Antisemitism On Campus

Thanks Badbrains!

I didn't have sound when I watched the video, but I've seen a lot of videos that cover the same events, and it goes way past shouting "free Palestine" (which, obviously, is not anti-semitic).

I can't believe that some of you have actually reacted to that video as if it makes any sense. That video is one of the most absolutely flawed videos I have ever seen - It is made by crazy people. campusintifada? those people have obviously lost their fucking minds.

"What we see here is the Middle East war brought to US campuses"

are you guys fucking serious? what a joke. the entire video is based off of Sharansky's dumb ass logic of what equals antisemitism. Sharansky by the way is practically a war criminal since he served as Deputy Defense Minister (i think it was that, maybe some other position where he was able to carry out his disgusting policies). Nothing in that video is antisemitic. Those students rightfully dispute what they see as a state founded on ethnic cleansing and the delegitimization of an entire people. Palestinians were not recognized by Israelis, keep in mind, until they saw fit to do so when they needed to respond to the first intifada and were finally being held accountable (though hardly) for some of their tremendous track record of international and human rights crimes. This was in the early 1990s. In fact, these students have a right to argue that the state of Israel itself is guilty of all these crimes, as they see fit to do so on campus. There is no clear attempt to delegitimize JEWS, but rather the jewish state as it has been run in the past several decades: a racist, apartheid state guilty of war crimes. this is actually a fact, obvious to anyone who chooses to see past their hatred and read into this conflict more deeply.

back to the video, reading the info on the side shows how hilariously stupid the people who made the video are. It attempts to emphasize the lie that the Muslim Students Associations on campus are tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. The MSAs are just ways for muslim kids to network, which all people do. There are Jewish Students Associations but no one connects them to the Israeli Army or anything, so let's just shut the fuck up and stop spreading these ridiculous lies that only help create more animosity, and allows Israel to go on violating international law. What a stupid fucking video.

yosi wrote:

I've met Sharansky several times, and had the chance to talk to him at length. He's a really decent guy, and frankly a heroic figure. If you don't know what I'm referring to you should go read up on the movement to free Soviet Jews. This is a person who actually experienced the horrors of a totalitarian state (even if not during its worst Stalinist period), and if his politics are now somewhat to the right in terms of an emphasis on Jewish and Israeli self-defense, I really don't blame him. I'm fairly certain that he was never defense minister in any Israeli government, and besides, simply serving in the role doesn't make one a war criminal.

"Previously he served as the Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, Minister of Housing and Construction since March 2001, Interior Minister of Israel (July 1999 - resigned in July 2000), Minister of Industry and Trade (1996-1999). He resigned from the cabinet in April 2005 to protest plans to withdraw Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip. He was re-elected to the Knesset in March 2006 as a member of the Likud Party. On November 20, 2006, he resigned from the Knesset to form the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies.[1]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natan_Sharansky

yosi wrote:

Also, I believe it was at Concordia, the student government tried to ban Hillel, a major international Jewish organization for college students from campus for no other discernable reason than the group's support for Israel. Also, many Jewish kids have reported experiencing real antisemitism on campus, as in being beat up and intimidated, and while pro-Palestinian students are of course well within their rights to criticize Israel I think it is also fair to say that in some instances this criticism crosses the line into anti-semitism.

+1. "I know a guy who ..." is not the best evidence, but one of my close friends went to Concordia, and as a member of the Jewish community, she knows first hand about these sorts of incidents. Attacking people is not an acceptable form of protest, and neither is bombarding someone with ethnic slurs.

I'd would also add that in Nazi ideology Jews and Communists were very much connected and conflated, since the Nazis viewed Soviet Communism as essentially Jewish because of the large number of Jews in prominent positions within the Soviet Union, and the socialist and communist parties in other countries around the world. Nazism was very much built, at least in part, on anti-semitism.