#jewish on campus

[fromgoy2joy]

I sat next to the protest today.

I wrote fan-fiction about two gay jewish dads raising children to the play list of the chant- "No peace on stolen land!" on an American college campus. It isn't a name brand one either, nor does it have any legitimate ties to Israel. The anger is just there- it has rotten these future doctors, nurses, teachers, and members of society.

I don't even know what to call their demonstration- it was a tizzy of a Jew hatred affair. At points, there were empathetic statements about Gazans and their suffering. Then outright support of Hamas and violent resistance against all colonizers. Then this bizarre fixation on antisemitism while explaining the globalists are behind everything.

"Antisemitism doesn't exist. Not in the modern day," A professor gloated over a microphone in front of the library. "It's a weaponized concept, that's prevents us from getting actual places- ignore anyone who tells you otherwise."

"How can we be antisemitic?" A pasty white girl wearing a red Jordanian keffiyeh gloats five minutes later. "Palestinians are the actual semites."

"there is only one solution!" The crowd of over 50 students and faculty cried, over and over.

"Been there, done that," I thought, then added a reference to a mezuza in the fourth paragraph.

Two other Jewish students passed where I was parked out, hunching and trying to be as innocuous as possible. We laughed together at my predicament, where I am willingly hearing this bullshit and feeling so amused by this.

"Am I crazy? For sitting here?" I asked them. My friends shook their heads.

"We did the same last week- it's an amazing experience, isn't it?”

We all cackled hysterically again. They left to study for finals. Two minutes later, I learned from the current speaker that “Zionism” is behind everything bad in this world.

Forty-five minutes in, a boy I recognized joined me on my lonely bench. He came from a very secular Jewish family and had joined Hillel recently to learn more about his culture. His first Seder was two nights ago.

He sat next to me, heavy like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. There was just this despondent look on his face. I couldn’t describe it anyone else, but just sheer hopelessness personified.

“They hate us. I can’t believe how much they hate us.” He said in greeting.

And for the first time all day, I had no snarky response or glib. All I could do was stare out into the crowd, and sigh.

[mylight-png]

[thebrightestwitchofherage]

Things to notice at your campus' pro-Palestine protest

A\N: I'll try to keep this concise as people here ignore long posts, and I've talked about most of these issues in the past.People here will believe the most outlandish claims about Jews, especially if they're Israelis. -Protect your Jewish friends. -Stop spreading blood libels and non credible images about this war. please check your sources.

Antisemitic rhetoric, blood libels and misinformation

I'm a secular Jew, but the amount of misinformation and antisemitism in those protests is just exhausting. At this point, people will believe anything about Jews Zionists.

2. Nazi- like rhetoric is making it's return Just replace the word "Zionist" with "Jew", and you'll get Nazi propaganda.. Examples: Pro- Palestine doing sieg heils in protets, describing Zionists as animals (pigs, rats, insects..), "Zionists control everything\the banks\the news", Zionists have "tentacles"...

STOP CALLING JEWS NAZIS! What is wrong with you people?? 3. Revisionism- rewriting history to fit the Anti-Zionist narrative. Check what is being said, in a neutral source as people are apparently now editing Wikipedia articles about Jewish holidays and history. PLEASE- stop trying to correct us and teach us about our own history, you're wrong 99% of the time.We're constantly being accused of revisionism, while the opposite is true...We're constantly asked to cite our sources and show "proof", while the source is simply our personal experience, our family's history.

4.Double Standarts I'll start with the best example: It's not a war- it's a genocide. I get it , I don't like war either and I am literally living through this one.

Again- I'm not denying the deaths and definitely not supporting them. However, it is important to note that the numbers and stories are often exaggerated (either by heat of the moment or knowingly ). 5. Using Jewish culture against us

Many protest try to incorporate Jewish elements, and even "celebrate" Pesach (in some cases, they did this a week late lol)... However, all of this is simply Dog- whistling and a try to use our culture against us.

You can't do this and then harass Jews on campus, target Jewish events or prevent access from them. You're pro-Jewish when it's comfortable for you: You can not wish us a happy holiday or try to be inclusive, and then chant "from the river to sea" or spread misinformation...

Anti zionists are treating this like a trend: Just like the war in Ukraine and treatment of women in Iran. Only in this case, the sentiments quickly turned into Antisemitism in the guise of Anti Zionism.

Supporting Palestinian businesses, trying traditional food and apparel is all great- just don't erase or mock Jewish Culture while you're at it.

6. Look out for problematic Sources and stop telling Jews to "educate ourselves"

-Suddenly Western media (which is heavily biased against Israel and is inaccurate) isn't trustworthy. Do you want them to just call us all killers? is that it?

Ironically , when actual Israelis (like myself) tell you about our actual experiences and link credible sources, it's dismissed as propaganda.

[applesauce42069]

two separate dogs in the hillel house today. we stay winning.

[wolvesandvoices]

an exhaustive list of everything my college store put out for passover, (today, only two days before passover) ranked from best to worst:

Chocolate macaroons: Always a favorite. Unfortunately, there were only three or four bags left by the time I got there. 10/10

Almond macaroons: Slightly less good, but still good. 10/10

Matzah: A classic. Can't have a Passover without matzah. Loses points because there were only two brands and neither were egg matzah. 8/10

Tubs of matzah meal: Again, a classic. Loses points because of how big the tubs were, and because college students don't really cook that much. 7/10

Gefilte fish: Still a classic, but they don't have the pull-tab cans, and nobody really owns a can opener. 6/10

Grape juice: I can't say they're wrong to have it, but again, almost all of it was gone because grape juice is pretty good. 6/10

Kosher salt: They pretty clearly only bought this because it's called "kosher" salt. 3/10

Apple juice: Not at all related to Passover. 2/10

There isn't a 9, I just need a gap between the kosher salt and the last thing on display, which was:

CORN CHIPS. WHAT THE FUCK. WHY. WHY WOULD YOU PUT KITNIYOT ON THE PASSOVER DISPLAY. I HATE IT HERE. -10/10

[that-rad-jewish-girl]

“They came in on humanitarian aid trucks!”

“This is a war crime!!!”

“They massacred 200+ people!”

It’s actually a war crime to take hostages babe. It’s also a war crime to kill people you take and/or attack civilians. All of October 7th was a war crime. You cannot enter another country and slaughter random civilians dancing at a rave. You cannot go door-to-door in a village and burn people alive. That’s a war crime.

On the other hand, it is not a war crime to attack an entity involved in war, even if it would normally be a crime to do so. For example: attacking a refugee camp is not a war crime when the “refugees” are hiding hostages. If a hospital is being used as a base for terrorists, the hospital is now legally fair game for war. When we have satellite videos of Hamas members driving UN vehicles and operating out of an UNRWA building, those vehicles and that building are up for grabs.

They will literally video themselves wearing press vests while firing rockets into Israel. But if they die, they won’t be reported as a combatant death. The headlines will read “Israel Kills Member of Gazan Press”. And people eat it up.

At this point people have two options:

1. You’re a sheep. You do no real research. You follow blindly.

2. You’re a Jew hater. You are antisemitic.

Which one is it? Maybe a combo of both.

[jewish-vents]

When my mom was 8 she broke a 15 year old boy's arm when he would not stop bullying her siblings for being Jewish, including trying to drown my uncle. Not as a joke, he was actively trying to kill him. Being 19 and on my second year of jiujitsu and breaking my antisemitic instructor's shoulder because his dumb ass thought he could thrash me with illegal moves repeatedly without consequences feels like a defining moment in my life. I really am my mother's son. My 5"3 ass can and will beat your 6"4 one despite the 100 lb weight differential. And I don't even need to make illegal moves to do it.

This is what it's like to be Jewish. You deal with people twice your size who don't play by the rules and you fight fairly and yet even when you're defending yourself, eyewitnesses get antisemitic and say your response was disproportionate. He had me in a lethal chokehold. I'm the one who had to talk to police for assault. He doesn't even get a reprimand from the university even though he's employed by them and murder on the campus is, even now, a bad look.

The police were, fortunately, swayed by the video footage. They said my lack of guilt was disturbing. I stared at them in disbelief. "I'm not going to feel guilty for not wanting to die," I told them incredulously, "I have elderly parents to support, a girlfriend to propose to and a dog to take care of. I'm 20, I have shit left to live for!"

I'm being forced into therapy by the university. I look forward to it. Sure would be a shame if I'd, I don't know, hypothetically, scoured the internet to find other accounts of people he'd used illegal moves on. It'd sure suck if I brought those up and had those entered into the school record. Sure would be awful if those accounts found their way into his RateMyProfessor listing in addition to, say, theoretically, being sent to local dojos and other dojos throughout the state, thus ruining his ability to find work or fight competitively.

All sarcasm aside I am not afraid to nuke his career. I am my mother's son but I am also my grandmother's grandson. When a KKK member tried to kill her dad, my great-granddad, she wrestled the man's gun off of him and shot him in the knee. He never walked again.

Nobody in my family starts fights. But I don't mind finishing them.

This is what it's like to be Jewish. Someone tries to kill you. You do exactly what's required to get out alive. They get angry at you. They want you to feel guilty for wanting to live. You get up and go to class hours later with bruises on your neck and refuse to feel guilty. I have as much of a right to be alive as anyone else. I will not be gaslit into thinking I don't deserve to live.

The school said I wouldn't have to do therapy if I apologized. I will not apologize for surviving or defending myself.

I have as much of a right to be alive as anyone else.

.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Christopher Mathias at HuffPost:

A coalition of 185 social justice and religious groups published an open letter Monday expressing support for the campus protest encampments sweeping the country in opposition to Israel’s siege of Gaza, and calling on university administrators to end the brutal crackdowns of the student-led demonstrations. “We commend the students who are exercising their right to protest peacefully despite an overwhelming atmosphere of pressure, intimidation and retaliation, to raise awareness about Israel’s assault on Gaza — with U.S. weapons and funding,” the letter states. “These students have come forth with clear demands that their universities divest from corporations profiting from Israeli occupation, and demanding safe environments for Palestinians across their campuses. ” Groups that signed the letter include Gen-Z for Change, Working Families Party, IfNotNow Movement, Young Democrats of America Black Caucus, Movement for Black Lives, Sunrise Movement, MPower Change, Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestine Legal, and the Unitarian Universalist Association.

Some 900 students have been arrested during anti-war encampments and demonstrations at American universities in the last 10 days, per a tally from Al Jazeera — a tumultuous period that mirrors volatile demonstrations against the Vietnam War in 1968, when police arrested at least 700 students. The open letter Monday represents one of the largest shows of support among progressive groups for the burgeoning student protests, and makes clear the divide between establishment Democratic figures and social justice groups when it comes to U.S. support for Israel. President Joe Biden has refused so far to condition the sale of weapons to Israel. “Our communities have been horrified to see the militarized and violent response to students protesting an ongoing genocide funded and supported by our government, and our coalition of organizations join millions of our members across the country in standing in solidarity with the students’ efforts in support of the people of Gaza,” Yasmine Taeb, one of the main organizers of the letter, told HuffPost. Taeb is a human rights lawyer and political director at MPower Change, a Muslim social justice group.

“Instead of attacking young people mobilizing for Palestinian human rights, President Biden needs to listen to the majority of Americans who have been calling on him to stop funding and supporting the atrocities committed against the people of Gaza,” Taeb said.

[...] Israel has killed over 33,000 Palestinians since Oct. 7, when the Gaza-based militant group Hamas launched an attack in which nearly 1,200 Israelis were killed. In January, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel’s siege of Gaza — which has displaced 85% of the population and put the occupied territory on the cusp of famine — left Palestinians at risk of experiencing a genocide. Last week, health officials in Gaza said medics had discovered mass graves at hospitals raided by Israeli troops. “We join [the students] in calling for an immediate and lasting ceasefire and an end to the U.S. government’s and institutions’ role in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza,” Monday’s letter states. “As we stand in solidarity with the students protesting in encampments across the country, we reaffirm our commitment to amplifying their voices, condemn the university administration officials’ violent response to their activism, and demand that universities remove the presence of police and other militarized forces from their campuses,” it continues.

[...] Meanwhile, Republican Party officials and right-wing media figures have accused the demonstrations of antisemitism, falsely equating criticism of Israel with bigotry towards Jews. Although there have been scattered reports of actual antisemitic incidents at or near the encampments, many were not perpetrated by students but by interlopers. Many of the student protesters across the country are Jewish. Far-right agitators, including Christian nationalist activists, have also targeted the encampments, with MAGA pastor Sean Feucht leading hundreds of Christian and Jewish Zionists on a march around the Columbia campus on Thursday. The rally ended with pro-Israel demonstrators yelling through the gate at pro-Palestinian Columbia students. “Go back to Gaza!” they screamed.

More than 185 groups, including IfNotNow, Jewish Voice For Peace, MPower Change, and Working Families Party, signed a letter in support of the campus protests against Israel Apartheid State's genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

[newnitz]

Ashkenormativity

Ashkenormativity is the assumption that the default Jew is the Ashkenazi one. It is a term coined by Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews to explain our alienation from the rest of the Jewish community, from my lived experience specifically from the Diaspora Jewish community.

I'm half-Ashkenazi, but that half is pretty secular. When it comes to major Jewish holidays, I've always done them with my maternal grandparents, who, despite being secularized, still respect their cantor roots to the point of not wanting to skip on a holiday or even shorten the Seder(until one hilariously bad one). So the only minhag I've known was the Sephardi one.

In Israel, this was a non-issue.

The most I heard about differences is how Sephardim and Mizrahim emphasize table manners because unlike Ashkenazim, they actually eat on the table.

When I left Israel and moved to a place hundreds of kilometers away from the nearest Jewish community, I finally realized how much I need our community. So like everyone on lockdown, I sought it online, where Jewish cultures is bagels and casual use of Yiddish, two things completely foreign to me. I mean we have bagels in Israel, but they're not the meme they are among US Jews. They're nowhere near as popular as a pita. So when I had to look up what "davening", "shul" and "shanda" meant, I first got the sense I don't actually belong.

But the people using those terms as a day to day weren't the ones who actively made me feel unwelcome. In fact, those were more likely to acknowledge my confusion and explain. The ones who alienated me are the antizionist Jews from the Anglosphere, who ignore and revise non-Ashkenazi history and even history of Ashkenazim outside the Global North, who blame modern Hebrew for the decline of Yiddish which they frame as the traditional Jewish language, ignoring how that pushes down communities that traditionally spoke Ladino, Juddeo-Arabic, Amharic and more, and overall infantilize and dismiss families like mine who built a good life for ourselves in Israel and rose to the position to actively combat Ashkenazi hegemony, and remove the agency of my former classmates who take a stand against it, all in favor of superimposing the race politics of the Anglosphere onto Israel.

So the Columbia university definition of singling out "white Jews" is quite inaccurate. Under ashkenormativity, an Ashkenazi JoC would find themselves better represented than the white-presenting members of my Sephardi(or raised according to that half) family. It's another reductivist attempt to superimpose European guilt onto Jews by erasing half of us. Specifically, the half that lives in Israel.

Goyim, ashkenormativity doesn't belong to you. Stop using it as a shield to be antisemitic. Stop using it as anything regarding inter-community issues, it's our term to use within our community.

[matan4il]

Hearing people, including Ivy League university presidents, citing freedom of speech to justify allowing genocidal calls is beyond crazy.

I can't believe this has to be said, but under democracy, no freedom is sacred unto itself. EVERY freedom we have is limited based on our choices regarding how to use it. If we're willing to abuse it in the service of harming others, we can and should lose it.

We have the right to property, but if we'll use our money to kill people (for example, if we're a terrorist organization, or helping to fund one), our money can and should be confiscated. We have the freedom of movement, but if we use it to stalk someone, we can and should be limited by a restraining order, or even by being arrested.

So yes, we have the freedom of speech. But if we use it to incite hate against Jews, to spread demonizing lies about the Jewish state, to call for the ethnic cleansing or even genocide of Jewish people, we can and SHOULD lose that freedom.

This is not a debate. This is how democracy works.

And if this principle had been applied properly and justly, as it would be to any hate speech against any other marginalized group, then we wouldn't get to where the violence against Jews at these protests had long ago stopped being just verbal. The vid below is one of MANY examples from campuses around the world.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

Source

The article this X thread was created from is at the Washington Free Beacon.

[kick-a-long]

Jewish Columbia students were chased out of dorms, spat on, and pinned against walls: damning report

By Matthew Sedacca

Published Aug. 31, 2024, 3:44 p.m. ET

Jewish students at Columbia University were chased out of their dorms, received death threats, spat upon, stalked and pinned against walls, as the Ivy League school devolved into a cesspool of antisemitic hate in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 murderous raid on Israel.

The new and disturbing details emerged from the lengthy, 91-page document released Friday by the school’s faculty-led antisemitism task force, which revealed the extent to which the hate permeated the institution.

“Students described being shoved, pushed to the ground, berated for showing support for Zionist causes, and watching Israeli flags burned,” the task force’s authors wrote.

Jewish and Israeli students at Columbia University endured a months-long nightmare of harassment, violent threats and assaults after Oct. 7.

Getty Images

“They recounted seeing drawings of swastikas in their dorms, students yelling pro-Hamas chants, and being denied access to public spaces and opportunities simply because they were Jewish or Israeli.”

Testimony from nearly five hundred Columbia students informed the report, which found visibly observant Jews had been pinned to the wall and had their jewelry ripped off while coming and going from synagogue. Others recounted being spat on and having been called ethnic slurs on campus.

One student, who had installed a mezuzah on her dorm’s doorway prior to the Israel-Hamas war, was forced to move out after people were pounding her door throughout the night beginning in October, demanding she explain the Jewish state’s war in Gaza.

“If I walk on campus right now with my star out or kippah or say ‘am Yisrael chai,’ I could start World War III,” one anonymous student’s testimony read.

Instructors tasked with guiding and mentoring students instead contributed to the sense of isolation and unease among Jews and Israelis on campus, according to the report.

Students recalled being pushed to the ground and watching Israeli flags being burned.

One faculty member leading a class that delved into the Israel-Hamas conflict called a student who previously served in the IDF a murderer. Another professor extensively said a pair of Jewish donors to the university had “laundered” “dirty money” and “blood money.”

During the spring, as protests and encampments roiled the school’s Morningside Heights campus, protesters, including outsiders and members of the university community, bellowed death threats at Jewish students. Demonstrators who held Israeli flags, meanwhile, recalled being assaulted.

“There is a sense of personal threat, and we keep looking over our shoulders,” master’s student Omer Lubaton Granot, an Israeli veteran and father of a toddler, told an Israeli radio station in the wake of protesters seizing the academic building Hamilton Hall in April.

Councilman Eric Dinowitz (D-Bronx) described the students’ testimonies as “horrifying — and not surprising.”

“These are stories we’ve been hearing about, as the report says, even before the encampments,” he told The Post, adding that antisemitism had been on the rise at college campuses even before Oct. 7

“Without any sort of consequence [for students and faculty] this sort of behavior will continue

The task force offered several recommendations to address the issues detailed in the voluminous report, including improved anti-bias training for students and staff along with a new system for reporting complaints about antisemitism.

The report was issued just days before Columbia’s fall semester begins and less then three weeks after embattled university president Minouhce Shafik suddenly resigned, citing the “period of turmoil” that marred her brief tenure at the school.

Interim President Katrina Armstrong called the disturbing incidents “completely unacceptable” before rattling off new initiatives at the university aligning with the panel’s recommendations.

“This is an opportunity to acknowledge the harm that has been done and to pledge to make the changes necessary to do better and to rededicate ourselves, as university leaders, as individuals, and as a community, to our core mission of teaching and research,” she said

[thebrightestwitchofherage]

@ Antizionists- AT LEAST verify that the images you're reblogging are from the war in Gaza or Aren't fake

The amount of fake\ AI generated \ Syrian civil war photos I've seen tagged here as Gaza is concerning...

[secular-jew]

[steveyockey]

I think more than the message that “Zionism is NOT Judaism” which is true but rings hollow to me I would like to see people embracing the fact that Zionism directly contradicts many Jewish values and that anti-Zionist Jews see their faith as inherently connected to their activism against the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. I was taught to be anti-Zionist largely by Jewish friends and comrades and I continue to lean on them for guidance and clarity as they bravely stand against the propaganda their institutions foisted on them from the moment they were born. In return I work to fulfill the promise that I will make them feel safe in any place, not just the occupied land they were raised to see as the only home where they would not face anti-Semitism. the fight for a free Palestine and the fight for a world where Jewish people can exist without fear are intrinsically linked and must be pursued together

[gingerswagfreckles]

Columbia University having a normal one today!!