Officials at Columbia University, facing surging tensions on campus that raised safety concerns, have announced all classes will be virtual on Monday as Passover begins.
Columbia President Minouche Shafik said in a statement the decision was made to “deescalate the rancor and give us all a chance to consider next steps.”
The move underscores how tense the situation has become at the Ivy League school and the enormous challenge facing Shafik to get the situation under control.
Could it be that some of the protesters are antisemitic and they are using the protest as cover? I don’t know that this is the right step to take, but this is really the perfect time for actual bigots to make attacks. It’s Israel’s fault since they associate themselves with Judaism and they’re the ones perpetrating the genocide, but that doesn’t change anything.
Yeah it looks like there’s some peaceful protesting going on, that’s also attracting more extremist elements. At least that’s what I got from reading the article.
It’s always a risk when ethnic groups are involved in conflicts of any sort and there are protests elsewhere in the world. It gives bigots cover.
I haven’t seen any actual anti-semitism though, all I’ve seen is vague allusions to it by the media.
Sort of hard to know on an individual level, but it certainly doesn’t seem to be a widespread problem. I will say I’ve encountered it a couple of times on Lemmy in the past few weeks. Thankfully, they were pretty swiftly dealt with by admins.
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The protests against Israel are a perfect cover for anti semitic assholes to spread their hate. I live in an area with a large Jewish population. Plenty of anti semitic shit has popped up, the most blatant being swastikas painted outside of Jewish schools with “free gaza” tagged along side it.
I’m actually shocked to have someone say theyve seen no antisemitism in these protests. Do you live in an area with few or no Jewish people?
Considering that many of the people at these protests are jewish themselves, it’s a bit of an absurd worry.
Criticizing Israel is not anti-semitic. I’ve seen no swastikas at the protests, please refrain from being dishonest.
Considering you avoided my question, I bet it’s safe to assume you don’t live around many Jewish people.
Can’t see things happening at the protests if you don’t see the protests at all. Taps forehead
I mean, ffs, even this article is quoting someone from the pro Palestine protests that is trying to distance themselves from the anti semitic outsiders who have latched onto it.
No, you pivoted from the protests to talking about how you saw graffiti outside schools. You know that the protests are not anti-semitic so you have to try and shift things.
There are plenty of jewish people where I live, not that it’s relevant.
lol “Free Gaza” is not a protest because, well, it was done in graffiti!
You also ignored that, in the article we are responding to, from the mouths of pro-Palenstine protestors, that it is happening.
There is no doubt at this point that the claim of “refrain from being dishonest” was, no surprise, a projection.
The protestors are literally leading inter-faith prayers, and many of them are jewish. You can’t on one one say jewish students fear for their safety while on the other hand the jewish students are oarticipating in the anti-genocide protest…
There is zero evidence presented in the article that jewish students are unsafe or that there’s anti-semitism being tolerated by the protestors.
False dichotomy and putting words in my mouth. Well played.
Funny, when you accused me earlier of “pivoting,” it’s like you were warning me that you were going to pivot when the point became untenable.
That’s exactly what happened with the confederate monuments being taken down in the late 2010’s. Neo Nazis - yes literal ones, with swastikas and SS lightening bolts on their bodies and clothes - showed up in droves. I have my own footage of it, this isn’t some random CNN photo somewhere or something. They were a serious problem in my city for a few weeks.
I don’t think people should generally defend the monuments but there is at least a discussion to be had about them on a case by case basis in rare instances. So the real monsters use that as cover to provide a sensible-seeming veneer to their awful hatred.
I was with you until this. Criticizing Israel’s government is absolutely legit (and IMO justified at the moment) but criticizing Jews for being Jewish is… weird.
I’m not criticizing Jews for being Jewish. I’m Jewish. What I am not is Israeli, despite them trying to associate me with them.
Gotcha, agreed. To be fair, there is a LOT of antisemitism on the Palestinian/Arab side, so the Israeli govt is not the only one causing this conflation of Israeli policy and Judaism at large.
To be fair, why do you think they’re antisemitic? Could it be the years and years of oppression under Israel, who have conflated themselves with Judaism the entire time?
This isn’t me saying that antisemitism is good, but the same reason you were confused about the ties between Judaism and Israel (and lack thereof) is probably the same thing going through their heads.
I’m going to assume you mean well, but this is bordering on “She was asking for it, did you see what she was wearing?”