Well said. Slow Boring's younger staff are obsessed with gaslighting Jews that they're imagining the breadth and depth of left-wing antisemitism, especially on campus. It's pretty weird how many different articles on Slow Boring attempted to tell us to ignore what we're seeing, pro Hamas students and faculty aren't actually anti Jewish. It's so tedious that I set my subscription to cancel after this year. That's not a centrist publication any more - it's one more place where Gen Z staffers from elite universities turn news and opinion every more antisemitic, or in this case make excuses for the antisemitism of the "just anti Zionist, not antisemitic" (but actually) anti Jewish left.
Interesting analogy, Dr. Graboyes. I grew up in the lower-middle class of the South in the 60's and 70's, and saw a lot of the "omicron" variant antisemitism, which like most racial prejudice was just absorbed with the RC Cola. I knew the terminology and a lot of the jokes; what I didn't know was any actual Jews. How surprising, in college, to find out they were pretty much like everybody else, except maybe on Friday night.
The "delta" variant I haven't personally experienced, but it seems more dangerous because it is intentionally learned. As per Josh Billings, it's not what they don't know, it's what they know for sure that isn't so.
I think Prof Al Gharbi should quit the gaslighting. We know what we saw October 7 and we know what we saw on American and other universities since then.
The Americans who told Jewish jokes and made snide remarks about Jewish noses in the 1960s were country-club types, or even urban street types. These antisemites didn't boycott Jewish businesses, crowd around Jewish delis plastering ugly signs on the walls or breaking windows, keep Jewish scientists from delivering lectures, or get hold of bricks and smash the faces of Hasidim.
Or chase Jewish students into libraries.
Or amass and mob in the hundreds and thousands and block major thoroughfares and transportation hubs, leaving broken glass and graffiti in their wake.
What's happening now is what happened early on in Nazi Germany.
If I thought young people woefully undereducated last year, and I did, I am more than ever convinced that going easy on students, praising every bit of drivel they did, and awarding them participation prizes, policies ill-advised. That they can be swayed by murderous religious fanatics in headscarves to do what they're doing is no wonder.
Which doesn't mean I do not remember the "RESTRICTED" sign posted in the 1950s on the lawn of a well-known cooperative apartment complex in Washington Heights. It was the first long word I ever sounded out, and my father told me what it meant.
It wasn't nice, but it wasn't what we have out there now either.
What you are seeing now, to use your analogy, is the virus mutated and let loose upon a body already wracked by another disease, DEI. The young people, already prone to do what young people do - rebel, have been fed decades of hate and the belief that people of various backgrounds must be separated and judged accordingly. The outcome, if considered in those terms, is fairly predictable. Thus the wry "welcome to the club" that you see amongst many conservative white males. Unless and until we once again begin teach that people are individuals, not members of some monolithic group with their moral value cooked in at birth by their immutable characteristics, the path will get harder and darker for anyone on the "wrong" side of the road.
Dr. al-Gharbi says “[S]urveys suggest that more than 80 percent of scholars who work on Middle East issues self-censor on the subject of Israel and Palestine. Overwhelmingly, self-censorship entails *refraining* from criticism of Israel …” and, amazingly, adduces this datum as evidence those 80 percent of scholars are *not* antisemitic!
Thank you for this terrific piece. As a boomer non-Jewish woman I say when Jews and gays aren’t safe, women aren’t safe. Now the threat comes from the so-called left more than the so-called right. Academic idiocy is not a shock: they carry a lot of terrorist-supportive baggage.
Re: "if one argues that Israel is engaged in genocide, apartheid, or U.S.-style racism, one is employing antisemitic tropes—plain and simple": How so? All three of these items have definitions that have nothing to do with antisemitism, and the fact that a former Israeli prime minister and former top-level people in the Israeli government, not to mention many thoughtful Jews, have said that Israel is an apartheid state makes the charge of antisemitism against these people hard to accept. Do you agree that the Israeli government has been harsh, to put it mildly, in its treatment of the Palestinians since 1948 and astonishingly barbaric to innocent Palestinians since October 7? Even if you don't think so, many people do, including, again, many Jews. And when you see videos of Israeli soldiers celebrating the killing of innocent people (Glenn Greenwald, who hosted a debate/conversation between a pro-Israel/Zionist Jew and a pro-Palestinian journalist or scholar, had some pretty shocking such videos on his show recently), a possible explanation, though not approval, of the rising antisemitism might suggest itself. Netanyahu, who is captured on tape talking about how he propped up Hamas, is not a good man, not a man of peace, and he is fueling some of the antisemitism that is very painful to watch.
Thank you for the detailed essay and for setting the example of charity of mind towards those who earnestly disagree with you. If everyone on the internet and in media did that, we would all be enjoying a happier and more productive intercourse of ideas.
Well said. Slow Boring's younger staff are obsessed with gaslighting Jews that they're imagining the breadth and depth of left-wing antisemitism, especially on campus. It's pretty weird how many different articles on Slow Boring attempted to tell us to ignore what we're seeing, pro Hamas students and faculty aren't actually anti Jewish. It's so tedious that I set my subscription to cancel after this year. That's not a centrist publication any more - it's one more place where Gen Z staffers from elite universities turn news and opinion every more antisemitic, or in this case make excuses for the antisemitism of the "just anti Zionist, not antisemitic" (but actually) anti Jewish left.
Interesting analogy, Dr. Graboyes. I grew up in the lower-middle class of the South in the 60's and 70's, and saw a lot of the "omicron" variant antisemitism, which like most racial prejudice was just absorbed with the RC Cola. I knew the terminology and a lot of the jokes; what I didn't know was any actual Jews. How surprising, in college, to find out they were pretty much like everybody else, except maybe on Friday night.
The "delta" variant I haven't personally experienced, but it seems more dangerous because it is intentionally learned. As per Josh Billings, it's not what they don't know, it's what they know for sure that isn't so.
I think Prof Al Gharbi should quit the gaslighting. We know what we saw October 7 and we know what we saw on American and other universities since then.
The Americans who told Jewish jokes and made snide remarks about Jewish noses in the 1960s were country-club types, or even urban street types. These antisemites didn't boycott Jewish businesses, crowd around Jewish delis plastering ugly signs on the walls or breaking windows, keep Jewish scientists from delivering lectures, or get hold of bricks and smash the faces of Hasidim.
Or chase Jewish students into libraries.
Or amass and mob in the hundreds and thousands and block major thoroughfares and transportation hubs, leaving broken glass and graffiti in their wake.
What's happening now is what happened early on in Nazi Germany.
If I thought young people woefully undereducated last year, and I did, I am more than ever convinced that going easy on students, praising every bit of drivel they did, and awarding them participation prizes, policies ill-advised. That they can be swayed by murderous religious fanatics in headscarves to do what they're doing is no wonder.
Which doesn't mean I do not remember the "RESTRICTED" sign posted in the 1950s on the lawn of a well-known cooperative apartment complex in Washington Heights. It was the first long word I ever sounded out, and my father told me what it meant.
It wasn't nice, but it wasn't what we have out there now either.
What you are seeing now, to use your analogy, is the virus mutated and let loose upon a body already wracked by another disease, DEI. The young people, already prone to do what young people do - rebel, have been fed decades of hate and the belief that people of various backgrounds must be separated and judged accordingly. The outcome, if considered in those terms, is fairly predictable. Thus the wry "welcome to the club" that you see amongst many conservative white males. Unless and until we once again begin teach that people are individuals, not members of some monolithic group with their moral value cooked in at birth by their immutable characteristics, the path will get harder and darker for anyone on the "wrong" side of the road.
Dr. al-Gharbi says “[S]urveys suggest that more than 80 percent of scholars who work on Middle East issues self-censor on the subject of Israel and Palestine. Overwhelmingly, self-censorship entails *refraining* from criticism of Israel …” and, amazingly, adduces this datum as evidence those 80 percent of scholars are *not* antisemitic!
Thank you for this terrific piece. As a boomer non-Jewish woman I say when Jews and gays aren’t safe, women aren’t safe. Now the threat comes from the so-called left more than the so-called right. Academic idiocy is not a shock: they carry a lot of terrorist-supportive baggage.
Re: "if one argues that Israel is engaged in genocide, apartheid, or U.S.-style racism, one is employing antisemitic tropes—plain and simple": How so? All three of these items have definitions that have nothing to do with antisemitism, and the fact that a former Israeli prime minister and former top-level people in the Israeli government, not to mention many thoughtful Jews, have said that Israel is an apartheid state makes the charge of antisemitism against these people hard to accept. Do you agree that the Israeli government has been harsh, to put it mildly, in its treatment of the Palestinians since 1948 and astonishingly barbaric to innocent Palestinians since October 7? Even if you don't think so, many people do, including, again, many Jews. And when you see videos of Israeli soldiers celebrating the killing of innocent people (Glenn Greenwald, who hosted a debate/conversation between a pro-Israel/Zionist Jew and a pro-Palestinian journalist or scholar, had some pretty shocking such videos on his show recently), a possible explanation, though not approval, of the rising antisemitism might suggest itself. Netanyahu, who is captured on tape talking about how he propped up Hamas, is not a good man, not a man of peace, and he is fueling some of the antisemitism that is very painful to watch.
Robert,
Thank you for the detailed essay and for setting the example of charity of mind towards those who earnestly disagree with you. If everyone on the internet and in media did that, we would all be enjoying a happier and more productive intercourse of ideas.
Best,
42W