Summer is upon us, but the push to punish pro-Palestine students has not slowed down.
This week GOP Congress members Elise Stefanik (NY) and Jim Banks (IN) introduced the No Tax Dollars for College Encampments Act.
The legislation would strip U.S. schools of their federal accreditation if they fail to squash protests in support of Gaza.
“I am committed to ridding universities of the antisemitic rot corrupting our students and making campuses dangerous and unwelcoming to our Jewish communities which is why I am proud to help lead the No Tax Dollars for College Encampments Act. This legislation would prevent the disgraceful mob riots we saw overtake campuses across the country, including Columbia University, and make sure school leaders are enforcing policies against hostile campus takeovers. Any university leaders that fail to stand up for our Jewish community will be held accountable,” declared Stefanik.
“Last school year, makeshift encampments were allowed to flourish on campuses across the country, disrupting classes and intimidating Jewish students. This is unacceptable,” claimed Banks. “My legislation holds these woke universities accountable and ensures they enforce protest rules fairly and equally, not only when it fits their political agenda.”
These kinds of Republican efforts always seem wacky, but I’m reminded of something Professor Darryl Li told me earlier this year when I interviewed him about a report on how anti-Palestine sentiment helped shape terror laws.
“One of the messages that I think is really important for the movement to understand is that proposals that don’t get formally passed into law but still sort of circulate in the air can have really important and harmful effects,” said Li. “So, in Congress, we’ve seen this incentive structure, a sort of race to the bottom of racist grandstanding against Palestinians. That’s actually existed for decades, and there’s no downside for most people in Congress to come up with increasingly wild and disturbing legislative proposals. And even if 90% of them don’t pass they still kind of shape the position of the Overton Window.”
Next we turn (yet again) to Columbia University. The university’s task force on antisemitism has been compiling a report on the topic for weeks and shared information on their findings with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz before communicating any of it to the actual students or faculty.
Part of this effort entails establishing a definition of antisemitism and this new definition seems to encompass anti-Zionists statements. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before!
“The new definition is expected to determine that statements calling for the destruction and death of Israel and Zionism can be considered antisemitic, while criticism of the Israeli government cannot,” reports Haaretz.
This is obviously similar to the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, which has been embraced by pro-Israel groups as a means to shut down dissent on the issue.
“This definition is designed to inform faculty and students about what can offend Jewish people and which types of statements can cause pain and discomfort,” reads the Haaretz piece, but who’s buying this?
“Given that aggressive police raids at Columbia and Barnard, its women’s college, that saw student protesters arrested and the shutdown of the entire campus, the claim that free speech on campus will not be repressed beggars belief,” writes Natasha Lennard at The Intercept. “Even if the only use of the definition is during mandatory orientations on antisemitism, its deployment inscribes the dangerous antisemitism/anti-Zionism conflation into campus culture. Views of Palestinians, anti-Zionist Jews, and the many others in the community who express criticism of Israel are bound to be delegitimized.”
Moving onto Pennsylvania, where the State Senate just passed the “Stand with Israel Bill,” by a vote of 41-7. The legislation would cut funding to schools that divest from Israel, a central demand of campus protesters.
Here’s Sen. Steve Santarsiero, a Democrat who co-sponsored the bill, on BDS. “It’s a political movement by Palestinian partisans that seeks to blame Israel for every problem in the conflict and that also engages in antisemitic rhetoric and tropes. It needs to be understood in that light and confronted.”
Finally, we have the strange case of Andrew Cuomo, New York’s disgraced former governor. He was in last week’s Shift for cheering on a George Latimer victory on social media.
Now his pro-Israel has dropped an ad attacking students who support Palestine. “If you stand with Hamas, you stand with terror,” declares the tv spot.
Cuomo’s group, Never Again, NOW!, will debunk “lies and deception” regarding Israel. “We are at a crucial moment in history where antisemitism is spreading unchecked and support for Israel in this country is waning,” Cuomo said. “There are protestors in the streets that are not merely Pro-Palestinian — but embrace Hamas, a brutal terrorist organization.”
“Cuomo’s group said it plans to raise funds to keep the new ad running, launch another ad, and host a virtual symposium this summer about antisemitism on college campuses, reports the Forward. “Never Again, NOW! is also planning to deploy speakers to address Israel and antisemitism in lectures and in the media in the upcoming months.”
Look for these efforts to gain steam as students begin returning to campus in the fall.
Biden Letter
With the media focus on Biden’s disastrous debate and the prospects of removing him from the ticket, many might have missed a public statement that was just put out by 12 former officials who quit their jobs over the administration’s Gaza policy.
The story was first reported by Akbar Shahid Ahmed at HuffPost.
“Each of us has sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and as our nation celebrates its Independence Day, each of us are reminded that we resigned from government not to terminate that oath but to continue to abide by it; not to end our commitment to service, but to extend it,” reads the statement. “This failed policy has not achieved its stated objectives — it has not made Israelis any safer, it has emboldened extremists while it has been devastating for the Palestinian people, ensuring a vicious cycle of poverty and hopelessness, with all the implications of that cycle, for generations to come. As a group of dedicated Americans in service of our country, we insist that there is another way.”
“There have been a lot of moments where I felt, against reason, quite hopeful that we could see a change, and I think what we all understood – some of them faster than me – is that outside pressure is the only thing that’s going to move the ball on this,” Harrison Mann, a Jewish Army veteran who quit his military position last month, told the website.
We also recently saw the first Muslim appointee quit the Biden administration over the genocidal assault on Gaza, with Maryam Hassanein quitting her position at the Department of the Interior.
“I am resigning today from my position as a Biden administration appointee in the Department of the Interior,” reads a social media post from Hassanein. “As a Muslim American, I cannot continue working for an administration that ignores the voices of its diverse staff by continuing to fund and enable Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.”
“Marginalized communities in our country have long been denied the justice they deserve,” she continued. “I joined the Biden-Harris administration with the belief that my voice and diverse perspective would lend a hand in the pursuit of that justice. However, over the past nine months of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, this administration has chosen to uphold the status quo instead of listening to the diverse voices of staff urgently demanding freedom and justice for Palestinians…”
“We welcome this principled resignation by another Biden administration official who took up their post believing they could help the nation, but instead realized they were becoming complicit in the administration’s enabling of the far-right Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza,” said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awa. “President Biden, whose administration has lost all credibility on the issue of human rights, must reverse course and end our nation’s complicity in genocide, forced starvation and ethnic cleansing. He must demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire, an end to the occupation and justice for the Palestinian people.”
Odds & Ends
🏫 Columbia University Hind’s Hall defendants reject deals in solidarity with the CUNY 22
🇮🇱 The Israel lobby defeated Jamaal Bowman
🗳️ More calls for Biden to step down
⛺ CUNY encampment felony charges could set a dangerous precedent for Palestine organizing
🗳️ CPR News: Colorado Democrats vote against Gaza ceasefire resolution
👀 New York Times: D.N.C. Member Pitches Process to Replace Biden as Nominee in Memo to Party Chair
🇺🇸 Reuters: US officials who have quit over Biden’s support of Israel
📰 In These Times: We Can’t Let the Press Launder Israel’s War
🇺🇸 The Intercept: 62 Democrats join 207 Republicans in vote to conceal Gaza death toll
🗳️ Counterpunch: Bowman Was Defeated by a Toxic Blend of Zionism and Militarism
🇺🇸 Truthout: Biden Releasing Part of Bombs Shipment to Israel That Was Paused Over Rafah Raid
🇮🇱 Responsible Statecraft: Biden’s mixed messages to Israel are coming home to roost
😷 The Nation: Masks Are a Symbol of Solidarity. Don’t Let Democrats Take Them Away.
🇮🇱 USA Today: Amid Gaza War protests, this website profiled students and accused them of ‘hatred’
“Even if the only use of the definition is during mandatory orientations on antisemitism, its deployment inscribes the dangerous antisemitism/anti-Zionism conflation into campus culture. Views of Palestinians, anti-Zionist Jews, and the many others in the community who express criticism of Israel are bound to be delegitimized.”
Here’s an article from 972:
https://www.972mag.com/haredi-protest-army-conscription-ruling/
Scroll down a little and you will see a photo of a large crowd of Jews – correct me if I’m wrong, these are Jews, right? – and in the middle of the crowd there’s a big sign: We Would Rather Die as Jews Than Live as Zionists”
How can we possibly be still having this debate about whether anti-Zionism is anti-semitism?
“My legislation holds these woke universities accountable and ensures they enforce protest rules fairly and equally, not only when it fits their political agenda.”
Officials who abet aparthied from outside the territory are specifically cited as an example of the crime in the UN Convention.
The Zionist idiot who promulgated the idea that universities have to make supporters of Israel “feel safe” admitted at the same time that they had to make Muslims feel safe from Islamophobia too. That ought to forestall providing a publicly-funded venue for propaganda appearances by IDF and State of Israel officials during an armed conflict.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/06/16/fact-sheet-biden-%E2%81%A0harris-administration-takes-action-to-counter-islamophobia/
Universities invited expatriate Israel Ambassador Michael Oren to speak about Israel’s right to defend itself after the ICJ had ruled it couldn’t do that while building walls, illegal settlements, illegally annexing territory, and mowing the lawn in Gaza and the West Bank. So he was allowed to freely engage in hate speech that minimized and denied findings of fact about war crimes and crimes against humanity, while the University exercised viewpoint discrimination and prosecuted the students who interrupted him with violating a California public meeting law.
Hint: Why is an institution that receives federal funding providing a public, taxpayer funded state meeting to promote Israeli hate speech and propaganda, when the Omnibus spending bill always prohibits any funding of propaganda and SCOTUS has ruled that universities cannot engage in viewpoint discrimination? When you outlaw non-violent protests or resistance, it invariably results in violence.
It is a monumental tragedy that student activism has been about anti-Zionism, with all the political confusion and downsides, instead of about equal civil rights and justice for Palestinians, a winning political focus.
Why has it not been recognized this is the logical future? Seems always about peripheral considerations, unnecessary battles. No wonder the hole keeps getting deeper.