Free Speech Doesn’t Include Using the Word ‘Palestine’’

Coming Soon: all the other words on Trump’s ‘woke’ list.

Photo by Saleh Najm and Anas Sharif at FARS News

Wars in the area of Israel are rooted in decisions made by colonial powers granting immigration and failing to regard the rights and needs of the non-Jewish indigenous population.

Animus toward followers of the Jewish faith dates back to the Roman empire, and has evolved into mythology holding that they are a separate race with a disguised agenda.

Questions of sovereignty in the region have been impossible to resolve because outside powers have agendas and must posture to prove their legitimacy. And now what exists are military forces influenced by the notion that their enemies must be vanquished in every sense of the word before peace can be declared.

The split is so deep that any statement describing it is impossible to make without invoking accusations of bias. (as I’m sure this essay will attract.) It’s one of those situations where you’re damned if you do or damned if you don’t.

In the context of the destruction of a constitutional democracy in North America, this conflict is being used as a weapon. At the moment, supporters of a Palestinian state (and opponents of the current Israeli government’s military practices) are being treated as terroristic enemies of the state by the Trump administration.

A student who co-authored an essay favorable to the cause of Palestinians was snatched off the street by immigration authorities. As a student visitor to this country she is now part of a newly created exempted class for whom the rule of law does not apply. And the sad part of this is that her ambush and subsequent incarceration was enabled by a vigilante group, who single-handedly passed judgement on her essay.

Student journalists, both domestic and international, are now seeking to have articles written in the past either be unpublished or have bylines removed.

Via The Guardian:

• In February, the Purdue Exponent, a student paper at Purdue University in Indiana, removed the names and images of student protesters advocating for Palestinian human rights from its website, citing safety concerns and the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics, which prioritizes minimizing harm. “Pro-Palestinian students are under attack, so we’re removing their names,” the paper announced in an editorial. The paper immediately found itself at the center of a rousing conversation about journalistic ethics, and its editor reportedly received more than 7,000 emails, including death threats.

Immigration authorities have cracked down on other college campuses, arresting a Georgetown University scholar who had spoken out on social media about the Israel-Gaza war, canceling the student visas of some protesters and deporting a Brown University professor who they said had attended the Lebanon funeral of a leader of Hezbollah, another militant group that has fought with Israel.

When a group of more than 130 Jewish members of the Georgetown University community released a signed statement in support of Badar Khan Suri, a Muslim postdoctoral scholar and professor who was arrested and targeted for deportation, the White House responded to an NBC News query:

• White House spokesperson Harrison Fields responded to NBC News, calling the group "radical activists" who "wouldn’t last a minute in Hamas-controlled Gaza."

• "Their misguided virtue signaling is doing more to embolden Hamas than to end the war," Fields said in an email. "President Trump will always stand for peace and for the nation of Israel.”

So there you have it: oppose the authoritarian crackdown and get named as supporters of a group the US government considers to be terrorists.

Terrorism as an ideological/cultural descriptor now implies that there are enemies with unredeemable qualities who must be eliminated from society in order to ensure domestic tranquility.

Sadly, those involved with these vigilante groups who “out” supposed antisemites don’t realize that it’s only a matter of time before they, too, are targets of this societal purging.

Rooting out “anti-Christian bias” was included along with other transgressions in February executive orders.

Via Politico:

• The Trump administration has ordered State Department employees to report on any instances of coworkers displaying “anti-Christian bias” as part of its effort to implement a sweeping new executive order on supporting employees of Christian faith working in the federal government.

Secretary of State Mario Rubio has argued that combating antisemitism globally and protecting Jewish students from “harassment and violence” is a US foreign policy objective and “condoning anti-Semitic conduct and disruptive protests in the United States would severely undermine that.” Look at the hard work “disruptive protests” is doing in that statement.

Antisemitism is just one of the tools being used by the Trump administration in its efforts to degenerate institutions it believes harbor humans who would actively oppose its authoritarian policies. The much maligned concept of DEI is being used as the basis for similar targeting.

The Department of Education has launched investigations into 52 universities in 41 states, accusing the schools of using "racial preferences and stereotypes in education programs and activities."

Education has also been investigating 60 universities over allegations of antisemitic discrimination. A handful of schools are involved in both sets of investigations, including Cornell, George Mason, Rutgers, Yale, University of Wisconsin, Madison, and University of Washington-Seattle.

There is no escaping the fact the Trump administration has loaded its ranks with self-loathing supremacists, eager to use their sociopathic skill sets to belittle minority groups of every kind.

For now, antisemitism is a primary public justification for attacking academia. Anybody who thinks they actually care about hatred directed at Jewish students probably also believes President Trump pulled off one of the greatest foreign policy moves ever with his waffling on tariffs.

As Timothy Snyder, the historian author of On Tyranny, observes:

• The point of repeating antisemitic tropes while claiming to fight antisemitism is to evacuate any meaning from the term "antisemitism" and to erase the lessons of the Holocaust. And there can hardly be a more antisemitic action than that.

• Antisemitism is a terrible problem in our battered world, and it is worse from year to year, moment to moment. There are antisemites among Americans, among American young people, and among college students. This is no reason, however, to attack higher education or undermine the legal and moral basis of the American republic.

• Antisemites claim that they themselves can make up what they like about history, they can decide who is a real Jew, that the Jews brought suffering upon themselves. Antisemites meanwhile apply the word "antisemitic" to other people who are simply doing things that the actual antisemites do not like. The absurdity is part of the point: the claim that Jewish democrats are the real antisemites or the real Nazis or the real Hitlers is meant to disorient well-meaning people who assume that there must be some logic somewhere, and to provide guidance for malicious people who actually wish to further antisemitism.

Finally, as to the situation in Gaza/Israel, I don’t think the horribleness that defines the entire conflict can be undone or forgotten. The Israelis in practical terms became what they opposed, and have accomplished the goals that the military and political leadership on either side espoused. This “victory” includes a poison (the destruction of their own democracy) that will inevitably lead to very bad things.

I don’t know if this essay qualifies as a pro-Palestine or anti-Israel statement. I do know that the suppression of views in my country is of grave concern. It’s everywhere. People are becoming afraid to express opinions, lest there be legal or cultural consequences.

FYI - Just last week, Facebook permanently banned the Words & Deeds page I set up to support my writing efforts. It wasn’t because I published pictures of burnt children’s bodies from Gaza or because I made a statement supporting Hamas or the IDF: it was because I published a parody graphic calling out Facebook for using its algorithm to suppress the distribution of writings by historian Heather Cox Richardson. (Fuck em if they can’t take a joke.)

American Caesar by Charlie Angus at The Resistance

• Turns out Trump got the idea of taking control of Greenland from cosmetics mogul Ronald Lauer. This revelation comes from the book The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser.

• A billionaire mascara mogul suggested that it would be a cakewalk for the United States to take control of Greenland. Trump was hooked. After the meeting, he called John Bolton and said,

• "A friend of mine, a really, really experienced businessman, thinks we can get Greenland."

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A New Plan to Fix Mexico’s Housing Crisis by Ximena González at Jacobin

• In October, President Sheinbaum put forward an ambitious plan to build one million affordable homes across the country before the end of her mandate, in 2030.

• This time around, construction won’t be left at the mercy of private real estate developers.

• Thanks to a recent reform to INFONAVIT’s regulatory framework, the federal government subsidiary will acquire serviced land in well-connected areas, and build social housing for lower-income workers for the first time in three decades.

• In Mexico City, Sheinbaum’s plan is expected to produce 26,000 affordable homes over the next five years, and mitigate displacement in the city’s center.

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Carney’s Checkmate: How Canada's Quiet Bond Play Forced Trump to Drop Tariffs by Dean Blundell

• Rewind a bit. While Trump was gearing up his trade war machine, Carney, Canada’s Prime Minister, wasn’t just sitting in Ottawa twiddling his thumbs. He’d been quietly increasing Canada’s holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds—over $350 billion worth by early 2025, part of the $8.53 trillion foreign countries hold in U.S. debt. On the surface, it looked like a safe play, a hedge against economic chaos. But it wasn’t just defense. It was a loaded gun.

• Carney didn’t stop there. He took his case to Europe. Not for photo ops, but for closed-door meetings with the EU’s heavy hitters—Germany, France, the Netherlands. Japan was in the room too, listening closely. The pitch was simple: if Trump went too far with tariffs, Canada wouldn’t just retaliate with duties on American cars or steel. It would start offloading those Treasury bonds. Not a fire sale—nothing so crude. A slow, steady bleed. A signal to the markets that the U.S. dollar’s perch wasn’t so secure.

• And here’s the kicker: Canada wasn’t alone. Japan, holding over $1 trillion in U.S. debt, signed on and started to sell those US Treasury bonds which scared Trump shitless. Key EU countries—collectively sitting on another $1.5 trillion—nodded in agreement. This wasn’t a bluff. It was a silent pact. A coordinated move to remind Trump that the free world doesn’t just roll over when he swings his tariff bat. Hurt us, Carney said, and we’ll hurt you—right where it counts.