Eli Meyerhoff
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elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
Eli Meyerhoff
@elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
2.5K followers 1.5K following 340 posts
building new worlds in the shell of the old / trusting kids / abolition / decolonization / Free Palestine! / anti-Zionist, diasporist Jewishness / https://abolition.university / Beyond Education: Radical studying for another world / http://elimeyerhoff.com
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elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
Big Balls is MAGA's Horst Wessel

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Donald Trump Trump threatens to ‘federalize’ DC after attack on Doge staffer US president cites youth crime in call to strip the capital of local rule, despite declining violence and local opposition Image: Washington DC operates under ‘home rule’, which grants the city an elected mayor and council while maintaining ultimate congressional oversight. Photograph: Daniel Slim/AFP/Getty Images The threat received backing from Elon Musk, after the billionaire described an incident in which a member of the Doge team was allegedly “severely beaten to the point of concussion” while defending a woman from assault in the capital. “A few days ago, a gang of about a dozen young men tried to assault a woman in her car at night in DC,” Musk posted on X. “A @Doge team member saw what was happening, ran to defend her and was severely beaten to the point of concussion, but he saved her. It is time to federalize DC.” The victim was identified by friends and the police as Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old known as “Big Balls”, one of Doge’s most recognizable staffers who joined Doge in January. He reportedly left in June, and is currently employed at the Social Security Administration. According to a police report obtained by Politico, Coristine was assaulted at approximately 3am on Sunday by about 10 juveniles near Dupont Circle.
August 6, 2025 at 5:01 PM
elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
Israel has killed 549 civilians seeking food since May 27.

An IDF soldier said: “It’s a killing field. … Our form of communication is gunfire.”

Israel is a death machine. Its so-called “aid centers” are extermination camps. It must be stopped.

www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...
HAARETZ 'It's a Killing Field': IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid IDF officers and soldiers told Haaretz they were ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near food distribution sites in Gaza, even when no threat was present. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, prompting the military prosecution to call for a review into possible war crimes One soldier described the situation as a total breakdown of the Israel Defense Forces' ethical codes in Gaza. According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, 549 people have been killed near aid centers and in areas where residents were waiting for UN food trucks since May 27. Over 4,000 have been wounded, but the exact number of those killed or injured by IDF fire remains unclear. "It's a killing field," one soldier said. "Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They're treated like a hostile force - no crowd-control measures, no tear gas - just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Pur form of communication is gunfire." The soldier added, "We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred meters away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there's no
June 27, 2025 at 12:31 PM
elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
When Israeli forces use aid distribution sites as concentration and extermination camps, how can we not compare them with Nazis?

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...
Text: "Israeli forces killed at least 60 Palestinians in Gaza on Wednesday, nearly two-thirds of them as they were seeking food from GHF food points, according to local health authorities. There were more mass casualties reported on Thursday morning. The Palestinian civil defence agency told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that Israeli forces had killed 22 people across Gaza, of whom 16 had been waiting to collect food." Image: Relatives mourn while gathered around the body of Ahmed al-Sharbasi (who cannot be seen) text: "Relatives mourn near the body of Ahmed al-Sharbasi, a Palestinian father of nine children, killed by the Israeli army while waiting for food in Gaza City. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty"
June 12, 2025 at 6:31 PM
elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
“The politicians want to define protest as merely voicing a demand without disrupting anything; they don’t want to recognize the value of putting one’s body between the state and the scapegoated. There is apparently no “peaceful” way to do that in Los Angeles.” newrepublic.com/article/1963...
It is very difficult to believe that Los Angeles’ political leadership—or California’s governor or other state officials—truly wish for ICE raids to end when they are willing to arrest the only people who are actually standing in ICE’s way. The politicians want to define protest as merely voicing a demand without disrupting anything; they don’t want to recognize the value of putting one’s body between the state and the scapegoated. There is apparently no “peaceful” way to do that in Los Angeles. And for those of us elsewhere, who would like these raids on immigrants to end, who want to end Trump’s abuse of power—we will fail if we defer to such “leadership” and line-drawing. What we are witnessing in Los Angeles is not only a protest; it is self-defense.
June 10, 2025 at 12:22 PM
elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
“No matter what a peaceful protestor may intend, it’s police who are deciding when to use violence and whom to use it against—and nothing we saw this weekend indicates their violence was confined to those who were not “peaceful.”” - @melissagiragrant.com

newrepublic.com/article/1963...
Drawing lines between “peaceful” and “violent” is a common move for politicians amid popular protest. They continue to urge so-called nonviolence even as such directions can feel quite difficult to follow in a cloud of tear gas you did not set off. It’s nearly impossible to figure out what compliance is supposed to look like when police are launching weapons of war on the public. In such a gross imbalance of power, the police are the ones really drawing the lines. No matter what a peaceful protestor may intend, it’s police who are deciding when to use violence and whom to use it against—and nothing we saw this weekend indicates their violence was confined to those who were not “peaceful.”
June 10, 2025 at 12:19 PM
elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
Jonathan Glazer's Oscar acceptance speech for "Zone of Interest":
Text: "All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present. Not to say look what they did then, rather look what we do now. Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst. It shaped all of our past and present. Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people—whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza—all the victims of this dehumanization. How do we resist? Alexandria, the girl who glows in the film as she did in life, chose to. I dedicate this to her memory and her resistance. - Jonathan Glazer"
March 11, 2024 at 2:10 AM
elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
The Israeli leadership is clear about their intentions of ethnic cleansing.
Meme of “Oh, my God, he admit it!” With image from “I think You should leave” tv show.
November 22, 2023 at 8:36 PM
elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
"The loudest liberal defenders of academic freedom fall silent when Israel is the violator. This is not surprising. This is called the Palestine exception."

- Robin D.G. Kelley, lecture on "“The Virtual Suspension of Thought”: The War on ‘Woke’, the University, and the Question of Palestine"
Screenshot of Robin D.G. Kelley, a black man, wearing round-lensed glasses, with a short salt-and-pepper beard. Talking on Zoom. With several books behind him about Palestine.
November 22, 2023 at 4:27 PM
elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
On Jewish support for Israel as a natural "trauma" response:

"It’s actually not a biological or historical inevitability that a group of people who experience fascist violence will in turn embrace an ethnostate premised on a similar form of fascistic colonial terror"
- @charlotteerosen.bsky.social
Tweets from Charlotte E. Rosen: "I don't mean to dismiss the reality of historical trauma associated with the Holocaust & anti-semitic violence, something that profoundly shaped my own family's history. But I find it troubling how Jewish support for Israel is treated as a natural or expected "trauma" response... It’s actually not a biological or historical inevitability that a group of people who experience fascist violence will in turn embrace an ethnostate premised on a similar form of fascistic colonial terror The suggestion -- even if couched in a well-meaning project of contextualizing Jewish "feelings" -- actually occludes the political work (undertaken with substantial assistance from a literally anti-semitic West) involved in translating this historical experience into Zionism"
November 20, 2023 at 4:36 PM
elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
Does this anti-immigrant, racist sentiment among assimilated Jews help explain why the Jewish Baltimore real estate mogul, Joseph Meyerhoff, (no relation to me) discriminated against fellow Jews?
r called Monumental Properties Inc. This firm thrived for nearly 40 years until it was sold for about $180M (making Meyerhoff and his family one of the wealthiest in Baltimore). Monumental Properties was responsible for many buildings in the city, including various shopping centers throughout the west side. During the 1940s, Meyerhoff refused to rent or sell to fellow Jews in the affluent and predominantly white Christian neighborhood of Roland Park in Baltimore. In 1948, the Baltimore Jewish Council wrote Meyerhoff a formal letter denouncing his complicity in antisemitic real estate practices and requested that he show solidarity with the Jewish community, but Meyerhoff insisted that his career would be ruined if he sold or rented to Jews in non-Jewish neighborhoods.[1] In the early 1950s, Meyerhoff and other prominent Jewish-American businessmen were chosen to assist Israel during its initial establishment crises. He retired in 1965.
November 19, 2023 at 10:50 PM
elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
Rashid Khalidi argues we should learn from successful liberation struggles (eg, Irish, Algerian, Vietnamese, and South African).

Since Israel is a settler colony, Palestinian anti-colonial struggles must also be waged in its metropole of the US & the West.

mondoweiss.net/2023/11/a-pa...
Text: “A paradigm shift in the hundred years’ war on Palestine? Since October 7, there have been five elements that indicate we may be seeing a paradigm shift in the hundred years' war waged against the Palestinian people. BY RASHID KHALIDI NOVEMBER 18, 2023 0” With photo: PALESTINIANS TAKE CONTROL OF AN ISRAELI TANK AFTER CROSSING THE BORDER FENCE WITH ISRAEL FROM KHAN YUNIS IN THE SOUTHERN GAZA STRIP ON OCTOBER 7, 2023. (PHOTO: STRINGER/ APA IMAGES) Text: What happens in the hostile political, media, and institutional space in the U.S. and the West that many of us occupy matters enormously. If we accept that Israel is a settler colonial (as well as a national) project, then the U.S. and the West are its metropole. As the Irish, Algerian, Vietnamese, and South African liberation movements understood, it was not sufficient to resist colonialism in the colony. It was also necessary to win over opinion in the metropole, which often involved limitations on the use of violence, as well as the use of non-violent means (difficult as that is to do in the face of the massive violence of the colonizer). That is how the Irish won their War of Independence from 1916 until 1921, how the Algerians won in 1962, and how the Vietnamese and the South Africans won as well. In the hostile political and media spaces in which those who support Palestinian rights operate in the U.S. and Europe, absolute clarity on these matters is essential, not just for
November 19, 2023 at 12:26 AM
elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
Some men would rather confuse a genocide’s perpetrators and victims than go to therapy.
Screenshot of a tweet from Elon Musk: “ As I said earlier this week, “decolonization”, “from the river to the sea” and similar euphemisms necessarily imply genocide. Clear calls for extreme violence are against our terms of service and will result in suspension.”
November 18, 2023 at 2:47 AM
elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
Antisemitic comments one day, anti-Palestinian the next: Apartheid Clyde is consistently a settler-colonial racist.

One with a massive platform for his own speech and far too much power over other people’s speech.
Screen grabs of a tweet from Elon Musk: “As I said earlier this week, “decolonization”, “from the river to the sea” and similar euphemisms necessarily imply genocide. Clear calls for extreme violence are against our terms of service and will result in suspension.”
November 18, 2023 at 2:33 AM
elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
Fuck Habermas for supporting Israel’s genocide!

The OG Frankfurt School criticized Israel.

E.g., Erich Fromm:

“Hitler destroyed half the Jewish people physically, but I am afraid the Zionist State is destroying the very essence of Judaism by its claims of representing the Messianic solution.”
“Hitler destroyed half the Jewish people physically, but I am afraid the Zionist State is destroying the very essence of Judaism by its claims of representing the Messianic solution. Its whole militarism, its arrogance, lack of respect for the Arabs which arouse the admiration of the American military and reactionary circles is, indeed, the exact opposite of Prophetic teaching, and more than that; by this policy Israel is one of the greatest dangers to world peace. . . As long as the world is as it is each individual – whether Jewish or not – is, I believe, an exile, and from the traditional standpoint the Jewish people must be an exile too. To want to abolish “exile” in its spiritual meaning is to deny the discrepancy between what man is and what man could be. . . the voices that speak for the Messianic message among the Jewish people are rare, and met with more hostility by the other Jews than the dissenters are met with in other nations.” Text from, The Frankfurt school, Jewish Liv
November 17, 2023 at 4:58 PM
elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
“It’s all happening at once. While I’m grieving, the brutality escalates and expands and we brace ourselves for a future violated by the loss of the kids who are stuck under the rubble.”

- Nadine Naber

On @mskellymhayes.bsky.social’s Movement Memos

truthout.org/audio/vigil-...
Text: “moment of silence bursts with the sounds of Israeli weapons and the smell of fire and death on TV. I can almost smell the fire and the death. And I watch images of Gazan doctors searching for more bodies under the rubble. What will the names be of those I will grieve tomorrow, I wonder? It’s all happening at once. While I’m grieving, the brutality escalates and expands and we brace ourselves for a future violated by the loss of the kids who are stuck under the rubble. There is no moment of silence when we have to fight for those who remain alive. But just as our ancestors taught us, when the figs and the olives are ripe and ready “
November 11, 2023 at 2:37 AM
elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
“By rejecting the false binaries of nationalism, empires and states [in Palestine], we are able to finally gain the real power that comes when those fighting for liberation can do so together.”

- @shaneburley.bsky.social
on @mskellymhayes.bsky.social ‘s Movement Memos:
truthout.org/audio/vigil-...
Text: “the abdication of Jewish supremacy in the legal code of the country. When rebuilding that society, we inculcate a system of solidarity instead, where those marginalized by our global systems of capitalism and statecraft, both Jewish and Palestinian, can collaborate to fight for continued gains into the future. Together, building a society that reflects both of them and honors both of their traditions, histories and cultures. By rejecting the false binaries of nationalism, empires and states, we are able to finally gain the real power that comes when those fighting for liberation can do so together. We cannot do that while one people is living in a state of ferocious occupation, so when we give up the tenuous promises of ethnic statehood, we get something infinitely more powerful in return: we get each other.”
November 11, 2023 at 2:17 AM
elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
Another world is possible in Palestine!

“it can become a revolutionary avalanche that brings more and more residents of historic Palestine into the question of what kind of future could be built if equality and justice become the operative concept.”

- @shaneburley.bsky.social
Text: There is a single step that starts this, and then it can become a revolutionary avalanche that brings more and more residents of historic Palestine into the question of what kind of future could be built if equality and justice become the operative concept. This will require a few things: the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendents, the dismantling of the military state whose purpose is the permanent subjugation of the Palestinian people, the addition of Palestinians to the Law of Return, and the abdication of Jewish supremacy in the legal code of the country. When rebuilding that society, we inculcate a system of solidarity instead, where those marginalized by our global systems of capitalism and statecraft, both Jewish and Palestinian, can collaborate to fight for continued gains into the future.
November 11, 2023 at 2:07 AM
elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
“An ethno-theocratic authoritarian settler colony that denies the rights of Indigenous people is not a sufficient answer to … antisemitism: it doesn’t keep Jews safe, since what has kept us safe is solidarity with other people affected by systems of oppression.”

- Shane Burley
Text: “When I look at the average Israeli Jew, I don’t see a tremendously safe person. I see a culture built on the fear of the colonizer, a crisis that only further radicalizes them toward violence. An ethno-theocratic authoritarian settler colony that denies the rights of Indigenous people is not a sufficient answer to the historical violence and dispossession of antisemitism: it doesn’t keep Jews safe, since what has kept us safe is solidarity with other people affected by systems of oppression. There are other options, and a commitment, however tenuous, to end the violence is the only the first step. But those that follow come in the same vein: what does it take to build a meaningful life?”
November 11, 2023 at 2:01 AM
elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
SJP & JVP student groups bravely act on their knowledge of Israel’s colonial violence.

Columbia’s suspension of these groups reveals the colonial ignorance at the heart of the university, as it suppresses knowledge that threatens racial-colonial capitalism.

Listen to the students! Free Palestine!
Photo of Columbia University campus with text: “Columbia University is suspending Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) as official student groups through the end of the fall term. This decision was made after the two groups repeatedly violated University policies related to holding campus events, culminating in an unauthorized event Thursday afternoon that proceeded despite warnings and included threatening rhetoric and intimidation. “
November 11, 2023 at 12:32 AM
elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
The students arrested for occupying Brown’s University Hall wrote an open letter with a brilliant reply to critics of the phrase, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”:

(The full letter “by a collective of anti-occupation Jews” is here:
www.browndailyherald.com/article/2023... )
Text: “1. What do we mean when we say, “from the river to the sea”? “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is not a call for the forced removal of Jews from Palestine or, as it is commonly misconstrued, a call to "throw Jews into the sea;” instead, it is a call for the end to the oppression of all Palestinians — in Gaza, the West Bank and within the Green Line. Liberating all of Palestine requires revolutionary change: not an eradication of Jews from the land, but a total dismantlement of the apartheid regime occupying it. The assumption that this phrase is inherently genocidal falsely conflates liberation with the annihilation of each citizen of the oppressive state and ignores its liberatory intent. Within this “ Text: “ignores its liberatory intent. Within this conflation, we hear a racist assumption that Palestinians are ruthless "animals” and an intentional obscuring of the violent intent of a neo-fascist government — a characterization shared even by writers in Israel’s newspaper of record. It is not only blatantly false but obscene to frame a call for liberation and justice as genocidal while Israel is carrying out genocide in Gaza funded by billions of American tax dollars. If calling for a future in which Palestinians can live in their homeland unshackled implies an existential threat to the Zionist ideology, it is that ideology that must be called into question — not the call for liberation. “
November 9, 2023 at 2:09 AM
elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
New essay on "Marx, Critique, & Abolition: Higher Education as Infrastructure"!!

I co-wrote this with @abbieboggs.bsky.social, Nick Mitchell, & Zach Schwartz-Weinstein. We put the Marxist tradition in conversation with abolitionist approaches to higher education.
www.academia.edu/108991210/Ma...
Text: Marx, Critique, & Abolition: Higher Education as Infrastructure Abigail Boggs, Eli Meyerhoff, Nick Mitchell & Zach Schwartz-Weinstein Chapter First Online: 08 November 2023 Part of the Marxism and Education book series (MAED) Abstract This chapter puts the Marxist tradition in conversation with abolitionist approaches to higher education. We emphasize the centrality of accumulation to understanding the university as an historical object, particularly by reading the university as an infrastructure for capitalism. We start by exploring Marx’s own relationship to the university, to nineteenth-century disciplinary formation, and to critique as institutional infrastructure. Next, we analyze W. E. B. Du Bois’s combination of the Marxist and Black radical, abolitionist traditions. We highlight how the university transforms along with its changing interrelations with capitalism, especially its accumulative functions. We briefly demonstrate this approach by turning to two key periods in
November 8, 2023 at 7:17 PM
elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
Against those who reduce “Free Palestine” to an expression of antisemitism:

“People don’t understand the history, depth and beauty of Free Palestine.”

- Eman Ghanayem

(On @mskellymhayes.bsky.social ‘s Movement Memos

truthout.org/audio/vigil-... )
Text: “One of the biggest griefs and sadnesses that I feel from the United States side of things, its discourse and its erasure and egregious treatment of the ongoing genocide of my people, is how the expression “Free Palestine” is almost unanimously considered by American institutions, like on university campuses, to be an antisemitic statement. Truthfully, it breaks my heart. People don’t understand the history, depth and beauty of Free Palestine. Free Palestine originated from the Arabic “فلسطين حرة” [Falasteen hurra] which translates to Free Palestine, but in fact not in its assumed verbal meaning: i.e., to Free Palestine. Rather, the “free” in Arabic is actually an adjective that originally reads: Palestine is free. The land that we call Palestine is inherently free; the land that our ancestors called Palestine before Europeans made claims on it must be freed.”
November 8, 2023 at 2:39 AM
elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
What opinion on Palestine gets you this reaction in your field?

In academia:
Tenured faculty who claim to be leftists but won't publicly express solidarity with Palestine—they perform leftist politics for status, but pull back and hide when it might threaten their institutional power.
Image: Unpopular Opinion Swords, also known as Flynn Surrounded by Swords, is a reaction image and an object-labeling meme featuring a frame from the 2010 Disney animated fantasy film Tangled. The shot sees the character Flynn with a number of swords pointing to his neck as he looks unfazed and comfortable. (Description via https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/unpopular-opinion-swords )
November 7, 2023 at 4:56 PM
elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
All these people offended by using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s attack on Gaza when the IDF clearly states that this is their intention:

“Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.”

(From @mskellymhayes.bsky.social ‘s Movement Memos: truthout.org/audio/vigil-... )
Text: “While U.S. officials have insisted that Israel has a “right to defend itself,” Israeli officials have been more explicit about their intentions. A reservist major general in the IDF, Giora Eiland, recently wrote in an Israeli newspaper, “The State of Israel has no choice but to turn Gaza into a place that is temporarily or permanently impossible to live in … Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieve the goal.” He added, “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.””
November 7, 2023 at 4:00 PM
elimeyerhoff.bsky.social
Duke University Faculty for Justice published a statement on Palestine today.

Consider signing in solidarity if you have any relation to Duke (faculty, students, admin, alumni, or staff like me).

“It is imperative to reject injustices committed in our name.”

medium.com/@dukefaculty...
Text: “We condemn the brutal and inhumane attacks against civilian lives and call for an immediate ceasefire. The decades-long status quo in the region — where the Palestinian people have been living without equal rights or the right to meaningfully self-govern — is at the root of the current war. Over two million people, nearly half of whom are children, have been entrapped in what has been widely reported as conditions of an open-air prison, given very little freedom of movement in and out. The Israeli human rights organization, B’tselem, concluded that Israel has established in Gaza and the remainder of historic Palestine, “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. This is apartheid.” Amnesty International agrees in its report “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians.” “ Text: “Statement on Palestine Duke Faculty for Palestine Duke Faculty for Palestine · Follow 8 min read · Just now Listen Share By Duke University Faculty for Justice* *This statement was drafted in the week following October 7th by a concerned group of Duke University faculty in response to the current war in Gaza. What we have witnessed through numerous conversations with faculty, administrators, staff and students across our campus is that the fear “
November 6, 2023 at 8:16 PM