I don’t know why it’s hard for so many people to believe that Columbia’s Jewish students (and esp visibly Jewish/pro-Israel students) could be experiencing harassment at the same time that pro-Palestinian protesters are experiencing harassment but… I believe many people can be simultaneously harmed!
At the core I think there was just a colossal failure by Columbia to meet the moment and create an an environment in which everyone could feel heard and people could express their political views without attacking fellow students who are not actually the core of the problem here
A few days ago I saw someone* make the point that “Israel is a racist state” and “Zionists not welcome here” are qualitatively different statements — one is a political critique of a foreign nation; one is an attempt to intimidate fellow students. Key thing to keep in mind!
* @dov.bsky.social?
Like I have to believe that there are ways to enable students to voice their views on Israel-Palestine *and* help them remember that other students aren’t actually the problem here.
I mean in the grand scheme of Israel-Palestine — the core issue this is all supposedly about — literally nothing that happens at Columbia matters; President Shafik could burn an effigy of Bibi and pull all of Columbia’s investments from anything remotely Israel-related and it would still matter…
… less than President Biden actually standing up to Bibi and enforcing existing international law.
If anything, what Columbia does or doesn’t do is more a bellwether for sentiment within a specific strata of the US than anything else.
Yeah - I think the second one is becoming an increasingly close call. Obviously, it is aimed at fellow students/campus community members, but in the same way that "racists are not welcome here" is; the question that I think is now open is if Zionism is close enough to racism for that.
in a nutshell i think the problem is not whether /zionism/ is racist or not (there is a perfectly credible theory under which it always was), it's whether /jews at large believe it is/
I feel like it is a, to be charitable, unintentional motte-and-bailey. It's not necessarily obvious (or at least plausibly deniable) that people who are far from full-throated supporters of Netanyahu will understand "Zionist" as including them
That depends very much on your definition of Zionism.
Certainly some Israelis hold an overtly racist view of Zionism but it’s quite a stretch to say that most Diaspora Jews would agree with that definition.
The thing that really angers me about situations like this is seeing Palestinians divert their attention away from trying to survive to tell gentiles to knock it off with the actual instances of antisemitism.
All because gentiles are still struggling (or even outright refusing) to police themselves, despite antizionist Jews showing time and time again how to protest without resorting to antisemitism, be it backhanded or overt.
Ah, okay. Yeah, I meant non-Jewish, non-Palestinian individuals, and I guess I always figured “gentile” could suffice as a better descriptor over “goyim” for that.
