Notices by Raphael Mimoun רפאל מימון (raph@social.coop), page 7

Student protestors are portrayed as anywhere between naive and brainwashed. Now listen to this. Nothing naive here.

#Israel #Gaza #Chicago #Palestine #StudentProtests

Fears that antisemitism—or overt support for unbridled violence against anyone affiliated with Israel—pervades the movement are legitimate. There is antisemitism in the movement, just like there is antisemitism in American society.

This antisemitism, and other forms of harassment, must be condemned and, as much as possible, ousted from the protest movement. But the priority right now is to end Israel's murderous assault on Gaza. And this is what this movement is working toward.

16/17

There are now over 100 student encampments.

Thinking about student movements over the past century, when has such a large movement been proven wrong later on? Has there ever been a case where students and young people mass mobilized, protested, occupied, and were later proven wrong? As far as I know, no.

When students are moved by the hundreds of thousand to take action like they are doing right now on university campuses, history usually proves them right.

17/17

News and social media rarely give a full picture of what happens inside protest movements. But based on my experience on campuses and at protests, the overwhelming majority of protestors are there to call for an end to the suffering in Gaza and Israeli crimes against Palestinians.

15/17

If anti-Jewish hatred was widespread, I believe many of these Jewish students would rapidly pack up, go home, and dissociate themselves from the movement and—like everything these days—it would be aggressively shared online.

Yet, they aren't just remaining at the forefront of the movement, but these Jewish protesters are also very visibly taking part in Jewish rituals right in the middle of the encampments.

14/17

Finally, I haven’t heard of Jewish students who were active participants in the encampments and left because of rampant antisemitism. Jewish students have a significant presence in many of the encampments and protests.

13/17

It feels to them as if, by calling for a transformation of Israel from a Jewish state to a state for all its citizens, you are in fact calling for the destruction of the entity that (in their mind) ensures Jewish safety.

So when Zionist Jews feel unsafe in the face of anti-Israel or anti-Zionist rhetoric, they are not faking it: they actually feel threatened, they feel attacked. But their subjective feelings do not mean that they are facing objective threats.

11/17

Second, the cynical instrumentalization of antisemitism by pro-Israel advocates makes it harder than ever to distinguish anti-Zionism from antisemitism.

The ADL has been including anti-Zionist protests in its tally of antisemitic events. https://forward.com/news/575687/anti-defamation-league-adl-antisemitism-count-anti-zionism/

Establishment Jewish institutions, mainstream media outlets, and many public figures have erased any form of separation between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

12/17

Antisemitism in all its forms, especially in a movement for justice & liberation, must be condemned & fought in the strongest possible way. What is markedly difficult right now is to decipher what is antisemitism & what isn’t.

First, for many Jews, Zionism is an integral part of their Jewishness—alongside Jewish traditions, languages, religion, etc. To them, it is impossible to separate Zionism from Jewish identity. So attacking Zionism or Israel feels like an attack on their identity.

10/17

During protests following the police murder of George Floyd, I often marched alongside white anarchists who clearly sought to provoke clashes with the police (most of the time, the police didn't need any provocation to be violent anyway). This, of course, said nothing about the justness and the critical importance of the protests and the Movement for Black Lives in general. There is nothing surprising, then, that grifters and extremists are joining in the Palestinian solidarity movement.
8/17

Antisemitism is widespread in American society. It is most prevalent and most violent in the right and far-right (see the deadly shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in 2018). But Jewish conspiracy theories are present on the left too.
It would be widely naive to think that, miraculously, the Palestinian solidarity movement—a movement of hundreds of thousand, maybe millions—would be exempt from antisemitism, as if it didn't emerge out of American society.
9/17

When I organized for Bernie Sanders in 2016, the movement gathered an multiracial, multi-generational coalition of people united in their fight for more social justice in the United States. But some activists went too far, too strong & too loudly—engaging in toxic behaviors online and offline, against anyone who opposed our movement. The establishment conveniently latched onto these individuals to paint the movement as being overrun by extremist "Bernie Bros".
7/17

The full version of this thread is available on my blog for easier reading: https://www.onesmalldetail.blog/campus-protests-antisemitism-and-the-lessons-from-history/

2/17

We see on social media and in the news antisemitic chants, overt support for Hamas, and other distressing reports. No question that some of these are true. I watched myself a video of a small group of protesters chant "burn Tel Aviv to the ground". I lived in Tel Aviv & many of my relatives still live there. Calls to burn Tel Aviv to the grounds are calls to kill my relatives.

But anyone who has been on campuses in the past month knows that this is a far cry from the heart of the movement
3/17

It is easy to get bogged down by viral videos & news reports of violent statements, to think that the movement initially felt so promising to challenge the status quo in Palestine-Israel but was hijacked by extremists.

But unsavory and even violent rhetoric and behaviors are, sadly, to be expected.

4/17

One of the beautiful things about mass movements is that they gather people from all walks of life: with or without formal education; working class, middle-class or well off; from all ethnic backgrounds; people who have stable lives and people with mental illnesses.
5/17

This means mass movements cannot have a single, well-defined message. They are open, diffuse and decentralized. Those who do not fully grasp the ethos of the movement (including people who are mentally unstable) can join in. Like anyone else, they can make statements or engage in behaviors that go against the movement's aims or are simply abhorrent. Parasitic individuals and groups often join in to co-opt the movement, to push their own agenda, or just to spew hate and incite violence.
6/17

Since October 7th, I've joined protests, fundraising events for Gaza, and students on university campuses.

As a Jew and someone who has a ton of friends and family in Israel, I want to share some thoughts on claims of antisemitism in student encampments and the broader Palestinian solidarity movement:

1/17
#Israel #Palestine #Gaza #students #universities

Just came back from the UCLA campus. A few quick thoughts:

1. The encampment is not very disruptive. It occupies a tiny part of UCLA's massive campus. Though it's been there for days, I saw a lot of students discovering it for the first time and asking "what's going on?"

1/6
#Israel #Palestine #Gaza #UCLA #Columbia

The main disruption is that students have to walk around the encampment (maybe 5 extra minutes) to go from one side to the other. The main path that is closed is actually closed by campus security, not protestors.

So not exactly the riot we are told makes the students' lives impossible.

I took this photo just outside the encampment. Very peaceful, students chilling, living their student lives.

2/6