#that is not related to Israel whatsoever

[isthisjackie]

If you’re calling a Jewish person a Zionist but don’t have any concrete proof and have not seen any proof yourself but continue to do so, and someone who is agreeing with this accusation says something like “most Jews are zionists if not all” perhaps maybe you are on the wrong side of this conversation my friend and not as liberal as you think

[cgi-heart-eyes]

oh to be a queer jew living in a kibbutz with all of my other queer jew friends <3

[arabian-batboy]

So the EU just suspended all aid to Palestinians in Gaza, which is happening at the same time as the same time Israel is cutting all electricity, fuel and food from Gaza with the Israeli Defense (?) Minister calling them "human animals" while continuing their indiscriminately bombing campaign on Gaza due the Palestinians resistance groups currently retaliating against 17 years straight of Israel's illegal blockade and war crimes.

Apparently its okay to perform collective-punishment to 2 millions Palestinian civilians, half of whom are children, living in the world's most densely population are and biggest open-air prison, for the actions of a few hundreds armed fighters (who again, have the right to resist their occupation)

However, all Israeli settlers are innocent angels and you should never ever hold them accountable to any of the IDF's many crimes or Palestinians being ethnically cleansed from their homes, even though almost all Israelis have served in the IDF and all of them are literally living in stolen Palestinian homes, so statically speaking, the average Israeli settler has more blood on their hand than the average Palestinian by a large margin.

Matter of fact, Western countries should continue giving them their full unconditional support as well as more billions of dollars for free and complete impunity to continue committing even more war crimes in "self-defense," because no Israeli should be held accountable for the crime of any Israeli and while all of this is happening, you will of course continue having the bothsideism crowd crying about how "all killing is bad!" while completely ignoring how the killing is severely disproportional and that the side doing most of the killing is the occupier side with one of the strongest nuclear-power army in the world, who have the entire world on their side with absolutely no consequences whatsoever to their crimes.

So no, not all killing is bad, that's not the reality we're living in, because if "all killing is bad!" then the systematic-killing of so many occupied Palestinian civilians wouldn't be so encouraged/justified while the death of some Israeli occupiers-settlers in retaliation wouldn't be treated as the world's biggest crime against humanity.

-

Palestinians made a document that contains templates for letters to US, UK, & Canadian politicians, media outlets, and companies in relation to current events in Palestine as well as petitions & other resources. If you live in any of these countries then please select a template, edit it to your preference and send according to the instructions on the relevant page.

Here is a link to it (please share it): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-RUOHHiEtr7uoclQgWN-tCWOihnHIp5hym89aNePi_E/mobilebasic

Aside from that, please protest, support the BDS boycott and spread awareness as much as possible.

[a-very-tired-jew]

So we all saw the MIT sukkah and how bad that was.

Are you ready for NYU’s?

Because not only is it bad, but the persons behind it are either Jews with no connection whatsoever to their culture and can’t be bothered to do a basic fact check or it’s goyim who can’t be bothered to do a basic fact check.

That’s right. It says “l’chaim intifada” on their post. Yes, the structure is made out of wood. Good job for not using an event tent as the base like MIT. But you've built it under a tree, a no-no, and just said “To life intifada” on your “solidarity” sukkah poster.

That’s as bad as the backwards Hebrew.

It’s a nonsense phrase and makes no sense.

So what else is in the post?

Points 1 through 3 are standard for these organizations. Others that have more experience regarding the legalities of these asks have broken down why it won't happen for 1 and 2.

Point 3 is just xenophobic and discriminatory, and shows the hypocrisy of these orgs. I hate whataboutisms, but this same academic boycott is not being held for other countries that have committed or are committing comparable or worse actions. I have not seen calls to boycott Russian, Chinese, or Iranian academics and condemn research alliances or remote campuses.

Why is it only Israel?

(we know why)

Points 4 and 5 are what we expect as well. But here's the thing. Point 4? So much research and innovation comes through military contracts and funding. Medical entomology alone is reliant on massive funding from the military and was actually established by the US Military as well. The break throughs in treatments for vectored diseases typically come from their projects.

This is going to piss people off. But cutting funding projects that are associated with our military industrial complex is actually really bad for innovation, research, and scientific advancement.

"They can get the funds elsewhere".

No the fuck they cannot. Tell me you know nothing about research in academia without telling me.

But sure, cut funding to things associated with the MI-complex. I'm sure the DHS and DOD projects that are working on medical innovations will definitely help "Free Palestine".

Point 5 states it is "No Normalization", but the text reads more that they want to undo the Find Out portion of the Fuck Around they've been doing all year. As well as redefine antisemitism the way they want so that their dog whistles can be allowed and then it gets to the normalization thing. Which is just a way of saying they don't want peace. I'm not surprised as normalization processes lead to peace, and these groups don't want that. We've seen them eschew peace repeatedly and endorse violence.

But they'll tell you they're a peace movement.

Point 6 is just odd to include. 1 through 5 are standard, but 6 gets into the academic pay scale and structure and that just feels tacked on. It's trying to put a rider to ban abortion at the back end of the agricultural bill. It's trying to say "while I have you attention, also this."

I'll be the first one to say the academic pay structure is fucked and needs to be overhauled (The Cali University system has had multiple protests because Professors can't afford to even live in the cities they teach in). But putting pay structure issues onto this is just "everything relates to Gaza!" nonsense. We've seen countless occurrences of these activists trying to link any and every movement and concern to I/P throughout the year and it's just ridiculous.

Also note the text "expanding further into the city and across the globe" makes it seem like they view the university they are attending as a colonizer as well. If such is the case, and they're against colonization as vehemently as they attest to, then why are they still attending as their tuition is funding colonization? Yes, this is a "why don't you leave" argument, but they have the option to drop out or transfer. It's not leaving the USA, it's leaving or changing schools (and that's much more doable).

Point 7 isn't really a point. It's the same thing we've seen from anti-Israel groups across college campuses in the USA a long time. The problem is that they deny Zionism/Zionist has become a major dog whistle that has a history of being one ever since the Soviet era. Is every instance of anti-Zionism antisemitism? Of course not. But because major antisemitism groups, militias, and governments have used it for decades as a cover it is often viewed as such.

There's no denying that.

The problem is that you have college kids who are earnest in their beliefs that they don't see how they're being manipulated to use said dog whistles. It's especially worse when it comes to anti-Zionist Jews because they will say/endorse absolutely horrendous antisemitic rhetoric while justifying it through "Don't worry, I'm a Jew".

Unfortunately the sukkah they've built and the "L'chaim Intifada" brings in to question how Jewish they are. Even secular Jews would know that L'chaim means "To Life" by simply existing within our culture. So they're either extremely detached and didn't fact check, they're religious Jews who don't know enough Hebrew and didn't fact check, or they're goyim who are cosplaying as Jews and didn't fact check.

Initially I was leaning towards the detached as being behind this as I personally know several detached Jews who are using their ethnicity to defend antisemitism in NYC and by these groups. And because this is NYU it's more than likely that detached Leftist Jews are behind this with support from goyim than simply goyim alone. Which shows how little is know of our culture in general and means they really shouldn't be relied upon as arbiters of what is offensive to Jews and what isn't.

However, there is nothing Jewish about what they post. They even have photos of them in the sukkah and there's not a single kippah in sight. It's all keffiyehs. You'd think that if they wanted to show solidarity there'd be some variation in garb. You'd think that if they wanted to show that Jewish religious traditions and culture are welcoming that you'd have some visibly Jewish persons in your sukkah sitting side by side with keffiyeh wearing activists in this "solidarity sukkah"

But there's not.

Now this isn't to say I know who is behind this group, who the members are, or what the agenda is.

But this organization has only existed since November 2023, regularly cross posts with NYU SJP, and endorsed/justified 10/7 as well as the anniversary events celebrating it.

Come to your own conclusions as you will, but I know what I think.

[fairuzfan]

Leifer’s core justification for refusing to renounce Zionism parades itself as a kind of sober pragmatism, as if an “adult in the room” has faced the facts of Israel’s existence and can finally discipline misguided Jewish anti-Zionists. As he writes, “by 2050, most Jews will live in a sovereign Jewish state.” This means, he suggests, American Jews must contend with a future where “Jewish existence” will be “increasingly dominated by Israel as the author of the collective Jewish fate.” And, he argues, this apparently neutral fact necessitates American Jewish allegiance—albeit, qualified—with the Israeli nation-state. “The locus of the Jewish people’s historical drama is now there, in Israel, whether we like it or not,” he asserts. An apparently incontrovertible future where the “Israeli Jew, raised to live by the sword, his Jewishness taken for granted, will become the norm” is something American Jews must simply resign themselves to. He even goes as far as to state that Israel’s forthcoming eclipse of the diaspora as home to a majority of the world’s Jews means that “there can no longer be a meaningfully autonomous Jewish politics outside of [Israel].” Despite Leifer’s breezy, matter-of-fact tone, there are a number of disturbing implications about this assertion of Israel’s “demographic reality.” That Israel has “become the homeland of the majority of the world’s Jews,” (soon-to-outpace even the US Jewish population) has not simply just “emerg[ed].” Rather, it has been catastrophically produced through the relentless slaughter, displacement, and dehumanization of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and made possible by shoehorning a once definitionally diasporic Judaism into a ghastly experiment in settler colonialism. In other words, Leifer’s demography-as-destiny analysis willfully obscures the ongoing colonial violence, racial segregation, and aggressive land theft that makes the growth of Israel’s Jewish population possible. Indeed, Leifer’s analysis is perhaps better understood as a form of demography-as-race-science: by spuriously presenting Israel’s emergence as “the global Jewish center of gravity” as a spontaneous process divorced from Israel’s history of Palestinian dispossession and occupation, Leifer helps legitimize and depoliticize an ethnonationalist project premised, as Fayez Sayegh identified in 1965, on “statehood in all of Palestine…completely emptied of its Arabs.”10 One might expect a self-proclaimed “anti-occupation Jew” to consider such matters in an argument directly related to questions of Israel’s “demographic reality.”11 Yet Leifer’s discussion of Israel’s population dominance omits any consideration of Palestinians whatsoever. As a result, he shrouds his discussion of Israeli Jewish population growth in a false sense of politically neutral inexorability, while willfully enabling the ongoing suppression of Palestinian history and experience under Zionist colonialism. Indeed, Leifer’s vision of Palestinians’ role in Israel’s “demographic reality” as homeland to a majority of the world’s Jews is unclear—a glaring oversight for an author who purportedly detests Israel’s racist and eliminatory stance towards Palestinians. For example, nowhere in his discussion of Israel’s growing Jewish population does Leifer mention or endorse the Palestinian right to return—a right that Israel still denies Palestinians displaced by the 1948 Nakba in open violation of international law. Nor does he discuss the repeal of Israel’s heinous Jewish Nation-State Law of 2018, which, as Lana Tatour argues, “simply affirms reality” in its codification of the Jewish supremacy, apartheid governance, and ongoing occupation that had long constituted Palestinians’ lived reality in a “Jewish State.”12 No matter Leifer’s stated convictions, his consciously decontextualized and statistical appeal to Israel’s impending Jewish majority can only be read as a callous whitewashing of Zionism’s colonial origins and a tacit endorsement of Israel’s ongoing fascistic debasement of Palestinian life.

—"Acting Jewishly During a Genocide: On Joshua Leifer’s Tablets Shattered" by Charlotte Rosen

[gamer2002]

Hi, I’m a lawyer. Do want to know what is really meant by a “#proportionate response” under international law? Then read on - and feel free to ask questions!

Under International Humanitarian Law, #proportionality requires that any degree of damage (up to and including death) to #civilians not be “excessive” in relation to the “military advantage anticipated from a strike against a military target.”

We are going to break that down, so everyone understands what exactly that means.

However, first, you should be aware that it is a misnomer that anytime #Palestinian civilians die after an #Israeli strike, it is automatically evidence of an Israeli war crime. This is completely false - the law does not work that way.

Simply, and unfortunately, the international rules of law recognize that civilians are often killed during war; and, most of the time, those deaths are actually not indicative of a war crime.

Instead, the legal test for “proportionality” requires that each individual strike be looked at with a particular balancing analysis.

First, here is a hard and fast rule: the strike must be intended to target a military objective; it is, therefore, an unlawful war crime to strike with the intent of targeting civilians without any military objective whatsoever.

Now, let’s get a little technical while still keeping it simple.

Under the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 1977 at both Article 51(5)(b) and Article 52(2), we know that when #Hamas uses its own population (or Israeli #hostages) as #humanshields - either by using them to shield themselves or to shield their weapons depots - Hamas has, under international law, turned civilians targets into military targets.

That means that when Hamas places weapons caches in and under schools, hospitals, mosques, etc., Hamas has made each of those places legitimate military targets.

So, it has been well-known for many years that Hamas purposefully placed its headquarters underground beneath the al-Shifa Hospital. In doing so, international law holds that the hospital is no longer just a civilian target, it is a legitimate military target.

That does not necessarily give the IDF carte blanche to attack hospitals, schools, mosques, etc.; however, it does mean that an IDF attack on a civilian target that has been made into a military target by Hamas’ use of human shields is not per se illegal under international law.

Instead, such a strike (as is the case with any strike conducted by a military like the IDF), must be analyzed through a balancing test.

One part of this balancing test performed by Israel before each strike is to determine whether the human shields in question are being used voluntarily or involuntarily.

If the human shields are being used voluntarily - meaning the human shields are there protecting Hamas and its weapons of their own volition - then the target remains a completely legitimate military target.

If the human shields are being used involuntarily - meaning Hamas is forcing people to act as human shields to protect themselves and/or their weapons - then the IDF must go back to the balancing test to determine whether the anticipated military advantage of a successful strike would outweigh the reasonably anticipated loss of civilian life.

Importantly, the IDF rules state that if it cannot determine whether a human shield is being used voluntarily or involuntarily, it must presume the civilian is being used against his or her own will and treat the civilians as an involuntary participant.

Assuming that there is a military target & that there may be human shields that are there involuntarily, the next step in the proportionality analysis for each individual strike (remember, proportionality is determined on a strike-by-strike basis, and not as the accumulation of strikes over time) is to try to determine the likely amount of damage to civilian persons and/or property as a result of the strike.

In other words, under international law, Israel must be able to give a sort of “value” to the anticipated impact on civilians (including potential civilian deaths). Simply, a smaller number of anticipated civilian casualties may make the strike proportionate if there is a significant military advantage to be gained by conducting the strike.

However, if Israel determines that the anticipated impact of a strike may cause many civilian casualties, it must make the difficult determination of whether the anticipated military advantage is so significant that it warrants carrying out the strike anyway.

So, if Hamas has a weapons depot underneath a house with two civilians inside, and that house has been used to fire 500 rockets at Israeli civilians, and it is reasonably expected that there are hundreds more rockets under that house, Israel can almost certainly carry out the strike within the confines of international law.

If that same house, however, had 10 families living inside, including many children, it could - and likely would - tip the scales of the proportionality balancing test toward Israel not being permitted to carry out the strike, even though the house has been used to attack Israeli civilians and can be expected to continue to be used to carry out attacks against Israeli civilians.

Now, that balancing test can always change. If that same house is being used to fire long-range, precision-guided missiles at Israel’s major population centers in places like #TelAviv (effectively putting millions of Israeli civilians in danger), the balancing test may tip back in favor of Israel being legally permitted to carry out the strike.

This all suggests the third and final step in the proportionality balancing test: the #IDF must determine and place a “value” on the anticipated military advantage that would be gained if it were to carry out a particular strike.

An attack on Hamas leadership and/or its weapons manufacturers would be considered a high value target. An attack on a single Hamas member who has no special skill, would be a much lower value military target.

Similarly, an attack on a small cache of mortars would have less military value that an attack on a large cache of advanced rockets that can reach large Israeli civilian population centers.

Once the @IDF determines the anticipated “value” of the likely effect on civilian persons and property and the anticipated “value” of the likely military advantage to be gained if the strike is carried out, the balancing test can be performed, and a certain amount of judgment must go into the determination of whether that strike would or would not be “proportionate.”

Importantly, this decision is so vital that the IDF does not simply permit a single solder on the ground with his or her hand on the proverbial (or actual) “trigger” to make that determination.

In fact, the decision of whether a strike is proportionate is not even left up to IDF officers. It’s not even left up to IDF Generals.

Instead, before any IDF strike can take place, IDF Guidelines provide that the proportionality balancing test must be presented to and analyzed by IDF military lawyers who then determine whether the strike is legally permissible as “proportionate” under international law and the rules of war.

And these IDF military lawyers are not mere patsies or people who simply “rubber stamp” what the IDF requests.

In fact, the IDF’s military lawyers work entirely independently of the IDF. They are outside of the chain of command and do not answer to anyone in the IDF, including a General (for example).

Plus, every IDF military lawyer knows he or she may very well be held to account if he or she makes a wrong decision based on the evidence available at the time.

Furthermore, sometimes the decisions to be made while balancing the likely military advantage against the likely civilian casualties can be so difficult that the legality of the strike is first brought to the Israeli Supreme Court for instant review.

Another important concept: the comparison of civilian body counts of #Israelis versus #Palestinians (to the extent those numbers can be trusted since they come directly from Hamas-only) is not relevant to a proportionality analysis. Each strike must be viewed individually to determine proportionality. It is not a test of the cumulative nature of the strikes.

Also, by simply comparing body counts, it does not factor in how many people killed were actually #HamasTerrorists, how many were Hamas collaborators there voluntarily, and it does not consider what military advantage was gained by Israel carrying out any individual strike.

As Israel is now in the process of seeking to secure the military advantage of preventing Hamas from having the capacity to carry out repeated attacks of the kind and nature seen on October 7th, Israel is permitted to act proportionately insofar as necessary to achieve that military objective (the elimination of Hamas and/or its ability to make war).

One more important fact people do not know, but that they should know: according to UN statistics of global conflict, the average civilian to combatant killed ratio is a rather appalling nine civilians killed for every one combatant killed.

That’s why civilian body counts in and of themselves are never indicative of a war crime. Each individual strike has to be analyzed, and unfortunately civilians always suffer disproportionately in wars.

In fact, while Israel is routinely criticized for any of its strikes that kill civilians, you may be surprised to know that Israel’s civilian to combatant ratio is routinely much lower than the nine to one average.

In the very last operation carried out by the IDF prior to October 7 (in Jenin), 0.6 civilians were killed for every one combatant killed.

In that conflict, not only were the IDF’s ratio numbers nowhere near the nine to one international average, but the IDF actually managed to kill more combatants than civilians - something that is extremely rare.

In truth, Israel is targeted by accusations of war crimes almost immediately by the media, by politicians, and by the UN General Assembly despite the fact that those accusations are near 100% of the time based neither in fact nor in law.

Since a proportionality balancing test must be used to determine whether a single specific Israeli strike falls within the confines of international law, someone providing an analysis must have all of the facts Israel considered before carrying out that strike as to the anticipated impact on civilians and the anticipated military advantage. Obviously, anyone who is making a snap judgment critical of Israel could not possibly have that information.

Understand then, that when you see talking heads accusing Israel of “war crimes” immediately after and/or during Israeli strikes, that is not an actual legal analysis under international law of what constitutes a war crime.

Much more likely, what you are witnessing is part of Hamas’ ongoing psychological and propaganda warfare campaign of demonizing and delegitimizing the State of Israel in the eyes of public opinion.

#Hamas_is_ISIS #HamasisISIS #HamasISIS #HamasMonsters #October7massacre

[matan4il]

Update post:

On Yom Ha'Shoah (Israel's Holocaust Memorial Day), anti-Israel protesters heckled Holocaust survivors during the March of the Living, which is held along the route between two parts of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. Some of the survivors who were at the march had survived Hamas' massacre as well. The protesters wore yellow stars, culturally appropriating the way the Nazis legally marked Jews for extermination. But sure, it's not antisemitism. What can be antisemitic about hijacking the Holocaust and targeting its last survivors? /sarcasm

The other week, a Warsaw synagogue, the only one to have survived the Holocaust, was attacked in the middle of the night with no less than 3 firebombs. I'm sure there is no connection whatsoever between this, and the rise in antisemitism we've seen since Oct 7, which is allowing for the targeting of Holocaust survivors. None.

Hearing the news about the tragic floods in Rio, my heart goes out to innocent Brazilians suffering. But a part of me can't help thinking that if it weren't for Israeli emergency forces being tied up in a war to protect innocent Israeli civilians from murderous, genocidal antisemitic terrorists here, Israel would have likely been among the first to send a rescue delegation to Brazil, to help save as many lives as possible, just like we have done countless times before, for many countries around the globe, including ones we have no official diplomatic relations with. And it just hit me all over again. As one Israeli song states, we are all one living human tissue. We're all connected, sometimes in ways we're completely unaware of. When some of us are intentionally targeted, so many others end up hurt, too. Sometimes we see it, like when we realize there is no way to defeat Hamas without some innocent Gazans and Israelis paying the price, and other times we don't, like with this tragedy in Brazil. But the connection is there.

The following vid was shared by an Israeli Muslim non-Arab Bedouin:

This is 20 years old Evyatar Moshe Chelef.

He was a policeman. On Oct 7, he was at a southern headquarters, and saw and watched all the horror footage and news that was constantly streamed to the control center. On May 6, he reportedly ended his own life, not being able to contain all the atrocities he had witnessed. Primo Levi had survived the Holocaust, but is believed to have eventually taken his own life. His friend Elie Wiesel, a fellow survivor of the same Nazi camp, said about Primo that he was, "...murdered at Auschwitz, 40 years later." I think that fits what Hamas did to Evyatar as well. May his memory be a blessing.

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

[girlactionfigure]

Hi, I’m a lawyer. Do want to know what is really meant by a “#proportionate response” under international law? Then read on - and feel free to ask questions!

Under International Humanitarian Law, #proportionality requires that any degree of damage (up to and including death) to #civilians not be “excessive” in relation to the “military advantage anticipated from a strike against a military target.”

We are going to break that down, so everyone understands what exactly that means.

However, first, you should be aware that it is a misnomer that anytime #Palestinian civilians die after an #Israeli strike, it is automatically evidence of an Israeli war crime. This is completely false - the law does not work that way.

Simply, and unfortunately, the international rules of law recognize that civilians are often killed during war; and, most of the time, those deaths are actually not indicative of a war crime.

Instead, the legal test for “proportionality” requires that each individual strike be looked at with a particular balancing analysis.

First, here is a hard and fast rule: the strike must be intended to target a military objective; it is, therefore, an unlawful war crime to strike with the intent of targeting civilians without any military objective whatsoever.

Now, let’s get a little technical while still keeping it simple.

Under the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 1977 at both Article 51(5)(b) and Article 52(2), we know that when #Hamas uses its own population (or Israeli #hostages) as #humanshields - either by using them to shield themselves or to shield their weapons depots - Hamas has, under international law, turned civilians targets into military targets.

That means that when Hamas places weapons caches in and under schools, hospitals, mosques, etc., Hamas has made each of those places legitimate military targets.

So, it has been well-known for many years that Hamas purposefully placed its headquarters underground beneath the al-Shifa Hospital. In doing so, international law holds that the hospital is no longer just a civilian target, it is a legitimate military target.

That does not necessarily give the IDF carte blanche to attack hospitals, schools, mosques, etc.; however, it does mean that an IDF attack on a civilian target that has been made into a military target by Hamas’ use of human shields is not per se illegal under international law.

Instead, such a strike (as is the case with any strike conducted by a military like the IDF), must be analyzed through a balancing test.

One part of this balancing test performed by Israel before each strike is to determine whether the human shields in question are being used voluntarily or involuntarily.

If the human shields are being used voluntarily - meaning the human shields are there protecting Hamas and its weapons of their own volition - then the target remains a completely legitimate military target.

If the human shields are being used involuntarily - meaning Hamas is forcing people to act as human shields to protect themselves and/or their weapons - then the IDF must go back to the balancing test to determine whether the anticipated military advantage of a successful strike would outweigh the reasonably anticipated loss of civilian life.

Importantly, the IDF rules state that if it cannot determine whether a human shield is being used voluntarily or involuntarily, it must presume the civilian is being used against his or her own will and treat the civilians as an involuntary participant.

Assuming that there is a military target & that there may be human shields that are there involuntarily, the next step in the proportionality analysis for each individual strike (remember, proportionality is determined on a strike-by-strike basis, and not as the accumulation of strikes over time) is to try to determine the likely amount of damage to civilian persons and/or property as a result of the strike.

In other words, under international law, Israel must be able to give a sort of “value” to the anticipated impact on civilians (including potential civilian deaths). Simply, a smaller number of anticipated civilian casualties may make the strike proportionate if there is a significant military advantage to be gained by conducting the strike.

However, if Israel determines that the anticipated impact of a strike may cause many civilian casualties, it must make the difficult determination of whether the anticipated military advantage is so significant that it warrants carrying out the strike anyway.

So, if Hamas has a weapons depot underneath a house with two civilians inside, and that house has been used to fire 500 rockets at Israeli civilians, and it is reasonably expected that there are hundreds more rockets under that house, Israel can almost certainly carry out the strike within the confines of international law.

If that same house, however, had 10 families living inside, including many children, it could - and likely would - tip the scales of the proportionality balancing test toward Israel not being permitted to carry out the strike, even though the house has been used to attack Israeli civilians and can be expected to continue to be used to carry out attacks against Israeli civilians.

Now, that balancing test can always change. If that same house is being used to fire long-range, precision-guided missiles at Israel’s major population centers in places like #TelAviv (effectively putting millions of Israeli civilians in danger), the balancing test may tip back in favor of Israel being legally permitted to carry out the strike.

This all suggests the third and final step in the proportionality balancing test: the #IDF must determine and place a “value” on the anticipated military advantage that would be gained if it were to carry out a particular strike.

An attack on Hamas leadership and/or its weapons manufacturers would be considered a high value target. An attack on a single Hamas member who has no special skill, would be a much lower value military target.

Similarly, an attack on a small cache of mortars would have less military value that an attack on a large cache of advanced rockets that can reach large Israeli civilian population centers.

Once the 

@IDF

 determines the anticipated “value” of the likely effect on civilian persons and property and the anticipated “value” of the likely military advantage to be gained if the strike is carried out, the balancing test can be performed, and a certain amount of judgment must go into the determination of whether that strike would or would not be “proportionate.”

Importantly, this decision is so vital that the IDF does not simply permit a single solder on the ground with his or her hand on the proverbial (or actual) “trigger” to make that determination.

In fact, the decision of whether a strike is proportionate is not even left up to IDF officers. It’s not even left up to IDF Generals.

Instead, before any IDF strike can take place, IDF Guidelines provide that the proportionality balancing test must be presented to and analyzed by IDF military lawyers who then determine whether the strike is legally permissible as “proportionate” under international law and the rules of war.

And these IDF military lawyers are not mere patsies or people who simply “rubber stamp” what the IDF requests.

In fact, the IDF’s military lawyers work entirely independently of the IDF. They are outside of the chain of command and do not answer to anyone in the IDF, including a General (for example).

Plus, every IDF military lawyer knows he or she may very well be held to account if he or she makes a wrong decision based on the evidence available at the time.

Furthermore, sometimes the decisions to be made while balancing the likely military advantage against the likely civilian casualties can be so difficult that the legality of the strike is first brought to the Israeli Supreme Court for instant review.

Another important concept: the comparison of civilian body counts of #Israelis versus #Palestinians (to the extent those numbers can be trusted since they come directly from Hamas-only) is not relevant to a proportionality analysis. Each strike must be viewed individually to determine proportionality. It is not a test of the cumulative nature of the strikes.

Also, by simply comparing body counts, it does not factor in how many people killed were actually #HamasTerrorists, how many were Hamas collaborators there voluntarily, and it does not consider what military advantage was gained by Israel carrying out any individual strike.

As Israel is now in the process of seeking to secure the military advantage of preventing Hamas from having the capacity to carry out repeated attacks of the kind and nature seen on October 7th, Israel is permitted to act proportionately insofar as necessary to achieve that military objective (the elimination of Hamas and/or its ability to make war).

One more important fact people do not know, but that they should know: according to UN statistics of global conflict, the average civilian to combatant killed ratio is a rather appalling nine civilians killed for every one combatant killed.

That’s why civilian body counts in and of themselves are never indicative of a war crime. Each individual strike has to be analyzed, and unfortunately civilians always suffer disproportionately in wars.

In fact, while Israel is routinely criticized for any of its strikes that kill civilians, you may be surprised to know that Israel’s civilian to combatant ratio is routinely much lower than the nine to one average.

In the very last operation carried out by the IDF prior to October 7 (in Jenin), 0.6 civilians were killed for every one combatant killed.

In that conflict, not only were the IDF’s ratio numbers nowhere near the nine to one international average, but the IDF actually managed to kill more combatants than civilians - something that is extremely rare.

In truth, Israel is targeted by accusations of war crimes almost immediately by the media, by politicians, and by the UN General Assembly despite the fact that those accusations are near 100% of the time based neither in fact nor in law.

Since a proportionality balancing test must be used to determine whether a single specific Israeli strike falls within the confines of international law, someone providing an analysis must have all of the facts Israel considered before carrying out that strike as to the anticipated impact on civilians and the anticipated military advantage. Obviously, anyone who is making a snap judgment critical of Israel could not possibly have that information.

Understand then, that when you see talking heads accusing Israel of “war crimes” immediately after and/or during Israeli strikes, that is not an actual legal analysis under international law of what constitutes a war crime.

Much more likely, what you are witnessing is part of Hamas’ ongoing psychological and propaganda warfare campaign of demonizing and delegitimizing the State of Israel in the eyes of public opinion.

[qqueenofhades]

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/02/white-house-israel-gaza-palestinian-state/677554/

i think this is a pretty decent article in general, but this is a passage i particularly want to highlight:

"The U.S. can’t force Israel to do anything it regards as anathema to its interests. All Washington can do is lay down its own markers, including open recognition of a Palestinian state and a clear warning to Israel that its rejectionism will do significant damage to bilateral relations. The bear hug of support that Biden has provided for Israel over Gaza, at times with no international backing, cannot be gratis. The U.S. has a right, indeed a responsibility, to demand Israeli cooperation on this indispensable priority. Failing that, Washington will have to reevaluate the merits of America’s special relationship with Israel.

That is unlikely to happen before the U.S. election. But Biden might be more willing to apply the full weight of American influence on Israel if he wins a second term. Historically, second-term presidents—freed from the domestic political constraints of seeking reelection—tend to take on such issues with more determination. And if Biden really believes that U.S. interests—and ultimately Israel’s future—rest on the creation of a Palestinian state and normalization with Saudi Arabia, he could act decisively."

like i can't see any scenario where Biden's re-election would make the current situation worse! idk why it's so hard for some people to get!

I mean... yeah. I literally said the other day that Biden would be much more likely to go MORE left in a second term, because he's always gone more left when he's been pushed before, he wouldn't have to face the general electorate again, and because he's already in such a precarious position right before the election (which again, NETANYAHU KNOWS and is using to his advantage in attempting to get Trump back in). There's also the fact that literally nothing, no cause whatsoever for anyone anywhere, would be helped by Trump being elected instead. But that's apparently "baseless fearmongering" for Online Leftists who resent it when reality intrudes on their glorious revolution fantasies and/or anyone points out the basic real-world consequences of their rhetoric, so...

We've already seen that Biden can be successfully pressured, in four short months, to make drastic changes to decades of long-standing US/Israeli policy. There's no reason except sheer brainrot and terminally online idiocy to think that re-electing him will make the current situation worse (and on the other hand, as noted, many reasons to think that now he will be able to act more forcefully and without the worries of being sabotaged in an election year). Yet for the Schrodinger's Imperialists who think all Western and American influence is Always Bad, but Acktually Good when it relies on being used as magical thinking to instantly solve major global/geopolitical crises with literal millennia of roots and sources, this is just really hard, I guess. GENOCIDE JOE. There, that's easier.

[stealer-of-gimmicks]

Please. Do not ask. Why I made this. Anyways I am the gimmick stealer!

(Ran by @nobrain-the-silly, gimmick blog s̶t̶o̶l̶e̶n̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ inspired by @gimmick-thief and @gimmick-copier)

(And also @gimmick-thief-thief and)

Basically, I steal people’s gimmicks! It’s simple!

DNI:

-NSFW

-Pedos and zoophiles

-All Phobics

-Israel Supporters

Tags:

#Gimmick = Stolen - When I steal a gimmick

#Imagine getting your gimmick stolen - Stealing gimmicks, but make it ✨fancy✨ (I use this one way too much)

#Other crap - Not related to stealing gimmicks whatsoever

#Requested - Requested gimmick blogs to steal (you can request via asks!)

#Unconventional - What the fuck does this mean

#lore time - Lore. (Inspired by @your-gimmick-has-been-stolen‘s lore tag)

Edit: Apparently there are WAAAAY more gimmick stealing blogs than I thought, but I only took inspiration from the ones I knew about.

Masterlist:

[leverage-ot3]

not going to give the blog any attention or time of day but this is your reminder that the leverage crew would never be zionists or support israel whatsoever

I wasn't going to engage with it because I value my mental health but yeah. absolutely fucking NOT

y'all really think that this group of people that actively go out of their way to go against the rich and powerful, who make it their goal to help people that are oppressed, devalued by society and taken advantage by those more powerful would at all EVER align themselves with israel? bffrrn

I'm going to go off for a few paragraphs about why this is such a horrendously ridiculous and delusional idea, but I'm not going to clog up your dash so it's going under the cut. I want to respect people who already participate in activism and need fandom space for lighter things

tw for discussion of the atrocities and war crimes happening in palestine

over 25 THOUSAND innocent people have died as a result of israeli terror the last few months alone. over 10 thousand children. entire family lines have been erased from the world forever- grandparents, parents, children, grandchildren all martyred, often together as they are sheltering from bombs and bullets until they are murdered by soldiers that laugh as they shoot and detonate bombs.

you really think that eliot 'I adopt every child I see' spencer would support a regime that let a child stay trapped in a car where her family members were martyred, not let paramedics in for days and then when they finally let the paramedics approach they kill both her AND the EMS? you think he would stand with the government that arrests children as young as 6 years old for *checks hand* being terrorists (because what fucking 6 year old is a terrorist let alone any kind of national threat. they're fucking SIX). that snipes children for throwing rocks at tanks and their apartheid walls

he and all of them would weep at the picture released the other day of the little girl handing from rubble with her legs blown off.

all of them would be horrified of the bombardment that has murdered tens of thousands of innocent civilians, women, children, men, elderly alike with no fucking care. that shoots people with their hands up waving white flags. that bulldozes graveyards and digs up bodies and probably steals organs from they dying and deceased. that bombs hospitals, governmental and archival buildings, mosques, churches, holy sites, schools and universities. whose soldiers have a trend where they go through women's underwear drawers and make lewd comments about their lingerie and how kinky they must be. who make tiktoks of them playing in decimated playgrounds and signing their children's names on bombs. who force parents to collect pieces of their children in plastic bags because they have been blown apart by relentless bombing. who shoot a grandmother holding a child's hand. who murdered a woman that dared say that she was older than the 'state' of israel.

the fact that you're posting this as israel relentlessly bombs rafa, the place they were told would be the only safe place to be, where 1.6 million people are living in tents living off animal feed because no sufficient humanitarian aid (if any) has been let through

these people that advocate for comeuppance and exposing wrongs would not support a regime that actively targets and murders journalists and their entire families.

you really think any of them would actively support a genocidal sociopathic government? fucking delusional

to a certain extent, I know that people want to keep fandom and advocacy spaces separate and I acknowledge and relate to that- when we are logged on every moment of the day we sometimes need to take breaks and engage with something else for our mental health. I need that too. and there is a very thin line when you try to apply fandom to current events because in all honesty, making headcanons about how your faves would react to X horrendous event can come off as extremely tone-deaf. I get you love your blorbos (I do too!), but actual people are suffering and it can come off as disingenuous to a lot of folks when you try to talk about your characters instead of the very real harm that is going on. HOWEVER, the other account posted in the leverage tag that the crew would be zionists and started that discourse and since it was already out there in our space I wanted to make sure that people know that this blog does not support that whatsoever.

and before this gets misconstrued: antizionism is not antisemitism. I have a lot of love for my jewish friends and followers, but saying that we can't be critical of war crimes and incessant aggression because it is a jewish state is fucking ridiculous. we should be able to hold any and all governments accountable when they do bad things (this absolutely also means I think we should hold the US accountable for enabling them and I live here. every country that is complicit needs to face consequences). saying that israel is exempt from criticism because jewish people deserve a right to a homeland isn't a great take. I completely understand fear of antisemitism and discrimination, but at some point we have to think critically and acknowledge that people are dying by the thousands and standing up for that and calling out atrocities takes precedence. jewish voices for peace has some really good content about this topic

anyways there's a random blog out there posting about how your faves are zionists splattering their rancid sponge and I want to make sure my stance on this subject is very clear: fuck israel, free palestine, and no one is free until everyone is free

[velvetvexations]

Possibly they mean the current row over transphobes seeing people as their assigned sex? Some people are desperately insecure and seeing any even hypothetical relation to what they're transitioning away from to be so terrifyingly abhorrent that they entirely misunderstand what's being said. Case in point:

Not to psychoanalyze, but, like, wow, right? This is either maliciously lying or an incredibly sad coping mechanism. People are literally just saying that transphobes don't see people as the gender they identify as, but somehow this has led to the completely off the wall takeaway "trans women are men."

Like, no one is saying that. Literally no one is saying that, except for TERFs who I and every transmasc in this discourse shut down when they try to insert themselves into the conversation with their obviously wrong and vile bullshit.

And it's telling transradfems never actually...engage with what's being said at all. Like they never take a post and argue with it, they exclusively post about takes that don't exist. They're shadow boxing.

It breaks my brain a little. Like, how? How do you do this? How do you get this twisted a perception? Every single day anti-transandrophobia activists are repeating endlessly that they don't think transfems oppress them or anything remotely like that. Beyond intentionally trying to deceive their audience, it feels like transradfems are driven by an intense fear of anyone - even actual transphobes - seeing them as as the gender they were assigned that they not only deny that, but also take any acknowledgement of how transphobes think as misgendering them as well.

Which is just sad. It sucks that a transphobic society has made them this unbelievably skittish as to have a meltdown over the very thought that anyone could view them incorrectly. A person's gender validity is not dependent on what others think of them and it's not misgendering each other to understand that some people we are all aligned against have incorrect beliefs.

The "so you're saying we OPPRESS YOU?" reaction to "maybe don't slur other trans people?" may also arise out of this. It's plausible transradfems can't acknowledge trans women and trans men are on the same plane, with equal capacity (no more, no less) to harm each other, because they feel like they're somehow not getting the full Fymyle experience of being maximumly oppressed by all definitions of man at all times. Their problem with cis radical feminism is purely that they aren't allowed into the club, so naturally they can only relate trans men talking about their issues or expressing a belief that trans women are capable of causing them harm with MRAs. Cis men oppress all trans people, but to copy-and-paste the experience of being a cis woman as closely as possible, you can't be equal with any men whatsoever, even just trans men.

TERFs are well-understood to define womanhood around suffering and asserting themselves the biggest sufferers of all, and that's the definition transradfems have inherited.

I'm sorry, anon. You're a man and I'm so, so happy for that, your masculinity makes the world a better place. Please always be who you are. <3

my proposal is that we all start casually referring to all trans people as transmisogyny affected

"TMAs have it so rough" "yeah, trans women, men, and non-binary people of all sexual characteristics and assigned genders do have it rough, you're right"

trans radical feminism's one and only distinction form radical feminism is that they want to make a small edit to how it determines if someone is a man or a woman

I AM awesome!

Trans radical feminism and being a tankie are practically inseparable so it's a much more politically homogenous group taking a swing at a number of people likely to severely disagree on several things, like people who support Israel as a concept if not it's current actions vs. those who see the concept as the problem regardless of who's in charge.

Good instincts.

He seems like a very miserable guy.

Ideally we should make an effort to do work on behalf of others, but yes, it's not surprising and completely understandable that people tend to work on their needs first.

Yeah. It's based in radfem ideas of men being the ultimate evil and literally incapable of restraining themselves from harming women.

[power-chords]

Often I feel very angry. It is hard to explain this even to my progressive Jewish parents – my Ashkenazi father, and my convert mother who frankly is more observant than I am – sometimes easier with fellow third generation millennials, depending on their milieu. My goyische husband, believe it or not, grasps it quite well because he grew up in Scarsdale. For the 18 years that we lived on East 70th our mezuzah was on the wrong side of the door. We never kept kosher. And yet I went to Hebrew school at Park Avenue Synagogue followed by Or Zarua which are both conservative congregations, a step up from reform and a step down from orthodox. We observed Shabbos, the high holidays; for a while I had a basic comprehension of the loshn-koydesh.

After I was bat mitzvahed I had no desire to see the inside of a temple again. This remained the case for many many years. You know what I learned about besides Torah? (Torah study, the ritual of Saturday morning services, was actually the good part.) Israel. At length. A country I felt no connection to whatsoever, that I had no desire to ever visit, that alienated me from my own Jewish identity as a diaspora New Yorker growing up in (what was, then, much more so!) a diverse neighborhood with kids from every ethnic and religious background imaginable.

You know what I learned NOTHING about? Yiddishkeyt. German expressionist cinema. Postwar American Jewish literature. Philosophy and psychoanalysis and dialectics and dialogics. Art, literature, theater, folklore. You would think that institutions theoretically devoted to the preservation of Jewish life in America would take a greater restorative interest in what the Nazis attempted to wipe from the historical record. You would be wrong.

The irony doesn’t end there. According to Dad my grandfather would not speak a word of German in the house – understandable after they've gassed your entire family to death – and he was resentful, for a little while, that on account of this he did not grow up bilingual. Why Martin refrained from speaking Yiddish around his American children had nothing to do with a rejection of Jewishness per se and everything to do with the guarantying of a more prosperous future. Metallurgy and manual labor sentenced him to a hard life and an early death. Despite chronic exhaustion and physical pain, he would bring my young father to public lectures at Yale on anything and everything related to the space program. He supported and cultivated his two sons’ every personal and intellectual interest. He ferried my grandmother to and from her performances along the Borscht Belt circuit, which back then was still a thriving scene. He was a state-raised orphan who lost everything and nevertheless managed to give everything. When she grew too old and infirm to do so herself any longer, he even cared for the cranky old bitch of an aunt who turned him away when he first washed up alone as a teenager on a totally foreign shore. I have tears in my eyes just typing this.

It is my parents and grandparents whose memory I hold sacred, the culture they swallowed or sacrificed in the hope of a new beginning – not for themselves, but for their loved ones. That a certain continuity could be transmitted and traced despite all efforts to either disguise or remake it, that there is an inextinguishable spark of recognition in language and expression and sensibility, is miraculous. It defies the nation state. And it will outlive the nation state.

[a-very-tired-jew]

I've seen Ta-Nehisi Coates touted as an authority for years, and I honestly never looked into his background.

As he has all the attention of Jumblr and the Jewish community right now, I decided to actually do a cursory look.

Bruh.

Someone who is touted and lauded as a great expert and authority by the Left actually has no credentials whatsoever?! He went to Howard for 5 years and then dropped out to start his journalism career.

Coates states that "Howard trained him intellectually" and just.. no. No it did not.

You didn't finish an undergrad degree my guy. That's barely giving you any training in intellectual thinking and rigor.

It honestly appears that Coates has been given an "authority" pass because he is speaking as a Black Man on Black history and Black issues that currently effect or have effected Black people.

But now?

Now he's taken that "authority" and is using it to speak on issues that he has no relation to beyond traveling to the area for a small amount of time in 2023. He has no understanding, relationship, or education on anything relating to Israel, Palestine, or the Levant. It's reminiscent of Nobel Disease, where an well regard authority in one subject matter starts talking out their ass about something else (e.g. Linus Pauling and vitamin C).

Now, some of you are going to attack me for this because something something privilege and academia and I'm talking about someone who is arguable well regarded. But I'm sorry, dropping out after 5 years to pursue your career, not even have the credentials for said career, and now take that uncredentialed pseudo-expertise and apply it to something you have no relationship to at all?

That's just asinine.

I honestly think this tweet by Montefiore sums it up nicely.

Let's also not forget that Ta Nehisi Coates was taught by his father, Paul Coates, to be antisemitic and literally view this entire situation through America's Issues. Paul Coates was a member of the Black Panthers, which for all the good they did do and have done you also have to remember that antisemitism is baked into the group. The BPP was influenced by the Nation of Islam and Marxism-Leninism and Mao, so they were literally influenced by some of the most antisemitic organizations, groups, people, and rhetoric in the 20th Century outside of Nazis. This means that Ta Nehisi Coates likely grew up with antisemitic rhetoric and conspiracy being prevalent and accepted throughout his life. For example, take this excerpt from his book The Message:

Now also consider that his father's publishing company was also caught republishing an extremely antisemitic book that spreads conspiracy, hate, and misinformation.

So yeah.

Sorry folks.

But Ta Nehisi Coates is just spouting NOI and Tankie antisemitic conspiracy and rhetoric wrapped in progressive pseudo-academic professional language.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Jay P. Greene

Published: Dec 8, 2021

Universities ostensibly employ diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) staff to create more tolerant and welcoming environments for students from all backgrounds. A previous Heritage Backgrounder documented that the number of people devoted to DEI efforts has grown to about 45 people at the average university. This Backgrounder examines whether these large DEI staff are, in fact, creating a tolerant and welcoming environment on college campuses. In particular, this Backgrounder examines the extent to which DEI staff at universities express anti-Israel attitudes that are so out of proportion and imbalanced as to constitute antisemitism.

To measure antisemitism among university DEI staff, we searched the Twitter feeds of 741 DEI personnel at 65 universities to find their public communications regarding Israel and, for comparison purposes, China. Those DEI staff tweeted, retweeted, or liked almost three times as many tweets about Israel as tweets about China. Of the tweets about Israel, 96 percent were critical of the Jewish state, while 62 percent of the tweets about China were favorable. There were more tweets narrowly referencing “apartheid” in Israel than tweets indicating anything favorable about Israel whatsoever. The overwhelming pattern is that DEI staff at universities pay a disproportionately high amount of attention to Israel and nearly always attack Israel.

While criticism of Israel is not necessarily antisemitic, the inordinate amount of attention given to Israel and the excessive criticism directed at that one country is evidence of a double-standard with respect to the Jewish state, which is a central feature of a widely accepted definition of antisemitism. Frequently accusing Israel of engaging in genocide, apartheid, settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and other extreme crimes while rarely leveling similar criticisms toward China indicates an irrational hatred that is particularly directed toward Jews and not merely a concern for human rights.

The evidence presented in this Backgrounder demonstrates that university DEI staff are better understood as political activists with a narrow and often radical political agenda rather than promoters of welcoming and inclusive environments. Many DEI staff are particularly unwelcoming toward Jewish students who, like the vast majority of Jews worldwide, feel a strong connection to the state of Israel. The political activism of DEI staff may help explain the rising frequency of antisemitic incidents on college campuses as well as the association between college and graduate education and higher levels of antisemitic attitudes. Rather than promoting diversity and inclusion, universities may be contributing to an increase in anti-Jewish hatred by expanding DEI staff and power.

The Context

There has been a sharp increase recently in antisemitic incidents worldwide, in the United States, and particularly on college campuses. According to Hillel International, the main university organization for Jewish students, there were 244 antisemitic incidents reported during the mostly virtual 2020–2021 school year compared to 181 during the prior year when everyone was on campus for in-person instruction.

DEI staff are supposed to be working to prevent such incidents rather than foment them. According to the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education Standards of Professional Practice, “Chief diversity officers work with senior administrators and campus professionals to develop, facilitate, respond to, and assess campus protocols that address hatebias incidents, including efforts related to prevention, education, and intervention.” DEI staff are supposed to prevent hate/bias incidents directed at any student group: “Chief diversity officers have ethical, legal, and practical obligations to frame their work from comprehensive definitions of equity, diversity, and inclusion—definitions that are inclusive with respect to a wide range of identities.”

But the activities of many DEI staff lend credence to the title of David Baddiel’s recent book that “Jews don’t count.” Not only do DEI staff fail to attend to Jewish concerns, including scheduling events on Jewish holidays, but there have been reports of diversity officials expressing antisemitic attitudes. The most prominent example of this from the corporate world was when Kamau Bobb, the head of diversity at Google, wrote that Jews have an “insatiable appetite for war” and an “insensitivity to the suffering [of] others.” Amazingly, Bobb was only reassigned to work on STEM education efforts for Google. Bobb let the mask slip by accusing “Jews” of these crimes rather than simply saying “Israelis” or “Zionists.” If DEI staff maintain that cover, they might be able to get away with expressing virulent antisemitic statements without even being reassigned to new positions. This Backgrounder examines empirically how common these kinds of antisemitic statements are from university DEI staff.

The Method

The previous Backgrounder, “Diversity University,” identified 2,933 DEI staff at 65 “Power Five” universities. Primarily using Google searches, we found 797 Twitter accounts linked to these DEI staff. Of those 797 accounts, 56 were “protected” so that tweets could not be viewed. That left 741 accounts that could be searched for antisemitic content.

Almost all of these were personal accounts, not operated by the universities themselves. Thus, they provide a window into what these DEI staff believe and how those beliefs may shape their university work.

The publicly available Twitter feeds of these DEI staff were searched for comments related to Israel and, for comparison purposes, China. The specific search terms to find comments related to Israel were Israel, Palestine, Palestinian, and Gaza. The search terms for China were China and Chinese. The searches found all mentions of these terms in the tweets, retweets, and “likes” of tweets associated with these accounts. Researchers coded whether each tweet indicated a positive or negative view toward Israel and China, respectively.

Of course, this approach does not find all public communications from DEI staff regarding Israel and China. Not all DEI staff have accounts on Twitter. Some accounts may not have been found by Google searches involving their name and institution, especially if individuals avoid mentioning their real name and employer on social media. Some people automatically delete their tweets, retweets, and likes periodically, making it impossible to find earlier communications. People may describe Israel or China using words other than those that were used as search terms. Moreover, the application used to facilitate searching truncates some tweets and places a cap on how many tweets can be searched per user. For all of these reasons, the results presented in this Backgrounder are a conservative undercount of public communications. Nonetheless, the patterns that this imperfect method yield are likely an accurate presentation of the broader picture of DEI staff sentiment toward Israel and China.

The Results

DEI staff have a disproportionate interest in Israel relative to China and are far more likely to be critical of Israel than they are of China. In total, there were 633 tweets regarding Israel compared to 216 regarding China—three times as many—despite the fact that China is 155 times as populous as Israel and has 467 times the land mass. China has also had many reasons to be in the news recently, including being the origin of the pandemic, conducting a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy forces in Hong Kong, mass imprisonment and mistreatment of China’s Muslim Uyghur population, increasing confrontation with Taiwan and other countries in the Pacific Rim, and severe internal repression of political dissent and private corporations. One who is genuinely interested in human rights around the world had many more reasons to be paying attention to China than to Israel.

Of the 633 tweets regarding Israel, 605 (96 percent) were critical of the Jewish state. Of the 216 tweets regarding China, 133 (62 percent) expressed favorable sentiment.

Examples of Tweets About Israel

The severe tone and extreme content of the tweets, retweets, and likes critical of Israel are even more illuminating. There is no reason to identify individual DEI staff, but quoting from their tweets and counting the use of hyperbolic rhetoric is important.

For example, the word apartheid appears 43 times in DEI staff public communications about Israel. One retweet by a Multicultural Student Affairs staff person asserted that “the State of Israel is guilty of the human rights crimes of apartheid and persecution. Settler colonialism is fundamentally violent. And it begets violence.” Another remark retweeted by someone in an Office of Inclusion and Diversity stated that “one cannot teach radical geog/critical urban theory without a curriculum on this settler colonialism & apartheid.” A tweet by a Multicultural Student Center staff person declared, “Condemn the Apartheid State of Israel for their Human Rights Violations against the Palestinian.” An assistant director of an Office for Institutional Equity and Diversity lamented, “no apology for a pro apartheid Zionist organization holding a reception? I guess there’s no justice for Queer Palestinians here.”

Some variant of the word colonial appears 39 times in tweets, retweets, or likes by DEI staff. A person working for Graduate School Diversity Programs liked the message, “Y’all love to add the word liberal in front of the most evil things and it’s unhingedddd. Wtf is a liberal Zionist? What’s next? Liberal Nazi? Liberal colonizer? Liberal murderer? Liberal imperialist? Liberal fascist?” One staffer at a Multicultural Student Involvement and Community Advocacy Center endorsed the following: “You cannot disentangle the colonization experienced by indigenous ppl from the racism experienced by black ppl from the xenophobia experienced by latinx ppl from the imperialism experienced by palestinians. They’re all different extensions of the same oppressive project.” A person in an LGBTQ Equity Center retweeted, “Re Palestine, you gotta understand: there’s no ‘controversy.’ Most people around the world know that Israel brutally colonizes the Palestinians. The issue is only ‘controversial’ because Zionists pitch a fit whenever anybody speaks this truth.”

The word genocide appears nine times, the term ethnic cleansing appears seven times, and the accusation that children are specifically targeted appears 27 times. The assistant director of an Asian Pacific student center tweeted, “#Gaza is under attack. This is genocide. #FreeGaza.” One DEI staffer retweeted, “what you need to understand is that these are entire BLOODLINES being wiped out. generations upon generations completely GONE. their indigenous history with them.” A staffer in a Center for Educational Outreach retweeted, “israel has a particular loathing for children. they target them with violence specifically and intentionally every single day.”

The public communications of DEI staff embrace the genocidal phrase from the river to the sea five times. One message declares that “‘from the river to the sea’ means that we will decolonize every block and every grain of sand in palestine. go ahead and fuel people to make us look like we’re bloodthirsty for the death of jews when you’ve just killed 42 family members in one airstrike.” Another states, “Every Israeli bomb and bullet used against Palestinians and paid for by USA dollars has been consummated by the blood and soil of American Indians. From the river to the sea and from sea to shining sea, we shall be free.”

Angela Davis, the former vice presidential candidate for the Communist Party who was accused of supplying the guns that resulted in the killing of a judge, features prominently in DEI staff tweets. So does former CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill, who was fired by the network for his antisemitic statements. One LGBTQ center staff person who is also an instructor tweeted, “I ordered ‘Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique’ which I think I’m going to pair with Angela Davis’ ‘Freedom is a Constant Struggle’ in my LGBTQ activism class in the spring!” The director of an African American Cultural Center posted a photo with the following description and quotation from Davis: “The Black Panther Party & a Palestinian delegation at the first Pan-African Cultural Festival in Algiers, 1969. ‘The Black radical tradition is related not simply to Black people but to all who are struggling for freedom … our histories never unfold in isolation.’—Angela Davis.”

While American Jewry is rarely mentioned specifically in these public communications from DEI staff, their alleged role in facilitating Israeli crimes is often in the subtext. An Outreach and Engagement librarian retweeted, “Tell U.S. Jewish leaders: Stop defending #Gaza assault.” One multicultural consultant liked the message, “Jewish people are not responsible for the actions of the Israeli government, but we are responsible for calling out violence and human rights abuses when we see them, especially when the people committing the violence claim to be doing so in our name.” A DEI staffer at a Big Ten school was clearly describing the supposedly insidious influence of American Jews when he liked this message: “There’s a vast philanthropic-lobbying complex in the US that works tirelessly to present Israelis as benevolent, peace-loving, and fundamentally reasonable victims of Palestinian aggression, and meanwhile in actual Israel no one bothers with the pretense.”

The relatively small number of tweets, retweets, or likes by DEI staff favorable toward Israel—28 in total—are tepid compared to the fire-breathing tone of those that are critical. Sometimes the praise is mixed with criticism of Israel. For example, a leader of an Office of Diversity and Inclusion liked this mixture of praise and criticism: “Dear Israel, you have a story to tell that is important and often glorious. But you don’t tell your story by keeping people out. You tell it by opening your arms, sharing the complexity and challenges and inviting exchange and ideas.” An associate dean for diversity and inclusion praised Israel’s democracy while denouncing its leader: “The beauty of a democracy is the right of people to elect the wrong person. Jerusalem, Israel.”

Other positive comments lamented insufficient attention to Israeli and Jewish contribution to progressive causes: “why no coverage in the media?: Thousands of Jewish protesters join 500,000-strong Women’s March… via @timesofisrael.” But most of the favorable tweets were about trips to Israel, Israeli scientific innovations, or expressions of support for memorials. The closest thing to a full-throated defense of Israel can be found in this tweet liked by an associate at a Multicultural Engagement Center: “The Jewish people are indigenous to Israel, the birthplace of our identity and unique culture, and have maintained a documented presence for over 3,000 years.” But this tweet is the only one like it among the more than 600 tweets, retweets, and likes found in DEI staff Twitter feeds.

Examples of Tweets About China

The favorable tweets about China also tended to be more tepid than those that were critical, but they were far more common. For example, some positive tweets focused on partnerships between the DEI staff person’s U.S. university and government or educational institutions in China. One Big Ten DEI official stated, “A real pleasure to meet China’s Vice Minister of Ag and Rural Affairs Han Jun in Beijing last night to discuss Ag and food innovation…. Wonderful conversation with great plans for the future.” An assistant provost at another university praised the success of her institution’s president at establishing partnerships with Chinese universities: “President Stresses Internationalization Opportunities on Trip to China. [University president] signed five cooperative agreements with Chinese universities and was a featured speaker at an event for globalization in academia.”

Another common type of tweet favorable to China was to extoll China for its efforts to combat COVID-19. An associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion endorsed this message: “Chinese medics have just arrived in London to help us fight Covid-19. The media won’t tell you for some reason.” A multicultural consultant at another university affirmed, “Thank you to psychologists from Wuhan, China for helping @APA to learn from their experiences of #COVID and improve our ability to care for the #mentalhealth & needs in the #USA.”

Other DEI staff expressed favorable sentiment toward China to counteract what they perceived to be anti-Chinese bias. A staff person at a Center for Multicultural Affairs expressed concern: “when are people going to realize that anti china propoganda [sic] directly correlates with a rise in hate crimes against Asians.”

A few people offered strongly worded praise of China. An LGBTQ staff person seemed to think that it would be better to be a trans person in China: “i wonder a lot if it would feel easier to come out to my parents if i was a ~binary trans woman~ or what the f*** ever b/c they at least have a frame of reference for trans women celebrities in China.” Another DEI staff person endorsed this tweet from the People’s Daily newspaper in China touting how China had improved the lives of people in Tibet: “China’s Tibet Autonomous Region had lifted 530,000 people out of poverty during the five years to 2017, reducing poverty rate to 12.4% from 32.3% at the end of 2012, the regional poverty relief office said Friday.”

The smaller number of tweets regarding China that expressed criticism tended to focus on human rights issues. An associate dean for diversity and inclusion retweeted, “Human rights experts estimate that 1.5 million Uighur Muslims and members of other ethnic minority groups, including Chinese-born Kazakhs, have been detained in Xinjiang since 2016.” The assistant director of campus inclusion and community responded to a Bloomberg news headline that said, “China looks at cutting inequality in order to boost the economy” by asking, “Good for China. But also are they still doing that Muslim genocide? Why we ain’t also talking about that?”

A number of negative tweets about China addressed the treatment of African residents in China. An associate provost for inclusive excellence retweeted, “In China, African residents are alleging anti-black racism resulting from the coronavirus pandemic.” Others expressed concern about Chinese efforts to use technology for surveillance. An assistant dean for equity and inclusion endorsed these concerns: “Google built prototype of a censored search engine for China that links users’ searches to their personal phone numbers, thus making it easier for the Chinese government to monitor people’s queries.”

The extreme language used in tweets regarding Israel almost never appeared in tweets regarding China. There are no occurrences of the words apartheid and ethnic cleaning, nor is China ever accused of targeting children in these tweets, retweets, and likes. The term colonial does appear twice, but it is used favorably toward China. For example, one tweet asserted that people “talk about China like a British colonial officer from 1850.” The term genocide does appear four times in tweets about China, but that is less than half as common as the term was used with respect to Israel.

The overall picture, however, is that DEI staff were less likely to offer criticisms of China than of Israel, and those criticisms tended to be less strongly worded. It would be impossible to review the inordinate attention that DEI staff pay to Israel relative to China, the nearly universal attacks on Israel versus general praise of China, and the dramatically different tone used in discussing Israel and China without concluding that DEI staff have an obsessive and irrational animus toward the Jewish state.

The Definition of Antisemitism

Some people might object that just because DEI staff express criticism of Israel frequently and forcefully does not necessarily mean that they are antisemitic. According to a widely accepted definition of antisemitism, however, criticism of Israel constitutes antisemitism when it exhibits certain characteristics. This definition was formulated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and has been endorsed by governmental bodies around the world, including the European Parliament, the U.S. State Department, and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, which oversees the activities of DEI staff at universities.

The IHRA definition suggests the following as examples of antisemitism:

“Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor”;

“Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation”;

“Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”; and

“Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.”

The tweets, retweets, and likes of DEI staff documented here provide instances of all of these antisemitic qualities. The frequent use of terms such as apartheid and colonialism are meant to portray Israel as a racist endeavor and deny its right to exist as the homeland of the Jewish people. The forceful denunciation of Israeli responses to rocket and terrorist attacks prominently feature a double standard, as only the Jewish state is expected not to defend its citizens in a way that all other countries would. The sparsity of criticism of China relative to Israel is also strong evidence of a double standard. Accusing Israel of genocide or ethnic cleansing is clearly meant to equate Israeli policy with that of the Nazis. And demanding that U.S. Jewish leaders denounce Israeli actions or accusing them of hypocrisy for failing to do so are clear examples of holding Jews collectively responsible for Israel’s behavior.

Conclusion

According to Gallup data, 95 percent of American Jews support Israel. While that figure is lower among younger Jews, a large majority of Jews at American universities feel connected to the state of Israel as part of their Jewish identity. Even if the hyperbolic and obsessive criticism of Israel expressed by university DEI staff did not meet the definition of antisemitism (which it clearly does), attacking a central feature of Jewish students’ identity would be entirely contrary to the stated purpose of having DEI staff: to welcome students from all backgrounds, make them feel included, and prevent or address incidents of hate and bias. But it is clear that DEI staff at universities actually function as political activists, articulating and enforcing a narrow and radical ideological agenda.

Truly achieving diversity, especially ideological diversity, and helping all students feel included requires a dramatic change in how universities approach DEI. Existing staff need to be dramatically reduced, and the remaining DEI infrastructure needs to be reoriented toward serving the true purposes of diversity and inclusion.

Jay P. Greene, PhD, is Senior Research Fellow in the Center for Education Policy, of the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity, at The Heritage Foundation. James D. Paul is Director of Research at the Educational Freedom Institute.

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If you were shocked by the rampant antisemitism on college campuses after October 7, you shouldn't have been. DEI cultists were building and encouraging it for years. October 7 was just when they said, "now."

[matan4il]

I spent some time with a friend yesterday. We briefly came on the topic of Palestine. Briefly because I knew we would have opposing views as she's Muslim. I have sympathy for Israeli and Palestinian civilians. She only has sympathy for Palestinian civilians. She wouldn't even refer to Hamas as a terrorist organisation. And it made me wonder how many Muslims have been told that Hamas is not evil? How many are taught that Israel is getting what it deserves? It makes me wonder why there are many many pro Palestine protests calling for a ceasefire but Jewish communities are getting no support whatsoever. Saying the word Israel feels like it is something dirty. And I am scared. I know Israel and Palestine have been in conflict for years and Israel has oppressed Palestine for a very long time. But how can people think that a terrorist organisation will bring them liberation?

Hi Nonnie, I'm sorry you had this experience. I'm sending you hugs!

I wanna introduce you to Mansour Abbas:

He's a devout Muslim Israeli Arab, and the chairman of an Arab Islamic party in Israel. He's not a part of the current governing coalition in Israel, but he was a part of the last one. He is still a member of the Knesset (MK, member of the Israeli parliament).

A few days ago, MKs were invited to see a 40+ minutes long film composed of footage from the Hamas terrorists, CCTV, victims cellphone recordings, etc. It's some of the horrors that most people haven't seen. No MK had to attend, and quite a few chose not to. I can understand, many of those who watched the footage fell apart, some couldn't stay to the end.

Mansour Abbas chose to come, and he brought with him two MKs from his party. One of the Jewish MKs said Abbas was crying during the screening. Abbas himself made it clear that what the Hamas terrorists did was sacrilege and goes against everything that Islam stands for. When one of the members of his party, an MK who didn't attend the screening, denied the horrors of the massacre, he demanded that she resign from the Knesset (heads of parties can't fire MKs, the latter have to resign). She's refusing to, and according to journalists, Abbas is looking for other ways in order to sanction her.

I'm saying all of this, because I want it to be clear that, much like every other human group, Muslims are not a monolith. Yes, there is a history of antisemitism in Muslim majority countries, that tends to be ignored (something that we have to address, if we want any hope of eradicating that antisemitism and make relations between Jews and Muslims better). Yes, there is a tendency to present the Palestinian issue to Muslims as if it's an Islamic issue, so they're all meant to take the same stand on it (and of course that can go hand in hand with a lot of misinformation. I have an online friend, who lives in a country, where I expect none of what she hears about Israel and Hamas is true). But Muslims are not a monolith, especially ones who live in the west, and have free and full access to information, to the real historical records, and not just to anti-Israeli propaganda.

So that brings me to two points that can and do coexist:

I do NOT want to treat all Muslims automatically as if they will for sure be against Israel to the point of having no empathy for Israelis and/or Jews...

If they are against Israel to that extreme degree, and if they are living in a western country, then it is, at least partly, on them.

And in this context, I'd like to share this vid that was sent to me.

So regarding this friend, I guess it's a question of how you feel about it. Do you think she has the conditions to look beyond this narrative, and see Israelis as people, who deserve empathy just like everyone else, and yet she doesn't?

(as a very small footnote, I wouldn't say that Israel oppresses Palestine, 'coz that makes this conflict far more one-sided than it actually has been...)

I'll say that for myself, that friend who lives in a country that is defined as an enemy of Israel? Where she will never get the truth (and that country doesn't exactly have free press in general)? I don't hold it against her. In her context, it's pretty amazing she's even talking to me when she knows I'm an Israeli. But other Muslim friends I have? Or even other non-Muslim friends from the west, who know Jews, who should know better than to uncritically accept a de-humanizing narrative? Yeah, I feel differently about them. IDK if this helps you in figuring out how you feel about this girl. I hope it does.

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