The university recently deposed tenured law professor Katherine Franke as part of an investigation stemming from an interview she gave to “Democracy Now!” in January. During that interview, Franke was asked about allegations that two students who had previously served in the Israeli army had sprayed a chemical at their classmates at an on-campus rally for Gaza.
Franke, who has worked at the school for decades, responded by linking the incident to a documented pattern of on-campus harassment that Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students have alleged for years.
“Columbia has a program with older students from other countries, including Israel,” Franke said, referring to the school’s General Studies program. “It’s something that many of us were concerned about because so many of those Israeli students who then come to the campus are coming right out of their military service. And they’ve been known to harass Palestinian and other students on our campus, and it’s something the university has not taken seriously in the past.”
The remarks set off a firestorm, with commentators suggesting that Franke was calling to ban all Israeli students from campus. Within a few days of the interview, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an article titled “Columbia University Pushes Back Against Professor Who Vilified Israeli Students,” citing a statement from the university affirming its support for Israeli students.
Can we avoid, even jokingly, accommodating the Zionists by saying anti-Israel and antiisemitism are the same thing when they absolutely aren’t?
Dr. Franke was not antisemitic and actual antisemitic stuff is happening in the U.S. that gets a lot less attention. Many don’t know about this and many more probably dismissed it. A few even justified it as a protest against Israeli genocide despite many of the graves being of Jews who died before Israel even existed as a nation.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/02/us/cincinnati-jewish-cemeteries-vandalism/index.html
Zionists are helping to normalize that sort of thing by desensitizing people to the concept of antisemitism. The fact is that there are people, sometimes very dangerous people, who hate Jews because they are Jews and that should not be minimized any more than Israeli genocide should be minimized because they are both things that no one should tolerate.
Zionists want antisemitism. Zionists need antisemitism. The only moral claim to Zionism is that Jews need a safe place in the world. They construct Israel as this place by making Jews everywhere else in the world unsafe.
This is why there is multiple unholy alliances between antisemites and other bigots and Zionists.
Well said.
This is definitely not helped by many of the most vocal anti-israelites also being antisemites (at least from my experiences irl, along with what I’ve heard from family).
One of the many reasons I keep that part of my identity hidden irl. It’s a lot less bad on here, but still an issue.
Not until Israel stops being used as a weapon to silence dissent.
At the moment calling it out at every step is the right move. A peoples are actively being wiped off the face of the planet, that’s got priority.
Letting them control your language is the opposite of calling them out. It’s letting them win.
This reeks of “Black people shouldn’t let racist words affect them”
In what possible way?
In that you’re trying to get people to ignore the impact of the words and what it’s doing to victims of it?
I am in no way doing that. Why are you making such a nonsensical accusation when I explained why I said whst I did in great detail?
Refusing to let them win the propaganda war by policing your language does not in any way do that.
You’re basically accusing me of being a bigot by saying that a word that should describe bigotry is being used to describe things that are not bigoted to support a genocide.
You are in every way doing that.
You are promoting that others downplay or outright ignore the importance of what is happening with the word today, because you’re more concerned with a lesser evil meaning of the word being lost.
In one thread you’re complaining about me not being civil and in this one you’re calling me a bigot. Who am I even being bigoted against? Antisemites?