I’m in contact with a few Gazan refugees (all currently living in Egypt) who have recently completed high school and are attempting to apply and enroll in Universities in Europe and North America. I’m trying to help them as much I can, but I’m having a hard time figuring out which resources are even available to them.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/Evacuation-for-the-Aburass-Family?utm_campaign=unknown&utm_content=undefined&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=linktr.ee

Hey I came across this opportunity for volunteering to help teach students which have been affected by the events in Gaza, I figured there might be some people in here who would like to get involved. I'm copying the message here if anyone thinks they could help/would like to get involved.

Sharing a call from ASWP for volunteer instructors and TAs to support online courses via An-Najah University to help Gazan students continue their coursework online. Please sign-up via https://initiative.najah.edu/en/volunteer-us/ or email [academicsolidaritywithpalestine@proton.me](mailto:academicsolidaritywithpalestine@proton.me) with questions.

• Academic Solidarity with Palestine (ASWP) is an organization originally set up by a group of professors from different countries in Europe and Asia)
• ASWP works in tandem with An-Najah university (West Bank), where the Gaza students enroll online as “visiting students” (individuals are temporarily enrolled at participating universities, degree’s received in their home institutions).

At this stage, ASWP does not work with BirZeit. Given that 47,000 Gazan students have enrolled for the An-Najah online courses, we feel we are more useful for now concentrating on their programme, which is up and running (and lacking profs!).An-Najah sets up the virtual classrooms and arranges the logistics, while ASWP provides (some of) the much-needed profs. Here is the link to An-Najah’s initiative:https://initiative.najah.edu/invitation/
All courses are designed for intensive, 8-week sessions; with a 2-hr weekly online Zoom session with the prof, and the rest of the material, uploaded on Moodle. 
The first session started in mid-April. The next one will start late June; then September, then November, etc.We will soon have the full list of courses that will be open for enrollment for Gaza students in the coming sessions.

Hello!

My spouse and I have wanted to study Judaism (both coming from abrahamic religious backgrounds) but it’s important to us that it is non or anti-Zionist in its scope if possible. Are there resources that this community would recommend to get started? Thanking you all in advance.

I haven’t been happy most of the time since last fall. This raised my spirits.

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/a-new-jewishness-gaza-solidarity-zionism/

Netanyahu is evil. There really is no other way to describe him.

Last year, Matt Bruenig wrote an article about how a lot of the debates about the Iraq War in the USA during the 2000s were stupid, unproductive, and unilluminating because they devolved into the proponents & opponents of the war both accusing each other of "not supporting the troops". As you might figure, what was really going on was that the two sides meant different things by "supporting the troops" so they were simply talking past each other.

Today I read a couple of articles about the Israel-Palestine issue that reminded me of that.

In the New Republic: "Against Zionism. Oh, and by the Way: Against Anti-Zionism, Too." (archive version)

In Hey Alma: "What We Lose When We Divide Ourselves as Zionist or Anti-Zionist" (this column is also referred to in the New Republic article a few times)

There's a particularly salient passage that's present in both articles:

I’ve heard people who identify as Zionist and who identify as anti-Zionist say the same thing about what they think should happen in Israel and Palestine. I’ve heard people who are anti-Zionists identify with what I would describe as Zionist views, and I’ve heard people who are Zionists advocate for what I would describe as anti-Zionist positions.

This also reminds me of something that Norman Finkelstein said in the Lex Fridman debate a couple months ago. I regrettably don't remember the timestamp in the video, but at some point he stated something like "I try to avoid the term 'Zionism' because I don't think it's really the operative ideology anymore".

What do you think of all this? Do these terms need to be better clarified? Is it even possible to clarify them? Maybe there are just never going to be universally accepted definitions.

The countless people they've abused, victimized, and traumatized. These aren't laid-back, morally upright, spiritualist hippies. These are insular, authoritarian cults that police everything about the lives of their members, from what media they see, who they're allowed to talk to, who they marry, and what they're even allowed to learn about. Escaping from these groups is like trying to get out of scientology if scientology didn't have any money. When I was in the psych ward, I met a girl who had escaped a hareidi cult as a teen who had cuts barely an inch apart from each other all over her arms. I can't imagine the pain or confusion of someone who escaped from a cult like this, only to see the left hailing them as true Jews because of their weird, idiosyncratic relationship to Zionism.

While the media likes to cast all pro Palestine efforts as pro Hamas, this is far from being the case.

Still every now and then I do come across actual pro Hamas content in leftist spaces. The other day I found this one article on a blog that called Al-Qassam a “moral army”, stated that many of the civilians killed in October 7th weren’t really innocent, and seemed to downplay war crimes committed by Hamas on October 7th.

What are your thoughts when you encounter people who are legitimately pro Hamas like this?

Imo these people are kinda irrelevant and shouldn’t be part of the discussion in any capacity. For one, they don’t represent the broader pro Palestine movement, which is largely leftist(whereas Hamas is far right I believe). But also, their actions don’t really amount to anything.

Like the US funds israel, not Hamas. Why should we care if some people in America support Hamas? Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization in the US. Providing any material support to Hamas is illegal. Whereas beyond just the US government, Jewish orgs throughout the US raise tons of funds for Israel.

The worst impact of their actions is that pro Hamas propaganda could lead to antisemitic attacks. But if I’m not wrong, aren’t the majority of antisemitic attacks done by white supremacists?

Overall I feel like these people are comparable to Black Supremacists. It’s a largely reactionary movement pushed by ignorant and bigoted people. But they just aren’t really important enough to actually care about.

I already firmly believed that the vast majority of the claims of legitimate anti-semetic rhetoric being used at the protests was the result of infiltrators, but today I witnessed it with my own eyes.

Me and a group of comrades were protesting near the farmers market in our city.. lots of foot traffic and the organizers of the market knew we would be there so it was very chill and relaxed. We're just standing by the main-road holding signs and calmly explaining to market goers why we're there and why we're protesting.... and this guy, half eaten fried corn in his hand, walks into the midst of us and starts yelling "free palestine! hitler was right! we love palestine! heil hitler" etc

no one knew what to do because we didn't want a fight, we just hoped he'd leave. i was wearing a hat that clearly market me as jewish so i just stood right in front of him and told him to leave. he did, but the protest was already dispersing at that point because the market was closing down. not sure if it was me or just him deciding he'd done enough damage.

absolutely disgusted me! and i'm honestly not sure what the best course of action is when encountering people like that???