In the two-things-can-be-true-at-once file:
- The Gaza protests on university campuses are mostly peaceful. The extreme behavior is largely happening outside of campus walls.
- Nevertheless, Jewish students on these campuses widely report feeling scared and harassed.
I feel a lot of sympathy for university presidents dealing with this, even the ones who have made some unquestionably bad choices. They're in an almost impossible situation and are operating with, I'm sure, maddeningly limited and conflicting information.
This is all going to fade away naturally when the semester is over and students go home. In the meantime, I only wish everyone—protesters, faculty, administrators, cops, Israel supporters—could show a little more empathy for both sides. Neither Israel nor the Palestinians are pure evil and neither are purely righteous. They've both done hideous things and they both have understandable grievances. There's a century of history that shows this pretty clearly.
Of course, if either side accepted this, that century of history would have unfolded very differently. It's hard to even conceive of a peaceful resolution today.
This is going to be a reasoned and thoughtful comment thread.
Yeah, I've been assembling my thoughts and reasons even before finishing Mr Drum's milquetoast, "I'm not affected, so how bad could it possibly be?" posting.
Increasingly his standard mode.
And in proving my point.
Spare a moment for the University presidents, who almost all understand that these protests are peaceful, but who have to appease their mega-donors who all want to see the protesters arrested/shot/imprisoned/silenced, and who absolutely have the power to get those presidents fired if they talk back to them.
Not to mention the camera-hogging, hypocritical yahoos in Congress.
this. i'm pretty sympathetic to kevin's post, but university presidents have seemed like pretty bad actors in these protests most interested in protecting themselves from scary right wing attack dogs, not their students, either pro-paletinian/anti-war protesters or jewish students who report fearing for their safety.
Too many people have a vested interest in keeping the conflict going.
There were real chances in the past, but the peace makers ended up being attacked and even assassinated. A real settlement would be a godsend for all in the region and could help stabilize the surrounding states. The losers would be the leaders of Iran, Syria, Hamas, and the current government of Israel. Not sure how peace could affect the leaders in Egypt and Saudi Arabia or even Jordan for that matter.
"It's hard to even conceive of a peaceful resolution today."
I have never heard an end situation described nor seen it drawn on a map. I do not follow this particular constant source of the world's problems, but I don't recall hearing or reading anyone talking about a future. It's always the past and it's always grievances. Without an end that the people who live there will accept, there can be no resolution other than the elimination of one or the other. That seems to be what each "side" is pursuing. Or maybe just hoping for.
It's the two-state solution. Sounds outdated, but it's still the only long term path to peace.
Agreed. Various relatively reasonable land swap maps have been proposed. In the end the sticking points have been Jerusalem and whether the Palestian state is sovereign or more of a Bantustan.
And it has come sorta close
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/20/magazine/israel-gaza-oslo-accords.html
MMMM?
Jewish students afraid?
Catholic students afraid?
Johova's Witnesses afraid?
How did Catholic student's in America feel during the Northern Ireland "troubles"?
A co-worker told me of having rocks thrown at him on the way to school. He was a protestant kid in NI.
Us white folks can just blend in and go with the flow.
Black folks not so much.
How does empathy even happen when Israel is occupying and openly trying to destroy Palestine? What are the Palestinians on the West Bank supposed to empathize with as settlers kick them out of their homes and kill them for driving on the wrong street?
I’m truly curious. Are they supposed to think this is ok because Hamas in Haza committed horrible acts? Are they supposed to have some sort of sympathy that they’re being killed and displaced because Israelis are angry about Hamas?
And that’s the best case. More realistically, the settlers are just doing a slow resettlement and genocide. What are the Palestinians supposed to empathize with?
It's been a very slow motion ethnic cleansing for decades, and now it is moving faster.
“ What are the Palestinians on the West Bank supposed to empathize with ”
The Israelis who were raped, tortured and murdered by Hamas on October 7? Did you mean for the answer to be this easy?
They show at least as much empathy towards the victims of 10/7 that the Israeli public shows towards the Palestinian victims of Jewish settler terrorism.
And in proving KD's point, it’s…the Donkey.
This is of course the correct answer. It is however the wrong question.
Not that it doesn't matter at all, but it is not most important who Palestinians or Isrealis empathize with. We on the outside must empathize with all civilians killed, mained, kidnapped, assaulted or forced from their homes.
Hamas must be restrained. The Isreali army and government must be restrained. And frankly, restraining Isreal is the only thing a true "friend of Isreal" should be doing.
*Israel
Thanks. I think I've been making that mistake alot.
You can sue for peace without feeling empathy. You just have to realize not suing for peace is worse.
David Shulman in the May 9 New York Review is eloquent on this. Thomas Friedman of all people is also good (gift link)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/26/opinion/israel-war-rafah-riyadh.html?unlocked_article_code=1.n00.liXX.SYsZhQldkpE2&smid=url-share
I doubt many wars end cuz empathy.
It would be even more absurd to expect Jews/Israelis to have empathy for Hamas and its supporters.
Mostly… largely…
https://ktla.com/news/local-news/ucla-acknowledges-violence-on-campus-as-israel-hamas-war-protests-escalate/amp/
Re: Photo of the Bradford house.
Go to Pasadena and take a photo of the Gamble house. There is a Gamble House in Palo Alto if you are ever up north.
As a great statesman once said, "There are very fine people on both sides."
It’s certainly legitimate to ask, as Kevin does, if the ongoing campus protests are “mostly peaceful” or not; but,
That’s not the only legitimate question to ask about the protests. And it’s unclear to me why Kevin narrows his analysis in that manner.
Another essential question to ask is whether or not the protests are antisemitic. And in the case of this topic, Lefties seem to either avoid the question, as Kevin is doing here, or reply in a discrediting and dishonest manner.
I would say that the protests are indeed antisemitic in more or less a similar way that the Jim Crow south was racist. In both cases, contrarians could assert that some people just didn’t know any better; that they didn’t realize the import of what they were actually saying or doing; or that, even though there were a few genuine bad apples, you can’t or shouldn’t say that everyone was an antisemite/racist.
And, indeed, I’m not saying that everyone in the protests is (or everyone in the Jim Crow south was) an antisemite/racist; but,
I am saying that the protests are antisemitic. They are antisemitic just as the culture of the Jim Crow south was racist. And everyone involved is implicated, whether that’s entirely fair or not.
Many if not all of the campus protests are promoted and/or to some extent organized by organizations who openly promote violence against Jews, Israelis, Zionists, Zionist entities, or whatever the current euphemism for antisemitism may be (it’s admittedly difficult to keep up).
Journalists have now conducted interviews among the protestors in many different locations and found (among other things): an unequivocal endorsement of Hamas (a terrorist organization that promotes the genocide of Jews in its written statements), a refusal to acknowledge Hamas atrocities on 10/7 or to even talk about 10/7, and a reductive narrative about one of the most complex regions in world history (the Middle East) that is determined to cast Jews as the villains.
And I don’t care how young or stupid a kid is, choosing to remain affiliated with such protests taints them with antisemitism the same way choosing to remain in the Jim Crow south tainted its residents with racism.
There are also additional questions that could be asked about these ongoing protests, and again they would not come out looking good, but this is enough for now.
/What a reality free comparison. Jim Crow was a system of institutionally supported racism. The protests on campus exist in a climate in which all institutional power is on the side of Israel, as shown by the fact that Congress and most state authorities are coming out against the protests. The defenders of Jim Crow did not have to worry about the government finding excuses to arrest them, the whole thing about Jim Crow is they had the law on their side.
It might be possible to come up with an argument that the people protesting the slaughter of Palestinians are anti-Semitic. But it is not easy, as your black is white attempt shows.
@LonBecker:
You are attempting to distort my comparison. By doing so, you may very well be engaging in the type of discrediting and/or dishonest Lefty behavior I reference above.
“The protests on campus exist in a climate in which all institutional power is on the side of Israel.”
There are a number of problems with this.
First, I am comparing the culture of the Jim Crow south with the culture of the ongoing campus protests. I am, in other words, comparing the inherent nature of each: not their externalities. And there are obvious parallels relating to bigotry (among other things).
In other words, suppose I said that pear sauce and apple sauce are similar in taste and constitution. Your response above is like saying that, in fact, no such comparison is possible because of the context in which the apples are much more popular and widely distributed. But such points do not bear on the actual comparison as presented.
And even if you really did want to get into externalities, that raises a good deal more questions than you seem to anticipate. But I’ll leave that aside for now.
I see. What you are saying is that if you ignore the fact that they are opposites in almost every way that matters, then they are similar. Even then you have to get very dishonest to make the case. Are the majority of protesters anti-Semitic? Does this include the Jewish protesters who are horrified at what Israel is doing in the name of Judaism? (Do the protests created by Jews count among your claim that many if not all of the protests are created by anti-Semites?).
You may not know this, but the supporters of Jim Crow were all racists, because what Jim Crow was, is a system of discrimination based on racist beliefs. By contrast, the protests on Universities gain their support from the fact that Israel has now killed well over 30,00 people, mostly civilians in Gaza and has created famine conditions that are likely to kill 10s of thousands more. This is certainly part of the inherent nature of the two things you are comparing. One was a system of oppressing black people, the other is a protest of the slaughter of civilians. That is not actually like the difference between apple sauce and pear sauce.
It is true that the MAGA crowd has tried to portray the protesters as anti-Semitic. And it is possible if your sources of information are limited to pro-Israel sites then you could reasonably be tricked into thinking that this is the case.
But it would not justify your missing that the "intrinsic nature of the protests" is a response to the massive death toll among Gazans, and this is not at all similar to the "intrinsic nature" of Jim Crow.
If they are supporting Hamas (as opposed to just protesting Israel), they are anti-Semites. There is no grey area there.
Do you mean this in the sense that if the counterprotesters are pro-Israel they are supporting the slaughter of Palestinian civilians?
It is not anti-Semitic to support resistance by a people who have been kept stateless for more than 50 years under cruel conditions. Unfortunately Hamas is the face of resistance since the PA has tried to end this statelessness through cooperation with Israel and has been made to look foolish for doing so.
If you erase the humanity of the Palestinians then what you say is true. But it should be obvious that erasing the humanity of the Palestinians is fundamentally racist.
(I should note that I am not expressing support for Hamas, just noting why someone who is not anti-Semitic might do so).
Hamas is a terrorist organization with a stated goal of destroying Israel. There is no equivalence between them an Israel.
Hamas is one of the groups representing the Palestinians under occupation. It uses violence to try to achieve its ends. Often this is unsuccessful unless its ends is just to kill people. Israel is a state currently holding millions of people stateless as it expands its control over occupied territory in violation of international law. It uses violence to achieve its ends. Often this is unsuccessful unless its ends is just to kill people.
Actually there are lots of points of comparison between the two. Of them Israel has killed many times more civilians and is currently working against peace in order to control a territory on which it possesses a minority population. So there are also points of difference many of which are to the disadvantage of Israel. It is only if you care about Jews and not Palestinians that there is no point of comparison.
That's a lot of word salad to not say anything very bright, and a few things that are simply falsehoods.
"That's a lot of word salad to not say anything very bright, and a few things that are simply falsehoods."
Leo *always* does exactly that.
Yeah, I actually started to comment, but there is no point.
It is a big world and he can always do some cherry-picking and confirm he was right after all.
@ jeffreycmcmahon:
I would direct you to the part of my original post in which I point out that many Lefties respond in ways that discredit them. Your response seems to fit that description. It has no substance. It is not constructive. It does not engage. There is no point. Why did you even bother?
I am, of course, very well aware that Lefties have a terrifically difficult time acknowledging the extent to which an extremist faction of the Far Left has made itself look bad with these ongoing campus protests.
But reality is reality. And Liberals/Lefties of all types (including me) have castigated right wing Trump supporters for years for failing or refusing to acknowledge or call out the excesses of MAGA.
So if we fail to call out the antisemitic extremists on our own side, whether they are Columbia students asserting on camera that Zionists should be killed or just protest-adjacent dopes, then we essentially turn ourselves into world-class hypocrites.
It's a troll, and it's trolling. Please don't feed the troll. It trolls to get attention. Starve the troll.
There are no good guys in the Middle East. And so when they are fighting, as they have repeatedly over the years, over land, religion, resources, and ancient grievances, I don’t pick sides. There are like 10 different sides to pick from and they all suck. Their misery is of their own making. When they get tired, they will stop fighting. They won’t get tired.
It’s disappointing that old Joe hasn’t grasped the changed nature of the Israeli government. As for the Arabs, Palestinians, Iranians, and their various armed factions, they haven’t changed a bit.
I don’t have empathy for these protest groups. They are simply combatants in endless religious wars. No empathy; only contempt.
Nihilism is the lazy person's choice.
As Nietzsche said, "If you gaze too long into an abyss, you get sleepy and want a nap."
Thinking that you can always figure out a solution is the dumb person's choice.
I think the importance of the student protests is being overblown. The Progressive Left want to portray this as some sort of mass youth revolt against "genocide," etc. The Conservative Right wants to portray it as some anti-Semitic mass rebellion by elite liberal punks that should be shut down hard. Media likes having dramatic and visually interesting stories to write about.
In real life, best as I can tell, it is a series of protests by relatively small groups of left-leaning kids and Moslem (mostly American) students with strong but often ill-informed views (as youth views tend to be).
I for one will be happy to see these end as the semester ends and we can move on to some other controversy, hopefully one that damages the Dems' election prospects less than this one.
And we all know that about the only plausible chance for an actual peace solution in that region is a two-state solution on model of the Camp David talks. Too bad we got to destroy Hamas and discredit the Bibi-ites in Israel before that is even a possibility, neither of which are likely. But if any good can be seen from coming from the current mess, maybe this will somehow open a path towards those two events coming to pass.
Yeah, I just worry the protests help Trump.
Maybe not. The protesters are from a demographic that won't vote. They're potentially driving middle of the roaders back to Biden, who after all, is defending "The Plucky Little State of Israel, Who Made the Empty Desert Bloom and Has Been Victimized By Jealous, Hostile Ayrabs for Thousands of Years."
Yeah, we know the stuff about Israel is agitprop dreamed up by their PR folks and AIPAC. But too many older folks still believe it and much of the "shamestream media" cater to this POV.
Americans have a history of turning against any "protests" by college students. So these could actually be good news for Biden weirdly enough
Things are pretty balanced if you ignore the fact that close to 2 million Palestinians are facing the threat of starvation due to an Israeli imposed famine, that even Israelis allies are trying to figure out how to mitigate around the resistance of Israel. If you leave that out, then the kind of balanced description above makes some sense. If you include it, then it would seem more empathy is due to the side that is trying to bring attention to this famine than to the people who are uncomfortable because they are the same religion as the people causing the famine.
The Israelites and the Philistines were at each other's throats 5000 years ago. I'm pretty sure it's not stopping any time soon.
My problem is not who is worse---they both suck if you ask me, and Saudia Arabia and Iran are worse than either of them---but the fact that the US is so openly in the tank for Israel not matter what they do, or how much they snub us. Why are we obliged to back everything they do, and give billions to the Netanyahus of the world? Because they've bought politicians from both parties, that's why. That's what is so frustrating to someone like me who doesn't have a dog in the fight.
Nowadays, it's Israel vs the Palestinians. The Philistines were from Crete, and migrated to the Holy Land sometime during the twelfth century BCE, during the collapse of the Late Bronze Age and the start of the Iron Age.
Between the end of the Crusades in the early 13th century and 1917, Palestine was actually a pretty peaceful place.
Thanks to both Joel and the Melancholy Donkey for your actual historical perspectives.
*Extremely Erdogan voice* Ottoman Empire doesn't look so bad now, eh?
“All is forgiven.”
I’ve seen a lot of protests over the decades. I don’t get the point of these demonstrations. I understand they are upset and don’t like the awful atrocities committed by both sides. However, I don’t see the point of blocking bridges in the Bay Area or disrupting campuses. It is clear that congress writes the checks for American participation. If they want to stop American support go to the House and get them to stop the funding. They are wasting their time otherwise.
That makes a lot of sense.
Students protesting??? Goodness me. What is the world coming to?
It is a mistake to put Israel, Hamas, and the PA in the same bucket.
Hamas and Israel do all they can to prevent a two-state solution. The PA is willing to sit down and deal in good faith. If you aren't part of the solution you are part of the problem.
I'm not saying Abbas is a good guy, but he is definitely less bad.
If Drum has a third post in his ongoing series of “There are no good guys in the Middle East,” and he doesn’t post this…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8_FOQ7-P30
…I’m contacting the Better Bloggers Bureau and filing a formal complaint.
Why in the world would Jewish/Israeli students show any empathy to supporters of Hamas? That's ridiculous. If they could, Hamas would kill every Jew and wipe out Israel.
This is a lazily dismissive column.
I would be very surprised if there were not as many "good guys" in the Middle East as you would find in any population. Part of the problem, I guess, is that we in America are endlessly told that some actors in the Middle East are irretrievably evil. Hamas is regularly described as "nothing but a terrorist organization" or words to that effect ... which might be news to the people who have gone to their schools, used their hospitals, or benefited from their charity drives.
And Iran. Iran is not squeaky clean, but I think they are far more the victims than the villains: America encouraged and supported Saddam Hussein attacking Iran; Israel has been conducting assassination campaigns against Iranian scientists for decades; etc.