Rutgers has become the latest university to suspend its Students for Justice in Palestine chapter.
“You allegedly have had multiple cases of disrupting classes, a program, meals, and students studying,” associate Dean of Students Michelle Jefferson told the group in a letter. She also says their was alleged vandalism at the business school.
In a statement, Rutgers SJP accused the school of implementing a double standard against the group, citing anti-Palestinian sentiment on campus.
“While the Rutgers Administration suspended our SJP over nebulous and unsubstantiated complaints, they have yet to conduct an investigation regarding Rutgers Chabad’s threatening post with an SJP protest in the background that labels us, students that attend Rutgers, as ‘children of darkness,’ captioned with the words ‘STRAPPED. ARMED. LOCKED AND LOADED’,” the organization explained. “This is one of many examples that lacks adequate response to incidents that have made Palestinian students feel unsafe and threatened. Meanwhile, mere accusations against our free speech rights have led to arbitrary suspension.
“Rutgers University has also failed to support the Palestinian and Muslim-presenting students on campus that have submitted bias reports of the constant harassments and attacks they have faced since October 7th,” they continued. “This includes the Palestinian student who submitted a report against a Professor who cornered and began to record them in response to a coordinated walk out protesting an event – which the Palestinian student took no part in. The Professor subsequently accused SJP of disrupting the event, though it played no role in the incident. For all we know, we could be suspended based partially on this false accusation.”
Rutgers Academic Freedom Committee also put out a statement condemning the move, calling on the administration to reverse course. “The suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine arbitrarily silences the voices of many students and is redolent of the McCarthyism of the 20th century,” it reads.
Less than a week before the announcement Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) tried to shut down a panel on Palestine featuring Noura Erakat, Nick Estes, and Marc Lamont Hill. “While differing views are a critical part of building cultural understanding, they cannot provide a bully pulpit for those who seek to divide others and spew hate,” said the congressman in a statement. “The first amendment does not give students the right to bully, intimidate, and instill fear onto other students.”
You see new stories like this every day.
There are calls for a police investigation into a Palestine group at Yale because the organization shared a drawing of a child throwing a stone. A pro-Israel activist tagged the IDF on Twitter because her dining hall changed the name of its Israeli couscous.
Eve Gerber, the wife of Harvard Economics professor and former Obama official Jason Furman, accosted a graduate student on the streets of Cambridge for wearing a keffiyeh. “Hi, camera,” she says, in a recording of the incident. “Thank you for walking through neighborhoods and making families feel unsafe with your terrorist scarf.”
When a 7th-grade student in Georgia questioned a social studies teacher for hanging up an Israeli flag in his classroom, he told her that he would “kick her f*****g ass, slit her godddamn throat..drag her ass outside and cut her head off.”
The coverage of this stuff has not been promising.
Elizabeth Magill just resigned as University of Pennsylvania president, and there are consistent calls for the other presidents who attended the (now infamous) congressional hearing on antisemitism to step down.
The testimony of those school leaders was undoubtedly terrible. Of course, if students were calling for genocide should be condemned, but they aren’t, and nobody pushed back on Rep. Elise Stefanik’s (R-NY) offensive and ridiculous frame. The GOP congresswoman had stated that chants of “intifada” constituted a call for genocide. The parameters of this debate were set when this smear was allowed to sit uncorrected. Stefanik (who never criticized Trump for hosting a Holocaust denier at Mar-a-Lago) was given the space to have her moment go viral. Subsequent media coverage gives viewers and readers the impression that Palestine activists are calling for genocide on campus.
Beyond the Headlines
Speaking of the media. I wrote an extra Shift this week on the media, you can find it on the website. I wanted to rerun something I wrote about headlines:
Studies have shown that most Americans just read the headlines and don’t bother clicking on the story.
This is concerning on its own terms, but it’s especially frightening as it relates to the U.S. media’s coverage of anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
WWE star’s ‘likes’ of antisemitic posts cause firestorm—but no sanctions, declared a recent one from Israel Hayom. The short piece also found a home on Jewish News Syndicate’s website.
Invoking the possibility of sanctions implies that something truly terrible was endorsed, but the story makes it clear that was not the case.
Sami Zayn is a Muslim wrestler whose parents were Syrian immigrants. He’s criticized Israel’s treatment of Palestinians before and has been consistently targeted by pro-Israel groups over it.
The big “antisemitic” post that liked this time around is an article by Chris Hedges about Israel’s plans for Gaza. Among other things, the piece actually criticizes the Israeli government for attacking Jewish people. “Israel, at the same time, is turning on ‘Jewish traitors’ who refuse to embrace the demented vision of the ruling Jewish fascists and who denounce the horrific violence of the state,” writes Hedges. “The familiar enemies of fascism — journalists, human rights advocates, intellectuals, artists, feminists, liberals, the left, homosexuals and pacifists — are already being targeted.”
Zayn’s other indiscretion was liking a post where a Twitter user said Israel’s killing in Gaza was “calculated and deliberate.” The article doesn’t cite any example of this, implying that it’s a lie. So here’s one: in October Human Rights Watch concluded that two Israeli strikes in Lebanon, that killed Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah and injured six other journalists, intentionally targeted civilians.
In short, Zayn never liked an antisemitic post. He shared and liked posts about Israeli policy.
You may have heard about a recent controversy that erupted at an Oakland coffee shop. A woman complained to the staff about graffiti that she found in the bathroom at Farley’s East, then tried to reenter the bathroom to document it. She was prevented from doing so by the workers. They asked her to leave and said, “Free Palestine” when she did. The woman’s video went viral, the coffee shop shut down for a short amount of time, and the workers were fired. Now the former employees are now criticizing the owner, saying he had known about the graffiti for month.
This is an interesting story, but the details are not entirely relevant to the subject of this newsletter. In this case, I’m interested in how the graffiti has been framed in headlines.
Here’s a small sample:
Oakland cafe workers say owner knew about anti-Semitic graffiti
So, what was the graffiti in question? On the bathroom walls it said “Zionism=fascism” and “Your neutrality is enabling genocide.” Again, where is the antisemitism?
A story at Berkeleyside contains one of the only truthful headlines on the topic: Oakland cafe confrontation over anti-Zionist graffiti leads to staff firings, boycott call
Let’s conclude with this one from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Decatur schools staffer still employed after emailing resources on Gaza.
Here’s another one that implies a move so grave that the person should have been fired.
The story? City Schools of Decatur equity coordinator Anthony Downer sent an email to some co-workers providing resources on how they could support the Gaza. The email included an attachment that was effectively a reading list “compiled by a queer collective of Jews, Palestinians, and allies in Atlanta.”
Downer was investigated over the email, which probably shouldn’t be surprising at this point. City Schools of Decatur have stated that he should be removed from his position. I’d like to reiterate that the person investigated for trying to help Gazans is the school’s equity coordinator.
It’s another surreal and ridiculous story, but you wouldn’t know that if you didn’t click.
Odds & Ends
???? ‘Educators teaching Palestine face academic repression at the University of California’
⚽ ‘BDS victory: Puma to end its sponsorship of Israel’s national team’
???????? ‘Report: Israel used U.S.-supplied white phosphorus in Lebanon attack’
???? Verso released a new free e-book: From the River to the Sea: Essays for a Free Palestine
???????? Axios: ‘U.S. delaying sale of M16 rifles to Israel over settler violence’
???? Jewish Currents: ‘Harvard Is Ignoring Its Own Antisemitism Experts’
???? ‘Biden says Netanyahu must change, Israel losing global support’
???? The Origins of Totalitarianism, indeed: ‘Masha Gessen’s Hannah Arendt Prize has been canceled because of their essay on Gaza‘
???????? National Security Council spokesman John Kirby wore a dog tag calling for the release of Israel hostages at a White House briefing.
✊ 75 Jewish activists and their allies were just arrested shutting down a Los Angeles freeway to demand a ceasefire.
????️ Kumar Rao on Twitter: “Rep. Dan Goldman is getting grilled by constituents on town hall. Multifaith/multiracial CD-10 wants the genocide to end, wants a ceasefire, wants an end to siege on Gaza, & a Free Palestine. Goldman’s reflexive pro-war AIPAC positions are WAY out of step w/this district. Important context: Goldman’s office was essentially forced into holding this event (and did so virtually as a highly-controlled, ridiculously short webinar) to avoid joining a consitituent-organized townhall he was asked to attend over the weekend.”
???????? Jeremy Schall at The Intercept: ‘This Is Not a War Against Hamas’
????️ From Common Dreams: ‘Citing Schiff’s Gaza Silence, California Mayor Switches Senate Endorsement to Lee’
???? From Truthout: ‘Israeli Knesset Member: Bernie Sanders Ignored Both of My Appeals for Ceasefire’
???? From TomDispatch: ‘Power, Protest, and All That’s News‘
???????? From Counterpunch: ‘Changing U.S. Policy on Gaza is Overdue‘
???????? The U.S. voted against a United Nations resolution calling for a ceasefire.
???? From Dissent: ‘Terrorism Investigations on Campus and the New McCarthyism’
???????? From HuffPost: ‘Capitol Hill Interns Accuse Congress Of Suppressing Cease-Fire Demands’
Stay safe out there,
Michael
“Studies have shown that most Americans just read the headlines and don’t bother clicking on the story.”
It’s not just in the USA. Reading the comments here in the UK on the website of the Daily Mail tabloid, it’s obvious that most of them don’t read beyond the headlines. However, given that so many of them are functionally illiterate, it’s a wonder they manage to get that far.
I was on the campus of UC Berkeley in early 70’s when anti apartheid groups were in the early stages of forming.. Then on the campus of Univ of Colo Boulder 72/73/74 when more anti apartheid student groups were just coming together on that campus as well as across the U.S. I don’t remember this kind of push back from administrations. At that time I don’t remember University administrations punishing students for their focused activities on social justice and human rights work. All of the divestment work in beginning stages at that point. Of course the Anti Vietnam war protest were massive and wide spread at that point and getting the attention deserved.
These student groups trying to bring attention to this critical issue have AIPAC, Campus Watch and ADL pushing back hard against their justice work.
http://michiganintheworld.history.lsa.umich.edu/antiapartheid/exhibits/show/exhibit/origins/movement_on_college_campuses
Has anyone seen any visual clips of students yelling “kill all Jews” or “we support genocide against Jews” which is what Rep Stefanik was claiming. Anyone read or see any hard and substantive evidence that would back up these claims? .
Palestinian and Israeli liberation will be at hand when the average person sees a kafeyah, hears “intifada” or hears “river to the sea”, and thinks, “all to be free, and live in equality”.
The only proposition with legs and benefits Jews and Arabs in the long run.