the UN Security Council. While condemning the hijacking, the resolution also affirmed "the need to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all States." The resolution did not secure enough votes to pass, so it was withdrawn. At the same time – according to declassified documents – Secretary of State Henry Kissinger informed Israel's ambassador in Washington that because the Israelis had used US equipment in the raid, "we will have to put a temporary freeze on military shipments."

Ambassador Simcha Dinitz replied: "You are kidding me." Kissinger was not kidding. "You know you have no right to do this without prior consultation," he admonished the ambassador. Dinitz argued that the relevant US law applied to "only weaponry, not equipment." But Kissinger insisted that the US-made C-130 transport planes were a "military version" of that aircraft and therefore could not be used outside Israel's borders. Kissinger could have looked the other way; instead, his response was to penalize Israel following its miraculous rescue of the hostages.

Israel's prime minister in those days was Yitzhak Rabin, and the government was ruled by the Labor Party–a reminder that whether Israel's government is from the political left or the right, and whether its leader is named Rabin or Netanyahu, there will always be those who complain when Israel takes action to defend the lives of its citizens.

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The recent image of a pro-Hamas student at George Washington University brandishing a poster calling for a "final solution" was horrifying. But it was also deeply ironic. Because on the very same campus in Washington, DC, where that Nazi slogan was invoked last month, actual Nazis were repeatedly welcomed in the years before World War II.

In October 1933, Gustav Struve, an official of Nazi Germany's embassy in Washington, spoke on the GW campus under the auspices of the university's German Club. In February 1934, Gerrit Von Haeften, Third Secretary of the German Embassy, visited GW to address the German Club's Valentine party. And in May 1937, two Nazi representatives, the wife and daughter of the German embassy's Chancellor, Franz Schulz, participated in an event on campus sponsored by GW's International Studies Society.

Friendly attitudes toward Nazi Germany appear to have permeated the campus. The visits by Nazi officials proceeded without any sign of objections or protests – unlike, for example, at Columbia University, where hundreds of students held multiple protest rallies when the Nazi ambassador, Hans Luther, was invited to that campus in 1933.

Both the German Club and the International Studies Society at GW held screenings of films that were "procured through the German Consul," according to the student newspaper, The GW Hatchet. At least one of the events also included displays of foreign flags; The GW Hatchet's coverage included a large image of Nazi Germany's swastika flag.

That was in April 1937, four years after Hitler came to power, after the Nazi regime's boycott of Jewish businesses, the nationwide book burnings, the Nazi takeover of German universities, the mass firing of Jews from most professions, and the mob violence against Jews in Berlin and elsewhere. It also was after the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, which stripped German Jews of their citizenship.

Yet The GW Hatchet, which was published by the university, continued to run advertisements from the Nazi government's tourism department and touted upcoming summer tours by GW students to Europe that included visits to Nazi Germany. During those years, GW maintained a junior-year student exchange program with the Nazi-controlled University of Munich, despite the purging of Jewish faculty, implementation of a Nazi curriculum, and mass book-burning at the Munich school.

The Hitler regime viewed such exchanges with American universities as a way to soften the Nazis' image abroad. The Nazi official in charge of sending German students to American universities was quoted, in the New York Times, as describing the German students in such exchanges as "political soldiers of the Reich." But that did not deter GW from participating in the program.

GW was not the only American university to sponsor student exchanges with Nazified German universities, as Stephen Norwood documented in his book, "The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower." But not every American school with ties to Germany turned a blind eye when the Nazis rose to power and took over the country's universities. Williams College, for example, terminated its student exchanges with Germany as a protest against Nazi policies. GW did not.

Some GW students who spent a year at the University of Munich returned with upbeat reports about the new Germany. GW student Mary-Anne Greenough, for example, stated in a 1937 university newsletter that during her year in Germany, she attended the Nazis' celebration of the anniversary of Hitler's failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch; she said she found the event "worthy of admiration."

Some GW faculty who visited Germany during the 1930s likewise came back with positive descriptions of the Nazi regime. Assistant Professor of Philosophy Christopher Garnett, returning from a visit to Germany in 1934, reported to the campus historical society that  the "optimism which permeated the Germans, even those who at first opposed the present regime, is almost unbelievable." Such apologetics whitewashed Nazi outrages and made Hitler more palatable to the American public.

The time has come for the GW administration to acknowledge that it was wrong for GW to invite Nazi representatives to campus and to maintain student exchanges with Nazi-controlled institutions. But that is not all.

In 1985, GW presented an honorary doctorate to Mircea Eliade, a noted scholar of comparative religion. Before Eliade was a scholar, he was a Nazi collaborator. During the 1930s, Eliade authored viciously antisemitic articles in the extremist Romanian periodical Cuvantul, raving about the alleged "Jewish onslaught" threatening Romania. He actively supported the fascist paramilitary group known as the Iron Guard, and when the Romanian government cracked down on Iron Guard activists in 1938, Eliade was among those whom it imprisoned.

After the Iron Guard came to power in 1940, Eliade was appointed as one of its diplomats in London. British officials privately called him "the most Nazi member of the legation." The Iron Guard regime actively collaborated in the mass murder of Romania's Jews. "Particularly gruesome," the US Holocaust Memorial Museum notes, "was the [Iron Guard's] murder of dozens of Jewish civilians in the Bucharest slaughterhouse. After the victims were killed, the perpetrators hung the bodies from meat hooks and mutilated them in a vicious parody of kosher slaughtering practices."

Eliade continued to defend the Iron Guard after the war, praising it in his 1963 autobiography. For some reason, that didn't deter GW from giving him an honorary doctorate in 1985. The time has come to revoke that honor.

Two years ago, public concern over racism in the United States prodded the George Washington University administration to remove the name of its longest-serving president, the late Cloyd Heck Marvin, from the student center because he advocated racial segregation. Last year, the administration changed the school's moniker from "colonials" to "revolutionaries" because of the many injustices associated with colonialism. GW should now show similar sensitivity to the concerns of its Jewish students and faculty.

Ninety years after actual Nazis were warmly welcomed at GW, extremist students on its campus today are invoking the infamous Nazi phrase "final solution" – meaning mass murder of Jews. That's a blatant violation of the GW Student Code of Conduct. Section V (F) prohibits "acting in a way that threatens, endangers, or harasses others, including verbal, written, or any other form of communication." Violators are subject to a range of possible punishments, from a warning to permanent expulsion. It's time for George Washington University to implement its own rules.

Acknowledging the error of GW's friendly attitude toward Nazi Germany in the 1930s, revoking Mircea Eliade's doctorate, and taking meaningful action against today's violators of the Student Code of Conduct is the path to restoring order, and decency, at George Washington University.

The post The Nazis at George Washington University appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

The recent image of a pro-Hamas student at George Washington University brandishing a poster calling for a "final solution" was horrifying. But it was also deeply ironic. Because on the very same campus in Washington, DC, where that Nazi slogan was invoked last month, actual Nazis were repeatedly welcomed in the years before World War II.

In October 1933, Gustav Struve, an official of Nazi Germany's embassy in Washington, spoke on the GW campus under the auspices of the university's German Club. In February 1934, Gerrit Von Haeften, Third Secretary of the German Embassy, visited GW to address the German Club's Valentine party. And in May 1937, two Nazi representatives, the wife and daughter of the German embassy's Chancellor, Franz Schulz, participated in an event on campus sponsored by GW's International Studies Society.

Friendly attitudes toward Nazi Germany appear to have permeated the campus. The visits by Nazi officials proceeded without any sign of objections or protests – unlike, for example, at Columbia University, where hundreds of students held multiple protest rallies when the Nazi ambassador, Hans Luther, was invited to that campus in 1933.

Both the German Club and the International Studies Society at GW held screenings of films that were "procured through the German Consul," according to the student newspaper, The GW Hatchet. At least one of the events also included displays of foreign flags; The GW Hatchet's coverage included a large image of Nazi Germany's swastika flag.

That was in April 1937, four years after Hitler came to power, after the Nazi regime's boycott of Jewish businesses, the nationwide book burnings, the Nazi takeover of German universities, the mass firing of Jews from most professions, and the mob violence against Jews in Berlin and elsewhere. It also was after the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, which stripped German Jews of their citizenship.

Yet The GW Hatchet, which was published by the university, continued to run advertisements from the Nazi government's tourism department and touted upcoming summer tours by GW students to Europe that included visits to Nazi Germany. During those years, GW maintained a junior-year student exchange program with the Nazi-controlled University of Munich, despite the purging of Jewish faculty, implementation of a Nazi curriculum, and mass book-burning at the Munich school.

The Hitler regime viewed such exchanges with American universities as a way to soften the Nazis' image abroad. The Nazi official in charge of sending German students to American universities was quoted, in the New York Times, as describing the German students in such exchanges as "political soldiers of the Reich." But that did not deter GW from participating in the program.

GW was not the only American university to sponsor student exchanges with Nazified German universities, as Stephen Norwood documented in his book, "The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower." But not every American school with ties to Germany turned a blind eye when the Nazis rose to power and took over the country's universities. Williams College, for example, terminated its student exchanges with Germany as a protest against Nazi policies. GW did not.

Some GW students who spent a year at the University of Munich returned with upbeat reports about the new Germany. GW student Mary-Anne Greenough, for example, stated in a 1937 university newsletter that during her year in Germany, she attended the Nazis' celebration of the anniversary of Hitler's failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch; she said she found the event "worthy of admiration."

Some GW faculty who visited Germany during the 1930s likewise came back with positive descriptions of the Nazi regime. Assistant Professor of Philosophy Christopher Garnett, returning from a visit to Germany in 1934, reported to the campus historical society that  the "optimism which permeated the Germans, even those who at first opposed the present regime, is almost unbelievable." Such apologetics whitewashed Nazi outrages and made Hitler more palatable to the American public.

The time has come for the GW administration to acknowledge that it was wrong for GW to invite Nazi representatives to campus and to maintain student exchanges with Nazi-controlled institutions. But that is not all.

In 1985, GW presented an honorary doctorate to Mircea Eliade, a noted scholar of comparative religion. Before Eliade was a scholar, he was a Nazi collaborator. During the 1930s, Eliade authored viciously antisemitic articles in the extremist Romanian periodical Cuvantul, raving about the alleged "Jewish onslaught" threatening Romania. He actively supported the fascist paramilitary group known as the Iron Guard, and when the Romanian government cracked down on Iron Guard activists in 1938, Eliade was among those whom it imprisoned.

After the Iron Guard came to power in 1940, Eliade was appointed as one of its diplomats in London. British officials privately called him "the most Nazi member of the legation." The Iron Guard regime actively collaborated in the mass murder of Romania's Jews. "Particularly gruesome," the US Holocaust Memorial Museum notes, "was the [Iron Guard's] murder of dozens of Jewish civilians in the Bucharest slaughterhouse. After the victims were killed, the perpetrators hung the bodies from meat hooks and mutilated them in a vicious parody of kosher slaughtering practices."

Eliade continued to defend the Iron Guard after the war, praising it in his 1963 autobiography. For some reason, that didn't deter GW from giving him an honorary doctorate in 1985. The time has come to revoke that honor.

Two years ago, public concern over racism in the United States prodded the George Washington University administration to remove the name of its longest-serving president, the late Cloyd Heck Marvin, from the student center because he advocated racial segregation. Last year, the administration changed the school's moniker from "colonials" to "revolutionaries" because of the many injustices associated with colonialism. GW should now show similar sensitivity to the concerns of its Jewish students and faculty.

Ninety years after actual Nazis were warmly welcomed at GW, extremist students on its campus today are invoking the infamous Nazi phrase "final solution" – meaning mass murder of Jews. That's a blatant violation of the GW Student Code of Conduct. Section V (F) prohibits "acting in a way that threatens, endangers, or harasses others, including verbal, written, or any other form of communication." Violators are subject to a range of possible punishments, from a warning to permanent expulsion. It's time for George Washington University to implement its own rules.

Acknowledging the error of GW's friendly attitude toward Nazi Germany in the 1930s, revoking Mircea Eliade's doctorate, and taking meaningful action against today's violators of the Student Code of Conduct is the path to restoring order, and decency, at George Washington University.

The post The Nazis at George Washington University appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Brazil's president has compared Israel to the Nazis and accused it of committing genocide in Gaza. But when the real Nazis were committing actual genocide, how did Brazil's leaders respond?

During the Hitler years, the regime of Brazilian president Getulio Vargas, driven by religious antisemitism and hostility to immigration, slammed the country's doors shut as Jews tried to flee the Nazis.

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The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from Germany, James G. McDonald, visited Brazil in 1935 and begged Vargas and other Brazilian leaders to admit Jewish refugees.

McDonald pointed out that vast, underpopulated Brazil is larger than the contiguous United States (that is, without Alaska), yet its population in the 1930s was less than one third the size of America's. In other words, there was plenty of room for refugees. But McDonald's pleas ran into a wall of excuses.

The Minister of Labor, for example, told McDonald that no changes could be made to Brazil's quota for German immigrants. When McDonald suggested that Brazil take in Jews who were living in Germany but were citizens of other countries, the minister replied that his government previously had decided "to classify them as Germans, and any other way of figuring the matter would be too complicated."

A senior Foreign Ministry official bluntly told McDonald that his government was not interested in any group of refugees that was "predominantly Jewish." President Vargas was noncommittal, offering only that he would ask the Minister of Labor to appoint a committee to look into the matter. McDonald also met with the country's top Catholic Church official, Archbishop Sabastio Leme da Silveira Cintra, who expressed "complete sympathy" for the refugees. But when McDonald asked the archbishop to raise the issue with President Vargas, "this he said he could not do," because of "certain difficulties."

After nearly six weeks in Brazil, McDonald wrote in his diary that he was leaving the country "in very low spirits," because of the "hostile personal attitude" of Brazil's leaders toward the Jews.

Only a trickle of Jewish immigrants were permitted to enter  Brazil during the Nazi years. An average of between 2,000 and 3,000 were admitted annually during most of the 1930s. During the peak of the mass murder of the Jews, from 1942 to 1944, the Brazilian government opened its doors to a grand total of 108 Jews in 1942, eleven in 1943, and six in 1944. As 12,000 Jews were being gassed in Auschwitz daily in the summer of 1944, Brazil granted haven to exactly six.

Only two Brazilians are listed among Yad Vashem's "Righteous Among the Nations." Both were consular officials in Europe who omitted the Jewish identity of refugees to whom they gave visas, in order to fool the Brazilian government into thinking they were not Jewish.

While Jewish refugees were turned away, Brazil became a popular haven for some of the most notorious Nazi war criminals. Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death" who conducted hideous medical experiments on Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz, lived comfortably in Brazil for most of his post-World War II years.  Franz Stangl, a commandant at both Sobibor and Treblinka, also enjoyed his Brazilian exile. He was living there under his real name when Nazi hunters located him in 1961, yet it took the Brazilian authorities six more years to arrest him. Stangl's deputy commander at Sobibor, Gustav Wagner, also lived openly in Brazil. He was publicly identified in 1978, yet the Brazilian government rejected extradition requests from five different countries. Herberts Cukurs, the notorious Butcher of Latvia, spent two relaxing decades in Brazil before he was assassinated.

Instead of showing remorse for his country's abandonment of the Jews, Brazil's current president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has pointed an accusing finger at Israel, claiming that Israel's anti-terror campaign in Gaza is "genocide" and similar to "when Hitler decided to kill the Jews." In other words, with the Jews facing new genocidal assaults, Brazil has abandoned them again. How should world Jewry respond? Consider the example of Mexico.

When Mexico voted in favor of the "Zionism is racism" resolution at the United Nations in November 1975, numerous American Jewish organizations protested by canceling their tour programs to Mexico. In addition, the Mexican Travel Agents Association reported 68,000 individual cancelations at hotels in Acapulco, and another 60,000 in Mexico City, for the upcoming winter vacation season. A dozen Jewish conventions scheduled to take place in Mexico in the months following the UN vote were canceled, costing local vendors $750,000. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that the boycott "has taken a heavy toll on Mexico's all-important tourist industry, with severe repercussions on [the] country's economy." Mexico's leaders backtracked and pledged that they would not support anti-Israel resolutions at future international forums.

Brazil, too, supported the infamous Zionism-is-racism resolution. However, it was not the target of an organized boycott at the time, apparently because Mexico was a more frequent destination of Jewish travelers.  Today, however, there is considerable Jewish tourism to Brazil, including kosher-for-Passover programs that are currently advertising in search of customers. It will be interesting to see if President Lula's anti-Israel slander results in the kind of Jewish response that Brazil managed to avoid years ago.

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US President Joe Biden is reported to have used profanity in two recent outbursts against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Sadly, such eruptions are nothing new. Going all the way back to the 1940s, presidents or other senior US officials occasionally have said some ugly things about Israel or Jews.

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In 1943, Samuel Rosenman, the chief speechwriter for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, confided to a colleague that the president was "much displeased" to learn that four hundred rabbis were planning to march to the White House to plead for the rescue of Jewish refugees. Rosenman said FDR was so upset that he "used language that morning while breakfasting which would have pleased Hitler himself."

Syndicated newspaper columnist Drew Pearson reported in early 1948 that President Harry Truman privately railed against American Jews who were urging him to support the creation of a Jewish state: "Pounding his desk, [Truman] used words that can't be repeated about 'the (blank) New York Jews.' 'They're disloyal to their country. Disloyal!' he cried." Truman denied the story, but Pearson's source, New York Post publisher Ted Thackery, did not back down.

The White House tapes released by the Richard Nixon Presidential Library revealed some ugly remarks in the Oval Office in the early 1970s. In one, the president could be heard becoming angry at his attorney, Leonard Garment, and shouting, "Goddamn his Jewish soul!"

In another, Nixon angrily complained to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger about American Jews urging him to press the Soviet Union on Jewish emigration. Referring to the possibility of Jewish demonstrations outside a forthcoming US-Soviet summit, Nixon thundered: "Let me say, Henry, it's gonna be the worst thing that happened to Jews in American history. If they torpedo this summit – and it might go down for other reasons – I'm gonna put the blame on them, and I'm going to do it publicly at 9 o'clock at night before 80 million people. They put the Jewish interest above America's interest, and it's about goddamn time that the Jew in America realizes he's an American first and a Jew second!"

Kissinger used vulgar language in describing Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and his cabinet in 1975. The incident took place during a round of shuttle diplomacy that Kissinger was conducting between Israel and Egypt. According to Prof. Gil Troy's book, Moynihan's Moment, Kissinger at one point became frustrated that Rabin was not making enough concessions to Egypt, and complained to President Gerald Ford that Israel's leaders were "the world's worst s—ts."

Not that Americans have a monopoly on such ugliness. There also have been several incidents along these lines involving European diplomats.

In 2001, the French ambassador to Great Britain, Daniel Bernard, launched into an obscenity-laced rant against Israel and its prime minister, Ariel Sharon. At a dinner party, Bernard told Conrad Black of the Daily Telegraph that "All the current troubles in the world are because of that s——y little country, Israel." Despite an international uproar, Ambassador Bernard refused to apologize, claiming his remark had been distorted.

In 2009, a senior official in the British Foreign Office, Rowan Laxton, unleashed a profane tirade against the Israeli government headed by Ehud Olmert. During a workout in a London gym, Laxton shouted about the "f—-ing Israelis, f—-ing Jews," and declared that the Israelis should be "wiped off the face of the earth," according to staff members at the gym. During his trial on charges of racial harassment, Laxton's defense was, "We are all human. I erred. I don't normally swear."

Perhaps the best known contemporary example of a government official cursing the Jews involved Secretary of State James A. Baker, in 1992. His cabinet colleague, House and Urban Development secretary Jack Kemp, leaked to the media that when Baker was told of Jewish concerns about US policy toward Israel, he replied, "F—- the Jews, they don't vote for us anyway." Baker's spokeswoman called the report "garbage," but New York Times columnist William Safire, after investigating the episode, wrote: "I can confirm that Baker did say that, with the same vulgarism that made it so memorable, to two high officials on two different occasions."

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Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic, reported in October 2014 that "a senior Obama administration official" derided Israel's prime minister as "chickens—t" for not making more concessions to the Palestinian Authority. No US official publicly took responsibility for the remark; but nobody in Washington seemed to doubt the accuracy of Goldberg's account.

In a 2021 interview, Donald Trump used profanity in denouncing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump said he was angry that Netanyahu congratulated Joe Biden on winning the 2020 election.

Whether the president has been a Democrat or a Republican, and regardless of who happened to be Israel's prime minister, the phenomenon of a rage-filled or obscenity-laced outburst against Israel or Jews is a recurring feature in the political world. So perhaps Israelis should not take the latest reported vulgarity to heart. It wasn't the first, it probably won't be the last, and it reflects more on the speaker than the target.

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It may not be much consolation to the Israelis, but US secretaries of state have been leveling unfair accusations against Israel, and sometimes against the Jewish people, for more than 75 years, regardless of whether Israel's government leaned left or right.

In 1948, Secretary of State George Marshall vigorously opposed the creation of Israel, implemented the US embargo on weapons to the Jewish forces, and urged President Harry Truman not to recognize the new state. Marshall also promoted a plan to drastically reduce the size of Israel by tearing away the Negev.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, testified to a Senate committee in 1953 that Israel should stop seeking arms and start putting its trust "in the United Nations." He also criticized the Israelis for striking at Arab terrorists in Gaza.

At another point in his testimony, Secretary Dulles claimed that Israel's fears of being destroyed were baseless. When asked if America's strategic plans for the Mideast were adequate to prevent Israel's annihilation, he replied that the US could not "underwrite" such a promise. Dulles reiterated that the US would not sell weapons to Israel while defending the administration's decision to send 18 tanks to Saudi Arabia. He also justified the US surrender to the Saudi leaders' demand that no Jewish soldiers be permitted to serve on American bases in Saudi Arabia.

In a Mideast policy speech later that year, Secretary Dulles declared that Jerusalem should be ruled by "the world religious community," instead of serving as Israel's capital. He also challenged Israel's identity, asserting that Israel "should become a part of the Near East community and cease to look upon itself…as alien to this community."

President Richard M. Nixon's secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, had a disturbing agenda of his own. Kissinger advised Nixon in 1973 that the persecution of Soviet Jewry was "not an American concern," even "if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union."

When Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin hesitated to make concessions that Egypt was demanding in 1975, Kissinger accused him of "bringing the world to the edge of war." Kissinger also claimed that Rabin was "fomenting antisemitism," and he denounced Rabin and other Israeli officials as "fools" and "common thugs."

According to Prof. Gil Troy's book, Moynihan's Moment, Kissinger once described Rabin with a vulgarity, a term similar to the obscenities that some US officials reportedly have used concerning other Israeli leaders.

Another secretary of state with a fondness for curse words – at least when Israel and Jews were the subject–was James Baker, who served under George H.W. Bush. When Housing Secretary Jack Kemp noted Jewish concerns about Baker's pressure on Israel, the secretary of state infamously replied, "F– the Jews, they don't vote for us anyway." Kemp leaked the quote to former New York City mayor Ed Koch, who publicized it in his syndicated column.

Other Baker gems reported in the press included mocking pro-Israel members of Congress as "the little Knesset," and remarking, "Jews remember the Holocaust, but they forget insults as soon as they smell cash."

The pattern of secretaries of state taking shots at Israel crosses party lines. Cyrus Vance, secretary of state in a Democratic administration, criticized Israel's use of US fighter planes to strike terrorists in Lebanon in 1979. Alexander Haig, secretary of state in a Republican administration, lambasted Israel for bombing the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981.

In 2003, Colin Powell, secretary of state under President George W. Bush, publicly accused Israel of inflicting "daily humiliations" on the Palestinian Arabs. His successor, Condoleeza Rice, said the Palestinian-Arab war against Israel was similar to the African-American civil rights movement. She also compared the Holocaust-denying Palestinian Authority chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Bill Clinton's secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, was still chastising Israel long after she left office. Albright asserted on CNN in 2014 that Israel had lost all its "moral authority" because it was "overdoing it" by carrying out "disproportionate" strikes on terrorists in Gaza. (That was the same Albright who said on "Sixty Minutes" in 1996 that even if sanctions against Iraq caused the deaths of half a million Iraqi children, responded, "We think the price is worth it.")

John Kerry, who served as secretary of state under Barack Obama, took his share of shots at Israel. In 2014, he publicly claimed that Israel was at risk of becoming "an apartheid state." In 2016, he indulged in disturbing moral equivalence by listing "settlement expansion" alongside "violence, terrorism, [and] incitement" as the reasons for the absence of Mideast peace.

Ironically, the unfriendly remarks made about Israel by various secretaries of state do not seem to have impressed Palestinian Arab leaders. The official PA newspapers Al-Hayat Al-Jadida and Al-Ayyam have referred to Kissinger as "Henry the Jew"; derided Albright as "vulgar," "insolent," and "a snake"; denounced Powell as "a neo-Nazi agent"; and labeled Rice "the black widow" and "the black raven," among other insults. One wonders what epithets they have in store for Blinken.

The lesson for Israel? Blinken's insult about "Israel dehumanizing Gazans" is consistent with what we have come to expect from the State Department. Many secretaries of state seem to have believed that coldness to Israel is part of the job description. But Israel has outlasted them all.

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Young Americans are turning against Israel, and that's Israel's fault, says New York Times columnist Ezra Klein. Is he right? 

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In a major Jan. 27 op-ed, Klein pointed to a recent poll showing only 27% of Americans aged 18 to 29 – known as "Gen Z" – are more sympathetic to Israel than to the Palestinian Arabs, as compared to 63% of Americans who are 65 or older. According to Klein, that's because of the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, since young Americans "know only Netanyahu's Israel."

Does that mean all Gen Zers were pro-Israel when the left-of-center Yair Lapid was prime minister fourteen months ago? Hardly. The real reason for hostility toward Israel among that age bracket is their ignorance of the history and facts of the Arab-Israeli conflict, not the specific polices of a particular prime minister. Israel is not to blame if many young people choose to base their views on misleading Instagram photos, biased college professors, and radical ideologies that falsely paint Israel as a "white supremacist" state.

Nor is ignorance among the younger generation about foreign affairs a new problem in America. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was bothered by it, too.

 In the 1930s, polls found 63% of college students favored unilateral American disarmament and many thousands of them signed a public pledge declaring, "We will not support the government in any war it may conduct." 

They couldn't be bothered to read up on what was happening in Nazi Germany and the threat Hitler posed to world peace. They were worried about being drafted. They preferred sweet fantasies of peace to the reality of a world headed for war. And some just wanted to mimic "what the cool kids were doing" – they saw that many British university students were signing the Oxford Pledge, vowing that "under no circumstances" would they "fight for [their] king and country."

 In 1934, 25,000 American college students took part in a one-hour walkout from classes to demonstrate their opposition to involvement in any war. The strike mushroomed to 175,000 participants in 1935, then 500,000 in 1936 – nearly half the national college student population.

The student antiwar movement began to crack when communist-aligned students changed their position – again and again – not as a result of studying the facts but out of obedience to their party. For them, ignorance was truly bliss.

 In the early 1930s, the Soviet Union preferred that America keep out of European affairs, so their followers on college campuses promoted the antiwar strike. But when the Spanish civil war erupted in 1936 and the Kremlin backed Spain's leftwing government, its campus sympathizers suddenly dropped their calls for American isolationism. Then when the Soviets signed their nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany three years later, their followers all went back to urging America to stay out of Europe's conflicts.

 When the Soviets invaded Finland in November 1939, American communist college students defended the attack and denounced President Franklin D. Roosevelt's proposal for modest financial aid to the Finns.

 Not long afterwards, FDR gave a previously-scheduled address to thousands of activists from the American Youth Congress – including many of his communist critics. He decided to give them a piece of his mind.

 The students' claim that aid to Finland would "force America into an imperialistic war" was, the president said, "unadulterated twaddle." He repeated that slap for emphasis. Roosevelt called their position "about the silliest thing that I have ever heard in my fifty-eight years of life." 

 Note the contrast between Roosevelt's response to his youthful critics and the recent responses by President Joe Biden to pro-Hamas protesters. On two occasions when hecklers shouted at Biden over Gaza, he responded that he was pressuring Israel to slow down its actions against Hamas and to withdraw from Gaza. He treated the protesters' shouts as reasonable, persuasive arguments and sought to convince them he was already doing his best to implement their demands. 

Not Roosevelt. He considered his pro-Soviet student critics to be ignoramuses, and told them so. Despite audible boos from the crowd, he admonished the students that their positions were "based perhaps on sincerity, but, at the same time, on 90 per cent ignorance" of the subject matter. "There is room for improvement in common-sense thinking and definite room for improvement in the art of not passing resolutions concerning things one doesn't know anything about," the president said. He characterized his student critics as "young people [who] get a smattering of the subject from two or three speakers who themselves have but a smattering on the subject."

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Has the political climate on America's campuses changed very much since then? Whether Communist Party members then or Israel-haters now, campus political activity is often steered by a handful of ideologically-driven militants. Particular social, economic, or political circumstances create opportunities to attract sympathetic students – not because many students are deeply acquainted with the relevant history, but precisely because they are not. Probably very few American college students in the 1930s had read Mein Kampf; probably very few today are aware of the discovery of Arabic-language copies of Mein Kampf in Gaza.

Those members of Gen Z who are marching for Hamas or telling pollsters they oppose Israel are driven by a variety of motives. For many, old fashioned ignorance or personal factors such as a desire to join a popular cause may determine whether they march against Israel, as their predecessors marched for isolationism in the 1930s. Whatever their motives, however, the real-world impact of their activities must be considered. Their actions back then contributed to America's aloofness in the face of Hitler's outrages against the Jews and fascist aggression in Spain, Ethiopia, and China. Their actions today are undermining America's support for an ally fighting for its very survival.

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Bernie Sanders says his new bill to restrict aid to Israel is a response to the deaths of civilians in Gaza. Yet he also proposed cutting aid to Israel more than four years ago. The current war, it seems, is just a convenient excuse for Sanders to slam the Jewish state again.

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In the immediate aftermath of the mass slaughter, torture and gang-rapes of 1,200 Israelis by Hamas on Oct. 7, Sanders briefly took Israel's side. He called Hamas "barbaric" and rejected the demands by his political allies that Israel cease firing at the terrorists. That enraged friends such as his ex-press secretary, Briahna Joy Gray, who claimed there's no evidence that Hamas raped Israeli women and called Sanders "the biggest political disappointment of our generation" for not agreeing with her.

It didn't take long for Sanders to succumb to the criticism. He's now the author of legislation to put restrictions on the supply of US weapons that Israel needs to fight the gang-rapists.

But Sanders cannot pretend his motive is the current casualty toll in Gaza. In October 2019, addressing the annual conference of J Street, Sanders proposed reducing US military aid to Israel – and he said a portion of the Israel aid should be diverted, "right now," to Gaza.

Sanders said he was proposing that the funds to Gaza consist of "humanitarian aid." But it has been well known for years that "humanitarian aid" such as concrete, ostensibly to build houses, was being used by Hamas to build tunnels. That is, the hundreds of miles of tunnels, underneath Gaza, where Israeli rape victims and other hostages are still being held to this day.

So it appears the new Sanders legislation represents nothing more than a political calculation. Impressing Briahna Gray and other rape-deniers is more important to Sen. Sanders than standing by Israel. And it's not the first time that he chose to abandon Jews in their hour of need.

On May 17, 1988, then-US Representative – today Senate Majority Leader – Chuck Schumer led a delegation of eight Democratic congress members to the Soviet Embassy in Washington to protest the Soviet regime's persecution of Soviet Jews.

They were especially concerned about onerous new restrictions the Kremlin had imposed to deny requests for exit visas. Soviet Jews seeking to emigrate now had to prove that their departure would not cause financial hardships even for distant relatives. Invitations to Soviet Jews from relatives in America would no longer be accepted unless the relative was a parent, child or sibling. And not only were Jews who supposedly knew "state secrets" disqualified from emigrating, but now their spouses and children would be denied, too.

In addition, all families with children under the age of 17 would be denied exit visas until the children completed military service. That new rule was particularly cruel because it was a Catch-22: those who completed their army service were often then denied exit visas on the grounds that they had learned military secrets during their service.

Congressman Schumer said he was worried the Soviet Jewry issue would "be swept under the rug" in the name of pursuing détente between the US and the USSR. He was right to be worried. Because his future Senate colleague, Bernie Sanders, was one of the ones doing the sweeping.

Two weeks after the Schumer protest, Sanders and his new wife, Jane, decided to spend their honeymoon with a group of Vermont political activists on a visit to the Soviet Union to promote friendly relations with the Kremlin. Upon their return, Sanders – who was then mayor of Burlington, Vermont – held an hour-long press conference with his fellow travelers to discuss their trip.

Sanders spoke first. He heaped praise on the "friendship and openness" of the "extremely generous and warm" Soviet officials who hosted them. He hailed the Soviet government's cultural programs for youth, which, he said, "go far beyond what we have in this country."

Sanders focused on the trains in particular. "In Moscow we were extremely impressed by their public transportation system," he said. "In fact, it was the cleanest, most effective mass transit system that I've ever seen in my life…The stations themselves were absolutely beautiful, including many works of art, chandeliers that were beautiful, it was a very, very effective system."

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While Sanders had much to say about the efficiency of Soviet trains, he had nothing to say about the vicious mistreatment of his fellow-Jews behind the Iron Curtain. He never mentioned the plight of the three million Soviet Jews who were being persecuted and prevented from emigrating. He never spoke about the grueling new restrictions the Kremlin had imposed.

When Soviet Jews needed Bernie Sanders to raise his voice in protest, he abandoned them. Today, when the Israeli victims of Hamas rapes and torture need Senator Sanders to raise his voice on their behalf, he has chosen to abandon them, too.

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Australia is going through a kind of preemptive denazification. So why can't Gaza?

Nearly eight decades after the end of World War II, Australia has just outlawed publicly making the Nazi salute or displaying the swastika or the signs of the SS. Attorney General Mark Dreyfus said the laws are necessary to deter Australians from "glorifying" or "celebrating" the "evil ideology" of Nazism.

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Neo-Nazi groups in Australia have never attracted many members, and their candidates for office have won only a tiny number of votes. Most Australians want to keep it that way. Placing Nazi gestures outside the margins of civilized society is a small step in that direction.

The salute, known in German as a Hitlergrub (Hitler Greeting), was adopted by the Nazis in the 1920s, along with the accompanying words "Heil Hitler" or "Sieg Heil." After the Nazis rose to power in 1933, the salute was made compulsory for all government employees in Germany and during the singing of the German national anthem. Failure to give the salute could result in criminal prosecution or worse. Portugal's consul-general in Hamburg was beaten up by Nazi thugs for failing to salute a march by Hitler supporters. German Jews were prohibited from giving the salute on the grounds that their use of it would dishonor the gesture.

In post-World War II Germany, the Allies outlawed all Nazi symbols, gestures, and activities as part of a "deNazification" strategy. The goal was to eliminate all traces of Nazism from the political and educational systems, and from popular culture, in order to ensure that Hitler's followers could never again influence German society.

A similar policy was pursued in Japan. The American occupation authorities rewrote the Japanese Constitution and drastically reformed Japan's schools. They also implemented what was known as the Shinto Directive, to curb the influence of the Shinto religion because of its militaristic elements. Shinto-linked government officials were removed from office, Shinto priests and shrines were deprived of government funding, and school textbooks reflecting Shinto ideology were revised or eliminated.

In the years following World War II, many other countries – now including Australia – implemented laws to obstruct neo-Nazi activity, even when such legislation ruffled the feathers of some civil libertarians.

Thus in addition to Australia (and Germany), the Nazi salute is outlawed in Austria, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. In Sweden, giving the salute is considered a hate crime. In many other European countries, it is prohibited if used to promote Nazism.

Public display of the swastika is banned in twenty-one countries. In some others, there are partial restrictions on the symbol, such as permitting its display only for educational or artistic purposes. Some countries have prevented neo-Nazis from running for office; earlier this year, Greece banned the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party from participating in the upcoming general election. And a number of democratic countries have outlawed various forms of hate speech.

Many Israelis support implementing a "denazification"-type process in postwar Gaza. Terrorist groups and supporters of terrorism would be banned from any future political process. The curricula in Gaza schools would be completely overhauled to eliminate textbooks that glorify terrorists or teach hatred of Jews and Israel, and teachers would be re-trained accordingly. The news media would be required to engage in genuine journalism, not cheerleading for murderers and rapists.

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To be successful, such a process would have to address even those of aspects of Gazan society that might at first glance seem innocuous, such as children's toys. In Nazi Germany, the authorities sought to entrench the Hitler salute in the national culture by giving all children a three-inch-tall plastic figurine of Hitler with a movable right arm. In Gaza, there is a popular doll of a child holding a rock in his upraised arm, his face covered by a keffiyah. Rooting out the glorification of violent antisemitism needs to start at a young age.

Denazifying Gaza will be a lengthy and complicated undertaking. Vigilant monitoring will be necessary to guard against backsliding, and even decades from now, additional corrective steps might be needed, just as Australia and other countries are still doing, all these years after World War II. But the alternative is an eventual repeat of October 7.

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Italy reportedly has complained about the choice of Benny Kashriel as Israel's next ambassador to Rome, because he has served as mayor of Ma'ale Adumim, which the Italians consider an illegal "settlement."

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Ma'ale Adumim, with its 40,000 residents, is just seven kilometers from the municipal boundary of Jerusalem. It is widely assumed that it will be physically connected to the capital in the near future. For most Israelis, the idea of characterizing Ma'ale Adumim as a "settlement" – conjuring up images of trailers on a remote hilltop – is laughable.

But some of Italy's own territorial acquisitions could be described that way.

The islands of Lampedusa and Lampione, which are closer to North Africa than to Italy, are nonetheless occupied by Rome. Over the centuries, various imperialists have ruled the two islands, including the Barbary pirates, the Spanish, the British, and, most recently, the Italians. They have no particular right to the territory, other than the "right" of might.

In recent years, the 6,000 residents of Lampedusa have been joined by tens of thousands of African migrants. Does the local population want Lampedusa, which is arguably an African island, to continue to be part of Italy? Should they have the right to vote on whether their majority-black island should be governed by white Europeans? The Italian occupation regime, which points an accusing finger at Israel, does not appear to be interested in granting the Lampedusans self-determination.

There are Italian "settlements" in a number of other countries. Within the borders of Switzerland, for example, there is an Italian enclave, Campione d'Italia. Historically it was called just "Campione," but fascist dictator Benito Mussolini added "d'Italia" to assert his imperialist claim to the territory. Several thousand Italian citizens currently reside there.

Not all the Swiss are happy about the Italian "settlers" in their midst. When Campione's casino went bankrupt in 2018, Swiss creditors were left with millions of dollars in unpaid debts.

Italy also has manned outposts (for scientific research) in Kenya, Antarctica, and the Norwegian-occupied part of the Arctic Circle. In addition, the Italians have a military base called Amedeo Guillet, with some 300 personnel, in Djibouti, an African country that the Italians illegally occupied from 1889 to 1941.

The Italian government has described the base as "a permanent outpost in an area of enormous strategic importance." Israel might say the same thing about Ma'ale Adumim, especially considering its close proximity to Jerusalem.

Israel's historical, legal, and religious claims to the area where Ma'ale Adumim is situated are much older and stronger than Italy's claims to Campione or Amedeo Guillet. Ambassador Kashriel may have an opportunity to remind Rome of that fact when he takes up his new position.

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