Freedom of speech and the left

6079_Smith_W wrote:

Do you have sources for any of these claims?

Smith I think you're very smart and often enjoyed the thoroughness and challenge of your posts. I enjoy it when you put me on the spot and make me work to articulate my statements and opinions. You often bring up stuff I don't even consider and I've enjoyed when you've given me a new perspective on an issue.

Unfortunately, I don't see you as debating in good faith anymore. In most of your responses to me you point out you think I'm lying, trolling, or not understanding something on purpose. Then you post responses and questions. It's a waste of time and energy for me to put effort into any kind of response because you won't take what I say as genuine attempts to answer you. That means whatever I say you will automatically reject.

If you are genuinely curious about something and willing to not automatically discount everything I say then change your posting style when you interact with me and I'll put effort into responses.

... though I should say that most people who try to chat me up at least do me the courtesy of buying me a drink first.

Claudine Gay Fought Palestine Solidarity at Every Turn

quote:

Gay and Magill faced widespread criticism for their ambiguous, legalistic responses to a series of antagonistic questions, which presupposed the conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism. In a widely seized-upon moment, Stefanik repeatedly asked, “Calling for the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or harassment?” When both Gay and Magill described the university response as “context-dependent,” Stefanik pounced, asking, “Calling for the genocide of Jews is depending upon the context?” Their responses obscure the reality: that advocacy for Palestinian freedom is not and has never been synonymous with Jewish genocide — at Penn, Harvard, or anywhere else.

Stefanik’s questions, among others, are based on fundamentally false premises that deny this reality. By tacitly accepting the terms of these questions, Gay and Magill were made unable to formulate compelling responses. The refusal to vocally separate the concepts antisemitism and anti-Zionism made it impossible for them to offer any robust condemnation of antisemitism.

If you only followed the backlash to Gay and Magill’s congressional testimony, you might be forgiven for thinking that the presidents were critics of the war on Gaza. In fact, prior to the hearing, Magill released six statements on the conflict, all of which overwhelmingly condemned antisemitism and contained little or no mention of Palestinian students. In a video posted on Twitter after the hearing, she stated that “a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate,” while again failing to note the actual, ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.

Gay’s hostility toward Palestine persisted before and after the hearing even more nakedly. In a November 9 email to the Harvard community, Gay wrote that the common chant “from the river to the sea” implies “the eradication of Jews from Israel and engender[s] both pain and existential fears within our Jewish community.”

“Intifada” and “from the river to the sea” are phrases with deep roots in Palestinian history; it is not the place of university presidents to decide the meaning of these words. Yet, Magill, Gay, and the elite institutions they serve continue to intentionally misinterpret these cries of resistance. “Intifada,” for instance, simply means “uprising” or “shaking off,” and “from the river to the sea” is often a call for what the historian Maha Nassar describes as “a secular democratic state established in all of historic Palestine.”

In her recent opinion piece in the New York Times, Gay doubled down, writing, “In my initial response to the atrocities of Oct. 7, I should have stated more forcefully what all people of good conscience know: Hamas is a terrorist organization that seeks to eradicate the Jewish state. . . . I neglected to clearly articulate that calls for the genocide of Jewish people are abhorrent and unacceptable and that I would use every tool at my disposal to protect students from that kind of hate.”

What is most alarming about Magill and Gay’s words is their ignorance about Palestine, not their supposed insensitivity to antisemitism. We are in a time of heightened repression toward Palestinians. Magill and Gay show no interest in the slaughters of 1948, the dispossession of Palestinians in the West Bank, or even the bombardment of Gaza. Magill and Gay’s words seal off the past, as if Hamas’s attacks were the only act of violence to ever take place in the region.

It’s no surprise that this ignorance is reflected on their campuses. As the Penn Freedom School for Palestine, we have three key demands: call for a cease-fire now, protect freedom of speech for pro-Palestine voices, and support critical thought on Palestine at the university. Our attempts to educate the university community about the art, culture, and resistance of the Palestinian people have been met with disciplinary action, doxxing, and national uproar.....

quote=epaulo13:

In fact, prior to the hearing, Magill released six statements on the conflict, all of which overwhelmingly condemned antisemitism and contained little or no mention of Palestinian students. In a video posted on Twitter after the hearing, she stated that “a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate,” while again failing to note the actual, ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.

/quote

When opposing antisemitism why do Palestinians have to be mentioned?

quote: epaulo13

What is most alarming about Magill and Gay’s words is their ignorance about Palestine, not their supposed insensitivity to antisemitism. We are in a time of heightened repression toward Palestinians. Magill and Gay show no interest in the slaughters of 1948, the dispossession of Palestinians in the West Bank, or even the bombardment of Gaza. Magill and Gay’s words seal off the past, as if Hamas’s attacks were the only act of violence to ever take place in the region.

[/quote]

Israelis, Arabs, and Palestinians have all perpetrated many acts of violence over the last century. The solution is for Israelis and Palestinians to get together and establish a mutually beneficial peace agreement.

[quote=kropotkin1951

Because the Zionist state of Israel is the leading cause of antisemitism.

[/quote

Antisemitism has been around long before the State of Israel was created. Antisemites will always find a reason to use the Jewish minority as a scapegoat for their problems. The state of Israel is not the cause of antisemitism. If they want, people can easily oppose Israel without being antisemitic. Unfortunately many Jews are being harassed due to the Palestinian - Israeli conflict. Many stories are coming out of Toronto lately of Jewish neighborhoods in Toronto being targeted for harassment. Instead of Jewish people and Jewish institutions like day cares, schools, and community centres being targeted, people could be focussing on Israel’s embassy in Toronto.

Government's and international organizations are ultimately responsible for dealing with the climate emergency, not individuals or certain sections of society. Governments and international organizations are also responsible for dealing with conflicts like the Israeli Palestinian conflict. This is why the government of Israel and the political leaders of the Palestinians are responsible for establishing a solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. 

..not in this case. there is a court hearing that begins tomorrow. left up to israel there would not be a "palestinian problem."

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Because the Zionist state of Israel is the leading cause of antisemitism.

Robert Reich, in an article about the campaign to push Claudine Gay out, said something similar:

"As a Jew, I also cannot help but worry that the actions of these donors – many of them Jewish, many from Wall Street – could fuel the very antisemitism they claim to oppose, based on the age-old stereotype of wealthy Jewish bankers controlling the world."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/03/powerful-donors-ma...

Brianna spoke in her piece about AI being weaponized to comb through things people have written to find anything that can be used.

Kind of like Cardinal Richelieu's comment that with six lines written by most honest people he could find something to hang them. So it isn't that new.

I also like that she pointed out that Gay wasn't the only one caught up in this.

Mobo2000 wrote:

Just to jump in on the Claudine Gay issue and racism, she did say this in her resignation, which I imagine is what Paladin is refering to:

That's one of the statements I was referring too, I'm still trying to find the other two that I read.

Quote:

—and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.”

Rereading this, I don't think it supports my initial statements. In hindsight she doesn't make a clear connection to the plagiarism crusade against her being because of her race. This centres on personal attacks and threats (based on race) which we know the US is in no limited supply of. A gay black women in a position of prestige and authority making $900K a year is going to have quite the big target on her back.

Mobo2000 wrote:

Personally I agree wholeheartedly with Brianna's take on this manufactured outrage:

The outrage seems to be a "gotchya" moment by people pissed off over her statements at the hearing in congress.

[quote=kropotkin1951;

Please contrast the Arab and Muslim antisemitism with the Italian/ Roman expulsion followed by the centuries of pogroms in Christian countries in Europe culminating with the Holocaust. I would like you to please cite some articles to back up your views ….

/quote]

Professor Kropotkin since I am very fortunately not your unfortunate student I feel no compulsion to write essays for you. Professor Kropotkin you do realize this is a message board and not a university lecture hall where you can demand subservience from your unfortunate first year students? I find it ironic that you want me to cite articles contrasting Christian antisemitism with Islamic antisemitism after you have called me a Jewish “terrorist” a couple of times.

On the antisemitic fingerpointing, I wonder how long it will be before someone starts in about the Durban Conferences getting derailed. Not long I expect, though I think Netanyahu has outdone them all by invoking blood libel.

Of course people are going to point at stuff like that to pretend they are justified in committing atrocities.

Funny we were just talking about context. If we want to have a little scripture class I can think of some passages from Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy that are unambigous directions from god to commit genocide... if we really want to start judging modern people by ancient books.

Basically, it isn't helpful, not really relevant to the situation on the ground and modern power dynamics, and it has no  bearing on the slaughter that is going on right now. It really is icky armchair stuff.

And it doesn't make sense either, unless you think the fact that some people might have discriminatory ideas (in some cases spurred on by real grievances) means they no longer have human rights and it is okay to slaughter them, and their whole society, including those who are completely innocent. 

The first American retrospective of Samia Halaby, regarded as one of the most important living Palestinian artists, was abruptly canceled by officials at Indiana University in recent weeks.

Dozens of her vibrant and abstract paintings were already at the school when Halaby, 87, said she received a call from the director of the university’s Eskenazi Museum of Art. The director informed her that employees had shared concern about her social media posts on the Israel-Gaza war, where she had expressed support for Palestinian causes and outrage at the violence in the Middle East, comparing the Israeli bombardment to a genocide.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/11/arts/design/indiana-university-samia-...

With the world’s attention on Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there, the violence of war has also erupted in the West Bank. Israeli settler attacks have surged at an unprecedented rate, according to the United Nations. The escalation has spread fear, deepened despair, and robbed Palestinians of their livelihoods, their homes and, in some cases, their lives.

READ MORE: Israeli troops close in on another Gaza hospital, raising evacuation fears

“Our lives are hell,” said Sabri Boum, a 52-year-old farmer who fortified his windows with metal grills last week to protect his children from settlers he said threw stun grenades in Qaryout, a northern village. “It’s like I’m in a prison.”

In six weeks, settlers have killed nine Palestinians, said Palestinian health authorities. They’ve destroyed 3,000-plus olive trees during the crucial harvest season, said Palestinian Authority official Ghassan Daghlas, wiping out what for some were inheritances passed through generations. And they’ve harassed herding communities, forcing over 900 people to abandon 15 hamlets they long called home, the U.N. said.

This is why a two state solution is never going to be achieved. These settlers are not peaceful people who will sit down and their settlements are supported by the Israeli government. Preaching a two state solution while not vehemently condemning ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank is disingenuous at best,

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/israeli-settler-attacks-on-west-bank-...

High sounding words that just seem to defend the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.

As per B'Tselem, an Israeli human-rights organisation, 10,712 Palestinians and 1,330 Israelis had been killed since 2000 till this year, before the start of the current violence.

The IDF generally tries to kill 10 Palestinian for every Israeli killed but currently they have really upped those numbers.

Paladin1 wrote:

kropotkin1951 wrote:

High sounding words that just seem to defend the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.

Would there currently be +20,000 dead (since 7 October) had Hamas not attacked Israel?

Nice.

..international law says israel has no right to defend itself within it's occupied territory. as argued by s. africa on thur. 

Who played into whose plan?

They are allies, after all. Why do you think he helps finance them? And why his government considers them "an asset"? Netanyahu said himself that he supports them.

Netanyahu's current finance minister, West Bank settler Belazel Smotrich, explained the approach to Israel's Knesset channel in 2015: "Hamas is an asset, and (Palestinian Authority leader) Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) is a burden."

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended Israel's regular allowing of Qatari funds to be transferred into Gaza, saying it is part of a broader strategy to keep Hamas and the Palestinian Authority separate, a source in Monday's Likud faction meeting said," the Post reported.

"The prime minister also said that 'whoever is against a Palestinian state should be for' transferring the funds to Gaza, because maintaining a separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza helps prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/netanyahu-israel-gaza-hamas-1.7010035

When your business is peddling hate it isn't in your interest to end conflict. It is all about whipping it up. I know you understand that, Paladin.

October 7 might have been an embarrassment, but it played right into his hands because it was tossing gasoline on an already burning fire. And it gave him an excuse to kick a genocide that was already underway into high gear - in Gaza, and in the West Bank.

As an Occupier, Israel Has No Right to “Self-Defense”

quote:

Because of this intrinsic “lack of clarity about the legal parameters of article 51,” many legal scholars do not see it as fit for purpose. Aggressive states have turned article 51 into a mechanism for justifying violence rather than prohibiting the use of force. Every war is now a war of self-defense conducted in the name of securing the state against threats: from the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq to the Russian invasions of Chechnya and Ukraine. As Noam Chomsky once put it: “If we had records, we would probably discover that Attila the Hun was acting in self-defense. Since state actions are always justified in terms of defense, we learn nothing when we hear that certain specific actions are so justified except that we are listening to the spokesperson for some state; but that we already knew.”

quote:

As a justification for war, self-defense is based on article 51 of the UN Charter, which specifies: “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.” Barring Security Council authorization, this is the only legal justification for the use of force by states against other states. No mention is made of nonstate actors here. Nor is the analogy between individual and state rights that informs it conceptually unproblematic: states do not have the rights of individuals.

quote:

The Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq has already criticized Israel’s abrasive and abusive “lawfare” methods in international law. Over the invasion of Gaza in 2008–9, it argued that Israel could not invoke self-defense as a justification for war because it contravenes both Israel’s obligations as occupier (in “effective control”) of Gaza and the legal principle of military necessity “as the exclusive legal justification for any operation.” Indeed, “despite the widespread acceptance of Israel’s pretext, the legal status of the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories] excludes the application of Article 51 of the UN Charter as a result of the prolonged occupation.”

This is supported by scholarly analysis of international law in reference to Israel’s numerous invasions of Gaza. Norman Finkelstein argues that “Israel . . . has no legal mandate to use force against the Palestinian self-determination struggle.” Why? Because “Israel cannot pretend to a right of self-defense if the exercise of this right traces back to the wrong of an illegal occupation/denial of self-determination (ex injuria non oritur jus [No legal benefit or right can be derived from an illegal act]).” National Palestinian rights are paramount, and protected by law....

6079_Smith_W wrote:

Who played into whose plan?

They are allies, after all.

For the sake of argument I'll agree. If they're allies why is Hamas being ignored in favor of going after Israel? Shouldn't Israels partner Hamas also be singled out for protest and blame?

Quote:

When your business is peddling hate it isn't in your interest to end conflict. It is all about whipping it up. I know you understand that, Paladin.

October 7 might have been an embarrassment, but it played right into his hands because it was tossing gasoline on an already burning fire. And it gave him an excuse to kick a genocide that was already underway into high gear - in Gaza, and in the West Bank.

I don't disagree with you. Barbarians at the gate theory.