Robert Reich wrote this a few days ago. I share it because I think it wholly appropriate to do so, and that his words were wise:
Let's be clear about a few things.
Antisemitism should have no place in America — not on college campuses or anywhere else.
But there is nothing inherently antisemitic about condemning the ongoing bloodshed in Gaza that has so far killed at least 34,000 people, mostly women and children.
Protesting this slaughter is not hate speech. It is what should be done on a college campus — taking a stand against a perceived wrong, at least provoking discussion and debate.
The mission of a university is to coach students how to learn, not tell them what to think. Peaceful demonstrations should be encouraged, not shut down. And having armed police arrest peaceful student demonstrators is never acceptable.
His Substack is worth subscribing to - and there is a free version.
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On one hand we are told that American students have suddenly become anti-semitic or have unveiled existing bigotry.
On the other they are protesting, despite lots of opposition from authority, about the live streamed slaughter, starvation and trauma inflicted on a civilian population, day after day and for the last six months.
In my humble opinion they are speaking out while their elders ‘walk by on the other side’.
Saturday is 54th anniversary of the shootings on the campus of Kent State University where the National Guard killed four students, two of them female, and injured nine more. No one was ever held accountable as far as I know.
I hope we will not see history repeat itself but I suspect I will be disappointed.
Students’ protests kicking off across the American college campuses have echoes of the Vietnam protests of the 1960s, coming out of a shared conviction about what is so wrong about the inhumanity happening several thousand miles away but about which their government is complicit. Except now, the military draft is not hanging over their heads. It’s why these protests are so impressive. But protests are not without ‘costs’; students jeopardising their future as well as the violent response by authorities; sanctioned by the ‘body politic’, one riddled with the insidious Israeli-lobby influence, such as AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee). Ironically, Israeli experience is used to train up many US police forces while police tendency towards violence is further exacerbated by significant recruitment of ex-military, often with PTSD baggage.
The ludicrous charge against these students and protests (In both US or UK), conflating ‘Anti-Zionism’ with ‘Anti-semitism’, comes from an aged-generation faction brought up on prejudice, whereas so much of the West’s ‘woke’ Generation Z is largely free from such baggage of prejudices.
As this short post [at least: 08:30-11:00min], including comments from the insightful Michael Moore, suggests,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHeLBPC9FaI
these protests are not going away anytime soon. Ultimately, they have the potential to unhinge Biden’s assumed lead against Trump. The situation itself is an indictment of a political system of 335 million populated country that can only come up with two grotesque, as lead presidential candidates; not totally unlike the curse in the UK, with ‘Sunak v. Starmer’.
Israel may not realise the Pandora’s box it has opened. For it is on the long road to the death of Zionism: the colonial, settler apartheid project. A phenomenon Mandela marked out as more insidious than South Africa’s apartheid. But Netanyahu has no ‘off-ramp’. It is horrible to consider it may yet require tens of thousands more Palestinian deaths. But there are more Christian Zionists than Jewish Zionists in the US, which is from where Israel ultimately wields so much power, abetted by Zionist presidents.
As the very talented Rachel Maddow (Of the US establishment’s MSNBC) often says, “judge not on what they say but on what they do”. Every day since the ICJ’s preliminary judgement of ‘plausible genocide’ on 27th January, Israel has been continuing to rack up the evidence of its war crimes and ‘genocidal actions’; for its inevitable genocide trial. But huge change is needed. Yet, to quote Bob Dylan, “The Times They Are A-Changin’ “. And the UK needs to pull back from any further facilitation of Israel.
I wish the end of settler colonialism and revisionist Zionism – an especially racist manifestation, were on the defensive, and might wither, but the Stern Gang and Irgun mindsets are almost 100 years old now, and you cannot argue with the illogical foundations of the type of blood and soil nationalism defined by Zionist destiny and right. It really is fascistic and will endure.
Many of these student protests are calling for their universities to divest from Israeli weapons manufacturers. This seems entirely reasonable. Why would universities, supposedly centers for enlightenment, liberal values, learning etc, want to support companies profiting from war? Just as its possible for individuals concerned about the environment to find environmentally sound companies to invest in it should surely be possible for universities to invest their endowments in ethical, non weapons making companies? Also much pf the news coverage forgets that there are many Jewish students individually and those belonging to Jewish organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace taking part and being welcomed by their fellow protesters. The slur of anti-Semitism is being weaponized to close down the protesters. Also in the last few years the usual definition of anti-Semitism being “irrational hatred of Jews” has been broadened under the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance(IHRA) to include criticism of Israel. This is what shut down Jeremy Corbyn and is now being used against the students.
Passing judgement
As described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgement
requires a detached forensic examination of as wide a corpus of relevant information as can be made accessible for careful comparison.
Like ‘virtue’, that lofty prescription may be more often preached than consistently practiced across public information media, but we all have access to a range of information sources from the internet.
This provides an opportunity for each of us to expose our inclination to practice ‘exceptionalism’ on behalf of our least acknowledged assumptions; an opportunity to ‘triangulate’ a range of factual information before drawing conclusions.
On that basis, I, along with many, have concluded that Israel was founded on the same strategy as that perpetrated across Europe by the Nazis against the Jews and others; genocide, in the case of Israel, against Palestine, which Israel has relentlessly pursued ever since.
If the current Zionist government of Israel, enabled by the current US government, succeeds in bombing and bulldozing Palestine into oblivion, they will have succeeded beyond Hitler’s psychopathic fantasies in provoking a tide of global revulsion against Judaism.
In support of ‘triangulation’, I recommend a comparison of the coverage of Palestine news by ‘mainstream’ media with the constant flow of information provided on https://www.aljazeera.com/tag/israel-palestine-conflict/ at least for a few minutes each day.
There’s also a brilliant speech by Naomi Klein at the “seder in the street” before the latest arms package to Israel :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U75KcMUjMyI