WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2023
How about some cable news stars? It's a proven fact! College students often show limited judgment.
Of course, we adults routinely show limited judgment too. Reportedly, that can even happen, on the rare occasion, among upper-end mainstream journalists!
Still, college students may sometimes be inclined to go all in. In yesterday's report, we cited some shouting which one college student heard during a recent demonstration at Northwestern University. We quoted from this lengthy New York Times report:
HARTOCOLLIS AND SAUL (11/11/23): In the days after the Hamas attack on Israel, Max Strozenberg, a first-year student at Northwestern University, experienced a couple of jarring incidents.
Walking into his dorm, he was startled to see a poster calling Gaza a “modern-day concentration camp” pinned to a bulletin board next to Halloween ghosts and pumpkins.
At a pro-Palestinian rally, he heard students shouting, “Hey, Schill, what do you say, how many kids did you kill today,” an echo of a chant from the anti-Vietnam War movement, now directed at Northwestern’s president, Michael H. Schill, who is Jewish.
With apologies for the language, had Northwestern's president actually killed any kids that day? At times of very high partisan feeling, college students, like everyone else, can perhaps show somewhat limited judgment in very large, very loud ways.
What might such behavior tell us about the shouters? According to the Times report, the Northwestern freshman who heard that shouting seemed to think the shouting amounted to, or had stemmed from, a form of antisemitism.
On the other hand, the Times reporters quoted a "pro-Palestinian" college student in California. She had offered this general rebuttal to that general charge:
HARTOCOLLIS AND SAUL: Pro-Palestinian supporters are quick to push back, asking whether any criticism of Israel and Zionism is acceptable.
They say that the cries of antisemitism are an attempt to stifle speech and divert attention from a 16-year blockade of Gaza by Israel, backed by Egypt, that has devastated the lives of Palestinians. They point to the uprooting of 700,000 people during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. And they rail against Israel’s current invasion of Gaza, which has killed more than 10,000 people, according to the Gazan health ministry.
“We stand staunchly against all forms of racism and bigotry,” said Anna Babboni, a senior at Scripps College in Claremont, Calif., and one of the leaders of the local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.
Ms. Babboni said her group is not antisemitic, but it is anti-Zionist...
In the present-day context, it isn't automatically clear what "anti-Zionist" means. But this California college student denied the claim of antisemitism. Indeed, she staunchly said that her group stands against all forms of racism.
Why is that student "pro-Palestinian?" According to Hartocollis and Saul, some such students cite that "16-year blockade of Gaza." Reaching all the way back, they may also "point to the uprooting of 700,000 people during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War."
They'll say that they aren't antisemitic. That said, were the Northwestern shouters antisemitic? How about that senior at Scripps College?
In theory, such questions are very important. They're also hard to answer.
In this morning's New York Times, Alan Blinder offers a lengthy news report about the loosely-organized nationwide group to which that Scripps senior belongs. Headline included, Blinder starts like this:
BLINDER (11/22/23): After last month’s attack on Israel by Hamas, Students for Justice in Palestine promoted a “tool kit” for activists that proclaimed “glory to our resistance.” The group has been banned or suspended by Brandeis, Columbia and George Washington University. And it was recently the target of thundering speeches on Capitol Hill and blistered during a Republican presidential debate.
In the six weeks since Hamas attacked Israel, there may be no college group that has drawn more scrutiny than Students for Justice in Palestine, perhaps the most popular and divisive campus organization championing the Palestinian cause.
But unlike many national campus groups—whether they are sororities, fraternities, religious or political—Students for Justice in Palestine is by design a loosely connected network of autonomous chapters. There is no national headquarters and no named leader. There is a national student steering committee, but it is anonymous. The group has never registered as a nonprofit, and it has never had to file tax documents.
[...]
That deliberate lack of hierarchy has been crucial to the network’s ascent, allowing chapters to spring up with few obstacles, according to interviews with 20 people and a survey of videos, academic writings, archival news accounts and public records. The network’s constellation of tactics and rhetoric, including theatrical demonstrations with “apartheid walls” and mock Israeli checkpoints, has been replicated on campuses across the country.
The flat structure, though, has also fueled worries among pro-Israel groups that accuse the network of driving antisemitism on campuses, often with little accountability...
“Glory to our resistance?” Given the nature of the events of October 7, it's hard to find a way to locate that statement within the broad range of acceptable American political thinking.
On the other hand, would that college kid in Claremont subscribe to some such framework? According to Blinder, the national student group to which she belongs is very loosely organized. Indeed, there's no way to know, from Blinder's report, who made the quoted statement.
Would that college kid in Pomona see some type of "glory" in October 7's act of "resistance?" We have no idea, and it seems that she wasn't asked.
Meanwhile, it's also true that today's New York Times offers a guest essay by "a Palestinian writer living in the West Bank"—an essay with which that Scripps student would almost surely agree.
The Palestinian writer is Ali Awad. Headline included, his essay starts like this:
Many West Bank Palestinians Are Being Forced Out of Their Villages. Is My Family Next?
I was born in February 1998 in Tuba, a rural shepherding community of 80 Palestinian residents in the South Hebron Hills of the West Bank, where my family has lived for generations. Over the years we have suffered repeated attacks by Israeli settlers, part of an ongoing campaign to remove us from our land. Still, nothing prepared me for what our life has become since the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. In the last six weeks, the raids and harassment by settlers have become so intense that I do not know how much longer I and the other members of my community will be able to live here.
Under the cover of war, settlers have been storming villages in the West Bank, threatening Palestinians and destroying their homes and their livelihoods. International attention has been mostly focused on the atrocities in Israel and in Gaza, including the internal displacement of more than half of the population of the Gaza Strip.
In the West Bank, increasingly violent assaults on villages have forced at least 16 Palestinian communities—more than 1,000 people—to flee their homes since Oct. 7...
Awad is the age of a typical graduate student. His essay may serve to remind us that there are imaginable reasons for college seniors to be "pro-Palestinian"—to feel the bulk of their sympathy aligned with people like Awad.
Can a college student be "pro-Palestinian" without being antisemitic? Could such students even engage in a type of "shouting" in which they may seem to exercise limited discernment?
It seems to us that the answer is a fairly obvious if unfortunate yes. That doesn't mean that every other college student is somehow required to adopt the first student's overall view of this matter.
It simply means that Person B can disagree with Person A's view—can even do so rather loudly—without necessarily being racist or misogynist, or without being antisemitic.
That doesn't mean that no one holds views or feelings which are antisemitic, since some people plainly do. Also, it doesn't mean that there aren't American college students whose reaction to October 7 are almost impossible to square with the most expansive framework of American belief.
As we close today, we direct your attention to one such student—a junior at Penn. Especially on the right, a speech by this student on October 28 has gained a substantial amount of attention. On November 10, a report in Penn's student newspaper quoted part of what had been said:
DILWORTH (11/10/23): Recently, online reports citing a clip of a speech from a pro-Palestinian rally in Center City on Oct. 28 suggested that [the student] called the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7 “glorious” and said she felt “empowered and happy” when Hamas invaded Israel. [Her] theft of [an] Israeli flag was reported the same day.
“How about the photos of the bulldozer breaking through the deadly border? Do you remember that picture? And the several other joyful and powerful images which came from the glorious Oct. 7?” she reportedly said in the video circulating online.
To watch the video clip of this student's speech, you can just click here. It's hard to place this student's reactions to "the glorious October 7" within even the broadest framework of American political belief.
Is that student antisemitic? We'd be inclined to say that, within the framework of American thought and belief, she is currently lost to the world.
That said, it shouldn't be especially hard to see why some other students might be "pro-Palestinian"—might principally sympathize with people like Ali Awad, or with the people of Gaza.
That doesn't mean that such students are "right" in some ultimate way. In our view, it does suggest that people who are seeking solutions shouldn't rush to call such students names, or to assume the worst about their mentality or their motives.
Over the past many years, our own blue tribe has formed the habit of name-calling others. Some of our thought leaders may not be especially good at hearing the actual voices of some such actual people.
You don't have to agree with that Scripps College student. We're just suggesting that you probably shouldn't rush to call such people names. They'll do plenty of that on Fox without our team joining in.
We'll make a shocking suggestion:
For the many people within our own blue tribe who (quite understandably) are "pro-Israel," it's even possible that there are some things that student knows which some older people don't! This brings us to the statements by certain "cable news" stars to which we've referred of late.
How should those "pro-Palestinian" students be seen? In our view, some blue tribe leaders have been inclined to take the more simplistic route—the road more traveled by.
In our view, these thought leaders have appeared on our blue tribe's "cable news" shows and adopted a very odd, if perhaps understandable, stance:
They can't seem to understand why anyone would disagree with their own (plainly perfect) understandings and views. There is no knowledge but their knowledge, no facts but the facts they cite.
In fairness, we humans are wired to react in such ways, major top experts have said.
Coming Friday: Unabashedly clueless! ("Teach your parents well.")
