Another DOE Antisemitism Investigation
Officials at the Department of Education have confirmed that they’re moving forward with an investigation into alleged antisemitism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Last October, chancellor Robert Jones sent out an email condemning swastika graffiti that was found in a school building. The email also attacked a presentation called “Palestine & Great Return March: Palestinian Resistance to 70 Years of Israeli Terror” and claimed that the event made Jewish students feel unsafe. This conflation understandably concerned the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, so SJP UIUC scheduled a meeting with Jones.
At that meeting, Jones admitted that the event had prompted backlash from just one student and that the student’s complaint stemmed from a slide on Palestinian martyrdom. Professor Bruce Rosenstock, who teaches a course on antisemitism at the school, pointed out that that section of the event used the term “martyrs” to describe Palestinians murdered in the Gaza Freedom March. Former SJP UIUC president Dumia Ghanimah, whose cousin was killed by the IDF, explained to Jones that “martyr” was a word commonly used to refer to Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli forces.
On October 23 of last year, the Illinois Student Government passed a resolution titled “Condemning Ignorance of Racism and Equating Anti-Zionism with Anti-Semitism” that criticized Jones’s email and condemned the conflation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism.
This spring, a formal complaint against the school was filed by a law firm representing Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the Jewish United Fund of Chicago and Hillel International. The Chicago Tribune reports that it draws on the experiences of two Jewish students and “lists a number of alleged offenses, including the defacement of religious ornaments, depictions of swastikas drawn on campus property and tense interactions between Jewish students and a student group advocating for liberation and self-determination of the Palestinian people.”
“We deplore anti-Semitic incidents on campus, including those that demonize or delegitimize Jewish and pro-Israel students or compare them to Nazis,” said the school in a statement. “This subjects them to double standards that are not applied to others. All Jewish students, including those who identify with Israel or Jewish campus organizations, should be able to participate in campus activities aimed at fighting racism and achieving social justice.”
“The university has a history of silencing and demonizing pro-Palestine advocacy on campus,” SJP President Sofia Sinnokrot told the Tribune. “This conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, I believe, is part of a larger campaign to suppress pro-Palestine organizing.”
Biden Won’t Investigate Trump
Donald Trump has yet to concede and continues to tweet out refuted conspiracies about the election, but there seems to be some level of transition occurring nonetheless. This week, some GOP lawmakers congratulated Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris on the Senate floor despite denying that Biden won the election publicly.
NBC reports that Biden has told his advisers he isn’t interested in investigating the Trump administration after he moves into The White House:
Biden has raised concerns that investigations would further divide a country he is trying to unite and risk making every day of his presidency about Trump, said the sources, who spoke on background to offer details of private conversations.
They said he has specifically told advisers that he is wary of federal tax investigations of Trump or of challenging any orders Trump may issue granting immunity to members of his staff before he leaves office. One adviser said Biden has made it clear that he “just wants to move on.”
Back when Barack Obama was running for president in 2008, he claimed that he would “immediately review” the Bush administration’s torture program because “nobody is above the law.” It turns out some people are. As soon as Obama was elected, he made it clear that no such investigations would be taking place and declared that “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”
This brand of bipartisanship is on full display in Obama’s memoir A Promised Land, which was published this week. He writes that he didn’t agree with Bush spinning the “intelligence to gain public support” and thought the Iraq War was a “blunder”, but notes that “unlike some on the left, I’d never engaged in wholesale condemnation of the Bush administration’s approach to counterterrorism.” He goes onto defend his murderous drone program, which Noam Chomsky has called “the most extensive global terrorism campaign the world has yet seen.”
It remains to be seen whether Trump will end up dancing with Ellen one day but, if 2020 has taught us anything, it’s “Never Say Never.”
Odds & Ends
?? The New York Times reports that Trump asked senior advisers whether he had options to attack Iran last week. “A range of senior advisers dissuaded the president from moving ahead with a military strike,” explains the article. “The advisers — including Vice President Mike Pence; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Christopher C. Miller, the acting defense secretary; and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — warned that a strike against Iran’s facilities could easily escalate into a broader conflict in the last weeks of Mr. Trump’s presidency.”
✉️ 41 Democratic lawmakers signed a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, condemning Israel’s November 3 demolition of a Palestinian village and demanding to know whether U.S. equipment was used in the operation. The letter was led by Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan. “Creeping annexation cannot be a policy that the U.S. government supports if we wish to see peace in the region,” reads the letter. “This single act was the largest Israeli displacement of Palestinians in four years, behavior only made possible by continued silence from the American government.”
?? Akela Lacy has a great piece at The Intercept on activists pressuring Biden to end U.S. support for the war on Yemen. “Progressives are really interested in encouraging the Biden administration to follow through very quickly on the commitment to end the Yemen war, for starters,” Bernie Sanders foreign policy adviser Matt Duss told Lacy. “It’s not just a progressive priority, it’s a bipartisan issue at this point. You have a number of conservative groups that were part of the coalition, and this could be a good early bipartisan win.”
At In These Times, Shireen Al-Adeimi has a piece about Yemenis calling on Biden to end the war. “Biden’s election is a paradox for Yemenis: As Obama’s vice president, Biden is complicit in the havoc. Yet, after years of organizing by anti-war groups and individuals, Biden said on the campaign trail he is against continuing U.S. support for the war,” she writes. “Because their lives are so tremendously impacted by the U.S. president, Yemenis deserve a voice in the political discourse about the incoming administration.“
?? The Huffington Post reports that a bipartisan group of Senators is trying to stop Trump’s arms deal with the United Arab Emirates. The group includes Senators Bob Menendez (D-NJ) Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.)
✉️ A small group of Republican Senators led by Arkansas’s Tom Cotton is urging the Trump administration to label goods from the West Bank as “Made in Israel.” “This decision would support Israel and push back against anti-Semitism and the BDS movement,” reads the letter to Trump from the group.
?? At Foreign Policy, Emran Feroz reports that members of a CIA-backed paramilitary group have allegedly killed 14 civilians during raids in Afghanistan’s Khost province this month.
?? Palestine Legal just launched a new website to tracking legislative efforts to silence Palestine advocacy in the United States. Check out what’s happening in your state.
?️ Jon Ossoff defended fellow Democratic candidate Rev. Raphael Warnock against accusations of being anti-Israel. “Reverend Warnock is a beloved friend and ally of Georgia’s’s Jewish community and a friend of Israel,” said Ossoff. “Kelly Loeffler’s baseless attacks on the Reverend make me sick.”
?? This week Mike Pompeo visited the Psagot winery, making him the first Secretary of State to appear at an illegal West Bank settlement. During the visit, Pompeo announced that the Trump administration will cut off any support for organizations that support the BDS movement. “As we have made clear, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. The United States is, therefore, committed to countering the Global BDS Campaign as a manifestation of anti-Semitism,” read a press statement from Pompeo.
Prime Minister Netanyahu referred to the decision as “simply wonderful.”
Stay safe out there,
Michael
|| … Last October, chancellor Robert Jones sent out an email condemning swastika graffiti that was found in a school building. … ||
Swastika graffiti should be condemned. Zionism and Israeli colonialism, (war) crimes and supremacism should also be condemned.
|| … The email also attacked a presentation called “Palestine & Great Return March: Palestinian Resistance to 70 Years of Israeli Terror” and claimed that the event made Jewish students feel unsafe. … ||
Why would a presentation about decades’ worth (and counting) of Israeli (war) crimes make Jewish-American students feel unsafe? Is it because they anti-Semitically self-conflate with Israel or because Zionists have done a bang-up job of anti-Semitically conflating them (and all other Jews) with Israel?
Same old, same old; Israel has total protections and voices for Palestinians are silenced. Steal more of their land, demolish more and sell their goods as Israeli.. Oh and who is the victim here? Let them go to war against Iran, I double dare them.
Hope you enjoyed your fine wine, Mike, made from grapes grown on stolen land!
As for the swastika graffiti, smells like a false flag operation to me.