By ALEXANDER DOLITSKY
What happened on Oct 7, 2023 was not just a massive attack on innocent people inside Israel, it was the equivalent to about 36,000 Americans being massacred and burned in their homes in one day and about 9,000 of our fellow Americans being taken hostage.
Pro-Palestinian and anti-Semitic protests in our country are shocking. But it also has been predictable: The same protests have been occurring in Europe for years, as Muslims have increased their presence in European countries as “refugees” from Muslim countries only to become violent within short times and reluctant to assimilate with the host country. European politicians have stood by, watched, and let it continue to happen.
Certainly, rather than learning from the European mistakes, the United States has followed suit and welcomed, indiscriminately, radicalized Muslims to this country, too.
It’s no surprise in today’s political environment that university presidents will defend the rights of Muslims while ignoring those very same rights for Jews and others deemed in the “majority.” Even when hate speech is expressed directly at Jews, “woke” authorities simply turn their heads.
Elite university presidents are afraid to do anything that might subject them to criticism for not being “woke” enough. This is the American society that the progressive and far-left activists have been pushing on Americans for years with their identity politics: Draw lines between people, make them feel persecuted and sorry for themselves, and get them to hate each other.
But a real irony is that most Jews in the U.S. have been strong far-left activists for many years; I wonder how long it will take my Juneau Synagogue friends to begin rethinking their blind allegiance to far-left politics and activism.
The other irony is that the people most blind to antisemitism and far-left ideology are the so-called “educated elite.” It’s the working-class people whose common sense screams at them that this is messed up. However, the power in our society resides with the oligarchs and the “educated elite.” The “educated elite”—products of those same universities (e.g., Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, MIT, Cornell) that started “Wokism.”
Politics of the pro-Palestinian activists prioritizing their radical beliefs and values; and it clouds their judgment for human rights and justice. Pro-Palestinian activists also misinterpret and misuse the concepts of apartheid, genocide and occupation in reference to Israel’s governing and political standing.
The apartheid and oppression in South Africa (1948 to 1994) was the racial segregation under the all-white government, which dictated that non-white South Africans (most of the population) were required to live in separate areas from whites and use separate public facilities.
Today in Israel, Jews make up the majority at 73% (about 7.145 million individuals). The Arab community, spanning various religions, accounts for 21% or nearly 2 million individuals. They are citizens of Israel with equal rights, political participation, and representation.
Genocide is an internationally recognized crime with the intent to exterminate a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. Between 1950 and 2023, the Palestinian population in Israel, Gaza and neighboring territories grown from 944,807 people to 5,371,230—an increase of the population by 468.5% in 73 years.
Occupation. The Jewish presence in the Israel-Gaza region is, archaeologically and historically, well documented; it is clearly described in every high school and college world history textbooks. The Land of Israel has changed hands many times over the centuries. But it has been the homeland of the Jewish people for nearly 3,500 years.
Indeed, pro-Palestinian and anti-Semitic rhetoric is a classic example of the confusion that far-leftist politicians, media, and educators has created in our youth. In fact, it is not surprising that many of our youth now proclaiming support for the Palestinians in Gaza, even that the Palestinian Hamas terrorists committed atrocious crimes against Israel.
Many rational and peace-seeking Americans are outraged by the Gaza (via Hamas) atrocious attack on Israel on Oct. 7 of last year, killing, mutilating, and kidnapping nearly 1,500 individuals in Israel. It is inconceivable how anyone can find moral equivalence between the two sides in the present conflict between Israel and Gaza/Hamas. What Hamas terrorists did was savage, primitive, and far beyond any justification.
World-wide antisemitism, triggered by Israel/Hamas-Gaza war, is a direct result of the far-left ideology that is prevalent today in the West. Progressive and far-left activists attempting to create an ignorant, self-important generation of youth with a corrupt moral compass. Pro-Palestinian activism stems from the far-left ideology of white privilege doctrine, critical race theory, systemic racism and transgenderism.
Clearly, school administrators and teachers’ unions are turning the public schools into the “Blue Cities” with the far-left, “woke” ideology.
Alexander B. Dolitsky was born and raised in Kiev in the former Soviet Union. He received an M.A. in history from Kiev Pedagogical Institute, Ukraine, in 1976; an M.A. in anthropology and archaeology from Brown University in 1983; and was enroled in the Ph.D. program in Anthropology at Bryn Mawr College from 1983 to 1985, where he was also a lecturer in the Russian Center. In the U.S.S.R., he was a social studies teacher for three years, and an archaeologist for five years for the Ukranian Academy of Sciences. In 1978, he settled in the United States. Dolitsky visited Alaska for the first time in 1981, while conducting field research for graduate school at Brown. He lived first in Sitka in 1985 and then settled in Juneau in 1986. From 1985 to 1987, he was a U.S. Forest Service archaeologist and social scientist. He was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Alaska Southeast from 1985 to 1999; Social Studies Instructor at the Alyeska Central School, Alaska Department of Education from 1988 to 2006; and has been the Director of the Alaska-Siberia Research Center (see www.aksrc.homestead.com) from 1990 to present. He has conducted about 30 field studies in various areas of the former Soviet Union (including Siberia), Central Asia, South America, Eastern Europe and the United States (including Alaska). Dolitsky has been a lecturer on the World Discoverer, Spirit of Oceanus, and Clipper Odyssey vessels in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. He was the Project Manager for the WWII Alaska-Siberia Lend Lease Memorial, which was erected in Fairbanks in 2006. He has published extensively in the fields of anthropology, history, archaeology, and ethnography. His more recent publications include Fairy Tales and Myths of the Bering Strait Chukchi, Ancient Tales of Kamchatka; Tales and Legends of the Yupik Eskimos of Siberia; Old Russia in Modern America: Russian Old Believers in Alaska; Allies in Wartime: The Alaska-Siberia Airway During WWII; Spirit of the Siberian Tiger: Folktales of the Russian Far East; Living Wisdom of the Far North: Tales and Legends from Chukotka and Alaska; Pipeline to Russia; The Alaska-Siberia Air Route in WWII; and Old Russia in Modern America: Living Traditions of the Russian Old Believers; Ancient Tales of Chukotka, and Ancient Tales of Kamchatka.
So?