Robina G.’s Post

The number is now over a 1,000. Please consider signing this letter if you are a professor and Jewish. The statement accompanying the letter: "Criticism of the state of Israel, the Israeli government, policies of the Israeli government, or Zionist ideology is not – in and of itself – antisemitic. We accordingly urge our political leaders to reject any effort to codify into federal law a definition of antisemitism that conflates antisemitism with criticism of the state of Israel. This includes ongoing efforts to codify the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which has been internationally criticized for conflating antisemitism with legitimate criticism of Israel. We hold varied opinions on Israel. Whatever our differences, we oppose the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism. If imported into federal law, the IHRA definition will delegitimize and silence Jewish Americans–among others–who advocate for Palestinian human rights or otherwise criticize Israeli policies. By stifling criticism of Israel, the IHRA definition hardens the dangerous notion that Jewish identity is inextricably linked to every decision of Israel’s government. Far from combating antisemitism, this dynamic promises to amplify the real threats Jewish Americans already face." Please like, comment and share for broader reach. The link to the actual letter is in the comments.

A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF #JEWISH #ACADEMICS CALL ON #BIDEN NOT TO SIGN A #LEGISTLATION WHICH #EQUATES #ANTISEMITISM TO #CRITICISM OF #ZIONISM, ISRAEL, #ISRAELI #GOVERNMENT AND ITS #POLICIES‼️⬇️👇🏼🌎👀⬇️👇🏼‼️ “The number is now over a 1,000. Please consider signing this letter if you are a professor and Jewish. The statement accompanying the letter: "Criticism of the state of Israel, the Israeli government, policies of the Israeli government, or Zionist ideology is not – in and of itself – antisemitic. We accordingly urge our political leaders to reject any effort to codify into federal law a definition of antisemitism that conflates antisemitism with criticism of the state of Israel. This includes ongoing efforts to codify the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which has been internationally criticized for conflating antisemitism with legitimate criticism of Israel. We hold varied opinions on Israel. Whatever our differences, we oppose the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism. If imported into federal law, the IHRA definition will delegitimize and silence Jewish Americans–among others–who advocate for Palestinian human rights or otherwise criticize Israeli policies. By stifling criticism of Israel, the IHRA definition hardens the dangerous notion that Jewish identity is inextricably linked to every decision of Israel’s government. Far from combating antisemitism, this dynamic promises to amplify the real threats Jewish Americans already face." Please like, comment and share for broader reach. The link to the actual letter is in the comments.”

Palestinian Open Letter We the undersigned, Palestinian academics, writers, artists, activists, and people of all walks of life, unequivocally condemn the morally and politically reprehensible comments made by President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas about the Holocaust. Rooted in a racial theory widespread in European culture and science at the time, the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people was born of antisemitism, fascism, and racism. We adamantly reject any attempt to diminish, misrepresent, or justify antisemitism, Nazi crimes against humanity, or historical revisionism vis-a-vis the Holocaust. The Palestinian people are sufficiently burdened by Israeli settler colonialism, dispossession, occupation, and oppression without having to bear the negative effect of such ignorant and profoundly antisemitic narratives perpetuated by those who claim to speak in our name. We are also burdened by the PA’s increasingly authoritarian and draconian rule, which disproportionately impacts those living under occupation. Having held onto power nearly a decade and a half after his presidential mandate expired in 2009, supported by Western and pro-Israel forces seeking to perpetuate Israeli apartheid, Abbas and his political entourage have forfeited any claim to represent the Palestinian people and our struggle for justice, freedom, and equality, a struggle that stands against all forms of systemic racism and oppression.

Phenomenal article by Peta Credlin AO shining a spotlight on some of the core issues facing Western society today, best summarised by two phrases in the closing paragraph - historical amnesia and moral confusion. "…there has been a chilling contrast between the reactions to September 11 and October 7. …This time, even though it’s the same “death to all infidels” mindset that has motivated the attackers to murder innocent Jews, much of the world has sided with Hamas in a giant and utterly improbable exercise in blaming the victims… At a deeper level, it’s a profound moral failure to appreciate the difference between a liberal society under existential threat and a terrorist statelet that wants to conquer and oppress its neighbour based on a creed that’s still in the Dark Ages… …the widespread display of moral equivalence between a death cult and a democracy; and, even worse, the preference for Hamas with its indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, over an Israel trying to avoid civilian casualties while fighting a mortal enemy whose whole modus operandi is to use civilians as human shields, is an altogether more serious failure. Israel is not trying to drive the Palestinian people into the sea or to exterminate Gaza. Israel simply wants to be free from random, regular rocket attacks from a Gaza that’s run to be a base for military operations against it rather than a decent home for the people who live there. Our widespread collective inability to see this is a sign of intellectual decay, as well as a wilful selective blindness about horrors against a group we remain all too ready to stigmatise…" https://lnkd.in/gmmgvPXc

Yuval Noah Harari and his fellow signatories of this statement are right to call out some on the progressive left for their apparent indifference to the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7th. I’ve been seeing it around me and I’m deeply disturbed by it. Marches for Palestine, joined by dear colleagues from “the movement”, setting off with chants of “5, 6, 7, 8, Israel is not a state”, as if Israel can be wished away, as if it was not founded as a consequence of centuries of persecution and murder of Jews in Europe. And also, less egregious but still concerning, civil society organisations releasing statements calling rightly for an urgent ceasefire, but curiously failing to even use the word “Hamas”. There must be a ceasefire and there must, at long last, be an end to Israel’s blockade of Gaza, an end to the occupation, and a real push for a just and lasting peace in Israel/Palestine, whatever that looks like. In calling for that, I think we need to do better at recognising and calling out the perpetrators of war crimes and child murder consistently, whatever side of the conflict they are on - even as we recognise the dramatically unequal nature of the conflict. I couldn’t say it any better than Naomi Klein: “A left that is unshakably morally consistent, and does not mistake that consistency with moral equivalency between occupier and occupied. Love. In these difficult times, I’d like to be part of a left like that.” https://lnkd.in/eNFAigYP

Toward One Wisconsin 2024 features a timely and important plenary session, titled "Third Space: Jewish Muslim Discourse in Divided Times." Presented by two experts on Jewish and Muslim relations, The Divided Times Discourse will focus on the fallout from the Israel/Palestine conflict, specifically its effects on Jewish and Muslim communities in the United States and Europe. Centering on the diasporic context, the presenters will further illuminate how and why Jewish-Muslim relations (entailing a long history of intellectual, theological and social entanglements) should not be reduced to the conflict. They will further engage with these relations, both in terms of the conflict and beyond it, as a means to establish a discursive culture in democratic societies, highlighting a “third space”, that is a space between supposedly binary positions. Through this discussion, they will address forms of hate and exclusion, such as antisemitism and Islamophobia, which threaten to undermine democratic culture and unity. You can learn more about this presentation on our website: https://lnkd.in/gSA4bdmN. Register for the 2024 Toward One Wisconsin Conference, taking place in Eau Claire May 7&8, to see this presentation and many more! Learn more and register at t1w.org.

"Israel and the Surrender of the West" by Shelby Steele, June 2010 ...This is now—figuratively in some quarters and literally in others—the moral template through which Israel is seen. It doesn't matter that much of the world may actually know better. This template has become propriety itself, a form of good manners, a political correctness. Thus it is good manners to be outraged at Israel's blockade of Gaza, and it is bad manners to be outraged at Hamas's recent attack on a school because it educated girls, or at the thousands of rockets Hamas has fired into Israeli towns—or even at the fact that Hamas is armed and funded by Iran. The world wants independent investigations of Israel, not of Hamas. One reason for this is that the entire Western world has suffered from a deficit of moral authority for decades now. Today we in the West are reluctant to use our full military might in war lest we seem imperialistic; we hesitate to enforce our borders lest we seem racist; we are reluctant to ask for assimilation from new immigrants lest we seem xenophobic; and we are pained to give Western Civilization primacy in our educational curricula lest we seem supremacist. Today the West lives on the defensive, the very legitimacy of our modern societies requiring constant dissociation from the sins of the Western past—racism, economic exploitation, imperialism and so on. When the Israeli commandos boarded that last boat in the flotilla and, after being attacked with metal rods, killed nine of their attackers, they were acting in a world without the moral authority to give them the benefit of the doubt. By appearances they were shock troopers from a largely white First World nation willing to slaughter even "peace activists" in order to enforce a blockade against the impoverished brown people of Gaza. Thus the irony: In the eyes of a morally compromised Western world, the Israelis looked like the Gestapo. This, of course, is not the reality of modern Israel. Israel does not seek to oppress or occupy—and certainly not to annihilate—the Palestinians in the pursuit of some atavistic Jewish supremacy. But the merest echo of the shameful Western past is enough to chill support for Israel in the West. The West also lacks the self-assurance to see the Palestinians accurately. Here again it is safer in the white West to see the Palestinians as they advertise themselves—as an "occupied" people denied sovereignty and simple human dignity by a white Western colonizer. The West is simply too vulnerable to the racist stigma to object to this "neo-colonial" characterization....

"I believe the battle of Rafah is unnecessary and may be very costly for the invaders in terms of lives and war materials. That's why I am calm knowing with certainty the Western double standard (I refer only to governments) and the necessary collaboration of all Arab countries with the invader. Also, the Western world, according to Carter, who signed the Camp David treaty, clearly stated that they are not interested in democracy in the Arab world, but in dictators for the sake of Israel, as a Christian. Now we understand why Israel is above the decisions of the UN. All of the West, Israel, and Arab monarchs (many of them of Jewish origin) want to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah. It's curious that Jews believe that the Virgin Mary had an affair with a Roman soldier and that he is the result of adultery, while Christians believe he is the son of a virgin. But Jews seek another Messiah for the temple and Jewish governance in all countries of the world, and they are especially using the American church to carry out their mission. That's why we see this blind support for this artificial being in this area. Absolute loyalty to a people without a map because they will devour all their Arab puppet governors, and they are in a hurry because we are in the last years of this people on this earth, if 80 years maximum according to their beliefs, and we will see a different world, but better than a world condemned by Vladimir Putin, who is no saint, to thousands of punishments, but does not move against Israel, which is untouchable, it kills more... thousands of children, but what a pity their eyes are not blue. Journalists should not be killed or imprisoned, but Israel does whatever it wants and not a peep. This world is hypocritical, except for a few protesting in universities, and this is our future. We must know that we are all equal, beyond races, so we must read more and learn more languages, and be pillars for a fairer world, in which no person or entity commits crimes and gets away with it. #Thirst_for_Justice"

NEWS FROM FRANCE - IS MARION MARECHAL ‘RIGHT’? Much has been said in recent months about the appalling atrocities committed by ‘Islamists’, most notoriously in recent months by Hamas against Jewish/Israeli girls and women, boys and men. It is not a new phenomenon but appears to be on the rise. Following is a brief post on one woman’s stand against what she sees as an existential threat to Europe and Democracy. France’s Marion Maréchal has made the “defence” of European civilisation and fighting against the “Islamification” of Europe a cornerstone of her platform. She has promised to strengthen borders to prevent migration and wants to enshrine “Europe's Greek, Latin and Christian roots” in EU treaties. As a candidate she has also embarked on a tour of France and Europe speaking out on “Islamification”. She has spoken out against the Ramadan decorations installed by the mayor of the German city of Frankfurt, the presence of what she called a “noxious Koranic school with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood” in Château-Chinon, and has accused certain elected representatives of French conservative party Les Républicains of being “Islamo-rightist”. “We are the only ones to make the defence of our civilisation the cornerstone of our programme,” Maréchal said at a May 13 press conference, vowing to “fight Islamification” as part of a “common European cause”. Despite some anti-EU rhetoric Maréchal is in favour of cooperation between European states, and intends to join forces with European Conservatives and Reformists groups in an attempt to change the more leftist/ stance of the European Parliament. One can agree or disagree with her stance but one thing appears to be clear – she is at least unequivocal in what she says - a far cry from the ‘waffle’, equivocation, lack of direction and shirking of issues one has come to associate with our ‘Leaders and politicians’. Or is this just pre-election ‘grand-standing’ ? You choose.