#joseph massad

[gothhabiba]

The only discernable difference between the views of [liberal commentator Anthony] Lewis and Israel's supporters is on the unavoidable issue of real Palestinian physical victimization—deaths, injuries, deportation, detention, torture. Here Lewis supports Palestinians insofar as Palestinians are physical victims, that is objects of Israeli violence. But his support does not surpass this limit by much. When Palestinians assume a subject role (in this case our refusal to accept U.S. dictates), condemnation ensues, as if in outrage that objects have presumptuously assumed the role of subjects. Once Palestinians exercise agency, we are considered uncritically to be "irrational" and are consequently dismissed.

— Joseph Massad, "Palestinians and the Limits of Racialized Discourse"

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Jaryn Crouson

Professors connected to anti-Israel protests head programs that received millions of taxpayer dollars, according to a report released Wednesday by government transparency group Open The Books.

The Department of Education has spent $283 million on foreign studies grants since 2020, with over $22.1 million going towards programs studying the Middle East, Open The Books found. The study analyzed the top three grant recipients, Indiana University, Columbia University and Georgetown University, and found that each highlighted anti-Israel professors as distinguished staff in their programs.

“These universities all have multibillion dollar endowments,” Amber Todoroff, deputy policy editor at Open The Books, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “They get tax breaks, government-backed student loans, and enormous sums through federal grants and contracts. Through these Title VI grants, they’re getting funding specifically for departments that have hosted radical professors, instigating shameful protests nationwide. It’s high time Congress takes a closer look at how this money is being spent, and, with so many new ways to learn languages and international culture, if it’s even necessary at all.”

Universities received these funds in the form of two different grants: National Resource Centers grants, which go directly to departmental programs, and Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) grants, which can be used to give students fellowships to study foreign regions or languages, according to Open The Books.

Columbia received $2.8 million in FLAS grants from 2020 to 2024, according to the report. Its program is meant to “examine transnational connections, develop Islamic studies, and deepen specialist expertise on the region,” according to Columbia’s 2018 grant proposal.

The 2018 application mentioned Joseph Massad, a professor in the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies department, as a selling point for the university’s program, noting that his classes “focus on the modern history, gender, political economy, international relations, politics and culture of the region.” The university received $653,632 in an FLAS grant in the 2022-2023 school year that was used in part to fund a fellowship for a student to take Massad’s “Gender and Sexuality in the Arab World” class, according to Open The Books.

Massad was alleged by students to be biased “against both Israel and the West” in his classes, according to Open The Books, citing nonprofit group Middle East Forum. The professor published an article the day after Hamas’ attack in 2023 calling it a “stunning victory,” and he gave a talk at the university in 2002 titled “On Zionism and Jewish Supremacy.”

Columbia experienced intense anti-Israel campus protests during the spring semester that resulted in over 100 arrests and multiple safety concerns. (RELATED: Many Pro-Palestinian Protesters Remain In ‘Good Standing’ At Columbia)

🧵On October 8, Professor Joseph Massad described the Oct. 7 brutal terror attack as “awesome” and a “stunning victory.” He also happens to be the chair of an important academic approval Committee. Watch as @Columbia President claims: “he is no longer a chair of that… pic.twitter.com/rRU32HQnTv — House Committee on Education & the Workforce (@EdWorkforceCmte) April 17, 2024

Indiana University raked in $2.84 million in federal grants from 2020 to 2023 for its Middle East program, and touted professor Abdulkader Sinno its 2018 grant application for his specialization in “the evolution and outcomes of civil wars, ethnic strife and other territorial conflicts; Muslim representation in Western liberal democracies; Islamist parties’ participation in elections,” according the report. Sinno reportedly served as a faculty advisor for the university’s Palestinian Solidarity Committee, which was involved in hosting an “anti-Israel counter protest” where members confronted participants of a Hillel demonstration.

Sinno attempted to sidestep university policies to host the pro-Palestinian speaker Miko Peled for the organization, booking the speaker as an academic event rather than student event, according to the university’s students newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student. The decision led to a two-semester suspension from teaching and a year suspension from advising student groups, according to Open The Books.

Even after the suspension, Sinno gave a speech at an “alternative” graduation for anti-Israel activists during which he praised them for being part of a “proud tradition” and said that their protesting showed “empathy and caring,” according to WFYI.

More than 50 protesters were arrested on Indiana University’s campus in April after a clash with police that left multiple injured, according to Fox 59.

Georgetown received $2.64 million from the Department of Education from 2020 to 2023 in FLAS funding, and it named Associate Professor and Director of Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies Dr. Fida Adely in its 2018 grant proposal, the report found. Adely is a member of the Faculty for Justice in Palestine’s National Advisory Board, according to Open The Books, which is a group that “encourages academic and cultural boycotts of Israel and Israeli academic institutions,” according to its website.

Hundreds rallied on Georgetown’s campus during the spring semester, hosting an encampment that lasted more than a week and scuffled with police, according to the university’s student newspaper, The Hoya. Adely participated in an October rally, calling on the university to divest from Israel-linked companies, according to a separate student paper, The Georgetown Voice.

“By funding schools that teach radical ideologies and practice a far-Left DEI philosophy, controversial professors and administrators are also gaining access to a vast ecosystem of tax dollars, and influence over impressionable young people,” the report concluded. “These funds can be used to advance their research, build their standing as credentialed academics, gain tenure, and impact international policy discussions. Meanwhile, our national interest in these grants comes into considerable question. Are we encouraging more professionals who will be credible in these fields and represent U.S. interests, or more folks who are determined to ‘dismantle’ the ‘settler colonialism’ they see all around them?”

Columbia, Georgetown, Indiana University, Massad, Sinno and Adely did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

[hummussexual]

Excerpt:

When UN member states recognise a phantasmic Palestinian state, all they are doing is buttressing Israel's illegality as an institutionally racist state. What they need to do is not recognise a Palestinian state but withdraw their recognition of Israel. Only that will lead to a decolonised anti-racist and democratic outcome.

[theinconvenientlifestyle]

[edwordsmyth]

Joseph Massad

[edwordsmyth]

Quotations taken from this article by Joseph Massad, worth reading in full.

Kissinger had a horrifying list of crimes against many countries, Vietnam and Cambodia and many more. Words aren't enough to describe the horrors.

Though, one of which I find is not talked about much is the ones against Palestine.

The bastard is one of the main reasons why Israel was able to do all of those genocides

Suffer in Hell, Henry

[xtruss]

"The Final Years of All Settler-colonies Are Marked By More Protracted Colonial Savagery, Including Genocide.

In Kenya, the British are estimated to have killed 100,000 Kenyans during the war of national liberation that ended white supremacist colonial rule in 1963. The wars of liberation in Angola and Mozambique against their Portuguese colonists cost tens of thousands of lives between 1956 and 1976. But of all these precedents, Algeria is perhaps the most apposite example of what has been unfolding in Gaza.

In January 1955, former French minister of the colonies Jacques Soustelle was appointed governor-general of Algeria. He created the Sections Administratives Specialisees to undermine the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) and win over the Algerians.

The army began to depopulate Algerian villages, relocating whole villages away from FLN areas of activity. It further established Algerian anti-FLN militias, depicting the FLN fighters as "locusts" in a huge propaganda campaign while representing itself as saving the Algerians from the evils of communism and Arab nationalism. This is not unlike the American and Israeli attempts to "save" Palestinians from the evils of "terrorism".

If these imperialist justifications remind us of how Iran today is targeted as the force behind the Palestinian revolt in Gaza and the West Bank and is constantly being threatened by Israel, the US, and their Arab allies, it is because the rhetoric is the same.

There was also growing support for Algeria's independence at the UN. The US, however, abstained on a General Assembly resolution in December 1957 recognising Algerians' right to independence.

So far, The Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, Apartheid, Illegal Occupier and War Criminal Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗 Isra-hellis have killed over 33,000 Palestinians in the last six months. They have shown an appetite to kill many more to preserve their Jewish supremacist settler-colony. As to how many more Palestinians Israel will kill in its final years before it is dismantled is something only White House strategists know."

— ✍️ Joseph Massad

[still-searching-for-something]

Let's talk about Israeli cuisine.

Unfortunately, I have less experience with it than I should, as it looks absolutely delicious, but I've never had any. Diaspora Jew in a place with few Jews or Israelis moment :(. And I'm talking less about Israeli cuisine and more about how it's perceived--namely how it's taken from Israelis, denigrated as 'not Israeli', as having been 'stolen' from Arab cuisine as a part of a broader project of 'cultural conquest'. Looking at you, Joseph Massad.

This assertion is not only a bald-faced lie, it is also deeply antisemitic. People have the right to make food. Nobody's going to call a non Italian racist for making or eating Italian food. Nor would an Italian be culturally appropriating if they eat sushi. Yet Jews and Israelis are stealing if they make Middle Eastern food?

More than that, though, it ignores Jewish history. Jews have lived in the Middle East for... as long as homo sapiens have lived in the Middle East? Mizrahim, who make up most of Israel's population, did not grow out of the ground in Israel from 1948-1979. They were expelled, violently chased out of the Muslim-majority countries they had lived for millennia. Before then, they sustained themselves on falafel, couscous, hummus, tahini, halva, shawarma, and every Middle Eastern food under the sun. If there were such a thing as the 'right' to make food, they'd absolutely have it.

But it's instead 'colonization', 'cultural appropriation', and 'cultural conquest'? To bring the culinary practices they and their ancestors had been practicing since Judaism began to the only country that had thrown open their doors to them? After experiencing pogroms, riots, anti-Jewish legislation, the world once sat by and did nothing to stop it. Again. And then members of these countries have the gall--the audacity and sheer disrespect--to accuse them of pilfering their own fucking culture?? After violently kicking them out???

Like, it blows my mind how many injustices Israelis are subjected to by moronic protestors who think 'Zionism is racism' or whatever. Every time someone posts about Zionist colonization of Palestinian food and culture, they're ironically themselves indulging in cultural erasure. The fact that Palestinians often make the same foods isn't indicative of a supposed Zionist plot to exterminate Palestinians and steal their culinary practices, but rather reflective of their shared origins as being Middle Eastern. But these online 'activists' don't care--nor do they care that the implied 'Zionist plot' that runs through their claims is textbook antisemitism.

Middle Eastern food is widespread in Middle Eastern countries. When Middle Eastern people get kicked out of Middle Eastern countries and go to another Middle Eastern country, they make... Middle Eastern food. Shocking, I know.

It isn't stealing. It isn't cultural appropriation.

Now, gut shabbos everyone.

[opencommunion]

"Palestinians have resisted and resist the Nakba with steadfastness and a refusal to leave their lands; with strikes, demonstrations, and civil disobedience; with art, music, and dance; with poetry, theater, and novels; with writing their own history and asserting their own geography; with local and international appeals to courts of law, and to the United Nations. Palestinians have also resisted and resist the Nakba with stones and with guns. The denial of the Palestinians’ right to resist (guaranteed and deemed legal by international law) is not however confined to their use of guns, but equally to their use of art, books, music, demonstrations, even of filing UN appeals, of teaching Palestinian history, of narrating the Nakba, or of remembering and commemorating it."

Joseph Massad, Resisting the Nakba (2008)

[gothhabiba]

[...] [A]side from strengthening ties with the Zionist settler-colony of Israel, which became a major US ally during the Nixon and Ford years, Kissinger armed Israel to the teeth during the 1973 war in order “to prevent an Arab victory”. His emergency military help to Israel during the war reversed the early victories of the Egyptian and Syrian armies and ensured that Israel won the war. He also ensured that no US relations could be established with the Palestine Liberation Organisation. 

In September 1975, Kissinger signed a “memorandum of understanding” with the Israelis committing the US not to recognise or negotiate with the PLO unless it recognised Israel’s “right to exist” as a racist, Jewish-supremacist state. Former PLO chairman Yasser Arafat would finally do so in 1988 in Geneva, and again in 1993 with the signing of Oslo.

In effect, Kissinger ensured the perpetuation of Israeli colonisation of Palestinian lands for decades to come. He was the architect of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s surrender to Israel and selling out of Palestinian rights at Camp David, and designed the so-called American-sponsored “peace process”, which has defined US policy towards Palestinians and Israel and has since brought about the ongoing calamities in much of the Arab world.

–Joseph Massad, "The murderous legacy of Henry Kissinger." Middle East Eye, 30 November 2023.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Dion J. Pierre

During Wednesday’s interview with the Algemeiner, Davidai defended his approach as a genuine expression of grief and concern for the welfare of Jewish students.

“People are free to see exactly the videos and see, you know, what did or did not happen and judge for themselves,” he said. “That is why I call this a clear act or retaliation. My lawyers got on a phone call with them on Oct. 7 [of this year] and were told that the university is going to suspend my ability to be on campus. On that day, the university found that the most important thing is to remove me from campus. I am, to the best of my knowledge, the only professor who has been removed from campus since Oct. 7 [2023].”

Davidai went on to point to faculty conduct which has been covered by The Algemeiner, including Columbia professor Joseph Massad publishing in Electronic Intifada an essay cheering Hamas’s atrocities as “awesome” and describing men who paraglided into a music festival to kill young people as “the air force of the Palestinian resistance.”

Davidai continued, “The only person who was removed from campus is the one that exposed the chief operating officer’s antisemitic problem. And I say this, you know, I don’t know if he is or isn’t an antisemite. I do know that he’s awfully comfortable with antisemitism and that he has an antisemitism problem.”

According to Columbia University, the campus ban, which does not affect Davidai’s compensation or employment status, was prompted by “threats of intimidation, harassment, or other threatening behavior.”

Samantha Slater, a university spokesperson, continued: “Columbia has consistently and continually respected Assistant Professor Davidai’s right to free speech and to express his views. His freedom of speech has not been limited and is not being limited now. Columbia, however, does not tolerate threats of intimidation, harassment, or other threatening behavior by its employees. Because Assistant Professor Davidai repeatedly harassed and intimidated university employees in violation of university policy, we have temporarily limited his access to campus while he undertakes appropriate training on our policies governing the behavior of our employees.”

This latest clash between Davidai and Columbia University comes during what has been widely described as an unprecedented “crisis” at the school which, since Oct. 7, 2023, has undermined its credibility with the public and drawn the scrutiny of federal lawmakers.

In April, an anti-Zionist group occupied Hamilton Hall, forcing then-university president Minouche Shafik to call on the New York City Police Department (NYPD) for help, a decision she hesitated to make and which led to over 108 arrests. However, according to documents shared in August by the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce, 18 of the 22 students slapped with disciplinary charges for their role in the incident remain in “good standing” despite the university’s earlier pledge to expel them. Another 31 of 35 who were suspended for illegally occupying the campus with a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” remain in good standing too.

In August, Shafik resigned as president of the university, and just two months prior, in June, its legal counsel reached an out of court settlement with a student who accused administrators of neglecting their obligation to foster a safe learning environment during the final weeks of last spring semester. While stopping short of admitting guilt, the settlement virtually conceded to the plaintiff her argument that the campus was unsafe for Jewish students, agreeing to provide her and others “Safe Passage Liaisons” tasked with protecting them from racist abuse and violence.

Amid this cluster of scandals and conflagrations, Davidai has allegedly received a lion’s share of the university’s attention. Last semester, it launched an investigation of his conduct, which he called a persecution that “reveals the depths of its hostility towards its Jewish community.” He has since retained counsel to guard his rights and prevent being bulldozed by one of the wealthiest and powerful universities in the world. Despite his troubles, however, he told The Algemeiner on Wednesday that Columbia is redeemable.

[ghelgheli]

Stuff I Read In May 2024

bold indicates favourites

Books

Hogg, Samuel Delaney

Land Reform & its Direct Effects in Iran, OIPFG [link]

Blackshirts and Reds, Michael Parenti

Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton

The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, Seth Dickinson

Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant

Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle

Yuri/GL

maintenance, crvptozoology [link]

Shimeji Simulation, Tsukumizu

If We Can Meet Tomorrow / Ashita, Kimi Ni Aetara, Aoto Hibiki

Love Thy Neighbour, Willow

Short Fiction

Let's Not, Isaac Asimov

Each an Explorer, Isaac Asimov

Blank!, Isaac Asimov

Palestine

Exiting Law and Entering Revolution, Basel al-Araj [link]

Resisting the Nakba, Joseph Massad [link]

Rain is Coming, Mohammed El-Kurd [link]

Novel Evil, Miriam Gordis [link]

Queer &c.

The Logics of Gender Construction in Asian Modernities, Emiko Ochiai

“It’s Only a Penis”: Rape, Feminism, and Difference, Christine Helliwell [link]

In the Dark Room: Homosexuality and/as Blackness in James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, Josep M. Armengol [link]

She's always a woman: Butch lesbian trans women in the lesbian community, Hannah Rossiter [link]

No Sex Please—We’re Hobbits: The Construction of Female Sexuality in The Lord of the Rings, Brenda Partridge

Toward a historiography of the lesbian transsexual, or the TERF’s nightmare, Jules Gill-Peterson [link]

Sick Woman Theory, Johanna Hedva [link]

The Myth and Tradition of the Black Bulldagger, SDiane A. Bogus [link]

This Infamous Proposal, Jules Joanne Gleeson [link]

Transing and Transpassing across Sex-Gender Walls in Iran, Afsaneh Najmabadi [link]

What Is It Like to Have a Gender Identity? Florence Ashley

Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe, Hortense J. Spillers

Egg Theory's Early Style, Grace Lavery [link]

NEVER EVER TRANSITION, lily bloodguts [link]

Pol

What Was To Be Done? Protest and Revolution in the 2010s, Jasper Bernes [link]

Anarchy and Scientific Communism, Nikolai Bukharin [link]

Against Innocence, Jackie Wang

Islamology, Ali Shariati [link]

Signals of Disorder: Sowing Anarchy in the Metropolis, A. G. Schwarz [link]

Foucault: The Faux Radical, Gabriel Rockhill [link]

Extractivism in the Anthropocene, John Bellamy Foster [link]

The Xinjiang Atrocity Propaganda Blitz, Roderic Day [link]

I Accuse This Liberal University of Terror and Violence, Fredy Perlman [link]

Other

Public Transit, AJ Julius [link]

Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess, Linda Williams [link]

The Myth of the Boiling Point, Hasok Chang [link]

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

Also while I'm getting shit off my chest and screaming into the void fuck Joseph Massad and all of the other "anti-imperialist" critics/theorists who just, really fucking hate gay people lmao. We're still fighting for our lives against the state after decades of struggle and you want to act like we've been transformed into a hegemonic imperializing force because insincere politicians occasionally wave a rainbow flag with one hand while killing us with the other. Worry more about the overwhelmingly cishet fascists and imperialists who want to colonize your countries for entirely non-gay reasons.

[good-old-gossip]

Last week, in a major televised address, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah threatened Cyprus with military action if it continues its military cooperation with Israel, whose army has been training in the island nation for an attack on Lebanon.

Indeed, the Cypriots have not only become Israel’s close friend but also a major US ally. The recent love affair between Cyprus and Israel has been in the making for more than three decades.

Yet the closeness of that relationship did not become apparent until March 2011, when former President Dimitris Christofias went on an official visit to Israel.

But if Cyprus began to cosy up to Israel only recently in its history, Christian and Jewish Zionists have had a much longer involvement in Cypriot affairs.

The Zionists have always referred to the ancient Hebrew colonies in Cyprus, whose ancient Hebrew name (which is still used in modern Hebrew) is ‘Kafrisim’, including Paphos and Salamis, as a precedent for future colonisation. It was the British-Israelites, however, who became the most ardent British Protestant group supporting Jewish colonisation.

If the Cypriots indeed find Jewish colonisation and Israeli genocidal wars across Palestine so unobjectionable as to continue warm relations and military cooperation, perhaps they can offer their own country for Jewish colonisation and revive Zionist dreams of taking over the island.

This is especially so as the embassy of Cyprus in Tel Aviv celebrates the ancient Hebrew colonies in its country.

Strangely, it does not seem to celebrate the colonies at Kouklia or Margo-Tchiflik.

Perhaps, given this Cypriot welcome, the Zionists could begin a new call for the ‘return’ of modern Jews to the ancient Hebrew colonies in Kafrisin and the more recent Zionist ones in Kouklia and Margo-Tchiflik, as this could reduce their ceaseless colonisation of the lands of the Palestinians.”

✍️ by Joseph Massad

[secular-jew]

DAILY CALIPHATE HEADLINE NEWS:

Columbia University Professor Joseph Massad: The US Was, And Still Is, A Settler Colonialist Country;

Houthi Spokesman Meets With Top Russian Diplomat In Moscow;

Hizbullah Scholar Threatens: Missiles 'Can Reach Everywhere In Israel'

Lebanese Writer Jamal Fayad: The Jews Lied About How Hitler Burned Some Of Them;

Brooklyn Sermon: The Jews Incurred The Wrath Of Allah, Killed The Prophets;

New Jersey Muslim YouTuber: The Jews Distort Scripture, Killed Their Own Prophets;

Australian Center Affiliated With Pro-ISIS Preacher Runs School For Children