Israel/Palestine post 10/7 - follow-on events/thoughts as relate to other countries

I think it's debatable whether "Israeli officials" did this, but there is this:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/20/the-gaza-diplomacy-of-biden-sunak-and-co-seems-to-be-heading-for-failure

Blinken’s bigger US goal to establish safe zones in Gaza’s war zone was never easy, and may ultimately prove a mirage. Tzipi Hotovely, the Israeli ambassador to the UK, pointed to the bombing of Dresden in the second world war, as she insisted civilian casualties were inevitable in wars.

I'm not sure if that's a reference to this interview in particular or further comments made elsewhere: https://www.mediaite.com/uk/israeli-official-evokes-dresden/

Which is also what my earlier post was about, which felicity declined to actually address in any kind of way, instead opting to smear me by saying that I don't care about antisemitism. This was my post:

Except only one seems to be a real priority on campuses at the moment?

I think that one of the reasons I am so frustrated with current conversations about college campus environments is that there is an execrable rise in hatred toward both Jewish students and Muslim students, but the institutions seem to be really addressing only the former while presuming that the latter is just business-as-usual.

This is to say: the amount of latent, even blatant, antisemitism on college campuses before 10/7 was awful and real, and so was the amount of Islamophobia. I have taught students who told me that they didn’t wear their hijab because of Islamophobic harassment, and that’s in a city like Philly with a huge (and racialized) Muslim population.

I guess this is all to say that I really want people to feel safe, yet I become really frustrated when it feels like one group’s safety is privileged over another’s, in an almost exact mirror image of how things are playing out in the larger conflict.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Tuesday, December 5, 2023 6:40 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

rob, a recent report from CNN has intimated that Israeli officials initially wanted to "flatten" Gaza, and had to be walked back by US officials. That said, it seems like they're getting their wish.

oh I don't need convincing about the derangement of Israel's military campaign; the numbers speak for themselves while also being incomprehensible. 1 out of 150 Gazan children have been killed according to an otherwise typically iffy Kristof column in today's nyt, and the current evacuation & bombing policy in the south (widely reported in lots of mainstream media) is astonishingly cruel. The 10/7 attack was also abhorrent if I need to make my perspective on that clear.

Anyway, I am sorry to pile on felicity, but I was wary of the misinformation characterization when the specific Dresden comparison rang a bell with things I'd seen earlier. Obviously other tweets posted in the past may have been misinfo--I'm not sure what the MIT discussion refers to.

It’s interesting to read the NYT and see a particular trend emerging: a multimedia story today about “life for people trapped in Gaza”, with reference links to three other stories that also claim people as being “trapped” there. Prepping readers for a feeling of relief when surviving Gazans are inevitably permanently evacuated: this wasn’t their home, it was a trap they were caught in

"But his thread was full of the "Z word" in the way you agreed not to use. He posted "Is Zionism a mental illness"

Zionism is far too much in the discourse, there have been things posted by other posters that use the word and discuss Zionism, so it can't be entirely avoided.

The point I took from our discussion wasn't to use the Z word in an aggressive manner myself, but ofc I will bring in other perspectives where needed. I want to see Palestinian voices on here.

Otherwise I do some checking of what I post (like I know who James Schneider is in UK politics) but in the end I am often posting a take, discourse for people to talk about if they wish. It's a take I am often agreeing with but it's fine if it's not perfect or sourced. Like, I know this.

felicity declined to actually address in any kind of way

First of all, I am not obligated to focus on what you deem important. You're not a tyrant.

instead opting to smear me by saying that I don't care about antisemitism.

You'd better quote paste where I did that.

What you may have been taking personally is saying that there is something wrong with people who do not identify as either who constantly feel the need to play Muslim students in the US against Jewish students in the US. Maybe this is you.

in an almost exact mirror image of how things are playing out in the larger conflict.

Do you understand that you are dragging Muslim students and Jewish students studying in US universities, who have nothing to do with foreign policy, into a discussion about "the larger conflict" and it's extremely offensive. Please stop playing with groups of people in your mind in this way.

As for your student who feels intimidated to wear hijab, that is terrible and I hope you exercised your obligation as faculty to report it and do what you can to make the school a safe place for her. If more teachers would do that instead of posting hate online maybe we wouldnt be here.

xyzzzz, as you know I like you and am not trying to stifle you. Just take care with who you spread if you can.

i won’t be interacting with you or your bad-faith arguments on this site any longer.

Though ultimately I will keep posting as I am I would just add that I am only explaining this at length because I like you too Felicity.

Take care.

And table - thanks!

felicity, I'm a little confused about invoking the House hearing. I didn't watch it, but I read a bit about it and got the impression it was a GOP-led opportunity for grandstanding and berating the presidents of three elite northeastern private universities (all three were women, notably I thought), but not in any way a genuine attempt to address antisemitism on college campuses, especially across the US and in other kinds of institutions. Am I wrong? Did you find it to be a serious effort? I'm genuinely asking as like I said I didn't watch it, but people I broadly trust dismissed it so I assumed I didn't miss anything worthwhile. Plus, the chances we'll see a similar hearing on anti-Palestinian or Islamophobic sentiment is nil imo, so I was pretty cynical about the hearing itself (not the issue of antisemitism).

This is a much more eloquent way of saying what I was trying to say in my original posts

i won’t be interacting with you or your bad-faith arguments on this site any longer.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Thursday, 7 December 2023 19:26 (forty-four minutes ago) link

You said that yesterday.

instead opting to smear me by saying that I don't care about antisemitism.

You didn't quote paste where I said that. Because I didn't.

felicity, I'm a little confused about invoking the House hearing. I didn't watch it, but I read a bit about it and got the impression it was a GOP-led opportunity for grandstanding and berating the presidents of three elite northeastern private universities (all three were women, notably I thought), but not in any way a genuine attempt to address antisemitism on college campuses, especially across the US and in other kinds of institutions. Am I wrong? Did you find it to be a serious effort? I'm genuinely asking as like I said I didn't watch it, but people I broadly trust dismissed it so I assumed I didn't miss anything worthwhile. Plus, the chances we'll see a similar hearing on anti-Palestinian or Islamophobic sentiment is nil imo, so I was pretty cynical about the hearing itself (not the issue of antisemitism).

― rob, Thursday, December 7, 2023 11:35 AM bookmarkflaglink

Keyes invoked it. I am in favor of people watching primary sources and drawing their own conclusions.

I would be very interested in discussing specific portions. There were House members using their allotted time to discuss incidents of Islamaphobia on campus. There were statements from House members about race segregated dorms at MIT. There was also grandstanding and bullying and poorly advised college presidents stammering and issuing Tweets revising their statements the next day.

What I did not see was what Keyes called:

Right now there's a House Hearing on Antisemitism on College Campuses and Congressmen are calling out UPenn Professors by name and saying they are members of terrorist organizations.

― Beyond Goo and Evol (President Keyes), Tuesday, December 5, 2023 8:15 AM bookmarkflaglink

Specifically, I did not see any Congresspeople calling Professors "terrorists." Perhaps Keyes can point to who said that in the hearing.

The point I am making is that accuracy is not a left-right issue. And asking people not to brainlessly repeat whatever paraphrasing of hearsay sources of political events they feel like unless they are willing to discuss and correct as needed. History shows this kind of rumor mongering leads to bad things and I would hope ILX does not want to pour gasoline on the fire.

I think the hearing was definitely political grandstanding. It’s kinda absurd to see Republicans concerned about anti-semitism tbh considering stuff like Charlottesville. The MIT president had the best response with stating she had not heard any calls for genocide. It all seemed to hinge on the semantics of the term “intifada” which is definitely fraught for sure, but I think a lot of people on the Left are using it not to advocate for genocide against Jews. It is unfortunate imo that a lot of younger American leftists don’t have the most solid grasp of history and I feel like they are actually ignorant of how others interpret some of their terms and slogans.

The NYT article about the Students for Justice in Palestine is worth reading

rob, the testimony will go in the Congressional record. Like the January 6 hearings, it may not be immediately clear where this leads.

But a number of these schools are being investgated for civil rights violations under Title VI. So one way this might work is the testimony triggers an "actual knowledge" of discrimination or harassment that could lead to the school's defunding from federal grants and nonprofit tax exemptions if not satisfactorily addressed. These tax preferences are in the billions or tens of billions of dollars and contribute to the elite ranking of these schools along with their multibillion dollar endowments.

There was also a some weird evangelical stuff being said, and generally the politics of the GOP House are abhorrent. But focusing on that is to me like reading a gossip blog item in Gawker and thinking you know what's up. I believe it's wrong to use antisemiticsm in the US as a political football. A stopped clock, etc. Antisemitism is a problem on the left as well as the right. Attempts from eithet party to blame the other party while silently standing by and ignoring it disgust me equally.

It all seemed to hinge on the semantics of the term “intifada” which is definitely fraught for sure, but I think a lot of people on the Left are using it not to advocate for genocide against Jews. It is unfortunate imo that a lot of younger American leftists don’t have the most solid grasp of history and I feel like they are actually ignorant of how others interpret some of their terms and slogans.

― sarahell, Thursday, December 7, 2023 12:45 PM bookmarkflaglink

Thank you for this intellectually honest take. I agree.

Not sure what people on the left want to do with chants of "there is only one solution! Intifada revolution!" but a lot of them seem very naïve.

Nonprofit tax exemption is not governed by this issue. But yes, federal funding is definitely at risk, you are correct.

Im not going to debate the tax issue but I thought that under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that all institutions that receive federal money must comply with Title VI or lose their preference. I wasn't referring to the federal tax code.

Wrong man, wrong place, wrong time https://t.co/qgWuUbLgcX pic.twitter.com/7gs40pmh1E

— ettingermentum (@ettingermentum) December 7, 2023

thanks felicity, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts

fwiw I looked into a little, and I wonder if Keyes caught the last few seconds of this bit from Joe Wilson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucoyvcYQNXk

It's incoherent as hell, and I have no clue what Wilson is referring to myself, but it does sound like he's calling someone a terrorist.

I don’t think “intifada” is problematic in the way people are utilizing it. This again seems like a case where the rhetoric of an international solidarity movement against occupation and genocide is being unnecessarily policed because it calls out the lie at the heart of so-called “democracies” like Israel and the US, but that’s just my take.

xpost to sarahell

Ken White's substack on the House hearing is exceptional:

"There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that antisemitism is on the rise in America in the wake of October 7th. It’s on the rise on college campuses. Sometimes criticism of Israel or defense of Palestinians is explicitly antisemitic, sometimes it is implicitly antisemitic, and sometimes it incorporates classic antisemitic tropes. Sometimes people of bad faith take advantage of the ambiguity. (I think some people use “from the river to the sea” that way, as a deliberately ambiguous taunt, a big brother’s back-seat ha-ha-I’m-not-touching-you, but with an implicit allusion to genocide.) I don’t blame Jews who feel under siege in America or on campus, even if I sometimes disagree with their interpretation of criticisms of Israel. Feelings are not right or wrong, and in the face of so much overt Jew-hatred, I understand a tendency to interpret ambiguous statements in the worst way possible. I think we should feel compassion and empathy for people who feel that way.

None of that is solved by pretending hard questions are easy. None of that is solved by letting demagogues and hucksters take advantage of the moment to push their agenda. None of that is solved by contributing to what America is becoming — stupider and meaner."

https://popehat.substack.com/p/stop-demanding-dumb-answers-to-hard

xp

It all seemed to hinge on the semantics of the term “intifada” which is definitely fraught for sure, but I think a lot of people on the Left are using it not to advocate for genocide against Jews. It is unfortunate imo that a lot of younger American leftists don’t have the most solid grasp of history and I feel like they are actually ignorant of how others interpret some of their terms and slogans.

― sarahell, Thursday, December 7, 2023 3:45 PM (fifty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Not sure what people on the left want to do with chants of "there is only one solution! Intifada revolution!" but a lot of them seem very naïve.

― felicity, Thursday, December 7, 2023 4:00 PM (forty-three minutes ago)

Would either of you mind elaborating? I guess I am one of the naive, as it's genuinely news to me that "intifada" could be interpreted in good faith to mean "genocide against Jews." Neither of the historical Palestinian intifadas could be described as genocides; if nothing else, both resulted in more Palestinian deaths than Israeli. It also has a literal meaning in Arabic, though I know literal definitions don't necessarily help in these situations (c.f. jihad).

Xp rob … akm touches on it with the “from the river to the sea” slogan part of his post

But in the hearing, the politicians were operating on the assumption that “intifada = genocide of Jews”

I wonder if Keyes caught the last few seconds of this bit from Joe Wilson

tbh, I was under the impression that Keyes was paraphrasing from the TheHill.com article he cited and got overly excited. Not that he was watching the hearing. Maybe I am wrong. It may seem like I am splitting hairs but that clip from Wilson (terrible clip btw) is talking about 2 separate incidents:

1. faculty called out by name for visibly clapping (at 4:26) an October 8 rally calling to send Jews "Go back to Moscow, Brooklyn, ____ing Berlin where you came from" and asking if any action had been taking against them.

2. a class "featuring a person who is with the terrorist organization PFLF"

So if that's what he is referring to, no there were not "Professors called out by name and saying they are members of terrorist organizations."

My point overall is collapsing facts into inflammatory rumors on subjects that actually have potential criminal and violent repercussions for people in the US is dangerous and not helpful. Why do that. The murderer of the little Palestinian boy in Illinois said he was "angry" at what he saw on the news.

I don’t think “intifada” is problematic in the way people are utilizing it. This again seems like a case where the rhetoric of an international solidarity movement against occupation and genocide is being unnecessarily policed because it calls out the lie at the heart of so-called “democracies” like Israel and the US, but that’s just my take.

xpost to sarahell

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Thursday, December 7, 2023 1:28 PM bookmarkflaglink

table, and if people disagree with your take? We had this discussion a few months back where you did not support the striking WGA writers because you don't watch tv, but you supported the striking Starbucks workers because .... I guess you drink coffee? Just surprised you talk about solidarity when so many of your views seem to end at the limits of your own self interest. As I said, I don't dislike you, but I think your empathy is highly selective, which is hard to square with your stated deontological morality. And people have been telling you this for a while.

You never returned to respond to people who thought this post of yours regarding imagery of a bulldozer on October 7, 2023 was troubling:

I think destroying a border wall unjustly keeping people from land that is as much theirs as anyone else’s is an act of liberation, not an act of terror.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Wednesday, November 8, 2023 9:41 AM bookmarkflaglink

So that can be your view. But can you accept that your view is an extreme outlier that does not serve the student body at large - and is even quite offensive - and potentially emboldens people to take action that is harmful. Perhaps you can recognize you are not the one affects, and make room for the voices, of those who are most immediately affected? And perhaps not center your own experience so exclusively and acting like you are the aggrieved person if people disagree with you on this point?

I don’t think “intifada” is problematic in the way people are utilizing it. This again seems like a case where the rhetoric of an international solidarity movement against occupation and genocide is being unnecessarily policed because it calls out the lie at the heart of so-called “democracies” like Israel and the US, but that’s just my take.

xpost to sarahell

a friend's sister recently was told by some young leftists who work for her (she doesn't work in a political org btw!) they didn't feel comfortable working under her bc she's jewish, considering the current climate. this is someone who isn't out there waving Israeli flags, she just...happens to be jewish.

I guess it depends on what the goals are in using that language… if you want to gain sympathy from a broader audience, one who includes people who associate that language with eradicating Jews from the “Holy Land” then my thought would be to “use other words please”… if you don’t gaf about that, then nbd I guess??

i'm not noting it to damn leftists, considering i'm vv left, but that jewish people who have no allegiance to israel and no love for its policies or leadership are getting it from folks who might like to use it as an excuse to engage in a bit of the ol' not-so-veiled antisemitism.

That said, I encourage everyone to read that article about the Student group because it also speaks to stuff that T and xyzzz have been posting about in terms of authorities cracking down on Palestinian supporters. And perhaps think about that in terms of the hearing where the focus was solely on the antisemitism and anti-Israel part of the conflict

The focus of the hearing was not solely that. Did you watch it?

a friend's sister recently was told by some young leftists who work for her (she doesn't work in a political org btw!) they didn't feel comfortable working under her bc she's jewish, considering the current climate. this is someone who isn't out there waving Israeli flags, she just...happens to be jewish.

Those people are racists! (that was to omar)

re: intifada

The quote (popehat's; sorry thread is moving around a lot) about river/sea is well put and at this point I would advise activists against using it, but I can't get there with intifada (without further info at any rate; not that I, a non-Palestinian, would go around chanting about it anyway). For me it's nonsensical to have basic historical facts available and claim the word means genocide: https://www.britannica.com/topic/intifada.

I also feel kind of weary about these debates, too reminiscent of arguments over "defund the police" where the semantics, as you said sarahell, start to blot out the urgent issue at hand. Move on and find a better slogan is probably the wise tactical choice. But I also get frustrated with constantly having to concede things because the right is adept at capturing them, and I think there is something at stake at allowing popular Palestinian resistance, even violent resistance, to be entirely reframed as a campaign of antisemitic genocide.

I just want to commend gyac for her posts in this thread.

All Israelis and many Jews associate "intifada" with the numerous deliberate massacres of civilians that occurred in the second intifada, which is the most recent widespread use of the term intifada in modern western memory, a fact that any activist for Palestine who didn't just join he cause on 10/8 obviously knows. The idea that using that term immediately after the largest massacre of Israeli civilians in history isn't intended to invoke terrorism against civilians is completely absurd and laughable, even if it's not intended to invoke genocide (which I think is an exaggeration).

"Intifada just means shaking off" is gaslighting. It would be like saying "Nakba just means catastrophe."

The focus of the hearing was not solely that. Did you watch it?

I just want to commend gyac for her posts in this thread.

I think the WSJ opinion piece JiC posted over in Hey Jews is worth posting here

https://archive.ph/1tn2C

"Less than a quarter of these students knew who Yasser Arafat was (12 of them, or more than 10%, thought he was the first prime minister of Israel). Asked in what decade Israelis and Palestinians had signed the Oslo Accords, more than a quarter of the chant’s supporters claimed that no such peace agreements had ever been signed."

I mean, on some level that's just the nature of student activists. That's fine. I didn't know shit about Tibet when I protested for Tibet other than whatever talking points were in the trainings I went to. I'm sure a lot of the people chanting don't know what they are invoking, but there are also people organizing those chants and creating those materials and leading those trainings, and those people do know what they are invoking.

The focus of the hearing was not solely that. Did you watch it?

what was the name of the hearing? I can't seem to find it anywhere but absolutely everything, including CSPAN, calls it a hearing on antisemitism

https://www.c-span.org/video/?532147-1/university-presidents-testify-college-campus-antisemitism-part-1

on some level that's just the nature of student activists. That's fine. I didn't know shit about Tibet when I protested for Tibet other than whatever talking points were in the trainings I went to.

i mean, I guess... but actualy no, it's not fine. Like, cmon, spend a little time educating yourself (not you specifically).

and the reason it's not really fine is because of your follow on point: "there are also people organizing those chants and creating those materials and leading those trainings, and those people do know what they are invoking."

spend a little time finding out who is running the 'trainings' you go to. Maybe this is because I was no student activist. I worked with Amnesty International and that was it. I am deeply suspicious of 'trainings'.

like that just sounds like willingly signing yourself up for brainwashing. wtf do I know I am and old GenX and apparently we are the worst people on earth now.

My point is really less about the students who don't know stuff and more about the educated people who do know what they are saying. Because I think the idea that "people mean different things by what they are chanting" kind of belies the way activism and organizing actually works and the way communication works.

The coverage focused on that part. I imagine a lot of people also are responding based on that framing.
― sarahell, Thursday, December 7, 2023 2:25 PM bookmarkflaglink

It's fine if you watched the hearing or didn't watch the hearing. I did. So if you want to focus on the coverage of the hearing, feel free.

Just please don't argue here about what the hearing "focused" on if you did not watch it.

“Specifically, I did not see any Congresspeople calling Professors "terrorists." Perhaps Keyes can point to who said that in the hearing.”

Yeah I turned the hearing on and immediately heard Joe Wilson saying a professor was a member of a terrorist org. Didn’t have a clip to post at that time.

xp Like this is what Intifada means in the context of Israel/Palestine in 2023 for anyone who knows any history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_attacks#2000s If you support that, own it. If you think it's fine to repeatedly murder civilians riding on public buses and sitting in pizza restaurants in Tel Aviv because of what their government is doing in the West Bank, just say so. Don't tell me intifada just means shaking off, and don't pivot to Israel is actually worse. Because I'm not arguing with you about Israel, I'm arguing with you about whether the people organizing chants about intifada against "zionists" mean terrorism against civilians, and if that's the chant they are choosing right after October 7, they obviously fucking know it means that.