Tensions spill across universities like Columbia and Harvard as students on each side accuse the other of a kind of bloodlust
To one side, Columbia students stood silently, wrapped in the blue and white of Israel as they gripped pictures of the murdered and abducted. Across the grass and brick divide, a slightly larger cohort of students chanted “Free, free Palestine.”
The faultline between the two ran along the claim by each that the other was pursuing a kind of bloodlust – a charge that has divided university campuses across America in the wake of the bloody Hamas attack on Israeli communities and Israel’s ongoing military assault on Gaza.
Reactions within US universities to the killing of at least 1,300 Israelis and the abduction of about 100 more have swung from celebration of the Hamas assault as a legitimate act of resistance to occupation to condemnation along with a demand that it not be used to ignore the deaths of Palestinians killed in Israel’s retaliation on Gaza.
Leading financial figures on Wall Street made a show of saying they would not employ Harvard students who signed the statement blaming Israel for the Hamas attack. A billboard truck drove around Harvard campus displaying the pictures and names of the students, and their addresses and other details were published on websites.
That’s some intense and coordinated propaganda.
I think they believed people would jump on with the hate, rather than seeing how messed up it is.
Israel is paying for the success of Iron Dome - rocket attacks never really stopped, but the international perspective shows only Palestinians displaced and abused, while a few rockets get shot down over Israel. If Israel wades into Gaza and occupies it, the attack got what it wants, a new South Africa, with millions of un-enfranchised citizens. This outcome was warned about in the early 2000’s.
The doxxing truck should get someone slapped with attempted murder charges.
So we’ve finally reached the point where people realise where cancel culture was leading and now they don’t like it.
On the one hand, it’s a favorite conspiracy among the right-wing to scream about the “internationalist cabal of Jewish globalist bankers who control the world!”
But then you read something like that, and it does seem suspicious. Like why would “leading financial figures” care who Harvard students support? And who would think putting their personal info on a fucking truck is acceptable?
Note: I am absolutely not saying or espousing any theory that the Jews control the world or anything. But I think that in a vacuum, absent any outside context, it seems weirdly coincidental for Wall Street to care if a bunch of college students blame Israel or for their information to be publicly broadcast.
If it’s black it’s called a gang, If it’s Italian it’s the mob, if it’s Latino it’s the cartel, BUT if it’s jewish, it’s a coincidence and should never be talked about.
That’s the problem with the right wing conspiracy theories. They all just blame the “Jews” for being elite and evil. If a group of people who happen to be Jewish are conspiring to control money and politics, it doesn’t mean the whole ethnicity is in on it. Their ethnicity and religion are irrelevant to the fact that they are just power hungry assholes.
That’s like blaming all of the Italians for everything the mafia does.
It’s not really that Israel is Jewish, it’s that Israel is a strategic and financial asset to Western liberalism. And students at Ivy League schools are going to face more pressure to kowtow as they will eventually participate in executive political and financial institutions. Power doesn’t demand a grand conspiracy to maintain itself.
The problem with conspiracy theories is how unsure one must be of another’s motives: from where you’re sitting you think I’m sealioning; from my perspective you’re painting with a really broad brush.
Perhaps my point wasn’t clear enough so let me try to rephrase it: this is the exact kind of activity that adds fuel to right-wing anti-Semitism. I fully expect to hear on next week’s Knowledge Fight Alex Jones using this to fuel his “Jews Globalists control the world!” narrative.
Freedom of speech, not freedom of consequences.
The government isn’t stopping anyone from saying their piece, industry gets to make their own decisions based on your words and actions.
These university students aren’t a protected class, if Wall Street wants to say ‘get fucked, we want nothing to do with your position on this topic’, that’s entirely their choice to make… and the thing people don’t seem to want to accept, is there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. You’re not taking on Wall Street, anymore than these protestors are going to make a difference. They must feel real special about the impact they’re making!!!
The boomers spent a lifetime equating blind, unconditional support of israel to benevolence, in the same way they blindly equate being anti abortion to being pro life despite supporting little to no assistance for unwanted children and unwilling mothers. Its FREE and it sounds pretty at face value so they made it their position.
I can read and see the white hot hatred of boomers in power over the fact that younger generations don’t value an Israeli life over a Palestinian life or vice versa. It literally seems to dumbfound them that we didn’t come to their same shallow from the inception conclusion. Sorry, fuck your team sports, and fuck all the imaginary friends you use to rationalize killing real human beings that exist here in reality. I would never pick a religion or a skin tone to determine who is more worthy to love.
And the fact is, neither the Israeli government or Hamas that controls the Palestinian government take care to spare civilian life. That isn’t a Hamas thing, that is a this conflict thing.
And the Israeli government is the force with more responsibility to temper their response for 2 reasons: They’re a much larger military. Something something power, something something responsibility, peter parker. Israel always gets a global pass retaliating against Palestinian civilians when Hamas attacks Israeli soldiers, which doesn’t exactly scream “keep our civilians out of this.” And 2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip
You can’t run the world’s largest open air prison, largely filled with people guilty of no crime, and get credibly angry when the prisoners robbed of hope turn to desparation and vengeance.
There are no heroes in this conflict, and with the blood dripping off both parties, Im inclined to be more supportive of the force less capable of defending themselves and their side’s civilians.
This is the first year in a long time that could be considered a conflict, rather than a globally sanctioned, continuous slaughter.
I support the civilians. Both governments can go slather themselves in honey and take a hike in bear country.
The Enlightened Centrist who absolutely MUST make sure others know that they are. For smugness.
I strongly believe that in this case, being on the side of the civilians in all cases is not enlightened centrism…it’s just the correct side… Do you think the civilians of one side deserve retribution?
Siding with the Israeli government is to support Netanyahu and his fascistic genocide of the Palestinian people
Siding with Hamas (Hamas =/= Palestine) is to support violent extremists.
I never took a side. I called out smugness. Not everything in life boils down to two sides that people MUST be on.
There’s an old proverb that goes ‘Better to be an enlightened centrist than a miserable prick’.
Not sure what reminded me of that.
Can you comprehend this is about having to announce yourself? People have an incessant NEED to point out what enlightened centrists they are. Its up there with vegans always letting you know they are.
Hint: some of us also may hold similar views as you, but we don’t go around announcing it at every opportunity.
Can’t both sides be driven by bloodlust? It’s all horrific and a never-ending cycle of pain and rage.
Both governments (Israel and Hamas) are driven by an urge to seek more power by claiming land and killing their “enemies”. The populace are witting and unwitting pawns of that. I am not surprised people back the Israeli government with the amount of propaganda being put forth and I’m not surprised that people who have been murdered and had their homes destroyed for decades are willing to tacitly support the only group that seems like it can fight back. Desperate people don’t make rational decisions.
Yes, there are no good guys in this conflict. Israel has spent decades commiting low level offences against Palestine and her people, and Hamas has spent the same amount of time launching small attacks against Israel. They both have legitimate grievances with each other, but it’s the civilians on both sides that suffer for it. Unfortunately there’s no good solution to the problem, there’s too much bad blood between them at this point that any hope for peace would be short lived. Even if Israel and Hamas agreed to stand down some other group on one side or the other would start things up again.
Israel has spent decades commiting low level offences against Palestine and her people
“Low level”… Yeah no.
Low level as in murdering a dozen people there, evicting and bulldozing a bunch of houses over there, that sort of thing, as opposed to like, rolling tanks into the middle of Gaza and opening fire, dropping bombs on them, or like what they’re planning on doing now where they’ve ordered them to evacuate in 24 hours before they presumably march in and most likely just start murdering people. Israel tends to keep up a constant low level attack. It’s not one big thing, but thousands of small offenses happening nearly constantly. Hamas on the other hand tends to do less, but what they do is bigger. Bombs that kill or injure hundreds, launching indiscriminate rockets into Israel, that sort of thing.
For better or worse, Hamas attack is exactly what Netanyahu wanted. It’s an excuse for Israel to escalate things even further. In many ways Hamas played right into his hands. To be clear, they were absolutely provoked into it, but there’s still an inbalance of power at play. Now Netanyahu is going to use that attack to justify even more atrocities, and there’s not much Palestine or Hamas can really do about it. It will get very ugly over there before too much longer and both Palestinians and Israelis are going to suffer, but I fear the Palestinians are going to suffer a lot more before this is over. There’s a distinct possibility that this is going to result in Israel completely occupying Palestine and them effectively ceasing to exist as an independent state.
Fucking great! That’s what universities are for. Debate.
It’s gotten worse than debate in quite a few places. People protest memorial services saying that the murder of civilians was justified. This is some real WBC-level shit.
