Tel-Chai Nation

The overrated TV show Law & Order, whose flagship series was regrettably revived a few years ago, has now produced an episode that supposedly tackles the issue of Islamic antisemitism on college campuses, but unshockingly, the scriptwriters did everything they could to make the pro-Israeli side look as bad - and possibly worse - than the pro-Hamas side:

The original Law & Order (as well as its spinoffs) has always taken inspiration from headlines, so it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that the first episode of its 23rd season (which aired in the US on January 18 and which will be shown in Israel on Hot Zone on January 23 at 10:45 p.m. and on Hot VOD and Next TV), tackles the response to the war between Hamas and Israel on a New York college campus.

Since it’s network television, it tries to cover all the bases in the controversy without causing any actual offense, but given that show’s creator and one of the co-writers of this episode, Dick Wolf, is Jewish and that its most beloved characters tend to be wise and skeptical of violence and self-righteousness, it isn’t surprising that it tips its hat toward the Israeli position.

Umm, this ignores that there have been at least a few times in past L&O history where Jews/Israelis were made to look bad. If it does tip its hat, that's merely a coincidence coming from a TV show whose spinoff series were just as awful, if not more so. I'm aware there was at least one episode dealing with Islamic honor murders, but it wasn't enough to counteract the bad taste left by the series, and if the episode that was from around a quarter century ago avoided being critical of the Religion of Peace, that says all you need to know about anything else in this insufferable series. The writer's failing to consider that sometimes, frantically going out of your way not to offend anybody only ends up offending.

It opens with a shot of posters showing hostages abducted by Hamas, defaced by red paint. If you want the episode to surprise you, stop reading here, because there will be some spoilers. After we see the posters, Nathan Alpert (Scott Bryce), the Jewish president of the fictitious Hudson University, walks past them, talking on the phone to his wife about his fear that he will be accused of plagiarism in his academic work, an obvious reference to recently resigned former Harvard president, Claudine Gay.

If he forgot to cite a single article correctly, he worries, his career will be over. Distracted when he sees some keffiya-clad students spray-painting stars of David on a shuttered bagel kiosk, he tells them to stop and is stabbed to death by an assailant who comes from a different direction and tosses a card with the word, “Traitor” written on it onto his body before fleeing.

Credits roll, with the familiar and much-imitated bong-bong theme, much loved by crime show fans and canines (you can go to YouTube to see many videos of dogs barking along to it).

A donor character who even looks like Bill Ackman

“Nate was a firm believer in free speech,” his wife tells the detectives Vincent Riley (Reid Scott) and Jalen Shaw (Mehcad Brooks). “He didn’t think it was his job to articulate his personal opinions. He thought it might disrupt campus discourse.” The first suspect is Phillip Klein (Jason Babinsky), a nervous, obviously Jewish academic who has been tearing down pro-Palestinian posters when the detectives find him.

He is a politically conservative professor who is furious at the university for firing him, and he says was inspired to threaten to kill the liberal college president after watching news reports coming out of Israel. Klein points out that Alpert had no problem commenting on George Floyd’s death and is angry he stayed silent about Israel, in spite of being Jewish, and that a group of influential donors were demanding he resign.

A wealthy donor with an airtight alibi who even looks like Bill Ackman says he had been pressuring Alpert to ban a student group that supports Hamas. Chloe (Alexa Wisener), an actress and influencer who has family in Gaza who is involved with the pro-Hamas group, has called the president a puppet of the Zionists. When they ask her a few questions, some students accuse the detectives of “being in the pocket of the Israeli government.”

The eventual defendant is Cameron Lawson (Braxton Fannin), a wealthy, WASPy student. Israeli actress Odelya Halevi plays Samantha Maroun, a Lebanese assistant district attorney, intent on catching the killer. While she doesn’t agree with Chloe and Cameron, she opines that they aren’t crazy. Later, Chloe is shot dead while chanting, “From the river to the sea,” at a rally, and the shooter turns out to be – Klein. He shouts, “Never again!” as the detectives corner him, and is killed after he shoots at them. Dancy muses, “When did expressing your beliefs become so fraught?” and Maroun replies, “When it comes to Israel and Palestine? Forever.”

Oh dear. This is where the moral equivalence destroys all potential. A pro-Israeli figure is made out to look as murderously evil as the Islamofascists themselves.

They learn that Chloe and Cameron were under the sway of the charismatic professor, Kendra Nasser (Tehmina Sunny). Chloe’s bewildered boyfriend says he feels she “brainwashed them . . preaching and manipulating . . . She’s hardcore, too. She thought October 7 was justified. I mean, I support innocent Palestinians but come on. That was a flat-out act of terror.”

The district attorney’s office decides that Cameron was “doing Nasser’s bidding,” and they decide to go after her as well. When assistant district attorney Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy) worries about “the optics,” Sam Waterson as DA Jack McCoy the sole holdover from the original series, says, in his Sam Waterston way, “Let me worry about the optics, you worry about the case.” After some damning testimony against her, Nasser asserts, “The Jewish elite will stop at nothing to silence me. They’re terrified of Middle Easterners with a platform and brain so they’ll do anything to squelch free debate.”

Eventually, although she says she was proud her student killed, she is exonerated and as she leaves the courtroom – uncharacteristically silent – a brawl breaks out between her supporters and detractors. Maroun and Price discuss the case, and Maroun says it will never be over. Unfortunately, McCoy isn’t on hand with a comforting aphorism.

The melodramatic and fast-paced show hits almost every note you could possibly expect from combining coverage of American campuses following the outbreak of the war against Hamas, and it is even handed in that there is a killer from each faction. But in the end, the noxious professor, who doesn’t even come close to expressing views as vile about the October 7 massacre by Hamas of Israelis (and quite a few foreigners) as real professors have, but she still comes off as an overwhelmingly negative figure.

If the the waves of antisemitism crashing over American academia soon come to an end – as some predict they will – this may be the last Law & Order episode on these themes. If not, stay tuned.

What's really sad is the likelihood there's more TV shows and movie producers at the moment who're willing to take the same tack, or worse, tilt everything in favor of the Hamas/PLO/Religion of Peace/anti-Israeli side. "Even-handed" is no excuse. And it's defeating the antisemitic professor was exonerated, but far from shocking, recalling there were at least a few more similarities to the turnout of this episode in its past near-35 years in broadcast. Let's be clear. If a series that's anything but "realistic" can only conclude by letting a bigoted figure off the hook, and even goes so far as to make a pro-Israeli character look as horrific as the Islamofascists are, then this story is just a failure.

Here's some more on Ynet about the story:

The opening scene depicts the president's stabbing in front of the fictional Cohen Bagels, a Manhattan store graffitied with blue Stars of David. Various individuals express dissatisfaction with the president's leadership, including both Jewish and pro-Palestinian factions. The episode weaves in real-world references, such as Harvard's former president Claudine Gay's resignation amid plagiarism accusations.

The narrative delves into the campus controversy surrounding the documentary "Israelism" and mentions the October 7 terror attack, with tensions escalating among pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups. The episode includes protesters, discussions on the use of slogans like "from the river to the sea," and even touches on transgender athletes.

Notably, the episode, co-written by series creator Dick Wolf, exhibits a careful balancing act in addressing the contentious issues. While the pro-Palestinian protesters are portrayed negatively, depicted as brainless agitators, the show introduces a Jewish, Zionist murderer as well. This character, responsible for killing a student protester, is swiftly dealt with by the police.

"Law & Order," typically a basic network crime serial, ventures into socially relevant themes. Despite not being considered prestige TV, the episode attempts to navigate the complexities of the Israel-Palestine debate, presenting both sides as culpable in the violence. The show's historically progressive stance is acknowledged, although its current portrayal of political battles is critiqued for being somewhat shallow.

I hesitate to think what kind of position the episode takes on the whole transsexual issue. Yet it's doubtful it'll make clear the Religion of Peace is against it. I'm sorry, but, when you take as forced and contrived a direction as this story does, it only fails to make clear Islam is the problem. Besides, that Wolf may be of Jewish descent alone doesn't mean he's not negative towards Israel. And if this is how they're going to approach the October 7, 2023 massacre by Hamas, who knows how they'd deal with September 11, 2001, if it happened today?

Here's another commentary on the episode:

The cops find many people disgruntled about the president’s leadership. Some Jewish professors and donors felt he allowed pro-Palestinian student groups and protesters too much leeway, and criticized him for failing to release a statement condemning Hamas after the Oct. 7 attack. Pro-Palestinian students and professors, meanwhile, were mad at the president for canceling their film symposium and say he’s “a puppet of the Zionist regime.”

In case you haven’t been reading the news, that’s a reference to Harvard’s former president Claudine Gay, who stepped down amid accusations of plagiarism and criticism over her handling of Oct. 7 and its aftermath, and another to the campus controversy over repeated cancellations of on-campus screenings of Israelism, a documentary some donors and activists have accused of antisemitism.

There are also protesters ripping down hostage posters, a character who says that “from the river to the sea” is code for destroying Israel, and even a throwaway line about transgender athletes, all of which makes for about as heavy-handed an episode as you could possibly imagine.

The interesting part of the episode, however, is its own strange participation in exactly the same kind of careful line-toeing that it’s trying to criticize.

And again, that's precisely the problem. You can't solve a serious issue if you won't look for the causes of the crisis, like the Koran's writings on Jews, in example.

It’s clear where Dick Wolf, the series creator who co-wrote the episode, stands on the issues at hand. The pro-Palestinian protesters are presented as brainless agitators who speak in a Valley-girl whine. And — spoiler alert — one of them is the murderer, “brainwashed” by an unrepentant pro-Palestinian professor. (“She thought Oct. 7 was justified,” says one former student of hers, scoffing. “I mean I support innocent Palestinians but come on. That was a flat-out act of terror.”) The pro-Palestinian left couldn’t really come across any worse.

But lest anyone accuse the show of bias, there’s a Jewish, Zionist murderer too, who ends up shooting and killing one of the student protesters. He’s quickly dispatched by the police — he’s shot when he points the gun at a cop — which allows the show to avoid having to dig in too deeply into Jewish extremism around the war. Still, it’s important to the show that he exists; after all, in the Law & Order system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups — the pro-Israel advocates, and the pro-Palestinian ones, and they’re both killers.

Well they're right that it's just oh-so important to the show that such a character as a pro-Israeli villain be shoehorned in, because they have absolutely no courage needed to take a clear stand on Israel's right to exist. Also notice how as described, they raise no questions whether there was ever actually an Arab/Islamic palestinian state.

Law & Order is not prestige TV; it’s a basic network crime serial, albeit one that has made its name off of being at least somewhat socially relevant. People are not coming to it for biting social commentary, or to help them form their views about the war or campus debates (which is not to say it won’t influence them). It probably could have gotten away without its one, throwaway, pro-Israel bad guy.

But Law & Order, once upon a time, was kind of progressive, at least for a network crime serial. It took on issues of gender-based violence, abortion, race in policing. It was actually, tangentially, part of the same culture war that “Freedom of Expression” portrays as shallow.

Ahem. L&O was shallow, and still is. As time went by, it wound up portraying far more whites as criminals (unless they were Muslims, of course), and quite a few of said whites were even wealthy types. What do we need such a shoddy would-be crime drama for anymore? It was only the beginning of prime-time TV's erosion when it originally began at the dawn of the 1990s, and is still a huge stain on mainstream TV as a whole. The 1st quarter of the original flagship series' run is now tainted by the offenses of its former co-star Chris Noth, and that only underscores why it's run far too long. Why won't NBC just let it go already?

All that aside, it's shameful Wolf had to be a contributor to TV shows like Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice in the years before he created the L&O franchise. Exactly why they'll have to be taken with a grain of salt, even if they're better.

Labels: anti-americanism, anti-semitism, dhimmitude, islam, Israel, jihad, lgbt cultism, misogyny, Moonbattery, msm foulness, political corruption, racism, sexual violence, showbiz, terrorism, United States, war on terror