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

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/04/16/pro-palestinian-protests-us-biden/

i haven't gone digging to see what she linked to or what she said.

apparently she has posted stuff to instagram stating that jews have no historical connection to the land, which, if so, is pretty dumb coming from a valedictorian.

I wouldn't oppose her as valedictorian for that though. IDK, these lines are hard to draw I guess but I generally lean pro-speech and anti-seeking out petty reasons to take away people's platforms or honors. Valedictorians are allowed to have views some might consider dumb! Deans can be good deans without actively espousing the most righteous views on every issue! Sometimes people's subjective expectations of "feeling safe" in every situation are too high! That doesn't mean that it's always the case!

I think the rhetoric that akm refers to is often in service of highlighting the way that the Zionist entity has treated the land— by exploiting it, bombing its inhabitants, and creating open-air prisons on it. While technically and obviously inaccurate, it’s also a little difficult to see how Israel has respect or appreciation for the land except as a resource to be exploited.

I would have to see the exact statement, but in general it is pretty commonplace to hear denial that the claimed Jewish connection to Israel/Palestine is real. Arafat famously claimed there was no temple at the Temple Mount. The more common claim is that Ashkenazi Jews or some set of Jews aren’t “real Jews,” aren’t really descended from the original Jews, are impostors, etc. and therefore don’t have any connection to the land.

That is obviously ridiculous to me, but I have seen such sentiments, too.

The issue seems to be "connection" versus "claim," and then further between "claim" and "exclusive claim."

A connection to a specific piece of land, as a people, is irrefutable. A claim to that piece of land is a bit more complicated, but seems fine to me. But an *exclusive* claim on a piece of land, especially a piece of land that is also claimed and has connections to the two other major world religions, seems foolhardy, if not insane and violent.

But oof that Berkeley story is a mess. It strikes me as extremely confusing and bad to host university-related events at your private home, to then insist that 1A doesn't apply for that reason, but to then also threaten anyone who protests further university-related events at the dean's home with a violation of the student conduct code. Surely following this incident, the wiser move would be to clearly demarcate the difference between your home and the university?
― rob, Tuesday, April 16, 2024 1:37 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I agree with man alive's read of the situation fwiw, and I think the moment the conversation turns toward what the speech rights of the "protesters" are, the plot has been lost: these sorts of things are meant to be a convivial celebration of the hard work the students have put in there and their relationships with their peers and professors. from what I understand, it was not a mandatory event, just a reason to throw what was probably a pretty expensively catered party the dean probably paid for at least in part himself. I've been to a handful of these sorts of things when I was a medical student and resident. the expectation is that people at these things just...act normal and have a good time. it's not meant to be a public soapbox. but of course acting normal is something completely foreign to a great number of highly ambitious people with elite educational backgrounds...

I've also seen some suggest that hosting students like this at one's own home is inherently problematic, which I dismiss as infantilizing nonsense: law students are adults, not 18th graders. obviously what transpired is not something one plans for, nor should it need to be. though I am sure this is going to be a pretty durable HR case study

in a normal world I agree. in this world in which we live in, sadly, lots of people continue to act like infants well into middle age and beyond.

I'm not sure the 1A stuff matters that much. It was a civil disobedience protest at the home of an elite and powerful person.

sounds like Columbia's leadership came more prepared for today's house dog and pony show on campus antisemitism than MIT and Harvard.

Still waiting for the alleged investigations into islamophobia which were also supposed to be part of this.

think you'll be waiting a while

a good indication of that never happening is that Tim Walberg, the Michigan rep who said Gaza should be nuked, sits on this committee

Google fired a bunch of employees for protesting their contract with Israel: https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/17/24133700/google-fires-28-employees-protest-israel-cloud-contract

maybe not in an of itself very surprising, but I was surprised by the strict daddy tone of the internal memo. I'm not sure why anyone would want to work at google these days.

do mo evil

How much of an incentive Is there an incentive for - and route to - Netanyahu using Iran as a way of getting rid of Biden in November (via something like higher gas prices)

If you told me Google would address its employees as "googlers" when dressing them down for acting like human beings..... well I'd probably believe you.

Also, good post above Table.

Striking Iran, yikes.

Solid piece by Michelle Goldberg: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/18/opinion/columbia-antisemitism-hearing.html?ugrp=c&unlocked_article_code=1.lk0.gMDT.rpyfUsAW9kxH&smid=url-share

Shafik appeared with two chairs of Columbia’s board of trustees, Claire Shipman and David Greenwald, and with David Schizer, a former dean of Columbia’s law school who is one of the chairs of the school’s antisemitism task force. The university, said Shipman, was taking steps to restrict student protests: “One of the excellent recommendations of our antisemitism task force is that they have said that if you are going to chant, it should only be in a certain place, so that people who don’t want to hear it are protected from having to hear it.”

Goldberg doesn't mention it, but Claire Shipman is ostensibly a journalist. OTOH she's married to one of Obama's old press secretaries.

And as at many other schools, some at Columbia have celebrated terrorism; in an ugly Oct. 8 essay repeatedly cited at the hearings, Massad, the anti-Zionist professor, wrote of “jubilation and awe” occasioned by the “innovative Palestinian resistance” of Oct. 7.

This bit of testimony was elicited by the aforementioned Tim "turn Gaza into Hiroshima" Walberg, if you want to calibrate this committee's level of hypocrisy.

Google apparently fired people for simply saying 'hello' to the protestors in the office or offering verbal support. California is an at-will employment state, but I think there will be some lawsuits over this because it sounds like retaliation.

https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/google-worker-fired-protest-israel-project-nimbus

Apparently people at my alma mater thought the poster advertising the spring weekend poster was anti-semitic and the student newspaper wrote an article about it, but only had one sentence about the anti-semitic complaints and several paragraphs of students complaining that they didn’t think the concert lineup was good

*spring weekend concert

we have to see the poster now

There are kinder ways to ask for sarah's photo

How much of an incentive Is there an incentive for - and route to - Netanyahu using Iran as a way of getting rid of Biden in November (via something like higher gas prices)

That might be a related benefit but part of the point to enlarge the war and keep it going because Netanyahu is facing trial and jail once it ends

i know sarahell in the real life!

it was a bad joke akm <3

That might be a related benefit but part of the point to enlarge the war and keep it going because Netanyahu is facing trial and jail once it ends

I think the incentives to keep Netanyahu away from trial are fairly well established and understood, this is kind of a side question.about whether theres also a perception getting rid of Biden might be a plus too. I say perception, because I dont know if it a sure fire thing that Trump would be a better bet, with the isolationist wing of the the republicans holding some sway and Biden being pretty pro-Israel (although not so much pro-Netanyahu, which may tie into any calculation regarding the trial factor)

Biden being “anti-Netanyahu” is a total fabrication, afaic. You can’t be against him if you materially support nearly everything he is doing. Total bullshit made to obscure Biden’s full-hearted support of a genocide.

I was referring more to Netanyahu's perception of Biden rather than mine

oh i didn’t even think that you were referencing your own beliefs, fwiw, but i appreciate that clarification

The markets are pretty cool on any war rn.

One of the remarkable things about all of the backwards and forwards missile strikes between Iran and Israel from the last week is how cool the oil markets have been to the whole story.

Oil prices barely moved in the last week and they shrugged off yesterday‘s strike by Israel… https://t.co/yhHsExt2Zm

— BenAris (@bneeditor) April 20, 2024

Not unsurprising given that only the consulate strike from either 'side' has really been anything more than a virtue signal

Ignore quotes around the word side, doesn't sit right

the isolationist wing of the the republicans holding some sway

Some posturing here. The conservatives are as reflexively pro-Israel as the Democratic establishment. If Trump announced he would support Netanyahu militarily, Matt Gaetz, Ted Cruz, Mike Johnson, et al would be onboard.

I agree its partially posturing, but what isn't currently clear is to what degree

https://www.columbiaspectator.com/opinion/2024/04/18/is-columbia-in-crisis

https://imgur.com/a/V61qDHQ

https://www.nydailynews.com/2024/04/21/as-columbia-protests-continue-university-rabbi-warns-jewish-students-to-stay-home/

"“in response, he says, to ‘just horrific’ videos of ‘protesters on campus calling for Jews to be killed, just off campus Jews being yelled at to ‘go back to Poland’,"

are these videos in wide circulation?

or, is this going to turn out to be people saying 'from the river to the sea' again

remind me what image host to use ... it's been forever since I did it and the old way no longer works apparently (not a bbcode problem btw)

I saw a video of some chanting of Kill Yourself and Death to America but it wasn't on a campus. I never know how seriously to take these things when there's no real indication of size

and it wasn't a TSOL show from the early 80s?

It was in Manhattan, I saw it when doing a twitter search on a pro-Israeli provocateur that the table is the table mentioned, in one of the replies. I don't like posting tweets when I'm not clear if misleading (only mentioned because in reference to akm). For me there's a gray area on things that happened but aren't representative, or are smaller in scale than they appear and I don't know how to accurately gauge stuff like that

“Death to America” is good not bad, and “Kill yourself” aimed at one person is NOT inherently antisemitic. It’s not great language, but I have certainly yelled it at cops before.

the Daily News is a right-wing rag and the idea that we’re entertaining propaganda from them is ludicrous.

I don't have particularly strong opinions on the former, or the latter for that matter - though I agree neither are anti-semitic and should have been clearer about that. I don't know that daily news is but you're probably right I shouldn't have posted without finding out more (something I usually do but was a response to akm).

I've seen the usual dipshits on twitter saying "Now Jews are not even allowed on college campuses" as if this Rabbi's declaration is a government edict or something

What is most infuriating is that many Jewish students and faculty are a part of these protests. The antisemitism of making a monolith of the Jewish people in service to Zionists ideology is craven and unhinged, and I cannot believe it is tolerated as much as it is.

"“in response, he says, to ‘just horrific’ videos of ‘protesters on campus calling for Jews to be killed, just off campus Jews being yelled at to ‘go back to Poland’,"

are these videos in wide circulation?

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Sunday, April 21, 2024 1:00 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I did see a video from Columbia that fit this description. It seemed like it was a small group a little away from the main protest site, and it’s always a little hard to tell if something precipitated it (although it wouldn’t be ok regardless). Both things can be true: that the main thrust of the protests is not antisemitic and that there are also antisemitic incidents.

What is most infuriating is that many Jewish students and faculty are a part of these protests. The antisemitism of making a monolith of the Jewish people in service to Zionists ideology is craven and unhinged, and I cannot believe it is tolerated as much as it is.

Yale students arrested, Harvard Yard getting closed due to protests; not sure how they don't realize that by arresting these protestors, they're simply causing these protests to grow and escalate