The Nation: “Student Encampments Aren’t a Danger to Jews. But the Crackdown Is”

“The narrative of protesters endangering Jewish students has been used to justify police repression. But at the Columbia encampment, I saw a commitment to confronting antisemitism.”

Journalist Hadas Thier has written a good article for The Nation magazine giving an insider’s look at the anti-genocide demonstrations happening on American campuses.

The article is titled “Student Encampments Aren’t a Danger to Jews. But the Crackdown Is.”

Here is a brief excerpt:

. . . Since then, the story of protesters endangering and threatening Jewish

Photo-by-Gabriella-Gregor-Splaver

students has been used to justify the brutal repression that they’ve been met with. But I spent the last week speaking to students across many campus encampments, and last Wednesday I made my way to Columbia’s encampment to get a picture of it for myself. My experience was decidedly different from the story we’ve been fed.

In the middle of the lawn, surrounded by a low buzz of students sitting in study circles, making art, pointing out a hawk that flew nearby, working on laptops, I met Atesh, a Columbia student who asked to be identified only by his first name for fear of reprisal. He told me how meaningful it was for him to participate in his first Passover seder with about 100 other students and professors on the lawn. There, Jewish students had led their peers in songs and rituals. The Passover seder is a Jewish tradition that celebrates liberation and is rooted in community, inquiry, and questioning. It was a fitting celebration for the encampment.

As Atesh was talking to me, another student approached us, looking for a Jewish member of the encampment to connect with. Atesh shrugged and said, “We’re all Jewish. We’re all Palestinian.”

Later that day, I sat on the lawn with nearly 200 students to listen to Jewish students lead a teach-in about antisemitism. Some discussed their experiences growing up in predominantly Christian towns where pennies were thrown at them and conspiracy theories about Jews were ubiquitous. Others shared their impressions of why so many American Jewish communities feel connected to their Israeli counterparts and why conversations about Palestine are difficult to have. A few recounted why their opposition to the current war is rooted in their traditions and observance of Judaism. All of them expressed discomfort at having to take center stage. But they felt an obligation to do so because of the ways in which the “safety of Jewish students” has become a disingenuous rallying cry of everyone from liberal college presidents to MAGA-aligned politicians.

I am an Israeli-born Jew who has been involved in Palestine activism for over 20 years, and I have never experienced the level of solidarity and the depth of understanding about antisemitism that I am seeing across college campuses right now. In the past, I had seen antisemitism only on the fringe of the movement, turning up through an occasional odd and unsettling poster at a protest, summarily dismissed and removed by organizers. At the center of the movement, I always felt welcome and comfortable as an Israeli-born Jew. But, still, until the recent phase of the new movement for Palestine emerged on American campuses last fall, I had never before witnessed such a deliberate commitment to learning about and confronting antisemitism head on. . . 

. . . “It is not that they care about Jewish students,” JVP [Jewish Voice for Peace] member Maya, told me. “They actually care about Zionist students.” Among those arrested and suspended were many Jewish students, she said. “They do not care about the safety of the Jewish students that are in the camp or that are part of this movement. And they’ve shown that by arresting and by attempting to erase the fact that we even exist.” Anti-Zionist Jews, she explained, “are not part of [the administration’s] fight against antisemitism.” . . .

You can read the entire article here.

Counterpunch: “The Distortion of Campus Protests Over Gaza”

Helen Benedict has posted a good story at Counterpunch magazine investigating the student protests launched against the Gaza genocide.

The article is titled “The Distortion of Campus Protests Over Gaza.” I include a brief excerpt below:

. . . Even as the now-notorious student tent encampment there stretches through its second week, all is calm. Inside the camp, students sleep, eat, and sit on bedspreads studying together and making signs saying, “Nerds for Palestine,” “Passover is for Liberation,” and “Stop the Genocide.” The Jewish students there held a seder on Passover. The protesters even asked faculty to come into the encampment and teach because they miss their classes. Indeed, it’s so quiet on campus that you can hear birds singing in the background. The camp, if anything, is hushed.

Those protesters who have been so demonized, for whom the riot police are waiting outside — the same kinds of students Columbia University’s president, Minouche Shafik, invited the police to arrest, zip-tie, and cart away on April 18th — are mostly undergraduate women, along with a smaller number of undergraduate men, 18 to 20 years old, standing up for what they have a right to stand up for: their beliefs. Furthermore, for those who don’t know the Columbia campus, the encampment is blocking nobody’s way and presents a danger to no one. It is on a patch of lawn inside a little fence buffered by hedges. As I write, those students are not preventing anyone from walking anywhere, nor occupying any buildings, perpetrating any violence, or even making much noise. (In the early hours of April 30th, however, student protesters did occupy Hamilton Hall in reaction to a sweep of suspensions the day before.)

As a tenured professor at Columbia’s Journalism School, I’ve been watching the student protests ever since the brutal Hamas attack of October 7th, and I’ve been struck by the decorum of the protesting students, as angry and upset as they are on both sides. This has particularly impressed me knowing that several students are directly affected by the ongoing war. I have a Jewish student who has lost family and friends to the attack by Hamas, and a Palestinian student who learned of the deaths of her family and friends in Gaza while she was sitting in my class.

Given how horrific this war is, it’s not surprising that there have been a few protesters who lose control and shout hideous things, but for the most part, such people have been quietly walked away by other students or campus security guards. All along, the main messages from the students have been “Bring back our hostages” on the Israeli side and “Stop slaughtering Gazan civilians” on the antiwar and pro-Palestinian-rights side. Curiously enough, those messages are not so far apart, for almost everyone wants the hostages safe and almost everyone is calling for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take a different direction and protect the innocent. . . 

You can read the entire article here.

Everything the Corporate Media is Telling Us About Campus Protests is Wrong

Journalist, editorialist and former lawyer, Briahna Joy Gray, explains the motivations and concerns of the campus protests now sweeping the world.

Guess what. The truth about student protesters has nothing to do with the anti-demonstration messaging coming from the corporate media and the political class.

“Words are not violence; Zionism is.”

Check Out My Recent Article in the “Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies”

Today the Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies published my article  titled “Echoes of Slavery, Racial Segregation and Jim Crow: American Dispensationalism and Christian Zionist Bible-Reading.”

Below is the abstract, that is a brief summary of the article:

The apologetics of pro-slavery, pro-segregation Christians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were identical to the methods of biblical interpretation used by Dispensationalist Christian Zionists today. The ideology’s specific rules of ‘literal interpretation’ and ‘antecedent theology’ led both groups to similar conclusions about slavery and racial segregation, on the one hand, and Jewish privilege and Palestinian displacement, on the other. Abolitionist efforts to promote a Christ–like hermeneutic rooted in Christian morality points the way forward to correcting modern theologies, such as Dispensationalist Christian Zionism, that continue to sanction human oppression.

I believe that clicking the highlighted title above will allow access to the article online. However, if this does not work for you, let me know and I can send you a copy.

Yes, I too am disappointed by the numerous formating and editorial errors in my article. Yuck! Unfortunately, it is too late for me to do anything about it now…sigh…

Jewish Student Explains the Difference Between Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism

Jewish students have been in the lead of the current anti-genocide campus protests. Here a Jewish student at Columbia clearly explains the difference between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, a distinction that our corporate media, as well as Congress, is working hard to erase.

Former Israeli Soldier Admits: You Can’t be a Moral Occupier

Breaking the Silence is an Israeli organization made up of former soldiers. They share similar stories. The majority did their tour of duty in the Occupied Territory (the West Bank). Upon reflecting on their behavior when they wore the uniform; after thinking about the ways they treated Palestinians, all develop a guilty conscience. In order to ‘atone’ for their sins, and to educate the Israeli public about the evils of occupation, they tell their stories

Below is one recent example dealing with Gaza:

More Than 700 Bodies Discovered in Two Mass Graves Near Gaza Hospitals

One mass gravesite is near Al Shifa hospital. The other is near Nasser hospital. Both hospitals have been demolished by Israeli forces.

Many of the corpses have their hands tied together.

Many are women. Some are children.

Others are wearing hospital gowns. Some even have the IV drip tubes still attached to their arms.

I have posted a selection of video reports below. Since most are age restricted I have enclosed the URL in quotation marks. Simply copy the URL to your web browser in order to watch:

“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhsRRGvl1dc”

“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clg-x1dchv8”

“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcZ4_dZ8WZU”

 

Nowhere is Safe in Gaza, Not Even in the So-Called ‘Safe Zones’

An NBC investigative report demonstrates the frequency with which Israel continues to bomb areas and travel routes that have been designated by Israeli officials as “safe zones.”

Destitute Palestinians travel to areas where they were told they would remain safe from attack, only to be bombed, shot and terrorized in their  freshly erected makeshift homes.

It’s as if the ‘safe zones’ were deliberately designed holding pens created to ensure a higher percentage of civilian targets for Israeli bombs.

There is LITERALLY no safe place in Gaza today. Watch:

 

“Why Young American Jews are Turning on Israel”

One important fact that the mainstream media will not tell you about the current anti-war protests condemning Israel’s assault on Palestinians in Gaza is that many of the leaders and participants are Jewish Americans.

Two important Jewish organizations — If Not Now and Jewish Voice for Peace — are leading the way in these student protests.

Remember this the next time you hear someone accuse these protests of being “antisemitic.”

They are not anti-semitic. That is a standard Zionist lie used to distract from the real issues.

Rather, they are anti-war, anti-genocide, pro-Palestinian, pro-humanity.

Simone Zimmermann is a young Jewish woman, and cofounder of the Jewish organization IfNotNow, who is also one of the creators of the important, recent film Israelism. I encourage everyone to watch this story of how an increasing number of young Jewish Americans are turning away from Zionism and embracing the just cause of Palestinian liberation.

Rob Dalrymple: “When Injustice Isn’t Injustice and Justice is Injustice”

Several  months ago Christianity Today produced a video series intended to justify Israel’s war against the people of Gaza.

My friend, Dr. Rob Dalrymple, has watched these videos and in the  process

Gaza’s Al Shifa hospital after it’s destruction by Israel

of writing a series of responses to these heavily prejudiced productions.

Rob’s second post is titled “When Injustice Isn’t Injustice and Justice is Injustice.” I encourage you to read both posts. Below is a brief excerpt from post number two:

As the church, we are called to cry out against injustice. We are to weep with those who suffer injustices. We are to condemn those who commit injustice. And we are to demand justice; especially for the sake of the oppressed.

Yet, when it comes to the actions of Israel we get a little uneasy. (Even this last sentence is sure to ruffle some feathers).

When the conversation turns to Israel and its assault on Gaza, some unwritten (though they are practically written on stone) rules are invoked before the conversation is allowed to proceed.

First, there must be an unequivocal condemnation of Hamas. Check.

This includes their attack on Oct 7 and their stated goal of annihilating Israel. Check.

Second, there must be a complete acknowledgment of Israel’s existential fear of annihilation. Check

Third, there must be a condemnation of antisemitism. Check.

Once these boxes are all checked, the conversation may continue.

You can read the entire post here.