The three deans include Cristen Kromm, the former dean of undergraduate student life; Matthew Patashnick, the former associate dean for student and family support; and Susan Chang-Kim, the former vice dean and chief administrative officer.
The suspension of the deans is the latest example of how Ivy League schools have moved to squash any speech critical of Israel or simply challenging the view that students who express pro-Palestinian sentiment are inciting antisemitism.
Columbia has been the spotlight of the student protest movement in solidarity with Gaza over the past several months.
Comments like the one above make fun of how Netanyahu and the Israeli right use the term “antisemitism”, and how they want us all to use it in an absurd way that supports their political objectives and inoculates them against criticism. The comment attacks the Israeli right’s undermining of the notion of antisemitism, not the notion itself. To preserve our ability to call out actual antisemitism we must reject this politically motivated attempt to spread the concept so wide and thin that it loses all force.
I think that’s the point of comments like the one you’re replying to: they’re ridiculing the Israeli right’s narrative, not following it.
They’ve made it very clear in subsequent replies that if they read the word ‘antisemitism,’ they assume it means ‘anti-Israel criticism’ and that it’s the news’ duty to tell them when it doesn’t mean that.