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Israeli Diplomat Pressured UNC to Remove Teacher Who Criticized Israel

58 points by anon1385 5y ago

kevingadd 5y ago
Respect to UNC here, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop in this article with a disclosure that she was fired, but they haven't done it (yet). I'm sure the pressure will continue to mount until they conform to the US political dogma on this one - one of the iron-clad rules in US politics, liberal or conservative, is that Israel Is Always Right because they're one of our most treasured allies (and political donors).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rob74 5y ago
So much for freedom of speech... it has become a knee-jerk reaction to call everyone who criticizes the current policies of the Israeli state an antisemite - as if the one had anything to do with the other. EDIT: of course, in this case the tweets sound like she's completely questioning the right to existence of the Israeli state, which is more extreme than criticizing Israel, and could also get you into trouble here in Germany.
- xdennis 5y ago
  Criticizing Israel doesn't mean you're antisemitic... but it is quite common.
  - jgb1984 5y ago
    Why would it be common? Israel is a nation built upon stolen land and decades of oppression of the Palestinian people. A modern day apartheid state with a strong and worldwide lobby apparatus. Labeling any criticism of the state as antisemitic is weak and dishonest.
    - mikevm 5y ago
      So many outright falsehoods in your statement, and you even wonder? Lol.
      - jgb1984 5y ago
        Feel free to highlight the many falsehoods. I didn't say anything that Human Rights Watch and the UN haven't confirmed many times before.
        mikevm 5y ago
        No thank you. I'd rather spend my time more productively. Oh, and I actually live in Israel and am well aware of the one-sided nonsense being spewed by both of these organizations.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - invalidname 5y ago
      I think rhetoric like yours is problematic. It doesn't help the Palestinian people. The way to help them isn't to cast blame on one side or the other. There's plenty of blame to go around. The way to move forward is to help moderates on both side reduce the toxic nature of discussion here. In that spirit let's start with the thing I agree with here. I actually agree that people shouldn't jump on the "antisemitic" labeling. In that you're correct. We need to separate misinformation and antisemitism which are different things. In fact the right wing in Israel claims Berni Sanders (a Jew) is anti-Israel. Which IMHO is insane. So a few things are problematic in what you said. Stolen land - not exactly. Israel was originally settled by Jews up until 2000 years ago when the Romans kicked Jews out. That's settled history. Jews returned over the years especially after the holocaust to a land occupied by the Turks and later on the British. Jews were granted a part of today's Israel by the UN as the British left... So far so good. No steal. There was a war immediately after due to dissatisfaction over the division mostly from the arab side. The war was "won" by the Jews (despite great bloodshed) and Israel was formed. I'll skip ahead despite many "dirty" attempts over the years. In 1967 all countries surrounding Israel ganged up to destroy it. All were much larger in terms of population and funding. Israel took a bold preemptive strike and won extra land in 6 days. Effectively beating armies double in size. None of that is stealing. Now you can be talking about the west bank or Gaza. Here Israel made a mistake of starting with settlements. I agree that was stupid. But it isn't stealing. Israel has a peace treaty with Jordan from whom it got the west bank and with Egypt to whom it returned the Sini desert and other huge territories. They don't want Gaza back. Israel tried to give the Palestinian people a country on multiple occasions only to be met by bombing and in-ability to compromise from the Palestinian side. There were multiple opportunities along the way to give the territories to the Palestinian people which were rejected by their leaders. Notice that there was never an independent Palestinian country. It was always owned by other countries so Israel never "stole" it. I'm not saying it's innocent. Not by a longshot but calling it stolen... Not accurate. Oppression - yes. I actually agree that the occupation created a bad situation all around. This sucks for both sides with bombings, missiles etc. Unfortunately you can't wave a magic wand to stop this and Israel can't "just leave" as we saw in Afghanistan things can get WAY worse. In fact when Israel left Gaza the Hamas terrorist organization took over and did mass executions. The life of people there is much worse than it was before. Worldwide lobby apparatus is a bit much (and that does ring antisemitic even if you didn't meant that). Yes there's lobbying but it exists on both sides with Palestinian victim hood also playing along.
- baud147258 5y ago
  though it's not helped by actual antisemites hiding their antisemitic speech as criticizing Israel
  - kevingadd 5y ago
    This logic does the antisemites a favor, frankly. It allows them to pull all criticism of Israel under their ideological umbrella so anyone with legitimate objections to that nation's leadership has no choice but to ally with the antisemites because you've pushed them out of all reasonable spaces.
    - joelbluminator 5y ago
      > has no choice but to ally with the antisemites Jeez no choice but to join the antisemites, ok man...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
albertopv 5y ago
These are things that bring hate on Israel. Freedom of speech? Democracy? Yes, but only if you say what we want.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
theGeatZhopa 5y ago
Hate is hate and should not be tolerated. My experience with that, often/most of the time, the one's who criticize others (no matter if it's a country, religion, human being, way of thinking, ... ) are not willing to take criticism of themselves at all. And that's the problem. Right now, you see it at best with the demonstrations against COVID measures. And most of the time, the ones organizing or participating in the demonstrations are far right nationals who cover their nazi-izm with the "we are a lot and we don't want". But it's a lie. It's solely a private agenda to "to catch the dumbest" and make the system break down in the hope of getting enough individuals together to form another form of state - like Hitler & NSDAP did. Examples: Musicians, a vegan chief, a few others, radicalized themselves up to hating EVERYTHING they relied on and used their whole life. Suddenly, the public social & health systems are bad (but they still want to use them), the government want to kill children with masks or vaccine (is it like that?), everyone's is a lier.. and so forth.. If one look deeper in that, one will see, that actually, they are earning a lot of money, which comes from the "believers". Or, there was a incident last week, a 20y old boy was shot in the head as a sign of the protest against masks - just because he told the killer to wear a mask and it's mandatory in shops. All hate need to be punished as hard as possible. The one's hating should be rejected by the society at the highest levels. No chances should be given. It doesn't have to do anything with freedom of speech, when the speech is against a certain group or directed to individuals or is intended to destabilize something. That's why we have wars, competition among nations, Putin & Trump, Nazis and ultraright & ultraleft parties. The same can be applied to Israel as a country ruled by the ultraconservatives (who hate against others), to Palestine (who are not willing to arrange things and instead are openly saying, Israel must be diminished and have no right for existence), to the US and other supporters of the current politics, and Russia & Iran, Arabia, China. We should all rejected that and do our best to mute the hate. The ones who don't understand that, are already part of the game :)
- AstralStorm 5y ago
  Except said teacher was not promoting hate, just criticizing Zionist project, so you missed the point with your terminally online friend examples.
  - 5y ago

58 points by anon1385 5y ago

Respect to UNC here, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop in this article with a disclosure that she was fired, but they haven't done it (yet). I'm sure the pressure will continue to mount until they conform to the US political dogma on this one - one of the iron-clad rules in US politics, liberal or conservative, is that Israel Is Always Right because they're one of our most treasured allies (and political donors).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rob74 5y ago

So much for freedom of speech... it has become a knee-jerk reaction to call everyone who criticizes the current policies of the Israeli state an antisemite - as if the one had anything to do with the other. EDIT: of course, in this case the tweets sound like she's completely questioning the right to existence of the Israeli state, which is more extreme than criticizing Israel, and could also get you into trouble here in Germany.

xdennis 5y ago
Criticizing Israel doesn't mean you're antisemitic... but it is quite common.
- jgb1984 5y ago
  Why would it be common? Israel is a nation built upon stolen land and decades of oppression of the Palestinian people. A modern day apartheid state with a strong and worldwide lobby apparatus. Labeling any criticism of the state as antisemitic is weak and dishonest.
  - mikevm 5y ago
    So many outright falsehoods in your statement, and you even wonder? Lol.
    - jgb1984 5y ago
      Feel free to highlight the many falsehoods. I didn't say anything that Human Rights Watch and the UN haven't confirmed many times before.
      - mikevm 5y ago
        No thank you. I'd rather spend my time more productively. Oh, and I actually live in Israel and am well aware of the one-sided nonsense being spewed by both of these organizations.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - invalidname 5y ago
    I think rhetoric like yours is problematic. It doesn't help the Palestinian people. The way to help them isn't to cast blame on one side or the other. There's plenty of blame to go around. The way to move forward is to help moderates on both side reduce the toxic nature of discussion here. In that spirit let's start with the thing I agree with here. I actually agree that people shouldn't jump on the "antisemitic" labeling. In that you're correct. We need to separate misinformation and antisemitism which are different things. In fact the right wing in Israel claims Berni Sanders (a Jew) is anti-Israel. Which IMHO is insane. So a few things are problematic in what you said. Stolen land - not exactly. Israel was originally settled by Jews up until 2000 years ago when the Romans kicked Jews out. That's settled history. Jews returned over the years especially after the holocaust to a land occupied by the Turks and later on the British. Jews were granted a part of today's Israel by the UN as the British left... So far so good. No steal. There was a war immediately after due to dissatisfaction over the division mostly from the arab side. The war was "won" by the Jews (despite great bloodshed) and Israel was formed. I'll skip ahead despite many "dirty" attempts over the years. In 1967 all countries surrounding Israel ganged up to destroy it. All were much larger in terms of population and funding. Israel took a bold preemptive strike and won extra land in 6 days. Effectively beating armies double in size. None of that is stealing. Now you can be talking about the west bank or Gaza. Here Israel made a mistake of starting with settlements. I agree that was stupid. But it isn't stealing. Israel has a peace treaty with Jordan from whom it got the west bank and with Egypt to whom it returned the Sini desert and other huge territories. They don't want Gaza back. Israel tried to give the Palestinian people a country on multiple occasions only to be met by bombing and in-ability to compromise from the Palestinian side. There were multiple opportunities along the way to give the territories to the Palestinian people which were rejected by their leaders. Notice that there was never an independent Palestinian country. It was always owned by other countries so Israel never "stole" it. I'm not saying it's innocent. Not by a longshot but calling it stolen... Not accurate. Oppression - yes. I actually agree that the occupation created a bad situation all around. This sucks for both sides with bombings, missiles etc. Unfortunately you can't wave a magic wand to stop this and Israel can't "just leave" as we saw in Afghanistan things can get WAY worse. In fact when Israel left Gaza the Hamas terrorist organization took over and did mass executions. The life of people there is much worse than it was before. Worldwide lobby apparatus is a bit much (and that does ring antisemitic even if you didn't meant that). Yes there's lobbying but it exists on both sides with Palestinian victim hood also playing along.
baud147258 5y ago
though it's not helped by actual antisemites hiding their antisemitic speech as criticizing Israel
- kevingadd 5y ago
  This logic does the antisemites a favor, frankly. It allows them to pull all criticism of Israel under their ideological umbrella so anyone with legitimate objections to that nation's leadership has no choice but to ally with the antisemites because you've pushed them out of all reasonable spaces.
  - joelbluminator 5y ago
    > has no choice but to ally with the antisemites Jeez no choice but to join the antisemites, ok man...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

albertopv 5y ago

These are things that bring hate on Israel. Freedom of speech? Democracy? Yes, but only if you say what we want.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

theGeatZhopa 5y ago

Hate is hate and should not be tolerated. My experience with that, often/most of the time, the one's who criticize others (no matter if it's a country, religion, human being, way of thinking, ... ) are not willing to take criticism of themselves at all. And that's the problem. Right now, you see it at best with the demonstrations against COVID measures. And most of the time, the ones organizing or participating in the demonstrations are far right nationals who cover their nazi-izm with the "we are a lot and we don't want". But it's a lie. It's solely a private agenda to "to catch the dumbest" and make the system break down in the hope of getting enough individuals together to form another form of state - like Hitler & NSDAP did. Examples: Musicians, a vegan chief, a few others, radicalized themselves up to hating EVERYTHING they relied on and used their whole life. Suddenly, the public social & health systems are bad (but they still want to use them), the government want to kill children with masks or vaccine (is it like that?), everyone's is a lier.. and so forth.. If one look deeper in that, one will see, that actually, they are earning a lot of money, which comes from the "believers". Or, there was a incident last week, a 20y old boy was shot in the head as a sign of the protest against masks - just because he told the killer to wear a mask and it's mandatory in shops. All hate need to be punished as hard as possible. The one's hating should be rejected by the society at the highest levels. No chances should be given. It doesn't have to do anything with freedom of speech, when the speech is against a certain group or directed to individuals or is intended to destabilize something. That's why we have wars, competition among nations, Putin & Trump, Nazis and ultraright & ultraleft parties. The same can be applied to Israel as a country ruled by the ultraconservatives (who hate against others), to Palestine (who are not willing to arrange things and instead are openly saying, Israel must be diminished and have no right for existence), to the US and other supporters of the current politics, and Russia & Iran, Arabia, China. We should all rejected that and do our best to mute the hate. The ones who don't understand that, are already part of the game :)

AstralStorm 5y ago
Except said teacher was not promoting hate, just criticizing Zionist project, so you missed the point with your terminally online friend examples.
- 5y ago