The Anti-Semitic Awareness Act needs to be stopped
Pro-Israel, Pro-Genocide, and “Respectability Politics”: Rep. Don Bacon, a New York Rep., Tells Fox 5 News
Some pro-Palestinian demonstrators seem to believe, given the moral enormity of mass death, displacement and starvation in Gaza, that deferring to mainstream Jewish sensitivities means buckling to so-called respectability politics, which whitewash horror in the name of civility. The Columbia Law chapter of the National Lawyers Guild has been providing legal assistance to the protesters who are demanding that the Jewish students and faculty be removed from their seats.
The statement dislikes the ethos of nonviolence, likening it to an opponent with a conscience who must have a conscience in order for nonviolence to work. The United States does not have any. I think that this rhetoric functions as a sign of commitment within the movement, a rejection of liberal hollow pieties. Outside of it, to the extent that anyone takes this language seriously, it serves to stoke a raging panic about the protests that both distracts from the war and feeds a growing backlash that threatens academic freedom.
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., has introduced a resolution to censure Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar for referring to some Jewish university students as “pro-genocide.”
During her visit to the Columbia University student population at a protest camp, Fox 5 New York asked her about allegations of rising antisemitism.
“Attempts to misconstrue her words are meant to distract from the ongoing violence and genocide occurring in Gaza and the large antiwar protests happening across our country and around the world,” the statement reads.
Last week, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, who chairs the House Progressive Caucus, told reporters she thought Bacon’s pledge to bring forward the censure resolution was “ridiculous.”
“This is not what we need and these censure resolutions — if we were to censure everything that we didn’t like that somebody from the other party said, we’d be censuring people all day long,” she said.
The House Republicans are focused on the rising allegations of antisemitism at colleges as students continue to demonstrate against the Israeli government as it continues its war against Hamas.
