Israel-Hamas War 2023

[grumbler]

Slogans heard at Columbia:

"We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground!"

"Al-Qassam you make us proud! Take another soldier out!"

"Hamas, we love you! We support your rockets, too!"

"Red, black, green, and white, we support Hamas' fight!"

"It is right to rebel, al-Qassam, give them hell!

Not that catchy, but Josq has told me that nobody supports Hamas.

Where were you "at Columbia" that you heard these statements?  Or was it just a dream?

[grumbler]

Actually Jewish students were specifically warned to stay home because campus was not safe, by an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi who works there. The later cancellation of all in person classes occurred after that.

The statements and actions of random individuals does not constitute university policy.  The university can cancel classes.  Random rabbi cannot.

No one said otherwise. Raz stated that Jewish students were told to stay off campus—and they were.

But they were also told to stay on campus, so they were not.  No one "told" them anything but the university, and the university told everyone to take classes remotely. The private statements of private citizens isn't relevant.

[grumbler]

To deescalate the rancor and give us all a chance to consider next steps, I am announcing that all classes will be held virtually on Monday. Faculty and staff who can work remotely should do so; essential personnel should report to work according to university policy. Our preference is that students who do not live on campus will not come to campus.

During the coming days, a working group of Deans, university administrators and faculty members will try to bring this crisis to a resolution. That includes continuing discussions with the student protestors and identifying actions we can take as a community to enable us to peacefully complete the term and return to respectful engagement with each other. I know that there is much debate about whether or not we should use the police on campus, and I am happy to engage in those discussions. But I do know that better adherence to our rules and effective enforcement mechanisms would obviate the need for relying on anyone else to keep our community safe. We should be able to do this ourselves.

Over the past days, there have been too many examples of intimidating and harassing behavior on our campus. Antisemitic language, like any other language that is used to hurt and frighten people, is unacceptable and appropriate action will be taken. We urge those affected to report these incidents through university channels. We also want to remind everyone of the support available for anyone adversely affected by current events.

There are different ways to interpret this statement, but it certainly seems like anti-semitic harassment was an important motivating factor in the closure.

I think that, if you read it closely, it explicitly talks about "antisemitic language" as the specific example of the "many examples of intimidating and harassing behavior on our campus," so I don't agree that this could reasonably be interpreted otherwise.

[Razgovory]

Slogans heard at Columbia:

"We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground!"

"Al-Qassam you make us proud! Take another soldier out!"

"Hamas, we love you! We support your rockets, too!"

"Red, black, green, and white, we support Hamas' fight!"

"It is right to rebel, al-Qassam, give them hell!

Not that catchy, but Josq has told me that nobody supports Hamas.

Where were you "at Columbia" that you heard these statements?  Or was it just a dream?

Read it in a news article.

[Admiral Yi]

The first time I scanned Raz's list of genocide chants I thought fuck, expel them all.

Second read through I noticed they're all directed to Israel proper.  Nothing threatening to Jews at Columbia or in the US.  So maybe no expulsion?

[Josquius]

Got to love the double standards continuing to be at play from some.
Endlessly pressing how bad anti semitism has gotten yet the rise in islamophobia?
Not a peep.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-anti-muslim-incidents-hit-record-high-2023-due-israel-gaza-war-2024-04-02/

[Admiral Yi]

Got to love the double standards continuing to be at play from some.
Endlessly pressing how bad anti semitism has gotten yet the rise in islamophobia?
Not a peep.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-anti-muslim-incidents-hit-record-high-2023-due-israel-gaza-war-2024-04-02/

We peeped the Vermont attack.  At least one peep.

[Razgovory]

Yeah, there has been quite a bit about this.  Many, many peeps.  Keep in mind CAIR is a somewhat dodgy organization.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/california-muslim-leader-warns-about-polite-zionists-drawing-rebuke-from-adl/

California Muslim leader warns about 'polite Zionists,' drawing rebuke from ADL
Activist Zahra Billoo tells pro-Palestinian conference to monitor 'Zionist synagogues'; Anti-Defamation League calls speech 'vile, antisemitic, conspiracy-laden garbage'

. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA — A Muslim civil rights attorney and activist is drawing criticism, including accusations of antisemitism, from local and national Jewish organizations after a November 27 speech.

Zahra Billoo leads the San Francisco office of CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

In her speech, which drew attention after excerpts were republished by the Israel-advocacy website Israellycool on Dec. 2, she asked attendees gathered at a pro-Palestinian conference in Chicago to focus on not only extreme right-wing forces, but also "polite Zionists," including the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Federations, Hillel and "Zionist synagogues."



"When we talk about Islamophobia, we think oftentimes about the vehement fascists," Billoo said.

"But I also want us to pay attention to the polite Zionists. The ones that say, 'Let's just break bread together.'"

"They are not your friends," she said.


In the speech, delivered at an annual conference of American Muslims for Palestine, Billoo described a well-funded campaign to bolster Islamophobia around the world and an interconnected network of Zionist-supporting organizations working to harm Muslims.


She also repeated a false claim, one that circulates among some left-wing activist groups, that "police officers in the United States who kill unarmed black men, women and children are trained by the Israeli military."

A number of Jewish organizations offered harsh criticisms of her comments, saying they echoed antisemitic tropes of Jewish power and control.

The ADL's national director Jonathan Greenblatt issued a searing rebuke, calling the comments "textbook vile, antisemitic, conspiracy-laden garbage attacking the mainstream US Jewish community."

The San Francisco-based office of the Jewish Community Relations Council also excoriated the speech in a statement, calling it "antisemitic and deplorable, seeking to divide and besmirch efforts at cooperation and coexistence."

The incident illustrated the political chasm that separates many mainstream Jewish organizations from pro-Palestinian Muslim activists on the subject of Israel, even as they may agree on other political issues such as gun control, immigrant rights and combating racism.

The statements were also a rebuke of not only right-wing, pro-settlement religious Zionism, but also more moderate Zionist views widely held in the American Jewish community. According to a recent Pew survey, roughly 8 in 10 American Jews say they feel a connection to Israel and that it is an important part of their Jewish identity.

Billoo said during the speech she does not support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "Allah has promised us victory," she said.

Billoo, a member of CAIR since 2009, is a celebrated civil rights attorney with a law degree from UC Hastings who appears in television news interviews and newspapers.

Over the last 12 years she has helped pursue civil rights lawsuits against Southwest Airlines, Abercrombie & Fitch and the US Justice Department, and has won accolades for her work. She has also partnered with a left-leaning Jewish group for at least one 2019 event.

In 2016, a few weeks after Donald Trump was elected president, Billoo posted on Facebook, "He's going to do to you Muslims what Hitler did to the Jews."

In 2019 Billoo became one of a handful of Women's March organizers who either left or were removed from organizing roles amid claims of anti-Israel animosity and antisemitism. Her removal came after criticism from the ADL and others stemming from a 2015 tweet in which she wrote: "I'm more afraid of racist Zionists who support Apartheid Israel than of the mentally ill young people the FBI recruits to join ISIS."

Billoo and the national office of CAIR did not respond to a request for comment.

In the end, CAIR supported her https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/cair-supports-member-that-said-zionist-synagogues-behind-islamophobia-688510

[viper37]

Slogans heard at Columbia:

"We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground!"

"Al-Qassam you make us proud! Take another soldier out!"

"Hamas, we love you! We support your rockets, too!"

"Red, black, green, and white, we support Hamas' fight!"

"It is right to rebel, al-Qassam, give them hell!

Not that catchy, but Josq has told me that nobody supports Hamas.

Ohhh.  University students have radical leftists spouting anti war slogans!

It's a first!  Stop the press!

[Razgovory]

"Burn Tel Aviv to the ground" is a very unorthodox anti-war slogan

[viper37]

"Burn Tel Aviv to the ground" is a very unorthodox anti-war slogan

I remember plenty of protests against war that turned violent.

I do remember reading about riots during the US Civil War and then during the Vietnam war.

Between a riot an "Burn tel Aviv to the ground"  I think I'll take the moron with the hate speech.

Besides, isn't hate speech protected in the US?  Isn't this a value dear to everyone and particularly the GOP and its supporters, without any limits?

[Admiral Yi]

I remember plenty of protests against war that turned violent.

I do remember reading about riots during the US Civil War and then during the Vietnam war.

Between a riot an "Burn tel Aviv to the ground"  I think I'll take the moron with the hate speech.

Besides, isn't hate speech protected in the US?  Isn't this a value deer to the right and particularly the GOP and its supporters, without any limits?

"Kill the enemy" is not an anti war slogan.  It's a pro war slogan.

[OttoVonBismarck]

David Horowitz explains this situation well:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-goal-of-the-campus-jew-haters-to-render-israel-indefensible-in-both-senses-of-the-word/

The leftists who this very day are working to effect a mass genocide on the Jews of Israel must be seen for the true, genuine evil that they are--the moral stain on them shall last forever.

The goal of the campus Jew-haters: To render Israel indefensible, in both senses of the word

The aggression against Israel and Jews would not be tolerated if aimed at any other minority; its defenders are unforgivably prioritizing free speech above the intended deadly consequences

Pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protesters hold a march against Israel outside Columbia University in New York City on April 18, 2024. (Kena Betancur/AFP)
This Editor's Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI's weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor's Notes as they're released, join the ToI Community here.

While Jews have been celebrating the first days of Passover, the ancient festival of freedom, antisemites and their useful idiot collaborators on a swelling number of American university campuses have been rallying and issuing murderous threats in a strategic effort to end Jewish freedom, in the here and now, by destroying the world's only Jewish majority state.

The underlying goal of the encampments and marches at Columbia, Yale, NYU and the other campuses is to render Israel indefensible — in both senses of the word.

The strategy:

First, to misrepresent what Israel has been subjected to and how it has responded since Hamas invaded our country on October 7, slaughtered 1,200 people, abducted 253 hostages, and then hid behind and beneath Gaza's civilians in a bid to survive and do it all again.

Second, to falsely brand Israel as a brutal and indifferent aggressor, solely responsible for a soaring Gaza death toll that would, in fact, total precisely zero were it not for Hamas's genocidal ambitions for the Jews and indifference to the lives of Gazan civilians.

Third, to build pressure for divestment from Israel, for an end to military aid, and ultimately for the severing of Israel's vital alliance with the United States.

And, finally, to thus deprive Israel of the diplomatic and military means to survive the ongoing effort at its destruction, as effected by Iran and its allies and proxies.

At the root of this strategy is, of course, the oldest of hatreds.

The antisemitism is stirred in this case by Muslim extremists, racists, ignoramuses and self-hating Jews; "inspired" on social media, and partly funded openly and covertly by states seeking Israel's demise.

And it is being tolerated in an environment that seems to prioritize limitless free speech over the violent consequences of the abuse of that freedom.

To the university administrations and faculty members defending, enabling and even rallying in support of the activists' ostensible rights to viciously denounce Israel and Jews with calls to burn Tel Aviv, kill soldiers and threaten Jewish students with murder by Hamas, one must put the question: Is the right to free speech unlimited, to be upheld even when the goal and likely potential consequence is deadly?

As the British-Palestinian writer John Aziz has noted, this is "the rhetoric of mass murder."

Were this level of hatred and aggression directed at any other minority group, it is hard to imagine that it would be indulged and tolerated, even at the price of limiting free speech.

But targeting the planet's only Jewish majority state — and extending the hostility to Jews on campus and beyond — is evidently considered an exception, forgivable, even admirable.

That again, all you ostensibly ultra-humane and decent people who support these protests, is antisemitism.

The initial goal of this inexcusably tolerated murderous hostility is to aid in Israel's demise — by establishing our country as a pariah state, and rendering it untenable to be associated with, defended or protected. Protected, that is, from the amoral, rapacious, misogynistic, homophobic, and potent enemies who, as I write, are firing rockets from the north (Hezbollah), trying to do so from the south (Hamas), and advancing toward obtaining nuclear weapons in the east (Iran).

But if those enemy states, terrorist armies and their facilitators get done with Israel, they'll be coming for Jews everywhere (and, no, membership in Jewish Voice for Peace won't help), and, for that matter, for every other minority deemed unacceptable (sorry, Queers for Palestine).

At our family Seder night this year, I understood properly for the first time how it was that Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon, studying the story of the Exodus in Bnei Brak almost 2,000 years ago with their own urgent preoccupations, would, of course, have been talking all night, until their students came to remind them it was time for morning prayer.

And I thought at length for the first time — forgive me — of what it must have been like for Jews three or so generations ago to read the Haggadah during the Holocaust, trying to celebrate ancient deliverance while seeking to escape contemporaneous genocide.

With 133 Israelis absent from the Seder, held in captivity by the monstrous Hamas, in a nation still coming to terms with October 7 — with our loss, vulnerability and the surging global hostility to the very fact of our existence — passage after passage took on immediate and extreme relevance.

How could it not?

[viper37]

I remember plenty of protests against war that turned violent.

I do remember reading about riots during the US Civil War and then during the Vietnam war.

Between a riot an "Burn tel Aviv to the ground"  I think I'll take the moron with the hate speech.

Besides, isn't hate speech protected in the US?  Isn't this a value deer to the right and particularly the GOP and its supporters, without any limits?

"Kill the enemy" is not an anti war slogan.  It's a pro war slogan.

It's a radical leftist slogan.  People who destroy property, people who attack cops and journalists, people who set fire to everything they find their hands on.  People who believe it's a wise idea to guillotine bankers and seize their money.  That sort of people.

It's hardly new or exclusive to the Pro-Palestinian camp.

And as I said, your country believes in absolute free speech.  Hate speech should be tolerated according to most Americans, we've had this discussion before.  Don't act all offended when it does not go the way you want it.

Just print your own sign saying you'll burn Teheran to the ground and organize a counter protest with OvB and Raz.  Print some saying all of Gaza should be depopulated.  I don't know.  It's your country, it's legal.

Just don't have people come here whining about that hate speech crap.

[viper37]

The goal of the campus Jew-haters: To render Israel indefensible, in both senses of the word

All 5 of them?

Good luck!