Rising Antisemitism on Campus, Online, and On the Streets - Michal Cotler-Wunsh

Shalom al Yisrael 🕊️🇮🇱🙌🏻🙏🧿

Very interesting Thanks

What is missing in this presentation is identifying the narrative that motivates all those criticizing Israel post 10/7: The idea that Israel is an oppressive and illegitimate colonial power against which 10/7 was a morally acceptable and legitimate resistance. Every time this topic is discussed this idea and narrative has to be exposed as essentially BS. The main line of refutation is that Israel exists as part of the reshaping of the middle east by by post Ottoman European imperial powers, just as it was reshaped by every imperial power for the last 6000 years. The thing that distinguished this reshaping was its equity, forbearance, grace, and intelligence. Instead of adjusting to the new opportunities it presented, all of Israel's neighbors focused all their energy on destroying her. For 100 years this policy has been ruinous for Israel's enemies, and only periodically tragic and continually inconvenient for Israel and those who wish her well. To condemn what happened as the Ottoman empire broke up as somehow inhuman and uniquely unfair betrays a profound ignorance of human history.

legitimate criticism of the Israeli government or military is not necessarily anti-Semitic, although it can be. The difference is in the intention of the critic. I have no evidence to support a rise of anti-Semitism, but do see an increase in legitimate criticism, as one would expect considering the actions of the Israeli government and military.

Stop eating near the mike

I'm a huge fan of Haviv Rettig Gur's speeches and I'm a passionate supporter of Israel's right to exist. But this speech doesn't convince me. Diaspora Jews were undoubtedly the distant descendants of people who left the land of Israel anything from hundreds to thousands of years ago. Just as diaspora Irishpeople, the descendants of Irishpeople who left during the potato famines or at some other time in history don't have the right to "return" to a country that now belongs to indigenous Irish people who've never left and to the non-Irish migrants who've been allowed to settle there, so diaspora Jews didn't have the right to settle in Mandate Palestine. But what they did have, as a decimated and destitute refugee population coming out of war-torn Europe, was the same right as refugees today have to escape danger and extreme poverty and try to get to a better place. Just as Africans crossing the Mediterranean right now aren't obliged to read and take heed of the poll data showing a rise in anti-African or anti-refugee sentiment, so the Jews of 1948 weren't obliged to take much account of how Palestinians, inspired to some extent by the pro-Nazi Grand Mufti, felt about their arrival. If we are to win the argument against campus protesters we should avoid any idea that Jews are claiming the land of their distant ancestors. We should avoid the claim that for centuries, by deliberate choice, diaspora Jews have remained poorly integrated and apart from their host societies and that they've endlessly pined to be somewhere else: Israel. By far the strongest arguments in Israel's defence are that Israeli Jews today are the descendants of refugees (most campus protesters are supportive of refugees) and that most Hamas supporters aren't respectable anti colonialists, rather they're ideologically similar to the pro-Nazi Grand Mufti or to anti-immigrant ultra-nationalists on the European far right.

If you classify every criticism of Israeli government’s conduct or of Israel itself as antisemitism, then I can’t help you!

Saying Israel is "Imperfect" or has "Issues" is actually comedic. This is an insult to any intelligent human being.