So in your post you said you wanted Tikvah members to be “attacked”, and called for more “assaults on campus”. My advice to you is to calm down. Yael, this is an example of your violent and extreme rhetoric and if you don’t tone it down, someone could end up getting hurt. Quit being be such a fanatic.

How do you feel when you read this distortion of your words? respected? listened to? now try and think how Yaman feels when he writes this group is “marginal” and you tell him he thinks it represents the Jewish community, or how I feel when you cross out the words “do not even consider” that preceded the word “retaliating”, in order to twist my words to fit into some caricature.

1. the correct slur would actually be self-hating jew, not antisemite ;-) believe me, I have practice with that.

2. Look, the point is that you ask for respectful answers, but it feels like you don’t act respectfully yourself. I’m sure you read the academic texts you work on very carefully, but it always seems like you criticize us before you read what we’ve said properly. For example, you say that “what you are doing (intentionally?) is to make those people more important than they really are and thereby suggesting we(jews/iaraelis) are all them”.

Now, the post you are responding to says “the right-wing Zionist argument in the United States [...] is why it is such a marginal movement within the American Jewish community, and may even be stronger amongst Christian Evangelicals than Jews”. It says “I am heartened by the support and condemnation of mainstream Jewish student leaders on campus”. It says “The lack of attendance at their rally reflects the fact that they have no substantive support whatsoever either from the campus Jewish community”. And my response to you said “We not only know “this group does not represent even a fraction of jewish or israeli politics” – this is what the whole post is about”. And instead of “occupying ourselves with retaliating”, my post very clearly says the opposite, it warns against retaliation. It calls for people to “to prevent this and to restore calm and peace to our campus”. The way you read us is like criticizing Fanon for supporting white supremacy.

If you want to disagree with us, fine, but you give the impression that what we write isn’t worth reading seriously and carefully.

3. Do we make mistakes? We definitely do. As they say in Hebrew, “מי שלא עושה, לא טועה” – he who doesn’t do anything, never makes mistakes. I appreciate and respect criticism from allies who are really on our side, who really know what we’re doing, who are really trying to support us and help us accomplish our goals. I feel your criticisms are based on a very superficial knowledge and understanding of who we are and what we do. When you say SJP will drift to extremism without Yaman, what is that based on? When you say we intensify violence – do you know our full range of activities, what emails we sent, who we met, what we did? You don’t, but again, you give the impression that what we do isn’t worth learning about before it is criticized.

4. Over and over and over again you blame the victim. What does it mean to say ” you respond hysterically to things like a 5-man “rally””? three of our members heard the ultra-racist lyrics in this rally, and decided to hold up a flag, and for this they were hit and called racial slurs. Why do you feel such a need to criticize “hysterical” Palestinians who are quietly and non-violently protesting racism against them? This is very offensive, as Yaman said, and it does make you sound like the “good cop” to Tikvah/ZFA’s “bad cops”. Tikvah tried to get them to remove the flags by force, and you are chiding them for holding it up. How about supporting them, being their allies, putting yourself in their shoes? And how about occasionally trying to sound supportive instead of 100% critical? Seriously.

5. And I think you need to take Seth’s last comment very seriously. Growing up in Tel-Aviv (or even in the affluent Ramat-Aviv, if I remember correctly) you (like me) benefited from a lot of privileges on Palestinians’ behalf. The land you were living on may have belonged to the destroyed village of Sheikh Muwwanis (which covered a lot of the area of what is now Ramat Aviv). The clean water you drank came not only from the Sea of Galilee, but also from the “Mountain Equifer”, that is – from the West Bank. You (like me) had access to a good high school which enabled you to come and study at Berkeley. All these are privileges which you shouldn’t take for granted – I think you could reflect on them and on what it means for you to be a true ally to Palestinians, before you criticize them as “hysterical” and extreme. I’m saying this not to make you feel guilty, but because I think we reach a much more empathic and profound political stance by recognizing our own privileges.

“unfortunately,” and as this does relate to you, have you considered that perhaps before “correcting” the colonized on how they should go about achieving their liberation, you should FIRST check your fellow colonizers on the intellectual and moral incoherence of their stance?

Just a question, sister. I really want to give you the benefit of the doubt that you’re an ally, but you’re making it really hard…

i am not saying you are to blame for being attacked, nor am i saying that nothing should be done about the assaults on campus. however, i do think that your specific responses are a mistake you are making. i bother to say my opinion b/c unfortunately this does relate to me, since what you are doing (intentionally?) is to make those people more important than they really are and thereby suggesting we (jews/iaraelis) are all them.

my critique of you is that in my eyes sjp – astonishingly – seem to replicate the jewish anti-defamation league. look at you, you respond hysterically to things like a 5-man “rally” where people talk about the UN, for christ sake!
occupy yourselves with “retaliating” to those people in blogs like this if you have nothing else to do, fine — but my problem with this is that by so doing you further establish their positioning in front of you, not dismantling it. THIS is where i think you should exercise some ignoring (and just to make it clear for tom – not in relation to the assaults. this blog is not about the assaults).
now, the ADL are in this business longer that you and doing it better – and they are still pathetic and damaging.
like the ADL you hysterically yell “racist” at me for not agreeing with you. sweet. glad you found some easy target who tried to dialogue with you. guess i’ll leave you to your “everybody who disagrees is an anti-arab” attitude. so ADL of you.

(so tom, it is you, and not “the arabs” that i am addressing. call me an anti-semite, go ahead, enjoy).

(I guess, apart from knowing me, and you assume I am extreme based on a post that warned anyone thinking of retaliating that “We should all be working as best we can to prevent this and to restore calm and peace to our campus”. Wow, that sure is radical).

I want to echo what some of the previous commenters have stated. I am stunned and confused by your claim that we “position ourselves against Tikvah.” In fact, the opposite is true. Because Tikvah positions itself against us, and because its actions often require us to respond in order to defend ourselves, it gives the appearance that we exist only to oppose Tikvah. Frankly, that’s not true. It is unfortunate that Tikvah often precipitates a number of huge public controversies, that the Daily Cal and co love to cover, but I think it is really outrageous to say–especially at this time–that when students are assaulted we should just ignore it.

I table for SJP every week, I go to meetings, and I’ve never met this person. So far as I know, she’s never had anything to do with SJP beyond her criticism of it, yet her comments are consistently couched in a way that gives the impression she has some sort of investment in SJP’s agenda. Perhaps the muzzle as opposed to the cage…

Where’s the common ground, Yael? Where’s the reason to think your motivation is something other than stopping, or at least slowing SJP’s activity? You consistently respond to posts as if you hadn’t really read them with a desire to understand their content, and you never say anything that can’t be summed up by “SJP, you should stop X or Y.” At the very least, I suppose, it’s predictable. You blame the victims: “…since this year started your rhetoric is all about violence …Its not that there hasn’t been violence – but you intensify it with the way you talk and write.” You characterize the tensions as a “rival[ry]“, ignoring altogether the power dynamics at play (there are individuals who attacked and who were attacked). All in all, you’re beginning to sound like the ‘good-cop’ who works in concert with the bad-cop (Tikva attackers), and merely feigns concern for the victims in this scenario in order to impact what they do.

So far as “respecting” your input goes, I certainly respect your right to blather after failing to think. But I don’t respect apologists. And I don’t think the disrespect of a lazy intellect is a thing to mourn. Next time you post, you should try to say something you haven’t said before.

What a digression.

https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/11/18/18552126.php