In a different universe, part of a college education would involve learning how to intelligently listen and respond to people saying things you disagree with. Even in a crowd.
One of the large and seemingly overlooked issues affecting college campuses is that college students are very young adults. They can’t do nuance, they like to get excited and shouty and have little capacity to wonder whether they indeed know everything. With their protests, they are experiencing wielding power for the first time, and it’s heady stuff.
Does this remind you of any other problematic group? There is a mob mentality at work. And university administrators are frightened of them.
As to the OP, it seems to me that the State of Israel’s oppressive and cruel behaviors can never be excused because their people have historically been at the receiving end for so long. But just the same, the call for genocide of the Jewish people by Hamas cannot in any way be condoned or excused. Neither are supportable. This seems so blatantly obvious. The waters seem permanently muddied by racism and by history, ancient and modern. That we are still unable to distinguish between racism and political criticism – of Jews, of Muslims – is a travesty.
This is a really interesting question and probably boils down to semantics. A lot of Christianity’s major early strides were the result of rulers converting and legitimatizing the religion, and it didn’t defeat its oppressors so much as it literally became the system that had previously oppressed it.
Israel is an example of an oppressed ethnic group establishing an independent* nation, successfully defending itself in a series of wars, and securing political legitimacy from most of its peer governments.
*I think this is the unique bit, at least off the top of my head. There have been lots of semi-autonomous ethnic enclaves throughout history, but always and ultimately at the mercy of whatever political entity it exists inside. Things like that rarely end well.
I don’t really think the waters are muddy at all in this case.
Political criticism of Israel is fine.
What Israeli policy does a call to “globalize the Intifada” criticize?
Intifada means armed resistance (in this case against Israel). You could perhaps argue that this could mean supporting armed resistance against legitimate targets of Israeli oppression. If the Intifada is “globalized” - IE brought to wider theaters than Israel/Palestine - what possible legitimate targets of Israeli oppression are found globally?
“Globalize the Intifada” is very clearly a call for violence against Jewish people around the world. There is no other honest interpretation.
When someone points this out, and the reaction is “why are you making everything about anti-Semitism”, that’s pretty fucking ridiculous. “Globalize the Intifada” has absolutely nothing to do with legitimate criticism of Israeli policy. It isn’t even a call for legitimate resistance against oppression. It’s a call for violence against Jewish civilians outside of Israel.
Yes, it does, because the whole genesis of this thread is that those students are anti-Semitic, and I say they aren’t. I could definitely see a naïve college student thinking, if it were all one secular state, all of this fighting would go away. We had a naive poster here trying to claim that. It’s a naïve position that ignores the reality that, without their own state, Jews will once again face pogroms and oppression and that the fighting wouldn’t stop if it were all one state. But, that doesn’t mean it’s anti-Semitic. And, certainly, I disagree that the heads of these colleges are anti-Semitic.
Right, everyone who disagrees with you is automatically dishonest. This kind of hermetically-sealed, epistemologically-closed argument is of course bullshit.
The literal translation of “intifada” is “shaking-off”, as in pushing back against oppression. Of course I’m not naive enough to insist that only the literal meaning is valid. It generalizes to “resistance”. I would also point out that it takes some large, hysterical leaps of logic to get from “shaking-off” to “college students want to come to my house and do violence to me personally.” This is like how midwestern Americans reacted to 9/11, just radically and ridiculously paranoid.
Man, you’re really fucking good at killing strawmen!
I do not think that college students want to come to my house and do my violence. You fucking idiot. Please point out where I said so.
It is very possible that these college students are what you might call “useful idiots”, and that they aren’t familiar with the Intifada. Pretty sad condemnation of the American education system if our best and brightest are that dumb, though.
I know what the literal meaning of “Intifada” is, you dumb fucking idiot. I lived through the second Intifada. Words have meanings in context, and in the context of the Arab-Israeli Conflict it refers to a number of specific periods of greatly increased violence against Israeli civilians.
Pretending that they mean a different fucking Intifada is delusional. It’s like saying that you want to “Globalize the Hollocaust” but then explaining that you just want everyone to have a fire in their fireplace, honest!
The genesis of this thread is that the college heads are antisemitic and tolerating antisemitism at their schools. I don’t think calling the college heads or the students antisemitic is useful, or even accurate. This is about the tolerance for actions and speech which are reasonably considered antisemitic in nature.
In addition, you shouldn’t have to express your belief in the right of the state of Israel to exist in order to disagree with the direct opposite view or any of the multitude of opinions somewhere between the extremes. You only need to be able to express your opinions or state facts in a reasonable manner that doesn’t play to emotional responses, use hateful characterizations, or call for destructive action. The larger part of the problem is that colleges accept and graduate students incapable of doing that and lack leadership to identify or correct the problem.
I honestly couldn’t follow what you’re saying here. I think there are too many hypotheticals or something. Sorry, I’m sure it’s on my side, but maybe try again?
Holy shit. You just turned the massascre of 1200 people into a narrative where it was Israel at fault failing to protect its people, due to those evil right wingers. And now the response in Gaza is just a ‘cover-up’ for their own incompetence.
This is the worst kind if blame-the-victim nonsense I’ve seen for a while. It gives me some insight into how anti-semites can twist themselves into logical pretzels to hand-wave away the most brutal slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
This reminds me of Ilhan Omar’s description of 9/11 as ‘some people did something.’
Yes, some people make that distinction between “the Israeli government” and “Jews in general”. Some people do not.
And there are certainly Americans who have long been convinced that “the Jews” are secretly conspiring to run the world.
Also this:
Of course not - there is a long history of antisemitism in US colleges. My father was sharply limited in where he could go to get a degree because back in his day most colleges simply flat out refused to admit Jews. It would be foolish to think such attitudes have been entirely eliminated.
It makes a difference to me, as someone not Israeli who is Jewish. Not that I want to see any harm come to any Israeli but just because the distinction does not matter to you does not mean it is not of importance to other people.
I’m talking about the subset of people who are Harvard college students, not the white supremacists that conservatives like to invite to college campuses.
So when they chase innocent students in the school, forcing them to lock themselves in the library, or when a Jewish teacher has to lock herself in her classroom while students bang on her door, are these just abstract expressions of geopolitical anger at Zionism?
Come on. Jewish businesses are being threatened, Jews are frightened to go to school, inAmerica. And in Canada, and in Europe. We are WAY past theoretical debates about Zionism. We’re heading for 1930s levels of antisemitism once qgain, and it’s terrifying.
I think you’re seeing an upswing because of the war, and when the war is over, and (hopefully) Hamas is pulled out by the root, that will subside. But, if we do see continued anti-Jewish actions, it won’t be from college students, it will be from the Right in the US, who embrace Nazis and white supremacists.
We’re also seeing an upswing of anti-Muslim hate, again because of the war. There’s as little justification for that here in the US as there is for the anti-Jewish hate, but wars can bring out the worst in people.
I think that part of the problem is that Stefanik in her usual, showboating way, asked a question that was far too vague to be answered in a Congressional hearing by a University President who has been prepped by their attorneys. The basic question, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your university’s] code of conduct or rules regarding bullying or harassment?
Who is calling for the genocide of Jews? Students, employees, professors, random protestors completely unaffiliated with the University? How are they calling for it - signs, chants, in writing, on a video? Where is this call happening - on campus, on the sidewalk adjacent to campus, in a video that people are watching at a rally? Those are some of the specific things that I would have to know before saying if it were against my university code of conduct. Now you may say that all of those things should be readily apparent, but I sure as hell wouldn’t answer a question that broad either in Congress or in court with a yes or no.
SA’s transition in the end was a negotiated transfer of power after a small-scale armed struggle and a lot of civil unrest+international sanctions, rather than a full-on independence war + civil war (Ireland) or an immediate post-independence war with all one’s neighbours (Israel), so I didn’t think it was quite the same.
That is not the genesis of this thread. The genesis of this thread is the perception of antisemitism by the heads of colleges. I don’t think those college heads or those students are necessarily antisemitic.
I do think that students singing From the River to the Sea are making an antisemitic statement that should not be tolerated by colleges. I think that college heads should have said it would not be allowed right from the start and have no difficulty stating that and enacting it.
I also have no problem with students expressing their own belief that the state of Israel has no right to exist or that Palestinians are justified in their attempts to take back the land they believe they have a right to, providing the students can do that in a reasoned manner without hateful language, emotional appeals, or calls for destructive actions.
We up to date at this point? I think this is just a symptom of ingrained problems that I would discuss further if you are interested.
What stops White Supremacist young adults from applying to go to Harvard?
I think it’s quite naive to think there aren’t White Supremacists among college students, either because they come from families that are White Surpemacist or because they get there on their own.
The Ivy League colleges all sharply limited “minority” admission starting in the 1920’s, and included Jews among the undesirable groups. It was done deliberately, not by accident. This didn’t change at all until the 1960’s, and the mechanisms to limit “undesirables” have not been entirely dismantled.
Again - why do you think college age people can’t be members of the political Right, or Neo-Nazis, or White Supremacists? Those people aren’t hatched out as 40 year olds.
Antisemitic acts were rising in the US before the Hamas-Israel war. They started rising, in fact, during Trump’s first term even if Mr. Trump himself doesn’t seem to be what I’d call antisemitic, just profoundly ignorant, stupid, and callous. Trump hitched his wagon to the far-Right and the bigots have taken that as a license to be more openly bigoted.