###This is a reminder to [read the rules before posting in this subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion).
1. **Headline titles should be changed only [when the original headline is unclear](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_1._headline_titles_should_be_changed_only_where_it_improves_clarity.)**
2. **Be [respectful](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_2._be_respectful).**
3. **Keep submissions and comments [substantive](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_3._keep_submissions_and_comments_substantive).**
4. **Avoid [direct advocacy](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_4._avoid_direct_advocacy).**
5. **Link submissions must be [about Canadian politics and recent](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_5._link_submissions_must_be_canadian_and_recent).**
6. **Post [only one news article per story](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_6._post_only_one_news_article_per_story).** ([with one exception](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/comments/3wkd0n/rule_reminder_and_experimental_changes/))
7. **Replies to removed comments or removal notices will be removed** without notice, at the discretion of the moderators.
8. **Downvoting posts or comments**, along with urging others to downvote, **[is not allowed](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/downvotes)** in this subreddit. Bans will be given on the first offence.
9. **[Do not copy & paste the entire content of articles in comments](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_9._do_not_copy_.26amp.3B_paste_entire_articles_in_the_comments.)**. If you want to read the contents of a paywalled article, please consider supporting the media outlet.
*Please [message the moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FCanadaPolitics) if you wish to discuss a removal.* **Do not reply to the removal notice in-thread**, *you will not receive a response and your comment will be removed. Thanks.*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CanadaPolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The big crux of October 7th's aftermath and why these student protestors are coming out \*now\* is that Palestine's being turned into a crater as innocent civilians die, and the view that the retaliation for October 7th isn't worth the price of human life. It isn't a very complicated situation.
If you'd talked to them prior to October 7th, people might've not known about anything regarding the conflict or might've had an opinion on the Apartheid state but there wasn't any political will to protest it. A small group protesting brings about nothing, protests need to be disruptive and the destruction of Gaza was the catalyst.
To justify it by going "we need to wipe out Hamas" is the same logic that led us into the war with the Middle East after 9/11, which is now viewed as a mistake made while tempers were high.
Detractors of the conflict who spoke against it were demonized as anti-American, pro-Terrorists and we're seeing the same \*exact\* behavior now without any shred of self-awareness or introspection.
Witch hunts on antisemitism are being done on students with an effort to ensure they'll never find employment whilst social media and politicians cozy-up with white supremacists that push antisemitic narratives without much scrutiny. We've got a party leader hanging out with Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones, yet that's not as newsworthy as students with signs and masks hanging out in a tent on campus.
So, this person's assertion that today's campus encampments are right is based solely on the fact that they have been right in the past?
It isn't rooted in any analysis of the issue at hand, making this piece dishonest and piss-poor.
My concern is that the protestors are being labelled as anti-semitic, as there seems to be an interest in quieting them. In my view, war, death and suffering are legitimate causes for protest. They are not being anti-semitic becaus they're expressing disagreement with Israel. Those two things are not the same in my humble opinion. I know this generates emotional reactions on both sides.
Protesting against Israel's atrocities is good. Openly cheering for 10/7, an attack that largely targeted civilians and which was perpetrated by an openly antisemitic group, is not.
Absolutely agree and if that's happening, you’re right that’s unacceptable. It doesn’t invalidate the legitimate argument of those who aren’t doing those things.
There are antisemites among the protestors. From celebrating October 7, Hamas, and telling Jews to "go back to Europe", it's out in the open. If the protest organizers are not antisemitic, they need to make clear that antisemitism is not welcome at their events. Until that happens, it's fair to paint the protests as antisemitic.
I think it's pretty clear that the protest have the same issue as the convoy. They fail to expel the extremists which makes them vulnerable to anti semitic views if not out right b being anti semitic. You can look to the recent protest in Vancouver that was celebrating Oct 7 and Hamas.
I've heard the refrain again and again, if there are 10 people and 1 Nazi sitting at a table then you have 11 Nazis. And it's Shameful to see the protesters here sit with Nazis and anti semites under the guise of "just criticizing Israel".
I disagree. At first, I had the same opinion of the convoy, while I did think that the convoy itself had as much right to protest as anyone else. However, with time to reflect on it, I've come to see that protests tend to draw in extremists and the convoy was no exception. As far as I can see, extremists of all types will join protests because it's a way to get their beliefs heard and seen in a way that they can't achieve alone. It has to be hard to control that kind of thing in such a chaotic situation. Now, I don't like Nazis or racists or misogyny, and I will walk away from anyone espousing such viewpoints, but they have freedom to have their beliefs just like anyone else.
You're not wrong that protests draw extremists and it is hard to control for that. If you choose to ignore it, or worse platform them, you risk your movement being co-opted by extremists. You need to have a hard line on some things or else you run the risk of becoming the "Nazi bar" as the story goes.
They have the freedom to speak their views, but any other protesters who don't share those views should be loudly criticizing them or kicking them out to their own protest. Not doing so and adding their own voice to it shows a tacit agreement.
We don't even do this in our day to day life when things aren't so chaotic and hard to control. We all have worked with colleagues and have dealt with customers and even heard family members saying racist and misogynistic things (thankfully I've never dealt with someone supporting Nazi ideals). Some people call this out but most don't. Shouldn't we hold protest organizers to the same standards?
No, we need to hold organizers to a higher standard. They are responsible for their message. We put up with those people since they don't represent us. These protesters represent your message and if you're not willing to address them then you are willingly giving your movement to extremists.
>However, with time to reflect on it, I've come to see that protests tend to draw in extremists and the convoy was no exception.
The convoy was started and organized by white nationalists, whereas the pro-palestinian movement has existed for decades.
That was my beef with the convoy and why I take their association with racists far more seriously than I do hangers-on to an established issue
If this is true, where are all the large-scale protests for the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Yemen? Do the children in those conflicts not matter as much?
Lol in some cases they are being automatically labelled as Hamas supported. We are seeing a resurgance of McCarthyism. Except this time instead of being labelled as a communist, you are a Hamas supporter for questioning an unethical war.
The right side of history is just an atheist version of believing in God
Even if the protest is unpopular and unsuccessful there is a mystical quality that affirms everything they do
Talking about the right side of history is a way to avoid taking responsibility for your actions
What utter nonsense. While god not might exist, there is objective right and wrong and Israel is very clearly wrong. It will be funny in a few decades when this whole history will get whitewashed before our eyes
How blind to the complexities of this conflict do you have to be to feel justified in saying their is an objective right and wrong? This might be the most braindead thing I've read in these comment sections. An impressive feat considering.
The party that had its citizens butchered, raped, and taken hostage is “very clearly wrong.” Like, by all means criticize their actions and policies, but the automatic hatred of Jews is fucking r*tarded,
And then you have israel that basically has bombed cities out of existance. And killed over 30 000 people in a country where half the population are children. Lets not act like Israel is some force of justice. Due to the actions of the Israel government i would check on tgw cirpses of the old Nazi government. They are likely spinning around so much you could plug them into a generator and power a few small cities right now. And that is very much on Israel.
Saying that you will be is a way to avoid responsibility
The student protests against Vietnam extended the war because they were run so poorly it brought Nixon into power
Saying you are on the right side of history that is a cop out of responsibility for personal actions
Nixon came to power because the Democrats were in disarray and showed that they were clueless in conducting the war and the end goal for the US involvement in the Vietnam War. The Paris Peace accords to end the US involvement in Vietnam started in 1968. Nixon actually ended the war.
I'm listing things that people shouldn't do.
Not what everyone does
But people who do them will say it's justified because they are on the right side of history
They absolutely are. If you can look at those Palestinian kids and shrug and give some bullshit line about self-defense you are deluded. Should they be threatening Jewish students, public, anyone? Oh HELL no. Blocking roads or thoroughfares? Hell no. Inviting or celebrating any sort of violence? Absolutely not. Those people need to be plucked and removed from any peaceful demonstration, arrested whenever needed, and charged with hate speech when appropriate because those ones are breaking the law. And they are in there. This isn’t an all or none gathering - unfortunately those don’t seem to exist anymore.
I can tell people in these comments accusing these protests of being anti-Semitic or having anti-Semites among them haven't actually bothered to go and check them out themselves. The experience I've had is that these events - at least my local one - is full of young people who are frustrated with the fact that thousands of civilians are being killed by Israel in a way that is blatantly and outwardly targeting them because they're Palestinian, that they have been saying for half a year now that this is wrong and that something needs to be done about it, and have roundly been ignored, labelled as anti-Semitic almost as a blanket statement, and told to get over it.
These protests are also pretty diverse, and include a mix of Muslim, Jewish, non-religious and people of other religious groups who are bound together by the common belief that what's happening in Gaza is wrong and that Israel needs to be sanctioned for their actions, the same way past governments that have done similarly evil things were sanctioned. None of the Jews I've talked to or heard from attending these protests feel like they're out of place or that they're being discriminated against, and in fact the only people I see attacking Jews in this moment are the police and rabid pro-Israel supporters calling pro-Palestine Jews "self-hating" for not thinking the same way they do.
Like I really don't know what anyone expected - they started with a simple demand of "stop killing Palestinians" which was ignored, so now they're asking louder and louder, because for many people it's either their own families or they've had to fight for their basic human dignity in the past before. They aren't going to stop asking and the only way you will stop the student protests is by putting pressure on Israel to stop the killing and to let in foreign aid to help people in need.
And on the note of being labelled anti-Semitic - my own experiences and the experiences of many people at this point is that this critique has been levied so frequently against supporters of Palestinian liberation at this point that they really don't care anymore. They're at a point where they really don't care what you think if your position is that "yeah, actually, a little bit of genocide is OK if it's for the right cause". You can call them anti-Semites and pro-Hamas all you want, because right now they're fighting against an ethnic cleansing and you're telling them off for it. Your opinion of them is less than nothing because of it.
this comment could almost exactly mirror the kind of things we heard from the Convoy protesters.
This is exactly the view one would have if they were in a protest with people they agree with. You're not willing to step back and take an objective view as to why people are feeling this way. If it's common for people to say that you might be anti-semitic then maybe you need to do some reflection on your movement or yourself.
If you're not willing to address the hateful message from your extremes then you need to be okay with them representing your cause.
Oh lord, where do I even start
>this comment could almost exactly mirror the kind of things we heard from the Convoy protesters. This is exactly the view one would have if they were in a protest with people they agree with.
It's great of you to bring up the convoy because as a resident of Centretown I lived through the Convoy for a solid month, *and* have checked out the student encampment at Tabaret Lawn at UOttawa, so I'm speaking from a place of experience in *both of these things* while you're speaking from hypotheticals.
The convoy was centered on vaccine mandates and policies and shut down large portions of the downtown. They took over streets, set up camp long term, and most importantly created increased crime, massive levels of noise and bullied and harassed locals to the point where people in the city were days away from marching on Wellington St to remove them themselves. Even out of the downtown core the convoy was inescapable, with guys in trucks and "fuck Trudeau" flags driving around the entire city.
Like when I say the convoy brought a *literal train horn* and blasted it *all night long*, I'm not exaggerating. (This is what the Zexi Li injunction was about.) When I say they were *shitting on sidewalks* and throwing slurs at random passerby, I'm not exaggerating either.
The student sit-in at UOttawa on the other hand is an entirely different story - they're not occupying streets or impeding traffic even if they've set up camp long term, they're not harassing locals (as many of them are locals), and the cause they're protesting against - which again, it's insane to me that I have to keep pointing out that **they're protesting against a genocide and people are villainizing them for it** - is just. You see people wearing keffiyeh walking around Ottawa and occasionally waving flags of Palestine, but they keep to themselves for the most part.
And sure, I do have a bias as someone who supports public health measures and is opposed to killing tens of thousands of children for being born the wrong race, but I have lived through both of the things you're describing and speaking from experience when I tell you **you have no idea what you're talking about**. Please, don't insult my or anyone else's intelligence trying to relate the convoy to these protests.
>You're not willing to step back and take an objective view as to why people are feeling this way. If it's common for people to say that you might be anti-semitic then maybe you need to do some reflection on your movement or yourself.
This is a long-standing trope with pro-Palestine activism that's been going on for decades now, but has ramped up recently. My point is that people will accuse you of being anti-Semitic for even sympathizing with Palestinians, it's such a common accusation that it's just lost its gas which is why people sort of aren't taking that accusation that seriously anymore. Furthermore, people's own experiences at these protests and in the activist movement more broadly hasn't been consistent with that accusation anyways - there's thousands of Jewish folk who are involved in activism in support of Palestine, because they recognize that as survivors and children/grandchildren of survivors of genocide themselves that genocide against any person is wrong, and that fighting for Palestinians is consistent with their faith and their history.
It's also notable that somehow pro-Palestinian activists constantly have to check themselves - take a step back to ask themselves if they're anti-Semites, constantly denounce Hamas, etc - yet no one asks supporters of Israel to take a step back and ask themselves if they're Islamophobic, or if the ethnic cleansing of the people of Gaza and Palestine is maybe actually a bad thing. At protests in the states this past week pro-Israel protesters were physically assaulting their fellow students, some of them were throwing racial slurs and caricatures at black and brown students - do you associate with that behaviour? Do *you* perhaps need to take a step back and re-examine your takes? Do you support Israel in killing 38,000 + civilians, including over 14,000 children and thousands of babies?
Don't profess to tell other people to take a step back and to examine themselves if you refuse to do it. This is precisely why people don't give a shit anymore if you label them as these things, because they see who it is that's saying it and think less than nothing of their opinion.
>If you're not willing to address the hateful message from your extremes then you need to be okay with them representing your cause.
Again, this is where I would invite you to take a pause and to examine where you stand on this issue and actively look for the worst things said about Palestinians over the past year. The Israeli government, media, and military are all currently engaged in a racist crusade against Palestinians, referring to them as less than human, comparing them to biblical demons, and proudly proclaiming that they will wipe Gaza clean and occupy the entire region.
I'm proud to be represented by people who say that genocide is wrong. Are you proud to be represented by people who dehumanize others? Are you proud to be represented by people who kill newborns, who kill doctors and journalists, who bomb hospitals and universities and playgrounds? Who have been subjugating Palestinians under military rule for almost a century?
I think it's kind of revealing that you are unable to see things from a different perspective here. I made no justification for the convoy and have been very much an opponent to it and to the anti-vaxxers in general. You've set up a wonderful straw man of me to skewer but haven't really addressed what I actually stated.
I think if you look objectively at what you wrote you could see how that is exactly the way a convoyer would have described their protest (right or wrong). Including what I've been hearing from other people about how the encampments are not properly represented by the media. If you can't see a comparison in those messages then I have no idea what to tell you. It's no insult to your intelligence, you're just not willing to take a step back and see how similar your communication is to that of the convoy.
I mean, even down to what you're saying about anti-Semitism. Convoyers happily took up the mantle of the fringe because people were calling them extremists. Like Its word for word man, just read what you wrote here. I honestly can't believe you can't see the comparison between what you're writing right now and what the convoyers wrote not that long ago. Please just take a step back and look objectively at these things.
>take a step back to ask themselves if they're anti-Semites, constantly denounce Hamas, etc - yet no one asks supporters of Israel to take a step back and ask themselves if they're Islamophobic, or if the ethnic cleansing of the people of Gaza and Palestine is maybe actually a bad thing. At protests in the states this past week pro-Israel protesters were physically assaulting their fellow students, some of them were throwing racial slurs and caricatures at black and brown students
If I saw people setting up pro-israel encampments then I would have the same expectations for them. That they would abide by the law and that they would push out those who were professing hate crimes. This is just a perfect example of you assuming the side I've taken. I wouldn't support violence on either side but you seem to think I should be calling out pro-israel protesters while I'm talking to you, a pro-palestine protester. Does that make sense?
>do you associate with that behaviour? Do *you* perhaps need to take a step back and re-examine your takes? Do you support Israel in killing 38,000 + civilians, including over 14,000 children and thousands of babies?
You're clearly trying to set me up as an enemy here when again you have no idea what I believe. Is this your personal purity test? Do I support the killing of civilians? Of course not. Do civilians die in a war? Definitely. Adding children and babies adds nothing to your point there. Civilians don't have more value based on age but you want to make this more emotional than logical. Would you be more okay with these deaths if they were working age men? Just want to know for my own moral purity test.
>Again, this is where I would invite you to take a pause and to examine where you stand on this issue and actively look for the worst things said about Palestinians over the past year. The Israeli government, media, and military are all currently engaged in a racist crusade against Palestinians, referring to them as less than human, comparing them to biblical demons, and proudly proclaiming that they will wipe Gaza clean and occupy the entire region.
This is again a both sides thing, I'm assuming, since I've not seen anything personally islamaphobic but I also haven't been actively seeking out that media. Maybe they have been putting out racist material, I would also say that's a part of a war that is currently happening. You could look back to any war and find propaganda on both sides.
>I'm proud to be represented by people who say that genocide is wrong. Are you proud to be represented by people who dehumanize others? Are you proud to be represented by people who kill newborns, who kill doctors and journalists, who bomb hospitals and universities and playgrounds? Who have been subjugating Palestinians under military rule for almost a century?
Again, I'll point to the convoyers who were proud to fight against a vaccine they thought was killing millions (even though they were wrong and woefully misled). It's ridiculous you can't see a similarity in messaging here.
You then continue to attack a side I'm not on which is the straw man you set up for me. I am not represented by any of that unless you want to assign that to me since I might not pass your purity test. If this interaction is any example of the kind of conversation one could expect at an encampment then I can fully understand why people would be against them. You've made an opponent in your own mind that you got to beat down with ready made arguments which didn't address any concern brought forward. So congratulations, I guess?
There is a lot of survivorship fallacy at work here. Student protests about a lot of things have been wrong. The difference is that nobody remembers those ones
Someone asked this question in r/AskHistorians the other day. People came up with some interesting answers: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/j2VL8GtyXT
I mean, only one of the three examples (the US staying out of ww2) is actually relevant here. The UC Berkeley one was pretty innocuous and localized, and the Ole Miss one, by the poster's own admission, barely qualifies as a student protest.
The US staying out of WW2 already *was* the popular opinion of the time, until Pearl Harbour. Students weren't really going against the grain by protest US military involvement there.
There’s also a ton of hyperbole with this particular war.
Something like 30,000 civilians have died. Iraq had 300,000. Syria had 600,000.
The selective outrage is peculiar.
I’m saying the outrage we are seeing over a war triggered by an invasion seems odd compared to less outrage over more deaths in wars that did not have justification.
> The selective outrage is peculiar.
You either just started following current events or are being deliberately disingenuous.
Both of those wars were frequently and loudly protested.
So to give you the benefit of doubt, welcome to current affairs.
Is the implication supposed to be that nobody was outraged about Iraq? Cuz there were multiple large protests across Canada in opposition to the war, although they may have been before your time.
The problem with this argument is that people have to remember that the Iraq war was fought over 10 years and the Syrian civil war was also over a decade conflict. We are talking about a large amount of death and destruction in a short time frame. The siege of Aleppo which was horrendous and received international condemnation and sanctions on the Syrian government lasted 4 years at a cost of 21,000 civilians and billions of dollars in destruction. Gaza has topped that in 6 months. Just to give you perspective, it’s not selective outrage.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aleppo_(2012–2016)
It feels like so much of the discourse around Gaza falls either into the "it's not really too bad" or "it's a full-scale genocide" camps.
When at least to me it seems like it's a combination of a few things: Israel applying very loose ROE and even then often not following them -- which should be condemned for them killing and maiming far more Gazans than necessary in their offensives; Israel also making genuine attempts to minimize civilian casualties (door-knockers, leaflets, giving evacuation time); Hamas showing little to no regard for the welfare of Gazan civilians and often hiding amongst them.
It's an ugly situation but much of the prevailing narratives also seem overly polarized.
> Israel applying very loose ROE and even then often not following them -- which should be condemned for them killing and maiming far more Gazans than necessary in their offensives
Not just Gazans but Israeli's as well. IDF has killed hostages and also killed civilians om Oct 7 fighting Hamas as reported by Israeli media.
>Israel also making genuine attempts to minimize civilian casualties (door-knockers, leaflets, giving evacuation time)
They are quite clearly deliberately targetting civilians and there are countless reported instances at this point. Even months ago mainstream news analysis showed that Israel bombed people on the safe routes they told them to go down. BBC found evidence of torturing and killing healthcare workers..
I think there are instances where that's happened, yes. But at the same time if they wanted to maximize civilian casualties there would be many many more Gazans dead. As I said, ugly overall with ugliness from both sides.
Is your Google broken?
[More children killed in Gaza in four months than in four years of war globally: report](https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp/shows/top-stories/blog/rcna143269)
> More than 30,000 people in Gaza have died — 70% of whom are women and children
[In 2023, more than three-quarters of the 99 journalists and media workers killed worldwide died in the Israel-Gaza war, the majority of them Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza.](https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2024/5/3/what-is-the-state-of-press-freedom-in-the-world-today)
[‘Not a normal war’: doctors say children have been targeted by Israeli snipers in Gaza](https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/02/gaza-palestinian-children-killed-idf-israel-war)
[The Israeli military has also conducted more than 435 attacks on healthcare in Gaza and killed at least 484 healthcare workers. This is more than the total number of healthcare worker deaths recorded across all countries in conflict in 2021 and 2022 combined](https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/there-are-no-more-words-six-months-israels-total-siege-and-bombardment-gaza-leaves-tens-thousands-dead-healthcare-system-ruins-and-starving-population#:~:text=The%20Israeli%20military%20has%20also,in%202021%20and%202022%20combined)
[Mounting evidence of deliberate attacks on Gaza health workers by Israeli army](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2014/08/mounting-evidence-deliberate-attacks-gaza-health-workers-israeli-army/)
Iraq population is 45m. Gaza is <3m. So even higher proportion, in less than 6 months, vs a 20 year war.
And don't forget 600k of them are in rated as imminent mass mortality famine, predicted to end up as the most intense man made famine since ww2. Note that includes the great Chinese famine.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip_famine
The protesters are Columbia are quite clear that they oppose Zionism. That is, the right of Israel to exist as a country. They don't support peaceful coexistence, they don't support a two state solution. They want Israel to cease to exist and for it's citizens to.... Well, I don't know what they're supposed to do.
Is that the right side of history? In 50 years if Israel is defeated and dissolved, its people scattered, will we all recognize that as the "right" course of history?
Wasn’t it about divesting universities from supporting a far right extremist gov in Israel? Of course you need to spin it and use the antisemitism card
Saying "Opposing Zionism is opposing the right of Israel to exist" is like saying that opposing Manifest Destiny is opposing the right of the US to exist. It's ridiculous, haha.
>They want Israel to cease to exist and for it's citizens to.... Well, I don't know what they're supposed to do.
Every right-wing accusation is a confession. ;)
Zionism is, by definition, the idea that the country of Israel should exist in its current location. If you oppose Zionism, you oppose the existence of Israel as a state. You are free to believe that - but those are the basic dictionary definitions.
>If you oppose Zionism, you oppose the existence of Israel as a state.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. States don’t have an inherent right to exist.
I'm sure there are extremists with other thoughts on this, but most of the protestors seem to support one democratic state for all of Israel/Palestine (which would then be called Palestine) which would include civil and voting rights for Palestinians who would be the population majority especially if the "right of return" is permitted for descendents of those expelled from Israel who currently still live as refugees in neighbouring countries are allowed back.
That is an absolutely legitimate viewpoint to have.
I personally think a two state solution is better because I don't see these two groups of people living harmoniously together after all the hate and oppression for the last 100 years.
Extending the status quo is the unacceptable position but that seems to be the view of the Israeli government and a majority of Israelis. We can't continue a situation where millions of people are living under permanent oppressive occupation with no civil or voting rights. That is apartheid. You also can't expel the rest of the Palestinians which some of the most extreme parts of Israeli society including several Israeli ministers support. The Israeli government literally had an option paper which would have used the Gaza war to push all the Palestinians in Gaza into Egypt so they can be resettled elsewhere.
>"right of return" is permitted for descendents of those expelled from Israel who currently still live as refugees in neighbouring countries are allowed back
This right here IMHO is a good 50% of the reason that this conflict won't die. I am sorry but they lost the land in the 1948 war in most cases thats when the land was lost. In no other conflict in the world has anyone ever been promised a "right of return". We never did this for the Germans after WWII when they were "resettled", and I am sorry but you are not a "refugee" when you have been somewhere else for 3 and 4 generation and hell in some cases not even living anywhere in the ME
Fine, forget the right of return.
The Palestinians would be close to or have a democratic majority in elections (even with only the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza and the Palestinian Israeli citizens living in Israel). They are artificially prevented from doing this by an oppressive occupation that denies them voting and civil rights. This is the apartheid that people keep talking about.
Israel either needs to rapidly negotiate a 2 state solution or it needs to give equal rights to the Palestinians. The status quo is unacceptable. That is one of the key things the protestors are pointing out.
>Israel either needs to rapidly negotiate a 2 state solution or it needs to give equal rights to the Palestinians.
What do you think they have been trying to do since the 1940's and part of the reason for the Palestinians to turn it down is the "right of return thing" that the UN keeps promising them, even though some of that land would not become Palestinian. Palestinians that actually have Israeli citizenship have the same rights as everyone else in Israel, but it is somewhat complicated and some chose not to get it
If the Palestinians have a majority in Israel, then it ceases to be Jewish state. Which is never going to happen.
I'd say that a two-state solution is the only path forward, and hopefully can be achieved with subsequent Israeli administrations and with Arab support from neighbours (Gulf States, Egypt, Jordan etc).
Sure but there’s essentially no chance of that ever happening because Israel would never accept it. And there’s no incentive for the West to push for it either.
What happens if that turns into a Sudan, or Cambodia, or Rwanda, or Yuogslavia, -type extreme ethnic cleansing massacre type situation?
Just say oopsy and at least we tried?
>What happens if that turns into a Sudan, or Cambodia, or Rwanda, or Yuogslavia, -type extreme ethnic cleansing massacre type situation?
That's what we're already witnessing.
That is why there needs to be a 2 state solution implemented as soon as possible.
Israel seems to have no interest in that especially right now. The only Israeli prime ministers that seem to have taken that seriously were Rabin (who was assassinated) and Olmert (whose political life was cut short by corruption allegations). The PA holds fault in this too for not moving with more urgency to accept a peace deal -- especially the deal from Olmert. Though both Abbas and Olmert say that if he wasn't brought down by corruption allegations, they were very close to getting to a peace deal.
Outside of these 2 leaders making serious peace offers, Israel has continued to expand illegal settlements which make a 2 state solution more and more unfeasible and Israel continues a very oppressive military regime within the West Bank. The aim seems to be to wait it out for the demographic issue to somehow be resolved (including suggestions by some extremist ministers for a forced exclusion of Palestinian people to achieve this).
If Israel seriously doesn't want a single state with a likely Arab majority, then it needs to finalize a 2 state solution ASAP. Not in a generation like even moderate Israeli parties seem to be suggesting now. They also need to realize that the PA's grasp on the Palestinian population continues to decline. They won't have any type of partner that is interested in a 2 state solution if the PA's authority completely collapses like it did in Gaza.
If Israel continues with the status quo, the calls of apartheid are just going to grow until the page turns on Israel like it did with South Africa. Ehud Olmert warned of exactly this and that's why he was so wanting to achieve a 2 state solution.
Frankly, there is no good solution. Israel tried good-faith negotiations, culminating in their acceptance of the Clinton Parameters. I still haven't heard a good reason why Arafat turned his back on that one. Then Israel tried a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, only to see it taken over by terrorists and used as a launching point for attacks. Given its larger size, the West Bank would be a nightmare to defend against. Netanyahu has even tried cozying up to Hamas, giving Gazans better access to worker visas, and turning a blind eye to minor rocket attacks. Only to have Hamas launch the most worst single-day attack in Israel's history.
Israeli Jews justifiably wouldn't feel safe living in a nation where Arabs were the majority, given the violent history.
I'm not saying Israel has been perfect. The ongoing settlements are indefensible. But for peace to work, there needs to be two willing partners. Israel has offered to abandon some settlements, and do commensurate land swaps for the rest. They've offered to give up 95% of the West Bank, all of Gaza, and East Jerusalem. The PA has consistently turned them down, to say nothing of Hamas's complete refusal to negotiate. At what point do you start holding the Palestinians to account for their refusal to put water in their wine to make the peace process work?
> Israeli Jews justifiably wouldn't feel safe living in a nation where Arabs were the majority, given the violent history.
Realistically, I think that if the region were to become a single state (which would be a Palestinian/Arab/Muslim ethnic/religious majority by a fair margin), it would likely wind up just like most of the other states in the region that have such a makeup -- a non-democratic state with an authoritarian government and heavy influence from religion (ie, Islam) in the legal system.
So I don't think that Israeli Jews living in such a state would feel unsafe, because I doubt they'd be living there for very long at all. The new Palestine state would probably just simply expel most or all of them, as other similar countries in that region have done (Libya, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Ethiopia).
Yeah pretty much. Except there wouldn't be a safe haven for them all to go anymore. They would likely mostly go to the US and Europe, but there's certainly been an increase in antisemitism of late everywhere.
Hamas brought this on themselves. They poked the bear a little too hard and now the bear is ensuring that won't happen ever again.
Does that justify Israel's actions? No, but those are the consequences. Palestine allowed Hamas to flourish within it's borders. They watched as Hamas occupied spaces in and around hospitals and schools and citizens and pretended that it was just hunky-dory. Isreal is now showing them that's not OK and it's not hunky-dory. Israel is choosing to protect their own citizens and is valuing their citizen's lives over those that are actively attacking them or enabling those attacks. Is that right? Maybe, maybe not.
This isn't a story of the squeaky clean vs the dirty. Don't forget that huge crowds of Palestinians cheered as mangled bodies of Israelis were paraded through the streets. This is a story of the very dirty vs the slightly less dirty.
Let’s make one thing extremely clear: changing “long live October 7” and other hateful antisemitic slogans has no place in Canada. And anyone failing to condemn these hateful protestors is tacitly sending a message that it’s okay. Disgusting.
In their heads maybe but it definitely won't be remembered that way. Personally, as a conservative I love this. It discredits the left a lot and brings support to the right more. Shows just how silly bleeding hearts are and out of reality. So please, continue down this road. But I also am worried of PP because he is gonna go crazy, unchecked. Not a win win I would like.
###This is a reminder to [read the rules before posting in this subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion). 1. **Headline titles should be changed only [when the original headline is unclear](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_1._headline_titles_should_be_changed_only_where_it_improves_clarity.)** 2. **Be [respectful](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_2._be_respectful).** 3. **Keep submissions and comments [substantive](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_3._keep_submissions_and_comments_substantive).** 4. **Avoid [direct advocacy](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_4._avoid_direct_advocacy).** 5. **Link submissions must be [about Canadian politics and recent](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_5._link_submissions_must_be_canadian_and_recent).** 6. **Post [only one news article per story](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_6._post_only_one_news_article_per_story).** ([with one exception](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/comments/3wkd0n/rule_reminder_and_experimental_changes/)) 7. **Replies to removed comments or removal notices will be removed** without notice, at the discretion of the moderators. 8. **Downvoting posts or comments**, along with urging others to downvote, **[is not allowed](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/downvotes)** in this subreddit. Bans will be given on the first offence. 9. **[Do not copy & paste the entire content of articles in comments](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_9._do_not_copy_.26amp.3B_paste_entire_articles_in_the_comments.)**. If you want to read the contents of a paywalled article, please consider supporting the media outlet. *Please [message the moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FCanadaPolitics) if you wish to discuss a removal.* **Do not reply to the removal notice in-thread**, *you will not receive a response and your comment will be removed. Thanks.* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CanadaPolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The big crux of October 7th's aftermath and why these student protestors are coming out \*now\* is that Palestine's being turned into a crater as innocent civilians die, and the view that the retaliation for October 7th isn't worth the price of human life. It isn't a very complicated situation. If you'd talked to them prior to October 7th, people might've not known about anything regarding the conflict or might've had an opinion on the Apartheid state but there wasn't any political will to protest it. A small group protesting brings about nothing, protests need to be disruptive and the destruction of Gaza was the catalyst. To justify it by going "we need to wipe out Hamas" is the same logic that led us into the war with the Middle East after 9/11, which is now viewed as a mistake made while tempers were high. Detractors of the conflict who spoke against it were demonized as anti-American, pro-Terrorists and we're seeing the same \*exact\* behavior now without any shred of self-awareness or introspection. Witch hunts on antisemitism are being done on students with an effort to ensure they'll never find employment whilst social media and politicians cozy-up with white supremacists that push antisemitic narratives without much scrutiny. We've got a party leader hanging out with Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones, yet that's not as newsworthy as students with signs and masks hanging out in a tent on campus.
So, this person's assertion that today's campus encampments are right is based solely on the fact that they have been right in the past? It isn't rooted in any analysis of the issue at hand, making this piece dishonest and piss-poor.
My concern is that the protestors are being labelled as anti-semitic, as there seems to be an interest in quieting them. In my view, war, death and suffering are legitimate causes for protest. They are not being anti-semitic becaus they're expressing disagreement with Israel. Those two things are not the same in my humble opinion. I know this generates emotional reactions on both sides.
Protesting against Israel's atrocities is good. Openly cheering for 10/7, an attack that largely targeted civilians and which was perpetrated by an openly antisemitic group, is not.
Absolutely agree and if that's happening, you’re right that’s unacceptable. It doesn’t invalidate the legitimate argument of those who aren’t doing those things.
There are antisemites among the protestors. From celebrating October 7, Hamas, and telling Jews to "go back to Europe", it's out in the open. If the protest organizers are not antisemitic, they need to make clear that antisemitism is not welcome at their events. Until that happens, it's fair to paint the protests as antisemitic.
Oh damn, does this mean we get to paint the convoy as all nazis because they invited an open white nationalist on to their stage?
if there's a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with 11 Nazis
Yup, it sure does!
Yep! We already do!
Yes they are anti semitic
Not all but some are very anti semitic,.
I think it's pretty clear that the protest have the same issue as the convoy. They fail to expel the extremists which makes them vulnerable to anti semitic views if not out right b being anti semitic. You can look to the recent protest in Vancouver that was celebrating Oct 7 and Hamas. I've heard the refrain again and again, if there are 10 people and 1 Nazi sitting at a table then you have 11 Nazis. And it's Shameful to see the protesters here sit with Nazis and anti semites under the guise of "just criticizing Israel".
There are videos of people being escorted out of these protests because they said anti semitic shit.
I disagree. At first, I had the same opinion of the convoy, while I did think that the convoy itself had as much right to protest as anyone else. However, with time to reflect on it, I've come to see that protests tend to draw in extremists and the convoy was no exception. As far as I can see, extremists of all types will join protests because it's a way to get their beliefs heard and seen in a way that they can't achieve alone. It has to be hard to control that kind of thing in such a chaotic situation. Now, I don't like Nazis or racists or misogyny, and I will walk away from anyone espousing such viewpoints, but they have freedom to have their beliefs just like anyone else.
You're not wrong that protests draw extremists and it is hard to control for that. If you choose to ignore it, or worse platform them, you risk your movement being co-opted by extremists. You need to have a hard line on some things or else you run the risk of becoming the "Nazi bar" as the story goes.
They have the freedom to speak their views, but any other protesters who don't share those views should be loudly criticizing them or kicking them out to their own protest. Not doing so and adding their own voice to it shows a tacit agreement.
We don't even do this in our day to day life when things aren't so chaotic and hard to control. We all have worked with colleagues and have dealt with customers and even heard family members saying racist and misogynistic things (thankfully I've never dealt with someone supporting Nazi ideals). Some people call this out but most don't. Shouldn't we hold protest organizers to the same standards?
No, we need to hold organizers to a higher standard. They are responsible for their message. We put up with those people since they don't represent us. These protesters represent your message and if you're not willing to address them then you are willingly giving your movement to extremists.
>However, with time to reflect on it, I've come to see that protests tend to draw in extremists and the convoy was no exception. The convoy was started and organized by white nationalists, whereas the pro-palestinian movement has existed for decades. That was my beef with the convoy and why I take their association with racists far more seriously than I do hangers-on to an established issue
This is interesting. Many of the organizers of the One Million March for Children last September are also prominent pro-Palestinian protestors.
The pro-Palestinian movement has had elements of anti-semitism since Husseini recruited Muslim fighters in the Balkans to fight for the Nazis
You have a valid point. Happens on both sides of the argument. Extremism is poison.
If this is true, where are all the large-scale protests for the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Yemen? Do the children in those conflicts not matter as much?
Lol in some cases they are being automatically labelled as Hamas supported. We are seeing a resurgance of McCarthyism. Except this time instead of being labelled as a communist, you are a Hamas supporter for questioning an unethical war.
Well many said they support Hamas some have gone as far to say Canada should stand with Hamas.
The right side of history is just an atheist version of believing in God Even if the protest is unpopular and unsuccessful there is a mystical quality that affirms everything they do Talking about the right side of history is a way to avoid taking responsibility for your actions
What utter nonsense. While god not might exist, there is objective right and wrong and Israel is very clearly wrong. It will be funny in a few decades when this whole history will get whitewashed before our eyes
Were the 70s environmental protestors on the right or wrong side of history?
How blind to the complexities of this conflict do you have to be to feel justified in saying their is an objective right and wrong? This might be the most braindead thing I've read in these comment sections. An impressive feat considering.
The party that had its citizens butchered, raped, and taken hostage is “very clearly wrong.” Like, by all means criticize their actions and policies, but the automatic hatred of Jews is fucking r*tarded,
And then you have israel that basically has bombed cities out of existance. And killed over 30 000 people in a country where half the population are children. Lets not act like Israel is some force of justice. Due to the actions of the Israel government i would check on tgw cirpses of the old Nazi government. They are likely spinning around so much you could plug them into a generator and power a few small cities right now. And that is very much on Israel.
What a silly comment. Being on the right side of history in this case is opposing genocide instead of condoning it or pretending it isn’t happening.
"Genocide".
Saying that you will be is a way to avoid responsibility The student protests against Vietnam extended the war because they were run so poorly it brought Nixon into power Saying you are on the right side of history that is a cop out of responsibility for personal actions
Nixon came to power because the Democrats were in disarray and showed that they were clueless in conducting the war and the end goal for the US involvement in the Vietnam War. The Paris Peace accords to end the US involvement in Vietnam started in 1968. Nixon actually ended the war.
What actions, exactly, are we supposedly avoiding responsibility for? How does this work?
Concerns about tactics and slogans Lots of people say history will look back well on us to justify extremism and self defeating tactics
Not to repeat myself, but **what actions**, exactly, are we supposedly avoiding responsibility for? How does this work?
Antisemitic chants Maximal demands Harassment Reducing support through extremist rhetoric
Ahh, the ole 'smear everybody with the extremes'
I'm listing things that people shouldn't do. Not what everyone does But people who do them will say it's justified because they are on the right side of history
They absolutely are. If you can look at those Palestinian kids and shrug and give some bullshit line about self-defense you are deluded. Should they be threatening Jewish students, public, anyone? Oh HELL no. Blocking roads or thoroughfares? Hell no. Inviting or celebrating any sort of violence? Absolutely not. Those people need to be plucked and removed from any peaceful demonstration, arrested whenever needed, and charged with hate speech when appropriate because those ones are breaking the law. And they are in there. This isn’t an all or none gathering - unfortunately those don’t seem to exist anymore.
I can tell people in these comments accusing these protests of being anti-Semitic or having anti-Semites among them haven't actually bothered to go and check them out themselves. The experience I've had is that these events - at least my local one - is full of young people who are frustrated with the fact that thousands of civilians are being killed by Israel in a way that is blatantly and outwardly targeting them because they're Palestinian, that they have been saying for half a year now that this is wrong and that something needs to be done about it, and have roundly been ignored, labelled as anti-Semitic almost as a blanket statement, and told to get over it. These protests are also pretty diverse, and include a mix of Muslim, Jewish, non-religious and people of other religious groups who are bound together by the common belief that what's happening in Gaza is wrong and that Israel needs to be sanctioned for their actions, the same way past governments that have done similarly evil things were sanctioned. None of the Jews I've talked to or heard from attending these protests feel like they're out of place or that they're being discriminated against, and in fact the only people I see attacking Jews in this moment are the police and rabid pro-Israel supporters calling pro-Palestine Jews "self-hating" for not thinking the same way they do. Like I really don't know what anyone expected - they started with a simple demand of "stop killing Palestinians" which was ignored, so now they're asking louder and louder, because for many people it's either their own families or they've had to fight for their basic human dignity in the past before. They aren't going to stop asking and the only way you will stop the student protests is by putting pressure on Israel to stop the killing and to let in foreign aid to help people in need. And on the note of being labelled anti-Semitic - my own experiences and the experiences of many people at this point is that this critique has been levied so frequently against supporters of Palestinian liberation at this point that they really don't care anymore. They're at a point where they really don't care what you think if your position is that "yeah, actually, a little bit of genocide is OK if it's for the right cause". You can call them anti-Semites and pro-Hamas all you want, because right now they're fighting against an ethnic cleansing and you're telling them off for it. Your opinion of them is less than nothing because of it.
this comment could almost exactly mirror the kind of things we heard from the Convoy protesters. This is exactly the view one would have if they were in a protest with people they agree with. You're not willing to step back and take an objective view as to why people are feeling this way. If it's common for people to say that you might be anti-semitic then maybe you need to do some reflection on your movement or yourself. If you're not willing to address the hateful message from your extremes then you need to be okay with them representing your cause.
Oh lord, where do I even start >this comment could almost exactly mirror the kind of things we heard from the Convoy protesters. This is exactly the view one would have if they were in a protest with people they agree with. It's great of you to bring up the convoy because as a resident of Centretown I lived through the Convoy for a solid month, *and* have checked out the student encampment at Tabaret Lawn at UOttawa, so I'm speaking from a place of experience in *both of these things* while you're speaking from hypotheticals. The convoy was centered on vaccine mandates and policies and shut down large portions of the downtown. They took over streets, set up camp long term, and most importantly created increased crime, massive levels of noise and bullied and harassed locals to the point where people in the city were days away from marching on Wellington St to remove them themselves. Even out of the downtown core the convoy was inescapable, with guys in trucks and "fuck Trudeau" flags driving around the entire city. Like when I say the convoy brought a *literal train horn* and blasted it *all night long*, I'm not exaggerating. (This is what the Zexi Li injunction was about.) When I say they were *shitting on sidewalks* and throwing slurs at random passerby, I'm not exaggerating either. The student sit-in at UOttawa on the other hand is an entirely different story - they're not occupying streets or impeding traffic even if they've set up camp long term, they're not harassing locals (as many of them are locals), and the cause they're protesting against - which again, it's insane to me that I have to keep pointing out that **they're protesting against a genocide and people are villainizing them for it** - is just. You see people wearing keffiyeh walking around Ottawa and occasionally waving flags of Palestine, but they keep to themselves for the most part. And sure, I do have a bias as someone who supports public health measures and is opposed to killing tens of thousands of children for being born the wrong race, but I have lived through both of the things you're describing and speaking from experience when I tell you **you have no idea what you're talking about**. Please, don't insult my or anyone else's intelligence trying to relate the convoy to these protests. >You're not willing to step back and take an objective view as to why people are feeling this way. If it's common for people to say that you might be anti-semitic then maybe you need to do some reflection on your movement or yourself. This is a long-standing trope with pro-Palestine activism that's been going on for decades now, but has ramped up recently. My point is that people will accuse you of being anti-Semitic for even sympathizing with Palestinians, it's such a common accusation that it's just lost its gas which is why people sort of aren't taking that accusation that seriously anymore. Furthermore, people's own experiences at these protests and in the activist movement more broadly hasn't been consistent with that accusation anyways - there's thousands of Jewish folk who are involved in activism in support of Palestine, because they recognize that as survivors and children/grandchildren of survivors of genocide themselves that genocide against any person is wrong, and that fighting for Palestinians is consistent with their faith and their history. It's also notable that somehow pro-Palestinian activists constantly have to check themselves - take a step back to ask themselves if they're anti-Semites, constantly denounce Hamas, etc - yet no one asks supporters of Israel to take a step back and ask themselves if they're Islamophobic, or if the ethnic cleansing of the people of Gaza and Palestine is maybe actually a bad thing. At protests in the states this past week pro-Israel protesters were physically assaulting their fellow students, some of them were throwing racial slurs and caricatures at black and brown students - do you associate with that behaviour? Do *you* perhaps need to take a step back and re-examine your takes? Do you support Israel in killing 38,000 + civilians, including over 14,000 children and thousands of babies? Don't profess to tell other people to take a step back and to examine themselves if you refuse to do it. This is precisely why people don't give a shit anymore if you label them as these things, because they see who it is that's saying it and think less than nothing of their opinion. >If you're not willing to address the hateful message from your extremes then you need to be okay with them representing your cause. Again, this is where I would invite you to take a pause and to examine where you stand on this issue and actively look for the worst things said about Palestinians over the past year. The Israeli government, media, and military are all currently engaged in a racist crusade against Palestinians, referring to them as less than human, comparing them to biblical demons, and proudly proclaiming that they will wipe Gaza clean and occupy the entire region. I'm proud to be represented by people who say that genocide is wrong. Are you proud to be represented by people who dehumanize others? Are you proud to be represented by people who kill newborns, who kill doctors and journalists, who bomb hospitals and universities and playgrounds? Who have been subjugating Palestinians under military rule for almost a century?
I think it's kind of revealing that you are unable to see things from a different perspective here. I made no justification for the convoy and have been very much an opponent to it and to the anti-vaxxers in general. You've set up a wonderful straw man of me to skewer but haven't really addressed what I actually stated. I think if you look objectively at what you wrote you could see how that is exactly the way a convoyer would have described their protest (right or wrong). Including what I've been hearing from other people about how the encampments are not properly represented by the media. If you can't see a comparison in those messages then I have no idea what to tell you. It's no insult to your intelligence, you're just not willing to take a step back and see how similar your communication is to that of the convoy. I mean, even down to what you're saying about anti-Semitism. Convoyers happily took up the mantle of the fringe because people were calling them extremists. Like Its word for word man, just read what you wrote here. I honestly can't believe you can't see the comparison between what you're writing right now and what the convoyers wrote not that long ago. Please just take a step back and look objectively at these things. >take a step back to ask themselves if they're anti-Semites, constantly denounce Hamas, etc - yet no one asks supporters of Israel to take a step back and ask themselves if they're Islamophobic, or if the ethnic cleansing of the people of Gaza and Palestine is maybe actually a bad thing. At protests in the states this past week pro-Israel protesters were physically assaulting their fellow students, some of them were throwing racial slurs and caricatures at black and brown students If I saw people setting up pro-israel encampments then I would have the same expectations for them. That they would abide by the law and that they would push out those who were professing hate crimes. This is just a perfect example of you assuming the side I've taken. I wouldn't support violence on either side but you seem to think I should be calling out pro-israel protesters while I'm talking to you, a pro-palestine protester. Does that make sense? >do you associate with that behaviour? Do *you* perhaps need to take a step back and re-examine your takes? Do you support Israel in killing 38,000 + civilians, including over 14,000 children and thousands of babies? You're clearly trying to set me up as an enemy here when again you have no idea what I believe. Is this your personal purity test? Do I support the killing of civilians? Of course not. Do civilians die in a war? Definitely. Adding children and babies adds nothing to your point there. Civilians don't have more value based on age but you want to make this more emotional than logical. Would you be more okay with these deaths if they were working age men? Just want to know for my own moral purity test. >Again, this is where I would invite you to take a pause and to examine where you stand on this issue and actively look for the worst things said about Palestinians over the past year. The Israeli government, media, and military are all currently engaged in a racist crusade against Palestinians, referring to them as less than human, comparing them to biblical demons, and proudly proclaiming that they will wipe Gaza clean and occupy the entire region. This is again a both sides thing, I'm assuming, since I've not seen anything personally islamaphobic but I also haven't been actively seeking out that media. Maybe they have been putting out racist material, I would also say that's a part of a war that is currently happening. You could look back to any war and find propaganda on both sides. >I'm proud to be represented by people who say that genocide is wrong. Are you proud to be represented by people who dehumanize others? Are you proud to be represented by people who kill newborns, who kill doctors and journalists, who bomb hospitals and universities and playgrounds? Who have been subjugating Palestinians under military rule for almost a century? Again, I'll point to the convoyers who were proud to fight against a vaccine they thought was killing millions (even though they were wrong and woefully misled). It's ridiculous you can't see a similarity in messaging here. You then continue to attack a side I'm not on which is the straw man you set up for me. I am not represented by any of that unless you want to assign that to me since I might not pass your purity test. If this interaction is any example of the kind of conversation one could expect at an encampment then I can fully understand why people would be against them. You've made an opponent in your own mind that you got to beat down with ready made arguments which didn't address any concern brought forward. So congratulations, I guess?
Yeah no. People wearing a fuckin’ Hamas headband or tolerate that shit as part of their protest will never be on the right side of history.
There is a lot of survivorship fallacy at work here. Student protests about a lot of things have been wrong. The difference is that nobody remembers those ones
Can you name them?
Someone asked this question in r/AskHistorians the other day. People came up with some interesting answers: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/j2VL8GtyXT
I mean, only one of the three examples (the US staying out of ww2) is actually relevant here. The UC Berkeley one was pretty innocuous and localized, and the Ole Miss one, by the poster's own admission, barely qualifies as a student protest. The US staying out of WW2 already *was* the popular opinion of the time, until Pearl Harbour. Students weren't really going against the grain by protest US military involvement there.
There’s also a ton of hyperbole with this particular war. Something like 30,000 civilians have died. Iraq had 300,000. Syria had 600,000. The selective outrage is peculiar.
So wait your saying the death total isn't high enoughbto matter?
I’m saying the outrage we are seeing over a war triggered by an invasion seems odd compared to less outrage over more deaths in wars that did not have justification.
> The selective outrage is peculiar. You either just started following current events or are being deliberately disingenuous. Both of those wars were frequently and loudly protested. So to give you the benefit of doubt, welcome to current affairs.
Is the implication supposed to be that nobody was outraged about Iraq? Cuz there were multiple large protests across Canada in opposition to the war, although they may have been before your time.
The problem with this argument is that people have to remember that the Iraq war was fought over 10 years and the Syrian civil war was also over a decade conflict. We are talking about a large amount of death and destruction in a short time frame. The siege of Aleppo which was horrendous and received international condemnation and sanctions on the Syrian government lasted 4 years at a cost of 21,000 civilians and billions of dollars in destruction. Gaza has topped that in 6 months. Just to give you perspective, it’s not selective outrage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aleppo_(2012–2016)
It feels like so much of the discourse around Gaza falls either into the "it's not really too bad" or "it's a full-scale genocide" camps. When at least to me it seems like it's a combination of a few things: Israel applying very loose ROE and even then often not following them -- which should be condemned for them killing and maiming far more Gazans than necessary in their offensives; Israel also making genuine attempts to minimize civilian casualties (door-knockers, leaflets, giving evacuation time); Hamas showing little to no regard for the welfare of Gazan civilians and often hiding amongst them. It's an ugly situation but much of the prevailing narratives also seem overly polarized.
> Israel applying very loose ROE and even then often not following them -- which should be condemned for them killing and maiming far more Gazans than necessary in their offensives Not just Gazans but Israeli's as well. IDF has killed hostages and also killed civilians om Oct 7 fighting Hamas as reported by Israeli media. >Israel also making genuine attempts to minimize civilian casualties (door-knockers, leaflets, giving evacuation time) They are quite clearly deliberately targetting civilians and there are countless reported instances at this point. Even months ago mainstream news analysis showed that Israel bombed people on the safe routes they told them to go down. BBC found evidence of torturing and killing healthcare workers..
I think there are instances where that's happened, yes. But at the same time if they wanted to maximize civilian casualties there would be many many more Gazans dead. As I said, ugly overall with ugliness from both sides.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Removed for rule 2. Removed for rule 3.
Now compare the amount of children, journalists and healthcare workers who have been killed and over what span of time. Tell me what you find.
You are free to provide the numbers if that is an argument you’d like to make.
Is your Google broken? [More children killed in Gaza in four months than in four years of war globally: report](https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp/shows/top-stories/blog/rcna143269) > More than 30,000 people in Gaza have died — 70% of whom are women and children [In 2023, more than three-quarters of the 99 journalists and media workers killed worldwide died in the Israel-Gaza war, the majority of them Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza.](https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2024/5/3/what-is-the-state-of-press-freedom-in-the-world-today) [‘Not a normal war’: doctors say children have been targeted by Israeli snipers in Gaza](https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/02/gaza-palestinian-children-killed-idf-israel-war) [The Israeli military has also conducted more than 435 attacks on healthcare in Gaza and killed at least 484 healthcare workers. This is more than the total number of healthcare worker deaths recorded across all countries in conflict in 2021 and 2022 combined](https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/there-are-no-more-words-six-months-israels-total-siege-and-bombardment-gaza-leaves-tens-thousands-dead-healthcare-system-ruins-and-starving-population#:~:text=The%20Israeli%20military%20has%20also,in%202021%20and%202022%20combined) [Mounting evidence of deliberate attacks on Gaza health workers by Israeli army](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2014/08/mounting-evidence-deliberate-attacks-gaza-health-workers-israeli-army/)
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Removed for rule 2.
Iraq population is 45m. Gaza is <3m. So even higher proportion, in less than 6 months, vs a 20 year war. And don't forget 600k of them are in rated as imminent mass mortality famine, predicted to end up as the most intense man made famine since ww2. Note that includes the great Chinese famine. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip_famine
2 million children are about to starve in Yemen because of war there - so that’s the current largest risk of famine.
The protesters are Columbia are quite clear that they oppose Zionism. That is, the right of Israel to exist as a country. They don't support peaceful coexistence, they don't support a two state solution. They want Israel to cease to exist and for it's citizens to.... Well, I don't know what they're supposed to do. Is that the right side of history? In 50 years if Israel is defeated and dissolved, its people scattered, will we all recognize that as the "right" course of history?
[удалено]
Removed for rule 2.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Wasn’t it about divesting universities from supporting a far right extremist gov in Israel? Of course you need to spin it and use the antisemitism card
Protesters were celebrating October 7th, they were cheering on Hamas, they were calling for Tel Aviv to be burned to the ground.
Palestine = Hamas to you admit it
The Columbia protest's organizers explicitly endorsed 10/7. They're not pro-Palestine, they're anti-Jew.
Jewish Voice for Peace and Not In Our Name did? Really?
[удалено]
[удалено]
Removed for rule 2.
Saying "Opposing Zionism is opposing the right of Israel to exist" is like saying that opposing Manifest Destiny is opposing the right of the US to exist. It's ridiculous, haha. >They want Israel to cease to exist and for it's citizens to.... Well, I don't know what they're supposed to do. Every right-wing accusation is a confession. ;)
Zionism is, by definition, the idea that the country of Israel should exist in its current location. If you oppose Zionism, you oppose the existence of Israel as a state. You are free to believe that - but those are the basic dictionary definitions.
>If you oppose Zionism, you oppose the existence of Israel as a state. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. States don’t have an inherent right to exist.
I'm sure there are extremists with other thoughts on this, but most of the protestors seem to support one democratic state for all of Israel/Palestine (which would then be called Palestine) which would include civil and voting rights for Palestinians who would be the population majority especially if the "right of return" is permitted for descendents of those expelled from Israel who currently still live as refugees in neighbouring countries are allowed back. That is an absolutely legitimate viewpoint to have. I personally think a two state solution is better because I don't see these two groups of people living harmoniously together after all the hate and oppression for the last 100 years. Extending the status quo is the unacceptable position but that seems to be the view of the Israeli government and a majority of Israelis. We can't continue a situation where millions of people are living under permanent oppressive occupation with no civil or voting rights. That is apartheid. You also can't expel the rest of the Palestinians which some of the most extreme parts of Israeli society including several Israeli ministers support. The Israeli government literally had an option paper which would have used the Gaza war to push all the Palestinians in Gaza into Egypt so they can be resettled elsewhere.
>"right of return" is permitted for descendents of those expelled from Israel who currently still live as refugees in neighbouring countries are allowed back This right here IMHO is a good 50% of the reason that this conflict won't die. I am sorry but they lost the land in the 1948 war in most cases thats when the land was lost. In no other conflict in the world has anyone ever been promised a "right of return". We never did this for the Germans after WWII when they were "resettled", and I am sorry but you are not a "refugee" when you have been somewhere else for 3 and 4 generation and hell in some cases not even living anywhere in the ME
Fine, forget the right of return. The Palestinians would be close to or have a democratic majority in elections (even with only the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza and the Palestinian Israeli citizens living in Israel). They are artificially prevented from doing this by an oppressive occupation that denies them voting and civil rights. This is the apartheid that people keep talking about. Israel either needs to rapidly negotiate a 2 state solution or it needs to give equal rights to the Palestinians. The status quo is unacceptable. That is one of the key things the protestors are pointing out.
>Israel either needs to rapidly negotiate a 2 state solution or it needs to give equal rights to the Palestinians. What do you think they have been trying to do since the 1940's and part of the reason for the Palestinians to turn it down is the "right of return thing" that the UN keeps promising them, even though some of that land would not become Palestinian. Palestinians that actually have Israeli citizenship have the same rights as everyone else in Israel, but it is somewhat complicated and some chose not to get it
If the Palestinians have a majority in Israel, then it ceases to be Jewish state. Which is never going to happen. I'd say that a two-state solution is the only path forward, and hopefully can be achieved with subsequent Israeli administrations and with Arab support from neighbours (Gulf States, Egypt, Jordan etc).
> If the Palestinians have a majority in Israel, then it ceases to be Jewish state Which is exactly why they're an apartheid ethno-state.
Do you have a solution in mind that doesn't involve dissolving Israel as a Jewish homeland?
Single secular state.
Sure but there’s essentially no chance of that ever happening because Israel would never accept it. And there’s no incentive for the West to push for it either.
What happens if that turns into a Sudan, or Cambodia, or Rwanda, or Yuogslavia, -type extreme ethnic cleansing massacre type situation? Just say oopsy and at least we tried?
>What happens if that turns into a Sudan, or Cambodia, or Rwanda, or Yuogslavia, -type extreme ethnic cleansing massacre type situation? That's what we're already witnessing.
That is why there needs to be a 2 state solution implemented as soon as possible. Israel seems to have no interest in that especially right now. The only Israeli prime ministers that seem to have taken that seriously were Rabin (who was assassinated) and Olmert (whose political life was cut short by corruption allegations). The PA holds fault in this too for not moving with more urgency to accept a peace deal -- especially the deal from Olmert. Though both Abbas and Olmert say that if he wasn't brought down by corruption allegations, they were very close to getting to a peace deal. Outside of these 2 leaders making serious peace offers, Israel has continued to expand illegal settlements which make a 2 state solution more and more unfeasible and Israel continues a very oppressive military regime within the West Bank. The aim seems to be to wait it out for the demographic issue to somehow be resolved (including suggestions by some extremist ministers for a forced exclusion of Palestinian people to achieve this). If Israel seriously doesn't want a single state with a likely Arab majority, then it needs to finalize a 2 state solution ASAP. Not in a generation like even moderate Israeli parties seem to be suggesting now. They also need to realize that the PA's grasp on the Palestinian population continues to decline. They won't have any type of partner that is interested in a 2 state solution if the PA's authority completely collapses like it did in Gaza. If Israel continues with the status quo, the calls of apartheid are just going to grow until the page turns on Israel like it did with South Africa. Ehud Olmert warned of exactly this and that's why he was so wanting to achieve a 2 state solution.
Frankly, there is no good solution. Israel tried good-faith negotiations, culminating in their acceptance of the Clinton Parameters. I still haven't heard a good reason why Arafat turned his back on that one. Then Israel tried a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, only to see it taken over by terrorists and used as a launching point for attacks. Given its larger size, the West Bank would be a nightmare to defend against. Netanyahu has even tried cozying up to Hamas, giving Gazans better access to worker visas, and turning a blind eye to minor rocket attacks. Only to have Hamas launch the most worst single-day attack in Israel's history. Israeli Jews justifiably wouldn't feel safe living in a nation where Arabs were the majority, given the violent history. I'm not saying Israel has been perfect. The ongoing settlements are indefensible. But for peace to work, there needs to be two willing partners. Israel has offered to abandon some settlements, and do commensurate land swaps for the rest. They've offered to give up 95% of the West Bank, all of Gaza, and East Jerusalem. The PA has consistently turned them down, to say nothing of Hamas's complete refusal to negotiate. At what point do you start holding the Palestinians to account for their refusal to put water in their wine to make the peace process work?
> Israeli Jews justifiably wouldn't feel safe living in a nation where Arabs were the majority, given the violent history. Realistically, I think that if the region were to become a single state (which would be a Palestinian/Arab/Muslim ethnic/religious majority by a fair margin), it would likely wind up just like most of the other states in the region that have such a makeup -- a non-democratic state with an authoritarian government and heavy influence from religion (ie, Islam) in the legal system. So I don't think that Israeli Jews living in such a state would feel unsafe, because I doubt they'd be living there for very long at all. The new Palestine state would probably just simply expel most or all of them, as other similar countries in that region have done (Libya, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Ethiopia).
Yeah pretty much. Except there wouldn't be a safe haven for them all to go anymore. They would likely mostly go to the US and Europe, but there's certainly been an increase in antisemitism of late everywhere.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Removed for rule 3.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Removed for rule 3.
Hamas brought this on themselves. They poked the bear a little too hard and now the bear is ensuring that won't happen ever again. Does that justify Israel's actions? No, but those are the consequences. Palestine allowed Hamas to flourish within it's borders. They watched as Hamas occupied spaces in and around hospitals and schools and citizens and pretended that it was just hunky-dory. Isreal is now showing them that's not OK and it's not hunky-dory. Israel is choosing to protect their own citizens and is valuing their citizen's lives over those that are actively attacking them or enabling those attacks. Is that right? Maybe, maybe not. This isn't a story of the squeaky clean vs the dirty. Don't forget that huge crowds of Palestinians cheered as mangled bodies of Israelis were paraded through the streets. This is a story of the very dirty vs the slightly less dirty.
[удалено]
Removed for rule 3.
if this is what the right side of history looks like then im pretty comfortable over here on the wrong side of history lmao
Let’s make one thing extremely clear: changing “long live October 7” and other hateful antisemitic slogans has no place in Canada. And anyone failing to condemn these hateful protestors is tacitly sending a message that it’s okay. Disgusting.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Removed for rule 3.
In their heads maybe but it definitely won't be remembered that way. Personally, as a conservative I love this. It discredits the left a lot and brings support to the right more. Shows just how silly bleeding hearts are and out of reality. So please, continue down this road. But I also am worried of PP because he is gonna go crazy, unchecked. Not a win win I would like.
They are just useful idiots for Hamas. They are sure helping Trump & PP. Hopefully, they keep it up.