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| (Source: Hunger Strike for Palestine Launched at CUNY) |
Professor James Dennis Hoff, on the English faculty at CUNY and a prominent contributor to Left Voice, champions the slogan Free Palestine. Hamas, the murderous death cult responsible for the current war in Gaza, also proclaims Free Palestine. Elias Rodriguez--the person arrested for murdering a recently engaged, young Israeli couple while attending an event in DC--outdid them both, yelling Free Free Palestine upon completing the deed.
Free Palestine is a very thinly disguised exhortation to kill all the Jews living in Israel. Another of Hamas' favorite slogans is Globalize the Intifada, which can only be read as demanding the extermination of all Jews worldwide. Mr. Rodriguez took the slogans literally and got a head start on said extermination--he murdered two Jews in cold blood.
Professor Hoff obviously agrees with both Hamas and Mr. Rodriguez--the only good Jew is a dead Jew. In his article entitled Don’t Blame the Palestine Movement or the Left for the Jewish Museum Shooting, he justifies Mr. Rodriguez's act in two ways:
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| Professor Hoff calls this "genocide" (https://www.anera.org/how-big-is-gaza/) |
First, he claims that because "more than 60,000 people were murdered by Israel in Gaza," Mr. Rodriguez had some cause for exacting revenge. The only people murdered in the Gaza war were the 1200 Israelis slaughtered during the surprise attack on October 7th. All other victims are war casualties--the number of which Hamas certainly exaggerates. Israel is not trying to kill civilians, but it is working hard (and successfully) to wipe out Hamas.
War is terrible and all deaths are tragic. But there is a world of difference between war casualties and gratuitous murder. There is also a big difference between war casualties and genocide. There is no genocide taking place in Gaza--Professor Hoff and his comrades are just lying about that.
Second, he claims any sympathy for the DC victims is just hypocrisy, exaggerated by media outlets such as the New York Times. The goal of the media is "to actively propagate the lie that the movement for Palestine is a violent and antisemitic threat to domestic peace."
Really!? Is Professor Hoff claiming that Hamas is nonviolent, and that Oct. 7th was just a peaceful walk in the park? He apparently also believes that purposely killing Jews isn't antisemitic! His justification is silly (links omitted).
The New York Times, for instance, has repeatedly stated, without evidence, that the shooting was an act of antisemitism, despite the fact that both of the victims were employed by the Israeli state, and that reports suggest Rodriguez chose his targets deliberately. Furthermore, as his manifesto makes plain, his actions were clearly driven by his outrage at the ongoing genocide in Gaza and had nothing to do with hatred of any ethnic or racial group. Such knee-jerk conflations of anti-zionism and antisemitism have by now become standard practice for most of the U.S. media.
Cruelly murdering two Jews only because they're Israeli seems obviously antisemitic--what other evidence do you need? Mr. Hoff says the murderer wasn't really killing Jews, but rather only "Zionists." Among Israelis this is a distinction without a difference. For Hamas (and for anybody else who uses Hamas slogans) there is no daylight between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. Does our professor really believe that Zionists in the United States should just be gunned down for no other reason? Apparently Yes, he does.
Because the murderer is connected to the communist Party for Socialism and Liberation grouplet, his act is seen as a black mark against all socialists. Professor Hoff complains
Such obvious red-baiting clearly has nothing to do with protecting Jewish people or stopping real antisemitism of the kind promoted by people like Elon Musk and the Far Right. Instead it is designed to encourage more repression and violence against those who support the movement for Palestine and the entire Left.
Except demanding the extermination of all Jews in Palestine (and worldwide) as Hamas and its followers do--is definitionally antisemitic! I don't know what comments Elon Musk has made that cause the professor to think he's an antisemite, but unlike Hamas and Professor Hoff, Mr. Musk has never, ever called for the murder of all Jews (whether or not they're Zionists).
Professor Hoff is a raving antisemite, and American antisemitism is today a disease of the Left-- including many in the Democratic Party. The professor has a right to free speech, despite the fact that what he says is vile. But nobody who advocates for and defends the slaughter of Jews should be employed as a professor at a public university.
While Professor Hoff's piece reveals the deeply illiberal and murderous intentions of Left Voice, the other article we consider today better belongs as an SNL skit. These antisemites (depicted above) are nothing if not a self-parody.
The lede paragraph reporting on their hijinks reads,
As the Israeli genocide of Gaza intensifies and a famine is declared, a group of eight faculty, students, and staff from across the City University of New York (CUNY) have launched an indefinite hunger strike outside the Graduate Center in Manhattan. They will be at this location from 12 to 6 pm every day and are demanding that, “Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez and the CUNY Board of Trustees immediately divest from the zionist state and from all weapons and technology manufacturers equipping the israeli-US genocide in Palestine.” The hunger strikers are launching a fundraiser to support families in Gaza and hosting political education, art, and mutual aid events for the local community in New York.
I'm not sure what the point of a hunger strike is. Are they trying to prove how stupid they are? Do they want us to feel sorry for them? Is it an act of virtue-signaling directed at fellow antisemites? I suspect the latter--you and me are not part of their intended audience.
Though one has to wonder how serious this is. They're in public from noon to 6pm--and for all I know afterwards they go to McDonalds for a good dinner.
Their demands are as kooky as the project itself. They want 1) CUNY to divest from Israel, and 2) to divest from all "weapons and technology manufacturers" equipping the "genocide." These are impossible.
Israel is fully integrated into the global economy, and "divesting" from Israel means sticking all your money under a mattress. This won't happen. Similarly divesting from specific industries is equally impossible--Israel produces much of the software that is built into Silicon Valley technology.
Our antisemitic comrades are all pro-poverty. Their best solution for Palestinians between the River & the Sea is to completely destroy the Israeli economy, driving all residents of whatever nationality into dire poverty. It's worse than absurd. These people are just a joke.
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