Nahlia Al-Arian
They’re a terrifying force of nature. They’re so scary that their presence is sufficient pretext to marshal a squad of cops to deal with the threat.
The mayor of New York City Eric Adams and the police department have used the claim of outside agitators to justify their use of force in clearing the protestors from Columbia University. Adams pointed to the presence of Nahlia Al-Arian as the “tipping point” in his decision to authorize the military-style raids on the campus.
Who is she? Jeremy Scahill writes about how this 63-year old retired fourth grade teacher and grandmother, whose family is from Gaza and who has lost about 200 of her family and friends in the recent Israeli onslaught there, ended up as the embodiment of ‘outside agitators’ that required such brutal force.
Oh no! And a teacher, too? They’re the worst. She’s got the NY police trembling in their jackboots.
I’ve got one of those grandmas living in my house, and I tell you, sometimes I’d like to call out the National Guard, but I’m too scared.
When reading stories like this I first deal with the rage by taking a medication I normally only use during extreme stress at work. High blood pressure is not a trivial problem at my age.
Second, I deal with the rage by forwarding the news item as widely as possibly. Because John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) sings “anger is an energy”.
Just get her that bidet and no one gets hurt.
I recently met a Palestinian woman from Lebanon…a friend of my partners who could be a grandmother. She said for the first time in her life she is proud to admit she is Palestinian given the support from university students.
I think I’ve seen this sort of complaint somewhere before — about half a century ago.
As I have commented, I contend that both Israel and Palestine should be states and peoples that should exist in peace. But, centuries of building hatred and violence by the governing bodies of both will never allow that. Perpetuation of the slaughter is, in a large part, due to aholes vile kushner and the intentionally impotent stooge blinken.
The stupidity and deceit of government and university administrators is appalling.
First, semitic refers not only to Jews but also to Palestinians and other Arabs.
Second, the student protesters are primarily demanding a halt to the netanyahoo genocide of palestinians and for universities to divest from supporting that slaughter.
Third, the corrupt university administrators are acting in the spirit of Kent State in using militarized police to brutally stop the demonstrations that their inaction has caused to intensify.
Fourth, many professors, including Jewish professors, have been trying to protect the student protesters
Fifth, as PZ points out, at least some ‘outside agitators’ have very legitimate reasons to participate in the protests.
Sixth, many of these universities are public, which, logically, gives the public appropriate standing to support student causes.
Seventh, yes, tRUMP is excrement. But, biden has been busy sending billions in arms so israel can murder and destroy the palestinians, their hospitals, universities and homes. Israel is using hand grenades to kill a fly.
Eighth, based on his own reported remarks, it seems ‘mayor’ Eric Adams is a mealy mouthed imbecile.
It hasn’t been centuries. Modern Israel has existed less than 80 years. The zionist movement is only a few decades older.
Jews in Arab states were second-class citizens but they generally fared much better than in Christian states, until modern Israel came into being.
@6 numerobis wrote: It hasn’t been centuries. Modern Israel has existed less than 80 years. The zionist movement is only a few decades older.
I reply: of course you are correct. But, as conflicting cultures, they had leaders that engaged in violence and hatred for centuries, according to historical records. I should have been more precise, maybe ‘leadership’ would be more accurate than ‘governing bodies’.
There are cops who panic when hit by an acorn, so this kind of over reaction should surprise no one.
So… Democratic mayor, in a Democratic-majority city, in a Blue State, under a Democratic President, ordering the violent arrest of people protesting a genocide that they are funding.
I wish I believed in an afterlife, because Biden and all who support him really do deserve hell.
Trump would be much worse for the Palestinians. His manikin of a son-in-law has published plans to build a sea resort on the ruins of Gaza. Trump would be all-in on ethnic cleansing.
He also would be much worse for you and I. The difference between Biden and Trump is like the difference between King Log and King Stork.
Both the settlers and Hamas have expressed genocidal intent; the former by bloodthirsty popular culture, and the latter in its founding charter. No moral high ground there.
I see no solutions there, only tradeoffs. If, for instance, the USA withdraws support from Israel, then they’ll ally with Saudi Arabia, and Mr. Bone Saw will greenlight extermination. What Ummah?
shermanj 1:26 pm:
“Anti-semitic” does refer to both Arabs and Jews, if you accept 19th-century racial pseudo-science. The term was invented by some German Jew-haters because in the late 1800s, religious bigotry was unfashionable, but all the cool kids did racism. I recommend that we retire the term “anti-semitism” and replace it with “Jew-hatred” if you don’t mind the rawness, or “Judenhass” if you like the creepyness, or “Judeophobia” to be polite, and to parallel “Islamophobia”.
@shermanj #7:
That’s still not really true, or at least it’s less true than for Jewish-Christian relations in Europe and the Middle East. Palestine was governed by the Ottoman empire for about 400 years before the British took it over in WWI, and throughout that time there was relative peace between Jews and Muslims under the the millet system. Pogroms and other violence were not unknown, but they were mostly instigated by Arab Christians, and less common than in Europe. Many Jews moved to Palestine in order to escape persecution in Europe: the first and second Aliyahs occurred under Ottoman rule.
Arab-Jewish conflicts in Palestine became more severe during the 19th century, because both groups had burgeoning nationalist movements with competing aims: to establish Palestine as a Jewish state with a mostly-immigrant population, or to establish it as an Arab state for most of the folks who already lived there. It was a fairly practical conflict, and remains so.
There’s nothing intrinsically incompatible about Arab & Jewish cultures. The hatred persists because Israel & Palestine form an apartheid state in which both the regime and the resistance receive lots of military support from outside powers, and there’s no generally livable status quo which lasts long enough for most people to become invested in it. I think you’d see significant shifts in attitudes within a generation or two, under either a one-state or two-state solution, but it would take international intervention to maintain stability during that time, and the US has always worked hard to thwart that.
I’ve got one of those grandmas living in my house, and I tell you, sometimes I’d like to call out the National Guard, but I’m too scared
Wise man. Bring her flowers, agree to anything she says, and tell her how wonderful she is.
I met Sami and Nahla Al-Arian decades ago, when he first landed on GW Bush’s “War on Terrorism” list – very nice people.
A rarely-mentioned irony: as an influential and respected member of the Tampa Muslim community, Sami played a significant part in winning Florida’s 2000 vote for … GW Bush.
Prax @ # 12: Palestine was governed by the Ottoman empire for about 400 years before the British took it over in WWI, and throughout that time there was relative peace between Jews and Muslims …
You just need to roll the historical record back a bit further. Take the word “Palestine”, change the first two vowels to “i”s, drop an “h” in after the “P”, and you have the name of a historical nation that played the role of bad guys throughout the Old Testament. (That’s not just an archaic pun – ask any modern Arabic-speaker how they pronounce that word.)
Both populations have gone through tremendous cultural and genetic changes since then, but they keep up the feud and have already done the prep work to maintain it for generations more.
@11 Nathaniel Hellerstein wrote:
“Anti-semitic” does refer to both Arabs and Jews, if you accept 19th-century racial pseudo-science. The term was invented by some German Jew-haters because in the late 1800s,
I reply: this is inaccurate and inflammatory. I refer you to an authoritative source that puts in clearly in the 1700s. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/who-are-the-semites/
While Shem and his sons are of biblical antiquity, the Semite is of much more recent origin, >> dating from 18th-century Europe <<. The notion that some languages may be related to other languages was by no means new.
It was not until >> 1781 that this group was given the name which it has retained ever since. << In that year, August Ludwig Schlozer contributed an essay on this subject to a comprehensive German work on biblical and Oriental literature. According Schlozer, “from the Mediterranean Sea to the Euphrates and from Mesopotamia down to Arabia, as is known, only one language reigned. The Syrians, Babylonians, Hebrews and Arabs were one people. Even the Phoenicians who were Hamites spoke this language, which I might call the Semitic.”
@12 Prax writes: That’s still not really true, or at least it’s less true than for Jewish-Christian relations in Europe and the Middle East. Palestine was governed by the Ottoman empire for about 400 years before the British took it over in WWI, and throughout that time there was relative peace between Jews and Muslims under the the millet system.
I reply: I agree with you that the Ottoman millet system minimized violence throughout their empire. But, I have been told by a middle-eastern scholar that even under that umbrella government there were many violent clashes between groups of Muslims and Jews. Confirmation Ref. @15 Pierce R. Butler
No, it doesn’t. In current academically respectable discourse, “semitic” does not refer either to contemporary Jews, or to Arabs. It is used only of languages (both Hebrew and Arabic are semitic languages), and of ancient populations. Indeed, your own link pretty much says so! As for “antisemitic”, that has always referred only to prejudice against or hatred of Jews, since its 19th-century coining – and was quickly adopted by antisemites themselves, although apparently not actually originated by them. “Jew-hatred” (as suggested by Nathaniel Hellerstein) misses key aspects of antisemitism as a specific pseudo-scientific term; Jews were widely hated in medieval Europe, but the target was essentially Judaism – in principle at least, Jews could escape it by converting to Christianity, while the modern antisemite couldn’t care less whether a Jew is a religiously observant Jew, a Christian convert, or an atheist.