#the palestinian exception (to free speech)

[readingsquotes]

.. Over the summer, university administrations revised expressive speech policies at over 100 campuses with restrictions so broad they could foreclose most forms of protest. They’ve demanded protests be registered in advance, limited hours when protests may occur, banned megaphones and restricted flyers and signage. 

Administrators like Martin typically rationalize these contradictions of their professed values through strategically vague abstraction. Having long decried undergrads for anti-speech illiberalism, they now discover abundant boundaries on expressive speech.

...

Consider the two justifications that Martin offers for suppressing free speech. First, he singles out encampments as uniquely disruptive forms of protest. But from Revolutionary Boston to MLK’s lunch counter sit-ins to the Berkeley Free Speech Movement (where campus activism was born), the occupation of public space has been a cornerstone of American social movements. This is presumably why Martin himself previously allowed a protest encampment advocating for a living wage for campus employees at Wash U, even meeting with the campers. Why was that encampment acceptable when the pro-Palestinian one wasn’t?

Second, the chancellor insists that protests cannot “instill fear.” But how do we decide if something inherent to the protest instills fear? Wash U administrators have provided no examples of threatening behavior from protesters, instead citing 911 calls from bystanders terrified by loud chanting. By this standard, surely someone has expressed fear at any protest ever worth the name.

What’s more, this argument — that the sole criteria of a speech act’s threat is whether a listener feels threatened — is the exact doctrine that Strossen and similar campus free speech advocates identify as the greatest threat to free expression. Martin appeared to agree when telling Michigan students terrified of a white nationalist guest speaker that they were in no danger. Why isn’t a Richard Spencer speech a threat when a pro-Palestine chant is?

These contradictory standards display what activists call “the Palestine exception.” Self-declared defenders of free speech suppressed protests against the slaughter in Gaza because of ideological content, and in this respect Wash U joins its peer institutions.

But the Palestinian cause won’t be the only example of such hypocrisy. Many university administrations decided last year that calling the police is effective PR management. If that goes uncorrected, expect more causes to join Gaza on the roster of implicitly forbidden subjects. The emergent doctrine of American universities is “free speech for me but not for thee.”

Free speech hypocrisy at Wash U

by Michael O’Bryan, opinion contributor - 09/27/24 1:30 PM ET

[odinsblog]

I’m old enough to remember way back in 2018 when the NYPD got busted spying on Muslims, and how they illegally infiltrated Muslim communities + mosques, and that their actions were unethical, unlawful and ultimately found to be unconstitutional.

And now that same NYPD is suppressing pro-Palestinian protests and using unreasonable force against college students whose demands are for peace, a ceasefire and an end to the war crimes + genocide being inflicted on Palestinians by Israel.

Never forget that under the guise of fighting “terrorism,” police forces around the country have always been deeply Islamophobic, but especially the NYPD.

And now they’re doing this against college students.

The protesters are American taxpayers, citizens (you don’t have to be a citizen to be a taxpayer) activists, and college students. And cowardly university presidents, mayors, governors and the police are treating them like armed insurrections—except on January 6th law enforcement actually treated armed insurrectionists much better than unarmed college protesters.

America, where armed white nationalists—literally fomenting an insurrection—get treated with more equity, dignity and respect than peaceful college students who are exercising their constitutionally protected right to protest against war and genocide.

America, where white guys doing the Nazi salute while chanting “Jews will not replace us” is considered protected free speech, but college students saying “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free” is somehow violent antisemitic hate speech. Completely backwards.

[mariacallous]

Students and activists from multiple faiths are sounding the alarm over the Trump administration and lawmakers’ efforts to silence dissent on college campuses over issues like Palestinian rights — accusing officials of using allegations of antisemitism as a pretext to crush free speech and exert control over the country’s higher education system.

At a hearing Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee listened to testimony related to the rise in antisemitism in the U.S., particularly after the deadly Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023. With the exception of temporary, fragile ceasefires, Israeli forces have been fighting in Gaza — and destroying infrastructure and killing civilians — ever since.

The U.S. also has seen a rise in Islamophobia since the attack, though Wednesday’s Senate hearing did not include concerns over that issue. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the Republican-controlled committee’s ranking member, stressed that the panel under his leadership had held multiple hearings on hate against all faiths. He added that the mother of Wadee Alfayoumi, the 6-year-old Palestinian American boy murdered by his landlord in Illinois, attended a previous hearing.

“It was clearly a hate crime, and it was based on their religion,” Durbin said. “And the fact that that was part of the hearing did not diminish in any way my strong feelings about antisemitism. It is the same hatred that we’re trying to stamp out today.”

In the spring of 2024, protests erupted on college campuses across the country, with students and faculty of all faiths peacefully demanding that the U.S. government – the Biden administration at the time – stop supporting Israel in its destruction of Gaza and the Palestinian people.

Similar to the students who protested the Vietnam War, participants faced police brutality, far-right agitators, retaliation by their schools and mostly unfounded accusations of being antisemitic. Just Wednesday, Columbia University’s Barnard College expelled a third student for participating in pro-Palestinian activism.

“It is essential we continue working to dismantle real antisemitism while also defending our friends and community members who are falsely accused of antisemitism,” Ellie Baron, a Bryn Mawr College student who is part of this year’s graduating class, said in a statement. “The only [way]forward is through forging greater solidarity with all people who are targeted by fascism and supremacist ideologies, including antisemitism and anti-Palestinian racism.”

President Donald Trump has threatened to essentially sanction universities that allow peaceful protests for Palestinian human rights, and he has even called for revoking the visas of foreign students who participate in those protests. At Wednesday’s hearing, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) repeatedly questioned why the government should not enact Trump’s pledge todeport foreign students who commit “an act of violence against a Jewish student.”

“Well, that’s already the law,” civil liberties attorney Jenin Younes posted on X. “So everyone with a brain knows these ‘antisemitism’ related [executive orders] aren’t about prosecuting violent crime or other illegal conduct like harassment and vandalizing property. They’re about suppressing disfavored speech and you’re smart enough to know that this is a grave violation of 1A.”

Despite Trump and his allies’ statements that they care about Jewish safety, the president’s actions have done the opposite. Trump and his billionaire friend Elon Musk are behind the layoffs of at least a dozen government officials from the Education Department’s office of civil rights, which looked into students’ complaints of discrimination — including antisemitism.

The president has a history of objectively antisemitic statements, like saying that any Jewish person who votes for Democrats “hates their religion,” and implying that Jewish Americans have dual loyalty with Israel. On his first day in office this term, Trump issued full pardons to rioters who carried out the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, including white nationalists and others who brought antisemitic symbols to the Capitol.

Musk has also come under fire for giving a Nazi-like salute during an event, openly supporting far-right German politics and saying that society should stop paying so much attention to the Holocaust.

“It is reprehensible that MAGA senators who have aligned themselves with white nationalists and antisemites like Elon Musk are putting on this hearing to crack down on the movement for Palestinian rights and for our civil liberties writ large under the guise of fighting antisemitism,” Jewish progressive group IfNotNow said Wednesday. “We refuse to let our Jewish community be the face of the Trump-Musk administration’s attacks on our rights.”

Protecting education and open dialogue is vital to “the ability of Jewish students to succeed and thrive,” Tufts University student Meirav Solomon testified at the Senate hearing on Wednesday.

Some lawmakers support adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which labels most criticism of the State of Israel as antisemitic. Civil and human rights groups – as well as the definition’s original co-author – have strongly opposed it as “overbroad” and “unconstitutional,” particularly in education spaces.

In November, a federal judge ruled that a state-level executive order threatening funding to Texas colleges and universities who don’t update campus free speech policies to include the IHRA definition of antisemitism likely violates the First Amendment.

“Distorting the meaning of antisemitism and making Jews the face of a campaign to crush free speech is deeply dangerous to Jewish Americans,” Barry Trachtenberg, presidential chair of Jewish history at Wake Forest University, said in a statement, “and all of us who work for collective liberation.”

[guerillas-of-history]

🚨🟢 Martyr Izz El-Din Al-Qassam Brigades spokesperson Abu Obeida issued a speech today announcing the martyrdom of the commander-in-chief of the Qassam Brigades Mohammed Deif and resistance leaders from the General Military Council of the Al-Qassam Brigades as part of Al-Aqsa Flood battle:

—

O people of martyrs, the factory of men and heroes, O mujahideen and resistance fighters of our nation, O masses of our Arab and Islamic Ummah, and O free people of the world everywhere, peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah and His blessings.

With all pride, honor, and dignity, after completing all necessary procedures and addressing all security concerns imposed by the conditions of battle and the field, after conducting the necessary verifications and taking all relevant measures, the Al-Qassam Brigades announce to our great people, to our Ummah, and to all supporters of freedom and resistance around the world, the martyrdom of a group of great mujahideen and heroic leaders from the General Military Council of the Al-Qassam Brigades:

- The great martyr of the Ummah, Commander Mohammed Deif (Abu Khaled), Commander-in-Chief of Al-Qassam Brigades.

- The great martyr commander Marwan Issa (Abu Al-Bara), Deputy Chief of Staff of Al-Qassam Brigades.

- The martyred mujahid commander Ghazi Abu Tam’a (Abu Musa), Head of the Weapons and Combat Services Division.

- The martyred heroic commander Raed Thabet (Abu Mohammed), Head of the Manpower Division.

- The martyred heroic commander Rafiq Salama (Abu Mohammed), Commander of the Khan Younis Brigade.

We had previously announced during the battle the martyrdom of two other commanders:

- Ahmed Al-Ghandour (Abu Anas), Commander of the Northern Brigade.

- Ayman Nofal (Abu Ahmed), Commander of the Central Brigade.

May Allah have mercy on them and be pleased with them. Peace be upon their pure souls and upon all the martyrs of our people.

All these great men were martyred facing the enemy in the midst of the Al-Aqsa Flood Battle—whether in leadership operation rooms, in direct engagements with enemy forces on the battlefield, or while overseeing and organizing the battle.

Our martyred leaders achieved their ultimate wish—martyrdom in the path of Allah—as the blessed conclusion of a life filled with devotion to Allah, and then for their freedom, their sanctities, and their land.

They sacrificed their lives to seal with their pure blood their sincerity and dedication, declaring that their blood is no more precious than that of any Palestinian child on this land. They were truthful to Allah, and He was truthful to them. We do not elevate anyone above Allah.

As we bid farewell to these great leaders on their journey to paradise, we affirm that these senior commanders fought and were martyred for their faith, their homeland, and Al-Aqsa.

They were killed in the greatest battle our people have ever known, for the holiest cause on earth, at the hands of the vilest and most despised of God's creation. And they were victorious—by inspiring millions of our people and our Ummah to carry the banner alongside them and after them, by the will of Allah.

Our martyrs were victorious when they passed the banner to steadfast and steadfast leaders—their comrades-in-arms, who, with Allah’s strength, will never know defeat.

These martyred commanders departed after a life of immense struggle, during which they fought heroic battles, inflicted heavy losses on the enemy, and placed its downfall and defeat on an inevitable path.

This is the legacy of our leader, Mohammed Deif (Abu Khaled)—who exhausted the enemy for over 30 years. How could Mohammed Deif be remembered in history without the title of martyr and the honor of martyrdom in the path of Allah?

How could Marwan Issa, the mastermind of Al-Qassam and its steadfast pillar, die in his bed? How could Abu Musa, the wise fighter and exceptional leader, or Raed Thabet, the towering mountain, not sacrifice their lives for Al-Aqsa?

How could our heroic brigade commanders—Ahmed Al-Ghandour, Ayman Nofal, and Rafiq Salama—not lead from the front alongside thousands of their fighting brothers and sacrifice their blood, after plunging a poisoned dagger into the heart of the enemy in Al-Aqsa Flood? The trade was indeed successful, O great ones!

Blessed are you, O our martyred leaders, your families, your children, and the people who nurtured you, embraced you, and stood by you in your lives—and will continue on your path after your passing until your aspirations are fulfilled, and your struggle achieves victory.

Glad tidings to you, O our leaders, and to all the martyrs of our people—those who were killed in the path of Allah—for He will not waste their deeds. He will guide them, improve their state, and admit them into paradise, which He has prepared for them.

[eretzyisrael]

by Christian Toto

Antisemitism keeps rearing its ugly head in the arts.

And, sadly, many Legacy Media outlets can’t be bothered to notice.

Among the Jewish artists who have found their events canceled in recent months include Michael Rapaport, Matisyahu and Brett Gelman.

The media mostly looked the other way each time, with only a few exceptions. Imagine a black artist being canceled due to his skin color or place of origin.

What kind of news coverage might that spark?

Jewish news organizations covered the cancellations extensively, and understandably so.

Yet at a time when sites like IndieWire and The Hollywood Reporter are warning of a Trumpian crackdown on the arts, they’re often silent during actual artistic crackdowns.

THR made an exception for Kosha Dillz. The Israeli-American rapper planned to show rough footage from his upcoming documentary, “Bring the Family Home,” at Facets, a Chicago-based theater. The film follows the rise of antisemitism on college campuses following the Oct. 7 attacks.

Dillz planned to host the screening with a DePaul University student who says he’s endured severe antisemitic harassment at his college.

Facets spiked the screening hours before showtime. THR has more details about the cancellation.

Dillz said he even offered to have the theater show the film without any promotion on the marquee or website to avoid drawing attention to it, but Facets leadership declined.

The club’s reasoning for the cancellation is almost laughably predictable.

“Based on the public posts made by Kosha Dillz and the overall tone surrounding the event, we determined that proceeding would not align with our values or our responsibility to protect the safety and well-being of our community,” Facets said, without elaborating on what they were referring to. “We reject antisemitism in all forms — just as we reject Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian racism, and any form of hate or dehumanization.”

The ownership of Facets later had a change of heart. THR suggests “press coverage” played a role in its decision, but the cancellation drew little media noise.

If entertainment news outlets cared about free speech in the arts they’d give events like this far more coverage.

[tieflingkisser]

Americans find it easier to mourn the death of free speech than the death of 60,000 Palestinians

from the article:

My peer’s naivete is an expression of the systemic innocence built into the fabric of Americanness–a feature of American society that continues to help defend, mold, and perpetuate empire. Except now, the rest of the world has fewer reasons to tolerate these claims to innocence. As a televised genocide unfolds before our eyes–a blockade on humanitarian aid, water, fuel, thousands of murdered children, and blatant calls for ethnic cleansing–America has no excuses left. The atrocities in Gaza are unmistakably visible: on campuses, in the workplace, and on every phone screen. Turning a blind eye to the assault on Palestine is an active choice.

The occupation of Palestine has long been an investment for the United States–long before Trump vocalized his intent on annexing Gaza for commercial gain. This decades-long investment has been a means to placate Zionist voters, and lobbies, and to ensure that America’s strategic partnership with the apartheid state remained intact. Trump’s detentions must be situated within the larger, bipartisan context of America arming, enabling, and justifying Israeli expropriation of Palestinian land and lives. America’s “authoritarian turn” has manifested in various ways over the last eighteen months–the smokescreen of campus antisemitism, barring Palestinians from speaking at the Democratic National Convention, and a persistent refusal to reconsider financing Israel’s crimes against humanity. Even now, as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer reluctantly condemns Mahmoud Khalil’s detention, he caveats it by vilifying the “opinions and policies” that Khalil seemingly stands for. Cory Booker’s twenty-five-hour-long marathon speech made only the most negligible mention of Gaza–not to mention his consistent endorsement of the Israeli assaults–once again rendering the genocide insignificant for the liberal conscience. 

Yet, it is important to note that America’s silence–and its complicity–did not begin with Palestine, and will not end with it. As airstrikes ravage Yemen and murder people in residential areas, most of America remains hyper-fixated on the callousness with which a journalist was added to a Signal chat. The procedural ineptitude of office-bearers is scrutinized more than the fact that a five-year-old Yemeni boy, Hamad, was killed as a result of the “war plans” the world now has access to. These priorities remind us that the assaults on Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and my native Pakistan will never become visible to the American eye. They are a reminder of the looks of disbelief we would receive from Democrats upon revealing that we chose to not vote for Obama, Clinton, or Biden, owing to their genocidal legacies abroad.

And that remains the American dilemma: it is easier to mourn the death of free speech than it is to mourn the deaths of more than sixty thousand people in Gaza. Mahmoud Khalil, the person, is a secondary concern–as is what he fights for. America fails to grapple with the fact that Mahmoud’s right to speak for his people’s liberation is inseparable from his Palestinian origin and the material plight of Palestine. What the liberal conscience elides, even in this moment, is that he was coerced into exercising that right by the ruthlessness of an assault bankrolled by the United States. Campaigns to resuscitate free speech cannot afford to ignore this fact. As America is shaken awake by images of abducted students–shoved into unmarked cars in broad daylight–circulating on the same phone screens that carry footage from Gaza, it must confront the reality that it remains responsible for bringing the war home. 

[zionistgirlie]

Hiii! You seem really good at collecting info and facts.

I'm not Jewish so l've never really heard a pro-Israel side to the war that wasn't from the POV of a non-Jew. I've also mainly been of the opinion of 'plz can no one die' so l've usually leaned to the pro-Palestine side, because of the huge amounts of deaths l've heard of.

I was wondering if you could maybe give some examples of pro-Palestinian arguments+views, and your opinions of them? Like for example the colonisation argument, or the fact that a lot more Palestinians have died than Israelites.

I'm not going to say that you're necessarily going to change my mind on a lot of things, but I really value all opinions and would like to broaden my understanding of the war.

Thanks for your time!

First of all, I really appreciate your willingness to seek views that go against your own. I think it's courageous and something that people of all opinions hate to do.

Honestly, I don't follow the pro-"Palestine" arguments too much; they seem to all end in "(((zionists))) are killing babies and using them for baking matzot", I don't know if I've seen many actually decent, logical points even when I was an antizionist, so if you have anything specific you'd like me to refer to, feel free to send a following ask!

I don't know if I'll manage to keep it short and sweet; this is a vast topic to cram into bullet points, and as the Talmud says, "Ten measures of speech descended to the world; women took nine", but let's try!

YOU'RE A WHITE COLONISER

This view seems to ignore two main points:

Colonies, historically, were under the rule of an empire. Colonies, by definition, are an extension of an empire, a mother country or a sovereign entity. The British Empire had colonies, the best known of which are, of course, the 13 colonies of America. There was also Arab colonisation, which, for some reason, people don't like to mention.

The Jews, on the other hand, were a persecuted minority group in every country they were in. They were not an empire, and they had no mother country. Zionism began, in fact, when Herzl watched the Dreyfus affair and realised that Jews, even if they were in high positions, were still persecuted and scapegoated. Is it Colonialism when members of a persecuted minority return to their native land? This brings me to the other point:

In no case in the history of colonialism, except for the case of the Jews and the Land of Israel, have settlers arrived in the land and found archaeological evidence dating back thousands of years that they were indigenous to the land. Is it possible to colonise a country you are native to? This seems to be the case, but only when it comes to Jews.

Speaking of colonisation: Those who hold the view that Jews colonised the Land of Israel claim that the Arabs who call themselves "Palestinians" are the natives of the Land of Israel. But there is no archaeological evidence of an Arab or Muslim presence in the Land of Israel until the seventh century, when the Muslim conquest began (the conquest, begun by Arabs in present-day Saudi Arabia, took from Kashmir and Punjab and parts of India in the east to Morocco and parts of Spain in the west). The Arab conquerors reached the Levant (where they were not natives), and ordered the construction of a mosque on the Temple Mount, above the site of the first and second Jewish temples. In the eighth century, the Muslim conquerors ordered non-Muslims to wear identifying clothing (a yellow star for Jews (sounds familiar?) and a blue star for Christians).

TLDR:

Arabs are native to Arabia, not to the Levant; Jews are native to Judea. You cannot colonise a land to which you're native.

A persecuted and displaced minority group, who returns to their native land in order to protect themselves from persecution and genocide: this is not colonisation.

WHAT ABOUT THE CRAZY DEATH DISPARITY?

First of all, it is worth saying that a higher death toll in a war does not equal moral superiority, more just (justest?) claims or righteousness in general. In World War II, more Germans died than the British, and that includes civilians. The logical assumption is not and should not be that the Germans were probably right and that the Nazis were righteous. This opinion seems funny when applied to other conflicts, yet for some reason, when it comes to Israel and Gaza, it seems a correct and logical opinion.

However, if you believe the numbers provided by the Hamas Health Ministry (which you shouldn't), it does appear that there are more deaths on the Gaza side. So why is that?

Israel devotes the largest percentage of its annual budget to the defence budget. The budget allocation within the Ministry of Defense itself is mainly confidential, and yet we still know that Israel has some of the most advanced defence systems in the world (Iron Dome and the like), so advanced that several countries, including the United States, have purchased them. Israel is an advanced, technological country, with good minds, and is constantly working on inventing, building, and improving its defence systems in order to ensure maximum protection for its citizens.

Gaza, how shall we put it, is none of these things. Gaza receives enormous sums of money from the West, as well as from Iran, and invests it in purchasing offensive equipment (Kalashnikovs, tanks, missiles, explosives…) and building a network of underground terror tunnels, in which senior Hamas figures hide. It was recently revealed that these tunnels are 200-400 miles long.

The shafts for these tunnels are often found inside hospitals, mosques, schools, and even children's rooms (including the tunnel in which the six hostages were murdered), as revealed by the IDF spokesman.

Hamas has continuously, since 2007, hidden weapons and tunnel shafts in these humanitarian locations, carried out shooting from these locations, and put its citizens in danger. A NATO report from 2014 also says so. This is a violation of international law.

During the war, Hamas prevented civilians from evacuating areas that the IDF announced it would attack, in some cases even shooting its own people who wanted to flee an area of ​​attack. This, too, is a violation of international law.

Former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar said "the growing civilian death toll would serve to benefit Hamas more than a cessation of fighting would." He also called the high civilian death toll "necessary sacrifices." From their actions and words, it is clear that Hamas does not consider protecting its citizens important.

TLDR:

Hamas does not defend its people. Furthermore, they hide behind them in order to use "lawfare". Israel spends money and effort on defence and protects its civilians rather than hiding behind them.

I don't support death, hence I support Palestinians:

Israel is not looking to murder Gazans. Israel was in a ceasefire with Hamas until the massacre of October 7, 2023 and the kidnapping of 251 men, women and children. An existential war was forced upon Israel, which it waged most of the time with one hand tied behind its back (courtesy of the Biden administration and the West). Even if you look at the number of deaths that Hamas has provided (in which there was no separation between civilians and militants), after over a year of fighting, it can be said that Israel is waging a precise war and is very careful to avoid harming civilians. For reasons detailed above, and also due to the nature of war in general and the October 7 war in particular, harm to civilians cannot be zero. This is the bleak nature of war. I would love to find a war in which not a single civilian was harmed, if you have any links or ideas, please! But this war began following a massacre in which 1200 people were brutally and cruelly murdered, many of them civilians, a hundred of them children. Fifty more children were kidnapped to Gaza, where they were abused. Two children, Kfir and Ariel Bibas, were strangled in cold blood in captivity. The argument that you don’t want unnecessary death is a great one, but it misses the point that Gazans do want unnecessary death. Of Jews, and, to be honest, of Gazans too.

In short, Israel is waging a war against jihadist terrorist organisations. That should be the basic premise. It is difficult to wage a fair and lawful war, even more difficult when the enemy does not follow international law, the laws of war, or basic decency.

The premeditated murder of civilians is a violation of international law. The premeditated murder of children during a war is a violation of international law. Kidnapping of civilians and children is a violation of international law. Sexually, physically, and psychologically harming the hostages, as well as starving them, is a violation of international law.

To be honest, you don't have to be pro-Israel now. It's strange to me that people who have no skin in the game are choosing teams as if it were a football game. The view that war is bad is a good enough "side." The view that the death of civilians in war is bad is a good enough "side". The view that harming Jews who have nothing to do with the war is bad is also a good enough "side".

We are not looking for your support or your love. We are not a football team. We are a broken and hurting people who have experienced the greatest massacre since the Holocaust and are just trying to bring our sons and daughters home, to eliminate a terrorist organisation that is willing to shed our blood, and to be left alone.

(Don't get me wrong, your support is appreciated, but that's not why we're fighting.)

[padawan-historian]

To better upRoot our miseducation about settler-colonialism, antisemitism, islamophobia, apartheid, and the growing military industrial complex, here are a few urgent and timely reading recommendations from your friendly neighborhood historian (books with ** are my padawan picks)

Books on Muslim Identities & Solidarities:  

Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire: Twenty Years After 9/11 | Deepa Kumar **

The New Crusades: Islamophobia and the Global War on Muslims | Khaled A. Beydoun 

Tolerance and Risk: How U.S. Liberalism Racializes Muslims | Mitra Rastegar **

The Muslims Are Coming: Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror | Arun Kundnani **

Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza | Mosab Abu Toha  **

The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine | Ben Ehrenreich 

Erasing Palestine: Free Speech and Palestinian Freedom | Rebecca Gould **

Books on Jewish Identities & Religious Imperialism: 

Holocaust to Resistance, My Journey | Suzanne Berliner Weiss  **

A Land with a People: Palestinians and Jews Confront Zionism  

Ten Myths about Israel | Ilan Pappe **

Voices from the Warsaw Ghetto: Writing Our History 

Whatever Happened to Antisemitism?: Redefinition and the Myth of the 'Collective Jew' | Antony Lerman **

Books on the Histories & Afterlives of Palestine: 

The Palestinians | Rosemary Sayigh 

The Balfour Declaration: Empire, the Mandate and Resistance in Palestine | Bernard Regan **

The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 |  Rashid Khalidi **

The Great War and the Remaking of Palestine | Salim Tamari 

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine | Ilan Pappe **

Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel | Andrew Ross **

Gaza Under Hamas: From Islamic Democracy to Islamist Governance | Bjorn Brenner 

The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories | Ilan Pappe

The Battle for Justice in Palestine | Ali Abunimah 

In Search of the River Jordan: A Story of Palestine, Israel and the Struggle for Water | James Fergusson **

Books on Queer Liberation & Apartheid: 

Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique |  Sa'ed Atshan **

We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir | Samra Habib **

Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times | Jasbir K. Puar 

Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation | Eli Clare

Books for Young Readers & Growing Families on Palestine, Apartheid, and Racism: 

Young Palestinians Speak: Living Under Occupation **

You Are The Color **

The 1619 Project: Born on the Water **

A Little Piece of Ground 

Wishing Upon the Same Stars **

The Shepherd's Granddaughter **

They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom **

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier **

We Are Displaced: My Journey and Stories from Refugee Girls Around the World **

Books for upRooting Political & Academic Imperialism 

Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics | Marc Lamont Hill + Mitchell Plitnick **

Tolerance Is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial | Saree Makdisi

The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World | Antony Loewenstein **

We Are Not One: A History of America's Fight Over Israel | Eric Alterman **

Beyond Occupation: Apartheid, Colonialism and International Law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories | Virginia Tilley

Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom | Keisha Blain

Beyond Walls and Cages: Prisons, Borders, and Global Crisis | Matt Mitchelson

Books for Decolonized Scholarship & Community Building: 

The Wretched of the Earth | Franz Fanon **

Necropolitics | Achille Mbembe **

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement | Angela Davis **

Captive Revolution: Palestinian Women's Anti-Colonial Struggle within the Israeli Prison System | Nahla Abdo **

Europe's Fault Lines: Racism and the Rise of the Right | Elizabeth Fekete 

The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World | Kehinde Andrews **

The Republic Shall Be Kept Clean: How Settler Colonial Violence Shaped Antileft Repression | Tariq D. Khan 

Decolonial Marxism: Essays from the Pan-African Revolution | Walter Rodney

You can explore more decolonized book recs + history reads over on Neighborhood Historian or access deeper history lessons (and support these public resources + works) through my Patreon.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Prem Thakker and Pablo Manríquez at Zeteo:

Marco Rubio personally signed off on the arrest of Palestinian Columbia University student protest negotiator Mahmoud Khalil, using a narrow, little-used authority given to the secretary of state, per two sources within the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department. The authority, a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), reads: “An alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.” In other words, the provision – section 237(a)(4)(C)(i) of the act – gives the secretary of state power to deport any person who is not a citizen or national of the US, if they meet the threshold for "reasonable ground” of belief that they may have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the nation. Interestingly, the “quotas and ideological litmus test” of the INA, enacted in 1952, “were widely understood at the time to target Eastern European Jewish Holocaust survivors suspected of being Soviet agents,” the Jewish publication the Forward pointed out this week. A State Department source, who spoke to Zeteo on the condition of anonymity, said that not only is the government using this justification to pursue Khalil, but that there are in fact “multiple targets” – a notion affirmed by another source familiar with the case, raising the question of whether Rubio will continue signing off on each case personally. The State Department has not publicly disclosed the specific evidence on which it based its decision to order the arrest of Khalil, who is a green card holder. The INA provision explicitly says people “shall not be excludable or subject to restrictions or conditions on entry into the United States” because of their “past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations, if such beliefs, statements, or associations would be lawful within the United States.” But it allows for an exception – if the secretary of state “personally determines that the alien's admission would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.” The Board of Immigration Appeals has said that under the provision the State Department is using to detain Khalil, a letter from the secretary of state “conveying the Secretary’s determination that an alien’s presence in this country would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States, and stating facially reasonable and bona fide reasons for that determination, is presumptive and sufficient evidence that the alien is deportable.” The provision, however, is rarely used. “That’s how powerful it is,” said Charles Kuck, an immigration attorney and adjunct professor of law at Emory University and the University of Georgia. “Of course, there's never been a secretary of state as manipulatable as our current Secretary Rubio. Most of them would stand their ground and would follow due process considerations,” he told Zeteo.

Free Speech Concerns

The federal government appears to be staking its entire case to deport Khalil on whether Rubio “personally” believes Khalil would “compromise” US foreign policy. A White House official told the Free Press that “the allegation here is not that [Khalil] was breaking the law,” but rather that he is a “threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States.” The official added: “He was mobilizing support for Hamas and spreading antisemitism in a way that is contrary to the foreign policy of the US.” Khalil has previously denied such allegations. The use of the INA provision to go after someone based on their speech is so unprecedented that immigration law experts appear at odds over what specific evidence, if any, Rubio would have to provide to supersede any First Amendment concerns. Courts have previously found that lawful permanent residents share the caliber of First Amendment rights as US citizens do.

What a disgraceful ghoul Marco Rubio is by ordering the lawless and illegal arrest of Mahmoud Khalil for the “crime” of protesting the Gaza Genocide on Columbia University’s campus.

[dirtytransmasc]

this is going to very different from my usual content, but it needs to be said now, loud and clear.

while I'm not going to get up on some soapbox and talk politics, cause they are quite frankly not my thing, it makes my head spin and I would surely misspeak like an idiot and make a fool of myself, if not do harm with my lack of political knowledge.

what I will do is say I stand with Palestine with no if's and's but's or exceptions of any kind, and if you don't stand with Palestine in that manner do us both a favor and block me now.

no one, not a single soul on this earth, deserves what Palestine has gone through in the last few decades, much less the last few weeks.

what Israel has been doing in just the last few weeks alone goes so far beyond sickening I don't have words to describe it. they're bombing innocent people, civilian homes, schools, hospitals, and ambulances of all things. targeting people fleeing on the route they told them to take, forging 'evidence' of heinous crimes that never took place, spreading horrific propaganda, the lot of it. not to mention this has been going on for decades, that barely scratches the surface of it all.

they are calling Palestinian's animals, cutting off food and water and power, cutting off the internet to silence them and it is sickening.

Palestine deserves to be free, they deserve peace and prosperity, they deserve to live and if you disagree with that, you are a monster. Palestine has done nothing to deserve this, nothing to deserve decades of apartheid, mass bombings and violence, having the world turned on them in their greatest time of need, it is sick.

this isn't some fancy speech, I know, this is just the thoughts and feelings of some stupid young (white) american who is for all intents and purposes unaffected by this genocide outside of how its tearing my heart to shreds. I don't know everything, hell I don't know anything, but my feelings stand, no one deserves to be genocided, especially not Palestine, and they need every ounce of our support.

[readingsquotes]

"Free speech doesn’t exist in a vacuum nor in a perfect liberal society composed of individual signatories to a social contract where everyone has equal rights to express themselves freely. Academia reproduces an epistemology of ignorance, as Charles Mills put it, whereby whites in general, are unable to understand the world they themselves have created (Mills, 1997, p. 18). Unfortunately, this does not only apply to white scholars but to the whiteness we all can uphold. As Ruha Benjamin mentioned at a commencement speech, Black and Brown faces in high places will not save us.

Despite those who are seduced by whiteness and coloniality, there still exists the presence of radically situated others who threaten dominant discourses that justify colonialism. After all, racialized and colonized others “know where the bodies are buried.”

....

It’s for this reason that the emerging student movement urges us to not only question or interrogate academia’s silence and complicity but also to unsettle the technologies of colonial violence in which universities are deeply invested. Student activists are teaching us what a decolonial praxis demands—that is, a radical ethical and political commitment that remains steadfast in the face of institutional and police violence. Take for instance, Christopher Lacovetti, a PhD student at the University of Chicago encampment who was interviewed by Fox News when he expressed the following:

if our government and our academic institutions are complicit in this, there comes a point where we say, “we’re not following orders and it doesn’t matter what you do to us because there are principles and there are human lives that matter more than our careers and our futures.” And that our commitment to Gaza runs deeper than fears for our safety, fears for our careers, fears for ours paychecks.

Students are teaching us a radical form of academic freedom and right to assemble. They’re pressuring universities to divest from weapons manufacturers profiting from Israel’s genocidal campaign.

[mariacallous]

Last Friday could have passed for a lovely spring day on the Connecticut campus of Wesleyan University. Students with books and laptops dotted a green hillside; flocks of admissions visitors trailed tour guides; baseball season had just begun, and practice was under way. It was almost possible to forget the grim straits of American higher education in 2025.

Colleges and universities have been early targets of the second Trump Administration. In the past month, the Administration has announced it will investigate diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at more than fifty schools; cut hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding from such institutions as Johns Hopkins and the University of Pennsylvania; and sought to deport international students involved in pro-Palestinian activism. Columbia received a letter from the federal government issuing demands—which included making changes to discipline and admission policies, and placing the department of Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies under “academic receivership”—to be met as a “precondition” for negotiating the restoration of four hundred million dollars in federal funding. The university agreed to these demands the following week; the week after that, the university’s president resigned.

Columbia’s capitulation was in line with a general trend toward circumspection. The memory of Congress grilling university presidents in 2023 seems to be fresh among leaders in higher ed: few want to risk either their jobs or their budgets by saying the wrong thing. A handful of exceptions have stood out; for example, President Christopher Eisgruber, of Princeton, who wrote a piece for The Atlantic about “The Cost of the Government’s Attack on Columbia.” (This week, the Administration suspended dozens of grants to Princeton.) But perhaps none has been as voluble or persistent as Michael Roth, who has been president of Wesleyan since 2007.

Roth is a historian and a Wesleyan alumnus who, as an undergraduate, designed a major in the history of psychological theory. His scholarship has dealt with Freud and memory but also colleges as institutions, in books such as “Safe Enough Spaces” (2019) and “The Student: A Short History” (2023). Recent years have brought an increasingly political thrust to both his writing (for national media and his presidential blog) and to his work as president. In 2023, in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmative action, Wesleyan ended legacy admissions.

When Wesleyan students joined the national wave of protests over the war on Gaza, Roth—who describes himself as a supporter of both free speech and Israel’s right to exist—tangled with student protesters as well as with those who wanted him to shut the protests down. Meanwhile, in interviews and essays, he took administrators at other colleges to task for embracing the principles like those found in the “Kalven report”—a 1967 document out of the University of Chicago, which advanced the argument that universities should almost always remain scrupulously neutral. (Such stances were, he told me, “a cover for trying to stay out of trouble.”) As the Trump Administration has ramped up its attacks on the academy, Roth has continued to publish widely, urging fellow-leaders to stand up for their principles. “Release Mahmoud Khalil! Respect freedom of speech!” he concluded in a recent column for Slate, which argued that the Columbia activist’s arrest “should terrify every college president.”

Roth and I met in his office, which is dominated by a round table where he meets with both students and his cabinet. Wearing Blundstones and polka-dot socks, he was loose-limbed and gregarious, and our conversation (which has been edited for length and clarity) was punctuated by the bright sound of batting from the baseball diamond just outside.

You wrote last year, before the election, that colleges and universities weren’t ready for what was coming. How has the reality compared to your expectations?

It’s much worse than I expected.

I had this idea—alas, it was in 2020, just as COVID was happening—that it would be great if colleges and universities took our civic responsibilities more seriously and really incentivized students to participate in the public sphere: work on a campaign, zoning commission, whatever. Rigorously agnostic about what they chose to work on. We found a few hundred schools that agreed in principle and we created a network. Before the 2024 election, we reactivated that group, and this time around, the institutions were much less likely to want to be publicly in support of even something so nonpartisan.

We’re really small—three thousand students or so—and I wanted University of Texas at Austin, and Michigan, other big places. Some of them did agree in principle, but this time, in 2024—in the spring, let’s say, when Biden was still in the race, it was clear Trump was going to be the candidate—the reticence of academic leaders was already apparent.

Last year, we ran a program called Democracy 2024. We brought people here—nice conference, all that stuff. And even a group of presidents that I helped put together for this purpose, they started talking more about “dialogue across difference” than participation in the electoral system.

Everybody’s in favor of not fighting and having better dialogues, and I am, too. But I’m more in favor of people working on campaigns and learning about issues and getting things done. And in the last two months, it’s become painfully apparent that wanting to have nice conversations is not going to stop people who are bent on authoritarianism. Right now, I’m not sure what will stop them, except successful court challenges, and even that seems precarious.

Watching the video of this poor woman at Tufts who was abducted by federal agents —I wrote my blog today about that. I think the government is spreading terror, and that’s what they mean to do. This kid isn’t a threat to security.

It’s a terrifying video.

I wrote to the president of Tufts—who I know, because we’re in the same athletic conference—and just said, “Is there anything you want anyone to do?” He said, “Thank you for writing.” And I don’t know his business. I’m sure he’s trying to help the student; that’s his responsibility, and I respect that. But I also think every citizen, but certainly every university person, should be expressing outrage.

I’m curious to hear your thoughts about how we wound up here. Are there choices that universities have made that have made them more vulnerable to attack?

I try to think about that without blaming the victim, because right now the story for me is that the government is abusing its powers by making war against civil society. That’s the song I’ve been singing—because you may not like universities, but you probably like churches or synagogues. But I have also been thinking about how universities can be less vulnerable in the long run. I’ve been arguing for almost a decade about the intellectual and political insularity of especially highly selective colleges and universities, and that we need more intellectual diversity at these places. I wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal [in 2017], about affirmative action for conservatives, which annoyed everyone—which makes it a good op-ed, I guess.

I teach a course, “The Modern and the Postmodern.” It’s not really about conservatism, but I have added conservative critiques of some of the modernists that I talk about. I teach a course on virtue and vice in history, philosophy, and literature, and I have added conservative critiques of the liberal assumptions that almost all my students share. And it’s interesting to see how they react—they’re shocked by these critiques, in ways they’re not shocked by, I don’t know, Bolshevism or violent anti-colonial revolutionary rhetoric. And I point that out. So we talk, and they’re perfectly able to deal with it. I’m not trying to convince them that these guys are right or anything; just that it’s interesting to think about.

We have to be less insular, less parochial, and being politically more diverse is part of that. Also, at the fancy places—like Wesleyan and Ivy League schools and others, a small percentage of schools in the country—I do think it would not be unfair to say we’ve bred a kind of condescension. When you define the quality of your institution by how many people you reject, you can create—unintentionally—an attitude of “I’ve earned my superiority.”

Trump and his allies have found a way to tar all of the sector with the brush of the Ivy League. They’re excellent schools, and they have excellent scientists, and if one of Vice-President Vance’s kids is sick, he’s going to want the doctor to have gone to one of these schools; he’s not going to want them to have gone to Viktor Orbán’s university. But higher education serves so many more people in so many different ways than the places that are highly selective.

What do you make of the fact that the conflict over Israel and Palestine has become the pretext for the current crackdown?

I think anti-antisemitism is a very useful tool for the right. Many others have noted how comfortable these same people who are cracking down on antisemitism are with Nazis—real, frighteningly confident antisemites. But it’s a useful tool, because so many people in the liberal-to-progressive, educated coalition are divided about it, and it’s generational.

Anti-antisemitism can be appropriated by any political movement. They can use that as a vehicle for persecuting researchers and institutions that are not aligned with the ideology of the person in charge. It’s to show that you control them.

You have prominent Jewish figures around the country who get comfortable with Trump, it seems to me, because they can say he’s fighting antisemitism: “He’s good for the Jews.” It’s pathetic. It’s a travesty of Jewish values, in my view.

Over the last couple of months, many leaders of colleges and universities haven’t spoken out against the Trump Administration’s attack on higher education. You’ve been pretty vocal. What do you think has made that possible?

I have, for many years, spoken my mind in ways that are clearly fallible. I’ve had to apologize. My communications office, when I said I wanted to do blogging, thought it was a bad idea. I think it’s important to participate. And then to say, “Oh, shit, I made a mistake.” “Oh, I shouldn’t have said that.” “Yes, I should say this.” It’s not perfect—no conversation is.

I think my job as a leader of the university is to speak up for the values that we claim to believe in, especially when they’re at odds with people with enormous power. So I think I’m speaking now because I’ve been speaking.

My board is very supportive. My board teases me that I threaten to quit a lot. I don’t think I do, but they say I do, so they’re probably right. In November, after the election, I said, “If you want a president who’s not going to speak up, you have to find another president.” One of my friends on the board said, “Why did you do that? You don’t have to threaten to quit. Everybody wants you to stay.” I said, “I didn’t threaten to quit! It’s just a fact!” I’m more combative than I want to be, and I’m not looking for a fight, but I do feel that when people are getting really pushed around, in horrible ways, that someone who is at a university and has a platform and can call an editor—we should try.

I actually thought other people would speak out. Because the missions are at stake. Even the Kalven people—when the mission’s at stake, you’re supposed to speak out.

Someone on the faculty at Columbia who works in the administration asked me to put together a group of presidents. I was unable to. I wrote something quickly for people to sign, and one of the people I contacted said to me, “Are you sure the president at Columbia wants you to?” I said, “I’m not sure.”

Tell me about the kinds of conversations you’ve been having with fellow-presidents. What’s your sense of the internal debates they’re having?

Presidents—we’re not usually honest with each other. It’s just the nature of the job. You’re always trying to put your institution in the best possible light. I always joke that I see a president I haven’t seen in a few years, and he used to have two arms and now only has one —“What the hell happened, Charlie?” “Oh, I hated that arm! I feel so much freer!”

I don’t go to a lot of presidential gatherings, but I go to a couple. I was at one, and this guy came to me and said, “You know, you make me feel like a coward.” I said, “I’m sorry, that’s not really what my intention is.” But he said he’s at a public university—he was going to the state legislature two days later. He said, “They’re not going to let me have any diversity stuff in the university.” I said, “Well, you can quit.” He said, “And what good would that do?” So, I’m lucky—I have a board that likes the work we do. I have an incredible team of vice-presidents and a wonderful faculty, and they’re supportive. But I don’t understand. Because I know some presidents—many of them are a lot smarter than I am. I’m sure they can write well. I don’t understand.

People have said to me, “Well, you take all that money from the government, why don’t you listen to them?” The answer is, because the money doesn’t come with a loyalty oath. And that has served the country so well because Americans and various governments we’ve had recognized that it’s better for the country if people can practice freedom. The government’s not going to tell you how to run your business. It starts with universities, because universities are this object of resentment and this kind of weird charisma, negative and positive. It starts with that, but it could very easily go into these other aspects of this culture that, again, depend on the government.

I don’t have to agree with the mayor to get the fire department to come put out a fire. And that’s what they’re saying to these international students: “Well, you came to this country. What makes you think you can write an op-ed in the newspaper?” Well, what makes you think that is, this is a free country. As I say that, I can hear my leftist friends: “Oh, yeah, it’s never been free.” It’s never been totally free, but freedoms haven’t been as threatened as they are now since World War One. I’m confident of that. Universities are part of a sector of our culture that is worth preserving, from the Kennedy Center to magazines to churches. Autonomy of these different areas, even if they’re entangled economically with the government or with rich people, is so important. I can’t believe that I have to say these things out loud; it’s so obvious.

What are you doing right now at Wesleyan? What kinds of plans are you putting in place to protect your school?

We’re making sure that we are not wasting a dollar, so that we can have monies available should we need them. It could be because of the endowment tax—which is really an ideological, punitive thing. That would have an impact on us—our financial-aid program is supported by the endowment. We’re preparing scenarios for the endowment tax, for cuts to the scientists and other things. I’ve talked to schools about creating a legal-defense fund, but I don’t know—that’s a relatively new idea. I’ve talked to a group of faculty at Yale about that.

How much federal funding does Wesleyan get?

About twenty million. A good chunk of that is student loans that are guaranteed, and then the rest is grants to scientists and others. Right now, we have N.I.H, N.S.F. We have graduate programs in the sciences, so we are unlike most other liberal-arts colleges.

The scale of our budget is three hundred million, let’s say, annually. So it’s real; it’s an important part of the budget. People use the word “existential”—it’s not. It would change the dynamic we have.

What kinds of concerns are you hearing from students?

International students are very afraid to travel. The idea that somebody would take your phone and look at all the images and find an image they didn’t like is very frightening. International faculty, too—we have faculty who are here, of course, legally, and working for the university either as permanent residents or on visas. Then we have a lot of faculty who travel for research, and go to scientific meetings, or are doing work in archives around the world. And I think all of them are nervous about this use of the border in an ideological way. As I say that out loud, I can hear many of my colleagues on the left saying, “Duh! We’ve been using the border in an ideological way forever.” And that’s true—in a certain way, borders are a product of ideology. But saying “This isn’t different than five years ago” would be, for me, like putting your head in the sand. To use the tools of the government to make people align ideologically is really different—and, I think, would offend the values that many conservative Americans have. I did the Charlie Sykes podcast, and I’m trying to get some other more conservative people to have me on, so I can talk about these things in ways that aren’t just for the faculty at liberal-arts colleges.

What would you do if ICE agents showed up at Wesleyan? Do you have a plan in place?

We are making sure that our students, faculty, and staff know their rights, as people who live in the U.S. and are owed due process. The university would ask any federal agents to check in with the Office of Public Safety—that’s the campus police. They would need to have judicial warrants. [Mahmoud Khalil has said that the agents who arrested him refused to produce a warrant.] We would want to make sure government officials are following the law. We will protect people who are on our private property from people who want to constrain their freedom. We’d offer whatever legal assistance we can.

We’re not going to obstruct the work of legally authorized officials—we want to make sure that they are, in fact, legally authorized.

In your scholarly work, you focus on the ways people grapple with the past—the psychology of history. How does that inflect your work as president, especially now?

Scapegoating and the creation of categories of people you can hate on and abuse is a fundamental aspect of human societies, and one should really pay attention to the dynamic in which that process takes place. That definitely comes out of my work on Freud—and, in a weird way, René Girard, who’s anti-Freudian, but there’s a lot in common. An appreciation for the ways in which animosity can spring forth in brutal forms, especially when it’s been repressed—that’s something I’ve tried to stay aware of.

I wrote a lot about Freud over the years, and for me, the most important concept in Freud is the transference, and how sometimes we treat people as if they were other people from our pasts. Famously, the analyst is transformed into the parents and other things. I think that that happens a lot in my job. It happens as a teacher all the time. And as president, oy. It’s really big time. People were like, “Why don’t you end the war in Gaza?” last year—they just want someone to be able to do the things they desire. They didn’t have that relationship to Biden or the Secretary of State; it was me, I was in charge of the university. You know, so, they give me credit for things that I don’t deserve and they blame me for things I don’t think I deserve the blame for, and that’s just part of the deal.

I didn’t see that before. I didn’t care so much about the president when I was a student. I loved my teachers—I mean, I had massive transference for my teachers. But the president, these days, has more symbolic importance than I expected.

[schraubd]

Did You Hear? CUNY Branches Cancel Hillel Yom Ha'atzmaut Events

Two branches of the City University of New York system -- Kingsborough and Baruch -- have apparently canceled Israeli Independence Day events sponsored by local Hillel chapters, citing security risks. In the case of Baruch, administrators reportedly offered alternative venues to the Hillel chapter (which were declined), at Kingsborough, by contrast, the administration reportedly refused to make any arrangements to enable the event to go forward. CUNY is a public university, so this raises the usual First Amendment problems. While every case is different, there are some clear overlaps between this case (in particular, the citation to "security" concerns) and the cancellation of pro-Palestinian speakers and events justified on similar logic (for example, at USC). This, of course, represents a golden opportunity for people to lob dueling hypocrisy charges at one another ("You were aghast when this happened at USC, but I don't hear you complaining now!" "Yeah, well you were apologizing for this when it happened at USC, but you're aghast now!"). I'm sure that will be a grand old time for everyone. I do want to make one note on the relative coverage and penetration of this story compared to other free speech debacles related to Israel and Palestine on campus. I haven't seen this story covered outside of the Jewish press. That doesn't mean it won't be later, and I'm not generally a fan of the "...but you'll never see this reported in the mainstream media!" genre of commentary. In part, that's because I think there's massive selection bias in what we claim is over- or under-covered; in part, it's because I think virtually everyone massively overestimates how many stories break through to mass public consciousness at all. In reality, I think different stories gain traction in different media domains, such that a story which might tear through one sort of social or ideological circle might make barely a ripple in another. That said, in many of the circles I reside in, there is essentially no knowledge that there are any cases of academic censorship of "pro-Israel" voices on campus at all. To be clear, I'm not saying that there are not numerous cases of academic freedom violations targeting pro-Palestinian speakers -- there are a slew of them. But the notion that this is a Palestine exception to academic freedom, rather than something which unfortunately happens in a host of other cases and contexts (including, in the right-slash-wrong environments, to pro-Israel speakers), speaks less to the reality of academic freedom and more to an epistemology of which cases get attention and which don't. There are many academics for whom the Steven Salaitas are known, while the Melissa Landas are not. In other domains and registers, there are different gaps. Ultimately, it's a variant on "they would say it about Jews, they'd say it about other groups too." The claims of injustice are not wrong, but the claims of uniqueness very often are. How many times have we heard variations on "can you imagine if there was a mob of people harassing and making racist remarks towards any other minority group -- how would universities respond to that?" (As we saw at UCLA, the answer apparently is "they'd sit back and let said mob kick the crap out of their targets"). And at the same time, we've also heard plenty of iterations of "if a university dared cancel a pro-Israel event, it'd be on the front-page of every newspaper for the next month" (so far, no headlines). So I'll all say is that, if you're of the bent that there's no meaningful suppression of pro-Israel speech in campus environments, and your informational ecosystem (other than me, I guess) didn't alert you to this cancellation at CUNY, you should consider how the former belief might be correlated with the latter lacuna. Other people might have different gaps, and they should contemplate what generates them as well. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/SaROhQI

[darkmaga-returns]

I have in the past speculated that the day might come when President Donald Trump, he of a massive ego, might just become tired of his being manipulated and controlled by America’s Israel Lobby and by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in particular. I thought, and hoped, that he might become so annoyed that he might move to take control of the so-called tail wags the dog relationship that has for so long put Israel in the driver’s seat. While I am loath to read too much into several recent developments, the first suggestion that all is not well in Washington’s relationship with what has been euphemistically referred to as “America’s best friend and closest ally.”

Many observers are now openly voicing their view that Israel and its all-powerful Lobby in the United States have corrupted and now control many aspects of government, starting at the top in Washington and working its way down to state and local levels. Witness the near worship of Netanyahu by groveling congress critters during recent visits to Capitol Hill if you want a tangible display of government serving no conceivable national interest. Or check out the “antisemitism” and anti-Boycott legislation currently moving through Congress that will strip all Americans of free speech and free association, leaving them able to demonstrate against or even criticize their own country or other nations with the single exception of the Jewish state. If you don’t believe that will happen, check out the current tale coming out of San Marcos in Texas at the hands of ardently Zionist Governor Greg Abbott.

Given that Jews constitute something like 3% of the US population the establishment of such control through bribery and the support of a compliant media is truly a remarkable achievement but one might plausibly argue that it has done terrible damage to the country as a whole and has contributed nothing to benefit the American people. Israel is currently carrying out a genocide against the Palestinians that is funded, armed and provided with political cover by the Trump Administration, following on to the model established by Genocide Joe Biden, which could be stopped with one phone call to Netanyahu from the White House. But, unfortunately, up until now no one has been picking up the phone.

[lady-byleth]

I'm sitting here, warm and safe in the house I've lived in for 25 years, and yet I have this strong feeling of wanting to go home

If you've ever seen me talk about Germany learning from it's past, about being a steadfast ally of the weak, please disregard every single word of this because Germany has learned jack shit

You'd think we could go 100 years without committing genocide but here we are, 120 on the dot after the Herero and Namaqua Genocide and we're on number fucking 3 because our raison d'état - the defence of Israel - apparently extends to just letting them do whatever

Germany is going to defend Israel in court, sending a frigate into the red sea and I had to learn from fucking twitter that there were protest everywhere in the country in support of Gaza today that the news didn't breathe a single word about

Since before the trial started there hasn't been any coverage of Gaza, any and all criticism of Israel is treated as antisemitism, even just using the word genocide is hate speech now

We're interfering with the red sea completely illegally so Israel can continue killing Palestinians unhindered while our own farmers are being bled dry. We have money to fund a genocide but not to feed our own people, it's incomprehensible

I...I don't even know what to say anymore. I'm so angry and frustrated, this is not what this country should stand for. This is not what it claims to stand for.

Just today I put a "Justice for Gaza" sign into the window. At the rate they're going it's gonna get me arrested.

Sorry, I don't know where I'm going with this, except maybe to say "Boycott the shit out of German products, this is the only language they understand"

They can try to silence us as much as they want but that doesn't mean we'll stay silent

From the River to the Sea Palestine will be Free

[stillnaomi]

Those condemning Israel possess no moral obligation to politeness. Personal comportment is beside the point, anyway. Decolonization is never a polite affair and any oppressor expecting civility from the oppressed is merely rationalizing their social and economic primacy. The entire purpose of decolonization is to undo dominant notions of civility. Moreover, there is an issue of situational power at play here: Palestinians are the aggrieved party and in turn maintain the prerogative to speak freely about their oppressor. Doing so is a mechanism for catharsis and affirmation. The speech is often ugly. It is often ungracious. But it also a reality that cannot be diminished by the oppressor’s arrogance and self-involvement. One cannot ill-treat others and expect adulation in return.

The Free Speech Exception to Palestine by Steven Salaita