Tensions spill across universities like Columbia and Harvard as students on each side accuse the other of a kind of bloodlust
To one side, Columbia students stood silently, wrapped in the blue and white of Israel as they gripped pictures of the murdered and abducted. Across the grass and brick divide, a slightly larger cohort of students chanted “Free, free Palestine.”
The faultline between the two ran along the claim by each that the other was pursuing a kind of bloodlust – a charge that has divided university campuses across America in the wake of the bloody Hamas attack on Israeli communities and Israel’s ongoing military assault on Gaza.
Reactions within US universities to the killing of at least 1,300 Israelis and the abduction of about 100 more have swung from celebration of the Hamas assault as a legitimate act of resistance to occupation to condemnation along with a demand that it not be used to ignore the deaths of Palestinians killed in Israel’s retaliation on Gaza.
Leading financial figures on Wall Street made a show of saying they would not employ Harvard students who signed the statement blaming Israel for the Hamas attack. A billboard truck drove around Harvard campus displaying the pictures and names of the students, and their addresses and other details were published on websites.
That’s some intense and coordinated propaganda.
On the one hand, it’s a favorite conspiracy among the right-wing to scream about the “internationalist cabal of Jewish globalist bankers who control the world!”
But then you read something like that, and it does seem suspicious. Like why would “leading financial figures” care who Harvard students support? And who would think putting their personal info on a fucking truck is acceptable?
Note: I am absolutely not saying or espousing any theory that the Jews control the world or anything. But I think that in a vacuum, absent any outside context, it seems weirdly coincidental for Wall Street to care if a bunch of college students blame Israel or for their information to be publicly broadcast.
If it’s black it’s called a gang, If it’s Italian it’s the mob, if it’s Latino it’s the cartel, BUT if it’s jewish, it’s a coincidence and should never be talked about.
That’s the problem with the right wing conspiracy theories. They all just blame the “Jews” for being elite and evil. If a group of people who happen to be Jewish are conspiring to control money and politics, it doesn’t mean the whole ethnicity is in on it. Their ethnicity and religion are irrelevant to the fact that they are just power hungry assholes.
That’s like blaming all of the Italians for everything the mafia does.
The problem with conspiracy theories is how unsure one must be of another’s motives: from where you’re sitting you think I’m sealioning; from my perspective you’re painting with a really broad brush.
Perhaps my point wasn’t clear enough so let me try to rephrase it: this is the exact kind of activity that adds fuel to right-wing anti-Semitism. I fully expect to hear on next week’s Knowledge Fight Alex Jones using this to fuel his “Jews Globalists control the world!” narrative.
It’s not really that Israel is Jewish, it’s that Israel is a strategic and financial asset to Western liberalism. And students at Ivy League schools are going to face more pressure to kowtow as they will eventually participate in executive political and financial institutions. Power doesn’t demand a grand conspiracy to maintain itself.
The doxxing truck should get someone slapped with attempted murder charges.
So we’ve finally reached the point where people realise where cancel culture was leading and now they don’t like it.
Freedom of speech, not freedom of consequences.
The government isn’t stopping anyone from saying their piece, industry gets to make their own decisions based on your words and actions.
These university students aren’t a protected class, if Wall Street wants to say ‘get fucked, we want nothing to do with your position on this topic’, that’s entirely their choice to make… and the thing people don’t seem to want to accept, is there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. You’re not taking on Wall Street, anymore than these protestors are going to make a difference. They must feel real special about the impact they’re making!!!
I think they believed people would jump on with the hate, rather than seeing how messed up it is.
Israel is paying for the success of Iron Dome - rocket attacks never really stopped, but the international perspective shows only Palestinians displaced and abused, while a few rockets get shot down over Israel. If Israel wades into Gaza and occupies it, the attack got what it wants, a new South Africa, with millions of un-enfranchised citizens. This outcome was warned about in the early 2000’s.
