OMNI
STUDENT PROTESTS AGAINST ISRAELI COLONIAL SETTLEMENTS, ATROCITIES, AND GENOCIDE AGAINST PALESTINIANS, #2
December 28, 2024
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and
Ecology, 2024
https://omnicenter.org/donate
What’s at Stake: Michael Roth,president of Wesleyan University,argues that
universities should protect campus-wide free, non-violent
exchange of ideas. “It’s
almost the end of the school year, and more than once I’ve been asked, “Don’t I
wish we had just made it through a couple of more weeks without incident?”
Mostly … no. How can I not respect students for paying attention to things that
matter so much? I respect that they’re concerned about Gaza; I admire that
they’re not entirely taken up with grades or lining up their credentials. . . .I
would prefer they use their energies to pressure the U.S. government to do more
to get the hostages released, to stop supporting Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu’s war tactics, and to bring more direct aid to people in
Gaza on the brink of starvation. My team expects to discuss all of this with
students in the coming days. Right now, I’m most concerned with protecting
their right to protest in nonviolent ways that don’t undermine our educational
program. For me, the modest violations of the rules are preferable to the
narrow-minded vocationalism that others seem suddenly to pine for.”
CONTENTS STUDENT
PROTESTS AGAINST ISRAELI ATROCITIES #2
John Clarke. “Truth
Takes a Side.”
Chris Hedges’“Israel’s Willing
Executioners.”
David Spero. “Contrived Charges of
Antisemitism are the New ‘Red Scare’.”
Michael Roth. “Why I’m Not Calling the
Police on My Students.”
Henry Reynolds. “The West Believes that
Antisemitism Is a More Egregious Problem
than Genocide.”
Rabbi Arthur Waskow. “The New
Antisemitism: Colleges Invite Police to Pro-
Palestinian Camps.”
Rick Perlstein. “The New Antisemitism.” (police violence)
Janine Jackson. “Israeli Violence is
Legitimized and Palestinian Counter-Violence is
Delegitimized.” (Jackson interv. Gregory Shupak).
Nicholas Griffin. “The New Face of
Academic Freedom.”
Dick Bennett. “Teaching Peace During the
Decimation of Gaza.”
SOURCES
The American
Prospect
Canadian Dimension
Chris Hedges Report
CounterSpin
FAIR
The Link
Mondoweiss
Monthly Rev. org
OMNI
Pearls and Irritations
Shalom Center
TEXTS:
STUDENT PROTESTS AGAINST ISRAELI GENOCIDE #2
Inequality of Power
and ROOTS of Information Control
“Truth
takes a side.”
John Clarke. Mronline.org (7-15-24).
Understanding and truth are our best
weapons against an exploitative society based on lies. By John Clarke (Posted Nov
14, 2024).
Originally
published: Canadian Dimension on November
7, 2024 (more by Canadian Dimension). Imperialism, Inequality, Movements, Political EconomyGlobalNewswire
Whenever corporate magnates try to justify their
destructive greed or conservative politicians whip up hateful and
ignorant sentiments among their supporters, it is easy to appreciate that
power elites and the political right are the natural home of intellectual
dishonesty. We can see evidence of this all around us and examples abound.
As The Conversation has pointed out, the
major oil and gas companies “have understood since at least the 1960s that
burning fossil fuels causes climate change and then worked for decades to
undermine public understanding of this fact and to deny the underlying
science.”
Through the long months of the unfolding genocide in Gaza,
the shocking lies of Israeli spokespersons have become routine. The
Intercept points out that
Israel’s representatives and enablers constantly advance accusations or
justifications that “are either complete fabrications or have not been
substantiated with a shred of evidence.”
I’m not suggesting here that the left has an entirely
unblemished track record of truth-telling. Dogmatic approaches, wishful
thinking and even outright falsehoods are not unknown on our side. Still, those
who support and perpetuate systems of oppression and exploitation are
unavoidably driven into a swamp of lies, while the struggle for a just and
rational society lends itself to honest accounting.
Class lies
Any viewpoint that challenges capitalism as a system
of production holds that system to be inherently exploitative and unjust, and
aims to replace the existing system with a more egalitarian and sustainable
social order. For capitalists and their ideological enablers, however, no such
considerations can be entertained. They must deny or minimize the predatory
nature of their system and, above all else, defend it against all challenges.
In his History and Class Consciousness,
Hungarian socialist Georg Lukács grappled with these very questions.
He argued that,
for the capitalist class, “it is a matter of life and death to understand its
own system of production in terms of eternally valid categories: it must
think of capitalism as being predestined to eternal survival by the eternal
laws of nature and reason. Conversely, contradictions that cannot be
ignored must be shown to be purely surface phenomena, unrelated to this mode
of production.” Those who insist that the profit system is the
pinnacle of human achievement must part company with truth and reality “as soon
(they are) called upon to face problems that… point beyond the limits of
capitalism.”
The great problem for us is that the defenders of the
present order and the deceptions they peddle enjoy undue power and influence,
as we must reluctantly acknowledge. Indeed, their view of things is widely
regarded as received wisdom and it forms part of the official discourse. As
Marx and Engels famously noted in The
German Ideology,
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling
ideas.
These dominant ways of thinking may serve the purposes of
people like Elon Musk or Galen Weston, who refuse to acknowledge the
destructive irrationality of their relentless drive to accumulate or
question the narrowly individualistic view of society. For those of us who
struggle against the system, however, the “ruling ideas” are an encumbrance and
we need to develop very different ways of thinking.
The musings of billionaires, the pronouncements of leading
politicians and the version of events that we get from the corporate
media all reveal how the rich and powerful view the world and their own
place in it. We need to be alert to the common ways in which they misrepresent
and distort reality for their own advantage. The values and beliefs espoused
and propounded by the dominant members of society become so deeply entrenched
that they are taken for granted in public discourse. It is important to be aware
of such hidden assumptions and how they can underlie arguments about political,
social and economic issues and policies. When the mainstream media
reports on workers’ strike actions, for example, the coverage is almost always
focused on the question of disruption and adverse economic impacts. With rare
exceptions, the grievances of the workers are neglected or discounted and the
question of how much a strike victory would advance the interests of other
workers is simply not considered.
Of course, no conventional media report is ever going to
include a disclaimer that “this newspaper is owned by wealthy employers and, in
line with their interests, this article regards the needs of working people as
of little consequence, while viewing corporate profitability, narrowly
conceived, as of paramount importance.” Yet, precisely this assumption informs
the coverage of workers’ struggles in the corporate media.
Last month, I wrote a column for Canadian
Dimension discussing the dehumanization of Palestinian lives
underlying Western government attitudes and actions as well as mainstream media
coverage during the unfolding genocide in Gaza. I pointed out that “a sustained
process of slaughtering civilians with weapons supplied by Western governments
would not be possible without an assumption that the lives of the victims are
sufficiently cheap to render them expendable.” Again, no media outlet or
official spokesperson would openly acknowledge this racist bias, but it
is a potent factor in the West’s response nonetheless.
Selective reasoning
The approved discourse also relies heavily on highly
selective forms of reasoning and evidence-gathering. The corporate
media’s failure to look at events in context is key to understanding the skewed
nature of their news coverage. We are living in a period when social
explosions occur with great frequency, especially in the Global South. Few
months go by without people in one country or another coming into the streets
to protest the hardships imposed on them by Western corporations and local
elites. You would have to do a fairly diligent search of the major media
outlets to unearth even barebones information about the deep and longstanding
grievances that engender such uprisings. For the most part, a picture of
inexplicable and uncivilized riotous behaviour will shape the discourse
whenever people rise up and resist their oppression.
[THE TRUTH ABOUT GAZA]
The horrors that Israel is raining down on Gaza once again provide a
compelling example. Those intellectuals, journalists and organizations who have
sought to present an accurate account of the situation have driven home the
message that the history of Gaza did not begin October 7, 2023, and what
transpired on that day cannot be understood without considering how the Gaza
Strip was created and the conditions that have been imposed on the Palestinians
living there over generations, particularly in the last 17 years of Israeli
blockade and siege. Yet, save for the odd piece offered up pro forma in the
name of providing ‘balance,’ the mainstream media has consistently
trumpeted the message that the entire ‘conflict’ is attributable to a recent
unprovoked act of Palestinian brutality. Such an impressive feat has required
the most dogged forms of selectivity.
The evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote in The
Mismeasure of Man that “the invalid assumption that correlation
implies cause is probably among the two or three most serious and common
errors of human reasoning.” With this observation, he exposed the faulty logic
of many politicians and state bureaucrats, who cherry-pick evidence to support
their austerity-driven approach to public policy.
You will often hear it asserted that homelessness is
attributable to addiction and mental health issues. That there is a level of
correlation is undeniable and significant numbers of unhoused people certainly
contend with these issues in their lives. However, to fixate on this supposed
explanation is to divert attention from a glaring and obvious reality. The
factor that has driven the explosion of homelessness over recent years, as
Margot Kushel argues, has
been “the exorbitant cost of housing and the extreme shortage of housing
available for the lowest-income households.” Addiction and mental health issues
may make people more vulnerable to homelessness but the impacts of social
cutbacks and upscale redevelopment are the primary causal factors, as
unwelcome as this disclosure is to those who have driven these processes.
Flawed reasoning and self-delusion may meet the needs of
the ruling strata of our society we can be hip to their game and expose their
ruses to equate their interests with the common good. The occupier has
to create a false version of history but the fight for liberation
must paint an accurate picture. [See Spero on smearing protesters with
accusations of antisemitism. –D] Those who profit from the production of
fossil fuels are driven to conceal the terrible consequences of their actions
but the struggle for a just and sustainable society must look reality squarely
in the face. Understanding and truth are our best weapons against an
exploitative society based on lies.
I will leave the last word to someone who challenged
countless lies during his lifetime: Malcolm X. In a speech he
gave in New York City in 1964, he declared,
Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it’s against
the oppressor. You don’t need anything else.
John Clarke became an organiser with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty when it was
formed in 1990 and has been involved in mobilising poor communities under
attack ever since.
ERADICATION OF
GAZA
“Israel’s Willing
Executioners” by Chris Hedges, Read by
Eunice Wong.
Hundreds of thousands of
people are being forced to flee, once again, after more than half of Gaza's
population took sanctuary in the border town of Rafah. This is part of Israel's
sadistic playbook.
CHRIS HEDGES. MAY 14, 2024. Text originally
published May 13, 2024.
Run,
the Israelis demand, run for your lives. Run from Rafah the way you ran from
Gaza City, the way you ran from Jabalia, the way you ran from Deir al-Balah,
the way you ran from Beit Hanoun, the way you ran from Bani Suheila, the way
you ran from Khan Yunis. Run or we will kill you. We will drop 2,000-pound
bunker buster bombs on your tent encampments. We will spray you with bullets
from our machine-gun-equipped drones. We will pound you with artillery and tank
shells. We will shoot you down with snipers. We will decimate your tents, your
refugee camps, your cities and towns, your homes, your schools, your hospitals
and your water purification plants. We will rain death from the sky.
Run
for your lives. Again and again and again. Pack up the pathetic few belongings
you have left. Blankets. A couple of pots. Some clothes. We don’t care how
exhausted you are, how hungry you are, how terrified you are, how sick you are,
how old, or how young you are. Run. Run. Run. And when you run in terror to one
part of Gaza we will make you turn around and run to another. Trapped in a
labyrinth of death. Back and forth. Up and down. Side to side. Six. Seven.
Eight times. We toy with you like mice in a trap. Then we deport you so you can
never return. Or we kill you.
Let
the world denounce our genocide. What do we care? The billions in
military aid flows unchecked from our American ally. The fighter jets. The
artillery shells. The tanks. The bombs. An endless supply. We kill children
by the thousands. We kill women and
the elderly by
the thousands. The sick and injured, without medicine and hospitals, die.
We poison the
water. We cut off the food. We make you starve. We
created this hell. We are the masters. Law. Duty. A code of conduct. They do
not exist for us.
But
first we toy with you. We humiliate you.
We terrorize you. We revel in your fear. We are amused by your pathetic
attempts to survive. You are not human. You are creatures.
Untermensch. We feed our libido dominandi – our
lust for domination. Look at our posts on
social media. They have gone viral. One shows soldiers grinning
in a Palestinian home with the owners tied up and blindfolded in the
background. We loot.
Rugs. Cosmetics. Motorbikes. Jewelry. Watches. Cash.
Gold. Antiquities. We laugh at
your misery. We cheer your death. We celebrate our religion, our nation, our
identity, our superiority, by negating and erasing yours.
Depravity
is moral. Atrocity is heroism. Genocide is redemption.
Jean
Améry, who was in the Belgian resistance during World War II and who was
captured and tortured by the Gestapo in 1943, defines sadism “as the radical
negation of the other, the simultaneous denial of both the social principle and
the reality principle. In the sadist’s world, torture, destruction, and death
are triumphant: and such a world clearly has no hope of survival. On the
contrary, he desires to transcend the world, to achieve total sovereignty by
negating fellow human beings – which he sees as representing a particular kind
of ‘hell.’”
Back
in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Netanya, Ramat Gan, Petah Tikva who are we? Dish
washers and mechanics. Factory workers, tax collectors and taxi drivers.
Garbage collectors and office workers. But in Gaza we are demigods. We can kill
a Palestinian who does not strip to his underwear, fall to his knees, beg for
mercy with his hands bound behind his back. We can do this to children as young
as 12 and men as old as 70.
There
are no legal constraints. There is no moral code. There is only the
intoxicating thrill of demanding greater and greater forms of submission and
more and more abject forms of humiliation.
We may
feel insignificant in Israel, but here, in Gaza, we are King Kong, a little
tyrant on a little throne. We stride through the rubble of Gaza, surrounded by
the might of industrial weapons, able to pulverize in an instant whole
apartment blocks and neighborhoods, and say, like Vishnu, “now I have become
death, the destroyer of worlds.”
But we
are not content simply with killing. We want the walking dead to pay homage to
our divinity.
This
is the game played in Gaza. It was the game played during the Dirty War in
Argentina when the military junta “disappeared” 30,000 of its own citizens. The
“disappeared” were subjected to torture – who cannot call what is happening to
Palestinians in Gaza torture? – and humiliated before they were murdered. It
was the game played in the clandestine torture centers and prisons in El
Salvador and Iraq. It is what characterized the war in Bosnia in the Serbian
concentration camps.
This
soul crushing disease runs through us like an electric current. It infects
every crime in Gaza. It infects every word that comes out of our mouths. We,
the victors, are glorious. The Palestinians are nothing. Vermin. They will be
forgotten.
Israeli
journalist Yinon Magal on the show “Hapatriotim” on Israel’s Channel 14, joked that
Joe Biden’s red line was the killing of 30,000 Palestinians. The singer Kobi
Peretz asked if that was the number of dead for a day. The audience erupted in
applause and laughter.
We
place "booby-trapped" cans resembling food tins in
the rubble. Starving Palestinians are injured or killed when they open them. We
broadcast the sounds of women screaming and babies crying from quadcopters to
lure Palestinians
out so we can shoot them. We announce food distribution points and use
artillery and snipers to carry out massacres.
We are
the orchestra in this dance of death.
In
Joseph Conrad’s short story “An Outpost of Progress,” he writes of two white,
European traders, Carlier and Kayerts. They are posted to a remote trading
station in the Congo. The mission will spread European “civilization” to
Africa. But the boredom and lack of constraints swiftly turn the two men into
beasts. They trade slaves for ivory. They get into a feud over dwindling food
supplies. Kayerts shoots and kills his unarmed companion Carlier.
“They
were two perfectly insignificant and incapable individuals,” Conrad writes of
Kayerts and
Carlier:
…whose
existence is only rendered possible through the high organization of civilized
crowds. Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character,
their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their
belief in the safety of their surroundings. The courage, the composure, the
confidence; the emotions and principles; every great and every insignificant
thought belongs not to the individual but to the crowd; to the crowd that
believes blindly in the irresistible force of its institutions and its morals,
in the power of its police and of its opinion. But the contact with pure
unmitigated savagery, with primitive nature and primitive man, brings sudden
and profound trouble into the heart. To the sentiment of being alone of one’s
kind, to the clear perception of the loneliness of one’s thoughts, of one’s
sensations – to the negation of the habitual, which is safe, there is added the
affirmation of the unusual, which is dangerous; a suggestion of things vague,
uncontrollable, and repulsive, whose discomposing intrusion excites the
imagination and tries the civilized nerves of the foolish and the wise alike.
Rafah
is the prize at the end of the road. Rafah is the great killing field where we
will slaughter Palestinians on a scale unseen in this genocide. Watch us. It
will be an orgy of blood and death. It will be of Biblical proportions. No one
will stop us. We kill in paroxysms of excitement. We are
gods.
The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication.
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From
GENOCIDE to Controlling Ideas and Speech: SMEARING, WITCH HUNTS.
David
Spero. “Contrived charges of
antisemitism are the new ‘Red Scare’.” Mondoweiss. contact@ifamericansknew.org September
19, 2024
Supporters
of Israel have resurrected McCarthy’s tactics, falsely labeling those who call
for peace in Palestine or an end to U.S. military aid to Israel ‘antisemites’ –
which does not make Jews safer.
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/09/contrived-charges-of-antisemitism-are-the-new-red-scare/
U.S.
Senator Joe McCarthy (R – WI, 1946-57) would have been proud. In the 1950s, McCarthy
led a series of hearings and shadowy ‘investigations, attacking
supporters of labor and progressive causes as ‘Communists.’ Evidence of
wrongdoing was not provided and not needed, only allegations. People lost their
jobs and their careers, faced hostile grilling by Congressional committees, and
were sent to prison after being accused of Communism by McCarthy and his
allies.
The “Red
Scare,” as it was called, came to resemble the witch hunts in 17th-century New
England. Now, supporters of Israel have resurrected McCarthy’s tactics,
condemning all who call for peace in Palestine or an end to U.S. military aid
to Israel as ‘antisemites.’
The new
McCarthyites smear as Jew-haters anyone who calls for a ceasefire
in Gaza or says “Free Palestine.” They have attacked universities, labor
unions, and school districts around the country. Current targets include
professors, doctors, students, and staff at my former employer, the University
of California at San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center.
Last
month, congressional Republicans sent a chilling letter to UCSF. They
threatened to stop Medicare and MediCal reimbursement, putting at risk the care
of thousands of desperately ill patients. The letter said Congress is
investigating “hundreds of complaints from UCSF employees and patients of
antisemitism and/or a hostile work environment.” These complaints were
conveniently “learned from confidential sources,” so no one can check them.
The
Congressional letter to UCSF offers little evidence of this supposed
antisemitism. They cite “calls for violence” at a short-lived protest
encampment, which were actually calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and Palestinian
freedom. They accuse medical professionals of wearing pro-Palestinian pins that
“discomfort” Jewish patients.
Nobody
has alleged a single case of patients being mistreated by those pin-wearing
caregivers, or of their even hearing an unkind word. At least one, though,
Denise Caramagno, the co-director of a UCSF counseling program, has been fired
because of her pro-Palestinian statements, which supposedly rendered her
incapable of caring for Jewish clients.
UCSF is
only the latest academic target of the witch hunters. Made-up antisemitism
charges have already cost professors their jobs, chilled teachers’ academic
freedom and students’ rights to free speech, and cost good schools millions of
dollars in donations. Elite university presidents
have been publicly grilled by Congress and forced to resign at schools
including Columbia and Harvard.
Three
administrators at Columbia were forced to resign this summer for saying or
tweeting things that were not anti-Jewish or untrue, but called up in some
minds “antisemitic tropes,” meaning ideas that
have historically been used by Jew-haters in other contexts.
The
witch hunt is now attacking the labor movement, opening “investigations” of the
United Auto Workers (UAW) who have called for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Congressional witch hunters are also ‘investigating’ high
schools in Berkeley and many other places for teaching about Arab history
or displaying Palestinian flags, which they say makes Jewish families
uncomfortable. Many Jewish families have spoken out to say they support the
schools, but the investigation goes on.
Jewish
organizations claiming to fight antisemitism have demanded changes to ethnic
studies and genocide studies curriculum to make lessons friendlier to Israel.
Bills have passed the California legislature to require those changes.
The
witch hunt is not meant to help Jewish people
These
charges of antisemitism especially ring hollow when it becomes clear that many
of the people supporting Palestine are Jewish themselves. Erasing this Jewish
presence in the pro-Palestine movement is the only way claims of antisemitism
become remotely plausible. But still, I know that some Jews feel threatened by
pro-Palestine sentiments in their workplace, streets or schools. I think their
fear is misplaced, but they’re being honest about it. However, other actors
behind these witch hunts are using antisemitism hysteria as a cynical weapon to
push their own agendas.
Israeli
leaders want to ensure a continued flow of arms and money from
U.S. taxpayers. U.S. militarists want to enable the spread of Israel’s
wars to nations like Iran and Lebanon, ensuring billions more in profits to
arms corporations. Christian Zionists want to frighten all Jews to
Israel so that Jesus will return, while right-wingers use antisemitism
charges to attack higher education. Republicans hope to woo Zionists
into the GOP. None of them care about Jewish people; all of them are
trying to suppress dissent against the American war machine.
Like all
demagogues, the modern witch hunters turn on its head. They cast calls for peace as
calls for violence. They say ‘Ceasefire now!’ is hate speech against Jews. But
criticizing the Israeli government is not anti-Jewish, and opposing ongoing
mass murder is not antisemitism. This campaign of slander is not about
protecting Jews.
Real
antisemitism is a terrible thing. It led to genocide during World War
II and Jews are rightly terrified of it. But this pretend antisemitism
dishonors the Jews who have actually suffered. It enables the crimes of rogue
governments like Israel and legitimizes the suppression of people from
Palestine to San Francisco.
It’s the
Red Scare all over again. Senator McCarthy tried to sink the U.S. into
fascism with his slanders and slurs. He did a lot of damage but ultimately
failed because Americans resisted his demonizing of activists. The Israel lobby
and its congressional enablers are taking us down McCarthy’s dark path, and
it’s up to us to stop them.
David
Spero is a journalist and activist for Palestinian rights
with Jewish Voice for Peace in the San Francisco Bay Area.
GLOBAL STUDENT
PROTESTS
Michael
S. Roth. “Why
I’m Not Calling the Police on My Students’ Encampment.”
[Universities should protect the free,
non-violent exchange of ideas, which includes freedom from intimation or
harassment.]
Roth
is the
president of Wesleyan University in Middletown,
Connecticut. His most recent books include Safe Enough Spaces: A
Pragmatist’s Approach to Inclusion, Free Speech, a nd Political Correctness on
College Campuses. We are
reprinting excerpts from his essay in The New Republic, and
urge you to read the whole article at: https://newrepublic.com/article/181341/wesleyan-president-not-calling-police-student-gaza-encampment. We
send it NOT as The Shalom Center policy but to more
richly inform you about the issues. https://theshalomcenter.org/shalomreport/why-im-not-calling-the-police-on-my-students-encampment [see the next entry] — AW, ed.
Michael
S. Roth. “Why
I’m Not Calling the Police on My Students’ Encampment.” May 7, 2024.
The encampment at Wesleyan University went up on the night of Sunday, April 28,
during a planned rally in support of Palestinians. . . . The students were well
aware that I’d already gone on record—several times in print—with respect to
Gaza since the heinous terrorist attacks of October 7. On that day I wrote
about Hamas’s “sickening violence” against Israel, and since then I have written about
the dangers of antisemitism and Islamophobia at home and about the loss of
innocent life in Gaza. So I can’t argue that university leaders should keep
quiet or say something evasive about “principled neutrality.”
Indeed, the students reminded me of a phrase I’d used: “Neutrality is
complicity.” Although I am one of the only American university presidents
to call for a cease-fire in
Gaza, the students in the meeting did not find that nearly enough. Mere words,
they told me, are just another form of neutrality. They accused me of trying to
hide behind them. And outside the chants grew louder: “Roth, Roth, you can’t
hide / you can’t hide from genocide.” When I walked home, an angry crowd of
maybe 75 followed close behind.
By Monday morning there were a couple dozen tents set up. Students were careful
not to block exits and entrances to campus buildings, and they made sure that
the pathways through their encampment were clear. They were claiming territory
for their protest, but they were not attempting to close it off. This was
important for everyone. For the protesters, it was a sign that they wanted to
spread their message to others, and also that they were open to discussing
their objectives with anyone who wanted to talk. For me and my administrative
colleagues, it was important because one of the reasons encampments are not
normally permitted is that they mark off public areas for exclusive use,
thereby denying others the opportunity to use that part of campus.
We could have immediately closed down the encampment because the protesters
hadn’t gotten advance permission for tents, and because they were writing
messages on the adjacent buildings in chalk. . . . In my initial message to the
broad university community, I wrote: “The
students [in the encampment] know that they are in violation of university rules and
seem willing to accept the consequences.” So why haven’t I made them feel those
consequences? Cops don’t always give people tickets for going a few miles over
the speed limit. Context matters, whatever Republican Congresswoman Elise
Stefanik says. In this case, I knew the students were part of a broad protest
movement, and protest movements often put a strain on an institution’s rules.
They are meant to do that. The encampment was “non-violent and has not
disrupted normal campus operations,” I wrote, and “as long as it continues in
this way, the University will not attempt to clear the encampment.” I added
that we would “not tolerate intimidation or harassment of students, staff, or
faculty,” and that the protesters, as far as I could tell, were not moving in
that direction.
The encampment is just beneath my office window, and many times during the last
several days I’ve looked over to see what was happening: mostly students and
the occasional faculty member engaged in casual conversation, and occasionally
animated debate. I’ve written that being a student in the
West has come to mean “practicing freedom,” and
I was reminded of that as I looked at these young people expressing their
political concerns. …
The encampment, now grown to roughly 50 tents, may be fostering a sense of
community among protesters, but it hasn’t been kumbaya for everyone. Several
Jewish students were outraged by the messages about genocide and freeing
Palestine. Did this mean freeing the region from Jews? . . . I’ve checked in
with many Jewish students individually and sat down with a group to talk about
their fears—and their complaints about faculty bias. . . . The Jewish students
opposed to the protesters seemed glad to be able to talk openly about their
concerns. I emphasized to them that I could not protect them from opposing
views but that I could protect their safety and capacity to pursue their
education. . . .
It’s almost the end of the school year, and more than once I’ve been asked,
“Don’t I wish we had just made it through a couple of more weeks without
incident?” Mostly … no. How can I not respect students for paying attention to
things that matter so much? I respect that they’re concerned about Gaza; I
admire that they’re not entirely taken up with grades or lining up their
credentials. Will their protest help? My fear is that such protests (especially
when they turn violent) in the end will help the
reactionary forces of populist authoritarianism. I
also think student protesters are wrong to
focus on university investments. I
would prefer they use their energies to pressure the U.S. government to do more
to get the hostages released, to stop supporting Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu’s war tactics, and to bring more direct aid to people in
Gaza on the brink of starvation. My team expects to discuss all of this with
students in the coming days. Right now, I’m most concerned with protecting
their right to protest in nonviolent ways that don’t undermine our educational
program. For me, the modest violations of the rules are preferable to the
narrow-minded vocationalism that others seem suddenly to pine for.
I share this view of the moment with some trepidation. It only takes a few
jerks to turn a peaceful protest into a violent confrontation. But I also share
this with hope that we will all learn something from this experience—whether or
not we are sleeping in a tent.
Though
these views are not necessarily those of The Shalom Center, it is The Shalom
Center that brings them to you for your thought. So — If you are joyful to see
The Shalom Center’s providing ideas and resources to create a more just and
loving Earth and Humanity, or saddened but had your determination to act for
change strengthened by a Shalom Center report of danger, please help us keep
doing this work by contributing. We are 40 years old and we are working to
transform ourselves for the next 40; if you can quadruple your last gift,
please do! Click here: theshalomcenter.org/donate
“The West believes
antisemitism is a more egregious problem than genocide.” Editor. mronline.org (5-13-24).
The loss of Western authority as a result of Israel’s
genocidal attack on Gaza has merely sped up changes already underway for a
generation.
Originally
published: Pearls and Irritations on May 10, 2024 by Henry Reynolds (more
by Pearls and Irritations)
(Posted May 12, 2024). Human Rights, Ideology, Inequality, WarAmericas, Gaza, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United StatesNewswireAntisemitism
The loss of Western authority as a result of Israel’s
genocidal attack on Gaza has merely sped up changes already underway for a
generation.
It was a coincidence of course.
As Australia Day came to an end the seventeen judges of the
International Court of Justice (ICJ) were preparing to deliver their
preliminary response to the South African genocide case against Israel
presented to the Court on the 29th of December 2023.
South Africa had taken this action as a leading member of
the Global South and a founding member of the BRICS economic block. Thirty
countries supported the case. Only two European states, Ireland and Slovenia,
joined the twenty eight countries from all parts of the Global South.
By a very large majority of 16 to 1 on some points and 15
to 2 on others the Court found for South Africa, accepting that there was a
plausible case that the Palestinians should be protected ‘from acts of
genocide.’ The Court did not accede to the South African request for a demand
for a ceasefire but it set out a series of conditions that Israel was required
to meet ‘in accordance with its obligations under the genocide Convention.’ It
was ordered to ‘take all measures within its power’ to prevent the commission
of acts prohibited by the Convention, in particular killings, causing serious
physical or mental harm or the deliberate infliction of conditions of life
calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the population in whole
or in part.’
These provisional measures were legally binding on Israel,
which simply ignored them and the mass killing, profound suffering and physical
destruction continued without pause. And the rest of the world looked on with
horror. While the countries of the Western World did not go as far as Netanyahu
in claiming that the ICJ was acting as ‘the legal arm of Hamas’ they were
dismissive. The American leadership declared that they could not see any
evidence of genocide and that the South African case was meritless. Like
Australia, other countries simple ignored what had happened, its gravity
notwithstanding. In our case there has been no official reaction, no legal
briefing from the Attorney General and no known use of the word genocide by
anyone in government. It clearly has been a case of well-disciplined avoidance.
But it’s not Western governments alone that have
deliberately crafted their language and their diplomacy to protect Israel from
the outrage felt around the world, arguing with well-rehearsed casuistry that
antisemitism is a more egregious problem than genocide. The Western media is
equally culpable. Surveys from outside and leaks from inside tell the same
story. There has been a deliberate corruption of the news to defend Israel
itself and the sensibility of Zionists everywhere else. And this applies to the
great bastions of the liberal intellectual establishment—The New York Times, the Washington
Post, The Guardian, the BBC and the ABC. And now
with the rise of student activism the most prestigious American universities
are behaving in exactly the same way sending in riot police to crush the
student movement and then to blame the resulting violence and turmoil on the
victims.
And at what cost? Do any of Israel’s cheer squad estimate
the catastrophic loss of moral authority visited on the major western powers
and their minor camp followers? Who will ever again tolerate those tiresome
lectures about “the international rules based order“ which Australian leaders
proclaim all around the world. There are also those homilies about human rights
and the corollary that the Western democracies are the exemplary models to be
admired and emulated. Perhaps the most damaging aspect of all is that America
and the leading European powers have been shown to be arch hypocrites
who don’t practice what they preach. One only has to look at Israel and observe
that it has ignored international law and evaded innumerable U.N Declarations
virtually since its foundation since 1948. This is the country that Foreign
Minister Wong has called a ‘steadfast friend’ for whom we provide ‘immovable
support.’ A week or so ago, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian
referred to the discovery of mass graves at the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
As far as we can tell this event was not reported in our mainstream media nor
commented by anyone in the Australian Government. He observed that vast swathes
of Gaza were now left in rubble and more than a million civilians ‘were
struggling in despair on the brink of death.’ The fact that this was happening
in the 21st century was ‘an outrage to the moral conscience of humanity and
tramples on the most fundamental aspect of international justice.’ While it is
true that the devil can quote scripture, this statement is far closer to global
opinion than the cautious weasel words which emanate from Australian
commentators.
The loss of Western authority as a result of
Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza has merely sped up changes already underway
for a generation. The latest iteration of decolonisation has seen a pervasive re-interpretation
of the history of European imperialism, which has analysed the reasons for
the rise of the West and focussed attention on the pillage of the outer world’s
resources, the role of slavery and the theft of indigenous land. Demands for
reparation grow louder. Respect for the old Imperial powers is withering away.
It is a process which has been observed for some time now by the Singaporean
intellectual leader, Kishore Mahbubani, who wrote in London’s Financial Times in December last year that: ‘It’s
no secret that the west captured the imagination and respect of the rest of the
world for centuries. However, what is a secret—because it is happening silently
and invisibly in the minds of billions—is that the west is now losing that
respect.’
It is here that the campus rebellions that have
spread from America are doing the work that would have been impossible for the
discredited leaders of government, the media and the universities in the West.
They are taking a stand for human rights and those other principles that
have been corrupted by support for Israel’s catastrophic siege of Gaza. They
have intimated to the rest of the world that redemption is possible.
“The
New Anti-Antisemitism: Colleges Invite Police to Pro-Palestinian Camps.” Rabbi Arthur Waskow via uark.onmicrosoft.com
The
Shalom Center.
These
snatches of Prophetic Vision sometimes agree and sometimes disagree with each other,
sometimes agree and sometimes disagree with The Shalom Center. For not even
prophetic vision can adequately express the Infinite ways to seek deep healing
and justice inherent in the Breath of life.
The
New Anti-Antisemitism
The
response to college protests against the war on Gaza exemplifies the darkness
of the Trumpocene.
Rick
Perlstein is an historian and journalist who has written chronicles
of the post-1960s American conservative movement. The first of those books was, Before
the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus. He
has become a weekly columnist for The American Prospect on
media criticism, history and the 2024 United States 2024 US elections. We are
reprinting excerpts from his article called “The New Anti-antisemitism” on the
pro-Palestinian campus encampments supporting a ceasefire and peace in the war
between Israeli and Palestinian regimes. For the whole article see https://prospect.org/politics/2024-05-08-new-anti-antisemitism-college-protests-gaza/. — AW, ed.
The
New Anti-Antisemitism [Colleges Invite Police to
Pro-Palestinian Camps] By Rick Perlstein
…
You
might have already stomached some of the videos of last week’s most harrowing
abuses. At the University of Wisconsin, a
balding, bespectacled professor face down, two cops pinning his left arm
sharply behind his back, and a disabled professor getting her dress torn and
suffering internal damage from police strangulation. The 65-year-old former
head of Dartmouth’s Jewish studies program who dared scream “What are you
doing?” at cops being taken down with a wrestling move that also left her with
an arm wrenched behind her back. Then a second cop arriving to keep her pinned
as a third looks on blithely, rifle at the ready. (She was suspended by
her university for her trouble.) At Washington University in St. Louis, a 65-year-old professor, a
Quaker, was told by his doctor he was “lucky to be alive” after absorbing a
flying tackle from a very large officer for the sin of filming cops with his
cellphone, then being dragged to a nearby patch of grass, writhing, then to a
police van, where he fell limp.
…
Why?
Contrasting scenes from recent days:
Students at the protest encampment at the University of Chicago enjoyed a
gorgeous twilight “Mimouna,” a rite celebrated by the Maghrebi Jews of North
Africa during Passover. Some wore kippahs, others keffiyehs, some both. Muslim
and Jewish prayer services are a regular feature at this “Popular University
for Gaza” where a thousand or so people are reported to be milling about, which
features 24-hour food service, lots of art, film screenings—a vibe like a jam
band festival camping area, only with more eight-syllable words.
·Two thousand miles away in Boston, the administration at
Northeastern University said they had no choice but to flood in the campus
police to take down an encampment because it “was infiltrated by professional
organizers with no affiliation to Northeastern,” and it had descended into
“virulent antisemitic slurs, including ‘Kill the Jews.’” Then, however,
the student newspaper reviewed
footage demonstrating it was the pro-Israel counter-demonstrators
who trollingly chanted that, to the pro-Palestinian side’s angry boos.
Similarly, at UCLA, it was pro-Israel ultranationalists who came onto campus
one night last week to attack the protesters’ encampment and the protesters themselves,
a story that the Los Angeles Times got right, but that the
East Coast press managed to garble completely by misstating who attacked whom.
Concerns for the “safety” of Jewish students has become a rhetorical
commonplace in elite discussions of campus politics these days: “Jewish
students of all political beliefs,” Theo Baker, son of New York Times superstar
Peter Baker, tells us in The Atlantic in “The War at
Stanford,” “have been given good reason to fear for their safety. They’ve been
followed, harassed, and called derogatory racial epithets.”
It makes me feel like I’m losing my mind. You know who has good reason to fear
for their safety? People, many of them Jews, getting pummeled by cops and
fascists. People getting high-powered rifles aimed at them from rooftops by
agents of the state who surely have been told by the people giving them orders
to be ready to shoot because of all the “dangerous” things that are going on
amid those protesters’ tents. . . . MORE………
Though
these views are not necessarily those of The Shalom Center, it is The Shalom
Center that brings them to you for your thought. So — If you are joyful to see
The Shalom Center’s providing ideas and resources to create a more just and
loving Earth and Humanity, or saddened but had your determination to act for
change strengthened by a Shalom Center report of danger, please help us keep
doing this work by contributing. We are 40 years old and we are working to
transform ourselves for the next 40; if you can quadruple your last gift,
please do! Click here: theshalomcenter.org/donate
‘Israeli Violence Is Legitimized and Palestinian Counter-Violence
Is Delegitimized’. JANINE
JACKSON (MARCH 1, 2024).
https://fair.org/home/israeli-violence-is-legitimized-and-palestinian-counter-violence-is-delegitimized/30
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“CounterSpin
interview with Gregory Shupak on Gaza assault.”
Janine Jackson
interviewed Gregory Shupak about the Gaza assault for the February 23, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited
transcript.
Janine
Jackson: Seven national US unions, along with more than 200 locals, just
formed a coalition calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
Postal workers, flight attendants, teachers, nurses, auto workers, painters:
more than 9 million union workers have signed on to the National
Labor Network for Ceasefire, calling for
an immediate end to violence and the restoration of basic human rights, the
release of hostages and full access for humanitarian aid. “We can’t stand by in
the face of this suffering,” said the head of United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers. “We cannot bomb our way to peace.”
So this is on the
heels of a ceasefire call by the AFL-CIO, who have a decidedly spotty history
in taking the side of humanity in international conflicts in which the US is
involved. It’s reflective of a growing understanding of the non-marginality of
protesting Israel’s violent actions in Palestine, and dissenting from US
financial and political support for them.
At some point,
elite media are going to say, “This was wrong and everyone saw it,” but what
are they saying now? If you only can call out horror when it’s history, what is
journalism good for?
Gregory
Shupak is a media critic, activist
and teacher. He teaches English and media studies at the University of
Guelph-Humber in Toronto, and he’s author of the book The Wrong
Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media,
from OR Books. He’s joining us now by phone. Welcome back to CounterSpin,
Gregory Shupak.
Gregory
Shupak: Hi,
thanks for having me back.
JJ: As of February 20, the US,
for the third time, has used its veto on the Security Council to kill a
resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in what news outlets persist
in calling the
“Israel-Hamas war.” We’re told the White House has put forward an alternative
that asks for a halt in fighting “as soon as practicable.”
We know that
folks like to say journalism is the first draft of history, and unfortunately
that can be true even when what you’re seeing with your eyes doesn’t match with
what you’re reading in the paper. I still think that a lot of folks are kind of
waking up to media criticism right now, but I just want to ask you, in terms of
journalism in coverage of this nightmare, what are you seeing that needs to be
called out? What do you think needs to be paid particular attention to?
[CENSORSHIP]
GS: One
thing that comes to mind is that there are a lot of credible organizations
based in Palestine, including in Gaza, that get very little in the way of a
platform in US media or Canadian media, organizations like Palestine Center for Human Rights (PCHR), Al-Haq and the Al Mezan Center for Human
Rights. These organizations are very
well-connected on the ground in Gaza, and elsewhere in Palestine in some
cases. [ BBC, 2/29/24 ] So I find it, well, at best
disappointing that these groups are virtually never mentioned, or never
cited, I should say, in the American or Canadian media. I think that they
provide a lot of very detailed information as to what’s happening, and it’s one
of the problems with the constant framing of what is called the “Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza,” framing what Palestinian health officials say that way
is flawed, as we know, because it’s used to cast doubt on what’s being said,
because Hamas is a thoroughly demonized organization in this part of the world.
So, therefore, attaching their name to information is going to make that
information sound suspect to a large portion of the audience.
One other kind of
facet of that is that it’s not just the so-called Hamas-run health ministries
giving us information about attacks on hospitals and medical workers and
schools and refugee camps, and so on and so forth. There are these groups that
have a really long history of doing vital work and a very strong track record,
an internationally recognized track record, and they should be part of the
media conversation, but these sources are just not admitted. It’s just
everything is presented as, “Well, Hamas said this versus Israel said
that.” New York Times, 2/6/24
[SETTLER
COLONIALISM DENIED] One of the more
frustrating motifs throughout the period since October 7 has been to wedge
Palestine into the anti-wokeness, culture-war stuff. And we saw Bret
Stephens a couple of weeks ago having a piece called “Settler Colonialism: A Guide for the Sincere,” we’ve seen at least two pieces in the Atlantic,
quite stridently opposing the framing of Palestine as a conflict between
colonizer and colonized. And, in some way most disappointingly, we’ve seen in
the last few days, Lydia Polgreen writing in the New York Times, “Restoring the Past Won’t Liberate Palestine.”
And so all of
these have in common, especially the Atlantic pieces and the
Stephens piece, they rest on this idea of naive, fanatical college students who
have these simplistic ideas about politics, and is really a way of eliding some
very basic fundamental elements of how things have gotten to this point in
Palestine. New York Times, 2/18/24
So Polgreen
mentioned, partially to her credit, I guess, that the vast majority of people
who created Israel were not from there, and this is still, I
think, treated as a minor point by her, and it’s really absent in the
other pieces I’m mentioning. And what she says is that talking about Palestine
as a conflict between an indigenous population and a colonial population is
what she describes as part of a
larger trend on the left these days, emanating from important
and complex theories in the academy but reflected in crude and reductive forms
in the memes and slogans at Palestine protests, an increasingly rigid set of
ideas about the interloping colonizer and the indigenous colonized.
So I mean, it’s
hard to know what crude and reductive slogans Polgreen has in mind, because she
doesn’t mention any, but the fact that Polgreen, and especially Stephens, the
pieces in the Atlantic, they’re all obscuring that at the time of
the post–World War I British mandate in Palestine, the population of Palestine
was 90% Palestinians. And
even when the UN issued its 1947 partition plan, Palestinians owned more
than 94% of the land
between the river and the sea.
So Polgreen—and
the other commentators I’ve mentioned—they’re wrongly implying that the
movement to stop the genocide in Gaza is at some basic level wrong about Israel
being a colonial enterprise. And this is really significant, because they
present this idea of anti-colonial struggle in Palestine as some kind of a
misguided romanticism that selectively wants to restore the past. Well, the
issue isn’t whether the past should somehow be restored, but whether Zionism
should continue to be the governing principle across all of historic Palestine.
And so these are all just one example of the ways that Israeli
violence is legitimized and Palestinian counter-violence is delegitimized, as is the Palestine
solidarity movement within the United States and Canada and so forth. Because
if you obscure the fact that this is a colonial dynamic, then it’s much easier
to just present what has happened, both in the longer term and since October 7,
as “Israel is just a country defending itself.” . . . .
JJ: All right then. We’ve been
speaking with writer, activist and teacher Greg Shupak from the University of
Guelph-Humber. His book, The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel
and the Media, is available from OR Books. Thank you so much, Gregory Shupak, for joining us this week
on CounterSpin.
“The
New Face of Academic Freedom?” Six
essays edited by Nicholas Griffin. The
Link ( Sept. 28, 2024). Published by Americans for Middle East
Understanding (AMEU).
Laurie
Brand, Sam Halabi, Gary M. English, Maud
Burnett McInerney, Stephen Zunes vol57_issue3_2024Download
From the Editor
David Remnick,
America’s premier arbiter of culture, failed. From his lofty perch at the helm
of The New Yorker, his May 20 cover lowered the bar for commentary
by what it didn’t depict: college graduates contentedly process across the
stage, in handcuffs, yet somehow disconnected from their crime, from whatever
it was last Spring that drove them to the barricades. “Class of 2024”
went out of its way to normalize the moment as just another rite of
passage… go to college, protest, graduate, move on. With his omission,
Mr. Remnick leaned into American ignorance, preferring a story about the
ineluctable upset of youth to a more complex confrontation with contemporary
America.
The context redacted
from the heart of this story was, of course, Gaza; not even the checkered
corner of a kuffiyah would be allowed.
Fast forward to this
Fall semester and, with that benefit of just a little hindsight, plus the
mnemonic beat of new protest chants, many Americans now understand what college
presidents still prefer to forget: the students were right. They
were right to believe the Constitution when it said their right to free speech
would not be abridged. They were right to question a world that kept company
with genocide. They were right to have believed their own eyes over the State
Department’s perversion of events. They were right to think institutions with
latin encomium about Veritas and Pro Scientia Atque
Sapientia would defend academic freedom in earnest.
This issue of The
Link samples experiences from a handful of universities – public and
private, large and small, Jesuit, Quaker, and secular. The faculty contributors
document the fundamentally nonviolent character across different encampments
and highlight their demands for ceasefire, for arms embargo, and even for
adherence to the US laws that Anthony Blinken so brazenly disregards. They
decry the serial conflation of political criticism with antisemitism.
The student
protestors, wise beyond their years, eviscerated the media’s prurient
obsessions about “Hamas sympathizers” and “spiraling antisemitism.” Instead,
they kept each other warm and safe, practiced de-escalation, and decried the
aggression funded by their tuition dollars– all while studying for finals.
Compared to the ignoble discourse in Congressional subcommittees, where protest
speech about “from the river to the sea” and “intifada” was being
grossly misrepresented, students understood that freedom of speech was being
thrown under the pro-Israel bus, like so many innocent civilians. Across
disciplines and faith traditions, students and faculty continue to say Gaza’s
name this Fall, bending the arc of history toward justice.
We close this issue
with a grateful remembrance of Rabbi Marc Ellis who, even in his final
days, centered Palestine and the tragedy of Gaza within the context of Jewish
ethical history. Professor Ellis wrote for The Link several
times over the decades, including shortly before his death. AMEU is grateful to
Rabbi Brant Rosen for carrying forward the vital traditions that Marc Ellis
inspired. Indeed, his memory is a blessing we cherish. –Nicholas Griffin
TEACHING
PEACE DURING THE DECIMATION OF GAZA
In 2024, after compiling my second
anthology on the war between the Palestinians and Israelis, and while I was
reflecting upon their effects and rummaging around my library, I rediscovered a
collection of essays I had enjoyed reading three decades ago—Neil Postman’s Conscientious
Objections. I reread the three
satires of US nuclear arming. And then I
read the essay “Columbusity” and was reminded of its advocacy of
teaching Creation Science and Ptolemy alongside evolution and post-Copernican
astronomy as the best way to reach the truth.
I saw the connection with the war. With angry faces, placards, and slogans,
students worldwide were protesting Israeli saturation bombing of Gaza. My anthologies had made available arguments
intended to refute the self-exculpatory arguments by the Israeli, US, and NATO
alliance. If you believe in reason and
education to effectuate genuine change, then the teaching of the history of
the Palestinians and the creation of Israel seems analogous to the teaching of
the history of Ptolemaic and Copernican astronomy, in which dogmatic and
emotional foundations of belief are replaced by scientific belief; that is, by
critical thinking-- by debate, the comparison of views, arraying arguments for
and against each, explaining why one is more persuasive than the other, above
all searching for the roots of historical events, when did X begin?, and along
the way learning that knowledge and truth are quests.
That is, by the rejection of Columbusity;
Columbus discovered the New World while believing in the Bible as the
infallible account of world history, and the European westward genocide
began. Is this association also cause
and effect? What preceded and followed Columbus’ colonizing? In regard to the Gaza War, choosing when its
history began determines the rightness or wrongness of decisions and
actions; i.e. whether populations are nourished or injured. When did the Gaza War begin? Incalculable suffering has arisen from the
infallible choice of that complex date, for it determines not only when the
conflict started and but who started it. For peacesake, then, if we genuinely seek
to prevent or stop wars, schools should require for graduation knowledge of the
history of present or imminent wars.
The United Nations provides an extensive
timeline of Palestinian/Israeli history that could serve as the skeleton of a
university (or, condensed, high school) course:
https://www.un.org/unispal/timeline/ And at UAF Prof. RICHARD SONN offers his course: HIST 4203,
The Holocaust. A glance at his
required readings reveals the high priority he gives to roots: to etymology, etiology, genealogy, provenance. Millions of people have been tortured,
injured, killed over the correct date of the start of the war of the
October 7, 2023, Hamas Breakout, with Israel, the US and NATO fixated on that
day, because it justifies smearing Hamas as a criminal organization, identifies HAMAS as the sole
perpetrator of the war and its atrocities, and turns Israeli atrocities intonecessary acts
of defense.
Had it figured
in the Israeli-Pentagon-White House war preparation, Sonn’s model might have prevented such a slaughter. From the point of view of the Palestinians
the Oct. 7, 2023 Breakout arose from the
1948 “Nakba”(“catastrophe” in Arabic), the mass
displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli
war, with no right to return.
Contents Student Protests #1
STUDENT PROTESTS AGAINST ISRAELI COLONIAL SETTLEMENTS, ATROCITIES, AND G ENOCIDE
AGAINST PALESTINIANS, ANTHOLOGY#1: https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2024/05/omni-student-protests-against-israeli.html
