2,000 Sociologists Discredit Their Profession

Over 2,000 sociologists (and climbing), from some of the world’s most prestigious universities, have proudly signed a letter of support for Gaza after the October 7 attack on Israel. They accuse Israel, not the Palestinians nor their Hamas gunmen, of genocide. Their letter states:

We are witnessing internationally supported genocide. This latest siege comes as a continuation and escalation of the daily violence Palestinians faced for decades from Israeli colonization; an apartheid regime whose occupation is in clear violation of international law, but persists with the support of powerful governments globally.

Perhaps these students of other societies should read up a bit on apartheid in South Africa before making such statements. They may be missing a few points on context.

The letter’s signatories assert that Israelis are committing wanton murder. Their letter continues:

As of writing, over 9,000 Palestinians have been murdered, including a staggering 3,600 children, and over 22,000 injured.

No mention was made that the Palestinian casualties resulted from a war they started or that many of those innocent deaths were caused by their own government, which was using them as human shields. Nor, did they refer to the Palestinians as “casualties of war,” but as victims of murder. Is the bias of these “people of science” contaminating their objective analysis?

In response to world outrage about the attack, these scholars cautioned against a rush to judgement. They write:

As educators, it is our duty to stand by the principles of critical inquiry and learning, to hold the university as a space for conversation that foregrounds historical truths, and that contextualizes this past week’s violence in the context of 75 years of settler colonial occupation and European empire.

Did you get that? The events of October 7 must be “contextualized” -- considering 75 years of Palestinian suffering since the establishment of Israel.

sociology
noun
so·ci·ol·o·gy ˌsō-sē-ˈä-lə-jē ˌsō-shē-
1
: the science of society, social institutions, and social relationships
specifically : the systematic study of the development, structure, interaction, and collective behavior of organized groups of human beings
2
: the scientific analysis of a social institution as a functioning whole and as it relates to the rest of society

notice the words systematic, functioning whole

I understand SeekAndFind's point.

I don’t understand yours. Please explain.

I'm not sure that I do understand his point - is it that there are many Jewish sociologists who are taking the Palestinian side? (Side question: Where is it written that any of this group is actually Jewish?)

Regardless, there are plenty of Jewish people whose only Jewishness is cultural, people who don't worship the God of the Jews.

My point is that tarring all Jews with the same brush is as unwarranted today as it was 2,000+ years ago.

"Actually, it was the UN that ‘declared statehood’ for Israel - it wasn’t self-declared."

UN Resolution 181 had no teeth to create either a Jewish or Palestinian state. The Israelis declared independence and fought for it, just like we did.

Israeli Declaration of Independence

"The Israeli Declaration of Independence, formally the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, was proclaimed on 14 May 1948 by David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization, Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and soon to be first Prime Minister of Israel. It declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel, which would come into effect on termination of the British Mandate at midnight that day. The event is celebrated annually in Israel as Independence Day, a national holiday on 5 Iyar of every year according to the Hebrew calendar."

The best answer I can give you that is independence was declared from the Arabs who would have taken over rule of the former British Mandate.

The argument fails as a comparison to the birth of the United States. Israel began with a well trained and equipped army which was given to them. Within four hours of their declaration of independence, the United States formally recognized them. They were an internationally recognized nation state before the inevitable invasion by their neighbors. There was certainly a war, not to obtain independence, but to maintain independence, a war of survival for a very new state.

On December 11, 1947 it was announced that the British Mandate would end on May 15, 1948. Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948. Whether Israel had declared independence or not, the Mandate was disappearing the next day, leaving the territory independent.

The land itself ceased to be Hebrew land nearly three millenia ago. It was muslim controlled land until the League of Nations proclaimed the Mandate for Palestine in 1922, and appointed the British to act as administrator for the Mandate.

How the League of Nations gained the authority to own the mandate or declare a purpose to create a Jewish state in the middle of what had been muslim controled land for millenia, who knows? The same may be said for the United Nations creating the Jewish state, with Britain acting as its administrator. Much the same was done to Africa by the European colonial powers, drawing borders to suit the colonizing powers. The Mandate hokum just sprinkled legal pixie dust on the matter.

In the struggle to overthrow the Turkish Ottoman Empire, the British enlisted the aid of the Arabs to hold an Arab uprising against the Turks, and promised a large independent Arab nation. Having fought against the Turks, imagine the Arab surprise to learn their efforts were repaid with a declaration to create a Jewish state on then-muslim land.

And so, this effort at nation building created not only a Jewish state, but an irreconcilable conflict that persists to this day. Regarding the land, both sides have reasonable arguments in a territorial dispute created by outsiders.

Concluding that the purpose of the post was to "tar all Jews with the same brush" may, or may not, be accurate. You have already made it clear that you don't know, so why do that?

I think it is more fruitful to consider the what was placed on display with these few words in post 11:

Judas was a Jew

So was Jesus.

In Jeremiah God has said: The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? And there is no one who has ever walked on this earth in the flesh who has overcome this wickedness except the Lord Himself, Jesus Christ. He became flesh and gave Himself, a Worthy Sacrifice, to rescue us from ourselves. This is the essence of the contrast between Jesus and Judas. Regardless of whether one considers an individual to be completely evil or simply misguided, there is hope and forgiveness at the cross of Christ.

God selected the Jews to be a people apart. Along with the human lineage of our Savior, one of His other purposes was to wright parables in history predominantly with the Jews and the nation of Israel. Scripture is straight forward on this issue: God loves Israel, and if you love God you love what He loves.

ps, did you intend to imply distance with the phrase; "God of the Jews"?

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