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I'd balk too except for the Western left's response to October 7th. Immediate celebration. One American professor at Cornell described himself as exhilerated! [

I'd balk too except for the Western left's response to October 7th. Immediate celebration. One American professor at Cornell described himself as exhilerated! [1] "This is what resistance looks like" say others. Tearing down missing posters. Exhileration followed by mass protests. Against Israel. On October 8th! Even before Israel could collect its dead. Using the inevitably incorrect rumors that develop in the panic that follows any disaster ("I heard there were 40 beheaded babies!" "A woman was raped while her baby was burned alive in the oven!") to discredit any actual atrocity ("This is a disinformation campaign by Israel! 40 beheaded babies is absurd. Hamas targeted only soldiers."[2][3]) Women's rights organizations who have yet to condemn the rape of Israeli women as a tool of terror [4]. Denial that there was any rape. Denial that children were murdered. Claims that the hostages were volunteers. Claims that the attack was by Israel, akshually. Claims that Israel staged the whole thing in order to justify genocide. UNWRA materials for children glorifying martyrdom. Even here on YN the only political articles of any kind that make it through the filter are those critical of Israel. It goes on. And on. If you don't find that convincing I unfortunately can drop loads more genocide- and rape-apologia - as long as it's perpetrated against "Zionists" (wink). You might begin to see why I honestly think anti-Zionism is at best genocidal-adjacent. [1] https://youtu.be/_foZMY8xfD8 https://youtu.be/_foZMY8xfD8 [2] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2023/10/31/post-falsely-claims-newspaper-reported-no-babies-beheaded-hamas-israel-fact-check/71394076007/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2023/10/31/post... [3] https://youtu.be/VL5ACBwO9cg https://youtu.be/VL5ACBwO9cg I find this asshole mortifying. Within hours of his hearing about the attack, you can see him in real time struggling to convert the atrocity into something anti-Israel. [4] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/october-7-hamas-sexual-assault/678091/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/october-7-...

edanm 2y ago
You don't need to convince me that there's been a lot of awful reactions to October 7th. I'm only pushing back that saying something like this: > You might begin to see why I honestly think anti-Zionism is at best genocidal-adjacent. Is painting too many people with too broad a brush. Yes, some protesters are genocidal. But it's a tiny minority of protesters, and all of these frankly disgusting anecdotes are a tiny percentage of the people engaged on this topic.
- rendall 2y ago
  Ok. I will cheerfully agree to disagree while also conceding that your point is arguable.
  - rendall 2y ago
    Except... Here is an open letter from the Jewish students at Columbia. Their experience there sounds pretty terrifying. Imagine yourself going through these experiences: https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vRQgyDhIjZupO2H-2rIDXLy_zkf76RoM-_ZIYsOfn9FkI7TETgRtOfXK9VobMvGh6iEZfDPgALXJTCR/pub https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vRQgyDhIjZup... Do leftists who call for Israelis to "return to Europe" not know the A) centuries of stark, genocidal oppression against Jews in Europe nor B) that many Israeli Jews are in Israel because they have been expelled from Arab and Middle-East countries where their ancestors have lived for centuries? There is no "back home" to go to for these people. One could argue these Western leftists earnestly care for Palestinians, but why? Why do they care about these particular Arabs and not the 1M+ other deaths of Muslims in current conflicts? What is the difference? When I look back at the literally genocidal pograms by Levantine Arabs against Levantine Jews in an unbroken timeline of violence from 1850s, continuing through the 1920s and al-Husseini's agreements with Hitler in WW2, and the continuing violence right now, the repeated rejections of compromise and peace, the insistence on "all the land or death", is super clear to me that the "pro-Palestine" movement is and has always been genocidal. It is not and has never been about sovereignty or self-determination. Do Western leftists not know this? Do they not care? They certainly don't want to hear about it.
    - racional 2y ago
      There have been numerous disturbing / idiotic / arguably antisemitic episodes originating from certain elements of the protestors' side, to be sure. Unfortunately the letter presents certain regrettable factual distortions. For example: We felt helpless when we watched students and faculty physically block Jewish students from entering parts of the campus we share, or even when they turned their faces away in silence. The protest movement, especially at Columbia, has a highly visible Jewish contingent (especially within its leadership). If people were blocked from the protest encampments, it was plainly not because they were Jewish. And it is intellectually dishonest to claim that this is the reason they were excluded. There have also been numerous disturbing / idiotic episodes on the part of the counter-protest movement, as I'm sure you know. Except unfortunately these have been notably more violent than most of what's been happening from the protestors' side. Just the other day for example: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/nyregion/columbia-driver-arrested-pro-palestinian-protesters.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/nyregion/columbia-driver-... Imagine being 55 years old and getting hit by a car that just so happens to have been driven by a cousin of one of one of Israel's most famous convicted terrorists (celebrated by none other than the country's current Finance Minister). Or being attacked with military-grade crowd control chemicals: https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2024/01/22/protesters-allegedly-sprayed-with-hazardous-chemical-at-pro-palestinian-rally-nearly-two-dozen-report/ https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2024/01/22/protesters... This isn't whataboutism. In order to understand this situation, it necessary the consider the whole playing field. And the simple fact that there's many profoundly disturbing episodes originating in both camps. I'll just close with one more particularly revealing snippet from the letter: If the last six months on campus have taught us anything, it is that a large and vocal population of the Columbia community does not understand the meaning of Zionism, and subsequently does not understand the essence of the Jewish People. Again, no one buys the "Zionism = Judaism" equivalence. Outside the ideological bubble world that the signatories of the letter (and the driver of that car which nearly killed a 55 year-old woman for expressing her political beliefs the other day) choose to live in.

edanm 2y ago

You don't need to convince me that there's been a lot of awful reactions to October 7th. I'm only pushing back that saying something like this: > You might begin to see why I honestly think anti-Zionism is at best genocidal-adjacent. Is painting too many people with too broad a brush. Yes, some protesters are genocidal. But it's a tiny minority of protesters, and all of these frankly disgusting anecdotes are a tiny percentage of the people engaged on this topic.

rendall 2y ago
Ok. I will cheerfully agree to disagree while also conceding that your point is arguable.
- rendall 2y ago
  Except... Here is an open letter from the Jewish students at Columbia. Their experience there sounds pretty terrifying. Imagine yourself going through these experiences: https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vRQgyDhIjZupO2H-2rIDXLy_zkf76RoM-_ZIYsOfn9FkI7TETgRtOfXK9VobMvGh6iEZfDPgALXJTCR/pub https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vRQgyDhIjZup... Do leftists who call for Israelis to "return to Europe" not know the A) centuries of stark, genocidal oppression against Jews in Europe nor B) that many Israeli Jews are in Israel because they have been expelled from Arab and Middle-East countries where their ancestors have lived for centuries? There is no "back home" to go to for these people. One could argue these Western leftists earnestly care for Palestinians, but why? Why do they care about these particular Arabs and not the 1M+ other deaths of Muslims in current conflicts? What is the difference? When I look back at the literally genocidal pograms by Levantine Arabs against Levantine Jews in an unbroken timeline of violence from 1850s, continuing through the 1920s and al-Husseini's agreements with Hitler in WW2, and the continuing violence right now, the repeated rejections of compromise and peace, the insistence on "all the land or death", is super clear to me that the "pro-Palestine" movement is and has always been genocidal. It is not and has never been about sovereignty or self-determination. Do Western leftists not know this? Do they not care? They certainly don't want to hear about it.
  - racional 2y ago
    There have been numerous disturbing / idiotic / arguably antisemitic episodes originating from certain elements of the protestors' side, to be sure. Unfortunately the letter presents certain regrettable factual distortions. For example: We felt helpless when we watched students and faculty physically block Jewish students from entering parts of the campus we share, or even when they turned their faces away in silence. The protest movement, especially at Columbia, has a highly visible Jewish contingent (especially within its leadership). If people were blocked from the protest encampments, it was plainly not because they were Jewish. And it is intellectually dishonest to claim that this is the reason they were excluded. There have also been numerous disturbing / idiotic episodes on the part of the counter-protest movement, as I'm sure you know. Except unfortunately these have been notably more violent than most of what's been happening from the protestors' side. Just the other day for example: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/nyregion/columbia-driver-arrested-pro-palestinian-protesters.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/nyregion/columbia-driver-... Imagine being 55 years old and getting hit by a car that just so happens to have been driven by a cousin of one of one of Israel's most famous convicted terrorists (celebrated by none other than the country's current Finance Minister). Or being attacked with military-grade crowd control chemicals: https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2024/01/22/protesters-allegedly-sprayed-with-hazardous-chemical-at-pro-palestinian-rally-nearly-two-dozen-report/ https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2024/01/22/protesters... This isn't whataboutism. In order to understand this situation, it necessary the consider the whole playing field. And the simple fact that there's many profoundly disturbing episodes originating in both camps. I'll just close with one more particularly revealing snippet from the letter: If the last six months on campus have taught us anything, it is that a large and vocal population of the Columbia community does not understand the meaning of Zionism, and subsequently does not understand the essence of the Jewish People. Again, no one buys the "Zionism = Judaism" equivalence. Outside the ideological bubble world that the signatories of the letter (and the driver of that car which nearly killed a 55 year-old woman for expressing her political beliefs the other day) choose to live in.