The Ivy League and other elite private colleges are losing esteem

Oldest Palestinian dynasties are from around 18th century. Notice that calling them Palestinian is a stretch since they rarely had a unified identity as a people.

Jews started coming back to Israel en-mass in the 19th century, well before the British arrived. They bought land and at its peek owned a significant amount of land privately.

> which was almost 100% Arab

This is very false. If it was true Israel would have lost its independence war in which not only the Palestinians but also the surrounding countries attacked. Furthermore, notice that those Arab countries didn't give the Palestinians a country despite holding the west bank and Gaza. Neither did the Muslim Ottoman empire.

> > E.g. Shai Davidai. > > He's the only person who's been banned from campus

Many were locked out. Many spoke of fear to come to classes. Half the people in the encampment in NY weren't even students there. Professional agitators from outside the campus were guiding the students on maximizing their impact.

E.g. https://nypost.com/2024/05/01/us-news/professional-protester...

Here's a professor talking about violence and intimidation towards Jews on campus: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/education/2988097/...

There are quite a lot of these testimonials but they don't appear as prominently in the US media as they do on Israeli media where people feel more comfortable to speak out. There's claims that "Students for Justice for Palestine" are really cover organizations for terrorists just like BDS. There's a lawsuit of Oct 7th victims aimed to unmask them.

> Yosef Hadad isn't a student. He's a professional pro-Israel campaigner who went to campus, started yelling in the faces of protesters, and then got shoved by one of them.

So that's OK? He's a Muslim who came to help break people out of their distorted reactionary mold and got attacked.

> On the other hand, there have been plenty of assaults on pro-Palestinian students.

See how that starts?

See why these things are useless. Everyone plays the victim here. Palestinians have been playing the victim for a century. It made some sense in the past. But hasn't made any sense since the 90's. Right now they need to grow up and settle. Hamas is keeping a redundant conflict going because it refuses to accept the right of Israel to exist. It's delusional and you're part of the reason it keeps going.

None of them are Davidai and all of them look very dangerous (sarcasm). I've read what Davidai wrote and the claims that he's harassing seem ridiculous. He's trying to fight harassment from people who literally support terrorism and are hurting both sides of the conflict.

NYU president Linda Mills said she received threats and even bomb threats: https://nyunews.com/news/2024/05/03/mills-email-paulson-cent...

But US press doesn't write many of these stories because it doesn't fit the narrative of the publishers.

Here's a Stanford student dressed as a Hamas terrorist just for the general picture: https://ynet-pic1.yit.co.il/cdn-cgi/image/f=auto,w=740,q=75/...

Furthermore, you choose to accept unsubstantiated claims against Davidai as fact because it supports your confirmation bias.

You want more here: https://edition.cnn.com/business/live-news/university-protes...

> “Jewish students…get a second-class education where they are relegated to their homes to attend classes virtually and stripped of the opportunity to interact meaningfully with other students and faculty and sit for examinations with their peers,” the lawsuit said. “The segregation of Jewish students is a dangerous development that can quickly escalate into more severe acts of violence and discrimination.”

and:

> The lawsuit alleges that a subset of protesters has committed acts of violence, harassed Jewish students and faculty and incited hate speech and acts of violence.

There's plenty of that online.

Finally, about your point of two sides. That's absolute nonsense. One side started the demonstrations and mass agitation, the reacting side can't be blamed. This is pretty typical of this entire situation, Israel gets attacked then blamed for response, results and its defense.

Own it. People were violent and racist. Outside forces came in and manipulated students most of which are ridiculously ignorant about the situation. They were manipulated, in much of the same way as Trump voters are manipulated, to believe blatant lies.

British colonial administrators themselves quickly came to realize the insanity of what they were doing. The Balfour Declaration was basically a declaration of war against the population they were ruling over in Palestine, a population whose interests they were nominally supposed to rule in. Lord Curzon, who was the only British cabinet minister with expertise in the Middle East, warned about this before the Balfour Declaration was issued.

> Israeli Jewish people, who are themselves plurality MENA people (contrary to the popular narrative that they're all displaced Europeans)

Israel was founded pretty much solely by European Jews. Arab Jews emigrated to Israel years after it was founded, because the expulsion of the Palestinians and the Arab-Israeli conflict unleashed a wave of antisemitism across the Arab world.

That is the equivalent of the "I have a black friend so I can't be racist" argument. Quite a few Jews are ignorant of the situation and falsely blame Israel. To be fair, there's justified blame to lay on Israel about many things in the current situation. But the current demonstrations are definitely stupid and aren't helping.

> what matters is that the foundation of the state of Israel required the mass expulsion of the native population

Agreed. And now they want to perform a mass exodus of the Jews who live here.

> Israel required the mass expulsion of the native population,

That's a lie. There was some violence in 1947/8 before the state was properly formed and some militias were more violent than others due to lack of proper government. Blaming Israel for that is ridiculous. Israel was attacked violently in large numbers against the decision of the UN. Violence went both ways and a massive amount of Jews died in that war.

There was a massive exodus from Arab lands. Before 1947 there were Jews living all over Arab countries in large numbers. We were chased away from our homes. Can we have them back?

My fathers family ran from Morocco. I'm sure the Huties of Yemen won't welcome my spouse if she wants to go back to her paternal land. Her maternal land of Romania slaughtered most of her relatives as happened to my ancestral maternal relatives in Europe.

That's how history works. Sh*t happens. We got over it. Palestinians could have had a country multiple times in history and repeatedly chose to sabotage the process by refusing to settle with Israel. That is 100% self sabotage.

> There were small numbers of Jewish colonists who arrived in the late 19th Century, but they were still only a single-digit percentage of the population when the British took over.

Let's put numbers there: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-and-non-jewish-p...

Keep in mind that Jews had mobility issues both in Europe and in the Ottoman empire. They were barred from coming to Israel even if they wanted to and they tried.

The country during these years was practically empty by today's standards. 660,000 people in total. Today without including the occupied territories we have over 9M people 2.6M of them are not Jews.

Calling the number of Jews small and calling the country Arab is pretty disingenuous since the total number of people in Palestine was tiny. Even then the 600k number wasn't entirely Arab. There are many other minorities with roots in this country.

> When the state of Israel was founded in 1948, the vast majority of its Jewish population had recently immigrated to Palestine.

I wonder what happened that made so many Jews run away in search of somewhere to live... On the eve of WWII there were 449,000 Jews in Israel which is a significant number.

> when the Zionist movement was founded, the native population of Palestine was nearly 100% Arab.

Nope. The first Zionist congress was in 1869: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Zionist_Congress

Population was close to 8% and on a growing trend.

Other than placing redundant, mostly incorrect facts. What's your point?

Your point is that the Palestinians are victims. Well... Welcome to the club, we're the bloody club presidents. In 1992 I went on a trip with Palestinian youth to Europe as part of a teen peace delegation. The goal was to show the "adults" that even kids can make peace. During most of that trip we had a lot of grandstanding from both sides. The Palestinians played a lot of the victim card which was redundant. They understood us once we took a trip to a concentration camp together. They understood that victim-hood is pointless and brings nothing.

I wish more Palestinians would learn Jewish history. They are deeply misinformed about us.

Maybe that would trigger an understanding that the only path forward is acceptance of the current situation and negotiation.

> This whole narrative about antisemitism on American campuses is completely fabricated

You might think that. But even here I get people repeating tropes like "Jews controlling all the money". Antisemitism has always been around and is being cynically exploited by some people.

The demonstrations on campus are comprised mostly of people who have very little understanding of the actual situation. They are refined by external forces many of which are no part of academia.

> A fairly large share of the pro-Palestinian protesters are Jewish.

That is no longer true. This was true initially but most left. Think about the demands of the demonstration: blacklisting Israel. It's an academic embargo on Israel which is already taking place to some degree. Israeli academia members are finding it harder to go to conference and share research. It's harder to get grants and take part in research. This is also about investments which is probably nothing financially, but a symbolic "anti-Israel".

Jews are not anti-Israel. Most of us are liberal and this includes Israel which is one of the most liberal countries anywhere. We have one of the most progressive human rights laws, progressive gay rights and labor laws that would make San Francisco blush. But you don't understand the other side. You're thinking of them with the same sensibilities. This isn't the case. You can't think of people who crash airplanes filled with families into buildings with the same thought process we have here.

> Columbia is a liberal campus in the middle of New York City, the city with the largest Jewish community in the world. The idea that Columbia is a den of antisemitism is particularly absurd.

There's a common trope of the self hating Jew. It is a trope but it has some point, we're the first to blame ourselves, even here. The problem is that they think the antisemitism is caused by Israeli action, but it's bolstered by them as they are confirming a false narrative about Israel.

I'm sure you would accept that Trump has bolstered a lot of racism towards black people and Mexicans. Yet a lot of them support him. Does that make the first statement false?

If you can accept the last paragraph but can't accept the previous one, that's your confirmation bias ringing loudly...