…I can remember being a student…we thought we knew some shit, too…but I never pitched a tent outside a faculty to try to make a point…so maybe my frame of reference is out of kilter but the BBC had some lass from leeds uni on to try to articulate a position…which they did a passable job of even if the presenter did point out that being unwilling to say straight up without qualification that the state of israel has a right to exist is, arguably, “genocidal”…& then they followed that up by having an older woman sound more than a little patronizing in her assessment of said student’s views…she didn’t outright say “she has a right to think what she thinks but she’s hopelessly naïve” even if it was clear that’s what she boiled it down to…& it’s a fine line in a place where the formal status of the group governing gaza is that of a terrorist organisation that does in fact want to eradicate israel…personally I’d have thought saying things like “we’re against all forms of oppression” & “of course the jewish people ought to be able to live in israel safe from persecution – as should anyone else living in that part of the world” would take supporting terrorism off the list of things the students consider themselves to be doing…but rishi’s on a “it’s antisemitism & let’s all remember that antisemitism is a labour problem” tip…with a heaping side of “us tories are for broad-spectrum oppression of people who don’t have as much money as us”

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain will tell university leaders on Thursday to do more to combat antisemitism on college campuses, in a sign of rising dissatisfaction within government about the recent growth of encampments set up by students protesting the war in Gaza.

Vice chancellors from some of Britain’s prominent universities have been invited to Downing Street to discuss “escalating antisemitic abuse toward Jewish students in the U.K.,” Mr. Sunak’s office said in a statement issued in advance of the meeting.

Britain has so far not seen the sort of unrest witnessed on American campuses. But small-scale, largely peaceful protest encampments have sprung up recently around several universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, Newcastle, Leeds and Manchester.

“Universities should be places of rigorous debate but also bastions of tolerance and respect for every member of their community,” Mr. Sunak said in the statement released by his office ahead of the meeting. “A vocal minority on our campuses are disrupting the lives and studies of their fellow students and, in some cases, propagating outright harassment and antisemitic abuse. That has to stop.”

The prime minister’s office did not mention specific encampments in its statement, but it cited the concerns of the Union of Jewish Students, which says it represents 9,000 Jewish students across Britain and Ireland. The organization said recently that “while students have a right to protest, these encampments create a hostile and toxic atmosphere on campus for Jewish students.”

…the thing is…or at least the thing that trips me up, anyway…is that it might well be true that the existence of these protesters fast forwards straight to the idea that they don’t generally appear willing to swear they don’t harbor the sort of feelings that would make taking an approach to israel that israel has been (& continues to be) taking to gaza…necessarily fall at the “turnabout is fair play” fence…& I don’t particularly doubt that that would make them feel threatened…or that ultimately that threat would have its basis in a fear of being on the receiving end of a project of genocide

…but…last I checked…oxford, cambridge, leeds…& even newcastle & manchester…aren’t places where being jewish will get you killed & your home turned to rubble surrounded by the ruins of what used to be life-sustaining infrastructure…so they aren’t as threatened as a kid their age in gaza…& one of those genocides seems like it’s got a metric shit-ton more immediacy going for it in terms of appropriate considerations…& given the way in which more general protests in places like the streets of london have been rendered into a political football with about the same relationship to reality as the mask-wearing debate in the pandemic…that feels about as disingenuous as someone trying not to let on that they think erasing israel might be a good thing, actually

Downing Street also cited data from a charity that aims to protect British Jews from antisemitism, the Community Security Trust, which in 2023 recorded 182 college-related antisemitic incidents, triple the number recorded in 2022. Tell Mama, a government-funded group that monitors Islamophobic incidents and supports victims, said it has also noted a recent rise in anti-Muslim incidents on campuses.

While British police so far have not intervened significantly to break up student protests, they have been on the front line during large-scale pro-Gaza demonstrations, particularly in London.

Last year, Mr. Sunak and the former home secretary, Suella Braverman, urged the police to ban one march, which ultimately went ahead. Ms. Braverman was then fired after she described the tens of thousands of people who attended regular Saturday protests in London in support of Palestinians as “hate marchers,” “Islamists” and “mobs,” despite the fact that the demonstrations had mostly been peaceful.

On Thursday, the government plans to make it clear that universities must take immediate disciplinary action if any student is found to be inciting racial hatred or violence, and must contact the police if they believe a criminal act has been committed, Downing Street said.

…thing is…a bunch of these students seem pretty articulate…possibly even more articulate than the politicians…so when it comes to who is saying exactly what on behalf of who…I’m not sure I really trust rishi’s word on the subject…not least on account of it sounds like it’s at odds with…well…for example

Gavriel Sacks, co-president of the Cambridge University Jewish Society […] 20, said that anxiety at Cambridge had increased among some Jewish students in recent months, and especially so in the past week, after the establishment of an encampment on Monday.
[…]
“We don’t want to overplay it or make people more anxious,” he said.

…think I might have found the coalface of this ideological conflict of postures…but it’s early & I’ve barely had coffee so I’m probably wrong about that part

Groups representing Jewish students at Cambridge and other campuses have also been among those supporting pro-Palestinian encampments, however. The SOAS Jewish Society at SOAS University of London, for example, said on social media that it stood “shoulder to shoulder” with classmates who set up an encampment on Monday.

“We will not stand by as the media cynically employs fake concern for Jewish safety to demonize our cause,” the group said.

Sunak to Urge University Leaders to Protect Jewish Students on Campus [NYT]

…I just…can’t seem to extend the same degree of sympathy to the plight of a jewish student at an oxbridge institution in the face of the putative threat to their safety embodied by their peers camping out on campus…& however-many-thousands-of-not-terrorist non-combatants of the sort we generally refer to as “innocent civilians” being turned into so many collateral damage statistics even as I read/type…& maybe that’s a moral failing on my part…wouldn’t surprise me…it’s entirely possible I’ve never come across a cause that didn’t manage to fold something into the mix I wouldn’t be inclined to get behind…&…well…I’d probably be happy to while away days at a time hashing it out in some long-winded debate about abstractions & pretty principles the way euclidean geometry describes an axiomatic representation of a physical reality…I just don’t think that’s the same thing as dealing with actual physics the way you do when you target an area of effect with heavy ordnance…so it doesn’t seem to be in terribly good taste to skip to the abstractions before dealing with the whole slaughter-of-innocents mechanic that remains in effect

“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem,” Biden told CNN.

…& I dunno…me & joe might could differ a little on what “go in” looks like in that context given he said that on wednesday…& there were people & structures that were with us on tuesday that didn’t make it to thursday in very much that area of effect…but…even if the dynamic makes it easier to sympathize with the lass from leeds than the man from the white house…he’s got a similar problem in terms of the line he’s trying to walk…& I guess I do sympathize with that to some extent?

The president was speaking after it was announced his administration had paused the delivery of 3,500 munitions, more than half them 2,000lb bombs, which can cause devastating damage and severe civilian casualties when dropped on densely populated areas.

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden said.

…whereas I don’t really have any sympathy for the suggestion that the way to go after terrorists while taking pains to avoid inflicting the wrath aimed at them upon innocents for no other reason than a misfortune of birth is to employ a 2,000lb bomb…call me naïve…but that seems a whole hell of a lot like the diametric opposite…so

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence on a Rafah offensive to destroy what Israel says is the last stronghold of Hamas in Gaza, despite repeated US warnings about the humanitarian impact on more than 1 million Gazans sheltering in the city

…not claiming to be an authority on any of this…but…that part…that seems to be tied more to his not being in any kind of hurry to move on to a post-war footing where he’s out of power & more than likely on his way to some guilty verdicts all this has kept in abeyance than a sincere belief that “eradication of hamas” is achievable without…well…the genocide thing…I mean…there’s guilty parties on both sides of that divide…& on both sides they look to be a minority of the population they claim to be representative of…so being both for & against elements of both actually strikes me as more logical than incoherent even as it sounds incoherent…& if I were still an idealistic student…maybe I’d even think the 2-state thing was a rhetorical trap designed to exclude the possibility that the whole region be united into a single peaceful nation in which neither “people” had much inclination not to love thy neighbor & thereby stumble when it came to saying israel has an unequivocal right to exist…that kind of thing is par for that course…so I wouldn’t find an unusual degree of fault with a lack of deftness from a 20-something for whom it’s a distant reality…whereas…bibi’s reality?

Reliance on extremist allies such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich distancing prime minister from Israeli public [Guardian]

…that seems to be composed of literally nothing but faults…& fault-lines…which he shares in a lot of cases with the terrorists he seems to have more common cause with than he retains with his citizens

“Israel faces an existential and multi-front threat … and daylight between the United States and Israel at this dangerous time risks emboldening Israel’s enemies and undermining the trust that other allies and partners have in the United States,” the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, wrote in a letter to the president.

…the irony that the dude saying that wouldn’t be speaker were it not for members of his opposition being willing to do him a solid while his “allies and partners” would have been happy to pitch him on the discard pile & go back to spinning their wheels & obstructing the procedural elements of the legislature at large is frankly breath-taking…but I’m down a different rabbit hole this morning & I already did an inadvisable amount of digging so I’ll leave that mess to someone else to get into it about

“We’re going to continue to make sure Israel is secure in terms of Iron Dome and their ability to respond to attacks that came out of the Middle East recently,” he said. “But it’s just wrong. We’re not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells.”

…is it hypocritical…I dunno…maybe it is…but…if the non-hypocritical thing is a steep & slippery slope away from an equally genocidal role-reversal…it doesn’t feel like it…whereas handing over this sort of thing?

US officials made clear that the pause would not be a one-off if the Rafah offensive went ahead: other arms deliveries that have already been approved could be delayed, and shipments waiting for approval could also face obstacles, such as a pending consignment of 6,500 joint direct attack munitions, or JDAMs, which convert freefall “dumb bombs” into precision-guided weapons.

…gotta admit that kinda does…when the precisely-guided points of impact are the likes of this

A Guardian investigation this week found a US-made JDAM was used in a March airstrike in southern Lebanon that killed seven health workers. Analysis of debris found at the site of the attack revealed shrapnel from a 500lb (227kg) Israeli MPR bomb, as well as the parts of the JDAM that connect the munition to the guidance system and remnants of its motor.
[…]
The weapons – 1,800 2,000lb bombs and 1,700 500lb bombs – had long been seen by experts as the most likely to be targeted for any potential restrictions on arms supplies to Israel given how destructive they are in urban settings.
[…]
The highly significant US move on arms supplies comes amid mounting international pressure on Israel to pull back from a full-scale attack after its seizure on Tuesday of Rafah’s border crossing with Egypt, and criticism of Israel’s use of large aerial munitions in areas packed with civilians.
[…]
A second US official, also speaking anonymously and quoted by the Washington Post, said the decision was a “shot across the bow“ intended to convey to Israel the seriousness of US concerns about the Israeli offensive in Rafah.

An Israeli military spokesperson attempted to play down the shipment delay – saying that allies resolve any disagreements “behind closed doors”. However, the move appeared to mark a significant moment in US policy.

While the US, EU, UK and other countries have pursued an escalating sanctions campaign against extremist Israeli settlers and far-right organisations, against the background of the Gaza war and settler violence on the West Bank, US attention has moved recently to the Israel Defense Forces.

The weapons hold-up comes against the background of the expected delivery of a report by the US Department of State that examines whether Israel’s war conduct is credibly in compliance with assurances that American-supplied weapons will not be used in contravention of US and international humanitarian law.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/08/biden-israel-weapons-shipment-rafah-invasion

…so…I don’t know as I wholeheartedly (much less full-throated-ly) agree with one t. friedman on the whole deal…but I can see how he might know more about it than me

My problem is not that the protests in general are “antisemitic” — I would not use that word to describe them, and indeed, I am deeply uncomfortable as a Jew with how the charge of antisemitism is thrown about on the Israel-Palestine issue. My problem is that I am a hardheaded pragmatist who lived in Beirut and Jerusalem, cares about people on all sides and knows one thing above all from my decades in the region: The only just and workable solution to this issue is two nation-states for two indigenous peoples.

If you are for that, whatever your religion, nationality or politics, you’re part of the solution. If you are not for that, you’re part of the problem.

…&…I don’t know that it’s unequivocally the case that “two indigenous peoples” can’t co-exist in a single nation state…history seems to suggest it used to work in very much that part of the world until some bright spark decided to have the muslims not live with christians any more…but you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, they tell me…which also seems odd given that it got in there somehow in the first place…but…you know…not an expert

Again, you can be — and should be — appalled at Israel’s response: bombing everything in its path in Gaza so disproportionately that thousands of children have been killed, maimed and orphaned. But if you refuse to acknowledge what Hamas did to trigger this — not to justify what Israel has done, but to explain how the Jewish state could inflict so much suffering on Palestinian men, women and children in reverse — you’re just another partisan throwing another partisan log on the fire. By giving Hamas a pass, the protests have put the onus on Israel to such a degree that its very existence is a target for some students, while Hamas’s murderous behavior is passed off as a praiseworthy adventure in decolonization.

…so…I’ll leave it to others to figure out if that’s liable to the same charge regarding what some would very much describe as “what [Israel] did to trigger this – not to justify what [Hamas] has done, but to explain how the [Palestinian] state could inflict so much suffering on [Israeli] men, women and children in reverse” & whether or not that means tommy’s lobbing his own partisan log by giving a pass to the other side of the same coin…I do think he’s trying not to but I’m not sure any of us have that kind of dexterity given the material facts involved…for instance I don’t necessarily think that all the people…not least the israeli ones…who’ve uttered some variation of “from the river to the sea” mean what tommy says they perforce must have

Second, when people chant slogans like “liberate Palestine” and “from the river to the sea,” they are essentially calling for the erasure of the state of Israel, not a two-state solution. They are arguing that the Jewish people have no right to self-determination or self-defense. I don’t believe that about Jews, and I don’t believe that about Palestinians. I believe in a two-state solution in which Israel, in return for security guarantees, withdraws from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Arab areas of East Jerusalem, and a demilitarized Palestinian state that accepts the principle of two states for two peoples is established in those territories occupied in 1967.

…I guess I have the luxury of imagining that a call for people to live free between a river & a sea might not be necessarily indivisible from (or even a natural fit with) a call that people between that river & that sea be slaughtered…but…I also can’t claim that there’s much excuse for employing that particular phrase & trying to claim ignorance of the baggage it comes with…so I can’t say I don’t see his point?

I believe in that so strongly that the thing I am most proud of in my 45-year career is my interview in February 2002 with the Saudi crown prince, Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, in which he, for the first time, called on the entire Arab League to offer full peace and normalization of relations with Israel in exchange for full withdrawal to the 1967 lines — a call that led the Arab League to hold a peace conference the next month, on March 27 and 28, in Beirut to do just that. It was called the Arab Peace Initiative.

And do you know what Hamas’s response was to that first pan-Arab peace initiative for a two-state solution? I’ll let CNN tell you.

…over the years I can’t help noting that CNN has also told me a fair bit about how unenviable life is for a palestinian in gaza or the west bank for reasons that are pretty directly attributable to the state of israel…but I don’t feel like admitting that is necessarily tantamount to being cool with suicide bombings so I might slightly resent the implication friedman appears to be intending that I’d have to be…but then he seems confident that he saw the likes of me coming & he’s got my number

Hey, Friedman, but what about all the violence that Israeli settlers perpetrated against Palestinians and how Bibi Netanyahu deliberately built up Hamas and undermined the Palestinian Authority, which embraced Oslo?

Answer: That violence and those Netanyahu actions are awful and harmful to a two-state solution as well. That is why I am intensely both anti-Hamas and anti-Netanyahu. And if you oppose just one and not also the other, you should reflect a little more on what you are shouting at your protest or your anti-protest. Because no one has done more to harm the prospects of a two-state solution than the codependent Hamas and Netanyahu factions.

Hamas is not against the post-1967 occupation. It is against the existence of a Jewish state and believes there should be an Islamic state between the river and the sea. When protests on college campuses ignore that, they are part of the problem. Just as much as Israel supporters who ignore the fact that the far-right members in Netanyahu’s own coalition government are for a Jewish state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. How do I know? Because Netanyahu wrote it into the coalition agreement between himself and his far-right partners.

…funny how that doesn’t feel like not using the phrase “from the river to the sea” would meaningfully alter the alignment of the interests of those pushing for continued slaughter any more than talking about a region unified in principle according to the notion that slaughter is bad, actually…would somehow be all about the slaughtering if you thought of it being also unified into a singular rather than a bifurcated state…but…you know…that’s another of them “me problems”, I suppose…does seem he thinks that’s what it means…so…it is what it is, I guess

The third reason that these protests have become part of the problem is that they ignore the view of many Palestinians in Gaza who detest Hamas’s autocracy. These Palestinians are enraged by precisely what these student demonstrations ignore: Hamas launched this war without permission from the Gazan population and without preparation for Gazans to protect themselves when Hamas knew that a brutal Israeli response would follow. In fact, a Hamas official said at the start of the war that its tunnels were for only its fighters, not civilians.

…do they, tho?

…I haven’t been hanging out on campuses with protesting students…so maybe they do…but…the aforementioned lass from leeds certainly didn’t come across like she was ignoring that…for example

My view: Hamas was ready to sacrifice thousands of Gazan civilians to win the support of the next global generation on TikTok. And it worked. But one reason it worked was a lack of critical thinking by too many in that generation – the result of a campus culture that has become way too much about what to think and not how to think.

…maybe…but…also maybe “mote, meet beam“?

…anyway…he goes on to “recommend a few different articles [&] piece[s]”…& they’re probably worth a look…but he concludes

What Palestinians and Israelis need most now are not performative gestures of disinvestment but real gestures of impactful investment, not the threat of a deeper war in Rafah but a way to build more partners for peace. Invest in groups that promote Arab-Jewish understanding, like the Abraham Initiatives or the New Israel Fund. Invest in management skills capacity-building for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, like the wonderful Education for Employment network or Anera, that will help a new generation to take over the Palestinian Authority and build strong, noncorrupt institutions to run a Palestinian state.

This is not a time for exclusionary thinking. It is a time for complexity thinking and pragmatic thinking: How do we get to two nation-states for two indigenous peoples? If you want to make a difference and not just make a point, stand for that, work for that, reject anyone who rejects it and give a hug to anyone who embraces it.

Why the Campus Protests Are So Troubling [NYT]

…&…in the context…notwithstanding the part where I’m not entirely convinced that an idealistic approach to one’s definition of terms necessarily precludes the possibility that opting for two states over one might sound like its own form of exclusionary thinking…however much that might be a flight of fancy rather than your hard-nosed pragmatism…but…well…contradictions abound in the pages of the NYT…how else to explain that a piece by “a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace” kicks off with a quote

“History is littered, […] with the wars which everybody knew would never happen.”

…from the guy arguably more famous for a speech invoking “rivers of blood“

Hostility toward Israel is a useful tool for predominantly Shiite, Persian Iran to vie for leadership in the predominantly Sunni, Arab Middle East. But it should not be confused with concern for the well-being of Palestinians. In contrast to American, European and Arab governments that fund Palestinian human welfare initiatives, Iran has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into arming and financing Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Iran’s goal is not to build a Palestine but to demolish Israel.

And yet as much as the Islamic Republic is committed to its ideology, it is even more committed to staying in power. As the German American philosopher Hannah Arendt once put it, “The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution.” As its careful response to Israel’s recent military strikes on Iran showed, when faced with the possibility of full-blown war or existential economic pressure, Tehran tactically retreats.

After decades of living under an economically failing, socially repressive police state, Iran’s people long ago recognized that the greatest obstacle between themselves and a normal life is their own leadership, not America or Israel. In a 2021 public opinion poll conducted from Europe, only around one-fifth of Iranians approved of their government’s support of Hamas and “Death to Israel” slogan. Few nations have Iran’s combination of natural resource wealth, human capital, geographic size and ancient history. This enormous gap between Iran’s potential and its citizens’ reality is one reason the country has experienced numerous mass uprisings over the past two decades.

…either way…he’s arguing that the emnity between israel & iran is “unnatural” as much as it’s undeniable

Iran’s Axis of Resistance has empowered right-wing Israeli politicians far more than Palestinians over the past two decades. The threat of a Holocaust-denying Iranian regime with regional and nuclear ambitions has stoked Israeli anxieties, diverted attention from Palestinian suffering and facilitated normalization agreements between Israel and Arab governments equally fearful of Iran. Indeed, Iran and its proxies were such a useful adversary that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu helped prop up Hamas’s rule in Gaza until the deadly attacks of Oct. 7.

“The dream of Israeli leaders,” a retired Israeli general, Amos Yadlin, told me recently, “is to one day restore normal relations with an Iranian government.”

The dream of Iran’s Islamist leaders, on the other hand, is to end Israel’s existence. Israel’s conflict with Iran has been a war of necessity, but Iran’s conflict with Israel has been a war of choice. It won’t be over until Iran has leaders who put Iranians’ interests over Israel’s destruction.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/opinion/iran-israel-middle-east.html

…& what with mr friedman mere weeks ago trying to tell us all

How to Be Pro-Palestinian, Pro-Israeli and Pro-Iranian [NYT]

…& the iranian bit of that not looking like it’s any more interested in a peaceful resolution than bibi & his gung ho gang of collateral damagers…about the only part of any of this that seems consistent is a pervasive failure to practice what gets preached…to choirs or otherwise

…funny thing, though…the irish aren’t exactly strangers to multi-generational sectarian violence…& might have some “home rule” colored opinions about the way a “two-state” solution works out…&…well

Students against the war in Gaza began taking down the camp after Trinity College Dublin said it would divest from three Israeli companies. [NYT]

…is that a performative gesture?

…because if so I for one would take it over sending in the police to knock some sense into the kids…nobody got hurt, for a start…& I could stand for that to happen more…so…maybe…it’s complicated?