This is total crap. Anyone who falls for this guy's huge sweeping generalizations must never have passed Freshman Comp. On a related note re: Political Correctness, did anyone see that the Reds manager got fined by Selig for comparing a potential strike in bb to 9/11? God we have gone so far into hypersensitivity and thrown out notions of free speech in this country. And his remarks were not even that offensive. Ridiculous.
A car drove up to a Jewish student on campus and a passenger screamed: "Death to Jews. Hitler should have finished you all off when he had the chance." On a public listserve in the Humanities Department, a pro-Palestinian graduate student joked openly about Auschwitz. A Jewish senior was told by a university-appointed preceptor that he couldn't be "bothered" reading her B.A. paper because it focused on topics relating to Judaism and Zionism. Fliers posted in a dorm to publicize a pro-Israel rally were defaced with obscenities and vile, anti-Semitic suggestions. ***So from what I read from your post, Dr. Jones, these are all perfectly acceptable to you.
WorldNetDaily is usually a huge red flag (well, not a RED flag), but unfortunately these types of incidents have also been reported at Cal, San Diego State, and San Francisco State. Comparing anti-Semitism to political correctness doesn't do the issue justice. PC was just a blanket term for lazy conservative commentators. Anti-Semitism is far more violent and ugly. Of course, I've been resisting lumping in "left" and "anti-Israel" for a while, to no effect. (What about Pat Buchanan, huh? HUH?) So it's particularly galling to me seeing students from my old school buy into blood libels. I should go back to graduate school just as an excuse to move back up there and kick some ass. Anyone who believes in Jenin, but not the Holocaust, needs to spend some time in a coma.
The overuse of the term 'anti-Semitic' is in part due to the Israeli government and its supporters who all too often tend to label ANY criticism toward the present policies as 'anti-Semitic'. The result is like the little boy who cried wolf in that nobody really notices or cares when the occasional REAL act of anti-Semitism takes place.
Hey, Doc, you and I don't agree on much, but please keep in mind this is baseball. Anything that you or I consider "normal" has no bearing on what goes on in baseball. Selig is more concerned about Bowden's comments than the angry strike rhetoric. That pretty much sums up where baseball is going.
Far be it from Ted Rall to notice the difference between targeting terrorists and targeting innocent civilians.
I appreciate that the direct examples he gave were probably pretty much accurate. However the quote above just isn't true. It makes me think that somewhere stories are being deliberately expanded. Leading to the situation that another poster noted, about 'the little boy who cried wolf'.
There is not a change in the perceptions of the American public leading to racial intolerance or hatred of Jews. This is a reach on the part of this article. What we are seeing is a change in the media's perception of Israel based on their actions. You would be foolish to continue to support Israel when they are commiting acts as henious as those perpetrated by the Palestinians. This situation is so out of control it's almost comical if it weren't so tragic. Bill, I use to be a staunch supporter of the State of Israel. But after all of the actions I have seen over the past ten years I no longer think Israel hold's the moral high ground. Launching rockets at building's occupying the leaders of the PLO is not going to result in a resolution to the hostilities. Encouraging immigration and occupation of disputed territories, bulldozing Palestinians homes, these are actions that are neither noble or courageous. Just what will be accomplished? Will it escalate to a genoicde of both the Palestinians and Jews? Because with each escalation that is where it is going. Clearly the Palestinians have not had the strength to do the right thing. Israel once did. I would submit that Israel has lost it's moral compass. As an American I have no sympathy for either side. For me it's a no brainer. It's their war and we should take no action unless it reaches a point of the slaughter of the innocents. They have refused every effort to mediate their problems through diplomacy. I think thankfully the US media has finally come to the realization that both sides are undeserving of our support or sympathy. They are no better than each other. Everything they accuse the other of, they do themselves. Israel rationalizes their methods stating that the Palestinians did it first. Ergo an eye for an eye. Just because the Palestinians practice terrorism does justify Israel practicing terrorism too.
Dakism, "Sweeping generalization": faulty conclusion based on few examples. This guy is an ideologue who has taken a handful of regrettable (yet, sadly not at all unprecedented) incidents and is trying to assert that there is some new phase of anti-Semitism on the upswing in America. This is very akin to what the press is doing this summer with the multiple abduction cases (see other thread). Anti-Semitism has of course never gone away, but to claim that it is in fact becoming accepted is false to the point of absurdity. I could make a list 10 times longer than that of attacks on blackness in the same time frame; if I wanted to look for signs of anti-Muslim or Arab tendencies in America, I could come up with easily 50 times the number in this stupid article.
Re: Re: Anti-Semitism as the New Political Correctness So, how is the weather on Mars these days? What is the whole point, means, end, and raison d'etre of the intifada, if not a slaughter of innocents?
Re: Re: Re: Anti-Semitism as the New Political Correctness I wouldn't know. I thought you would since you live in Hollywood. What's the difference. Well, they are a terrorist organization. As far as I know the PLO charter does not sponsor state terrroism though it certainly has a large number of former terrorists and people sympathic to the use of terror. There are terrorists in many other countries yet the USA does not go to war with them. What is your suggestion as to what to do. Frankly both sides are vapor locked and running with blinkers on. They refuse to listen to reason. So maybe the best course of action is to let them beat the hell out of each other for a while and see if they come to their senses. Though that doesn't seem likely.
Actually, it is in the Israeli government's interest to increase the fear and the perceptions of anti-Semitism among Jews in the US. If Jews in this country feel that they are safe and that the US is thier true home, the fear among those in the Israeli government is that support for Israel among American Jews (moral, political, and financial) might begin to decline. Typically there is a direct correlation between these authors' pro-Israel/Zionist views and thier emphasis on isolated Anti-Semitic incidents in the US. Thus, anti-Semitism is used to emphasize the separateness of the Jewish people in the US country from mainstream society. In doing so, they set up the idea of Israel as the true homland of the Jews regardelss of the fact that most American Jews have never visited the country. This emphasis is further intensified by perceptions of these individuals that any criticism of Israeli policy is an act of anti-Semitism. Those Jews who don't have any significant feelings toward Israel seem to downplay anti-Semitism and focus instead on thier place in mainstream US society.
Further comment when I hear back from the flack from the U of C. Not that I don't implicitly trust everything I read in WorldNet Daily, but one can never be too cautious when dealing with publications with lower editorial standards than Taiwanese armpit-fetish magazines... 1. If these allegations are, in fact true, hank heavens I go to a school where people treat each other civily already. 2. The amusing (if you're capable of being amused by the deeply, deeply sad) thing is that it was a supposed wave of incidents such as this which led to the creation of the campus speech codes and seperate "_______ studies" departments that all good conservatives were decrying back in the early '90s, and some of the solutions proposed in the article sound suspiciously like the very same sorts of things that had those same good conservatives up in arms. I thought that mandating that some quota of courses be taught from a specific political perspective was the first step towards the barbarians storming the gates of Western Culture--or is that only a bad thing when the putative harrassment victims whose demands are being met are of a decidedly darker hue? 3. The very notion that the U of C is a hostile environment for Jewish people is a bit suspicious sounding, given the population of the college (and its neighborhood) and the school's history. Not saying it's impossible, by any means, just fishy.
I understand the first part of your point 2, but you kind of lose me after that. Sure, colleges have always been a place to grow alternative viewpoints, but to claim this as "barbarians storming the gates of Western Culture" and pass this off as people playing the race crad, well, as a good conservative, it throws me a bit.