Starting tomorrow is the “Week of Rage”, marking five days of pro-Hamas faculty, students, and staff acting out their hatred of Israel and Jews on our campus—and campuses across America. Odd, isn’t it, that the week begins on October 7, the first anniversary of the day the evil butchers of Hamas (and their allies) slaughtered 1200 people and kidnapped 250? One might even say that celebrating on that day violates common decency.
To many activists and their supporters shown below at the University of Chicago, that was a glorious day, marking the revival of the “resistance.” No matter that the dead and kidnapped were almost all civilians, and that about 70 are still languishing in horrible conditions in the dank tunnels beneath Gaza. No matter that Hamas and its ally Hezbollah (and their masters in Iran) continue to fire rockets at civilian targets in Israel. After all, it was ‘justified resistance” from the very beginning in 1917.
Here is a video, taken last Friday and put on the Instagram page of “fsjpuchicago,” which stands for Faculty and Staff for Palestine at the University of Chicago. The video calls for a continuation of protests along with a promise that they will continue protesting until Chicago “discloses and divests”.
This is all free speech, of course, but it doesn’t mean that these people are not odious apologists for terrorism and, as the term goes, “anti-Zionists” (we all know what that means).
Turn up the sound. The first speaker is Eman Abdelhadi, an assistant professor in the Department of Human Development, and the second is Callie Maidhof, Associate Director and Assistant Senior Instructional Professor in our Global Studies group.
The speeches are the usual tedious repetition of propaganda, cant, and lies, blaming the war entirely on Israel–in fact, going all the way back to blaming the current conflict on the 1917 Balfour Declaration from the British government that called for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Now, that state is, to these people, a “settler colonialist” state, a gross distortion of history.
The implication is that Israel shouldn’t be there at all. Pity that it’s here to stay!
Abdelhadi then decries America’s and Chicago’s emphasis on free expression, saying that the University’s dismantling of the encampment last summer (which violated University rules) was really a violation of free speech, thus “laying bare the contradictions of the Western World” and of the University of Chicago. The U of C is said to be “complicit in the murder of Palestinians”, “covered with Palestinian blood,” and dedicated to the erasure of Palestinian history. As Abdelhadi promises at the end (after some chanting), the FSJP group is not going anywhere until it accomplishes its goals. That will be. . . . well, never, and so we’re in for a long and rough yer as these protestors disrupt campus in their futile cause.
“Uchicagounited” is composed mainly of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)( and some non-student allies. (SJP, a registered student group here, was sanctioned last year by the University for disruption). This appeared on the uchicagounited Instagram page.
Here’s a larger-type version of their mission:
Next week marks one year of “israel’s” genocide in Gaza — and one year of resistance.
“israel” has spent the past twelve months brutally bombing and displacing the people of Palestine and now Lebanon; cutting off their food, water, and education; and perpetrating every kind of atrocity against them, causing over 186,000 deaths. Despite this genocidal onslaught, the Palestinian and Lebanese people have remained steadfast in their resistance. ❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥
SHOW UP ON FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11, AT 2:30 PM ON THE CENTER QUAD (by 1100 E 58th St) to express our grief and rage as the University continues to put their money behind this massacre. While our administration ramps up its repression, surveillance, and censorship against students and community members, WE WON’T TAKE IT FOR A SECOND. 🇵🇸🇱🇧
This is a masked event; keep yourselves and others safe! Masks will also be provided for those without them. 😷
The masks, of course, are not intended to prevent the spread of respiratory diseases, but to hide the identity of the protestors from the authorities. When Jewish students congregate in solidarity, you see no masks.
Well, the administration has made its position clear; it is in favor of free speech but against disruption. And it will not entertain the idea of divesting according to the protestors’ demands. In a statement issued recently, President Paul Alivisatos, while calling for truth-seeking and the expression of diverse voices, added this:
While constructive dialogue is the gold standard to strive toward, speech should never be chilled. Actions that chill the speech or learning of others are out of bounds, and the University’s academic and administrative leadership is obliged to act to protect the community from such actions. Such chilling actions can include disrupting the speech or expression of others, disrupting the ability of classes and events to proceed, and other efforts intended to impose rather than propose a viewpoint for others. Acts of discrimination and harassment are inimical to our values and purposes, and we will defend our community against such actions.
It is clear, at least to me, what prompted this statement.
The student manual has also been updated in light of what happened last year. As the Chicago Maroon reports:
The changes include an explicit ban on “staying overnight in outdoor structures on campus or in non-residential campus buildings,” a clarification that “the erection or construction of any structure on campus” requires advance approval from the Director of Student Centers, and that amplified sounds are only permitted on campus at certain times and “not inside campus buildings.”
No encampments! But, as the pro-Palestinian protestors promise, they’re not holding back: “WE WON’T TAKE IT FOR A SECOND”. I’m afraid they’ll have to, unless they want to face sanctions from the University.
I absolutely defend the right of the miscreants above to say what they want so long as it adheres to our “time, place, and manner” guidelines for speech. But that doesn’t mean that counterspeech is not the proper response. Count this post as that kind of speech. But the lies mouthed by the protestors above are sufficient to discredit them and their “cause”. Israeli genocide, indeed! They willfully omit that it is Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s other proxies who are really dedicated to genocide: the extermination of Israel and its Jews. Israel has no intention to wipe out all the Palestinians, which is why their attacks are targeted.
The Jewish students and faculty here will celebrate October 7 with a show not of resistance, but of sorrow, hope, and solidarity. I won’t disclose the details because the pro-Palestinian demonstrators are prone to disrupting such events.
I swear to god, the only thing that exceeds their hate for Israel/Jews is my hate for them.
These people depress me profoundly because they are just more evidence that a majority of human beings can always be counted on to be useful idiots for any vile cause you can name. That’s because the majority of people will just reflexively amplify anything propagandists say, instead of pausing first to consciously think things out for themselves in light of facts and their pre-existing internal sense of morality – assuming they have one.
As for these particular protestors, I wish they could grasp the fact that by being so willing to turn themselves into puppets for rabid anti-Semites, they are not only dehumanizing the Jews, they’re dehumanizing themselves.
One final thought: I can’t be the only person who sees the similarity between the Week of Rage and the Two Minute Hate in Orwell’s 1984. The purpose is obviously the same.
Most excellent allusion to Orwell. I was thinking the very thing and I agree, the point and purpose are the same. These are precarious times and I, for one, never expected it to be like this. I thought this evil was mostly gone. Of course, all evidence aside, I’m not an idiot and know it will never really go away; I just didn’t think it was so well fed and still so healthy.
An old friend of mine’s father encountered a neo-Nazi at a protest once; he really lost his temper and needed serious intervention before he attacked the useful idiot. He (my friend’s father) was hauled away by the police shouting; “I didn’t kill enough of you when I was over there”!
Indeed. They are back.
If your father’s friend is still around, I’d like to buy him a beer.
What is disappointing is the similarities between them and Orwell are lost on them. These students and faculty are supposed to be educated and frankly elite but they only display ignorance. It is a sad commentary on our hollowed out western culture.
It is indeed sad and depressing how wildly off the rails the pro-Hamas crowd has gone. Their language and tactics are extreme, their positions ahistorical and I can only hope enough of these useful idiots will have an opportunity to self-reflect and engage in deep learning once they move on from their current peer groups. I’m sure they would dismiss my views as condescending, but so be it.
Part of the problem is that they don’t even want to hear your views. They demand a completely unrestrained, unfettered, and absolute right of free speech, while also maintaining the right to shut down any opposition speech the moment a syllable is uttered, if not before. Their right of free expression also includes the right to commit violence against those with whom they disagree, though dismantling their rule-breaking camps is a form of oppression.
It is the purest form of hypocrisy imaginable. And somehow they regard all of this as civilized.
Undoubtedly a refinement of Orwell’s “two minutes hate.”
The Week of Rage will take place all across the country. I sincerely hope that university administrations have planned accordingly and that law enforcement agencies are ready.
I hope there are counter protests. Somebody has to stand up to the stupidity.
A lesson from the Vietnam Era: satire and a catchy protest song can capture a lot of positive attention. Barry McGuire’s Eve of Destruction and Woody Guthrie’s anything captured many of us Boomers. For satire: George Carlin’s seven dirty words you can’t say on TV. Some Israeli satirists have captured an hilarious take on our county’s young Hamas supporters.
https://x.com/LeviYonit/status/1721272323087401428?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1721272323087401428%7Ctwgr%5Eea4c9e781072ba7c157163abc78780eac241abe7%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.timesofisrael.com%2Fisraeli-satire-shows-mocking-of-us-student-support-for-hamas-goes-viral%2F
That’s pretty much it as far as I can see. Should these people be allowed to vote?
Hilarious!
“Next week marks one year of “israel’s” genocide in Gaza — and one year of resistance.”
I noted the above as an example of a minor but utterly childish aspect of wokeness in academia: the completely mistaken notion that capitalizing a word means you are treating the thing it denotes with more respect, and according it greater importance, than if it was lower-case — hence the insistence of capitalizing the perfectly ordinary adjectives “Indigenous” or “Black”, while ostentatiously lower-casing “white”, “settler” and, as we now see above, even country names like “israel” (as if the hygiene quotes around the name weren’t already enough of a giveaway of their feelings towards it).
Quite apart from the abysmal understanding of the principles of orthography it displays — which should be a cause of shame among anyone calling themselves an academic — what it amounts to is nothing more than an insult on the level of ‘Take that, “israel” — I lower-case in your general direction’.
Not all of the pro-Hamas crowd are useful idiots. Some are just antisemites.
Definitely. The old-fashioned kind who don’t even try to say it’s just opposition to Israel.
Here’s a diatribe timed for Oct 7. There’s obnoxious comments too. (The author is a Holocaust-denying Jew).
https://www.unz.com/runz/the-anniversary-of-october-7th/
https://twitter.com/news_postseven/status/1737732870490230954 💐
It is now October 7 in Japan.
Last year October 7 was a really sad day. 💐
Albert Einstein, Paul Krugman, Harrison Ford, Barbra Streisand, and Anouk Aimée are all Jewish.
There are so many wonderful Jewish people in this world.
Please don’t give in to harassment and live with pride. ✨✨✨
At my son’s school the SJP posted a long screed against the “Zionist settler-military state” and a week of rage to include “NO BUSINESS AS USUAL” (capitalization theirs) and ending with “we will affirm our commitment to the struggle until the roots of evil are extracted from the Arab world and beyond.” Please discuss whether these are examples of free speech which a administration should allow or if the are a promise to disrupt normal campus activities (which should not be allowed) and an incitement to violence? And am I right in seeing ‘roots of evil’ as an old antisemitic trope used to massacre Jews in the past?
If a school adheres to the First Amendment, and says it does, then yes, these are examples of free speech that do not violate that Amendment, odious though we may find them. Threats to do something are not violations unless they are threats to someone’s safety. Incitements of violence are permitted unless they are uttered in a crowd (or before a person) that is liable to create immediate and predictable violence. Threats to disrupt schools are not like that. And ‘roots of evil’ is certainly not a violation of the First Amendment. The way to fight this stuff is not to ban it, but to argue against it. Or so I think.
The new item I came across is :
”Hamas and Hezbollah are social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left.”
-Judith Butler
Video of a panel discussion of some sort :
x.com/drewpavlou/status/1842343469588590986?s=46
I have not gotten further into that, but I think PCC(E) has already noted a few of Butler’s statements on where Israel sits in her view (to be quite neutral).
Hezbollah and Hamas are against women’s rights and call for death to LGBT’s. How exactly are they progressive social movements?
Jews have existed in the land contained in Israel for thousands of years. How are they colonizers? I understand the position that the UN created the modern state of Israel and so revised the modern country borders in the area, but in such as case I would think that the same crowd that wants reparations for displaced Africans and who voice land acknowledgements in favor of displaced Indigenous tribes would be in favor of Jews returning to their native land. Since they aren’t, I have to conclude that these folks are just ordinary Jew-hating Nazis.