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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.
Discussion (108)
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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.
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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 -
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Rodin, thank you.
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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.
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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.
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