I had a conversation the other day with a woman associated with a very liberal Protestant church who’d been organizing a charitable event for Gaza. The event was a dinner intended to raise money for a well-known medical relief organization. The event was a success, but she told me with chagrin that she had to be careful to advertise it in such a way as to avoid mentioning it to those members of the congregation who might have objected.
Continue readingTag Archives: Gaza
Divestment and Complicity
I’ve reproduced a comment of mine below the fold from the website of Princeton Alumni Weekly, responding to critics of the student divestment campaign described in my previous post. One critic had said: “I fail to see why students on campus should vote on how the University invests its funds.” Another had said: “Students shouldn’t be ‘running’ the University any more than alumnae/alumni should. Leave investing to the experts hired by the University to manage the endowment funds.” Continue reading
Divestment at Princeton
Princeton’s Silence Is Our Weapon
I’m happy to report that Princeton University’s undergraduate student Referendum #5 has passed by a margin of 68% to 32%. A referendum has to win at least 65% of the vote to pass, so this one did. The referendum calls on the University to disclose and divest all direct and indirect holdings in companies involved in weapons development, manufacturing, or trade, giving first priority to disclosing and divesting direct holdings in Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX (formerly Raytheon), and General Dynamics, weapons manufacturers with documented ties to human rights violations. It also calls on the university to increase communication and accountability on socially responsible investments with the student body and campus community. Continue reading
No Tears for Zvi Kogan
If you look at virtually any mainstream media outlet this morning (The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, The Forward, Fox News, The Times of Israel, The Jerusalem Post, etc.), you’re likely to encounter a story about the “murder” of one Rabbi Zvi Kogan in Dubai. Apparently, Kogan was abducted on Thursday and killed sometime between then and now. His body was found early this morning, Dubai time. Every “Western” outlet I’ve looked at his played this story in an identical way, one that essentially follows the PR line of the Israeli government: Kogan was a rabbi, a man of religion and peace. He was in Dubai to do outreach work on behalf of Israel–hence The Jewish People–to the Arab world. For this the good man was slain. His murder was a vile act of anti-Semitic terrorism, and that’s all it was. Let us all condemn the act, and let us all weep for the loss of the deceased, an innocent civilian lost to the murderous Jew haters of the Arab world. Continue reading
Fajr Scientific Banned from Gaza
Two weeks ago, I posted here on Fajr Scientific’s Gaza Medical Evacuation Initiative. I’ve just learned that the initiative has been canceled, as the Israeli government has now banned Fajr from operating in Gaza. This decision comes a few weeks after the release, by 99 physicians associated with Fajr and similar medical organizations, of an Open Letter to President Biden and Vice President Harris, providing medical testimony and forensic evidence that the Israeli military had, among other things, been executing Gazan children by shooting them directly in the head and chest.
From the letter (bold type in original):
Children are universally considered innocents in armed conflict. However, every single signatory to this letter saw children in Gaza who suffered violence that must have been deliberately directed at them. Specifically, every one of us who worked in an emergency, intensive care, or surgical setting treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head or chest on a regular or even a daily basis. It is impossible that such widespread shooting of young children throughout Gaza, sustained over the course of an entire year is accidental or unknown to the highest Israeli civilian and military authorities.
Here is the appendix to the letter. This article contains images of X-rays showing bullets lodged in children’s heads and throat (the trajectory in the latter case being through the forehead). Here’s a link to The New York Times essay discussing the evidence (may be paywalled). Continue reading
No One is to Advocate Anything Until I Blow This Whistle
The New York Times has a click-baitish headline about Hamas on the front page, except that unlike most click-bait headlines, this one happens both to be click-bait and true.
“Pro-Palestinian Group at Columbia Now Backs ‘Armed Resistance’ by Hamas”
It’s true. They do. Of course, at this point, a headline like that is a bit like one ca. 1943 that said:
“Pro-Jewish Group at Columbia Now Backs ‘Armed Resistance’ by Stalin’s Red Army”
Or, how about, ca. 1944: Continue reading
Arrested Princeton Students’ Statement on Court Appearance
Princeton, New Jersey
5 months ago, 15 of us were arrested for protesting the University’s complicity in the ongoing genocide against the people of Gaza. 2 of us—both graduate students—were arrested on the 25th of April minutes after the launch of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. 13 of us—Princeton students, researchers, and affiliates—were arrested on the 29th of April for participating in a peaceful protest in a University administrative building. At the time of our arrests, the university barred us from campus and evicted us from university housing, all without formal disciplinary charges. Weeks later, the university conducted a “disciplinary investigation” and sanctioned us with four years of disciplinary probation. One of us, postdoctoral researcher Sam Nastaste, remains barred from campus. These measures are far harsher than Princeton’s response to previous campus protests.
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Crazy Like a Foxman: The ADL’s Descent into Racist Sociopathy
Abraham Foxman was for decades the National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, and is currently its National Director Emeritus. Paul Surovell, a Facebook friend of mine, is a peace activist and Chair of South Mountain Peace Action in Maplewood, New Jersey. The exchange between them (below the fold) is both revealing and astonishing.
Revealing because despite using them all his career, Abraham Foxman literally has no idea what the word “libel” or the phrase “blood libel” actually mean. Astonishing because Surovell’s final accusation really is as obvious as he says it is: Foxman’s aversion to the very acknowledgement of Palestinian suffering seems to suggest either that Palestinian suffering doesn’t exist, or that it’s deserved even in children, or that even if it exists, it doesn’t merit acknowledgement. Why else would that be, except on the assumption that non-Jewish suffering by definition takes a back seat to Jewish suffering? How much clearer could the sheer dehumanization of Palestinians get?
Continue readingAuschwitz: Some Reminders
This Monday, January 27, marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. We’re constantly being enjoined “never to forget” the significance of this day. Just to remind you of what actually happened on January 27, 1945: the Red Army defeated the Wehrmacht, wresting Auschwitz from the Nazis, liberating its inmates in one sense, and “liberating” Poland in a somewhat different one. Recall that it was the Soviet government that, in league with the Nazis, carved up and invaded Poland to start the war in the first place. Had they not done so, there might never have been an Auschwitz. And recall that we then spent the Cold War fighting the government of this same Red Army, which arguably went on to instigate the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, and commit genocide in Afghanistan. Continue reading
Letters to Our Ruling Class (3): Protesting the Killings in Gaza
JVP Northern New Jersey will be hand-delivering this letter at the Newark offices of Senators Menendez and Booker on May 30th, at noon.
Policy of Truth 