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eretzyisrael · 5 months

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Israel’s Enemies Tell Five Big Lies

Following the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, antisemites mount a series of vicious attacks, threats and malicious lies against Jews and Israel

With no shame or sign of humanity, the enemies of Israel have doubled down on their insistence that Israel is an illegitimate state that must be destroyed and that the savage slaughter of 1,200 innocent Jews was justified—all based on five “Big Lies” about the Jewish state.

What are the facts?

The world for Jews and Israel will never be the same. Wellesley College students receive official messages saying Zionists (i.e. most Jewish students) are not welcome in the school’s dorms. Hamas official Ghazi Hamad in a TV rant swears Hamas will repeat October 7 over and over until Israel is annihilated. West Bank Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi says “What Hitler did to you was a joke—we will drink your blood and eat your skull.”

While Hamas’s October 7 atrocity shattered the hope of many Palestinian supporters, causing them to rethink their positions, the event only ignited an explosion of hate from other of Israel’s enemies. Tens of thousands of demonstrators made clear they no longer support two states living side by side in peace. Rather they demand “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free . . . by any means necessary”—meaning, clearly, slaughter of civilians.

Power of Big Lies: Though Israel was the victim of a mass murder of innocent Jews, its enemies blame the Jewish state—not only for the Hamas massacre, but also for responding in defense. The reasons many blame Israel for the atrocity are based on five Big Lies. Big Lies were used by Nazi leader Goebbels, who noted that if he told an outrageous lie often enough, people would begin to believe it. Alternatively, if you use truth as a basis for your judgments, you may these facts useful:

Lie #1: Israel is a colonial state that stole Palestinian land. A colonizer is a foreign nation that conquers and exploits another nation. First, the Palestinians have never controlled any land in Palestine: They were also never a nation. Nothing was stolen. Second, Jews are the indigenous people of the land of Israel. They have lived there continuously for 3,000 years and had two commonwealths for over 1,000 years: They are not foreigners. No colonial state.

Lie #2: Israel commits genocide. Genocide is the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group by killing its members. Israel does not, nor has ever, targeted innocent Palestinian civilians for killing—no mass murders, no pogroms. All Palestinian civilian deaths have occurred as collateral damage while fighting terrorists who hide in residential or other public areas. Tellingly, the population in in and around Israel has mushroomed since Israel’s founding in 1948—from about 700,000 to seven million today: Zero genocide.

Lie #3: Israel practices apartheid. Apartheid is a system of legalized racial segregation in which one racial group is deprived of political and civil rights. Israel has no laws or policies separating or limiting the rights of any of its citizens—including two million Arab-Israeli citizens—nor any Palestinians outside Israel. Political and civil rights of all Palestinians outside Israel are controlled by their respective dictatorships, who allow virtually no freedoms, such as speech or the vote. No apartheid.

Lie #4: Israel is committing war crimes. War crimes include torture, hostage taking, acts of terrorism, rape and intentional targeting of civilians. While Hamas committed all these acts on October 7, Israel commits none. Though some media bristle at what they consider excessive civilian deaths during Israeli military efforts, in fact, Israel attacks only military structures and personnel—never civilian-only targets. Unfortunately, Hamas places its fighters in dense residential areas or in tunnels beneath them, endangering civilians. No Israeli war crimes.

Lie #5: Israel brutally oppresses the Palestinians daily. Oppression is the malicious exercise of power to discriminate against some groups. Because Israel completely exited Gaza in 2005, it has no power over of the daily lives of Gazans. However, because of Hamas’s continuous terror, especially efforts to kill Jews and destroy the Jewish state, Israel and Egypt have placed Gaza under a strict blockade to prevent terror attacks. Likewise, because of the Oslo Accords, Israel and the Palestinian Authority share governance of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). Thus, Israel plays virtually no role governing Palestinians daily lives and only enters Palestinian-controlled areas when terrorists flee to and hide in them. No oppression.

Above all, Israel and the U.N. have made numerous offers of land for an independent Palestinian state. Unfortunately, the Palestinians have turned down five offers of land for peace since 1948, three of them over the last 23 years. Apparently, their dream of conquering Israel “from the land to the sea” is more important.

The bestiality of the October 7 massacre shocked us—beheadings, incineration, rape, torture, heartless executions, brutal kidnappings. Even worse, the gates have opened to unlimited Jew hatred on American streets and campuses—to condoning savagery with the excuse of Palestinian liberation . . . based on utter lies about the Jewish state. But Hamas and the haters should know that “Never Again,” means fighting and defeating evil forever.

#big lies #israel's enemies #israel #hamas #gaza

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racefortheironthrone · 3 months

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Someone on Twitter asked who was the British politician who has harmed the British people the most. Of course all the answers were modern politicians - the earliest suggestion was James Callaghan. Looking further back in history, who were the really bad British politicians?

In order to not answer this with a long list of "History's greatest colonialist monsters," I'm going to focus on just the ones who had a negative effect on "the British people," and in order to not answer that with a long list of "the history of English oppression of the Irish," I'm going to focus on just harm done to "the people who lived in what is currently the U.K." I am well aware that this is highly restrictive, but I don't have the time to write a complete history of Britain.

So who's on my shortlist?

Pitt the Younger. Fought the Napoleonic Wars on the backs of the poor while violently suppressing any dissent with a police state. He passed the Treason Act of 1795 to criminalize dissent, the Seditious Meetings Act of the same year to criminalize public assemblies, spied on pretty much anyone who wasn't an arch-Tory, suspended the writ of habeus corpus, and passed the Combination Act of 1799 to criminalize trade unions. In a just world, would have died on a guilottine in Trafalgar Square.

Lord Liverpool. In the wake of the Peterloo Massacre which he was absolutely responsible for, passed the Six Acts to allow the government to search people's houses for arms without a warrant, arrest and transport people for owning weapons or attending a meeting that was deemed to involve unlawful military drilling, reduced due process, shut down all public meetings that involved politics or religion, arrest and transport anyone who wrote anything that criticized the government or Christianity, and heavily tax and impose bonds on newspaper publishers. In a just world, the Cato Street Conspirators would have exercised better tradecraft and assassinated him and his entire government.

Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington. Followed up his victory in the Napoleonic Wars by fighting a war against the British people. Arch Tory bastard, adamantly opposed any political Reform that would enfranchise ordinary people, and opposed Jewish emancipation while supporting Catholic emancipation. To be honest, I wish the mob had torched Apsley House with him inside when they had the chance.

As for the runners-up?

Bonar Law, Stanley Baldwin, and Ramsay fucking MacDonald for dropping the Geddes Axe and then subjecting British workers to twenty years of crippling austerity and repression.

#history #uk history #british history #u.k history #prime ministers

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napoleonic-sexyman-tournament · 3 months

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Friends, enemies, comrades, Jacobins, Monarchist, Bonapartists, gather round. We have an important announcement:

The continent is beset with war. A tenacious general from Corsica has ignited conflict from Madrid to Moscow and made ancient dynasties tremble. Depending on your particular political leanings, this is either the triumph of a great man out of the chaos of The Terror, a betrayal of the values of the French Revolution, or the rule of the greatest upstart tyrant since Caesar.

But, our grand tournament is here to ask the most important question: Now that the flower of European nobility is arrayed on the battlefield in the sexiest uniforms that European history has yet produced (or indeed, may ever produce), who is the most fuckable?

The bracket is here: full bracket and just quadrant I

Want to nominate someone from the Western Hemisphere who was involved in the ever so sexy dismantling of the Spanish empire? (or the Portuguese or French American colonies as well) You can do it here

The People have created this list of nominees:

France:

Jean Lannes

Josephine de Beauharnais

Thérésa Tallien

Jean-Andoche Junot

Joseph Fouché

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

Joachim Murat

Michel Ney

Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte (Charles XIV of Sweden)

Louis-Francois Lejeune

Pierre Jacques Étienne Cambrinne

Napoleon I

Marshal Louis-Gabriel Suchet

Jacques de Trobriand

Jean de dieu soult.

François-Étienne-Christophe Kellermann

17.Louis Davout

Pauline Bonaparte, Duchess of Guastalla

Eugène de Beauharnais

Jean-Baptiste Bessières

Antoine-Jean Gros

Jérôme Bonaparte

Andrea Masséna

Antoine Charles Louis de Lasalle

Germaine de Staël

Thomas-Alexandre Dumas

René de Traviere (The Purple Mask)

Claude Victor Perrin

Laurent de Gouvion Saint-Cyr

François Joseph Lefebvre

Major Andre Cotard (Hornblower Series)

Edouard Mortier

Hippolyte Charles

Nicolas Charles Oudinot

Emmanuel de Grouchy

Pierre-Charles Villeneuve

Géraud Duroc

Georges Pontmercy (Les Mis)

Auguste Frédéric Louis Viesse de Marmont

Juliette Récamier

Bon-Adrien Jeannot de Moncey

Louis-Alexandre Berthier

Étienne Jacques-Joseph-Alexandre Macdonald

Jean-Mathieu-Philibert Sérurier

Catherine Dominique de Pérignon

Guillaume Marie-Anne Brune

Jean-Baptiste Jourdan

Charles-Pierre Augereau

Auguste François-Marie de Colbert-Chabanais

England:

Richard Sharpe (The Sharpe Series)

Tom Pullings (Master and Commander)

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

Jonathan Strange (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell)

Captain Jack Aubrey (Aubrey/Maturin books)

Horatio Hornblower (the Hornblower Books)

William Laurence (The Temeraire Series)

Henry Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey

Beau Brummell

Emma, Lady Hamilton

Benjamin Bathurst

Horatio Nelson

Admiral Edward Pellew

Sir Philip Bowes Vere Broke

Sidney Smith

Percy Smythe, 6th Viscount Strangford

George IV

Capt. Anthony Trumbull (The Pride and the Passion)

Barbara Childe (An Infamous Army)

Doctor Maturin (Aubrey/Maturin books)

William Pitt the Younger

Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry (Lord Castlereagh)

George Canning

Scotland:

Thomas Cochrane

Colquhoun Grant

Ireland:

Arthur O'Connor

Thomas Russell

Robert Emmet

Austria:

Klemens von Metternich

Friedrich Bianchi, Duke of Casalanza

Franz I/II

Archduke Karl

Marie Louise

Franz Grillparzer

Wilhelmine von Biron

Poland:

Wincenty Krasiński

Józef Antoni Poniatowski

Józef Zajączek

Maria Walewska

Władysław Franciszek Jabłonowski

Adam Jerzy Czartoryski

Antoni Amilkar Kosiński

Zofia Czartoryska-Zamoyska

Stanislaw Kurcyusz

Russia:

Alexander I Pavlovich

Alexander Andreevich Durov

Prince Andrei (War and Peace)

Pyotr Bagration

Mikhail Miloradovich

Levin August von Bennigsen

Pavel Stroganov

Empress Elizabeth Alexeievna

Karl Wilhelm von Toll

Dmitri Kuruta

Alexander Alexeevich Tuchkov

Barclay de Tolly

Fyodor Grigorevich Gogel

Ekaterina Pavlovna Bagration

Ippolit Kuragin (War and Peace)

Prussia:

Louise von Mecklenburg-Strelitz

Gebard von Blücher

Carl von Clausewitz

Frederick William III

Gerhard von Scharnhorst

Louis Ferdinand of Prussia

Friederike of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

Alexander von Humboldt

Dorothea von Biron

The Netherlands:

Ida St Elme

Wiliam, Prince of Orange

The Papal States:

Pius VII

Portugal:

João Severiano Maciel da Costa

Spain:

Juan Martín Díez

José de Palafox

Inês Bilbatua (Goya's Ghosts)

Haiti:

Alexandre Pétion

Sardinia:

Vittorio Emanuele I

Lombardy:

Alessandro Manzoni

Denmark:

Frederik VI

Sweden:

Gustav IV Adolph

#napoleonic sexyman tournament #new pinned post for now

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allthecanadianpolitics · 11 months

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Each year Canada welcomes thousands of refugees who have fled everything from war to political unrest. For some newcomers, they’ve come to the country for a different reason: to be able to live a life true to themselves.

The 519 is located in the Church-Wellesley Village, which is home to Toronto’s 2SLGBTQ+ communities. It serves as a hub for Queer people of all walks of life, offering a wide range of services. The community agency is hoping to highlight the supports available for 2SLGBTQ+ refugees.

Gloria Godwin claimed asylum in Canada in 2019. In her home country of Nigeria, she was faced with a distressing ultimatum: stay and be imprisoned, or leave and be free.

“It’s against the law to be an LGBTQ person in my country, and if you are caught, you’ll definitely go to jail for 14 years. It wasn’t safe for me and at the time I was caught,” Godwin said. [...]

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

#cdnpoli #Toronto #Ontario #LGBT+#refugees #queer

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venomousmaiden · 6 months

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Wellington’s women

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington enjoyed the company of women, except his wife, who he detested. His marriage to Catherine ‘Kitty’ Pakenham was commonly known to be loveless; he infamously remarked to his brother before their wedding, “She has grown ugly, by Jove”. Not an excellent start.

As perhaps the most famous and sexy man in Europe, (superseded only by the man whose wars granted him his celebrity) the Duke enjoyed no shortage of admirers. (Read: women threw themselves at him; redcoat fever was real). The attraction was mutual: according to Sharon Selin, “Wellington was very much at ease with women and enjoyed their company, especially if they were good-looking and intelligent”

I have endeavoured to record this list (with links to resources) of few of the women who graced good old nosey’s life for my research and writing.

Mrs Harriet Arbuthnot (close friend and Tory hostess, plus a political ally)

A powerful political woman

Lady Charlotte Greville (this one was almost certainly an affair - her husband even wrote telling her she was too obvious 😳)

Giuseppina Grassini (the opera singer he was frequently seen with in Paris in 1814, who also had an affair with his greatest enemy, Napoleon. Boss bitch for sure)

Marianne Patterson (this one was going well until she actually ended up marrying his brother 😬)

Angela Burdett-Coutts (rich heiress and philanthropist, who proposed to him (power move) when she was 33 and he was 77. And yes, she was from that Coutts family)

Further reading:

On embracing the Duke’s rakish nature

A summary his female companions

#hopefully other people find this interesting too #slightly shouting into the void here #history #napoleonic era #napoleonic wars #regency #regency era #duke of wellington #arthur wellesley #redcoats #scandalous 😱#poisonous rambles #redcoat ravings

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the-empress-7 · 10 months

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From Fed Anon: “I did hear at one point that Kamala really can’t stand Meghan and has her blocked or won’t ever return her call. So something definitely went down.”

Empress, may I put this in perspective for your readers who may not know? Re: the above + MM as “Fist Lady botherer” (South Park lol) - whether one agrees politically with VP Harris or various FLOTUSs or not, “love ‘em or hate 'em”…VP Harris and the various FLOTUSs who have been linked to MM are all highly educated women of accomplishment, stratospheres above Meghan, who shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same breath as these women. Apples and oranges to the max (!):

Hillary Clinton: (Wellesley/BA, Yale Univ Law/JD, top of her class), lawyer, FLOTUS, US Sec. of State, US Senator, first female US Presidential nominee (won the largest popular presidential vote in US history until Biden), a TRUE feminist icon, best-selling author

Michelle Obama: (Princeton/BA, Harvard Univ Law/JD), lawyer, FLOTUS, cultural icon, best-selling author

Jill Biden: (Villanova/MA, Univ of Delaware/BA, EdD): professor, FLOTUS, passionate advocate for education

Kamala Harris: (Howard/BA, Univ of California Law/JD): lawyer, VPOTUS (first female US VP), US Senator, Attorney General of California

Note: all of the above women have doctorates (“PhDs”) in either law or education

Meghan Markle: (Northwestern/BA): D-list cable TV actress, working senior royal/BRF (18 months), any claimed “philanthropic”/“diplomatic” creds, pre- and post-BRF, were ALL merely PR-arranged events and photo ops to fluff up her fake “global profile” lol

'Nuff said :) (it makes me so mad lol!). The massive hubris and ego that MM has to cold-call these women (and other female US Senators as well), or to attempt to align herself with them, is mind-boggling and delusional! And any interaction that these women may have had with MM was due to their respect for the British monarch, as Head of State of the UK, not for MM (or Harold).

=====

I agree that she does deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as them, and can’t believe the left leaning celebs in the US actually helped encourage her bullshit.

#submission

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aclaywrites · 6 months

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I have no idea what this question is asking. ‘Scoping?’ Is this a Wellesley phrase for checking them out? Hitting on them? I’ve read a bunch of dictionaries looking for a nuance I’ve missed, but this is the only interpretation I can find so I’m going from there.

I don’t know if there’s a political problem with hitting on straight women while they’re out with a heterosexual date, but it’s creeper behavior and pointlessly dumb. How would this predatory pestering make them comfortable with lesbians in any way at all? What is wrong with you two? How would a question like this even come into your heads? The value in contact with straight men lies in the nature of the contact. I have straight men doing electrical work on my house right now! But I’m not trying to scope their females because what the actual fuck.

#lesbian queries #lesbian query of the day #lesbian #lesbian history #herstory #dykes to watch out for #gay shit #butch #dykes of tumblr #dykes please interact #wtf lesbians #wellesley #lesbian art

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scobbe · 10 months

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As all the whatever of the 4th of July approaches, let’s all take a moment to remember “America the Beautiful” (the only worthwhile “patriotic” song) was written by a woman, Katherine Lee Bates, who lived her adult life with another woman, Katherine Coman, until the latter’s death.

“At Wellesley, Bates fell in love with another young professor, Katharine Ellis Coman, an economic historian who specialized in the study of the American West. They lived together for 25 years. From a third-floor study in the house where Bates displayed the souvenirs of her many travels, Coman wrote her best books, including The Industrial History of the United States. Coman, born on a farm in Ohio, was the daughter of an abolitionist. She was a formidable intellectual—Bates once wrote that her eyes had “the strength of folded granite”—and she was a political activist. She helped organize the Chicago Garment Workers’ Strike, and, with Bates, she set up immigrant aid societies in Boston. Coman was also a socialist… Then, too, Bates’s love of the wilderness, in particular, was influenced by Coman, who taught a course on “the wastes involved in the exploitation of forests, mineral resources, soil and water power, and the means proposed for scientific conservation,” helping to found a field that would later be called environmental science.”

Both of them were pretty amazing.

#4th of July #America the Beautiful #Katherine Lee Bates #our priest mentioned them in her sermon yesterday #and we sang it as the last hymn #all stops out on the organ it seemed

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blackswaneuroparedux · 1 year

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Never write a letter to your mistress and never join the Carlton Club.

- Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

Despite its having Wellington’s characteristic terseness and, as regards the first bit, good sense, it feels an odd thing to say. Wellington was after all the Carlton’s founding father and, although he played no large part in its affairs, he must have observed its political success with considerable satisfaction. Perhaps, like many phrases supposedly uttered by famous people, it was attributed to him, but actually coined by someone else.

It would be hard to overestimate the importance of the establishment of the Carlton Club in the history of British party politics. At the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, there were in existence two great clubs, Brooks’s and White’s, linked to the historic Whig and Tory Parties respectively. But by the 1830s, the two political parties needed far more than their long-standing London bastions could supply. They simply were not large enough. Some MPs had begun to resort to non-political clubs, like Boodle’s in St James’s Street, giving rise to the following merry ditty: ‘In Parliament I fill my seat/With many other noodles/And lay my head in Jermyn Street/And sip my hock at Boodle’s’.

Such exile from the political mainstream soon became unnecessary. Politics entered a new era, in which the two parties, which evolved in the 1830s and the two subsequent decades - acquiring new names, Conservative and Liberal- expanded their political activities greatly. They needed London accommodation on a generous scale in premises which provided a variety of rooms, large and small.

That is what the Carlton Club supplied. In 1837, the year of Queen Victoria’s accession, it opened its first club house in Pall Mall on the corner of Carlton Gardens, yet another reminder of the gross, bloated monarch, George IV (114 years later a slim Miss Margaret Roberts would depart from the next door house in Carlton Gardens en route to her marriage to Mr Denis Thatcher).

The Carlton club remained on its Pall Mall corner site until a Nazi bomb fell on it in October 1940. The original club house underestimated the party’s need for space. It was enlarged in the 1840s as Sir Robert Peel brought the party first to election triumph in 1841, and then to political disaster and division as a result of the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. To assist the Conservative party’s recovery from the split that the Corn Laws’ repeal brought about, the enlarged building was demolished and replaced by an even bigger one in 1856.

Members stared from the Carlton club’s windows across Carlton Gardens at the Reform club, founded in 1836, four years after the Carlton, to equip the Tories’ opponents with the same range of services, social and political, that the Carlton pioneered. It should be noted in passing that in the new nineteenth-century political world the Conservatives put themselves at the forefront of organisational change, where they were to remain until Tony Blair’s day.

The close proximity of the two rival clubs meant that they kept each other under close observation. In the early days, the Reform took a great interest in the volume of mail posted by servants of the Carlton, who retaliated by waiting until darkness fell before venturing forth. During a political crisis in 1884, blinds were pulled down at every window of the Carlton club’s library after a member noticed two figures across the road in the Reform club spying with the aid of opera glasses. Members of the Carlton noted with satisfaction that their club eclipsed the Reform in size and grandeur.

But that’s a matter of griping. Or is that groping?

In 2022, the disgraced Conservative MP Christopher Pincher was alleged to have sexually groped two men, in an area known as Cads’ Corner within the Carlton. Former No 10 strategist Dominic Cummings once claimed that Prime Minister Boris Johnson referred to the now disgraced MP as “Pincher by name, pincher by nature” before making him deputy chief whip, which he subsequently had taken away from him.

The club boasts about this ‘inviting corner’ that features a small cluster of chairs underneath a grand staircase - but talk to my father’s peers and friends who are members about how Cads’ Corner gained its name and they get all coy and look at their watches. Indeed it’s well known that it’s the spot where male members could stand to stare up the skirts of female guests walking up and down the stairs.

As a member of the Reform club naturally I think they’ve got their head up their arse or at the very least looking up at some unlucky lady’s skirt.

#wellesley #duke of wellington #carlton club #club land #london #gentlemens club #society #St. James's #reform club #personal #scandal #poilitics #conservative party #tories #liberal party

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eretzyisrael · 5 months

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They condone savagery based on utter lies

What are the facts?

#hamas #gaza #flame #the big lie

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wellesleyunderground · 1 year

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Alex Joseph ’10 (@AlexJosephATL): Why Atlanta Should #StopCopCity

Written by Alex Joseph ‘10

I never imagined my first foray into local politics would start like it did: I got into a fight on Twitter with a local elected official. My city council member had just tweeted a strongly-worded statement denouncing a controversial $90 million police and fire department training center being planned in Atlanta, Georgia known as “Cop City.” In that same statement, however, they also said that despite their opposition to the project, the city council did not have the power to cancel the city’s lease agreement and to stop the construction of Cop City. As a lawyer who represents cities and counties and a person who has rented several apartments (and broken several leases), I just didn’t believe their statement that nothing could be done.

I then spent the weekend digging into the publicly available lease and what I found surprised me. In short, the lease has a provision (Sec. 4.3) that allows the mayor to terminate the lease at any time with or without cause with the requirement of giving the lessee (in this case, the Atlanta Police Foundation) 180 days written notice. And after further research, I uncovered that the city council can also adopt a resolution at any time to cancel the lease! To summarize these findings, I wrote this legal memorandum and shared it with the public, via Twitter of course. My hope is that members of the public will use the information and legal arguments contained in my memorandum to have constructive, fact-based conversations with our elected officials and ultimately persuade them to cancel the lease between the city and the Atlanta Police Foundation.

The lease should be canceled for many reasons. First, the proposed site location is within the Weelaunee Forest, which is Atlanta’s largest remaining green space and one of the city’s greatest defenses against worsening climate change. The forest was originally inhabited by the Muscogee (Creek) Tribe before their forced removal in the early 19th century. The area then became part of a complex of farms that included a slave plantation and was purchased by the City of Atlanta in 1911. The city would operate the land as a prison farm until the mid-1990s.

The $90 million conceptualized Cop City facility will include a mock city, a “burn building” for firefighters to practice, a firing range, a driving course, stables and pastureland for police horses and kennels for K-9 units, along with training classrooms. The design designates 85 acres of the proposed site location to be turned into the training facility while the other 265 are slated to be preserved as greenspace. The scale of the project is truly unprecedented. For comparison, the NYPD’s training academy is a roughly 32-acre campus and the LAPD training campus is about 20 acres. The proposed site location is also in an area largely made up of Black residents — one of the groups most at risk of over-policing.

But perhaps the most important reason the lease should be canceled is because Atlantans are, for the most part, vehemently against the construction of Cop City. When the proposal first emerged on the city council meeting docket for consideration, there were 1,166 comments from the public, totalling 17 hours, the majority of which were in opposition to the project. This has been the driving force behind my research and involvement because no matter where one stands on the issues surrounding Cop City, I think we all agree our elected officials should listen to the voices of their constituents. Today, protests continue against the project and while construction is slated to begin in August, there is energy in the community around holding councilmembers accountable for acknowledging the feasibility of canceling the lease. I’m glad that in a small way, my legal research has helped amplify these voices loud enough for decision makers to listen.

_________

Alex Joseph graduated from Wellesley with a degree in history and later obtained a JD from the University of Georgia School of Law. Her previous experience includes serving as an Assistant District Attorney in South Carolina and as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Northern District of Georgia.

#Wellesley Underground #Atlanta #StopCopCity

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theculturedmarxist · 5 months

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In front of Columbia University’s Low Memorial Library, seven infant-sized bundles of white cloth rested on the steps, splattered with red paint. Behind the swaddles, plywood boards read “10,600 lives slaughtered,” “4,412 children,” and “let Gaza live,” alongside images of Palestinian flags and olive trees.

This was the scene where Columbia students gathered last Thursday for a “peaceful protest art installation” and demonstration organized by the campus chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine. Hundreds of students demanded that Columbia publicly call for a ceasefire in Gaza, divest its endowment from corporations complicit in Israeli apartheid, and end its academic programs in Tel Aviv.

The next day, Gerald Rosberg, chair of the Special Committee on Campus Safety, announced Columbia had suspended its chapters of JVP and SJP through the end of the semester, citing an “unauthorized event” that “included threatening rhetoric and intimidation.” The announcement quickly drew widespread criticism, including from hundreds of Jewish faculty who denounced the “vague allegations” that served as grounds for the suspensions.

But amid the backlash, StandWithUs, a self-described “non-partisan Israel education organization,” lauded Columbia’s decision. “StandWithUs sent several legal letters to universities like @Columbia, urging them to immediately hold these groups accountable for the hate, fear, and harassment they incite on campus,” the group wrote on social media. “We hope more universities will follow suit.”

Alongside Israel advocacy groups like the Brandeis Center, the International Legal Forum, and the David Horowitz Freedom Center, StandWithUs has spent years trying to shut down criticism of Israel on college campuses, often by weaponizing civil rights law. The groups allege that, while the political speech may be protected by the First Amendment, it fosters a campus climate of antisemitism in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits federally funded programs from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin. As students have ramped up pro-Palestinian demonstrations over the past month, Israel advocacy groups have escalated a pressure campaign of their own.

Earlier this month, StandWithUs sent an open letter to thousands of universities addressed to the general counsel and vice president of student affairs, outlining actions colleges could take to ensure compliance with Title VI. The group’s recommendations include requiring student identification cards at protests, monitoring university communication channels for “biased statements about Israel,” and investigating student groups for ties to Hamas. The group has also sent a surge of direct letters urging administrators to clamp down on specific Palestine solidarity campus events. Meanwhile, on November 9, the Brandeis Center filed two Title VI complaints with the Department of Education against the University of Pennsylvania and Wellesley College. (The Brandeis Center also joined forces with the Anti-Defamation League to call on the presidents of nearly 200 universities to investigate their SJP chapters, alleging they could have ties to Hamas that would constitute “materially supporting a foreign terrorist organization.”)

According to Dylan Saba, a staff attorney at Palestine Legal, the groups tend to target “pretty mundane examples of pro-Palestine expression … because that’s precisely what these organizations are trying to get rid of.” But as Israel’s military assault over the past month has become “increasingly indefensible for the pro-Israel forces,” it’s spurred a new wave of Title VI threats.

“That’s what’s motivating the strategy to try to raise the stakes of Palestinian expression and organizing by getting universities to try to crack down on it,” said Saba. “If you can’t win the debate because the facts aren’t in your favor, it’s pretty sensible to try to stop it altogether.”

Crackdown at Columbia

The Title VI crusade adds even more fuel to the recent punitive actions against Palestine solidarity student groups.

Since the start of Israel’s bombing of Gaza, students at Columbia have organized numerous protests, vigils, and rallies in a show of support for civilians in Gaza. As part of a nationwide “Shut it Down for Palestine” walkout on November 9, SJP and JVP arranged an art installation and rally.

One day later, the groups were suspended for the unauthorized event and “threatening rhetoric and intimidation,” making them ineligible to hold campus events or receive school funding for the remainder of the term.

While university policy requires students to obtain a permit 10 days before an event, violations of policy usually result in a disciplinary proceeding against individual students, not an outright suspension of an entire organization, according to Katherine Franke, a law professor at Columbia University who has been serving as a faculty advocate for the sanctioned students.

Franke noted that the organizations were suspended by a newly formed group, the Special Committee on Campus Safety, which was created with no advance notice and did not go through the standard University Senate Executive Committee approval process. Columbia’s website does not contain any mention of the Special Committee before the November 10 announcement, which did not elaborate on the new committee’s members or purview.

“We don’t know who’s on it, who created it, what its authority is, under what rules is it operating,” said Franke. Franke has asked Rosberg, the chair of the Special Committee, for more information about the new group and the specific rhetoric that led to SJP and JVP’s sanctioning. She says she has not received a response.

Additionally, internet archives show Columbia quietly updated its student group event policy some time between June 12 and October 20 to include new language around the sanctioning of student organizations “for failure to obtain event approval and/or not abiding by terms of an approved event.”

“They edited the student conduct rules without any consultation with the groups that normally are required to be consulted,” said Franke.

Columbia University did not respond to a request for comment.

During her 25-year tenure, Franke noted she’s seen “a lot of demonstrations,” from the Iraq War to 9/11. “All manner of things have been debated, protested, and the university’s structure was able to handle it,” she said. “But somehow, they had to create — without any consultation with any of the responsible governing bodies — a whole new way of dealing with these issues.”

Columbia is one of three private universities that have now sanctioned their SJP chapters in an unprecedented cascade of crackdowns on student organizing around Palestine solidarity.

Earlier this month, Brandeis University announced an outright and total ban on its SJP chapter, claiming the group “openly supports Hamas.” On Tuesday, George Washington University suspended its SJP chapter from hosting on-campus events for three months.

Roz Rothstein, co-founder and CEO of StandWithUs, wrote in a statement to The Intercept that after the group sent letters to thousands of universities, “many responded privately thanking us for the letter or, in the days after receiving it, taking concrete action on their campuses, such as Columbia, Brandeis, and GWU banning SJP for the rest of the semester.”

She added, “Other schools have notified us that they have launched independent investigations or task forces to address antisemitism. We look forward to seeing the results of those inquiries.”

Changing Standards

At Pomona College in Claremont, California, student organizers have also been challenged by a shifting web of guidelines. Samson Zhang, an editor of a student publication focused on leftist campus organizing called Claremont Undercurrents, noted that new policies seemed to arise in direct response to specific Palestine solidarity campus actions.

In one instance, 150 students attended a vigil at the student services center. “It was very intentionally organized so that no club claimed it, and the messaging was that it was organized by everybody and nobody,” said Zhang. “That happened Friday, and by Monday they sent out an email with a new demonstration policy that an event is only compliant with the student code of conduct if there’s a specific student club that it’s registered under.”

And, on November 7 — the day before a planned divestment protest — Pomona President Gabi Starr sent a letter to students and alumni with a reminder of campus demonstration rules. Claremont Undercurrents reported that one day before Starr’s email blast, StandWithUs sent her a letter expressing concern over the event. The letter urged the administration to take immediate action “to prevent discriminatory treatment of Jewish and Israeli students” and specifically noted that the administration has “the right to prohibit masks worn for the purpose of concealing identity.” Starr’s email similarly states that “masks that prevent recognition of individuals pose a challenge to the ability to maintain campus codes of conduct,” adding that students may be asked to remove them.

In response to inquiries from The Student Life, a campus newspaper, Pomona’s spokesperson said Starr’s mention of masks “was in response to significant concerns related to our own campus — not in response to any outside organization.”

StandWithUs has targeted Pomona before. In April 2021, the Associated Students of Pomona College voted to ban the use of student government funds on items or companies that “knowingly support the Israeli occupation of Palestine” — a move that triggered a swift condemnation from Starr. That same day, StandWithUs sent a letter praising Starr for her statement and calling on her to use “whatever means at your disposal to invalidate this resolution.” Every student government representative that voted in favor of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions resolution that year was then doxxed on Canary Mission, a secretive website that posts public blacklists of Palestinian rights organizers.

One year prior, in February 2020, the David Horowitz Freedom Center wrote to Starr and Pitzer College President Melvin Oliver, claiming that the colleges had violated Title VI by fostering “pervasive, college-sponsored anti-semitism.” The Southern Poverty Law Center has classified Horowitz as an extremist, noting that “the Freedom Center has launched a network of projects giving anti-Muslim voices and radical ideologies a platform to project hate and misinformation.”

“Political Cudgel”

A core ask from groups like the David Horowitz Freedom Center and StandWithUs is that university policies adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Association, or IHRA, working definition of antisemitism, which critics say falsely equates broad criticism of Israel with antisemitism. The IHRA definition found new footing in 2019, when then-President Donald Trump signed an executive order instructing federal agencies to “consider” the IHRA definition in Title VI enforcement.

“IHRA expressly recognizes that criticism of Israel, similar to criticism of other countries, is not antisemitic,” wrote Rothstein of StandWithUs. “And it recognizes that some rhetoric and actions related to Israel do cross the line into bigotry.”

By eliding meaningful differences between critique of Israel and Jewish discrimination, said Saba of Palestine Legal, the groups warp claims of antisemitism into a “political cudgel” to be wielded against students voicing solidarity with Palestine.

The Brandeis Center’s recent Title VI complaint against the University of Pennsylvania conflates disparate events as uniform examples of campus antisemitism. The letter notes recent disturbing attacks against Hillel, a Jewish student organization, including bomb threats and an instance in which a Penn student vandalized the Hillel building and yelled “fuck the Jews.” But the letter also highlights Penn’s “Palestine Writes” literature festival, condemning the September event’s inclusion of speakers “known for their aggressive stance against the Jewish State.”

In November 2022, the International Legal Forum, an Israel-based organization dedicated to “fighting legal battles against terror, antisemitism, and de-legitimization of Israel,” filed a Title VI complaint against the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, after nine student groups banned supporters of Zionism from speaking at their events. In its complaint, the group wrote, “Zionism is an integral and indispensable part of Jewish identity.”

Since its founding in 2001, StandWithUs, which is registered as a nonprofit under the name “Israel Emergency Alliance,” has launched efforts to oppose “anti-Israel bias” in libraries, supported anti-BDS laws, and encouraged supporters to buy Caterpillar stock amid scrutiny over the construction company’s role in Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes. The group recruits annual student fellows to serve as pro-Israel activists on American campuses nationwide and once invited Elvis Costello on a VIP trip in an attempt to convince the singer to change his mind about canceling concerts in Israel.

Last year, StandWithUs filed a Title VI complaint against George Washington University, after assistant professor of clinical psychology Lara Sheehi hosted a brown-bag lunch with a Palestinian professor, leading to a pressure campaign and an internal investigation that turned up nothing. “Many of the statements the complaint alleges were made by Dr. Sheehi were, according to those who heard them, either inaccurate or taken out of context and misrepresented,” the university said in a summary of its findings at the time, adding that Sheehi had “denounced antisemitism as a real and present danger” in classroom discussion. StandWithUs refuted this characterization. In February, Palestine Legal filed its own Title VI complaint against GWU for a “hostile environment of anti-Palestinian racism,” which cites the Sheehi case among others.

“The byproduct of all of this is that you have now a lot of obfuscation about what the meaning of antisemitism is and what constitutes antisemitism, which is very dangerous for Jewish students on campus,” said Saba. “It makes it much more difficult to be able to identify and work to eliminate real instances of antisemitism and threats to Jewish students, which tend to come from the political right.”

Meanwhile, many members of the Jewish community are resisting these groups’ efforts to conflate Judaism and Zionism, noting that their faith inspires resistance to injustice, not blanket support for a regime.

“A lot of institutions across the country, and also at the university, have pushed this idea of a hegemonic Jewish community that all shares the same political beliefs,” said Rafi Ash, a Brown University sophomore who was one of 20 Jewish students arrested during a November sit-in at an administrative building organized by BrownU Jews for Ceasefire Now. “We all have been kind of disturbed by the ways in which a Jewish identity has been twisted in a way that makes it political.”

While the Department of Education is expected to field a new influx of Title VI complaints from organizations representing Jewish students, Saba noted that groups like Palestine Legal have also filed complaints regarding instances of anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic discrimination on campuses. The Department of Education has never made a finding of antisemitic or anti-Palestinian discrimination in any of its investigations so far, though that could soon change as the Israel–Hamas war puts Title VI in the limelight. The American Civil Liberties Union has begun to take legal action over the First Amendment rights of Palestinian solidarity protesters.

“We are in touch with many, many, many student groups across the country, and we are seeing a pattern of heightened scrutiny and suppression,” said Saba. “Fortunately, despite the mass suppressive effort, students are continuing to organize, continuing to speak out, and are refusing to be silenced. We’re seeing one of the largest upsurges in pro-Palestine organizing and demonstration that we’ve ever seen.”

#israel palestine conflict #censorship #freedom of speech #israel #us politics #palestine #jewish voice for peace #students for justice in palestine #Standwishus #brandeis center #David Horowitz Freedom Center #anti defamation league #antisemitism

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Books I read in March 2023

When I Spoke in Tongues by Jessica Wilbanks. This is a memoir about the author's deconstruction from her Pentecostal childhood faith. It also includes details of her recovery process from an eating disorder and her journey to become a writer. I was really interested in her travel to Nigeria in order to explore Yoruba influence on Pentecostal worship. This was interesting to me because one of my grad school classes involved studying Yoruba religion in Cuba, which also has a large emerging neo-Pentecostal demographic. Although some of my views and experiences with Pentecostalism were very different from Wilbanks's, I appreciated the chance to think carefully about how to approach my experiences through writing and academia intentionally and fruitfully.

Biblical Womanhood by Beth Allison Barr is nonfiction arguing that biblical womanhood as understood by American evangelicals today is not a straightforward reading of the Bible but developed over a long and complicated history, driven by men's desire for power over women. Some of the history was new for me but as a New Testament student I liked her exegesis.

Leftover in China by Roseann Lake is nonfiction about women in China who remain unmarried over age 30-35. There's a lot of detail here about Chinese marriage norms historically and in the present, the impact of the one-child policy meaning that there were fewer girls in China and the girls who were born suddenly had unprecedented attention and access to educational and financial opportunity. I was really interested in the interviews with various women--it offered a personal glimpse into the challenges, privileges, and priorities of these unmarried women.

The Last Queen by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is historical fiction about the life of Maharani Jindan. This book has romance, politics, trauma of war, and ends with a very moving parent-child tragedy of assimilation and colonization. (Spoilers: you can blame a whole lot of problems on the British.)

The Gilded Page by Mary Wellesley. Nonfiction about handwritten manuscripts, mostly centered on medieval England. Wellesley is interested in what the manuscripts reveal about the people who wrote them by hand: marginalia, errata, other traces of everyday life. This book wove in neatly with Biblical Womanhood's discussion of Margery of Kempe. I was also really interested in all the detail it gave about the ascetic lives of anchoresses.

Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot. This memoir follows the author through her struggle as an Indigenous woman to leave an abusive relationship, learn how to live with bipolar disorder, and parent her two sons. Mailhot makes a conscious effort not to write an auto-hagiography, showing her worst moments in full detail that earns the audience's sympathies even more effectively. I love reading authors' memoirs because at some point they turn into books about writing books. It was really cool to see Mailhot's success after how hard she worked to earn it.

The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera. Dystopian middle grade scifi. When Earth becomes unliveable, Petra Peña, along with her parents and younger brother, are supposed to be part of a privileged few cryogenically frozen to be woken up 300 years in the future on a new colony planet. When things go wrong Petra stays conscious through her stasis and wakes in a world where no one else remembers stories of Earth. This book was really intense for middle grade fiction! It's a very thoughtful look at grief, love, stories as a means of continuing culture, environmentalism, critique of censorship, and at its heart an argument that conflict comes not from differences between people but from unwillingness to embrace those differences. I appreciated how this book approached its protagonist's disability in a eugenicist dystopia. I'd recommend this book for fans of Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb series (particularly if you liked the John chapters in NtN).

The Preacher's Wife by Kate Bowler. This book was already on my list but then Beth Allison Barr talked about Kate Bowler in Biblical Womanhood, which made me even more interested. Bowler looks at celibrity women within evangelicalism, arguing that even the most conservative church spaces offer these spotlit women subtle but significant power, and even the most egalitarian-seeming liberal church spaces still embrace social norms that uphold patriarchal power over women. Fun fact: this book also cites one of my religion professors from undergrad!

How Far the Light Reaches by Sabrina Impler. This book is a collection of memoir essays in which various marine animals are used to illustrate the author's life. The Chinese sturgeon illuminates immigrant familiy history, an octopus watching her eggs pairs with the author's relationship with their mother in regards to disordered eating, and life in high temp, and high pressure volcanic vents are paired with the persistence of a queer community in Seattle. From a craft perspective I'm so impressed by the structure of this work, and it was a real pleasure to read.

Bitter Orange Tree by Jokha Alharthi. Realistic fiction in which an immigrant university student remembers and traces the life of her Omani pseudo-grandmother, who dies just as the narrator is leaving for Britain. There's a lot of love and grief and memory and love again in this book, and the writing is just beautiful.

Bible and Sword by Barbara W. Tuchman explores the historical relationship between Britain and Palestine, particularly the history of Zionism in Britain. (Spoilers: you can blame a whole lot of problems on the British.)

Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin. Realistic fiction about the family of a woman who goes missing after she gets separated from her husband at a subway station in Seul. The book switches between the woman's children and husband as narrators, as they search for her and remember her. This book made me think a lot about my own aging parents as I read how easily the children overlook their mother's health issues and failing memory.

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty. Historical fantasy about a notorious pirate coming out of retirement to rescue the daughter of her old crewmate, in part motivated by love for her own daughter. This book is a bit sweary and has PG-13 level sexual content. We've got ruffians and scallywags, sea monsters, rigorous hospitality, legendary treasures, magic and scholars of magic, and some really thoughtful depictions of religious characters whose faiths inform their difficult decisions. Amina wrestles with her nostalgia for her pirate days in light of her post-retirement efforts to be a devout Muslim. I love how Chakraborty writes interactions between characters of different religions.

Nonfiction:8

Fiction:5

Total nonfiction for 2023 so far:18

Total fiction for 2023 so far:10

Total books read for 2023 so far:28

I'd love to chat about any of these books and I'm always happy to provide content warnings on request! What are y'all reading lately? Anything you really love or really hate? Any recommendations?

#books read in 2023 #gab tag #long post

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