The Free Press
Whether it’s gender ideology in healthcare or “anti-racism” in newsrooms, the dangerous consequences of the ideological capture of our institutions is something we’re committed to investigating here at The Free Press. The events since October 7 have demonstrated the scale of the problem.
Today, two examples of this problem as it relates to the law—how it is enforced and how it is taught.
First, our own Rupa Subramanya reports on the response of the British police to protests in Britain in recent weeks. This is a huge story in the UK right now, with a big political fight over whether pro-Palestinian protests should be permitted alongside Armistice Day commemorations in London tomorrow. In her look at law enforcement across the pond, Rupa discovers more than a whiff of a double standard, with genocidal chants in the street tolerated but, in some cases, pro-Israel speech leading to a knock on the door.
How did Britain’s police find themselves appearing to take a side in this way? One former police officer explained to Rupa the challenge today’s officers face:
At the end of the day, there’s 100,000 protesters against probably less than 1,000 coppers, so 100 to one. So there’s only so much you can do on the day, without causing quite a lot of a disorder.
Read Rupa’s full piece for more:
On October 17, a man posted a video on Twitter of a street in his East London neighborhood. There was a Turkish restaurant, a Dominos, graffiti—and lots of Palestinian flags.
“Look at this crap here,” the man, known only as John A, is heard saying. He has a working-class, Scottish accent. “You let them into the country, and this is the shit they come up with.”
Two weeks later, on the night of October 31, police officers showed up at John A’s apartment.
“The reason why we’re here,” one of the officers can be heard saying in a separate video, “is on the 17th of the 10th of 2023, in Bethnal Green Road, at 10:04, you were witnessed as saying, ‘Why are they over here, etc.? We let them into our country, etc.’ ”
The police then arrest John A on suspicion of a “racially aggravated offense,” a violation of the Public Order Act of 1986. (David Atherton, a journalist who spoke with John A, tweeted that John A “does not have a criminal record & was not arrested for breaking bail conditions, as some have suggested.”)
As John A is led to a police van, his wife—now battling stage 4 cancer—wails at the cops.
“Fuck you!” she screams.
For more on the mood in Britain, read Tanya Gold’s essay about how recent weeks have changed what she thought it meant to be a British Jew.
Back on this side of the Atlantic, Aaron Sibarium reports on events at Yale Law School, where antisemitism has been tolerated and a center nominally dedicated to human rights hosted an event on Israeli “apartheid.” Aaron reveals that Jewish students have been crushed by the inadequacy of the school’s response to their appeals for help in the face of hatred.
Read Aaron’s full account of the failings at the institution that’s training our future top lawyers:
In its own telling, Yale Law School’s Schell Center for International Human Rights seeks to “equip lawyers and other professionals with the knowledge and skills needed to advance the cause of international human rights.”
The center has educated students and human rights professionals on atrocities large and small, issuing a detailed report last year on ethnic cleansing in Myanmar and proposing a framework in mid-September to moderate “indirect hate speech online”—whatever that means.
But six days after Hamas’ October 7 massacre over 1,400 Israelis and kidnapping of 240 more, the center was silent.
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Withdrawal of advertising dollars from media sources fueling antisemitism through unbalanced biased reporting might be a countermove to consider. Consumers can also vote with their dollars via their fingers and eyes by not watching coverage on platforms with whom you disagree. The platform doesn’t care if you disagree, they just want your click data. Fear and anger generate views which in turn generates dollar reinforcement through advertising which then generates more reporting designed to raise outrage and / or fear. Just a thought.
I think they must nip it understand the meaning of Zionism . It is simply the Jewish connection to the ancient and now modern land of Israel. It is expressed at the end of every Passover Seder” next year in Jerusalem “ which we hav3 been reciting for millennia. It is NOT a treatise of colonialism which is something else entirely. The crafty Woke anti semites have falsely equated the two. Hence your progressive Jewish acquaintances who do nor understand or value their own heritage. Both Jews and Arabs have indigenous claims to the land and can coexist peacefully in a two state solution if only the Palestinian Arabs would acknowledge it and abandon their false claim of “ return” . Time to get real . Israel isn’t leaving