People here are "sick" of Israeli/Palestine Posts. But it goes beyond this topic.

[question everything]

Many want the posts to be relegated to the Israeli/Palestine group. But what about harassing of Jews on their way from synagogues? Invading the home of a Jewish dean? The shameful taking over campuses and attacking Jewish students?

All these sentiments may have been hidden under the surface and now exploded.

The protestors shout about the casualties in Gaza but not a word about the Oct 7 atrocities. There are still charred remains to be identified, some are of a parent and baby burned alive. Not a word about the hostages, not even how many are alive.

If African Americans, or LBGT were singled out like that would the same DUers be just sick of all the posts reporting and opine about such harassment?

What does it say about this country when so many Jews are being harassed?

And what does it say about DU when some prefer not to even read a post title and skip the thread?

[JohnSJ]

1. Something to think about

[RockRaven]

2. What about whataboutism? What about strawmen? What about gaslighting

DUers about what they think or do while scrolling?

[Roy Rolling]

3. Protest Legitimacy

After absorbing every bit of news since October 7th, as well as the Ukraine invasion by Russia, the incessant media announcements by the governments involved paints a large picture.

So, how much of today’s campus violence is from students who pay their tuition and attend there and who are the “third man in”? That is, which protesters have skin in the game and which protesters are there for the TV exposure and camaraderie with like-minded outside agitators?

It’s morons like this that seek the attention using the cause to unleash their inner demons. Remember What’s his face Rittenhouse. His mother drove him to the protest.

[wnylib]

6. Good points. I just finished reading a thread that

complained about constant references to the 60s, and I get the point of that OP. So my apologies to people who are tired of 60s references, but there is one parallel to them in the points that you brought up.

I noticed something back in the 60s about Vietnam protests that relates to what you said about some protesters being involved for the personal exposure and cameradarie. I was among the early boomers, born at the end of the 1940s, just missed 1950 by 3 months. In the initial protests against the Vietnam war, the protesters knew what they stood for and why. They had a commitment based on information about what led us into the war.

But later protesters often did not know what the issues were. They knew nothing about the French withdrawal from Vietnam, the early attempts by the Vietnamese to establish a democratic government, the infiltration of communism, and the US "solution" of backing RW dictators solely because they were anti communists, etc. The protesters who joined the bandwagon later did so for personal reasons like adolescent and young adult rebellion against their parents' generation, peer unity as a boomer, and seeking a "righteous" cause to identify with and feel important. When it became cool to be part of a counterculture, people joined protests and mouthed slogans to be cool.

There were still anti war protesters who knew the issues and tried to make their points, but there were also many who thought the protests were just great social events.

Other movements of the time period remained more dedicated to the principles, such as the civil rights movements for equality for Blacks and for women. The people in those movements knew the principles involved and were committed to them from from personal experience.

[Think. Again.]

7. We must also consider the possibility of...

...intentionally planted disruptors (agitators) that we know are used in situations like this.

[Bucky]

4. I don't think there's a competition over who's most oppressed

I have yet to read a post in this forum dismissing the sickening Hamas atrocities on October 7th. Certainly no one here in DU is joining or accepting of the rank antisemitism persistently creeping into the anti-war voices. My sense is that they are outside agitators, antisocial types who don't really believe in democracy, but I haven't really followed them because I don't think they're a real threat--not in the way white supremacists are in this country. But I agree, there's no place for anti-Semitism in America--hate speech deserves to be censored and censored.

That said, I have to disagree with your framing that people in general are tolerating Jew hating sloganeering. When it does happen among the war protests, it immediately becomes the laser focus of the media coverage; it is disproportionately singled out and denounced. It deserves to be.

What's not getting enough media coverage is the fact that most of the people drawing attention to Israel's war crimes in Gaza are also supporters of Israel. It's perfectly consistent to believe America should support Israel and to think Israel shouldn't be indiscriminately bombing or starving Palestinian civilians.

[wnylib]

10. Regarding an absence of posts that dismiss the 10/7 attacks,

I have seen such posts. I have seen thoughtful threads about the 10/7 attacks hijacked by posters who dismiss them as insignificant, turning the threads into protests against the war when the threads were about the 10/7 hostages, their families, and the people who died in the attacks.

In regard to indiscriminate bombing and starvation, I disagree with calling them indiscriminate and attributing motives like genocide to Israel. There is a strategy in Israel's actions that people can disagree with, but they should, I think, be accurate about their disagreement. Israel's goal is the destruction of Hamas because of the open statements from Hamas about their own goal to obliterate Israel and Jews. With backing for Hamas from Iran and other terrorist groups, plus demonization of Israel in other nations, that is not an idle threat.

A nation of people who have survived centuries of attemots to destroy them, most recently in the Holocaust, does not take obliteration threats lightly. They are determined to destroy Hamas's ability to carry out further attacks, even if they cannot destroy every member if Hamas. So, Israel is destroying the fortifications network of Hamas. That's what warring factions do, destroy the enemy's ability to make war. The Hamas network is in underground bunkers connected by tunnels that run the entire length of Gaza. Bombing those targets inevitably kills civilians because the bunkers and tunnels lie beneath civilian homes and institutions.

Hamas has food, water, and medicine that it hoards for itself while its people are starving. It has money from its leaders abroad. Hamas gets its supplies in a few different ways. One is from smugglers in Egypt who get supplies into the tunnel complex in southern Gaza, at Rafah. (The Egyptian government is not, AFAIK, involved.) Another is through aid organizations that are sympathetic to Hamas and who deliver weapons in their shipments of humanitarian aid. A third way is when Hamas diverts aid from humanitarian organizations to its underground locations before civilians can receive it. That is the reason for Israel's intense, time-consuming inspections of aid deliveries.

Anyone can disagree with the strategy of bombing the underground Hamas fortifications and Israel's inspections of aid deliveries. But they should do it accurately and not make up motives out of thin air or draw conclusions from anti Israel slogans.

[betsuni]

5. Agree. It's a discussion forum, not someone's personal blog where how dare anyone disagree.

[Oopsie Daisy]

8. "» The protestors shout about the casualties in Gaza but not a word about the Oct 7 atrocities."

The protestors shout about the casualties in Gaza but not a word about the Oct 7 atrocities. There are still charred remains to be identified, some are of a parent and baby burned alive. Not a word about the hostages, not even how many are alive.

Thank you for your thoughtful post.

[wyldwolf]

9. Just tell me who on DU supports these idiots on college campuses so I can avoid them

I'm not here enough anymore to recognize the young progressive Hamas supporters.

Young, yes. Stupid, yes. Racists, yes. Helping Trump get re-elected? Yup.

[Prairie Gates]

11. For all those people getting fed up with one-sided posts lacking any empathy or understanding

of the other side's position, here's a one-sided post lacking any empathy or understanding of the other side's position!

Take that!

[ProfessorPlum]

12. "The protestors shout about the casualties in Gaza but not a word about the Oct 7 atrocities"

There is a reason for that, and it isn't antisemitism. Can you guess what it is? Think hard.

[question everything]

13. That Israel deserved it? Even before Israel started with retaliation there were many, too many

who held this opinion.

[ProfessorPlum]

14. Nope. It has nothing to do with who is doing the genocide

guess again.

[question everything]

15. The last scene of Gone with the Wind

[ProfessorPlum]

16. Oh, don't give up. You are getting close.

I'll give you a hint: If US colleges were investing student tuition money in Hamas, and the US government was funding and arming Hamas, and Hamas was engaged in an ongoing slaughter of Israeli citizens, would US college students

A) protest investing in, arming, and funding Hamas as a way to stop the killing? or
B) call for more killing of innocent civilians by Hamas

Really think about the answer - it may surprise you!!

[question everything]

17. A short class about foreign relations

As long as this county has interest in the Middle East, Israel is our eyes and ears. Israel provides important information about the military and economic status about the countries there. We have access to view and study any military equipment, some of it Russian, that is captured by Israel.

The recent Iranian attack on Israel, with this country, Jordan and the U.K. shooting down the missiles and drones, provided important information about the capability of Iran.

Plus, as with every foreign aid, most of it is returned by purchasing American products.

And, as a reminder in January 2020, while Trump was in office, the U.S. targeted and killed Qassem Soleimani, the top commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force who was linked to the deaths of hundreds of Americans overseas.

[ProfessorPlum]

19. and yet, none of that will make slaughtering civilians the moral thing to do

ever

[Coventina]

18. Wow! Shocking that the US would invest in the only liberal democracy in the ME!!

A place where women and LGBTQ+ have actual human rights!

Yes, Netanyahu is a piece of shit, but so is Trump, and we have a right-wing problem just like Israel has a right-wing problem.
So, instead of working with them we should turn our backs?

What kind of logic is that?

[ProfessorPlum]

20. how about we work with them to stop committing atrocities?

[Coventina]

21. We do work with them. I think that's what many of the protesters are mad about.

If we don't work with them, what leverage would we have?

[ProfessorPlum]

22. ? we have all the leverage

and we should use it to protect civilians and de-escalate. Including the Israeli civilians who will be killed in the future in retaliation of the atrocities being committed now.

[Coventina]

23. I was under the impression that Biden is doing that right now?

[Coventina]

24. Delete, dupe