Comparing anti-Zionism to antisemitism is just to ‘shut people’s brains off’
This past Monday, anti-Israel activists at Texas A&M braved “heavy rain” to “create signs” and yell chants such as “Biden, Biden you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”
According to The Battalion, the “unofficial” student organization Aggies Against Apartheid want that for which they had protested earlier in the year: “full divestment from companies linked to Israel.”
With only a brief mention of how the current conflict between Hamas and Israel started — the former’s surprise attack on October 7 which resulted in the deaths of over 1,200 Israelis — activists such as “Madi M.,” also a member of the Young Democratic Socialists of America, demanded the university “denounce” its investments in Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and the “ongoing almost 360 days of genocide” in Gaza.
Madi claimed the BDS — boycott, divestment, and sanctions — movement isn’t antisemitic, just anti-Zionist.
“To say that being anti-Zionist and against the apartheid State of Israel is antisemitic is to kind of conflate the two,” Madi said. “The idea that antisemitism and anti-Zionism can be conflated in any sense is just disingenuous.”
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Madi added that comparing the two is “just used to shut down conversation and shut people’s brains off.”
Protest organizer Noor Sheikh, a “graduate non-degree-seeking research student,” said the gathering also was intended to raise monies for students with family members “stuck” in Gaza.
Sheikh said Israel “has met at least three of the United Nations criteria for genocide.”
Sheikh added that while she and her fellow activists weren’t “trying to minimize any Israeli suffering,” they claim Israel’s response has been “unequal,” “disproportionate,” and “collective punishment.”
A link at the bottom of the Battalion article provides links to several pro-Palestinian GoFundMe pages, as well as others that allegedly “provide context” on the “decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” These portray Israel as the villain throughout, and omit references to Palestinian/Arab aggression in, for example, the original 1948 war and 1967’s Six-Day War.
MORE: Professors: Hamas not terrorists, just an anti-Zionist ‘resistance’ group
IMAGE: The Battalion/X
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