Antisemite means "opposing people of Semitic ethnicity". Surprisingly Arabs are also Semitic people. Therefore whichever side you pick you can't be antisemitic by definition.You can be anti Zionist and oppose people based on thier actions and ideas, not their ethnicity. I saw many people using this nonsense argument that according to a paper written by some people the definition of anti Semitism is opposing Israel. This is falsely accusing people who criticize Israel and labeling them as racist.

That's the etymology of the two roots of the word, but it's not the English definition which specifically refers to discrimination against Jews. The word is from a German term which was created by an antisemite in order to make his hate speech sound more reasonable.

I say this in no way to discredit your argument against the conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism. It's possible to be critical of Zionism without being antisemitic.

Salaita might have strong family history reasons for not having a particularly nuanced take on Israel, but I'm not sure character limits are the main factor driving tweets suggesting the Israeli ambassador takes sexual pleasure in seeing pictures of dead kids...

It's not exactly as if Israel and its actions are seldom criticised on campuses, or indeed on academics' Twitter accounts.

> It's not exactly as if Israel and its actions are seldom criticised on campuses, or indeed on academics' Twitter accounts.

But that's the thing. Any criticism of Israel requires a 2-page disclaimer in order to make it perfectly clear your criticisms do not in anyway support antisemitism. I have not found a clear criticism of Israel on Twitter that did not require, at least, 10 additional tweets.

It's a poor medium for any academic to use. I fail to understand why he would in the first place. Intellectual debates are quite dry and nuanced. 2 things that microblogs do really poorly.

One can find statements criticising Israeli policy that do not need a disclaimer or any other sort of qualification to determine that they are not anti-Semitic (and in many cases highly unlikely to be motivated by anti-Semitism) by typing 'Israel', 'Israeli' or 'Netanyahu' into Twitter's search box. Of course, it's also not difficult to find statements that are probably or unambiguously anti-Semitic using the same search terms...

For all Twitter's shortcoming as a means for making nuanced arguments and the sensitivities of commenting on things Israelis and Palestinians have done without being accused of rationalising the excesses of the other side, it's not exactly difficult to convey dismay over a particular attack, disgust with an Israeli policy, support for Palestinian statehood or opposition to a statement made by an Israeli in 140 characters without blood libels, gloating about Israeli kids going missing or rants about a concept of 'Zionism' that owe more to the 'Protocols' than reality. Indeed enforced brevity would tend to lead one towards not including that sort of extraneous anti-Semitic sentiment.

Sure, Twitter is an utterly terrible medium for making carefully reasoned arguments about how to reconcile conflicts and redress grievances, but on the other hand it's a fantastic medium to rant and have the "I was misinterpreted" defence if anyone ever suggests your abusiveness towards the other side of the debate goes too far. Academics are certainly not immune to enjoying a rant about their enemies.

So why would criticisms against Israel always require careful and complicated disclaimers (which might still not be enough to save you from being immediately labeled as "anti-Semite", while many other totally uninformed nonsense float freely on Twitter? What he said on Twitter was definitely largely reasonable and anti-Semitism is being branded about freely, being institutionalized as a universal tool, to silence any critics of Israel.

I agree with the first part, Twitter is a bad idea for anyone who deals in complexity.

A teacher's job is to inform. They should inspire us to rise above our base instincts and investigate issues further.

Compressing ideas into vulgar soundbites (the point of Twitter) is something teachers should be helping us avoid, not participating in. I don't think he should have been fired, but anyone who made the bumper sticker tweet below definitely doesn't deserve to be rewarded with tenure so they can become immune from criticism.

>> Zionists: transforming "antisemitism" from something horrible into something honorable since 1948.#Gaza #FreePalestine

While I find what happened to him to be disgusting, I think you CAN do better nuance in 140 characters than call people who support X (Israel in this case) "awful human beings".

But again, such an outburst shouldn't be cause for exclusion, nor strong evidence for anti-semitism.