Is this anti-semitism?

the Fine thing (I haven't read it all yet btw) seems to be exclusively about academic institutions...? Academic boycotts seem inherently stupid and wrong imo.

he makes some points about discrimination based on nationality but yeah i think his point is most damning re academic boycott

yeah there's been a ton of discussion about this -- i agree that academic boycotts seem counterproductive and kind of dangerous to scholarly culture.

and, again, completely ineffectual

it just seems so dumb. it isn't the universities that are building illegal settlements and dropping bombs.

and yeah its actual effects on intellectual discourse are inherently negative

also i think his point about alienating allies is really stark, esp re academics + other cultural resistances who may form/join a leftist coalition.

and as a jew i admit i'm kind of guarded and wary about some of the more heated rhetoric employed by proponents of BDS; that respectability-politics blog above (which I liked a lot) gets at some of the reasons why.

― I dunno. (amateurist), Wednesday, September 10, 2014 4:22 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Me too. Theoretically I don't really oppose BDS, but I find myself in a lot of conversations (online) anyway that I don't like being in with some of its supporters. Once I feel like I'm being pinned into the "are you the right kind of Jew?" corner I don't really let my guard down easily.

And also that post Mordy posted is on point about certain things -- the whole idea that all accusations of anti-Semitism are nothing more than a cynical smear campaign really bothers me. The Steven Salaita affair is one place where I find myself unable to really support the left line, because (1) I actually did find his tweets hateful, and (2) I think a university is entitled to be concerned about the way an academic publicly holds himself out, esp before fully hiring him (let alone giving tenure). I don't really buy that "civility" is just being used to silence all critics of Israel.

i have really mixed feelings about the salaita affair. my sense is that he is being singled out a little bit, since professors elsewhere have said really awful things on social media in other contexts and haven't been fired (or in this case a job offer rescinded at the last minute). i think UI handled it poorly, and their public comment on the matter has been incredibly tin-earned at best and genuinely scary at worst. but salaita seems like an idiot firebrand. so my sort of above-it-all opinion is "a pox on both their houses." but as an academic i still don't know exactly what to think.

another thought i had, which reminds me a little of the whole ward churchill affair, is why they would hire this guy in the first place given his history of asinine public comments. (churchill is obviously a whole nother kettle of fish but my sense of that whole affair was that the original sin was the university hiring him in the first place.)

it just seems so dumb. it isn't the universities that are building illegal settlements and dropping bombs.

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, September 10, 2014 8:35 PM

sorry but this ignores how many universities are closely tied to the state, not only economically but politically, not to mention in literal military applications - not only in Israel of course (the US DoD finances many departments and projects at America's best universities). further, the whole point of a boycott is to put pressure on a particular group - in this case for academics at universities in Israel to in turn pressure their government and use whatever influence they may have have towards a particular cause. how is this "dumb"?

the boycott is specifically against institutions tied to the Israeli state as opposed to academics who are Israeli, so Fine's efforts to conflate the two and portray this as discrimination against people based on their nationality are quite unfair.

Yeeeeah I dont really think israeli academics have much clout w the govt. Certainly not as much as American $$$ do. It seems like a weak lever to attempt to use from outside to affect policy. With tons of negative side effects.

Well, the boycott is dumb, but it's true that it's not a boycott against jews or Israelis. My Danish friend is doing a ph.d. in Israel - he married an Israeli girl and moved with her - and he'll be hit as well.

http://972mag.com/israeli-universities-becoming-hasbara-mills/38929/

"Two Israeli universities, Haifa University and Tel Aviv University, now offer programs in Hasbara. The Haifa course is meant for Israeli students, the Tel Aviv one for foreign students. Both are supported by Israeli ministries: the Haifa one by the Ministry of Propaganda and Diaspora (Ministry of Hasbara, in Hebrew) and the Tel Aviv program by the Foreign Ministry."

yep, definitely no complicity of institutions of higher learning in Israel with the state's domestic and foreign policy here!

more examples here: http://www.haaretz.com/mobile/.premium-1.612657?v=EEF7C70EBF2B3A98C8CCC99971173CA2

I didn't say there was no complicity, just that its negligible in the scope of things. And it's like two steps removed from actually impacting Israeli policy - the idea being that a) boycott the universities (OK no problem there), b) universities then respond by accepting the demands of the boycotters (highly unlikely, when has this ever happened? the boycott would just make them more isolationist and defensive, not cooperative) and then c) Israeli government acquiesces to the (coerced) demands of its academic institutions (also highly unlikely given that its the gov't that has leverage over the universities, not the other way around). The whole thing seems poorly conceived.

And still smacks of stifling ideas you disagree with.

yeah I'm treating that as a separate issue

http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2014/09/11/vandals-spray-paint-swastikas-on-kosher-shop-in-northeast-philly/

http://www.jpost.com/Not-Just-News/WATCH-Egyptian-academic-demands-Jews-give-back-gold-stolen-during-the-Exodus-375282

that was reparations ffs

They can pry my precious egyptian gold from my cold dead hands

ew http://gawker.com/brooklyn-coffee-shop-chooses-instagram-to-say-how-much-1641619566

this place is like a block from my house. my (jewish) wife and i have met this dude and bought coffee from him a few times. he didn't strike me as a raving anti semite at the time but who knows what evil lurks in the hearts etc.

what evil lurks in the hearts of instagram

http://i.imgur.com/0dB6CMw.jpg

This guy got 8% of the vote in the 2014 Ukrainian Presidential election.

More Twitter fun'n'games

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/124682/luciana-berger-targeted-antisemites-after-jailing-abusive-internet-troll

http://pitchfork.com/news/57253-mark-kozelek-adam-granofsky-blues/

um, care to fill us in?

http://dsadevil.blogspot.com/2014/11/dominating-anti-semitism.html

http://m.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/student-stabbed-chabad-lubavitch-crown-heights-article-1.2038761

http://www.trbimg.com/img-5487156f/turbine/la-na-new-york-synagogue-stabbing-20141209-001/750/750x422

Man investigates crime scene while dressed as the abominable snowman

i davened + learned at that shul (770) for the year that i lived in crown heights :/

there's a great sicha from the rebbe about 770 where he points out that 770 is the gematria of 'Bais Moshiach' (house of the messiah)



loool

http://host.madison.com/scott-walker-menorah-letter-to-franklyn-gimbel/pdf_09e32252-9d73-5781-8e2f-1e4907797f69.html

idgi?

The signoff: "Thanks again and Molotov."

oh, i just assumed autocorrect and not like... a dig? i don't even know what the dig would be

here's my 'this is antisemitism' post of the day:
http://www.timesofisrael.com/al-aqsa-speaker-the-slaughter-of-the-jews-is-near/

of course it's an error, but i wouldn't expect Scott Walker (conservative governor and noted idiot) to know the difference.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/14/observer-view-on-torture

Oops

thought this was good:
http://tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/187652/my-jewish-feminist-problem

I don't know why this popped into my head since I haven't read it in years, but any thoughts on Cohn in Sun Also Rises? I have heard the portrayal described as anti-semitic, but I didn't find it to be at the time because 1) it didn't seem like the typical Jewish character portrayal and 2) it felt believable to me, this overcompensating, insecure Jewish boxer character. Like I think it's a very fine line, but recognizing ways in which someone's religious/cultural/ethnic upbringing could put insecurities into them, and that a particular individual might react to that in a particular way, even if it's a negative trait, doesn't strike me as anti-semitic per se.

Mordy, I did not think that Chesler article you linked was good. Because like many such articles it features characters like this:

Her tone is no longer light; it has become dark, coarse, mocking.

“Israel?! It deserves exactly what it’s getting. And more. And don’t think America doesn’t deserve what it’s getting too.”

We are sitting a mile away from Ground Zero in New York City.

“Have you no compassion for the innocent?” I say, shocked by her cold, driven, vehemence.

Who are these people? I live in a lefty town and move in lefty circles and I am a big old Zionist and nobody ever acts like this to me. Mind you there are plenty of people who think Israel is wrong a lot. Who would call themselves anti-Zionists. But they don't talk this way. Or think this way.

Also: this is nitpicky but

She answers me by coolly saying that “15 percent of the United States Senate is Jewish. The American Jewish Israel Lobby is very powerful. They will never allow America to broker a just peace in the Middle East.” Actually, the 108th Congress (which includes both the Senate and the House) has 535 members of whom 37 or 7 percent are Jews. But no matter.

According to Wikipedia, 10 Senators, or 10%, are Jewish. I mean, 10% is not 15% but why change the question to one her interlocutor wasn't actually asking, by including the House, just to make the number farther off from 15%? (Note: I do NOT know how many senators in the 108th congress were Jews and I am not going to bother to check.)

But do I think the Chesler article is anti-Semitic? No I do not. I think it demonstrates a lot of antipathy towards Jews and our practices (seriously? She takes it upon herself to stand up in shul and deliver a political proclamation and then she doesn't get it that the people praying there are annoyed?) But I don't think her attitude is predicated on antipathy towards Jews generally, I think it really is grounded in a political disagreement which is prior.

I was also gonna say that any time an essay uses the device of "my anonymous friend said _____" my strawman detectors go off

And I also disliked the move-the-goalposts thing she did with the senate vs the "congress."

https://twitter.com/EVKontorovich/status/549799373153255424

Yes, that is anti-Semitism. Was that supposed to be a hard one?

ok here's a harder one:
http://tabletmag.com/scroll/188052/harpercollins-leaves-israel-off-school-atlas

A HarperCollins atlas designed for students at English-speaking schools in the Middle East published in May 2014 has apparently scrubbed Israel from the region. According to the similarly-named U.K. Catholic newspaper The Tablet, the maps in Collins Primary Geography Atlas for the Middle East “depict Jordan and Syria extending all the way to the Mediterranean Sea.”

Collins Bartholomew, the subsidiary of HarperCollins that specialises in maps, told The Tablet that including Israel would have been “unacceptable” to their customers in the Gulf and the amendment incorporated “local preferences”.

Still parsing this magazine cover, don't know enough French or context (cartoon image, posting as link)

http://i.imgur.com/IW0j7.jpg