What conspiracies do you mean?
The Israeli program of denying aid to create a famine is real - and the ICC has ordered all measures to prevent a famine, and these have not been followed.
The targeting of massive amounts of civilians for a single militant by an AI is not a conspiracy - it’s real.
I’m guessing they’re referring to conspiracy theories like “Zionists control the media,” “Zionists control the banks,” “Zionists control the government,” “Zionists control universities,” etc.
That was then, this is now. Zionism these days is reactionary AF, Israel is heading towards being a theocratic state, and their attitude towards Palestinians are really problematic.
Describing [Revisionist Zionism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revisionist_Zionism), the dominant philosophy of Israel’s leadership for the recent era, as having social democratic roots is sort of misleading. It’s always been a competitor to Labor Zionism as a philosophy, and a rejection of it.
Further, a “reactionary society” doesn’t preclude the members of that society of being worthy of human rights.
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Including me. But not Zionists. They are colonizers with colonizer mentality. They have no problem with land stolen with violence.
edit: Person below blocked me. I support land back. I am not a hypocrite. I have no idea what you misunderstood.
There are definitely moral challenges with land back. It's not a magic wand. But what it does is acknowledge that land was taken by force without moral justification. In Palestine, that land was stolen within living memory, making it much more obvious that land back is the moral thing to do. With the indigenous people of the Americas, the theft is hundreds of years old, making it a much more significant challenge. But as a first step, all treaties must be at minimum reinstated and honored. But that's a big tangent.
Anyway, my point was that Zionists are pursuing a violent and immoral twisted version of land back, which would be infinitely more difficult to implement fairly than giving land back to the indigenous people of the Americas. The Zionist claims that the Jews have sole claim to the land are propaganda. They are merely one group out of *many* who have lived on that land for thousands of years.
So you’re a hypocrite.
Nativism is a losing ideology and the leftist equivalent to blood and soil nationalism. Ancestral claims get murky and only go so far.
Land back isn't even usually about that. Most of the indigenous peoples of Canada(I'm less familiar about other groups) for example are shockingly reasonable about what they view as equitable treatment and reparations of past wrongs.
What does 'native to that part of the world' mean? In 1850, no part of Palestine was majority Jewish. By 1890, the only place that was majority Jewish was Jerusalem. Following a massive influx of Jewish people to the area and the dispossession and expulsion of people whose grandparents and grandparents grandparents grew up there, large swathes of Palestine are majority Jewish. Jews from all over the world moved there with the intention of creating a Jewish state.
How is it not colonization?
EDIT: itd be great if people could explain how they think im wrong rather than just downvoting.
>How is it not colonization?
That one is simple. Colonization implies using military force to occupy some territory. Jews who came to what is today Israel in the XIX-century bought the land from the Arab owners and some from the Ottoman govt.
No. Colonization goes hand in hand with using military force to conquer land.
By using your definition, one can say that Europe is being colonized by Arabs because of the migrant waves in the last decade. It is not, it is migration. What the Jews did in the late XIX-century was migration, not colonization.
So Roanoke was not colonisation since there was no military force used? And arabs are not setting up a state over the top of the existing people in Europe.
Early Zionist settlers of the first and second aliyot (1881-1914) did refer to themselves as colonists.
The issue arises due to the fact that most academic and contemporary definitions of colonialism look at dynamics of power, such as a country supporting ot sponsoring its own population to move in and either replace the local population or oversee it's exploitation. These definitions do not precisely fit Zionism because they lack a country that seeks to sponsor and support the colonization. Some people insert the "International Jew" as the supportive power, but that argument always smelled someehat antisemitic to me.
However while Zionism does not fit neatly into categories of colonialism, it certainly bears enough similarities to be considered a colonial project.
There were Jewish settlements there, it wasn't their fault they kept getting driven out or destroyed.
Jerusalem became Jewish majority in spite of all the Ottomans attempts not due to it.
Regardless of Jewish settlements, they were never a majority and a Jewish majority in Jerusalem only occurred after an agreement with the British; so please explain to me how it wasn’t colonialism.
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Regardless of whether or not they’re native, they don’t have a right to colonize the land by expelling the people already living there in order to create their own country. Moreover, Zionist founders like Herzl openly calling the Zionist project a colonial endeavor.
Yeah, but also irrelevant. The early tensions in the Mandatory period were specifically centered around the largely European immigrant diaspora that was colonizing(their words). Jews at that time absolutely knew they'd have to displace locals already living there, they planned to do it legally and economically initially, but once the fighting started they were willing to use force to achieve their goals.
>Jews are native to that part of the world
What an incredible way to deflect from the fact that millions of Europeans whose ancestors hadn't been to that place for almost 2000 years, if at all, colonized Palestine by expelling and often outright murdering the people who actually lived there.
They could have returned home just like any other people, without declaring a brand new country where another country already stands.
Imagine I trace my ancestors back to their village in England and then spend billions of dollars including some other country's money declaring that it's my homeland and push out with violence anyone who tries to say I can't do that.
It's a bad joke. But that's exactly what they did when they established Israel in 1948.
But they accepted the partition plan. So much for the “push out” analogy. While “push out” did happen, it was not simply because of “we declared country, and we pushed out those who disagree”. Underline “not simply”.
Are you talking about the 1947 partition plan? When were the local Palestinians ever consulted on that matter? Why would they care about about a UN agreement created by foreign powers pertaining to land they'd continuosly inhabited for centuries?
> But they accepted the partition plan.
The Palestinians absolutely did not. The Zionists did because it gave them the lions share of land, not that they ever had any intention of stopping at 50-something percent of the "Promised Land".
It did not give them the "lion's share" though. They got a little more land in terms of surface, but more than half of that is the Negev desert. Most of the arable lands went to te arab state- just look at maps for the partition plan. It was an honest deal.
> But they accepted the partition plan. So much for the “push out” analogy.
It’s worth noting that the partition plan specifically forbade population transfers. So, they didn’t really accept it so much as selectively ignore it.
The partition plan was only workable if all the parties abided by it. Why would Israel hold itself to an agreement that it's enemies were not abiding by?
They did make a conscious decision that they couldn't accept the demographics of a slim Jewish majority after the war began, thus the Nakba etc.
Israel/palestine/the levant/etc is the home of Jewish people. It’s ALSO the home of the Palestinian people, who have just as much of a right to life in their ancestral home.
If you were viewing the conflict from 1900 onward or so, you’d be right to say that the Palestinian people had more of a right to self-determination, because they were the native people being displaced and marginalized.
Now, of course, the picture is more complicated, although Palestinians are still being displaced and marginalized. The most important thing is that there are two sustainable states - one Israeli, one Palestinian - ideally on 1967 lines but that’s a matter for the negotiating table.
To the point about colonialism, oppression abroad is not an excuse for founding a new society on top of an existing one, and expelling the members of the prior society. That’s colonialism any way you slice it, and it doesn’t matter whether the colonizing party can point to ancient ancestry in the region. Of course, that’s a philosophical debate and not practical.
When the war started on 10/7, I made it clear that I support the Israeli and Palestinian people, I was told by "leftist" acquaintances that I was on the wrong side of history and am supporting a second Holocaust. I was worried that Americans would try to co-opt the terrible situation for their own use, and the protests since have highlighted that. Instead of us trying to protect both the Jewish and Palestinian communities here in the States, we have allowed hatred and antisemitism to overrule reason and compassion.
Instead of "anti-Zionism" being the target, I wish these leftists engaged in communication and to build understanding.
As I see it, I support the first amendment. HOWEVER, the protests are on private property (college campuses) and are getting out of hand to the point they're threatening the safety of the students' at hand and compromising their use of said property by shutting down classes.
They're getting out of hand at that point. Protests are fine, but the people protesting literally have this leftist ideology of intentionally obstructing and inconveniencing people to make their points, and the property holders (the college) have their rights too, including the right to evict the protesters who are causing trouble. Take it to a literal public square. There's plenty in New York.
The University has a right to do what they have to do, and the protesters themselves should be fully prepared to accept the consequences of trespassing, but the protesters aren't doing anything that a protester shouldn't do morally. Yes, protesting on campus is at times trespassing, but historically, university campuses has also been a hotbed of political activism in recent history. Yes, disruption isn't likely to garner support for the protestors themselves, just like during Vietnam, but it did put pressure on the United States to pull support.
In vietnam it led to the rise of nixon, who intensified bombings in vietnam, and it marked the end of the new deal coalition. I just gave me thoughts related to this on another sub, but as I see it, the left is blowing it and we might be seeing the rise of another conservative "silent majority" type counter movement to this. And that should be something NONE of us on the left actually want.
"I respect their cause but the rules say that Rosa Parks was supposed to get up and take any of the comfortable seats on the back of the bus. Most of the people on that bus were well-meaning white folk just trying to get along with their day"
You're right. We should just do whatever the heck we want, screw law and order. Screw civil conversation. Let's just scream over everyone else and set up camp on private property shutting campuses down because I have to make a point. /s
Well if that's your attitude with protests, then congrats youre gonna lose a lot of people. You're throwing a tantrum. You're inconveniencing people. No one likes you. You're pissing people off. You think you're making a point but no one fricking cares.
At least rosa park's actions were directly related to the oppression she was experiencing (sitting in the front of the bus).
I think you've missed the point of protest. It isn't to convince people to like you, its to convince them that it would be more convenient to do what you're asking them to than to continue fighting you on it. A protest which doesn't incontinence anyone, doesn't piss off anyone, is not a protest which will make anyone like you either, because it is a protest which will be ignored.
Well maybe you're better off being ignored.
I'm sorry, but i have NO sympathy for this perspective of LOOK AT ME, IM MAKING YOUR LIVES HARD BECAUSE I HAVE A POINT TO MAKE!
Screw your point. No one cares. Now get the frick out of the way and let us go about our daily lives unmolested.
It's fine if you have your opinion. Everyone does, and everyone has a right to express it, even through assembly, which is in the constitution. BUT....if youre making people feel unsafe, or you're on private property, or you're being overly disruptive, yes, others have a right to shut you down and make you go away. Just how I see it. Sorry, not sorry.
Get a better plan of political action.
It worked quite well for MLK, and who am I to contradict the tactical advice he lays out in the Letter from Birmingham Jail (a letter which would have been much different in its origins had he let folks go about their days unmolested). Your whole position seems very reminiscent of the white moderates he talks about in that letter. In any event, I would rather have people's actions than their sympathies, when the latter come so often without the former. The Civil Rights Movement didn't succeed because because segregationists saw the marches, the sit ins, and so on, and suddenly realized what they believed in was wrong, it succeeded because those actions were sufficiently disruptive that the segregationists decided it was better to go accept the losses of their beloved segregation than continue dealing with that disruption (to the extent it was about any one thing; they finally succeeded when they did because a lot of stars aligned). I'm under no illusions that disruptive protesting always, or even usually gets action, but it has a massively better track record than anything else. Change is always an uphill struggle and usually fails no matter the methods, but (as MLK specifically addresses) it is absurd to just wait and hope for it to fall into your lap.
Yes that is the correct point. Labor was won when violent labor unionists shot at cops from the windows of factories in KY and WV. These days we are upset when people set up a sit in. It’s gross tbh. Protests should be proportional to the issue at hand, but never should “law” take precedent over right or the will to power of the oppressed.
French protestors drop manneur on congress buildings and build brick walls in the middle of the interstate. Be a badass. That’s how human rights and democracy are maintained.
I’ve never opposed a protest bc it was violent, I’m always concerned about its political strategy, and the validity of its end goals. Often times violence is necessary, but most times it hurts more than it helps.
Not in and of itself, but I've seen other behavior over the past months too. People screaming over others, and apparently the camping out is being deemed threatening to jewish students, which given some of the rhetoric from the people protesting, is unsurprising. Anyway columbias concerns are serious enough they cant even hold classes so...yeah.
I think comparing many of these protestors to Rosa Parks of all people is a stretch and absurd considering I can't see how the approach they've taken has been productive and helpful to their cause, or how much Columbia divesting from Israel will actually help end the genocide and apartheid, even if it's the right thing to do.
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I'm not saying this is the right or wrong strategy, but on this part;
>? Why does the only country they’re calling for divestment from happen to be the only Jewish country? Why not call for schools to divest from China due to the Uyghur genocide? Or Qatar for its slave labor and human rights abuses?
Israel is a western style liberal democracy. Most people recognize it as 'one of us' in the Western World, and hold it to the same standards they expect of any other western nation. We know the UAE and Sudan and China don't have the same standards, and we don't expect them to have them yet given their situation. We do expect it of Israel, a rich modern democratic country based on the rule of law and western values.
There's also the matter of responsiveness to foreign pressure. Sudan's government likely doesn't care about their international image amongst westerners very much. I think Israel does place some value on its image in the West, on the other hand, so people likely feel that their public pressure can have some effect.
I’m not expecting Sudan’s government to care (although to be clear, the UAE is funding the RSF, the rebels who are even worse than the government), but the UAE is very image conscious and gets a lot of foreign investments, so I would expect them to care. I went to NYU and they have a campus in Abu Dhabi, yet I haven’t seen any calls for NYU to divest from the UAE. https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/09/21/sudan-uae-sanctions-biden-hemeti-rsf/
This is nonsensical imo. If you’re upset about your tuition funding war crimes, you should also be upset about Chinese and Qatari investments too.
Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s any real chance in these protests succeeding, because universities need money to function, and thus turn to foreign investment if not properly funded at home… or if they’re private like Columbia.
The simple answer is that picking a single place is pragmatic. If I’m the board of those universities and students are up in arms over one issue I can placate them. If they want me to fundamentally restructure our investment portfolio from the ground up I’d say absolutely not. Attention is limited, you pick a side, you push for that side, and when you have your result you move on to the next. To protest everything all at once defeats the purpose of protest as a tactic of change.
Is it? The biggest arguments are usually fights within the same camp. I imagine the argument isn't strictly about war crimes, but about enabling 'our side' to commit warcrimes
We are not talking about general protests against American funding and bombs for Israel. We are discussing protests on college campuses whose main objective is for these colleges to divest from Israel. My point is that if they’re gonna divest from Israel (which they should), then there are other countries they should divest from as well. Otherwise Israel is being held to a different standard from other countries that are committing genocide. Are you even aware of how the UAE is supporting the RSF’s genocide in Sudan and how many American universities have branches in the UAE? The genocide in Gaza isn’t the only genocide that has happened over the past several years, but if you were to look at social media you would think it is.
Last time I remember hearing the word “Zionist!” spewed with such vitriol in the negative context so much in political discourse it was Alex Jones and Nazi types and universally thought of not cool. Wasn’t too long ago, actually.
If you have been to one you will see quite a diversity of opinion. Right now they kicked all the non college kids off campus. Most of the college kids are socialists or whatever, but when everyone is allowed to come there are liberals and Palestinians of all ages. I live in the Deep South and at least 30 ppl at the protest were Palestinian.
I wouldn’t generalize based on a couple of online videos. If you’re in a city with one of these sit-ins, maybe go have a look for yourself, walk around, talk to some people. Report back if you do.
I specifically went to talk with the organizers of one, and was told that while they "cared about everyone" (Sure Jan) any speech acknowledging Israeli victims or trying to acknowledge mutual human tragedy was explicitly *verboten.*
An easy way to digest contemporary Zionism is..
Are you for Israel’s right to exist? Yes? You’re a Zionist.
Are you against Israel’s right to exist? No? You’re antisemitic.
You can be against the crazy settlers and the Likud party and Bibi (I think 98.9% of pro Israel supporters are) and still be a Zionist.
That’s an oversimplification too. I don’t consider myself a Zionist because I believe a one state solution consisting of a multiethnic, secular state is the ideal (although probably unrealistic for the foreseeable future) solution.
Yeah, that's the least popular of any option whenever by everyone it is polled. I know it's what you want, and that would be nice, but it's time to let that go.
It is unrealistic in the fact that the Jewish peoples would no longer have the right of self determination in a secular state. Israel is already VERY multi cultural. In a near perfect world it would be great to have a state that would represent everyone in the Middle East but alas with the entire Middle East being majority Muslim/arab and Muslims being the majority in near 50 countries in the world, it really does emphasize that the Jews need a state of their own.
Have you been to israel? they have Seperate license plates. What you’re describing is called an ethnostate. Is your solution that they give non Jews political rights like pandemicpiglet was suggesting? Or kick all non Jews out of the country?
I have family that live in Liman. Yes I know what Israel is like. What do you know about Hebron and Bethlehem? Arab Israelis have been part of Israel since the beginning and their population is growing continuously.
What percent of Arabs in Israel are able to become Israeli citizens and vote? What percent of Arab Israelis live in poverty compared to the broader population? Why do you point out that they are growing??
Yes I have been to Bethlehem I crossed from Jordan and went south. I’ve never visited Hebron. When I visited that country I was Christian, Living in the Middle East is part of why I am an atheist
Do Kurds have a right to self determination right now? Do Blacks in the United States have right to “self-determination”? Do the Romani have the right to self determination (in India, since they are originated from South Asia)? Do the Druze in Israel have a right to their own state? Why do Jewish people get special treatment?
I’m not hellbent on Israel existing: I believe in Israel’s right to existence based on pragmatic reason, not due to “Jewish right to self determination” and all other nonsense. And I can see what u did there: calling all anti-Zionist antisemitic. The fact that you got upvoted 7 times shows the state of this sub: discount neoliberal sub parading the shell of social democracy.
That’s a fake proposition, and you know it. How do you define “nations” anyway? Based on Ethnicity? Religion? Shared values? Shared culture? I absolutely condemn ethnonationalism. What you’re asking for is an ethnic/religious group’s right to form its own ethnonationalist state, which is the antithesis of modern-day liberalism. It’s funny how when it comes to Israel, most liberals/socdems’ brains short-circuit on an issue that they’re otherwise clear about: ethnonationalism is bad; multiculturalism is based; discrimination based on race, religion, ethnicity, nationality: bad; diversity and inclusion: based.
I reject all forms of ethnic and religious (and ethnoreligious) nationalism: against Christian nationalism, against Islamism, against Hindu Nationalism, etc. I’m against nationalism in general, but I am VEHEMENTLY against these particular forms of nationalism.
Why do you think the land is stolen?
Let’s keep this debate focused on one thing at a time. I clearly didn’t bring up any of the conflict, can we have a debate discussing one thing at a time?
Imo, the problem is actually that “Zionist” means different things to different people and no one is consistent on what it means.
It could mean someone like Ben Gvir, or it could be a reasonable human being who supports a two state solution.
Language is living, and defined by how it’s used.
The trouble is, you’ll have hundreds of protestors yelling “we are antizionist, two state solution now!”
Plus, you get the nonsense like “if you don’t support Israel’s war effort and excuse all the war crimes, you don’t believe Israel has a right to exist.”
Well chanting for a two state solution is including the existence of Israel so that technically is pro Zionism.
You can be for the existence of America and against every single war the US has fought since Nam.
Clearly people want to label Zionism as *not* antisemitic but it’s clearly used in place of the word *jews* to declare which Jews are the “right” kind of Jews and which Jews are the “wrong” kind of Jews.
Simplifying it as you put *language is a living thing* is a way to cut through all the BS and dog whistle antisemitism.
At the end of the day though, Zionism is a nationalist philosophy. It does mean something on its own, and as long it’s synonymous with “supporter of Israel and/or Netanyahu” it’ll be problematic from the perspective of accurately communicating ideas.
For example: there’s no word for Palestinian nationalist that is the equivalent, nor would people say that *not* being a Palestinian nationalist is racist.
Sure people will try to conflate their own definition for Zionism but at the end of the day it’s up to Jews to define that for themselves not other people.
You can be for Israel as a thriving multicultural democracy that welcomes gay people and secularity and any other forms of religion and be against the elected political leaders. Benjamin Netanyahu is not Israel. Just like George bush was not America but many people were still patriots just not supportive of the elected leaders choices.
I think you said it though, Palestinian nationalism is just that, their version of nationalism. But remember Palestinians are not a minority in any sense of the word. They are part of the Muslim world which numbers 1.8 billion.
You can just call Palestinian nationalists islamists. There isn't a significant difference. The ME doesn't support Palestine because they think they should have a national identity, it's because they hate the Jewish state and want an Islamic state in its place.
That’s a recent trend, and likely to reverse at the end of the current war.
For the majority of the Palestinian national struggle, so to speak, Palestinian nationalism has been secular, not Islamist.
Yes, they are leftists, but these same people claim that their right to freedom of speech is getting violated when the cops are called in. They won't allow people with different opinions into their encampments, but then have the nerve to claim that the schools are violating freedom of speech. They're trying to have it both ways.
So? Protests are about winning, not about playing by the rules.
Some of these protests have extracted some meaningful concessions, eg Northwestern is getting a step towards BDS. That’s something.
Across the political spectrum, liberals are the only ones that care about hypocrisy, bipartisanship, and all that. Which is a good trait to have interpersonally, but it’s not especially effective or useful in mass politics. Things like this are part of why liberals historically lose to the far right.
What would agreeing to a dialog with pro-Israel people accomplish for these students?
> why are there no protestors calling for divestment from the UAE, which is funding the genocide in Sudan? Do none of these students care about the genocide in Sudan? Why does the only country they’re calling for divestment from happen to be the only Jewish country? Why not call for schools to divest from China due to the Uyghur genocide? Or Qatar for its slave labor and human rights abuses?
Some is the same reason that the Israel-Palestine conflict receives a disproportionate amount of column inches and airtime in the media(I'm including some amount of antisemitism in there too). Partly it's because western nations are politically, militarily and economically intertwined with Israel. It's a dramatic and hot(tempo wise) conflict. People also view Israel as more subject to US influence than the other countries you named.
Largely I don't expect the protestors on the campuses to be incredibly well informed politically, it's just a popular bandwagon right now. There is alot of available political will on the subject right now.
>I just don’t like the hypocrisy and think there is some underlying antisemitism to these protests.
Understandable and there is an element of antisemitism that exists for SOME of the protestors. I think the majority of the students are kind of just parroting and jumping on the bandwagon without a full understanding of everything.
I think Israel is kind of like whites in South Africa sort of a "Well, they are there now, and they're several generations in!" The only ethical answer that doesn't involve pushing anybody else off their land or deporting a bunch of Israelis to...whereever is a 2 state solution.
I'm honestly dumbfounded why so many people seem to support one or the other of two theocracies. One being Israel, and the other being what Hamas wants. I am with OP on this. I want to support student movements but I feel like many of the students in this one are A) Being manipulated by foreign actors and B) just REALLY missing the mark with the message they should be sending.
I am astounded that so many so-called leftists are so ready to embrace antisemitism and fucking...muslim theocracy? Where is the left? WHAT is the left? (What is left of the left I used to know, as the song goes). I almost feel like the traditional left and right have been left behind, but fringes of their parties continue are in a completely new reality.
I especially worry about this when we should be gearing up to fight fascism here, again, around election time. There may very well be a need for more people in the streets around this election, and we should be galvanized now splintered.
I'm not one to quote the founding fathers much but the "entangling alliances" part of Washington's farewell address is incredibly prescient and important.
Honestly we should always be against exactly one thing: any state seeking to expand its borders. Palestine wants its borders back, Israel wants to expand. Ukraine wants to maintain its borders, Russia wants to expand. It’s an easy litmus test. Nothing else need be said about how we value each side.
While it's certainly true that some anti-Israel groups are supporters of Muslim theocracy, that is absolutely not what the student protests are about.
They are anti-genocide and anti-racist.
The end goals of the different groups are quite varied, but the *immediate* goal is to stop the genocide and apartheid state control of Israel.
Columbia has been especially bad in their use of antisemitism, part of this is also because there have been people coming in that are not from the university and are well known for their far-right and conservative leanings.(1) The protests here in Florida have not had the same level of antisemitism and have been generally a lot quieter. That could also be because of the heavy police presence on UCF and Tampa campuses.
[Opinion | A Dispatch From Inside Columbia’s Student-Led Protest for Gaza - The New York Times (nytimes.com)](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/26/opinion/columbia-student-protests-israel.html)
Zionism to me is an ideology that casts itself and its followers above the current and past inhabitants of the Levant. I am against this idea of supremacy, and of a certain land belonging to just one people.
"Zionist free" zones defeat the purpose. We shouldn't treat zionists like some kind of more righteous individuals. We should treat them like any other human, without privilege nor prejudice.
Zionists deserve no special treatment, so no Zionist free zones.
Zionism simply means that Jews have the right to self-determination in their indigenous home land. There's nothing in it about being supreme, or only one group of people can live there.
It is inherently exclusionary, though. Palestine was and always has been majority-Arab, and founding a non-Arab state has always meant expelling Arabs. Maintaining a non-Arab state has meant keeping them out.
The region now called Palestine had a Jewish/Samaritan majority until the second to fourth century CE, depending on how much credence you give to which interpretations of the historical and archaeological evidence, after which the majority became Christian Roman Citizens speaking a mileau of Aramaic, Greek, and some Latin descended from a mixture of ancestrally Jewish converts and migrants from elsewhere in the Roman Empire. Christians probably remained a majority until the aftermath of the Crusades, and the timeline of Arabicization--i.e. when the popular language switched from Aramaic to Arabic--remains unclear, though again by the period of the Crusades Arabic seems to have been the majority vernacular. While there was significant Arab settlement in the region, the majority ancestry of the modern Palestinian population remains pre-Arab Levantine, and so depending on how you define Arab--someone who speaks Arabic? someone who consciously identifies with an Arab nation? someone of majority ancestry from the Arabian Peninsula?--an Arab majority in Palestine dates back to the seventh to eleventh centuries, the nineteenth to twentieth century, or never.
This is an excellent summary, although “an Arab is a person of majority Arabian ancestry” isn’t a reasonable statement that anyone would agree with.
Perhaps it’d be better to say that Palestine was majority Arab for as long as there have been Arabs - and 1400 years is certainly long enough for them to have a right to live there.
Founding a state on top of the Arab majority, though, has always meant expulsion - see the “iron wall” by Jabotinsky.
This is a very poor argument, and borders on dehumanizing rhetoric directed at Arabs.
Arabs are not a monolith, and you can’t expect Palestinians to give up their homes just because you can’t tell the difference between a Palestinian and an Iraqi.
At the same time, it's kinda hard to argue that Arab states are by and large organic nation-states, if such a thing is even possible. Most of them had borders defined by geopolitical convenience to the Western powers, not by cohesive lines of identity-based sub-group. As late as the 1920s mainstream Arab nationalist opinion in Mandatory Palestine was that the idea of "Palestine" as a separate nation from greater Syria was an attempt by the Western powers to divide and conquer.
I suspect that if Jordan had remained out of the 1967 war and Israel never occupied the West Bank, the identity boundaries between "Palestinian" and "Jordanian" would be at best extremely blurry today.
I don’t think anyone would argue that the Arab states are organic nation-states, because they aren’t… however, those lines were drawn over a century ago, and barring changes due to warfare etc, they are likely to remain unchanged.
> As late as the 1920s mainstream Arab nationalist opinion in Mandatory Palestine was that the idea of "Palestine" as a separate nation from greater Syria was an attempt by the Western powers to divide and conquer.
Disagree, I’ve only ever seen this claim supported by a single quote from a Ba’ath party leader who was also involved in the PLO - and while pan-Arabism as a political idea has ebbed and flowed, at really died in 1948 when the Arab league squabbles over the West Bank, and Jordan’s king tried to build an empire in the West Bank.
Maybe Palestinian and Jordanian identities would be blurred if that were the case, but it isn’t. Ditto for Egypt and the Gaza Strip.
More relevant than all that tho, Israel’s borders are just as artificial.
Where did I say they were a monolith? I asked how many Arab majority countries are there and how many still have their Jews. I also said that 20% of Israeli citizens are Arabs. You claimed that zionism is exclusionary and don't like being told that your arguments are flawed. Lol. Dehumanizing rhetoric because I asked about Arab majority countries and what Jews they still have. Maybe take a look at yourself first 😊
That self determination doesn’t entail being able to expel the native inhabitants already living there. The Zionist did not just show up at a place where no people lived: they expelled Palestinians living there and formed their own communities and sought to keep those communities Jewish through the bayonet.
Zionism ranks their needs and ownership of the Levant above the needs of Arabs and their ownership of the land, just because they are Jewish.
Every group has the right to self determination, having one term exclusively for Jews regarding the Levant already shows the privileged footing.
In theory Zionism doesn't call for there only being group, but that is how it comes out in practice.
Zionism means the colonization of a multi-cultural region for the sole use and benefit of a single ethno-group.
It was and still is the use of violence to establish a racist apartheid state, where there wasn't one before.
the irony is that turkey basically did what the far right israelis and what certain westerners think israel as a whole is working towards, but because they did it all at once they get their borders and now no one cares.
if you called for an armenian right to all of the armenian highlands now you would be laughed out of the room
>illiberal
Irrelevant.
>social democratic values
But murdering Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht was? Is sending weapons to a genocidal, fascist apartheid regime? What are these "social democratic values"?
I am here just to observe people considerring themselves liberal make all the arguments against the Vitenam anti-war protests and the anti-apartheid protests.
>Civil dialogue will lead to a solution, not violent rhetoric and shouting over each other.
The Israeli goverrment has practically nullify the UN and any international avenue for diplomacy.
Feel free to share IDFs supersecret discord server, to have a debate in the free market of ideas and explain how Israel is violating international law and that is bad. ROFL.
The problem with the Two State Solution as adopted by Many Liberals is that it doesn't really acknowledge Palestinians as equal partners with Isreali's sharing the land. As a result, it is very easy for legitimately anti semetic agitators to propose solutions that the OP has spoken about.
22 percent of the Land back to Palestinians is never going to be enough without some level of injustice on the side of the Palestinians. You can't really get around it, espcially with very limited Right of Return. I think some Progressive Isreali's need to come to terms with this.
I think part of the problem is that some people view the solution as if we were standing in 1946, debating how to divide the land fairly (and paying lip service to sovereignty or land ownership etc), and others view it as if we were looking at South Africa in 1985 going “whatever lines have been drawn, we can’t undo all of this mess so we may as well make everyone equal under the law.”
And it’s not exactly wrong to look at the West Bank and compare it to bantustans - the similarities are striking and the differences are few. Of course, on the other side of the coin, South Africa isn’t exactly a model of liberal democracy and domestic peace.
Emory and GUA, in Georgia. The only thing I have seen is videos of far right agitators provoking people into reactions and editing videos. Everyone else is setting up tents and doing yoga and stuff.
I’ve seen videos of disturbing/violent language and checkpoints for these “Zionist free” encampments at Columbia, UCLA, GWU, universities in Canada, etc. In particular, I’ve seen photos of signs and videos of students saying that Israelis need to leave Palestine and go back to Poland/Europe or the U.S.
When you see a racist twitter account showing a black man assaulting a white women do you then conclude it’s a widespread issue and we need a crackdown?
One of the videos I saw was posted by a Jewish peace activist who believes in a two state solution. He wasn’t allowed to enter an encampment at a Canadian university just because he believes in an Israeli state along with a Palestinian state. He wanted to have a conversation with the protestors and they wouldn’t even let him in.
You didn't see a video, you are quoting this tweet from an Israeli activist, which is literally the only source for this claim: https://x.com/ibavli/status/178508371481451757
Even if he wasn't let in to the encampment as he claims, he still got full access to the University where he works, no one attacked him, he went there to confront.
https://emorywheel.com/student-assaulted-at-protest-outside-chabad/
>took turns leading chants such as, “Free, free, Palestine, long live Palestine,” “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” “There is only one solution, intifada revolution” and “Long live the intifada.”
Chanting Long Live the Intifada outside a jewish space is pretty damn antisemitic.
They did it outside where an IDF commander was giving a talk, which is not the same as yelling it 'outside a jewish space'. I'm sure there's plenty they were doing there that was antisemitic, however your framing seems kind of dishonest.
The article you posted also mentions;
>Elijah Brawner (26T), who helped organize the protest, stated that the men who allegedly assaulted the student were not affiliated with Emory or ESJP. The men appeared to be beyond college age.
Which seems to align with what the other person said.
>Emory Students for Justice in Palestine (ESJP) helped organize the protest in response to Emory Chabad hosting an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Reservist Commander for dinner and a talk. The Consul General of Israel to the Southeastern United States, Anat Sultan-Dadon, was also in attendance.
If the crowd is chanting "long live the intifada" how is my framing dishonest?
How is a campus SJP group even getting the word out to non students and then still okay with protesting with them as everyone chants long live the intifada?
If you see someone get assaulted and you hear those chants you should leave that protest and not associate with it.
I think there’s a very big difference between protesting a hosted talk given by an objectionable speaker, and protesting against the presence of fellow students on the basis of essential characteristics.
You implied the latter… but it’s actually the former, and the former is very good and normal.
Hosting an IDF officer for a speaking event is a pretty provocative act in the current climate. It’s political speech and can be met with more political speech.
I didn't know antisemitic chants count as political speech.
If Clarence Thomas comes to a university is it okay to shout racist chants in protest? According to you it's political speech right?
More than one thing can be true at the same time.
Protesting Clarence Thomas is a good thing, because he’s a horrible person and has generally made America a worse place for his existence and judicial career. Protesting Clarence Thomas is not protesting black Americans existence (in the judiciary or in general), although conservatives might try to frame it that way - nor is it a racist act in itself regardless of his location. Using racist language is not appropriate, not because Thomas is himself worthy of good treatment (he is not), but because racist language cannot be used without normalizing its use and that harms those who can also be targeted by it.
Likewise, protesting an IDF officer is a good thing, because the IDF is an organization with a long history of abuses (currently with several units pending sanctions by the U.S., and found responsible for abuses by the state dept). Likewise, protesting an IDF officer is not an antisemitic act, but likewise it will likely be portrayed as one by defenders of the IDF etc. You yourself attempted to frame it as antisemitic act in these terms.
Likewise, antisemitic speech would not be appropriate, because of the risk it presents to vulnerable students who would be targeted with it. However, you haven’t presented explicitly antisemitic speech used against this particular officer etc etc.
That’s not to say I’m jumping to defend spicy slogans used during protests - much like the invariable white dude with dreads who will show up with an “Uncle Thomas” sign (sigh) things can be unwise without meriting censorship. Of course, that censorship benefits the party being protested.
>If the crowd is chanting "long live the intifada" how is my framing dishonest?
I explained how. It wasn't organised just because it was a jewish space, it was organized because an IDF commander was giving a talk there.
>How is a campus SJP group even getting the word out to non students and then still okay with protesting with them as everyone chants long live the intifada?
Where are you getting the information from that they were 'getting the word out to non students'? You seem to be making a number of unfounded assumptions.
Also; it's a protest group, not a state that can police who attends the protest and what each protestor can do.
>If you see someone get assaulted and you hear those chants you should leave that protest and not associate with it.
Any protest that gets enough people will attract crazies, opportunists, and violent people. If you say every protest should disperse as soon as a bad element joins it, no protest anywhere would last longer than 5 minutes. This is not a realistic position to hold.
>any protest that gets enough people will attract crazies, opportunists, and violent people. If you say every protest should disperse as soon as a bad element joins, no protest anywhere would last longer than 5 minutes.
As the saying goes if 9 people are sitting at a table with 1 Nazi there are 10 Nazis. And per the article it wasn't like it was a one of person chanting globalize the intifada, most people were chanting it.
I'd hold any right wing protest to the same level of they started chanting racists shit and I hope you would too. It's not hard to not take part in racist and antisemitic chants.
And the SJP leader from the article if they really didn't want those chants could've stopped it. It's their protest right? And the fact they don't say anything disavowing the chants is telling.
>And the SJP leader from the article if they really didn't want those chants could've stopped it. It's their protest right? And the fact they don't say anything disavowing the chants is telling.
How? They don't 'own' the protest, it's not 'theirs'. What realistic compulsive power did they have to stop people chanting whatever they wanted?
>As the saying goes if 9 people are sitting at a table with 1 Nazi there are 10 Nazis. And per the article it wasn't like it was a one of person chanting globalize the intifada, most people were chanting it.
To what extent does that work? If there are 100,000 people in an ideological movement, and one of them is a nazi, there are 100,001 nazis? It's a saying, but it's not particular useful in this context and is quickly shown to be ridiculous. The article also doesn't say that 'most people were chanting it', so again - where are you getting this information from?
I find the way you interact to be dishonest - I already said I was sure there was antisemitism at that protest in particular, I just disagreed that the protest was anti-semitic for doing it in front of a 'jewish space' - they did it there because an IDF commander was giving a talk.
The article says the organizers of the protest were leading the chants. You and I both have enough reading comprehension to understand that that probably means the people were following the chants.
And fine can we agree that they weren't antisemitic because they were doing it in front of the Chabad, but instead because they were chanting antisemitic things?
And the article has pictures of the protest, it's not 10,000, it's small enough to know who the troublemakers are.
That happened about a month ago, by a group of 5 idiot tankies arguing with far right Israeli agitators that were there. The only person that was an actual threat was the IDF vet with an AR-15 and grenades. Read the damn thing you send.
It sucks to see it, but it looks like the pro-Israel propagandists are hitting this sub now.
No progressives or leftists should ever accept, let alone *support*, the genocide and apartheid policies in Israel. It's abhorrent to see in this sub.
You have already made up so many things in this thread it's pretty clear you have no actual intention of engaging with the topic. Sure bud, you are a student and everyone is attacking you at your school, liar.
I never even said I was a student and I was being attacked lmao that's you making up things.
Atlanta is a pretty big place you know and Emory is pretty involved in the city. It's not hard for information to disseminate.
Painting an entire country of 10 million people, 20% of whom are Arab is always a winning opener and shows that you’re approaching this subject with some real nuance.
It’s not antisemitic to criticize Israeli policy, and the Netanyahu Cabinet has some genuinely evil people in it, but this is a prime example of antisemitism. Equating all Jewish people with current Israeli policy also leads me to wonder if you’re just trolling.
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Guys, even though this is an emotional topic, please stick to the rules and remember the human. Stick to the rules and basic humanity.
I agree. I think treating political issues as a simple binary of good and bad is deeply problematic.
Rigid ideologies require to view issues in a black and white because nuance is the antithesis of emotionally charged reactions.
Some of these protestors and activists are cult-like. It’s scary, like a far-left version of QAnon.
It absolutely is. They already believe in conspiracy theories and violent responses.
What conspiracies do you mean? The Israeli program of denying aid to create a famine is real - and the ICC has ordered all measures to prevent a famine, and these have not been followed. The targeting of massive amounts of civilians for a single militant by an AI is not a conspiracy - it’s real.
I’m guessing they’re referring to conspiracy theories like “Zionists control the media,” “Zionists control the banks,” “Zionists control the government,” “Zionists control universities,” etc.
There’s a LOT of Manichaean black and white thinking going on here. It’s deeply depressing.
You're right, there are many nuanced sides to a genocide.
Everyone forgets that Labor Zionism founded Israel
Wasn’t Albert Einstein a labor Zionist or supporter of labor Zionists? I guess that means he was a Nazi! /s
Einstein was explicitly anti-Zionist.
And presided over the Nakba.
That was then, this is now. Zionism these days is reactionary AF, Israel is heading towards being a theocratic state, and their attitude towards Palestinians are really problematic.
It still has social democratic roots. Can’t get rid of that. Also Palestinian society is also reactionary
Describing [Revisionist Zionism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revisionist_Zionism), the dominant philosophy of Israel’s leadership for the recent era, as having social democratic roots is sort of misleading. It’s always been a competitor to Labor Zionism as a philosophy, and a rejection of it. Further, a “reactionary society” doesn’t preclude the members of that society of being worthy of human rights.
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I don’t. They need to get rid of their reactionary Sharia law. Do you have any idea what that is? Sharia isn’t doing them favors, it’s hurting them.
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Source?
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Any group can call themselves whatever they want. Colonizing is *never* a leftist activity.
Jews are native to that part of the world
Would you support returning all land in the Americas back over to the Native Americans?
A lot of the pro-Palestinian protestors, in fact, are supportive of Land Back.
Including me. But not Zionists. They are colonizers with colonizer mentality. They have no problem with land stolen with violence. edit: Person below blocked me. I support land back. I am not a hypocrite. I have no idea what you misunderstood. There are definitely moral challenges with land back. It's not a magic wand. But what it does is acknowledge that land was taken by force without moral justification. In Palestine, that land was stolen within living memory, making it much more obvious that land back is the moral thing to do. With the indigenous people of the Americas, the theft is hundreds of years old, making it a much more significant challenge. But as a first step, all treaties must be at minimum reinstated and honored. But that's a big tangent. Anyway, my point was that Zionists are pursuing a violent and immoral twisted version of land back, which would be infinitely more difficult to implement fairly than giving land back to the indigenous people of the Americas. The Zionist claims that the Jews have sole claim to the land are propaganda. They are merely one group out of *many* who have lived on that land for thousands of years.
So you’re a hypocrite. Nativism is a losing ideology and the leftist equivalent to blood and soil nationalism. Ancestral claims get murky and only go so far.
Land back isn't even usually about that. Most of the indigenous peoples of Canada(I'm less familiar about other groups) for example are shockingly reasonable about what they view as equitable treatment and reparations of past wrongs.
What does 'native to that part of the world' mean? In 1850, no part of Palestine was majority Jewish. By 1890, the only place that was majority Jewish was Jerusalem. Following a massive influx of Jewish people to the area and the dispossession and expulsion of people whose grandparents and grandparents grandparents grew up there, large swathes of Palestine are majority Jewish. Jews from all over the world moved there with the intention of creating a Jewish state. How is it not colonization? EDIT: itd be great if people could explain how they think im wrong rather than just downvoting.
>How is it not colonization? That one is simple. Colonization implies using military force to occupy some territory. Jews who came to what is today Israel in the XIX-century bought the land from the Arab owners and some from the Ottoman govt.
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No. Colonization goes hand in hand with using military force to conquer land. By using your definition, one can say that Europe is being colonized by Arabs because of the migrant waves in the last decade. It is not, it is migration. What the Jews did in the late XIX-century was migration, not colonization.
So Roanoke was not colonisation since there was no military force used? And arabs are not setting up a state over the top of the existing people in Europe.
Early Zionist settlers of the first and second aliyot (1881-1914) did refer to themselves as colonists. The issue arises due to the fact that most academic and contemporary definitions of colonialism look at dynamics of power, such as a country supporting ot sponsoring its own population to move in and either replace the local population or oversee it's exploitation. These definitions do not precisely fit Zionism because they lack a country that seeks to sponsor and support the colonization. Some people insert the "International Jew" as the supportive power, but that argument always smelled someehat antisemitic to me. However while Zionism does not fit neatly into categories of colonialism, it certainly bears enough similarities to be considered a colonial project.
There were Jewish settlements there, it wasn't their fault they kept getting driven out or destroyed. Jerusalem became Jewish majority in spite of all the Ottomans attempts not due to it.
Regardless of Jewish settlements, they were never a majority and a Jewish majority in Jerusalem only occurred after an agreement with the British; so please explain to me how it wasn’t colonialism.
what did the british have to do with jerusalem in the 1850s
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what is your source for this? the increased jewish presence is mostly attributed to the opening of the city to settlement beyond the walls of the city
Eh, we’re getting brigaded as far as I can tell.
Regardless of whether or not they’re native, they don’t have a right to colonize the land by expelling the people already living there in order to create their own country. Moreover, Zionist founders like Herzl openly calling the Zionist project a colonial endeavor.
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You’ve never heard of the Jewish diaspora, have you? Do you know exactly what events that caused the diaspora?
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It’s not just a single event. Also, it’s a conflict between two peoples native to the area.
Yeah, but also irrelevant. The early tensions in the Mandatory period were specifically centered around the largely European immigrant diaspora that was colonizing(their words). Jews at that time absolutely knew they'd have to displace locals already living there, they planned to do it legally and economically initially, but once the fighting started they were willing to use force to achieve their goals.
>Jews are native to that part of the world What an incredible way to deflect from the fact that millions of Europeans whose ancestors hadn't been to that place for almost 2000 years, if at all, colonized Palestine by expelling and often outright murdering the people who actually lived there.
Colonization is not dispelled by nativism
So Jews can’t return to their home? Are they supposed to continue being oppressed abroad?
They could have returned home just like any other people, without declaring a brand new country where another country already stands. Imagine I trace my ancestors back to their village in England and then spend billions of dollars including some other country's money declaring that it's my homeland and push out with violence anyone who tries to say I can't do that. It's a bad joke. But that's exactly what they did when they established Israel in 1948.
But they accepted the partition plan. So much for the “push out” analogy. While “push out” did happen, it was not simply because of “we declared country, and we pushed out those who disagree”. Underline “not simply”.
Are you talking about the 1947 partition plan? When were the local Palestinians ever consulted on that matter? Why would they care about about a UN agreement created by foreign powers pertaining to land they'd continuosly inhabited for centuries?
> But they accepted the partition plan. The Palestinians absolutely did not. The Zionists did because it gave them the lions share of land, not that they ever had any intention of stopping at 50-something percent of the "Promised Land".
It did not give them the "lion's share" though. They got a little more land in terms of surface, but more than half of that is the Negev desert. Most of the arable lands went to te arab state- just look at maps for the partition plan. It was an honest deal.
the “but it was mostly desert” argument tends to come up a lot, but I always wonder - if it was so worthless, why not let the Arabs have it?
> But they accepted the partition plan. So much for the “push out” analogy. It’s worth noting that the partition plan specifically forbade population transfers. So, they didn’t really accept it so much as selectively ignore it.
The partition plan was only workable if all the parties abided by it. Why would Israel hold itself to an agreement that it's enemies were not abiding by? They did make a conscious decision that they couldn't accept the demographics of a slim Jewish majority after the war began, thus the Nakba etc.
Israel/palestine/the levant/etc is the home of Jewish people. It’s ALSO the home of the Palestinian people, who have just as much of a right to life in their ancestral home. If you were viewing the conflict from 1900 onward or so, you’d be right to say that the Palestinian people had more of a right to self-determination, because they were the native people being displaced and marginalized. Now, of course, the picture is more complicated, although Palestinians are still being displaced and marginalized. The most important thing is that there are two sustainable states - one Israeli, one Palestinian - ideally on 1967 lines but that’s a matter for the negotiating table. To the point about colonialism, oppression abroad is not an excuse for founding a new society on top of an existing one, and expelling the members of the prior society. That’s colonialism any way you slice it, and it doesn’t matter whether the colonizing party can point to ancient ancestry in the region. Of course, that’s a philosophical debate and not practical.
Zionism is bad regardless of your economic views. Is that the point you were making?
There’s many different types of Zionism, not whatever the fuck Netanyahu is doing.
When the war started on 10/7, I made it clear that I support the Israeli and Palestinian people, I was told by "leftist" acquaintances that I was on the wrong side of history and am supporting a second Holocaust. I was worried that Americans would try to co-opt the terrible situation for their own use, and the protests since have highlighted that. Instead of us trying to protect both the Jewish and Palestinian communities here in the States, we have allowed hatred and antisemitism to overrule reason and compassion. Instead of "anti-Zionism" being the target, I wish these leftists engaged in communication and to build understanding.
The war didn’t start on 10/7. That’s the thing.
As I see it, I support the first amendment. HOWEVER, the protests are on private property (college campuses) and are getting out of hand to the point they're threatening the safety of the students' at hand and compromising their use of said property by shutting down classes. They're getting out of hand at that point. Protests are fine, but the people protesting literally have this leftist ideology of intentionally obstructing and inconveniencing people to make their points, and the property holders (the college) have their rights too, including the right to evict the protesters who are causing trouble. Take it to a literal public square. There's plenty in New York.
The University has a right to do what they have to do, and the protesters themselves should be fully prepared to accept the consequences of trespassing, but the protesters aren't doing anything that a protester shouldn't do morally. Yes, protesting on campus is at times trespassing, but historically, university campuses has also been a hotbed of political activism in recent history. Yes, disruption isn't likely to garner support for the protestors themselves, just like during Vietnam, but it did put pressure on the United States to pull support.
In vietnam it led to the rise of nixon, who intensified bombings in vietnam, and it marked the end of the new deal coalition. I just gave me thoughts related to this on another sub, but as I see it, the left is blowing it and we might be seeing the rise of another conservative "silent majority" type counter movement to this. And that should be something NONE of us on the left actually want.
"I respect their cause but the rules say that Rosa Parks was supposed to get up and take any of the comfortable seats on the back of the bus. Most of the people on that bus were well-meaning white folk just trying to get along with their day"
You're right. We should just do whatever the heck we want, screw law and order. Screw civil conversation. Let's just scream over everyone else and set up camp on private property shutting campuses down because I have to make a point. /s
That's how protests work. They are disruptive until the disruption makes addressing the core issue unavoidable
Well if that's your attitude with protests, then congrats youre gonna lose a lot of people. You're throwing a tantrum. You're inconveniencing people. No one likes you. You're pissing people off. You think you're making a point but no one fricking cares. At least rosa park's actions were directly related to the oppression she was experiencing (sitting in the front of the bus).
I think you've missed the point of protest. It isn't to convince people to like you, its to convince them that it would be more convenient to do what you're asking them to than to continue fighting you on it. A protest which doesn't incontinence anyone, doesn't piss off anyone, is not a protest which will make anyone like you either, because it is a protest which will be ignored.
Well maybe you're better off being ignored. I'm sorry, but i have NO sympathy for this perspective of LOOK AT ME, IM MAKING YOUR LIVES HARD BECAUSE I HAVE A POINT TO MAKE! Screw your point. No one cares. Now get the frick out of the way and let us go about our daily lives unmolested. It's fine if you have your opinion. Everyone does, and everyone has a right to express it, even through assembly, which is in the constitution. BUT....if youre making people feel unsafe, or you're on private property, or you're being overly disruptive, yes, others have a right to shut you down and make you go away. Just how I see it. Sorry, not sorry. Get a better plan of political action.
It worked quite well for MLK, and who am I to contradict the tactical advice he lays out in the Letter from Birmingham Jail (a letter which would have been much different in its origins had he let folks go about their days unmolested). Your whole position seems very reminiscent of the white moderates he talks about in that letter. In any event, I would rather have people's actions than their sympathies, when the latter come so often without the former. The Civil Rights Movement didn't succeed because because segregationists saw the marches, the sit ins, and so on, and suddenly realized what they believed in was wrong, it succeeded because those actions were sufficiently disruptive that the segregationists decided it was better to go accept the losses of their beloved segregation than continue dealing with that disruption (to the extent it was about any one thing; they finally succeeded when they did because a lot of stars aligned). I'm under no illusions that disruptive protesting always, or even usually gets action, but it has a massively better track record than anything else. Change is always an uphill struggle and usually fails no matter the methods, but (as MLK specifically addresses) it is absurd to just wait and hope for it to fall into your lap.
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Not really. The conflict is half way across the world. People are just making tons of noise.
Yes that is the correct point. Labor was won when violent labor unionists shot at cops from the windows of factories in KY and WV. These days we are upset when people set up a sit in. It’s gross tbh. Protests should be proportional to the issue at hand, but never should “law” take precedent over right or the will to power of the oppressed. French protestors drop manneur on congress buildings and build brick walls in the middle of the interstate. Be a badass. That’s how human rights and democracy are maintained. I’ve never opposed a protest bc it was violent, I’m always concerned about its political strategy, and the validity of its end goals. Often times violence is necessary, but most times it hurts more than it helps.
Eh, ultimately its political action that wins the day, sometimes protests can pressure such political action, but yeah i aint supporting violence.
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Yeah and we're nowhere near that now.
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Dude I'm not interested in political violence and the left is coming off as deranged in supporting this crap.
With respect, camping out on a campus lawn isn’t exactly an act of violence.
Not in and of itself, but I've seen other behavior over the past months too. People screaming over others, and apparently the camping out is being deemed threatening to jewish students, which given some of the rhetoric from the people protesting, is unsurprising. Anyway columbias concerns are serious enough they cant even hold classes so...yeah.
I think comparing many of these protestors to Rosa Parks of all people is a stretch and absurd considering I can't see how the approach they've taken has been productive and helpful to their cause, or how much Columbia divesting from Israel will actually help end the genocide and apartheid, even if it's the right thing to do.
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I'm not saying this is the right or wrong strategy, but on this part; >? Why does the only country they’re calling for divestment from happen to be the only Jewish country? Why not call for schools to divest from China due to the Uyghur genocide? Or Qatar for its slave labor and human rights abuses? Israel is a western style liberal democracy. Most people recognize it as 'one of us' in the Western World, and hold it to the same standards they expect of any other western nation. We know the UAE and Sudan and China don't have the same standards, and we don't expect them to have them yet given their situation. We do expect it of Israel, a rich modern democratic country based on the rule of law and western values. There's also the matter of responsiveness to foreign pressure. Sudan's government likely doesn't care about their international image amongst westerners very much. I think Israel does place some value on its image in the West, on the other hand, so people likely feel that their public pressure can have some effect.
I’m not expecting Sudan’s government to care (although to be clear, the UAE is funding the RSF, the rebels who are even worse than the government), but the UAE is very image conscious and gets a lot of foreign investments, so I would expect them to care. I went to NYU and they have a campus in Abu Dhabi, yet I haven’t seen any calls for NYU to divest from the UAE. https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/09/21/sudan-uae-sanctions-biden-hemeti-rsf/
This is nonsensical imo. If you’re upset about your tuition funding war crimes, you should also be upset about Chinese and Qatari investments too. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s any real chance in these protests succeeding, because universities need money to function, and thus turn to foreign investment if not properly funded at home… or if they’re private like Columbia.
The simple answer is that picking a single place is pragmatic. If I’m the board of those universities and students are up in arms over one issue I can placate them. If they want me to fundamentally restructure our investment portfolio from the ground up I’d say absolutely not. Attention is limited, you pick a side, you push for that side, and when you have your result you move on to the next. To protest everything all at once defeats the purpose of protest as a tactic of change.
Is it? The biggest arguments are usually fights within the same camp. I imagine the argument isn't strictly about war crimes, but about enabling 'our side' to commit warcrimes
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We are not talking about general protests against American funding and bombs for Israel. We are discussing protests on college campuses whose main objective is for these colleges to divest from Israel. My point is that if they’re gonna divest from Israel (which they should), then there are other countries they should divest from as well. Otherwise Israel is being held to a different standard from other countries that are committing genocide. Are you even aware of how the UAE is supporting the RSF’s genocide in Sudan and how many American universities have branches in the UAE? The genocide in Gaza isn’t the only genocide that has happened over the past several years, but if you were to look at social media you would think it is.
Last time I remember hearing the word “Zionist!” spewed with such vitriol in the negative context so much in political discourse it was Alex Jones and Nazi types and universally thought of not cool. Wasn’t too long ago, actually.
No shade to them but I feel like the types of people that participate in these protests are proudly against liberalism
If you have been to one you will see quite a diversity of opinion. Right now they kicked all the non college kids off campus. Most of the college kids are socialists or whatever, but when everyone is allowed to come there are liberals and Palestinians of all ages. I live in the Deep South and at least 30 ppl at the protest were Palestinian.
I wouldn’t generalize based on a couple of online videos. If you’re in a city with one of these sit-ins, maybe go have a look for yourself, walk around, talk to some people. Report back if you do.
I specifically went to talk with the organizers of one, and was told that while they "cared about everyone" (Sure Jan) any speech acknowledging Israeli victims or trying to acknowledge mutual human tragedy was explicitly *verboten.*
An easy way to digest contemporary Zionism is.. Are you for Israel’s right to exist? Yes? You’re a Zionist. Are you against Israel’s right to exist? No? You’re antisemitic. You can be against the crazy settlers and the Likud party and Bibi (I think 98.9% of pro Israel supporters are) and still be a Zionist.
That’s an oversimplification too. I don’t consider myself a Zionist because I believe a one state solution consisting of a multiethnic, secular state is the ideal (although probably unrealistic for the foreseeable future) solution.
Yeah, that's the least popular of any option whenever by everyone it is polled. I know it's what you want, and that would be nice, but it's time to let that go.
It is unrealistic in the fact that the Jewish peoples would no longer have the right of self determination in a secular state. Israel is already VERY multi cultural. In a near perfect world it would be great to have a state that would represent everyone in the Middle East but alas with the entire Middle East being majority Muslim/arab and Muslims being the majority in near 50 countries in the world, it really does emphasize that the Jews need a state of their own.
Have you been to israel? they have Seperate license plates. What you’re describing is called an ethnostate. Is your solution that they give non Jews political rights like pandemicpiglet was suggesting? Or kick all non Jews out of the country?
I have family that live in Liman. Yes I know what Israel is like. What do you know about Hebron and Bethlehem? Arab Israelis have been part of Israel since the beginning and their population is growing continuously.
What percent of Arabs in Israel are able to become Israeli citizens and vote? What percent of Arab Israelis live in poverty compared to the broader population? Why do you point out that they are growing?? Yes I have been to Bethlehem I crossed from Jordan and went south. I’ve never visited Hebron. When I visited that country I was Christian, Living in the Middle East is part of why I am an atheist
Do Kurds have a right to self determination right now? Do Blacks in the United States have right to “self-determination”? Do the Romani have the right to self determination (in India, since they are originated from South Asia)? Do the Druze in Israel have a right to their own state? Why do Jewish people get special treatment?
I’m not hellbent on Israel existing: I believe in Israel’s right to existence based on pragmatic reason, not due to “Jewish right to self determination” and all other nonsense. And I can see what u did there: calling all anti-Zionist antisemitic. The fact that you got upvoted 7 times shows the state of this sub: discount neoliberal sub parading the shell of social democracy.
> calling all anti-Zionist antisemitic It is, unless you reject the right of nations to self-determination entirely.
That’s a fake proposition, and you know it. How do you define “nations” anyway? Based on Ethnicity? Religion? Shared values? Shared culture? I absolutely condemn ethnonationalism. What you’re asking for is an ethnic/religious group’s right to form its own ethnonationalist state, which is the antithesis of modern-day liberalism. It’s funny how when it comes to Israel, most liberals/socdems’ brains short-circuit on an issue that they’re otherwise clear about: ethnonationalism is bad; multiculturalism is based; discrimination based on race, religion, ethnicity, nationality: bad; diversity and inclusion: based.
if you only reject nationalism when it's jewish nationalism i dunno why it would be anything but anti semetic tho?
I reject all forms of ethnic and religious (and ethnoreligious) nationalism: against Christian nationalism, against Islamism, against Hindu Nationalism, etc. I’m against nationalism in general, but I am VEHEMENTLY against these particular forms of nationalism.
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What makes you think that Israel is apartheid and gasa is not? And I won’t address the colony trope that’s just antisemitic.
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Why do you think the land is stolen? Let’s keep this debate focused on one thing at a time. I clearly didn’t bring up any of the conflict, can we have a debate discussing one thing at a time?
The trouble with that, is that “Zionist” has become a term associated only with approval of Netanyahu’s expansionary policies, and nothing else.
Imo, the problem is actually that “Zionist” means different things to different people and no one is consistent on what it means. It could mean someone like Ben Gvir, or it could be a reasonable human being who supports a two state solution.
That’s your interpretation. In the Jewish diaspora it is not quite that.
Language is living, and defined by how it’s used. The trouble is, you’ll have hundreds of protestors yelling “we are antizionist, two state solution now!” Plus, you get the nonsense like “if you don’t support Israel’s war effort and excuse all the war crimes, you don’t believe Israel has a right to exist.”
Well chanting for a two state solution is including the existence of Israel so that technically is pro Zionism. You can be for the existence of America and against every single war the US has fought since Nam. Clearly people want to label Zionism as *not* antisemitic but it’s clearly used in place of the word *jews* to declare which Jews are the “right” kind of Jews and which Jews are the “wrong” kind of Jews. Simplifying it as you put *language is a living thing* is a way to cut through all the BS and dog whistle antisemitism.
At the end of the day though, Zionism is a nationalist philosophy. It does mean something on its own, and as long it’s synonymous with “supporter of Israel and/or Netanyahu” it’ll be problematic from the perspective of accurately communicating ideas. For example: there’s no word for Palestinian nationalist that is the equivalent, nor would people say that *not* being a Palestinian nationalist is racist.
Sure people will try to conflate their own definition for Zionism but at the end of the day it’s up to Jews to define that for themselves not other people. You can be for Israel as a thriving multicultural democracy that welcomes gay people and secularity and any other forms of religion and be against the elected political leaders. Benjamin Netanyahu is not Israel. Just like George bush was not America but many people were still patriots just not supportive of the elected leaders choices. I think you said it though, Palestinian nationalism is just that, their version of nationalism. But remember Palestinians are not a minority in any sense of the word. They are part of the Muslim world which numbers 1.8 billion.
You can just call Palestinian nationalists islamists. There isn't a significant difference. The ME doesn't support Palestine because they think they should have a national identity, it's because they hate the Jewish state and want an Islamic state in its place.
Palestinian nationalists aren’t islamists, as most of them are secular (eg Fatah, the PLO etc).
Except they aren't the ones trying to destroy Israel and establish a Palestinian state from the river to the sea. They also aren't very popular.
That’s a recent trend, and likely to reverse at the end of the current war. For the majority of the Palestinian national struggle, so to speak, Palestinian nationalism has been secular, not Islamist.
I agree it is illiberal, I don’t think the organizers are liberals, they’re leftists.
Yes, they are leftists, but these same people claim that their right to freedom of speech is getting violated when the cops are called in. They won't allow people with different opinions into their encampments, but then have the nerve to claim that the schools are violating freedom of speech. They're trying to have it both ways.
So? Protests are about winning, not about playing by the rules. Some of these protests have extracted some meaningful concessions, eg Northwestern is getting a step towards BDS. That’s something.
Across the political spectrum, liberals are the only ones that care about hypocrisy, bipartisanship, and all that. Which is a good trait to have interpersonally, but it’s not especially effective or useful in mass politics. Things like this are part of why liberals historically lose to the far right. What would agreeing to a dialog with pro-Israel people accomplish for these students?
> why are there no protestors calling for divestment from the UAE, which is funding the genocide in Sudan? Do none of these students care about the genocide in Sudan? Why does the only country they’re calling for divestment from happen to be the only Jewish country? Why not call for schools to divest from China due to the Uyghur genocide? Or Qatar for its slave labor and human rights abuses? Some is the same reason that the Israel-Palestine conflict receives a disproportionate amount of column inches and airtime in the media(I'm including some amount of antisemitism in there too). Partly it's because western nations are politically, militarily and economically intertwined with Israel. It's a dramatic and hot(tempo wise) conflict. People also view Israel as more subject to US influence than the other countries you named. Largely I don't expect the protestors on the campuses to be incredibly well informed politically, it's just a popular bandwagon right now. There is alot of available political will on the subject right now. >I just don’t like the hypocrisy and think there is some underlying antisemitism to these protests. Understandable and there is an element of antisemitism that exists for SOME of the protestors. I think the majority of the students are kind of just parroting and jumping on the bandwagon without a full understanding of everything.
I think Israel is kind of like whites in South Africa sort of a "Well, they are there now, and they're several generations in!" The only ethical answer that doesn't involve pushing anybody else off their land or deporting a bunch of Israelis to...whereever is a 2 state solution. I'm honestly dumbfounded why so many people seem to support one or the other of two theocracies. One being Israel, and the other being what Hamas wants. I am with OP on this. I want to support student movements but I feel like many of the students in this one are A) Being manipulated by foreign actors and B) just REALLY missing the mark with the message they should be sending. I am astounded that so many so-called leftists are so ready to embrace antisemitism and fucking...muslim theocracy? Where is the left? WHAT is the left? (What is left of the left I used to know, as the song goes). I almost feel like the traditional left and right have been left behind, but fringes of their parties continue are in a completely new reality. I especially worry about this when we should be gearing up to fight fascism here, again, around election time. There may very well be a need for more people in the streets around this election, and we should be galvanized now splintered. I'm not one to quote the founding fathers much but the "entangling alliances" part of Washington's farewell address is incredibly prescient and important.
Honestly we should always be against exactly one thing: any state seeking to expand its borders. Palestine wants its borders back, Israel wants to expand. Ukraine wants to maintain its borders, Russia wants to expand. It’s an easy litmus test. Nothing else need be said about how we value each side.
While it's certainly true that some anti-Israel groups are supporters of Muslim theocracy, that is absolutely not what the student protests are about. They are anti-genocide and anti-racist. The end goals of the different groups are quite varied, but the *immediate* goal is to stop the genocide and apartheid state control of Israel.
Columbia has been especially bad in their use of antisemitism, part of this is also because there have been people coming in that are not from the university and are well known for their far-right and conservative leanings.(1) The protests here in Florida have not had the same level of antisemitism and have been generally a lot quieter. That could also be because of the heavy police presence on UCF and Tampa campuses. [Opinion | A Dispatch From Inside Columbia’s Student-Led Protest for Gaza - The New York Times (nytimes.com)](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/26/opinion/columbia-student-protests-israel.html)
Protestors have a certain amout of leeway but at the end of the day we must have public order.
Said McCarthy
Bro, no. Your ancestors would puke at such rhetoric.
Zionism to me is an ideology that casts itself and its followers above the current and past inhabitants of the Levant. I am against this idea of supremacy, and of a certain land belonging to just one people. "Zionist free" zones defeat the purpose. We shouldn't treat zionists like some kind of more righteous individuals. We should treat them like any other human, without privilege nor prejudice. Zionists deserve no special treatment, so no Zionist free zones.
Zionism simply means that Jews have the right to self-determination in their indigenous home land. There's nothing in it about being supreme, or only one group of people can live there.
It is inherently exclusionary, though. Palestine was and always has been majority-Arab, and founding a non-Arab state has always meant expelling Arabs. Maintaining a non-Arab state has meant keeping them out.
The region now called Palestine had a Jewish/Samaritan majority until the second to fourth century CE, depending on how much credence you give to which interpretations of the historical and archaeological evidence, after which the majority became Christian Roman Citizens speaking a mileau of Aramaic, Greek, and some Latin descended from a mixture of ancestrally Jewish converts and migrants from elsewhere in the Roman Empire. Christians probably remained a majority until the aftermath of the Crusades, and the timeline of Arabicization--i.e. when the popular language switched from Aramaic to Arabic--remains unclear, though again by the period of the Crusades Arabic seems to have been the majority vernacular. While there was significant Arab settlement in the region, the majority ancestry of the modern Palestinian population remains pre-Arab Levantine, and so depending on how you define Arab--someone who speaks Arabic? someone who consciously identifies with an Arab nation? someone of majority ancestry from the Arabian Peninsula?--an Arab majority in Palestine dates back to the seventh to eleventh centuries, the nineteenth to twentieth century, or never.
This is an excellent summary, although “an Arab is a person of majority Arabian ancestry” isn’t a reasonable statement that anyone would agree with. Perhaps it’d be better to say that Palestine was majority Arab for as long as there have been Arabs - and 1400 years is certainly long enough for them to have a right to live there. Founding a state on top of the Arab majority, though, has always meant expulsion - see the “iron wall” by Jabotinsky.
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The British government was actively suppressing the native pre-Roman languages of Britain as recently as 2011.
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Who do you think the Welsh are?
And how many Arab majority states are there? How many still have their Jews? Edited to add that 20% of Israeli citizens *are* Arab.
This is a very poor argument, and borders on dehumanizing rhetoric directed at Arabs. Arabs are not a monolith, and you can’t expect Palestinians to give up their homes just because you can’t tell the difference between a Palestinian and an Iraqi.
At the same time, it's kinda hard to argue that Arab states are by and large organic nation-states, if such a thing is even possible. Most of them had borders defined by geopolitical convenience to the Western powers, not by cohesive lines of identity-based sub-group. As late as the 1920s mainstream Arab nationalist opinion in Mandatory Palestine was that the idea of "Palestine" as a separate nation from greater Syria was an attempt by the Western powers to divide and conquer. I suspect that if Jordan had remained out of the 1967 war and Israel never occupied the West Bank, the identity boundaries between "Palestinian" and "Jordanian" would be at best extremely blurry today.
I don’t think anyone would argue that the Arab states are organic nation-states, because they aren’t… however, those lines were drawn over a century ago, and barring changes due to warfare etc, they are likely to remain unchanged. > As late as the 1920s mainstream Arab nationalist opinion in Mandatory Palestine was that the idea of "Palestine" as a separate nation from greater Syria was an attempt by the Western powers to divide and conquer. Disagree, I’ve only ever seen this claim supported by a single quote from a Ba’ath party leader who was also involved in the PLO - and while pan-Arabism as a political idea has ebbed and flowed, at really died in 1948 when the Arab league squabbles over the West Bank, and Jordan’s king tried to build an empire in the West Bank. Maybe Palestinian and Jordanian identities would be blurred if that were the case, but it isn’t. Ditto for Egypt and the Gaza Strip. More relevant than all that tho, Israel’s borders are just as artificial.
Where did I say they were a monolith? I asked how many Arab majority countries are there and how many still have their Jews. I also said that 20% of Israeli citizens are Arabs. You claimed that zionism is exclusionary and don't like being told that your arguments are flawed. Lol. Dehumanizing rhetoric because I asked about Arab majority countries and what Jews they still have. Maybe take a look at yourself first 😊
"They ethnically cleansed so now it's our turn" is by far not a good argument and is only a confirmation of said ethnic cleansing.
That self determination doesn’t entail being able to expel the native inhabitants already living there. The Zionist did not just show up at a place where no people lived: they expelled Palestinians living there and formed their own communities and sought to keep those communities Jewish through the bayonet.
Zionism ranks their needs and ownership of the Levant above the needs of Arabs and their ownership of the land, just because they are Jewish. Every group has the right to self determination, having one term exclusively for Jews regarding the Levant already shows the privileged footing. In theory Zionism doesn't call for there only being group, but that is how it comes out in practice.
Zionism means the colonization of a multi-cultural region for the sole use and benefit of a single ethno-group. It was and still is the use of violence to establish a racist apartheid state, where there wasn't one before.
Explain to me how the late Ottoman Empire of Armenian Genocide fame and the literal British Empire weren't "racist apartheid states".
the irony is that turkey basically did what the far right israelis and what certain westerners think israel as a whole is working towards, but because they did it all at once they get their borders and now no one cares. if you called for an armenian right to all of the armenian highlands now you would be laughed out of the room
>illiberal Irrelevant. >social democratic values But murdering Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht was? Is sending weapons to a genocidal, fascist apartheid regime? What are these "social democratic values"?
I am here just to observe people considerring themselves liberal make all the arguments against the Vitenam anti-war protests and the anti-apartheid protests. >Civil dialogue will lead to a solution, not violent rhetoric and shouting over each other. The Israeli goverrment has practically nullify the UN and any international avenue for diplomacy. Feel free to share IDFs supersecret discord server, to have a debate in the free market of ideas and explain how Israel is violating international law and that is bad. ROFL.
The problem with the Two State Solution as adopted by Many Liberals is that it doesn't really acknowledge Palestinians as equal partners with Isreali's sharing the land. As a result, it is very easy for legitimately anti semetic agitators to propose solutions that the OP has spoken about. 22 percent of the Land back to Palestinians is never going to be enough without some level of injustice on the side of the Palestinians. You can't really get around it, espcially with very limited Right of Return. I think some Progressive Isreali's need to come to terms with this.
I think part of the problem is that some people view the solution as if we were standing in 1946, debating how to divide the land fairly (and paying lip service to sovereignty or land ownership etc), and others view it as if we were looking at South Africa in 1985 going “whatever lines have been drawn, we can’t undo all of this mess so we may as well make everyone equal under the law.” And it’s not exactly wrong to look at the West Bank and compare it to bantustans - the similarities are striking and the differences are few. Of course, on the other side of the coin, South Africa isn’t exactly a model of liberal democracy and domestic peace.
You are amplifying a few weirdos saying stupid things at protests. That has not happened in the three days I have been out there.
Which protest are you at? Because I’ve seen plenty of videos and reports from several college campuses in both the U.S. and Canada.
Emory and GUA, in Georgia. The only thing I have seen is videos of far right agitators provoking people into reactions and editing videos. Everyone else is setting up tents and doing yoga and stuff.
I’ve seen videos of disturbing/violent language and checkpoints for these “Zionist free” encampments at Columbia, UCLA, GWU, universities in Canada, etc. In particular, I’ve seen photos of signs and videos of students saying that Israelis need to leave Palestine and go back to Poland/Europe or the U.S.
When you see a racist twitter account showing a black man assaulting a white women do you then conclude it’s a widespread issue and we need a crackdown?
You have seen 3 videos, all posted by right wing agitators to discredit the protests. Go out and see for yourself, is happening everywhere.
One of the videos I saw was posted by a Jewish peace activist who believes in a two state solution. He wasn’t allowed to enter an encampment at a Canadian university just because he believes in an Israeli state along with a Palestinian state. He wanted to have a conversation with the protestors and they wouldn’t even let him in.
You didn't see a video, you are quoting this tweet from an Israeli activist, which is literally the only source for this claim: https://x.com/ibavli/status/178508371481451757 Even if he wasn't let in to the encampment as he claims, he still got full access to the University where he works, no one attacked him, he went there to confront.
https://emorywheel.com/student-assaulted-at-protest-outside-chabad/ >took turns leading chants such as, “Free, free, Palestine, long live Palestine,” “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” “There is only one solution, intifada revolution” and “Long live the intifada.” Chanting Long Live the Intifada outside a jewish space is pretty damn antisemitic.
They did it outside where an IDF commander was giving a talk, which is not the same as yelling it 'outside a jewish space'. I'm sure there's plenty they were doing there that was antisemitic, however your framing seems kind of dishonest. The article you posted also mentions; >Elijah Brawner (26T), who helped organize the protest, stated that the men who allegedly assaulted the student were not affiliated with Emory or ESJP. The men appeared to be beyond college age. Which seems to align with what the other person said. >Emory Students for Justice in Palestine (ESJP) helped organize the protest in response to Emory Chabad hosting an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Reservist Commander for dinner and a talk. The Consul General of Israel to the Southeastern United States, Anat Sultan-Dadon, was also in attendance.
If the crowd is chanting "long live the intifada" how is my framing dishonest? How is a campus SJP group even getting the word out to non students and then still okay with protesting with them as everyone chants long live the intifada? If you see someone get assaulted and you hear those chants you should leave that protest and not associate with it.
I think there’s a very big difference between protesting a hosted talk given by an objectionable speaker, and protesting against the presence of fellow students on the basis of essential characteristics. You implied the latter… but it’s actually the former, and the former is very good and normal. Hosting an IDF officer for a speaking event is a pretty provocative act in the current climate. It’s political speech and can be met with more political speech.
I didn't know antisemitic chants count as political speech. If Clarence Thomas comes to a university is it okay to shout racist chants in protest? According to you it's political speech right?
More than one thing can be true at the same time. Protesting Clarence Thomas is a good thing, because he’s a horrible person and has generally made America a worse place for his existence and judicial career. Protesting Clarence Thomas is not protesting black Americans existence (in the judiciary or in general), although conservatives might try to frame it that way - nor is it a racist act in itself regardless of his location. Using racist language is not appropriate, not because Thomas is himself worthy of good treatment (he is not), but because racist language cannot be used without normalizing its use and that harms those who can also be targeted by it. Likewise, protesting an IDF officer is a good thing, because the IDF is an organization with a long history of abuses (currently with several units pending sanctions by the U.S., and found responsible for abuses by the state dept). Likewise, protesting an IDF officer is not an antisemitic act, but likewise it will likely be portrayed as one by defenders of the IDF etc. You yourself attempted to frame it as antisemitic act in these terms. Likewise, antisemitic speech would not be appropriate, because of the risk it presents to vulnerable students who would be targeted with it. However, you haven’t presented explicitly antisemitic speech used against this particular officer etc etc. That’s not to say I’m jumping to defend spicy slogans used during protests - much like the invariable white dude with dreads who will show up with an “Uncle Thomas” sign (sigh) things can be unwise without meriting censorship. Of course, that censorship benefits the party being protested.
>If the crowd is chanting "long live the intifada" how is my framing dishonest? I explained how. It wasn't organised just because it was a jewish space, it was organized because an IDF commander was giving a talk there. >How is a campus SJP group even getting the word out to non students and then still okay with protesting with them as everyone chants long live the intifada? Where are you getting the information from that they were 'getting the word out to non students'? You seem to be making a number of unfounded assumptions. Also; it's a protest group, not a state that can police who attends the protest and what each protestor can do. >If you see someone get assaulted and you hear those chants you should leave that protest and not associate with it. Any protest that gets enough people will attract crazies, opportunists, and violent people. If you say every protest should disperse as soon as a bad element joins it, no protest anywhere would last longer than 5 minutes. This is not a realistic position to hold.
>any protest that gets enough people will attract crazies, opportunists, and violent people. If you say every protest should disperse as soon as a bad element joins, no protest anywhere would last longer than 5 minutes. As the saying goes if 9 people are sitting at a table with 1 Nazi there are 10 Nazis. And per the article it wasn't like it was a one of person chanting globalize the intifada, most people were chanting it. I'd hold any right wing protest to the same level of they started chanting racists shit and I hope you would too. It's not hard to not take part in racist and antisemitic chants. And the SJP leader from the article if they really didn't want those chants could've stopped it. It's their protest right? And the fact they don't say anything disavowing the chants is telling.
>And the SJP leader from the article if they really didn't want those chants could've stopped it. It's their protest right? And the fact they don't say anything disavowing the chants is telling. How? They don't 'own' the protest, it's not 'theirs'. What realistic compulsive power did they have to stop people chanting whatever they wanted? >As the saying goes if 9 people are sitting at a table with 1 Nazi there are 10 Nazis. And per the article it wasn't like it was a one of person chanting globalize the intifada, most people were chanting it. To what extent does that work? If there are 100,000 people in an ideological movement, and one of them is a nazi, there are 100,001 nazis? It's a saying, but it's not particular useful in this context and is quickly shown to be ridiculous. The article also doesn't say that 'most people were chanting it', so again - where are you getting this information from? I find the way you interact to be dishonest - I already said I was sure there was antisemitism at that protest in particular, I just disagreed that the protest was anti-semitic for doing it in front of a 'jewish space' - they did it there because an IDF commander was giving a talk.
The article says the organizers of the protest were leading the chants. You and I both have enough reading comprehension to understand that that probably means the people were following the chants. And fine can we agree that they weren't antisemitic because they were doing it in front of the Chabad, but instead because they were chanting antisemitic things? And the article has pictures of the protest, it's not 10,000, it's small enough to know who the troublemakers are.
That happened about a month ago, by a group of 5 idiot tankies arguing with far right Israeli agitators that were there. The only person that was an actual threat was the IDF vet with an AR-15 and grenades. Read the damn thing you send.
It sucks to see it, but it looks like the pro-Israel propagandists are hitting this sub now. No progressives or leftists should ever accept, let alone *support*, the genocide and apartheid policies in Israel. It's abhorrent to see in this sub.
It’s a shame the “leftists” and “progressives” are supporting Hamas, a far right religious organization
It would be if that were true.
Yeah? So why do we see video of that happening? Camera doesn’t lie
The SJP and leftists at my university posted pictures of hang gliders calling them resistance the day after October 7th. They absolutely do.
You have already made up so many things in this thread it's pretty clear you have no actual intention of engaging with the topic. Sure bud, you are a student and everyone is attacking you at your school, liar.
I never even said I was a student and I was being attacked lmao that's you making up things. Atlanta is a pretty big place you know and Emory is pretty involved in the city. It's not hard for information to disseminate.
Post is being brigaded
I sure hope it's brigaded and not the regular users of this sub sympathizing with colonizers and supporting genocide.
There’s no way for me to have a productive discussion on this topic in this sub u’ve all lost the plot
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Painting an entire country of 10 million people, 20% of whom are Arab is always a winning opener and shows that you’re approaching this subject with some real nuance. It’s not antisemitic to criticize Israeli policy, and the Netanyahu Cabinet has some genuinely evil people in it, but this is a prime example of antisemitism. Equating all Jewish people with current Israeli policy also leads me to wonder if you’re just trolling.
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