First time?

(It’s their playbook. It’s how they killed occupy wall street)

I’m not surprised to hear that the protests are being mischaracterized; every countering message helps. Glad this person spoke up

This is depressing. The media and politicians do this all the time. I’ve seen them do this with tiny protests in DC back when I lived there. It’s very irresponsible of people to do stuff like this, and it has made me really distrust media characterizations of protests.

Hopefully faculty walkouts will help correct the narrative. Show solidarity anywhere you can. Free palestine

I’m not inclined to trust this student more than the ones who do say they’re unsafe and recount incidents of intimidation and even physical violence. There are some Jews among the protesters, but being near the protest while looking obviously Jewish and without having ingratiated yourself with them still seems like a pretty bad idea according to my judgement. As for the Jews who have ingratiated themselves: history has shown that thinking the crowd only hates the “bad” Jews is rather naive.

This isn’t at all surprising.

Up until December last year, the Biden Administration was in the habit of claiming that anytime the words “from the river to the sea” were used it was antisemitism so any demonstration were people chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” was said by the White House to be “an antisemitic demonstration”.

(One might notice that the sentence isn’t at all about the Jewish Religion but is instead about Israel, so this was quite an open - at least for professional politicians - use of accusations of antisemitism for things which were only about Israel, not the Jewish Religion)

This only stopped after a White House Press Briefing ( here ) were during Press Questions the White House Spokesperson was asked by a member of the Press if the post from Netanyahu’s son with “from the river to the sea” was antisemitic, were they kinda fumbled but didn’t deny it and then suddenly discovered that they were “out of time” to evade the question.

And this isn’t just the US - in the UK, a couple of years ago the Labour party leadership contest was lost by the New Labour faction (i.e. neoliberals) and won by an actual leftie, Jeremy Corbyn. Then followed a massive smear campaign by pretty much the whole Press (it’s as bad in the UK as the US) including an “oh so special” one were they accused Corbyn of antisemitism because in a conference he sat on a panel, and another member of that panel compared some of the actions of Israel with those of the Nazis. Now, the really juicy part of this is that said person that said those words that others deemed antisemitic (and hence Corby was deemed antisemite by association) was a Jewish Holocaust survivor - in other words, to slander the newly elected leftwing leader of the Labour party, the whole of the British Press (along with lots of Labour party figures from the neoliberal faction) accused a Jewish Holocaust survivor of being an antisemite.

Whilst I think it’s very important and deserving of massive respect that the OP came forward with this, I’m surprised by the sentence “I still can’t quite believe how the events on campus over the past few days have been so cynically and hysterically misrepresented by the media and by our elected representatives.” - the massive abuse of accusations of antisemitism by (neo)liberal Politicians and Press has been standard in places like the US, UK and Germany for at least a decade and has been maybe one of the most evident indications that those liberals’ claimed anti-racism was political folklore and a tool, not a reflection of any equalitarian principles. Their support for the murderers in the Gazan Genocide - and how they just kept using their own very special version of what the claim is “anti-racism” as a political tool to bat away criticism of the near-Nazi Fascists committing that crime - just made it ever more obvious that they’re just Racists with not a shred of Humanitarianism and who only differ from Traditional Racists by their lists of “good races” and “bad races” being different.

Unsurprising, given how the pro-Zionist cause has been consistently pushed through Congress since October 7th.

First, was the House resolution declaring officially that “Anti-Zionism is Antisemitism”.

Then the House declared that the phrase “From the river to the sea” is antisemitic, despite the fact that it historically, and still is, used to mean different things by different groups.

Then, of course, there was the predictably one-sided Congressional drubbing hearing where Pro-Israel politicians lined up to criticize Columbia University for, according to them, letting Antisemitism run amok when in fact Columbia have implemented various draconian crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protests and voices on campus.

The lobbying has sadly been very effective in creating a situation where simply saying “Free Palestine” is increasingly framed as being antisemitic, so it’s always good to see that there are some media outlets that are pushing back against this narrative.

The way the students have been framed by media and the White House is beyond pathetic.

Good on you for speaking out. Consider having others do the same if possible.

In other words, the political powers-that-be have settled on contrived histrionics tailor-made to to fool anyone suffering from liberal brain-rot.

And it’s going to work, too.

I listened to the campus radio for 6 hours. I also just have a brain and realize that Israel is currently engaging in the kind of genocide that the Nazis perpetrated against them 80 years ago. Standing up for what’s right isn’t easy.

Reminds me of CHOP/CHAZ here in Seattle and how poorly that was reported on. Cops were bold face lying and it was being reported as fact immediately.