This is just one person, but I thought it was worth sharing. It came in response to my question about antisemitism on college campuses:
I recently just started working on a college campus, and the question I get all the time now (including earlier today) is “What’s up with all the antisemitism on campus? Are you seeing this?” Every time I explain that I’ve seen a lot of emails about Israel and Hamas from the administration, which generally talk about respecting everybody’s concerns about the war. I also explain that I’ve seen zero evidence of any antisemitism. I’ve talked to faculty who’ve had to respond to angry parents who are convinced that the faculty is spreading antisemitism. Mostly they tell the parents that aside from the political science classes, nobody has any reason to talk about it (certainly not in a math class for crying out loud).
So my experience so far has been zero antisemitic acts/statements/anything. But boy people sure think it’s all over, like you said.
Interesting to find out which parts of Twitter are spreading the idea.
Because this is exactly the kind of thing that would be promoted by foreign intelligence services to sow dissension.
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Really? Is anyone chanting "From the river to the sea" at your school like they are at mine (Columbia)? How about "There is only one solution ..."? (To be fair, I haven't heard that one at my campus, although obviously I can't attend every minute of every rally.) How about tearing down the posters of people kidnapped by Hamas? Those are all anti-Semitic actions, in my view.
"To be fair, I haven't heard that one at my campus,"
Wow! What other horrible things are being said that you don't have evidence of? One can only imagine the extent of the vitriol nobody is hearing!
"From the river to the sea" has multiple meanings depending on the speaker. To most people it suggests a two state solution, which is the path to peace favored by President Biden and many others. It is not inherently antisemitic although many Zionists think it is.
Of the 80 students who saw the map, 75% similarly changed their view... In all, after learning a handful of basic facts about the Middle East, 76.8% of students went from supporting "from the river to the sea" to rejecting the mantra.
A third group of students claimed the chant called for a Palestine to replace Israel. Sixty percent of those students reduced their support for the slogan when they learned it would entail the subjugation, expulsion, and annihilation of seven million Jewish and two million Arab Israelis.
WSJ, via thread here.
You mean, when presented with a certain bias of history, they changed their mind.
Until just now, I thought it was a Zionist slogan. (Shows how current I'm keeping. ????) In the most extreme sense, "the river" is the Euphrates.
The phrase originally was Zionist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_river_to_the_sea#:~:text=The%20precise%20origins%20of%20the,the%20boundaries%20of%20Eretz%20Israel.%22
It was part of the Likud's platform in 1977.
Not just 1977. In 1999, it was upgraded to "The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river."
The latest version "Preserving the right of the Jewish people over the Land of Israel, as an indisputable eternal right, persevering in the settlement and development of Eratz Israel and applying the sovereignty of the state to them." Where Eratz Israel is a code word that can mean "from the river to the sea," but can also mean including Jordan and more.
"River to sea" is a red herring. There is absolutely positively no way the Gazans can obliterate the state of Israel. It simply is not in their power. You can gnash your teeth and shake your jowls and screech "how dare they" but it is an empty threat.
I remember when the American hostages were grabbed by the Iranian students after the U.S. sheltered the Shah and you sometimes saw them chanting "Death to the USA." Did I lose any sleep over this? Of course not, because there was no way in hell they could carry this out.
On the other hand, when Netanyahu says he's going to kill every Gazan that doesn't make it out of Gaza then he totally does have the power to make this happen and so I take it very seriously.
This is an interesting map when you think of From The River To The Sea.
https://ibiblemaps.com/kingdom-saul/
and another one:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/5xagli/map_of_israelpalestinian_territories_overlaid/?rdt=40537
I believe the ruling party Likud has also used the phrase “from the river to the sea.” What’s Hebrew for IOKIYAR? IOKIYAL?
One side is “chanting” “From the River to the Sea”. The other is actually doing it, with some of the bloodiest and most destructive violence seen anywhere in recent years.
How about the racism of putting up the posters?
Your bigotry doesn't make others bigoted.
Your view is shaded by subjection to ethnic nationalism.
So I guess there is no antisemitism at that particular college. So what is going on at the other 3,981 colleges/universities in the US that was not represented by this antidote?
Anecdote. C’mon, man…
The above statement is the opinion of 1 person who teaches at 1 college (out of 3,982), who spoke to a few other teachers at that this 1 college. He didn't do a study or a broad questionnaire asking students and faculty about antisemitism at this 1 college. It may or may not be representative of what is happening today at this 1 college.
I haven't seen any antisemitism personally in my town, about 1 hour north of NYC, but I really have not looked for it. I usually don't have a Hanukkah Menorah in my window at home, and didn't think it was the right year to start doing that..
Well, I teach at a college, and that's basically my experience, too. Students occasionally draw some comparison between Palestinians and indigenous peoples, but no one is chanting "death to Israel" or taunting Jewish students.
Now, maybe my experience is also unrepresentative, or maybe this doesn't show up much in my vicinity because I'm not Jewish. But you know what, my brother-in-law is also a college professor, and he is from Israel. I'm not saying he's pro-Israel, I'm saying he was born and raised in Israel, but came to the U.S. for college and has been here pretty much ever since. So you'd think that if there was a lot of venom aimed at Jewish people on campus because of an association with Israel, then and honest-to-goodness Israeli would be prime target. And you know what he says? Pretty much nothing is happening, and exactly nothing has happened to him. His parents have contacted him asking about this. Hell, his brother who is still in Israel and served in the IDF has contacted him about this. And they're surprised and relieved to hear that nothing has happened on his campus.
So, maybe this is actually unrepresentative, and while incidents have definitely happened in more than a few places, the overall mood toward Jewish people is pretty much just what it was a few months ago.
Well, maybe the rampant, vicious campaign of antisemitism has just been put briefly on hold so that the War on Christmas can be waged at full strength.
Nothing at all unless you come with proof, buddy. You're trying to suggest that every other college has this going on, but... ya got nothing.
I have no fucking idea what is going on on college campuses today in the USA, and I am not making any suggestions about what is, or is not going on at colleges today, so I don't need to provide proof about anything.
KD provided the view from 1 person about 1 college. All I am saying is that this may or may not be representative of the state of US colleges today.
Maybe we should find better antidotes for you?
So basically, you have no point at all?
My point is really simple, KD's posting above proves almost nothing about antisemitism on US college campuses. I certainly hope he is right.
I think you made a great point. The ADL website says, "ADL Center on Extremism notes nearly 400-percent increase in preliminary antisemitic incidents reported year over-year". Is this really all occurring outside of college campuses? Maybe, but I doubt it.
IDK that professors/employees would see/hear antisemitism on campus, but I think if you asked Jewish students for their experience, you might get a wholly different response.
Put another way, do you think students would be openly antisemitic in front of people who would be in a position to directly affect their academic record?
I'm certain most of the antisemitism comes in the form of direct, personal, discreet actions, not out in the open, blatant displays for everyone to see. I never once saw an open display of antisemitism in college, but I heard and saw quite a few one year in the dorms.
That sounds like America in general, not just colleges, sadly.
There's no evidence of that, either.
Just some agitators who want the ability to demonize Palestinian and Islamic without pushback.
I'll grant that there isn't concrete evidence of antisemitism at each of the ~4k institutions KD is asking about. But no evidence of antisemitism at all? Don't be ridiculous.
At Cornell, we had: “If you see a Jewish ‘person’ on campus follow them home and slit their throats,” and a threat to “bring an assault rifle to campus and shoot all you pig jews.” Seems kinda antisemitic to me. And that was after a Cornell prof described the murder, rape, and kidnapping of October 7th as "energizing" and "exhilerating".
At Tulane men wearing keffiyehs grabbed an Israeli flag from Jewish students. When the students attempted to grab the flag back, they were beaten with flagpoles.
At Columbia, a man argued with a woman pulling down posters of hostages kidnapped by Hamas. She attacked him with a stick.
At Wellesley, an RA sent out a message banning any "support for Zionism" in the dorm.
Swastikas were painted on buildings at Stanford.
Etc.
Also re "From the river to the sea." Yeah, Likud once said it. So it's meaningless that it's now the slogan of a group that's explicitly called for the death of all Jews?? Please. Shades of alt-right asshats whining that "swastika is just a Sanskrit symbol" and "If they can say the n-word, why can't I?"
Kevin, you are asking the right questions. Declaring pro-Palestinian demonstrations to be essentially antisemitic has been a terrible mistake by the ADL for over twenty years now. It obscures the focus on real antisemitism, which exists and is dangerous, like at Tree of Life in Pittsburgh.
At my university, I have heard nothing that I would consider true antisemitism; only pro-Palestinian voices/posters. Including "from the river to the sea." But we just had someone arrested for making plans to (apparently) firebomb Jewish institutions in town. You know, real antisemitism. The focus should be on those.
Sure, there can be overlap between pro-Palestinian and antisemitic people. But I doubt that overlap is as strong as the ADL believes. As long as they are lumped together, we don't have data to let ourselves see what's really going on. And many people (me included) cannot take the statistics seriously.
After reading Kevin’s earlier posts, I spent some time Googling “antisemitism increase,” and found a lot of hits in mainstream media. Interestingly, the overwhelming majority of the mainstream media reports were based on a study recently published by the ADL. I respect their work, and don’t think that they cooked the books for political advantage. I also ran across a few reports of rising antisemitic incidents reported by police.
And I agree with those who (correctly) that say that “I don’t see it in my small corner of the world therefore it doesn’t exist” is NOT a compelling argument.
The ADL count pro-Palestine protests as antisemitic.
That's not too surprising. Just about everybody in the country thinks San Francisco is some sort of "escape from New York" like hell hole when in fact it remains a great place to live. Yes, there are issues with homelessness, drug abuse, and property crime just like there were in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. The media compares the present to some imaginary golden age that never existed.
Like drugs in Haight-Ashbury in the 60's?
Semantics. If I say aloud "Gee, there's a lotta Gazans getting killed right now" then it's practically guaranteed that someone in earshot is going to think or say "he's an antisemite." This is, of course, absolute bullshit. I don't give a red rat's about a person's religion as long as they stay out of my face.
As a citizen of Planet Earth I have known for 35 years (Hansen testimony in 1988) that the single greatest problem threatening our species is global climate change. Military activity dumps an ungodly amount of CO2 into the atmosphere IN PEACETIME. Bombing concrete infrastructure and blowing up fuel dumps and destroying and burning and killing on a massive scale is EXACTLY what we, as a species, should not be doing. We Americans sit on the couch, jump up at halftime and shout "freedom or death" or "death to Gaza" and then go grab another Bud Lite. The U.S. should be doing everything in its power to stop the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, not pouring gas on the fire by giving one side or another more munitions.
I'm with you until you decided to oppose war by allowing the larger faction to run roughshod over the smaller.
Grab another Bud Lite while you're up.
That comment is almost the definition of trollish behaviour.
I think McWhorter recently provided a useful perspective:
“In the congressional hearing, the presidents made clear that Jewish students should be protected when hate speech is ‘directed and severe, pervasive’ (in the words of Ms. Magill) or when the speech ‘becomes conduct’ (Claudine Gay of Harvard).
“But the tacit idea is that when it comes to issues related to race — and, specifically, Black students — then free speech considerations become an abstraction. Where Black students are concerned, we are to forget whether the offense is directed, as even the indirect is treated as evil; we are to forget the difference between speech and conduct, as mere utterance is grounds for aggrieved condemnation.”
In other words, anyone who wears black face without any idea of its historical relevance or uses the N word as a joke or historical reference on campus is likely to be instantly fired or expelled (though I imagine that tenure might complicate that situation in some cases). There won’t be any consideration regarding whether or not such behavior was “severe” or “pervasive.” Intent won’t matter.
So-called Micro-aggressions, let anlone actual aggressions, against blacks or other demographic groups recognized as marginalized or oppressed will be met with zero tolerance. But chanting “from the river to the sea” must be carefully parsed for context.
These are obvious double standards. And I would go so far as to say that they are antisemitic double standards. McWhorter is making the case that the perspective of the university presidents in question reveals the soft bigotry of low expectations against blacks. And I agree with him on that point. But the university president statements also reveal a pervasive attitude against Jews.
The fact that the presidents may have been correct regarding free speech does not change the fact that their overall perspectives are antisemitic in nature.
Eugene Volokh made the point that censorship leads to what he calls "censorship envy." Jews might accept that a slogan which they find offensive is protected by the principle of free speech, but not when statements that offend other groups are censored out of hand. Jews (or anyone else) are going to demand that they be just as protected as blacks or transgenders or what have you. The end result of this process is that everyone must be protected from offense, and free speech disappears.
@ey81:
Yes and that does seem to be the direction we are heading in. And, indeed, some measure of blame for an increase in censorship may lie with Jews if they seek to excessively limit free expression in response to antisemitism on campus and elsewhere.
But I personally would point to antiracism as the main culprit. The DEI apparatus has invested so much money, time, and energy into censoring anything that a marginalized group might find offensive (thereby creating the infamous safe spaces) that the DEI operatives behind this movement likely cannot even conceive of changing course.
The only way they know how to respond is by instituting more censorship. They are like the proverbial scorpions: all they can do is stIng. It’s their nature. They don’t know anything else.
So when a teachable moment arises and the Leftists finally experience what happens when the shoe is on the other foot (and they are the ones accused of persecution - this time against Jews), they aren’t likely to respond by relaxing the rules of discourse for their own preferred victims; rather, they ever so begrudgingly extend their censorious regime to “protect” yet another demographic.
None of this will change until liberals and conservatives alike stand up to the Leftists and call out the 21st century McCarthyism that they have instigated. Divisive, Essentialist, Identitarianism (DEI) is completely incompatible with an open society.
And on that note: happy holidays!
For the record, I have often advocated for trans people here in this comment section. I don't like certain thing that are said, but I am far more concerned with laws that are being passed making it difficult for trans people to transition and/or have a normal day-to-day existence.
If only the only problem were people saying crappy things.
It would help if Likud hadn’t already used the phrase “from the river to the sea” themselves as far back as 1977.
Does McWhorter think that blackface is a political position like opposing Israel's bombing campaign on Gaza? If not that is a pretty facile comparison. And if so that is a pretty ridiculous belief.
It is rather silly to compare an attempt to silence criticism of Israel with causal racism. If Jews on campus were facing this kind of casual anti-Semitism we would be having a different discussion. But the evidence suggests that Jews on campus do not face micro-aggressions, they face people who are critical of the actions of the self-proclaimed Jewish state. (I put it that way to avoid the criticism that I am linking Israel with Jewish in a way that is anti-Semitic. My point is that it is mostly the offended Jewish students who are equating criticism of Israel with criticism of Jews, not the people criticizing Israel, many of whom are Jewish).
Plus one.
@ Lon Becker:
By all means, read the McWhorter column in question @ the NYT and decide for yourself what he means.
For my own part I would say that the broad patterns I reference above are indeed divisive, discriminatory, and ultimately anti-Semitic. Quibbling with the relevance of my examples is fair enough, but it’s not clear to me how anyone at this point in time could be unaware of what is now a decades long Leftist movement starting on campuses and then infecting other once-Liberal institutions to enforce arguably illegal if not unconstitutional racial quotas in the name of equal outcomes (or “equity”).
One of the definitive books touching on these issues, Coddling of the American Mind, came out almost ten years ago!
And, yes, I think it’s entirely accurate to say that the repressive and censorious DEI regime that sprang up to put that Leftist movement into practice adopted anti-Semitic double standards by recognizing blacks, for example, as a class of victims that must be sheltered in safe spaces while leaving Jews to twist in the wind.
If my examples were bad, fine. But the broad trends I speak of are, in my opinion, indisputable. We all saw those trends on stunning display when the now infamous university leaders like Claudine Gay (an anti racist with a documented record of chasing faculty out of Harvard for their disfavored speech) suddenly became free speech advocates so long as the hate speech in question was directed against Jews (and not, you know, a demographic that they actually care about).
More free speech? By all means. But that’s almost certainly impossible so long as “anti racist” DEI exists.
Merry Christmas!
So you don't care if your examples are true you are convinced you are right whether your evidence supports it or not? Harvard's black population is 6% or about half of the black population of the US. So if they are secretly using hard quotas they are not doing a very good job of it. I don't doubt they have been using affirmative action to get to that figure, because they are open about it. The idea that this is anti-Semitic is inane. But then maybe that isn't what you consider to be anti-Semitic. Since your claim of anti-Semitism isn't tied to your evidence it is hard to know what the evidence is supposed to be.
Jews make up more than 9% of the undergraduate student body.
But having said you don't care whether your evidence of hypocrisy is accurate you still feel free to call Gay a hypocrite based on no evidence of it. Or I guess your evidence is "its obvious that" which is a good way to claim things are true which you don't have evidence for.
“So you don't care if your examples are true you are convinced you are right whether your evidence supports it or not?”
Well, now it’s clear that you’re arguing in bad faith and resorting to obvious straw man assertions. No one would state that it doesn’t matter if their examples are bad and that they don’t care about evidence. Get a grip. But yes, some examples can certainly be better than others.
For goodness sake, it’s Christmas: take a break from the logical fallacies!
Someday you may actually give evidence to support the claims you say are obviously true. So far you have pointed to political advocates claiming that the people they see as their political opponents are doody heads. What is lacking in your comments is any actual evidence, rather than your conviction that what you want to believe is true.
Some people would have been more bothered by the idea that their first evidence given was not very apt. You seem to have found that idea unproblematic. But I suppose if you know your conclusion a priori then it is just a matter of choosing the political advocate who says what you believe, and it hardly mattes which one.
In the real world of course you haven't actually given a hint as to why Gay is supposedly a hypocrite. Nor have you given a hint of evidence that Jewish students are less protected at Harvard than are black students.
People who compare this slogan to that are not, in fact, honest actors.
An interesting juxtaposition here: https://president.mit.edu/writing-speeches/opening-statement-us-house-committee-education-and-workforce-hearing
Sounds like living in Seattle in 2020!
This is what gets me about the whole Republican fatwa against higher education in America. The overwhelming majority of students take courses with no potential for bigoted or "woke" content, unless you're like Rufo and go looking for it in maths textbooks. They enrol to get a credential which will help them get a job. Most are too busy with study and part-time work to care about politics, which is a pity.
And the way in which Republicans have turned the presidencies of Ivy League universities into major political controversies is bizarre beyond belief.
Because what these people really mean when they say there is antisemitism on campus is that there is anti-Zionism/anti-Likudism/anti-Israel-for-their-past-50-years-of-colonialism on campus.
Which is NOT antisemitism.
Exactly, and just remember that Palestinians are in fact Semites! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_people
Just fanatically brainless.
Like when you're talking about black people and someone keeps insisting there a lot of people with the surname 'Black'.
In fact trying to make this moronic point is itself antisemitism.
No that is not true - the name anti-semitism comes because many middle eastern origin people in Europe were Jewish. Why wasn't it just called anti-judism. Because it was originally meant to include Arabs who also were present in some of Europe.
It's popular usage has been expressly to refer to anti-Jewishness and any secondary, niche usage is trivial and promoted today only in the interest of obscurantism and abuse and obviously for a corrupt purpose, because that would separate it from it's entire application for the last century and a half.
Before 10/7 studies indicated that students who were involved in debates about Israel felt they faced a lot of anti-Semitism. Jewish students who were not involved with such debates did not feel they experienced anti-Semitism.
This is a big country with a lot of colleges and universities, so it is not shocking that it is possible to find a lot of anti-Semitic incidents if one tries to look for them. But actual anti-Semitic incidents seem to have been rare on campuses, and most committed by right wing people looking for attention.
It is not surprising that reports of anti-Semitism would be higher after 10/7. But there does not seem to be any indication that the profile of them has changed, that is they are mostly statements about Israel that some American Jews take personally, with some increase of attacks on Jews using the cover of the conflict.
...And weirdly ignoring the attacks on Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims.
The second post is about anti-Islamic posters, for instance, but apparently the content of the posters is obscured for some reason...
I'm not sure what you mean by the second post. Are you talking about a post by Drum or someone else?
I recently retired after having taught classes at five different colleges over about 25 years. I, too, never once encountered any antisemitic behavior or attitudes. I'm not saying my experience was representative of the whole, and I'm not saying problems don't exist, but listening to the news makes it sound as if this is going on everywhere all of the time. Obviously, it is not.
TL;DR: The anti-semitism on campus meme is being deliberately pushed by the MSM with the goal of getting the low-info viewe to buy into the notion that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. As to why the MSM would want to do this ... connect the dots. These people are despicable.
The generalized right wing bias in "mainstream" news comes to mind. The wingers working the refs to get more of their stories pushed, which focus on "Democrats are BAD!"
Note that no matter how good the economic news is, how far the price of gasoline falls, the number of projects bringing jobs to the benighted Midwest and its ubiquitous diners --- it's invariably painted as "Bad news for Biden and the Democrat Party!"
Then they can continue to yowl about "unfair coverage by the librul media!" and do it all over again.
To me it is clear that we need to stop accepting implications that pro-Palistinian = pro-Hamas and pro-Jewish = pro-Likud. They simply are not the same thing. There are some people amongst the pro-Palistinian camp who are pro-Hamas - but not many. The same can not be said about the proportions on the other side.
And there are plenty of people who are anti-Hamas AND anti-Likud.
First we saw Progressives celebrating the massacre of Jewish civilians. Then we saw an outpouring of excuses for the celebrations. Then things like Drum's pathetic posts: excuses for the excuses, minimization, and denial.
Now being a Progressive means being an Antisemite. A Progressive is a person who supports a movement that welcomes Antisemties. A Progressive is a person who knowing facilitates Antisemitism.
Progressives are Antisemites.
And Progressives will remain Antisemites until "Good Progressives" stop prioritizing harmony with their Antisemite gentile friends and start actively working to remove Antisemitism from their movement.
The Jews of the world are not holding our breath. You are dead to us. You have exposed yourselves as fundamentally rotten. Progressives are disgusting, depraved people.
Of course progressives are disproportionately Jewish. And there is little more tiresome than people calling progressive Jews anti-Semites because their values extend to Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.
Do the Jews who are not dead to you have a plan to remove the Israeli leaders who are quoting Biblical passages supporting genocide, or promising that Israel will never make peace with the Palestinians, so they can either leave their homes or accept perpetual statelessness?
Because frankly the Israelis who have beliefs that should make Jews vomit are much more central to the state of Israel than are the progressives who have views about Hamas that should make Jews vomit. If the latter bothers you and the former does not then you are not somebody whose opinion progressives should respect in the first place.
Waving around your Uncle Tom tokens and your whattaboutism do nothing to change the basic fact that American Progressivism has knowingly and intentionally turned itself into a safe space for Antisemites and thus has become inherently Antisemitic.
Stop whining about the current conflict and CLEAN HOUSE.
Progressives. Are. Antisemites. I'm not going to let you change the subject. Take responsibility and clean your selves up.
Did you really just say that I should stop whining about the slaughter of hundreds of Palestinians a day, and starvation of more than a million people, and focus about the fact that Jews in this country are hearing people say mean things?
Progressives are not a danger to American Jews. The utterly myopic amoralism that is currently needed to defend the self-proclaimed Jewish state is much more worrisome.
I would say you should take your own advice and clean up yourselves up, but that would pretend that you are making a principled argument, and you clearly aren't. You are whining that the morally repugnant behavior of Israel is only getting a partial pass, and not the complete pass it has traditionally gotten.
And, of course, this isn't even good for Israel. Israel has spent more than a decade abusing the Palestinians on the grounds that Palestinians were suffering, but Israel was thriving so nobody Israel cared about was suffering. It was predictable that at some point the Palestinians would break that model by producing suffering on the other side. It was not predictable what form it would take, but that it would happen eventually was inevitable. And it was also predictable that we would get the whining "But now Jews are suffering too, that' not fair".
This has nothing to do with Israel or Palestine. Progressives are Antisemites.
Admit it and fix yourselves.
And if you really cared about the Palestinians, you might be concerned that the folks you're trying to convince to change are instead convinced you want them dead.
Why would any Jew take advice from an Antisemite like you? Your analysis is a pure symptom of moral rot and a total waste of electrons. Just look at yourself.