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Are Jews About to be “Cancelled” in America?!
It seems beyond belief and possibility. But the campus riots and threats to “obviously Jewish” students should be sounding a very loud klaxon. The headlines are too numerous to cite them all, but here is a collection:
Pro-Palestinian protests sweep US college campuses following mass arrests at Columbia
Columbia faculty stage walk-out in solidarity with students
Yale Arrests Pro-Palestine Student Protesters As Tensions Escalate On Ivy League Campuses
MIT students protest Gaza war with encampment on campus
Student Protests Spread to Other Campuses Across America
This is getting to have a “George Floyd” vibe. This is something to watch. Student and faculty protests are one thing, spreading into corporate policy has to be the next target. And there is an infrastructure in place for that: Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS). There is a website. And reports and headlines are alarming:
Suspend Israel from International Sports. Sign the DiEM25 Petition.
Israeli filmmakers call on Locarno Festival to drop ‘complicit’ Israeli film
Sportswashing is associated with certain countries – why not Israel? Here is a quote:
When we refer to sportswashing, the attempt by nation-states to sanitise their reputations and launder their crimes, there is a certain kind of country we’re usually thinking of. We have no problem linking the manifold abuses of Qatar or Saudi Arabia or China to their investment in sport. And yet there appears to be a certain squeamishness about referring to Israel in similar terms, even though its aims are even more explicitly stated, its crimes well documented by human rights groups.
The primary objective of Israeli sporting diplomacy is that when you hear the country’s name, you won’t think of any of this. You won’t think about military checkpoints or the bombing of Gaza or the Palestinian occupation, or really Palestinians at all. Instead you’ll think about golden beaches, rooftop cocktails, Lionel Messi and Chris Froome bathed in a glorious sunset. “Most people don’t care about politics,” Adams has said. “Through world-class cultural and sporting events, we can reach the silent majority.”
But push at the door a little, and all the classic sportswashing tropes are present: denial, whataboutery, the curious blend of incredulity and aggression.
This past weekend Douglas Murray in his Things Worth Remembering column focused on a speech by Golda Meir in her 1948 visit to Chicago to meet with Jews skeptical of a State of Israel and seek their financial support to arm Israelis for the anticipated conflict with their neighboring Arab states. As Douglas relates —
According to those present, Meir went to the stage with her hair severely parted, absolutely no makeup, and with no notes to speak from—her preferred habit. The pauses in her speech seem to have been as important as the words themselves. She seemed to be feeling the words, weighing up the words, and judging, by the second, their effect on her audience.
She spoke for some 35 minutes.
Friends was the term she chose to address her audience.
“The mufti and his people have declared war upon us,” she said. “We have no alternative but. . . to fight for our lives.”
She told the audience about the thirty-five Jews who “fought to the very end” on the road to Kfar Etzion and of the last one killed. He had run out of ammunition but died with a stone in his hand, prepared to continue fighting.
And she paraphrased the famous words of Winston Churchill: “We will fight in the Negev and will fight in Galilee and will fight on the outskirts of Jerusalem until the very end.”
She added: “I want you to believe me when I say that I came on this special mission to the United States today not to save 700,000 Jews. During the last few years the Jewish people lost six million Jews, and it would be audacity on our part to worry the Jewish people throughout the world because a few hundred thousand more Jews were in danger. That is not the issue.”
The issue, she explained, “is that if these 700,000 Jews in Palestine can remain alive, then the Jewish people, as such, is alive and Jewish independence is assured. If these 700,000 people are killed off, then for many centuries, we are through with this dream of a Jewish people and a Jewish homeland.”
I was born 15 years after the conflict in Europe, after the Nazi version of the Holocaust was ended. But even when I was 10, 25 years after WWII, there were restrictive covenants or property organizations that excluded Jews. At my church there was a wealthy Jewish entrepreneur who had converted to Christianity and who had been denied purchasing a home in a gated community within a mile of my house because he was Jewish. He swallowed his disappointment and built a beautiful sprawling ranch-style home in a lovely tree shaded street in Coral Gables, instead. I was close friends with the younger of his two sons. The unfairness has always stung me.
I get that there is a distinction to be made between anti-Zionism and anti-Jewishness. But that distinction died in the Yom Kippur war. The history of the world is one of displacement. It may not be right. But at some point it becomes settled fact. So I find making distinctions between anti-Zionism and antisemitism in the 21st century to be unpersuasive. To wish to isolate and destroy Israel is, today, an expression of antisemitism. And the behavior of pro-Palestinian protesters toward any random Jewish-appearing person underlines this point. The target is not simply Israel. It is all Jews.
That we in America in any way countenance this is alarming. We must reckon with the destruction and violence of protests like BLM and, now, BDS. If China sees advantage in further weakening America, it can subtly lean on Nike and other China-entwined enterprises to join the BDS movement. We have seen the mind virus jump from academia to corporate America before. The immune system is weak.
Pray for your Jewish brethren.
Published in General
This is a profound post. Thank you.
It’s the Gaslight-level manipulation that is most distressing to me. These protesters are calling the Israelis “genocidal.” But if the protesters get what they are demanding, it is the 6 million Jews who will be the victims of genocide while the 464 million Arabs will live on. The protesters are demanding genocide.
I have been in dis-belief since October 7th and still am. It’s getting worse, but the one good thing is it is exposing the rot – the propaganda – that has infiltrated and consumed the minds of “higher” education, and our culture. We are an example of a light to the world – for freedom??? It’s so hideous that when I hear the chants and see the Star of David on their signs, I can’t help but think about Nazis and WWII. The German people were convinced through mass propaganda and it (pure evil) slithered in and consumed the world.
I wonder if Iran and other bad actors are behind some of this funding and incitement of these “groups” stirring it up on campuses?? What better way to wound your enemies (Israel and US)- from the inside?
Think if this was all targeted against Italians, or Mexicans or African Americans or Asian people?? Would that not constitute hate speech and threats for their safety? They are not getting much help. To tell Jewish kids to stay home on campus for your own safety???? My gosh – I never thought I’d see the day –
Rodin, thank you.
I suspect this may be a product of the academic trends we saw undermine the culture of America in the last part of the last century. The Trump era beginning in 2016 has intensified that within that base but I’m not convinced it is winning more adherents, just as I don’t think that has happened with the George Floyd aftermath.
The ‘Commies’, which is another way of addressing the extreme Leftists, have made much of the effort to rekindle racism as an issue, taking great advantage of the Obama Presidency. Real Americans have contested that effort and rejected all forms of racist and ethnic prejudice and instead rejected political socialism.
The next moves are up to the Jewish people, many of whom wield much influence in these academic circles. Real Americans, most of whom are Christians, are allied with them.
The southern American background in which I lived my formative years tells me that much of the reputation laid on the early white residents of the South is false. What we are seeing is a product of the Ivies and the big cities under Democrat influence, and there is a long history behind that.
The key question is: What is to be done?
Some colleges have tried arresting members of the mobs, but many prosecutors simply release them. Similarly, some colleges have suspended some students, but this seems to do little to dissuade them.
The next level, which many have suggested, is to expel the students, and to arrest any expelled students who refuse to obey the law. This should be accompanied by visa revocation and deportation for any foreign offenders.
Another step, which I don’t think has yet been suggested, is to not only expel the offending students, but to revoke their academic credits and any previous degrees they may have earned at the college. After all, the main purpose of a college is no longer to provide education – which in the internet age is available to almost anyone, anywhere – but to provide credentials for subsequent employment. Stripping students of their existing credentials, and/or of any progress they have made to earning credentials, should prompt students to reconsider their behavior.
Of course, the former students would retain their student debt.
Seems like,
As I argued in my post They Are Not Going Home, things are irrevocably changing. The suggestions you make can, in part, be effected consistent with our current system. But others can only be done if we are different than we used to be. Revoking credits/credentials for anything other than academic fraud is taking of property. Our system has historically protected property rights and that has been a hallmark of American success. The spirit of tyranny wants to provoke us into abandoning our approach to fundamental rights. Like the imam in Britain said in 2001, “We will use your ideology against you. If you protect our rights we will destroy you. If you deny us our rights we will have changed you.”
Change is coming. We have to be very careful in how we address this challenge. We are being changed whether we like it or not.
Here is a good account of how repetitive this process is in totalitarian regimes:
It Always Starts with the Jews.
Is it possible that the American Leftists are giving up on the ‘George Floyd’ racism approach because it really did not work. It won’t work with anti-Semitism either.
The problem is, how many people have to die to prove it doesn’t work? The answer in the past has always been in the millions. How many this time?
My view is that the Left is not looking for a single cause, they are promoting chaos. So it’s not gay marriage, transsexuality, white supremacy, reproductive rights, islamophobia, Israel, hate speech, systemic racism, etc. It’s all of them, all the time, at whatever volume can be generated, and with whatever new thing that can be turned to that purpose. The key to a good life is responsible freedom that Jordan Peterson describes as walking a line between order and chaos. The Left promotes chaos to drive us to seek order alone.
I used to accept there was a good-faith argument that anti-Zionism was not necessarily anti-Jewish, but I don’t believe that anymore. If you believe that, then you would believe Stalin when he assured you, after he had ordered the forcible removal of all ethnic Germans living in the Volga River valley, that it had nothing to do with them being German.
I’m not sure it is correct to say that colleges may revoke credits or credentials only for academic fraud, or that credits and credentials can be considered a student’s property. Credits and credentials are information that is held by a college. But they are not negotiable information like account balances held by a bank, or quasi-public information like credit scores held by a financial rating agency, or proprietary information like copyrighted or trademarked material held by a publisher.
Even if you are correct, the same effect could be achieved if a college kept the information intact, but simply refused to confirm or deny that a student had earned the credits or credentials. This is already done for minor offenses such as unpaid library fines, as any library scofflaw who has requested his transcript will attest.
Virtually all jobs and professional schools that require academic credentials insist on confirming them directly with the colleges rather than with the applicants, since digital imaging allows any applicant to counterfeit a very convincing paper transcript or diploma.
That said, you are absolutely correct about being careful to not erode the key rights, including property rights, that we need to protect. Not everyone is so careful these days.
And that it could be seen as very different if a student engages in violent activities while attending the school, versus after having earned degrees and moved on.
Once having left the school, the only credentials that might be suitable for retraction would be “honorary” degrees. Beyond that, they may want to reconsider their admission policies and requirements. Maybe they would have fewer pro-Hamas riots if they didn’t admit “Palestinians.”
Maybe former graduates would like to take action publicly to repudiate the source of their credentials that are no longer useful to them. I have no need and get no particular comfort from having parchments from George Washington and Georgetown universities.
Well, that seems to be easily solved by just not using them to get a job or whatever.
Some people make monetary donations they could stop or make sure if they finance someone else it’s not there.
That’s also true, in terms of “renouncing” the institution in general, or the credentials of someone else. But there’s no need to “renounce” one’s own credentials: just don’t use them.
Rodin, you state:
“I get that there is a distinction to be made between anti-Zionism and anti-Jewishness. But that distinction died in the Yom Kippur war. The history of the world is one of displacement. It may not be right. But at some point it becomes settled fact. So I find making distinctions between anti-Zionism and antisemitism in the 21st century to be unpersuasive. To wish to isolate and destroy Israel is, today, an expression of antisemitism. And the behavior of pro-Palestinian protesters toward any random Jewish-appearing person underlines this point. The target is not simply Israel. It is all Jews.”
I am sorry but no that is not how everyone sees it.
A year ago very few people other than actual white supremacists had their panties in a knot over either Jews or Zionists. But the horrendous situation whereby Mid-Jan 2024, some 21 thousand Palestinians had been killed by the retaliatory efforts of the Netanyahu hard liners that then inflated to some 35 thousand of people killed in Gaza – this has gotten to the point that as of this week, even the New York Times is realizing that this is beyond acceptable.
How did we get here? Young people are asking that. They then find out about AIPAC – an organization that would have never received the power it has held over our election situation for the pas 45 years had John Kennedy not been taken out by CIA/Mafia. At the very least, the org should have been required to register as a foreign agency.
Note this opinion piece from 2018 in a Jewish based publication:
https://forward.com/opinion/395676/its-time-for-aipac-to-register-as-a-foreign-agent/
The fact that this week some 20 billion more of money for Israel’s defense has come about and the method of paying for this new expense actually puts the burden of that expense on those who live paycheck to paycheck. Perhaps there would not be so much resentment if those who want to support Israel dipped into their equity on their homes, or looked into their retirement funds to bail out the IDF. (I tell people I know who want endless benefits for immigrants to please quit their virtue signalling and cough up the hard cash – so it is not about a religion or ethnicity – some of us are simply sick of people supporting something that they want to be either taxpayer-funded or else to have the hidden tax of rampant inflation to take care of, while their virtuous support can go along its merry way unimpeded.)
None of is happening in Atlanta that I can. I think the “Racist” south is safer for Jews than the North East
Maybe it’s time for the South to attack the North to bring it to heel.
Suppose you come home from work one afternoon to find that your husband and three children are being held at gunpoint by ten terrorists. That’s five of you (you and your family) and ten of them. They kill one of your children right in front of you.
Since you don’t know which one of those ten terrorists is going to kill your husband or two remaining children or you, would you think it justified to kill all ten of them? Would you put your gun down to avoid possibly killing more of them than they have killed of your side?
Or would you hand them your two last children and husband to avoid killing more of their side than they have killed of your side? And let them take your two children, your husband, and you as prisoners for an indefinite length of time to torture all of you any way they want?
The Israelis are exercising great restraint under the circumstances, more restraint than I am capable of when it comes to my family, but you are unable to see that these days. All you read is anti-Israel propaganda.
It would be justified to kill ten thousand of them.
Indeed. Or more.
My answer to his question could very easily be “yes.”
We’ve seen vicious and unprecedented suppression of speech by Zionist activists, spearheaded by organized Jewish groups and prominent Jewish billionaires. This is done to prevent criticism of the open war crimes, mass slaughter, apartheid policies, deliberate use of mass famine as a weapon, and what appears to be either an ethnic cleansing or a genocide, possibly both. Oh, and the lies. Lie after lie after lie, from beheaded babies to mass rape to control centers supposedly in the hospitals that the Israelis brutally destroyed.
These terrible things have been done by the sole Jewish state in the world, a state that strongly identifies itself as Jewish. As far as I can tell, the vast majority of Israeli Jews support Israel’s misdeeds, and a large majority of American Jews appear to do so, as well.
So, this group is going to experience some hostility. It’s not surprising. It’s not some strange hatred for no reason. It is strong disapproval of the crimes of the Jewish state, and those who support it.
I fully understand that not all Jews support the crimes of the state of Israel. Some of the strongest advocates against those crimes are Jewish, like Norman Finkelstein and Gideon Levy and Ilan Pappe and Max Blumenthal.
This does show another problem, though. It’s hard enough for a Jew to be critical of Israel. Non-Jews are viciously targeted with slanderous accusations of anti-Semitism for pointing out the truth. It’s actually the Zionist Jews, and their allies, who are cancelling people.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231215-israel-social-security-data-reveals-true-picture-of-oct-7-deaths
And
Hardly “Lies and Lies”.
The deaths of innocents is real. The attack on 10/7 was real and in no way justified.
Jerry, you appear to be saying that it almost did not happen, or was justified. How sick.
While I don’t agree with your comment I will not assert that I have perfect knowledge to know how to refute everything you have said. As I stated in my post by adopting Meir’s quote I think it is quite understandable that a people who have been subject to persecution and death in various societies would be desiring a nation where they could protect their borders and organize their society. Given the origin of their identity in the geographical region assigned the name Palestine by the Romans, setting up a country in that region was an understandable aspiration. One can regret the hubris of European colonization and belief that Britain had the right to create countries in the Middle East and the Balfour Declaration without accepting that the establishment of modern day Israel is no better or worse than the establishment of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen, etc. And certainly the wars fought and won by Israel should have created recognition by all concerned if historical precedents had been observed. More nations have been created by this means than any other. And but for the utility to various interests in any number of countries in the Middle East and elsewhere, the animus toward Judiasm in Islam, and the persistence of antisemitism in the West there would not be a conflict there today. It has served too many to keep the conflict going.
Are there bad Jews and good Arabs? Of course there are. Are there organizations that try to influence the public’s view one way or the other? That is true as well. Are any of them “pure as the driven snow”? I doubt it as they are human institutions. But I am prepared to give Israel the benefit of precedents in history to secure their statehood, and I am adamantly opposed to invidious discrimination based on immutable characteristics.
I said this in an earlier comment and then I read this article linked from Instapundit that illustrates what I was saying, ‘THE JEWS WHO DIDN’T LEAVE EGYPT’ :
and their modern analogs.
That was an extremely important article. And the conclusion is spot on:
Guess I am a bit confused. Why should I care about the Jewish / Israel issue? They went Democrat / leftist a long time ago and have been beating against my views / beliefs ever since. This is effectively a Left fight Left issue that either or both will be back to beating on us again as soon as they sort themselves out. Let them fight. Leave me and mine out of it.
Dissolve the people and elect another.