#blake flayton

[eretzyisrael]

When people ask me what the origin point is—when I knew I would leave—it’s not one particular moment, but a collection. Among them:

The drunk girl at my alma mater, George Washington, caught on video in November 2019, saying, “We’re going to bomb Israel, you Jewish pieces of shit.”

The Hillel that was spray-painted with “Free Palestine” in July 2020, at the University of Wisconsin.

The Chabad House set on fire in August 2020, at the University of Delaware.

The Jewish vice president of student government at USC who resigned in August 2020, after getting barraged with antisemitic hate.

The University of Chicago students who, in January 2022, called on their fellow students not to take “sh*tty Zionist classes” taught by Israelis or Jews.

The Jewish fraternity at Rutgers that got egged in April 2022—during a Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration.

The Chabad menorah that was vandalized for the fourth time in two years, in May 2022, at the University of Cincinnati.

The protester who hurled rocks at Jewish students in June 2022, at the University of Illinois.

The swastikas that turned up in July and August 2022, at Brown.

The Hillel that was vandalized in August 2022, at USC.

The innumerable, antisemitic incidents at San Francisco State University, which the Lawfare Project, a Jewish nonprofit, has called “the most anti-Semitic college campus in the country.”

The two girls recently kicked out of a group that combats sexual assault, at SUNY New Paltz, because they had the temerity to post something positive about Israel.

The universities, which bend over backward to create safe spaces for most students, increasingly making room for antisemites in lecture halls and at graduation ceremonies (see, for example, Duke, Indiana University, the University of Denver, Arizona State University and CUNY).

The proliferation of statements and articles and open letters proclaiming support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement—a political movement that has as its stated goal the dismantling of the Jewish state—from Harvard to Pomona to Berkeley to the University of Illinois, along with the conviction, widespread on many campuses, that Jewish students should be barred from conversations about BDS, because, well, they’re Jewish.

In college, for the first time, I began to feel the way Jews have often felt in other times and places: like The Other.

At first, I felt deeply alone in this feeling. I wondered if I was paranoid or hysterical.

But I discovered I’m not the only one. There are many other twenty-something Jews who, like me, had never felt this kind of isolation—until suddenly we did.

#blake flayton #antisemitism #academia #college

[smashtheshell]

305 notes for made up shit from a guy who listens to way too many podcasts. the average israeli is not blake flayton and people are not "fleeing back to their homelands" in any significant numbers. why is it that you need the true things described here - the power asymmetry, that gazans are living in an open air prison, that israel subjects them to continuous, genocidal murder sprees - to be enveloped by this fantasy? is shitposting so fun right now that you don't mind whether it's true or not?

[power-chords]

Chanukah is kind of a bullshit holiday that nobody takes particularly seriously, but instead of telling guys like Blake Flayton that they can shove all 44 candles where the sun don't shine I just may bust out the menorah this year.

#telling other jews they shouldn't observe is about as contemptuous as you can get but *I'M* the one who's self-hating. sure.

[bringmemyrocks]

Half baked idea about deception of young people in the Jewish American Aliyah Industrial Complex

Aka a lot of young BTs and converts are basically tricked into moving to Israel

This is not trying to gain sympathy for any group of people but I think people might not know this. It doesn't make a difference in the grand scheme of things but

One thing that I think about now and then, as someone who had several (former) friends sucked in:

A lot of young adults who are new to Judaism or new to religious Judaism are heavily pressured to "make aliyah" to move to Israel without

- knowing any language besides English

- any education or job experience

- any community or family support (this last one is key)

Because when I was a 19-year-old convert I didn't realize that most people who made this move had money from family and/or their community (it's a mitzvah to live in the holy land, obviously nation states and Zionism came later). And a huge amount of young "olim" were basically duped into it, thinking they would be given support when they weren't, because "look at so-and-so! They made aliyah!" (When so-and-so was supported by their family for 5+ years.)

I didn't do this myself but it was a very common thing to happen. I thought it was cheap to live in Jerusalem until a few years ago, even after I became anti-zionist because Israel wants young Jews to think that. Goodness knows they did that with MENA Jews in the 20th century. There are tons of books and articles about Jews who regretted moving to Israel because of the racism and economic deprivation there.

There are some grants that help young Americans starting out, but those grants are not substantial nor are they long-term. They help you get there and pay for maybe half a semester of classes or Ulpan (language classes) or w/e and then you're stranded.

And these individual "olim" who get duped into this still support Israel, apartheid, etc so my sympathy is limited, but I think this is something people who haven't been in Orthodox or more religious Jewish communities necessarily know. They're shipped off to Israel to help enforce a demographic "majority" (in quotes bc it's only a majority bc of apartheid laws) and hung out to dry because Israel, the supposed "Jewish nation" does not care about them.

I think this is an interesting topic as I know multiple people who bankrupted themselves before age 21 doing this but I worry that people will take this the wrong way "fuck you for telling us to care about settlers" etc. etc. etc.

Obviously it's people's own responsibility not to benefit from apartheid or support Israel if they at all can but there's a lot of deception involved. A lot of young olim (Jews who moved to Israel) aren't like Blake Flayton--they basically did what their community told them to and took multiple years to afford a plane ticket back to America, if they were able to come back at all.

And the people in charge of these "support" orgs whether orgs that just do hasbara or ones that offer small grants think they're doing good. Aside from being Zionists themselves, a lot of them are genuinely in denial that a lot of the young people they "help" end up destitute, either that they don't believe that these young people they've "invested in" are broke or they're so deluded that they think it's better to be broke in Jerusalem than slightly above the federal poverty line in NYC.

#i

[daloy-politsey]

#jumblr

[schraubd]

On the Vice of the Right of Exclusion

Inspired no doubt by recent news out of UC-Berkeley Law, Ken Stern published a column arguing that student groups have the right -- as destructive as it may be -- to exclude "Zionists" (and vice versa -- student groups also have the right to exclude anti-Zionists). It is not a good decision, it is not a noble decision, it is certainly a hurtful decision, but it is a decision that is within the right of a student groups to make.

Still, this was unsurprisingly a controversial take. I think it is right -- but with some very significant qualifiers.

On Twitter, Blake Flayton drew the analogy to arguing that "campus groups have a right to exclude Chinese students who want China to continue existing." It's not quite right -- the exclusion would be of any students who want China to continue existing, regardless of whether they are Chinese or not -- but it's close enough for our purposes to help clarify quite a bit.

Ideological groups have to have the right to set boundaries of inclusion -- the Student Dems can say "no Trumpists" and the Student MAGA club can say "no Democrats". How could it be otherwise? And once we accept that case, it's very, very hard to explain why other declarations of ideological necessity can be forbidden.

Moreover, these ideological exclusions are distinguishable from a status-based ban, even where the status is very closely tied to the belief. Yet noting that distinction, which may be the entire ballgame from a legalistic or rights-based perspective, in no way obviates or renders incorrect the feeling by the group that they're enduring discrimination. Chinese students are not unreasonable in viewing a rule that says "all members of a group must support the dissolution of China" as discriminatory; all the more so in the case of a group that seems to have little to do with China. Jews are entitled to view the same thing regarding compulsory anti-Zionism. The more such exclusions proliferate, the more they practically act to squeeze out Chinese or Jewish students from campus life. And these remain true notwithstanding the existence of dissident minority views within the group.

Perhaps the most common example we see regularly is a student group that does not say "no gays", but does demand all members affirm the ideology that homosexual conduct is an abomination or that marriage is solely between a man and a woman (one sees things like this regularly in campus Christian groups; Stern's analogy to the Hurley case where an Irish-American gay rights group was excluded from an "Irish Pride" parade is also well taken). These are conceptually distinct, even though gay individuals could and would clearly be justified in feeling targeted by the rule (and if all or nearly all campus groups imposed such a rule, it would represent a structural impediment to gay inclusion in campus life even as it operated in the space protected by the groups' free association rights). 

Put differently: "No Zionists" and "no gay rights apologists" are both conceptually distinct from "no Jews" and "no gays"; perhaps dispositively so, but to go further and say that the former rules are not even related to discrimination against Jews or gays, it's just a idiosyncratic coincidence that Jews and gays happen to be disproportionately excluded, is patronizing nonsense. The discrimination here is perhaps protected, but it isn't a "conflation" or a hypersensitivity for Jews or gays to view it as discrimination. And the more commonplace such exclusions are, the more they can be said to represent a structural inequity afflicting the relevant groups.

It is no revelation that individuals and groups can exercise their rights in harmful and destructive ways. The Berkeley student group which invited Milo to campus had the right to do so, and Milo himself has the right to express his deeply racist and misogynist views, we can and should view both as behaving badly for doing so.

So to say that student groups have the right to exclude Zionists does not mean they are right to do so. Indeed, they are behaving quite wrongly, and we should have no qualms in saying so. Something can be in the realm of rights and yet nonetheless be nasty, discriminatory, counterproductive, and antipathic to community building, and a "no Zionists" rule is all of these things even where it is an exercise of a student group's "rights". Rather than speaking in terms of rights, we should be speaking in terms of certain virtues that we wish to inculcate in our student communities -- virtues of open-mindedness, pluralism, and free inquiry. We have a right to narrow the boundaries of who we are willing to stand in community with, just as we have a right to only read newspapers and articles and twitter accounts of people who already agree with us. But neither choice is a virtuous choice, even if it cannot be articulated in the language of rights. That we cannot be compelled by principle to live out these values makes it more important, not less, that they be impressed as matters of moral virtue and vice.

For example, even Blake I imagine does not think that Students for Justice in Palestine has to admit Zionists, any more than Students Supporting Israel has to admit anti-Zionists. The trouble comes when we're not talking about SJP or SSI, but "Women of Cal" or "the Ice Cream Lovers of America Club" that decides excluding Zionists or anti-Zionists is core to the group's ideological mission. Conceptually speaking, there might not be a way of distinguishing these cases so as to be able to craft a rule that says "SJP and SSI can exclude while Woman of Cal and the ICLAC cannot". As a matter of practical moral logic, these cases are obviously distinctive, and the more the exclusions migrate into the latter type of case, the more toxic they are to the aforementioned virtues of open-mindedness and pluralism.

Does this mean that rules such as this can never be legally discriminatory? No. The example Blake used, where the rule is specifically applied only to Jewish (or Chinese) students, would be an obvious example. More subtle would be circumstances where the rule is nominally applicable to all, but is enforced with greater care or scrutiny against Jews than others. Everyone supposedly has to be anti-Zionist, but Jews have to prove they're anti-Zionist. That heightened scrutinization should be seen as a form of discrimination as well, and one that is very much associated with "rules" such as this.

Yet on the whole, I think the focus on "rights" is misleading here. We would be better off concentrating on the virtues and vices of how student groups should behave, rather than on what they have the right to do. And in the exercise of their rights, these student groups are behaving poorly. They are not embodying the virtues we hope to inculcate in young minds regarding how they handle issues of pluralism and disagreement. In practice, their actions function to discriminate against Jews, even if it is in a manner that must be legally protected. There is the same right to exclude Zionists as there is the right to exclude proponents of gay rights; and we should view the decision to exercise one's right in that way as vicious in the same way.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/EPFRWpN

#academia #anti-semitism #Berkeley #Jews

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

Source

#blake flayton #anti-zionism #antisemitism #israel #jews

[eretzyisrael]

The New Zionist Congress will educate: hosting weekly discussions on all issues pertaining to Jews worldwide, promoting a book-of-the-month for members to read and discuss, and producing a new podcast where young Jews will speak with leaders of our community about the complexities of our people. New Zionist Congress will charter campus chapters, and send speakers to individual universities to mobilize and inspire Jewish students to be fierce activists and teachers. We will sponsor debates, lectures, movie nights, and trips to Israel. We will advocate for Jewish people, not only in the United States, but everywhere in the world, and spearhead efforts to oppose BDS resolutions, fight for the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism, and combat the new incarnation of Soviet-style conspiracy theories that manically obsess over Zionism and target the only Jewish state as the root of all earthly evils.

I'm not going to beg for scraps in exchange for tolerance. I stand on the shoulders of those who realized that self-determination was the only solution to the Jewish question: Theodor Herzl, Golda Meir, and Natan Sharansky, who said that “when Jews abandon identity in the pursuit of universal freedom, they wind up with neither.” Go ahead, ask a Jew in the United Kingdom what it looks like when anti-Semitism masquerades as equality, and what happens when it is left unchecked.

It is my Zionism that compels me to build my own spaces, amplify my own community, and to vociferously reject any movement that mandates I sacrifice part of myself in order to be righteous. I’m no longer trying to convince anybody of my humanity, I know my humanity. I’m not interested in your interpretation of my history, I know my history.

Jews have had a terrible habit of thinking we can wait out these storms of illiberalism by taking care not to be overdramatic or reactionary, by placating our enemies, and by hoping to win over enough allies along the way. It never succeeds. The only way through this period in our history is to honor the Talmud and ask again the ancient question: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”

#zionism #anti-semitism #campus anti-semitism #israel on campus #student struggle for soviet jewry #blake flayton

[girlactionfigure]

Thank you, Blake Flayton for being an inspiring young and powerful voice for the Jewish community. Blake is a writer and the founder of the New Zionist Congress. He is on a successful mission to empower and educate the next generation of Jews to stand up against hate.

StandWithUs 

[outsidetheknow]

On the Frontlines of Progressive Anti-Semitism I am a young, gay, left-wing Jew. Yet I am called an “apartheid-enabler,” a “baby killer” and a “colonial apologist.”. via NYT Opinion

#https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/14/opinion/college-israel-anti-semitism.html?partner=IFTTT BLAKE FLAYTON On the Frontlines of Progressive An

[b1rdonawire]

blake flayton singlehandedly putting the jewish superior intelligence stereotype to rest!!!!!!!

[antisemitism-us]

For Jassey and Blake Flayton, a 20-year-old senior at The George Washington University, in Washington, DC, the greatest concern is the more insidious, seemingly regular and casual anti-Semitism, the cloaked language being used -- whether knowingly or not -- in progressive circles they once considered themselves integral parts of.

"An American Jew is only used to perceiving anti-Semitism as Nazis in Charlottesville carrying tiki torches, or a swastika being spray-painted onto a synagogue wall, or the Christian right saying that Jews killed Jesus Christ. We're not very attuned to and good at recognizing anti-Semitism when it doesn't come from that extreme side of the political spectrum," Flayton says. "But we are going to have to get used to it, because that's what's coming here. It's already here."

#antisemitism #united states

[blairwitchh]

that guy blake flayton is an awful zionist reactionary too

good to know ive never heard of him, but yeah that post was Bad. but then she posted some better takes right after, not saying that at all makes up for the original bad take, but im not trying to slander or whatever.

#Anonymous

[daloy-politsey]

I guess either not enough people know who Blake Flayton is or everyone just thought someone else on that poll was worse

[wolkovitzky]

We can, and we must, simultaneously fight against Bibi and the occupation...and also the demonization of 50 percent of the world’s Jewish people and their self determination. They’re. Not. Mutually. Exclusive.

— Blake Flayton (@BlakeFlayton) February 13, 2020

from Twitter https://twitter.com/wolkovitzky February 14, 2020 at 08:34PM via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Twitter #Tweet

[lgnnewsworld]

On the Frontlines of Progressive Anti-Semitism

By BLAKE FLAYTON via NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/2O9zpjb The New York Times

from Blogger https://ift.tt/2poybZ4

#news world newsa global news