Washington Post Op-Ed Argues That Colleges Should 'Restrict' Speech To Fight Antisemitism
In her article, University of Pennsylvania professor Claire O. Finkelstein absurdly argued that colleges treat free speech as "near-sacred."
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, college campuses around the country have been embroiled in intense anti-Israel protests. Elite college campuses have seen particularly aggressive demonstrations that have frequently included outright support for Hamas.
On December 5th, the college presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) appeared at a Congressional hearing, where they were grilled on their schools' response to allegations of campus anti-Semitism. During the hearing, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), asked all three if "calling for the genocide of Jews" would violate their school's policies.
"It is a context-dependent situation," University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill responded. "If the speech becomes conduct, it can be harassment,"
Outrage over Magill's answer—both from those who wished to see her commit to banning legal but offensive anti-Semitic speech and from those who pointed out Penn's consistent record of punishing professors for much less offensive expression—culminated in her resignation on Saturday.
While First Amendment advocates have expressed hope that these recent controversies would show just how easily abused anti "hate speech" rules on college campuses are, many administrators seem to be taking the opposite position, advocating for more censorship, not less.
On Sunday, Claire O. Finkelstein, who is a member of Penn's Open Expression Committee and chairs the law school's committee on academic freedom, took to the pages of The Washington Post in an article titled "To fight antisemitism on campuses, we must restrict speech."
In it, Finkelstein farcically argued that "the value of free speech has been elevated to a near-sacred level on university campuses," adding that, "as a result, universities have had to tolerate hate speech."
The idea that free speech is treated as "near-sacred" on college campuses is beyond absurd. Far from being treated as sacrosanct, free speech and free expression are constantly under fire at American college campuses, elite colleges most of all.
As the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) CEO Greg Lukianoff points out, over the past decade, "we know of more than 1,000 campaigns to get professors punished for their free speech or academic freedom. Of those, about two-thirds succeeded in getting the professor punished."
The most disturbing detail? Lukianoff says that almost 200 of these professors were fired, "nearly twice the number estimated for the Red Scare."
Finkelstein further argues that colleges—both public and private—should crack down on anti-semitic speech from students by employing an incredibly broad definition of conduct like incitement or harassment.
"With or without the First Amendment, calls for genocide against Jews—or even proxies for such sentiments, such as calling for intifada against Jews or the elimination of Israel by chanting "from the river to the sea"—are, in the present context, calls for violence against a discrete ethnic or religious group," she writes. "Such speech arguably incites violence, frequently inspires harassment of Jewish students and, without question, creates a hostile environment that can impair the equal educational opportunities of Jewish students."
While much of the content of college anti-Israel protests in recent weeks has included genuinely anti-Semitic speech, the First Amendment simply protects the vast majority of even deeply offensive speech. Further, legal terms like "incitement" and "harassment" have incredibly narrow definitions that almost certainly do not include speech like chants of "from the river to the sea" during anti-Israel protests.
While Penn, as a private university, is not bound to follow the First Amendment, Finkelstein also makes a non-legal argument for increased censorship.
"What values do university presidents think are most important to prepare leaders in a democracy?" Finkelstein writes. "The ability to shout intemperate slogans or the ability to engage in reasoned dialogue with people who have moral and political differences?"
However, Finkelstien's mistake is nearly universal amongst censorship advocates. While silencing the most heinous instances of anti-semitic speech may sound acceptable at first glance, there's no guarantee that introducing wide-ranging speech codes wouldn't be wielded against speech Finkelstein likes, not to mention a wide range of controversial political speech.
Finkelstein concludes her essay by asking, "Isn't it time for university presidents to rethink the role that open expression and academic freedom play in the educational mission of their institutions?"
Here, Finkelstein is right. They should—but in order to recommit to free expression, not censorship.
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“This is why I can’t associate with you” – Lib Right to Auth Right
asdasd
Jews have slaughtered over 17000 Palestinians including 12000 women and children. ACTUALLY not merely rhetorically.
They NEED to be stopped. What will it take to do so? These Jews are committing a holocaust in Gaza.
They have specifically targeted vulnerable noncombatants in refugee camps, hospitals, schools and homes.
They kill women and children and have the hypocrisy to call them human shields.
Jews are implementing their premeditated plan to kill and forcibly displace the entire Palestinian population in Gaza. This is the UN definition of a crime against humanity.
This is irrefutable proof that Jews are committing crimes against humanity, genocide and terrorism.
The time is long past due to stop these terrible Jews. Everyone all over the world recognizes their atrocities in Gaza and our governments refusal to address it.
This is exactly what free speech is for. To identify and stop criminal behaviour. The world and these students will never forget.
The term antisemitism means recognizing what Jews are..
You seem to be confused. Those deaths were all caused by Hamas.
And a lot of those “civilian” dead are Hamas terrorists. The more dead Hamas terrorists, the better.
If I might insert a small comment here, all of this is a distraction. Finkelstein is absolutely right that institutions of higher education must restrict harmful speech–as has been universally recognized in the case, for example, of inappropriately deadpan parody targeting certain distinguished American academicians. See the documentation or our great nation’s leading criminal “satire” case at:
https://raphaelgolbtrial.wordpress.com/
Something we actually agree on. I hope the IDF slaughters them all.
They NEED to be stopped. What will it take to do so? These Jews are committing a holocaust in Gaza.
Oh, you mean like The Holocaust that you spend your every waking moment on the Comments section of Reason denying ever happened?
And if the Jews in Israel are so genocidal, why hasn’t Israel–a nuclear power–not only ethnically cleansed out Gaza and The West Bank, but turned the capitols of every Arab and Muslim nation into sheets of glowing glass?
I look forward to your oom-pa-pa hem-hawing shuck-and-jive about that. Meanwhile…
Fuck Off, Nazi!
“They NEED to be stopped. What will it take to do so? These Jews are committing a holocaust in Gaza.”
Nothing claimed by either side coming out of Gaza can be taken as credible until a full detailed forensic analysis, including DNA identification of every single victim has been established by a laboratory. Why not apply the same standard of substantiation to current events that you’ve repeatedly claimed would be necessary to corroborate the tens of thousands of individual accounts and written government records from Berlin as well as the confessions made by those tried at Nuremberg?
We don’t know that anyone who’s been reportedly killed in Gaza is actually dead. Maybe they’re all hanging out on a beach with the 993000+ people who were taken to Auschwitz by German trains but weren’t there when the camp was “liberated” by the Red Army in 1945?
You seem to get awfully trusting about the occurrence of an alleged “genocide” when it’s the one that you desperately need to believe in….
Gotta live free speech!
I could never demonstrate the Jewish perspective as well as you.
I’ve done nothing other than apply to your claims, the criteria you’d make everyone other than yourself meet or else face criminal penalties for what you claim to consider “lying”.
It’s laughable that whenever your claims can’t stand up to your own criteria, you suddenly wrap yourself in the protection of “free speech” that you’d happily deny to everyone but yourself if you somehow got within 50 miles of any sort of authority. The thinking around that is almost as twisted as your notion of “properly applied logic”. If I’m expressing the “Jewish Perspective”, then you should be hoping for the Jews to take over the world since I’ve never once said that you should or would be denied the right to express your gibbering nonsense except under the hypothetical scenario of your own dream of “criminalizing dishonesty” (including the distortion of “due process” to put all burden of proof onto the accused rather than the accuser) since there’s never been a claim made by you in these forums that would ever meet the level of proof that you’ve said you’d demand of anyone accused.
All I can do is point out that you repeatedly (and intentionally?) fail to meet the standard you constantly demand of anyone else, in a completely non-binding manner, and you’re jumping to pretending to somehow now be the “victim”? You must do a lot of yoga to have the flexibility to get your head so far up your own ass. Might I recommend you peek out once in a while and experience reality? At the very least the smell should be better.
You’ve also never refuted anything that I’ve said.
Jews admit targeting refugee camps, hospitals, schools and homes. We’ve seen glimpses of the images of total destruction in Gaza.
When the Gaza health ministry officials report the number of dead they’ve counted including women and children there needs to be immediate confirmation and response, not baseless denial and genocidal propaganda from the Jews and the west. The reported numbers of dead come from many media sources, just not the lying waste of skin Jews who are committing the atrocities.
The Jewish plan to kill or forcibly displace the entire Palestinian population in Gaza is public, undeniable and the UN definition of a crime against humanity.
We have proof that Jews are committing crimes against humanity, genocide and terrorism and instead of stopping them our governments response is to send them more money and weapons and block the UN call for a humanitarian ceasefire to stop the slaughter.
These are facts that neither you nor anyone else can refute.
By your rules, there’s no need to refute anything. It’s up to you to prove it all with objective and verifiable facts, not with centuries-old claims about the illuminati and freemasons (you’ve forgotten to also involve Sasquatch and Nessie in the plot though), a personal letter written to British official over a century ago regarding the disposition of land which was controlled by the Ottoman Empire at the time, and a small excerpt from an admitted activist giving a talk that’s titled as being his own personal opinions.
If you won’t believe that the Nazi Extermination Camps in the 1940s were ever used for the purpose of genocide without a “full forensic analysis” including DNA testing at a level which can’t possibly produce any conclusive result more than 50 years later, then you can’t assert a genocide is happening now without producing the reports from exactly that level of analysis from the location in question. That’s your rule, not mine or anyone else’s; if you don’t want to meet your own standard, then stop applying it to claims that aren’t your own.
Are you referring to the same Gaza Health ministry which is part of the Hamas government? which initially reported 500 killed in an Israeli bombing of a hospital which turned out to have actually been the parking lot being hit by a failed rocket launched by Islamic Jihad which actually killed fewer than 100 (since it luckily failed to ignite the stores of munitions which Hamas almost certainly had stashed in the basement of the building)? In the “fog of war” timeframe, I see no compelling reason to take claims coming from Hamas as any more inherently credible than those coming from the IDF; both have ample motivations to at least “spin” their reports in their own favor if not completely fabricate their claims.
Since both sides have conflicting claims, and neither can be independently verified, neither claim should be taken as a proven fact, so if you don’t have substantiated numbers to back your claim, then you are, by your own standard, lying. These are your own rules by which you’re failing to support your claims, not mine.
You’re lying again Kol Nidre boy.
While I’m calling for a thorough forensic investigation of every alleged site of the holocaust to PROVE TO THE WORLD that the holocaust is a lie, I’ll be satisfied with ANY irrefutable evidence that there was a holocaust as stated.
In Gaza, regarding Jewish crimes against humanity, I’ve demonstrated this evidence.
Jews are executing their premeditated public plan to kill or forcibly displace all Palestinians from Gaza.
Jews are intentionally targeting noncombatants in refugee camps.
No, we’re not going through all of that based on the claims of a lone nut like you.
“We have proof that Jews are committing crimes against humanity, genocide and terrorism and instead of stopping them our governments response is to send them more money and weapons and block the UN call for a humanitarian ceasefire to stop the slaughter.
These are facts that neither you nor anyone else can refute.”
Under the definition of “genocide” which is now being applied to Israeli actions but has somehow never been applied to the stated intent of Hamas to eliminate the presence of all non Muslim-Arabs (which would include the Christian Arabs who you claim make up the bulk of the regions “indigenous” population) in the Middle East, the act of clearing out the Warsaw Ghetto and moving all of those Jews to Auschwitz in the 1940s would constitute genocide regardless of whether or not a single person died at the camp for any reason.
What you claim is “proven fact”, some might call “semantics” as a result of defining-down the magnitude of what constitutes “genocide”.
Going farther back into history, it could be claimed that what Israel is currently doing is an act of “decolonization”. The Roman emperor Hadrian re-named the region from “Judea” to “Palestine” (as punishment for the local Jews attempting a rebellion against Roman occupation) in reference to the Philistine population who were ethnic Greeks that had spread from Crete; there may have been some remnants of Babylonian and Assyrian invasions in the area, but ethnic Arabs didn’t start to occupy the area for anther 400-500 years. Not to mention that the construction of the Al Aqsa Mosque on the site of the sacked 2nd Jewish temple in Jerusalem (also the 2nd Jewish temple in Jerusalem to meet that fate after the Greeks did something similar to the first one almost 3000 years ago) centuries after that would be called an act of “cultural erasure” if it hadn’t been done to the Jews.
Considering that the mere concept of ethinc Arabs having ever had a national identity as “Palestinian” was created in the 20th century, since there has never in human history been an established “nation of Palestine” (unless you choose to count the current polity of the West Bank and Gaza, which don’t have a unified government, police force, or currency and didn’t even exist on paper until the 21st century), and the Arabs were literally the last group to have occupied that area (or 3rd to last if you count the Ottoman Turks and the British Empire although they didn’t really try to take over the land as opposed to ruling over the people) of land out of every ethnicity to have ever laid claim to the area; the Jews might arguably be more recent but also have a documented history of living in (and being forcibly driven out of) the area going back over 5000 years. There’s no version of language under which being the last ones into an area makes someone the “indigenous” people rather than the “colonizer”.
Actually not rhetorically, Jews stole Palestine 75 years ago and have oppressed Palestinians with apartheid, genocide, crimes against humanity and terrorism ever since.
Jews referenced the Balfour Declaration of 1917 as justification for the theft in their 1948 declaration of the state of Israel which clearly references Palestine.
Jews knew what they were stealing and from whom.
I say that the Jews 75 years ago were reclaiming their ancestral homeland which they can prove their Israelite ancestors lived in more than 1000 years before the first Arab ever set foot in the area, and that the Arabs claiming to be “Palestinian” are at best descended from one of the most recent groups of colonizers to have displaced the indigenous population of that particular piece of land.
Unless you think you have some way to prove that the 7th Century actually predated the Roman Empire, or the 6th century BCE, or the 12th Century BCE.
You do realize that the holiday of Hanukka (currently being observed this year) is in commemoration of an attack on the First Jewish Temple in Jerusalem by Greeks more than 300 years before a Roman emperor renamed the occupied territory of “Judea” to “Palestine” (taken from the Philistines who were also ethinc Greeks, not Arabs).
If there are “indigenous Palestinians”, they’re not ethnic Arabs, and they don’t have any claim on the land which pre-dates the indigenous presence of the Israelites/Jews.
It’s kind of humorous, and also sad, how many claims of Arabs being “indigenous” to the area that are made in the USA lately are preceded by “land acknowledgements” in which the indigenous tribes of North America are reminded once more that being named in a speech is as close as they’re likely to ever seeing their ancestral lands returned.
Long before lying waste of skin Jews emerged to cause trouble many different peoples existed together.
“ Canaan and the Canaanites are mentioned some 160 times in the Hebrew Bible, mostly in the Torah and the books of Joshua and Judges.[94] The biblical history has become increasingly problematic as the archaeological and textual evidence supports the idea that the early Israelites were in fact themselves Canaanites.[94] While the Hebrew Bible distinguishes the Canaanites ethnically from the ancient Israelites, modern scholars Jonathan Tubb and Mark S. Smith have theorized—based on their archaeological and linguistic interpretations—that the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah represented a subset of Canaanite culture.[5][6]”
If the Isrealites are descended from the Caananites, then that would make them at least part of the indigenous people of the area.
Whatever issues there are about translations of the biblical history, there’s no dispute that all of it pre-dates the 7th Century CE when the influx of ethnic Arabs into the region began. Even your own citations disprove the notion that the Arabs who now call themselves “Palestinian” could possibly be any more indigenous to the region than the families of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were to the North American Continent.
If the whole debate is about the “indigenous” driving out the “colonizers”, then I’d say that history is pretty clear about which of those roles ethnic Arabs (whether they’re Christian, Muslim, Zoroastrian, or otherwise) actually play in the historical record.
If the issue is which side seeks to eliminate the other, I’d accept that the moral footing of Hamas and Netenyahu is now more or less even, although the Egyptian government has been quite clear that they’d accept the extermination of all Gazan Arabs almost as happily as the Israeli government (which lacks majority support among the Israeli people from every report I’ve heard). The main difference, which hardly matters now, is that Hamas has been committed to genocide (the real version of it, not the “modern” definition under which some over-agressice HOAs and Condo boards might qualify) for nearly 40 years since its inception, and other than the fringe hard-line Israelis the other side of the conflict would accept simply not being targeted for mass murder if those targeting them would also accept less than “from the river to the sea” including all of Jerusalem as the territory they’d have to cede in exchange for peace.
No fuckwit the whole issue is about Jews committing crimes against humanity, genocide, apartheid and terrorism against the Palestinians in Gaza TODAY.
They’ve been doing it for 75 years.
These terrible Jews need to be stopped.
The only thing that’s prevented Hamas from killing every Jew in Israel for 40 years has been their lack of ability. Their charter is very clear on their intentions regarding what would have been called “ethnic cleansing” 20 years ago but has now been apparently rolled into the ever-widening definition of Genocide. The version that Hamas is committed to carrying out someday is the one where every member of a particular ethinc group is exterminated. What’s happening to Arab muslims in gaza is horriffic; I think they should have started with relocating anyone in Gaza who claims to be a civilian and isn’t known to be active in Hamas into the West Bank, after forcibly also relocating the Jewish settlers in that area, and giving the Gazan residents those settlements as a portion of compensation, and I do realize that also violates “international law” but it does so without killing and creates a condition where there’s a more viable Palestinian State populated by Arabs who claim to be “Palestinian” by virtue of their ancestors possibly having displaced or killed the previous occupants of the area but whose great-grandparents would have held either Egyptian or Syrian citizenship since there never was a sovereign State of Palestine at any time prior to or including 1948.
The only thing that’s prevented Israel from exterminating the “Palestinian” Arab population within their borders since 1948 has been the lack of any intention to do so. Netanyahu now seems to have that intention, but he’s spent his entire life facing Arab factions which are very open about their intention to not coexist at any level (with those factions being backed by the religious council in Iran who have also been very open about their intention to remove the State of Israel from existence and kill every non-muslim occupant of that land. Even the two instances in which the Palestinians claim to have “attempted non-violent resistance” were single demonstrations which followed decades of wanton violence and deliberate slaughter of civilains; the first in 1998 and the second in 2018 in Gaza. It took MLK a lot more than one peaceful march to send his message of non-violence, and he hadn’t switched to that tactic after 35 years of suicide bombings and airplane hijackings; the idea that Arafat would have been taken seriously as non-violent the first time out barely had a chance if he hadn’t bathed himself in blood for so many decades prior.
Like I said these terrible Jews need to be stopped today.
They also need to be punished for current crimes against humanity, genocide apartheid and terrorism.
Undoing the cause, the 1948 theft of Palestine which started the Middle East conflict is probably the first step to peace in the region.
The first shots fired in 1948 were from Arab guns. The “Palestinian” Arabs who left the area prior to the war were promised by the Arab nations that launched the first war that they’d soon be moving back to take over the lands that their former Jewish neighbors had previously owned and would then be buried under.
Being driven off of, and re-taking that particular land is a recurring theme in Jewish history. There are multiple different holidays centered around the time it was done by the Egyptians, then by the Greeks, then the Romans, and all three of those happened centuries (some millennia) before the Arabs moved into the area (followed by occupation by the Ottomans, then finally by the British Empire). Like I keep saying, the Arabs are the third-to-last group to have come to the land where they’re now pretending to be the “indigenous” population and repeatedly attempting to exterminate the descendants of the actual indigenous people (even you admit that the Israelite were descended from the Caananites, and I’ve yet to see anyone anywhere claiming to be “ethnic caananite” in the 20th or 21st century. Simply having been there in 1947 doesn’t make people indigenous to an area with nearly 6000 years of recorded history; even less so for those who willingly left the area (in hopes that someone else would come in and murder their neighbors for them so they could then take ownership of their lands as well).
Ghengis Kahn once had control of that area as well. Should be give legitimacy to a claim that Mongolians are actually the indigenous occupants of the region?
You just proved that you are first class anti-Semite.
The fact is that Jews are the group committing crimes against humanity, genocide, apartheid and terrorism against the population of Palestinians in Gaza.
If we oppose those atrocities, we need to stop the Jews period, not help them complete their holocaust.
Yes, many of those advocating and funding their atrocities are not Jewish. The corruption is widespread but the actual acts of atrocities are being carried out by Jews.
This recognition of fact is what you call antisemitism.
“If we oppose those atrocities, we need to stop the Jews period, not help them complete their holocaust.”
This just seems disingenuous when it’s factored in that it’s coming from someone who’s got no problem with the genocide, and only opposes it because the Jews aren’t on the receiving end of the most severe killing.
You’ll never prove that lying claim Kol Nidre boy
If I said the sun was yellow and grass is green you’d concoct some version of the world to believe in where you could pretend they were false.
I don’t expect to convince you of anything, but I’m confident that anyone reading this whose capable of comprehending english and understands the actual rules of logic as they’ve existed for almost as long as there have been Jews living in Jerusalem will know with certainty which of us is actually repeating falsehoods and pretending that their prejudices are confirmed by evidence.
I know what my subjective beliefs are, and I know what’s objectively true according to the available evidence, and I know how to make the distinction between the two, that’s all I need for my own satisfaction. Anyone who’s mentally competent reading any of your lunatic screeds won’t need me to explain to them that you quite possibly don’t understand that there is a distinction between subjective belief and objective fact let alone how to distinguish one from the other, and illuminating the gaps in your “thinking” (for lack of a more precise term for whatever happens between your ears) just in case someone as damaged as yourself happens upon this thread someday.
Jews started this by stealing Palestine, creating an apartheid state and committing crimes against humanity, genocide and terrorism for the last 75 years.
Stopping and punishing these crimes is JUSTICE.
I said that you’re a lying waste of skin because I’ve never advocated any crimes against humanity, genocide or terrorism.
You’re lie “ someone who’s got no problem with the genocide, and only opposes it because the Jews aren’t on the receiving end of the most severe killing.”
Fuck you lying waste of skin.
Anyone who’s read more than three of your post is very clear on your personal feelings toward the Jews, and you’re pretty clear about your belief that the “solution” (maybe the “final solution”?) to all of the problems would be removal of the Jews from at least that region, and perhaps the entire world.
If you’re going to call what you see as an effort by Israel to clear all of the Arabs out of Gaza as a “genocide” and a “crime against humanity”, but advocate for clearing all of the Jews out of Israel and re-naming it Palestine (the second half of that is something done by the Romans as punishment for an attempted Jewish revolt during the Roman occupation of the area), then it’s pretty clear what your actual objection to current events is based on.
Not what I’m saying fuckwit.
Just take away what the west stole for these terrible Jews take them out of power and let them live in Palestine like they did 76 years ago.
Then see how they fare trying to kill Palestinian women and children.
Cowards.
Jews are the good guys. Islamic minsters like Hamas are the villains. You’re a villain too.
Another fact about antisemitism and Jews.
Being a Jew is nothing more than being a member of the religion Judaism. They are defined by the tenets of their religion. Judaism is not a race but Jews have eliminated the element of choice, which all other religions share. If one or more parents is a Jew, the offspring are Jews, period.
One other thing to remember when speaking to any Jew is that their religion advocates unrestricted lying.
On their annual holiest day of the year they reaffirm their plan to lie for the coming year by chanting the Kol Nidre as follows,
“All vows, obligations, oaths, and anathemas [curses]which we may vow, or swear, or pledge, or whereby we may be bound, from this Day of Atonement until the next we do repent. May they be deemed absolved, forgiven, annulled, and void, and made of no effect: they shall not bind us nor have any power over us. The vows shall not be reckoned vows; the obligations shall not be obligations; nor the oaths be oaths.”.
Jews would call these clearly stated facts antisemitism for purely self serving reasons.
Well you don’t often see this kind of vile hatred, even on the internet.
Reality, truth isn’t hatred. It is fact.
If you think what I said isn’t true, refute it.
If you can’t, you demonstrate that you’re a liar.
What would be a satisfactory way to prove to you that you’re citing an improperly translated version of what’s said along with a misinterpretation (likely intentional) of its meaning and intent? It’s hardly uncommon for literal translations between languages to end up appearing to have differing meanings; in the era when most translations of the New Testament into english were done, the word “virgin” merely referred to a woman who’d never been married, it was merely presumed that she hadn’t had sex, but more than enough first-children in heavily religious communities in the 14th-16th centuries were born within 7 months of their parents’ wedding date to make that assumption dubious at best.
If every vow made by every Jew were absolved every Yom Kippur, then the Synagogues would be overwhelmed with people looking to restore their marriages every year on the following day; in reality, it’s very difficult for orthodox Jews to get the religious version of a divorce even when the civil dissolution of a marriage is amicably carried out and bilaterally desired. The IDF would have to re-recruit all of their Jewish soldiers once a year, and there’d be no bank loans made by Jewish lenders to Jewish borrowers for terms of more than 12 months. None of those things happen (or have ever been considered as possibly being necessary), so clearly Jews aren’t interpreting their own rituals in the same way that you’re trying to do. Considering that your chosen misinterpretation is part of the foundation of your hatred (and likely dreams of someday seeing an actual genocide carried out?)
What’s absolved in that ritual are promises people have made to themselves and “to god”, so they can re-start the new year on a clean slate internally. Essentially what it really amounts to is forgiving oneself if you’ve failed to make good on any “new years resolutions” from the previous year so as to try to do better in the coming year rather than to get hung up looking backward at past shortcomings.
Except that’s not what the kol Nidre says, is it?
“All vows, obligations, oaths, and anathemas [curses]which we may vow, or swear, or pledge, or whereby we may be bound,” clearly isn’t synonymous with simply “resolutions with only oneself”.
With God? Hahaha. What stupid Jew doesn’t know that God is omnipresent, existing and knowing all past, present and future. Lies don’t work on God fuckwit.
You’re so obviously lying again Kol Nidre boy.
There’s a huge difference between the interpretation of the Kol Nidre between those who recite it in Hebrew and how you want to interpret an inexact translation; which I’m assuming you learned from the “schools” run by whichever of the white supremacist cults that used to pretend to be churches in northern Idaho, or maybe got from your copy of “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”?
I can’t dispute that the “translation” you choose to believe in can be interpreted to say what you want it to mean. None of that means that your translation is accurate, or that any living and practicing member of the Jewish religion has ever interpreted the Hebrew to mean what you’re imagining. Just because you’re incapable (or unwilling) to comprehend the distinction, doesn’t mean that the difference isn’t very much real.
You fucking lying waste of skin.
The actual meaning of the words in the text say that you’re a lying waste of skin.
I’m not surprised that you deny it.
Do you think your opinion on that matters to me at all?
Keep it up though, since there’s no better demonstration for any passive reader to know what’s motivating you and where your capacity for actual logic (as opposed to whatever you think “properly applied logic” might actually be) hits its limits. As Harry Callahan famously said, a man’s got to know his limitations.
I could make up a bunch of words, and claim they were translated from something Jesus wrote on a napkin at the Seder dinner depicted in the famous painting, then say that those words mean that you’ve had more than one sexual encounter involving both your mother and a prarie dog which led to both of you contracting the boubonic plague. Doesn’t make it true no matter how many times I claim that the burden is on you to prove it didin’t happen.
You’re the one who keeps reposting that translation. The burden is on you to prove the claim that the translation is accurate, and that you’re interpreting it correctly (your rules, not mine); especially since the meaning you see in those words is so disconnected from the meaning that the hundreds of millions of people who’ve said them over the last 5000+ years have believed them to mean
You didn’t refute my translation or the similar translation in Wikipedia either.
Is wiki a white supremacy website fuckwit?
You just denied them because you’re a lying waste of skin.
For all I know, you posted the translation that’s in Wikipedia. Or one of the other lackeys around you who get Richard Spencer his coffee since he’s been 86’ed from every Starbucks in Whitefish…
“Being a Jew is nothing more than being a member of the religion Judaism. They are defined by the tenets of their religion. Judaism is not a race but Jews have eliminated the element of choice, which all other religions share. If one or more parents is a Jew, the offspring are Jews, period.”
That last sentence is not true, and therefore by the “Misek standard” is a lie (although I suspect you sincerely believe it, which would under conventional interpretation simply mean that you choose to believe something that’s false.
Under Jewish law, a child is considered to have been “born Jewish” (ethnically) if the mother is Jewish. The given reason is that the only parent that’s 100% certain (especially 4-5 millenia ago) is the mother. I personally suspect that this “law” was adopted as a response to the number of times the Jews in that era were attacked by other groups (Greeks, Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, probably Turks, Persians, maybe Carthaginians, and possibly once even Mongolians) and either enslaved, run off their homeland, occupied, sacked and often likely had a lot of the women in their populations raped many of those time; so treating any child born to a Jewish mother as a Jewish child was a defensive measure against the tactic of invaders trying to “breed them out”
If a Jewish man has children with a non-Jewish woman, it’s left to the choice of the parents whether to raise their children within the religion; but in modern times the same is true for children born to Jewish mothers, except in orthodox families. Even a huge percentage of Israeli Jews consider themselves to be “ethincally Jewish” but aren’t particularly religious. Of course, either parent (or probably even one grandparent) being Jewish would be considered enough for an individual to be worthy of murdering under the tenets of Hamas and Hezbollah (and probably also whatever Aryan Nation North Idaho death cult Misek was raised in?)
You admit that Jewish laws confirms my statement.
Your statement was that “either parent” being Jewish means that the child is considered Jewish (even though you also deny the existence of a “Jewish” ethnic group for such children to actually be deemed to be a member of). No child born to any parents can be bound to actually practice any religion if they choose not to as an adult, or if their parents choose not to raise them with that faith as a child. My mother’s parents (and that side of the family gong back many generations) were both Jewish, and raised their children in the faith; my mother is Jewish and my brother and I were raised in a non-orthodox practice until we moved to a place that was 400 or so miles from the nearest synagogue (my mother’s father used to cover the Thanksgiving turkey with bacon for most of the cooking time, and we spent every christmas with my father’s parents and my aunts/uncles on that side who were marginally some kind of protestant) but no longer practice much of any religion (and nobody has ever attempted to coerce me into doing so), and I believe my Niece is being raised Catholic because that’s the religion her mother’s family practices and in which my sister-in-law was raised. Nobody that I’m aware of has ever attempted to force either my brother or my niece to practice Judaism instead.
If your statement were true, then myself and several members of my immediate family (as well as millions more around the world) would be facing some kind of consequence or pressure to actively practice a particular religion. The closest I get is your repeated attempts to get everyone (including me) on board with a genocide in which I would be killed. I really don’t see where I would stand to benefit from that, though so I keep declining.
“Jewish law” only makes that determination in the case of one parent. There is nothing in that tradition (which was established thousands of years before paternity could be conclusively proven based on anything other than the mother’s personal credibility) to address a situation where only the Father is Jewish.
Even your twisted concept of “properly applied logic” can’t make those two things equivalent. The one that’s been established and documented for thousands of years contradicts your claim that any child born to only a Jewish father is considered to be Jewish by birth.
Since the truth is in direct contradiction to your claim, you are by conventional standards, incorrect in believing what you claimed; by your own standards, since your claim contradicts the facts, you are a liar regardless of whether or not you thought the statement was correct when you made it.
Wrong again you lying waste of skin.
Anyone can see that I didn’t say that.
I said “ If one or more parents is a Jew, the offspring are Jews, period.”
The mother is one parent.
Aside from that, the relevant point which you admit, is that Judaism isn’t a choice up to the individual but required by law for the children in the cult.
Without specification, those with “one or more” Jewish parents includes those with a Jewish father or a Jewish mother (either way is one Jewish Parent), as well as those with two Jewish parents.
People with Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers aren’t necessarily considered “Jewish by birth”, and have one Jewish parent; this is the origin to the reference to “the half that matters” when some people who understand the culture discuss being “half Jewish”. The existence of any one person with a single Jewish parent who isn’t deemed “Jewish by birth” is sufficient to disprove your claim as it was made, and there are millions of such people living today, possibly just in the USA (actually you claimed that those people are all forced into the practice of the religion since you deny the existence of the Jewish ethnicity, which is something for which there are many more millions of counterexamples).
You’re arguing that all rectangles are square because all squares are rectangles; and that’s even setting aside the additional claim you’ve made that squares don’t exist anyway.
We all know that you don’t understand the actual rules of logic, and cover for that with the BS phrase “properly applied logic”. If you either don’t actually comprehend the meaining of your own words, or refuse to engage in good faith (by pretending your claims meant something you didn’t say
You’re lying again Kol Nidre boy.
I’m satisfied with the optics of our dialogue
“I’m satisfied with the optics of our dialogue”
Nobody calling you a Nazi could possibly discredit the veracity of your entire worldview or illuminate your fundamental lack of comprehension of logic more than that statement just did.
And you still haven’t refuted anything that I’ve said.
I’ve got no need to refute it.
You’ve been pretty clear that your “filter” on the world is build upon your personal animus toward Jews (maybe a few other races as well?), and now that you’re content to be open about that fact.
Nothing that anyone else could say or prove could possibly do more to undermine your entire premise, and I’d be wasting my time to try it.
“Being a Jew is nothing more than being a member of the religion Judaism. They are defined by the tenets of their religion. Judaism is not a race but Jews have eliminated the element of choice, which all other religions share. If one or more parents is a Jew, the offspring are Jews, period.”
If there are no ethnic Jews, then there are no Jewish parents, and can be no ethnic Jewish offspring. If the only defining characteristic is the active practice of a particular religion, then nobody can be Jewish until they’ve got a developed enough mind to practice that religion (meaning nobody has ever been “born Jewish” any more than someone could be “born Catholic” or “born Baptist”); if the religion denies all those born to such circumstances the choice of whether or not to practice the religion, then why have I never encountered an attempt to coerce me away from my choice not to practice any formal religion as an adult? My next door and across-the street neighbors are practicing Jews, as are at least one of my uncles and several people who I knew in High School have converted (one lives less than 20 miles from me, which in L.A. isn’t a huge distance, but is a monumental drive) and not one of them has ever tried to pressure me in any way to join one of the local Synagogues despite all of them knowing that I was raised in that faith for a portion of my childhood.
No human being has ever been born capable of practicing a religion at birth, not even Scientologists. How can babies whose minds have yet to develop a concept of object permanence or sense of self have any kind meaningful faith in anything more than getting fed when they suckle on certain objects? If newborns can’t practice a religion, and only those who practice are Jewish, then there are no newborn Jews. There has to be a Jewish ethnicity in order for anyone to be born into the group since ethnicity is rooted in genetic heritage and religion is an entirely human artifice.
Yes, the inconsistency of Jews lies.
Their laws contradict logic like their lies do.
The only lies I posted were in the opening citation. Literally any mentally competent reader with even a moderate grasp of logic and the english language will recognize that distinction; nobody reading will be surprised that it escaped your notice.
You are a liar. The Jewish religion advocates lying. I try not to lie because I know it’s wrong.
Do you admit to lying because you also know it’s wrong? Then why do you lie and advocate the institutionalized lying in the Jewish religion.
You’re lying about how much you lie. Here’s some of your lies on this thread alone.
“All I can do is point out that you repeatedly (and intentionally?) fail to meet the standard you constantly demand of anyone else, “ You never have Prove otherwise if you claim to have done so. “ you won’t believe that the Nazi Extermination Camps in the 1940s were ever used for the purpose of genocide without a “full forensic analysis” including DNA testing ”
I never said that either.
“ I say that the Jews 75 years ago were reclaiming their ancestral homeland which they can prove their Israelite ancestors lived in more than 1000 years before the first Arab ever set foot in the area, ”
That’s a lie. Canaanites are the ancestors of both Jews and Arabs. It was 1200BCE when Jews split off claiming land as Israelites, causing the very first conflict between Jews and Arabs in the region.
“t’s coming from someone who’s got no problem with the genocide, and only opposes it because the Jews aren’t on the receiving end of the most severe killing.”
I’ve never advocated either genocide nor killing Jews, particularly innocent ones.
“What’s absolved in that ritual are promises people have made to themselves and “to god”, so they can re-start the new year on a clean slate internally. “
That’s two lies. Firstly the text clearly states “ALL” oaths vows etc are meaningless certainly not only personal ones. Secondly, the Kol Nidre isn’t about clearing a past slate. It clearly states that the lying is advocated for the COMING YEAR of future lies.
If you think that you can prove as true what I’ve called your lies, you should have done it before. Do it now.
Still you have never refuted anything that I’ve said.
You’ve repeatedly refused to prove your own claims to be true as you just demanded of me, yet claim that I lied in calling that the case.
I’ve got no need to provide proof of your lies, anyone looking for it merely needs to read your own posts. Your problem seems to be that your notion of “properly applied” logic is the opposite of actual logic (as established since the time of Plato and Aristotle if not before that), so you actually believe that the insanity you’re spewing actually constitutes some kind of “proof” when in reality it undermines your entire premise.
I’ve provided proof of my claims and refuted what I deny.
Not only can’t you but you refuse to do either claiming that you don’t need to.
Instead you advocate and apologize for the terrible Jews committing crimes against humanity.
Along with demonstrating the terrible perspective of of advocates for the atrocities of these Jews in Palestine, these are all the optics that dialogue with you yields.
Didn’t some member of the Commentariat once write something to this effect?: ‘Sure, you can censor stuff. Just let *me* decide what’s to be censored.’
Washington Post Op
To which Obama does this refer?
Words and ideas are dangerous.
And violent. Almost rapey.
But not Hamas-rapey. There’s bad rape (women victims), there’s good rape (men victims), and then there’s that dreamy Hamas rape.
Democrats are ok with Jew rape.
Just a few like Jayapal and Tlaib. This Democrat will be contributing to their primary opponents.
Now lets talk about Candace Owens. Pro rape Republican.
‘In her article, University of Pennsylvania professor Claire O. Finkelstein absurdly argued that colleges treat free speech as “near-sacred.”‘
Looks like a typo. I am sure what Finkelstein said was how colleges treat sacred speech as near-free.
Here’s the thing. We know speech at UPenn already isn’t free. Should it be? Sure. Absolutely. But, there are a lot of things that should be that aren’t. So, the question is what should be the optimal arrangement of what is? In that….context….it’s reasonable to question whether arguments that there are two sexes are beyond the pale while arguments that Israel/Palestine should be Judenrein from “the river to the sea” aren’t. Because saying that the latter is acceptable won’t make the authorities at UPenn have a Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus moment with regard to free speech. Academically fashionable views will continue to be permitted and academically unfashionable views will continue to be quashed.
This is about the best summary of this whole kerfuffle I’ve read. Well done.
I propose a compromise:
Declare universities (all of them) as religious organizations. That will shortly end all the funding and free speech issues surrounding them.
Better to seize their endowments and redistribute them as reparations to non democrat Americans. This should be very popular with democrats. Since it involves two things they love. Redistribution of wealth, and reparations.
“Easy, Igor! You impetuous boy!”
🙂
😉
No need to seize anything. Just shut off the taxpayer-underwritten Grants and Student Loans and, combined with disgusted private donors shutting their wallets, all of these Ivy League propaganda diploma mills literally die on the vine.
Parents and students can send their time and money to Community Colleges, Vo-Tech schools, online universities, and learn their Humanities with what I affectionately call The Eric Hoffer Fellowship.
Eric Hoffer–Wikipedia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hoffer
Yeah, they effectively are, anyway. Might as well make it de jure.
Hell, even the Catholic universities have replaced Catholicism with marxism as their core theology.
Is anyone under the impression that these universities do not punish speech?
Look, I’m not sure what all the fainting spells are about. For the last 25 years, universities have been shutting down any speech which fell outside of a very narrowly acceptable set of topics. Hell, they made a movie about it in the 90s!
The Genie is out of that toothpaste tube and it ain’t going back in. The only reason this is even in the news at this point… and the only reason it seems Reason is getting the vapors over it is… Palestinians or something.
Which movie was that?
This one.
no high school diploma issued until a test is passed on PCU.
I think the single greatest meta moment in 90s movie history is when Jeremy Piven holds the microphone for the sign language interpreter to sign “We’re not going to protest!”
Thanks! I guess I never saw that.
it’s a shame it took this event and this long for people, including the news media and even libertarian (cough-cough) sites to wake up to censorship on campus.
sadly it won’t stick, the lefties who are screaming about being censored for their anti-israel views will keep censoring non-woketards
Root cause analysis:
The Federal Department of Education.
Most efficient long and short term fix.
Eliminate the root cause.
Greaaaaaaat. Instead of restoring the Chicago free expression/viewpoint neutrality principles, we’re just going to add another constituency for speech codes. Precisely the wrong outcome.
Correct.
White college educated female millennials are destroying civilization.
Mattress girl resembles that remark.
“The ability to shout intemperate slogans or the ability to engage in reasoned dialogue with people who have moral and political differences?”
“Reasoned dialogue”? On a college campus?
Not going to happen.
Free speech SHOULD be treated as “near-sacred”. While explicit calls for genocide are probably beyond the boundaries of protected speech, what Finkelstein and Stefanik claim are “proxies” for such calls are in fact nothing of the sort. “Intifada” simply means “uprising” and can include a wide range of activities. Calling for Israel’s replacement with a secular government that is not labeled a Jewish State is definitely a legitimate political position.
It is unfortunately true that many colleges have not consistently protected free expression in recent years. I was hoping that what we heard a few days ago represented a real renewed commitment to such protection going forward. Alas, it seems that is not to be.
Hamas does not call for a Secular government, but an Islamic Theocracy, with Sha’ria laws on morality just like the ones they enforce on the people of Gaza.
And check the etymology of Intifada and you will see that it is eliminationist in it’s implications:
Intifada is an Arabic word literally meaning, as a noun, “tremor”, “shivering”, “shuddering”.[2][3] It is derived from an Arabic term nafada meaning “to shake”, “shake off”, “get rid of”,[2] as a dog might shrug off water, or as one might shake off sleep,[4] or dirt from one’s sandals.[5]
Intifada–Wikipedia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intifada
Calling for Israel’s replacement with a secular government that is not labeled a Jewish State is definitely a legitimate political position.
Sure, but it’s also a thoroughly disingenuous one. Only true-believing globalists at this point actually think a two-state solution is possible, and realistically, the only ones in Israel or the Palestinian territories that would even accept it are the turboleft Haaretz types.
The only thing notable about the current slapfight is that left-wing Jews are seeing themselves but pushed down the progressive stack, and saying “Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity” isn’t getting them a free pass at the moment.
Also, no matter how coy these people act, chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is in no way, shape, or form a call for a secular government. That’s a western shitlib pretense that not even the Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank would find acceptable.
Palestinians want Israel destroyed.
Jews want Hamas destroyed.
If calls for destruction of Israel equate to calls for genocide of all jews, then calls for destruction of Hamas equate to calls for genocide of all Palestinians.
I don’t particularly care how they settle the issue between themselves, but I would like an explanation how the former is true to some while the latter isn’t.
Because Hamas’s long stated position is the elimination of the Jewish presence in the region. That is seven million Jews — more than the Nazis murdered.
The difference between the German Nazis and the Palestinian Nazis is that the Palestinian Nazis are religious fanatics while the German Nazis were anti-religion. Their goal, however, is the same.
And your solution is what? A two-state solution is gone. Do you forcibly remove 6 million Palestinians? Both sides are way too full of anger to ever compromise.
And Stefanik is a hypocrite herself. She has promoted the QAnon conspiracy, the lies about Dominion Voting Systems, and the Great Replacement Theory nonsense. And she went all in to support a congressional candidate who praised Adolf Hitler — and then tried to complain that he was taken out of context. She was okay with “context” being used to defend Hitler because the defender was a Republican, but not okay with “context” being used to defend other anti-semites because the defenders were Democrats.
Sigh.
The underlying question that nobody seems to feel that they can say out loud is “why aren’t Jews considered to be a ‘minority’?”
Would these administrators also say that a call to eliminate all LGBT people from some particular portion of the map (or even the whole of it) might or might not be a violation of their campus codes “depending on the context”?
There used to be t-shirts (and bumper stickers, probably also coffee mugs and maybe even mouse pads) back in the late 1980s and early 1990s which made reference to AIDS in a parody of the slogan for a popular brand of pesticides. Would anyone wearing one of those shirts around that campus be allowed to do so as long as they avoided a certain “context”?
Would Misek be allowed to spout his regular gibberish within 3 miles of any of those campuses? Has he been offered a gig as a “guest lecturer” at any of the schools to spout his most recent rantings in front of a room full of undergrads?
Finkelstein concludes her essay by asking, “Isn’t it time for university presidents to rethink the role that open expression and academic freedom play in the educational mission of their institutions?”
Sounds like she’s defending Ron DeSantis’s overhaul of the FL state colleges.
I’m sure it is ok if they are pushing anti Italian or anti Irish (coded as “white”) smearing and demonizing right prof? Old world grevences die hard with some I guess..damn old world christian peasants….
I didn’t read the entire post, but I bet the supposedly “libertarian” Ms. Camp did not suggest the obvious libertarian solution: shut down all public higher-ed institutions, end all public higher-ed subsidies. Let the remaining (private) colleges & universities decide for themselves how to handle “hate speech.”
If I were running one of them, I would not interfere in any way with student advocacy / discussions / presentations. However, I’d be very careful about whom I’d hire, trying to avoid professors who advocate for genocide. And if, upon being hired, a professor surprised me by so advocating (especially, but not only, in the classroom), I’d fire him. (Yes, he has a right to speak his mind, but my (private) school has a right not to be associated with him.*)
* This may very well be wrong under current laws. If so, the laws should be changed.
Anything critical of Israel is being considered ‘anti-Semitic.’
You simply cannot have a reasonable discussion about the subject.
Karma….Jewish liberal academics who are overrepresented at Ivy League colleges have been at the forefront of the whole anti European American Christian crap (“white privilege, white supremacy” and so on) for decades. Irish, Italian and other Americans of European background (and North African and Middle eastern) who were not Jewish were using dog whistles the enemy. But now the minorities they lobbied to blame all problems on those darn Irish or Italian are now getting a little karma and they are crying. 17K dead in Gaza and the issue in the US media is antisemitism at Harvard. What goes around…
Is antisemitism acceptable..no but neither is anti Italian or anti Irish or anti “white”