The University of Southern California canceled its valedictorian’s planned speech after pro-Palestinian posts. It’s no surprise.
If you want to get ahead in life then I have some advice: keep your mouth shut about Palestine. Or, if you must say something, then make sure it is nuanced like – I’m just paraphrasing a
former Mossad agent here – no Palestinian over the age of four is an innocent civilian and they all deserve to be starved to death. Certainly make sure you
don’t use controversial words like “genocide” or “occupation”, even if those are accurate descriptions according to
international law and
UN human rights experts. Best to avoid considering Palestinians as humans altogether, rather think of them as Israel’s defense minister does – “
human animals” – if you want to avoid unpleasantness.
(…). USC declined my request to clarify their official statement. But here’s a somewhat more straightforward description of what
appears to have happened: campus
pro-Israel groups trawled through Tabassum’s social media history in order to find posts that were sympathetic to Palestine and then proceeded to smear her with bad-faith accusations of antisemitism.
Instead of standing up for a student that USC had recognized as exemplary, the university caved into pressure to silence her.
(…) cancelling her speech under the vague pretext of “safety” is disingenuous. Let’s be very clear: if Tabassum were pro-Israel and her Instagram linked to any of the
very many genocidal things that the Israeli government had said about Palestinians, there is little chance her speech would have been cancelled. Jared Kushner, let’s not forget, was just at Harvard advocating for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. (
Kushner said that he thought Israel should move civilians out of Gaza into the desert while it “cleans up” the strip. He added that the Palestinians should absolutely not have their own state and mused that waterfront property in Gaza could be very valuable.)
(…) People who support the attacks on Gaza seem free to say the most depraved and racist things possible about Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians without facing any consequences whatsoever.
What’s left out of these nonstop discussions of campus safety is this: there isn’t a single safe campus left in Gaza. Israel, with the unconditional aid of the US,
has destroyed almost every kindergarten, school, and university in Gaza. It has killed at least 100
Palestinian academics. It has decimated every cultural institution. There are over 13,000 dead children in Gaza who will
never have the opportunity of an education. You should not be able to talk about campus safety without mentioning the fact that, thanks to US-backed Israeli air strikes, every campus in Gaza is now a graveyard.