Academics and Israel

[LadyShea]

This is important but I am unsure where to put it

Why I Was Fired - The Chronicle of Higher Education

[Watser?]

It's the 'Palestine exception' to Free Speech.

Does Free Speech Have a Palestine Exception? Dismissed Professor Steven Salaita Speaks Out | Democracy Now!

[AynMisesLibertarian]

yes leftists academia firing people because lefty opinion yawn

[Watser?]

So Freedom of Speech not your thing either then?

[Kael]

It's only REAL free speech if you agree with it.

[SharonDee]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

This is important but I am unsure where to put it

Why I Was Fired - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Can't read without subscription.

[LadyShea]

That sucks Sharon, I don't have a subscription but I was able to read it the other day! Now I can't read it either.

There is this copypasta, but the blog author I don't know anything about Steven Salaita: why I was fired

There is some outside coverage, not written by him, that is just as compelling Judge refuses to throw out fired professor Steven Salaita’s case against University of Illinois-UC - Salon.com

[Watser?]

Here's some more on this: The Palestine Exception to Free Speech: A Movement Under Attack in the US

Flush With Cash, Right-Wing Extremists Train the Future Zealots of Pro-Israel Campus Activism

[The Lone Ranger]

One of my colleagues is Jewish, and lived in Israel for a time.

In most areas, she's quite liberal-minded, but a few days ago, while we were discussing this and that, she blurted out that she's sick of people acting like Israel is the "bad guy" when it comes to Israeli/Palestinian relations.


"I lived in Israel," she pointed out. "I know firsthand how much the Palestinians hate Jews, and the lengths they'll go in order to hurt us." Basically, her claim was that the Israelis have, by and large, bent over backwards to be decent to the Palestinians, only to be repaid with hatred and bloodshed.



Well, I'm hardly an expert, so I didn't pursue the discussion. It's not like I've lived in the area, either.

Still, I couldn't help but wonder: "Don't you think the Palestinians have a right to feel aggrieved? I mean, here they were, minding their own business, when suddenly they're thrown off their own land and forced to live as second-class citizens, if that. It seems to me that there are plenty of reasons other than anti-Semitism to explain why the Palestinians, by and large, aren't big fans of Israel."


Like I said, I'm hardly an expert. So what am I missing here?

[Watser?]

Guilt and victim-blaming I think.

[erimir]

One might have pointed out that living as a Jew in Israel doesn't necessarily give any more insight into the lives and minds of Palestinians than being white in America gives into the lives and minds of black Americans (and that applies throughout American history, so you can't dismiss it by denying there's much racism now).

Perhaps even less, given that Israelis are even more physically separated from the West Bank/Gaza than whites are from blacks in most of America.

That wouldn't require you to have a counterpoint based on experience living in Israel. Maybe she would reconsider whether living somewhere is enough to totally understand all its people.

[Watser?]

It's something they come up with in almost any discussion, so apparently Israelis think so. I do remember that the last defenders of South African Apartheid always claimed you 'need to have been there to have an opinion on it'.

The problem is that very few Israelis have been to the West Bank and even fewer to the Gaza Strip so yeah, basically they have less of a clue than outsiders.

[Sauron]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

Like I said, I'm hardly an expert. So what am I missing here?

I would reach back in history and grab something she *ought* to be able to grok without a moment's hesitation.

"By your argument, Germans during the Hitler years fully understood the motivations and perspectives of Jews living in ghettos and concentration camps. Cause all you need to understand someone is to live in the same country with them. Right?"

She'd probably dismiss it by using the all-purpose Holocaust get-out-of-jail-free card, though.

[erimir]

Well... That could work. Or it could just offend her and shut down any chance of having a real discussion. I imagine a comparison to white America in the 60s will probably be more rhetorically persuasive than going full Holocaust analogy.

Even back then, white Americans said in polls that racism wasn't much of an issue anymore... but obviously we* now recognize that they didn't know what the fuck they were talking about.

*In this case, I'm using "we" to mean white people. Black people knew they were full of shit from the beginning.

[Watser?]

People who are at this stage

"I lived in Israel," she pointed out. "I know firsthand how much the Palestinians hate Jews, and the lengths they'll go in order to hurt us." Basically, her claim was that the Israelis have, by and large, bent over backwards to be decent to the Palestinians, only to be repaid with hatred and bloodshed.

are beyond reasonable discussion anyway. I don't bother with them.

[mickthinks]

People who are at this stage [...] are beyond reasonable discussion anyway. I don't bother with them.

I think that's a mistake, Watser? (How big a mistake depends on how important you really are to the Palestinian cause.)

[ceptimus]

People who live in Israel (and to a lesser extent people who live in the USA) are fed by their media a view on Palestine and Palestinians that seems very distorted to those of us living in Europe.

You may argue that it's the European reporting that is biased... but I don't think so. My suspicion is that most European reporting is heavily biased towards supporting Israel - but not as heavily biased as the reporting in the USA and, of course, Israel.