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the-garbanzo-annex-jr · 3 months

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by Dion J. Pierre

Columbia University professor Shai Davidai, a Jewish Israeli, defended his right to condemn Hamas’ atrocities on Thursday after learning that an anonymous group of graduate students has accused him of anti-Palestinian racism and demanded a professional association of which he is a member publicly censure him.

Anti-Zionist TikTok influencer Jessica Burbank first reported the accusations the graduate students lodged in a letter to the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), an organization founded in 1974 to promote the social psychology field and its usefulness to society. Comprising over 7,500 student and faculty members, it provides invaluable funding and networking opportunities.

Accusing Davidai of “targeting individuals — especially Palestinians and students of color,” the students’ letter describes his efforts to hold pro-Hamas student groups accountable for harassing Jewish students and defending terror as “decolonization” as “blatant dereliction of duty with respect to his responsibilities and ethical standards as a professor and faculty member of SPSP.” The students additionally accused him of promoting “doxxing” and “misrepresenting” the views of pro-Hamas groups, all of whom have defended Hamas’ atrocities on Oct. 7 while calling for a ceasefire, a strategy they have employed to portray themselves as a pro-peace movement.

On Thursday, Professor Davidai told The Algemeiner that the man depicted in the letter is not someone his community, students, and peers would recognize, and he accepts that enduring assaults on his character is a consequence of defending the Jewish people wherever they are, be it Israel or New York City.

“Look, I’m speaking up against evil, and against the support of evil,” he said. “I’m willing to take the reputational hits because people that won’t like me for saying what I’m saying — I don’t need them to like me. This isn’t about the performative virtue signaling that is en vogue right now. This is about having a moral compass and standing up for what’s right.”

Davidai went on to express concern that his colleagues in the field have not defended him, a silence which suggests that incriminating pro-Israel activists with baseless accusations will not be denounced or resisted even by moderates holding nuanced views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Israel’s war against Hamas.

“If I have to pay the price, I’ll pay the price. Thousands and thousands of Jews and non-Jews contact me to say that calling out pro-Hamas support on US college campuses is the right thing to do,” he continued. “And the irony is that I won’t be silenced. They might take away my reputation. They might take away my job and my career. But I’m not the kind of person who will be quiet now that there’s a personal cost for telling the truth. They’re just proving my point.”

Davidai first achieved national notoriety after delivering a thunderous speech before a crowd of students and others gathered on campus in which he called the school’s president a “coward” for refusing to condemn Hamas apologists and anti-Zionist demonstrations on campus.

“I’m talking to you as a dad, and I want you to know we cannot protect your children from pro-terror student organizations, because the president of Columbia University will not speak out,” Davidai said to the students, whom he asked to film and send the remarks to their parents. “Citizens of the US are right now kidnapped in Gaza, and yet the president of the university is allowing — is giving — her support to pro-terror student organizations.”

In many ways, becoming a public figure has been a detriment, Davidai said. His email is flooded daily with notes from antisemites accusing him of being an “Elder of Zion” and a “genocidal baby killer.”

His colleagues, furious that his exposing antisemitism and left-wing radicalism at Columbia University has caused important donors to pull their support from the school, have never commented on the hate mail even though they are always copied as recipients of it, he alleged.

#shai davidai #columbia university #antisemitism #evil

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lgbtawarenessproject · 5 days

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All Eyes on Rafah

It is the seventh of May, 2024. Israel is attacking Rafah. I know I haven’t been active on this account in a while, and I know this has nothing to do with queer news, but there is a genocide going on right now. If you think that the murder of 1.4 million refugees(https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/6/why-is-israel-forcing-the-evacuation-of-part-of-rafah-gazas-last-refuge) is okay, then you should ask yourself “what if that was my friend, my family member, why is it different if it isn’t?” Because it isn’t different. It isn’t. Every person in that city has friends, family members. Everyone in that city is being targeted. Whether they are a 3 month old baby, an 87 year old grandmother or otherwise. Rafah was supposed to be a refuge (https://www.vox.com/2024/2/16/24074311/israel-hamas-war-rafah-gaza-civilians) and now they are sending in airstrikes and ground troops.

Some of you seeing this are going to say that Palestine attacked first, and that Israel has the right to defend itself. You’re wrong. I’m not going to argue with you about who attacked first, there isn’t any point in it, but I want to ask you. Does self-defense look like the murder of over thirty thousand people? (https://time.com/6909636/gaza-death-toll/) What about more? This article is from March. Right now, they are in Rafah. A place they said they wouldn’t attack. (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/israel-continues-bombarding-gaza-including-places-it-told-palestinians-to-evacuate-to) It is easy, to blame this on Hamas. It is easy to say the Israelis are protecting themselves. This situation is a whole lot more complicated than that. With every person Israel kills, every man, woman, child, elder, with the excuse that “they were part of Hamas”, it makes you wonder if their definition of “Hamas” is instead, Palestinians. A minimum of 12,000 children have died (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/israel-continues-bombarding-gaza-including-places-it-told-palestinians-to-evacuate-to) . You don’t kill 12,000 children by accident. You don’t think that children are part of a terrorist organization. You kill 12,000 children because you want them to be scared of you, because you want them to fight back so you can kill more.

You cannot call every person who picks up a gun, a terrorist. If you were forced to watch someone kill your child, your kid sibling, your best friend, your grandmother, and you didn’t try to fight back? People would call you a monster. Yet- they call Palestinians monsters for doing just that. They call people who are in mourning monsters, after they killed their families. If you still side with Israel, you are a monster. If you still side with Israel after all that they have done, you are a monster. This isn’t a matter of religion, this isn’t a matter of stolen land, this is a genocide. This is a country committing war crimes. (https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1654922) (https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/06/04/israel-50-years-occupation-abuses) (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/31/have-war-crimes-been-committed-in-israel-and-gaza-and-what-international-laws-apply)

If your defense of Israel is that is antisemitic to go against them, choose a better one. Judaism is not a country; Judaism is not a government; Judaism is not the murder of thousands. If that is what you think Judaism is, then you are the one being antisemitic. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/09/israel-gaza-war-crimes-genocide/) (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/27/london-gaza-protest-openly-jewish-march-holocaust-survivors-palestine-demonstration) (https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/israel-using-holocaust-as-a-cover-for-gaza-genocide-holocaust-survivor/3207269)

Neither group in this battle are my people, neither group are mine by genetics nor religion nor culture, but they are all humans. Every single one of them is a human. Every single person out there deserves a chance to live. Please put your eyes, put your attention, or Rafah. On the families that are trying to escape and to live. Please help them before it is too late. For the ones that it is too late. Donate, support, make you voices heard. We cannot let another genocide happen while we just stand back and watch. It shouldn’t be our responsibility to tell them to stop, it shouldn’t be our jobs to stop humans from killing humans. But we have to. Because they aren’t doing it themselves.

It is hard to watch these things when you know you can look away. It is hard to help when you know that it is easier not to. But do you want to tell your friends and family, your children and grandchildren, the people in Rafah, that you decided to stand back? That you had the opportunity to help, like very few have before, and you didn’t? Help these people. Get them to safety. Do your part. Whether that be donating a couple of dollars, sharing a video, going to protests, writing an essay. Do something. You can do something, so do it. I know it is scary, it is depressing, but they can't just look away as they are running and hiding for their lives. Even one small thing, can do a lot.

Please reblog and reply to this post with GFM's and other places to donate to. Additional information and updates are welcome.

Go here to keep updated on the situation in Rafah.

-Soul

#all eyes on rafah #rafah #israel #gaza #palestine

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female-malice · 7 months

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What Hamas Wants

First, there is Hamas’s notorious charter, a Frankensteinian amalgam of the worst anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of the modern era—the very same that have motivated numerous white-supremacist attacks in the United States. “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious,” the document opens. “It needs all sincere efforts … until the enemy is vanquished.” The charter goes on to claim that the Jews control “the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others.” According to Hamas, the Jews were “behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about,” as well as World War I and World War II. The charter accuses Israel of seeking to take over the entire world, and cites as proof the most influential modern anti-Semitic text, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Russian fabrication that purports to expose a global Jewish cabal.

“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it,” Hamas declares in its credo. “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews.” In case anyone missed the point, the document adds that “so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.” In 2017, Hamas published a new charter, but pointedly refused to disavow the original one, in a transparent ruse that some respectable observers nonetheless took at face value.

In any case, Hamas communicated its genocidal intentions not just in words, but in deeds. Before it took control of Gaza, the group deliberately targeted Jewish civilians for mass murder, executing scores of suicide bombings against shopping malls, night clubs, restaurants, buses, Passover seders, and many other nonmilitary targets. Today, this killing spree is widely blamed for destroying the credibility of the Israeli peace movement and helping derail the Oslo Accords, precisely as Hamas intended. And it did not stop there. Since the group took power in Gaza, it has launched thousands of rockets indiscriminately at nearby civilian towns—attacks that continue at this very moment and that have boosted the Israeli right in election after election.

Hamas’s anti-Jewish aspirations were evident not only from its treatment of Israelis, but from its treatment of fellow Palestinians. Despite being the putative sovereign in Gaza and responsible for the well-being of its people, Hamas repeatedly cannibalized Gaza’s infrastructure and appropriated international aid to fuel its messianic war machine. The group boasted publicly about digging up Gaza’s pipes and turning them into rockets. It stored weapons in United Nations schools and dug attack tunnels underneath them. (Contrary to what you might have read on social media, Gaza does have underground shelters—they are just used for housing Hamas fighters, smuggling operations, and weapons caches, not protecting civilians.)

When dissenting Gazans attempted to protest this state of affairs and demanded a better future, they were brutally repressed. Hamas has not held elections since 2006. In 2020, when the Gazan peace activist Rami Aman held a two-hour Zoom call with Israeli leftists, Hamas threw him in prison for six months, tortured him, and forced him to divorce his wife. Why? Because his vision of a shared society for Arabs and Jews, however remote, was a threat to the group’s entire worldview. Jews were not to share the land; they were to be cleansed from it.

Simply put, what Hamas did two weekends ago was not a departure from its past, but the natural culmination of its commitments. The question is not why Hamas did what it did, but why so many people were surprised. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, quick to discern anti-Semitism in any effort to merely label Israeli products from West Bank settlements, somehow overlooked the severity of the genocidal threat growing next door. Journalists like me who cover anti-Semitism somehow failed to take Hamas’s overt anti-Jewish ethos as seriously as we should have. Many international leftists, ostensibly committed to equality and dignity for Palestinians and Israelis alike, somehow missed that Hamas did not share that vision, and in fact was actively working to obliterate it.

Today, in the ashes of the worst anti-Jewish violence since the Holocaust, some analysts have admitted their error of sanitizing Hamas. “It’s a huge mistake that I did, believing that a terror organization can change its DNA,” the former Netanyahu national-security adviser Yaakov Amidror told The New York Times. Others on the left have clung to their tortured conception of Hamas as a rational resistance group, despite it having been falsified by events. Perhaps some fear that acknowledging the true nature of Hamas would undermine the struggle for Palestinian self-determination. But in actuality, it is the refusal to disentangle Hamas’s anti-Jewish sadism from the legitimate cause of Palestinian nationalism that threatens the project and saps its support.

(continue reading)

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readingsquotes · 6 days

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"The violent crackdown on students protesting against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza reveals the stark hypocrisy of political and academic leaders at our colleges and universities, including my own. Instead of first turning to dialogue and debate – the very skills and values universities should promote – school administrators have turned to police, extreme discipline, and complying with a mainstream consensus that seems more interested in suppressing criticism of Israeli and American policy than protecting students.

From Columbia University to my own University of Southern California, peaceful student encampments in common university areas have been dismantled by city police, with hundreds of students arrested. Some have been suspended, evicted from dormitories, and threatened with expulsion and criminal conviction. At UT Austin, state troopers threw a Fox cameraman to the ground and arrested him. At Emory University, the chair of philosophy, Noelle McAfee, was arrested by a police officer wearing a balaclava, as if he were conducting an antiterrorism raid. Another Emory professor, Caroline Fohlin, who sought to protect students being arrested, was wrestled to the ground by two police officers, handcuffed, and charged with battery.

These student protests against a war that has killed over 34,000 Palestinians, at least two-thirds of whom are women and children, are what professors and administrators love to call a “teachable moment.” Unfortunately, most universities and colleges are failing their academic principles, their students, and their faculty. I wish I could say I was surprised, but after three decades in academia, I am not.

...

On my own campus, the USC administration canceled the speech of its valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, after pro-Israel groups on and off campus labeled her antisemitic for including a link on her Instagram to a website that called for the abolition of Israel. Tabassum minored in resistance to genocide, offered through the Advanced Center for Genocide Research. The center’sfounding director, Wolf Gruner, called Tabassum one of the most empathetic students he had ever taught. Tabassum said she planned to speak to the commencement audience about hope and human rights. She might or might not have brought up Gaza and Palestine, war and genocide, but even if she did, should that have been a reason to cancel her?

The university administration offered unspecified threats to safety so severe that it felt it could not protect Tabassum or the commencement ceremony, even though former President Barack Obama had attended the commencement the year before and presumably required heightened safety measures. It is difficult not to believe that safety was a pretext for the university to avoid controversy that might antagonize pro-Israel students, family members, and outsiders. But the real consequences of such a controversy would not have been community protest; instead, it would have been political blowback from Congress, donors, and trustees.

....

In universities, the lack of democracy and transparency is more of a norm than an exception. Faculty and students are routinely ignored by university administrations when it comes to the most serious issues, which is to say those that involve money. This is perhaps why students have felt that their only recourse when it comes to demanding divestment and the end of military aid to Israel was through protest, carried out in public spaces, rather than the futile road of privately appealing to administrators.

The student protesters are on the right side of history, as they were in the 1960s and 1970s, demonstrating against the immoral and racist war the U.S. was waging in Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia. The students were right again in the 1980s, campaigning against apartheid and forcing universities to divest from South Africa.

It is amazing how institutions teach idealism, including these cases of opposition to war and apartheid, and are then astonished that students are idealists. We are now witnessing a student rebellion against the hypocrisy of their elders and the powerful, who tell them they have to accept the lesser of two evils, and who weaponizeantisemitism to justify genocide."

#viet thanh nguyen #student protests #student activism #usc #columbia university #palestine #free palestine #isreal #gaza #genocide #apartheid #colonization #american imperialism #us politics #police state #palestinian liberation #collective liberation

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nikkoliferous · 5 months

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More than 700 people were killed in the Gaza Strip in just 24 hours, the Health Ministry in the besieged territory said Sunday, as Israeli bombings escalated following a brief pause and wider evacuation orders stoke fears of wider displacement and carnage.

According to an Al-Jazeera dispatch:

Overnight and into Sunday, intense bombing was reported in Khan Younis, Rafah, and some northern parts targeted by Israel's air and ground attacks. "Everywhere you turn to, there are children with third-degree burns, shrapnel wounds, brain injuries and broken bones," James Elder, UNICEF's global spokesperson, told Al Jazeera from Gaza. "Mothers crying over children who look like they are hours away from death. It seems like a death zone right now."

The Israel Defense Force (IDF) has been dropping evacuation leaflets across the south of Gaza in cities that include Khan Younis, Rafah, and others neighborhoods where many had been told to flee by Israel prior to the recent week-long pause.

The IDF is now using a wholly invented "grid system" to tell Palestinians in Gaza which sectors might be safe and which ones will not, leading to reports of widespread confusion on the ground for those trying to keep themselves and their families safe from the indiscriminate bombing.

"What Israel is doing in Gaza right now is one of the most cruel tactics of war I've ever seen," said Rohan Talbot, director of advocacy and campaigns for the U.K.-based Medical Aid Palestine, on Sunday. "This grid system effectively means people are being chased from square to square, in constant mortal fear. Bombing happens both inside and outside 'unsafe' areas. It's terrorism."

"And they say it's about protecting civilians! People in Gaza are saying they hope to die just to be free from the fear!" Talbot declared. "I use the word terrorism in its specific sense: using violence to intimidate civilians for political aims. Israeli leaders don't hide that this is what they are doing."

In a statement on Sunday, U.N. Human Rights Chief Volker Türk called for an end of the new wave of bombardents and a return to the talks that saw Israeli and Palestinian hostages freed and an increase in humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza.

"Silence the guns and return to dialogue—the suffering inflicted on civilians is too much to bear. More violence is not the answer. It will bring neither peace nor security," Türk said.

"As a result of Israel's conduct of hostilities and its orders for people to leave the north and parts of the south, hundreds of thousands are being confined into ever smaller areas in southern Gaza without proper sanitation, access to sufficient food, water and health supplies, even as bombs rain down around them,” he added "There is no safe place in Gaza."

Last week, it was reported that the Israeli military is using artificial intelligence to help generate bombing targets, a situation described as "dystopian" and the "first AI-facilitated genocide in history."

Horrifying scenes were evident across Gaza over the weekend as witnesses shared footage of children killed by the bombings along with the heartbreak and cries of survivors:

In the north, the Jabilia refugee camp, the largest in the Gaza Strip, was bombed again on Saturday.

"More than 100 Palestinians were killed Saturday in a new massacre committed by Israeli occupation forces in the Jabalia refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip," the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

The agency said an Israeli missile hit a residential building belonging to the "Obaid family in Jabalia camp" and that "dozens were injured, and many others are still missing under the rubble," in that strike alone.

Meanwhile, Medicin Sans Frontier/MSF doctors reported their rescue vehicles, despite being clearly marked, were targeted by Israeli tanks.

Jason Lee, the Palestine country director for Save the Children, who was in Rafah on Friday, told the Guardian newspaper that what's being witnessed is a fresh population transfer in a country where 1.7 million people—out of an approximate total of 2.3 million—have already been displaced, with most now frantically trying to find safety in the south.

"How is it possible for people to move again? For many, this is not their first evacuation. The scale and scope of this is unprecedented," he said.

#how much more palestinian blood needs to be spilled #before you stop accepting 'yeah but hamas tho'#as a reasonable justification for this wholesale slaughter and displacement?#and even if you don't accept how unreasonable it is on moral grounds #consider the logic #how many more hamas fighters do you think you create with every family you obliterate #if the goal is actually to eradicate hamas israel is doing a pisspoor job #ceasefire now #free palestine #current events #politics

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corre1310-blog · 6 months

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From the river to the sea,

From Earthrealm spreads to all Realms & Heavens,

Palestine and Gaza always existed in every timelines

The Elder Gods always protect or bring fallen mortals to better place,

Ermac will collect the souls of martyr warriors,

And hope the Intifada still strong and firm

To protect their dignity & identity tarnished to the wind of fire

Like Kitana of Edenian

Stubbornly protects & acclaimed the Edenia existion

Despite it being ruined by Shao Kahn of Outworld in cold blood

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girlactionfigure · 6 months

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ISRAEL REALTIME - noon Nov 8 🇮🇱

"Connecting the World to Israel in Realtime"

▪️CONCERNS… (Amit Segal, Ch. 12) From PM office announcement, “meeting with the heads of the authorities in Judea and Samaria is taking place today as part of a visit by the War Cabinet to the Central Command, in view of the security officials' warning of a serious security escalation in Judea and Samaria.”

▪️IDF ON THE MOVE… Enemy sources report online that IDF tanks are inside the Ansar outpost in southern Gaza City (Tel El Hawa area). According to them, this indicates that the front of the foot soldiers is already much deeper inside Gaza City.

▪️EXTREME PALLYWOOD… a bit surprised at the EXTREME OBVIOUS staged photos from Gaza, yet being published in mainstream media as real. Photo 1 - 10 children run towards camera (away from ‘bad things’).. area dusty, children clean, in the background group of men smoking drinking coffee not very worried about bad things. Photo 2 - man spontaneously holds his head screaming near rubble in clean white t-shirt, whoops 2 different photographers on opposite sides of him caught in picture. Photo 3 - man holding child (child with clean white undershirt) running away from ‘bad things’ through burnt tree branches, with a crowd (with a man with clean white t-shirt) behind him who is casually walking the other way.

I’m sure there is real horrible things happening, but EVERY GAZA HAMAS PICTURE IN THE MEDIA is FAKED, MANIPULATED, or AI. Every. Single. One. https://nypost.com/2023/11/06/news/israels-ground-invasion-ramps-up-as-gaza-death-toll-surpasses-10k/

▪️ROCKET STATS… The percentage of successful rocket interceptions is over 88%. About 9,600 launches from 4 arenas since the beginning of the war. David’s Sling intermediate range interceptors scored 60 interceptions for the system with 100% success. And 2 Arrow long range interceptions, one noted as the first-ever live interception of a missile in space.

▪️WORKERS… (A portion of the Israeli economy operates using lower-cost foreign workers, in construction, farming, elder care, and some basic jobs at restaurants among others. Palestinian and Gaza workers filled many of these roles.) Minister of Interior MK Arbel, "We signed a very important agreement with Sri Lanka to receive thousands of workers.”

▪️TEL AVIV CITY… The Municipality decided to budget about NIS 50 million for the construction of protected areas in the municipal kindergartens where there is no protected area.

▪️WORLD POLITICS… US SEC STATE “There is no possibility that Hamas will continue to rule Gaza. A transition phase is needed after combat. Israel cannot manage/control Gaza and its captains have informed us that they have no intention of doing so.”

▪️ISRAELI POLITICS… Justice Minister calls meeting of Committee to Select Judges, the delay of this meeting being one of the primary controversial issues in Israel prior to the war. It will meet next Thursday at the office of the Minister of Justice in Jerusalem.

#Israel #Operation Iron Sword #Real time war updates

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dumb-cdc · 3 months

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UNRWA and the Problem of Data Stewardship

Every single Registered Palestinian Refugee™️ took a grave risk to maintain their legal claim to their ancestral land. A deadly risk. UNRWA now stewards this data and all claim to land that Palestinians past, present, and future depend on. Even if UNRWA wishes to deny that it grants any type of legal status, it cannot deny that it is stewarding validated data that Palestinians lived on their ancestral land before 1948.

---

Three weeks ago, I was digging into population data for Palestine. Population pyramids offer a crude picture of health for a population, and unsurprisingly, Palestine's trends failed to show population stability. Due to premature death, many children do not age into adulthood and few adults grow old to become elders. Typically, members of a population only "exit" a population in two ways: 1) death and 2) physically leaving the geographic bounds that define this population. This leaving could be a willful emigration or a forced displacement. It's one thing to locate data for death rates and survivorship curves. It's another thing to track down refugee data. For the Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt as defined by the U.N.), refugee data is poorly defined and deeply political. And this data is stewarded solely by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

If it were the 90s, I would be slumped over a series of bloated desktops like Julia Roberts. *adjusts tin foil hat*

On January 26th, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel could no longer act with impunity and had to immediately permit the delivery of basic services and essential humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza. However, Israel has moved to accuse UNRWA staff members of conspiring with Hamas for the October 7th attack. The United States and Western nations have taken their cue to suspend funding to UNRWA.

To recap: now that the ICJ has ordered humanitarian aid to enter the Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt), Western nations have cut funding to the U.N. arm delivering that very humanitarian aid in the region.

152 UNRWA workers have been killed and 145 UNRWA facilities have been damaged or destroyed. Over 1 million Palestinians are currently taking shelter in ~154 UNRWA buildings (via OCHA's reliefweb). Al Jazeera reports that the United States, Germany, the EU, and Sweden together fund ~62% of UNRWA's total funding. As these countries suspend their funding, it's predicted that UNRWA will run out of funds within weeks.

29 January 2024 statement from NGOs:

The suspension of funding by donor states will impact life-saving assistance for over two million civilians, over half of whom are children, who rely on UNRWA aid in Gaza. The population faces starvation, looming famine and an outbreak of disease under Israel's continued indiscriminate bombardment and deliberate deprivation of aid in Gaza. We welcome UNRWA's swift investigation into the alleged involvement of a small number of UN staff members in the October 7th attacks. We are shocked by the reckless decision to cut a lifeline for an entire population by some of the very countries that had called for aid in Gaza to be stepped up and for humanitarians to be protected while doing their job. This decision comes as the International Court of Justice ordered immediate and effective action to ensure the provision of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza. 152 UNRWA staff have already been killed and 145 UNRWA facilities damaged by bombardment. UNRWA is the largest humanitarian agency in Gaza and their delivery of humanitarian assistance cannot be replaced by other agencies working in Gaza. If the funding suspensions are not reversed we may see a complete collapse of the already restricted humanitarian response in Gaza.

Letting UNRWA sputter out and die has grave implications for Palestinian refugees past, present, and future. Why? UNRWA is the only recognized entity that grants Palestinians their legal claim to their ancestral land and their refugee status. Piecing together the data on Palestinian refugees is Kafkaesque. The U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) operates in 135 countries and estimates that ~108.4 million people are forcibly displaced globally. However, UNHCR is a distinct entity from the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) serves every single country but Palestine. UNRWA was established in 1949 and is mandated to serve Registered Palestinian Refugees™️. Registered Palestinian Refugees™️ are defined as "any person whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948 and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict" (UNRWA FAQs). Registered Palestinian Refugee™️ status extended to biological and adoptive descendants of male lineage only. Registration closed after the 1950s and re-opened decades later in 1992 to allow new appeals for registration from persons "able to produce valid documentation proving their 1948 refugee status." Only in 2006 could Registered Palestinian Refugee™️ women have their own husbands and descendants registered as Registered Palestinian Refugees™️.

Census data has never been used to build UNRWA's registry of Registered Palestinian Refugees™️. All registered persons are registered voluntarily.

So here we are in 2024. The current database of Registered Palestinian Refugees™️ only captures individuals who voluntarily registered to maintain their legal claim to the land they were displaced from. Individual men who, from 1949 to 1959, had physical documents proving that they and their family lived in Palestine. Individual men who, over 40 years later, submitted physical documents (themselves or posthumously through their children) proving that they and their family lived in Palestine. Then, individual women, who almost 60 years later, submitted physical documents (themselves or posthumously through their children) proving that they and their family lived in Palestine.

Violence since 1948 has repeatedly displaced Palestinians. Most notably is the 1967 Naksa, when Israel annexed the remaining Palestinian territories after the Six-Day War. Though UNRWA serves Palestinians who have been displaced "as a result of the 1967 and subsequent hostilities," these persons are NOT Registered Palestinian Refugees™️ — they can receive services from UNRWA, but only persons and lineages connected to the 1948 Nakba fall under the definition of Registered Palestinian Refugees™️.

This wholly fucks up the numbers.

This data is hardly complete. It is miraculous that there are any Registered Palestinian Refugees™️ given how bureaucratically violent and prohibitive this process is. How do you present documentation when the registration window finally re-opened in 1992... if your entire family line was wiped out? How do you present documentation of where your family lived some 40 years after they were driven from their home with just the clothes on their back? In public health, it has been widely studied and proven that stigma, violence, and distrust are durable drivers of surveillance avoidance. Victimized people will refuse to engage systems that capture any of their identifying information because of their fear of surveillance. They are, rightfully so, afraid of being revictimized by peoples and powers beyond them.

And so: Can you imagine having your home seized by a Western-backed nation, your family dying and suffering on a Trail of Tears, and then being asked to sign up for a Western-backed registry tracking your genetic family lineage?

UNRWA only operates in 5 regions: Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank (including East Jerusalem), and Gaza. It cannot operate outside of these regions. With that said, the U.N. is only tracking Registered Palestinian Refugees™️ who are internally displaced within the Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt) or have crossed borders into one of these 5 regions. Apparently the U.N. banks on Palestinians being unable to find resettlement outside of these 5 regions. From VOA News:

UNRWA does not have the authority to give Palestinians refugee status under the 1951 Geneva Convention. Nor does the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees have that authority while they are in UNRWA's area of operations; it can designate Palestinians as refugees only when they are outside UNRWA's jurisdiction. "The Refugee Convention was written such that it excluded [Palestinians] from protection and consideration by the UNHCR," Yael Schacher, director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International, told VOA.

Unsurprisingly, there have been continued efforts to dissolve UNRWA. Doing so would transfer its mandate over to Arab powers within the 5 regions and subsequently dissolve the registry of Registered Palestinian Refugees™️.

In a 2021 letter, UNRWA's Director of Legal Affairs pens a letter "at the request of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees ('UNHCR') for the purposes of describing the Agency's mandate and services that it is able to provide, and limitations thereto."

The letter defines the purpose of UNRWA and the state of its funding as such:

UNRWA's fields of operations are Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza. The Agency does not have a mandate to operate outside of its five fields, and therefore, other than maintaining regional representative offices, does not have offices anywhere else. UNRWA pursues its mission within its five fields of operations through the provision of humanitarian assistance and mandated services. UNRWA mandated services are concerned with: - Basic education, - Primary health care, - Relief and social services, - Infrastructure and camp improvement, and microcredit, and, - Emergency assistance, including in situations of armed conflict.

The Agency contributes to the protection of Palestine refugees both through its service delivery and by advocating for their rights with relevant stakeholders. UNRWA does not have a mandate to seek durable solutions for Palestine refugees. UNRWA does not manage refugee camps and is not responsible for protecting the physical safety or security of Palestine refugees or maintaining law and order in UNRWA's five fields of operations. The Agency cannot guarantee any individual's physical security. Ensuring the physical security of Palestine refugees residing in any of UNRWA's five fields is the responsibility of the respective host state or authority. [...] Operating within a resource-constrained environment, and reliant on voluntary funding, UNRWA allocates its limited resources among the services provided to Palestine refugees, prioritizing the needs of the most vulnerable. The level of services that UNRWA is able to provide depends on the Agency's funding situation, which is largely dependent on voluntary contributions by States, and may not correspond to the needs of Palestine refugees. The Agency's funding situation, which has steadily deteriorated over the past several years, reached a critical point in 2020. UNRWA received US$ 940 million, US$ 649 million short of total requirements and US$ 60 million less than in 2019. The Agency's financial situation remains uncertain with a shortfall of US$ 100 million as at mid- September 2021.

As stated, UNRWA does not operate or fund refugee camps, as they can only deliver services; refugees become the financial responsibility of the host nations. Thus, pushing Registered Palestinian Refugees™️ across borders is to the advantage of UNRWA in a few ways. If Registered Palestinian Refugees™️ are pushed outside of UNRWA's 5 regions, through the Rafah crossing into Egypt let's say, then UNRWA washes its hands of these refugees from both a financial and jurisdiction standpoint.

To reiterate from before: At least 152 UNRWA workers have been killed and most of UNRWA's physical infrastructure has been blown up and destroyed. Over 1 million Palestinians are taking refuge in remaining UNRWA buildings. Nations that account for ~62% of UNRWA's total funding and are now suspending their funds one-by-one. It's predicted that UNRWA will run out of funding within weeks.

Sounds like a convenient solution for the problem of Registered Palestinian Refugees™️. And again, this brings up concerns regarding data stewardship.

If UNRWA dies, then all Palestinians would be absorbed into the umbrella title of Internally Displaced Persons™️ (IDP) -- forcibly-displaced persons who do not cross borders. "People become internally displaced when they are forced to leave their homes due to conflict, violence, human rights violations, natural hazards, or other crises within the borders of their country. This can include situations where people move voluntarily to seek safety or to access essential services" (via OCHA).

IDP is a regionally-agnostic and globally-used term, as opposed to Registered Palestinian Refugee™️. The U.N. body primarily concerned with IDPs is the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Defined solely by geographic bounds, IDPs are not refugees, even if they've been displaced for generations. Those IDPs are just experiencing protracted internal displacement: "Protracted Internal Displacement refers to IDPs who, for significant periods of time, cannot take steps to progressively reduce their vulnerability, impoverishment and marginalization, and find a durable solution" (United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement, 2021).

There is a current movement to apply the term IDP to Palestinians. On one hand, it's accurate and helpful in garnering resources. On the other hand, it further erodes the UNRWA classification of Registered Palestinian Refugee™️.

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (a Norwegian organization) put out an interesting report in 2015 regarding this language shift and foreshadows a mandate shift for UNRWA:

Until 2006, local NGOs, INGOs and the media generally referred to Palestinians displaced by house demolitions and evictions as "homeless", not as IDPs. At that time, some did not see the utility of the IDP label, especially given that the status of Palestinian refugee used by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) conferred some degree of assistance to Palestinians. Over time there has been growing recognition of the validity of the IDP label in Israel-Palestine and its potential to ensure greater visibility. This new awareness of internal displacement and its triggers and consequences in the region was reflected in the 2008 creation of the Inter-Agency Displacement Working Group (DWG) led by OCHA under the auspices of the Protection Cluster chaired by OHCHR. It rapidly grew to include over a hundred members, including UN agencies, Palestinian and Israeli local organisations, INGOs and donors. They collectively acknowledged the local applicability of the IDP definition provided by the Guiding Principles and started considering as IDPs all Palestinians, including UNRWA-registered refugees, who have been displaced as a result of policies associated with the Israeli occupation of the territories annexed in 1967. Accompanying this conceptual shift there has been increasing recognition of the applicability of the term "forcible transfer" to describe Israeli practices in the oPts.

Without UNRWA's registry of Registered Palestinian Refugees™️, the public identity of Palestinians will irrefutably change. Both in the region and on the world stage.

Just another internally displaced person. Just another refugee. Displaced from where? Refugee from where? Not any place that they have claim to, legally or anecdotally; not any place that they have power to return to.

This is the problem of data stewardship that needs to be answered. Anyways, a depressing rabbit hole I found myself in.

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 4 months

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Published: Nov 30, 2023

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Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef, urged Israel on Tuesday to set a clear time limit for the Islamist terror organization to release all remaining Israeli and international hostages held in the Gaza Strip.

Yousef, who has become a vocal opponent of Hamas, even urged Israel to kill Hamas leaders, including his own father, if the terror organization does not release the hostages.

Yousef, who said he understands the Hamas mentality better than most people on the outside, emphasizes that neither Israel nor the international community can afford to release the "mass murderers" held in Israeli prisons in exchange for the hostages being held captive in Gaza.

"Hamas has been waging psychological warfare against humanity," he began.

They want to release thousands of mass murderers back to the streets in return for the Israeli hostages. Israel cannot afford this, but also humanity cannot afford this because the release of mass murderers... means the death of many other innocent people," Yousef said.

His father, Sheikh Hassan Yousef, recognized as a spiritual leader within the Hamas organization and serves as the terror group’s spokesperson in the West Bank, has spent many years in Israeli jail for terrorism-related incitement.

On Oct. 19, Israeli forces arrested Yousef’s father once again, as part of the ongoing strategic operation to eliminate senior Hamas officials, also in Judea and Samaria, internationally known as the West Bank.

The former Hamas prince said he understood recent Israeli compromises driven by the urgency to release abducted Israeli women, children and elderly in Gaza.

"I understand that Israel had to compromise in the past week or two in order to release children, women, elders, and defenseless civilians," Yousef said.

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However, he stressed that Israel must stop compromising and shift its focus toward eliminating Hamas.

Yousef urged that "the remaining hostages – especially soldiers, [and] those who failed to defend themselves and defend the civilians in the southern communities when they were captured – should be treated as war prisoners and Israel must shift its priority from a hostage rescue mission to an offensive that focuses on eradicating Hamas."

In October, Yousef told Fox News that Israel should “finish Hamas rule in Gaza.”

“It is the time to win the war against the most brutal terrorist organization living today,” Yousef urged.

Last week, Yousef warned the international community of the consequences if Hamas survives as a military and political force in Gaza during his speech at The Mission of Israel to the UN.

“If Hamas is not eradicated in Gaza, we will set the model, we will give the freedom to so many radical groups around the world."

Regarding Hamas endangering the lives of innocent civilians in Gaza they are supposed to protect, Yousef emphasized: “This crime – none of us should forgive this crime. Gambling with children's blood for political gain? It doesn't get worse than this.”

“So Israel now got stained by blood," he continued. "This is what Hamas wanted to happen from Day 1. They wanted to sacrifice thousands of children so Israel can take the blame…”

He blasted Hamas as “savages” who perpetrated unspeakable crimes against humanity, against both Israeli and Gazan civilians.

“If Israel fails in Gaza, all of us will be next,” he emphasized.

Yousef who no longer keeps in contact with his family, defected from the terrorist group in the late '90s and cooperated with Israel's security services to expose and prevent several Hamas terrorist attacks. He described his remarkable story of leaving the radical movement in his bestselling book Son of Hamas in 2010. He also describes in the book how he left Islam and found faith in Jesus.

#Mosab Hassan Yousef #hamas #islam #islamic terrorism #hamas terrorism #religion of violence #islamic savages #hamas savages #freedom fighters #hamas hostages #exterminate hamas #jihad #islamic supremacy #israel #palestine #free palestine #free palestine from hamas #religion is a mental illness #Youtube

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sophia-zofia · 9 days

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"The children in Gaza need a cease-fire." That's how Catherine Russell, executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), concluded a brief video Wednesday about the harrowing conditions across the Gaza Strip, particularly in Rafah, where about 1.5 million of the besieged enclave's 2.3 million residents have sought refuge from Israel's devastating assault. The video was released nearly seven months into Israel's retaliation for the Hamas-led October 7 attack—which has killed at least 34,596 Palestinians in Gaza, wounded another 77,816, and left thousands more missing—and as a full-scale Israeli assault of Rafah looms. The war has already taken "an unimaginable toll," and a major military operation against the crowded southern Gaza city "would bring catastrophe on top of catastrophe for children," Russell warned. "Nearly all of the some 600,000 children now crammed into Rafah are either injured, sick, malnourished, traumatized, or living with disabilities." "Many have been displaced multiple times and lost homes, parents, and loved ones," the UNICEF chief noted. "There is nowhere safe to go in Gaza. Homes throughout the Gaza Strip lie in ruin. Roads are destroyed and the ground littered with unexploded ordnances." "Rafah is also the main hub for the humanitarian response, which includes UNICEF, and the city has some of the last functioning healthcare facilities," she explained. Israeli forces launched at least 435 attacks on health facilities or personnel during the first six months of the war, and just 10 of the enclave's 36 hospitals remain partially functional, according to the World Health Organization. As Common Dreamsreported Wednesday, thousands of Palestinian child amputees are struggling to recover due to the destruction of Gaza's healthcare system. "UNICEF continues to call for the protection of all women and children in Rafah and throughout the Gaza Strip—and the protection of the infrastructure, services, and humanitarian aid they rely on," said Russell. "We repeat our calls for the unconditional release of all hostages in Gaza who need to be home with their children and families. The violence must end." The agency's five core demands for Gaza are: An immediate and long-lasting humanitarian cease-fire; Safe and unrestricted humanitarian access; The immediate, safe, and unconditional release of all abducted children, and an end to any grave violations against all children; Respect and protection for civilian infrastructure; and Allow patients with urgent medical cases to safely access critical health services or leave. As Russell called for peace in video form, James Elder, UNICEF's global spokesperson, penned a Wednesday opinion piece for The Guardian following his recent trips to Gaza. He began with a startling anecdote: The war against Gaza's children is forcing many to close their eyes. Nine-year-old Mohamed's eyes were forced shut, first by the bandages that covered a gaping hole in the back of his head, and second by the coma caused by the blast that hit his family home. He is nine. Sorry, he was nine. Mohamed is now dead. "From looming famine to soaring death tolls, the latest fear is the much-threatened offensive in Rafah in southern Gaza," he wrote. "Can it get any worse? It always seems to." "Rafah will implode if it is targeted militarily," Elder stressed. "Water is in desperately short supply, not just for drinking but sanitation. In Rafah there is approximately one toilet for every 850 people. The situation is four times worse for showers. That is, around one shower for every 3,500 people. Try to imagine, as a teenage girl, or elderly man, or pregnant woman, queueing for an entire day just to have a shower." On October 31, just weeks after the start of what the International Court of Justice has since determined is Israel's plausibly genocidal assault, UNICEF called Gaza a "graveyard" for children.

"Last month I saw new graveyards in Rafah being constructed. And filled," wrote Elder. "Every day the war brings more violent death and destruction. In my 20 years with the United Nations, I have never seen devastation like that I saw in the Gaza Strip cities of Khan Younis and Gaza City. And now we are told to expect the same via an incursion in Rafah." Elder recalled that "in the north of the territory, close to where a UNICEF vehicle came under fire last month, a woman clutched my hand and pleaded, over and over, that the world send food, water, and medicine. I will never forget how, as I felt her grasp, I tried to explain we were trying, and she continued to plead." "Why? Because she assumed the world did not know what was happening in Gaza. Because if the world knew, how could they possibly let this happen?" he continued. "How, indeed. The world has certainly been warned about Rafah. It remains to be seen how many eyes stay, or are forced, shut."

#palestine #free palestine #israel #gaza #free gaza #genocide #zionism #west bank #rafah #unicef

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silicacid · 5 months

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UNICEF official on hidden danger of ‘safe zones’

James Elder, spokesman for the UN’s child relief agency, says that so-called safe zones in Gaza risk crowding thousands of people in inhumane conditions.

The Israeli military said on X on Monday that it was defining “safe areas” for civilians, but Al Jazeera correspondents and people on the ground say it is difficult to heed these orders.

Safe zones “risk being zones of disease and human suffering”, Elder said in an audio message posted to his X account.

“Currently in a shelter in Gaza, there’s around one toilet for 400 families. In these safe zones, there’ll be no toilet, and it’s tens of thousands of people,” he said. “For safe zones to be safe, they must, by law, have water, food, medical supplies and shelter.”

Elder stressed that for safe zones to provide protection, people need to be able to safely get to them. Throughout its war on Gaza, the Israeli army has repeatedly instructed Palestinians to evacuate to various areas of the Strip for their safety, only to later bomb those areas as well as evacuation routes. “Only a ceasefire can save the children of Gaza,” he said.

A new camp area constructed in Rafah near the crossing. My friend shared with me these photos as he slept in the tents yesterday. He told me that there is no bathrooms or water. He told me it is unbearable and humiliating. He came back to Deir El Balah, he couldn’t handle it.

#free palestine #palestine #gaza

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the-garbanzo-annex-jr · 5 months

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by Hugh Fitzgerald

Those who wish Israel ill are up in arms about the IDF’s plan to flood the network of tunnels Hamas has built under Gaza. They are angry because they fear the novel plan will work: Hamas operatives will be flushed out, forced to scurry out of the tunnels and appear above ground, where the IDF can pick them off. The water in the tunnels will also weaken the tunnels by soaking their walls, and the soil just above them, so that they will be more susceptible to eventual collapse; Hamas will never again be able to use them as they have been doing. More on the proposed tunnel flooding, and the reasons given by Hamas and its supporters as why it should not take place, can be found here: “Did the UN Human Rights Council just admit Hamas steals civilian aid? Plus, the dumbest argument yet against flooding tunnels,” Elder of Ziyon, December 15, 2023:

The UN Human Rights X account tweeted something spectacularly stupid:

Israel’s flooding of tunnels with saltwater could have severe adverse human rights impacts, some long term. Goods indispensable to civilian survival could also be at risk, as well as widespread, long-term & severe environmental damage. Civilians must be protected.

Hold on: when they say “Goods indispensable to civilian survival could also be at risk,” doesn’t that mean that they are admitting that Hamas tunnels are warehouses for the aid that the world has been sending into Gaza for the past decades?

Yes, there is no other possible interpretation: those “goods indispensable to civilian survival” — humanitarian aid — are apparently being stored in those tunnels, Hamas having seized them from the shipments of aid meant for all the people of Gaza. Hamas has now stored them inside its tunnels for safe-keeping, for the future care and feeding of Hamas operatives alone. The rest of the Gazans will have to make do with whatever ”goods indispensable to civilian survival” Hamas left behind after taking its massive cut.

Critics of the flooding plan, like Eurasia Review, also say things like “Flooding the tunnels could damage Gaza’s aquifer and soil, if seawater and hazardous substances in the tunnels seep into them.”

“Hazardous substances” means “explosives.” Now, why might there be explosives in the tunnels?… The list of bad things listed in that article that “could” happen if Israel floods the tunnels is almost comical, but the pièce de résistance (so to speak) comes at the end.

Flooding the tunnels could affect the cultural heritage and identity of Gaza, which has a rich and diverse history and culture. The tunnels are part of Gaza’s landscape and memory, and they reflect its character and spirit. Flooding the tunnels could .. affect the cultural expressions and practices of Gaza’s people, such as the art, literature and folklore that are inspired by or related to the tunnels.

Yes, the terror tunnels must be protected because they are an important part of Gaza’s culture!

The tunnels were built by the terror group Hamas to do one thing: help facilitate the terror group’s murderous attacks on Israelis. That is their sole reason for being. The tunnel network has served as a vast underground pedestrian passage, allowing the hiding of weapons, rocket launchers, and Hamas terrorists under most of Gaza, and also allowed the undetected movement underground of weapons and fighters. The tunnels are instruments of murder, not “cultural artifacts” that must be preserved as part of Gaza’s “landscape and memory.” These terror tunnels cost billions of dollars to construct; they likely represent the greatest misallocation of resources in the Middle East since the pyramids were built in the Valley of the Kings.

Do the Gazans really want those ghastly tunnels — which will be left in ruins by the IDF — to be thought of as part of the “cultural heritage and identity of Gaza”? How many Germans like to think of the extermination camps as part of the “cultural heritage and identity” of their country, or aren’t those camps, rather, something of which they are ashamed? The camps are part of their history, but not of their “cultural heritage,” which is a different, and a positive, thing.

How many Russians want to preserve the Soviet labor camps of Vorkuta and Kolyma, as part of their “cultural heritage”? A museum in Moscow, containing testimonies, photographs, and videos, of life in the camps that constituted the Gulag, would be enough to preserve the memory of that hideous aspect of Soviet history.

By all means, the people of Gaza should preserve the memory of the malignant and wasteful tunnels forced on them by Hamas, but they have no need to preserve what remains of those tunnels — 800 of the approximately 1000 that existed have already been destroyed by the IDF —themselves. Must the tunnels really be preserved as part of Gaza’s “landscape and memory,” or are they testimony only to the murderous madness of Hamas, hellbent on murder, and indifferent to the wellbeing of the people of Gaza it has caused? Perhaps one tunnel might be preserved, so that Gazan schoolchildren can visit and see what Hamas wrought in its unhinged unquenchable desire to kill Israelis; that would be more than enough to preserve the memory of the terror group’s madness. Some claim that the tunnels must not be flooded because the resulting damage would affect “the art, literature and folklore that are inspired by or related to the tunnels.” I very much doubt that the “art, literature, and folklore” of Gaza — is there any worth mentioning? — could ever be “inspired” in a good way by those hideous tunnels. Go to it, IDF engineers. Flood those tunnels. Flush the killers out.

#united nations #un human rights #hamas tunnels #flooding hamas tunnels #idf #gaza #hamas #gaza's culture

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thatstormygeek · 10 days

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The violent crackdown on students protesting against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza reveals the stark hypocrisy of political and academic leaders at our colleges and universities, including my own. Instead of first turning to dialogue and debate – the very skills and values universities should promote – school administrators have turned to police, extreme discipline, and complying with a mainstream consensus that seems more interested in suppressing criticism of Israeli and American policy than protecting students. From Columbia University to my own University of Southern California, peaceful student encampments in common university areas have been dismantled by city police, with hundreds of students arrested. Some have been suspended, evicted from dormitories, and threatened with expulsion and criminal conviction. At UT Austin, state troopers threw a Fox cameraman to the ground and arrested him. At Emory University, the chair of philosophy, Noelle McAfee, was arrested by a police officer wearing a balaclava, as if he were conducting an antiterrorism raid. Another Emory professor, Caroline Fohlin, who sought to protect students being arrested, was wrestled to the ground by two police officers, handcuffed, and charged with battery. These student protests against a war that has killed over 34,000 Palestinians, at least two-thirds of whom are women and children, are what professors and administrators love to call a “teachable moment.” Unfortunately, most universities and colleges are failing their academic principles, their students, and their faculty. I wish I could say I was surprised, but after three decades in academia, I am not.

This strategy of avoidance and appeasement is doomed to failure. Columbia University president Minouche Shafik submitted completely to Republican demands to discipline her faculty and students, but this did not prevent Rep. Elise Stefanik and House Speaker Mike Johnson from demanding her resignation. Republicans will not be satisfied until students are being clubbed and tear-gassed in a law-and-order spectacle that will please Benjamin Netanyahu and the GOP base. But the right-wing reaction against student protesters is not only about their stance on Israel and Gaza, which includes their willingness to declare the war a genocide and to demand divestment from Israel and the ending of further military aid. Instead, the right wing is stirring a moral panic around antisemitism, using Jewish students and their feelings of being uncomfortable and threatened as a reason to crack down on protesting students. ... Racist and antisemitic threats are wrong and should be treated appropriately, which is to say, through academic disciplinary and legal methods targeted at the individuals who issue such threats, not through the deployment of riot police against masses of peaceful protesters. But a big difference exists between being threatened and being uncomfortable, and critics of the protesters – and the anti-war movement in general – blur the two. This happens by conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, even though many student protesters are themselves Jewish. It’s what some have called a “weaponized antisemitism,” which places more value on how some Jewish students feel uncomfortable than how Palestinians are actually being killed en masse by an Israel whose weapons are supplied by the U.S.

#us politics #zeteo #viet thanh nguyen #campus protests

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