Victimology 101 at UC San Diego
Adding to the evidence that California campuses have become the epicenter for anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and anti-American activism, student groups at UC San Diego led by Students for Justice in Palestine introduced — for the third time — an initiative aimed at divesting university funds from “U.S. companies that profit from violent conflict and occupation.”
This year, the divestment call was aimed specifically at General Electric and Northrop Grumman — firms that “produce parts of Apache helicopters used by the Israeli Defense Forces against Palestinians” — with the empty ambition that “by removing investments from companies who assist in perpetuating the violence in the area [supporters would be instrumental in] setting up a forum where peace is achievable.”
As had happened on two earlier occasions on the UCSD campus when a similar divestment initiative was presented, the proposal was roundly defeated in a 20-13 vote, stunning its supporters.
The rejection of calls for divestment from companies doing business with Israel mirrors what has happened elsewhere on campuses, where such campaigns represent the continuing effort by some activist members of the academic Left — joined happily by Islamists and other ideological enemies of the Jewish state — to prolong and enhance the demonization of Israel for the purpose of delegitimizing, weakening, and, it is hoped by these advocates, eventually extirpating Israel altogether. Positioned as a morally upright effort to assert and protect the rights of the long-suffering Palestinians, these efforts at demonizing Israel are not, in fact, benign gestures of peace activists and well-meaning academics in pursuit of social justice for the Palestinians.
But a telling, if not unexpected, thing happened once the student groups who had sponsored this odious divestment resolution actually lost their bid to implement it: supporters of the divestment initiative immediately proclaimed that the initiative had failed because opponents of the resolution were “racists” and bigots. They claimed opponents pressured the student government representatives to vote down the campaign in a manner that created a “hostile campus climate … for students of color and students from underserved and underrepresented communities,” suffering victims who are now “hurt, [and] feel disrespected, silenced, ignored and erased by this University.”
These victimized students and faculty also self-righteously proclaimed in a letter to the UCSD administration that the pro-Israel faculty and staff who spoke against the resolution at the meeting should not even have had a voice in the proceedings: “The fact that they can state whatever they like at public meetings because of academic freedom but while also using their positions of authority as professors or staff for power and intimidation is not acceptable.”
The language of the whining memo to the UCSD administration, like the language of the divestment resolution itself, is revealing. Both are laced with the tired Marxist, post-colonial vocabulary depicting a Manichean world view in which Israel is the brutal oppressor and the Palestinians are the innocent Third-World oppressed, and that the absence of peace in the region is only the fault of the militaristically mighty Jewish state. “The reality is,” the memo clarified for those on the administration who might not know, “that [the Israeli/Palestinian conflict] is a human rights issue where the oppressed are fighting against the oppressor.”
The language of human rights has, of course, been exploited to promote the Palestinian cause by many in the West and in the Arab world who wish the struggle to be seen not for what it actually is — a decades-old campaign to extirpate the Jewish state and “drive the Jews into the sea” — but instead as merely a process by which the Palestinian Arabs throw off the yoke of colonial oppression by Israel and achieve self-determination and statehood. But that formula requires that the Palestinians always remain victims, for it is in that way that they are able to acquire support in furtherance of their cause.
That same designation of victimhood had obviously become a tool for Students for Justice in Palestine and other student groups and faculty members who wrote the scolding entreaty to UCSD administrators. Nowhere in their accusatory memo did they address the central point of the resolution; that is, whether it had any merit at all and whether the vote to defeat it was handled transparently and fairly (which it obviously was). Instead, their reaction to losing the vote was not to look at the vacuity of their campaign but rather to make themselves into victims who now “feel uncomfortable” on campus because of the rejection of their ideas. In other words, on campuses today, feelings trump ideas.
“In the society of victims,” Charles Sykes observed in his engaging book A Nation of Victims, “individuals compete not only for rights or economic advantage but also for points on the ‘sensitivity’ index, where ‘feelings’ rather than reason are what count.”
As victim groups become aware of their supposed classification as “authentic” victims, they are prone to contradict the stated goal of diversity by limiting real dialogue and interchange between opposing points of view such as those expressed by some pro-Israel, anti-divestment faculty and students at the February 29 meeting. Thus, while “social justice” proponents, who claim a high moral ground because they fight for the rights of the oppressed, adamantly defend free speech for themselves in order to define their own world views, they are clearly uncomfortable with the speech of others and exempt themselves from having to live by the suppressive rules of expression they craft for others.
In fact, the UCSD students claimed, the mere presence at the meeting of those with alternate views of the divestment resolution resulted in a “hostile campus climate being created for students of color and students from underserved and underrepresented communities,” something that served to “erase the existence of many individuals in the room,” presumably only those who hoisted the hateful resolution on this campus in the first place.
This technique is effective for those who make themselves victims on campus because it helps to insulate them from criticism and sanction for their often radical ideologies. As the signatories of the memo — members of the Muslim Student Association, Students for Justice in Palestine, MEChA, Student Affirmative Action Committee, and the Black Student Union, among them — had already made clear, the failure of the divestment resolution was the fault of others, not them, due to the racism and bigotry of pro-Israel faculty and students who obviously lack concern for social justice, Palestinians, and “students of color” like them. In his insightful book Illiberal Education, Dinesh D’Souza noted that campus groups regularly “seek the moral capital of victimhood” as the UCSD students are doing. Why? Because, he said, “by converting victimhood into a certificate of virtue, minorities acquire a powerful moral claim that renders their opponents defensive and apologetic, and immunizes themselves from criticism and sanction.”
“Concern for the Palestinians may be a commendable effort,…”
No, actually, at this point it is not commendable at all.
Indeed, the Palestinian cause is a reprehensible fraud.
There is a word for this: sinislam, the evil melding of the loony left and mohammed’s mayhem.
Northrup is a good buy and hold stock. Paying good dividends.
If these people were interested in helping Palestinians they would buy Palestinian products. They can’t because most of those are marketed under Israeli brands.
Spindok :And what products exactly, pray tell, do the Palestinians manufacture other than homemade rockets and explosives, that these people could buy? LOL
Some plastics, some agriculture. Fruits and vegetables go to Europe, plastics reach the US. Not much, but still.
The left is now the focus of anti semitism (Jew haters). The root of this is the belief that Jews (and Asians) have become too successful thus now the oppressors. And if the Muslims can be bought off by killing a few jews, so be it.
“student groups at UC San Diego led by Students for Justice in Palestine”
Strange, but you never seem to see any student groups on campus these days that say “Justice for Israel,” even when Israel has a few hundred rockets raining down on it from Gaza. It’s pathetic how low colleges have gone these days, treating our one true ally in the Middle East as an enemy. Yes, mainstream media and higher education propaganda have done their jobs well, so now that Palestinians, who would like nothing better than to kill every Jew in the area, are treated as the victims in this matter. They must be very happy with what they’ve done, the idiots.
“Social Justice” movements would lose 60% of their casual support if we started insisting on invariably calling it what it truly is, “Social Vengeance”.
I agree, almost invariably when you see any combination of what used to be called ‘buzzwords’: peace, justice, independent, liberal, antiwar, democratic, progressive…you will be treated to a loony left libtard lie-fest.
Brilliant article. Perfectly defines EXACTLY what is going on and the EXACT mechanics of their ongoing campaigns. Thank you
UCSD has long been a hotbed of Muslim Student Assn. agitation. Originally not so much, in more recent years the MSA has become an arm of Hamas, just as the organization CAIR.
UC Irvine has also been a target of the MSA.
I recall a course description at UC Berkeley (that just barely missed materializing) that if you were “pro Israel” you shouldn’t sign up for the course.
The soft jihadi infiltration process is well underway. These Muslim idiots know they can and so they do create problems for meek university administrators.
Here’s one of those charming UCSD agitators on display, watch to the end
they could focus on the pathologies of Palestinian society, crystallized and made more malevolent by the rule of Hamas itself, in which Palestinian children are inculcated nearly from birth, with seething, blind, unrelenting, and obsessive hatred of Jews and the “Zionist regime,”
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It isn’t about Hamas only, it’s about iSLAM itself… As the authentic hadith below shows, the muslim “necessity” to slaughter all Jews to the last one in order to bring about Judgment Day for black-cube worshippers isn’t anything invented by Hamas, but a centuries-old cornerstone of the so-called “religion of peace.”
Abu Huraira reported Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews. (Sahih Muslim 6985)
Good article. These campaigns are not really about support for the Palestinians, or about justice and morality. If they were, you would see said groups rally against injustices in other nations that by any standard have egregious human rights records (e.g.,Syria, Iran, Egypt), where the injustices against human rights are grave, consequential and deadly. These groups are set up with the aim of legitimizing hatred, through means of a false morality, against Israel, the Jewish People and the over-arching Western ideals. It’s an old tactic made new; the Jewish People have (sadly) seen it and borne the brunt of it for centuries. It would be beneficial for Western society to see it for what it truly is.
I don’t necessarily disagree with the article but it seems the initiative, if it passes, is seen to have done so because of racists and bigots and if it doesn’t, that is also because of racists and bigots.
In cases where racism has to be “proved,” it may not be racism at all but simple disagreement, however odious or ignorant one finds it. To me the student group’s accusations of racism rings just as hollow as the other side’s.
Huddling by race, ethnicity, culture and religion can be bigotry and at other time completely innocent and so is a delicate thing.
The bloated and dysfunctional UC system is what the people of California deserve. It is a subset of California’s Greece-like quality. All one can do (if one is not a resident) is stand back and enjoy the spectacle.
Palestinian Arabs living in Israel at the time of independence became Israeli citizens. Thos who fled to Jordan became Jordanian citizens. Israel and Jordan are the exceptions. It is very important to most of the Arab world to keep the Palestinians a running sore.
There are Palestinians who have lived in refugee camps since 1947. This is without precedent. However, if the Palestinians were not refugees, the world’s hatred of Israel might lessen, and so the Arab world makes sure that they continue to suffer.
http://www.jochnowitz.net/Essays/Palestinians.html
This article does a great job of delineating the rot at the heart of the UC system’s anti-Israeli and antisemitic movement.
Useful idiot UC students who participate in this dangerous nonsense should realize that Hammas has a vested interest in keeping Palestinians impoverished and aggrieved so they will be susceptible to manipulation by their cynical leaders. They should direct their humanitarian outrage against Hammas, which has taken a page from the book of Nobel Peace Prize-winning terrorist Yasser Arafat. Arafat adroitly played the West and betrayed his people while diverting millions of dollars in Western foreign aid to his private Swiss accounts, resulting in the dual advantage of enriching himself while ensuring the PLO of an army of hungry and desperate civilians eager for recruitment as human bombs and public relations cannon fodder. If UC students really cared about helping Palestinians they would protest Hammas, not Israel.
These clueless “students” might also be surprised to learn that Israel, the only functioning representative democracy in the Mideast, has done a creditable job of accommodating its Arab population. Israel offers citizenship to Arabs (including Palestinian Arabs)and the right to vote and to sit on the Knesset(which currently has 14 Arab members)as well as the Israeli Supreme Court. Compare this to Arab countries such as Libya, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt that have denied entry and/or citizenship to Palestinian refugees. The Arab League has even instructed its member states to deny citizenship to Palestinian Arabs in order to consign them to permanent refugee status, allowing Arab states to continue to use them as a political football. Where’s the compassionate student outrage over that hypocrisy and why aren’t their professors teaching them the truth?
Alan Dershowitz put it well: “The campaign currently being waged against Israel on college and university campuses throughout the world is fueled by ignorance and bigotry.”
Can I join Students for Justice in Israel? We could launch an initiative aimed at “divesting university funds from U.S. companies that profit from violent attacks and occupation of Israel by Palestinians”.
The real crime is committed by the university administrators and faculty who rob these young people of a decent education and the capacity to learn to use reason.
This is the curse of the radicals of the baby-boomer generation who are now trying to infect the younger generation. The end result can be seen in the students who come from the Middle East. They are raised in societies where people are told what to think and who to hate. These faculty intentionally discard the most important gift that Classical Greece endowed Western Civilization with – training the mind to use facts and logic to arrive at the truth.
In other words, if we don’t get approval for our ideas and feelings, we have been disrespected, silenced, and erased. There must be some Israeli students at UCSD; I wonder if anyone would give credence to their call that submitting the motion made them feel disrespected, unsafe, etc.?
Once upon a time it used to be that colleges and universities were the sources of knowledge, creativity and advancement on science, technology and culture in a country. European countries once were great and the U.S once was great and therefore had great academic institutions.
In a sad and ironic twist of things, U.S. and European colleges are now hotbeds of hatred, dissent and bigotry. This will only kick back into their societies and at the end in their whole countries. A standard marxist M.O. is to disrupt the academic life in a country; the country will gradually manifest a lack of ideas and inventions and will eventually fall into the sphere of mediocre, retrograde countries who don’t produce, don’t generate and only consume. Name one great college in the islamic world where you would send your child. Count the number of extraordinary universities in Africa or Latin America. By accepting the influx of islamic retards as students and islamic money as donations, the West has condemned its universities to become pathetic shadows of the once proud institutions. Pretty soon the academic real value of a title in Berkeley or Harvard will be equivalent to that of a title of the King Saud university in Riyadh.
Israel should have nuked their neighbors years ago, and then rebuilt the Muslim poplulation, much like the US did for Japan and Europe after WWII. The result might be an area that would be flourishing.
And the bigger problem is what is being taught, and how a response to people that want you dead and rain rockets into your populated areas, and celebrate suicide murderers are somehow the aggrieved party.
Bet if any of those protesters got hit once or twice in the face, sort of like bombs going off in Israel, there wouldn’t be calling for a peaceful settlement of the situation but would be calling for 911 to help them.
Somebody needs to take these protesters put them over their knee and smack some sense/intelligence into them
Unfortunately, I know a couple of UC professors. Like most of their students, they are fools, flakes & liberal whackoos. With students having garbage from these professional propagandists stuffed into their empty little minds, is it on coincidence that CA is falling off the edge of the world???
These students, I am referring to the students of ANY foreign country, are GUESTS in the United States and should be informed verbally and in writing what OUR RULES are and if they don’t like it than they should not come here or be sent home if they cannot adhere to OUR RULES and POLICIES. How many of these “exchange students” have been given the opportunity to be educated here and than return home to vilify the United States?