you know every time the Middle East vs Israel flares up I remember the book “By Way of Deception” where the author a former Mossad agent argues that there’s a very prominent group in Israel that really doesn’t want peace in the occupied zones because it furthers their political and financial interest to keep a antagonistic relationship with the Palestinians
to the point that he said that even if the Mossad knew what was going to happen that day their response would of been based on politics if there was nothing to gain but grandstanding for headlines saying “Look what we found out and stopped” it might not have happened but if problems were going on like corruption trials and such and the economy needed a boost well sacrifices had to be made
But since he wrote his book in the late eighties and early 90s he used examples like the Beirut bombing which he claimed the Mossad knew about but didn’t warn anyone about because it was thought that it would bring people to their side against the PLO
You also have to be of questionable judgement to reflexively take the word of Israel’s government or IDF on what’s happening, either. That “base” under the hospital was pretty pathetic. Telling people to go someplace safe when they’re trapped in an area where nowhere is safe is sadistic. There’s the whole cutting off of every essential of life for two months, which is a war crime.
We are not going to have solid evidence of anything much until all of this is long over. The only thing I am certain of is that both sides have been committing atrocities.
Hamas has a longstanding policy of attacking Israeli civilians, then using Palestinian civilians as human shields, then claiming victimhood when civilians die.
Civilan casualties are Hamas’ fault. In the long run, the best way to protect Palestinian civilians is to eliminate Hamas. A cease-fire protects Hamas.
The academics showing up and saying “it’s complicated” should not result in an accusation of “antisemitism from these college heads.” Timidity in addressing antisemitism/islamophobia, I’d buy that, but more likely their wording was driven by “after this hearing you’ll head to the Capitol Hill Club, I have to go back to the college and keep juggling these four flaming chainsaws.”
Like others said, they could have answered “when someone carries out an actual assault we’ll deal with that, merely shouting hateful slogans is not enough”. And then let the congresscritters get all puffed up about how that’s weaseling out and why can’t you give a Y/N answer to my bad question – like I said before, they should have known going in that this was not a good faith hearing about antisemitic activity on campuses, this was a showpiece hearing intended to say: Behold a bunch of elite academics normally all about preventing “microaggressions”, twist themselves in knots to avoid denouncing Real Evil™. To make the detested ivory tower libs squirm before the cameras. No matter what they answered other than “every single one of those students and staff has been expelled/fired and banned from campus” they would have been told that was the wrong answer.
Just wanted to add, having re-read this post - I’m not saying Israel is trying to kill everyone in Gaza.
While I do think the IDF has committed some war crimes, I definitely don’t think their intent is genocide. The two aren’t synonyms. Some war crimes can still have very low body counts.
I do think that the current rate of death isn’t sustainable, though, and I think pointing to non-wartime rates of growth in Palestine is laughably irrelevant to wartime attrition rates.
The presidents of Penn and Harvard both released clarifying statements yesterday. I’m now wondering if it was the plan all along to just accept that they were going to get dinged no matter what they said in the Congressional hearing, so go with a non answer there, and then release a better answer later when they controlled the mic. Not saying that’s a great plan, but it’s a plan.
Or, they royally screwed up in the hearing, not realizing how badly their comments played, and the ‘clarifications’ are just ass-covering the blowback.
It was not a hard question. The fact that they are still ‘clarifying’ their response is an indictment of their testimony.
I hadn’t thought of it before, but the current Penn standards on hate speech kinda blow. Some quotes below and a link. Now I’m wondering if the problem isn’t what she said as much as the toothless policy.
We can address classroom speech and behaviors that disrupt learning, but what our community members say in public spaces, including those spaces that are part of our campus, is only subject to discipline if the inflammatory speech intentionally and effectively provokes a crowd to immediately carry out violent and unlawful action. This means that if someone voices hateful views, the only appropriate response that can come from the community takes the form of disagreement, rejection, or offering alternative (or even ignoring the hateful statements, which may not deserve our attention).
To refrain from conduct towards other students that infringes upon the Rights of Student Citizenship. The University condemns hate speech, epithets, and racial, ethnic, sexual and religious slurs. However, the content of student speech or expression is not by itself a basis for disciplinary action. Student speech may be subject to discipline when it violates applicable laws or University regulations or policies.
When I attended as a grad student, the administration was much more conservative and unwilling to take action about all the things you just mentioned than my undergraduate institution (which is notoriously liberal.) Even within the school of social work, historically a very progressive field, they put a conservative in charge, much to the consternation of students (I kind of liked him, but also concede that he was an asshole. What I liked about him is that he was kind of a troll for people who didn’t want to use hard data to make systemic decisions.) And one of my mentors, the one who taught what was essentially critical race theory, was a staunch conservative.
Based on my undergraduate experience (which held room for many viewpoints and lots of rigorous debate between students of all nationalities and ethnicities), I just sort of assumed that all universities were highly diverse hotbeds of various strains of liberal ideology, as conservatives like to claim. Penn was not that. To the extent it had diversity, it was a very insular sort of diversity, with a lot of prejudice. (The core difference between that and my alma mater, I suppose, is that at my alma mater we felt like an incredibly diverse collective all working toward mutual understanding, whereas at Penn we felt siloed off by ideology, race, ethnicity, gender etc.) Based on my experience, I predict that Penn will continue to give lip service to these issues without really doing anything meaningful to address incidents of hate on campus.
I wanted to start a thread about this, and I’m glad someone did, but my issue is that I didn’t understand what these university heads were supposed to be doing wrong, because the articles would say, “So and so was accused of anti-Semitism today, two weeks ago so-and-so released a statement indicating that they found anti-Semitism abhorrent,” so I couldn’t figure out what the problem was. Not even the news coverage was willing to identify what exactly the heads were being accused of doing.
I also have a very limited understanding of the Israel-Palestine conflict, so am mostly watching these debates from the sidelines, but I wanted to say to @Babale that I have appreciated your thoughts on this issue, you represent your viewpoint very well and it has added to my understanding of the issue.
Well, yes, I think everyone agrees genocide is “bad”. That’s why the United States gives a lot of money and weapons to Israel to prevent another genocide at the hands of Israel’s Arab neighbors, Turkey chooses to deny the existence of the Armenian genocide and Americans feel really bad about the genocide of the Indigenous Americans.
I’m still continuing to stay out of the current Israeli War threads due to bias, but I wonder if part of the reasons for, not anti-semitism, but a serious waffling on the actions of Hamas is even more prosaic - money.
For a few months, I worked on campus helping dot i’s and cross t’s on graduate student admissions. And a hugely disproportionate numbers of them were Saudi nationals. Who were all coming in on full price, fully funded national scholarships. Which, for the state school I was working for, a welcome source of funds. Granted, this was almost a decade ago, so things may have changed.
So, at least some articles mention more direct investment as well, and a bit more recently -
Now please, I am fully aware that if I’m not careful, I’m just reversing the tired antisemitic trope that with Jews, it’s all about the $$$. That is NOT my intent, and if I’ve slipped into that fallacy, feel free to correct me. But, IMHO, those college heads are probably trying to juggle the earlier flaming chainsaws of which of the two groups providing financial support to piss off less. And so they’re giving the most banal, unsatisfying and wishy-washy answers they think they can manage. And then after the fact, seeing how the winds blow, they try to create ‘clarity’ in their intents with after the fact follow ups.
So, again, rather than being specifically antisemitic they’re waffling from much more banal motivations.
Is there also legitimate antisemitic and anti-Islamic (distinct from anti-Hamas) bias in some or even many of these individuals? Probably, but never forget the pragmatic elements as well.
Yes, @Babale, your posts are uniformly the most reasoned and informative analyses of the current situation I have encountered, despite the immense passions inextricably entwined in the issues.
I’ve mentioned it in another thread, but as an undergraduate I took a lot of anthropology courses that were also part of our Middle Eastern Studies Program. And looking back, Israel was pretty much absent. When the program sponsored student events, we’d see Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and even Iraq and Iran represented but never Israel. Maybe it was simply a lack of students from Israel? We had plenty of students from other Middle Eastern countries.
It was also the only time I saw what I thought were antisemitism from some of my fellow students. One guy was going to the region, two or three different countries over the summer, and when asked if he’d stop by Israel just went on a tirade about how terrible they were and how he’d never visit. Another time was when we were visiting a mosque and a Palestinian was accompanying us as we walked from the school. He was talking with a young woman when she casually mentioned her hatred of Israel and this guy shook his head waving his arms emphatically telling her, “No, no. I don’t hate Israel.” It was a little surreal seeing a Palestinian chastise someone for hating Israel.
