Workin’ for the Weekend #64: Gentiles for Jews

Also: So very many petitions.

I took this pic on Wednesday, 400 feet from my front porch, on the sidewalk flanking the (not pictured) Hannah Senesh Community Day School, which since the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre has cloaked its chain-link playground fence with obscuring green plastic trellises. Visible in the photo is the public elementary school that our oldest daughter graduated from and our youngest bailed on after the disastrous Covid kindergarten year; if you squint toward the distance on the left you can make out the door I walk through every year to make futile votes in elections that deliver 89 percent stampedes for type of City Councilwoman who might just get arrested in a pro-Palestinian demonstration that features chants of “From the river to the sea.”

But this is no self-satirizing limousine-liberal neighborhood like nearby Park Slope; we’re an old patriotic Italian burg with a semi-recent French/white-collar family overlay. You can take your shrill hippie progressive stuff across the Gowanus to the Co-op; in this neighborhood we police our own, respect the Virgin Mary statuary, and go HAM on the 4^th of July.

That’s part of why it was so troubling to see on various neighborhood poles and trees the paper/tape corner-scabs from hastily ripped-down fliers—sometimes discarded on the sidewalk, another Carroll Gardens no-no—that had been reminding residents, in this, the city with the world’s largest population of Jews, that there are more than 200 men, women, children and senior citizens held captive in Gaza after being kidnapped by the murder-gang Hamas. That we would even have to resort to the grim adaptation of hoisting these fliers up out of the moral midgets’ reach is upsetting. Though it was gratifying yesterday to see this classic Noo Yawker’s confrontation with a sign-vandal go viral.

* We talked about this and related concepts during our monthly, tech-challenged stint on The Megyn Kelly Show Thursday afternoon. In response to Megyn’s question about why we aren’t seeing bigger public demonstrations by American Jews, I suggested that what we really needed to see was some goddamned gentiles out there pounding the pavement:

* Referenced therein is a “Flood Brooklyn for Gaza” demonstration scheduled today at 3 p.m. in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Crown Heights, near the Brooklyn Museum. Jews are reportedly being encouraged to stay away. “What everyone is afraid of,” wrote John Podhoretz, echoing Moynihan on Megyn Kelly, “is a repeat of August 1991.” I am out of the city, but hopefully one of the other three Fifths will be on hand to document the potentially volatile proceedings, and I genuinely hope some from our robust NYC Fifdom contingent will be on hand to spread messages of empathy, tolerance, bullshit-calling, and (hopefully unnecessary) protection.

* Speaking of poster-ripping, as well as our Episode #427 guests Greg Lukianoff (#216, Members Only #183) and Rikki Schlott, the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) posted a piece Thursday by Talia Barnes under the headline “Tear Down Censorship, Not Posters.” Excerpt:

The latest flurry of poster teardowns shows that authoritarian impulses run not only through government entities and institutional leaders, but also through individuals inflamed by outrage, caught up in the whirlwind of current events and the media coverage surrounding them. And it’s happening at our most elite academic institutions, whose students should be leading the way in safeguarding — not tearing down — our most fundamental rights in difficult times.

* Lukianoff/Schlott also got the Nick Gillespie (Special Dispatch #72, #379) treatment this week:

* Speaking of Higher Ed, our pal Nellie Bowles (#187) took a blowtorch to that institution’s post-Oct. 7 performance in her latest TGIF newsletter for The Free Press:

Nearly 2,000 sociologists signed a letter that Israel was committing “genocide” and anything Hamas does is justified by the “context.” The University of California, Berkeley Ethnic Studies Faculty Council released a statement condemning anyone who describes what Hamas did as “terrorism,” which is offensive. The student leader of a Wellesley residential house wrote to the entire dorm she oversees: “We firmly believe that there should be no space, no consideration, and no support for Zionism within the Wellesley College community.” Harvard launched a task force to help ensure the pro-Hamas protesters feel safe and can get jobs while also berating any Jews they might find. At George Washington University, students projected onto the side of the school library: GLORY TO OUR MARTYRS and FREE PALESTINE FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA. At Stanford, students are asking the school to pay for round-trip tickets for Muslim students to visit home: “Full round trip covered by University upon the signing of a ceasefire for students to visit their family and friends and grieve properly.” […]

At Cooper Union, pro-Hamas protesters chased a clutch of Jewish students into the library. Video from inside shows the young Jews standing, frightened, as the protesters pound on the doors. What exactly would they have done if they got in? Librarians reportedly offered to hide the students in the attic. The joke writes itself. 

The protesters trying to ram through those doors to beat up the Jewish students might even be up for some extra credit. Professors are starting to offer it to anyone who joins a pro-Hamas protest. 

Here’s Berkeley professor Victoria Huynh: “Hi everyone, We’re offering a field trip and/or extra credit opportunity: (1) Students can attend the national student walkout tomorrow against the settler-colonial occupation of Gaza (info attached below) OR (2) Students can watch a short documentary on Palestine and call/email your local California representative using this linktree. Doing so will either count as a field trip or an extra 5 points on the field trip category of your grade.” First of all: Who talks to college students about “field trips?” Anyway, UCLA professors are also offering extra credit for students who go to pro-Hamas rallies. 

* Twofer Tuesday from former Fif’ guests in The Free Press: John McWhorter (#84, #121, #188 & #366) wrote “The Ultimate Condescension Toward Palestinians: There is a patronizing racism in the idea that slaughtering innocent people equates to noble freedom fighting, as if this were the only way to respond to oppression,” and Eli Lake (#52, #65, #141, #174, S.D. #51, #326, #368, #407, M.O. #184) added “Qatar’s War for Young American Minds: The same country now protecting Hamas’s senior leaders has donated billions to American universities. Here’s why.”

* Over in the Fifth Column Chat (where paying subscribers can initiate threads) I see a couple other bits of recommended Lakeiana: The Monday episode of The Re-Education with Eli Lake featuring former New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier on “why so many professors and intellectuals have expressed solidarity with the fanatic butchers of Hamas and the thinker who made radical violence cool, Frantz Fanon,” and Thursday’s convo with ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt on “Decent People Versus Campus Cretins.”

* You people keep-keep-keeping on asking us to bring on Freddie deBoer to talk about Israel/Palestine. So as a break in your battle, here’s FdB in conversation Wednesday with Fif’ sportsball fave Ethan Strauss (#185, #333, #383, M.O. #151, #408), including about “Freddie’s differences with The Free Press over the Israel issue.” Two recent deBoer pieces on the topic: “Goliath, Who Aspires to be David,” and “Can the Liberal Democratic Project Incorporate Israel? Will It Survive If It Can't?”

* Was this post distressingly short on Yael Bar tur fanfic? Let’s fix that. On Tuesday, Fifdom’s favorite Israeli went on a bomb-sheltertastic installment of Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em with Sarah Hepola (#354) and Nancy Rommelmann (#79, S.D. #27, S.D. #30, #198, #203, S.D. #34, S.D. #50, S.D. #64, S.D. #111). Also on Tuesday, the Yael/Chaya Leah Sufrin joint Ask a Jew brought on for a taped-both-before-and-after-Oct. 7 episode the great Mary Katharine Ham (#345).

* There’s been a lot of petitions and open letters flying around these days, most of them turrible. For those who appreciate the better examples of the debased form, here’s one from a couple weeks back that Kmele (our resident letter-signer) slapped his John Hancock on: The Westminster Declaration. Here’s how it begins:

We write as journalists, artists, authors, activists, technologists, and academics to warn of increasing international censorship that threatens to erode centuries-old democratic norms.

Coming from the left, right, and centre, we are united by our commitment to universal human rights and freedom of speech, and we are all deeply concerned about attempts to label protected speech as ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and other ill-defined terms.

This abuse of these terms has resulted in the censorship of ordinary people, journalists, and dissidents in countries all over the world.

Former Fif’ guests so co-declaring include Nellie Bowles, Glenn Greenwald (#183, #197, #211), Heather Heying (#99), Coleman Hughes (#121, #144, #181, #188, #201, #379, #412), Greg Lukianoff, Glenn Loury (#121, #188, #366), Aaron Maté (#138, #173), Jacob Mchangama (#102, #344), John McWhorter, Brendan O’Neill (#129) Paul Rossi (#304), Jeffrey Sachs (#229, #346), Jacob Siegel (#36, #70, #193), Matt Taibbi (#226, #348), Bret Weinstein (#99), and Bari Weiss (#89, #115, #159, #180, #187).

* Comment of the Week goes to first-timer C. Louise Kennedy:

Nope. I’m Ivor’s mom!! Different college kid, though I’d totally punk Ivor and he knows it. This is the first time I’ve ever entered tfc chat. But I was compelled to write an email this morning to the lads to thank them for alerting me to Ivor’s meth dealing.

Walkoff music, doubling here as a forthcoming-episode tease, is from Danny Polishchuk: