2024-01-06 16:20:01
The war of Gaza has also opened a battle front in USA. Since the terrorist attacks and hostage taking by Hamas on October 7 and the aggressive and prolonged military response by Israelthe conflict has set American society on fire and deepens the division of ideological and generational blocks.
Competing positions, debates around anti-Zionism and anti-Semitismand crashes on the freedom of expression or for him unwavering support of the White House Joe Biden a Israel They have been in their military campaign for months straining campus College students, streets, restaurants and other businesses and the power scenarios in the country. AND 10 months before the presidential electionseverything is already entangled in the deep cultural wars that the Republicans have made central to their political modus operandi.
Republican bloc and Democratic division
Although just over 25% of those over 7.5 million American Jews identify as Republicans, according to data from the Pew Center, it is the conservative party which since October 7 has championed the Israeli cause practically without fissures. From the same Republican leaders who point to George Soros within the conspiracy theory of the “great replacement”, who have been permissive and something more with neo-nazi movements and figures, the most arrive now strong messages of complaint of alleged rampant anti-Semitism in USAwhere the antisemitic incidentsbut those of Islamophobia.
In it Democratic Partymeanwhile, although extreme sensitivity to the interests of the Jewish community and a dominant support for Israel’s right to defense are maintained, the voices are not unanimous. From the first moment and the more the human and humanitarian drama in Gaza worsens, the progressive wing has been more reflecting the positions that divide its own bases. And among these are especially the youth and minorities those who have shown a evolution in reference to the Palestinian causepermeated with more intensity by ideas of racial and social justice that gained traction in protest movements after the murder of George Floydand in a will to being able to criticize and denounce Israel’s most questionable actions.
These divisions have been reflected on a couple of notable occasions in Congress. In November, 22 Democrats joined Republicans to pass a censorship resolution against Rashida Tlaib, the only congresswoman of Palestinian origin, accusing him of “promoting false narratives” about the Hamas attacks and of “calling for the destruction of the State of Israel” for having used the slogan “from the river to the sea“. And the following month, when Republicans presented a resolution equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, which was approved with 311 votes in favor, 95 were from Democrats. But 13 (and one Republican) voted against and 92 Democrats abstainedincluding prominent Jews such as Jamie Raskin and Jerry Nadler, who recalled that “it’s simple: not all anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.”
More than fighting anti-Semitism
As the lines between freedom of expression, censorship and hate speech become blurred, Republicans are also taking advantage to divert debates and divisions into the realm of culture wars and nothing like the resignation this week of Claudine Gay, the chancellor of Harvard, exemplifies that strategy and timing.
She was one of three presidents of prestigious Ivy League universities, along with Penn and MIT, who testified before the House Education Committee on December 5 in a session called in response to accusations of rampant anti-Semitism. in the pro-Palestinian protests on their campuses since October 7. That appearance, where they offered legalistic answers and they avoided making unequivocal condemnations of hypothetical calls to jewish genocideIt was a debacle.
Both Gay and Liz Maguill, Penn’s chancellor, later apologized. The second, who was already under fire for having organized a Palestinian literature conference in September, resigned just four days later, under political pressures and large donors of the university to withdraw funds, vital to its $30 billion budget.
These pressures also occurred in the case of Harvard (50 billion budget) and its rector. Although he initially maintained the support of the corporation that governs the university and a good part of the faculty, a campaign was opened from the right that exposed episodes of plagiarism in his academic work. And this Tuesday, Gay, Harvard’s first black president, the daughter of immigrants from Haiti, announced her resignation.
Race, gender and identity
In what happened, many identify something that goes far beyond a determined fight against anti-Semitism and clearly enters into the open war by the right on issues of race, gender and identityespecially since mandate of Donald Trump.
From combats in the states and in schools we have moved on to a national republican campaign against higher education, where conservatives accuse universities, especially elite ones, of being intolerant of their voices, incubating a supposedly radical left, and being overly concerned with issues of race and identity.
Celebrating Gay’s resignation Elise Stefanik, The ultra Republican congresswoman who was the protagonist in the interrogation of the rectors, left no room for doubt about the objective. “This is just the beginning to expose the rot in our most ‘prestigious’ institutions of higher education,” said the New York representative this week, who declared the university system “fundamentally broken and corrupt” not only because of anti-Semitism, but also because of the initiatives of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI for its acronym in English). And Christopher Rufo, the conservative activist who helped publicize Gay’s plagiarism accusations, also celebrated: “This is the beginning of the end of DEI in US institutions.”
It now extends worry why Congress enters into issues of academic freedom and in other university topics. And Gay herself wrote a column in ‘The New York Times’ the day after her resignation in which she warned that what happened in her case is “part of a larger war,” warning that what was happening try is “erode citizen trust in one of the pillars of society United States”.
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