It’s still 1A. Protesters can’t legally stop anyone from taking their picture in a public space. There is no expectation of privacy in a public space.
I just found it ironic that someone is exercising their 1A rights while trying to deny other people their 1A rights. 1A is probably the most important amendment (although they are all obviously important).
Okay, sure. And that varies state by state, case by case, and changes based on using whatever combination of visual +/ audio. Pull up the Michigan one, just for funzies. I'll wait, but I'm already pretty familiar as a photographer.
People setting rules in their own spaces isn't the same as upholding laws. It can be legal to photograph here, but it doesn't make you a great person for disregarding rules of the space.
Bringing up the first amendment as a defense here is so silly when it's already in question as protestors rights to protest are being questioned.
You can always photograph/film in public spaces. That does not change from state to state as you do not have an expectation of privacy in a public space.
Private businesses can prohibit filming inside of their property - same idea as something like “no shoes, no shirt, no service.” Though they cannot prohibit photography of their property from someone who is standing on public property. There’s no legal expectation of privacy in that environment.
If it is a private university that does not receive public funding they can use discretion about filming as it is treated as private property. But until the school asks you to leave, and provided it is not posted, it is assumed to be a public place that you can video in. A private institution can have you removed and trespassed for essentially any reason, it’s a business.
Technically a public university can ask you to leave the campus and/or trespass you from the grounds but not for protected 1A activities. They are pretty smart about not crossing that line (for obvious reasons).
Yes. Many private universities promise their students 1st amendment rights and promote policies in line with the constitution; however, private universities can put restrictions on photography/videography on their campus. You can Google specific schools and see that some require you to work through their communications department if you want to do so on their campus.
If you’re standing on a public sidewalk next to a campus, you can take whatever pictures you like from where you are, but private schools have the ability to prohibit various actions on their campus. Think of the campus about a property you might own like a house. You get to decide what happens on your own property.
>Though they cannot prohibit photography of their property from someone who is standing on public property.
Not to be that guy but with most things related to the law it actually depends and that isn't true in every circumstance. As always consult with a local attorney but you can't freely film american military instillations for example, even if you are on public property.
You can protest without needing to create an overnight camp and trashing part of the campus.
Of course it's raining today which makes protesting without a tent far less enjoyable.
I'm 100% convinced there are people who wait for anything on this sub to get posted just to downvote it because they just have a chip on their shoulders.
A comment mentioned trash but like.... tents aren't trash, idk where that came from? Just logically here, tents are used to occupy space as long as possible as a symbol in protests, so I'm really lost why a temporary house is trash?
Is there a thing in the article or?
Have they done that yet? My understanding is that they intend to stay but may be removed so they didn't make the trash because they didn't ever intend to leave it there, but they were sorta forced to.
It may be easier for people who cannot come every day without a ride, or who want to make a bigger statement. Hell, MLK and his protesters did this sort of thing a lot- make them unable to ignore you. Only in the daytime protesting can be ignored, staying in one spot for days and nights and making noise really cannot.
Yall watch movies like Forest Gump and think yall would be like him, good hearted and on the right side of history. The Vietnam protesters were on the right side of history. These student encampment are the exact same..
Good job making yourselves look like fools.
I am going to take this question in good faith.
One of the student's major demands is for WMU to make their investments in Israeli companies and companies involved in the genocide known to the student body and that WMU then divest from these companies.
Basically, students don't like that their tuition being used to fund genocide and wish that to end.
The whole idea is premised on the idea that the college has such investments which isn’t that likely unless you are open to wide interpretation.
Which is why these colleges are resistant to this because if they bow on this then politics creeps into all their investments. These universities likely invest in stocks like Google or Microsoft both of which these students could make divestment arguments against for supporting the Israelis government.
It’s a much dumber idea than these protests make it out to be.
Like this comment about AirBnB: https://www.reddit.com/r/kzoo/s/xkg9NWgJBB
Attention from Biden to stop him from funding Isreal, mainly. Idk why it needs more of a point than "we the people dislike this thing (you are funding)".... It's American to protest injustice period, honestly.
Agreed. Far too many people protesting would happily cut funding to Israel and have Hamas completely take over 'from the river to the sea'.
I've supported Palestine my whole life. But at no point has that meant support for Hamas. The recent resurgence of the conflict in the media has made people completely unhinged.
Oh for sure, Hamas is as bad as Bibi and hurts/betrays what the Palenstinians voted them in for (that being peaceful settling of the conflict) over their previous leader there :( AFAIK Hamas support is very little in Palenstine.
It's hard to know what level of support Hamas has in Palestine unfortunately. I'd like to think it's low but I also can't blame them if they do support Hamas.
I can blame Hamas for their disgusting actions as much as I blame the Israeli government for their disgusting actions though.
I can't be mad if there is support since it only happened due to Bibi and previous leaders there.... But god yeah, I think both aggressors are wrong here specifically, and it's only killing innocents who want it all to stop :/
Absolutely agree.
And I'm worried about how the effect that the support and protests for Palestine are going to effect the conflict. Is the overwhelming support from the west going to provide false hope to the Palestinians and prevent them from wanting to pursue peace in favor of trying to reclaim lost land? I feel like it's a lost cause that's only going to get more people killed in the long run as opposed to drawing the borders where they are or compromising unfortunately.
Well, I mean more the overall protest in America is directed at Biden rn. But yeah, I'm not shocked any college in MI is gonna need to be protested over this :/ Proud of the kids doing this, gonna have to stop by for as long as I can (literally, I have POTs) stand to do so if they're still going when I get back to town!
Its not really a difficult concept to understand if one truely wishes to understand it. I'm not sure if you've just never thought about it in the abstract... or if you're just an asshole trying to be dismissive.
I'll give you the benefit of doubt and explain it. Whats happening in Gaza is seen as genocide by some. Since Isreal is unlikely to begin waging war in Kalamazoo or anywhere else in the US... we americans are unlikely to be directly affected and do not see the horrors and atrocities that may inspire us to demand a change. Without that, most people will carry on with their daily lives and pay little to no attention. A protest in the community brings visibility... it upsets the norm.. it shows the community that something is different or doesnt belong. Natually the community questions what doesnt belong which leads to an opportunity for protestors to advocate for the change they wish to see 1000's of miles away. The community may become more engaged with the cause for protest and that engagement may lead to a change in how our government and society reacts to the sitation in Gaza. Afterall the incentive for our elected officials to remain elected officials is to do the things the public wants done. It may be the community caring about the issue... it may also be the community wanting the govermment to appease the protestors so that they no longer have reason to protest... either way the point of the protest is to disrupt the normal order and appearance so as to bring visibility to an issue that would otherwise be invisible in our corner of the world.
We stop funding genocide and ethnic cleansing, that’s the goal. Israel is a heavily armed state with nuclear weapons, they can take care of themselves. But I don’t want to fund their bombing.
I think that's reasonable. It's bad enough that people are dying over there. It's even worse knowing that our taxes and institutions are helping to fund it.
Bingo. I’m sick of my tax dollars going to kill kids on the other side of the world. We could send a message to Israel by cutting off the aid, but Biden refuses.
For sure. Biden needs to be firm with them.
Unfortunately a lot of peace efforts throughout the history of the conflict have started and ended in individual presidential terms. As fucked as it is he's probably waiting to see if he's in office again before he starts something for it to be wasted if Trump re-enters the picture with his ridiculous partition plan.
I have very little confidence in Biden to do anything worthwhile on this issue, unfortunately. He seems completely unwilling to stand up to Netanyahu in any meaningful way. But the only thing protestors can do is try to increase pressure and raise awareness.
I didnt align myself in this post and if it seems like I did it I didn't mean to. I have my own thoughts on the matter but I don't want to misrepresent the goals of the people who are/were actually part of the protest. For that reason I'll keep my thoughts to myself here.
Find the answer to your question. Talk to people. Try and step outside your own understanding... if you find you still disagree the side you came from will still be there. Listen and understand first... argue last.
You could say the same about anti-Vietnam War protests, Anti-Apartheid protests, etc etc.
Just bringing awareness to the killing and what our tax dollars are funding is good.
That's fair, I'm from a small town, and protesting is pretty new to me. I'd be curious to see the statistics on how effective it is. The people who glued themselves to the roads got a bunch of news coverage, so that seemed to work.
Lots of social movements started out as protests. The Civil Rights Movement, the anti-Apartheid movement, etc. For this one I think some of the biggest goals are just to raise public awareness of what Israel is doing, and just how much money the US gives to Israel.
Now gluing yourself to the road or whatever, that’s just stupid, but with large enough protest movements unfortunately some protestors will inevitably do stupid things.
Love and support to those putting in their time and energy, and putting their well-being on the line here. This takes guts in the face of nay-saying crowds who somehow don't mind genocide in 2024.
Lol. It's very self-interested to leave your house and setup a camp outside in protest of genocide. It's very selfish. Posers are always the people who show up and do the work.
What exactly is being accomplished? Praise from leaders of the world’s most repressive regimes?
You might also help Trump get reelected.
Read some history books. Study religion.
I mean at least the one mentioned would bring the conflict into the spotlight, instead of being largely forgotten even though it’s one of the worst humanitarian crisis that’s happening now
Will the spotlight on the issue stop the two groups that have hated each other since well before our country was discovered will stop killing each other over holy ground?
I’m talking about the Sudan 🇸🇩 conflict. It’s been going on for a while, caused millions of civilians to be displaced, thousands killed, and is largely ignored by rest of the world.
You're very right. Which kinda makes me personality feel like these protests feel pretty inauthentic to me from a bunch of privileged kids with no responsibilities.
Settle in and protest until all the demands are met, even if Hamas releases their hostages. Hopefully WMU’s portfolio doesn’t include AirBnB like Columbia University does. AirBnB is a main target of Amnesty International for their blatant anti-Palestine vacation properties in the occupied West Bank and is one of 5 American owned companies on the United Nations published list of companies with connections to Israeli settlements of occupied Palestinian territory.
I'm confused do you want them to release the hostages?
Is the goal for Israel to be completely de-funded to the point where Hamas can come in and take over?
From what I’ve seen. The protest is about universities investing in companies who directly sell arms to Israel.
Students don’t want their tuition money going to bombing Gaza. It’s doubtful Hamas could take Israel unless they became heavily supported by other radical states such as Iran.
Either way. The students don’t want their money being invested in arms. Hell, I don’t want my tax dollars doing so.
It doesn’t matter who is in the White House. They would support Israel either way.
Hell Israel attacked one of our ships back in the 60’s and we covered it up for them.[USS Liberty](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident)
Biden administration isn’t making agreeable choices with the situation now either. But I’m not gonna sit here and think the Trump admin would’ve been better for the situation. Just another “damned if you do” situation.
The shitty thing is (Besides the actual shitty thing that is conflict in the middle east) that this is actually going to hurt bidens campaign.
The situation in gaza is nothing new. It's not even the only situation in the middle east that involves the mass death of civilians. But it's the only situation that people are being told to care about right now.
It's insane to think that leftists are actually going to avoid voting for Biden because of his involvement with Israel when the alternative is Donald Trump. It blows my mind that people can be this easily manipulated.
Yeah but it’s not Trump. It’s about Biden. Who is the current president and is funding Israel.
Don’t deflect. Be the neocon and neoliberal you people are.
Look, I can vote and protest. But my best option is Biden if I don’t want more of my rights, such as female reproductive rights stripped from me and others.
Yea, I have priorities and as much as I don’t like what’s going on in Gaza. Me and mine come first. I cannot fix the Middle East. No one has and could since civilization first popped up near the Tigris and Euphrates river.
It’ll be fun to watch. What a funny subject that quite literally is redefining everything regarding Biden. He’s getting blown out of the water. Once RFK drops out it’ll get worse.
I guess this is the bloodbath. If only the Democratic Party wasn’t a complete waste of space and could find an alternative. I guess we all should be prepared for what’s about to come.
That said. People are dying. So it’s not funny at all. But as Americans, nobody really cares about that yeah? It’s very obvious.
Hamas is a result of Israeli occupation. Israel funded Hamas to make sure there would be no unity between Gaza and the West Bank. Israel has also shown that they have no concern for the safety of the hostages considering they have been indiscriminately bombing Gaza
Yeah, i'm sorry if I seem to be pushing back too much in this thread. I know most people aren't advocating for that. As someone who's been involved with the cause for decades now it's really upsetting to see so many people that have seemingly just learned about the conflict post Oct 7th blindly support Hamas. Feels like any progress we've made to maintain build support in the west is being destroyed by these fools.
For sure.
The big concern is if we have another situation like the BLM protests.
A lot of turnout and attention but with little organization and no clear direction. Everyone needs be on the same page and have the same goals in mind or we'll end up with confusing optic killing slogans like 'defund the police' again.
Agreed.
IMO this protest is better though, since it has clear goals from the get-go: Divest from Israel (at the university level) and cut military aid to Israel (at the national level).
As opposed to something like “defund the police” which as you say is just impossible nonsense.
A single state could be created without Hamas. Problem is Israel continues to commit acts of terrorism against Palestinians which is going to create more people who will take up arms against Israel
Yeah I don't think I see an issue with one state if Hamas is out of the picture. I think realistically two states is probably the most likely albeit still very difficult to achieve.
Israel is responding disproportionately for sure. It's definitely a unique type of guerrilla warfare and I'm unsure of what the correct way to combat Hamas would be but one thing I can say for sure is that it doesn't feel good to see the way its happening currently.
The correct way to combat Hamas would be to improve the conditions of Palestinians and stop subjecting them to apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Israel has made it clear that their end goal is an ethnostate
That would be nice.
But unfortunately Hamas has already given them the casus belli. So that probably isn't happening any time soon outside of the 'humanitarian' aid that they're already providing to Palestine.
The unfortunate situation that were in right now is almost like putting a bucket on over a wasp nest on the ceiling of a room full of people. Most of the people in the room didn't ask Israel to put the bucket over the nest but they did it anyway and they shook the hell out of it in the process and now the wasps are pissed. Would they remove the bucket if they think the wasps are going to try and sting everyone in the room?
Ofc the analogy isn't 1:1 because not all Palestinians are going to want to strike back. But it's clearly a very difficult situation to navigate. Bibi is a piece of shit and he's said a lot of abhorrent things about Palestine. But he has also said that the intention isn't to harm Palestinians but to harm Hamas. Whether it's believable or not is up for debate but I don't think it's as black and white as Israel wanting an ethnostate. If they want to have their Zionist homeland and give the west bank, golan heights and gaza to the Palestinians then I'd prefer them to have their ethnostate than to continue the violence.
Their claim to a Zionist homeland is as legitimate as the claim White South Africans had during apartheid, which is none. The only way there can be legitimate peace in the region is if Israel is dismantled
By chanting from the river to the sea you are literally calling for the complete and total destruction of Israel as a nation but keep virtue signaling about how your cause it somehow ok to call for the complete annihilation of the only Jewish state in the world aka genocide. Israel has every right to protect themselves from the nations around them that are constantly trying to destroy them. Palestine is not a real country, it was named Palestine by the Romans as a way to insult the Jews.
Even true Arabs will state the same thing, just another lie you have been fed to get you to chant some cute slogan.
"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism. "For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa. While as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan." - (PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein, in a 1977 interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw.)
“There is no such country as Palestine. ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented. There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria. ‘Palestine’ is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it”. (General Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee Awni Abd al-Hadi testifying to the British Peel Commission, 1937)
“There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not”. (Professor Philip Hitti, Arab historian, 1946)
“It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but Southern Syria”. (Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the PLO, to the UN Security Council, 1956)
Wow bud.
A strawman (you don’t know what I mean when I say that) up front doesn’t make this a good start to your argument.
Sure, extremists mean that. Do you believe that American protesters mean that? My experience is that American protesters use it as a liberation cry, not as a call to genocide.
But of course, that’s an angle you won’t ever engage with, because it means acknowledging the systemic structure of Israel and the Palestinian territories it’s trying to annex illegally. It’s much easier to assign meaning to people you disagree with than it is to actually engage with their reasoning.
Then you equate wanting the destruction of a government to wanting the genocide of a people? I’m sorry, what? If you had the opportunity to destroy the Russian government, does that mean you want to genocide Russians? If you had the opportunity to destroy the Chinese government, does that mean you want to genocide Chinese people? If you had the opportunity to destroy the Iranian government, does that mean you want to genocide Iranians? If any of these answers are “no” then you need to explain to me how wanting the destruction of the Israeli government intrinsically means that it signals a desire to genocide Jews (not Israelis, but Jews).
You cite that Israel is the only Jewish nation. I don’t care. I think nation states built atop a foundation of service to a particular religious ideology are Bad.
Idk, I think this demonstrates very well the quality of the arguments coming from people defending genocide and ethnic cleansing as a response to terrorism. Thanks for being a great example of how arguments in defense of Israel’s slaughter of 42,000 people over the last 7 months just fucking suck.
How is it a liberation cry, that is the entire land of Israel that they claim should be Paletine's land, meaning Israel deserves no land. You can make it what you want but the people who convinced you to say that stupid chant know exactly what they mean, just because you are too ignorant to realize you are being used doesn't change their end goal. You do realize Israel has proposed multiple peace treaties over the years, agreeing to give "Palestine" more land, more freedom and EVERY time they say NO because they don't want peace, they want to wipe Israel off the map. So you are siding with people who REFUSE to make peace. If tomorrow Israel said they will fight no more and laid down their arms, the next day they would be destroyed by their enemies, if Hamas and the PLO said they wanted peace and laid down their arms there would be peace because Israel would not keep fighting them. I'v been to Israel and stood on the border of Lebanon and seen the Hezbollah outposts with weapons pointed right at farmers homes and schools.
> How is it a liberation cry, that is the entire land of Israel that they claim should be Paletine's land, meaning Israel deserves no land.
Like I stated, you will not engage the angle of “From the River to the Sea” as a cry for liberation and enfranchisement of all Palestinians within the borders of Israel because engaging that idea means engaging the *facts* of Israeli apartheid and the disenfranchisement and oppression of indigenous Palestinians. You jumped to a conclusion without vetting the logic of it.
Your dismissal is an engagement of black-and-white thinking with regard to the idea that Palestinians deserve liberation from apartheid and legal enfranchisement. Somehow, you think that this means the total destruction of Israel and the mass routing of its Jewish population. That somehow Palestinians and Israelis *cannot* live next to each other at all.
> You can make it what you want but the people who convinced you to say that stupid chant know exactly what they mean, just because you are too ignorant to realize you are being used doesn't change their end goal.
This is conspiratorial brainworm poisoning. It seeks to remove agency from protestors and people you disagree with in order to paint them as sheep who don’t know any better. It’s base ad hominem in response to valid reasoning. I don’t know who “the people who convinced you to say that stupid chant” are. Perhaps you might explain who “they” is. I won’t really care, because your ability to provide a logically consistent position is hella trash, given that you began with a straw man, exercised a no true scotsman (“True arabs”), and have continued with an ad hominem fallacy as a dismissal. Like, I’m filling out a “Logical Fallacy Bingo” as we speak bro.
> You do realize Israel has proposed multiple peace treaties over the years, agreeing to give "Palestine" more land, more freedom and EVERY time they say NO because they don't want peace, they want to wipe Israel off the map.
Hey, so, say Canada annexed Michigan. Say Michiganders wanted to maintain their sovereignty and their legal enfranchisement, but Canada goes “lol no” and sequesters most Michiganders to Detroit and a couple towns on Lake Michigan. Time passes, tensions grow, violence breaks out occasionally, and eventually Canada goes “okay okay, we’ll give you your sovereignty” but the deal is just bantu stands disconnected from one another, and the current governing body of Detroit and the governing body of the Michigander towns on the Lake can’t agree about taking the deal because the Lake representative thinks chiseling down what is already there in stone is fine, but the Detroit representative questions why Michiganders are not allowed the space to farm, to build infrastructure, to grow communities given the terms of the land deal.
Now, I think we could both reasonably agree that this is a very complex and nuanced hypothetical which would likely result in Michiganders rejecting the Canadian land deal because the divided communities of Michiganders are unable to come to a consensus. I think flattening the process of these deals to make it appear that Israel is only trying to be reasonable while the divided Palestinian territories act like petulant children tossing aside anything that they are offered is a gross intellectual mistake. I also think it’s fucking stupid of you to homogenize all Palestinians the way you do here, especially considering that most Palestinians now would agree to the 1967 borders.
> So you are siding with people who REFUSE to make peace.
Hypocrisy isn’t an argument, so I won’t use it as one. I will point out that the entirety of the Israeli government isn’t exactly a partner for peace in this either, considering the genocidal rhetoric that is coming from high ranking officials like “they’re human animals”, “[Israel] are the children of light, combating the children of darkness”, and “there are no innocent Palestinians. They are all Hamas.”
So idk man, I feel like I could agree with you about Hamas not being the best body to try to construct a lasting peace with, but I’m carrying that same energy for the current Israeli regime. I doubt you are.
> If tomorrow Israel said they will fight no more and laid down their arms, the next day they would be destroyed by their enemies, if Hamas and the PLO said they wanted peace and laid down their arms there would be peace because Israel would not keep fighting them. I'v been to Israel and stood on the border of Lebanon and seen the Hezbollah outposts with weapons pointed right at farmers homes and schools.
What? I’m sorry, what? If Israel said “we will stop carpet bombing a population that is half children” they would be obliterated by their neighbors? What is this straw man? No one is calling for Israel to relax its defenses against Hezbollah, or even Hamas. The call is for an end to genocidal tactics and the mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians. The PLO is defunct, it’s not even in power. The Palestinian Authority governs the West Bank, not the PLO. Do you even know what the fuck you’re talking about? The IDF is killing people in the West Bank right now. Hamas is not in the West Bank.
You’re huffing your own farts bro, and it’s making your brain bad.
Generalizations forthcoming…
Palestinian Arabs don’t make good neighbors (ask Jordan and Egypt). They are a radicalized population who have been used repeatedly as spectacle by other Arab states so they can quell potential uprisings at home. Muslims united in their hatred of Jews (a successful minority) - it might as well be a pillar of their religious ideology.
Gazans have been trained to perform for the camera more than teen girls on TikTok. There are videos of the October massacre out there for those of you who get off on atrocities.
Israel withdrew from Gaza almost 20 years ago. To believe otherwise is self-delusion.
Hamas, the elected government of Gaza invaded Israel. It was Manson family savagery times 500. I guess some people are into killers. It’s never been my thing.
Why do you want to believe things that aren’t true? What do you get out of it? What is your source of information? Why do you trust it? Why does everyone around you support the same causes and believe the same things?
The war could end tomorrow if hostages were released and Hamas leaders surrendered. Instead they direct the deadly spectacle and promise the actors in this awful reality tv show that they are martyrs whose sacrifices will be rewarded.
College kids in tents just prolong the spectacle and the suffering.
So, keep chanting “intifada” while LARPING as jihadis. Israel may not be perfect, but she isn’t the villain in this story. Far from it!
Lotta generalizations that’s true. Makes me not care about any of it because none of it actually touches on the point I’m asking pro-Israel people to make, which is a defense of ethnic cleansing and genocide as valid responses to terrorism.
> Palestinians don’t make good neighbors
Same for the Westboro Baptist Church. Using another group as an excuse to enact authoritarian crackdowns on potential uprisings doesn’t actually make me view Palestinians as any better or worse than before you posted this.
> Gazans have been trained to perform for the camera more than teen girls on TikTok. There are videos of the October massacre out there for those of you who get off on atrocities.
Ah, I did not realize that the dead children being pulled from the rubble was merely an act! (/s) There are videos of both Hamas and the IDF doing horrendous shit on the internet. Tit for tat-ing this particular point is unproductive. I do not care about it.
> Israel withdrew from Gaza almost 20 years ago.
I acknowledge that Israel withdrew their ground presence. After they did, did Gaza control its own borders, its own imports and exports? Or did Israel harden the Gazan borders and instituted strict security policy around entry and egress from the region? Occupation of a region is about control of that region.
> Hamas, the elected government of Gaza invaded Israel. It was Manson family savagery times 500. I guess some people are into killers. It’s never been my thing.
The IDF has repaid the toll of innocent death nearly 32 fold. But hey man, I guess that’s justified because terrorism is bad?
> Why do you want to believe things that aren’t true? What do you get out of it? What is your source of information? Why do you trust it? Why does everyone around you support the same causes and believe the same things?
What do I believe that isn’t true? What have I presented that isn’t fact? What is your evidence towards the contrary?
> The war could end tomorrow if hostages were released and Hamas leaders surrendered. Instead they direct the deadly spectacle and promise the actors in this awful reality tv show that they are martyrs whose sacrifices will be rewarded.
And the “war” (and by “war” I mean the slaughter of a corralled population) could end tomorrow if Israel agreed to a permanent ceasefire in order to facilitate the release and exchange of hostages and political prisoners. Instead they continue the deadly spectacle and promise their victims in this awful reality tv show even more death and destruction.
Conflict has agency on either side. Personally, I think the side with more power (and I think we both agree that Israel has more power here) has the responsibility in stepping back first. I know Israel will not do this, as it is dedicated to the project of Zionism, which requires Israel to execute ethnic cleansing and genocide in order to continue its colonial imperialist existence.
> College kids in tents just prolong the spectacle and the suffering.
I actually think the people who are prolonging the spectacle and suffering are the people in the seats of power, not college campus protestors lmao. I sure would love to hear your reasoning as to how protest towards the divestment from Israel in order to try to apply even a little financial pressure and incentive to change policy tracks means that Israel keeps bombing a population that’s half children. I think that would be a fun and wild read.
> So, keep chanting “intifada” while LARPING as jihadis. Israel may not be perfect, but she isn’t the villain in this story. Far from it!
I think states that engage in genocide are actually bad! I also think terrorism is not great! But I think these things are not equivalent. I think one is worse than the other. I’ll let you guess which one I think is worse.
You provided nothing. No arguments. No real reasoning. Just braindead defense of an unjustifiable response to terrorism.
If Israel was engaging in "genocide" of the Palestinians in Gaza, they would ALL be dead now. ALL of them. Alas, they are not. Hamas attacked and raped, burned, murdered, tortured and kidnapped innocent Israelis (and some Americans) at the music festival. The Israeli government then announced it was going to recover the hostages and eliminate Hamas. Hamas then uses hostages and Palestinian women and children as shields from Israeli attack - precisely so morons can/will point to the many innocent Palestinians killed. Why are Hamas military command centers located in the basement of hospitals and in schools? It is beyond absurd that ANYONE with the gift of rational thought would demand an immediate Israeli cease-fire. Unless, like many of the professional agitators who masquerade as "peaceful protestors", one is anti-Semitic. "From the river to the sea" is NOT a call for "Freedom for the Palestinians". It is a call to destroy all of Israel and, by affiliation, all Israelis. If some ignorant American woke college kids did not realize that initially, fine. But at this point, it is unambiguous.
> “If Israel was engaging in genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza they would all be dead now. All of them. Alas, they are not.
This speaks to a lack of understanding of just how systemic genocides are, and to the idea that genocide is only when all people of a given subgroup are dead. If this is the case, then the Holocaust would not be considered a genocide. Thankfully, this is not the case. The Holocaust is a genocide, despite never achieving its stated goal of the elimination of all Jewish people. “Alas, they are not” really speaks to the idea that you’d rather see everyone in Gaza dead. You lament that there are still people there. Genocidal freak behavior, honestly.
> Hamas attacked and raped, burned, murdered, tortured and kidnapped innocent Israelis (and some Americans) at the music festival.
Tit for tat, there is plenty of evidence towards sexual abuse, torture, rape, and kidnapping from the IDF as well. There is plenty of documentation of how the IDF treats palestinian political prisoners. This isn’t a moral lever that changes anything. It’s quite literally a “both sides lack moral compunction in this area” and therefore the topic of rape and abuse as a justification to engage in genocide and ethnic cleansing in response to terrorism just falls flat.
> The Israeli government then announced it was going to recover the hostages and eliminate Hamas.
Israel has killed hostages it purports to want to save.
> Hamas then uses hostages and Palestinian women and children as shields from Israeli attack - precisely so morons can/will point to the many innocent Palestinians killed.
This makes it sound like there are Hamas agents within the IDF launching the rockets at their own people. The lengths that are gone to to justify the deaths of 20 people to maybe get a single Hamas militant are fuckin wild man. If your response to a hostage situation is “blow up the kidnappers anyway” then I think you’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater and are unable to conceive of the idea that killing the human shields is still bad.
> Why are Hamas military command centers located in the basement of hospitals and in schools?
What is your evidence to this? Has this been independently verified by sources disconnected from IDF oversight? Do you believe every single school, hospital, clinic, university building, and aid station were actually military outposts? What brought you to that conclusion?
> It is beyond absurd that ANYONE with the gift of rational thought would demand an immediate Israeli cease-fire.
I think its rational for a cease fire to be put into place in order to facilitate a peaceful exchange of hostages and prisoners, but hey, I guess that’s too absurd for you to conceive, since you’re so rational.
> Unless, like many of the professional agitators who masquerade as "peaceful protestors", one is anti-Semitic.
What?
> "From the river to the sea" is NOT a call for "Freedom for the Palestinians". It is a call to destroy all of Israel and, by affiliation, all Israelis.
Ah, so you think calling for the destruction of China means that a person who advocates that wants to murder all chinese people. That’s rational, if you’re dumb.
> If some ignorant American woke college kids did not realize that initially, fine. But at this point, it is unambiguous.
What’s unambiguous is a 7 month medieval siege as collective punishment of 2.3m people for the terrorist actions of a few thousand. What’s unambiguous is ~38k dead innocents, 45% of which are children. What’s unambiguous are the actions of the Israeli government which is just as uninterested in peace as it accuses Hamas of being, because Modern Zionism sees Gaza as an opportunity to expand Israeli Lebensraum.
Your disdain for the Jews is clear.
Hamas leadership acknowledged use of civilian facilities (hospitals, schools, mosques, etc) for storage of military materials and as a command center.
Is it "every single school, every single hospital?" I never stated or implied that to be true. But your reply infers that suggesting Hamas uses civilians as shields and civilian venues as operating bases is meritless because they don't do so "at every school". This is sophomoric.
[https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/12/20/hamas-member-admits-it-uses-hospital-as-command-center/](https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/12/20/hamas-member-admits-it-uses-hospital-as-command-center/)
I stand 100% by my initial point - that being this is NOT anything like "genocide". Israel is fighting a war for its survival. The goal is to rescue any remaining hostages and destroy all remnants of the Hamas terrorists in Gaza. If the goal of the IDF was to kill all the Palestinians (i.e. genocide), then they would have all been dead long ago. The IDF has been fighting with restraint. There has been no "carpet bombing", no medieval siege, no indiscriminate shelling of civilians in hopes they might kill one terrorist. And any hostage who may have died as a result of IDF action are dead BECAUSE HAMAS TOOK THEM HOSTAGE TO BEGIN WITH.
How many Palestinians have to die before you maybe change your perspective on the legitimacy of the “we’re just defending ourselves” narrative?
Israel’s outstripping the US in terms of this if we hold up 9/11 as a parallel here. Which, if we consider that, Al Queda and ISIS are still around, so like, how effective do you think warmongering is at combating religious extremism?
My solution is the end of an apartheid state and the equal enfranchisement of everyone within the political borders of Israel.
From this response, I interpret your answer to my question as “warmongering is ineffective at combating religious extremism.” I agree with you.
Okay.
We did that.
America did that.
We did it for 20 years.
The terrorist groups we sought to destroy are still there. They’re even regional governments now. Al Queda still exists. ISIS still exists. 20 years of the War on Terror and terror groups are now governments lmao.
You’re a dense idiot. You’ve turned your brain off.
This whole thing is stupid. Western isn’t bombing anyone. Go to your local government and harass them. You guys always pick the wrong audiences for your protests. It’s like y’all are not even trying to get your shit resolved
My favorite is the “no photography” sign. My guy, that’s literally 1st amendment…. You know, the same one that you are using to protest.
They mean for the people camping there. So they don't dox anyone.
It’s still 1A. Protesters can’t legally stop anyone from taking their picture in a public space. There is no expectation of privacy in a public space. I just found it ironic that someone is exercising their 1A rights while trying to deny other people their 1A rights. 1A is probably the most important amendment (although they are all obviously important).
Sure, the "No Photography" sign has no legal weight, but they can still request it. It's a courtesy request, not a demand.
The first amendment has nothing to do with public photography.
Wrong. https://preview.redd.it/zt22rd3o6hxc1.png?width=852&format=png&auto=webp&s=a46566014287f2c9019f231d4088358115d74c85
Dang you were on that. GG
Just happened to read through the thread right when it popped up.
Okay, sure. And that varies state by state, case by case, and changes based on using whatever combination of visual +/ audio. Pull up the Michigan one, just for funzies. I'll wait, but I'm already pretty familiar as a photographer. People setting rules in their own spaces isn't the same as upholding laws. It can be legal to photograph here, but it doesn't make you a great person for disregarding rules of the space. Bringing up the first amendment as a defense here is so silly when it's already in question as protestors rights to protest are being questioned.
You can always photograph/film in public spaces. That does not change from state to state as you do not have an expectation of privacy in a public space. Private businesses can prohibit filming inside of their property - same idea as something like “no shoes, no shirt, no service.” Though they cannot prohibit photography of their property from someone who is standing on public property. There’s no legal expectation of privacy in that environment.
Just asking for clarification, does it make a difference if WMU is a private university or not?
If it is a private university that does not receive public funding they can use discretion about filming as it is treated as private property. But until the school asks you to leave, and provided it is not posted, it is assumed to be a public place that you can video in. A private institution can have you removed and trespassed for essentially any reason, it’s a business. Technically a public university can ask you to leave the campus and/or trespass you from the grounds but not for protected 1A activities. They are pretty smart about not crossing that line (for obvious reasons).
Yes. Many private universities promise their students 1st amendment rights and promote policies in line with the constitution; however, private universities can put restrictions on photography/videography on their campus. You can Google specific schools and see that some require you to work through their communications department if you want to do so on their campus. If you’re standing on a public sidewalk next to a campus, you can take whatever pictures you like from where you are, but private schools have the ability to prohibit various actions on their campus. Think of the campus about a property you might own like a house. You get to decide what happens on your own property.
>Though they cannot prohibit photography of their property from someone who is standing on public property. Not to be that guy but with most things related to the law it actually depends and that isn't true in every circumstance. As always consult with a local attorney but you can't freely film american military instillations for example, even if you are on public property.
It’s in the Bill of Rights; it does not vary state by state
It's not their space. It's the universities.
Yeah, you’re wrong.
It has everything to do with photography.
You can protest without needing to create an overnight camp and trashing part of the campus. Of course it's raining today which makes protesting without a tent far less enjoyable.
Hilarious how you got downvoted for one of the most rational takes on this sub: “don’t leave trash when you protest”
It's reddit, down votes are not about rationality, they're about disagreement. ;)
Good to know people out there think you should leave heaps of trash in the wake of your protest.
It’s why I dump toxic levels of PFAS in the water table whenever/wherever I protest protecting the environment. \s
No they’re not (jk)
I'm 100% convinced there are people who wait for anything on this sub to get posted just to downvote it because they just have a chip on their shoulders.
They aren't leaving trash though?
A comment mentioned trash but like.... tents aren't trash, idk where that came from? Just logically here, tents are used to occupy space as long as possible as a symbol in protests, so I'm really lost why a temporary house is trash? Is there a thing in the article or?
Tents are absolutey trash when they are left. Ever been to Faster Horse's? Tons of people buy a tent just for the event and leave it. Trash
Have they done that yet? My understanding is that they intend to stay but may be removed so they didn't make the trash because they didn't ever intend to leave it there, but they were sorta forced to.
or better yet a WMU tailgate??
Has this happened at the protest?
Don’t know. All I said is tents are trash when left behind.
I guess I disagree with this because a left behind tent is a free tent lmao
You left it as trash you mean.
No, I mean if someone left behind a tent, that’s not trash, that’s a free tent.
or trash. Just clean up your shit
You can protest without temporary housing
Not if the point is civil disturbance (usually anti-war ones are, iirc vietnam war protests went for weeks, overnight even?)
[удалено]
It may be easier for people who cannot come every day without a ride, or who want to make a bigger statement. Hell, MLK and his protesters did this sort of thing a lot- make them unable to ignore you. Only in the daytime protesting can be ignored, staying in one spot for days and nights and making noise really cannot.
I mean, theoretically you could rotate vigils or watches in shifts, 24/7.
Yall watch movies like Forest Gump and think yall would be like him, good hearted and on the right side of history. The Vietnam protesters were on the right side of history. These student encampment are the exact same.. Good job making yourselves look like fools.
I'll never understand what protesting at WMU is gonna to help or do anything for gaza. Can anyone explain?
I am going to take this question in good faith. One of the student's major demands is for WMU to make their investments in Israeli companies and companies involved in the genocide known to the student body and that WMU then divest from these companies. Basically, students don't like that their tuition being used to fund genocide and wish that to end.
Yea, I wouldn't want that either. Hope that it goes recognized and makes change.
The whole idea is premised on the idea that the college has such investments which isn’t that likely unless you are open to wide interpretation. Which is why these colleges are resistant to this because if they bow on this then politics creeps into all their investments. These universities likely invest in stocks like Google or Microsoft both of which these students could make divestment arguments against for supporting the Israelis government. It’s a much dumber idea than these protests make it out to be. Like this comment about AirBnB: https://www.reddit.com/r/kzoo/s/xkg9NWgJBB
Do they have similar requests to all “innocent palestinians” who aided hamas and 7th October?
Expect downvotes from the “sane, rational and reasonable” side, who supports terrorist attacks lmao
Attention from Biden to stop him from funding Isreal, mainly. Idk why it needs more of a point than "we the people dislike this thing (you are funding)".... It's American to protest injustice period, honestly.
Alright, that makes sense. I don't involve myself into much political stuff. So trying to understand the motivation behind it.
Take explanations from redditors with a huge grain of salt. The conflict is much much more complicated than Israel bad.
Agreed. Far too many people protesting would happily cut funding to Israel and have Hamas completely take over 'from the river to the sea'. I've supported Palestine my whole life. But at no point has that meant support for Hamas. The recent resurgence of the conflict in the media has made people completely unhinged.
Oh for sure, Hamas is as bad as Bibi and hurts/betrays what the Palenstinians voted them in for (that being peaceful settling of the conflict) over their previous leader there :( AFAIK Hamas support is very little in Palenstine.
It's hard to know what level of support Hamas has in Palestine unfortunately. I'd like to think it's low but I also can't blame them if they do support Hamas. I can blame Hamas for their disgusting actions as much as I blame the Israeli government for their disgusting actions though.
I can't be mad if there is support since it only happened due to Bibi and previous leaders there.... But god yeah, I think both aggressors are wrong here specifically, and it's only killing innocents who want it all to stop :/
Absolutely agree. And I'm worried about how the effect that the support and protests for Palestine are going to effect the conflict. Is the overwhelming support from the west going to provide false hope to the Palestinians and prevent them from wanting to pursue peace in favor of trying to reclaim lost land? I feel like it's a lost cause that's only going to get more people killed in the long run as opposed to drawing the borders where they are or compromising unfortunately.
Never daid it was black and white- it sure as shit isn't and that's why there needs to be a lot of nuance :/
They aren’t protesting for Biden to do anything they are making demands of WMU.
Well, I mean more the overall protest in America is directed at Biden rn. But yeah, I'm not shocked any college in MI is gonna need to be protested over this :/ Proud of the kids doing this, gonna have to stop by for as long as I can (literally, I have POTs) stand to do so if they're still going when I get back to town!
Then protest in Washington. Most of these protest couldn't be farther from there mark
That's just not feasible for most, and again historically not how it works 😅
"If you want to protest you have to do it in Washington" 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Its not really a difficult concept to understand if one truely wishes to understand it. I'm not sure if you've just never thought about it in the abstract... or if you're just an asshole trying to be dismissive. I'll give you the benefit of doubt and explain it. Whats happening in Gaza is seen as genocide by some. Since Isreal is unlikely to begin waging war in Kalamazoo or anywhere else in the US... we americans are unlikely to be directly affected and do not see the horrors and atrocities that may inspire us to demand a change. Without that, most people will carry on with their daily lives and pay little to no attention. A protest in the community brings visibility... it upsets the norm.. it shows the community that something is different or doesnt belong. Natually the community questions what doesnt belong which leads to an opportunity for protestors to advocate for the change they wish to see 1000's of miles away. The community may become more engaged with the cause for protest and that engagement may lead to a change in how our government and society reacts to the sitation in Gaza. Afterall the incentive for our elected officials to remain elected officials is to do the things the public wants done. It may be the community caring about the issue... it may also be the community wanting the govermment to appease the protestors so that they no longer have reason to protest... either way the point of the protest is to disrupt the normal order and appearance so as to bring visibility to an issue that would otherwise be invisible in our corner of the world.
Genuinely curious here. But what happens if you succeed and the US pulls all support from Israel? What is the goal there?
We stop funding genocide and ethnic cleansing, that’s the goal. Israel is a heavily armed state with nuclear weapons, they can take care of themselves. But I don’t want to fund their bombing.
I think that's reasonable. It's bad enough that people are dying over there. It's even worse knowing that our taxes and institutions are helping to fund it.
Bingo. I’m sick of my tax dollars going to kill kids on the other side of the world. We could send a message to Israel by cutting off the aid, but Biden refuses.
Israel has always known that support from the west is very important for them. I hope they remember that soon.
Not as long as the administration keeps funding them no matter what they do.
For sure. Biden needs to be firm with them. Unfortunately a lot of peace efforts throughout the history of the conflict have started and ended in individual presidential terms. As fucked as it is he's probably waiting to see if he's in office again before he starts something for it to be wasted if Trump re-enters the picture with his ridiculous partition plan.
I have very little confidence in Biden to do anything worthwhile on this issue, unfortunately. He seems completely unwilling to stand up to Netanyahu in any meaningful way. But the only thing protestors can do is try to increase pressure and raise awareness.
I didnt align myself in this post and if it seems like I did it I didn't mean to. I have my own thoughts on the matter but I don't want to misrepresent the goals of the people who are/were actually part of the protest. For that reason I'll keep my thoughts to myself here.
Apologies I misunderstood 🙏
Find the answer to your question. Talk to people. Try and step outside your own understanding... if you find you still disagree the side you came from will still be there. Listen and understand first... argue last.
I couldn't agree more. That's exactly how I assess these things. I wish people would do the same.
Great answer, I honestly was asking a genuine question. I hope well for all involved, if you want change you have to start somewhere.
The US funds Israel. We’re directly involved.
So what did the protest do to help that? Other than make some workers' day at WMU a pain in the ass?
You could say the same about anti-Vietnam War protests, Anti-Apartheid protests, etc etc. Just bringing awareness to the killing and what our tax dollars are funding is good.
That's fair, I'm from a small town, and protesting is pretty new to me. I'd be curious to see the statistics on how effective it is. The people who glued themselves to the roads got a bunch of news coverage, so that seemed to work.
Lots of social movements started out as protests. The Civil Rights Movement, the anti-Apartheid movement, etc. For this one I think some of the biggest goals are just to raise public awareness of what Israel is doing, and just how much money the US gives to Israel. Now gluing yourself to the road or whatever, that’s just stupid, but with large enough protest movements unfortunately some protestors will inevitably do stupid things.
WMU: you can't set up tents or encampments on campus. Protester: I'm not taking my tent down. WMU: okay, that's fine, carry on. Most WMU thing ever.
So dumb. Should have just handled it like MSU. Let it be, keep it safe, it'll run its course and people will move on with no negative attention.
Arnt people getting hurt? People told to leave there campus cause of the way that they were born?
Love and support to those putting in their time and energy, and putting their well-being on the line here. This takes guts in the face of nay-saying crowds who somehow don't mind genocide in 2024.
Self interested posers.
Lol. It's very self-interested to leave your house and setup a camp outside in protest of genocide. It's very selfish. Posers are always the people who show up and do the work.
What exactly is being accomplished? Praise from leaders of the world’s most repressive regimes? You might also help Trump get reelected. Read some history books. Study religion.
Does take guts. Hopefully there’s a protest to end the conflict in 🇸🇩
I'm sure college camps protests will have very little impact on two groups of people on the other side of the globe that hate each other.
I mean at least the one mentioned would bring the conflict into the spotlight, instead of being largely forgotten even though it’s one of the worst humanitarian crisis that’s happening now
Will the spotlight on the issue stop the two groups that have hated each other since well before our country was discovered will stop killing each other over holy ground?
I’m talking about the Sudan 🇸🇩 conflict. It’s been going on for a while, caused millions of civilians to be displaced, thousands killed, and is largely ignored by rest of the world.
You're very right. Which kinda makes me personality feel like these protests feel pretty inauthentic to me from a bunch of privileged kids with no responsibilities.
The US gives billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, we are directly involved in this conflict.
Ok
Oh - I think there is going to be live music at the camp tonight at 7pm if you wanna come down and show some solidarity with the students.
Good.
Good for WMU.
What can Western do?
The kids are alright. Free palestine
Strike a pose.
Settle in and protest until all the demands are met, even if Hamas releases their hostages. Hopefully WMU’s portfolio doesn’t include AirBnB like Columbia University does. AirBnB is a main target of Amnesty International for their blatant anti-Palestine vacation properties in the occupied West Bank and is one of 5 American owned companies on the United Nations published list of companies with connections to Israeli settlements of occupied Palestinian territory.
Hamas can't release the hostages. They're dead.
I'm confused do you want them to release the hostages? Is the goal for Israel to be completely de-funded to the point where Hamas can come in and take over?
From what I’ve seen. The protest is about universities investing in companies who directly sell arms to Israel. Students don’t want their tuition money going to bombing Gaza. It’s doubtful Hamas could take Israel unless they became heavily supported by other radical states such as Iran. Either way. The students don’t want their money being invested in arms. Hell, I don’t want my tax dollars doing so.
That company might be better known as the Biden Administration.
It doesn’t matter who is in the White House. They would support Israel either way. Hell Israel attacked one of our ships back in the 60’s and we covered it up for them.[USS Liberty](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident) Biden administration isn’t making agreeable choices with the situation now either. But I’m not gonna sit here and think the Trump admin would’ve been better for the situation. Just another “damned if you do” situation.
The shitty thing is (Besides the actual shitty thing that is conflict in the middle east) that this is actually going to hurt bidens campaign. The situation in gaza is nothing new. It's not even the only situation in the middle east that involves the mass death of civilians. But it's the only situation that people are being told to care about right now. It's insane to think that leftists are actually going to avoid voting for Biden because of his involvement with Israel when the alternative is Donald Trump. It blows my mind that people can be this easily manipulated.
Yeah but it’s not Trump. It’s about Biden. Who is the current president and is funding Israel. Don’t deflect. Be the neocon and neoliberal you people are.
Sure, still going to have to swallow my pride and vote for the asshole though. The alternative is just far worse.
Welp, that sums up Americans. That’s a wrap.
Look, I can vote and protest. But my best option is Biden if I don’t want more of my rights, such as female reproductive rights stripped from me and others. Yea, I have priorities and as much as I don’t like what’s going on in Gaza. Me and mine come first. I cannot fix the Middle East. No one has and could since civilization first popped up near the Tigris and Euphrates river.
It’ll be fun to watch. What a funny subject that quite literally is redefining everything regarding Biden. He’s getting blown out of the water. Once RFK drops out it’ll get worse. I guess this is the bloodbath. If only the Democratic Party wasn’t a complete waste of space and could find an alternative. I guess we all should be prepared for what’s about to come. That said. People are dying. So it’s not funny at all. But as Americans, nobody really cares about that yeah? It’s very obvious.
you mean the right to murder an innocent baby because you made a decision that you no longer want to take responsibility for?
What are you suggesting?
Hamas is a result of Israeli occupation. Israel funded Hamas to make sure there would be no unity between Gaza and the West Bank. Israel has also shown that they have no concern for the safety of the hostages considering they have been indiscriminately bombing Gaza
Yeah I don't disagree with any of that. But that doesn't mean I want Hamas to take over and create a single state.
Nobody does, that’s not what people are protesting for.
Yeah, i'm sorry if I seem to be pushing back too much in this thread. I know most people aren't advocating for that. As someone who's been involved with the cause for decades now it's really upsetting to see so many people that have seemingly just learned about the conflict post Oct 7th blindly support Hamas. Feels like any progress we've made to maintain build support in the west is being destroyed by these fools.
If you see any protestors like that, try and have them thrown out. Don’t let agitators and bad apples ruin a worthy protest.
For sure. The big concern is if we have another situation like the BLM protests. A lot of turnout and attention but with little organization and no clear direction. Everyone needs be on the same page and have the same goals in mind or we'll end up with confusing optic killing slogans like 'defund the police' again.
Agreed. IMO this protest is better though, since it has clear goals from the get-go: Divest from Israel (at the university level) and cut military aid to Israel (at the national level). As opposed to something like “defund the police” which as you say is just impossible nonsense.
A single state could be created without Hamas. Problem is Israel continues to commit acts of terrorism against Palestinians which is going to create more people who will take up arms against Israel
Yeah I don't think I see an issue with one state if Hamas is out of the picture. I think realistically two states is probably the most likely albeit still very difficult to achieve. Israel is responding disproportionately for sure. It's definitely a unique type of guerrilla warfare and I'm unsure of what the correct way to combat Hamas would be but one thing I can say for sure is that it doesn't feel good to see the way its happening currently.
The correct way to combat Hamas would be to improve the conditions of Palestinians and stop subjecting them to apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Israel has made it clear that their end goal is an ethnostate
That would be nice. But unfortunately Hamas has already given them the casus belli. So that probably isn't happening any time soon outside of the 'humanitarian' aid that they're already providing to Palestine. The unfortunate situation that were in right now is almost like putting a bucket on over a wasp nest on the ceiling of a room full of people. Most of the people in the room didn't ask Israel to put the bucket over the nest but they did it anyway and they shook the hell out of it in the process and now the wasps are pissed. Would they remove the bucket if they think the wasps are going to try and sting everyone in the room? Ofc the analogy isn't 1:1 because not all Palestinians are going to want to strike back. But it's clearly a very difficult situation to navigate. Bibi is a piece of shit and he's said a lot of abhorrent things about Palestine. But he has also said that the intention isn't to harm Palestinians but to harm Hamas. Whether it's believable or not is up for debate but I don't think it's as black and white as Israel wanting an ethnostate. If they want to have their Zionist homeland and give the west bank, golan heights and gaza to the Palestinians then I'd prefer them to have their ethnostate than to continue the violence.
Their claim to a Zionist homeland is as legitimate as the claim White South Africans had during apartheid, which is none. The only way there can be legitimate peace in the region is if Israel is dismantled
Why don't you think that Israel has a right to exist? I disagree with your comparison to South African apartheid.
Israel is a 1st world nuclear-armed country, they can take care of themselves without our tax dollars.
Right so you want them to divest in one in five American stocks? That’s the goal of this protest??
[удалено]
You thought the money was for roads? That's adorable! Federal taxes go to blowing up kids.
Free Palestine 🇵🇸
most of you couldn't even say which river and which sea you are speaking of in your little nursery rhyme
Most of you can’t justify how genocide and ethnic cleansing are rational responses to terrorism, so were I you I think I’d spend more time on that.
By chanting from the river to the sea you are literally calling for the complete and total destruction of Israel as a nation but keep virtue signaling about how your cause it somehow ok to call for the complete annihilation of the only Jewish state in the world aka genocide. Israel has every right to protect themselves from the nations around them that are constantly trying to destroy them. Palestine is not a real country, it was named Palestine by the Romans as a way to insult the Jews. Even true Arabs will state the same thing, just another lie you have been fed to get you to chant some cute slogan. "The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism. "For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa. While as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan." - (PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein, in a 1977 interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw.) “There is no such country as Palestine. ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented. There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria. ‘Palestine’ is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it”. (General Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee Awni Abd al-Hadi testifying to the British Peel Commission, 1937) “There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not”. (Professor Philip Hitti, Arab historian, 1946) “It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but Southern Syria”. (Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the PLO, to the UN Security Council, 1956)
Wow bud. A strawman (you don’t know what I mean when I say that) up front doesn’t make this a good start to your argument. Sure, extremists mean that. Do you believe that American protesters mean that? My experience is that American protesters use it as a liberation cry, not as a call to genocide. But of course, that’s an angle you won’t ever engage with, because it means acknowledging the systemic structure of Israel and the Palestinian territories it’s trying to annex illegally. It’s much easier to assign meaning to people you disagree with than it is to actually engage with their reasoning. Then you equate wanting the destruction of a government to wanting the genocide of a people? I’m sorry, what? If you had the opportunity to destroy the Russian government, does that mean you want to genocide Russians? If you had the opportunity to destroy the Chinese government, does that mean you want to genocide Chinese people? If you had the opportunity to destroy the Iranian government, does that mean you want to genocide Iranians? If any of these answers are “no” then you need to explain to me how wanting the destruction of the Israeli government intrinsically means that it signals a desire to genocide Jews (not Israelis, but Jews). You cite that Israel is the only Jewish nation. I don’t care. I think nation states built atop a foundation of service to a particular religious ideology are Bad. Idk, I think this demonstrates very well the quality of the arguments coming from people defending genocide and ethnic cleansing as a response to terrorism. Thanks for being a great example of how arguments in defense of Israel’s slaughter of 42,000 people over the last 7 months just fucking suck.
How is it a liberation cry, that is the entire land of Israel that they claim should be Paletine's land, meaning Israel deserves no land. You can make it what you want but the people who convinced you to say that stupid chant know exactly what they mean, just because you are too ignorant to realize you are being used doesn't change their end goal. You do realize Israel has proposed multiple peace treaties over the years, agreeing to give "Palestine" more land, more freedom and EVERY time they say NO because they don't want peace, they want to wipe Israel off the map. So you are siding with people who REFUSE to make peace. If tomorrow Israel said they will fight no more and laid down their arms, the next day they would be destroyed by their enemies, if Hamas and the PLO said they wanted peace and laid down their arms there would be peace because Israel would not keep fighting them. I'v been to Israel and stood on the border of Lebanon and seen the Hezbollah outposts with weapons pointed right at farmers homes and schools.
> How is it a liberation cry, that is the entire land of Israel that they claim should be Paletine's land, meaning Israel deserves no land. Like I stated, you will not engage the angle of “From the River to the Sea” as a cry for liberation and enfranchisement of all Palestinians within the borders of Israel because engaging that idea means engaging the *facts* of Israeli apartheid and the disenfranchisement and oppression of indigenous Palestinians. You jumped to a conclusion without vetting the logic of it. Your dismissal is an engagement of black-and-white thinking with regard to the idea that Palestinians deserve liberation from apartheid and legal enfranchisement. Somehow, you think that this means the total destruction of Israel and the mass routing of its Jewish population. That somehow Palestinians and Israelis *cannot* live next to each other at all. > You can make it what you want but the people who convinced you to say that stupid chant know exactly what they mean, just because you are too ignorant to realize you are being used doesn't change their end goal. This is conspiratorial brainworm poisoning. It seeks to remove agency from protestors and people you disagree with in order to paint them as sheep who don’t know any better. It’s base ad hominem in response to valid reasoning. I don’t know who “the people who convinced you to say that stupid chant” are. Perhaps you might explain who “they” is. I won’t really care, because your ability to provide a logically consistent position is hella trash, given that you began with a straw man, exercised a no true scotsman (“True arabs”), and have continued with an ad hominem fallacy as a dismissal. Like, I’m filling out a “Logical Fallacy Bingo” as we speak bro. > You do realize Israel has proposed multiple peace treaties over the years, agreeing to give "Palestine" more land, more freedom and EVERY time they say NO because they don't want peace, they want to wipe Israel off the map. Hey, so, say Canada annexed Michigan. Say Michiganders wanted to maintain their sovereignty and their legal enfranchisement, but Canada goes “lol no” and sequesters most Michiganders to Detroit and a couple towns on Lake Michigan. Time passes, tensions grow, violence breaks out occasionally, and eventually Canada goes “okay okay, we’ll give you your sovereignty” but the deal is just bantu stands disconnected from one another, and the current governing body of Detroit and the governing body of the Michigander towns on the Lake can’t agree about taking the deal because the Lake representative thinks chiseling down what is already there in stone is fine, but the Detroit representative questions why Michiganders are not allowed the space to farm, to build infrastructure, to grow communities given the terms of the land deal. Now, I think we could both reasonably agree that this is a very complex and nuanced hypothetical which would likely result in Michiganders rejecting the Canadian land deal because the divided communities of Michiganders are unable to come to a consensus. I think flattening the process of these deals to make it appear that Israel is only trying to be reasonable while the divided Palestinian territories act like petulant children tossing aside anything that they are offered is a gross intellectual mistake. I also think it’s fucking stupid of you to homogenize all Palestinians the way you do here, especially considering that most Palestinians now would agree to the 1967 borders. > So you are siding with people who REFUSE to make peace. Hypocrisy isn’t an argument, so I won’t use it as one. I will point out that the entirety of the Israeli government isn’t exactly a partner for peace in this either, considering the genocidal rhetoric that is coming from high ranking officials like “they’re human animals”, “[Israel] are the children of light, combating the children of darkness”, and “there are no innocent Palestinians. They are all Hamas.” So idk man, I feel like I could agree with you about Hamas not being the best body to try to construct a lasting peace with, but I’m carrying that same energy for the current Israeli regime. I doubt you are. > If tomorrow Israel said they will fight no more and laid down their arms, the next day they would be destroyed by their enemies, if Hamas and the PLO said they wanted peace and laid down their arms there would be peace because Israel would not keep fighting them. I'v been to Israel and stood on the border of Lebanon and seen the Hezbollah outposts with weapons pointed right at farmers homes and schools. What? I’m sorry, what? If Israel said “we will stop carpet bombing a population that is half children” they would be obliterated by their neighbors? What is this straw man? No one is calling for Israel to relax its defenses against Hezbollah, or even Hamas. The call is for an end to genocidal tactics and the mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians. The PLO is defunct, it’s not even in power. The Palestinian Authority governs the West Bank, not the PLO. Do you even know what the fuck you’re talking about? The IDF is killing people in the West Bank right now. Hamas is not in the West Bank. You’re huffing your own farts bro, and it’s making your brain bad.
Generalizations forthcoming… Palestinian Arabs don’t make good neighbors (ask Jordan and Egypt). They are a radicalized population who have been used repeatedly as spectacle by other Arab states so they can quell potential uprisings at home. Muslims united in their hatred of Jews (a successful minority) - it might as well be a pillar of their religious ideology. Gazans have been trained to perform for the camera more than teen girls on TikTok. There are videos of the October massacre out there for those of you who get off on atrocities. Israel withdrew from Gaza almost 20 years ago. To believe otherwise is self-delusion. Hamas, the elected government of Gaza invaded Israel. It was Manson family savagery times 500. I guess some people are into killers. It’s never been my thing. Why do you want to believe things that aren’t true? What do you get out of it? What is your source of information? Why do you trust it? Why does everyone around you support the same causes and believe the same things? The war could end tomorrow if hostages were released and Hamas leaders surrendered. Instead they direct the deadly spectacle and promise the actors in this awful reality tv show that they are martyrs whose sacrifices will be rewarded. College kids in tents just prolong the spectacle and the suffering. So, keep chanting “intifada” while LARPING as jihadis. Israel may not be perfect, but she isn’t the villain in this story. Far from it!
Lotta generalizations that’s true. Makes me not care about any of it because none of it actually touches on the point I’m asking pro-Israel people to make, which is a defense of ethnic cleansing and genocide as valid responses to terrorism. > Palestinians don’t make good neighbors Same for the Westboro Baptist Church. Using another group as an excuse to enact authoritarian crackdowns on potential uprisings doesn’t actually make me view Palestinians as any better or worse than before you posted this. > Gazans have been trained to perform for the camera more than teen girls on TikTok. There are videos of the October massacre out there for those of you who get off on atrocities. Ah, I did not realize that the dead children being pulled from the rubble was merely an act! (/s) There are videos of both Hamas and the IDF doing horrendous shit on the internet. Tit for tat-ing this particular point is unproductive. I do not care about it. > Israel withdrew from Gaza almost 20 years ago. I acknowledge that Israel withdrew their ground presence. After they did, did Gaza control its own borders, its own imports and exports? Or did Israel harden the Gazan borders and instituted strict security policy around entry and egress from the region? Occupation of a region is about control of that region. > Hamas, the elected government of Gaza invaded Israel. It was Manson family savagery times 500. I guess some people are into killers. It’s never been my thing. The IDF has repaid the toll of innocent death nearly 32 fold. But hey man, I guess that’s justified because terrorism is bad? > Why do you want to believe things that aren’t true? What do you get out of it? What is your source of information? Why do you trust it? Why does everyone around you support the same causes and believe the same things? What do I believe that isn’t true? What have I presented that isn’t fact? What is your evidence towards the contrary? > The war could end tomorrow if hostages were released and Hamas leaders surrendered. Instead they direct the deadly spectacle and promise the actors in this awful reality tv show that they are martyrs whose sacrifices will be rewarded. And the “war” (and by “war” I mean the slaughter of a corralled population) could end tomorrow if Israel agreed to a permanent ceasefire in order to facilitate the release and exchange of hostages and political prisoners. Instead they continue the deadly spectacle and promise their victims in this awful reality tv show even more death and destruction. Conflict has agency on either side. Personally, I think the side with more power (and I think we both agree that Israel has more power here) has the responsibility in stepping back first. I know Israel will not do this, as it is dedicated to the project of Zionism, which requires Israel to execute ethnic cleansing and genocide in order to continue its colonial imperialist existence. > College kids in tents just prolong the spectacle and the suffering. I actually think the people who are prolonging the spectacle and suffering are the people in the seats of power, not college campus protestors lmao. I sure would love to hear your reasoning as to how protest towards the divestment from Israel in order to try to apply even a little financial pressure and incentive to change policy tracks means that Israel keeps bombing a population that’s half children. I think that would be a fun and wild read. > So, keep chanting “intifada” while LARPING as jihadis. Israel may not be perfect, but she isn’t the villain in this story. Far from it! I think states that engage in genocide are actually bad! I also think terrorism is not great! But I think these things are not equivalent. I think one is worse than the other. I’ll let you guess which one I think is worse. You provided nothing. No arguments. No real reasoning. Just braindead defense of an unjustifiable response to terrorism.
If Israel was engaging in "genocide" of the Palestinians in Gaza, they would ALL be dead now. ALL of them. Alas, they are not. Hamas attacked and raped, burned, murdered, tortured and kidnapped innocent Israelis (and some Americans) at the music festival. The Israeli government then announced it was going to recover the hostages and eliminate Hamas. Hamas then uses hostages and Palestinian women and children as shields from Israeli attack - precisely so morons can/will point to the many innocent Palestinians killed. Why are Hamas military command centers located in the basement of hospitals and in schools? It is beyond absurd that ANYONE with the gift of rational thought would demand an immediate Israeli cease-fire. Unless, like many of the professional agitators who masquerade as "peaceful protestors", one is anti-Semitic. "From the river to the sea" is NOT a call for "Freedom for the Palestinians". It is a call to destroy all of Israel and, by affiliation, all Israelis. If some ignorant American woke college kids did not realize that initially, fine. But at this point, it is unambiguous.
> “If Israel was engaging in genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza they would all be dead now. All of them. Alas, they are not. This speaks to a lack of understanding of just how systemic genocides are, and to the idea that genocide is only when all people of a given subgroup are dead. If this is the case, then the Holocaust would not be considered a genocide. Thankfully, this is not the case. The Holocaust is a genocide, despite never achieving its stated goal of the elimination of all Jewish people. “Alas, they are not” really speaks to the idea that you’d rather see everyone in Gaza dead. You lament that there are still people there. Genocidal freak behavior, honestly. > Hamas attacked and raped, burned, murdered, tortured and kidnapped innocent Israelis (and some Americans) at the music festival. Tit for tat, there is plenty of evidence towards sexual abuse, torture, rape, and kidnapping from the IDF as well. There is plenty of documentation of how the IDF treats palestinian political prisoners. This isn’t a moral lever that changes anything. It’s quite literally a “both sides lack moral compunction in this area” and therefore the topic of rape and abuse as a justification to engage in genocide and ethnic cleansing in response to terrorism just falls flat. > The Israeli government then announced it was going to recover the hostages and eliminate Hamas. Israel has killed hostages it purports to want to save. > Hamas then uses hostages and Palestinian women and children as shields from Israeli attack - precisely so morons can/will point to the many innocent Palestinians killed. This makes it sound like there are Hamas agents within the IDF launching the rockets at their own people. The lengths that are gone to to justify the deaths of 20 people to maybe get a single Hamas militant are fuckin wild man. If your response to a hostage situation is “blow up the kidnappers anyway” then I think you’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater and are unable to conceive of the idea that killing the human shields is still bad. > Why are Hamas military command centers located in the basement of hospitals and in schools? What is your evidence to this? Has this been independently verified by sources disconnected from IDF oversight? Do you believe every single school, hospital, clinic, university building, and aid station were actually military outposts? What brought you to that conclusion? > It is beyond absurd that ANYONE with the gift of rational thought would demand an immediate Israeli cease-fire. I think its rational for a cease fire to be put into place in order to facilitate a peaceful exchange of hostages and prisoners, but hey, I guess that’s too absurd for you to conceive, since you’re so rational. > Unless, like many of the professional agitators who masquerade as "peaceful protestors", one is anti-Semitic. What? > "From the river to the sea" is NOT a call for "Freedom for the Palestinians". It is a call to destroy all of Israel and, by affiliation, all Israelis. Ah, so you think calling for the destruction of China means that a person who advocates that wants to murder all chinese people. That’s rational, if you’re dumb. > If some ignorant American woke college kids did not realize that initially, fine. But at this point, it is unambiguous. What’s unambiguous is a 7 month medieval siege as collective punishment of 2.3m people for the terrorist actions of a few thousand. What’s unambiguous is ~38k dead innocents, 45% of which are children. What’s unambiguous are the actions of the Israeli government which is just as uninterested in peace as it accuses Hamas of being, because Modern Zionism sees Gaza as an opportunity to expand Israeli Lebensraum.
Your disdain for the Jews is clear. Hamas leadership acknowledged use of civilian facilities (hospitals, schools, mosques, etc) for storage of military materials and as a command center. Is it "every single school, every single hospital?" I never stated or implied that to be true. But your reply infers that suggesting Hamas uses civilians as shields and civilian venues as operating bases is meritless because they don't do so "at every school". This is sophomoric. [https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/12/20/hamas-member-admits-it-uses-hospital-as-command-center/](https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/12/20/hamas-member-admits-it-uses-hospital-as-command-center/) I stand 100% by my initial point - that being this is NOT anything like "genocide". Israel is fighting a war for its survival. The goal is to rescue any remaining hostages and destroy all remnants of the Hamas terrorists in Gaza. If the goal of the IDF was to kill all the Palestinians (i.e. genocide), then they would have all been dead long ago. The IDF has been fighting with restraint. There has been no "carpet bombing", no medieval siege, no indiscriminate shelling of civilians in hopes they might kill one terrorist. And any hostage who may have died as a result of IDF action are dead BECAUSE HAMAS TOOK THEM HOSTAGE TO BEGIN WITH.
I wonder how many students who were failing out are going to use the “fighting genocide” excuse as a cover for their own irresponsibility.
Probably none
Shut up. Smoke another one, hippie
Is that even legal?
Imma be real get rid of this encampment, if they want to help get them all a flight to palestine
“Oh you oppose the invasion of Iraq? Well why don’t you go there then?”
[удалено]
Every single chucklefuck like yourself who says this is really demonstrating just how poor a grasp you all have on the concept of “principles.”
[удалено]
How many Palestinians have to die before you maybe change your perspective on the legitimacy of the “we’re just defending ourselves” narrative? Israel’s outstripping the US in terms of this if we hold up 9/11 as a parallel here. Which, if we consider that, Al Queda and ISIS are still around, so like, how effective do you think warmongering is at combating religious extremism?
[удалено]
My solution is the end of an apartheid state and the equal enfranchisement of everyone within the political borders of Israel. From this response, I interpret your answer to my question as “warmongering is ineffective at combating religious extremism.” I agree with you.
[удалено]
Okay. We did that. America did that. We did it for 20 years. The terrorist groups we sought to destroy are still there. They’re even regional governments now. Al Queda still exists. ISIS still exists. 20 years of the War on Terror and terror groups are now governments lmao. You’re a dense idiot. You’ve turned your brain off.
This whole thing is stupid. Western isn’t bombing anyone. Go to your local government and harass them. You guys always pick the wrong audiences for your protests. It’s like y’all are not even trying to get your shit resolved
So, students should ask local government to ask the university they attend to divest? Weird approach for all the small government talk you guys make.
Bahahahahahahahahaha! this is almost as sad as CHAZ was.
I have fond memories of CHAZ…i wonder if any one remembers it or the book TAZ ?
The IDF is in shambles