#no it is not antisemitic or against judaism to be a jewish pro-palestinian

[luvmoonie]

if your sole argument to pro-palestinians is ‘what about oct 7’ or ‘you’d be killed in palestine’ or even ‘where will jews go’ PLEASEEEE leave the room right now nobody likes you

[pencopanko]

Antisemitism and Islamophobia are very similar (if not the same), actually

So I was scrolling down the #palestine tag for any updates and important information, and I came across this:

And I think we need to sit down and talk about this.

I am a Muslim. I live in Indonesia, a country that is predominantly Muslim and a lot of Muslims here also support the Palestinian cause. Hell, even our government supports it by not only allowing Palestinian goods enter the country without fee, but also by taking in Palestinian refugees and even acknowledging the status of Palestine as a state while not having any political ties with Israel. The topic of the Palestinian tragedy has been spoon-fed to us at schools, sermons, media, etc., so your average Indonesian Muslim would at the very least be aware of the conflict while non-Muslims would hear about it from their Muslim friends or through media.

However, there is a glaring problem. One that I keep seeing way too often for my liking.

A lot of them are antisemitic as hell. The sermons I would hear sometimes demonize Jewish people. Antisemitic statements are openly said out loud on social media. Some are even Nazi supporters who would literally go to anime cons and COSPLAY as members of the Nazi party. This is not just an Indonesian Muslim problem, no, but this is a glaring issue within the global Islamic community as a whole. Today, this sense of antisemitism is usually rooted in general hatred towards the Israeli government and its actions against the people of Palestine, but antisemitism amongst Muslims are also rooted in certain interpretations of verses from the Qur'an and Hadith mentioning Jewish people and Judaism (particularly the Bani Israil), but in a way that is more ridiculing instead of life-threatening when compared to how antisemitism looks like in the Western world.

As someone who prefers to become a "bridge" between two sides in most cases, I find this situation to be concerning, to say the least. While, yes, it is important for us Muslims to support Palestine and fight against injustice, we must not forget that not every Jewish people support the Israeli government. A lot of them are even anti-Zionists who actively condemn Israel and even disagree with the existence of Israel as a state as it goes against their teachings. A lot of them are also Holocaust survivors or their descendants, so it is harmful to think for one second that Hitler's actions and policies were justified. It's just like saying that Netanyahu is right for his decision to destroy Palestine and commit war crime after war crime towards the Palestinians.

As Muslims, we also need to remember that Jewish people (the Yahudi) are considered ahli kitab, i.e. People Of The Book along with Christians (the Nasrani). The Islam I have come to know and love has no mentions of Allah allowing us to persecute them or anyone collectively for the actions of a few. While, yes, there are disagreements with our respective teachings I do not see that as an excuse to even use antisemitic slurs against Jewish people during a pro-Palestine rally, let alone support a man who was known for his acts of cruelty toward the Jewish community in WW2. They are still our siblings/cousins in faith, after all. Unless they have done active harm like stealing homes from civilians or celebrating the destruction of Palestine or supporting the Israeli government and the IOF or are members of the IOF, no Jewish people (and Christians, for that matter) must be harmed in our fight against Zionism.

Contemporary antisemitism is similar to (if not straight up being the exact same thing as) contemporary Islamophobia, if you think about it; due to the actions of a select few that has caused severe harm towards innocent people, an entire community has been a target of hate. Even when you have tried to call out the ones supporting such cruelties, you are still getting bombarded by hate speech. It's doubly worse if you're also simultaneously part of a marginalized group like BIPOC, LGBTQ+, etc. as you also get attacked on multiple sides. This is where we all need to self-reflect, practice empathy, and unlearn all of the antisemitism and unjustified hatred that we were exposed to.

So, do call out Zionism and Nazism when you see it. Call out the US government for funding this atrocity and others before it that had ALSO triggered the rise of Islamophobia. Call your reps. Go to the streets. Punch a fascist if you feel so inclined. Support your local businesses instead of pro-Israel companies.

But not at the cost of our Jewish siblings. Not at the cost of innocent Jewish people who may also be your allies. If you do that, you are no different from a MAGA cap-wearing, gun-tooting, slur-yelling Islamophobe.

That is all for now, may your watermelons taste fresh and sweet.

🍉

Salam Semangka, Penco

[anti-zionist-jew]

I had to start a new blog, so I figured I would reintroduce myself.

My name is Zara. I’m a Black Ashkenazi Jewish woman, 36 years of age, who grew up in one of the oldest majority Black synagogues in occupied Turtle Island (USA). Being a Black woman, and a Jewish woman, have shaped my entire identity and walk through life. I am proudly Black and Jewish. I have been on the “birthright” trip, and can attest first hand how that is two weeks of pure Zionist propaganda, and how none of this is about Judaism.

We do not need a country to all be shuffled into in order to be safe. Israel does not protect Jewish people, and it never has. Palestinian sovereignty is not and never will be antisemitic, and From the River to the Sea is not a call for genocide against the Jews. It is a call for liberation, a declaration of decolonization. Is “from sea to shining sea” a call for genocide? Or is it a declaration that the land from the Pacific to the Atlantic is the USA?

White westerners get to hide their antisemitism by “supporting Israel” and thus supporting the idea of shuffling Jews to the Middle East. They get to claim they are protecting a historically marginalized people, while sticking us on the other side of the world, where they can “be over there, and they can fight amongst themselves far away from us”

Israel is a settler state. They came in and murdered people to steal their homes. Occupied the land. Began controlling all access to resources. And then started committing genocide when Hamas retaliated. What Hamas did is not just unsurprising, it was inevitable. Tell me that you, in Podunk USA would let people come steal your house. Tell me you wouldn’t use the “stand your ground” or “castle doctrine” to shoot the thieves coming to rob you. Tell me you’ll voluntarily give your home to an indigenous American. You simply cannot. Explain to me how Jews living in Israel who stand against genocide are being arrested, beaten, exiled from their communities. Explain to me how they’re not an ethno state when they do not legally recognize interfaith marriage.

Israel is an apartheid state, Israel has its hands in the worst atrocities the world over. Yes, white Jew reading this in Brooklyn, what is happening to Palestinians will always be far worse than the pro Palestine protestor calling you a colonizer when you inserted yourself against their cause, and then wanted to pretend you were attacked for being Jewish. Zionism ≠ Judaism, and the world knows that now.

Even in the context of those arguments to indigenous to the land, please read a single book or paper published by an indigenous scholar. Multiple people can and are indigenous to the same regions.

Anyway, it’s Free Palestine. Free Congo. Free the Sudan. Release the chains from all oppressed and colonized people. Agitate, educate, organize. And long live the intifada

[teal-deer]

sorry, are you pro-Israel?

Lmfao no.

Israel regularly shoots rockets at my mother's high school (in Lebanon). Israeli troops tried to kill my mother when she was 16 because she was getting tampons and condoms from the convenience store after curfew hours.

I am, however, very pro Jew. I wholeheartedly support the Jewish diaspora and even the innocent Israelis caught in the middle of this crap, the ones being used as bargaining chips in a stupid game of politics. I can hold that Hamas is a terrorist organization which routinely throws innocent Palestinians into the line of fire and doesn't care how many lives are lost in their doomed crusade.

These things can all be true at once.

So no, I'm not pro The Modern State of Israel, no. But I'm also staunchly against antisemitism. It's a thin line to walk. Never mistake my support for Judaism and my whole hearted belief that the Jewish people deserve safety & security & peace, for supporting a genocidal ethnostate.

[matan4il]

To the Nonnie who wrote me about screenshots of two Palestinians talking, where one mentioned an exchange between his Palestinian American father and an IDF (implied Jewish) soldier from the US.

You rightly pointed out the duplicity in that exchange -

Why did he phrase it 'we had American citizenship', but the presumably Jewish idf soldier was just straight up American? As if to put distance between he and his father's American identity while framing the Jewish man as solely American and there fore undeserving of being in Israel.

I'll add to this, but first I wanna tell you that by chance, I saw the post you were talking about, and I have to raise the question of context. Because that's not just screenshots from any old conversation between two random Palestinians. That was taken from an anti-Zionist documentary. I've heard about it, I didn't watch it, I did see the trailer for it, which was pretty blatant in how one-sided it generally is. Any Jew who is pro-Israel is presented as a brainwashed, violent mad person, while only Jews who are anti-Zionists are presented as humane, and capable of showing concern for the Palestinians. Who cares if there are Jews, including Israeli ones, who are both? That docu is clearly not interested in letting the nuanced facts get in the way of its simplistic, one-sided conclusions.

That's incredibly antisemitic. To treat Jews who are aware of their history, of the Zionist nature of Judaism, of their native rights in Israel or their connection to Jewish communities everywhere, including in our ancestral land, as if they're motivated by nothing other than brainwashing and inhumane blindness, is at the very least to rob us of our agency, dignity and rights as Jews and as human beings.

I can also say that some of their more high profile interviewees are, in addition to being notorious anti-Zionists, quite unreliable in the way that they refer to the facts of this conflict. Oh, and one more thing about that docu is that it's guilty of spreading the libel that Jews only speak about antisemitism as a form of weaponizing it to protect Israel from criticism. This is such a dangerous form of delegitimizing the voices of a majority of Jews (including on this hellsite) which have spoken up about antisemitism of the anti-Zionist type because IT DOES ENDANGER JEWS. We speak up about it, not to protect Israel, but to protect our people (especially those of us who recognize that the intention to harm Israel has more to do with wanting to harm Jews than with any facts in this conflict, see this post as an example). It is gaslighting and antisemitic to undermine the voices of Jews when 90% of us raise them to speak up against antisemitism, just because we speak out against how anti-Zionism is inherently antisemitic and is so often used to harm us.

So I wouldn't be quick to take ANY material from such a biased, antisemitic documentary at face value, including the accusations against the Jewish soldier and his behavior. Is it possible that the Palestinian man talking about his dad and the soldier, was telling the whole truth about the exchange, and nothing but? Yes. But I recognize that, knowing this is filmed for a propaganda piece, some or maybe even all parts of the story might be distorted, exaggerated or even downright made up. I have no way of knowing, and I do not trust that the makers of such a propaganda piece (only pretending to be a documentary) did their journalistic duty, and verified the truthfulness of all anti-Israel sources. More than that, I've seen how easily anti-Zionists lie about Israelis when they think their story can't be verified, or they trust that they're talking to clueless foreigners (kinda like how they'll have pics with Palestinians dressed up as IDF soldiers committing atrocities, and Israelis would be able to tell immediately that the uniforms are fake, but foreigners wouldn't), so...

Back to the exchange you mentioned. I fully agree with what you said about the duplicity. I'd even add to it.

According to historical research, there is an 80% chance that this Palestinian man's father most likely chose to leave Israel when this country's Independence War was started by the Arab leadership (unlike around 150,000 Arabs who didn't leave, nor attacked the Jews. They became Israeli Arabs, as this man's father could have been, too). Then the speaker's father further chose to go the US (rather than Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, etc) and get citizenship there. Good on him, but that means that as an idea, there's less of a distance between that man and his American identity, which he chose to pursue, and the Jewish soldier who was born having one, and chose to make the difficult decision of relinquishing the safe and comfortable life he had in the US, come to Israel (a country where financially he would struggle more), enlist in the army (which is mandatory for any Jew moving here), and put his own life at risk, all because Israel is his ancestral land. It IS two-faced to act like the Jew's American identity deprives him of a connection to his ancestral land, while the Palestinian dad's doesn't subvert his connection and claim to this place, but it's even worse when you remember the Palestinian man chose to walk away and move specifically to the US, while the Jewish guy did not, and it's even further a reversal tactic, when you remember that while Israel IS the ancestral homeland of all Jews, Palestinians (as Arabs) can are not native to this land. They came from Arabia and COLONIZED the Land of Israel (many doing so as recently as the 19th or 20th century). This is just pure and antisemitic historic revisionism, choosing to replace Jews as the natives of Israel, much like many other forms of antisemitism have chosen one form or another of replacement theory when it comes to our people.

I also found the way the Palestinian man framed the motivation of the Jewish soldier to be very antisemitic, degrading and reductive. "He just wanted to play Cowboys and Indians." And apparently, this American Jew couldn't find a good enough paintball team, so he HAD to make his life much harder, not to mention put it at actual risk, because he just HAD to play pretend with guns. It's not that this Jewish guy feels a strong connection to Israel, it's not that maybe he experienced antisemitism in the US to the point where he realized he had no place anywhere other than in the Jewish ancestral land, it's not that he felt deep kinship with his siblings in Israel defending our native rights here, no... The Jewish soldier MUST have just had a complex where mommy didn't let him play enough with space robots or something, so he decided to play out such fights in real life. Tell me that's not an incredibly patronizing, dismissive, reductive view of Jewish people and why we come here, even when it can be so much easier to stay elsewhere. It's an inherent racism, of seeing Jews as brainless puppets of "someone who told them this is home..."

Like, I'm a gentile but this wording is so frustrating to me. It plays into the untrue idea that the majority of Israelis are European or American when that is false and that jews are not from Israel. It's such an underhanded tactic imo. It's like they don't think the bad things some idf do or the Israeli government does is bad enough unless they add something else to it. It can't be war, it has to be genocide. It can't be soldiers abusing their power (something every army has trouble with) it has to be evil foreign, colonizers that don't belong bullying the pure, innocent native population.

You're absolutely right. War is always bad, horrible things will always happen, no army can control 100% of its soldiers 100% of the time (and that doesn't negate that the overall purpose of said army can be a good, worthy one, like how the atrocities some allied soldiers committed during WWII do not cancel the fact that the allies WERE the good guys in defeating the Nazis), every government can be criticized. But the need to turn the Jewish army into THE WORST, the Jewish implementation of our right to self defense into no less than a genocide (so what if none of the facts support that), the Jewish state into the greatest perpetrator of humanitarian rights crimes (again, with little proof, and while ignoring actual atrocities taking place on much greater scale around the globe) is just another form of antisemitism, of taking Jewish collectives and vilifying them to the point where Jews just no longer have their rights, including at the end of the line, the right to exist.

All of it is antisemitic and infuriating. I guess I'm just grateful that, even as a non-Jew, you can see right through most of that. Thank you for the ask, and I hope you're doing well! xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[eretzyisrael]

by Seth Mandel

ITEM: In Oakland, California, a Jewish woman walks into her son’s seventh-grade classroom on back-to-school night to see a poster that says, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

ITEM: In New York City, on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, angry pro-Palestinian crowds surround a Jewish man and bloody his head with a chair.

ITEM: In Philadelphia, hundreds mob a Jewish-owned restaurant, chanting, “Goldie, Goldie, you can’t hide; we charge you with genocide.” The restaurant is named Goldie.

ITEM: In Berkeley, California, the only Jewish teacher at an elementary school returns to find her door covered in Post-it notes that say, “Stop bombing babies!”

ITEM: In Chicago, home to the third-largest Jewish population in America, unions organize a high- school walkout in which students call for the destruction of Israel. “I’m incredibly proud of our students for exercising their constitutional rights to be able to speak out and speak up for righteousness,” said Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.

ITEM: In Washington, D.C., attendees arriving at a concert by the American-Jewish singer Matisyahu are greeted by a pro-Hamas demonstration.

At school, at work, and at play, American Jews find themselves increasingly ostracized by their peers. On college campuses, the quiet reestablishment of unofficial quotas has, over the course of a generation or two, halved the Jewish enrollment at a selection of elite universities. These days, stories of higher education’s turn against the Jews are ubiquitous. But as the above examples demonstrate, the attempt to cast Jews and Judaism out from the public square—or make Jews extremely uncomfortable inside the public square—has spread far beyond the college quad. And the statistics unambiguously say the same.

In the American Jewish Committee’s comprehensive survey of anti-Semitism in 2023, respondents were asked: “In the past 12 months, have you avoided certain places, events, or situations out of concern for your safety or comfort as a Jew out of fear of antisemitism?” Twenty-six percent—a quarter of U.S. Jews—responded in the affirmative. That is a 10-point increase over last year. In the poll, the number of those who admitted to avoiding “wearing, carrying, or displaying things that might help people identify you as a Jew,” as well as those who said they “avoided posting content online that would identify you as a Jew or reveal your views on Jewish issues,” increased as well.

All of this reflects the modern reality across the country. FBI reports show Jews are the target of more than half of all religiously motivated crimes. According to the Anti-Defamation League, over the course of the three months after October 7, there were more than 600 reported anti-Semitic incidents against Jewish institutions. And the ADL found a nearly 50 percent increase in security costs for Jewish schools in New York, New Jersey, and Florida.

[xclowniex]

I've been thinking that in building peace between Israelis and Palestinians, we need to build peace between our diaspora communities too. But how do we even begin that with the world dead set on pitting us against each other, making it an either-or choice of being strictly Pro-Israel or Pro-Palestine, and encouraging us to embrace destructive ideologies that fuel the cycle of violence in our homeland and around the world?

Hi sorry this has been sitting in my inbox a while I just keep seeing this ask and going "oh I want to answer that one but I wanna write a proper response so I'll do it when I have time" and then when I have time I just forget.

Yeah, I 100% agree. How can we achieve peace if we can't even have peace within the jewish community worldwide.

It's so hard in the diaspora as there are so many external influences which affect each jew differently.

I don't think peace would ever look like diaspora jews agreeing on like a vague overarching idea on Israel and tbh we shouldn't 100% need to as no group is a monolith and a diversity of opinions is good.+ 2 jews 3 opinions kinda being our thing.

However, we should reach a point where jews of all opinions on zionism stop throwing each other under the bus.

For example, antizionist jews need to stop acting like all zionist jews are dangerous and want Palestinians dead and zionist jews need to stop acting like every single antizionist jew is secular and is non practicing/has a weak connection to Judaism.

Throwing each other under the bus doesn't achieve anything except dividing the Jewish community making us an easier target for antisemitism and an easier target for external influences to divide us further.

We need to find some common ground, listen to each other and go from there.

The whole thing of making jews choose is also, sad as again, 2 jews 3 opinions whilst a light hearted statement, does have truth to it. And I think it's also an overarching trend in general, not just the Jewish community, where people are being forced to 100% align to every major opinion on a political side to be considered of that side.

Like I want a peaceful two state solution and most far left folk wouldn't consider me a leftist even though every other opinion I have is a leftist opinion. Having one non conforming opinion doesn't erase all of your other opinions. And I feel like it's important to not act like having one non-conforming opinion makes you no longer a leftist, etc.

I do hope and wish for the day when jews all around the world are united.

[edwardallenpoe]

the conflation of Zionism, the state of Israel, and Judaism is the worst thing on the planet, actually. Saying that supporting Palestine is antisemitism not only makes the struggle against genocide worse but it also makes the struggle against antisemitism worse! The more we conflate antizionism with antisemitism the less we will be able to spot actual antisemitism and the more we will harm the Jewish community and it is the greatest betrayal to Jewish people of all. Zionists (and 'leftists' who's hate for antisemitism is stronger than their love for jewish people and therefore inact alienation and conflation themselves) are doing a huge disservice to Jewish people (especially Jewish people who support Palestine and are being attacked by zionists and face so much antisemitism from zionists) and it's sickening.

I'm saying this as a non-jewish black person. You can SEE how much ACTUAL antisemitism is affecting the Jewish community but zionists are trying to conflate that with pro-palestinian protests and it's so frustrating.

How can zionists say that "from the river to the sea" is more colonialist than "we want '48"?

This post was inspired by an interview on MSNBC about the book "uncomfortable conversations with a jew" and seeing how they're also trying to frame antizionism and anti-Israel protests as equivalent to the civil rights protests and efforts towards freedom from the black community is sickening. This is an actual conversation to be had about antisemitism, antiblackness and intersectional activism and class solidarity between the Jewish community and the black community but the way they frame it in this lense is the biggest disservice, not just to the black and Jewish community but to every marginalized community. You CANNOT say that Israel's efforts to ethnically cleanse and genocide Palestine is the same as the African diaspora's (but specifically African American's) fight for rights and freedom, especially since the two biggest faces of the civil rights movement (Martin Luther King Jr. And Malcolm X, who was a pan African) were for the Jewish community AND for Palestine.

please. We can be pro-palestine and support Jewish people. That is something you can do. And I ENCOURAGE it.

Zionism ≠ judaism. Israel ≠ judaism. We understand this the same way we understand that nazi ≠ German citizens and that the state of russia ≠ russian citizens.

[mariacallous]

In April, when a group of pro-Palestinian activists pressured Florence’s city hall to have the local honorary Israeli consul resign, they also took aim at a politician, Sara Funaro, who was running for mayor.

“We’re sorry that we haven’t heard one word of condemnation of the Israeli government’s behavior from Marco Carrai,” the honorary consul, the activists said. “Just as striking is the silence of Councilor Funaro, who has actually wished this person well in his work.”

Funaro didn’t respond — and doesn’t appear to have publicly addressed the statement at all. Two months later, she won the mayoral election, becoming the first woman and first Jew to lead the city known as the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance.

The April petition incident reflects how Funaro, 48, has navigated being a Jewish politician in Italy.

She has expressed support for Israel, talked about what led her to embrace Judaism as an adult and, after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, received police protection due to antisemitic attacks.

But she also has not placed Judaism or Israel at the center of her career, instead trying to respond to hate against her with a poker face and framing her public persona around her family’s deep roots in the Tuscan city.

“When you put yourself out there in the context of an electoral campaign as mayor, you know that someone will try to exploit certain things against you,” Funaro told Corriere della Sera, a leading Italian newspaper, after facing antisemitic invective last year on social media. “It happened also in the past. I have always responded with great peace of mind.”

Funaro, who declined the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s request for an interview, comes from a family that has taken leading roles in Florence’s politics as well as its Jewish community.

The Jewish community was mentioned in writing as far back as the 14th century, according to its website. Today the city has around 1,000 Jews among a total population of more than 350,000, and a grand synagogue famous for its late 19th-century Moorish Revival architecture. Funaro’s father, an architect by profession, serves as president of the Opera del Tempio Ebraico di Firenze, a not-for-profit organization established to maintain the synagogue.

Funaro’s mother, a Catholic, is the daughter of Piero Bargellini, a centrist who served as the mayor of Florence in the 1960s. His term is best known for the catastrophic 1966 flood of the Arno River, which killed dozens and devastated the city and many of its artworks. He later served as an Italian senator.

Funaro was born and raised in Florence, where she studied psychology at the local Università di Firenze. When she was 20, she started working with children with disabilities, and shortly afterward, she became an educator in a care home for psychiatric patients.

Funaro says she and her brother were raised without any formal religion. But two decades ago, during a stint working with underprivileged children in Brazil, she decided to formally convert to Judaism. Italy’s official Jewish communities, like traditional Jewish movements globally, adhere to the standard that only those born to a Jewish mother are Jewish, but Funaro told the Corriere della Sera, “In reality I didn’t have a conversion: I embraced Judaism.”

“Both my dad and mom had a very strong religiosity, but they understood it was a very important individual choice,” she recalled in an interview with the paper. “Growing up, I began studying Torah and Talmud. I held long conversations with the rabbi. At 26, during my experience in Brazil among needy children, I made my decision.”

Funaro has remained involved in the city’s Jewish community, attending synagogue on holidays, said Ugo Caffaz, a friend of her father. “She studied for many years to get converted; she really wanted it,” he said.

She first ran for City Council under the leadership of the center-left mayoral candidate, and future Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi. She lost, but won a seat five years later with the center-left Democratic Party, and was reelected in 2019.

In the council, Mayor Dario Nardella tapped her to lead efforts concerning welfare, housing,integration and the advancement of women. She’s focused her political career on making Florence more inclusive, supporting the underprivileged, and fostering diversity. She has made a point of attending the city’s Pride parade and helped establish Florence’s first mosque.

She has also spoken up against antisemitism, denouncing the use of yellow stars, a symbol of the Holocaust, by anti-vaccine protesters during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, she criticized an event organized by two far-left Florence municipal council members whose posters described Israel as an apartheid state.

“Florence has always been a city of peace and dialogue and does not tolerate divisive messages that incite hatred,” she said at the time. “Putting up posters in the city stating that Israel is an apartheid state is not acceptable.”

In the summer of 2023, she was the subject of an antisemitic attack on social media. An Instagram user called her a “Zionist to the bone” and a lobbyist for Israel. Later, Funaro received death threats, and according to Corriere della Sera, the Italian authorities assigned her police protection beginning in October 2023, the month of the Hamas attack on Israel.

The 2023 Instagram post drew condemnation from Nardella, who called it “mean and revolting,” and added, “Sara is a strong and intelligent woman, and I am sure she isn’t intimidated by these insulting attacks.”

Like the leader of the Italian Democratic Party, Elly Schlein, who also has a Jewish father, Funaro has said she “absolutely” supports the two-state solution, which would see a Palestinian state established alongside Israel. “Anyone who has been to Israel and Palestine realizes that the only possibility of resolving this conflict is a recognition of the peoples, identities and cultures of belonging,” she told Corriere della Sera in July.

In the days following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, she said, “We need to keep living in the day-to-day, as we have always done,” a message she said she heard from local and national Jewish leaders as well. She added, “I think that’s the right spirit, of course with a view to the concern and the pain from what has happened.”

As in the rest of Italy and globally, antisemitism spiked in Florence following the Oct. 7 attack.

“Some Jewish kids were bullied at school, there have been antisemitic insults against people as they were leaving the synagogue, graffiti, and some unpleasant situations in the university,” said Enrico Fink, president of the Jewish Community of Florence. “At the same time, we have always felt supported by the authorities who increased security at Jewish sites.”

Funaro’s Jewish identity, or her position on Israel, was not a focus of this year’s campaign and did not stir controversy, despite the April petition criticizing her. She has continued to shy away from weighing in on the issue while in office, including declining to comment after the Florence City Council’s vote, just days before the first anniversary of Oct. 7, to urge Italy to recognize the state of Palestine.

Agnese Pini, the editor-in-chief of Florence’s newspaper La Nazione, said Florentine voters do not see their new mayor in terms of her religion.

“I think that if anything, for the people of Florence, Funaro is the heir of [her grandfather] Bargellini, I do not think that her religion played a role in her election, neither positively nor negatively,” Pini said. “Like many others, she received attention from internet trolls, but more for being a woman than for being Jewish.”

But Fink said that in the post-Oct. 7 world, Funaro’s election is a positive sign for the local Jewish community.

“I know Sara very well, and I believe she is a good person and capable politician,” he said. “She has always taken pride in her identity and history, the Jewish and the non-Jewish parts, and in Florence, everyone knows it, so there was no reason for further discussing the topic during her campaign.”

Funaro campaigned under the slogan “Florence in the plural – Many ideas, one city.” Her 89-page platform focused on fostering equality, security, sustainability and welfare, including proposals such as a minimum wage for city employees, keeping public daycares and elementary schools open until 6:30 p.m. to help parents, stationing police in a public park with high crime rates and increasing the number of affordable apartments in the city.

Pini said she would not be surprised to see Funaro entering the national political arena someday.

“Serving as the mayor of Florence opens up many opportunities,” said Pini. “All Florence mayors went on doing something at the national or international level. If Funaro decides to pursue this path, she will definitely have a good chance of succeeding.”

In the meantime, the mayor told the Corriere della Sera that she is not scared, despite the attacks against her. “I have always felt safe in my city,” she said.

[book--brackets]

Hi everyone. So I've been considering doing this for a while because I post a lot about it on my main blog but there are almost 2,000 of you following me here so I feel like this will have more impact.

As I'm sure you all know, there's some absolutely awful stuff going on in Palestine right now. To put it frankly, we are watching a genocide happen right now. Palestine has been colonized by Zionists for almost a century now, forced out of their homes, killed for no reason, had their basic rights denied, and now the Israeli government is actively trying to wipe them out. I want to make something abundantly clear. I am not here to debate this issue with you. I am firmly pro-Palestine, and there is no reason that homes, hospitals, and evacuation routes need to be bombed. No. Reason. If you are pro-Israel, maybe this isn't the competition for you.

Instead, I am here to tell you what we can do to support Palestine! Right now, it might seem like a pretty hopeless situation, but we are capable of affecting change. Currently, while donating is always good, it's very hard to get resources into Palestine. Also, donating isn't always feasible for everyone. Instead, here's what's recommended:

Boycotting. Right now, there are boycotts going on against pro-Israel companies. Now, to boycott every company supporting the Zionist movement would be very difficult, so there is a specific list of companies to target. There's the big three, Starbucks, McDonald's, and Disney+, and then the BDS has a list of the more minor companies to focus on boycotting. By focusing our efforts on these specific companies, it'll be a lot more effective.

If you're in a country where this is a viable route of action for you, contact your government officials! Tell them to call for a ceasefire! In the US, that means Congress, in the UK, that means Parliament. Even if it doesn't seem like it, this does have an impact. In the US particularly I know that representatives are so out of line with what their constituents want that their staffers have started pressuring them to avoid being so pro-Israel.

Finally, keep talking about this! There are a lot of issues in the world that have a surge of activism around them only for it to fall out of the public eye. Keep reblogging information and Palestinian testimony, keep posting resources, and keep the pressure on for a ceasefire!

Also, I want to make it extremely clear that the actions of Zionists do not speak for the many Jewish people of the world. Zionism does not mean Judaism. There are so many Jewish people out there standing with Palestine, and I won't tolerate any antisemitic or nazi ideology as a result of supporting Palestine.

I know this isn't exactly what you expected from a competition about childhood books, but this is an issue that all of us should be worried about. I'm not an expert on this, and I highly recommend checking out other sources on how to help, but I hope I can help get the word out.

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!

[jellyfishenjoyer22]

I am a born and raised Jew, and I am appalled and disgusted by the actions of the Israeli government against Palestinians. I am disgusted that the Israeli government would try to say that anyone against the ongoing genocide in Gaza is antisemitic. They are inadvertently spreading antisemitism by claiming this, as they are spreading the narrative that to be Jewish is to be a Zionist, and is to be pro-genocidal. I have been going to Hebrew school for my whole life. The mass murder of innocents is not what the Torah preaches. The destruction of hundreds of thousands of lives is not what Jews believe in.

Standing with Palestine does not make me any less of a Jew. Standing with Palestine is how I practice all that Judaism has taught me.

[la7ma-mafrooma]

I have witnessed the suffering of Palestinians growing up and I was accidentally exposed to graphic imagery at a young age. I was a child when I saw other children my age either in shrouds or brutally murdered in their parents' arms with unimaginable bloody imagery. This is the scene I grew up with. I grew up knowing that there is indiscriminate murdering of innocent Palestinians, including children, without any international condemnation and without any punishments. I grew up not being fed, but instead witnessing the truth. The difference between me and pro-Israelis is that they were fed "truths" but I grew up witnessing the real truth which is the colonization of Palestine and the exploitation of Judaism and Jewish struggle against antisemitism to justify said colonization. My eyes and heart were not blind to the atrocities carried out by Israel with international support from the biggest colonial powers in the world.

This year, as a an adult, I still saw people my age getting killed. I've seen more Palestinians in shrouds than alive on my timeline. I've seen more Palestinian people mourning than happy. I've seen more brutality than mercy. I've seen the truth of the world, and that the horrifying events of the past are still our present. This did not start on October 7th. This started in 1948.

Pick up your history books. Keep talking about Palestine.

[phoenixyfriend]

Hello! I was stalking your blog and saw your tags re: you cannot see an end to the occupation without causing large scale anti-semetism. So i wanted to send you this link. Additionally, i dont think opposing the israelis are in and of itself an act of anti-semetism as they're not being opposed bc of their religion but the fact that they, almost entirely as a nation save a meager handful, are disconcertingly hateful and murderous towards arabs and Palestinians. It is fact that they've created an ethnostate and use their religion as a shield to justify their wrongs.

I wrote this on the train to work so it's not as clean as it could be. Bear with me.

I think we're talking about two different issues. Your concern is the fault and the philosophy of the existence of Israel. My topic in those tags was the logistical follow-through and possible anticipated consequences.

Whether or not Israel should have tied their state to the Jewish religion is a different question. The fact of the matter is that they HAVE, and that many people see them as equivalent to each other.

For the purposes of this post, I am going to work on the premise that Israel must be dismantled. I have mixed feelings on the topic (see the below considerations), but for the rest of the post, let's assume it IS happening and we're just discussing how.

If the government at fault is violently and militarily opposed to being dismantled, then the dismantling has to come from outside, by foreign powers.

The nearest neighbors are differing levels of friendly, with some being of almost normalized relations, like Egypt or Saudi Arabia, but also include Yemen (admittedly not THAT close) and Lebanon, which have the Houthis and Hezbollah, and the former has "a curse upon the Jews" in their slogan.

"Allah is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, A Curse Upon the Jews, Victory to Islam"

So whatever your personal take on the philosophy of Israel's existence, propaganda, and choice to define itself by Judaism is, the fact that there are multiple countries in the region that are run by or at least sympathetic to groups of this opinion cannot be discounted when talking abut things like disarmament.

There is only one Jew in Yemen, a guy imprisoned for trying to smuggle out a Torah.

Syria and Lebanon, which are much closer to Israel physically, have less than 100 between them. It is vanishingly unlikely that the once-thriving communities chose to leave en masse. Many were probably enticed by the supposed safety and freedom of Israel, yes, but a near total exodus? Unlikely without domestic discrimination against Jews.

So that is what I am thinking of when I talk about nearby antisemitism.

Forcibly de-arming Israel leaves them open to the antisemitism of their neighbors UNLESS an outside power is there to manage the transition, and people who dislike Israel are generally vocally opposed to that kind of international interference.

Unfortunately, it currently looks like the only way to dismantle Israel's institution of violence is either an international oversight of the kind enforced on post-war Germany as it transitioned to a more peaceful nation, or to try to do it naturally and slowly like in South Africa.

But South Africa still has extreme economic inequality between the races. Speaking as an American, it's been 160 years since slavery ended and black people are STILL suffering here, so a slow and natural process where the Israeli government is "convinced" to stop being discriminatory seems unlikely. There are anti-apartheid activists in Israel! There are plenty of pro-Palestine Jewish organizations in other countries! But they are not enough to take apart Israel in a peaceful and stable manner with a speed that would help Palestinians recovery in any reasonable timeframe.

Which brings us back to either violent overthrow or foreign interference by UN forces, meaning yet more western military posts in the middle east, because a disarmed Israel is one that is open to the vocally antisemitic and anti-Israel groups just across their North/East borders.

I guess MAYBE Saudi Arabia could be the oversight force, but I don't think an absolute monarchy is the best choice for overseeing the complete restructuring of a democratic state.

As for the link you sent... 75% of Israelis were born in Israel. Half of the population is either Mizrahi Jews escaping persecution from nearby states (again: Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon could not have gotten their Jewish populations that low without systemic discrimination) that were happy to see them go, or their descendants. The rest are mostly jews who escaped antisemitism in Europe or their descendants. (Also, Ethiopian jews, but given that Israel discriminates against THEM, they're a bit too complicated to discuss in this already complicated post.)

And of course there's the Jews who were already living there... and the question of those who were kicked out centuries or even millenia ago by Romans or the Islamic caliphates or the Ottoman empire or what have you.

(I'll note here that I have a large bias against Ottoman Empire things and am trying to be conscious of that.)

None of this JUSTIFIES their actions. But the whole Settlers thing, at least for the main body of Israel, is really complicated by the fact that Israel's history, and the fact that the Jewish people HAVE been there in some capacity for thousands of years, is complicated. He mentions the decolonization of Algeria and French people leaving but... French people had France. They could go back to France.

Israel is the homeland. The whole reason Jewish people wanted it was because their thousands of years of history were there. Their holiest site (temple mount) was there. They'd just been driven from it over and over again.

It does not, by any means, justify their actions against Palestine. It DOES, however, mean that the whole "jews should have stayed where they were instead of coming here" argument is... flawed. They should NOT have taken that land, no, should NOT have kicked out Palestinians, but at that point we also get into whatever the hell Britain was doing.

West Bank settlers are a different issue. That should not be happening. That is in fact colonization. Go back to your own side of the border. Etc.

My thoughts on the situating keep changing as I learn, but I'm really hesitant to get on board with any particularly black-and-white generalizations.

[transmascpetewentz]

Was talking abt this with my family and decided this needed to be a post on the webbed site:

A fundamental way that antisemitism operates that makes it so difficult to remove from leftist spaces is by taking the broad scope of problems in the world and finding a couple that can be vaguely tied or related to Judaism in some way, then taking "this is tangentially related to Jews" to mean "Jews are 100% responsible for this." It's particularly this sentiment that I see echoed in most of the antisemitic posts that I see on the dash.

It's one of the reasons, imo, why the west is so focused on Israel as opposed to the situation in the Congo, Sudan, or Ukraine. All four of these situations suck and are very clearly, to any person observing, bad. However, only one of these awful situations where war crimes are being committed is one that I hear about every day, that I am told if I so much as block some tags relating to it that I am a bad person. And that's the one where people can blame The Jews for it.

Despite Russia currently committing what I would call a genocide against Ukrainians, many westerners who preach anti-colonialism are completely silent or worse. I thought that silence meant you are directly complicit? Odd, huh? Does this principle of being against historical imperial powers committing genocide against colonized people not apply when the colonized nation has more than three times the relative Jewish population compared to the colonizer?

Yep. And many of the most prominent antisemitic antizionists are completely pro-Russia because Russia claims to be against quote-unquote "western degeneracy," which is literal Nazi shit. As a Russian who regularly speaks out against slavophobia/russophobia/anti-Russian people sentiment on the left and the right, I am horrified by westerners' complete disregard for human life and basic moral principles to defend my country's genocide.

And this idea of blaming all tangentially-related problems on Jews isn't just showcased in how much people focus on Israel, but also in who gentiles tend to call "zionists" and the attributes that they prescribe onto anyone who is labeled a zionist. Zionism is a political movement with historical basis in Judaism, but the actual definition of zionism is irrelevant to the critique I am about to make. My issue is with how some gentiles define, or don't define, zionism.

I have said this before, but when some leftist gentiles are asked to name a few qualities that all zionists share, they might give a list that's something like this: they are pro-Israel, they support Israel's genocide of Palestinians, they are completely anti-Palestine, and they do not have nuanced takes on I/P. Of course, this is a batshit insane and very ahistorical take on zionism, but I would have less of an issue if these gentiles would stick to that definition and only call people zionists if they shared all of those qualities.

Instead, these same gentiles who claim that all zionists share these opinions will claim that any Jew, convert-in-progress, or ally that doesn't hate Jews is a zionist. This circles back to my first point about how antisemitism takes anything where Jews are involved and turns it into "Jews are The masterminds behind this." And that's exactly what this is. The label of zionist being applied to a non-zionist turns their views from nuanced and neutral to racist and genocidal in the eyes of antisemites.

The idea that all Jews one doesn't like must be behind some child-murdering conspiracy is an antisemitic one, no matter how real the child murder happening in Palestine is. Random Jews, even Israeli Jews, are not responsible for the actions of their government (which is being backed mostly by gentiles overseas, btw). Stop fucking taking any instance of a bad thing being tied to Jews or Judaism and blowing it up into calling Jews the masterminds behind it. There is no global conspiracy, no matter how much you wish there was for your daily dose of emotional support antisemitism.

Reading Comprehension Questions:

What do you think that OP means when they say "The Jews" with both the "t" and "j" capitalized? Is he using that language seriously, or is he trying to get another message across?

Is this a post about Israel and Palestine, or is this a post specifically addressing antisemitism within the pro-Palestine movement on the left? Additionally, does OP give any meaningful indication of his views on I/P within the post?

Why does OP talk for two paragraphs about the situation in Russia and Ukraine? How is OP more qualified than the average Tumblr user to have an opinion on Russia?

Why is OP, despite not being Jewish, making a post about this subject? How might OP be more qualified than the average gentile to make a post about antisemitism?

Does OP blame Palestinians for antisemitism on the left in this post? Does OP single out any specific ethnic or racial group as opposed to just gentiles?

Have I sat with and mentally answered to myself the above questions before I clicked on OP's page to send him an anon telling him to kill himself?

[pinkponkporpoise]

Heyguys stop um

Stop blaming Jewish people for the actions of Israel? Stop equating Judaism to Zionism as though they are even remotely the same? Stop acting like all Jewish people are a monolith that cannot think or act of their own accord? Stop naming them traitors , or "non-Jewish," when they speak up against Israel, who is CLEARLY committing genocide!? That is the REAL antisemitism that I'm seeing in all this. That, and the obvious Nazis using pathetic and horrific anti-semitic rage-bait, coupled with Pro-Palestinian talking points to fool people into believing that the movement is inherently anti-semitic when it is absolutely not.

We want Palestine to be free because we want EVERYBODY to be free.

[theculturedmarxist]

Many US papers are giving front-page, above the fold treatment to university administrators going wild and calling in the cops on peaceful campus protests, first at Columbia, followed by Yale and NYU. Harvard, in a profile in courage, closed its campus to prevent a spectacle. Demonstrations are taking hold at other campuses, including MIT, Emerson, and Tufts.

This is an overly dynamic situation, so I am not sure it makes sense to engage in detailed coverage. However, some things seem noteworthy.

First, in typical US hothouse fashion, the press is treating protests as if they were a bigger deal than the ongoing genocide in Gaza. I am not the only one to notice this. From Parapraxis (hat tip  guurst; bear with the author’s leisurely set-up):

I am employed as a non-tenure-track professor in a university department dedicated to teaching and research about Jews, Judaism, and Jewishness. One day, I arrived at work to find security cameras installed in my department’s hallway. I read in an email that these cameras had been installed after an antisemitic poster was discovered affixed to a colleague’s office door. I was never shown this poster. Like the cameras, I learned of it only belatedly. Despite the fact that the poster apparently constituted so great a danger to the members of my department as to warrant increased security, nobody bothered to inform me about it. By the time I was aware that there was a threat in which I was ostensibly implicated, the decision had already been made—by whom, exactly, I don’t know—about which measures were necessary to protect me from it. My knowledge, consent, and perspective were irrelevant to the process… The prolepsis of the decision did more than protect me—if, indeed, it really did that. It interpellated my coworkers and myself as people in need of protection…. I was unwittingly transformed, literally overnight, into the type of person to whom something might happen. My employer has a campus—three, actually—meaning that it has a physical plant. I navigate one of these campuses as my workplace, but it almost never figures for me as “the campus.” In fact, the first time since beginning the job when I felt myself caught up in an affective relation, not to the particular institution where I work, but rather to “the campus” was when I looked up into that security camera and felt myself being “watched” by it. Only then did I think, a couple of months into my temporary contract, that I was not just at my workplace. Now I was on “the campus.” This incident with the poster and the camera occurred, of course, some weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and the onset of Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza. Against so horrific a backdrop, and relative to the intimidation and retaliation to which those who speak out against the war (including—indeed, especially—in the academy) have been subjected, my story sounds banal. And it is. In its very ordinariness, however, the anecdote is quite representative: first, of how decisions get made at contemporary institutions of higher education (generally speaking, without the input of those whom they impact); and second, of the logic of a peculiarly American phenomenon I call campus panic…. The months since October 7 have aggravated the most extreme campus panic I have witnessed. To judge by the American mass media, the campus is the most urgent scene of political struggle in the world. What is happening “on campus” often seems of greater concern than what is happening in Gaza, where every single university campus has been razed by the IDF. When all the Palestinian dead have been counted, it seems likely that these months will be recorded as having inflamed a campus panic no less intense than the one that accompanied the Vietnam War.

Second, many otherwise fine stories, like Columbia in crisis, again by the Columbia Journalism Review, and Columbia University protests and the lessons of “Gym Crow” by Judd at Popular Information, start off with the 1968 protests at Columbia as a point of departure. And again, consistent with the Parapraxis account and being old enough to remember the Vietnam War, I find the comparison to be overdone. Yes, there are some telling similarities, like the role of right-wing pressure in getting campus administrators to call out the cops, the device of dwelling on the earlier uprising seems to obscure more than it reveals. The Vietnam War, unlike Gaza, tore the US apart. Today’s campus students are, with only the comparatively small contingent of Palestinian students, acting to protest US support of slaughter in Gaza. In 1968, for many, the stake were more personal. The risk of young men having to serve was real.

Similarly, conservatives then supported the military and were typically proud of their or any family member’s service. Draft dodging and demonization of armed forces leaders was close to unconscionable. It took years of the major television networks and the two authoritative magazines, Time and Newsweek, showing what the war looked like, and intimating that the US was not succeeding, that shifted mass opinion.

And even the initial 1968 protests were more disruptive. The first wave at Columbia occupied some campus buildings, presumably disrputing operations. Today’s were encampments, as in outdoors. So they were more analogous to Occupy Wall Street, where the ongoing rebellion was an offense to authority even if it caused harm. But worse, the ones at Columbia and other schools now are by elites in training, and not presumed loser riff-raff.

So the aggressiveness of the crackdown looks like very insecure leadership. For instance, why escalate to calling in the NYPD immediately, as opposed to campus police, when the city’s cops reported everyone cooperated with the arrests?

This takes us to the third issues, that it isn’t just the students who oppose the stifling of protest, but also faculty. From the Popular Information article:

[President] Shafik’s actions were blasted in a statement issued on Friday by the Columbia and Barnard College chapters of the American Association of University Professors: Shafik also drew a rebuke from the Columbia student council. In a statement, the council said that “students possess the inherent right to engage in peaceful protest without fear of retribution or harm” and called for “the preservation of freedom of speech and expression among students.”

Popular Information also points out how the Biden Administration is, natch, whipping up fear about possible dangers to Jews while ignoring that Muslims have been on the receiving end. Recall that ex-IDF soldiers who attacked pro-Palestinian protestors at Columbia in January went unpunished. Again from Popular Information:

On Sunday, the White House released a statement in response to the protests at Columbia, denouncing “calls for violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students”: What incidents prompted this statement? A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But some media outlets are interpreting it as a response to this video, in which two unidentified men promise more terrorist attacks against Israel. According to the individual who posted the video, the incident did not occur on Columbia’s campus. There is no evidence that Columbia students were involved. An NBC reporter, Antonia Hylton, who was on Columbia’s campus with protesters, reported no instances of “violence or aggression” among students.

Now we’ll turn to Rajiv Sethi, who as a professor at Barnard, has, for better or worse, a front row seat on the turmoil.

By Rajiv Sethi, professor of economics at Barnard College. Originally published at his website

My campus is in turmoil, and it’s hard to think or write about anything else. Dozens of students have been suspended, arrested, and barred from the premises. Others have been advised to leave for their own safety. Most entrances are closed altogether, and the few that remain open are guarded to prevent entry of non-affiliates. Calls for the resignation of leaders are coming from multiple quarters—some concerned about excessively punitive measures and others about inadequate enforcement and protection.

There are several reports on social media of harassment, intimidation, and the glorification of violence. Such reports often conflate what is happening outside the gates—involving people who may not be affiliates and who are on ground over which the university has no jurisdiction—with the protests on the South Lawn. Based on what I have seen personally, the latter protests have been peaceful, prayerful, and even joyful at times.1

I did see one sign directed at President Shafik that I felt was offensive and ill-advised. And there is one phrase—recently deemed anti-Semitic by an act of Congress—that has been repeated loudly and frequently within the gates. This post is about the meaning of that phrase, and about meanings and messages in general.

While on stage at a political convention in July 2015, Martin O’Malley said the following:

Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter.

Taken literally, these words are entirely unobjectionable, even laudable. But O’Malley apologized for them within hours, saying: “That was a mistake on my part and I meant no disrespect.”

Why was the apology deemed necessary? O’Malley was running for the Democratic presidential nomination at the time, and to many of the voters he was courting, the words “all lives matter” had come to mean something else entirely—an expression of indifference to racial inequality at best, and perhaps even a racist dog whistle.

As phrases come to be endowed with new meanings, some people respond by carefully avoiding them, while others are motivated to adopt them with relish. This further entrenches the new meaning and reinforces the process of selective abandonment and adoption. Thus “Democrat Party” can come to be intended and perceived as an epithet, and the seemingly harmless chant “Let’s Go Brandon!” a vulgarity.

This process is decentralized and largely uncoordinated, and there is little that legislation can do to enforce the attachment of meanings to messages. Of course, this hasn’t prevented our elected officials from trying. On April 16, by a vote of 377-44, the House passed Resolution 883:

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the slogan, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is antisemitic and its use must be condemned.

One day later, Columbia President Minouche Shafik was asked by Congresswoman Lisa McClain whether she agreed that such statements were indeed anti-Semitic. President Shafik answered as follows:

I hear them as such, some people don’t.

The problem with this response is that it suggests that listeners are free to assign meanings to expressions, regardless of the identities and intentions of speakers. But meanings are created jointly by speakers and listeners, and the same message can carry different meanings depending on what is known about the parties engaged in communication.

People have often appropriated and de-fanged racist, misogynistic, and homophopic insults aimed at the groups to which they belong. Even the most vile and vicious slur in the American language carries a different connotation when used by Randall Kennedy in conversation. The meanings of messages cannot be established independently of the indentities of those who use them. They cannot be established by listeners alone.

Thus the attempt by the House of Representatives to define the meaning of a phrase is likely to be futile. The meaning will evolve over time based on the process of selective avoidance and adoption. And this meaning is vigorously contested at present.

Consider, for instance, the Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism. This document states clearly that “denying the right of Jews in the State of Israel to exist and flourish, collectively and individually, as Jews, in accordance with the principle of equality” is anti-Semitic. However, it also proclaims:

It is not antisemitic to support arrangements that accord full equality to all inhabitants “between the river and the sea,” whether in two states, a binational state, unitary democratic state, federal state, or in whatever form.

President Shafik could have referenced the above in pushing back against the idea that meanings can be assigned by elected representatives or college administrators. I understand the pressure she was under, and it is difficult to give thoughtful responses under such circumstances. But it is important that moving forward, the use of this phrase alone not be used as a basis for disciplinary action.

One organization that I have come to admire over the past few years is the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which has been admirably consistent in defending freedom of speech on and off campus. On this phrase in particular, FIRE’s position is the following:

If students at a peaceful protest chant anti-Israel slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” that speech, taken alone, is protected political expression. Even if some understand the phrase to call for the destruction of Israel, it is still—absent more—protected as political speech, advocating in general terms for violence elsewhere at an unspecified time against a broadly defined target… But context is determinative: Were the same statement to be directed at a specific Jewish student by a student or group moving threateningly towards him, during a protest that has turned violent and unstable, it may arguably constitute a true threat.

This is the right position to take and I hope that Barnard and Columbia will adopt it. The keynote by Killer Mike at the 2023 FIRE Gala explains in the clearest possible terms the value of this perspective, and it will join the Reith lecture by Chimamanda Adichie and the Stanford Memo by Jenny Martinez (along with the Kalven Report and the Chicago Principles) as a classic in the pantheon of free speech advocacy.

Among the people who have addressed the students on the South lawn are Madmood Mamdani and Norman Finkelstein; I caught the tail end of the latter’s speech but couldn’t hear much because amplification was limited and he tends to speak quite softly. I do hope that the students who invited him will read his latest book, which is as fierce a critique of identity politics as one is likely to find anywhere.

Norman Finkelstein addresses student protestors at Columbia on April 19th, 2024

I received a response to this post from Seth Weissman, whom I first met when he was a graduate student at Columbia many years ago. I remember Seth fondly, and have enormous respect for him. His message is posted (with permission) below:

Rajiv, as usual, a very thoughtful take. That said, you are missing something. I say this as someone who knows and respects you as fair-minded and as an Orthodox Jew who is: So what are you missing? I’m all for “from the river to the sea, Palestinians will be free.” That could mean in a binational state alongside Jews living freely, or in two states, one Palestinian (West Bank, Gaza, and the Arab sections of Jerusalem such as Abu Dis) and the other a Jewish home where Arab citizens are accorded full rights, which is the current (albeit imperfectly realized) concept of Israel. This is in accordance with the Jerusalem Declaration. But the chant, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” explicitly and willfully denies Jewish self expression. In a context where some of the protestors (not all, and I am making no claim as to what percentage) have expressed solidarity with Hamas, it can be taken no other way. And while the majority of the protestors would denounce Hamas (I hope), they are standing shoulder to shoulder with those who empathize with Hamas. FYI, I have the scars from confronting nationalism and Islamophobia on the Jewish side. If I could pay the price for denouncing Jewish nationalists on my “side,” I can expect the protestors at Columbia and Barnard to do the same—criticize Israel without providing political support for terror and anti-Semitism.

1

After posting this I came across a credible report of significant harassment and intimidation within the Columbia gates. All classes at Barnard and Columbia are remote today, which I imagine is a prelude to clearing out of the encampment.