LILLEY: Canada now a land of ethic and religious fighting

2024/11/06 Leave a comment

Overwrought and exaggerated, but yes, these are worrying signs:

We are the country we claim not to be. Canada is now a country of religious and ethnic tensions, bigotry and violence.

We saw this over the weekend in Brampton when a Hindu temple was attacked. People beaten with bats; video shows people carrying Khalistani flags hitting temple goers with the flag poles.

We even have a Peel Regional Police officer suspended for taking part in the protest which turned violent. Sergeant Harinder Sohi, an 18-year veteran of the force, is now suspended after being identified as a participant.

He’s apparently now receiving death threats for participating.

The outbreak of a Sikh-Hindu religious war isn’t the only problem facing our country on this front. For a year, we have seen hate marches rise up across the country in support of terrorist organizations.

In the weeks after the Oct. 7, 2023 terror attacks by Hamas against Israel, we heard countless politicians say, “This isn’t who we are.” They said this in response to synagogues being attacked, Jewish schools being shot at, and Jewish community centres being firebombed.

Well, apparently this is who we are because these incidents have not stopped.

Last week, Eylon Levy, a man I’ve interviewed multiple times — with whom I met with in Israel last January and who was an Israeli government spokesperson for a time — was on a speaking tour in Canada. While at the University of Calgary to give a talk, Levy was met with cries of “Allahu akbar!” and claims that he was personally responsible for genocide and killing babies.

“That crosses the line from any sort of political protest into a full-on Jihadi war cry,” Levy told my Toronto Sun colleague Bryan Passifiume.

This is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s new Canada, full-on ethnic and religious wars on our streets and nothing more from our leadership than a tweet.

“The acts of violence at the Hindu Sabha Mandir in Brampton today are unacceptable. Every Canadian has the right to practice their faith freely and safely,” Trudeau said in a social media post.

It’s too bad that Trudeau has been part of what has encouraged these protests. Just like Trudeau has failed to deal with anti-Semitism and the attacks on Jewish institutions for political gain, he’s used tensions in India to win favour with some groups.

For years, Trudeau has decided to bring the tensions of India’s domestic politics into Canadian politics. He inserted himself into a dispute between the Indian government and farmers in 2020 in a way that would have caused great consternation had a foreign government done the same during our trucker’s protest.

He has campaigned in Canada against the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in an attempt to win votes in Canada’s Sikh community. Immigration to Canada, in both the Sikh and Hindu communities, dates back more than 100 years.

For most of that time, there has been some form of peaceful co-existence. Tensions yes, but not an all-out religious war which is where we appear to be heading with no help from Trudeau and his politicking.

Meanwhile, India is set to take a harsher stand against Canada, even considering calling Canada a state sponsor of terrorism, according to some reports. The fact that we went from decades long ally of India to a pariah can only be laid at Trudeau’s feet.

It’s the same with Israel.

Canada voted for the creation of the State of Israel at the United Nations in 1948 and for the past several years has done everything possible to undermine that state. The Liberal Party has also taken policy positions that put ethno-religious politics above principle.

Foreign Minister Melanie Joly is openly courting the votes of people who back Hamas and Hezbollah. Yet, we are supposed to be shocked when an Israeli speaker is shut down at the University of Calgary and needs to be escorted out by security.

Add that to the schools being shot at, the synagogues attacked, the temples being swarmed, this is Justin Trudeau’s new Canada. The PM, who says he’s against divisiveness, sure has created a lot of it.

Source: LILLEY: Canada now a land of ethic and religious fighting

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Canada opens its doors for Israelis due to northern escalation

2024/06/25 Leave a comment

Of note (published data does not include Israel as not in the top 30 countries so hard to confirm assertions by Harel):

After the Canadian government opened its doors in February due to the Israel-Hamas war by allowing Israelis to apply for a work visa until June, the country has decided to extend the immigration initiative for another year due to Israel’s escalation with Hezbollah in the North.

The work visa option for Israelis will be available until July 31, 2025.  The extension for the visa application was believed to be done after political pressure was exerted by Canada’s Jewish community as tensions in Israel continued to rise during the Israel-Hamas war.

Israeli citizens must meet two conditions in order to receive the visa.

The first requirement is that they have a tourist visa in their possession, regardless of their arrival date. The second requirement is that the Israeli citizen must have relatives who are Canadian citizens or holders of permanent residency. 

Michal Harel, who moved to Canada in 2019, established the non-profit website ovrimtocanada.com with her husband.

According to Harel, thousands of Israelis have moved to Canada since the start of the immigration initiative, and following the announcement of its extension, hundreds more families are expected to move to make the move as well. “According to our estimates, thousands of Israelis have arrived. Thousands of people have contacted us, and surely some have arrived even without contacting us,” she said.

“Since moving to Canada in 2019 we’ve been helping Israelis make the big move up north,” the website says.

Source: Canada opens its doors for Israelis due to northern escalation

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Yakabuski: McGill’s pro-Palestinian encampment’s ‘revolutionary’ curriculum has no place on campus

2024/06/22 Leave a comment

Yep:

…Lest you get the impression that the McGill protesters are just peaceniks in keffiyehs, consider the “revolutionary” youth summer program that the McGill chapter of SPHR launched this week at the encampment. An Instagram post touting the program included a 1970 photo of Palestinian Liberation Organization fighters, most with their faces covered and two of whom are holding assault rifles.

“We pledge to educate the youth of Montreal and redefine McGill’s ‘elite’ instutional [sic] legacy by transformining [sic] its space into one of revolutionary education,” the post said. “The daily schedule will include physical activity, Arabic language instruction, cultural crafts, political discussions, historical and revolutionary lessons.”…

Source: McGill’s pro-Palestinian encampment’s ‘revolutionary’ curriculum has no place on campus

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Islamisme et droits des trans, même combat ? Le grand paradoxe des campements pro-palestiniens

2024/06/20 Leave a comment

Some of these contradictions are truly hard to understand:

Les campements contre Israël et en soutien aux Palestiniens se sont multipliés sur les campus des universités occidentales, surtout canadiennes. Ils sont notamment installés à l’Université McGill, à l’Université de Toronto et à l’Université de la Colombie-Britannique.

Ils révèlent selon moi une tendance plus profonde que de simples circonstances géopolitiques.

Les étudiants et professeurs mobilisés pour soutenir la résistance palestinienne représentent un courant de radicalisation où la défense des droits LGTBQ+ et le radicalisme islamiste coïncident.

Je m’intéresse depuis un certain temps aux problématiques liées à la liberté universitaire et aux discours des groupes radicaux dans le contexte universitaire et l’éducation en général.

Les paradoxes du radicalisme

Il y a une contradiction apparente dans cette alliance entre des islamistes et des militants occidentaux pour les droits de la personne. On peut en effet penser que là où la charia, la loi musulmane, est appliquée, les personnes gays ou trans subissent de la répression, écopent de peine de prison et risquent même la mort (c’est le cas en Iran, en Arabie saoudite, en Afghanistan et dans d’autres pays musulmans). On pourrait dire la même chose de la situation des femmes dans des pays musulmans où leurs droits sont constamment bafoués.

Mais cela ne semble pas perturber les militants universitaires. Ils voient dans la résistance islamiste contre le sionisme le feu révolutionnaire nécessaire pour en finir avec l’Occident « hétéro-patriarcal », c’est-à-dire un supposé ordre social dominé par les hommes depuis la nuit des temps.

Michel Foucault, l’un des pères du postmodernisme qui inspire nombre de ces militants pro-palestiniens, avait exprimé le même enthousiasme dans les préludes de la révolution iranienne. L’athée homosexuel de gauche qu’était Foucault écrivait avec une vision presque prophétique en 1979 sur les conséquences de la révolution islamique naissante :

En effet, il est exact de dire qu’en tant que mouvement « islamique », il peut incendier toute la région, renverser les régimes les plus instables et perturber les plus solides […].

Dans une chronique plus récente sur le campement à l’Université de Turin, le journaliste Stefano Cappellini observait :

Dans la salle de classe occupée de l’université, les étudiants accroupis écoutent l’imam qui glorifie le jihad. Pas le jihad coranique, la tension morale vers la pureté religieuse. Précisément la guerre sainte du jihad, la destruction physique des infidèles […] alors qu’autrefois le motif politique de la solidarité pro-palestinienne était la communauté d’objectifs, aujourd’hui c’est l’adoption des objectifs des autres : des filles et des garçons suspendus aux lèvres d’un homme religieux qui, au fond, les enrôle dans une guerre sainte dont ils pourraient potentiellement être eux aussi de futures victimes ».

Plusieurs signes confirment la confluence du radicalisme de gauche et des revendications de l’islamisme palestinien. Beaucoup d’entre eux participent au discours mondial très uniforme et synchronisé des militants pro-Hamas dans les universités. C’est également le cas dans leurs omissions ou non-dits, selon le linguiste Oswald Ducrot, qui a fait des contributions significatives à l’analyse du discours. Ainsi, les silences « stratégiques » dans le discours des militants pro-palestiniens cachent les aspects du conflit qui ne vont pas dans la direction idéologique de leur rhétorique.

Les mêmes slogans partout

La diabolisation du sionisme, le mouvement national qui prônait la création d’un État juif sur la terre d’Israël où la nation juive est née, est le thème qui unit la rhétorique de ces universitaires.

Les slogans que l’on entend et lit sur les campus universitaires sont simplistes, mais choquants : « Le sionisme est le nazisme » (l’inversion des rôles de victimes et de victimaires) ; « Le sionisme est du racisme » (une vieille accusation promue par la défunte URSS qui a pris de l’ampleur parmi les radicaux d’aujourd’hui) ; « Le sionisme est génocidaire » (les exterminés deviennent des exterminateurs).

Autre expression récurrente : « Le sionisme est colonialiste » : les Juifs seraient des « Européens blancs » qui auraient colonisé les terres des « vrais » aborigènes palestiniens, même s’il est bien connu que des milliers de musulmans égyptiens, algériens et bosniaques ainsi que des Circassiens ont émigré vers la Palestine ottomane au XIX siècle. Bien que cela soit nié par plusieurs, il s’agissait alors d’un territoire assez dépeuplé, en raison de son manque d’importance commerciale pendant l’occupation ottomane, des dures conditions de vie dans le désert, ainsi que des marais infestés par la malaria.

Boycotter Israël

L’autre stratégie discursive exige que les universités mettent un terme à leurs relations de coopération et d’échange avec leurs pairs israéliens et cessent d’investir leurs fonds dans des entreprises liées à Israël. Cette initiative suit la même logique du Boycottage, Désinvestissement et Sanctions promu par des groupes pro-palestiniens, et ce bien avant le conflit actuel à Gaza.

Il y a ceux qui ont réussi à exclure des professeurs sionistes de l’université, comme cela s’est produit à l’Université de la République en Uruguay.

Des omissions significatives

Le discours de la résistance comporte aussi des omissions significatives. Le massacre et les horreurs du 7 octobre 2023 perpétrés par le Hamas et le Jihad islamique ne sont pas évoqués ou sont minimisés. Pour ces militants de gauche radicale, il n’existe pas d’otages israéliens, vivants ou morts. Leur silence l’est autant sur la participation du régime iranien, lequel apporte un soutien financier et logistique en matière de renseignement et d’armement aux islamistes palestiniens, ou du Qatar, le principal bailleur de fonds de Hamas.

Il n’y a aucune mention du rôle déstabilisateur du Hezbollahdans la région, une milice pro-iranienne qui attaque le nord d’Israël. Aucune mention non plus des attaques terroristes du Hamas survenues lors de la seconde Intifada (2000-2005).

Un phénomène générationnel

Les racines du conflit israélo-palestinien remontent à plus de cent ans et couvrent toute l’histoire du XXe siècle. Il comprend les horreurs de l’Holocauste et la collaboration avec les nazis du grand mufti de Jérusalem, Amin Al-Husseini, qui s’est installé à Berlin pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale pour faire la propagande anti-juive en arabe.

Il y a eu aussi l’exode des communautés juives des pays arabes, soumises à des persécutions, des attaques et dans certains cas des expulsions (des centaines de milliers de ces réfugiés juifs ont été intégrés dans l’État d’Israël). Mais la nouvelle génération d’étudiants ne connaît pas cette histoire.

En outre, notamment dans le cas des universités aux États-Unis et au Canada, une population plus diversifiée sur le plan social et ethnique est entrée dans les universités, modifiant ainsi la composition démographique des campus. Elle inclut des groupes qui étaient soit marginalisés (par exemple, des populations « racisées ») ou peu représentés dans les universités. Sous l’influence des politiques identitaires, qui s’expriment aujourd’hui dans les initiatives de diversité, d’équité et d’inclusion (DEI), certains jeunes ont tendance à voir le monde sous l’angle de la dualité des oppresseurs et des opprimés.

Le rôle des réseaux sociaux dans ces mobilisations ne peut pas non plus être exclu. Ces plates-formes façonnent la perception des conflits dans le monde avec leur charge de désinformation, leurs images terribles (parfois manipulées) et leur forte émotivité qui suscite l’indignation.

Les étudiants chantent « du fleuve à la mer », c’est-à-dire que tout le territoire de la Palestine (y compris celui d’Israël avant la guerre de 1967) soit libéré des Juifs souverains. Il s’agit de la réalisation du rêve islamiste de garder les Juifs comme dhimmis, le mot en arabe qui les désigne comme des sujets de seconde classe. N’excluons cependant pas que les jeunes ne comprennent même pas ce qu’ils chantent. Ce serait très typique de cette époque d’ignorance « informée ».

Source: Islamisme et droits des trans, même combat ? Le grand paradoxe des campements pro-palestiniens

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Muslim, Jewish voters leaning away from the federal Liberals as Gaza war grinds on: poll

2024/05/17 Leave a comment

Hard to reconcile Muslim and Jewish perspectives. Middle of the road is often road kill, as is the zig-zagging of the government:

A new poll suggests Muslim and Jewish voters are leaning away from the federal Liberals in voting intentions — a possible sign that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s efforts to straddle gaps in public opinion over the Israel-Hamas war are falling short.

The new poll of voting intentions by the Angus Reid Institute says the federal NDP is leading the Liberals among Muslim voters 41 per cent to 31 per cent, while the federal Conservatives are beating the Liberals among Jewish voters 42 per cent to 33 per cent.

“This does feel to the Liberals, in terms of their outreach around diaspora politics, to now be a fairly untenable situation,” Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, told CBC News.

“The Jewish diaspora is now saying, ‘You haven’t gone far enough in condemning Hamas and condemning the violence and stopping antisemitism in Canada.’ And you’ve got pro-Palestinian voters and populations, many of whom are Muslim, obviously saying, ‘You haven’t gone far enough to condemn the Israeli Defence Forces for its counterattack in Gaza.'”

The data shows only 15 per cent of Muslims polled say they would vote for the Conservatives, while just 20 per cent of Jewish voters say they would support the New Democrats.

Kurl said that under Trudeau’s leadership, the Liberals have made a concerted effort to appeal to Muslim voters since 2015, when the Conservatives under Stephen Harper ran an election campaign that included controversial promises like a ban on the niqab and a “barbaric cultural practices” tip line.

An Environics Institute poll looking back on that election found 65 per cent of Muslims who said they voted cast their ballots for the Liberals, while only 10 per cent voted for the NDP.

“We saw the Liberals go out and court Muslims in Canada to vote Liberal,” Kurl said.

She said the Liberals appear to be feeling the fallout from trying to appease both Muslim and Jewish voters since Hamas’s attack on Israel of Oct. 7, 2023. Israeli officials say up to 1,200 Israelis were killed and 253 were taken hostage in that attack. Health authorities in Gaza say the Israeli military operation launched in response has killed almost 35,000 people….

Source: Muslim, Jewish voters leaning away from the federal Liberals as Gaza war grinds on: poll

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Rioux | La nazification d’Israël

2024/05/11 Leave a comment

Useful reminder of past and present naïveté:

L’humour peut-il être ignoble et drôle tout à la fois ? Je l’avoue, il est arrivé que des humoristes qui flirtaient avec l’abject me fassent rire. Comme il m’est arrivé de m’ennuyer avec d’autres trop bien intentionnés. C’est tout le mystère de l’humour. Et c’est toute l’ambiguïté de cette blague qui, cette semaine, a coûté son poste au comique de France Inter Guillaume Meurice, qui avait qualifié le premier ministre israélien, Benjamin Nétanyahou, d’une « sorte de nazi mais sans prépuce ».

Peut-on en rire sans pour autant adhérer à cette infamie sans nom qui consiste à nazifier le peuple de la Shoah ? L’idée n’est pas nouvelle. Quelle jouissance de démasquer le loup déguisé en mère-grand et de dire à la victime qu’elle est devenue semblable à son bourreau. Comme le disait le philosophe Michel Eltchaninoff, rien de tel que de peindre les Israéliens en nazis pour « se libérer de la culpabilité d’une des plus grandes tragédies de l’histoire récente : le génocide des Juifs d’Europe » qui, à de très rares exceptions, n’a jamais été reconnu dans le monde arabo-musulman.

Ce n’est évidemment pas parce qu’on appartient à une droite dure, comme Nétanyahou, et qu’on s’est allié par pur opportunisme politique à des partis extrémistes qui sont la honte d’Israël qu’on est un nazi et qu’on prépare un génocide. Génocide dont on attend encore la preuve sonnante et trébuchante. Les deux millions de citoyens d’origine arabe qui vivent librement en Israël étant la preuve éclatante du contraire.

Les slogans entendus ces jours-ci sur les campus américains, français et canadiens n’en finissent pourtant pas de nazifier Israël, quand ils n’expriment pas parfois un antisémitisme flagrant. Ainsi en est-il du mantra « from the river to the sea » (« du fleuve à la mer »), dont l’origine n’évoque rien de moins qu’une Palestine où Israël aurait été rayé de la carte. Faudrait-il, pour soutenir le peuple palestinien — qui mérite toute notre compassion, répétons-le —, aller jusqu’à qualifier le pogrom du 7 octobre d’acte de résistance ? Ou en taire l’horreur absolue, ce qui revient au même ?

On peut certes comprendre le désir d’une génération élevée en banlieue, dans un moralisme souvent étouffant, de se rejouer la grande épopée de l’opposition à la guerre du Vietnam. « En 67 tout était beau, c’était l’année de l’amour », disait la chanson.

Un demi-siècle plus tard, la mythologie a pourtant pris quelques rides. Si la libération du Vietnam méritait le soutien de tous, il n’en allait pas de même des Viêt-Cong et de leurs alliés communistes, dont le véritable visage nous a été révélé quelques années plus tard par les multiples vagues de boat people et le génocide des Khmers rouges au Cambodge. Un vrai, celui-là, puisqu’il fit 1,7 million de morts.

Un demi-siècle plus tard, malgré l’émotion légitime, c’est pourtant la même naïveté béate qui s’exprime à l’égard du Hamas, dont l’objectif avoué n’est pas de créer un État palestinien, mais de rétablir le califat en Palestine. Et pour cela, d’en finir avec l’État d’Israël.

Serait-ce trahir « la cause » ou « faire le jeu de l’ennemi » que de rappeler à ces militants LGBTQ+ et autres « Queers for Palestine » le destin que leur réserverait la charia advenant une victoire du Hamas ? Quant à celles qui hurlent leur colère souvent légitime contre Israël, savent-elles le sort qu’on réserve aux femmes dans ces théocraties ?

C’est Raymond Aron qui disait que « les hommes font l’histoire, mais ils ne savent pas l’histoire qu’ils font ». Cette naïveté criminelle fait étrangement penser à celle de cette gauche française qui, derrière Jean-Paul Sartre et Michel Foucault, n’avait dans les années 1970 que des mots doux à l’égard de l’ayatollah Khomeini, réfugié dans le petit village de Neauphle-le-Château. Parlez-en à cette jeunesse d’extrême gauche très active à l’époque dans les universités iraniennes, et qui sera littéralement exterminée après la révolution de 1979.

Si on a raison de dénoncer le cul-de-sac politique que représente Nétanyahou, l’émotion légitime que suscitent les souffrances des Palestiniens ne saurait justifier la moindre concession à une organisation qui, en islamisant la cause des Palestiniens au profit d’un pur délire religieux, signe pour ces derniers la plus terrible des défaites. « Ce que cherchait le Hamas, écrit l’ancien ambassadeur de France à Tel-Aviv Gérard Araud, c’est de commettre des atrocités qui rendent tout compromis inacceptable. Je crains qu’il n’ait réussi… »

Source: Chronique | La nazification d’Israël

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John Ivison: CUPE is being held to account for its obsessive anti-Israel vitriol

2024/05/09 Leave a comment

Words and actions matter. Will be interesting to see how the Marshall lawsuit progresses:

….Keffiyehs are now the cultural appropriation of choice for leftists, including CUPE Local 905 president Katherine Grzejszczak, who wore one during a video meeting with members to discuss remote-working policies, as National Post recently reported. One fellow union member who raised objections to the keffiyeh was told participants were not allowed to talk about anything political. When the Post reporter called Grzejszczak for comment, she said that “intimidating and harassing individuals for wearing traditional cultural clothing is a form of racism.”

At least CUPE is not yet on record as threatening its critics with violence. But a communications officer with the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, Vic Wojciechowski, recently warned U of T professor Kevin Bryan to watch his back after Bryan penned a thread saying the majority of protesters he talked on his campus to were neither students nor affiliated with the university. “There need to be street-based consequences for clumsy buffoons like Kevin,” Wojciechowski tweeted.

This kind of thuggery seems to be where we are heading.

The CUPE-supported rally at the U of T sported a huge banner that bore the legend: “Long live legal armed resistance.” This wording is a variation of the aforementioned tweet on Oct. 7th by CUPE Local 3906, which represents academic workers at McMaster University. That tweet was later taken down because the union said it was not aware of the full scope of the situation on the ground.

The reality was that the massive expression of revulsion across the country shocked even the ivory tower revolutionaries into rethinking their support for slaughter.

But we seem to be inured to such outrages. Students and their public sector union allies can now parade across campuses inciting and glorifying violence without fear of repercussions or even censure.

Source: John Ivison: CUPE is being held to account for its obsessive anti-Israel vitriol

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McWhorter: The Columbia Protests Made the Same Mistake the Civil Rights Movement Did

2024/05/08 Leave a comment

Comparison of note:

Last week I wrote about the protests that had come to dominate my professional home, Columbia University, and make headlines across the country. I said that though I did not believe the participants were motivated by antisemitism, the volume, fury and duration of their protest left many Jewish students feeling under siege for their Jewishness. That assessment has turned out to be one of the more polarizing things I have ever written, in part because some readers interpreted my position as opposing student protest overall.

I had no objection when the protests began last fall, but since that time, they escalated significantly. After students occupied the university’s storied Hamilton Hall — and police officers in riot gear conducted over 100 arrests — the administration closed the campus, moved all classes online and recommended that we professors either trim or eliminate final examinations in our classes. The mood is as grim now as when Covid forced the spring semester of 2020 to end with a desolate groan.

What happened this week was not just a rise in the temperature. The protests took a wrong turn, of a kind I have seen too many other activist movements take. It’s the same wrong turn that the civil rights movement took in the late 1960s.

After the concrete victories of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, a conflict arose within the movement between those who sought to keep the focus on changing laws and institutions and those who cherished more symbolic confrontations as a chance to speak truth to power.

The conflict played out most visibly in what became of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. SNCC began with grass-roots activism in the form of sit-ins and voter registration, but in 1966 John Lewis, a veteran of the Selma demonstrations who spoke at the March on Washington, was replaced as the group’s leader by Stokely Carmichael, who spoke charismatically of Black Power but whose political plans tended to be fuzzy at best. The term “Black Power” often seemed to mean something different to each person espousing it. It was, in essence, a slogan rather than a program.

This new idea — that gesture and performance were, in themselves, a form of action — worried the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who regarded some of the group’s demonstrations as “expressions of rivalry and rage, without constructive purpose,” according to the historian Taylor Branch.

James Bevel, who worked alongside King, scolded his fellow activist Hosea Williams for having no political strategy beyond putting Black people — he used a racial slur instead — “in jail to get on TV.” In response to what he considered dangerous rhetoric, Andrew Young asked some activists in Memphis, “How many people did you kill last year?” and proposed that they translate their militancy into an actual policy goal instead.

Did this focus on performance bear fruit? Here’s something: Name some significant civil rights victories between 1968 and the election of Barack Obama. It’s a lot harder than naming the victories up until that point. Of course, protest requires theatrics, as King knew. (Writing to Young in 1965 amid the Selma demonstrations, King said, “Also please don’t be too soft. It was a mistake not to march today. In a crisis we must have a sense of drama.”) But it’s perilously easy for the drama to become the point, for the protest to be less about changing the world than performing a self.

I share the campus protesters’ opinion that the war in Gaza has become an atrocity. Israel had every right to defend itself after Hamas’s massacre, which itself was an atrocity. However, the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians, with uncountable more left maimed or homeless, cannot be justified. I am increasingly dismayed that President Biden does not simply deny Benjamin Netanyahu any further arms.

Beyond a certain point, however, we must ask whether the escalating protests are helping to change those circumstances. Columbia’s administration agreed to review proposals about divestment, shareholder activism and other issues and to create health and education programs in Gaza and the West Bank. But the protesters were unmoved and a subgroup of them, apparently, further enraged.

Who among the protesters really thought that Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, and the board of trustees would view the occupation of Hamilton Hall — and the visible destruction of property — and say, “Oh, if the students feel that strongly, then let’s divest from Israel immediately”? The point seemed less to make change than to manifest anger for its own sake, with the encampment having become old news.

The initial protest was an effective way to show how fervently a great many people oppose the war, but the time had come for another phase: slow, steady suasion. This is not capitulation but a change in tactics, with the goal of making the activists’ work pay off. We recall King most vividly in protests, including being imprisoned for his participation. However, his daily life as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was about endless and often frustrating negotiations with people in power, which eventually bore fruit. In this, as much as in marches, he and his comrades created the America we know today. Smoking hot orations about Black Power might have instilled some pride but created little beyond that.

Richard Rorty wrote in “Achieving Our Country” of the sense in our times that self-expression alone is a kind of persuasion. Marc Cooper, describing the left in the George W. Bush years, wrote of the danger of viewing “rebel poses” as substitutes for how “to figure out how you’re actually going to win an election.”

In our times, when the personal is political, there is always a risk that a quest to heal the world morphs into a quest for personal catharsis. Keeping in mind the difference will get the Columbia protesters closer to making the changes they champion.

Source: The Columbia Protests Made the Same Mistake the Civil Rights Movement Did

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Israel plans changes to Palestinian education to remake how children are taught

2024/05/04 Leave a comment

Hard to see how this will work. And of course, similar care needs to be taken with the Israeli curriculum. Good concluding quote:

…Yuli Tamir, a scholar and former cabinet minister who is president of Beit Berl College, said changes to schools can only succeed if they comes with much broader social and political change.

Ms. Tamir, who was Israel’s education minister from 2006 to 2009, provoked an outcry when as part of an effort to teach Israeli students about Palestinian history she reintroduced to textbooks a mention of the nakba – when Israeli forces drove hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes 1948 – and a map containing the green line, the pre-1967 borders of Israel.

It was a “mild change,” Ms. Tamir said, designed to foster understanding. It didn’t last long. “They took it out immediately when I left.”

By the same token, she said, teachers in Gaza should not be held uniquely responsible for fighting antisemitism when “the whole system hates Jews – the parents, the authorities, the health care,” she said.

It takes a change in governing priorities, she said, for education to successfully shift course.

“Curriculum is a representation of the state,” she said. “More than a flag. Or an anthem. This is what you tell your children you are all about.”

Source: Israel plans changes to Palestinian education to remake how children are taught

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Why Are the Anti-Israel Chants So Tedious? » Mosaic

2024/05/03 Leave a comment

Of interest:

The anti-Israel demonstrations on American campuses have been compared to the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations of the 1960s and early 1970s. In their intensity, they may be similar. In their stupidity, they are not. Nowhere is the difference between the two protest movements more immediately apparent than in the quality and nature of the slogans used by their participants.When one considers the slogans of the anti-Vietnam War movement, one is struck by the wit and humor of many of them. Many still have the power to make one smile or laugh, such as the “Make Love, Not War” motto that probably outdid any other in its popularity. What made it so potent, yet so funny? Partly, its clever yoking together of two opposed English idioms that shared only the verb “make”; partly, its puckish suggestion that everyone, from the foot soldier in Vietnam to the president of the United States, would be better off in bed with someone else than on a battlefield or in a war-cabinet session; partly its invoking of the sexual revolution of the sixties as both the antithesis of, and the alternative to, a supposed culture of aggressive militarism; and most sweepingly, its implication that life-giving Eros and death-dealing Thanatos are different expressions of the same human libido, and that the first is preferable to the second. That’s a lot to pack into four words, but “Make Love, Not War” managed to do it.

Other anti-Vietnam War slogans were almost as memorable. Some, like “Hell, no, we won’t go [to fight in Vietnam]” were chanted at demonstrations. Two favorites that I remember were displayed on signs. One bore the iconic flower of hippiedom and the words, in a take-off of the warning recently introduced in those days on packs of cigarettes, “War Is not healthy for children and other living things.” The other, a parody of the famous World War I recruiting billboard, had a drawing of a grim-faced Uncle Sam exhorting, “Join the U.S. Army! Travel to exotic lands, meet exciting people, and kill them.” There was the stern “If you support this war, send your own children,” and the poignant “Not our sons, not your sons, not their sons.” A sign carried only by black demonstrators said, “No Vietnamese ever called me n—r.”

There were, of course, angrier and more violent anti-Vietnam War slogans, too, such as the chant “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” But these, though they spread as the war dragged on and public frustration with it mounted, were never the rule. The dominant tone was irony and sarcasm, the underlying message: “You who are prosecuting this war may be more powerful than we are, but we are smarter than you, more creative than you, and more caring for human life and human beings, and because of this, we will prevail.”

Compare this with:

  • “Red, black, green, and white, we support Hamas’s fight!.”
  • “Hitler, Hitler, go back home! Palestine is ours alone!”
  • “Globalize the intifada!”
  • “One, two, three, four, Israel will be no more! Five, six, seven, eight, Israel we’ll eliminate!”
  • “There is only one solution! Intifada revolution!”
  • “Say it loud, say it clear: we do not want Zionists here!”
  • “Oh, al-Qassam, you make us proud!  Kill another soldier now!”
  • “Resistance by any means necessary!”
  • “Palestine is our demand! No peace on stolen land!”
  • “We say justice. You say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground!”
  • “We don’t want no two states. We want all of ’48!”

The sheer idiocy of such slogans is as staggering as is their hatefulness. Those who compose them seem to be under the impression that whatever rhymes is intelligent, and their ability to put two rhyming words together in what resembles a cheer for a high-school basketball team appears to be as far as their intelligence extends.

One mustn’t, of course, overgeneralize. Although many college students have joined the demonstrations, many times their number haven’t. Still, changed attitudes toward Israel aside, something has clearly happened to the minds of young American protesters between the 1960s and today. What?

Well, childhoods and adolescences dumbed down by smartphones, WhatApp, and Facebook, for one thing. And college educations given by teachers, products of the postmodernism and deconstructionism that gained ascendancy on university campuses in the last decades of the 20th century, who have taught that there is no such thing as verifiable truth or falsehood but only the competing narratives of oppressed and oppressor, and that it is incumbent to identify with the latter. And a national politics that has become one of non-debatable identities rather than of debatable issues. And the fear of saying or thinking anything that smacks of racism, sexism, genderism, religionism, elitism, nationalism, patriotism, colonialism, ethnocentrism, Orientalism, or whatever else might offend progressive values and the feelings of others, with the notable exception of those whose feelings it is permissible to offend.

None of this has been conducive to independence or subtlety of thought, let alone to irony or humor; combine it with a growing antagonism toward Israel and its Jewish supporters, now squarely placed by many young Americans in the camp of the oppressor, and you get the imbecility of “Go, Hamas, we love you! We support your rockets, too!” But whence all that rage, whence all that hate?

This is a question worth pondering. After all, the student demonstrators of the 1960s had much better reason to be consumed by such emotions (and some were) than those today. The government they were protesting against was sending them to fight, and possibly to die, in a war they considered immoral and unjust. What comparable threat does Israel, however immoral or unjust it may strike them as being, pose to students on American campuses now? What is all the screaming at it about?

The stock answer given by Israel’s supporters is: anti-Semitism. It’s hard to argue with that. When a Jewish state is vilified by mobs of students for supposed atrocities the likes of which leave them indifferent when committed by other nations, an antipathy toward Jews clearly has something to do with it.

But rampant anti-Semitism, as we know, does not spring from nowhere. It’s always an expression of some deep fear or resentment that the anti-Semite projects onto the Jew. What are today’s student demonstrators projecting that students in the 1960s were not?

Possibly, the loss of hope.

The demonstrators of the 60s were, like all rebellious young people since at least the time of the American and French Revolutions, a hopeful lot. They believed, however naively, in their power to make a better world than the one they were born into. They may have been the last generation in human history to do so. They were certainly the last in a chain going back two centuries or more, since what young person today honestly thinks life might get better in his lifetime? At most, it might be kept from not getting too much worse: too much hotter, too much more spun out of control by blind, unstoppable forces, too much more stripped of its human face by technology and artificial intelligence. The young generation’s task as the world passes into its hands will be to fight a holding action to stave off disaster, not to try creating something freer, more loving, and more joyous. If it doesn’t already know this, it surely feels it in its bones.

I would be full of anger, too, if such a world were passed on to me. Projecting such anger on a traditionally American-backed Israel that has almost nothing to do with the overall state of things is a tempting way to vent it. The more intelligent of today’s demonstrators will one day look back with embarrassment at the slogans they shouted. They will understand that they were shouting about something else.

Source: Why Are the Anti-Israel Chants So Tedious? » Mosaic

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

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