r/Israel_Palestine

Sources:

https://www.ms.now/news/frame-up-whistleblower-says-probes-into-antisemitism-at-colleges-were-ploys-to-harass-and-strip-millions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqQ64YQ5cBg

Report (3 universities were investigated; Columbia, Harvard, and Brown):

• https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/democrats-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/08.17.26-title-vi-whistleblower-disclosure-for-congress.pdf
• Key Findings:
  • Investigators believed Trump DOJ had decided the universities were guilty before the investigations were completed
  • Little to no factual basis of antisemitism
    • For Columbia, officials relied on unsupported allegations from news reports and lawsuit claims and on constitutionally protected speech
    • Investigators found no Title VI violation at Brown, but the whistleblower says administration was subject to pressure from 'outside stakeholders demanding action"
    • For Harvard, officials pursued freezing billions in funding and other settlement demands before the investigation had established Title VI violations.
  • Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) official Daniel Shieh noted "the goal is compliance, but pulling money is the tool," communicating that the funding suspensions were meant to be coercive irrespective of investigative finding
  • Investigators repeatedly warned that the government was treating First Amendment-protected political speech as evidence of antisemitism

Previous DOJ whistleblowers saying the Trump administration's campus antisemitism inquisition is a farce:

• LA Times - Ex-Trump DOJ lawyers say 'fraudulent' UC antisemitism probes led them to quit
• JOC - Former DOJ attorneys for Trump UC antisemitism investigations quit, calling them 'sham', 'fraudulent', 'political hit job', etc.

Further Context:

• JOC - Post-10/7 only 1 of 102 [126 since 2004] college antisemitism complaints raises claims unrelated to Israel criticism. 78% were filed by pro-Israel orgs as complainants or on their behalf. 15 investigations open based on a single conservative activist with no affiliation with any of the schools.

I found this article very interesting to describe the relationship and power dynamics between Israel, US and Europe, which I really recommend for people to read if they don't want to jumb to some unrealistic conclusions like "AIPAC/Israel controls the US.

>The US ruling class does not need a “lobby” to persuade it that Israel is indispensable to its interests.

>As backing Israel is a touchstone for US imperialism, it’s not surprising that supporters of Israel hold key positions in the US state and political establishment. But US imperialism is not the puppet of a Zionist lobby.

>From the outset, it was the interests of British imperialism that drove support for a Jewish state. Its most aggressive proponents, including Balfour, had been trenchant supporters of the Boer War in South Africa and opponents of Irish Home Rule.

>The Zionist leadership was completely reliant on their support. They did not even have the support of the Jewish establishment—for instance, the Board of Deputies of British Jews strongly opposed the declaration. The only Jewish member of the cabinet, Edwin Montague, vehemently opposed it.

>The same is true of US support. The principal Zionist lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), did not exist as a serious lobby until the 1980s. The US guarantee of Israel’s military superior firepower long preceded the rise of Aipac as a serious political force.

>Aipac’s lobbying fitted with US imperialist commitment to Israel without difficulty. Its director in the 80s, Thomas Dine, noted that Israel already had overwhelming support in Congress where Israel was seen as the US’s strongest ally. The Christian Science Monitor magazine noted that the group did not have to twist any arms.

>Why is Israel of such importance to the US ruling class? That’s because of the specific settler colonial and militarised structure of the Israeli state and society.

>As a settler population, Israeli Jews have a material interest in Palestinians’ continued dispossession. The Palestinians’ resistance—even their presence—presents a constant threat.

>This material reality, rather than ideology or indoctrination, binds the settler population to the Zionist state and to imperialism.

>While the US supports other regimes in the region, they have a fatal Achilles heel—the threat of revolt from their own people. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 is the prime example. The Shah’s regime was another pillar of US dominance in the Middle East—and its fall sent shock waves through the region.

>US and Israeli strategy do not always align—for example, Israeli terror and aggression can threaten stability and revolt in the region, which fuels tensions.  

>However, two factors prevent these tensions from reaching breaking point. First, US reliance on Israel as its garrison in the region. Second, Israel’s dependence on US military power and hegemony.

Mehdi Hasan interviews the folks at the Quincy Institute, Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick, about their new book, *Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power,* about the changing power of the pro-Israel lobby.

I’m not going to write much because the post at the link is pretty comprehensive.

The rhetoric makes it sound like the US is a big innocent victim, but hold on, that’s not what they are saying

https://www.reddit.com/r/Mehdi_Hasan/s/zKuS6Us0V4

Check out the opening transcript of Haaretz’s August 10 podcast:

>“Here with me to review all of the very hottest developments of the week are our two star members of the Haaretz election team, columnist Joshua Leifer, and correspondent Linda Dayan.

>Welcome, Josh and Linda.

>Thanks so much for having us.

>Thank you, Allison.

>81 days till the election, guys. I've started the countdown. So tell me, now that the immediate threat of resuming war with Iran has subsided for the moment, correct me if I'm wrong, are we feeling it in the air yet in Israel, or are people too busy on the beach in the pool to pay close attention?

>Are people buzzing and talking about the election now?

>I would say that people are talking about the election, but as the concerns about Iran are kind of going down a little bit, concerns in the West Bank are rising a little bit. People are looking at what's happening there, and there's more and more talk of, well, do you think there's going to be another intifada? And that's also becoming a more and more likely scenario.

>So, we've kind of left one conflict on the back burner and are going back to another. So, I don't think we can be completely divorced from the security scenario.”

>From Haaretz Podcast: 'Right-wing but not Netanyahu': Will Israel's new mini-parties save Bibi or bury him?, Aug 10, 2026

All in a pleasant sing-songy voice like it’s a soccer game. Is Israel so conditioned to permanent war and the narrative of victimhood that in this conversation they don’t even notice or mention that the Palestinians on the West Bank have been peaceful and passive, clinging as hard as they can to nonviolence as they are continuously terrorized and provoked as a way to clear coveted land, with the terror escalating? Team Israel just waiting for the game to begin? Hurry up and provoke them to violence because we’re bored? Gaza is dull and winding down. Ever rotating “Security scenarios” seem like an appetite for conflict. The conversation skips Israel’s initiation, indeed, demand and just glosses over it as the next “security scenario”

C’mon, fight us, they demand. Shall we burn more houses? Dance on the Dome of the Rock like Sharon, C’mon. We gotta have it.

It’s unsupportable

October 7th, 2023 marked the moment when many pro-Israel voices sought to impose a narrative of good versus evil, framing Israel as the country that had been attacked and Palestinians as the aggressors. It is staggering how October 7th erased Israel’s violence in the preceding months and imposed the portrayal of Israel as a virtuous nation that represents Western values in a turbulent region like the Middle East, ignoring Israel’s violence throughout those earlier months.

Before October 7th, Israel had killed dozens of Palestinians, including young children. It had seized more land and expanded illegal settlements. It had been permissive toward settler violence, whose perpetrators committed shameful acts such as what took place in Huwara in 2023. Israel had forcibly displaced thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank. Before October 7th, Israel had taken the lives of more innocent Palestinians than Hamas had of Israelis—and after October 7th, Israel has taken the lives of vastly more innocent people.

I wonder who the f. called the 1948 settler colonial attack by Zionist militias and armies a "civil war"? It's the first time in my life that I see a "civil war" between two populations who simply never lived with each others?

If so, we don't we call the war between European settlers and native Americans a civil war?

Or the war between European settlers and Algerians a civil war?

I understand that Israel spent so much money to change history but I mean, we can't change definitions to just fit some sick ideological narrative, I guess.

Given the fact that the scope of the horrors that is inflicted on the Palestinians is unavoidable, even for people who take a staunch Pro Israel stance. And so one of the things you have seen is a rhetoric that isolates individuals from structures of power. So you will hear "well I oppose Netanyahu and his current right wing government". Or "I think Israel is a major ally and I support its right to self defense but I think the extremist settlers go too far". The thing is, Netanyahu, and the extreme settlers didn't come out of no where. They came out of a system in place that actively dehumanizes Palestinians and we've seen rhetorical pattern when it comes to structures of oppression in the past.

During the Age of discovery when the genocide of the indigenous populations was taking place and you had certain people like the Dominican priest Bartolome De Las Casas documented those crimes many people in that age said "well we support the colonial project but we condemn some of the extreme abuses that individual conquistadors engaged in". During the abolitionist movement when the horrors of slavery were revealed you had many who defended the system of plantation slavery while condemning the "abuses" of individual masters. Same thing during Jim Crow segregation in the American South where they would condemn the extreme abuses of the KKK while leaving the system itself intact. Isolating individual actors or abuses in a system is a method of whitewashing said system.

Netanyahu and the extreme settlers aren't just a few bad apples. And they didn't just come out of no where. Netanyahu would not be able to do what he has done if all of the other PM's of Israel going back to Ben Gurion himself didn't set a pattern in place. There is a direct link between the ethnic cleansing of the Nakba under Ben Gurion's tenure and Netanyahu's current genocidal policies. And there is a direct link between the apartheid structures put in place in the occupied territories and the violent settler colonialism of the settlers.

I just tried to repost this post into this sub and I can’t. r/Israel_palestine doesn’t appear in the list of results anywhere, scrolling down quite far. What is going on?