Campuses with the Most Anti-Semitism

cobrat
Fri, 28 Oct 2016 18:14:49 +0000

While many Palestinians don’t feel comfortable bringing up the Israeli/Palestinian issue (it’s a contentious and emotional issue), there is no Jewish counterpart to BDS on campuses.

However, the Palestinian activists and their sympathizers would argue the following to explain why there’s a good reason why there’s no Jewish counterpart to BDS on campuses:

1. The US political/mass media establishment from their perspective tends to be largely favorable to Israel and treats problematic issues with its policies/actions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with "kid gloves". They often cite the US sending large amounts of military and economic aid going back several decades and the fact that many international media sources outside the US...including Western European democracies tend to be much more critical of Israel on those very same issues.

2. As a result of #1, pro-Palestinian activists and sympathizers are often effectively ignored and silenced both on US campuses and in the larger established newsmedia, especially before the internet broke down the effective stranglehold the established newsmedia had on news in the US...especially to the younger generation.

From their perspective, the rise of the BDS/SJP movement is a reaction against the perceived pro-Israeli bias in the US political/newsmedia establishment/society.

1. There isn't really a viable state to boycott, divest, or sanction nor a need to as Israel with its overwhelming military dominance already effectively controls economic and other access to/from the "Palestinian territories", routinely violates their sovereign rights agreed to in prior agreements through condoning/sanctioning the building of Jewish settlements there and destroying personal property of Palestinians living there(i.e. fruit trees), etc.

Those points have been practically ignored or heavily downplayed in the mainstream establishment US newsmedia, political establishment, and society at large, especially before the mid-late '00s when the internet brought about the rise of more newsmedia sites not associated with the established newsmedia.

While some may feel the above is too political, I feel it is important to outline and attempt to understand some of the Palestinian perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its factoring into the BDS/SJP campus movements for a more informative discussion of this exceedingly complex and contentious issue rooted in events of the last century.

Especially considering there’s little mention of those perspectives on this thread which the pro-Palestinian side would cite as proof of the first two points.

And I say this as someone who has more serious issues with the pro-Palestinian side for a multitude of reasons including the antisemitism going back decades. However, that does not mean we shouldn’t acknowledge or try to understand their perspectives…however much we may disagree with some/most/all of them.