Do pro-Palestinian protesters support Hamas? Probably most of them don't, but the language they routinely use leaves room for doubt. This is from Students for Justice in Palestine:
Settlers are not “civilians” in the sense of international law.... Resistance comes in all forms—armed struggle, general strikes, and popular demonstrations.
"Resistance" includes armed struggle and Israelis are not civilians. There may not be any explicit mention of Hamas here, but this is pretty obviously a defense of Hamas slaughtering civilians on October 7. In other places "the resistance" is used as a synonym for Hamas.
Avoiding explicit references to Hamas is plainly political. Jodi Dean, who was famously suspended from Hobart and William Smith Colleges for her "comments" on the Gaza war, is more explicit:
The images from October 7 of paragliders evading Israeli air defenses were for many of us exhilarating.... Although imperialist and Zionist forces try to condense the action into a singular figure of Hamas terrorism...the will to fight for Palestinian freedom precedes and exceeds it.
These are the paragliders who sailed into Israel and butchered more than a thousand civilians, including hundreds of kids at the Re'im music festival. This was "exhilarating."
The struggle for Palestinian liberation today is led by the Islamic Resistance Movement — Hamas. Hamas is supported by the entirety of the organized Palestinian left. One might have expected that the left in the imperial core [i.e., the United States] would follow the leadership of the Palestinian left in supporting Hamas. More often than not, though, left intellectuals echo the condemnations that imperialist states make the condition for speaking about Palestine.
In other words, American lefties feel like they "have to" condemn Hamas to maintain their credibility. But Dean is having none of it:
Defending Hamas, we take the side of the Palestinian resistance.... Which side are you on? Liberation or Zionism and imperialism? There are two sides and no alternative, no negotiation of the relation between oppressor and oppressed.
That's clear enough. It's worth noting that even after writing such an explicit defense of killing civilians, Dean's suspension was condemned by nearly everybody as a breach of academic freedom. Maybe that's correct. But after reading her entire essay, I have to wonder whether she can be trusted to treat all her students fairly and maintain an evenhanded approach in her lectures.
It's wise for most Palestinian resistance groups in the US to avoid being as clear as Dean. After all, most Americans, no matter whose side they're on, still think of Hamas as a brutal terrorist group. But even though the resistance groups try to keep things fuzzy, there's not much question that most of them think Hamas is just doing what has to be done and October 7 is therefore to be celebrated. After all, it was nothing more than a necessary step toward eliminating the settler colonialist Israelis once and for all.
POSTSCRIPT: And what about Israeli killing of civilians in Gaza? Is that just a necessary step toward eliminating Hamas? There are many who think so. I'm not one of them, but it's sophistry nonetheless to pretend these are the same things. Hamas invaded Israel for the express purpose of slaughtering civilians. Israel may be guilty of not caring enough about civilian deaths in Gaza, but they are fundamentally fighting against a terrorist group which has the announced aim of destroying Israel.
This is not some mushy, hair-splitting distinction that's blind to Israeli behavior. It's fundamental to the most minimal conception of human decency.
Kevin, right after Oct 7, I was of the opinion that Israel should do what it needed to do, to get their people back: the hostages. But at the same time, I believed that Israel also needed to give back all the Occupied Territories (OT). All of them. All of them. In the ensuing months, it's become clear that Israel isn't engaged in this war to get back their hostages, nor to take apart Hamas, but rather to ethnically cleanse Gaza. So here's the thing:
At what point, after how many decades, of what Israel has done to Gaza (a open-air prison) and the OT (bit-by-bit stealing their land, surreptitious and incremental ethnic cleansing), is the sort of vicious, brutal, beyond-the-pale military response like Oct 7 justified? B/c if it is *never* justified, then basically you're saying that a militarily powerless people must sit still for their land being taken, their people being imprisoned, as long as it's done, y'know, bureaucratically, without "too much" application of force.
It's easy to argue that we should condemn Hamas for Oct 7. And we **should** condemn them: it was criminal and completely unacceptable!! But meanwhile we let slide that Israel is stealing these people's homeland, bit-by-bit, over *decades* of time.
BTW, one response to this sort of argument is that "gosh, they've been fighting over the same land for millennia, it's so hard to sort out." But it's not. It's actually *easy*. Israel's borders are a matter of international law -- internationally recognized borders. And so also is the fact that the OT are Palestinian and not Israeli. We don't need to go "oh, in 1947 Israel didn't exist -- do you want to go back to that?" We can instead go to "we should return to internationally-recognized borders, and that means everybody should, including Israel".
Israel is a settler colonial state. A very small number of Jews lived there then a giant pack of foreign jews with 0 connection to the place (I don't give a fuck how you FEEL if you havebt lived in a place for centuries you have 0 connection) flooded the area in 30 years and started taking over. Both sides tried to kill each other and one side lost.
But disappearing Israel now, today, is an unjustifiable crime. I oppose that completely. And while Hamas is entitled to resist being crushed by Israel doesn't magically give them a pass to commit atrocities. Exactly the same as a large number of Arabs wanting to genocide them also does not give Israel a free pass to commit atrocities.
Agreed.
Hamas does not get a free pass for the slaughter of civilians. The fact that they have been given no other way out of their subjugation is a failure of the international community, but not an exoneration.
Isreal as well does not get a pass for the slaughter of civilians. The fact that they are free to choose this path is also a failure of the international community.
Isreal's crimes are objectively an order of magnitude more extreme as well as being a crime of choice.
Always remember that it is antisemitic to argue that Israelis have agency over their own actions.
Currently today Israel is the one that deserves the criticism. On October 7 it was Hamas, during intifada 1 and 2 it was also similar elements in PA (Barghouti). I will focus my condemnation on whoever is currently doing the worst shit.
"The fact that they have been given no other way out of their subjugation is a failure of the international community, but not an exoneration."
Disagree. The Palestinian Authority opposes Israel but does not commit mass atrocities and seek to eliminate Israel. And Hamas COULD have focused their attention in 2005 on properly administering Gaza and being relatively peaceful, which would give support to the elements of Israel that might be congenial to a two-state solution. I know that there is an endless cycle of violence and retribution, but Hamas is like an advertisement for the Israeli Right on why a two-state solution would not work.
And its not like what Hamas is doing is helping Palestinians out of their subjugation, unless you count provoking large civilian casualties to gain international sympathy is a help.
If you are holding out the West Bank as a Palestinian success story you are clueless.
Well, I was not saying that at all. I was pointing out that there were other options than what Hamas has been doing to give Palestinians their own state, much better options.
Well, Fatah has moderated, not only not engaging in violent resistance, but making at least some attempt to suppress terrorists trying to operate from the West Bank. And what that has gotten them is more evictions of Palestinians, more settlements, more victimization by extremist settlers.
The Palestinian Authority opposes Israel but does not commit mass atrocities and seek to eliminate Israel.
And they have made zero progress in achieving a Palestinian state. Measured by that goal, it is not a better option for the Palestinians. Despite having made a written commitment in the Oslo Accords to halt settlement construction, the Israelis never even slowed that process down. They treat the PA as a pathetically weak organization that they can walk over in any way that they please.
Unfortunately, true.
How did the Indians/Pakistanis manage to evict the British?
Through a combination of nonviolent resistance, periodic armed rebellions that usually included massacres of British civilians (and not just in 1857), the Indian National Army's collaboration with the Japanese during WWII, and the fact that Britain was functionally bankrupt by 1945.
The British didn't see India as their homeland. I think the idea for the British colonists in India was to make their money there and then go home.
The British exploited natural allegiances to strengthen their hold on their colonies; for example offering opportunities for Indians (including the young Mohandas Gandhi) to create a middle class in African colonies without empowering native Africans. They needed people to clerk in government offices, be shopkeepers, etc. who would have no attachment to the land.
India and Pakistan became independent in 1947. So did the Kingdom of Jordan. Did Jordan evict the British? Nope, because they were leaving anyway.
Meanwhile, while we’re on the topic, how did America become a country and evict the British?
Israel's conundrum — and ours — is that they’re just trying to do what the West has always done. Trouble is, the Palestinians won’t drink themselves to death, smallpox is extinct, and nowadays everyone gets vaccinated against measles. If Israel is going to get rid of the natives, they’re going to have to kill them.
The other problem is, the world has acknowledged through international agreements and laws, that that kind of behaviour is immoral and illegal.
We got help from the French, and didn’t try to attack the British Isles or claim Britain had no right to exist.
We did! John Paul Jones, commanding Ranger ‘invaded’ Whitehaven in Cumbria. https://www.heritagedaily.com/2020/04/april-22nd-1778-the-day-america-raided-england/127214#:~:text=On%20April%2022nd%2C%201778,town%20of%20Whitehaven%20in%20England
We also invaded British Canada, and briefly occupied Montréal. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/revolutionary-war/battles/quebec
When you elect a government that coerces it's own civilians as suicide bombers and human shields, expect a lot of collateral.
and once you ask that kind of government in, you can never ask them to leave
A "very small number of Jews" lived in Israel because there'd been repeated massacres, which both reduced the Jewish population and terrorized others into leaving.
If Israeli settler pogroms (and I'd agree with that characterizaion) succeed in driving out enough Palestinians, would settlers then be entitled to take over the abandoned?
“some mushy, hair-splitting distinction“
In terms of mushy hair-splitting, this post is a good example. You are working your way toward an honest reassessment of Israel, but you are obviously not there yet.
“Settlers are not “civilians” in the sense of international law…”
Maybe address that statement as opposed to mischaracterizing it and creating a strawman of “Israelis are not citizens?”
“These are the paragliders who sailed into Israel and butchered more than a thousand civilians, including hundreds of kids at the Re'im music festival”
824 civilians total have been killed since 10/7/23, not sure where you are getting your more than 1k civilians“butchered.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war
Notice your usage of “butcher” when Hamas kills, yet you utilize the more anodyne “kill” when it is the IDF killing actual children as opposed to concertgoers in the 20s and over at that music festival. There were no actual teens in the recorded deaths from that music festival.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re%27im_music_festival_massacre#Casualties
I notice that you ask that these that groups support the Palestinians denounce Hamas, but there’s never the same asked of supporters of Israel to denounce the most extremist terrorist settlers when they advocate for a course of action. I don’t know if you meant to put your thumb on the scale or if it was inadvertent and you thought you were being neutral.
+1 I was going to make similar points. Kevin took "Settlers are not “civilians” in the sense of international law.... Resistance comes in all forms—armed struggle" and transformed it into "a defense of Hamas slaughtering civilians"
I don't *think* it is disengenous, but it is an unjustifiable twisting of meanings.
"Settlers" pretty clearly means people taking up residence in occupied Palestinian land (eg the West Bank) and though surely some may think of all Isrealis that way, it is not the common meaning.
"Armed struggle" covers all kinds of activities and when not inclusive of war crimes is entirely defensible for an occupied people.
If “settlers” means occupiers of the West Bank, then why did Hamas rape, slaughter, and burn Israelis that were not occupiers of the West Bank?
Clearly, they mean all Israelis.
The “armed struggle” they employed was murder, rape, and torching of innocent civilians.
You are not following the thread at all.
Dr. Juan Cole prefers the term "squatters" to "settlers". Squatters more correctly implies illegal occupation of somebody else's property. These folks are unprosecuted criminals.
IANAL, but I actually took some time to read some of the international law on the protection of non-combatants, and that is the term used, not ‘civilians’. It is a broader group, including e.g. military no longer engaged in hostilities (prisoners of war, casualties).
Thanks to all that commented off my original post. I agree and don’t think kkseattle is following the thread. He is pushing his agenda context be damned.
Kevin: you should just not touch this topic. No good will come of it. Israelis and Palestinians have been intertwined in a multigenerational feud that has no hope of ending peacefully. Both sides have done atrocious things to each other and will continue to do so because both have irreconcilable claims to the same piece of land given to them by God and then re-given to both of them by the British (who by the way, goddamn, because who the fck promises the same finite thing to two different groups who hate each other and thinks it’ll all turn out ok? The same geniuses who thought “Hong Kong: one country two systems, that’d be splendid yes” apparently.)
If you insist on touching this topic anyway, as if anybody involved in it cares what an Orange County suburbanite (or a metro DC suburbanite like myself) thinks about the subject, you should simply conclude that it’s impossible to determine who is more right or wrong here. Yes Israel is killing children now, because Gazans killed children before, because Israelis killed adults and took their land before that, because Gazans killed adults and blew up buildings before that, because… the cycle just goes on and on and depressingly on for decades of each side doubling down on violence as retribution for the other side doubling down on violence.
The only winning move for the rest of the world is Not To Play.
Yah, the English totally messed up the world in the mid-20th century, by partitioning land by religion. They did this in both Palestine and in India. Both places are still violent hot spots to this day.
It depends on who the new landlord is. No violence or hotspots in Tibet or Myanmar, but I doubt the residents are thrilled.
You apparently aren't paying attention to what's going on in Myanmar.
Point taken- scratch the peace part. I shouldn't have grouped Myanmar with Tibet. Nothing like 2 million soldiers for keeping law and order. I could get excited about Myanmar folks possibly getting change if it was just one group, but this looks like they traded Tibet for Haiti
Unfortunately revolts like Ghandi and Mandella, (Yeltsin?) without an outside invader, are sadly very scarce
You are wrong again. There was an outside invasion of India prior to the British leaving. The Japanese made it into Manipur before the British and Indians, along with some West Africans, stopped them and then launched a re-invasion of Burma. (The Imphal/Kohima battles and then the Race to Rangoon are fascinating campaigns.)
More importantly for British rule was the presence of Subhas Chandra Bose and the Indian National Army operating with the Japanese. Their existence produced a lot of unrest in India. Bose is now considered to be an Indian national hero.
Settlers, in this context, could be West Bank Settlers and, if so, I would not consider them civiliand
Hamas did not rape, murder, and immolate West Bank settlers.
C’mon.
I have to agree with Coby Beck that you aren't paying attention. No one in this thread has justified Hamas's actions.
Perhaps no one in the comments thread has justified Hamas. But Kevin's original post referenced SJP saying ON OCTOBER 12TH, that settlers are not civilians. That was clearly with regard to Hamas had just done days earlier, and there "settlers" meant any Israelis, not just those on the West Bank. They were arguing that any Israeli citizen is a legitimate target for rape and murder in the name of "resistance".
Displaced Canuck is trying to inaccurately trying to reframe that context to settlers on the West Bank. kkseattle pushed back, pointing out that SJP's statement was about the Hamas attack.
Whether or not anyone *here* is saying "Hamas was justified" seems kinda irrelevant?
Why don’t you have the decency to post the full comment that KD edited to mischaracterize so he could conflate a strawman to argue against? This is the full sentence from the SJP’s “Day of Resistance Toolkit”:
“Settlers are not “civilians” in the sense of international law, because they are military assets used to ensured continued control over stolen Palestinian land.”
It would be nice if you or KD would be kind enough to enlighten the rest of us with your reasoning why this statement is faulty, absurd or however you would fairly and not disengenously characterize it. I don’t think you have given any evidence for your assertions.
“ The Security Council reaffirmed this afternoon that Israel’s establishment of settlements in Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, had no legal validity, constituting a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the vision of two States living side-by-side in peace and security, within internationally recognized borders.”
https://press.un.org/en/2016/sc12657.doc.htm
Sorry, if I come across as overly critical. However, looking at your photo, and all I can think is Milburn Pennybags has deep thoughts.
I believe the burden is on SJP to justify their statement. As I mentioned, I have read some material on the protection of non-combatants. I note that even spies and saboteurs (who actively aid military operations) are to be treated humanely, but are not afforded protection as non-combatants. I saw nothing to support the claim that non-combatants, by their mere presence, could be classified as ‘military assets’ (a term I did not see in the documents I read). The Israeli settlements are indeed illegal, but that does not define the status of the settlers. Civilian settlers who have perpetrated violence against Palestinians are simply criminals.
You want context? SJP posted that *in response* to Hamas' attacks on Israelis on undisputed Israeli land. Many of those raped and murdered where at a music festival. SJP posted that in their call for rally in celebration and support of that terror attack.
The only valid interpretation of their post (which Kevin linked, FFS) is that all Israelis (non-combatants, infants, etc) anywhere in Israel are valid targets for *any* form of attack or crime. Not as "collateral damage" but as deliberate, individual targets.
Kevin, why did you switch from their “settlers” to your “Israelis”? You are usually above such obvious strawmen.
That being said, Palestinians have had the right to violently resist the British/Zionist colonization since at least 1920, when Britain, choosing between multiple incompatible promises it made during WWI, decided to deny Palestinians self-rule* and proceed with colonization over the vociferous objections of the people it was mandated to protect. At this point British rule became illegitimate and violence justified.
* Palestinian leaders asked to be included with Syria, as they had been in the late Ottoman era, not an independent country.
Maybe the Ottoman Empire shouldn’t have lost the war.
I’m sure the Germans in Gdańsk (Danzig) weren’t happy about becoming Poles, but them’s the breaks of losing.
Does Gdańsk retain the right to violently resist Polish occupation?
I'm not even sure where to begin with the utter cluelessness of this comment, but I'll try.
The Palestinians are not the Ottomans. The end of WWI exchanged one imperial overlord for another. The Arabs actually thought they were on the winning side, given that they helped the British in 1917-18, before the British screwed them over. I'm guessing that you think that all Muslims are indistinguishable from each other and should just be lumped together.
The Germans of Danzig never became Poles. They were a free city rather than being a part of Poland from 1918-39. The spent the next six years as a part of the German Reich. After 1945, the Germans were ethnically cleansed from eastern Europe. Between 12 and 14 million were expelled, primarily from Poland and Czechoslovakia, but also the Soviet Union, Hungary, and Romania.
So, no, Gdańsk doesn't retain the right to violently resist Polish occupation.
If you want to use this as an example of how the Palestinians should be dealt with, I'm going to have to strenuously disagree. More than 2 million ethnic Germans died between 1945-50 as they were ethnically cleansed. Aside from which, this would, today, be a crime against humanity under the 4th Geneva Convention, which wasn't signed until 1949, and which Israel ratified in 1951.
I will take note of the fact that you are of the opinion that morality flows exclusively from power.
I’m with kkseattle. The Palestinians ARE the Ottomans, and that empire is gone and with it any claim to the land it controlled. Otherwise it all belongs to Turkey. Palestine was never more than the part of an empire that chose to allow Jews and Arabs to live there in exchange for tribute. That landlord is gone. Like Tibet, Mongolia, S Vietnam, etc, the only way they get a flag is if the current landlord says so.
Yes, as China, NK and Myanmar have demonstrated , morality pretty much flows from power. Unless of course you want us to invade.
The Palestinians ARE the Ottomans . . .
No. This is like saying that the Italians are Germans, because the Holy Roman Empire included much of Italy. If this is your position, everything else you say will inevitably be wrong.
Palestine was never more than the part of an empire that chose to allow Jews and Arabs to live there in exchange for tribute.
So, no one has a homeland, and those with power always have the right to force them from their homes and land?
Yes, as China, NK and Myanmar have demonstrated , morality pretty much flows from power.
You have a very malevolent idea of what constitutes morality. You are, at best, a rank apologist for evil.
Kevin didn't "switch from settlers to Israelis". Five days after 10/7, Students for Justice in Palestine used the term "settlers" to refer to the Israeli victims of the attack.
Speaking of sophistry ...
I could write a dissertation about the problems with this sentence, ranging from the mislabelling of Netanyahu's IDF as "Israel" through the naivete of accepting Netanyahu's public statements as his "fundamental" war aims to the bizarre idea that empty threats justify a massive military response.
Netanyahu launched a ground invasion of Gaza against plenty of advice from people both within and without Israel who accurately predicted the consequences. Far from "not caring enough about civilian deaths", he chose a course of action which would intentionally and unavoidably kill thousands of civilians in the hope it would induce Palestinians to turn against Hamas. This was evident in the first days of the conflict when members of the Israeli cabinet declared they were going to stop all food, water and energy supplies to the territory because the inhabitants were "animals".
On October 8 last year, Haaretz wrote in an editorial:
I ask the question others have asked: Just how long were Palestinians supposed to endure their condition, and what alternative means did Hamas have to try to alleviate it? Suggesting by implication that the Palestinians should have just put up with their immiseration indefinitely instead of resorting to violence is as morally bankrupt a position as advocating the arbitrary murder of Israelis.
Yes.
Is it understandable that they resorted to violence? Yes. Against non-combatants? No.
Also it is fine for Israel to try to kill those combatants? Yes.
Is it fine for Israel to not care or think of it as a 2fer if they kill some arab brats? No.
As to alternative means spending money Netanyahoo got them on making Gaza less a shithole is a good start. Holding actual fair elections is another.
It's superficially reasonable to argue that the Palestinians should limit their hostilities to attacks on the IDF, yet given the gross disparities in weaponry available to the two sides, this is tantamount to saying Palestinians should do nothing but stage futile suicide attacks against hardened targets where the IDF will sustain minimal casualties. It was only by committing terrorist atrocities against civilians on October 7 that the IDF could be lured into combat zones where Hamas could inflict significant casualties (fewer IDF members have been killed subsequently in the whole invasion of Gaza than on that single day in October).
War is hell, as Sherman said. Every conflict in modern times has traded off civilian casualties against military objectives, not least in World War 2 where indiscriminate area bombing of cities was a deliberate strategy by all nations to undermine civilian morale. The suffering and death caused by Israel's years-long blockade of the Gaza Strip have been well-documented, to which Hamas had no effective counter. Was it supposed simply to put up with it forever? IMHO it's a case of neither side having the moral high ground. Proposals to end the war based on the premise that Hamas is uniquely evil and must be wiped out are fatally flawed. Both sides should admit to past grievous acts and be open to a genuinely new relationship.
The surprise attack on October 7, on Israeli territory, inflicted more casualties on the IDF than Hamas were able to inflict on their home turf. There was early speculation that Hamas was trying to draw the IDF into a trap; either that was never their intent, or they failed to plan or execute successfully.
The killing of civilian non-combatants was not only a crime, it was an avoidable mistake which hurt the cause of Palestinian independence.
I don't hold out hope of it ever being sorted out in popular history, but it is worth saying that at this point none of us really know what the plan was and which specific groups did what. Like Bush in Iraq, Hamas bears ultimate responsibility for whatever crimes flowed from their attack, but which of them were premeditated or sponateous, encouraged or not requires a very detailed investigation.
I lean towards Hamas went in to capture as many hostages as they could, killing in the process expected, and inflict as much damage as they could. They were caught off guard by their own success.
not just non-combatants-
Brief quick thoughts: I think celebrating the deaths of people is a breach of academic ethics. Academic duties include treating people as individuals and figuring out the truth. The use of violence is not helpful in either case.
Really inane. For example, it is perfectly acceptable to celebrate the deaths of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.
The problem with academia is that it has lost sight of the fact that some views are unacceptable and those who hold them must be drummed or society. This applies to supporters of Hitler, of Hamas, and of Communism.
"…it is perfectly acceptable to celebrate the deaths of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao"
I don't know what world you live in, but, in mine, no one "celebrates" the death of anyone.
Really? I pity you for living in a world of people that cannot recognize and despise evil.
My dad is Romanian and when they shot Ceausescu we went out to a celebratory dinner at a Romanian restaurant in New York. The whole place was a party with plenty of drinks on the house.
When Putin and Sinwar die I will certainly have a celebratory drink. You, on the other hand, were presumably saddened by Pol Pot's death. I was just sad it was not earlier and more painful.
Really?? When Mao died, Russell Baker (showing my age) wrote something like, Baker referred to those three, Hitler, Stalin and Mao, and wrote that "No one with a heart could have mourned their passing."
The Baker quote is from memory -- Google isn't helping me here, but the thought is clear -- the three were the bane of the 20th century, and no sane person would miss any of them.
Dear MF:
I am glad we can trust you to draw the line about which deaths to celebrate for the thousands of people of people who die in conflicts each year, likely (almost?) all of whom you do not know personally.
miao
Thanks
I tend to think most of the college-age and slightly older lefties who echo Hamas are being edgy, like a lot of Republicans of the same age who talk a big game but don't go join a militia. Most of them will grow out of it, the few who spout crap like the below are irrelevant except for moments like now.
Anyone who talks like that is my enemy, and should be the adversary of any reasonable person. Bluntly, fuck Dean and her excuses for pogroms.
But people like her are irrelevant except for moments like now. I look forward to a time soon when I won't have to think about her anymore.
But speaking of deans, the admins of certain elite schools are truly, deeply incompetent. They seem to be dedicated to leaving no rake un-stepped-on.
I believe you may be right in your last paragraph. It's the wider expression of "enshittification." The transformation of education into a platform to deliver a revenue stream for investors into research for enterprise instead of knowledge itself. Sabine Hossenfelder did a video explaining her slow exit from academia and the forces that pushed her there. It is sobering.
There maybe several of those forces in the supervising hierarchy as well and they may facilitate those forces downwards.
First of all, unless all Israelis are settlers, " Israelis are not civilians. . ." is not what the author said.
Second, academic freedom is like freedom of speech or religion -- if you don't support it for people you disagree with, you don't support it at all. Academic freedom protects freedom of inquiry into controversial matters and freedom to conduct your class in the way you decide is best to reach the course goals, without interference or punishment from administrators, governments, or anything else.
You should read the AAUP on academic freedom (https://www.aaup.org/programs/academic-freedom/faqs-academic-freedom) where you will learn that it is limited by professional ethics -- academic freedom does not protect unethical behavior.
You can't take someone's research and use it as evidence of discriminatory conduct in class. The two are separate. I once had a professor who flatly declared that women have no place in physics. However, there was never any evidence of discrimination against female students because it would be an ethical violation. John Yoo is arguably a war criminal, having been the architect of the Bush/Cheney torture regime. But that is not evidence he discriminates against Muslim students.
I often wish people who have never spent a single day as an academic would stop pontificating about it as if they were experts. The fact that you were once a student does not make you an expert on education any more than owning a car makes you a mechanical engineer. Academics are constrained by a variety of guidelines, academic freedom being only one of many.
Settler colonialists???
The Jews have been there for 5,000 years. If anyone is a settler colonialist, it’s the Muslims. Indeed, ALL Muslims outside of Saudi Arabia are settler colonialist occupiers. (Including in particular, in North Africa, Spain, Indonesia, etc - every single one of those places occupied by settler colonialist Muslims over the past 1000 years.) If Israel were occupying Mecca, sure you can legitimately call them settler colonialist occupiers. But as it is, there is only one party to the war that are settler colonialists: the Muslims.
There's always one of you.
That's just straight up bigotry. The majority of Israel's Jewish population is from European Jews; the next largest is from the far-flung Islamic world.
Calling Palestinians 'settlers' because they're intermixed between the Arab, Muslim, and Christian communities which stayed in the land we call Israel and Palestine the last 5000 years is just straight up bigotry.
So if I convert to Judaism do I get to claim some land over there. I mean my "forefathers" would have lived there thousands of years ago, so it makes sense.
Who can tell me which are genetically from the area and who are converts.
The Middle-East always had millions of European-Descended Jews who gleefully stole any land they wanted and did absolutely abhorrent acts to their non-Jewish neighbors?
Do tell, Im interested in learning more about this previously hidden history.
LOL,LOL,LOL....You are a brave Man Mr Drum. I myself will not wade into this Swamp, (see above), but I do give you extreme credit and kudos for your inestimable Courage. Best Wishes, Traveller
No binary choices.
Of the Israelis killed in the October 7 attack, 1/3 were soldiers and 2/3 were civilians. This counts Israeli reservists as civilians. The attack targets included both military bases and civilian areas. With Israeli soldiers being intermixed with the civilian population, it is not surprising that there were civilian casualties. Also, Hamas has no space or air-based surveillance and is an irregular militia.
How does this compare to the actions of the Israeli army over the last six months, in regard to the laws of war and human suffering? There has been only limited reporting of the Israeli attacks on Gaza here, but the US press has reported that IDF has attacked Gaza with large numbers of bombs and missiles, not an approach that minimizes civilian deaths with Hamas fighters dispersed among the civilian population (or at home, off duty). Reportedly only a small percentage of the Palestinian deaths are of soldiers.
As well, some number of October 7 civilian casualties (not allowed to be investigated yet) were victims of friendly fire. "Butched more than a thousand" is not a supportable description.
But calling out exagerations of Hamas', and other militia's , crimes is antisemitic, as is even noting IDF war crimes.
It has been noted, but rarely repeated, that Bibi's Israel knew Hamas was up to something for over a year, and did nothing.
Like the Bush administration, did they invite some sort of action so that they could then "act"?
SO!! Israel was using its civilians as "human shields"! Now we know...
"Resistance" includes armed struggle and Israelis are not civilians. There may not be any explicit mention of Hamas here, but this is pretty obviously a defense of Hamas slaughtering civilians on October 7. In other places "the resistance" is used as a synonym for Hamas.
As other people have pointed out, "settler" is not necessarily synonymous with "Israeli." When most people use the term, it encompasses those Israelis who live outside the Green Line in the West Bank. While they are civilians (or most of them are civilians, as I'll get to), they aren't innocent. They are complicit in the stealing of the Palestinians' territory.
I'm ambivalent on the question of whether this makes them legitimate targets of Palestinian violence. On the one hand, they are civilians. On the other, they are engaged in an ongoing crime against the Palestinians. This is almost exactly the same question as whether or not the Sioux were justified in attacking the homesteaders that carved up their land.
Hamas invaded Israel for the express purpose of slaughtering civilians. Israel may be guilty of not caring enough about civilian deaths in Gaza, but they are fundamentally fighting against a terrorist group which has the announced aim of destroying Israel.
This gets us to the set of settlers that are not civilians. Many of them, especially in the outpost settlements, are every bit as much terrorists as Hamas is. They have the announced aim of driving the Palestinians out of all of "Judea and Samaria."
They regularly throw riots of arson, looting, and shooting in Palestinian towns and villages. In February, 2023, hundreds of them descended on the town of Hawara. They burned hundreds of cars, and a number of houses and businesses, killed one Palestinian and wounded dozens more. In videos, you can see Israeli security forces not only doing nothing to stop this orgy of violence, but actively assisting by preventing Palestinians from defending their homes or being carried away in ambulances. In another riot in Hawara a month later, IDF troops can be seen dancing with the settler terrorists during the attack.
To date, not a single Israeli has been charged with a crime from this event. And this is not an isolated incident. Since Oct 7th, there have been seven settler attacks on Palestinians per day. The most recent major incident was this weekend.
These Jewish terrorists live amidst civilians, though they don't really bother to hide. If Israel is justified in killing thousands of civilians in their effort to root out Palestinian terrorists who live amidst civilians, please explain why Palestinians wouldn't be justified in slaughtering thousands of settlers in an effort to root out Jewish terrorists.
This is wondeful example of a question that is every bit as just as it is outside of the Overton window of acceptability.
One of the military sources I monitor looked for recent relevant battles after the Hamas attack. The most relevant one they suggested was the battle of Manila between the US invasion forces and the Imperial Japanese Army defenders. CiviIlian casualites in that battle were far higher than we are seeing in Gaza.
As for settler colonialists, at this point the Israeli Jewish population's origin is primarily from the mid-East's counties, who expelled their Jews and seized all their property after the formation of Israel. The resulting Jewish migration to Israel was significantly larger than the Palestinian exodus from Israel.
Independence organizations against imperialist occupiers kill civilians and imperialist occupiers kill civilians. Only Israel exercises the Hannibal Doctrine to kill its own civilians to prevent them from capture. Imperialist occupiers also kill children, punitively destroy homes, agrculture, and places of indigenous worship, stimulating violent resistance. Most Americans who opposed the Occupation of S. Vietnam did not support the terrorism of the Viet Cong and most Americans do not support the terrorism of Hamas. Most of the targets of the Al Aqsa Flood were military but Global North reporting uses the attacks against civilians to rationalize Israeli attacks against civilian Palestinians. Most of the Americans who oppose the genocidal violence against Palestinians also oppose US support for that violence targeting civilians.
Whatever your stance, Dean is not the hill you want to make a stand on.
Her essays recall that old cartoon of the intense intellectual in a Greenwich Village with the thought bubble "Stalin wasn't a communist! 'I' am a communist!"
She's that prof you took because the reading list looked short, and then dropped after the first lecture.
I'm not equipped to speak on the actual topic here, but I am moved to comment on what is some uncharacteristically poor and muddled logic from Kevin.
He moves from "Do pro-Palestinian protesters support Hamas? Probably most of them don't" to they are "obviously [defending] Hamas slaughtering civilians" pretty fast, ending with 'they say condemn Hamas but obviously are lying and support them for real'. That's several leaps there.
And that's all only via some very loose yet aggressive interpretation of standard revolutionary language (eg, "armed struggle") and extensive quotes from one very radical professor.
I dunno. This just isn't a well-made or well-sourced way to get to a sweeping judgement of an entire spectrum of political thought.
As is always the case, it all depends on whether you are talking about the 'good' group or the 'bad' group.
Whether or not you can speak a certain way about a group who kills civilians depends on whether it is a good group or bad group. The good group kills civilians, the bad group kills civilians, but we must speak very differently about these two groups.
Bush and Netanyahu have purposefully killed a lot of civilians, but they are part of the good group. Those Hamas (savages!!) have killed fewer civilians, but they are the bad group. Some groups are just better than others and our language must reflect that. Or so we are told.
Plenty of zealots on both sides. When will Israel hold Netanyahu responsible for his implicit support of Hamas? Netanyahu’s policy was that anything that hurt the PLO was good for Israel.
And what was the IDF shooting unarmed civilians the week before, Kevin?
Things can be exciting and horrible at the same time. This is why pirate movies and video games exist.
it's not okay to slaughter any civilians, no matter what some idiot Hegel-Marxist professor said, shame on you Kevin. Hamas is party non grata now and will be destroyed, and the right-wing lunatic government of Israel will also be held accountable for their crimes, which are easy to count and impossible to ignore, unless you consider slaughtering woman and children to look strong somehow acceptable by any definition of "civilized".
Israel will stand trial, and it's about damn time.
No, it won't... At least not within my life time...
We just gave them a few more billions so that they can kill more defenseless women & children.
And for what it's worth, Hegel was a naive idealistic fool who liked to fall into pseudo-historical nonsense, while Marx doubled down on that naivete and ended up justifying a century of brutal oppression, somehow imagining that authority by the workers would be a reality instead of them being duped and co-opted by industrial military terrorists (dictators), and then spreading into the even more ridiculous Freudian strain (Victorian cocaine nonsense).
The current social science orthodoxy is also dumb, but not in the way MAGA "intellectuals" would have it, who are even dumber and easily co-opted by nativist rhetoric even when it comes from Russia and Putin (someone else's nativism fools).
Everything Freud ever said is mostly wrong, and really just "uptight" psychology that gave him unlimited access to pussy while he was snorting the lines down, an incredible imbalance of power situation which allowed him to make otherwise impossible advances on "repressed" women, and the whole notion of the "unconscious" is a complete fantasy there is no such thing, and certainly no empirical evidence to support this coke fiendery.
I don't support Hamas or anyone in the middle east. It's clear now that this conflict is not going to get out of control. Iran wants no part of it. Hezbulshit wants no part of it. No one does. So it's just a trivial gang war now. Since Hamas won't give up, Israelis will exterminate them and make Gaza uninhabitable. I guess that's the goal for everyone. It makes lots of people mad at Israelis.
I don't know what Hamas thought would happen after 10/7, but I have to assume this is the desired result. Look at all those foreign students protesting at university! Hamas wins!
Hilarious.
Yes, Hamas’ s objective was to get the Palestinians as brutalized as they possibly could, and that plan has hit the bullseye.
And after you have eliminated Hamas & rendered Gaza uninhabitable, what do you do with the 1.5 to 2 million survivors?
What makes you think that many Gazans are going to survive the destruction?
Right now, Im hoping just a quarter of a million survives this atrocity.
Killing a couple of million people isn't all that easy, unless you're willing to nuke them...
I figured 50K dead bodies when this war started and I underestimated the bloody mindedness of the Israelis. All things said and done I have a hard time visualizing more than a 100K dead bodies, but I could be wrong.
Honestly, I expected the US to step in and put the kibosh on the killing.
Wait, so every problem in America ISN’T the fault of Fox News ???
😐
First of all, I am coming to the conclusion -- not there yet, but nothing else suggests itself -- that genocide is an inevitable part of the Zionist program. I know, I know: Israelis swear up and down that they want a peaceful resolution and are doing their best not to kill civilians ... but they also swore up and down that they intended to live peacefully with the Palestinian Arabs and had no need or intent to drive them out, and how did that work out? How IS that working out?
So, the Zionists claim the land -- all of it really -- and won't give it up, but the Palestinian have not and I think will not move on: what solution is there for the Zionists other than to exterminate the Palestinians completely?
And I note that while Hamas is the current bogeyman for Israel's Western patrons, Hamas' origins -- never mind the nonsense about Netanyahu funding them, which hardly matters -- are entwined in Israel's desire to offer a religious alternative to the terrorist groups of the 1970s and 1980s, which were essentially entirely secular. The most vicious of them -- the PFLP -- was founded by George Habash, a Marxist from a Christian family.
So Israel saw the secular hatred for them and tried to finesse it with encouraging a religious group, and the religious group evolved into the same hatred for them. Maybe a deeper hatred.
It's almost as if violent colonization engenders hatred.
Anyway, a potential way out of it -- a potential peaceful way out of it -- is this:
Israel and its supporters to raise around $1 trillion in order to pay about $100,000 to every Palestinian man, woman, and child in exchange for them abandoning their claim to the territory of Palestine. I think this solution is plausible -- other than for a few hurdles that I'll get into in a bit -- because the Israelis are basically correct about one thing: the Palestinians didn't really identify themselves as a separate "nation" prior to the formation of Israel; they were just people -- mostly Arab and Muslim, but also Greek and Armenian and Christian, and many other combinations -- who happened to live in the area. (Before someone picks that up and tries to run with it, it's probably also true that the Jews didn't identify themselves as a separate nation until they were driven out of Egypt.)
And also the Palestinians are very well documented due to the UN's refugee programs.
So it might -- for a limited time -- be possible to get Palestinians to abandon their territorial claims if at least the claims are recognized and compensation is paid in exchange for them.
The hurdles, aside from $1 trillion being just an awful lot of money, are first that to even begin such an undertaking, Israel would broadly have to agree that the Palestinians have a legitimate claim to the territory ... which seems several bridges too far for Israel these days.
And second, there are those who benefit -- or at least believe that they benefit -- from the status quo: hegemonist Westerners who want to maintain a thorn in the side of the oil-rich Arab world; the military industrial complex that sells stuff to all involved; lunatic Christians who need Israel to exist for their stupid reasons; etc.
So I don't think anything like this will ever happen, but if it did, it would supplant Israel's illegitimate creation with a legitimate -- by way of happening with the consent of those who SHOULD have had a say earlier on -- recreation.
And, ultimately, the reason I don't think it will happen is that we think being out $1 trillion is worse than genocide. Never mind how many trillions we have spent on our efforts to "stabilize" the Middle East based on our idiotic worldview.
So if Israeli civilians are valid targets, then so too are Palestinian, hmm?
You got that backwards, Tuds: If Palestinian civilians are valid targets -- which they have been going on almost a century -- then so too are Israel civilians, amirite?
Am. I. Right? Say it.
Sure, SOV you foamy old rascal, if someone argued that Palestinian civilians were valid targets but lament attacks on Israeli civilians I'd point out the hypocrisy of that as well. Does that make you feel better?
*lamented
But you haven't pointed out their hypocrisy, have you? Israel's I mean. If you say you have, I'll need a link to verify.
What on earth are you wibbling about?
So you lied when you said you called out Israel for its mealy-mouthed hypocrisy. Is anybody surprised? You people will never learn that your oh-so-witty little sallies make you even less reputable than you're already perceived as being, not more. Playing to a diiferent crowd, I guess.
SOV, did you take your medication this morning? Your next assignment is to understand the use of future tense and how it applies to the answer I gave you.
You really can't follow a line of reasoning more than one inference past the initial statement can you
The irony, it burns. I'd say you're being deliberately obtuse, but I don't think you're smart enough to pull even that off.
Still haven't figured out the future tense, have you?
Here, let me help: if someone comments in a way that suggests something in the future ("this will happen") how does that affect your response?
Tick tock, SOV, you've been quiet for a while. Tick tock.
Uh, how to say this? You've gotten the beat-down but good, everyone knows it, and you thinking you get the final say is like the Black Knight insisting it's only a flesh wound. Since you're only here to get a rise out of the libs, back on my shitlist you go. Now FOAD, troll.
Wow, I waited for that? Still no clue on future tense, huh, SOV? You'll do better next time.
NARRATOR: They wouldn't.*
*that was a meta joke with future tense.
The Israelis claim that Palestinian civilians are legitimate targets. During the early stages of this campaign, they set a threshold that killing 20 civilians was an acceptable ratio to kill a single, bottom level Hamas operative. They decided that it was easier to kill Hamas members if they waited until they arrived at home, guaranteeing that they would kill entire families to get one guy.
If you target a home that you know a large number of civilians are in, you are targeting civilians.
Beyond that, you have Israeli settlers who make no effort to hide the fact that they are deliberately targeting civilians in the West Bank. The Israeli authorities don't stop them, or prosecute more than a tiny percentage of them after the fact. At times, IDF troops and security forces aid in this terrorism.
Unless you condemn these Israeli actions, then you are exactly the sort of hypocrite you are calling out.
Watch closely: So if Palestinian civilians are valid targets, then so too are Israeli, hmm?
If the first were true, then, yes, the second would follow. As it happens, I think both are false. You, on the other hand, are desperately trying to avoid comment on Israeli terrorism. You seem to have no principled opposition to terrorism, just a dislike of the Palestinians.
Actually, I have a dislike for militaries killing civilians. That doesn't seem to me to be problematic. Why do you think it is?
I'm only marginally talking about militaries killing civilians. I'm talking about the phenomenon of Israeli settlers in the West Bank attacking Palestinian villages, setting fire to hundreds of cars and dozens of homes and businesses, killing Palestinian civilians, all in the goal of terrorizing the Palestinians to the point that they abandon their homes and fields, as well over a thousand have just since 10/7. The only connection that military forces have to this is the the IDF stands by and watches the settlers riot without trying to stop them. They do, however, prevent Palestinians from fleeing the riots and block roads to prevent ambulances from carrying Palestinian casualties to hospitals.
I don't think that you believe that this is problematic because, despite a multitude of attempts to get you to comment on it, all you do is deflect and avoid the subject.
Do you condemn Israeli terrorism in the West Bank? Yes or no.
Do you believe that the Israelis are justified in killing thousands of civilians in order to defeat Palestinian terrorists? Yes or no.
If the answer to the previous question is yes, do you also think that the Palestinians would be justified in killing Israeli civilians in order to defeat terrorists? Yes or no.
Stop evading.
"I'm only marginally talking about militaries killing civilians."
You're certainly welcome to talk about what you want...but you don't get to decide what this conversation is covering. *I'm* talking about my disapproval of militaries killing civilians and I think I'll stay with that, thanks.
Yes, I've already noted that you are desperate to avoid acknowledging Israeli terrorism.
I'm acknowledging that I don't like militaries killing civilians. I'm not sure how that leads to your conclusion, but it's probably a sleep shortage on your part.
Tick Tock, MD, you got awfully quiet there.
TICK.
TOCK.
I work overnights and sleep during the day, so take your idiotic evasions elsewhere.
Answer my questions.
I did! I said I disapprove of militaries killing civilians. You're certainly welcome not to like that answer, but that's the one you're getting.
Also, you should get a new job. This one makes you cranky and bad at discussion.
Neither are valid targets. But, if you go on endlessly about the evils of Hamas without condemning Jewish terrorism in the West Bank, it means that you don't have any principled objection to terrorism. You are merely expressing animus towards the Palestinians.
The folks on the other side avoid this trap largely by being open about their belief that the underlying problem is that Zionism is illegitimate, and any method of resistance is acceptable. They're supporting evil, but at least they aren't hypocrites.
Oh, good. Well, I'm glad that they're not hypocrites about slaughtering civilians. I’m sure that'll make the dead people feel better: "Well, I was raped and murdered, but at least the terrorist wasn't a hypocrite."
You, on the other hand, are both just fine with terrorism, and you're a hypocrite.
Actually, I'm fine with both sides *not* killing civilians. I'm not sure why that makes me a hypocrite.
Tock tick, MD.
You really are an asshole, aren't you? I have lots of things to do aside from commenting on blogs. Like sleep. So, fuck off.
I don't think I will. I *do* think you should get more sleep than you seem to be.
The fascinating parts of the replies to my comment is that no one is willing to engage with the actual meat of the discussion; rather everyone is too busy trying to play gotcha about supposed hypocrisy (mine, the combatants, etc) with the clear goal of not having to deal with the issue.
This is how you announce that you haven't actually read the comments in the thread. Or, more likely, you are just fine lying about what other people have said in order to avoid having to answer questions about Israeli terrorism.
And still the avoidance. Fascinating.
Okay, you're just a liar. From previous comments:
"Neither are valid targets."
"If the first were true, then, yes, the second would follow. As it happens, I think both are false."
You lie. You are a gutless coward who doesn't want to come out and admit that you have different standards for what the Israelis are allowed to do and what the Palestinians are allowed to do. Show a little bit of courage and admit it.
Still avoiding things, I see. You know, the blackout curtains really help with sleeping during the day.
Fuck off, troll.
Maybe a sleep mask.
If this conversation is convincing in any way, it's evidence that peace in Gaza and Israel at the current time is practically impossible.
An encouraging sign would the parties involved showing real interest in stopping the fighting at least. But that doesn't appear to be in the cards right now.
Meanwhile, the tragedy there has become a politicized cause here, with people more interested in expressing their rage or hijacking the moment for their own purposes. How much any of the spectacle is moving us closer to a solution I am skeptical. I'm not sure that's even the point anymore.