The controversy is the latest sign of the deep divide on campuses over the Hamas attack that killed more than 1,000 people.

A law firm’s job offer to a New York University law student was rescinded on Tuesday for what the firm described as “inflammatory comments” about Hamas’s attack that killed at least 1,200 Israelis.

And at Harvard, student groups began to take back their signatures on a letter that blamed Israel for the violence.

The actions were part of a wave of fallout on campuses for students, who are deeply polarized over the fighting.

At N.Y.U., Ryna Workman, the president of the university’s Student Bar Association, wrote in a message to the group on Tuesday that “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life.”

“This regime of state-sanctioned violence created the conditions that made resistance necessary,” Mx. Workman wrote in the Student Bar Association bulletin. “I will not condemn Palestinian resistance.”

The backlash was swift.

By evening, the law firm, Winston & Strawn, said the comments “profoundly conflict” with its values and without naming the student, said it rescinded its offer of employment.

The same day, the dean of the law school, Troy A. McKenzie, repudiated the student’s remarks. “This message was not from N.Y.U. School of Law as an institution and does not speak for the leadership of the law school,” Mr. McKenzie wrote.

  • stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml
    335·
    1 year ago

    It’s notable that the people have changed their opinions on the conflict while institutions and the government have yet to catch up. I would suggest that we’re a generation away from a significant change in posture across the world.

    • alvvayson@lemmy.world
      37·
      1 year ago

      There is definitely a big change between generations.

      https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/07/11/american-views-of-israel/

      I think Israel has about 10-20 years of western support left to find a structural solution to their situation, otherwise they will start facing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.

      I think they also got a lot of sympathy after the attacks, but it hasn’t even been a week yet and their war crimes over the past few days are quickly eroding their support.

      And just wait until the whole world realizes that Netanyahu was informed by Egypt and let it happen to bolster his popularity.

      This was supposed to be Israel’s 9/11 or bataclan, where the whole western world rallies around them in support.

      But it seems to me that this will end with even less support for them than ever.

      • NOT_RICK@lemmy.worldEnglish
        161·
        1 year ago

        Yeah what Hamas did was terrible but it didn’t happen in a vacuum. Respect is a two way street and it’s clear neither side has any respect for the other. This whole operation was named after Al Aqsa due to a bunch of messed up stuff happening in Jerusalem over the past few years:

        In April 2021, during both Passover and Ramadan, the site was a focus of tension between Israeli settlers and Palestinians. Jewish settlers broke an agreement between Israel and Jordan and performed prayers and read from the Torah inside the compound, an area normally off limits to non-Muslims. On 14 April, Israeli police entered the area and forcibly cut wires to speakers in minarets around the mosque, silencing the call to prayer, claiming the sound was interfering with an event by the Israeli president at the Western Wall. On 16 April, seventy thousand Muslims prayed in the compound around the mosque, the largest gathering since the beginning of the COVID pandemic; police barred most from entering the structure itself. In May 2021, hundreds of Palestinians were injured following clashes in the compound after reports of Israel’s intention to proceed to evict Palestinians from land claimed by Israeli settlers.

        On 15 April 2022, Israeli forces entered the Temple Mount and used tear gas shells and sound bombs to disperse Palestinians who, they said, were throwing stones at policemen. Some Palestinians barricaded themselves inside the Al-Aqsa mosque, where they were detained by Israeli police. Over 150 people ended up injured and 400 arrested.

        On April 5, 2023, Israeli police raided the temple, saying “agitators” who had thrown stones and fired fireworks at the police, had barricaded themselves and worshippers inside. Following the incident, militants fired rockets from Gaza into southern Israel.

        Doesn’t matter the religion, Fundies ruin everything.