Jasbir Puar at Vassar and a new justification for homophobia

Jasbir Puar, an Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, recently gave a speech at Vassar College called "Inhumanist Biopolitics: How Palestine Matters." She was invited by the American Studies Program and her talk was cosponsored by Africana Studies, English, International Studies, Jewish Studies, Political Science, Religion, and Women’s Studies. William Jacobson, a Cornell professor of law, who also publishes the blog Legal Insurrection, recently posted a long article about Puar's talk - Vassar faculty sponsored anti-Israel event erupts in controversy. He quoted extensively from a transcript of the talk, prepared from a recording made by a member of an alumni/parent group called Fairness to Israel. (There was a request made not to record the speech, but FTI did so anyway). (All quotes here from Jacobson's article).

Before I give my brief remarks, I would like to request that you silence your devices you brought with you so as not to disrupt the conversation with Professor Puar is conducting with us today. I would also like to request on her behalf and on behalf of the rest of the assembly that you refrain from recording this evening’s proceedings, in the spirit of congeniality and mutual respect, though it is not against the law, to record someone vocation professional labor without informing them, it is quite unseemly and violates the modest contract of trust essential to the exchange of ideas.

William Jacobson has eviscerated the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish features of Puar's talk, but here I discuss the introduction that the Vassar faculty member gave to her talk.

Professor Puar is a Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University who has established herself as one of the preeminent scholars of Queer Theory.

Having produced work on par with Judith Butler, Robyn Wiegman, Jack Halberstam, and Sara Ahmed. Her widely acclaimed book Terrorist Assemblages published in 2007 explores the ascendant phenomenon of homonationalism, arguing that the new sexual inclusiveness of Western nations is not so much a sign of social progressivism but rather a tactic to shore up and re-invigorate existing hierarchies of race, gender and sexuality toward the end of furthering military initiatives like the U.S. war on terror. This evening, Professor Puar returns to a site of inquiry that to her offers a particular example of how states re-engineer sexual cultures for the purposes of making war: the State of Israel.

I've written about this new concept "homonationalism," before on this blog, and about my objections to it. I view this notion as homophobia in another form, this time justified not by traditional religious teachings or contemporary anti-gay political movements, but by people who consider themselves to be radical leftists. Puar's argument, as summarized in this paragraph, sees the limited positive effects of the feminist movement and the movements for LGBT rights not as social progress but as a means to support US militarism. It's a kind of conspiracy-theory argument - the fact that the US Supreme Court struck down anti-same-sex marriage laws, and other countries around the world have legalized same-sex marriage is taken not as a laudable sign of progress towards making the lives of LGBT people better, but as a covert project to support military initiatives. I do not see how improving the lives of women and LBGT can be viewed in any way as supporting militarism (in any country). In what sane evaluation of the activities and successes of the LGBT rights movement can the legalization of same-sex marriage be regarded as "re-invigorating existing hierarchies of race, gender, and sexuality"? Doesn't the ability of a same-sex couple now to get married in the US actually diminish the previously-existing hierarchy which valued male-female relationships entirely above same-sex ones?

Of course, legalizing same-sex marriages is not the only goal of the LGBT rights movement - one of the really big unfinished tasks is the passage of a federal law making illegal anti-LGBT discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodation. A same sex couple can get married in every state in the US, but in many states it is still entirely legal to fire someone for being gay or lesbian or transgender, or to prevent someone from renting an apartment or buying a house or any number of other ordinary human activities.

Vassar College Students for Justice in Palestine lauds Leila Khaled, terrorist hijacker

As before, in the spring of 2014, Vassar SJP just doesn't know when to stop. This t-shirt, with the image of Leila Khaled and the caption "resistance is not terrorism," is going to be sold at their events. by an organization called Existence is Resistance.

Leila Khaled was involved in the hijacking of two airplanes in 1969 and 1970. She is a member of the PFLP - Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The Wikipedia article on her gives information about both of the hijackings:

On August 29, 1969, Khaled was part of a team that hijacked TWA Flight 840 on its way from Rome to Athens, diverting the Boeing 707 to Damascus. She claims she ordered the pilot to fly over Haifa, so she could see her birthplace, which she could not visit.[10] No one was injured, but the aircraft was blown up after hostages had disembarked.

On September 6, 1970, Khaled and Patrick Argüello, a Nicaraguan-American, attempted the hijack of El Al Flight 219 from Amsterdam to New York City as part of the Dawson's Field hijackings, a series of almost simultaneous hijackings carried out by the PFLP. The attack was foiled, when Israeli skymarshals killed Argüello before eventually overpowering Khaled. Although she was carrying two hand grenades at the time, Khaled said she had received very strict instructions not to threaten passengers on the civilian flight.[10] (Argüello shot a member of the flight crew.)[13] 

The pilot diverted the aircraft to Heathrow airport in London, where Khaled was delivered to Ealing police station. On October 1, the British government released her in exchange for hostages taken in a further hijacking.[14]"

A fine hero for SJP at Vassar to have - an airplane hijacker who managed to avoid jail. Apparently the people in the two planes that she hijacked - TWA 840 and El Al 219 - don't matter to them. The terrorist, not the victims, is the one they laud. They don't appear to be able to imagine themselves as the terrified passengers, wondering what was going to happen to them when armed attackers take over their planes. No, what they like is "sweet fucking antiZionist gear."

Update - see also http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/26228/

More on this at http://commonsensewonder.blogspot.com/2016/02/anti-semitism-on-college-campus-here-at.html (also quoting my blog).

Further articles about SJP at Vassar

Daily News editorial about Vassar and SJP:

Vile at Vassar 

A college finally cracks down on anti-Israel extremists
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Saturday, May 17, 2014, 4:10 AM

After allowing an anti-Semitic, anti-Israel infection to fester for months, the president of Vassar College has finally taken a stand for academic freedom and decency. That it took a display of actual World War II Nazi propaganda for her to act is appalling. 

President Catharine Hill slammed the anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine after the group attempted to tar pro-Israel advocates by displaying on the Internet a poster created in 1944 to sow anti-American feeling among the Dutch under German rule.
The cartoon image, under the heading “Liberators,” shows a monster stomping on a European city while wearing a Star of David, holding a money bag clutched by a long-nosed man, bearing a U.S. flag and cloaked in a Ku Klux Klan hood. 

Stirring from her slumber, Hill announced a review of SJP’s status (the group had not yet been granted full campus credentials), said Vassar would probe use of the image “as a bias incident under college regulations,” ordered SJP to “cease representing itself as an official Vassar group” and asked that “the SJP Vassar membership take responsibility for its actions.” Fat chance. 

SJP has been running wild on the Poughkeepsie campus — hosting an obscene “Israel Apartheid Week” and trying to disrupt a college course for students taking a Vassar-sponsored trip to Israel. 

Hill gave a pass to that violation of academic freedom and campus conduct codes. All too predictably, an overflow campus forum discussing the Israel trip then degenerated into a near mob, with Israel-haters hurling invective at Jews and backers of Israel.
Faculty members have joined the depravity. Thirty-nine professors protested after Hill properly said in January that Vassar would not join the American Studies Association’s anti-Semitism-tinged call for boycotting Israeli universities. 

The 39 backed the boycott, with some asserting that Hill’s action “silenced discourse on campus,” as one put it. Duh, they claim they want dialogue while supporting a boycott against dialogue. 

Then it turned out that the 39 lacked the courage of their convictions. When Cornell University Law School professor Bill Jacobson challenged the entire group to debate the merits of boycotting Israel, they all ducked. So on May 5, Jacobson spoke — without fee — on campus at the invitation of the Vassar Conservative Libertarian Union, which is headed by a Muslim student. 

The libertarian union had sought co-sponsorships for Jacobson’s talk from numerous student groups and academic departments. All refused, a fact that demonstrates how strongly anti-Israel sentiment holds sway at Vassar, perhaps inducing a climate of fear among those who feel otherwise. 

Consider that five days before Jacobson’s visit, Israel-bashers Ali Abunimah and Max Blumenthal stopped at Vassar on a national road show selling separate books calling for Israel’s destruction. Paid for by student activity fees and departmental funds, their event was sponsored not only by SJP but by Vassar’s departments of religion, political science, sociology, English and geography. 

For good measure, the Jewish Studies program, the International Studies program and a variety of student groups signed on in support. 

In his talk, Jacobson demolished the rationales behind the BDS movement, a cause that seeks to delegitimize Israel through boycotts on trade, disinvestment in the Jewish state and economic sanctions. During 90 minutes, he proved that the boycott of Israel is based on factual, historical and legal falsities and is anti-Semitic. 

SJP responded on the web by attacking Jacobson and the audience of “old white people” and rolling out its artwork. First were nasty cartoons from racist and “white power” websites. One showed Israel inflicting a Holocaust on Palestinians and the other said that the Nazi Holocaust cows the West from criticizing Israel. 

Then SJP used the Nazi poster, putting the group beyond even Hill’s tolerance of intolerance.

 JTA published an article a couple of days ago:

Vassar pro-Palestinian group under review for Nazi cartoon

May 16, 2014 8:28am

(JTA) — The Vassar College chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine is being reviewed by administrators after the group posted a Nazi cartoon online. 

The post on the Vassar SJP Tumblr page, which has since been removed, showed a Nazi propaganda poster depicting a many-armed figure sporting a Jewish loincloth and holding a bag of money and an American flag, among other things. The cartoon is captioned “liberators.” 

On Wednesday, Vassar President Catherine Hill announced that SJP’s status as an approved student group is under review. 

“The college is also investigating the SJP’s online posting as a bias incident under college regulations,” Hill said in a statement. “I also request that the SJP Vassar membership take responsibility for its actions and cease representing itself as an official Vassar group, pending these investigations. Vassar College is committed to free speech and academic freedom, but we condemn racist, hateful speech.” 

Vassar SJP apologized Tuesday on its Tumblr account for lax social media oversight.
“We condemn any and all hate speech including any form of anti-Semitism and we are deeply sorry several offensive posts were made in SJP Vassar’s name,” the statement said. 

A German version of the JTA article was published at 02elf.net.

Also, from the Coordinating Forum for Countering Antisemitism:

United States / 16-05-2014

SJP Vassar posts a Nazi World War II propaganda poster

Source: truthrevolt

Poughkeepsie, NY - Despite their apology for posting material from Neo-Nazis and White Nationalists, the Vassar Students for Justice in Palestine have kept on doing it.

 Just today, they posted yet another antisemitic image on the Tumblr blog, this time one that is actually a Nazi propaganda poster from WWII .

Here's the image as posted on their Twitter feed. (It's now been taken down, but as of a few minutes ago it was still on Twitter).

UPDATE: Vassar college president, Catharine Hill, denounces antisemitic post of SJP

Subject: [Students] Bias incident investigation Date: Wed, 14 May 2014 21:07:47 To the Vassar Community: I am writing to condemn a racist, anti-Semitic graphic posted to the Tumblr online site affiliated with the Vassar chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). In response to this posting, the college is initiating a full investigation and action on the matter under established college procedures. SJP Vassar is a Vassar student “preliminary organization,” an initial status required of all student organizations as they seek full certification by the Vassar Student Association (VSA). I am requesting VSA review of the SJP’s pre-organization status. The college is also investigating the SJP’s online posting as a bias incident under college regulations. I also request that the SJP Vassar membership take responsibility for its actions and cease representing itself as an official Vassar group, pending these investigations. Vassar College is committed to free speech and academic freedom, but we condemn racist, hateful speech. Catharine Hill

More articles on SJP Vassar

The story about the Vassar chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine and their publication of posters and other material from Neo-Nazi and White Nationalist websites has spread more widely today, since the President of Vassar denounced them and announced that an investigation into the group has been started. Here's some recent articles:

From the local Poughkeepsie newspaper, the Poughkeepsie Journal:

An anti-Semitic online posting by a Vassar College student organization has prompted an investigation and a call for Students for Justice in Palestine to distance itself from the Town of Poughkeepsie school. 

In an email message addressed to students, faculty and employees, college President Catharine Hill condemned “a racist, anti-Semitic graphic posted to the Tumblr online site affiliated with the Vassar chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.” College spokesman Jeff Kosmacher described the graphic as a Nazi propaganda political cartoon from World War II “with a racist, white supremacist message.” 

SJP Vassar is a college “preliminary organization.” This status is required of all student organizations seeking certification by the Vassar Student Association. Kosmacher said the college administration and student association will investigate the posting, which occurred within the past week. A spokesman for SJP Vassar, speaking through Facebook, declined comment. 

Hill said in her email the college will investigate the online posting as a bias incident.
“I also request that the SJP Vassar membership take responsibility for its actions and cease representing itself as an official Vassar group, pending these investigations,” the email read. “Vassar College is committed to free speech and academic freedom, but we condemn racist, hateful speech.”

A new article from William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection on an attempt by conservative students at Vassar to put up a "wall of truth" to counter the "apartheid wall" that SJP had put up earlier this year.

The Vassar Conservative-Libertarian Union (VCLU), which sponsored my speech at Vassar, decided that it was time to protest before students left campus for the summer.
VCLU erected a Wall of Truth to counter the many defamatory and false allegations made against Israel. 

The Wall of Truth specifically was placed in the same location that Vassar SJP puts its misnomered “Apartheid Wall” during Israeli Apartheid Week. 

Julian Hassan of VCLU told me on the phone this afternoon that when VCLU put up the Wall of Truth he was confronted by administrators telling him to take it down because it was putting the campus on edge, and that there was not proper permitting. Some students also went to administrators complaining that the Wall of Truth was biased and should be taken down.

The new "wall" was taken down this afternoon by administrators at the college.

The Times of Israel posted an article today.

SJP’s Tumblr account recently published a Nazi propaganda poster by Norwegian artist Harald Damsleth captioned “Liberators” in which a many limbed monster decorated with the US flag, holding a money bag grasped by a long-nosed banker, and wearing a Star of David as a loin cloth, stomps on houses of the innocent. 

Vassar President Catherine Hill released an email Wednesday stating that SJP’s status as a campus organization is called into question. 

In response to this Nazi propaganda posting, the college is initiating a full investigation, wrote Hill.

Jonathan Marks of Commentary posted yesterday on the second SJP "apology":

This apology is better than anything SJP Vassar has said so far, though it does not account for the rant, linked to on SJP Vassar’s Facebook page, that I wrote about earlier in the week, accusing its critics of being “Zionist watchdogs,” paid by “Zionist watchdog organizations” to make “slanderous claims.” This rant, issued in the name of the organization, was presumably written in full knowledge of the posts the “SJP Vassar General Body” now disavows. 

Now consider the post that immediately follows the apology, a quotation attributed to George Habash. “In today’s world no one is innocent, no one is neutral. A man is either with the oppressor or the oppressed. He who takes no interest in politics gives his blessing to the prevailing order.” 

COMMENTARY readers will know that Habash founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an organization committed to the recovery, through violence, of the whole of what is now Israel, or what Habash called “the Occupied Territories of 1948.” The “only language,” says the PFLP’s founding document, “that the enemy understands is the language of revolutionary violence.” The PFLP pursued its program not only through a series of airline hijackings but also through actions like the 1972 Lods Airport massacre, in which terrorists working with the PFLP fired machine guns and threw grenades into crowds of people waiting in what is now Ben Gurion airport, killing 39. It is in this context that we have to consider the Habash quotation which begins, “Has it been said that these operations expose the lives of innocent people to danger?” Or, as Habash stated more boldly in a 1970 interview, to “kill a Jew far from the battlefield has more effect than killing 100 of them in battle.” That the new post-apology era begins with Habash is, to say the least, not encouraging.

A former student at Vassar (graduated two years ago) posted an article on Daily Kos:

I graduated from Vassar two years ago and I am a proud left winger, but I just can't be down with the Students for Justice in Palestine group at my alma mater. The group is full of filthy anti-Semites, who are spectacularly ignorant about everything from Nazi propaganda to Israel's defense of itself. 

When I read about how some of the SJP characters picketed an Israel class trip meeting, I couldn't help but be reminded of the images of 1960s when equally nasty white people frightened brave souls like little Ruby Bridges, or the Little Rock Nine, as they entered school. But now they've gone too far. Recently SJP-Vassar posted a Nazi propaganda poster to their Tumblr! (Notice the big-nosed Jew hiding behind the money bag in the machine's left hand.) 

.....Amazingly, the SJP can't see this bigotry (and self hate; notice the black arms in the poster?) when they invoke Nazi propaganda posters and anti-Zionist writings authored by trash like Greg Felton. When called on this bullshit the group tweeted that it didn't matter where the idea came from. Excuse me? Imagine the response if some group had quoted a prominent, anti-black racist to support an intellectual assertion. 

Tonight Vassar College president Catherine Hill took a great first step by sending out a campus email where she revoked SJP's club status and initiated an investigation of their hate speech. But some Vassarions—judging from my Facebook feed— are trying to change the subject, which goes against Vassar values. When a group is targeted, the Vassar community is supposed to address their pain, not attempt a changing of the subject. All forms of bigotry are repulsive and Vassarions should stand up against this garbage and not excuse it or try to change the subject. 

Vassar has become a reactionary, illiberal place full of unlettered bigots. No longer will I aid those values with donations.

President of Vassar condemns the "racist, anti-Semitic graphic" posted by Vassar SJP

As reported by William Jacobson of the Legal Insurrection blog, the President of Vassar College, Catherine Hill, has just sent out an email to the Vassar community about the Vassar SJP:

Subject: [Students] Bias incident investigation
Date: Wed, 14 May 2014 21:07:47

To the Vassar Community:

I am writing to condemn a racist, anti-Semitic graphic posted to the Tumblr online site affiliated with the Vassar chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). In response to this posting, the college is initiating a full investigation and action on the matter under established college procedures. SJP Vassar is a Vassar student “preliminary organization,” an initial status required of all student organizations as they seek full certification by the Vassar Student Association (VSA). I am requesting VSA review of the SJP’s pre-organization status. The college is also investigating the SJP’s online posting as a bias incident under college regulations. I also request that the SJP Vassar membership take responsibility for its actions and cease representing itself as an official Vassar group, pending these investigations. Vassar College is committed to free speech and academic freedom, but we condemn racist, hateful speech.

Catharine Hill

Jacobson suggests that the graphic might be the Nazi propaganda poster that I wrote about a couple of days ago.

SJP Vassar defends itself - "That was not anti-Semitic."

SJP Vassar has been getting pretty defensive in responding to those who criticize them on Tumblr. This is their defense of posting the article on "Zionist Internet Trolls" from the Occidental Quarterly (originally published in the Media Monitors Network on September 30, 2009).

I find it odd that they refer to the author as a "guest columnist." Did they commission him to write for them? I don't think so. The author of the article is Greg Felton. So who is he?

Terry Glavin, a distinguished Canadian author, wrote about him when he appeared at the Vancouver Public Library to peddle his anti-semitic tome, The Host and the Parasite: How Israel's Fifth Column Consumed America. Glavin wrote in the Vancouver Sun (February 12, 2008):

What is the right word for a book like Greg Felton's The Host and the Parasite: How Israel's Fifth Column Consumed America? 

What is the right word for Felton's thesis, which is that a Zionist "junta" was at work on Sept. 11, 2001, and that al-Qaida is a mere concoction in a secret plan to subvert the American Constitution, demonize Muslims and commit mass murder?... 

What are we allowed to call Felton, who traces his Zionist plot back to the 1940s, when these same Zionists made "common cause" with the Nazis to rid Europe of its Jews, and participated in the herding of Jews into Hitler's gas chambers? 

What Felton calls himself is an award-winning investigative reporter and Middle East specialist. His last legitimate journalism job appears to have been with a Vancouver weekly newspaper in the late 1990s, when his brief career as a columnist came to a famously embarrassing end. The column that got Felton into such trouble was also about Zionists. 

In that column, Felton traced Zionist swindles and trickery back through time and across Europe to a massive coverup of events that occurred in the Caucasus Mountains about 1,000 years ago. 

Europe's Jews aren't Jews at all, Felton wrote. Almost all of them are "Khazars," a long-extinct Turkic tribe from somewhere north of the Caspian Sea. 

Felton has been peddling this kind of thing ever since his departure from the weekly Vancouver Courier. He now writes for fringe Arab webzines and an online journal out of Tehran affiliated with the Iranian theocracy's Islamic Propagation Organization.
Felton's byline also routinely shows up on neo-Nazi websites, conspiracy-theory bulletin boards, and sometimes even in pamphlets of the Marxist-Leninist sort. And now, Vancouverites can hear Greg Felton in person. 

The Khazar legend was a staple of 1930s-era European racism. Long after it had been wholly discredited by geneticists, linguists, archeologists and historians, the lie was revived by late 20th-century neo-Nazis. 

Neo-Nazis find it useful as a twisted justification for their Jew-hatred. For Israel's more conspiracy-prone enemies, the Khazar legend completely delegitimizes the notion of Israel as a Jewish homeland. That's how Felton employs it, and he gets extra mileage out of it as further evidence of the world's real, hushed-up history, which the Jews don't want you to know. 

No, wait. Wrong word. Felton doesn't use the word "Jews" quite that way. It's the Zionists who are behind the curtain with their hands on the levers. Sometimes he uses two words to describe them. Zionist Jews. Jewish lobby. Zionist parasite. 

When he calls them Khazars, he can attribute to them "the declared purpose of dispossessing and terrorizing" the Palestinian people, and by that one word -- Khazars -- the Palestinians become the only real Semites in the Holy Land, and Israel itself becomes anti-Semitic. 

See how it works? 

In Felton's words, Hamas is not an Islamist death cult animated by that classic anti-Semitic forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It's the equivalent of the French resistance during the Second World War, the "passionate defender of Palestinians."
There are no suicide bombings in Felton's lexicon. There are only "sacrifice bombings." Israel itself is a creation of the Nazis. It's the "Zionist Reich." 

And that's the sort of ugliness that rushes in the moment the word "Israel" is mentioned in certain fashionable company these days. Martin Amis settled on the words "secularized anti-Semitism" to describe it. 

If those aren't the right words, then words fail me.

So much for Felton's article being "not anti-Semitic." Way to go, SJP Vassar, defining for Jews what is anti-Semitic.

SJP Vassar posts a Nazi World War II propaganda poster UPDATED

Despite their apology for posting material from Neo-Nazis and White Nationalists, the Vassar Students for Justice in Palestine have kept on doing it. Just today, they posted yet another antisemitic image on the Tumblr blog, this time one that is actually a Nazi propaganda poster from WWII (h/t Petra Marquardt-Bigman). Here's the image as posted on their Twitter feed. (It's now been taken down, but as of a few minutes ago it was still on Twitter).

I went and looked up this image to see if I could find out more about it. I found an interesting article that explains its provenance and meaning. It's by Kristen Williams Backer, "Kultur-Terror: The Composite Monster in Nazi Visual Propaganda," in Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil, edited by Niall Scott (Rodopi, 2007).

There are many interesting details in the image of the monster - notice especially the moneybag being held in the figure's upper right hand and the star of David flying from the drum that is its lower body.

The poster is from 1944, and targeted the Netherlands. It was made by an artist named Leest Storm.  As Petra Marquardt-B. has pointed out, the artist was actually Harald Damsleth, a Norwegian artist who designed many Nazi propaganda posters. "Leest Storm - SS," at the bottom right of the poster, means in Dutch, "Read Storm-SS," a Nazi publication. (For an image of the front page of "Storm-SS," go to Storm-SS). More examples of Damsleth's posters can be found at: damsleth.info. [Matthew Newton, From the Annals of World War II Propaganda, is the source of this information].

"Storm-SS" was the weekly newspaper of the German SS in Holland. (Source: images of the front page from Axis History Forum).

Here are some general remarks about the poster from Williams Backer's article:

The poster draws upon various images of American life and some specific historical events. One of those events was the 1938 heavy-weight boxing fight between an African-American boxer, Joe Louis, and a German boxer, Max Schmeling.

This is a larger version of the moneybag:

So in this one image we see the arm of the Black boxer, holding the moneybag, to which a man with a big nose is clinging - linking boxing, money, and the Jew.

The author of the article suggests that the banner decorated with the star of David "might be a similar suggestion of the pervasiveness of Jewish power in America."

Read the whole article - it says a lot more about the bizarre juxtaposition of the Klansman's hood and the noose, the cage with Black people inside it dancing the jitterbug, the two little female figures, etc.

Back to Vassar SJP:

This is what I wrote when I saw the poster, with their initial reply:

By adding this poster to their Tumblr blog, they are once again displaying their lamentable ignorance of history and lack of judgment. They really do not look at what they are reposting. If it looks vaguely like something they agree with, they will display it. They don't exercise any judgment, or sophistication in analyzing images.

And they also, as David Schraub suggests, are unable to recognize antisemitism (and in this case also anti-Black racism) even in the most blatant form of a Nazi propaganda poster, much less when it presents in a more subtle form. At this point, I can't help but feel that it's because for them (or some of them, at least), their anti-Zionism is really indistinguishable from antisemitism. They simply don't know the difference. Hence, they are not able to figure out that something is antisemitic and not "merely" anti-Zionist. I think they are suffering from the same problem with antisemitism as a lot of white people suffer when they are confronted by someone telling them they have said or done something racist. They (the white people) deny it because for them anti-Black racism is the KKK lynching a Black man. It couldn't possibly be their own good selves who have just made a racist remark. The same thing appears to be happening with some of the members of the Vassar SJP group. Antisemitism for them is the Nazi Holocaust, and since they don't advocate mass murder of Jews, they couldn't possibly say or do antisemitic things. But they are wrong.

SJP Vassar "apologizes"

Vassar SJP has posted this statement on its Tumblr blog:

This is what I wrote in response:

To be clear, my problem with SJP Vassar is not only that they use material from racists and antisemites. My problem with them is that they don't think the state of Israel should exist. This conclusion is clear from reading their Tumblr blog, their Twitter feed, and their Facebook page.  They just posted several stories about the Nakba - one of them with the slogan "OVER 60 YEARS OF ISRAEL ETHNIC CLEANSING AND PALESTINIAN STILL RESISTANCE." I don't know what they think should happen - none of their published articles states what their vision for the future is - but their analysis of the past is that the state of Israel should never have been established.

More articles and tweets about the Vassar Students for Justice in Palestine

David Schraub of The Debate Link has posted a good article about SJP Vassar:

FRIDAY, MAY 09, 2014 

Innocent Until Proven Nazi 

I've been reading with interest the saga of Vassar College's Students for Justice in Palestine branch, which recently has posted a series of material from various White supremacist websites. Rebecca Lesses, a professor at a fellow New York liberal arts college, initially posted about it here and has since written several follow-up posts.

Suffice to say, Vassar SJP is not backing down. They concede that their source (Occidental Quarterly) "is a white nationalist publication, that doesn't mean everything they say is invalid though!" "If the idea is alright, who cares where they come from?" (The idea here, in case you're curious, is that the intertubes are infested with "Zionist internet trolls" -- the electronic cohorts of "fifth columns in foreign governments who subvert national policies to serve Israel"). They contend that linking to OQ "does not mean we support white nationalist ideology; rather, we found this particular article’s description of those behind zionist propaganda campaigns and how they operate to be a helpful articulation of problems many organizations like us face." In short, "we're not white supremacists, but they sure do have it right about the Jews!" 

In a sense this is almost too easy. If you call yourself an anti-racist but find yourself nodding along with neo-nazis, maybe that's a sign that your anti-racist bona fides aren't quite what you think they are. Clearly they don't view themselves as anti-Semitic, but one wonders what exactly would be evidence to these students that this self-appraisal isn't reliable? In large part, this discussion is about Jews who are describing their oppression and gentiles who call us crazy for doing so. Once you're far enough down the rabbit hole, there is no threshold of evidence that makes the Jewish claim credible. The louder we speak, the crazier we are. But most people are not so far gone as to be unable to understand what it means when one starts unapologetically parroting white supremacist slogans. Demonstrating the overlap between "left-wing" anti-Semitism, which clothes itself in anti-racism discourse, and its "right-wing" counterparts is a way of validating the claim -- we can feel confident that these students are anti-Semitic because they're essentially waving its flag. "You shall know them by their fruits" indeed. 

But in another sense I find this very frustrating (aside from the obvious reasons, of course). Suppose Vassar SJP had posted the exact same material, only it wasn't attributable to an avowedly white nationalist website? Would the reaction have been the same? For some of us, sure: we know anti-Semitism when we see it. But for others, it seems that the Nazi link is a crutch -- without it they find it very difficult to even raise the prospect of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism has symbology but no content. Ideas, policies, statements, actions, and motives are not anti-Semitic -- only associations are. We saw this with Jenna Delich too -- it wasn't what was said, it was that David Duke was saying it, that was the smoking gun. You are anti-Semitic to the extent you can be tied to Nazis. If you can't, you're in the clear.

I think David is right about this - and it's a point that the British blogger Soupy One has been making insistently on Twitter. For some of the people that he writes about, sometimes even the direct association with the Nazis isn't enough to get the anti-Israel pro-BDS types to acknowledge that that what they are linking to or reposting is antisemitic. He periodically posts a string of tweets on how to spot racist or antisemitic material on Twitter.

A quick/v. imperfect guide (~27 tweets): how to spot & avoid those that probably like hardcore racist or antisemitic material on Twitter.
— Soupy One (@InTheSoupAgain) May 8, 2014

Soupy One also has posted on Storify about the Vassar SJP: Anti-Zionists gleefully use Neo-Nazi material

Once again: Vassar SJP and White Nationalist publications

There are times when you simply cannot make it up. SJP Vassar's Communique #1 - On White Supremacy and Its Watchdog reads as if it came from the Onion.

Where to start with the fisking?

Well, first off, they accuse nameless people of "lies, propaganda, and misrepresentation leveled against our movement. Baseless ad hominem attacks have been launched against us in an attempt to mystify both our politics and those of our attackers."

I've read many of the recent critical articles about SJP Vassar, and they address what the group is doing, without engaging in ad hominem attacks. The Commentary article from yesterday even ends with these words: "The SJP consists of students, and perhaps a national publication is not the place to discuss their foolishness." While condescending, this is not an ad hominem attack.

I have not attacked the SJP Vassar students personally. I have criticized their words, as posted on their various internet sites.

They claim that people are accusing them of supporting white supremacy. Since they provide no links, I don't know who they are referring to. I certainly haven't accused them of doing this. I have demonstrated, however, that their Tumblr blog reposts material from White Nationalist sites. They reposted an article from The Occidental Quarterly called "Zionist Internet Trolls." They reposted a cartoon from a White Nationalist Tumblr blog called "neonationalist." Both of these postings are still up on their Tumblr blog (as of this moment). Another blogger on Tumblr, Ora-Shira's Blog commented to them:

The article then says: "We find it an appalling irony to be accused of supporting white supremacy by those who support the racist Israeli regime and its white nationalist agenda. This agenda is comprised of policies that work towards exterminating Palestinians and African migrants, only to replace them with predominantly white Euro-American settlers."

I would like to see some proof that Israel is trying to exterminate Palestinians and African migrants. As Ari Shavit shows in his book My Promised Land, Israeli forces did expel Palestinian Arabs during the 1948-49 war. He details what happened in Lydda, and there are many other examples. Israeli forces also committed atrocities against Palestinians then; the most notorious example is the massacre at Deir Yassin (which Shavit also writes about). About 150,000 Arabs were left inside of Israel at the end of the 1948 war. Arabs are now about 20% of the total Israeli population. The refugees who fled to Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq have also increased greatly in population since 1948. While the State of Israel is guilty of crimes against Palestinians, it certainly did not in 1948 and certainly not now try to "exterminate" Palestinians. 

And the Jewish immigrants who came after 1948 were predominantly not "white Euro-American settlers." Hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees entered Israel in the next few decades from North Africa and the Middle East, motivated to leave Arab and Muslim countries by the physical attacks and discrimination that they encountered in those countries. The Arab countries are also guilty of crimes against their indigineous Jewish populations. The current Jewish population of Israel currently is about half of Ashkenazi descent (many of them Holocaust survivors and their descendants) and half of Sephardi-Mizrachi descent.

Now we get to the heart of the matter. SJP Vassar writes:

This should go without saying, and yet here we are saying it: providing an article link from a white nationalist publication does not mean we support white nationalist ideology; rather, we found this particular article’s description of those behind zionist propaganda campaigns and how they operate to be a helpful articulation of problems many organizations like us face. A profound irony is that we have come under assault from the very same trolls the article describes. As students who must navigate the world under the thumb of white supremacy, we understand what it is like to have to take ideas from organizations that have supported white supremacist structures, whether they be from Haaretz, the Jerusalem Post, Legal Insurrection, or the Occidental Quarterly, and put them in a productive conversation. The struggle for justice for the Palestinian people will continue despite petty slander, and we at SJP Vassar strongly encourage anyone who may read this to question the dominant narrative.

The article is trying to evade the fact that they reposted from a White Nationalist site by claiming that Haaretz, the Jerusalem Post, and Legal Insurrection all support "white supremacist structures," along with Occidental Quarterly. OQ publishes articles that denigrate Black people as inferior to whites. It publishes articles from Kevin MacDonald, who accuses Jews of having a "group evolutionary strategy" to undermine western white civilization. While the Jerusalem Post and Legal Insurrection are conservative publications, they would never publish articles like those. OQ is the "kinder, gentler" face of the white supremacist movement in the United States. The SPLC puts OQ into the category of "academic racism," writing "Founded in 2001 by Chicago millionaire publishing scion William H. Regnery, the Charles Martel Society puts out The Occidental Quarterly, a journal devoted to the idea that 'race informs culture' that is edited by a Who's Who of the radical right."

Why would an ostensibly anti-racist organization like SJP Vassar want to be connected in any way with The Occidental Quarterly? This is what I find particularly baffling. Why didn't they just apologize, remove the articles from the Tumblr blog, and move on?

More from SJP Vassar - it is "alright" to republish articles from antisemitic White Nationalists

Vassar Students for Justice in Palestine justified their publication of a link from the Occidental Quarterly on their Facebook page as well.

This is a screencap of the discussion:

"If the idea is alright, who cares where they come from?" Would they have the same response if they found out a supporter of Israel had links to racist sites on his or her blog? I doubt it - it would be used as a way to characterize that person also as a racist.

What is wrong with them?

SJP Vassar and White Nationalism

Last night I tweeted to @SJPVassar about their use of an article from the Occidental Quarterly (see previous post), and this is the response I got.

I didn't think it was possible to prove that there exist links (intellectual, political) between at least part of the pro-BDS movement and far right antisemitism and white nationalism, but here it is. I wonder who is writing the tweets for SJP Vassar. If someone is really antiracist, as they claim to be, they would stay far, far away from even a hint of connection to the organized racist and antisemitic far right. 

And it's not accidental - the SJP Vassar Tumblr just posted from another white nationalist on Tumblr.

This is the Tumblr blog of "neonationalist":

His slogan? "I have no white guilt."

Vassar College Students for Justice in Palestine and Antisemitism

I've blogged before about the very nasty fight at Vassar College over the academic boycott of Israel. William Jacobson (who runs the Legal Insurrection blog) spoke recently at Vassar to a good crowd against the boycott.

People in the SJP chapter at Vassar, however, were not pleased. One tweet objected to the kind of people who came to his talk:

I have never seen so many older white people packed into a room than at 'the case for israel' event. What could it all mean?

— SJP Vassar (@SJPVassar) May 6, 2014

I followed a link from Jacobson's blogpost to the Tumblr for the Vassar SJP - SJP Vassar College - and found some very disturbing posts. While the blog claims that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism, two posts not only blurred the line between them, but stepped right over into blatant antisemitism.

One of them is a quote taken from a deeply racist and antisemitic magazine, the Occidental Quarterly:

The Southern Poverty Law Center outlines the racist and antisemitic nature of the publication:

Founded in 2001 by Chicago millionaire publishing scion William H. Regnery, the Charles Martel Society publishes The Occidental Quarterly (TOQ), a racist journal devoted to the idea that as whites become a minority "the civilization and free governments that whites have created" will be jeopardized. Its editors and advisory board members have constituted a "Who's Who" of the radical right, and its regular publication of extremists' articles has made it a favorite among academic racists in America.

If the Vassar SJP claims not to be antisemitic, why on earth are they publishing articles from the Occidental Quarterly?

Another post is a cartoon claiming that the Israelis are wreaking a Holocaust upon the people of Gaza. It's a common antisemitic theme to compare Israeli treatment of the Palestinians with the Nazi Holocaust.

What is the purpose of such comparisons? I think it's simply to cause further pain to Jews. And all it does is to demonstrates profound ignorance about what really happened during the Holocaust.

UPDATE - see next post for another example of an article from a white nationalist source on the SJP Vassar twitter feed, this time from a Tumblr blog named neonationalist. The blog's motto is "I have no white guilt."

BDS and the attack upon academic freedom at Vassar College

Legal Insurrection, the blog maintained by Professor William Jacobson of Cornell University, just posted a story about how the controversy over BDS at Vassar has taken a truly awful turn. I had previously read about the conflict on the Vassar campus on the Mondoweiss website, which I usually find completely unreliable, but Philip Weiss's article seemed fairly responsible to me. Even he seemed a bit unnerved by what's going on at Vassar. Perhaps he can begin to reflect on the damage he is helping to create in the United States around the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He reported about a meeting that occurred at Vassar to discuss a study abroad trip to Israel/Palestine (part of a course - International Studies 110) that explored water issues and resources in the region.

I was at the March 3 meeting that so upset Schneiderman [one of the faculty members teaching IS 110], and it was truly unsettling... 

If a student had gotten up and said, I love Israel, he or she would have been mocked and scorned into silence. Or bedevilled by finger-snapping—the percussive weapon of choice among some students, a sound that rises like crickets as students indicate their quiet approval of a statement. 

I left the room as soon as the meeting ended. The clash felt too raw, and there was a racial element to the division (privileged Jews versus students of color). Vassar is not my community, and I didn’t want to say anything to make things worse.

(I'm not sure why Weiss assumes that all Jews are privileged, that no Jews are people of color, and that no white students belonged to the pro-BDS side. In fact, the president of the Jewish student union spoke out in favor of the academic boycott of Israel.)

Legal Insurrection gives all of the details about the ongoing conflict, which has given rise to some extremely nasty attacks upon pro-Israel faculty and students. One day the faculty members teaching International Studies 110 were confronted by a picket line of students from the group Students for Justice in Palestine at Vassar.. (The two professors are Rachel Friedman, Associate Professor of Greek and Roman Studies, and Jill Schneiderman, Professor of Earth Science and Geography).  The SJP students urged the students in the class to drop it and not go on the study tour of Israel/Palestine. This is a flyer they handed out to them:

From Legal Insurrection [Jacobson interviewed Friedman, and reports on the interview]:

In late February, Friedman arrived at Kenyon Hall on campus for her regularly scheduled class. 

As she entered the lobby of the building, near her class, Friedman was confronted with a line of SJP students holding posters and passing out flyers demanding that students not participate in the class and not go to Israel on the class trip. 

I spoke with Friedman at length about the incident. 

As Friedman describes it, protesters were lined up side-by-side across the lobby such that Friedman and the 28 students in her class had to push through the line to get to the classroom. While not physically blocked, Friedman described that this required her to physically cross the protest line, as the protesters created a space to walk through as she approached. 

The protesters made loud ululating sound similar to what is traditional among women in some Middle Eastern countries.... 

The protesters carried posters with slogans urging students to drop the class. While Friedman doesn’t have photos of the posters, Friedman recalls wording similar to ”It’s not too late to drop the class,” “Indigenous Palestinians don’t want you to take the class,” and wording regarding oppression of Palestinians.

Friedman said that she was “shocked” and “in 17 years at Vassar never experienced anything like this.” She said she “couldn’t believe protestors crossed over into [the] space of classes.” Even though the protesters didn’t enter the classroom itself, they imposed themselves physically in the pathway to the class. 

Friedman considered these physical actions to be a “new kind of transgression.” Friedman felt that the protest was “dangerous” from an academic perspective, and “crossed a line that no other protest crossed.” 

She said she would not have minded if the protest took place outside of the classroom vicinity and in a way that did not impose on those entering the class. SJP frequently leaflets and has a table set up in the student center, and Friedman said she doesn’t mind that. 

The protesters continued to make noise as class started, but eventually quieted down and left. The students in her class looked “shell shocked” according to Friedman. 

The class spent about a half hour talking about what had happened. Student comments during that session included that they “felt unsafe,” “bullied” and “harrassed.” Some other students felt that their “intelligence was insulted” by the protest.

The ASA claimed that their endorsement of the academic boycott of Israel would not have an impact upon individual scholars. They argued that it was aimed only at a boycott of Israeli institutions, not Israeli professors, and would not stop academic exchanges between individuals. Likewise, they argue that the boycott would not affect individual American (or other foreign) scholars.

I believe that this ongoing series of incidents at Vassar proves them wrong. The SJP students harassed both the students taking IS 110 and the professors teaching it. Their aim is to prevent anybody from going to Israel, even if the goal is to study the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What they are doing is fully in concert with what PACBI and USACBI have advocated.  The academic boycott of Israel is aimed squarely at the academic freedom of Israeli and international scholars. This is a particularly egregious case, in my opinion, because the SJP did its best to disrupt the free conduct of a class, thus damaging the academic freedom of the professors teaching the course and the students taking it.