Kevin Engel, a student protester at Dartmouth, explains why they won't give up:
“We’re not going to stop,” he said. “Palestine will be free within our lifetimes. The students are taking up the burden of doing that work because no one else really is.”
Engel is 19 years old and he's just one guy, but I still can't get over the hubris and ignorance on display here. I mean, "no one else really is"? Seriously? The fate of Palestine has been a burning worldwide issue for nearly a century. It's prompted multiple wars, half a dozen terrorist groups, UN resolutions by the bushel, endless peace talks, the only nuclear program in the Middle East, tens of thousands of rockets launched into Israel, and so many newspaper headlines as to be uncountable. But Engel thinks that living in a tent while attending an Ivy League university is "doing the work"?
Jesus. I've always figured the Gaza protesters have barely a clue about the history of the cause they're supposedly protesting, but I've never mentioned it because, of course, I don't really know for sure. Maybe they could all talk my ears off on the fine points of the Camp David talks.
Somehow I doubt it—though I suppose they can prove me wrong any time they want. However, that will require more than chanting a few stale rhymes.
"Palestine will be free within our lifetimes."
After many months, I'm still not sure what that means. Does he expect a Palestinian state as part of a 2-state (or 3-state) solution? Or does he expect a new Palestinian state that replaces the current state of Israel? I think different people who say "Free Palestine" mean different things, and different people who hear it interpret it differently too.
If one important purpose of protests is to mobilize public support, you need to have clarity about what you stand for. And you need to understand what the public is willing to go along with. A new state for Palestinians is reasonable. An end to the state of Israel is not. (Even if you're convinced that the creation of Israel was a historical wrong, you should understand that for most people it's a settled issue, and you'll only be winning a fraction of the support you would otherwise if your goal is ending the state of Israel.)
My guess is most protesters don't have a firm idea of what the goal of the protests is. In local news coverage, USC students talking about why they were there summed it up mostly like this: to show solidarity with the Palestinian people who were suffering tragically in Gaza.
I think that's great. It's enough reason to be there. It's about making a statement and raising public awareness. Showing solidarity was more or less the reason many of us participated in anti-Trump protests (like the Women's March) and BLM protests during the summer of 2020. Participating in protests can be empowering. What you should hope to achieve if anything is public support for your cause. ("Concrete" goals can be problematic. They tend to be too big or too vague, like a free Palestine, or too small, like stopping an Israeli company from selling hummus at UC Riverside.)
In a democracy, the best way to effect change in policy is through the political process. Protests can effect change in public opinion, and if so, then policymakers may listen. If you want big change, it'll take decades (at best).
A few thoughts about winning public support:
1. Take the high moral ground.
2. Don't engage in any violence.
3. Don't engage in hate speech such as antisemitic slogans.
4. If you break the law (e.g., break into buildings), understand you may have to pay the consequences (e.g., arrest or suspension).
5. Understand that disruption of normal activities (classes, graduations, etc.) usually leads to negative public opinion.
6. Do you best not to be mockable. (E.g., if you take over a building at Columbia, don't demand the university send in meals because you already bought a meal ticket. The whole world knows that the cafeteria is just a short walk away. You just look silly.)
7. Understand that if you attend an elite university, you are an elite (or at least an elite-in-training). The public does not have sympathy for elites as a general rule. You need to earn public support by your actions, not assume it.
8. Understand that controversy attracts bad actors. Don't let your cause be hijacked by those who set back your cause. They will try.
9. Back to #1, taking the high moral ground means drawing clear distinctions between righteous action and immoral action. For example, you do not hurt the cause of the Palestinian people by condemning Hamas for the attack of October 7. But if you fail to condemn terrorism, or make excuses for it, then you are setting back the cause of Palestinians by muddying the clear line between what is right and what is wrong. The public you would like to side with your cause will be tepid or negative.
10. Protests have a long history and many have helped advance the common good. But others have been ineffective, or worse, slowing down or preventing progress. Think about the outcome you want and the best way to achieve it.
11. Politics will determine how the situation in Gaza is settled. Protests in Tel Aviv will probably be more on the mind of the Israeli government than protests in the US. Ultimately, the election in November will determine longer term US policy. If you think "genocide joe" is the problem, you need to think again. Things can be worse. Much worse. (Assuming what's best for the Palestinian people is what you truly want.)
A+ response.
Concurred.
Well said. Excellent comment.
Hear hear.
Excellent
Don't forget 12:
It is totally moral to point out that Israli atrocities against the innocent are far greater in number and have been going on for a longer time than Hamas' atrocities against the innocent. In fact, it would be immoral not to point this out.
I'm sure this was a simple mistake and that Joseph forgot to inclued this point totally by accident (rolls eyes.)
That’s not the way war works. Especially for a country that has been attacked repeatedly by the same people.
Palestine is not a country. Do read up on the actual history before making a fool of yourself again.
You are, as usual, incorrect.
Yes, it is a State: https://www.nyujilp.org/an-examination-of-palestines-statehood-status-through-the-lens-of-the-icc-pre-trial-chambers-decision-and-beyond/
Yes, it is a State: https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/NR/rdonlyres/D3C77FA6-9DEE-45B1-ACC0-B41706BB41E5/281876/OTPErrolMendesNewSTATEHOODANDPALESTINEFORTHEPURPOS.pdf
Yes, it is a State: https://diposit.ub.edu/dspace/bitstream/2445/123175/1/TFM_Michele_Pitta.pdf
Yes, it is a State: https://legal-tools.org/doc/igwapq/pdf/
Yes: https://elibrary.law.psu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1121&context=psilr
Yes: https://www.proquest.com/openview/633fa5a313a0351c980a3e139e591c30/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=31168
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-179982/
Yes: https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1587&context=facultypub
Yep: https://scholarlycommons.law.cwsl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1403&context=cwilj
Yep: https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/handle/10919/64512
Oh yeah: https://www.ejiltalk.org/a-critical-assessment-of-the-government-of-israels-memorandum-to-the-icc-part-ii/
http://opiniojuris.org/2019/08/09/muddying-the-waters-a-reply-to-kay-and-kern-on-the-statehood-of-palestine-and-the-icc-part-ii/
And Palestine is not just attacked repeatedly by Israel: it is attacked continuously: an average of two to three times daily. With another twice a day attack by settler-terrorists.
Agreed, great response. I only quibble with #5, as a protest is ultimately seeking to gain attention and/or leverage, and very often some level of disruption is necessary for that. Yes, there is a cost in that the average person will be annoyed at the inconvenience on their lives, but a protest that can be overlooked is worse than doing nothing at all.
I believe the initial protests were staunchly anti-war/pro-ceasefire and divestment towards that end. There may have been some drift and a forced reframe by the Media™, but you are totally correct about the experienced agitators/protestors joining the fray after the initial police responses. Other wise, yours is a very middle of the road take, even handed, and comfortable and most importantly safe.
As for the end game in Gaza, the misery has just begun. Occupation and Reconstruction are on the table. We have long experience with that, now don't we?
"My guess is most protesters don't have a firm idea of what the goal of the protests is."
I don't think that's true at all. It's just that the news media tends very strongly not to report their goals, which are generally to have their schools divest from one interpretation or another of companies supporting the assault on Gaza.
^^^^This. Especially #9 and #11. And my upvote, as it were, is from someone who lived and worked with Palestinians for three years (2014 - 2017) and again in 2023 just before the Hamas slaughter spree. I am willing to bet that less than 0% of the protesters even know how the West Bank has been divided into sectors by Israel and what they mean or that the major highways are closed to any Palestinian with Palestinian plates and other roads are littered with military roadblocks.
" The fate of Palestine has been a burning worldwide issue for nearly a century. It's prompted multiple wars, half a dozen terrorist groups, UN resolutions by the bushel, endless peace talks, the only nuclear program in the Middle East, tens of thousands of rockets launched into Israel, and so many newspaper headlines as to be uncountable. "
This is why I have long thought that Zionism was a bad idea from the start. All of this was predicted before 1948 -- everyone knew that the inhabitants of Palestine would resist and that their ancestors would continue the resistance. Everyone knew that the Arab and Muslim states would support that resistance. And now everyone knows that supporting Israel's existence means supporting endless wars. Yet here we are.
Zionism was a response to late-19th century European antisemitism which eroded the hope that advancing modernity would eventually make Europe safe for Jews. Then came the Holocaust. Few movements have had their premises proven correct so decisively as Zionism. And when Arab states tried to pull a Hitler in 1948, they discovered that it makes a big difference if your intended victims are armed and defending their own state, another win for the Zionist position. States devoted to serving, representing, and guarding a single religion or ethnic group make me uncomfortable, but on its own terms Zionism has largely been vindicated by events, and those events make it hard to argue that the movement to found a Jewish state was foolish or ill-conceived. It would be more secure, IMO, if Israelis had chosen Peres over Netanyahu in 1996--were it not for Netanyahu, I think there would be a Palestinian state living in peace with Israel right now--but even so none of Israel's enemies are in a position to wipe it off the map.
I agree with this, on the justification for the existence of Israel and the problem with Netanyahu.
I believe protesters (and many commenters here) would be more effective in helping the Palestinian cause with more focus on actions of the Netanyahu regime and less on questions about whether Israel should exist. Israel is not going anywhere. Netanyahu will someday be gone, and perhaps soon.
Acceptance of Israel's existence should not be an impossible impediment to progress. Arab countries have signed peace treaties with Israel and have recognized Israeli sovereignty, such as Egypt and Jordan, where millions of Palestinians now live. UAE signed a trade deal with Israel just a few years ago. Saudi Arabia was moving toward normalized relations before the October 7 attack.
Finding a solution for Palestinians is urgent and difficult enough. Expecting to re-litigate the existence of Israel makes the job impossible, and is no help for the dire needs of Palestinians.
Agreed. I think a lot of protestors are vague on both the history and on what "free Palestine" means to certain people, including people who are presuming to speak for the protestors with manifestos that appear to be calling for the destruction of Israel. The vast majority mean well, but that doesn't mean that what they are saying always makes a lot of sense.
As much as I loathe Netanyahu and his coalition, all they have really done is to make explicit what has been Israeli policy ever since 1967.
Focusing just on him means ignoring the underlying problems.
"all [Likud] have really done is to make explicit what has been Israeli policy ever since 1967." That's 100% false. For a while (pre Rabin's assasination) Israel really did buy into a two state solution. And at no point prior to netanyahoo was extermination of the palestinian people Israel policy. Now it is.
"Saudi Arabia was moving toward normalized relations" No they weren't as there was precisely zero chance of Netanyahoo agreeing to their minimum demands for normalization.
And when Arab states tried to pull a Hitler in 1948, they discovered that it makes a big difference if your intended victims are armed and defending their own state. . .
The Arab states didn't "pull a Hitler." They defended the legal government of Palestine. The partition was blatantly illegal.
Maybe, just maybe, a movement dedicated to creating an ethnically defined state that excluded more than 90% of the population (as of 1917, when British took over) from its definition of full citizenship was a really bad idea. No one should wonder why the Arabs were deeply hostile to the Jews, because Zionism started from the premise that the Arab inhabitants of Palestine were inconsequential and should have no say in how their country was broken up.
States devoted to serving, representing, and guarding a single religion or ethnic group make me uncomfortable . . .
As it should. A state that gives more rights to one ethnic group than it does to others, as Israel does, is inherently illegitimate.
. . . but on its own terms Zionism has largely been vindicated by events . . .
This is only true if you very carefully select which events count. The Hamas attacks on 10/7 were an event, and they don't really vindicate Zionism. It also depends upon Zionism's "own terms" entirely discounting the basic rights of everyone else that lives in Palestine.
. . . and those events make it hard to argue that the movement to found a Jewish state was foolish or ill-conceived.
It doesn't make arguing that hard to argue at all. As I said above, a movement that excluded the vast majority of a population from full citizenship carried within it the seeds of its own insecurity. The existence of Israel has undoubtedly made Jews feel more powerful, but it hasn't really done much to make them safer.
It would be more secure, IMO, if Israelis had chosen Peres over Netanyahu in 1996--were it not for Netanyahu, I think there would be a Palestinian state living in peace with Israel right now . . .
I think you're living in a fantasy world. Netanyahu being elected didn't happen in a vacuum, totally separate from the peace process. He got elected because the Israeli public has always been opposed to a two-state solution. The peace process was killed, because that's what the Israeli public wanted.
. . . but even so none of Israel's enemies are in a position to wipe it off the map.
This is one of those questions where the answer depends entirely upon what the speaker is trying to prove in the moment, and the same person will often give different answers depending upon the context.
When Israelis want to justify the country's existence, they claim that it has made Jews feel strong and secure, and that Israel shall be eternal.
When they want to justify slaughtering tens of thousands of civilians, they say that they are engaged in an existential struggle.
Holy shit, illegal according to what law? Zionist started by purchasing land from Ottoman and Arab landowners. You act like there was some Palestinian state that Zionist Jews decided to invade at take over. They immigrated to the Ottoman Empire and started buying land--besides, of course, the Jews that were already there. After the Ottoman Empire was dissolved at the end of WW1, Palestine was a part of the British Mandate until after WW2, when the United Nations approved a plan to partition Palestine into Jews and Arab states. I guess that violated some holy law you personally can see by peering into Heaven or Plato's realm of forms or who knows what the fuck. In any case, it was Arab Palestinians, not the nascent Israelis, who rejected the partition and prevented the formation of a Palestinian state. Instead, they wanted to exterminate or expel all the Jews. Apparently you're having difficulty understanding exactly what that entails. You've also glossed over one of the biggest factors driving their rage--before the Zionists came along, Jews in Palestine had been second class citizens since the arrival of Islam, as mandated by Islamic law. Is that the law you say they broke?
I know this is the internet, but WTF? TheMelancholyDonkey gave you a pretty substantial point by point response. This doesn't mean it is all correct, but you have pretty decisively conceded when your reply is just over the top ridicule.
Holy shit, I know this is the internet, but I'm still amazed at this shit people will post without apparent embarrassment. TheMelancholyDonkey asserted that the U.N. partition was "blatantly illegal" without explaining "under whose law." Did you seriously not notice that? My reply was focused on that, and explained why the notion that Israel's neighbors were justified in their attempt to destroy Israel at birth because of "law" is absurd on its face. Most of the rest of TheMelancholyDonkey's reply was based on a misreading of my own post (e.g., that Zionism was vindicated by 10/7, a claim that I was in no sense making--THE RATIONALE FOR ZIONISM WAS VINDICATED BY THE HOLOCAUST MOST OF ALL, and to a lesser degree by the survival of Israel following attack by its Arab neighbors) that I did not care to correct. I mean, why bother given that TheMelancholyDonkey appeared to not understand what I claimed was the rationale behind Zionism even though I stated it at the beginning of my comment? I also wasn't interested in correcting the bullshit about what the Israeli electorate wanted and why they voted for Netanyahu in 1996. The idea that the terrorist attack Hamas staged in 1996 was completely irrelevant was so deranged that it was beneath comment.
I understood your claim about the rationale for Zionism in the 19th century. Where you went completely off the rails is in using that rationale to justify the dispossession of the Palestinians. Your entire argument boils down to, "The Europeans were horrifically bad to the Jews, so we have to find some other part of the globe to give them, without any regard of the rights and desires of the people that already live there." You then cite a lot of completely incorrect historical "facts" in an attempt to justify this.
TheMelancholyDonkey asserted that the U.N. partition was "blatantly illegal" without explaining "under whose law."
As ScentOfViolets points out, I have said all of this in these comment threads many times. Don't walk into the middle of a conversation and then complain that you don't understand the antecedents. Maybe, just maybe, ask politely for the explanation rather than just jumping in and being a colossal dick.
Most of the rest of TheMelancholyDonkey's reply was based on a misreading of my own post (e.g., that Zionism was vindicated by 10/7 . . .)
You claimed that "events" had completely vindicated Zionism. You conspicuously included only those events that support your claim, while ignoring others. That's still what you are doing.
So, you are dishonest, too.
The idea that the terrorist attack Hamas staged in 1996 was completely irrelevant was so deranged that it was beneath comment.
And if I had said that, you might even have a useful point. But I didn't. That is just the voices in your head talking.
Yes, the Hamas terror attack was a cause of the 1996 Israeli vote. But, I had two points:
1) That is not the only time that the Israeli electorate has given a governing majority to Netanyahu. At some point, it idiocy to keep arguing that Netanyahu is the problem. Israel's defenders like to argue that it is a democracy. Well, in a democracy, the electorate owns the policies of those it elects. Israel's supporters constantly make this argument when it comes to electing Hamas once. They get strangely squirrely when you try to use the same logic about Israelis.
2) Which gets to my other point. If you are going to blame Hamas for electing Netanyahu in 1996, if you are at all consistent, you have to blame the Israelis for the persistence of hatred amongst the Palestinians. This argument that the Palestinians must be blamed for their own extremism and Israeli extremism is deeply offensive.
This is another comment I'm just not going to bother to read. If you understood what I said the first time, you made a major tactical error by implying otherwise in your response. Beyond that...look, it is technically possible that you are a scholar of international institutions in the 20th century, know the League of Nations and United Nations charters like the back of your hand, and drew these conclusions from your scholarly analysis. But I don't believe it for a second (really, claiming that the creation of Israel is "illegal" under the League of Nations charter is exactly the kind of deranged irrelevancy that gets you labeled as a crank). The reality is that you've filled your head with delusional shit pooped out by other cranks who are fanatically dedicated to the mission of "proving" that the very existence of Israel is illegitimate from all possible perspectives and therefore it's elimination is justified by any means. Be more cautious in how you phrase your craziness the next time you attempt to bamboozle someone.
Man, you really like to point out that you are closed minded and unwilling to actually learn anything. Not many people take such pride in ignorance.
Your repeated use of "psychotic" and "deranged" in response to arguments you don't like merely exposes you as one of those internet denizens who think that the winning argument is the one that uses the most hyperbolic invective conceivable. Mostly, it just makes you look stupid.
You could actually try reading the Palestinian Mandate. I provided a link. But, you are, apparently, allergic to primary sources.
Uh, how to say this? Actually taking the time to read the primary document itself along with some side sources and a few commentaries does not make you a scholar. It makes you a reasonably informed person whose opinions deserve a respectful hearing.
That you think making a minimal effort to inform yourself before spouting off in public makes you some sort of 'scholar' says volumes about you. For example, how much you actually read, all protestations to the contrary.
"From among the several authorities of international law who have questioned the validity of the Mandate, the views of Professor Henry Cattan may be quoted:
“The Palestine Mandate was invalid on three grounds set out hereinafter.
“1. The first ground of invalidity of the Mandate is that by endorsing the Balfour Declaration and accepting the concept of the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine it violated the sovereignty of the people of Palestine and their natural rights of independence and self-determination. Palestine was the national home of the Palestinians from time immemorial. The establishment of a national home for an alien people in that country was a violation of the legitimate and fundamental rights of the inhabitants. The League of Nations did not possess the power, any more than the British Government did, to dispose of Palestine, or to grant to the Jews any political or territorial rights in that country. In so far as the Mandate purported to recognize any rights for alien Jews in Palestine, it was null and void.
“2. The second ground of invalidity of the Mandate is that it violated, in spirit and in letter, Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, under the authority of which it purported to be made. The Mandate violated Article 22 in three respects:
“(a) The Covenant had envisaged the Mandate as the best method of achieving its basic objective of ensuring the well-being and development of the peoples inhabiting the Mandated Territories.
“Was the Palestine Mandate conceived for the well-being and development of the inhabitants of Palestine? The answer is found in the provisions of the Mandate itself. The Mandate sought the establishment in Palestine of a national home for another people, contrary to the rights and wishes of the Palestinians … It required the Mandatory to place the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as would secure the establishment of a Jewish national home. It required the Mandatory to facilitate Jewish immigration into Palestine. It provided that a foreign body known as the Zionist Organization should be recognized as a public body for the purpose of advising and co-operating with the Administration of Palestine in matters affecting the establishment of the Jewish national home. It is clear that, although the Mandates System was conceived in the interest of the inhabitants of the Mandated Territory, the Palestine Mandate was conceived in the interest of an alien people originating from outside Palestine, and ran counter to the basic concept of mandates. As Lord Islington observed when he opposed the inclusion of the Balfour Declaration in the Palestine Mandate: “The Palestine Mandate is a real distortion of the mandatory system”. The same distinguished Lord added:
“When one sees in Article 22 … that the well-being and development of such peoples should form a sacred trust of civilization, and when one takes that as the note of the mandatory system, I think your Lordships will see that we are straying down a very far path when we are postponing self-government in Palestine until such time as the population is flooded with an alien race.”
“(b) The Palestine Mandate also ran counter to the specific concept of mandates envisaged by Article 22 for countries detached from Turkey at the end of the First World War. In the case of those countries, the intention was to limit the Mandate to the rendering of temporary advice and assistance. It is doubtful whether the people of Palestine, as also other Arab peoples detached from Turkey, were in need of administrative advice and assistance from a Mandatory. Their level of culture was not inferior to that existing at the time in many of the nations that were Members of the League of Nations. Such Arab communities had actively participated with the Turks in the government of their country. Their political maturity and administrative experience were comparable to the political maturity and administrative experience of the Turks, who were left to stand alone.
“Be that as it may, the framers of the Palestine Mandate did not restrict the Mandatory’s role to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance, but granted the Mandatory ‘full powers of legislation and administration’ (Article 1). Such ‘full powers of legislation and administration’ were not laid down in the interest of the inhabitants, but were intended to be used, and in fact were used, to establish by force the Jewish national home in Palestine. Clearly this was an abuse of the purpose of the Mandate under the Covenant and a perversion of its raison d’être.
“The whole concept of the Palestine Mandate stands in marked contrast to the Mandate for Syria and Lebanon which was given to France on 24 July 1922. This Mandate conformed to Article 22 of the Covenant …
“… The third ground of invalidity of the Mandate lies in the fact that its endorsement and implementation of the Balfour Declaration conflicted with the assurances and pledges given to the Arabs during the First World War by Great Britain and the Allied Powers. The denial to the Palestine Arabs of their independence and the subjection of their country to the immigration of a foreign people were a breach of those pledges.” 63
At the time that the Mandate was established, however, the people of Palestine were unable to question or to challenge it, and the process of establishing the “Jewish national home” commenced."
(UN History of Palestine Mandate)
That is real history, and mainstream at that.
Gdańsk isn’t Danzig anymore. Why? Because Germany attacked Poland and lost. That’s what happens when countries engage in war. When they lose, the victors cut them down to size to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Aside from being a lot more complicated than this, the entire legal regime changed in 1949, with the signing of the 4th Geneva Convention, which Israel ratified in 1951. It explicitly makes it illegal to acquire territory through conquest, no matter who starts the war.
Using pre-1949 examples to justify Israel's acquisition of territory in 1967 only means that you do not understand international law.
You do know that Israel attacked first, right? I'm asking because you don't know a lot of history and you give every impression of thinking the opposite is true. Let me guess 'blockade' amirite?
Go educate yourself. This has been covered here before -- more than once -- and has included cites and sources. Right now you're coming across as ignorant, lazy, and hopelessly propagandized ... and by propaganda of the most infantile type at that.
Ah, the "physicist" who blew a gasket contemplating high school electrostatics. How ya been?
Oh, dear lord, one of those: Still butthurt after all those years, eh? By all means, revisit that incident here so I can put the beat-down on you again; it won't distract anyone in the slightest. Did you really think we wouldn't notice you didn't respond to anything in my post? In the meantime, a few links to get you started:
https://newrepublic.com/article/177306/israel-colonialist-state-history-today
https://newrepublic.com/article/179430/zionism-lost-argument-american-jews-israel
https://thenation.com/article/culture/new-york-times-intercept-hamas-rape/
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-extreme-ambitions-of-west-bank-settlers
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/mahmood-mamdani-nation-state-interview/
I included several links in answering this bit of drollery, so it's awaiting moderation. In the meantime, here's the preface of what I originally wrote:
Judging from the various responses to your, um, output, it's not at all clear that I needed to do so.
Ah, you remember what a fool you made of yourself. It will fade in time, but try not to re-up.
Chuckle. Whatever you got to say to live with yourself, little man. You got the same reception then as you're getting here. But I forget, what was it you said? Yes, something to the effect of 'They support me in email'. Pathetic.
Holy shit, illegal according to what law?
The Palestinian Mandate and the UN Charter, which were clear about several things:
1) Through its invocation of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of nations, that Palestine was an independent country that the British would administer temporarily and would protect he rights and interests of the population, which, at that time, was 90% Arab;
2) Article 28 of the Mandate says that the British were to hand over control to a single government there when they left;
3) The UN Charter, specifically Article 2, Paragraph 7, says that the UN has no authority to intervene in a purely domestic dispute, which this was;
4) As the Israelis will loudly point out in every other case, a UN resolution has no force unless it is passed by the Security Council. After the General Assembly passed Res. 181, the Council never even took it up for debate, let alone vote on and pass it.
So, the creation of Israel was the result, not of a UN partition, but an Israeli revolt against the legal government.
Zionist started by purchasing land from Ottoman and Arab landowners.
This is going to be a long enough post that I won't go into the details, but the Zionists mostly purchased land from people who could not legally sell it. The Ottoman Empire was a feudal society, so the Turkish landlords had legal obligations to the Arab tenant farmers. Zionist purchaser ignored these obligations, and illegally evicted the tenant farmers.
The Arab landowners they bought from weren't usually the real owners of the land. Due to some quirks in the Ottoman rules for land registration, many Arab villages and the surrounding areas were registered to a single individual while really being owned either communally or by separate individuals. So, when the Zionists bought land from that single registered individual, he was selling land that he didn't own.
You act like there was some Palestinian state that Zionist Jews decided to invade at take over.
That's because the Mandate created a Palestinian state that Zionist Jews decided to invade at take over. Again, read the Mandate.
They immigrated to the Ottoman Empire and started buying land--besides, of course, the Jews that were already there.
During the 19th century, about 2% of the population in Palestine was Jewish. Many of them resented the Zionists as much as the Arabs did. So, no, this is not a justification for dispossessing the people that already lived there.
After the Ottoman Empire was dissolved at the end of WW1, Palestine was a part of the British Mandate . . .
Indeed. Again, I recommend actually reading the Mandate to cure your misapprehensions about what this meant.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/palmanda.asp
. . . when the United Nations approved a plan to partition Palestine into Jews and Arab states.
Which, as I said, it had no authority to do, and didn't follow the procedures that would have given the partition any legal force, even if they had had the authority.
I guess that violated some holy law you personally can see by peering into Heaven or Plato's realm of forms or who knows what the fuck.
That's a very medieval and superstitious way to describe "reading."
In any case, it was Arab Palestinians, not the nascent Israelis, who rejected the partition . . .
Yes, they did reject having a bunch of outsiders come in and tell them that they had to give up half of their territory. Funny thing, that.
. . . and prevented the formation of a Palestinian state.
They literally couldn't have prevented the formation of a Palestinian state, since a Palestinian state had existed since 1922.
Instead, they wanted to exterminate or expel all the Jews.
This is one of the reasons why allowing large scale immigration by a group of people ideologically committed to creating a state that definitionally excluded 90% of the population from full citizenship was a really bad idea from the very beginning. Human beings react with hostility when they are told that they must give away most of their territory to foreigners who plan to build a state that explicitly enshrines those foreigners as the only full citizens? Who could have guessed?
Apparently you're having difficulty understanding exactly what that entails.
Not really. I'm not saying that I agree with the goal of exterminating all f the Jews that had immigrated to Palestine, but if you don't understand why that was the reaction to very legitimate grievances, you are hopelessly clueless. Maybe, just maybe, the British and Zionists should have asked the Palestinians whether they wanted to cede most of their territory.
You've also glossed over one of the biggest factors driving their rage--before the Zionists came along, Jews in Palestine had been second class citizens since the arrival of Islam, as mandated by Islamic law.
This isn't only partially true. The Jews in the Ottoman Empire had varied sets of rights, and it really had nothing to do with Islam. The same was true of many of the Arab groups that lived there, too. In 1865, the Ottomans declared that all those that lived in their empire were equal citizens, though the extent to which this was practiced varied. The loudest objections to this change were Greek Christians, who strongly resented being told that Jews were their equals.
They certainly possessed more rights than Arabs did in post-independence Israel (where, until 1966, all Arabs lived under martial law despite being Israeli citizens). And they were a lot better off than Jews almost anywhere in Europe.
So, while I would oppose any return to such policies, this isn't as much an indictment of the Ottomans or Muslims, so much as evidence that human beings can be really awful to each other. It certainly in no way justifies the dispossession of the Palestinians.
Is that the law you say they broke?
No, but I don't expect that you will try to comprehend my actual arguments.
I stopped reading after "So, the creation of Israel was the result, not of a UN partition, but an Israeli revolt against the legal government," which is unhistorical and basically psychotic. As fun as it would be to untangle what you were saying about the League of Nations and UN charters, it's pretty clear that you suffer from derangement over Israel. If you want someone you take what you write seriously, you need to take what other people write seriously and read it carefully enough to understand it. You failed to do that on your first reply to my comment, indicating that--at least on this topic--you are not worthy of the respect required to carefully read and check your long list of claims.
As anticipated, you have no interest in actually educating yourself.
"I stopped reading after "So, the creation of Israel was the result, not of a UN partition, but an Israeli revolt against the legal government," which is unhistorical and basically psychotic. " Except it is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. You seem to be unaware that the founders of israel were quite open and quite proud that they invented modern terrorism.
Any comment that begins "I stopped reading after . . ." needs to be ridiculed, and then ignored.
"Holy shit, illegal according to what law? Zionist started by purchasing land from Ottoman and Arab landowners. " Sorry, but you are an idiot. Under both ottoman and British law, and the league of nations mandate, it was illegal for zionists to move to palestine. "besides, of course, the Jews that were already there. " Lesss than 2% of the population in 1880, almost all of whom spoke european languages. "when the United Nations approved a plan to partition Palestine into Jews and Arab states." As a result of the founders of Israel inventing modern day terrorism after overwhelming levels of illegal immigration.
TheMelancholyDonkey's history is much more accurate than yours.
By 1946, Zionists owned a whopping 6% of the land: Arabs about 50% outright.
Under the UN Charter, ownership is irrelevant: it is the will of the people that determines a state. And only about a third of Palestine was Jewish - almost all recent, illegal immigrants.
If the folks on the nearest Indian reservation swooped into your town, murdered a thousand people, including by burning children and the elderly alive, raped more, and took dozens of hostages—you’d be cool with that.
If they were launching rockets at you—no problem.
Because Israelis are uniquely awful, right?
If we were still refusing to allow them any representation in the polity, subjecting them to constant harassment under martial law, and condoning terrorism against them, they'd have a point. Because Israel is doing all of that now, not in the past.
Because Israelis are uniquely awful, right?
Have you considered using this capacity for mind reading at long distance for good?
Zionism dates back to the babylonian conquest of the Kingdom of Judea. In 1880 less than 2% of the people of palestine were jewish and the majority spoke a dialect of spanish and much of the rest spoke a dialect of german, i.e. were the descendents of previous centuries zionists.
"And when Arab states tried to pull a Hitler in 1948, " You really are a an utterly evil monster. What people wouldn'yt respond to a bunch of foreigern invaders moving into their homes and trying to kick them out. Looking at how many american conservatives full supported trump after the pictures of the dog cages holding illegal alien children, how many didn't care that the US government couldn't return the children to their parents because they hadn't bother to record the names of the parents when they took their children.
But that doesn't give Jews the right to colonize some else's land which they did. The population of the Levant pre-Zionism was like 35k Jews. In less than 50 years it exploded into 1,000,000 (well +900k) foreigners coming in making space.
No ammount of suffering justifies that. Just like all the abuse Israel has inflicted on the Palestinians fails to justify River-to-the-Seaing Israel or Oct 7.
The vast majority of jews pre WW2 were anti-zionists. They were fully aware that 1) the idea that the solution to more than a millenia of mistreatment of jews by europeans
2) was to take a part of asia without regards to the people already living there
3) was racist and evil.
It doesn't really matter if you think Zionism was a bad idea in 1948. 7.5M Israeli Jews aren't going to leave, or put Hamas in charge of a unified state.
There's no reason why Israel and a Palestinian state can't coexist. There will eventually be a two state solution, although both the Israelis and Palestinians seem desperate to try everything else first.
No, Israel is not going to disappear. But history matters. If you do not understand it, and insist on starting the clock well after events began, you won't understand why the Palestinians resist as they do.
It also helps to understand that the Israeli government has no principled objection to terrorism. They are strongly opposed to Palestinians engaged in terrorism targeted at Jews. They are almost entirely indifferent to Palestinian terror aimed at other Palestinians. They are at least somewhat okay with Jews engaging in terrorism directed at other Jews, considering that multiple ministers in the current government applauded the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.
And the Israeli government is downright encouraging of Jewish terrorism that targets Palestinians. They generally take no action at all against Jewish settlers that riot, burn, loot, destroy, and kill Palestinians in the West Bank in an effort to drive them out. Often times, they help the terrorists.
So, sure, there is, in theory, no reason that Israeli and Palestinian states couldn't co-exist. But the Israeli government is doing everything it can to change that, so that it becomes impossible. You say, approvingly, that Israel will never put Hamas in charge of a unified state (despite them quite happily propping up Hamas prior to 10/7). But you seem to have no problem forcing the Palestinians to live under Likud and Otzma Yehudit.
Two points for Kevin:
1. 19 years old means born in 2005. If we assume the kids were precocious, they might start remembering the news around age 4, which is 2009. Netanyahu became Prime Minister of Israel again in 2009. So this college student has never lived in a time where he wasn't. Now, maybe I missed some news stories, but I think it's accurate to say Netanyahu has had no interest in negotiating a settlement with the Palestinian people.
So "nobody has done anything about this in my lifetime" is accurate enough, at least for someone relying on the US news media and online sources. Or "nobody who is trying to bring about a solution for Palestinians," at least.
2. The Camp David accords are your historical referent that these protesters should remember? That was 1978 (46 years ago!), and was a brokered deal between Israel and Egypt. Palestinian leaders were not involved in the negotiations. You could, maybe, have referenced the Oslo Accords of 1993/5, which did involve the Palestinian leadership and were at least temporarily effective, although Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated for his part in them and Netanyahu's current ruling coalition includes the same kind of right wing extremism (ideologically; I'm not suggesting they're all assassins-in-waiting).
If we count from 1995, then the last major agreement between Israel and Palestine occurred 29 years ago. While it's obvious nonsense that nobody is working on this problem, how exactly are these protestors to know that if nobody seems interested in covering what's happening?
On a larger scale, this is the same problem with the work of government more generally. How most things actually get done gets ignored, or sometimes even scorned, by political reporters, as part of the broader disconnection between "deciders" and the population more generally.
Maybe this 19 year old is ignorant and the actions he's taking unlikely to change anything. He's still doing more about the problem than I have, and I'd wager he's doing more about the problem than Kevin has, too. This is precisely what college is for, to encourage the young to take chances in the hopes of achieving what we oldsters believe impossible.
Netanyahu's current ruling coalition includes the same kind of right wing extremism (ideologically; I'm not suggesting they're all assassins-in-waiting).
At least as recently as 2020, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the current National Security Minister, had a portrait of Baruch Goldstein in his living room. Some of them are assassins-in-waiting.
No thumbs up thing here, so thumbs up.
I agree, Kevin's ridicule is not fair.
The student also said "free within our lifetimes" and not "free by the time we leave the encampment" so this too seems a very reasonable thing for a young person to believe, and is not *completely* outside the realm of possibilities.
+1
Since I can't view the whole article, if that's the whole quote and the student in question is a random protestor then I have no idea how this is used as the basis of evaluating a generation or specifically college students.
That's an aspirational protest slogan being treated as someone's full perception of the situation and their take. And then bad mouthing their ignorance. Imagine encapsulating someone's whole worldview based on a bumper sticker or protest sign.
Meanwhile another dozen children die while we pontificate on protestor chants.
Kevin: You’re sounding like George Will. That’s not a good thing. It’s a sign you should rethink what you’re saying.
Examining the behavior of college students as a group clearly demonstrates that they are more interested in the Middle East than in things like democracy (which the U.S. could likely lose), the rule of law as embodied in the Constitution, and numerous, egregious Supreme Court decisions. Their actions weaken Biden, and are harmful to themselves. They don't seem on track to figure this out or, if they are, on track to figure it out it time.
Is democracy too abstract a concept to excite people?
You're complaining because these demonstrators picked that issue, and not your favorite? Really?
Yeah! And what about whataboutism? Why don't they protest that??
The comment that Kevin Engel makes about "nobody else is doing the work" is a very common attitude. So many people think that "nobody is doing anything", because nothing that is visible is happening.
There are a lot of reasons for that. One is that most of what happens, even in politics, is invisible. Media doesn't cover it, so there's no way to know about it. Discussions are held in secret, so there's no way to know about it. Aid organizations do their work, which is boring but vital, and nobody knows about it. Lobbyists have meetings and do their influence thing, and nobody talks about it, so nobody knows about it.
Most of what happens in politics is invisible. If you're a 19-year-old, you don't understand that. I certainly didn't.
The other issue that leads to a statement like this is that nothing observable is happening, in fact the observable events seem trending in an undesirable direction.
Sometimes, who holds power matters, and nothing can be done until someone else holds power. It might be that a generation needs to die. It might just take one election. All of this is a challenge to ones patience and faith.
I for one love to see young people eager to make the world better. It turns out that actually making the world better is very, very hard, and will take a lot of patience, determination and also self-knowledge, or else you might end up being one of the people making the world worse while thinking you're making it better.
I mean, I'm sure Vladimir Putin thinks he's making the world better - at least the Russian part of the world.
Instead of talking about what they protesters think they are accomplishing let's instead look at what they ARE accomplishing. College students tend to grandiose and narcissistic thinking, quoting pompous students is easy.
Bad thing they are accomplishing: Splitting the Democratic coalition, being disorderly, possibly putting Trump in power.
Good thing they are accomplishing: Divesting university endowments. This is gettable through student protests, Brown has yielded on this point already. It may not sound like much but divestment in is a step to branding Israel a pariah state, which is the only realistic path I see to a sovereign Palestinian State.
I wish it weren't so. I am fond of Israel and wish they would pursue a peace process short of being backed up against the wall.
I come back to this line in David Schulman's excellent piece in the New York Review:
"None of these points is going to be easy for Israelis to swallow. I can attest that most people find it easier to sacrifice the lives of their spouses, siblings, and children in a futile cause than to change how they feel and how they understand the world."
If the students help get Trump into power the United States will be a “pariah state”.
Trump has promised to deport 11 million people from the United States. He has said he will be a dictator on day one to accomplish this. He plans to use the Nation Guard to aid in this endeavor, and that “camps” will be set up for their temporary detention. Other undesirables such as the homeless will also be placed in “camps”.
Oh, and he supports Netanyahu.
yep. if it was up to me there'd be no protests. not because they aren't justified, only because Trump must lose.
Another way to get at the problem with Drum's response is that convincing Israel that there will be no consequences to Israel for not achieving peace is doing something, but it is not doing something to advance peace. Drum includes some of the things that have made Israel feel free to not pursue peace in his list of people doing things. But the college student presumably means doing things that advance peace.
“What do the Gaza protesters think they’re accomplishing?”
No joke: that’s a profound question. And definitive answers are impossible.
But one thing I will assert unreservedly: the ongoing campus protests reflect a hell of a lot more than the current Israel/Hamas war.
In fact, I think it’s perfectly legitimate to seriously inquire as to what extent these protests even relate to the country of Israel (as opposed to Israel as a symbolic entity) at all.
As many here have pointed out, the campus protests have not garnered mass support. The goals are vague. And the impassioned nature of these protests, therefore, strikes many as incomprehensible if not creepy.
But that’s because this protest movement cannot be understood on purely political or economic grounds. In short, I don’t think it’s really what we typically understand as an entirely rational movement. So, if kevin tries to answer his own question through logical analysis alone, he’ll probably fail.
There are certainly psychological components to what’s going on: people need purpose, meaning, and fellowship, and they’re getting it through these protests.
There also seems to be a religious component. And by this I’m thinking of a mindset that simply rejects argumentation. Slogans like “free Palestine” have simply become part of an ostensibly secular catechism.
Technology is also a crucial factor. I imagine that past and present authoritarian regimes could only dream of a propaganda campaign as successful as the one that many if not most of these protestors have largely imposed on themselves through their adherence to apps like Tik tok.
And, sure, there are reality based components. Some protestors may indeed be moved by scenes of suffering in Gaza. But these otherwise mundane concerns are elevated to an entirely different status by the other factors I have mentioned (among others).
After all, the world is always full of scenes of suffering. And Gaza is hardly the only area currently engulfed in a major war. So, something else has clearly become influential in this case.
But is there a unifying theme to it all that could come close to answering Kevin’s question? I honestly don’t know.
Nevertheless, here are some ideas of what the protestors may really and truly want (whether they realize it or not):
*An end to a modern world based on Liberal values of free expression and individualism.
*Following to at least some extent from that first point: an overthrow of capitalist society.
And:
*A quasi-religious revolution to achieve these and similar ends.
“Progressive” may have once meant a belief in the need for rapid change/progress;
But it now strikes me as a largely reactionary movement. The socio-political horseshoe has bent so far that it’s become a full circle;
And MAGA most definitely is not the only movement storming buildings, defacing property, blocking bridges, and endangering civilians in order to move the historical clock backwards.
That is an interesting way to minimize the slaughter of 10s of thousands of civilians with US weapons donated to the country doing the slaughtering. The problem with the analysis is that it explains something that doesn't need to be explained. After all, the actions being protested are fully sufficient to explain both the quantity and nature of the protests.
After all most of the factors you give to explain the protests existed before 10/7 but without the protests. In general to explain why something happened people look for what changed at that time. Your explanation does the opposite, it ignores when things changed and attributes the actions for things that did not change.
Technology, no doubt, shapes the form of the protests. But the reason for them seems most likely to be the reason given by the protesters. This is a good case for Occam's razor. People try to argue that there is something about the protests that does not fit with it being a response to Israel's behavior. But the arguments are consistently shallow and self-serving.
I have noticed, for example, that a lot of people have tried to make the case that these protests are nothing like those in the 60s, they are worse. But the people involved in those protests in the 60s who have spoken up have consistently said the opposite. The difference between the protest in the 60s and today is that the protesters are less violent and the police is more violent, as is the acceptance of violence by the police.
@LonBecker:
Regarding this:
"After all most of the factors you give to explain the protests existed before 10/7 but without the protests."
The observation that most of the factors I describe existed before the protests would, as best I understand, back up my thesis.
And, indeed, the evolution of progressivism into an ideologically fundamentalist movement has been a long time coming.
But the idea that there were no Leftist protests before 10/7 is inaccurate. The Left has been engaging in arguably counterproductive, if not self-destructive, tactics for a long time.
How long, exactly, is of course up for debate. But simply looking at recent history we have:
Instances of so-called climate activists (who in reality strike me as exactly the type of reactionaries I describe above) throwing paint on classic works of art. Because that supports their cause? or something.
Then of course we had the 2020 summer of George Floyd protests, and opinions will always differ on the extent to which they were or were not violent (and the extent to which they did or did not accomplish anything constructive). But one observation which I believe to be incontrovertible is that the call to "Defund the Police" associated (fairly or not) with those protests was the worst (in terms of being counterproductive) socio-political movement of modern history.
And of course we can consider (or at least I consider) cancel culture itself to be a form of anti-establishment (and hugely self-incriminating) Leftist protest. From university professors who were fired for supporting Halloween costumes (and thereby violating someone's safe space) to NYT editors fired for publishing editorials (written by Conservatives), cancel culture has arguably been at the vanguard of everything we are now discussing.
So I disagree with this:
"After all, the actions being protested are fully sufficient to explain both the quantity and nature of the protests."
No. The nature of these protests remain mysterious. I describe why I feel that way in detail above, and I offer my own theory. But if you don't have the receptivity for what I say there, then there's no sense in repeating it.
So your idea is that the protesters are not motivated by what is happening in Israel in the same way that BLM is not motivated by the killing of black men by the police?
BLM and the campus protests are both protests. They have been rather different in form. Campuses were not the general focus of the BLM protests. Nor did they take the form of encampments. So it seems what you are saying is that the reason that there are occasional protests these days, albeit not to the degree we saw in the 60s is the technology today.
As I said, these arguments that the protesters are not motivated by what they say they are motivated by tend to be shallow.
@Lon Becker:
"So your idea is that the protesters are not motivated by what is happening in Israel in the same way that BLM is not motivated by the killing of black men by the police?"
There is, indeed, MORE than just Israel, and MORE than just police misconduct behind the recent protests we've seen.
As I wrote in my original post above: "After all, the world is always full of scenes of suffering. And Gaza is hardly the only area currently engulfed in a major war. So, something else has clearly become influential in this case."
This is not a difficult concept. I don't know why you're struggling with it so much.
Because it is a childish attempt to belittle the people on the right side. When I was in college the protests were aimed at Apartheid South Africa. Now they are aimed at Apartheid Israel. This should shock nobody. Israel is the largest recipient of US aid and has been abusing the Palestinians for decades. The media tends to ignore this fact since it only cares when the Israelis suffer, not when Palestinians do.
But that college students, who were not born with the kindergarten version of the Israeli conflict that drives US policy, would react to the slaughter of 10s of thousands of civilians, and destruction of the complete infrastructure of a captive people of more than 2 million people by the top recipient of US aid, using US weapons with protests is about as predictable a thing as one can imagine. It is hard to see why anybody would think this needs further explanation.
And unfortunately the people who make this argument all seem to be people who are more bothered by the idea that Israel would be criticized for slaughtering 10s of thousands of people than they are by the slaughter.
Classic projection of a very personal and weird take onto "many". The rest of your post is similarily bizarre, with a sprinkling of callous inhumanity (using "mundane concerns" to describe wanton slaughter of 10s of thousands and enforced starvation of a million human beings).
@Coby Beck:
Completely blocking San Francisco's Golden Gate bridge for hours, and thereby needlessly endangering thousands of civilians, all in ostensible opposition to one war/tragedy among many in our world today, will - undoubtedly - strike many as "incomprehensible and creepy." In fact, those are some of the most polite terms I could think of for a phenomenon easily described in much harsher language.
Other examples: wearing keffiyehs, establishing student-enforced checkpoints on college campuses, walking out on a commencement address by Jerry Seinfeld, writing up blacklists of "Zionist" writers and actors, occupying campus buildings while demanding that the campus in question must honor your meal plan and deliver food to the building you occupied, engaging in vandalism, and then demanding amnesty for all of the above.
It is not in any way controversial to assert that the current campus protest movement is "incomprehensible and creepy." There is, after all, a reason why the movement is such a failure. People look at it and laugh at its idiocy. And such mockery is very well-deserved.
Kevin, with all due respect, your comment that current protesters lack knowledge of the history of the region seems absurd when your own history seems so one sided. Just who are the Palestinians in the first place?
"[T]he founding fathers of the Jewish settler colony, David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, in perhaps a moment of rare sobriety, to claim in a 1919 book they co-authored that the majority of the indigenous Palestinians were in fact descendants of the ancient Hebrews who had converted to Christianity and then to Islam"
Recent genetic studies lend credence to the claim. These were the descendants of the Jews who Jesus converted through his ministry, remained Christian during the Byzantine period and later converted to Islam over a 500 year period around the time of the crusades. There has never been evidence for large scale Arab settlement of the region.
Who is in Gaza? Gazans, or their parents or grand-parents, owned the land on which the 10/7 massacre occurred. When Israeli tanks came through in 1948, they fled and were herded into Gaza and then were prevented from returning. Israel claimed the land was abandoned to justify taking Gazans' land.
Finely, over the last generation, the entire life of the protesters, the gov't of Israel has defined Zionism explicitly as a single Jewish state. This can only happen with apartheid level oppression, or ethnic cleansing. When has a true two-state solution ever really been on offer?
p.s., if you look at the casualties on each side, Palestinians have died at a rate of almost ten for every one Israeli since the 40s. But I recall growing up that all Palestinians were terrorists. The US didn't take kindly to this level of taxation without representation or outright taking of land without due process or compensation.
There may be no worse way to criticize Israel than to make the criticism about genetic studies of who really is descended from the Israelites. You make a number of reasonable points after that. But for good reason you are almost certain to have lost anybody who might take you seriously with your second and third paragraphs. The issue isn't even whether they are true, just that they take a bad argument on the pro-Israel side and lend credence to its being a reasonable argument.
This is by far the most "get off my lawn" of any Kevin Drum post that I've ever seen. And as such, serves little purpose of its own.
Keep protesting righteous people
Drag Biden down a few points so Cheeto Von Tweeto get elected
That will surly help the folks in Gaza
. . .
And similarly, you will mock the people criticizing the protesters and making it more likely that they will see the two parties as indistinguishable, right? After all you are writing because you care about whether Trump is elected, and not because you enjoy hippie punching.
If anyone looks at the two parties and sees them as indistinguishable then nothing anyone says or does is going to change that. And I have no doubt they will blame Biden for our Trump dictatorship rather than themselves.
That is a good philosophy for getting Trump elected and blaming other people. I am not sure why so many people who are left of center seem to hate the left enough to think in this way. But I am amazed by the number of people who seem to think this way.
Because anyone not voting for Biden is voting for Trump. Trump has promised to deport 11 million people. That includes pro Palestinian protestors who aren’t citizens:
https://digbysblog.net/2024/05/13/they-need-to-wake-up/
So that is why you are doing your best to get people to not vote for either? I am not seeing the logic there.
It's all deeply disheartening. Of all the multiple horrors that young hotheads could have mobilized to protest "because no one else is" during the last 8 years, THIS is the one they've decided to latch onto -- the one that could put the evil clown back in the White House to finish the job of corrupting what's left of our system.
I wonder how many of these "passionate youths" are the ideological heirs of the ones who protested Hillary Clinton over the Trans-Pacific Partnership and then trundled off to vote for Jill Stein.
Why do you think this is the one issue that the right would make an issue of? Actually the best the right can do with this is to make commercials about the fact that people are protesting. And frankly they are much less scary than the ones they make about the evil immigrants murdering our young white women.
This is actually a fairly good issue if they have to pick one since Israel has been so incredibly indecent that it would be relatively safe for Biden to call them out on it. Unfortunately the center left seems determined to increase the cost of Biden doing the right thing.
People who don't want the Gaza issue to get Trump elected should be slamming the hippie punching, which plays into Trump's hands. That so many comments use Trump as a cudgel for their hippie punching suggests they care more about the hippie punching than the threat of Trump.
As a proud member of the center-left, I take some exception to this.
I guess genocide Joe broke the democratic party. Who would’ve thought? Get ready for trump. There’s no way out now.
No matter what the 'kids' are protesting, the old folks want them to shut up and stop bothering everybody.
Everybody hated the vietnam protestors and the police violence protestors and hell, everyone even hated the civil rights protestors.
Anyone insisting that the topic is the problem is deluding themselves.
You sound too much like a grumpy old man annoyed the kids are causing a ruckus here Kevin, and don't see the world the way you do.
How dare they see the world as it has been their entire life, and not as their elders tell them to see it.
Isn't that what voters for Perot and Nader didn't think about?
A new state for Palestinians is reasonable. An end to the state of Israel is not. (Even if you're convinced that the creation of Israel was a historical wrong, you should understand that for most people it's a settled issue, and you'll only be winning a fraction of the support you would otherwise if your goal is ending the state of Israel.)
Just as a point to the fundamental dishonesty here: What Joseph means is not that creation of Israel is a settled issue (which I agree with), but that the creational of Israel as a specifically religious ethnostate is a settled issue. It's not, not by a long shot, and trying to slip this in by this pathetically obvious rhetorical sleight of hand is insulting.
"but that the creational of Israel as a specifically religious ethnostate is a settled issue." He means that because it is true. You're belief that it is not true is because you are delusional. It's either a two state solution or one side is going to genocide the other. Those are the only possible outcomes. (You don't call your country after a nation that diapered several hundred years before Alexander the Great and start using a liturgical language that originally died more than 2000 years ago unless you are fully committed to it being a religious state.)
Sorry, I misspoke: What Joseph is trying to slip in is not that the existence of Israel as a state is a settled issue, but that the continued existence of Israel as an explicitly ethno-religious state is a settled issue. It is not. As the Israeli's themselves whine when they deny Palestinians citizenship.
I see your point. It is like imagining South Africa ending apartheid without the white population being slaughtered. And as anyone who watches Fox News and only Fox News and sites to the right of it, that was completely impossible.
Of course in the real world white South Africans still have an outsized amount of the wealth in the country and lower murder rates that black South Africans.
The point is that supporters of the status quo seem to want the range of acceptable outcomes to be a two state solution or Israel controls everything. And Israel seeing that choice say we'll take everything. But the moral choices are a two state solution or a single state in which everybody has basic rights. In such a state it would be in everybody's interest to live in peace. That doesn't guarantee that people will. But it makes it more likely than that there will be peace in the current situation in which Israel continually abuses a stateless Palestinian population.
I sometimes wonder if Kevin was born as a fully-fledged middle aged man, patronisingly asking what all those 1970s protesters thought they were accomplishing. And that Bob Dylan, with songs like "The Times They Are a-Changin'", talk about clueless. The hubris of "Your old road is rapidly agin'/Please get out of the new one/If you can't lend your hand"!
It's still there, despite attempts both peaceful and violent over the years to shut it down.
Federal MP and Wiradjuri woman Linda Burney said
I'm confident, however, that many of the people who kept watch in the embassy all these years had only sketchy knowledge of the history of their cause. To paraphrase Ted Kennedy at his brother Bobby's funeral: "They saw wrong, and tried to right it."
People protest in their own ways, with direct action being the most forthright and honorable (hurt mainstream feelings or not), and indirect speech protest less committed but also admirable (where I'm at), so I don't agree with Kevin here, the student protesters are doing great work, every little bit counts, and I admire them greatly.
Keep it up! Make them put you all in jail, once they do it all starts unraveling for the status quo in the wrong.
It would be uncharitable to ask what Kevin thinks he accomplishes with his blog posts :D.
Within context, it's not such a display of "hubris and ignorance."
There is a reason young people, and especially college students, are the only significant group protesting some things: they are one of the few groups that have ambition but that are not shackled by financial concerns. (Another such group should be retirees, but it just isn't, maybe because their worldviews are anchored in a time when the outrage du jour just wasn't a problem, and they do not currently see it as one, at least not en masse.)
And Israel is such a thing. The hold of pro-Israel forces over most prominent politicians can be seen in the periodic "expressions of support" for Israel that regularly are passed overwhelmingly in each House of Congress, and that are basically written by AIPAC. And a lot of the overwhelming support for such things is that pro-Israel political donors target politicians who are not sufficiently supportive of Israel, and there is no counter-acting support for Palestinians or any of Israel's other perceived adversaries.
And as we have seen, university administrations are very concerned about loosing donations from people like Leon Cooperman, Bill Ackman, and Robert Kraft -- each of whom have threatened ending donations to Columbia based on insufficient restriction of pro-Palestinian protests -- and until very recently there have been no significant counter-acting threats.
And being prominently pro-Palestinian can curtail your career opportunities: I think a lot of law and investment firms have blackballed members of pro-Palestinian college protests.
So college kids -- many maybe not fully realizing that they could pay a price for it in their careers -- are in many ways "taking up the burden of doing that work because no one else really is," just as Engel says.
You all haven't lived until you can look back in your 40s and 50 at the stupid stuff you said and did in your teens and 20 and just cringe
The protestors are actually doing a very good job. They are moving the Overton window by pointing out the crimes and atrocities of Israel and inherent in Zionism.
I think even Kevin Drum is adjusting his mindset because of that.
Of course it would help if he let go of the standard lies about the Palestinians.