I use the word “bullshit” several times below. I don’t care: if you dislike it, fuck off.
The ICC is a clown show. There is no such thing as “international law” because there is no such thing as law without authority, the US isn’t a party to the ICC for good reason, but these arrest warrants, while absurd, are not antisemitic, and Netanyahu (nor Gallant) is not Dreyfuss, any more than the arrest warrants for Putin were anti-Russian. They were stupid and toothless, but not anti-Russian.
If you reject the authority of the ICC, then don’t use definitions from some bullshit NGO in American law, and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance is exactly that. It’s a bullshit pseudo-deliberative body which exists to give credentials to a bunch of well-connected bullshit artists. Let them fundraise and exist in peace — away from me.
Anything that impinges on free speech is by definition UNAMERICAN and this stupid “Antisemitism Awareness Act” is exactly that.
This article has all the relevant links for those who have the guts to click on them. Money part:
The lead author of the IHRA definition himself, Ken Stern, opposes codifying the definition into law. In a recent conversation with Nico Perrino, FIRE’s executive vice president, Mr. Stern stated:
The thing that I see as the real problem of this on the campus is not necessarily how the cases are gonna be litigated. It's about the chilling effect. It’s about the pressure on administrators who know that there are groups out there hunting for speech to file Title VI cases, and their job is to protect the university from being sued.
What total gobbledygook. It’s exactly “how the cases are gonna be litigated” — that will cause the chilling effect!
But here’s the thing: it won’t cause a chilling effect, it will be the detonator for an outburst of cases. If you think that pro-Palestinian groups are going to be dissuaded by this law, you are living in a bigger dream world than I thought possible. They are all in for this. Right now, they’re getting ready. They’ll learn from their mistakes.
And, politics making the strangest of bedfellows, a lot of Jews will be on their side.
Jews like me.
Because I am in favor of the right of anyone to say anything they like, no matter how offensive to my little feelings, as long as it’s done legally and within the confines of the First Amendment.
We have a constitution, created as a result of a costly revolution and a lot of wrangling afterward. We have hundreds of years of case law refining and defining the 1A.
That’s our law. That’s what we fought for. To give it up so that we accede to the political passions of the day would be a complete betrayal of all this history and the people who fought for it.
It’s also unenforceable. It will be ruled un-Constitutional — at the end of a million cases. Why go there in the first place?
I hate that phrase, “the same people” but I’m going to use it here.
The same people who would oppose a “Racism Awareness Act” are all in on this because politics.
Making antisemitism a political football is the road to madness. It IS madness.
Do we want to end up like the UK, arresting people for saying hurty words?
We have ALL the laws we need on this subject. Arrest people who break the law. Arrest vandals. Arrest those who issue credible threats. I’m on record as saying that most of the anti-Israel/pro-Hamas “demonstrations” at the universities (and elsewhere) were lawless. The demonstrators were lawbreakers. They should have been arrested. Those who were students should have been expelled. Those who are foreign should be repatriated forthwith.
But criminalizing speech? No!
In reading about this dumbass law, I dropped down the rabbit hole of academic bullshit, another reason to oppose it.
Kenneth Stern is a professor of something called “Hate Studies” at Bard College.
Yep, you can now get a degree in Hate Studies at an accredited American university. Or take courses in it and make up an interdisciplinary major in it, I don’t know, I just know that in modern quackademia anything is possible.
LINKS
ACLU Urges House of Representatives to Oppose Anti-semitism Awareness Act Anyone who leaves a comment that begins with, “But the ACLU…” will be permanently banned. That the ACLU has gone crazy doesn’t mean they’re wrong here.
The Controversy Surrounding the Antisemitism Bill, Explained
“The proposed Anti-Semitism Awareness Act of 2016 is a speech code for schools and colleges that’s presented as common-sense protection against bigotry. After it was unanimously passed by the Senate recently, the House Judiciary Committee put off consideration until 2017. As I have told the committee, it should not be considered in any form.”
So Congress has been nibbling at this for several years. This time it’ll pass, because we’ve gone nuts.