[Deutschmania]

I just recently discovered this groundbreaking documentary , which seems to be the final nail in the coffin of pro-Israel apologism. It really does seem to me that modern day Zionism has increasingly been turning into a cult , in terms of its methodology , especially in regards to its use of thought terminating cliches . Jews are being indoctrinated into the ideology of Zionism that is characteristic of cult mind control tactics , especially in the categories of thought and emotion control , as it pertains to the B.I.T.E. Model , formulated by a Jew , Steven Hassan . So I will post the documentary film below , although I rather doubt that those whom are currently Zionists will even bother to watch it , given the self imposed information control that they are under , due to their alignment with the racist political cult movement that they are part of . https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/how-israels-war-gaza-exposed-zionism-genocidal-cult

[wat0n]

What "hate speech" is the Left defending?

Excluding Israeli students from attending US universities.

[Sherlock Holmes]

Bless our college students. They are going to single-handedly do what no one else could do. They are going to hand the election to Trump.

They will stay home and a significant number of Americans, tired of their shit will divide on these two lines. Those who stay home and those who are moved to vote for Trump. Remember Trump is FAR ahead in the polls right now so this little boost will be all it takes.

If less people vote for Biden because of his attitude toward Israel, and the outcome is as foreseeable as you imply, then doesn't that mean that the Democrat party and not the people, are the main contributor to Trump getting elected again?

If Biden reduces his chances of reelection by pursuing the Israel policy that the does, then doesn't that mean that it's Biden who's the problem rather than huge numbers of students (and all of the non-students too who are disinclined to support Biden now)?

Isn't it Biden who's "single-handedly doing what no one else could do"? the irony!

[Sherlock Holmes]

Clearly wrong, as usual.

But even then, anti-semitism itself is not illegal. Harassment and limiting access to Jewish students to their own universities, on the other hand, are.

The responsibility to protect Jewish and, in fact, all students falls upon schools.

Well "antisemtism" is not what it used to be. One can develop a reasonable argument that Orthodox, pious Jews are physically and culturally in more danger in Israel than anywhere else in the world. So is Israel itself antisemitic?

If you look at the history of Zionism, we find that militant Zionists actually emphasized the political advantage that antisemitism gave to the movement and it was welcomed if the net effect of it was to generate sympathy for the Zionist project of ethnic cleansing in Palestine.

How can protesting against a US supported antisemitic regime be worse than causing a bit of a ruckus outside some universities?

[wat0n]

Well "antisemtism" is not what it used to be. One can develop a reasonable argument that Orthodox, pious Jews are physically and culturally in more danger in Israel than anywhere else in the world. So is Israel itself antisemitic?

If you look at the history of Zionism, we find that militant Zionists actually emphasized the political advantage that antisemitism gave to the movement and it was welcomed if the net effect of it was to generate sympathy for the Zionist project of ethnic cleansing in Palestine.

How can protesting against a US supported antisemitic regime be worse than causing a bit of a ruckus outside some universities?

I'm fairly sure Jews of any denomination are in far more danger in a place like Yemen than Israel.

It is also absurd to say the Israeli government is antisemitic or that it is the cause of antisemitism. If anti-Zionists are really this concerned about antisemitism justifying Israel's existence then maybe they should stop harassing Jewish students.

This is a red herring that has nothing to do with the proven harassment faced by Jewish students in some US universities.

[Pants-of-dog]

No Israeli students are being prevented from attending US universities.

[KurtFF8]

Excluding Israeli students from attending US universities.

The Left doesn't run any university in the United States so this is a strange claim to make.

[Sherlock Holmes]

I'm fairly sure Jews of any denomination are in far more danger in a place like Yemen than Israel.

Well I look forward to seeing some support for that claim, you could be right but some data is called for here. Insofar as my argument goes I can start by showing you this:

Police Crack Down on Anti-Zionist Jews in Jerusalem.

If this were filmed in say London, Paris or Munich, I think few would argue that this was not blatant antisemitism, at least if the victims claimed that you'd be hard pressed to dismiss their claim and if you did it is you who'd then be called an antisemite.

It is also absurd to say the Israeli government is antisemitic or that it is the cause of antisemitism. If anti-Zionists are really this concerned about antisemitism justifying Israel's existence then maybe they should stop harassing Jewish students.

That depends on the specific Jew who feels persecuted I think. Orthodox, pious Jews were always opposed to a "State of Israel" but were sidelined - sometimes violently - by the militant Zionist movement in Israel and overseas some decades before the Holocaust too.

Many Orthodox Jews in Israel today are staunchly opposed to Zionism and often protest openly with Palestinians even to the extent of burning the Israeli flag. The modern state of Israel has never represented these Jews or their interests and in fact most Jews worldwide were also opposed to the creation of a state in Palestine, certainly before the Holocaust and even then many were reluctant.

This is a red herring that has nothing to do with the proven harassment faced by Jewish students in some US universities.

Some Jewish students might feel that way, others do not. Imagine protesting against the Third Reich at a University in say London in the 1930s and being accused of persecuting Germans or antigermansim.

[Sherlock Holmes]

For many, the protests against Israel is one of the few ways they can potentially influence their governments support for the Zionist regime and it's Jew-supremacist ideology.

This is an ideology that sees nothing wrong with demolishing the homes of non-Jews, when some family member (even a child) is "arrested" or incarcerated for some crime.

Please listen to this short discussion, I'd like to hear from others who approve of this policy, those who justify it. This is a TV show that was on evening television in Israel in 2020 about the very routine and taken for granted policy of punitive home demolition, seeing an entire (non-Jewish) family lose their house. There are not many countries where this is done and accepted passively by the population at large.

If this was advocated on evening TV by a white official for use against Black families in say Alabama, would anyone seriously object when students took to the streets or occupied their university campus protesting about it?

This punitive demolition is but one of many brutal and cruel policies that target non-Jews in Israel every day, week in week out, year in year out and the Zionist lobby have the audacity to repeatedly claim that this is the view of all Jews!

[QatzelOk]

The Left doesn't run any university in the United States ...

No it doesn't. Sponsorship money is what decides for universities, and what a disaster this is for education and creating the correct environment for intellectual activity.

By committing universities to "Israeli politics," our political prostitutes have guaranteed a decline in intellectual activity. The production of knowledge. And they did this... for money. They ruined their own schools for money.

In Canada, a parallel situation exists. Justin Trudeau's political party takes lots of money from Sikh groups in Canada. This has lead to situations where India is angry at Canada for our "politics" which aren't even "our politics." It's our "whore politics" which means that our leaders sell their power to sponsors.

Imagine if a Sikh terror organization were to blow up one of our universities because of this involvement that Canada has in Indian politics (involvement that is caused by money from sponsors).

Imagine if your own political class destroys your society by doing things that please ONLY its donor class - whatever the results.

"Want us to blow up a building? Want us to overthrow a government? Want us to sanction a society to starvation? I can do these things for you, Mr. Sponsor."

Meanwhile, back in the real world.... things deteriorate.

[Deutschmania]

It is clear from these articles who the good faith actors are and aren't .

For about a week, the cluster of tents raised by students at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, stood in solidarity with Palestinian civilians in Gaza and with students protesting at other campuses across the US.

Then, on Tuesday, the tents quietly vanished from the grassy quad at the heart of campus. There were no riot-gear-clad crackdowns from police and no assaults from masked groups to spur disbandment. Instead, Brown chose a different path: it negotiated.

While semesters at other schools speed toward a violent close – complete with canceled classes and commencement celebrations, scenes of brutal yet unsuccessful attempts at quelling the protests, and aggression from opposing groups that has heightened already inflamed tensions – Brown is one of several universities that have sought a more amicable solution.

Northwestern University in Illinois, the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, Rutgers University at New Brunswick in New Jersey and the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis have also brokered agreements with students, while others, including Wesleyan in Connecticut and the University of California at Berkeley, have allowed the protest encampments to continue. .

The outcomes from these divergent approaches remain uncertain; while some of the more extreme examples of suppression have been met with public shock and condemnation, protests have persisted. At Brown, students who agreed to dismantle their demonstration in exchange for a seat at the table in an upcoming meeting with the Corporation of Brown University did so knowing that a satisfying answer to protesters’ demands for divestment is far from a guarantee.

But the movement, which erupted in response to a conflict thousands of miles away, has brought one closer to home into sharper focus. The protests in support of Gaza are testing the bounds of students’ rights to free speech and shining a spotlight on the deepening political divides over the culture on college campuses.

“Students are pointing out contradictions between being asked to be free thinkers and then finding themselves challenged when they think they are thinking freely,” said Dr Manual Pastor, a professor and the director of the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California, whose research focuses on the power of social movements. Schools have long grappled with this balancing act, both encouraging diverse perspectives and limiting its expression in the name of safety. But these simmering tensions have come to a boil as political divides widen.

Since the start of the protests on campus last fall, conservatives have argued they’re a symbol of how an “out-of-control left” has come to dominate US campuses. It’s an issue the GOP-led House has pursued with vigor, launching an investigation into federal funding for schools where protests have lingered, and scrutinizing presidents of some of America’s most prestigious universities whom they allege have allowed an escalation in antisemitism.

That intense scrutiny, and the response of prominent university donors, has incentivized some schools to take a heavier hand, Pastor said. In December, the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard were forced to resign after a heated hearing on their actions to limit pro-Palestinian protests. The president of Columbia University, Minouche Shafik, who was called to testify in April, vowed to take a strong approach. The next day, she unleashed swarms of New York police department (NYPD) officers on student protesters.

Meanwhile, tensions on campuses have only intensified.

That’s why some universities have tried to use this moment as an opportunity, choosing to foster dialogues around the emotionally fraught issue rather than trying to remove it with force.

At Wesleyan, where the student encampment has quadrupled in size since Sunday, faculty have taught classes among the tents. President Michael S Roth said that, though it violates university rules, the protest won’t be cleared as long as it remains peaceful.

“As long as we all reject violence, we have opportunities to listen and to learn from one another,” he said in a statement posted on X. In an interview with the Guardian late last year, Roth – who is Jewish and a critic of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement largely driving these protests – championed debate and disagreement.

His mission, he said, was to ensure students feel safe and won’t get harassed or intimidated, “but you’re not so safe that you don’t encounter offensive comments or invigorating debate”.

“I’m trying to model this openness that has limits,” he added.

It’s an ethos echoed in Brown’s approach.

“Universities were built to hold disagreement and grapple with competing views. This is an essential part of our mission of advancing knowledge and understanding,” Brown’s president, Christina H Paxson, wrote in a letter announcing the agreement.

With a nod toward a shared sense of concern about the confrontations seen at other universities and an acknowledgement of stark differences in beliefs about the events unfolding in the Middle East, she added that she is “confident that the Brown community can live up to the values of support for free expression within an open and respectful learning community”.

Student protesters at UC Berkeley say they have, for their part, also tried to engage their community in discussion when confrontations arise, which has helped limit flare-ups of tension and ensured that they can keep the protest going. They plan to stay for the long haul.

“Things are OK on the Berkeley campus,” said Yazen Kashlan, an organizer and graduate student at UC Berkeley on Wednesday. “Students are protesting and exercising their right to free speech, so it hasn’t been confrontational.” There have been skirmishes. On Wednesday evening, videos of a small fight began circling on social media as Israel-supporting counter-protesters tussled with someone near the encampment. Campus officials condemned violence on both sides and are investigating the incident, which they said resulted in minor injuries. Still, the growing encampment has not been met with security or police, and university administrators have kept lines of communication open. Protesters at Berkeley have four main demands: they want the university to vocally condemn the violence in Gaza and call for an end to it, and to divest all UC financial holdings connected to the conflict. They also want UC Berkeley to academically boycott Israeli universities and create a permanent Palestinian studies program.

There are other goals, too, Kashlan said: “The way I see it, one of the wins this movement can already claim is awareness – aligning the struggles of the global south and generally oppressed people in this one cause.”

To Kashlan, a successful outcome is how people connect with the protest and the cause they hope to elevate. “It is a moral imperative,” he added, noting that that’s how students hope to enact change in a conflict that’s so far away.

Even with a more open approach, discussions of a divisive issue firmly rooted in identity, religion and ethnicity have at times devolved into rhetoric that’s left some students and members of the broader campus communities feeling targeted or unsafe at some schools. It’s why UC Berkeley administrators say they are investing in more dialogue.

“We are built for a world that’s painted in shades of grey, not black and white,” said Dan Mogulof, a spokesperson for UC Berkeley. “We need to support diversity of perspective and civil discourse, and dialogue across all variety of divides – that’s imperiled right now.” The school has doled out $700,000 to fund new plans and programs that encourage a culture shift on campus and promote civil discourse. Among them will be mandatory training for students, faculty and staff on Islamophobia and antisemitism and a new course on conversation across the divides.

“We are not turning a blind eye to any of this and we are not throwing our hands in the air,” Mogulof said. “We are marshaling all the educational resources we can to support our principles of community.” Still, he said, changing the school’s investment strategy isn’t on the table.

As the semester draws to a close, it’s also not a sure thing the encampment will be allowed to continue. Security at the school is keeping a close watch, Mogulof said, and is ready to step in if they deem campus life is being disrupted.

Other schools that first prioritized dialogue have shifted course. Dartmouth, an Ivy League university in New Hampshire, scheduled several events and discussions in recent months discussing the situation in the Middle East. But on Wednesday, soon after the first tents of a protest encampment were raised, officers from the Hanover police department cleared the site, arresting 90 people including history professor Annelise Orleck, a former chair of the school’s Jewish studies department who has taught at the school for 34 years.

And, some protesters have succeeded in getting their calls answered. The Evergreen State College agreed on Tuesday to set up a task force that will map out its “divestment from companies that profit from gross human rights violations and/or the occupation of Palestinian territories”.

Meanwhile, the cause aligning these protesters across the country has largely been lost in the rhetoric over whether their tactics are wrong or right. While crackdowns against student protesters feed the news cycle, updates about the carnage that continues in Gaza has been pushed to the background.

For Pastor, dialogue will be needed to help produce the potential for peace, both at American universities and in the Middle East.

“In the context of all this back and forth, the real pain being experienced in the Middle East on the part of Gazan parents seeing their children crushed under bombardment or Israeli parents who lost a young person they thought was safely going to a rave,” he said. “Even as we challenge the asymmetry of power and the complex history, that is all being lost right now.”

“If we are to return to any kind of lasting peace,” he added, “it will only be lasting if there’s empathy.” The Guardian

When he announced this week that Northwestern University had reached an agreement with the groups behind the school’s pro-Palestinian encampment, President Michael Schill was hopeful he could salvage the rest of the semester and commencement.

“I am proud of our community for achieving what has been a challenge across the country: a sustainable, de-escalated path forward,” Schill said in a video he released to campus Tuesday.

But Northwestern’s president has not been universally celebrated for finding a peaceful resolution amid so many other reports of violence and mass arrests. Instead Schill, who is Jewish, has faced harsh criticism from the Jewish community.

Seven Jewish members of Northwestern’s antisemitism committee resigned en masse over the deal, leading the entire committee to announce Thursday that it was shutting down before it could make any recommendations. “It’s a terrible mistake. The administration made a joke out of itself,” Efraim Benmelech, an Israeli professor at Northwestern’s business school who resigned as the committee’s co-chair, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the deal with protesters.Chicago’s Jewish federation condemned the agreement, saying, “The overwhelming majority of your Jewish students, faculty, staff, and alumni feel betrayed. They trusted an institution you lead and considered it home. You have violated that trust.”

And some prominent Jewish leaders — including those of the Anti-Defamation League and the national Jewish federations’ umbrella group — are calling for Schill’s resignation.

“The handling of this situation leaves us with no confidence in President Schill to correct it. We reiterate the call for an immediate leadership change at the University,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, JFNA CEO Eric Fingerhut and Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation CEO Rachel Garbow Monroe, all Northwestern graduates, wrote in a letter to the chair of the school’s board of trustees on Thursday. They also demanded the cancelation of the deal.

The blowback against Schill reflects a larger Jewish divide over how to handle the encampments that have sprung up across campuses nationwide in the wake of the original Columbia University protest — most pushing their schools to divest from Israel. Northwestern is one of a handful of schools to strikes deals with the protesters to get them to clear out before finals and commencement. (Others, including Columbia, have negotiated but failed to reach agreements with protesters.)

The deals mean that the encampments are being dismantled, something sought by Jewish groups and students who say the protests create an antisemitic and hostile climate on campuses. But they also mean that students and faculty who participated in the protests evade disciplinary action. Some critics say that through the agreements, the universities are legitimizing and incentivizing protests by negotiating with their leaders and making concessions.

“The same concept behind not negotiating with terrorists applies to these terrorist sympathizers as well: You are only giving them the incentive to continue, or escalate, the very behavior it is you want to discourage,” columnist Zachary Faria wrote in the Washington Examiner, a right-wing outlet, after a deal at Brown University this week. “Brown isn’t nipping this encampment impulse in the bud, it’s watering and fertilizing the seeds for more of it in the future.” Late Thursday, another school with a major Jewish presence, Rutgers University in New Jersey, also struck a deal with protesters, who then took down their encampment peacefully. As part of the agreement, the university promised not to retaliate against students and faculty who participated in the protests, as long as they did not continue to violate school rules, and to enroll Palestinian students. It also committed to continuing a relationship with a West Bank university and to taking other steps to make Palestinian students feel welcome. But it refused to end relationships with Israeli universities, and said only that it acknowledged a divestment request and would allow students to discuss it with an investment committee.

The Rutgers deal reflects an emerging pattern: While universities are committing to some steps demanded by protesters, they are not agreeing to the central goal of the protest movement: divestment. Brown’s agreement goes the furthest by committing the school’s board to holding a formal vote on divestment this fall. A deal reached early Thursday at the University of Minnesota, like Rutgers’, will allow protest leaders to make the case for divestment to the school’s governing board.

Northwestern’s own deal calls for the school to restart a dormant advisory committee on “investment responsibility”; fund positions for two Palestinian faculty and tuition for five Palestinian undergraduate students who are “at risk”; and renovate a center for Muslim and Middle Eastern and North African students, among other terms.

Representatives for the school did not return repeated requests for comment. The campus chapter of the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace, a member of the coalition that led the encampment protests, celebrated the deal on Instagram, calling it “the next step towards divestment.”

In contrast with Northwestern, Jewish leaders at both Brown and Evergreen State College in Washington told JTA they approved of their own campus deals, as they succeeded in clearing out the encampments while opening up future opportunities for dialogue. The leader of Brown’s Hillel also said he was confident that the school’s board would not vote to divest.

Besides Schill — who replaced the previous Jewish Northwestern President Morton Schapiro in 2022 after another initial successor’s illness — and Brown President Christina Paxson, at least one other Jewish university president has publicly floated the idea of reaching a deal with his encampment. Michael Roth at Wesleyan University in Connecticut said such a deal was not out of the question for him. This week, he had drawn praise in some corners for clearly outlining the terms under which his university would take action against its encampment.

On his blog Thursday, Roth said the Brown and Northwestern agreements “might show the way” toward a similar resolution at Wesleyan, and that the school has communicated with its own protesters. He added that the school would “much prefer to talk with protesters about things we can do as an institution to address the war in Gaza” rather than make arrests or issue suspensions. (Roth did not return a JTA request for comment.)

Yet at Northwestern, the Jewish backlash to the deal has been severe. Besides Benmelech, six other Jewish members, including the director of the campus Hillel, resigned from the antisemitism committee before its dissolution, citing their disapproval of the deal. In their resignation letter, they said they were not consulted on the agreement. They also said their committee — which, like other antisemitism task forces at other universities, was formed in recent months in the hopes of addressing campus unrest over Israel — had been unable to reach a consensus on whether or how to condemn antisemitism at the encampment.

“In light of the University leadership’s decision not to utilize the committee for its stated purpose, we can no longer continue to serve in this role,” the committee members wrote.

Following the statement, Northwestern’s student newspaper reported Thursday that the remaining committee members had informed Schill that “the committee as currently constituted cannot continue to function.” They added that they hoped he would “pursue the Committee’s goals through other means,” potentially by forming a different committee.

NU Hillel Executive Director Michael Simon declined to comment to JTA, and Benmelech declined to comment on Schill directly, though he rejected the narrative that the encampment’s dismantling was peaceful.

“Basically everyone gets away,” he said. “Everyone can violate university rules with impunity. What lessons do we teach those students? What lessons do we teach them as citizens? Disobey the rules, there’s no order, and you will be rewarded for that?”

One Jewish undergraduate student leader, who asked to remain anonymous, told JTA that Schill should resign, even though they were also “very glad the encampment is over.”

“I hope he will step down. I do not think he is fit to lead the university,” this student said, citing Schill’s failure to consult the task force and what they said was his failure to more strongly condemn antisemitic language, including the contentious pro-Palestinian phrase “From the river to the sea,” coming from the encampment.

Along with the ADL, StandWithUs and the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, two groups that often advocate on behalf of pro-Israel students, also called for Schill’s resignation.

Calls for a university president’s resignation over their perceived failure to address campus antisemitism have become a familiar tactic for Jewish groups since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war nearly seven months ago. The ousters of the presidents of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania followed an explosive congressional hearing about antisemitism on their campuses.

Now, as encampment protests mount and the specter of mass arrests and violence has become a reality at many universities, leaders may see the upside of making deals similar to Schill’s — and will have to weigh them against such opposition.

Asked what steps leadership should have taken to deescalate the protests instead, Schill’s critics offered solutions that they said wouldn’t involve bringing in police. Benmelech said the school should have done a better job identifying both students and non-students at the encampment, forcing them to remove masks when necessary, and handing down suspensions to anyone found in violation of university policy.

He also thought the university should have waited out the protesters: “If they will be patient enough, these encampments will die out.”

In a joint statement, the ADL, StandWithUs and the Brandeis Center said that universities could simply choose to do a better job to “enforce time, place and manner rules” for protests; prohibit common aspects of the encampments like tents and amplified sound; and remove threatening or antisemitic signage.

Whether such proposals could actually succeed in de-escalating the encampments, or even be accomplished without the aid of police, is an open question. But at a school with a much smaller Jewish community than Northwestern, one of the only Jewish faculty members said an agreement was the ideal path forward.

“This is the best way for change to happen,” Nancy Koppelman, a professor at Evergreen State who teaches classes on Israel and antisemitism, told JTA. She is one of the few visibly Jewish figures at the state school in Olympia, Washington, which does not have a Hillel or a Jewish studies department (Hillel International estimates the Jewish student body numbers around 90). She added that “things have de-escalated significantly” since this week’s agreement.

Koppelman, whose brother is a professor at Northwestern, described the encampment at Evergreen State as peaceful. But she also said she had been verbally targeted by protesters there, including some who called to boycott her class on Israel while refusing to meet with her, and believed it was a good thing the school worked to remove them.

“I think that they have some misinformation about me, which is very easy to do in a time like this,” she said, describing the attacks on her and her classes as antisemitic.

Anti-Israel activism has long been a fixture on Evergreen State’s campus, both before and after Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old Evergreen State graduate, was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer while protesting Israel’s occupation of Gaza in 2003. And some of the terms of Evergreen State’s deal seemed particularly friendly to the Israel boycott movement, including a promise to set up new “disappearing taskforces” specifically investigating the school’s financial ties to Israel, and a prohibition on studying abroad in Israel (or the Palestinian Territories) while the war is ongoing.

But Koppelman said neither provision was terribly concerning. As a public university, she noted, any divestment issues must go through the state government. And no Evergreen State student has studied abroad in Israel in at least two decades: “It doesn’t happen,” she said.

Regardless, Koppelman said, she is committed to trying to address and combat antisemitism through education — which she believes should be the goal of any university.

“Nothing would make me happier than for the people who boycotted my class to take it in the summer,” she said. Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona had a presentation ready on combating antisemitism in schools and universities — an issue that has been at the center of a burning debate in recent weeks over pro-Palestinian encampments at campuses nationwide.

But he had to present it twice, because at least five Jewish organizations boycotted the first meeting because they did not want to share the virtual room on Friday with progressive Jewish groups.

Representatives of the Jewish Federations of North America, the Anti-Defamation League, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the Orthodox Union and the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law dropped out of a Zoom meeting scheduled for 10 a.m. just minutes before its scheduled start.

Participants learned through texts that the Conference of Presidents was scrambling to get people to drop off the call because it had learned that several progressive groups were going to be on the call. Those groups included Bend the Arc, a social justice activist group; T’ruah, a rabbinic human rights group; Nexus, a group that offers resources and position papers on Israel and antisemitism; and the Diaspora Alliance, a group that combats antisemitism in conjunction with minority communities whose leaders have harshly criticized Israel’s actions. “I was really surprised not to see them there,” Jamie Beran, the Bend the Arc CEO, said in an interview about the missing organizations. Noting that a number of centrist and conservative groups did agree to join the call, she added, “And I was grateful to be with groups that are taking the safety of students seriously and putting politics aside.”

Nathan Diament, the Orthodox Union’s Washington director, did not want to discuss on the record why he and other officials requested the second meeting, except to note that the meeting was initiated by the Orthodox Union and the Anti-Defamation League, and would not have happened otherwise. A letter to Cardona spearhead by the O.U. and the ADL said that while the groups appreciated Cardona’s comments condemning antisemitism on campuses, “they are not at all sufficient to address the crisis.”

“We asked for a meeting within a week and we’re very appreciative that they responded and made it happen within a week,” Diament told JTA. “And so we had the meeting that we asked for.”

Hillel International, the umbrella Jewish campus group, had signed onto the ADL letter and had also been scheduled to attend but did not, according to officials invited to the call, although it was not clear if Hillel was boycotting.

Cardona agreed to re-run the call at 1 p.m. for the groups that boycotted the first call. About 20 groups were represented on the first call.

Groups boycotting the first call declined to speak on the record to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency until the second call was completed. One of the officials from this group said the Conference of Presidents had arranged the call and was blindsided by the addition of the progressive groups.

“It’s not a usual thing for a coalition to ask for a meeting for the meeting to be granted and then it turns out a different group of people are also invited,” said the official, who asked not to be identified to speak frankly about a sensitive matter.

Another factor was that a number of the progressive groups oppose the enshrining into law of a popular and controversial definition of antisemitism, known by the shorthand IHRA, which they see as too focused on criticism of Israel.

Nexus advances a different definition that gives a wider berth to criticism of Israel.

“There would be more groups which meant that each group would have less time to speak and that it would have less of the feel of a real meeting, as opposed to the government just says what it’s saying and we get very little opportunity to talk,” said the official from one of the boycotting groups. “Plus, there was a concern that there would be less uniformity among the groups because of the nature of the other groups who were getting on.”

The Department of Education did not return requests for comment.

Some officials of the groups that did participate — including groups that have good relationships with the boycotting groups — were stunned at their absence for what they regarded as a minor objection. They noted that groups that would be perceived as conservative, including the Orthodox Agudath Israel of America, and centrist, such as the American Jewish Committee, were in attendance. “It was not even left vs. right, it was just a small group of organizations that decided not to show up,” a participant said.

Also attending were liberal-leaning groups that work with the mainstream, such as the Reform movement, the Conservative movement, and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group, was represented by its student affiliate, J Street U.

The AJC’s CEO, Ted Deutch delivered opening remarks on behalf of the Jewish groups. Julie Fishman Rayman, the AJC managing director of policy and political affairs, said the meeting, which also included Neera Tanden, Biden’s domestic policy adviser, was productive. “The Secretary and the White House Domestic Policy Advisor acknowledged the fear and anxiety Jews are feeling at this moment and expressed eagerness to address them and the need to do more,” she said in an email.

The scramble by the Conference of Presidents to get people off the meeting was so last-minute that Kenneth Marcus, the chairman of the Brandeis Center, logged on for a minute, then wrote “I have to leave” in the chat, and logged off, according to two participants.

Cardona launched the meeting by noting the diversity of views on the call. The thrust of the appeal from department staffers was that its Office of Civil Rights was overwhelmed with requests to investigate civil rights violations at schools and universities, including antisemitism charges, among others.

The department had previously emphasized that complaints to the office were a welcome response to allegations of antisemitism on college campuses. An onslaught of complaints has ensued, many filed by Jewish groups and advocates, including the Brandeis Center.

Staffers are handling 50 cases at a time, said Catherine Lhamon, the assistant secretary who runs the Office of Civil Rights, and that it takes months to handle each case.

“Anyone who cares about Jewish safety on campus needs to support more resources for OCR to actually get through the backlog of Title VI investigations, which is the core tool we have to protecting the civil rights of Jewish students and all students on campus,” Amy Spitalnick, the JCPA CEO, said in an interview.

Kevin Rachlin, the Washington director of Nexus, said the Republicans in Congress now pledging to massively increase oversight of universities as a means of protecting Jewish students also were calling for cuts of up to 25% of the funding for the Office of Civil Rights. “They clearly don’t like OCR, and if they really wanted to combat antisemitism on campuses right now, they will increase this funding,” he said.

Also raised was the need to balance free speech on campuses with the rights of Jewish students, some of whom have complained of being targeted and harassed by pro-Palestinian protesters, Beran said.

“The groups were really measured, saying that they need to protect free speech and students need to be protected from harassment,” she said of participants on the call.

Hours before the call, Cardona sent out a Dear Colleague letter to university presidents decrying reports of antisemitic harassment on campuses. “I am particularly disturbed by the sharp rise in antisemitism targeting Jewish students on some college campuses,” he said.

Diament said that on the second call, Cardona and others raised funding for OCR, which the groups appreciated. Diament said the groups pressed the department to provide greater clarity to universities on what constitutes antisemitism.

Only one group, the National Council of Jewish Women, was represented on both calls. Jewish Telegraphic Agency

[wat0n]

Well I look forward to seeing some support for that claim, you could be right but some data is called for here.

THE LAST JEW

Only one Jew remains in Yemen, U.N. says
A report on the treatment of religious minorities in conflict zones described a harrowing environment for Jews and Baha’is in Yemen

By
Gabby Deutch
March 14, 2022

Why is there just 1 Jew in Yemen and why has he been jailed by the Houthis since 2016?

Insofar as my argument goes I can start by showing you this:

Police Crack Down on Anti-Zionist Jews in Jerusalem.

If this were filmed in say London, Paris or Munich, I think few would argue that this was not blatant antisemitism, at least if the victims claimed that you'd be hard pressed to dismiss their claim and if you did it is you who'd then be called an antisemite.

If they harass bystanders like those in Mea Shearim do, no one would bat an eye if they were arrested.

It's funny though, those who don't care about the Jews who were mass murdered on October 7 now are suddenly concerned about them being arrested? Nonsense.

That depends on the specific Jew who feels persecuted I think. Orthodox, pious Jews were always opposed to a "State of Israel" but were sidelined - sometimes violently - by the militant Zionist movement in Israel and overseas some decades before the Holocaust too.

Many Orthodox Jews in Israel today are staunchly opposed to Zionism and often protest openly with Palestinians even to the extent of burning the Israeli flag. The modern state of Israel has never represented these Jews or their interests and in fact most Jews worldwide were also opposed to the creation of a state in Palestine, certainly before the Holocaust and even then many were reluctant.

Yet the Holocaust changed everything and indeed proved the Zionists were essentially right.

Each and every incident of antisemitism in the diaspora only reinforces this idea.

Some Jewish students might feel that way, others do not. Imagine protesting against the Third Reich at a University in say London in the 1930s and being accused of persecuting Germans or antigermansim.

The majority certainly does, even before October 7 2023.

It would have actually been wrong to harass German students in the 1930s over opposition to Nazi Germany. Particularly those Germans who were fleeing the Nazis.

[wat0n]

The Left doesn't run any university in the United States so this is a strange claim to make.

That doesn't stop them from trying

[skinster]

Last I checked, the student intifada has gone global in over 200 universities, on all continents, and has resulted in some divestments put into motion.

@Saeko, I was wondering how the resident hasbara troll would apologize for Zionists beating up, throwing fireworks, pepper-spraying etc., anti-Zionist students and having them and faculty arrested for protesting their involvement in the genocide, and he did not disappoint :

The police didn't intervene when students took over buildings and started limiting access to the rest of the community:

Ahh... now the guy who can't go five whole seconds without calling someone a "mass rape supporter" suddenly has a problem with ad-hominem attacks. Also, it's not an ad-hominem attack to call into question the credibility of a witness.

I lol'd here too. And the bits where this Zionist pretends to be anti segregationist and pro civil rights and whines about "harassment" while spending the last 200+ days defending that live streamed genocide. He is beyond parody.

Zionists making themselves victims once again ITT and on the ground in the universities is unbelievably typical and pathetic but I actually support them on this as it will radicalise people dealing with much quicker, having a front row to their bullshit. Those in the media, politicians and elsewhere who are demonising the students will also encourage further radicalisation of the students and again, I welcome it.

The entire divestment demand is nonsense. It was originally devised as a way to placate some folks while actually accomplishing nothing of substance. Truly nobody in finance and investment cares at all. Even the Israeli companies, who, if the truth were known, would not lose a farthing if every university in the US divested of all Israel based companies.

Nonsense.

Trump Biden blah.

Can you stop projecting your own obsessions on others? I highly doubt the students generation are spending much time considering voting for either of the pro-genocide crew.

Yet the Holocaust changed everything and indeed proved the Zionists were essentially right.

Zionism preceded the Holocaust and the Zionists were given a state by the British state for reasons that had nothing to do with Jewish safety, since they were amongst those sending boats of Jewish refugees back while they were attempting to flee the Nazis.

The Brits gave Jews Palestine to maintain division amongst Arabs in the region and serve as their military base there during a time of decolonialism following world war two, something the U.S. took over a couple of decades after. This is why the West is so firmly in defence of the genocidal state even during the last seven months; defence of its colony.

[Unthinking Majority]

You mean you’ve only just noticed this?

When did I indicate that?

I like how smug you are by pretending to so much smarter than everyone else. If you have a problem with me then just come out and say it instead of all of these passive aggressive weasel snipes. I've never been rude to you once I don't recall, so here's the first: fuck off.

[Unthinking Majority]

What "hate speech" is the Left defending?

View the video in the post I quoted in the reply you're responding to.

[skinster]

^ Your signature! If you opposed those things, you'd be supporting the students!

[Potemkin]

When did I indicate that?

I like how smug you are by pretending to so much smarter than everyone else. If you have a problem with me then just come out and say it instead of all of these passive aggressive weasel snipes. I've never been rude to you once I don't recall, so here's the first: fuck off.

Of course I’m smug. I am Potemkin. And passive-aggressive weasel snipes are my thing, it’s what I do. Don’t worry, it’s not you - I do this to everyone. And I ain’t gonna stop now, so you’d better get used to it.

[wat0n]

I lol'd here too. And the bits where this Zionist pretends to be anti segregationist and pro civil rights and whines about "harassment" while spending the last 200+ days defending that live streamed genocide. He is beyond parody.

Zionists making themselves victims once again ITT and on the ground in the universities is unbelievably typical and pathetic but I actually support them on this as it will radicalise people dealing with much quicker, having a front row to their bullshit. Those in the media, politicians and elsewhere who are demonising the students will also encourage further radicalisation of the students and again, I welcome it.

Shitty excuses for supporting the return of numerus clausus ("bwaaaah mommy they called me out bwaaah!!"), but unsurprising coming from mass rape supporters like you two.

Zionism preceded the Holocaust and the Zionists were given a state by the British state for reasons that had nothing to do with Jewish safety, since they were amongst those sending boats of Jewish refugees back while they were attempting to flee the Nazis.

The Brits gave Jews Palestine to maintain division amongst Arabs in the region and serve as their military base there during a time of decolonialism following world war two, something the U.S. took over a couple of decades after. This is why the West is so firmly in defence of the genocidal state even during the last seven months; defence of its colony.

The Brits indeed had their own goals in supporting Zionism, but the core argument for the Jews to establish a state to exercise their self-determination ("Jews will never be allowed to integrate into European and other societies as equal subjects") was still proven correct with the Holocaust.

Many Jews opposed Zionism because they disagreed with Herzl's thesis that Jews would not be allowed to integrate as equal subjects in Europe and elsewhere... Until the Holocaust showed he had a point.

Even nowadays his point is still valid, although I would be fine with Israelis and Palestinians voting to become a single binational/civic state. The only problem is that strong majorities of both reject this idea, even among one staters its either a single Jewish state (among Israeli Jews) or a single Arab state (among Palestinians). This is proven by most if not all polls actually asking them.

If you really want that then support two states, support a gradual improvement of relations between them and then support a merging of both into a single binational/civic one after the two corresponding referenda asking both Israelis and Palestinians to vote on the matter.

[Rich]

The Brits gave Jews Palestine to maintain division amongst Arabs in the region

The British promised Palestine to the Jews in return for bringing America into the war in WW1. Britain did not vote for the Partition Plan recongising it as the fraud that it was. At the time when we made the Balfour declaration, were looking to unite Arabs against the Ottomans not divide them. Winston Churchill wanted the land bridge. Initially he wanted the landbridge from the Cape to the Med. Hence why he was so keen to ally with Russia and France and get in ot a war with Germany so Britain could seize the German colonies.

Once the Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of the Central Powers, which Churchill had done his best to provoke, Churchill saw the opportunity to extend the land bridge all the way to Burma and possibly at some point even Singapore. However to achieve this he need Russia to accede to Persia becoming a British protectorate. This was a big ask, a really big ask. Hence Gallipoli. Churchill's plan was to capture the Constantinople and the straits and then trade them with Russia in exchange for British domination of Persia.

By 1917 Churchill was out of government. The Balfour declaration exposed that there had been a back door deal between the British government and the Jewish bankers to bring America into the war in exchange for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Now people have argued that the US would have entered the war anyway. This may or not be the case, ti is however irrelevant, a deal had been made and the British Government clearly considered it unwise to welsh on their side of the deal