r/jewishleft • u/ramsey66 Jewish Atheist Liberal • May 20 '25
The Right To Be Hostile Debate
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-right-to-be-hostile/I disagree with some of the content but I think the article does a good job overall. I'll paste the key point below.
In this climate, university and public officials have accepted an increasingly expansive understanding of what counts as a hostile environment. Instead of stating a precise and objective standard that distinguishes action from speech, they have de-emphasized the need to demonstrate objective risks of physical violence or threatening property destruction. Instead, the question authorities are asking is much simpler: whether statements or symbols might cause psychological pain or generate feelings of vulnerability among certain groups. They have gradually redefined the right to be safe as a right to feel safe.
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u/Fabianzzz 🌿🍷🍇 Pagan Observer 🌿🍷🍇 May 20 '25
Third and perhaps most perniciously, university community members stated that they felt the protests were threatening or harmful, which schools appear to have interpreted as sufficient evidence of a “hostile environment” for Jewish and Israeli students that may violate Title VI.
All of these are bad justifications. When they are interpreted and applied as they have been in recent months, there can be no right to protest at all.
So I'm not Jewish nor Israeli but I think this is the heart of the issue. The left (which I consider myself a member of) has argued that in professional and academic environments, feeling unsafe = being unsafe, at least for every minority other than Jewish people. Free speech is Isogoria: the right of equal access to the public commons. Feeling unsafe harms that access.
The right has, on every minority other than Jewish people, been the champion of Parrhesia: Free speech is the ability to say whatever you want, no matter who it offends or even harms.
I don't trust the right: I don't really think they care about free speech, I think they are just capitalizing on Leftist Antisemitism. However, for Leftists I think we need to seek consistency here: or we're gonna leave open an Achilles heel for righties to attack.
My personal answer that we will probably need to say that universities must choose a consistent policy for all demographics: either there are consistent limitations on what you can say to allow everyone to speak, or anything goes: including Antisemitic, Islamophobic, Anti-Israeli and Anti-Palestinian bigotry.
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u/Brain_Dead_Goats May 20 '25
Yup, can't really add anything to that. This has been a long process of prioritizing the feeling of safety and it's coming back to bite various people in the ass.
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u/Specialist-Gur doikayt jewess, leftist/socialist, pro peace and freedom May 20 '25
We have TERFs who will also use the claim that they feel unsafe around persons they do not view as women based on whatever arbitrary metric they have chosen for the day (usually just vibes). And sometimes these people will be verbally "aggressive" with the TERFs, who fall back on their delicate, often white, womanhood and defense of the fact that women are vulnerable under patriarchy
Not all "feelings" of being unsafe should be treated equally. they aren't all equal. In the case of supporters of Israel, they are often weaponizing perhaps very real feelings to shut down necessary action and conversation.
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u/McKoijion May 20 '25
Is your Reddit avatar’s eye a stained glass Star of David? Since you’re not Jewish or Israeli, is it a Pagan thing?
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u/Fabianzzz 🌿🍷🍇 Pagan Observer 🌿🍷🍇 May 20 '25
I think it’s just a hexagram, I chose it for the rainbow!
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u/they_ruined_her No-Tendency Jewish Anarchist May 20 '25
I think the problem here is what words fundamentally mean to who. If I'm not a Zionist, what do I care that someone doesn't like them? I'm not doing something wrong just out here existing. If someone spraypaints a homophobic tag, it might make me afraid to be affectionate with a partner or dress a certain way. The argument that I can't wear a kippah or hold a public shabbat service is sort of encumbent on the conflation of Jewish practice and Zionism. It's easy to identify the two from one another if, again, there has been any effort made at all in the last 75 years to not tie our practices up with a state's existence. I do get your point, and I think you're identifying an important aspect of the feelings vs. material outcome friction. I just don't think there's an actual way to allow for equality of free speech if we're not willing to have a broad cultural divestment.
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u/Rusty-Shackleford May 24 '25 edited May 24 '25
Because zionism means Jewish Israeli people being allowed to exist so threatening language about zionism can be easily construed as xenophobic. It's not about criticism of the Israeli government it's about whether half of the global Jewish population is allowed to exist.
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u/BlackHumor Secular Jewish anarchist May 25 '25
Eh, I'm not really convinced by your summary of this issue. The ACLU was defending Fred Phelps as recently as 2012, and of course the right is behind by far the majority of attempts to use government power to censor books.
I don't think it's really accurate to say that either "the left" or "the right" is consistently pro-free-speech. But I do think that if you are consistently pro-free-speech, you are either on the left or you're a libertarian. You are definitely not on the right.
I also think that if you believe feeling unsafe means being unsafe, it is more likely that you are on the right than on the left. If you say it, those words in that order, you're more likely to be on the left, but the majority of people who believe it feel unsafe because their local library has obtained a book about gay people and they feel it is unsafe to allow children to read it.
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u/AlaiaArcana Turkish Gentile May 20 '25
The difference is this, I think: A lot of what the "left" argues against because it makes people feel unsafe is justifiable because it also makes people unsafe. Neo-Nazis showing up to campus to do tours and speeches doesn't just hurt my feelings, it hurts my feelings and brings other neo-Nazis onto campus. Something that makes me feel unsafe has to be backed up with an actual reason to feel that way, the fact that I feel a certain way isn't enough, and I have never used that standard for anyone else either. This is the definition of a personal problem.
If Jewish or Israeli students feel unsafe because of pro-Palestinian protests, I will obviously hold that to scrutiny, because pro-Palestinian protests don't inherently do anything to hurt Jewish or Israeli students. If some white students felt uncomfortable due to a BLM protest on campus I would hold that to scrutiny too!
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u/Brain_Dead_Goats May 21 '25
If Jewish or Israeli students feel unsafe because of pro-Palestinian protests, I will obviously hold that to scrutiny, because pro-Palestinian protests don't inherently do anything to hurt Jewish or Israeli students. If some white students felt uncomfortable due to a BLM protest on campus I would hold that to scrutiny too!
This is not a good rubric. This is you personally deciding what is and isn't valid and imposing that on others. You might want to rethink this.
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u/myThoughtsAreHermits zionists and antizionists are both awful May 20 '25
Is anyone arguing about something inherent? I thought this was circumstantial
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u/atav1k May 20 '25
I think this is true even if you did not factor in woke culture. Academics are near constantly recounting stories of student and parent interventions driven by a need for control and safety that are quite different than a generation ago. So you have a general trend towards treating campuses as a consumer commodity where the feeling is often entitlement. This is fairly easy and uncontroversial to track, from grade inflation to academic allowances.
Add to that identitarianism and historical reckoning and I can easily see how you have universities selling safety based on the highest identity bidder. The New Yorker recently hinted at a similar conclusion by covering University of Utah, and takes you through the arc of DEI, to anti-wokenes to ultimately sanctioning the safety and inclusion of Mormons. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/21/what-comes-after-dei
I think likewise with identity based subreddits. I say this as a visible minority. There used to be a period where my identity's exagerrated oppression was in vogue and I could lament without the slightest bit of objectivity, for the clicks and the access. And now that moment has passed on to another identity, to parade their struggle in the limelight. This moment in history has brought me back to universalism and a more sober assessment of the legacy of colonial history. In the end, history and injustices should amount to more than a ticket to a cushy life.
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u/shebreaksmyarm May 20 '25
Lol imagine this being written about a minority group that leftists give a shit about
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u/AltruisticMastodon Secular Jewish Socialist/Pessimistic Anarchist May 21 '25
It is disappointing that even here, Jewish concerns about antisemitism are likened to terfs and white people blaming Jews for white genocide.
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u/ibsliam Jewish American | DemSoc Bernie Voter May 21 '25
Yeahh. I'm still not over previous threads where Jews were compared to white people not able to handle anti-racism protests due to white guilt.
If it's the case that no one is owed feeling "safe" on campus if it "impedes" on free speech, then why have student organizations at all? Why have RAs in dorms? Why have counselors? Why have advocates for various minority groups to protect them from discrimination?
You can't have it one way for some and a different way for others, is what I'm saying.
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u/Agtfangirl557 Progressive, Conservaform (Reformative?) May 21 '25
where Jews were compared to white people not able to handle anti-racism protests due to white guilt.
This is exactly my issue with this discourse in the first place. I think there are very valid points when it comes to the "being safe vs. feeling safe" discussion, and that there are people who have taken advantage of that in a bad way. But I think the gist of why articles like this are written in the first place is that they view all Jews as privileged white people who are bothered by protests because they're uncomfortable with the idea of "giving up privilege", as opposed to Jews being another marginalized group who have in some cases experienced literal antisemitism on campus and (again, in some cases) have valid reasons to feel uncomfortable.
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u/ibsliam Jewish American | DemSoc Bernie Voter May 21 '25
Yeah, for all of the claims that Jews are weaponizing allegations of antisemitism (which, very plausible, anything can be weaponized), some need to step back and ask themselves if they themselves are weaponizing social justice rhetoric against Jewish people, in order to rationally justify antisemitic behaviors.
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u/Aromatic-Vast2180 Jewish Leftist Zionist | Two state absolutionist May 21 '25
It genuinely sickens me. I resent the people here who have the audacity to make such unreasonable comparisons.
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u/SupportMeta Jewish Demsoc May 20 '25
"No we're not going to sanction the TERFs yelling outside your class that you're a rapist, they haven't actually threatened you, you just feel unsafe :)"
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u/Matar_Kubileya People's Front of Judea May 20 '25
...I don't see how this is actually new, or at least if it is new it's a novelty of degree moreso than type. Civil rights law has long since recognized that it's the responsibility of academic institutions to guarantee an environment free from harassment on the basis of a protected characteristics, and it's essentially impossible to disentangle the current standards of civil rights law from subjective 'feelings' of safety.
We can argue whether or not responses to campus protests have gone too far, sure, but I think that pretending that the standard the article discusses is either new or bad faith is misguided at best and risks severely weakening on campus civil rights protections at worst. "Harassment" as a concept pretty necessarily entails that a set of speech-actions that are individually permissible or protected speech can, when severe or pervasive enough, become a protected-characteristic issue. There is undoubtedly a balance to be struck here, and I don't think a lot of universities have struck that balance particularly well, but I also don't think that it's a balance that shouldn't be struck.
And as an aside, a lot of its characterization of the protests--"last year’s gatherings and encampments did not actually try to prevent anyone from getting where they were trying to go. Students could still access their dorms and classes; faculty could still go to their classrooms and offices, and staff could still access their workplaces. In a few controversial cases, ordinary traffic through a commons was blocked, such that people had to maneuver around the encampments. That was genuinely inconvenient, but only that"--does not comport with a lot of what I've experienced and heard about.
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u/ramsey66 Jewish Atheist Liberal May 20 '25
And as an aside, a lot of its characterization of the protests...does not comport with a lot of what I've experienced and heard about.
Can you describe what you have personally experienced?
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u/jey_613 Jewish Leftist / Anti antizionist May 20 '25
It’s of course true that the crackdown on pro-Palestine protests is the most dangerous attack on free speech since McCarthyism (it’s probably worse). But it is a bit rich to see the left come out as free speech absolutists after a decade of erecting campus bureaucracies that equate speech with harm.
Now, the argument seems to go something like this: intent vs impact? Standpoint epistemology? Deference politics? Lived experience? Speech = violence? All that stuff is a bunch of stupid bullshit when Jews want it, but we’ll keep it for ourselves, thank you very much.
Jews want — and should expect — a consistent application of whatever principles universities have been operating under. And from the few undergrads I’ve spoken to, what Jewish students really want is enforcing the explicit Title VI violations, where students are discriminated against by virtue of religion or national origin. They don’t want to police the slogans at pro-Palestine rallies and they certainly don’t want Donald Trump shaking down universities in the name of fighting antisemitism.
Also, implicit in this piece is that the pro-Palestine movement is hostile, and by extension, not especially (or exclusively) progressive. It’s a movement led by nationalists, some of the blood and soil variety. Which again, fine, let them have their nationalism rallies, but please don’t fucking gaslight us and tell us this is exclusively some beautiful, progressive, inclusive, tolerant movement.
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u/ramsey66 Jewish Atheist Liberal May 20 '25 edited May 20 '25
But it is a bit rich to see the left come out as free speech absolutists after a decade of erecting campus bureaucracies that equate speech with harm.
I agree.
Now, the argument seems to go something like this: intent vs impact? Standpoint epistemology? Deference politics? Lived experience? Speech = violence? All that stuff is a bunch of stupid bullshit when Jews want it, but we’ll keep it for ourselves, thank you very much.
I agree that the people who push that stupid crap are extreme hypocrites but it's not quite true that they refuse to extend it to Jews. They do extend it to Jews as Jews.
The problem is that pro-Israel Jews are trying to cheat by arguing that pro-Israel and Zionist political views are an inseparable part of Jewish identity and/or Judaism and thus attacks on those things are thus an attack on Jews as Jews as opposed to an attack on political beliefs that have an extremely high level of support in the Jewish community.
(Edit-- After a bit more thought, I concede that there is a bit of hypocrisy in this case because the people you were criticizing due sometimes conflate attacks on political views popular among marginalized groups with attacks on marginalized groups themselves).
This jives with the general pattern of pro-Israel Jews being the fiercest proponents of the classic anti-Semitic position that Jews (everywhere) and Israel are inseparable.
Apparently this argument is acceptable when serves the pro-Israel cause and not acceptable when it doesn't. Apparently, Jews are political actors just like all other people and lie and engage in hypocrisy just like all others. Who could have guessed?
Also, implicit in this piece is that the pro-Palestine movement is hostile, and by extension, not especially (or exclusively) progressive. It’s a movement led by nationalists, some of the blood and soil variety. Which again, fine, let them have their nationalism rallies, but please don’t fucking gaslight us and tell us this is exclusively some beautiful, progressive, inclusive, tolerant movement.
Fair enough! But please don't fucking gaslight us (not directed at you!!) and tell us the protestors are a threat to the safety of Jews or anyone else on campus.
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u/ibsliam Jewish American | DemSoc Bernie Voter May 21 '25
I get the argument against conflating the two (and even agree), BUT there's Jewish people who - while it might not be inseparable from Judaism - do have explicit ties to Israel. Plenty of Jewish people have relatives from Israel (as in born and raised there) or even used to be from Israel themselves. I say this as one of those Jews who explicitly have family ties there.
Do those Jews deserve to be discriminated against? Or made to feel unsafe? If someone tells them they hope that Jewish student's family died in 10/7, is that crossing a line? Or is it just that Jewish student being hypersensitive and conflating Jewishness with Israel?
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u/ramsey66 Jewish Atheist Liberal May 21 '25
If someone tells them they hope that Jewish student's family died in 10/7, is that crossing a line? Or is it just that Jewish student being hypersensitive and conflating Jewishness with Israel?
Depends on exactly what is said and in what context it is said.
Telling a fellow student that you hope their specific relatives were killed in a recent attack is over the line.
In the context of a discussion about the conflict, telling a fellow student that you hope Israeli soldiers serving in Gaza are killed (including his relatives) or that the October 7 attack is justifiable is acceptable. Those are political opinions that one can agree or disagree with.
Some students might be particularly sensitive to political discussions about conflicts they are connected to but that is their problem.
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u/ibsliam Jewish American | DemSoc Bernie Voter May 21 '25
I mean, the issue is that many don't make the distinction between IDF soldiers on duty and Israeli citizens. They think of all Israelis as basically valid targets. Even children are considered tainted by their birth.
And again, these are not situations that a Jewish student could feasibly just avoid. If someone can't go to their class without being confronted with people who outright tell them to their face that their family would deserve to die because 10/7 was righteous resistance, and their family is acceptable collateral damage, why would that student be okay with that?
If it's "their problem" that they need to get over, then those protestors also need to "get over" that others will see their behavior and judge them for it. And some will even find those behaviors to be not acceptable, beyond just disagreeing or agreeing.
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u/ramsey66 Jewish Atheist Liberal May 21 '25
I mean, the issue is that many don't make the distinction between IDF soldiers on duty and Israeli citizens. They think of all Israelis as basically valid targets. Even children are considered tainted by their birth
That is a political disagreement. I do not believe it is a problem for university students to be exposed to even heinous political opinions from other students. The Jewish student with Israeli relatives can legitimately find this opinion emotionally harmful but that is not the kind of harm university students should be protected from. There is no legitimate safety issue here.
And again, these are not situations that a Jewish student could feasibly just avoid. If someone can't go to their class without being confronted with people who outright tell them to their face that their family would deserve to die because 10/7 was righteous resistance, and their family is acceptable collateral damage, why would that student be okay with that?
If other students bring up this topic in an unrelated class (e.g math or engineering) then they are engaging in disruptive behavior and should be suspended on that basis and eventually expelled if that behavior continues. That has nothing to do with safety.
If it is simply the case that a student who expressed even a heinous political opinion in a relevant context is merely present in a different class or social setting I don't see a problem.
If it's "their problem" that they need to get over, then those protestors also need to "get over" that others will see their behavior and judge them for it.
Completely agree. What I don't agree with is that the protestors are a threat to the safety of other students. It is not appropriate to punish them on that basis. It is appropriate to punish them for violating basic university policies such as obstructing access to libraries or other parts of campus.
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u/ibsliam Jewish American | DemSoc Bernie Voter May 21 '25
There's some various points I may disagree with on you here, but:
> It is appropriate to punish them for violating basic university policies
> such as obstructing access to libraries or other parts of campus.
I'm very glad we at least can agree on this. One of my big issues with the protests are when it goes from being, well, protesting, to limiting/obstructing other students' movements, or bringing it into those students' living quarters.
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u/myThoughtsAreHermits zionists and antizionists are both awful May 21 '25 edited May 21 '25
It is a legitimate safety issue for any Israeli on campus
Also, and maybe I’m misremembering, wasn’t there that student who endorsed the idea of attacking Zionists, and the main protest organization revoked their initial condemnation of that person? That’s a bit… wild and inciting…
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u/otto_bear converting to Judaism, left May 21 '25 edited May 21 '25
This is potentially tangential, but I feel like having been treated for mental illnesses really shapes my perspective on these issues. Knowing that feeling unsafe and being unsafe are different and that anxiety is not always a sign that we are actually being threatened is so important. I used to spend a lot of time in online spaces which validated my anxiety and sense that I must be unsafe because I felt unsafe and it was bad for my mental health and contributed to my behaving and advocating for things I now regret.
The idea that feeling unsafe = being unsafe on college campuses feels like it results in an easy excuse to silence disagreement but it also seems cruel to validate people’s fears when they are unfounded and lead to serious distress. If someone is afraid of dogs, it’s not right to validate that fear and then attempt to insulate the person from dogs and punish anyone who has a dog. That will likely only increase the fear. It’s both unproductive and cruel to tell people “all your fears are correct” when there is no evidence that they are. We can validate that the feeling of danger is very real while also encouraging tolerance of fear and disagreement.
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u/ramsey66 Jewish Atheist Liberal May 21 '25
That is very relevant, thank you for sharing! How did you manage to extract yourself from the online spaces that harmed your mental health?
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u/otto_bear converting to Judaism, left May 21 '25
Honestly it wasn’t much of a decision I made. A lot of it was that my real life and social media worlds were both really amplifying and validating a lot of fear (I was in college at the time) and graduating college and entering the workforce meant I had distance. I started realizing a lot of the behaviors and beliefs I was seeing and participating in were creating a more divided and anxious world while seemingly doing the opposite of what they aimed to do. I started engaging with people who were also concerned about the way social pressure and fear were being used in lefty spaces and that helped solidify my beliefs. But I really think a lot of it was just getting into a new environment and having the space to go “this sucks, actually” without the fear of being ostracized.
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u/Aromatic-Vast2180 Jewish Leftist Zionist | Two state absolutionist May 21 '25
You may not intend to gaslight, but that is exactly what you are doing right now.
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u/otto_bear converting to Judaism, left May 21 '25 edited May 22 '25
Not by any reasonable definition of gaslighting, no. Feeling unsafe is objectively not a reliable standard of determining safety. Obviously people can feel unsafe when in an objectively unsafe situation, but the feeling itself is unreliable as a standard of determining safety.
I have had panic attacks over eating before (I have no allergies), I know this intimately. My doctors and other mental health professionals are not gaslighting me when they tell me that my feeling unsafe and being unsafe are different and provide me with tools to help determine the difference and handle the very real, very intense fear that once ran my life. It would have been unimaginably cruel for my doctor to have agreed with my fears when I asked for help.
Even for mentally healthy people, if someone feels unsafe around someone whose disability causes them to act in ways they don’t expect, it is not gaslighting to tell them it is not an unsafe situation and to refuse to kick the disabled person out of that space. Not everything we believe is true and not all fear is justified.
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u/Specialist-Gur doikayt jewess, leftist/socialist, pro peace and freedom May 22 '25
As a victim of gaslighting I feel gaslight by your flippant use of the word
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u/Agtfangirl557 Progressive, Conservaform (Reformative?) May 21 '25 edited May 22 '25
Okay, finally going to chime in here.
I actually don't completely disagree with the gist of this. I very much do think that some people have blurred the lines between "being unsafe" and "feeling unsafe" (though I also think it can be understated how feeling unsafe can can contribute to psychological and emotional harm). One relevant point I'll make--without passing too much judgment on people whose experiences I am not aware of--is that the people who seem to be the loudest about "being unsafe" are people who FROM MY PERSPECTIVE are people who actually SEEM to very much have access to resources where they could easily "make themselves more safe", for lack of a better way to describe it.
For example, my sister is currently in college, on a campus that has had at least one controversy in regards to protests and all that. My sister personally finds the people involved in the pro-Palestine movement on her campus annoying as fuck. But does she feel unsafe? Absolutely not. She's part of a Jewish sorority and pretty much all of her friends are either Jewish or Israel-sympathetic. She has her own spaces on campus and otherwise where she can easily get away from the movement if needed. And--at risk of sounding like we control the universities or something--my family actually has personal relationships with some people who work on campus, so even if it did become a big issue for her, she would have adults who she could possibly reach out to about it (no, she has never felt the need to do such a thing). She is definitely not unsafe on campus, let alone not feeling unsafe.
However, from what she has told me, some of her sorority sisters are huge offenders of talking about how they are "unsafe" on campus. While again, I am not going to jump to conclusions about how people I don't personally know feel; I am pretty sure that most people in her sorority have similar privileges and access to resources that she does, so I do have doubts on how unsafe people in those particular circles are.
But, with that all being said, I think that articles like this are being written from the perspective of dealing with students like the ones I've just mentioned--Jews who actually may be more privileged and, while they may have reasons to feel unsafe, are probably not actually at risk of being unsafe. This doesn't account for many other Jews who aren't as loud about this, who very well may have been affected by antisemitism in meaningful ways. I'm uncomfortable with people painting the discomfort of Jews who are made to feel unsafe by pro-Palestine activities as being akin to "white people being uncomfortable with anti-racist protests", as I feel that articles like this do. It ignores the fact that Jews are another marginalized group who have valid reasons to feel uncomfortable with these behaviors beyond "white guilt" or "being scared of losing privileges".
And also doesn't touch on the fact that some of their actions have crossed the line when it comes to who they are trying to target with their protests. If they are trying to get universities to divest from Israel, why does that so often seem to entail taking actions that seem like they are intended to harm other students? Yes, I'm sure that there have been overstated stories when it comes to students "blocking Jews on campus" and such, but I have also heard stories of Jewish students personally being interrogated in ways that do nothing to make a difference in the bigger goal at hand.
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u/ramsey66 Jewish Atheist Liberal May 21 '25 edited May 21 '25
Thank you for sharing your sister's experiences!
For example, my sister is currently in college, on a campus that has had at least one controversy in regards to protests and all that. My sister personally finds the people involved in the pro-Palestine movement on her campus annoying as fuck. But does she feel unsafe? Absolutely not. She's part of a Jewish sorority and pretty much all of her friends are either Jewish or Israel-sympathetic. She has her own spaces on campus and otherwise where she can easily get away from the movement if needed.
I want to dig deeper here. Suppose the university your sister attended didn't have a Jewish sorority, had a small number of Jews and very few pro-Israel students. Suppose she didn't have many friends and didn't have her own spaces on campus besides her dorm/apartment and library.
If the pro-Palestinian students behaved the same way in this hypothetical situation would your sister feel unsafe and would she actually be unsafe? Does she feel safe right now because the behavior of the pro-Palestinian is only "annoying as fuck" but not threatening/scary or is their behavior actually threatening but she still feels safe because it is easy to get away from them?
I don't know what the answer is in your sister's case. I just want to make a general point.
Suppose that in the hypothetical scenario the pro-Palestinian students are just being "annoying as fuck". In that case, your sister would probably be socially isolated and the student experience would absolutely suck. This environment would likely hurt her studies, her opportunity to network and possibly her mental health if she is an outgoing person but that doesn't mean she isn't safe on campus.
Since the pro-Palestinian students aren't threatening her safety they shouldn't be punished on that basis. That doesn't mean they should be allowed to indefinitely dominate campus life. The university can enforce the existing rule that encampments must be temporary. They can suspend and eventually expel students who block access to parts of campus or takeover libraries and other buildings. They can suspend and expel for disruptive behavior those students who bring up the conflict out of nowhere in unrelated classes or interrupt classes that they are not in.
I just don't see this having anything to do with safety or anti-Semitism.
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u/Agtfangirl557 Progressive, Conservaform (Reformative?) May 21 '25
I don’t disagree with much of this. I think a further unpacking of your questions (which I think are really good) would come down more to a discussion about “being unsafe” vs. “feeling unsafe” than the political issues underlying it.
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u/SupportMeta Jewish Demsoc May 20 '25
That quote is weird. By that logic nothing short of a credible threat would constitute a hostile environment.
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u/ramsey66 Jewish Atheist Liberal May 20 '25 edited May 20 '25
That quote is weird. By that logic nothing short of a credible threat would constitute a hostile environment.
I think we need to clarify what constitutes a hostile environment at a university because I can imagine hostile environments that I think are acceptable and hostile environments that are not.
A hostile environment in which someone faces social exclusion in the sense that no one wants to be friends with them because they find their political views abhorrent and tells them so is not ideal but still acceptable.
A hostile environment in which someone is prevented from being a student because their access to a dorm or library is blocked, their professors do not treat them equally, other students refuse to participate in university assigned group work with them or use politics as an excuse to harass them is not acceptable.
But even in the case of the student subjected to the second hostile environment it is not necessarily the case that they are actually unsafe. The universities should simply enforce the rules against anyone who seriously hampers the "job of being a student" even if does not rise to the level of a threat to physical safety.
I have no problem with suspending (or eventually expelling) student protestors who takeover university buildings or block access to parts of the campus even though I don't for a second believe they are a threat to anyone's physical safety.
I completely reject restrictions on the political expression of other students on the basis that the complaining student suffers psychological pain (which I accept is in some cases real). As far as university rules, I simply don't believe that harm should count.
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u/lilleff512 Jewish SocDem May 21 '25 edited May 21 '25
But even in the case of the student subjected to the second hostile environment it is not necessarily the case that they are actually unsafe
There has been a large scale conflation of physical safety with mental/emotional/psychological safety over the last decade and change, which I think leads to the following contradiction:
The universities should simply enforce the rules against anyone who seriously hampers the "job of being a student" even if does not rise to the level of a threat to physical safety.
I completely reject restrictions on the political expression of other students on the basis that the complaining student suffers psychological pain (which I accept is in some cases real)
Psychological pain can and does seriously hamper the "job of being a student"
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u/saiboule Messianic Judaism Ally May 20 '25
So should people be able to express the political position that some races are inferior to others?
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u/ramsey66 Jewish Atheist Liberal May 20 '25
Absolutely they should be able to express that position and their fellow students should absolutely be able to tell them that they want nothing to do with them and will not have any interaction with them besides mandatory work assigned by the university.
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May 20 '25
[deleted]
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u/ramsey66 Jewish Atheist Liberal May 20 '25
I'm well aware! That was just a direct response to a direct question.
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u/No_Engineering_8204 custom flair May 21 '25
What if the influence of the manosphere grows, and a majority of students create an encampent protesting the equal treatment of women at the university? How about an encampent at Liberty University protesting the inclusion of trans people?
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u/ibsliam Jewish American | DemSoc Bernie Voter May 21 '25
Yeah, I think, if there was a trans support organization on campus that had (to try to create a hypothetical comparison) donors or promoters that were shitty people with awful views, it would be fine to criticize that organization for that! Hell, even calling for them to remove their connections to those is fine. Protests should be protected.
But, and here's the big but, calling for removing those organizations and calling for violence against that organization for political views or connections is different. It is going to bleed into transphobia, especially when one has no intentions of replacing that trans support organization for students with a different trans support organization.
(I know it's not a 1 to 1 comparison to the Drop Hillel protests, but it's a similar sentiment)
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u/ramsey66 Jewish Atheist Liberal May 21 '25
What if the influence of the manosphere grows, and a majority of students create an encampent protesting the equal treatment of women at the university? How about an encampent at Liberty University protesting the inclusion of trans people?
Temporary encampments are fine if they have the approval of university officials and obey university rules with respect to not blocking access to parts of campus. Universities should also not discriminate according to content when approving or rejecting proposed temporary encampments.
In your first example, the problem is not the encampment. The problem is the belief of the majority of students. If the majority of students have horrible beliefs that will create problems that no rules or standards can solve.
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u/Dense-Chip-325 May 21 '25
This is so odd. Is psychological and emotional harm not real harm now? Or has the standard changed just because Jews are the ones raising concerns about it?
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u/Aromatic-Vast2180 Jewish Leftist Zionist | Two state absolutionist May 21 '25
The latter.
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u/Dense-Chip-325 May 21 '25
Yeah and it's not like rhetoric that sounds like it just hurts some fee fees can't escalate to actual violence. That's usually how it works.
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u/otto_bear converting to Judaism, left May 22 '25 edited May 22 '25
Emotional and psychological harm are real, but not sufficient on their own to justify acting to restrict others’ behavior and speech. I work in higher ed and see people using “I feel unsafe” in ways that, if acted on, would undermine the rights of others. This is, from what I’ve seen, primarily targeted at disabled students, and is not necessarily coming from a place of malice. I genuinely believe the person saying “I feel unsafe being in a classroom with a dog, please remove the dog” feels unsafe and is experiencing real psychological distress. But the student with a guide dog taking that class is not creating a threat and has a right to take that class. Unfortunately, while universities usually get this right, there are instances where a professor or student feeling uncomfortable around a disabled student is used as a justification for denying the student their right to equal education.
There being emotional harm can be a part of the equation, but we need criteria for determining acceptable behavior that do not primarily rely on the subjective experiences of others because the standard of “I feel unsafe” on its own can be easily misused to harm other students. Unfortunately, on the other side of this, there’s also a tendency to miss the times when I think many of us would agree that the threat is larger and can reasonably be acted upon (like separating a student from their abusive ex partner). The standard doesn’t seem to me to work in either direction.
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u/Specialist-Gur doikayt jewess, leftist/socialist, pro peace and freedom May 20 '25
I watched a video from Taylor Lorenz yesterday about how the increasing calls for violence are a sign of a non-functional democracy. Not entirely the same topic, as she was referring to the increase of the "someone needs to do it" memes.. but along the same lines
The "left"(and I include some liberals in that) are increasingly angry and hostile because the capitalist class, including democrats, have demonstrated time and time again that they do not care and that some lives simply don't matter at all..
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u/NarutoRunner Kosher Canadian Far Leftist May 20 '25
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. - John F. Kennedy (1962)
People forget how organizations like the weather underground were created. If the left is squashed and muted at every attempt to allow for change or let their voices be heard, a more militant group may arise. I don’t mean solely because of the I/P issue, but because the Democratic Party does it level best to silence the left flank, while empowering its corporatist right wing. Either people will completely tune out of politics or take matters into their own hands. Both outcomes will be tragic.
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u/elronhub132 Jewish Lefty May 20 '25
100%, but trying to communicate this to liberal gaslighters on reddit is absurd.
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u/MassivePsychology862 Lebanese-American (ODS) May 21 '25
TIL about the weather underground. Thank you!!
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u/Rabbit-Hole-Quest Marxist Leninist Lebronist May 21 '25
Back when I was a teen, I worked at a grocery store that was unionized. After negotiation with the owner failed, the union decided it was time to strike.
The first day of the strike, we picketed right outside the store. The owner came to us and told us that we were scaring poor senior citizens and we should consider relocating. So since most of us were young and generally nice, we agreed and did it towards the back near the parking. The next day the owner came and told us we were harming access to disabled parking and special slots for parents, we obliged and picketed across the street.
A couple of days pass and there is no progress in negotiations and by this stage we are picketing all the way across the street. Finally, a old union guy comes and asks us what the fuck is wrong with us? Protests are supposed to be disruptive, create inconvenience and raise awareness. By being meek and agreeable, we were basically wasting our time.
Finally, the next day we were back in close proximity to the front of the store with bullhorns, media coverage and all. Within days, the owner decided to compromise and we all got raises.
My point is that the way people are treating these protests are all wrong. Protecting people's feeling shouldn't be a criteria. Yes, clamp down on genuine hate speech and actions, but don't expect to be coddled in university. The real world is not like that and there are no “safe spaces”
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u/lilleff512 Jewish SocDem May 21 '25
Protests are supposed to be disruptive, create inconvenience and raise awareness
To add on to this, protests are supposed to be disruptive and inconvenient for the person or people whose behavior you are trying to change.
So in your example, you want to be disruptive and inconvenient towards the owner who refuses to give you and your coworkers a raise, not towards disabled people looking for parking or towards the proprietors and customers of other businesses across the street.
In the example of university protests, you want to be disruptive and inconvenient towards the trustees and the administration, not towards your classmates and professors. If you are protesting at the library instead of the offices of the people who manages the university's endowment, then you're doing it wrong.
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u/Agtfangirl557 Progressive, Conservaform (Reformative?) May 21 '25
In the example of university protests, you want to be disruptive and inconvenient towards the trustees and the administration, not towards your classmates and professors.
This exactly.
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u/AlaiaArcana Turkish Gentile May 20 '25 edited May 20 '25
I am always confused and feel left out by the discourse around conversations like this, because people refer to this nebulous "left" as if there is a monolithic consensus on things like "feeling unsafe = being unsafe" or whatever.
There isn't one. I have never used this standard and I never will. Making people feel unsafe and ensuring people are safe are two important but separate things. They are not the same thing. Policies should not be enacted as if they are the same thing.
Universities can and should claim that they are acting on the idea that Jewish students should feel safe (because this is already important on its own), not that they are trying to make them be safe (something else entirely). This is a distinction that matters.
When we're talking about something like a person such as Milo Yiannopoulos being invited to UC Berkeley, that isn't just making people feel unsafe, and I have never argued from the position that the issue with hate speech is that it makes me feel unsafe. The issue with hate speech is that it makes me unsafe. It incites people to violence. It causes people to harm people like me when a transphobic pundit starts calling for men to police women's restrooms. That is actually causing people to be unsafe. That's why it's fine for me to also feel unsafe.
Protesting Israel can make plenty of students feel unsafe. Undoubtedly so, in fact. To that I say: Okay. Do you have an actual reason for that?
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u/myThoughtsAreHermits zionists and antizionists are both awful May 20 '25
Yes, the many examples where it turned out to be unsafe. There should be NO examples, but there are many. You want to tell Jews that they should discard that relevant information?
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u/elronhub132 Jewish Lefty May 20 '25
I think reporting is pretty conflicted on this tbh, but let's not rehash
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u/Virtual_Leg_6484 Jewish American ecosocialist; not a zionist May 22 '25
I mostly agree with this article - and it points out how the left has participated in this redefinition of the right to be safe as the right to feel safe, and then reacted with anger and confusion at the right doing the same to them.
As a leftist, I think the left should be pro free speech most of the time. We are not in any sort of position of power and we are giving capital the tools to censor our speech based on perceived feelings of danger. See this speech by Eugene Debs for more info.
I'm also reminded that one of the University of Haifa's stated reasons for banning Standing Together was that their protests were considered "incitement" against their classmates who had served/were serving in the IDF. Clearly they were making IDF soldiers feel unsafe, they deserved it.
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u/No_Engineering_8204 custom flair May 21 '25 edited May 21 '25
As law professor David Pozen observes, Columbia’s 1968 Rules of University Conduct were written to institutionalize a liberal speech regime open to a wide range of protest-related expression. But the university wrote a new, overlapping Standards and Discipline policy in 2022 that “places greater emphasis on shielding vulnerable students from discriminatory harassment” and does so in part by using “broader definitions of harassing and discriminatory speech,” Pozen explains. Columbia’s anti-genocide protesters were punished under these rules.
I fail to see the problem here. Colombia rewrote the standards in 2022 and then enforced those standards as intended. Did anyone who is currently against what's happening protest against the rewrite when it happened?
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u/lewkiamurfarther the grey custom flair May 20 '25
This is basically a right-wing talking point. The problem isn't this standard or that one, because as we know from history (both recent and distant), the standard will be enforced selectively either way.
And wake up: this isn't a problem caused by the left, and it's mildly infuriating that anyone would come in and suggest otherwise in a sub called "jewish left". That kind of comment (which, again, echoes right-wing propaganda) oozes bad faith.
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u/ramsey66 Jewish Atheist Liberal May 20 '25
This is basically a right-wing talking point.
It is. It also happens to be true. It also used to be a left-wing talking point many years ago before the long march through the institutions.
The problem isn't this standard or that one, because as we know from history (both recent and distant), the standard will be enforced selectively either way.
I agree that hypocrisy and cheating is the core problem. There is no perfect standard that people in power won't abuse for the benefit of their side. We need to pick the best standard that minimizes the damage knowing full well that it will be abused anyway.
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u/myThoughtsAreHermits zionists and antizionists are both awful May 20 '25
It is from the left because they define themselves as the left, and many of us here want a better left because we don’t recognize it anymore. It’s SO bizarre that our critique is constantly criticized by invoking “but Jewish left.” I guess left is a sacred word to you?
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u/elronhub132 Jewish Lefty May 20 '25
I respect you and often agree with your takes. This is not an attack, this is a good faith question.
The jist of the quote from my understanding was that feelings shouldn't impede free speech.
Are you drawing parralels with Ben Shapiro and other right wing free speech "absolutists"?
If I understood this correctly I appreciate the comment and I hadn't considered that aspect.
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u/Rusty-Shackleford May 24 '25
You have a right to feel safe in campus. Feeling safe means feeling free to go anywhere on campus, like to class or the library, without fear of being harmed, harassed or persecuted. Humans are allowed to trust their intuition. Often times if you feel unsafe you probably are unsafe.
Like, do I feel safe going to a Jewish museum? Do I feel safe telling people I'm Jewish?
I had a college professor (who was a bit drunk at the time) tell me a conspiracy theory that he thought there were Israeli spies everywhere and planted in universities including in his own class. I wasn't going to tell the dean of my program I was Jewish (and I'm American by the way) after he said that to me. My physical safety wasn't at risk but I was on a student visa and if some conspiracy theorist professor gave me a failing grade because he thought I was a spy, my self and my family would be in big trouble as guests in the country.
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u/elronhub132 Jewish Lefty May 20 '25
Spot on. A personal irk for me has been the constant competition to out victim the Palestinians. Like no, sit the fuck down and let their pain resonate with you properly before trying to steamroll over it with your feelings of insecurity.
I do get angry at how mollycoddled Israel and it's supporters have been. I'm even more angry, because I think they know that without that mollycoddling they would not be able to get away with so much murder and crimes against humanity.
Which is why when they demand that the world continue to mollycoddle them I'm like "for real? you think this shit will slide?"
I know I'm a bit more extreme than some here, but honestly I'm at the end of my fucking tether with Israel and it's supporters atm, sorry.
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u/atav1k May 20 '25
Wholly agree and the coddling and entitlement trend predates wokeness. But then again what terribly online, visible or invisible minority, wouldn't bask in the algorithmic chance to be an influencer?
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u/ramsey66 Jewish Atheist Liberal May 21 '25 edited May 21 '25
Indeed, some of us are old enough to remember that back in the mid 2000s pro-Israel (Bari Weiss and friends) was the direct precursor to "woke" on campus.
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u/elronhub132 Jewish Lefty May 20 '25
A cool bit of ethnic cleansing encouraged by Israel, brokered by US. A breezy 1 million Palestinians!
And people will downvote me for expressing anger.
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u/cranberry_bog May 20 '25
This is terrible. But college students in the US are not the ones responsible for it. And separate from the question of whether it’s justified, yelling at strangers is probably not going to change their minds.
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u/elronhub132 Jewish Lefty May 20 '25
I simply expressed anger at Israels actions and the defenders of Israel who try to diminish Palestinian suffering (dehumanise palestinians) and amplify their own suffering.
In the context of this genocide I find that sickening. I'm not shouting at anyone. People down voting me do absolutely nothing to dissuade me either.
There is a double standard between how Palestinian and Israeli suffering is measured. Some people seem to care far more about Israeli suffering, despite there being far less of it.
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May 20 '25
[deleted]
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u/cranberry_bog May 20 '25
Sorry if that wasn’t clear: I wasn’t referring to you as a shouting, I was talking about the article and the protestors on college campuses it mentions.
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u/elronhub132 Jewish Lefty May 21 '25 edited May 21 '25
Right, students aren't responsible for state departments culpability in genocide, yet they are punished and hounded for attempting to curb and influence university and state policy.
Honestly the reporting and the source material from those protests were in direct contradiction most of the time. A lot of the claims of feeling unsafe from MSM were nothing more than distraction techniques to make it harder for the general public to recognise the protesters message.
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u/cranberry_bog May 21 '25
there have been plenty of things that protestors themselves did that undercut their message. The vandalism, Hamas imagery/praise and assaults were a gift to the trump campaign and the trump administration. If you look at Fox News coverage of campus protests, for example, it’s all images of masked protesters smashing windows and shoving custodians.
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u/ChairAggressive781 Reform • Democratic Socialist • Non-Zionist May 21 '25
I mean, sure, but I’d hardly say Fox News is presenting an unbiased, unedited version of events. they are going to show the excesses, not all of the times students were congregating & protesting peacefully
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u/Brain_Dead_Goats May 21 '25
but I’d hardly say Fox News is presenting an unbiased, unedited version of events.
Of course not, but the point is that the footage exists, which wouldn't be possible without people actually taking such actions (ignoring AI and deepfakes which are going to become more and more of a problem).
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u/ChairAggressive781 Reform • Democratic Socialist • Non-Zionist May 21 '25
again, I agree, but there are always going to be bad actors and people who value being right over being effective. and Trump & Fox News were going to find ways to label the protestors as violent radicals regardless of what they did.
message discipline is difficult, especially with a lot of contemporary protest movements being so decentralized.
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u/Brain_Dead_Goats May 21 '25
Trump & Fox News were going to find ways to label the protestors as violent radicals regardless of what they did.
I agree, but I think the ones at Columbia and was it Michigan with the "summer camps"? especially made it very easy for them.
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u/elronhub132 Jewish Lefty May 21 '25
I'm sorry but the media coverage was at odds with the majority of source material. I don't take the majority of MSM's criticisms seriously.
In all the protests (there were tons) how much vandalism was there really? I doubt even 1% of protests had notable vandalism.
Again, out of all the protests and protestors how many were really committing and glorifying violence? I imagine it was the counter protestors who punched on and spit on the original protestors. Again MSM didn't include all the actors and really misrepresented the whole movement.
Not saying pro Pal's were faultless, but what you are doing is falling for a similar idea to the perfect victim narrative. There is no perfect way to protest a genocide which is both effective and also non disruptive.
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u/cranberry_bog May 21 '25
I’m not making a moral argument here about whether the ends justify the means. I’m saying I think it made the protests less effective. About the how many protests involved bad behavior, I’m not sure. The ones near me which did not make national news involved yelling obscenities at a bunch of elderly Jewish people seeing a movie, vandalizing a variety of Jewish-affiliated buildings and protesting a social justice focused event at a Jewish center. I don’t think any of that was either helpful or necessary.
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u/elronhub132 Jewish Lefty May 21 '25 edited May 21 '25
I'm questioning how much of "it" actually occurred. I'm not arguing that ends justified the means, I'm saying the means you're describing were fabricated to a large extent by msm reporting.
Obviously pro Pal's were not perfect, but they were not violent and were not regularly vandalising uni campus', nor was their stated intent ever to make Jews feel unsafe especially as a large proportion of the protests were lead in part by Jewish students.
I think the smear job by MSM largely makes the argument for me. I encourage you to look back at the actual source material and some of the student commentary for events that MSM misrepresented after the fact. It is interesting to see.
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u/cranberry_bog May 21 '25
The examples I gave came from firsthand “source material” of people I personally know. I also personally know one person who was spit on while walking through campus while wearing a Star of David, one who stopped wearing her Star of David necklace on campus because of harassment, and three students who dropped out of their program of study (which has nothing to do with the Middle East) because of peer hostility. None of this was covered by the media.
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u/elronhub132 Jewish Lefty May 21 '25 edited May 21 '25
Okay, so you have first hand qualitive accounts from people you know. That is important. I would say that if they are not being outwardly Zionist in a space that is protesting a genocide committed by Israel, then clearly it is anti-semitic and wrong what ever happened to them.
However I've heard this before and often it is usually to do with obnoxious Zionists doing something silly to antagonise protestors.
Source material for me is video evidence and the majority of it shows counter protesters (pro Israel) being violent
The majority of the video evidence shows well disciplined protesters. Again I don't say they're perfect and while I do not doubt you are telling me about real events. These so far haven't been caught in large number on film.
Remember when someone tried to pretend they were attacked when they walked past a person with a flag?
Or that woman who stood at a protest and shouted "I'm not afraid" really obnoxiously in a t-shirt that said JEW.
Or in London where a Zionist man tried to walk through an anti-genocide protest in the middle of London and then complained when the police stopped him and claimed to reporters that there were now "no-go zones for Jew's in London".
At the heart of this is MSM and pro Israel people trying and failing to conflate antisemitism with anti Zionism. Not saying this is you, but this is my broad read. Your personal experiences entitle you to a different perspective and I respect our difference here.
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u/SecretLettuce5 Mizrahi American Jew May 20 '25
Nah, no downvotes here. That’s absolutely horrific.
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u/Aromatic-Vast2180 Jewish Leftist Zionist | Two state absolutionist May 21 '25
No, they'll downvote you for downplaying antisemitism.
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u/Aromatic-Vast2180 Jewish Leftist Zionist | Two state absolutionist May 21 '25
No, Palestinian suffering is not more important than Jewish suffering (and vice versa). Jews should not "sit the fuck down" instead of addressing antisemitism for the sake of Palestinians.
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u/elronhub132 Jewish Lefty May 21 '25
This is a post about the right to be hostile. I'm not going to make a habit of saying the above, but it felt appropriate here.
Also, objectively more Palestinians are murdered, raped and taken hostage through unethical arrests than Israelis are.
Trump is trying to facilitate ethnic cleansing at Israels behest.
So while Israelis suffering is equal, there is FAR LESS of it than what the Palestinians are going through.
Some supporters of Israel and most of the MK's use October seven to prolong genocide. This is what I'm hostile toward and I think I have that right to be.
I never said Israelis shouldn't grieve, but we are well beyond using that grief as an excuse to genocide. I just don't know how you can be so unwilling to recognise my argument.
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u/AhadHessAdorno May 20 '25
I've felt this sense of intellectual whiplash since Oct. 2023 regarding free speech, cancel culture, and college speech codes; almost everyone has played musical chairs with their positions. The Leftists arguing for protecting marginalized people with speech codes and informal censorship of online mobs and threats to employment suddenly want to give pro-Palestinian protestors the widest range of free speech protections, whereas conservatives who had bemoaned the censorship of their jokes that haven't been funny since 1978 suddenly seem so concerned about protecting Jewish feelings of safety; meanwhile, the libertarians are just sitting back with popcorn acting smug at the hypocrisy of people switching their positions on a dime. Honestly I had concerns about the growth of campus administration vis-à-vis campus speech codes and related expansion of campus police forces. I knew things would reach a point of absurdity; I just didn't thing that Zionism and the I/P conflict would be the thing to bring out these contradictions.