‘Violence’

Joseph Simonson in The Washington Free Beacon, “NYU Law Students Say Classmate Losing Job Offer Over Pro-Hamas Statement Is ‘Violence’”:

New York University law students are rallying behind a student who lost a spot at a white-shoe law firm for defending Hamas, saying the firm’s decision to rescind their offer constitutes “violence.”

The Chicago-based Winston & Strawn withdrew its offer of employment to Ryna Workman after the nonbinary NYU student issued a statement claiming “Israel bears full responsibility” for the terrorist attacks that have left more than 1,300 dead, including at least 30 Americans. The firm’s decision is just one instance of “systemic, concentrated violence” Workman has experienced since issuing her anti-Israel pronouncement, according to a letter of support obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The letter’s signatories, which include the Black Allied Law Students Association and the Women of Color Collective, accuses NYU of being complicit “in the abuses of the Israeli government,” and condemns “the broader NYU administration for not protecting Ryna as a student and important member of our community.”

Words have meaning. The far left has been mangling the definition of violence for years now, inverting the age old adage that sticks and stones can break your bones but words will never hurt you. Words can hurt, of course — deeply. But it’s a different kind of hurt than pain and carnage inflicted through violence. We’d be in a far better place if the only exchanges between Gaza and Israel were words, no matter how hateful those words be.

These students should be expelled from college, not placated. Misusing violence in this context — a terrorist attack that has killed 1,300 innocent Israelis, maimed many thousands more, and killed thousands of Palestinians in the resulting still-unfolding war — is outrageously offensive. Many of the dead can’t be identified. They’ve just been blown apart. That’s violence. Everyone knows what the word really means — “the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy”. These left-wing nuts are obtusely pretending the word means something else for reasons that might surprise even Orwell, the master of identifying the decline of language in the name of politics. When in doubt, mistrust those abusing language, obfuscating, resorting to euphemism, and redefining words.

★ Thursday, 19 October 2023