Pro Hamas in the west - and their adventures
- Thread starter mandrill
- Start date
Yeah, truth really hurts.
We need an exodus from Zionism | Naomi Klein
This powerful, Jews don’t need or want the false idol of Zionism. We want freedom from the project that commits genocide in our name
www.theguardian.com
Having a bit of a meltdown today, mandrill?
The student uprising getting you down?
I Am a Jewish Student at Columbia. Don’t Believe What You’re Being Told About ‘Campus Antisemitism’
Smears from the press and pro-Israel influencers are a dangerous distraction from real threats to our safety.
JONATHAN BEN-MENACHEM
APR 23, 2024
1,160
162
Share
(Pro-Palestinian protests on Columbia’s campus stretched into their second week on Monday. Photo by Columbia University Apartheid Divest coalition).
“Reprehensible and dangerous.” “Terrorist sympathizers.” “It’s not 1938 Berlin. It’s 2024, Columbia University, NYC.”
The White House, Congressional Republicans, and cable news talking heads would have you believe that the Columbia University campus has devolved into a hotbed of antisemitic violence – but the reality on the ground is very different. As a Jewish student at Columbia, it depresses me that I have to correct the record and explain what the real risk to our safety looks like. I still can't quite believe how the events on campus over the past few days have been so cynically and hysterically misrepresented by the media and by our elected representatives.
Last week, the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition, representing more than 100 student organizations, including Jewish groups, organized the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, a peaceful campus protest in solidarity with Palestine. CUAD was reactivated after the university suspended Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace in the fall. On Wednesday morning, hundreds of students camped out on Columbia’s South Lawn. They vowed to stay put until the university divests from companies that profit from their ties to Israel. Protesters prayed, chanted, ate pizza, and condemned the university’s complicity in Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Though counter-protesters waved Israeli flags near the encampment, the campus remained largely calm from my vantage point.
Columbia responded by imposing a miniature police state. Just over a day after the encampment was formed, university President Minouche Shafik asked and authorized the New York Police Department to clear the lawn and load 108 students – including a number of Jewish students – onto Department of Corrections buses to be held at NYPD headquarters at 1 Police Plaza. One Jewish student told me that she and her fellow protesters were restrained in zip-tie handcuffs for eight hours and held in cells where they shared a toilet without privacy. The NYPD chief of patrol John Chell later told the Columbia Spectator that “the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner.”
Since then, dozens of undergraduates have been locked out of their dorms without notice. Barnard College, an affiliate of Columbia, notably gave students just 15 minutes to retrieve their belongings after returning from lockup and finding themselves evicted. Suspended students cannot return to campus and are struggling to access food or medical care. Students who keep Shabbat, and do not use electronics on the Sabbath, were forced to rely on technology in order to secure food and emergency housing. This crackdown was the most violence inflicted on our student body in decades. I implore you, as our Jewish Voice for Peace chapter does, to consider whether arresting Jewish students keeps us and Columbia safe.
Smears from the press and pro-Israel influencers, who have levied charges of antisemitism and violence against Jewish students, are a dangerous distraction from real threats to our safety. I saw politicians compare student organizers to neo-Nazis and call for a National Guard deployment, apparently ignorant of the lives lost at Kent State and in Charlottesville, and with very little pushback from national media. This is a repulsive form of self-aggrandizement that I can only assume is intended to preserve relationships with influential donors. Calls to more heavily police our campus actively endanger Jewish students, and threaten the regular operations of the university far more gravely than peaceful protests.
It’s true, the fact that CUAD organizers fundamentally reject bigotry and hate has not stopped unrelated actors from exploiting opportunities to shamefully harass Jewish students with grotesque or antisemitic statements. I condemn antisemitism – which should seem obvious since I have experienced it many times myself. (This likely won’t keep controversial Columbia Business School professor Shai Davidai from calling me a kapo.) But the often off-campus actions of a few unaffiliated individuals simply do not characterize this disciplined student campaign. The efforts to connect these offensive but relatively isolated incidents to the broader pro-Palestinian protest movement mirror a wider strategy to delegitimize all criticism of Israel.
As this national discourse over “campus antisemitism” reached a boiling point over the weekend, the Gaza Solidarity Encampment saw CUAD organizers lead joint Muslim and Jewish prayer sessions and honor each other’s dead. This is wholesome, human stuff – it doesn’t make for sensationalist headlines about Jew-hating Ivy Leaguers.
On Monday, I joined hundreds of my fellow student workers for a walk-out in solidarity with the encampment; we listened respectfully as a similarly sizable group of Columbia faculty held a rally on the library steps. Frankly, it didn’t feel much different from the environment during my union’s most recent strike on campus – I felt inspired again by my colleagues’ commitment to making Columbia a safer and better place to work and study.
Later that night, a Passover Seder service was held at the encampment. Would an antisemitic student movement welcome Jews in this way? I think not.
(Student protesters celebrated Passover during on-campus encampment on Monday. Photo by Columbia University Apartheid Divest coalition).
Here’s what you’re not being told: The most pressing threats to our safety as Jewish students do not come from tents on campus. Instead, they come from the Columbia administration inviting police onto campus, certain faculty members, and third-party organizations that dox undergraduates. Frankly, I regret the fact that writing to confirm the safety of Jewish Ivy League students feels justified in the first place. I have not seen many pundits hand-wringing over the safety of my Palestinian colleagues mourning the deaths of family members, or the destruction of Gaza’s cherished universities.
I am wary of a hysterical campus discourse – gleefully amplified by many of the same charlatans who have turned “DEI” into a slur – that draws attention away from the ongoing slaughter in the Gaza Strip and settler violence in the occupied West Bank. We should be focusing on the material reality of war: the munitions our government is sending to Israel, which kill Palestinians by the thousands, and the Americans participating in the violence. Forget the fringe folks and outside agitators: the CUAD organizers behind the campus protests have rightfully insisted on divestment as their most important demand of the Columbia administration, and on sustained attention to the situation in Palestine.
And we are not alone. College campuses across the United States have followed Columbia’s lead.
And so, it is my hope that we can all learn from their examples to remain clear-eyed about the stakes of this crisis and focus on the actual violence being perpetrated in all of our names.
Jonathan Ben-Menachem is a PhD student at Columbia University.
Smears from the press and pro-Israel influencers are a dangerous distraction from real threats to our safety.
JONATHAN BEN-MENACHEM
APR 23, 2024
1,160
162
Share
(Pro-Palestinian protests on Columbia’s campus stretched into their second week on Monday. Photo by Columbia University Apartheid Divest coalition).
“Reprehensible and dangerous.” “Terrorist sympathizers.” “It’s not 1938 Berlin. It’s 2024, Columbia University, NYC.”
The White House, Congressional Republicans, and cable news talking heads would have you believe that the Columbia University campus has devolved into a hotbed of antisemitic violence – but the reality on the ground is very different. As a Jewish student at Columbia, it depresses me that I have to correct the record and explain what the real risk to our safety looks like. I still can't quite believe how the events on campus over the past few days have been so cynically and hysterically misrepresented by the media and by our elected representatives.
Last week, the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition, representing more than 100 student organizations, including Jewish groups, organized the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, a peaceful campus protest in solidarity with Palestine. CUAD was reactivated after the university suspended Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace in the fall. On Wednesday morning, hundreds of students camped out on Columbia’s South Lawn. They vowed to stay put until the university divests from companies that profit from their ties to Israel. Protesters prayed, chanted, ate pizza, and condemned the university’s complicity in Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Though counter-protesters waved Israeli flags near the encampment, the campus remained largely calm from my vantage point.
Columbia responded by imposing a miniature police state. Just over a day after the encampment was formed, university President Minouche Shafik asked and authorized the New York Police Department to clear the lawn and load 108 students – including a number of Jewish students – onto Department of Corrections buses to be held at NYPD headquarters at 1 Police Plaza. One Jewish student told me that she and her fellow protesters were restrained in zip-tie handcuffs for eight hours and held in cells where they shared a toilet without privacy. The NYPD chief of patrol John Chell later told the Columbia Spectator that “the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner.”
Since then, dozens of undergraduates have been locked out of their dorms without notice. Barnard College, an affiliate of Columbia, notably gave students just 15 minutes to retrieve their belongings after returning from lockup and finding themselves evicted. Suspended students cannot return to campus and are struggling to access food or medical care. Students who keep Shabbat, and do not use electronics on the Sabbath, were forced to rely on technology in order to secure food and emergency housing. This crackdown was the most violence inflicted on our student body in decades. I implore you, as our Jewish Voice for Peace chapter does, to consider whether arresting Jewish students keeps us and Columbia safe.
Smears from the press and pro-Israel influencers, who have levied charges of antisemitism and violence against Jewish students, are a dangerous distraction from real threats to our safety. I saw politicians compare student organizers to neo-Nazis and call for a National Guard deployment, apparently ignorant of the lives lost at Kent State and in Charlottesville, and with very little pushback from national media. This is a repulsive form of self-aggrandizement that I can only assume is intended to preserve relationships with influential donors. Calls to more heavily police our campus actively endanger Jewish students, and threaten the regular operations of the university far more gravely than peaceful protests.
It’s true, the fact that CUAD organizers fundamentally reject bigotry and hate has not stopped unrelated actors from exploiting opportunities to shamefully harass Jewish students with grotesque or antisemitic statements. I condemn antisemitism – which should seem obvious since I have experienced it many times myself. (This likely won’t keep controversial Columbia Business School professor Shai Davidai from calling me a kapo.) But the often off-campus actions of a few unaffiliated individuals simply do not characterize this disciplined student campaign. The efforts to connect these offensive but relatively isolated incidents to the broader pro-Palestinian protest movement mirror a wider strategy to delegitimize all criticism of Israel.
As this national discourse over “campus antisemitism” reached a boiling point over the weekend, the Gaza Solidarity Encampment saw CUAD organizers lead joint Muslim and Jewish prayer sessions and honor each other’s dead. This is wholesome, human stuff – it doesn’t make for sensationalist headlines about Jew-hating Ivy Leaguers.
On Monday, I joined hundreds of my fellow student workers for a walk-out in solidarity with the encampment; we listened respectfully as a similarly sizable group of Columbia faculty held a rally on the library steps. Frankly, it didn’t feel much different from the environment during my union’s most recent strike on campus – I felt inspired again by my colleagues’ commitment to making Columbia a safer and better place to work and study.
Later that night, a Passover Seder service was held at the encampment. Would an antisemitic student movement welcome Jews in this way? I think not.
(Student protesters celebrated Passover during on-campus encampment on Monday. Photo by Columbia University Apartheid Divest coalition).
Here’s what you’re not being told: The most pressing threats to our safety as Jewish students do not come from tents on campus. Instead, they come from the Columbia administration inviting police onto campus, certain faculty members, and third-party organizations that dox undergraduates. Frankly, I regret the fact that writing to confirm the safety of Jewish Ivy League students feels justified in the first place. I have not seen many pundits hand-wringing over the safety of my Palestinian colleagues mourning the deaths of family members, or the destruction of Gaza’s cherished universities.
I am wary of a hysterical campus discourse – gleefully amplified by many of the same charlatans who have turned “DEI” into a slur – that draws attention away from the ongoing slaughter in the Gaza Strip and settler violence in the occupied West Bank. We should be focusing on the material reality of war: the munitions our government is sending to Israel, which kill Palestinians by the thousands, and the Americans participating in the violence. Forget the fringe folks and outside agitators: the CUAD organizers behind the campus protests have rightfully insisted on divestment as their most important demand of the Columbia administration, and on sustained attention to the situation in Palestine.
And we are not alone. College campuses across the United States have followed Columbia’s lead.
And so, it is my hope that we can all learn from their examples to remain clear-eyed about the stakes of this crisis and focus on the actual violence being perpetrated in all of our names.
Jonathan Ben-Menachem is a PhD student at Columbia University.
Terrorists are humans. Hate to tell you that.
But more importantly, you just said you think these protesters should be murdered after watching that tape.
I don't want anyone who willing to kill someone over what was shown in that tape anywhere near any levers of power.
The protests across US and global university just adds a bit more to Genocide Joe's rep, doesn't it?
First you back a guy who destroyed every university in Gaza and assassinated all the profs he could find and now?
"Biden has endorsed and is currently overseeing authoritarian repression of dissent across US campuses. "
Well, I see we have just decided to abandon any pretense at being taken seriously.
I'm also not sure why you think I backed Bibi, but whatever.
That post isn't accurate, but its important to see as that seems to be the view of students.
What is correct is that every student out protesting is protesting Biden's support of the genocide and that Biden's only statement was to condemn 'antisemitic protesters'. The day the UN reported Israel to be committing genocide Biden announced another $26 billion in weapons for Israel.
I don't think you back Netanyahu, but you do back Biden and I had assumed, students.
The Palestine protests have been massive, but these protests are another level.
Its going national and then international pretty quickly.
Biden and rump are still reportedly close to tied, losing more of the youth will hurt.
Its this line that you should note.
Don’t try to tell me that a vote for him is a vote for democracy.
Yeah.
It can be read that way and I guess it would make more sense.
You're probably right.
A student who believes that would be quite stupid.
And yes, many people are very stupid, but I guess I have a higher opinion of young people than you do.
Really?
That was his only statement?
Fascinating.
Meanwhile, in another part of crazy town...
Biden accused of using student loan forgiveness program to PAY pro-Palestine activists with taxpayer dollars as campus protests continue
I do back the students and think the use of police has been outrageous.
They are going to get a lot more press, yes.
The Press loves reporting on big university campuses out of all proportion because that's where the elite are.
It absolutely will.
I'm sure the calls to send in the National Guard are not well received by the youth.
Imagine being stupid enough to write a line like that. (Or how stupid you would need to think your audience is.)
You can see how hard the anti-Biden crowd is trying to push their narrative.
For someone who claims to support students you appear to have called them stupid at least twice.
You also seem to be bright enough that you should understand that those students are protesting Biden and US policy.
Just as you should also know your history well enough to understand that being the government that students protest and attack is not a good re-election move.
Combine that with this trending and you're going to be declaring everyone stupid soon.
Trending
United States of Israel
I never said terrorists are not humans. It doesn’t mean they should be treated as humans though.
As to the protesters who support terrorists, I wouldn’t say they should be murdered. More like summarily executed. Like they do with enemies of the people in those countries that arm hamas and that hamas supporters like so much, such as Iran, Russia and North Korea.
All I’m advocating for is speaking to people in a language they understand.
So you're saying you speak like a terrorist because you don't think you should be treated as a human?
By advocating for executing students and declaring your terrorist intents do you think that you now need to execute yourself for terrorism?
Asylum seeker who killed British retiree says he was seeking revenge for the people of Gaza (msn.com)
LONDON (AP) — An asylum seeker from Morocco who went on a vicious rampage following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that triggered the Israel-Hamas war was convicted Thursday of murder for stabbing a 70-year-old man in the streets of an English seaside town.
Ahmed Alid, 45, stabbed Terence Carney six times on Oct. 15 in the center of Hartlepool minutes after he hacked at a sleeping housemate while shouting “Allahu Akbar,” or "God is great” in Arabic.
The attack came eight days after Hamas militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7 and Alid told police he had done it “for the people of Gaza.” He swore he would have killed more if he had a machine gun and other weapons, prosecutor Jonathan Sandiford said in Teesside Crown Court.
Alid was also convicted of attempted murder for the attack on Javed Nouri, who shared the house in northeast England with him and other asylum seekers. Alid was upset Nouri had converted to Christianity.
Housemates told police that Alid began carrying a knife after watching TV coverage of the Hamas attacks and Israel's subsequent bombing of Gaza.
Alid laughed when he saw footage of killings by Hamas, alarming his housemate, Nouri told police.
“Every time they would kill somebody, he would praise God," Nouri said. “I was very upset from that night and I have seen something terrible and frightening in his eyes.”
Nouri had complained to housing officials, the Home Office and police and Alid was warned he could lose his housing.
Alid told police he justified killing an innocent man because Britain helped create the “Zionist entity” of Israel and Israel had “killed innocent children.”
“They killed children and I killed an old man," he said.
During his interview with two women detectives, Alid became agitated and attacked them. A panic button in the interview room, however, didn't work properly and other officers only intervened after Alid's defense lawyer phoned an emergency number for help.
He was convicted of additional counts for assaulting the officers.
Alid had denied the charges against him. Although he acknowledged the stabbings, he said he had no intent to kill or cause serious harm.
Sentencing is scheduled May 17.
The Associated Press
LONDON (AP) — An asylum seeker from Morocco who went on a vicious rampage following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that triggered the Israel-Hamas war was convicted Thursday of murder for stabbing a 70-year-old man in the streets of an English seaside town.
Ahmed Alid, 45, stabbed Terence Carney six times on Oct. 15 in the center of Hartlepool minutes after he hacked at a sleeping housemate while shouting “Allahu Akbar,” or "God is great” in Arabic.
The attack came eight days after Hamas militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7 and Alid told police he had done it “for the people of Gaza.” He swore he would have killed more if he had a machine gun and other weapons, prosecutor Jonathan Sandiford said in Teesside Crown Court.
Alid was also convicted of attempted murder for the attack on Javed Nouri, who shared the house in northeast England with him and other asylum seekers. Alid was upset Nouri had converted to Christianity.
Housemates told police that Alid began carrying a knife after watching TV coverage of the Hamas attacks and Israel's subsequent bombing of Gaza.
Alid laughed when he saw footage of killings by Hamas, alarming his housemate, Nouri told police.
“Every time they would kill somebody, he would praise God," Nouri said. “I was very upset from that night and I have seen something terrible and frightening in his eyes.”
Nouri had complained to housing officials, the Home Office and police and Alid was warned he could lose his housing.
Alid told police he justified killing an innocent man because Britain helped create the “Zionist entity” of Israel and Israel had “killed innocent children.”
“They killed children and I killed an old man," he said.
During his interview with two women detectives, Alid became agitated and attacked them. A panic button in the interview room, however, didn't work properly and other officers only intervened after Alid's defense lawyer phoned an emergency number for help.
He was convicted of additional counts for assaulting the officers.
Alid had denied the charges against him. Although he acknowledged the stabbings, he said he had no intent to kill or cause serious harm.
Sentencing is scheduled May 17.
The Associated Press
