Israel in 1948 was a manifestation of an ideal at the time it was created. Namely, this meant Jewish self-determination in their ancient homeland, a nation-state like all others, brought about by a liberation movement that worked with and ultimately against the world's greatest imperial power, and which was the culmination of decades of patient organizing and building, all set against the horrific backdrop of the Holocaust.

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Few trends in academia are more depressing than the continued domination of Middle Eastern studies departments by postcolonial professors whose shtick involves recycling cliched attacks on the United States as the "Great Satan" and Israel as the "Little Satan." The results of this trend are evident in faculty antipathy toward Israel, which is increasingly playing out in their support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

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Language, culture and politics are the ingredients of society; how they are mixed determines the kind of society we create. In his succinct essay Politics and the English Language George Orwell wrote, "the words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there is no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning."

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President Joe Biden earned deserved modest praise for his visit to Israel and Saudi Arabia last week, restoring confidence in core Middle East alliances. But the president made at least one major misstep: He pledged $201 million to the corrupt and bloated United Nations Relief and Works Agency, a step back into the failed policies of the past on a trip dedicated to continuing the forward progress made in the region in recent years.

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Congressional resolutions honor and commemorate, condemn, and even bluster. Rarely do they endorse a false conception of history as a means of conducting political warfare against an American ally.

House Resolution 1123, introduced by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), does just that. It also serves as an ominous warning about the future of the wider Democratic Party as its progressive wing organizes and grows in anticipation of a changing of the guard.

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