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.
...And kids protesting in the 90s, or in the 60s, were hard-eyed realists acting on nuanced historical briefings and cost-benefit calculations?
Dude, I say this as someone not far behind you: you're getting old and cranky.
Dude, in the 60s the United States was fighting a war in which ~50,000 American soldiers and ~2 million Vietnamese would ultimately die. Young Americans were being drafted to go fight in that war. Kids in the 60s may not have heard nuanced historical briefings and cost-benefit analyses, but that war involved them very, very directly and they knew about the part that could impact them. How many American soldiers have been killed in the Gaza War? How many Americans have been drafted to go fight it?
Exactly! The Vietnam protesters were protesting something quite tangible. Here they are spouting some nonsense about free Palestine.
You might not realize how tangible a non-free Palestine is these days?
I find it more admirable that kids are protesting for something from which they will not benefit and are not harmed by. It's easier to protest if you are at risk, but when you are protesting for someone else you are putting yourself at risk like the students who have been expelled and/or arrested.
People protested whale-harvesting, which was untouchable until it wasn't. Divestment in South Africa's racist regime.
No kids were even being killed?
The only way to stop it is for there to be consequences to both governments for the violence they continue to employ.
Palestine was a big issue in the past but for the last few years the media has ignored it and most people seem to think there is nothing that can be done. The idea of a two state solution was considered passé but the destruction and death caused by Israel’s attack coupled with international protests has put that discussion back in the picture.
Most people also thought the conflict in Northern Ireland also could not be solved. That conflict was also about land being taken from one group by the British (Catholics)and given to another Scottish Protestants) in the 1600s. So far the peace agreement has held even with the Brexit mess and it looks to be lasting.
"The Vietnam protesters were protesting something quite tangible."
Tell us you are an asshole without telling us you are an asshole.
The fact that the younger generations in the US actually care about so many dead abroad when their own skin is not at risk of dying tells us that they much more caring and humane than generations past.
Tell us that you lack analytical skills...by typing a moronic comment. Again, what does "Free Palestine" look like to you?
Ah, I see. So when you thought for yourself, that was for righteous cause.
Oh! But the Kidsthesedays, what they're about is all intangible nonsense.
If people like this had any self-awareness at all, well, they'd they'd be less embarrassing, for one thing.
So what you're saying is that we should only be protesting about things that will impact us personally? So fighting against apartheid in South Africa was stupid? Or for straight people to back marriage equality? Or that none of us should have cared about Abu Ghraib because they were just Iraqis getting tortured and not us?
It's only if we or our friends might get drafted that we should care?
Agree with you and Carissa; whether the protestors are well-informed or not, the ability to take up another’s cause, that does not benefit oneself, is a virtue that deserves encouragement.
Crissa. Damned Autocorrect thinks it knows how to spell people’s names better than the people to whom they belong.
With a shitty attitude like that, you need to explain why direct oppression is the only allowable reason to protest in your moral universe before I consider responding to your questions.
Concur with different_name.
It's pretty clear that what the student means by "no one else really is" is that there have been no results, and what they mean by "taking up that burden" is (again) that they don't see satisfactory results so they feel driven to protest.
I don't understand why this would be confusing unless there's some other agenda/motivated reasoning at work in one's mind, looking for a reason to dismiss the protesters on some grounds.
Older people dismissing younger people as naive (which is often, but not always, true) is a tale as old as time. And just because someone is naive doesn't mean they should be dismissed.
+1
"looking for a reason to dismiss the protesters on some grounds."
ding ding ding
John Kerry seemed like he knew what he was talking about.
I kinda agree and if Engel and Palestinians are successful what happens to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon? I mean Jews did get a sweetheart deal back in the day but Israel isn't just packing up and leaving. Palestinian leaders need to negotiate
" Jews did get a sweetheart deal back in the day but Israel isn't just packing up and leaving. Palestinian leaders need to negotiate"
The crux of the matter. One that seems nearly impossible to get the broader population to understand, and certainly the protesters at the universities don't get. My thoughts - there's a lot of willful ignorance going on.
In what way did Jews get a sweetheart deal?
Okay, that's it. You're trolling pure and simple. FOAD.
they got 55% of "palestine" with about 10% of the population. Land legally purchased by Jews only accounted for a little over 5%
Oh, he already knows the facts. He's just being a dick. "Nyaa, Naya you can't make me say I'm wrong" appears to be the whole of his schtick.
they got 55% of "palestine" with about 10% of the population.
That was just the initial, proposed deal. The actual (1948) deal they ended up getting once that first war over was more like 70-30, I'm pretty sure. And of course post 1967 it's 100-zero.
Yes post 48 Israel took close to 80%
Israel is the one refusing to negotiate, tho.
Yes that is correct. Bibi and Lukid have been quite clear that they do not intend to negotiate because in their mind they gave Palestinian leaders 50 years which has only strengthened the hard liners on both sides
I definitely don't think living in a tent at an Ivy League school is gonna accomplish fuck-all. But I get his point. I'm pushing 40, and I can't think of a time in my adult life that it felt like anyone was making good-faith efforts to sort things out in the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Palestinian leadership is woefully corrupt and cares nothing for the plight of the people they purport to govern. Israel seems to give less than two shits about the long-term damage and injustice that the settler movement is inflicting on the whole affair, and seems to cling to the mindset of David when they've been more like Goliath for the last 20+ years. And everyone on the outside looking in has their own agendas for supporting one side or the other, few if any of which seem to include helping the Israeli or Palestinian commonfolk. It'd be one thing if the whole situation just felt complicated and hard, but leaders were at least doing their best to muddle through nonetheless. But it really feels like everyone has tossed their hands in the air and given up. And, frankly, I'm not entirely sure that's the wrong move. If the Israeli and Palestinian leadership just want to duke it out and grind their citizens to dust underneath them, there doesn't seem to be much anyone can do about it from the outside. They have to want peace as a destination before anyone can help chart a path to it, and it sure as shit doesn't feel like they do. That's the indifference and helplessness this student is speaking to, and they're not wrong.
“They have to want peace as a destination before anyone can help chart a path to it, and it sure as shit doesn't feel like they do.”
This is exactly it, and what has always derails any meaningful movement toward peace. Both sides are wrapped in a religious coat of being the true God’s people that have all the rights to the whole place. No side has shown any inkling of dropping that, and until both sides do there can be no peaceful solution, no matter what anyone one outside does. The protestors are too young and naive to understand that yet. That’s the hubris of youth. To be effective protests have to be in support of a clear and defined goal, disrupt those who stand in the way of that goal, and win support of those who can help that goal. These current protests have none of that. It’s hollow, meaningless, and performative.
The religious element of this is overstated. Until around 1990, this was almost entirely a nationalist conflict. Both sides were dominated by secular nationalists, not religious fanatics. The problem was no less intractable then.
Ironically, one of the things that altered the nature of the struggle was the Israelis nurturing Hamas after it was created in 1987. (It is inaccurate to say that Israel created Hamas. Palestinians in Israeli prisons created it for themselves. But the Israeli government definitely thought that this was a good idea.) They explicitly wanted for there to be a religious opposition because it would weaken the secular PLO.
Be careful what you wish for.
While there has been a lot of attention and resources put into the I-P crisis, I don't think there has been much widespread support for making sure Palestinians get a fair shake -- aside from whatever needs to happen to make the whole thing go away. And now that the people in Gaza are getting crushed, there are many in power (in the government, at universities) who have been reluctant to criticize Israel or allow widespread criticism of Israel (at least on college campuses), so I can kind of understand why students feel that way.
I don't necessarily think the protests are helping (although honestly, no attention would be worse), and I don't think college students are well versed in the history and nuances of the conflict, but I certainly think they should be allowed to protest.
Perhaps a bit too provincial, yes, but certainly in the US he is right that no one else is doing the work. All we hear is hand-wringing about whether being anti-Zionist is somehow inherently antisemitic, and of course the important question of whether students camping out on the quad makes others uncomfortable. And, of course, we see plenty of blog posts about how very complicated the history is. All of these could have been, and were, used to smear campus protesters against the Vietnam war, South African apartheid, and Bush's war in Iraq. And yet they were right then too, despite those issues being oh so complicated and those college students being oh so naive. Sometimes a massacre of civilians is just a massacre of civilians and people are right to protest.
Can one be anti-Zionist and not antisemitic? It would appear the answer is yes, given the MAGA movement is antisemitic and pro-Zionist,
If anti-Zionist means you want to end Israel by demanding Muslim-majority rule (via letting all Palestinians vote in Israel, the right of return, allow Muslim immigration, etc.), I'd say that is antisemitic. Israel would be renamed Palestine, and surely Jews would be persecuted and feel compelled to emigrate. It would be the new exodus for Jews. Then Zionism is finally defeated and ended.
'Israel' doesn't have a right to exist. As you well know, troll.
No, anti-Zionism is just opposition to a policy that one could have predicted from the beginning would have bad results. Which it did, as we see from the chaos of the last century in the Middle East. By itself, anti-Zionism doesn't imply any specific remedy to that chaos, especially since any idiot can see no easy solution exists. We're allowed to deplore the disastrous Zionist policy without having some pat easy solution to the chaos that it caused.
"anti-Zionism doesn't imply any specific remedy to that chaos"
Yes, one can believe that Israel was founded in an illegitimate way, but since it existed now for 76 years, and the founders are now all dead, you recognize it as a long-established and legitimate state. But anti-Zionism in today's world don't accept Israel as a legitimate state which implies that Israel has no right to continue to exist. The end of Israel can be accomplished by creating a Muslim majority voting population in Israel. This idea is to destroy the Zionists’ original goal, and replace Israel with a Palestinian state.
Perhaps many “anti-Zionists” in the US have not clarified what their specific goals are, but from their words it seems to align with the script above. They want to let all Palestinians vote in Israel, the right of return, and to allow Muslim immigration to Israel. This leads to a Muslim majority country. Israel is converted to Palestine.
I'm antizionist in the sense that I don't believe that the Jews have a right to an ethnically defined state that provides fewer rights to non-Jews. No one has a right to such a state.
It's one thing to have a state that has a majority ethnic group, and entirely another to say that Jews may reunite their international families without limit, while Arabs are forbidden to bring spouses from many places into Israel. It's a different thing for three quasigovernmental organizations to own 80% of the land and refuse to lease it to non-Jews. It's another thing entirely to have a law that allows a community to ban those of a particular ethnic group from moving there, and make sure that it's only effective for Jews to use. It's another thing entirely to make large scale government subsidies available only to a particular ethnic group. It's another thing entirely for it to be enshrined in law that communities based around a particular ethnic group will have a much easier time getting building permits and access to infrastructure.
If the question is whether Israel should continue to exist as a majority Jewish country, I agree. If it is whether Israel should continue as it is, then I very clearly answer in the negative.
Why shouldn't Palestinians be allowed to vote in their own country?
Fair or unfair, Palestinians do not live in Israel, are not citizens of Israel, and they don't get to vote in Israel.
However, suppose Israel changed policies to do the following:
- Declare Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to be Israeli citizens and allow them to vote
- Implement a right of return policy where those expelled, and their descendants, can move to Israel and become citizens
- Begin allowing Muslim immigration for individuals and families to Israel
You then have a Muslim-majority country. Israel is converted into Palestine. Palestine will likely become an authoritarian state, and Jews there (41% of the world's Jews) are at great risk.
People have a fundamental right to be citizens of a country and to have a say in how that country is governed. Israel could:
1) Make all Palestinians citizens of Israel and allow them to vote there;
2) Allow and help to achieve the creation of a sovereign Palestinian country;
3) Continue to violate fundamental human rights on a massive scale.
Those are the three possibilities. There are no others.
Exactly. If Israel doesn't like door #1 they can pick door #2.
A real peace process is a thing Israel can do. As the most powerful party (by far!) they have scope of action. Both the PA and Hamas are impotent in comparison. Power corrupts, witness Israel. Powerlessness corrupts, witness Hamas.
Democracy isn't antisemitic. What an offensive thing to believe.
I wish the Zionist project had chosen Paraguay or Argentina instead of Palestine.
My mind congers up what would have happened if an Alien space ship descended on Kansas and dropped off a couple of million aliens who were now going to run the show. And then the ship hovered in space ready with lasers to blast anyone who objects.
Ah, yes. There are "lasers", and they have blasted many human beings who object. But their main weapon is to label anyone who objects to their actions as being antisemitic.
In the early days of Aliya they did consider Utah. However, no one dropped two million people on Palestine. You do realize that, don't you?
Notably, you're very incorrect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliyah#:~:text=During%20World%20War%20II%20and,from%20Eastern%20Europe%20through%20Poland.
Thank you Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Replace "lasers' with 'bombs' and 'aliens' with 'Jewish Aliyah' and come back in.
Using space aliens as an analogy for Jews is anti-Semitic. I believe that if it was used in any other contex you would point that out.
The space aliens with the big space lasers in this analogy are the rest of the world, backing the Zion-in-Palestine project with overwhelming force.
Uh huh.
That's the way I took it, well, with the US not the rest of the world being the aliens. You're squinting much too hard trying to see all opposition to Isreal as antisemiticism.
>> an Alien space ship descended on Kansas and dropped off a couple of million aliens who were now going to run the show<<
He compared Jews to space aliens. I wasn’t squinting.
sorry. I misremembered. Still very equivocal as evidence of antisemitism, given the context.
Only equivocal if you are unfamiliar with history:
“The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human.”
-Adolf Hitler-
Really? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087004/
Jews have been there for thousands of years. Why would they go anywhere else?
Are you serious? Jews have literally gone everywhere in the last thousands of years. They've done reasonably well. Even after deciding they just had to have an intolerant, theocratic ethno-state of settlerr-colonists which has required constant eradication of the indigenous population.
Atticus is serious. He's also a bigot who wants to force others to live by his religious precepts. Quite a piece of work, our Atticus is.
Yes, they've gone lots of places -- Babylon, Egypt, the ghettos, concentration camps. But they are inextricably tied to Jerusalem and the surrounding land. That is their homeland.
So what about the Palestinian people who didn't move everywhere in the last two thousand years? Why don't they get to vote?
Because that's like his hypothetical trans athletes competing against his daughters for athletic (athletic!) scholarships.
Not sure what you mean by hypothetical.
https://www.boston.com/news/high-school-sports/2024/03/01/injuries-involving-trans-basketball-player-at-mass-school-spark-controversy/
Move? Do you think the people who left their homes just decided they wanted a change of scenery? Or do just use that word include forced out or fled?
+1
So if tomorrow the rest of the world decided that the entire South West of the US should now be given back to Mexico, and all the lilywhite Americans of European descent should just fuck off because the Americans of Mexican descent are inextricably tied to the land and it is their homeland you would happy oblige?
Students for Justice in Palestine consider North America to be “occupied Turtle Island”. So, I guess we should all leave.
I mean that's the hypocrisy of Zionists. They believe in sort of weird "right of return" that only applies to Jewish people and not to anyone else in the world.
The Law of Return applies to Jews and their non-Jewish spouse. This includes gay couples. Tell me what other countries in the Middle East where that would be accepted.
1) So, as long as the Israelis aren't as bad as other countries around them, they get a pass?
2) The current government of Israel is full of people who very badly want to make the country less accepting of gays.
Our current government is full of people who want to make the country less accepting of gays.
If Trump is reelected I suspect our policies toward gays will look more like those countries around Israel.
And all of this justifies the dispossession of the Palestinians . . . how, exactly?
Yeah, you completely missed my point. They don't support return for any other people anywhere in the world. Just for themseleves, not for any other indigenous people.
If you think he missed it, I want some of what you're smoking.
yes, they did reasonably well in Germany, Austria, Poland, etc. Reasonably well considering they were Jews? And what countries were willing to take them when they were trying to leave Germany, Austria etc? that is why there has to be a Jewish state. I am not defending their actions, but their right to exist
I agree with different_name, cmayo, and clawback. Students are protesting because their government has been actively supporting Israel's role in creating a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. No, a few encampments won't immediately change Israeli military policy, but the students are doing what they can to put pressure on Biden and Congress to further isolate Israel. They are the leading edge of a changing tide of public opinion in the U.S., and they deserve our praise, not our condemnation or ridicule.
Like!
What's that story about the little girl throwing starfish back into the sea?
They will end up helping Trump elected, and achieve exactly the reverse of what they try to achieve.
+ 1
+1
Politically, Biden is already doing some things, which may seem minor, but are, in fact, unprecedented. And if more voices chime in with their disapproval of Israel, Biden may even move further away from supporting Israel. This is the positive side of the student protests -- maybe.
On the other hand, when they start spouting such nonsense as "free Palestine", they just sound dumb; or worse.
Sigh. You've been schooled on this more than once, most recently (that I've seen) by the commenter known as Meloncholy Donkey. Give it up. You're not being clever, you're not being smart, and you're down on my shitlist already for the first couple of times you thought no one would notice you were trying to force a narrative.
Such patent bad faith makes me wonder if you have a dog in this fight you aren't telling us about.
What are you complaining about?
Palestine being free does seem unachievable.
But so did an equal and fair South Africa.
Because part of his schitck is 'Palestine has never existed'.
Students are going to protest. In this case, most of the protest encampments popped up because police were used to clear out the early ones. In some ways, students were more into exercising their right to protest.
As for affecting outcomes, they may have helped push Biden into his current position, or at least give him some cover. Biden saw what happened when we went into Afghanistan and Iraq and was trying to stop Israel from making the same mistake. Basically, don't go in without a "day after" plan. He also saw the potential for blowback and the effective trap Hamas set for Israel.
The protests may have some effect on Biden, although overall public opinion has turned considerably against Israel anyway since its invasion. But the effect of the protests is negligible on Netanyahu, who is determined to carry out his objectives, whatever they are. Withdrawal of US support will not stop him and Israel does not need US weapons to devastate Gaza. The protests also will not have any effect on Hamas leaders, whatever their objectives are.
But the root of the problem is not any specific leaders. Those in the Middle East are in power because their populations support their actions. Israelis keep putting Netanyahu in power and Palestinians keep choosing leaders like Hamas. There are two groups, differentiated mainly by religion, fighting over ownership of the land. One side or the other has always killed any real effort to divide territory. Protests in the US will have no influence on this.
This is blatantly untrue , except for the parts about Israel. In most of the rest of the middle east, free elections have been blocked. This goes double for the Occupied Zones in Palestine: the West Bank and Gaza.
"The people" are not happy with their too-long-in-power leaders. But they haven't been given any opportunities to choose others, and the miilitary and police powers of the state have strongly put down any movements towards democracy.
We can't know if removal of US arms will stop him... but we can try.
. . . Palestinians keep choosing leaders like Hamas.
This is not true. The Palestinians chose leaders like Hamas, namely Hamas, once. Since 2006, the Israelis have put a lot of effort into helping Hamas (and Fatah) ensure that Palestinians don't get to choose again.
One of the things that has to change is that the rest of the world needs to stop telling the Palestinians who they must accept as their leaders.
This cannot be repeated enough. Israel propped up Hamas, a shocking fact shockingly few people know:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-qatar-money-prop-up-hamas.html
If one of the terrorist groups Iran props up attacked Iran, well, if you lie with a snake don't complain when you get bit.
With Israel the rules are different, go ahead, prop up a terrorist group in a cynical divide and conquer strategy to foreclose a peace process, no biggie.
Too simple. Nearly twenty years ago, Gazans voted for Hamas, West Bank Palestinians voted Fatah. There haven’t been any general elections since. Fatah is a secular party; there is a small minority of Palestinian Christians on the West Bank, and both Christians and Muslims have been in Fatah leadership. I couldn’t find any actual data on support among Palestinians for Sharia law or Islamist rule. The PA has long promised that any holy sites under their control would be open to all faiths.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the most extreme Islamist group has only about a thousand members; Hamas has never had majority support, and their appeal has always been based on fighting corruption and delivering public services, not Islamism, though their charter declares it as a principle.
Nearly twenty years ago, Gazans voted for Hamas, West Bank Palestinians voted Fatah.
This is false. There weren't separate elections in Gaza and the West Bank. It was one election, for the Palestinian legislature that governed both. Hamas won pretty much everywhere, narrowly among the proportional representation seats, and overwhelmingly in the single member districts. Fatah won in Qalqilya, Rafah, and Jericho, split the vote in Jenin, won seats specifically reserved for Christians, and got bludgeoned just about everywhere else. Hamas captured 74 of the 132 total seats in the legislature.
A few months later, Hamas tried to take control of the government, as they were entitled to do by winning the election. Backed by the Israelis and Americans, Fatah launched a coup to prevent this. The coup succeeded in the West Bank and failed miserably in Gaza. That's how they ended up being governed by different parties. I use "governed" extremely broadly, as Israel exercised its power to ensure that neither Gaza nor the West Bank were really governable.
Do I think the "work" Engle is doing is going to lead to a free Palestine? I doubt it.
But frankly, if he was standing in Dratmouth town square picking his nose, he' be doing more than any major politician in my lifetime.
Yes, why aren't they nihilists, like us?
I guess the big question is, how much history do you have to know in order to be disgusted by the current actions of Netanyahu and many in his government? Too often we point to history as a way to wave away the brutality of today as inevitable, and therefore not worthy of any action to stop it.
I'll take a semi-stab at this question, not so much about what the students think they are accomplishing--which is unlikely to be highly realistic--but on what they are (or may be) accomplishing. I see it as a salutary sign that Israel no longer enjoys a blank check from the United States. Netanyahu has been playing with fire for a long time. He has done his best to end the possibility of a Palestinian state and has been pursing what in my judgment is a slow-motion ethnic cleansing of the West Bank (if you disagree, ask yourself what you think Netanyahu's end game there is). He in effect allied himself with a despicable terrorist group whose mission is literally to destroy Israel because they helped him kill support for a Palestinian state among Israeli voters. And he openly allied himself with the Republican Party and against Democrats, destabilizing the bipartisan support for Israel. The protests are one sign of Bibi's chickens coming home to roost. There are aspects of these protests that really disturb me--e.g., whitewashing or even valorizing what Hamas did to start the Gaza war, not recognizing that civilians casualties are a part of Hamas's strategy are and due in part to choices Hamas has made. But the bottom line is that Netanyahu-led Israel is as callous about civilian casualties as I feared and Netanyahu himself is blocking efforts to formulate a strategy to win the war because that would endanger his political position. He'd rather keep the killing going.
Well said. +1
As I said elsewhere in this thread, focusing on Netanyahu's opposition to peace as being the problem lets off the hook the Israeli public, who have given his coalition a majority six times.
Netanyahu has spent most of the last three decades in a position where he can thwart the peace process, because Jewish Israelis want a leader who will thwart the peace process. If a population keeps electing someone who strongly pushes a given policy, then they are the ones who are responsible for that policy. Netanyahu is a symptom (admittedly, a very bad symptom), not the disease.
He means no one else in mainstream US, not the world. And in the United States the plight of the Palestinians is a niche issue.
The kids are idiots. Thank god for the kids.
The kids are all right.
"The student left is the most reliably correct constituency in America. Over the past 60 years, it has passed every great moral test American foreign policy has forced upon the public, including the Vietnam war, the question of relations with apartheid South Africa, and the Iraq war."
Osita Nwanevu, in today's Guardian.
When I was a young student I demonstrated against Pinochet, apartheid, nuclear proliferation and much more. Now I'm proud to see my daughter join marches for LGBT rights, with extinction rebellion and for a ceasefire in Gaza. Hubris? These are good kids. They're not doing it with any illusion of power but they also refuse to despair. And if a 19-year-old overstates things, that's just a 19-year-old being 19 years old. His heart is obviously in the right place and so is his action.
+ 10
Well said.
+1 No, x1 damnit!
For the first time in my memory, an American president put some limits on Israel's use of US-produced weapons against the Palestinians. I would say that's accomplishing a lot.
The following quote springs immediately to mind:
"I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice"
Plus-one-million.
This is one of my favorite quotes to reach for, but unfortunately the people being "moderate" and against whose rationalizing the statement is most applicable are exactly the people who won't listen to it.
"how dare young people not protest in a way I find acceptable!"
The Gaza protesters know they are only accomplishing making their opposition known to the rest of the polity who reflexively support whatever policies the implacable power elites pursue. No one expects college regents to change their endowment investments or whatever administration is in power to withdraw from the killing fields. The protests are just dismissible cries of helplessness, just like the ones barely heard coming from the wounded children in Gaza. The protests confirm what everyone already knows. No democratic means exist for citizens to effect the policies chosen by the oligarchy.
I don't know if when the student says "the students are the only ones doing the work" he means in the world or in this country. But having read Drum's commentary on the situation I would guess the student has a better understanding of the situation than Drum does. That seems supported by the fact that he thinks Israel developing nuclear weapons was working towards peace.
The reason there is no peace between the two sides is that Israel is doing comparatively fine as an occupying power. They are being asked to give up 22% of the territory they control to the majority Palestinian population, and they don't see any bad consequences in not doing so. Despite this, US policy towards peace has been to consider the keeping of millions of Palestinians stateless as a shame, but putting pressure on the Israelis to end their statelessness would be a tragedy. Even now when the consequences are the mass slaughter of 10s of thousands of civilians that still is essentially our policy, with Biden having moved slightly off it by only selling some weapons to Israel with which to slaughter Gazan civilians. And Dennis Ross (the chief US negotiator for the Barak/Arafat negotiations) objected that although the goal of preventing Israel from slaughtering civilians is a good one, no pressure should be put on Israel to stop because that would take pressure of Hamas. Why he would think this is not clear.
But this has been the stupidity of US policy. We have insisted that no pressure should be put on the occupier, because they want peace, all pressure should be put on the occupied because otherwise they will have no incentive to seek peace. This is so obviously stupid that it is hard to type it without thinking that people won't believe that that argument is actually made.
The student above is probably right that Israel is unlikely to survive the lifetime of today's students. The reason for this is entirely Israel's fault. It was offered a defensible state with a clear Jewish majority by Abbas and turned it down. Instead it has focused on moving settlers into the West Bank in a way designed to make two states impossible.
But he is also likely right that nothing will happen until Israelis become convinced that Israel will become a pariah country if it continues to be an apartheid state. That is what happened in South Africa, and it is the most likely end of Israel. And the student is right that currently the students are the only ones treating the slaughter of Palestinians as a tragedy rather than as a shame.
That is such a fantastic distillation. Wow.
The demands of the protestors are odd. They seem to mainly want their colleges to divest in US defense industry companies. Okay, but how is selling off stock in those companies going to accomplish anything? Someone else will just buy the stock, and the companies won't care what the protestors are saying. So there is no impact on Israel.
If you really want US defense contractors to stop selling weapons to Israel, you need to change US government policy. The government is the gate keeper regarding what countries can buy advanced weapons.
In the end, the only way to cause change is to somehow alter the behavior/thinking of both Israeli leaders and their citizens, as well as Palestinian leaders and their citizens. US student protests seem pretty far removed from impacting this.
The only long term fix is still the two-state solution. This simple point often gets lost in the confusion.
Divestment appears to have contributed to the end of South African apartaid.
But I could equally ask: why are universities, many of which have no such investments in the first place, more eager to set police on student protesters than to negotiate with them and give them what they're asking for? A few schools have, peacefully, and thus ended the protests.
"Divestment appears to have contributed to the end of South African apartaid."
Divestment was targeted at the South African government and businesses there. Also, the disinvestment campaign impacted South Africa only after the major Western nations, including the US, got involved beginning in 1984. Sanctions were put in place. From 1984 onwards, South Africa experienced considerable capital flight because of disinvestment and the repayment of foreign loans.
The current student protesters are focused on divesting in US defense contractors. This has no impact on anything.
Two things, the US only got involved in disinvestment after student protesters with most people dismissing the protests (including myself) as accomplishing nothing. If students were not protesting now it seems doubtful that Biden would be making even the slight moves he is making.
Second I have no idea where you get the idea that protesters are only focused on defense industry. Most demands I have seen, and discussions of their demands focus on divestment from Israeli companies and companies that do business with Israel, with the former being criticized as too slight and the latter as too broad to be practical.
Beacuse it's something they might actually be able to impact. Changing US policy is next-to-impossible. The perecent of politicians who might be open to change is probably on the order of 5-15% max.
Colleges selling off stock in US defense contractors will have no impact on those companies, Israeli policies, or on US government policy.
Perhaps not but it IS an achievable goal. And there are other people working on other fronts/angles. Every action counts.
If more Americans were like Kevin. The US would still be a country where women couldn't vote and Jim Crow laws were still the law of the land. Throughout all of history there have always been curmudgeons like him who consider protesters as clueless idiots, and who downplay protests as accomplishing nothing, that is of course until they do.
Big or small, all changes in society happen when enough people care about something, and that is something that always starts with a small group of people chanting a few stale rhymes.
I don't really get the idea expressed in several comments that Israel is destined to disappear. They're a top ten arms producer in their own right, their primary geopolitical opponents are reliant on the fossil fuels economy, and despite the current conflict their relations with their neighbors are still better than they were twenty years ago. The Jewish population is far larger relative to the Palestinian population than was the white population relative to the black population in South Africa. Hamas and the PLO aren't the ANC.
I don't have to like the situation over there to acknowledge that US influence is limited and not vitally necessary for Israel in the short term. Maybe on a decades long timeframe they would have problems, but in that timeframe their neighbors probably begin to weaken due to climate change and the move away from fossil fuels. I just don't understand the basis for believing that Israel is on the same trajectory as South Africa. While there are parallels in the treatment of Palestinians most of the other details are very different (and I think the fact that the native Jewish population being very conservative really complicates the settler colonial narrative, the European Jews that came over as part of the Zionist movement are more liberal, it's the natives and the group that came over from former Soviet territories that had different ideological commitments that were more conservative). I just don't get the perspective that things will develop in the same direction, the situations are too different and Israel has its problems but these don't appear to me to be existential.
I agree. On the one hand, predicting the future is a fool's errand. On the other hand, the vast majority of the Western counties continue to stand with Isreal 100% even in the face of 35,000 deaths. Hard to imagine a chain of events that would lead to them losing support for their very existence from the Western powers. And they're certainly not going to choose to end their existence.
I think it is very possible that the State of Israel will cease to exist.
It isn't the Palestinian population that you should be comparing Israel to, but the Arab population (400 million) and the Muslim population (2 billion).
Israel is a country the size of a large city that has pinned its fate on militarily dominating its neighbors, who ultimately are more powerful than it is. Without the support of Western patrons -- especially, in the last fifty years, America -- Israel probably would have ceased to exist long ago.
And now Israel is governed, and looks to continue to be governed for all future time, by a coalition of secular and religious fascists who are even more committed to peace through violence than the founders and early governments of the state.
If American cuts the apron strings -- and there are a lot of different forces that could point us in that direction -- I don't see how Israel survives on its own for more than maybe twenty years.
When you graduate from high school with all sorts of honors and awards, you're told repeatedly that you're smart -- and you are -- and will do great things. What they don't explain is that you're lacking wisdom and the full set of skills to achieve those great things.
At age 22 we are all filled to the brim with hubris, especially if we graduate from a top university. This goes back for forever -- it's not an especially new phenomenon.
It's when you get that first job where your eyes are finally opened. There's a pecking order and you're not all that especially outstanding.
Well, the protestors are certainly doing a great job of stealing the MSM headlines away from the humanitarian disaster in Gaza. I wonder if they're not secretly funded by Israel to distract the US news media from focusing on the particulars in Gaza. #snarkasm
Every conflict is the same. Your two options are to assume it's a zero sum game or a non-zero sum game.
If you assume that it's a zero sum game, then you are insufficiently mature. The insufficiently mature message is, "I'm right, you're wrong, and this conversation is over." The non-zero sum game / sufficiently mature / Biden administration message is, "It is our mutual responsibility to serve our shared social system at our short-term expense, and the long-term benefit will be when and because we've worked together to strengthened the system."
Insufficiently mature 19-year-old students are inevitable and nothing to worry about. An insufficiently mature Republican Party and Israeli government were not inevitable, but they are the current reality and an existential threat.