raison de arizona wrote: ↑Wed May 01, 2024 7:29 pm
“Let’s take any other ethnic or religious minority,” said Eden Yadegar, a junior at Columbia. “Would you only accept them if they were willing to denounce an integral part of their religious or ethnic identity? The answer is absolutely not. So how come it’s OK to say, you know, we accept Jews, but only if you denounce your religious and social and ethnic connection to your homeland? It’s ridiculous.”
This is one way to look at it. Another would be that they are refusing to denounce the indiscriminate killing on innocent women and children. The destruction of every University. The destruction of the hospitals, and health care system. The fact that there ARE in fact plenty Jews that support divestment belies their position.
What I think you are ignoring is this: the governing ideology of this protest movement is one in which Israel as a Jewish state is and always was illegitimate, a "settler colonial" enterprise of outsiders coming in and displacing the "indigenous" inhabitants, and that its creation as such should be undone. On this view every inch of Israel is occupied, every Israeli anywhere a "settler", and violence against them glorified as "resistance". It should boycotted, its citizens barred from academic conferences, and in general made a pariah state until this happens. All this has nothing to do with the current war, that just makes it more urgent.
But ... almost every Jew in the world, but for this sliver of radicals, is a "Zionist" in the sense of supporting Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. It's weird to even use that word since they regard Zionism as an accomplished project in the past. Israel is recognized by the UN and of course the US government. But in this student movement they spit out "Zionist" like a dirty word and physically block "Zionists" from their spaces.
If you are someone who hasn't drunk all this ideological Kool-Aid, who accepts Israel's right to exist, has no interest in the fantasy of undoing it, but only want to oppose its manner of conducting this war ... well, there is no place for you in this student movement. It's not just some narrow anti-war movement. It brings in all this baggage which is going to be deeply offensive to almost all Jews.
The fact that there are left-wing Jews in this movement is about as relevant to this as the fact that there are Black conservatives who support Trump.
There have been and still are real peace activists in this space who work for a path to coexistence and mutual understanding, now tragically distant. But they are not the one-sided students of this movement with their simplistic black-and-white construction.
Again, I think the
Josh Marshall piece I cited touches on some of the reasons this movement is deeply deeply disconcerting to Jews better than I can.