Israeli diplomat pressured US college to drop course on ‘apartheid’ debate

pleasemakesense@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 206 points –
Israeli diplomat pressured US college to drop course on ‘apartheid’ debate
theguardian.com
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Criticising Israel is not anti-semitism, god damn it.

If anything, lumping all Jewish people in with an oppressive apartheid state is just as antisemitic as lumping in all Muslims with Hamas and other Salafist extremist groups is Islamophobic.

For you assholes downvoting this, how about you speak up and provide an argument as to why criticizing the government of Israel is antisemitic, since you obviously don't agree with @800XL.

Seriously. Instead of just disagreeing, enlighten us. I'm open to legitimate conversation.

Disagreeing with a political state is not the same as being against an ethnic or racial group. Tell me why this is wrong.

Nothing to see here, just Fascists being Fascist.

This is the best summary I could come up with:


The Israeli consul for public diplomacy in New York, Yuval Donio-Gideon, took the highly unusual step of contacting Bard College earlier this year to object to the course, Apartheid in Israel-Palestine, on the grounds that it breached the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

Bard, which runs a joint-degree program with a Palestinian university, Al-Quds in the West Bank, awarded Thrall a writing fellowship which he used to complete his recently published book, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy.

In September, a former head of the Mossad intelligence agency, Tamir Pardo, joined a rising number of prominent Israelis in comparing the occupation of the West Bank to South Africa’s defunct system of racial oppression.

The consulate’s intervention came at a time when the Israeli government was threatening to “publish a ranking of the most antisemitic campuses in the US; to shame institutions that promote anti-Israel positions, where Jewish students feel unsafe”.

The Israeli consulate in New York said in a statement that it had a “moral imperative to alert academic institutions about content that defames Israel and could incite antisemitism and jeopardize the safety of Jewish students on campus”.

The UCJF’s executive director, David Drimer, told a local newspaper, the Daily Freeman, that Bard was influenced in its decision to hold the course by a $500m endowment to the college from George Soros who has been at the centre of antisemitic conspiracy theories on the right.


The original article contains 1,240 words, the summary contains 246 words. Saved 80%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

It's ridiculous that they're monitoring what courses are being taught at schools/colleges and have the ability to blackmail them into censorship.

It's about time we strip them of these privileges. I think they should lose their ability to abuse anti-semitism when they carry out those same injustices to other people.

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What's there to debate about? 💀

Completely not relevant to anything here, and apologies for that, but what is behind the use of that emoji? I've seen it more the past 2-3 years, and this is likely a old-fart issue. Maybe something from TikTok?

Pretty much the same as 😂 or 😭 in regards to laughing. The literal meaning would be "I'm dead"

That's good to know. I've wonder a few times if it was "Drop dead plz" or the self-actionable variant.

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