Mick Hartley

The problem with Pride, pt. 74: San Francisco Pride denies Israel float, but okays Palestinian groups.

Dennis Kavanagh noted the trans takeover. Now it's the Palestinian take-over. The common thread: homophobia.

Shutting down free speech if they don't agree with some of the speakers. It's all the rage.

Pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Durham locked students inside a building after a cancellation of a debate titled “This house believes Palestinian leadership is the biggest barrier to peace,” according to the university, media and participant reports.

Dr Shahid Mahmoud, Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at Durham University, was reportedly behind the event’s cancellation.

Ha. Inclusion doesn't extend to Jews.

The debate would have featured a number of experts including Natasha Hausdorff of UK Lawyers for Israel; investigative journalist David Collier and Lance Forman, a former Brexit Party Member of European Parliament. The pro-Palestinian side of the debate would have been represented by Chris Doyle, the director of the council for Arab-British Understanding; Dr Peter Shambrook, a specialist Middle Eastern historian and Mohab Ramadan a Durham University undergraduate.

Forman wrote on X that "I’m in Durham tonight to debate “Palestinian Leadership is the biggest barrier to peace” Only the University just caved in to a fascist mob and cancelled the debate at last minute. Free speech died in Durham tonight! They’re afraid of hearing the truth"….

Hausdorff told the Telegraph that students attending the debate were locked inside by a “mob” of pro-Palestinian protesters, who formed a human chain around the building.

The Durham Students for Palestine group condemned the choice of speakers, and accused the university of allowing the Union to become “a Zionist mouthpiece.”

They appear not to understand the concept of "debate". 

The tab reported the "mob" barricaded the doors in front of the building to prevent members and speakers from entering and leaving and claimed that those inside were trapped for an hour and 45 minutes.

The protesters also reportedly banged on the windows of the building, while shouting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

Hausdorff told The Telegraph: “Around a dozen students were preparing the chamber for the debate then a mob formed a human chain blocking them inside.

“They were stuck inside the debate chamber for more than two and a half hours. The police took no action because the university refused to give them a mandate to take action.”

“Students were in tears because they expected the university to have their back, but they sided with the mob.

“My heart goes out to all the students affected. It’s shameful, we’ve been told it’s the diversity official.”Students are said to have been escorted out of the premises, after several hours of being trapped, by police. UK Lawyers for Israel posted on social media: “Durham University shut down free speech today at the Durham Union Society, home of free speech since 1842.

“Hundreds of students hoped to attend, but the uni caved into a mob chanting for genocide.”

Yep.

An alarming step back prior to the Olympics. From the Telegraph:

The International Olympic Committee have provoked fury among former female competitors by asking journalists attending this summer’s Paris Games not to use terms such as “born male” or “biologically male” to describe transgender athletes, arguing that they were “dehumanising” and constituted “problematic language”.

Factual language. Always problematic for the trans cult.

In a 33-page “Portrayal Guidelines” document, the IOC have told the 20,000-strong media contingent that “a person’s sex category is not assigned based on genetics alone” and “it is always preferable to emphasise a person’s actual gender rather than potentially calling their identity into question by referring to the sex category that was registered on their original birth certificate”.

Actual gender? What does that mean? Clearly not sex – so, presumably, it's that mystic thing otherwise known as "gender identity".

This advice flies in the face of actions taken by the major Olympic sports of athletics, swimming and cycling, all of which have revised their transgender policies in the past two years to prioritise sex over gender and ensure fairness for women in their own category. In 2022, World Swimming was forced to act after Lia Thomas went from being the 554th-ranked male in the United States in the 200-yard freestyle to winning a national collegiate title in the equivalent female race.

The IOC’s vacillation over trans athletes lies behind much of the discord and confusion that has engulfed sport on this issue. In 2004, it endorsed a policy for post-operative transsexuals to enter women’s events, insisting that the situation would be “extremely rare”. At the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, their medical director, Dr Richard Budgett, declared: “Everyone agrees trans women are women.” Except many women agreed nothing of the sort, with France’s Marion Clignet presenting a survey to the UCI last year to show that 92 per cent of female cyclists favoured a ban on biological males from their events.

The listing of “born male” or “genetically male” under terms to avoid in Paris – along with a blanket guideline to replace “identifies as” with “is” – has sparked outrage among many ex-Olympians. Inga Thompson, a cyclist who represented the US at three Olympics, said: “The IOC media have allowed themselves to be bought, because deep down, they never wanted women to be in sports. The ultimate misogynist movement.”

Alison Sydor, who competed for Canada in mountain biking at Atlanta 1996, pointed out that the IOC had cited GLAAD, an American LGBT advocacy group, as a leading authority on the subject. Only this week, GLAAD promoted a T-shirt bearing the message: “No TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists).” “The IOC sure know how to pick a partner to lecture everyone about dehumanising language,” Sydor wrote.

Sharron Davies, the British swimming champion who took silver in Moscow in 1980, retweeted a post from Cathy Devine, a former lecturer in sport and physical activity at the University of Cumbria, branding the IOC’s document “breathtakingly sexist and complete propaganda”. Despite the backlash, Yiannis Exarchos, chief executive of Olympic Broadcasting Services, promised that his team in Paris would use the guidelines as “our Bible”.

This is not looking good….

brilliant achievement Fossil boycotters and all those self righteous saboteur " writers" who signed up to their blackmail https://t.co/Fz4w9yiPG0

— Simon Schama (@simon_schama) June 7, 2024

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"We've fucked up SO bad, and now we're scared we're going to get beaten up when everyone realises how much damage our whiny posturing has done for no benefit to anyone." https://t.co/XYfVritufd

— Wings Over Scotland (@WingsScotland) June 6, 2024

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More from the Daily NK on the crackdown on "impure videos" from South Korea, with reports of inspectors breaking down doors to check what people are watching:

Crackdowns and inspections targeting the consumption or distribution of foreign content, including South Korean movies and dramas, have suddenly intensified in North Hamgyong Province after a period of inactivity.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Daily NK source in North Hamgyong Province said Monday that members of an enforcement group tasked with curbing non-socialist behavior “have recently been inspecting homes in Hoeryong’s neighborhood watch units to determine if they are watching impure videos.” He said people are inconvenienced “because the inspectors barge in unannounced twice or thrice a day.”

He continued, “Public discontent is especially growing because the inspectors break down your door if nobody opens it right away when they knock or act as if you’ve committed some sort of felony.”

The source said the intensified inspection campaign is due to an order from the national headquarters of the so-called unified command on non-socialist and anti-socialist behavior issued in mid-May to “Unified Command 82” branches nationwide instructing them to “root out anti-socialist and non-socialist phenomena, especially the watching of impure videos.”

It's the Greens again. The real raving loony party.

Green Party general election candidates have shared “antisemitic” slurs and conspiracy theories, backed pro-Palestinian protests at Auschwitz and justified the October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel.

On Thursday night party officials were examining a dossier featuring nearly 20 candidates who have shared offensive material online. Among them were individuals who compared Zionism to cancer and claimed the Hamas atrocities on October 7 were a false flag orchestrated by Israel….

Kefentse Dennis, the Green equalities and diversity co-ordinator, and candidate in Birmingham’s Perry Barr constituency, said rocket attacks launched before the October 7 massacre were an example of “Palestine defending itself as it is legally allowed to”.

On May 6, when pro-Palestinian demonstrators disrupted a remembrance march to honour the victims of Nazi atrocities at the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, Dennis wrote on X that “it’s because never again means never again”. He also called for a boycott of Israel in the days after the October 7 attacks.

Simon Anthony, the Green Party candidate for Barking, east London, compared Hamas to the French Resistance and said the October 7 terrorist massacre was the “current Palestinian home guard outburst”.

In a post on Twitter/X from May 15, he wrote: “Hamas is terribly similar to what the ‘Home Guard’ and the French Resistance would have been called if the UK had lost the Second World War.”

He also liked a tweet marked by its author as “Hamas official statement”, and a message saying “every time the Palestinians fight back, they are accused of being ‘terrorists’”.

Nataly Anderson, who is standing in Woking, Surrey, shared her suspicions that the October 7 attacks were “orchestrated” and claimed that there were connections between human traffickers and the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. She said: “We are seeing links between the institutional kidnapping of children and the state of Israel. It is very unfortunate that the victims of the Holocaust turn into the predators.”

And so on. The climate, the whales…all forgotten, as antisemitism and gender woo take centre stage.

Learning about Zionism’s long genocidal war on Palestinians, in Portland:

Jewish leaders and concerned parents in Portland, Oregon are accusing the local teachers’ union of indoctrinating students with anti-Israel messages and engaging in one-sided, pro-Palestinian activism as the war in Gaza continues to rage.

Last week, the Portland Association of Teachers held a pro-Palestinian advocacy meeting where members were urged to display Palestinian flags in their classrooms, according to a report in the Oregonian newspaper. Union members were also urged to wear T-shirts that read “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – an antisemitic slogan the refers to the elimination of Israel, which is home to nearly half of the world’s Jews.

The meeting comes after the union recently released a guide that instructed teachers on how to get involved in Pro-Palestinian organizing and how to inject their lessons for children as young as preschool with anti-Israel messages.

The 32-page guide, “Know Your Rights! Teaching & Organizing for Palestine within Portland Public Schools,” was published last month by the Oregon Educators for Palestine in collaboration with the teachers’ union. It offers legal advice to educators “teaching about the genocide in Palestine,” and advice on how to teach about the ongoing conflict.

At one point, it recommends teaching students that “Palestinian resistance is a political struggle for self-determination against colonial and apartheid rule.”

The teaching guide does not mention that Gaza is governed by Hamas, which the U.S. designated as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997. And critics note that while it focuses on the plight of Palestinians, it makes no mention of Hamas’ terrorist attack on October 7, which killed about 1,200 innocent people, mostly Israeli civilians, and led to the war.

The guide accuses Israel of engaging in “settler colonialism” and says that the “Zionist settler colonization of Palestine has been widely compared to settler colonialism in the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and elsewhere.” …

For younger students, the guide recommends lessons, books, and videos from various far-left education outfits, including Woke Kindergarten, the Palestinian Feminist Collective, and Social Justice Books. It includes a visual guide titled “So You Made it to a Protest!” and “Lil Comrade Convos,” which urges young kids to discuss “power.”

Older students are directed to lessons on “Renewable Energy in occupied Palestine,” “Unions,” “Genocide of Palestinians,” “Queer Voices From the Fight For Palestine Liberation,” and “No Freedom Without Reproductive Freedom for Palestinian Women.”

More from the City Journal:

Before snack time, the teacher is encouraged to share “keffiyehs, flags, and protest signs” with the children, and have them create their own agitprop material, with slogans such as “FREE PALESTINE, LET GAZA LIVE, [and] PALESTINE WILL BE FREE.” The intention, according to the lesson, is to move students toward “taking collective action in support of Palestinian liberation.”

The recommended curriculum also includes a pamphlet titled “All Out for Palestine.” The pamphlet is explicitly political, with a sub-headline blaring in all capital letters: “STOP THE GENOCIDE! END U.S. AID TO ISRAEL! FREE PALESTINE!” The authors denounce “Zionism’s long genocidal war on Palestinian life” and encourage students to support “boycott, divestment, and sanctions” policies against Israel.

The pamphlet includes chants that teachers can adopt in the classroom. Some imply support for militancy and political violence: “Resistance is justified when people are occupied!”; “We salute all our martyrs! mothers, fathers, sons and daughters!”; “Justice is our demand! No peace on stolen land!”

It's like a case study in the insanity – and plain imbecility – of so much reaction to Gaza and Israel on the US left. There's zero understanding of the historical and political realities, but, my god, the moral fervour of these people….

[Via Jerry Coyne]

Shabbos Kestenheim at Tablet – Being a Jew at Harvard is way worse than you think:

As a Jewish student at Harvard University, I have had my learning interrupted by students calling for the globalization of the intifada, sat directly next to classmates who praised the terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, listened to 34 student groups blame the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust on Jews themselves, been exposed to countless death threats, and perhaps most infamously, had a university president who described calls for Jewish genocide to be “context-dependent.”

According to Hillel International, in the 1970s, Jews accounted for roughly 25% of Harvard’s student population. In 2023, that number is estimated to be lower than 5%. For Ivy League institutions across America, the percentage plummets are relatively equivalent….

While Harvard took the extraordinary step to raise the Ukrainian flag on its campus following Russia’s illegal invasion of the country, we were told a similar display of solidarity would not be permitted, and the request to fly the Israeli flag after the Hamas attacks was denied. Although Claudine Gay, as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, immediately sent out an email forcefully condemning the murder of George Floyd and the racial undertones that allowed for it to happen, no equivalent response, certainly not one with such moral clarity, has been issued to Jewish students.

Indeed, the antisemitism and Hamas sympathies are not confined to Harvard students. They extend to, and are promoted by, Harvard faculty.

Earlier in the year, close to 100 Harvard faculty and staff published a cartoon depicting the hand of a Jew, imprinted with the Star of David and the dollar sign, holding nooses around the necks of an Arab and a Black man.

To this day, these faculty have not been disciplined in any way. They continue to teach and spread their poison with impunity. In many cases I have been a student in their classroom, pass them in the hallways, and see their names featured prominently on lectures.

Only days later, Harvard proudly hosted antisemite Noura Erakat, who participated on a panel with internationally designated terrorist and senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad who has promised to repeat Oct. 7 “again and again … October 7, October 10, October one-millionth.”…

While I can provide countless more examples and infuriating testimony, I will conclude with these words: I have seldom experienced such disdain and contempt for a minority group as the way in which Harvard treats its Jewish student population.

This is the reality of being a Jew at Harvard in 2024.

I used to justify using Amazon (no, nothing to do with them being cheaper!) by thinking of all those bookstores (yes you, Waterstones) where gender-critical books were unavailable or hidden away by staff.

Well, think again. From the Free Speech Union:

Our source is an Amazon employee and FSU member who provided us with a copy of the training material produced by ‘Glamazon’, the company’s internal LGBT+ affinity group, which has been rolled out to employees in the UK with supervisory responsibilities. The managers concerned are referred to as – wait for it – ‘Glamzonians’.

It is not clear how or whether the material is adapted for different Amazon locations across the globe or whether it is UK-specific. The course contains many of the familiar LGBT+ topics but, as highlighted by our member who said that employees feel “silenced and scared to admit their own beliefs”, it slides into authoritarianism when discussing “preferred gender pronouns”. The following is taken directly from the Glamazon UK training material:

The #PushforPronouns initiative is aimed at normalizing the sharing of pronouns to ensure all people have the opportunity to define and be referred to by the pronouns they personally identify with. While it’s not an exhaustive list, here are some examples of pronouns people may identify with: they/them/theirs, she/her/hers, zie/zim/zirs, he/him/his, ey/em/eirs.

This is followed by three “quick and easy” suggestions for how Amazon employees can navigate this field, such as adding your preferred pronouns to the ‘Phone Tool’ (an internal Amazon tool) and email signatures. But the training material makes a third recommendation:

Start introducing yourself with your pronouns. Whenever you’re introduced to somebody new, it’s easy to state your pronouns alongside your name. This helps others understand how to refer to you in the future, and encourages them to also share their pronouns.

The training says that employees should:

Do this at work and in your personal life to help establish pronoun sharing as a standard practice with your team, your business org, and your community.

The Glamazon training course goes on:

Ignoring what others identify themselves as can be alienating, and at times traumatising, to others [sic].

Intentionally using the wrong pronouns or misgendering an individual is a form of harassment. If you make a mistake, apologize and correct yourself. Never intentionally use the wrong pronouns for a person who has identified their preferred pronouns.

If this is a reference to ‘harassment’ as defined in the Equality Act 2010, then it’s misleading. Gender critical beliefs are not mentioned in the Glamazon course material, begging the question of whether Amazon is aware that in the UK those beliefs are protected by the Equality Act….

Under the ‘Protect’ section of the Glamazon training, we find the following:

Ensure gender neutral language is used in documents and meetings, making sure employees are aware that we have zero tolerance of homo/bi/transphobia and educating employees on the LGBTQIA+ community.

Dennis Kavanagh from Gay Men’s Network at Spiked – The Pride movement has nothing to be proud of:

This year’s Pride Month has rarely seemed so pointless. After all, only the truly shameless in the LGBT activist set could feel any pride in 2024 – a year in which the rainbow-flag fliers’ betrayal of gay youngsters in the name of gender ideology was laid bare.

The publication of the Cass Review in April exposed the scandal of the NHS’s treatment of ‘gender confused’ kids. It showed how the NHS’s Gender Identity Development Services (GIDS) subjected troubled, often gay youngsters to life-altering hormones, drugs and treatments. Yet when these same-sex-attracted young people needed a gay movement, it failed them. Stonewall, its principal representative, actively cheered on those encouraging gay youngsters to believe they were born in the wrong body. Former Stonewall CEO Ruth Hunt even warned parents that half their gender-distressed children would commit suicide without puberty blockers. At the same time, leading sections of the gay movement turned on anyone questioning the trans agenda.

You won’t see any reflection on this betrayal of gays and lesbians during Pride Month. There will be no recognition that by embracing gender ideology, the gay-rights movement of today has undermined the gay rights of tomorrow. Instead, an unholy alliance of corporates, trade unions and parading gendercrats will spend weeks celebrating their supposed virtue, while remaining oblivious to the absurdity and growing unpopularity of the movement they represent….

Pride was once our answer to shame. The riposte to being kicked out of your home for coming out. The retort to everyday incidents of homophobia, which are now thankfully a thing of the past in the UK and the West….

Pride, the holy month of the rainbow, is now a thoroughly rudderless affair. Its foolish embrace of the specious cause of trans rights has cost it dear. This increasingly silly party now takes place against the backdrop of a generation-defining medical scandal that Pride and its backers endorsed. Even Stonewall seems cowed. It certainly seems less keen to pronounce that transing a two-year-old is a good idea than it was just a few years ago.

Pride should parade its way into irrelevance. The gay-rights activism of the future will need to look very different.