The really fascinating thing I’ve discovered about the left is that they’ll suppress speech involving political opinions, but when it comes to threatening or inciting violence, they’ll use it very liberally — both in the free sense and the political one. Case in point: Florida State University student Reem Zaitoon, who tweeted “Announcer at [National Students for Justice in Palestine]: There’s police here for our safety [because] there are people who are upset & angry that we are here. Me: I’ll f**k up a Zionist.”
And lest you think Zaitoon is one of those moderate Palestinians, here she says “Zionists can kick & scream for a two state but it will never happen- we WILL achieve liberation within our lifetime & it will be a single state called Palestine, whether they like it or not.” And of course, don’t think she’ll just focus her zaniness on the East and leave the West alone.
“We will see a Unified Korea & a Free Palestine, enshallah, as soon as we dismantle the United States.” “Happy Valentine’s Day death to the United States long live the DPRK.” I wonder if she’d be able to make such a remark about her country if she actually lived in North Korea…I wonder if she’d even be allowed to use the Internet.
As for Florida State’s SJP chapter, they issued a statement, which Zaitoon shared, saying that “many of the tweets [Canary Mission refers] to are legitimate criticisms of Israeli governmental policies and practices” but “a few tweets and posts that we are referring to are undeniably racist and anti-Semitic” and that people who “made such posts are no longer members of our organization nor are they students at FSU.”
The group also apologized separately for the “f**k up a Zionist” tweet made by Zaitoon, who IS a current FSU student and SJP member. But that doesn’t answer the bigger question, which is why do these remarks come so unilaterally, from only one side of the Israel-Palestine conflict?
