Folks, relevant information - not context - about that USC valedictorian people are posting about.
Relevant information because you maybe don't want to valorize her as some kind of hero.
Not context because the information doesn't remotely change that the school is wrong and her harassers vile
(She's posted deeply antisemitic stuff to her instagram account claiming that, essentially, Jews have no historical connection to the land, that "zionism" arose is the early 1800s when Jews started coming to the land to steal it as part of a european conspiracy, etc.)
And now that provost has now handled the situation as poorly as possible. So the antisemitism isn't actually challenged, and now she gets to be a victim.
I’m not sure if I buy that those are antisemitic statements - the idea that Jews have no historical connection to the land is questionable, but Zionism emerging in the 1800s as a political movement of European Jews looking to settle in Palestine is a historical fact.
Very true, and certainly the idea that it was a “conspiracy” is nonsense. History could have played out in a lot of ways other than how it actually ended up happening.
Zionism obviously wasn’t a conspiracy, and people who apply a conspiratorial worldview to everything annoy me a lot. That said, as an approach to “Jewish liberation” it had the unfortunate side effect of getting Jews out of Europe, so it aligned with the goals of some European anti-semites.
Lots of other Jews were seeking liberation where they were born, like the Jewish Labor Bund with their concept of hereness. Or immigrating to the United States. The really unfortunate thing about Zionism, as it actually played out, is that it required kicking out 750,000 people from their homes.
How the hell is getting Jews out of Europe an "unfortunate side effect" of Zionism? This is the continent ruled over by the same people who have, with only very brief intermissions, been constantly oppressing and murdering us for 2000 years.
The idea that Jews have no historical connection to Judea sails right past revisionism and straight into ahistorical nonsense, and the idea that Jews don't belong wherever they happen to be is a very old antisemitic trope.
Sure, but I think the way it’s looped into a national origin story is pretty ahistorical too. Phonecians have a historical connection to Phonecia, as well - the fact is that many overlapping cultural and political entities have existed in the same place in the last 3,000 years.
Absolutely. We shouldn't draw and enforce political boundaries based on the way things "used to" or "should" be. It's enough to say that Israel is oppressing Palestinians and that's wrong, and that some opposition to Israel is clearly antisemitic and also wrong (but much, much less severe).
Agree. Though, I don’t think clear anti-Semitism is less severe than anti-Palestinian racism. Which is one of the reasons why it’s so important to distinguish between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, fwiw, and why the Israeli government wants so badly to erase that distinction.
To be clear, I think American kids espousing antisemitic beliefs is less bad than the Israeli government killing Palestinian civilians. But I'm also concerned about the former, especially when it's based in ahistorical lies, because of its capacity to encourage violence toward Jews.
Questionable? It's 100% wrong as a matter of amply demonstrated historical fact. Denying our history is most definitely antisemitic.
Still doesn't make it right to bar her from speaking.
It’s equally wrong to say that Jews have some sort of exclusive historical connection to the land, and I understand why someone would react against that (which is the ideology of the Israeli state) by saying that Jews have no connection. I don’t think it’s accurate, but it’s not antisemitic either.
If an Israeli Jew reacts to the false statement "Jews have no historical connection to this land" by getting emotional & saying "there's no such thing as a Palestinian, historically speaking," that's racist even though it's provoked.
Denying Jewish history is antisemitic. Even if you're mad.
I assume we're not defining"antisemitism" or '"racism" purely subjectively—something's racist only if the person hates Jews/Blacks/Palestinians, etc.
I don't know what's in this person's heart. I don't know if she hates Jews. That's not my claim. I'm saying the statement is objectively antisemitic.
Zionism has been a key facet of the Jewish ethnoreligious identity for 2000 years. It's baked in. It didn't state in the 1800s.
If you want an example of an ancient ritual that mentions it explicitly, get yourself invited to a somewhat traditional seder next week and stick around until the end.
"Zionism" as a political movement was founded in the late 1800s. "Zionism" as the Jewish longing for, and intent to, return to the land of Israel is 2000 years old.
Don't equivocate between the two; they're related but different
I think it’s ahistorical to assume that the majority of Jews over the past 2,000 years wanted to uproot their lives and move somewhere their distant ancestors lived, which they knew about mainly through religious texts. It negates diaspora Jewish existence in a way I’m uncomfortable with.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure some did. But Zionism as a mass movement - the state ideology of Israel - is recent, and emerged alongside all the other nationalisms that were happening 150 or so years ago
Personally I find it really depressing, that the national identities of the countries in which people actually lived had no room for them, and they felt the need to go off to a completely different continent to find safety and belonging.
I’m trying to talk about Zionism as a modern political movement, and people keep referring to this vague 2,000 year sense of belonging. My point is that they’re not the same thing.
Good lord (sorry) the notion that we have a land to call our own in that very specific region of the world is imprinted in the Book we're all ostensibly arguing over
Sure, but that was in the context of an ancient world that’s unrecognizable to us today. You start using the Bible as a source of political legitimacy, suddenly you’re talking about the Assyrians and the Roman Empire and shit. There’s a real history but it doesn’t map neatly onto modern concepts
No one's using the Bible as a source. There was an indigenous people with a kingdom or 2 that is well known to archeologists today. They had names, they were conquered by the Roman Empire, and there is contemporaneous history of it. That land was decolonized by the indigenous people in 1948.
Perhaps you mean "political zionism" or "religious zionism" or labor zionism" or other " something Zionisms"? If so, please use the full name or names of what you mean since I'm sure you are well aware of the potential for ugly confusion if you don't use the correct term.
Nobody referred to "Jewish longing for Zion" as "Zionism" prior to the emergence of "political Zionism"; assume the un-adjectived use of the term is not the anachronistic one
