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Johns Hopkins Jewish Student Association Board Statement on the Hopkins Encampment
I thought this was worth sharing:
To the Members of the Johns Hopkins Community,
On Monday, April 29, the Beach became the site of a Palestine Solidarity Encampment, one of many on campuses across the nation. The encampment concerns many Hopkins students, the Jewish community included.
The horrific attacks against Israel on Oct. 7 impacted us directly, with members of our community losing friends and family members. In the months since, we have mourned the loss of civilian lives - Israeli and Palestinian. We recognize the disheartening and disturbing conditions in Gaza. At the same time, we stand firm against Hamas - a terrorist organization committed to the destruction of the Jewish people.
While the Hopkins Jewish community possesses a variety of opinions regarding the Israel-Hamas war, we are committed to promoting peace, security and healing for all affected by this tragic war. But, irrespective of the conflict, it is unacceptable to risk the safety and security of students; the hatred espoused within the encampment puts every Hopkins student at risk.
Protesters - despite their stated desire to demilitarize both Gaza and Hopkins - call for violence against Jews. Some of these include:
- "There is only one solution: Intifada revolution."
- "Resistance is justified when people are occupied."
- "BPD, KKK, IDF, you're all the same!"
- "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free."
- "Anytime somebody comes and tells you that in order for there to be justice in Palestine, that the illegal, racist settler colony of Israel needs to be wiped off the face of the earth, what are you going to say? [Crowd response:] 'Smash Zionism.' This is the task."
- Written on a tent in the encampment: "Theirs [sic] no such thing as a peaceful protest."
- On a sign at the encampment: "Zionism upholds Nazi ideology and white supremacy."
- "Some people think that victory is a ceasefire, these are people who haven't been paying attention because they've already shown that ceasefire just means pause. We're not here for a pause. Some people think that victory means peace, we think there's no such thing as peace without justice. And we know you only get peace and justice in victory. It means that your enemies have been defeated; it means that your enemies have been squashed; it means your enemies have been checked."
These are not calls for peace. These are not calls to improve the lives of Palestinian people. These are calls for violent attacks against all Jews: Jews in Israel, Jews in your classes, Jews in your community and Jews across the world.
These statements are antisemitic. We define Zionism as the right of the Jewish people to self-determination and statehood in our ancestral homeland. Denying this right is antisemitic. Denying our religious connections to the land is antisemitic. Calling for the destruction of the only Jewish state in the world "from the river to the sea" - home to 46% of the global Jewish population" - is antisemitic. It is unacceptable for outside parties to assert that something is not offensive to our community.
While encampments tokenize minority anti-Zionist Jewish voices to justify their rhetoric and actions, national polling consistently shows broad Jewish support for the state of Israel, and the Jewish community at Hopkins is no exception. Israel is a critical part of our Jewish identities, and no student should be targeted based on their identity.
Calling the intifada - periods of intense violence, terrorist attacks and suicide bombings against Israeli civilians - "resistance" is sickening. Saying that all resistance, including the use of murder, rape and kidnapping is "justified" is not representative of the values of the University, Judaism or the United States. Referencing the Nazi ideology of the Final Solution is blatantly antisemitic.
Yet, these statements are regularly proclaimed in front of a defaced Hopkins sign for all Jewish and non-Jewish students to hear by people hiding their identities. Many protesters may not know what they are chanting - the connotations, allusions and meanings behind phrases thrown out by a faceless leader. You may not know what you are saying, but the groups who created these chants did - and Jews do too. We encourage everyone, protester or not, to do their own research and critically evaluate what they are saying. Ignorance is not an excuse for hate; it is your responsibility to educate yourself.
For centuries, antisemitism has contained the consistent assertion that Jews are responsible for a culture's greatest evil. In Christian Europe, we were falsely accused of being Christ killers. In Nazi Germany, we were smeared as communist race polluters. In the Soviet Union, we were besmirched as greedy, capitalist bourgeoisie. Now, encampments label us as "settler colonizers" and "Nazis" committing a "genocide." These words pervade their rhetoric with ancient antisemitic tropes.
The violence hasn't been limited to words; it has extended into the physical realm. Protestors have reportedly assaulted a member of the Jewish community - which the encampment dismissed as "baseless." With their identity obscured and groupthink rationality, protestors suddenly lose accountability and act in ways that are completely unacceptable - here or on any other campus.
It is one thing to condemn antisemitism, but actions speak louder than words.
The encampment organizers brought protesters from the broader Baltimore community onto campus. We have repeatedly seen on other campuses non-student affiliates making encampments sites of violence and vitriol. The wide calls for non-affiliate participation and antisemitic rhetoric used by the protesters attracted hateful individuals to our campus, including one who waved a swastika on N. Charles St. on May 2.
It only takes one person with ill intentions for a student to get hurt. It only takes one person for consequences that can never be taken back.
It is a stressful time on campus. As the Board of the Jewish Student Association (JSA), we want to reiterate that all Jewish community members at Hopkins have a home at Hillel. We are here for you. We are a strong community and welcome every student: whether you come to JSA events every day or have never stepped foot in our doors.
Critical thought and intellectual humility are the only ways to break through dogmatism and ideological stubbornness. Escaping echo chambers and doing the hard work of analysis allows us to understand each other and this conflict far better than we ever could alone. We are inspired by President Daniels, who wrote on May 2, "But I believe the much harder work is to now move beyond the shouting, the slogans, the call and response, and to engage in a rigorous and open-minded way with the university community on the agenda for change that you propose."
The Jewish community welcomes respectful dialogue as we work towards a better future for Israelis and Palestinians.
The Board of the Jewish Student Association.
Note that on the mayor's orders, the Baltimore police will not provide any assistance to Hopkins in dispersing the encampment, despite the fact that it's a clearly illegal trespass, and that many of the people at the encampment have no affiliation with Hopkins, creating a very real safety concern. The mayor quite wrongly has consistently suggested that the encampment is protected by the First Amendment.
But I don't want to let President Daniels and the Hopkins administration off the hook. Since last Thursday, he has been threatening students who remain at the encampment with discipline, while providing amnesty for those who leave peacefully. So far, no discipline has been forthcoming.
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What if they believe they have a God-given right to create an outpost there?
Have Jordan take it over, attack unprovoked, and if they defeat Jordan they can have the outpost wherever they want?
Now you’re talking! Israel needs to reposition this as a territorial conflict, not a religious war.
Israel isn’t the side positioning this as a religious war.
Its allies are. Did you even read the letter?
I did. You clearly did not.
The mayor will wait until there is a violent outbreak and then will offer a empty excuse for not allowing police to come when called. Will the Hopkins President need to beg the governor to help?
If the police won’t help, Hopkins should hire private security to do the job.
Call in the Pinkertons.
Hillell ought to start accepting “allies” like Team Hamas does — state that it Hillell is also a refuge for non-jews who share Jewish values.
I don’t know about NYC but my guess is that elsewhere the numbrer of Israel-supporting Conservative Christians is at least equal to the number of Jews on campus. And there is strength in numbers.
Hillell ought to start accepting “allies” like Team Hamas does — state that it Hillell is also a refuge for non-jews who share Jewish values.
They do. Also it’s Hillel. Three ells, not four. But I think it’s a mistake for Hillel to set itself up as the counter-protest. Better to stay above the fray.
I don’t quite agree, but you do raise a point I was just raising with a well-known Jewish communal type via email. For decades, the Jewish communal strategy, including most Hillels, was to ally with progressive groups, especially, but not only, other minority groups. (I’m not saying that people didn’t also do this out of conviction, just that this was definitely semi-official Jewish communal strategy.) Jews would help lobby and advocate for the other groups, and then when Jews needed help, they would be able to count on their allies. It was obvious that this strategy was starting to fail many years ago, but after 10/7 it’s proven a rather obvious abysmal failure, with even rather blatant antisemitism on campus being met with a collective shrug (at best) from the putative allies. Which wouldn’t be so terrible but for the fact that none of the relevant organizations in the meantime tried to figure out how it might cultivate allies outside the traditional progressive bubble.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/american-jews-stop-being-stupid-about-politics
Oops.
.
But I don’t want to let President Daniels and the Hopkins administration off the hook.
Of course not! They’re not settler terrorists in the West Bank, or Ben Givr, or government officials calling for driving Palestinians out of Gaza, or Smotrich, or the people arranging the slaughter of children, or Netanyahu, or . . .
Carry on, clingers. For how long? That is uncertain.
“On a sign at the encampment: “Zionism upholds Nazi ideology and white supremacy.””
That’s particularly hilarious given the historical connection between Hamas and the Nazis.
Well, maybe not Hamas — according to Wikipedia, it was founded in 1987. But the Palestinian national movement? You bet!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amin_al-Husseini
It’s a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot, and the MB definitely had some Nazi influences, as does the Hamas charter.
Yes, that’s what I meant, that they’re an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose Nazi connection is quite explicit.
Second or third hand Nazis complaining that the very group the Nazis tried to exterminate are Nazis. Well, the Nazis WERE into the Big Lie technique, weren’t they?
I tend towards Israel over Palestine but this is some nonsense. (To be fair so are the signs…Zionism upholds Nazi ideology and white supremacy? I feel like you could have an entire class devoted to unpacking that, and it may well be antisemetic to invoke naziism in this context.)
We define Zionism as the right of the Jewish people to self-determination and statehood in our ancestral homeland. Denying this right is antisemitic
It’s awful, but I don’t think antisemetic is correctly being brought to bear. Besides what people who think Israel shouldn’t exist in this day and age want is bad enough by itself.
encampments tokenize minority anti-Zionist Jewish voices to justify their rhetoric and actions, national polling consistently shows broad Jewish support for the state of Israel
Way to elide your own minority. What the fuck, dudes?
Plenty of the protesters are worse than this, but this is also bad.
“We define Zionism as the right of the Jewish people to self-determination and statehood in our ancestral homeland. Denying this right is antisemitic
It’s awful, but I don’t think antisemetic is correctly being brought to bear. Besides what people who think Israel shouldn’t exist in this day and age want is bad enough by itself.”
For once, I agree with you. What I would have said is something more like, “to be hostile to nationalism in general is not antisemitic; but to be hostile only to Jewish nationalism, and indeed to welcome other forms of nationalism as liberatory, but Jewish nationalism as inherently racist, is antisemitic. And regardless, Israel is an existing free, liberal society of 10 million people, and to act as those it and its people are entirely dispensable in support of an ideoligically driven dogma is worse than mere antisemitism, it is genocidal.”
but to be hostile only to Jewish nationalism, and indeed to welcome other forms of nationalism as liberatory, but Jewish nationalism as inherently racist, is antisemitic
This would be true, but it’s not what’s happening. The Palestinians aren’t opposed to Jewish nationalism in the abstract, they’re just opposed to it happening in their country. If Jewish nationalism were happening in, say, Oklahoma, I don’t think they’d mind.
You cannot possibly be serious.
There are 5 million people living under Israeli rule without citizenship or civil rights. They have the right to use violence in self defense. Israel seems pretty set in the destruction or displacement of millions of Palestinians.
They may have the right to use violence, but it obviously hasn’t worked very well so far. Maybe try another tactic?
And Israel has the right to use violence in response.
“They have the right to use violence ”
Where did that right come from? Allah?
The do have the ability, but right? That is just an apologize for the plan to exterminate Jews. Never again! Get that through your skull.
So you’re from an alternate dimension or just insane. Which 5 million are you referring to? Thaose under Gazan leadership for almost 20 years? You know those same people that think suicide bombing is a great party favor.
He certainly has not shown either the ability to be serious or an inclination even to try. He claims to think that people who sided with the Third Reich and who attack Jews across Europe, Asia, Africa and North America would be happy to co-exist if only Jews lived places like, um, all those places other than Israel where those people already attack Jews.
And this with people who will actually TELL you they want to exterminate Jews world-wide, too. Seriously, it’s not like Hamas isn’t coming right out and telling people what their aim is.
You cannot possibly be serious.
If there were a Jewish reservation in Oklahoma called Israel and the Kiowa Nation was in Palestine, and the Kiowa were occupying the West Bank and bombarding Gaza, do you think the Palestinians and the protesters would be complaining about Israel or the Kiowa?
Aren’t you down at the bottom of the crab bucket with The Rev??
An oversight, surely.
White people in free countries concerns: Palestinians are opposed to Jewish some words in their country, and without them, under the grinding boot of much nastier Palesinian kleptocrat dictators, would be just swell, they’d think, I’d imagine!
But there are people who argue that Jews, regardless of how they think about themselves, are just a religious group and therefore may not be “nationalist”.
I’m sure there are, somewhere. People argue lots of things.
Still not antisemitic, assuming they also reject Christian nationalism, Hindu nationalism, Islamic nationalism, etc.
You’re so desperate to find antisemitism in your enemies’ minds. It makes sense, since the implications of them not being antisemitic are pretty bad for Israel and Judaism. That’s what I’ve been trying to say. Hamas set a trap not just for Israel but for Jews. Once Israel is done ethnically cleansing Palestine in the name of Jews, Judaism is going to have quite the PR headache to deal with. Telling everyone that God made you to do it, which is the basic gist of this letter and the Columbia one, is the worst message you could possibly select (other than maybe that the Devil made you do it, although honestly it’s close).
Israeli nationalism and Jewish nationalism should not be conflated.
And as Prof. Somin points out, neither should Israeli nationalism, national pride, and thinking Israel has a right to exist.
When I first started forming an opinion in the 70’s I didn’t think Israel had a right to exist, but like everyone else they do have a right to national and self-defense.
Who does have a right to exist?
Tibet?
Ukraine?
Slovokia?
Taiwan?
Scotland?
Chechnya?
Isreal?
Palestine?
All of them and none of them.
You forgot Kurdistan, Uighuria, French Arabia, Bougainville, Quebec, Inuitia, Catalonia and the Basque Country, Staten Island, and countless other would-be independent peoples, each with the right to self-determination and self-defense.
I hope this wasn’t meant as some sort of counter argument to my post:
“Besides what people who think Israel shouldn’t exist in this day and age want is bad enough by itself.”
Critical thought and intellectual humility are the only ways to break through dogmatism and ideological stubbornness.
Sadly, the letter demonstrates zero critical thought or intellectual humility.
Just one example…
These are calls for violent attacks against all Jews: Jews in Israel, Jews in your classes, Jews in your community and Jews across the world.
No they aren’t. None of the quoted statements remotely suggest violent attacks against Jews across the world. They focused on Israel.
Sorry Israel, when you get into decades-long war, some people are going to side against you. It doesn’t have anything to do with your religion (except to the extent that your religion is what’s driving you to wage war).
One can debate whether they are inherently antisemitic, but “Smash Zionism;” “And we know you only get peace and justice in victory. It means that your enemies have been defeated; it means that your enemies have been squashed; it means your enemies have been checked;” “Zionism upholds Nazi ideology and white supremacy;” are not aimed at Israel, they are aimed at Zionism and Zionists, very broadly defined, which would include the vast majority of Jews and what they believe.
they are aimed at Zionism and Zionists, very broadly defined, which would include the vast majority of Jews and what they believe.
Sure, but that’s hardly the Palestinians’ fault.
They’ll be happy with Israel gone and Jews out of Palestine. They don’t need / want to exterminate all Jews worldwide. Or maybe they do, but these statements don’t indicate anything like that.
No surprise that Randal thinks “stop believing in Israel’s legitimacy if you want to live” is somehow neither antisemitic nor genocidal.
You’re right for once. Similarly, “stop believing in Vichy France’s legitimacy if you want to live” is neither anti-Aryan nor genocidal.
No surprise that Randal thinks Israel is morally equivalent to a Nazi puppet regime.
Was Vichy France even run by or for Aryans? I mean, damn, stop digging that hole you are in.
Where did I say they were morally equivalent? I’m just pointing out that it’s not necessarily genocidal or racist to deny the legitimacy of a country. There are lots of countries that aren’t recognized as legitimate for various reasons.
You implied they were morally equivalent when you substituted Vichy France into your paraphrase of what I wrote.
Vichy France never formed a constitution, its collaborationist government was formed at the point of a sword, its nominal capital was always fully occupied by Germany, the whole of Metropolitan France was occupied for half of the regime’s existence, and so on.
It’s not necessarily antisemitic or racist or genocidal to deny the legitimacy of a country in the abstract, but somehow the people who deny the legitimacy of Israel do so on antisemitic and often genocidal grounds.
And what if they are anti-semitic? Does that rob them of First Amendment protection?
Let’s suppose that someone posts a sign: “Jews kidnap Christian children and bake their blood into their matzos. We should expel them all from campus, by violence if necessary.”
That’s not libeling an individual. It’s not a direct threat against anyone. Shouldn’t it be protected by the First Amendment: like, for instance, the right of Nazis to parade through Skokie back in 1977, when the ACLU was actually about civil rights rather than just another generic leftist group?
No. Unfortunately, the young Jews of Hopkins don’t seem to be exempt from the speech=violence misconception. They write: “…the hatred espoused within the encampment puts every Hopkins student at risk.” That’s the very formulation that we’ve seen used by Muslims, Blacks, persons of transgender, &c., &c., as grounds for suppressing statements with which they disagree. By accepting it when it comes from people with whom we agree, we give it a spurious legitimacy that will happily be wielded by people with whom we differ.
Yes, we should expel them from campus just as we would expel someone posting signs saying “wetbacks go home” or “N—-rs are stupid and lazy”, it creates a hostile environment which severely impairs the right to get an education on a campus that is funded in part by federal contributions.
Or is it your assertion that the civil rights act of 1964 is unconstitutional?
I like how you are all suddenly the biggest proponents of DEI ever.
Do you also think that public schools are socialism?
Is immaterial to Kaz’s fair weather concerns about not offending students.
Very material to Randal equivocating on definitions.
You’re the only one who brought up socialism here.
I take that, and your refusal to answer the question below, as conceding the points that you and Randal are intentionally equivocating, and that DEI includes a lot of controversial stuff that is well beyond what is required to reach the position that you two claim implies support for DEI.
It’s also funny that you complain that I brought up socialism in response to you and Randal bringing up DEI, while you accuse me of hypocrisy down-thread.
Really, people, never be Gaslight0.
Still not following your socialism thing. Not all bad things are socialism.
There’s an old trope that public education and social security or roads and bridges and parks are socialism. It’s a dumb attempt to argue that if people like those things, they should sign on to socialism’s whole program. The argument that you and Randal are making is structurally identical and just as stupid.
Not getting this ‘structural identical’ push. Whatever you’re seeing, it’s not obvious at all.
The law is the law, Randal. Enforce it. That was Kaz’s point.
The law seems to indicate Israel is no longer eligible to receive American military assistance.
Bigoted right-wingers like Commenter_XY will relax their ostensible “enforce the law” provision in that context.
Northerners are stupid and lazy? I thought it was the other way around
““Jews kidnap Christian children and bake their blood into their matzos.”
Doesn’t Kosher law prohibit animal blood from meat? Wouldn’t that also prohibit human blood in a baked product, or any meat in it under the dairy rule?
One reference I found stated that children have around 73-82 mL/kg of blood after the third month. That’s not much, so to do this at any scale, you’d need a lot of children, which would poise two problems.
1: The children would be missed. Almost all of the missing children are family/parent related kidnappings, stranger kidnappings are very rare.
2: Bodies are hard to dispose of illicitly. That is the biggest problem the Nazis had with the Holocaust, murder was easy, hiding the bodies was not. In states with returnable container laws, it is common for people to go through trash looking for beer cans, that’s how the baby that a UM student threw out in the trash got discovered.
3: Matzos are commercially made, and sold in stores to anyone wanting to buy them. Pennsylvania has strict bakery laws — so strict that most other states accept PA approval, like they do MA or CA approval for gas cans.
So if blood (of any origin) was an ingredient, no inspector would ever catch it, no disgruntled employee would ever leak it, and no one would ever buy a package and test it?
Hence while there may be a Jewish Jeffery Dahmer, it’s not possible for the blood libel to be true, and that’s the proper response to it.
“from the speech=violence misconception. ”
You got the sign wrong.
The daily creation of a physically and emotionally threatening environment is deliberate and is violence.
No it is not violence. It’s like you have never read this blog.
To you in your bubble it’s not.
But just who do you think you are to deny the lived experience of others?
It’s the left who is always saying hate speech is violence.
Who knows if I’d think that if I hadn’t been reading this blog for well over a decade.
But I have, and I know that’s not what the word means, neither in common parlance or legally.
It’s does not reflect well on you how quickly you’re willing to take on some of the shallowest reactionary leftist positions around if it suits your feelings.
So Michael Bloomberg, alum and donor of 1.2 billion to Hopkins, must be ok with this. Or maybe he’s too busy reviewing all the non-disclosures he paid women to sign (https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/19/politics/michael-bloomberg-elizabeth-warren-nda/index.html) before Bragg presses charges against him, too?
Almost as sad as the day Bloomberg gave a billion to the school and hired his personal gigolo gun-prohibitionist Daniel Webster to write his anti-gun propaganda.
smh.
full disclosure: I am a Hopkins alum too (Homewood campus not one of their franchises lol). Yeah, they bug me for money, but heck no.
The correct decision, even just on the basis that they taught you how to swear. smfh
“Note that on the mayor’s orders, the Baltimore police will not provide any assistance to Hopkins in dispersing the encampment, despite the fact that it’s a clearly illegal trespass, ”
Also: I suppose in fairness I should point out that there is a long-running rancor between Hopkins and the city going back a decade or more due to crime. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/09/22/johns-hopkins-moves-forward-private-police-force
Hopkins has been trying to establish its own armed police force due to crime in the city and the fact that the Baltimore Police are generally feckless and corrupt. There is a lot of crime in the city, esp surrounding Hopkins, so the BPD is stretched thin.
So… don’t read a lot into the mayor’s specific fecklessness here. Whether its drug dealing, murder, mayhem, riots, or encampments, The Baltimore Police don’t do a lot for Hopkins. Or even Baltimore, lol. The BPD has a murder a day to deal with in Baltimore (almost literally).
Yes, we’ve all watched The Wire…
SHEEEEEEEEEITT!
Is the mayor of a city the laws’ executor the way a governor or the president is? Is the civilian head of the police the way they are over the military or some militia?
So the police have to obey the mayor?
Often the Chief and Deputy Chiefs “serve at the pleasure of the mayor.” This is usually true in academia.
Most of the speech isn’t antisemitic. But even if it is, the Association wants to silence speech which would be protected by the First Amendment at a public university.
Contrary to your assertion, Johns Hopkins is not “a public university.” Which means it isn’t bound by the First Amendment. It can ban pretty much any speech it wants to. And I bet it has various rules in place that the quoted statements violate. As I and many others have pointed out, colleges don’t seem to have a problem enforcing such rules when other groups are targeted. Is it too much to ask that Jews be treated like everyone else?!
I said “which would be […] at a public university” because Hopkins is private.
Oh my. Surely you have noticed that the discretionary enforcement of rules, laws, penalties and punishments is one of the greatest desiderata of any “progressive” effort.
So we see selective police actions wrt protests; violent, fiery, vandalizing. We see selective arrest, charging and prosecution of crimes-from theft to violent assaults. We see very inconsistent actions taken by the DoJ against political opponents, suspiciously political-looking actions undertaken by the IRS, etc.
A thousand-page post would be required to enumerate the suspect inconsistencies related to the firehose of funding and grants spraying over the various pet causes of Congressweasels.
In all such cases, the KEY is to avoid any requirement for “equal treatment” or “consistent application”. In the arbitrariness lies the power.
Discretion is progressive now. Ignore all the GOP investigations and other such things that appear to be choices – partisan choices even. All of those are mandated by very consistent values.
It’s childlike to think every rule must be zero tolerance and include all potential factual modalities. Institutions do not and cannot function like that.
Makes good copy for unthinking rubes though.
“It’s childlike to think every rule must be zero tolerance”
This is your usual tactic of argument by gross exaggeration and distortion. Give it up as it convinces no one.
As usual read the comment. Read the second fucking sentence.
As usual you think you can go on with your usual deceitful exaggeration and then try to excuse yourself with “read the comment.:
You’ve stopped engaging. As you do when I point out you called me out after yet again failing to read.
To drag you a bit: “the discretionary enforcement of rules, laws, penalties and punishments is one of the greatest desiderata of any “progressive” effort” is saying discretionary enforcement is a progressive plot.
I pointed out that’s lazy and shallow (i.e. childlike). You, without going into why, said I was strawmanning.
Explain yourself or GTFO.
” Johns Hopkins is not “a public university.”
I wonder how much longer that distinction will be made — with all the public money funding Hopkins, this is largely becoming a distinction without a difference.
The only difference is that the Feds took the nondiscrimination route, not the free speech one — and I argue that was a mistake.
The speech may or not be antismeitic (some is, some isnt, set that aside), but the bullying and harassment of students, preventing them from going to class, and overall attempted intimidation of jewish students IS antisemitic. The schools are not thinking very far ahead: They will get sued, and they will be forced to pay millions. And, like DEI was the new hotness 3 years ago but not everyone is running from it, 3 years from not these school’s reputations will be permanently damaged. Being part of the mob feels empowering and social…until their students cant get jobs in the real world, because in the real world racism is not tolerated in the workplace. It took Google all of a few hours to fire the 28 sit-in protestors.
The speech aspects of harassment require pervasive attacks at specific individuals (e.g., “you are dirty pig Jew.”). None of the examples provided by the Association meet that standard.
i think you missed my point.
I guess I did. Do go on …
Dude who hates DEI wants to talk about what DEI totally requires.
Do you also believe public schools are socialism?
Why do you ask irrelevant questions?
the bullying and harassment of students, preventing them from going to class, and overall attempted intimidation of jewish students
It doesn’t sound like that’s happening at Hopkins, or really most places. Those sorts of allegations were mostly about Columbia iirc.
Supporters of Israel need to come up with some talking points that they can win on.
+
We've got all these deeply-held religious beliefs.
So do Muslims.+
We have ties to the land.
So do Palestinians.+
We want and deserve self-determination.
So do Palestinians.+
We have nowhere else to go.
Neither do the Palestinians, really.+
The Palestinians aren't nice to us.
The Palestinians actually win this one.+
Lots of Muslims don't want to live in a majority-Jewish nation.
Nor do Jews want to live in a majority-Muslim nation.All of those arguments get you nowhere since they apply equally or better to the other side.
These are the talking points that work in Israel’s favor:
+ Israel is a prosperous, democratic nation.
+ Israel already won the West Bank and Gaza from Jordan and Egypt in battle in 1967, so its land claim is superior.
+ Israel is better positioned militarily to win.
+ Israel is better positioned economically to win.
+ Israel’s presence in the region is geopolitically strategic.
Those are the things that are going to keep people on your side. Especially the first one.
And there will be lots of protests. But again, flaunting your deeply-held religious beliefs at the protesters doesn’t accomplish anything. Instead you have to craft a message that you’re being as humanitarian as possible. And it would be helpful to actually be as humanitarian as possible, which has been a failing of Israel, not just over the last few months but for decades. You need to gently but quickly and deliberately finish the conquest of Palestine.
What do you mean by the “conquest of Palestine.” And how do you achieve that gently?
Concentration camps? Just kidding! Israel needs to do a calculation to figure out how many Palestinians they’re willing to absorb as real Israeli citizens. The only reason they haven’t just annexed the West Bank and Gaza is that there are too many at the moment. What’s the minimum percentage of Jews in Israel that will keep Israel’s Jewish majority stable for the foreseeable future? 70%?
Then they need to figure out how to reduce the Palestinian population by the amount needed to achieve that percentage. Maybe they pay people to relocate. Maybe the United States works a deal with Egypt and/or Jordan. Maybe they just keep squeezing Palestine until enough Palestinians leave as refugees. Maybe they issue a call to Jews worldwide to come to Israel to counterbalance the population that way. Maybe they
stealadopt Muslim babies and raise them as Jews. Maybe some combination. But whatever it is, it’s ethnic cleansing, make no mistake. There are lots of historical examples of ethnic cleansing that they can pore over to see what works best.Then once the demographics are acceptable, annex the West Bank and Gaza.
Ethnic cleansing is not a winning argument.
I know. That’s why there are so many protesters protesting. It’s not at all a winning argument. But it is a winning strategy.
The only other remote possibility I see is to somehow convince Jordan to take back the West Bank and/or Egypt to take back Gaza, or parts of them.
Randal,
I doubt that Jordan would accept the West Bank even if offered. It does not want the West Bank Palestinians
Josh R/Randal: Is voluntary, incentivized emigration the same as ethnic cleansing? If so, why?
It is not an uncommon for there to be population movement in the aftermath of a war.
If the purpose of the war is to induce emigration, that’s ethnic cleansing for sure.
Bribing people to get out? If it is ethnic cleansing, it’s the least bad.
The concentration camps for Palestinians are in Syria, Jordan, Egypt, etc. they’ve been held there since 1948 by the governments there.
I know you think you’re entitled to be needlessly dramatic, but “concentration camp” implies a degree of imprisonment which is simply not present in the “refugee camps”.
Those are the ones run by the IDF.
I know a Palestinian Jordanian who can tell you how his and nearby villages were plowed back into the desert.
Of course, this was 30+ years ago. I’m sure hearts and minds have changed.
I’m sure the thousands of Palestinians currently being held without trial in prison camps amidst accusations of torture and sexual abuse apreciate the point.
“Maybe they steal adopt Muslim babies and raise them as Jews.”
Classic blood libel, of course. You forgot that you were trying to make principled objections to Israel and avoiding explicit antisemitism. Not that anyone for a moment thought you were genuine.
It was done to the Indians….
This was the reference I was making of course. (Recent Supreme Court issue too.)
Randal, the British spent 200 years trying that with Quebec and it didn’t work. What DID work is what they did in Arcadia (Nova Scotia), they shipped everyone down to Louisiana where they became the ‘Cagins.
No surprise that Randal left out “Jewish holy books do not demand that they kill Muslims.” And “Jews were there first.” And “Hamas uses human shields.” And “There is not a worldwide history of pogroms and other ethnic cleansing directed at Palestinians that means they really need their own country.” And “Israel has tried every which way to co-exist, yet Hamas and the PLO keep murdering Israeli civilians.”
I am sure I could think of more, but I think the point is clear enough.
Jewish holy books do not demand that they kill Muslims.
I thought about including something along those lines, but I think it ends up just sounding anti-Islamic and ultimately devolves back into “my religion is better than your religion,” which is not interesting to people of neither religion. The best way to talk about the difference in values is objective: “Israel is a prosperous, democratic nation.”
Jews were there first.
lol
Hamas uses human shields.
I intentionally didn’t talk at all about Hamas. The utility of demonizing Hamas has pretty much already come to an end. Israel can and will defeat Hamas. Then what? If the whole legitimacy of Israel’s war is predicated on Hamas, then when Hamas is defeated, the war will have to end, and any mistreatment of the Palestinians at that point will be impossible to justify. But Israel intends to continue occupying Gaza and the West Bank indefinitely. It just doesn’t work. Israel needs a narrative that’ll outlive Hamas.
There is not a worldwide history of pogroms and other ethnic cleansing directed at Palestinians that means they really need their own country.
Seriously? You think “Jews deserve a country but Palestinians don’t really” is a convincing line of argument?
Israel has tried every which way to co-exist, yet Hamas and the PLO keep murdering Israeli civilians.
An obvious lie, it’s easy to disprove this claim. Israel has been trying every which way to undermine peace for many decades.
But even more importantly, it’s time to move on from arguing for coexistence. There are too many obvious reasons why it’s never going to happen.
+ Israel doesn’t want it.
+ The Palestinians don’t want it.
+ It’s been almost 60 years by the clearest measure, and the prospect is further away than it’s ever been since probably the 80s. It’s not happening.
+ It’s not viable for Israel defensively to give up the West Bank. It would be like giving Queens and the Bronx to North Korea… when they already have New Jersey in the form of Hezbollah. Suicide.
+ After N decades, there’s too much bitterness to just bury the hatchet.
Any arguments for “coexistence” at this point are transparently just arguments for the status quo, with Israel prospering and Palestine subjugated. That status quo is what the protesters are angry about.
Otter: North Korea?
Boon: Forget it, he’s rolling.
They seemed to be the example that presented a similar level of threat.
The really random part: New Jersey for Lebanon? Well, it feels right to me. 🙂
Randal…I agree with every bolded reason you wrote on why the time for two-state solution (e.g. coexistence) has come and gone. There are more.
The status quo of continual terror attacks against Israel and her citizens is what must change; whether it is Hamas in Gaza in the south or Hezbollah in the north, or the PLO within Judea and Samaria.
Sadly, it is a hot war in the south, and it is headed that way in the north (though, the internal politics of Lebanon seem to be shifting, with many more pointed questions on how a minority party (Hezbollah) can drag Lebanon into a war they did not vote for). If Hezbollah withdraws to behind the Litani river, war in the north will be averted. If Hezbollah does not, they will be moved to behind the Litani river by Israel, and Lebanon won’t be the same.
When Israel falls, right-wingers like Commenter_XY will be the cause.
Fine by me. I don’t support right-wingers here, there, or anywhere.
I’m sure they’re losing sleep over not having the Revolting Reverends support
Moving…
If there ever was, there is no longer the possibility of two economically viable states “between the river and the sea.”
I agree with all your points in bold why arguments for the two state solution are now an impediment to moving forward to peace in the region.
In that case, does anyone know of a market that handles short action on Israel?
Put every damned dime you have into it.
Instead of $0.
Betting everything would be stupid enough to qualify me to wear a goofy red hat.
Betting a few thousand on the right proposition (number of years, etc.) seems prudent, though. If Israel does not renounce its right-wing, superstition-driven bigotry; West Bank terrorism; and Gaza war-criming it will lose American support and sustain the predictable, just consequences of its despicable conduct.
“Jewish holy books do not demand that they kill Muslims.”
You may want to check your dates.
Dates don’t change who has what specific religious imposition.
You defended Dr. Ed’s ‘Honest question” about
Exodus 22:18 —
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”?’ as a good faith question.
Or earlier Exodus 22:2-3 –
“If a thief be found breaking up, and be smitten that he die, there shall no blood be shed for him. If the sun be risen upon him, there shall be blood shed for him; for he should make full restitution; if he have nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft.
What do you think he was asking?”
This is what happens when you defend Ed. Here you are claiming no such requirement, but previously you were down with some inquiries about why the Old Testament doesn’t demand Jewish vigilante justice.
So now you’re both dumb and a hypocrite.
Never defend Ed.
“Never defend Ed.”
One cannot give better advice than that.
I can: Don’t be Gaslight0.
Wow, you really are a dumbass tool if you’re trying to argue I’m worse than “NUKE GAZA” Ed.
You and your straw men are certainly worse than defending a reasonable question from spurious criticism.
I guess you have such high standards that once a person has crossed some line, he must never be defended or recognized for anything. The rest of us learned from the First French Republic where that kind of attitude leads.
How about: Mute Ed and never engage him.
Of course, that doesn’t apply to DMN. Some of his responses to He Who Shall Not Be Engaged are comedy gold.
His question was how people deal with that part of Scripture. It’s a reasonable question, given that we don’t believe witches are real, so executing people for witchcraft is rejected now.
If you find a nation of people who put Exodus 22:18 in their founding charter, I’ll gladly denounce them. An awful lot of Arabs take Hadith 41:6985 and the like very literally, so I denounce them.
Similarly, I don’t think many people actively live by the idea of indenturing people into servitude to make crime victims whole, but go ahead and overlay a map of contemporary slavery with a map of dominant religions and see what conclusions a reasonable person would draw.
You’re once again projecting your dishonesty, stupidity and hypocrisy onto others.
Again, you’re very stupid if you don’t see that his questions are ineptly poised the requires Jews to murder the bad guys.
I know you’re a level of tool that does not care about inconsistency, but if you’re going to tell the Muslims how to interpret their holy book, you should probably deal with Ed’s bullshit as well.
And then it’s full on Islam causes slavery. Doesn’t take much to get to the bigotry.
How do you get from his question to Muslims inherently being witches?
And then accuse me of bigotry?
“How do you get from his question to Muslims inherently being witches?”
Well witches float on water. What else floats on water ? …. A duck, a duck floats on water. So if a Muslim weighs as much as a duck, then he will float on water and must be a witch. A bigot has a natural bias and would discriminate thus treating the Muslim and the duck differently.
At least Sarcastro has the advantage of his reasoning being that of a Monty Python skit. He does seem to have a knack for the most entertaining derp.
The real problem I have is that I believe Demonic possession is real, although today we use psychological terms to describe (and try to understand) such people. Either way, people like Jeffrey Dahmer (the “Milwaukee Cannibal”) are very real. As was Charles Manson.
My faith learned a lot from the mistakes of Danvers (not Salem) circa 1692, when it got to where they wound up accusing the Governor’s Wife of being a witch, the Royal Governor abolished the whole court system and replaced it with the one Massachusetts has today.
How do you get from his question to Muslims inherently being witches?
I’ll leave the Allah as Satan path as an exercise to those slightly less purposefully stupid than you.
For someone who whines so loudly and so often about supposed mindreading by his opponents, Gaslight0 sure enjoys pretending to be able to read people’s minds.
.
Great point at a clinger blog conducting a debate concerning the finer points of childish superstition, prominently featuring people gullible enough to believe that fairy tales are true.
How is “witches aren’t real” any more or less accurate than “God is real?” Regardless of which particular flavor of deity one might wish to indulge.
Carry on, nonsense-based clingers.
“You defended Dr. Ed’s ‘Honest question” about
Exodus 22:18 —
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”?’ as a good faith question.”
Context matters, Gaslighto, I asked it relative to the common
Leviticus 18:22 – (Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.) The prior post had been about it not being read as it (apparently) is supposed to be.
I neglected to state that Leviticus 20:13 says “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”
Lots of stupid, bigoted stuff in the Bible.
That’s what attracts bigoted, gullible dumbasses to those fairy tales.
You’ve cited that verse before.
Tell us, do you adhere strictly to the rules and commandments laid down in Leviticus?
If you do, I have some questions.
And if you don’t (and of course you don’t) you seriously need to STFU about others, including Jews, who no more observe them strictly than you do.
One simple question: Have you even read Leviticus, other than the few passages pointed out to you by your fascist pals?
Anyone got any bets?
OMG, not more whining about the rights of the refugee Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites and Jebusites.
Those weren’t Muslims, so you don’t have to tiptoe around them.
“+ We have nowhere else to go. Neither do the Palestinians, really.”
Ask yourself why Muslim Arabs aren’t able to find another Muslim Arab state to take them in. Pro-tip: check Jordan in the 70’s and Kuwait in the 90’s. Ask Egypt why the Rafah border crossings gate has been welded shut.