Rising antisemitism – and not only on college campuses and not only on the right – on the one hand and on the other the politically motivated deployment of invented claims of antisemitism to stifle and discredit dissenters of the relentless bombing of Gaza are a part of the complex, entangled, and contradictory political ecology of this moment.

Neither one is a new phenomenon, but with the outbreak of fighting, first in Israel where 1200 were slaughtered on October 7 and shortly thereafter in Gaza where the death count rises above 16,000 (and counting,) both have spread in reach and gained in intensity.

For anyone who hopes to live in a world of substantive equality, peace, and freedom resisting both is imperative.

While the political class and media gang up against the three presidents of Ivy Leagues colleges for their misspeak and moral insensitivity in the face of rising antisemitism, the resumption of bombing and consequent mass murder of the people of Gaza – over 16,000 – going on right before their (and our) eyes, courtesy of Netanyahu and the Israeli military machine, doesn’t seem to merit the same outrage from these interlocutors.

“One down. Two to go,” Ms. Stefanik said in a statement on Saturday. “This is only the very beginning of addressing the pervasive rot of antisemitism that has destroyed the most ‘prestigious’ higher education institutions in America. This forced resignation of the president of Penn is the bare minimum of what is required.”

Beware Beware Beware!

“Rot” for Stefanik – a Trump flunky – goes far beyond the presence of antisemitism on college campuses. And even if it didn’t I would have little confidence in her sincerity and capacity to address antisemitism. After all, the MAGA movement, and she is one of its leaders, is a purveyor of the worst kind of antisemitic tropes and constantly rails about the takeover of the country’s most “prestigious” college campuses by the left .

Even her choice of the word “rot” I find suspicious. It strikes me s a close cousin of “vermin.” And guess who uses that term?