POSTED BY JENNIFER RUTH
For the June 3rd meeting of Portland State University’s Faculty Senate, twenty-one faculty and staff members submitted the following question for PSU President Ann Cudd:
In your remarks to Senate last month and in your email “Evolving Community Expectations” on 5/7/2024, you refer to “vile messages” and to ‘”that kind of speech” and ‘”these words, slogans, and epithets.” “These words, slogans and epithets, while protected by the First Amendment, will not bring about a ceasefire in Gaza, but they can poison our community,” you say, and that we should not condone, normalize, or accept them. However, you do not say what the objectionable words and slogans are. When there is a lack of clarity accompanied by a sense of fear or taboo, that is when speech is most effectively chilled — including political speech about oppression and injustice. For example, because some people have claimed that slogans like “From the River to the Sea” or “Globalize the Intifada” or “Free Palestine” are calls for genocide, when the vast majority of the time they are being used to call for the end of genocide and for the equal rights and dignity of the Palestinian people, people will wonder if you have those slogans in mind. This will have the effect of suppressing speech about injustice when speaking out about injustice is a basic human right and being unable to do so without fear of retaliation is a form of oppression. The only way the university can claim to support free speech and academic freedom is to make itself clear about what it finds acceptable speech and what it doesn’t. Can you please explain which words and slogans you consider objectionable and why?
President Cudd received the question weeks ahead of the meeting. At the meeting, she said that she would not say what the words and slogans are that she finds objectionable but that she would submit a list of them for publication in the meeting’s minutes. “From the River to the Sea” was on the list submitted.
Stéphanie Wahab, author of this recent article in Truthout and Professor of Social Work, spoke at the meeting. Wahab’s teaching, research and scholarship tend to occur at the intersections of individual and state sanctioned violence including but not limited to intimate partner violence, sex trades, systemic racism, militarization, and occupation. These are her prepared remarks, most of which she gave at the meeting.
President Cudd, since fall term, you have consistently refused to accept or incorporate any Palestinian perspective or narration about what is happening in historic Palestine. You’ve not only pushed Palestinian perspectives on this campus into the margins, but right off the page.
While you state that you won’t utter the “vile” and “hateful” phrases graffitied in the library, I’m going to assume they include “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and “globalize the intifada.” Palestinians on this campus and elsewhere have told you directly and indirectly that these slogans, our slogans, are a call for our liberation and dignity, not an invocation to harm Jews. Why don’t you believe us? Why do you insist on acting like we are not reliable narrators of our slogans, our history, our liberation movement?
“From the river to the sea” is a statement about geography (from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea). What exists at this moment between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is Jewish supremacy operationalized through a violent apartheid system consisting of check points, operated by soldiers carrying machine guns, separate road systems for Palestinians and Israelis, a 30-foot apartheid wall, detention centers filled with over 6000 Palestinians being held hostage, and so much more. The slogan “ From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” calls for Palestinian liberation within this geographic area. Freedom is not a political arrangement; freedom is a human condition, and an essential pre-condition for any political arrangement.
Postscript
Here are some points for the PSU community to consider going forward:
1) Who benefits when university presidents claim to be neutral towards Israel’s complete destruction of every single university in Gaza, slaughter of over 95 university deans and professors, alongside thousands of university students? What and who is this “neutrality” in service of?
2) Despite claims of value neutrality as a position on the ethnic cleansing and genocide, in all of its forms including scholasticide (see point #1), PSU leadership and administrative priorities, communications, responses, and relationships suggest otherwise.
3) The centering of semantic violence rather than the actual systemic, genocidal violence, entirely enabled by American weapons and dollars, Palestinians continue to experience is not only a distraction, but a disgrace on all of us.
Amie Thurber, Associate Professor in the School of Social Work, also spoke at the meeting. Here are her remarks:
Hello, my name is Amie Thurber, and I’m an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work. This is my first Senate meeting, and I’m not quite sure of the protocol, but it felt important to be here for this conversation, and I’ve prepared a few remarks.
I want to speak to something we’ve heard from the administration- that essentially although some phrases or slogans used to express solidarity with Palestinian calls for freedom – may be legally permissible, we should defer to what “the victims” take to be hate speech directed against them, and, for example, in the case of the phrase, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” -that Jewish people have said they hear that as a call for the annihilation of the state of Israel and/or Jewish people.
As a Jewish faculty member, this framing of ‘deferring to the victims’ has been troubling on several levels.
First, it suggests that Jewish people are a monolith – that all Jewish people have the same political orientation, the same beliefs, the same experiences – a flattening that, in assigning an assumed slate of characteristics to all members of a group- is itself antisemitic.
In fact, Jewish people have been divided about the nature of a political state of and for Jewish people for as long as there have been CALLS for a political Jewish state. My great grandfather, Rabbi Irving Reichert, was a founding member of a national organization that actively worked to prevent the establishment of such a state. There was then, in the 1940s – as there is now – two predominant theories of change circulating among Jewish people. There were those that deeply believed that Jewish people would never be safe until they had their own political state and army – and thus they advocated for an ethno-nationalist colony for Jewish people in the land of Palestine. And there were those that deeply believed that Jewish people would be safe to the degree that ALL people are safe, and advocated for the creation of robust and fully democratic governments, in the US, and everywhere. This is essentially a belief in collective liberation- that none of us are free unless all of us are free.
There are of course many more than just two theories of changes circulating among Jewish people today – but these two are still very much in the mix – and which one you ascribe to impacts how you hear phrases like “from the river to the sea”. When I hear “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” from my Palestinian colleagues and students, among others, colleagues and students I’ve known for years, with whom I’ve built relationships of care and mutual respect and understanding
I hear these words as a call for collective liberation;
I hear them as a lamentation for the collective injury caused by relationships of inequality;
I hear them as a hymn, a prayer, and a promise for a future Palestine/Israel that we have not yet seen, but still could come to be.
I am not suggesting that others should hear this phrase as I do, simply sharing my perspective as a Jewish person who is part of a legacy and a contemporary community of Jewish people who believe that none of us are free until all of us are free.
Which brings me to the second thing that has troubled me about this framing that we should “defer to the victims” – President Cudd, I have been in rooms with you where you have heard from Jewish people who hear this and other phrases differently from one another; I’ve been present as you’ve heard from Jewish people who feel the language is antisemitic and from Jewish people who do not, and in fact hear it as righteous – and I know you have received letters from Jewish people on campus and the community who say the same. But you have only referred to those Jews who find offense at this or other phrases. Why does our perspective not matter? Does that mean that you do not see us as Jewish people? This concerns me because there is a longstanding tactic of trying to silence dissent among Jews by claiming they are not truly Jewish. This erasure is antisemitic.
And this brings me to the third thing I find troubling about all this talk about what is or is not antisemitism and who gets to decide. It seems it would be simple enough to say the truth: that while there are some statements we might all agree are antisemitic – such as those denying the holocaust – there are others where there is legitimate debate and difference of perspective. That even the Association for Jewish Studies – the world’s largest professional organization of Jewish studies scholars – discourages the use of a single definition of anti-semitism and instead recommends that universities familiarize themselves with three different definitions…
But I’m not convinced that what’s at play here has anything to do with legitimate concerns about antisemitism. It feels to me like Jewish people – and Jewish people’s intergenerational trauma – are being used as pawns in a national political theater largely meant to delegitimize higher education. University presidents are getting hauled before conservative congressional hearings and accused of antisemitism by people with ties to white supremacist groups – these are clearly not people who truly care about the wellbeing of Jews. To be used and exploited in this way also smacks of antisemitism.
So – I am concerned about antisemitism I see circulating on our campus right now – and while this may include occasional language on signs, or slogans at rallies that strike me as demonizing Jews as Jews- I am particularly unsettled by the essentializing of Jewish people, the denial of Jewish identity to those who critique Israel, and the exploitation Jewish trauma, and I ask the administration to consider the degree to which you are contributing to this.
Finally, what breaks my heart and shames me, as a Jewish person, is that not only are the horrific and worsening conditions in Gaza happening in my name, but that allegations of antisemitism are being weaponized to distract us from putting every available resource, every ounce of our creativity, and every minute of our generative thinking towards ending the violence and pursuing a sustainable and just future in Palestine/Israel. I urge you – please do not be distracted from what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank. I know we will not all be called to act in the same ways, but so much is at stake if we do not act.
This post defends the use of “River to the Sea,” but it notably declines to defend “Globalize the Intifada.” There is obviously a good reason. In circumstances where Jewish institutions — including synagogues, schools, and community centers — have been attacked in the U.S. and countries around the world, globalizing the Intifada certainly lands as a call to violence against Jews outside Israel.
Perhaps there is some subtle meaning other than the apparent one — though the post does not suggest it — but I have been in enough campus DEI trainings to know that impact can be more important than intention. Why is it that this principle is abandoned only when invoked by Jews?
As to “River to the Sea,” this assertion is disingenuous:
“Palestinians on this campus and elsewhere have told you directly and indirectly that these slogans, our slogans, are a call for our liberation and dignity, not an invocation to harm Jews. Why don’t you believe us? Why do you insist on acting like we are not reliable narrators of our slogans, our history, our liberation movement?”
The issue again, is how the slogan lands, not how it is possibly intended. We have heard many right-wingers insist that the Confederate flag symbolizes only southern heritage, and is not intended to be racist. Maybe so, but decent people will not display it, knowing how it will be received. There is no amount of narration “of our slogans” that will change the impact of the symbol. This is incontrovertible for every minority group. Well, evidently with one exception.
I disagree with the premise that how a slogan lands is more important than the meaning as understood by the person who says it. In It’s Not Free Speech, my co-author and I argued that we need to be very careful about elevating “impact” over “intent” in any setting. Ultimately, we argued neither impact nor intent should be privileged over context. Decent people who don’t want to display the confederate flag don’t want to because they understand its historical context in white supremacy. In the US, with its widespread enforcement of the Palestine exception to academic freedom and free speech, which has censored and distorted scholarship and speech in support of Palestinians and critical of the Israeli state, some of us may be missing the context that my colleague, Stephanie Wahab, provides above but that cannot be an excuse to censor.
Elevating impact over intent and elevating either over context will dangerously erode academic freedom and also lead to painful misunderstandings such as the silencing of someone who wants to speak out about injustice. Context — including the context of the speaker — will always matter, as the University presidents tried to explain to Congress on Dec. 5 and then got roundly humiliated for their honesty. Situations in which minoritized groups in the States find themselves in conflict with one another due to conflicts abroad (but also domestic conflicts) will only increase (Uighurs and Chinese, Taiwanese and Chinese, Hindu Indians and Muslim Indians, and so on) and if we follow the logic by which we take the lead from one impacted minority without considering the perspective of the other and without considering the context of the larger historical power dynamics involved, it’s going to lead to a lot of misunderstandings and probably a lot of miscarriages of justice.
Once again, there is no defense of “Globalize the Intifada,” no doubt because the meaning is unambiguous. Yet the slogan is widespread. The benign assertions about “River to the Sea” would be more credible if the proponents were critical, rather than silent, about the call for a global intifada.
As to censorship and “miscarriages of justice,” I am not seeking to prohibit any slogans, only to criticize them.
Sorry, I was responding to your suggestion that Jews are the only minority for whom “impact” is not elevated over “intent” by arguing against the premise of “impact” over “intent”. Please see this article — https://forward.com/culture/573654/intifada-arabic-israeli-hamas-war-meaning-linguistics/ — for some context for “intifada.”
I thought “context” was supposed to matter.
Isn’t the context of synagogue attacks in Europe, North Africa, South America, and the U.S. relevant to globalizing the intifada?
Given even the possible implication of violence, why would decent people insist on chanting it? There are plenty of other slogans.
For years we’ve all been sensitized to think about how even seemingly banal remarks land as microaggressions. Now, in this “context,” Prof. Ruth executes a classic bait-and-switch maneuver. It’s the intention of the speaker that suddenly matters. But speakers are not control of their own intentions– speech acts are in large measure scripts entangled in discourses that supersede any individual speaker. Moreover, “context” is not a static, fixed, closed frame but can be infinitely expanded, complicated, nuanced, contested. Wahab does not have the last word over the “context” in which she proclaims what she imagines to be her truth. Other speakers can show that the “context” she constructs is partial or spurious. That’s called debate. Likewise, many statements in the wake of October 7 rationalized the actions of Hamas in view of the “context” of 75 years of occupation. But exactly how to formulate that 75-year context is very much open to dispute.
Prof. Ruth’s response to the Confederate Flag example demonstrates the weakness of her argument. She merely substitutes “context” for intentionality. The folks who claim the symbol is benign deny that the context has to do with white supremacy; they say their context is states’ rights, or some other Lost Cause myth.
There is nothing ambiguous about the Confederate Flag as a symbol, and there is nothing ambiguous about the slogans chanted at rallies on behalf of the Palestinian cause.
Context does matter. And, right now, this is the context:
“Finally, what breaks my heart and shames me, as a Jewish person, is that not only are the horrific and worsening conditions in Gaza happening in my name, but that allegations of antisemitism are being weaponized to distract us from putting every available resource, every ounce of our creativity, and every minute of our generative thinking towards ending the violence and pursuing a sustainable and just future in Palestine/Israel. I urge you – please do not be distracted from what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank. I know we will not all be called to act in the same ways, but so much is at stake if we do not act.”
And this:
“The centering of semantic violence rather than the actual systemic, genocidal violence, entirely enabled by American weapons and dollars, Palestinians continue to experience is not only a distraction, but a disgrace on all of us.”
The slogan “Globalize the intifada” clearly refers to the 2 Palestinian intifadas that killed hundreds or thousands of Israelis–even at children’s birthday parties. believing that this isn’t a call for engaging in violence against “Zionists” and just plain Jews is naive. We have already seen synagogues targeted for vandalism and violence against Jewish and Israeli students while Hillel houses are being targeted at some universities for vandalism and expulsion from campuses. There are even reports of some shootings at synagogues in Canada. The logic of intifada is escalating violence, so condemning calls to “globalize the intifada” should be the normal response, not downplaying its significance.
I can speak for myself only on this, as someone who has long cared about academic freedom but put off really understanding what is meant by the Palestine Exception to academic freedom until this current moment. I sensed that it would take some real work to understand and I was focused on issues like contingency. Now that I understand a little better, I cannot condemn slogans with the word “intifada” in them. I see in them calls for resistance, with the understanding that resistance to oppression is justified. They are calls that require you to think about zionism from the standpoint of its victims, to use Said’s articulation. They ask you to think about the asymmetrical and extremely disproportionate violence and dispossession (of land, of dignity) perpetrated on Palestinians from 1948 forward. They warn against calling for a peace which would not actually be peace but rather an inhumane status quo enforced through oppression and repression.
This completely ignores the violent history of the Palestinian intifadas. It is hard to understand how anyone could ignore this reality and replace it with an unjustified reinterpretation pretending that it doesn’t mean suicide bombings of civilians. October 7 was celebrated as an intifada too. Pretending that calling for globalizing the intifada is not a call for spreading violence against Israel’s, Zionists and Jews to American cities and campuses is simply untenable and amounts to gaslighting.
Good way to shut down the discussion, Prof. Ruth. It might otherwise be possible to develop some consensus, but I see that you are not interested.
You can have the last word.
No! Wait, wait! I, another masculine man, want the last word! It seems, Steven Lubet, that you have fallen into the very semantic pit the commenters above were talking about or implying. People argue over words when they should be using that time and energy to resolve the issues on the ground. Hence, the hundreds or thousands of students jailed over the last few months for their protests. For most of my waking life, I have watched people arguing about arguing, vomiting words about words — in community meetings, academia and governments — while totally ignoring the real problems. Yes, words can hurt, but not acting on a problem can hurt people even more. Yes, words can hurt; accumulated microaggressions cause trauma. So please, can we all stop acting like academics and fighting about words, and can we get down to fixing what is broken in Palestine/Israel? Now, Steven Lubet, would you like the last word?
When the two Palestinian intifadas involved suicide bombing children’s pizza parties and supermarkets, leading to hundreds or thousands of deaths, chanting “globalize the intifada” isn’t just a question of words. It is an explicit call for violence against (((Zionists))). It is starting with graffiti on synagogues and broken windows (and with several shootings in nearby Canada), along with several assaults against Jewish students around campuses like Columbia, Harvard and UCLA. Pretending that this context doesn’t matter is dishonest. Jewish students have been sent to hospitals and condoning the call for intifada allows the momentum to build. Sooner or later this intifada will claim its first death and those who condone it will be culpable.
Ok, I’ll take a turn here. The “hundreds or thousands” of students jailed should be taken on a case by case basis. Destroying university property (or any property) is wrong. Shouting down invited speakers is wrong. Erecting tents that impede campus movement, especially when demonstrators are asked to remove them, is wrong. People are tired of protests, particularly when people chanting “from the river to the sea” cannot name either the river or the sea.
Bravo — and thank you.
As part of her blog, Prof. Jennifer Ruth incorporated remarks delivered by Prof. Amy Thurber at a PSU faculty senate meeting. Thurber was disingenuous in invoking the name of her great-grandfather, Rabbi Irving Reichert, as an example of Jews who opposed the creation of the state of Israel. It is true that Reichert, a prominent San Francisco Reform rabbi, was a founder in 1942 of the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism, which opposed the idea of Israel as a sovereign nation. This article notes that San Francisco’s wealthy Jewish elites were among the leaders of the anti-Zionist ACJ: https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=San_Francisco_Jewish_Elite:_America%27s_Leading_Anti-Zionists Like quite a few classical Reform Jews, Rabbi Reichert wanted Jews to assimilate into American society and culture and believed that anything that led non-Jews to think of Jews as a different ethnic group or even a different race (as Jewish were often referred to) would obstruct their ability to be seen as loyal Americans. He and his colleagues in ACJ wanted non-Jews (and Jews) to believe that the only difference between Jews and non-Jews was how they worshipped. “Judaism is a religion, and a religion only,” Reichert said. Some Reform Jews even took to calling Jews “Americans of the Mosaic persuasion.” That was the idea underlying Reichert’s and other prominent Jews’ anti-Zionism. But he changed his mind. In July 1956 he resigned from the ACJ in protest, objecting to its “obstructionist campaign against the welfare and legitimate aspirations of Israel and its people.” In his letter of resignation, he wrote that the ACJ had abandoned its original purpose of supporting projects in Palestine of an “economic, cultural and spiritual nature.” Instead, he wrote, the Council had become a political pressure group attempting to influence the policies of the United States toward Israel and the Middle East “in precisely the same fashion as have the Zionists, whose political activities it severely criticizes.” As a result, he wrote, the ACJ “is virtually a pariah in Jewish organizational life.” This is recounted in this article about his resignation in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in July 1956: https://www.jta.org/archive/rabbi-reichert-attacks-council-for-judaism-resigns-from-organization. Surely Thurber, his great-granddaughter, should know about his resignation and chose not to mention it.
Wow. Here we go again; more attempts to sugar-coat the phrase, “river to the sea.”
Professor Stéphanie Wahab asserts that the phrase “river to the sea” is merely a call for “liberation and dignity [and] not an invocation to harm Jews.” She asks President Cudd, “Why don’t you believe us?” The answer is really quite simple. It is history.
While the “the river to the sea” expression has been around for years, Khaled Mashal, a former leader of Hamas turned that phrase into a rallying cry for Hamas and its genocidal aims in a 2012 speech.
His speech was unambiguous. It called for the elimination of Israel…from the river to the sea. Moreover, in 2017, the phrase was incorporated into the Hamas Charter.
Since that 2012 speech, to the present day, the distinct meaning of that phrase – as Mashal used it – has not suddenly and magically morphed into a principled call for “liberation and dignity” à la Professor Wahab.
No amount of gas-lighting or discussions of “impact vs intention” can alter history and distract from what has become the well-accepted interpretation of this phrase.
It is beyond disingenuous for pro-Palestinian sympathizers and apologists to claim – given its dark background – that the “river to the sea” chant by frenzied mobs (often along with “global intifada”) has shed the clear meaning that Mashal originally assigned it.
Indeed, if the meaning of this phrase has changed since 2012 – per Professor Wahab’s apparent view – then one could surely find some Palestinian leader who changed it. But that is not the case.
Absolutely no Palestinian leader has come forth and given a contrasting speech that offered a more benign meaning for the “river to the sea” phrase or – in any way – challenged the malignant meaning that Mashal – so perniciously – imprinted on the Palestinian psyche.
Professor Wahab asks, “Why don’t you believe us?” Answer: Your self-serving re-interpretation of a well-known phrase lacks any historical support and, as such, is simply not credible.
We should all be careful in our use of language. Here are some representative examples from Israeli leaders who, some might say, were not being careful. But I think Israel’s actions in Gaza show they were saying exactly what they intended:
Two days after the October 7 Hamas attack, Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant ordered “a complete siege” in Gaza: “There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.” He added, “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything.” He made clear that he had “removed every restriction” on Israeli forces.
On October 16, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu portrayed the conflict in a formal address to the Israeli Knesset as “a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.” On October 18 he affirmed: “We will not allow humanitarian assistance in the form of food and medicines from our territory to the Gaza strip.”
Israeli President Isaac Herzog rejected any distinction between militants and civilians: “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not being involved. It’s absolutely not true.”
Similarly, Israeli Minister of Heritage Amichai Eliyahu said “there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza.”
Nissim Vaturi, Deputy Speaker of the Knesset and Member of the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee tweeted, “Now we all have one common goal—erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.”
Major General Ghassan Alian made clear that “there will only be destruction” in Gaza: “Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water.”
Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, spokesperson for the IDF, explained Israel’s policy of “maximum damage”: “Gaza will eventually turn into a city of tents. There will be no buildings.”
Israel’s Minister of Economy Bezalel Smotrich said Israel’s actions in Gaza would send “a very clear message to our enemies …. We are going to wipe you off the face of the earth.”
The slogans discussed in this post and in the various comments are not the only ones with multiple meanings. Those who say “I Stand with Israel” should also clarify what they mean.
In her comment, which she sent to Portland State University’s president, Prof. Jennifer Ruth incorporates remarks made by Prof. Amy Thurber at a meeting of the PSU faculty senate. Prof. Thurber invoked the name of her great-grandfather, Rabbi Irving Reichert, as an example of prominent Jews who opposed the creation of the state of Israel. This is quite disingenuous. Reichert, the rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, a prominent classical Reform synagogue in San Francisco, was indeed a founder of the anti-Zionist group, the American Council for Judaism, in 1942. But in July 1956, he resigned in protest. In the 1940s, some of San Francisco’s wealthy Jews were among the leaders of the anti-Zionist movement in the American Jewish community, as this article explains: https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=San_Francisco_Jewish_Elite:_America%27s_Leading_Anti-Zionists. These Jews wanted to assimilate into American society and culture. They wanted non-Jews to believe that Jews were no different from other Americans except how they worshipped. In their view, the idea of a Jewish state was an obstacle to getting other Americans to think of Jews as just another religion, rather than as a separate culture, ethnic group, or race. (Many Americans referred to Jews as a race back then). Some Jews even began referring to themselves as “Americans of the Mosaic persuasion.” Rabbi Reichert said that “Judaism is a religion, and a religion only.” That was the underlying view of those who, like Reichert, formed the American Council for Judaism. By 1956, however, he had changed his mind. In his letter of resignation that July, he criticized ACJ for its “obstructionist campaign against the welfare and legitimate aspirations of Israel and its people.” He wrote that ACJ had abandoned its original purpose of supporting projects in Palestine of an “economic, cultural and spiritual nature.” Instead, he wrote, it had become a political pressure group that sought influence American foreign policy toward Israel and the Middle East “in precisely the same fashion as have the Zionists, whose political activities it severely criticizes.” As a result, he wrote, the ACJ had become “virtually a pariah in Jewish organizational life.” He wrote that when the ACJ was founded during World War 2, many Americans questioned Jews’ loyalty to the U.S., but that was no longer a problem. The loyalty of American Zionists to the U.S. “is freely conceded to be as ardent as that of any anti-Zionist or non-Zionists,” Reichert said, as reported in this article at the time: https://www.jta.org/archive/rabbi-reichert-attacks-council-for-judaism-resigns-from-organization. Surely Professor Thurber should know about her great-grandfathers change-of-heart, but to make her point, she probably chose not to mention it.
I receive daily email updates from Electronic Intifada (https://electronicintifada.net), a website founded to globalize the intifada by bringing it online. I have read hundreds of articles on that site over the years, including dozens in the past few months (I also read Israeli, Jewish, and Zionist sources daily). All of the articles at Electronic Intifada are pro-Palestinian and many are anti-Zionist. But I have never seen anything there that advocates or endorses violence against Jews or is in any way anti-Semitic. The co-founder and editor of Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah, is the author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780805086669/onecountry), in which he argues for a one-state democratic solution that fully recognizes the rights of all involved. So that’s what one prominent Palestinian has in mind when he edits the Electronic Intifada and calls for a single country from the river to the sea. Of course Electronic Intifada doesn’t speak for all Palestinians, but neither does Hamas.
“I have never seen anything there that advocates or endorses violence against Jews or is in any way anti-Semitic.” Ali Abunimah has been campaigning in EI articles written around the assertion that there were no rapes on October 7 and this story is an anti-Palestinian lie told by Jews & their mainstream media co-conspirators. Previously he argued in several articles that the casualties of October 7 were inflicted largely by the IDF, not Hamas. And you see no anti-Semitism…
I recall at least some of the articles you are referring to but your summaries misrepresent them. Abunimah and others have argued that some aspects of the Israeli narrative about October 7 are not supported by evidence and have provided alternative claims and evidence of their own. There’s nothing anti-Semitic about that.
I especially welcomed these remarks from Amie Thurber: “But you have only referred to those Jews who find offense at this or other phrases. Why does our perspective not matter? Does that mean that you do not see us as Jewish people? This concerns me because there is a longstanding tactic of trying to silence dissent among Jews by claiming they are not truly Jewish. This erasure is antisemitic.”
Although I’m not sure I would label this erasure as antisemitic (perhaps), it is at the very least manifestly unwelcoming to the growing number of Jews who do not share the perspective of the American Jewish establishment groups, including Hillel, the ADL and the American Jewish Committee. I’m at San Diego State and the only remaining dissenting member of the presidential taskforce on addressing antisemitism. Originally there were several other students and faculty with dissenting views but as we’ve all come under harsh attack, the others have left the group. I’ve tried to reach out to the SDSU president and several other top officials to indicate both the diverse Jewish perspectives on Israel-Palestine and the harsh attacks we’ve encountered but have been met with silence. I’ve found that the leadership only responds to the establishment views. It even gives a rep from the ADL and the AJC institutional representation in shaping supposed time, place, and manner views on the recognition of student orgs and their expression. The fact that a number of Jews recoil at the close-mindedness of the establishment groups and offer a very different Jewish-informed perspective is dismissed as apparently inconvenient. Amie Thurber is correct that university leaders need a more sophisticated and inclusive view of Jewish perspectives and that their failure to date makes a growing number of Jews, especially students, unwelcome.