Columbia University faces full-blown crisis as rabbi calls for Jewish students to “return home”

News@lemmy.world – 128 points – 2 months ago

Columbia University faces full-blown crisis as rabbi calls for Jewish students to ‘return home’ | CNN

The situation at Columbia has even drawn the attention of the White House, joining local leaders in urging calm.

“While every American has the right to peaceful protest, calls for violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community are blatantly antisemitic, unconscionable, and dangerous,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement shared with CNN on Sunday.

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Sooo... where's the antisemitism these liberal pundits are all getting hysterical about and wants to pretend poses some kind of "antisemitic" threat to Jewish people at this university?

Oh, right... here it is.

“Columbia students organizing in solidarity with Palestine – including Jewish students – have faced harassment, doxxing, and now arrest by the NYPD. These are the main threats to the safety of Jewish Columbia students,” Jonathan Ben-Menachem, a PhD student, told CNN.

Ie, all the antisemitism is coming from the usual sources - the US political establishment, it's pet media and it's goon squads.

The antisemitism is coming from inside the house

It always has... antisemitism is a western invention.

Considering Judaism is a western religion, no duh?

Right, Judaism is so "western" that it existed long before the west existed. Much "western."

I'd say I'm sorry that obvious historical fact disturbs so many liberals - but I won't. Because I'm not.

I'm sorry your hot take is what here exactly? Antisemitism didn't exist before the cultural concept of 'the west'? Because that's just patently false

You do understand that we can track where antisemitism comes from, right? Even all the way past the Spanish Reconquista and the subsequent instututionalization of the very first race laws?

White supremacism and antisemitism is as fundamental to "western civilization" as... well - I guess there really isn't anything else to "western civilization," is there? And that includes the liberalism that's overflowing here on lemmy.world.

I never said the west didnt/doesn't practice antisemitism, but to call a "Western invention" is patently false. And just sprinkling "liberalism" throughout your comments doesn't make you sound like an enlightened leftist, it makes you sound uneducated. You can't even identify it and you're just calling people liberals left and right lmao. How can Judaism simultaneously both predate the West and antisemitism be invented by the west? Antisemitism has existed since the beginning, literally in their own books.

Wanna take a wild guess who invented the term "Semitic." liberal?

1879 statute of the Antisemitic League, the organization which first popularized the term.

You were saying, liberal?

How can Judaism simultaneously both predate the West and antisemitism be invented by the west?

You do realize that people existed in Africa before "western civilization" invented "race science", right?

Please take a moment to appreciate just how garbage your understanding of history really is. You know what they say - acknowledging your condition is the first step toward recovery.

We're not talking about race science we're talking about hatred for Jews existing long before the concept of 'the west'. You're either willfully ignorant of non Western countries xenophobia or you're an apologist. Sounds like a pretty liberal stance to me, liberal.

we’re talking about hatred for Jews existing long before

PThen you should have no problem proving it, should you?

You’re either willfully ignorant of non Western countries xenophobia

Yeah... attempting to excuse the west's invention of white supremacism and antisemitism by pretending "everybody else was doing it, too" is about as ahistorical and apologetic as it gets, lib.

So yes, you are actively pushing propaganda. Goodbye

PThen you should have no problem proving it, should you?

Yeah it was actually rather easy, just one Google search away to know you're spouting bullshit.

The first clear examples of anti-Jewish sentiment can be traced back to Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE. Alexandrian Jewry were the largest Jewish community in the world and the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, was produced there. Manetho, an Egyptian priest and historian of that time, wrote scathingly of the Jews and his themes are repeated in the works of Chaeremon, Lysimachus, Poseidonius, Apollonius Molon, and in Apion and Tacitus.

Source: The History of Antisemitism, Classical Period (Wikipedia)

Yeah... attempting to excuse the west's invention of white supremacism

I don't think I saw the commenter you're replying to ever try to excuse Western White Supremacism, or say they didn't invent it. I think they were merely pointing out that there's been anti-jewish hatred for far longer than there's been a "West".

Thank you for being the only sane person in this thread 😭

Yeah it was actually rather easy, just one Google search away to know you’re spouting bullshit.

Maybe try reading your own sources next time.

From your own source:

However, Bohak has argued that early animosity against the Jews cannot be regarded as being anti-Judaic or antisemitic unless it arose from attitudes that were held against the Jews alone, because many Greeks showed animosity towards any group which they considered barbaric.

Yet more from your own source:

Edward Flannery describes the form of antisemitism which existed in ancient times as being essentially "cultural, taking the shape of a national xenophobia which was played out in political settings"

And yet more from your own source:

The terms "religious antisemitism" and "anti-Judaism" are sometimes used in reference to animosity towards Judaism as a religion rather than antisemitism, which is used in reference to animosity towards Jews as members of an ethnic or racial group

And the most important bit you and the other libs on here are so desperate to ignore (italics mine for the terminally bewildered):

The coming of the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions in 19th-century Europe bred a new manifestation of antisemitism (ie, actually racialized antisemitism - the only antisemitism there is), based as much upon race as upon religion, which culminated in the Holocaust that occurred during World War II.

Are you starting to see a pattern yet, lib? Or do you still want to pretend that western "race science" can simply by swept under the rug by appealing to "everyboy-was-doing-it-ism"?

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