Weekend long read

1) At the Fathom journal, David Hirsh explains ‘The Meaning of David Miller’.

“According to Bristol University Professor David Miller, ‘Britain is in the grip of an assault on its public sphere by the state of Israel and its advocates’. He believes ‘Bristol’s JSoc [Jewish Society. Ed], like all JSocs, operates under the auspices of the Union of Jewish Students (UJS), an Israel lobby group’ and is part of ‘a campaign of censorship and manufactured hysteria’ that is ‘directed by the State of Israel. The campaign involves false claims of antisemitism designed ‘to give cover to Zionist activists’. His outburst has led to outraged calls for his removal but also fulsome messages of support from the academic left, open letters that do not simply argue he has free speech rights but which endorse his world view. David Hirsh, author of Contemporary Left Antisemitism, explores the wider meanings and deeper roots of the controversy.”

2) Orna Mizrahi and Yoram Schweitzer of the INSS ask ‘Is Hezbollah More Ready to Engage in Conflict with Israel?’.

“There are signs that Hezbollah is more ready than in the past to take risks vis-à-vis Israel, though at this stage it is unclear whether the organization will further escalate the situation. No deliberate reversal is evident – Hezbollah is still interested in avoiding war – but it is making an effort to consolidate the deterrence equation with Israel. This approach represents a shift from the restraint the organization displayed in the final months of President Trump’s tenure, in order to preclude any excessive response. Although the Biden administration has not yet formulated its policy vis-à-vis Lebanon and Hezbollah, the organization’s leadership, like its patron Iran, believes there is a window of opportunity to advance interests with respect to Israel and the Lebanese arena.”

3) As the tenth anniversary of the start of the uprising in Syria approaches, Aaron Zelin and Oula Alrifai of WINEP document the Assad regime’s domestic negligence.

“The inhumane military and diplomatic steps taken by Assad and his foreign allies over the years have brought Syria’s healthcare crisis to a head. First, Damascus and Russia’s deliberate bombing of hospitals and other medical facilities has destroyed infrastructure that is indispensable to public health for wide swaths of the population. Their forces have also murdered healthcare workers—nearly 1,000 of them since the war began, according to a 2020 report by Physicians for Human Rights.”

4) The Jerusalem Post reports on Israel’s designation of ‘Samidoun’, one representative of which has in the past been a source of BBC content.

“As part of the campaign against the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and its global organizational infrastructure, Defense Minister Benny Gantz has signed an order designating the Samidoun organization, which acts abroad on the group’s behalf, as a terrorist organization. […]

Representatives of the organization are active in many countries in Europe and North America, led by Khaled Barakat, who is part of the leadership of the PFLP abroad, it said.”