Omri rightly points out that conservatives have been subject to censorship and exclusion for decades on the argument that their events might 'make students feel unsafe.' Actual calls for students who are Jewish women to be raped, or Jewish students to be killed, or Jewish students actually being stabbed in the eye, apparently don't warrant any special notice by the university administration.
It's important to know who your friends are, and who they are not, I suppose.
That said, I do wish to object to something the Orthodox rabbi said whom Omri quotes. He writes, "It is not our job as Jews to ensure our own safety on campus." Perhaps "as Jews" is carrying some weight here, but it absolutely is everyone's job -- and right, and duty -- to ensure their own safety at all times. Even where it is forbidden by positive law, it is demanded by natural law. No positive law is legitimate that disarms a threatened people, nor one that purports to strip them of the right to defend themselves.
Columbia is in New York City, one of the parts of America with the least legitimate laws as regards self-defense and the right to keep and bear arms. This is a good time to reflect on how evil such laws really are.
Laws repugnant to the Constitution are null and void. It's time to start defying them accordingly, and enforce the rights with which Nature and Nature's God endow you.
9 comments:
I understand Rav Elie Buechler's sentiment that it should not be the job of Jews to protect themselves any more than other students. It is the university's responsibility first. But yours is the deeper truth. At the last, we bear the responsibility ourselves, and it is good to know it.
I think this is particularly hard for Jews in America, as this safety has always been a central part of the American Dream for them and they are loath to give it up. They had come to regard America as a place that still had prejudices, but at least guaranteed the safety of its citizens equally. Whatever hatreds came, they believed the authorities knew it was their job to protect equally. Now that is vanishing.
They are clinging to a hope of how things were. Perhaps they will prove to be right and this will be a brief unpleasant episode.
I've been saying for a while that Jews should all move to the South. We're fine with Jews being armed.
Rather than forcing Jews to leave their not-South homes and migrate--again--I think it's more incumbent on the rest of us to stand with Jews wherever they are against these folks, who I think are more terrorist supporters than strictly antisemitic bigots.
Behaviors that look like bigotry, after all, is often just broad ignorance. These wonders of the Left, though, know full well what they're doing, and they know full well where the money for their pro-terrorist disruptions originate.
Eric Hines
I have no desire to force Jews to leave their homes and I certainly stand with them wherever they are. But I'd move if it meant I could protect myself and my loved ones.
I'm not suggesting you would. Like you, were they to move to the South, I'd welcome them.
However, I think moving under duress only potentiates the risk to me and mine by demonstrating to those harassing or threatening that they can drive me out wherever I am.
It's not just Jews, either. Mormons tended to be herded away, too. Nor were they the only ones.
Eric Hines
In fairness, the history of the early Mormon church is violent enough that it probably wasn't mere prejudice at work there.
Now Jews have done well in the South for a long time. George Washington visited the Jewish community in Savannah at their invitation, and found it thriving. I've written several times about how Jewish gentlemen in the South occasionally fought duels with Christian gentlemen, showing that they were accepted as equals: gentlemen would only duel with equals, after all. It's a bold way to prove your equality, but if another man gives you a fair chance to kill him out of respect for your equal standing, it's also a very emphatic way of establishing that equality is real.
Mormons tended to be herded away, too.
The early history of Mormonism does involve quite a lot of violence, yes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormonism_and_violence
There's a back and forth about this on Twitter, starting here:
https://twitter.com/EJSchorr/status/1782171578702406124
Both sides are presented: stay and fight vs prioritize safety. AlexTheCheck puts it thusly:
You do not want to cede ground. You also do not want to remain in lost territory.
I don't think there is a right answer. It's simply something each person much decide for him- or herself. Is Columbia University lost territory? Is New York City? Is the Northeast?
We don't lose "it"--territory or anything else--until we surrender "it." We may be driven off for a time, but unless we surrender, "it" is never lost.
Eric Hines
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