4 ms·

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.
  - tptacek 2y ago
    Why is it plain to you that people weren't blocked because they were Jewish? The contention of Jewish people who see antisemitism in these protests is that Jewish participation is allowed only for Jewish people who disavow substantial parts of their identity. This gets into the whole JVP thing; activists have held JVP up as a demonstration of Jewish support --- to the point where College Democrats of America claimed that JVP was more representative of Jewish Democrats than the CDA Jewish Caucus (a risible claim) --- and we just saw the JVP Peace Seder, where the labels on the plate were written front-to-back; JVP has also (very recently!) posted a Houthi endorsement on their Insta (it's since been deleted). Don't get me started on counter-protesters. No matter who's protesting, the counter-protest will always be worse. At least some subset of protesters have an intrinsic motivation aligned with the cause. Virtually all the counter-protesters will be there to stir the pot. I know I'm a wet blanket here but I'm going to keep mentioning that we're all necroposting on a long-dead threat, bloated with corpse-gases, that just 3-4 people are reading. HN is bigger and better than this.
    - racional 2y ago
      Why is it plain to you that people weren't blocked because they were Jewish? Because the encampments contained many Jewish organizers / participants (likely equal to or greater than their proportion across the student body as a whole). The contention [is that] Jewish participation is allowed only for Jewish people who disavow substantial parts of their identity. I see what you're driving at, but overall it seems to be a weak and ancillary argument. It basically gets into the whole "if you reject / insult Zionism (or even the military campaign in Gaza itself) then you're insulting my religious/ethnic identity" line, which I just don't buy (neither do many Jews in fact, and in fact they find it rather insulting that one should presume that all Jews should automatically feel that way). I don't speak for JVP, so you'll have to take up issues about their dining plates / ephemeral Houthi endorsements with them.
      - tptacek 2y ago
        Yeah, I don't know. If you're protesting the broad concept of Zionism, of the legitimacy of a Jewish homeland, then not allowing the participation of the majority of Jewish people who are (in that broad sense) Zionist makes sense. On the other hand, you can't be blocking their entrance to buildings, or singling them out for verbal harassment due solely to religious signifiers coupled with the fact that they're not echoing your chants, right? This doesn't seem all that complicated. Everybody is a little bit right, everybody is a little bit wrong, and a few people on both sides (SJP, Shai Davidai) are luridly wrong.
- tptacek 2y ago
  I don't know about "terrifying". "Uncomfortable", or, probably more accurately, "supremely irritating", sure. Zeynep Tufekci has been writing for a couple weeks --- I don't agree with everything she's saying, but I take anything she says seriously --- about how physically small and limited the protests have been. If there were white power protests happening on campus at the University of Chicago, we'd all be up in arms; we are not when SJP, an organization that formally endorses the Al-Qassam Brigades, protests instead. There's for sure a blind spot. I see why people are pissed. It is not at all clear to me that anyone's safety was threatened at Columbia, though.
  - kasey_junk 2y ago
    The comment you are replying to is ridiculous. Frankly by engaging I perpetuate ridiculousness and I should know better. That said, to some reasonable approximation even the most militant pro Palestinian campus protests didn’t threaten any ones safety. In nearly every case the danger came from reactionary protests. Which is completely predictable if you are a campus safety officer!
    - tptacek 2y ago
      I think I agree with all of this, including the ridiculousness. We all have a problem.
      - kasey_junk 2y ago
        We only have a problem if we agree with the contention that kids protesting genocide are some sort of chaos agent. They aren’t! They’re just college kids. Sleeping rough. Temporarily.
        tptacek 2y ago
        I don't know what "chaos agent" means, but the problem I'm referring to is us all commenting on this thread. I'm confident we agree more than we disagree about all of this stuff.

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.
- tptacek 2y ago
  Why is it plain to you that people weren't blocked because they were Jewish? The contention of Jewish people who see antisemitism in these protests is that Jewish participation is allowed only for Jewish people who disavow substantial parts of their identity. This gets into the whole JVP thing; activists have held JVP up as a demonstration of Jewish support --- to the point where College Democrats of America claimed that JVP was more representative of Jewish Democrats than the CDA Jewish Caucus (a risible claim) --- and we just saw the JVP Peace Seder, where the labels on the plate were written front-to-back; JVP has also (very recently!) posted a Houthi endorsement on their Insta (it's since been deleted). Don't get me started on counter-protesters. No matter who's protesting, the counter-protest will always be worse. At least some subset of protesters have an intrinsic motivation aligned with the cause. Virtually all the counter-protesters will be there to stir the pot. I know I'm a wet blanket here but I'm going to keep mentioning that we're all necroposting on a long-dead threat, bloated with corpse-gases, that just 3-4 people are reading. HN is bigger and better than this.
  - racional 2y ago
    Why is it plain to you that people weren't blocked because they were Jewish? Because the encampments contained many Jewish organizers / participants (likely equal to or greater than their proportion across the student body as a whole). The contention [is that] Jewish participation is allowed only for Jewish people who disavow substantial parts of their identity. I see what you're driving at, but overall it seems to be a weak and ancillary argument. It basically gets into the whole "if you reject / insult Zionism (or even the military campaign in Gaza itself) then you're insulting my religious/ethnic identity" line, which I just don't buy (neither do many Jews in fact, and in fact they find it rather insulting that one should presume that all Jews should automatically feel that way). I don't speak for JVP, so you'll have to take up issues about their dining plates / ephemeral Houthi endorsements with them.
    - tptacek 2y ago
      Yeah, I don't know. If you're protesting the broad concept of Zionism, of the legitimacy of a Jewish homeland, then not allowing the participation of the majority of Jewish people who are (in that broad sense) Zionist makes sense. On the other hand, you can't be blocking their entrance to buildings, or singling them out for verbal harassment due solely to religious signifiers coupled with the fact that they're not echoing your chants, right? This doesn't seem all that complicated. Everybody is a little bit right, everybody is a little bit wrong, and a few people on both sides (SJP, Shai Davidai) are luridly wrong.
tptacek 2y ago
I don't know about "terrifying". "Uncomfortable", or, probably more accurately, "supremely irritating", sure. Zeynep Tufekci has been writing for a couple weeks --- I don't agree with everything she's saying, but I take anything she says seriously --- about how physically small and limited the protests have been. If there were white power protests happening on campus at the University of Chicago, we'd all be up in arms; we are not when SJP, an organization that formally endorses the Al-Qassam Brigades, protests instead. There's for sure a blind spot. I see why people are pissed. It is not at all clear to me that anyone's safety was threatened at Columbia, though.
- kasey_junk 2y ago
  The comment you are replying to is ridiculous. Frankly by engaging I perpetuate ridiculousness and I should know better. That said, to some reasonable approximation even the most militant pro Palestinian campus protests didn’t threaten any ones safety. In nearly every case the danger came from reactionary protests. Which is completely predictable if you are a campus safety officer!
  - tptacek 2y ago
    I think I agree with all of this, including the ridiculousness. We all have a problem.
    - kasey_junk 2y ago
      We only have a problem if we agree with the contention that kids protesting genocide are some sort of chaos agent. They aren’t! They’re just college kids. Sleeping rough. Temporarily.
      - tptacek 2y ago
        I don't know what "chaos agent" means, but the problem I'm referring to is us all commenting on this thread. I'm confident we agree more than we disagree about all of this stuff.