Israel/Palestine post 10/7 - follow-on events/thoughts as relate to other countries

To give a new twist to an old Stokely Carmichael adage: If my city's chief of police wants to buy the department a tank after visiting Israel, that's his problem. If he has the budget to do it, that's my problem.

Afaict US police forces have been gradually shifting towards military policing of civilian populations for quite a while now

Yes, it's police militarization that is the larger problem. I haven't read Radley Balko's book on it (Rise of the Warrior Cop), but I believe the basic thesis is that in the US it was the War on Drugs that drove the development of SWAT teams and other military-style police techniques.

This got more serious post-9/11 when you saw stuff like the Dept of Defense's equipment transfer program and Homeland Security's grants for counterterrorism equipment: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/20/police-billions-homeland-security-military-equipment. And yes, giving cops tanks is clearly more of a problem than training programs.

lol my last line was an xpost

To give a new twist to an old Stokely Carmichael adage: If my city's chief of police wants to buy the department a tank after visiting Israel, that's his problem. If he has the budget to do it, that's my problem.

One can also make the simplistic argument that after the cold war ended, the weapons industry needed to find new markets for their products

Military hardware sellers gotta eat!

Military hardware sellers gotta eat!

after the cold war ended

But did it really?

I think we had warmer relations with the USSR than we do with the Russian Federation

_after the cold war ended_

But did it really?

I got a Kalashnikov and a coupon for vodka in 1997.

Basically Gorbachev and Yeltsin were “bros” … then Putin succeeded Yeltsin, then Yeltsin died and a lot of the more “liberal” factions lost the protection of his clout, and now we have Stalin 2

xpost "sorry, missile launchers can only be returned within 30 days of initial purchase, and this has clearly been damaged"

yeah but see the protests don't work:

The University of Vermont will publicly disclose its endowment investments by the end of the week, school officials said Wednesday. The decision comes in response to demands made by pro-Palestinian student protesters, who have staged an encampment on the Burlington campus since Sunday.

UVM provost and senior vice president Patricia Prelock met with a group of students on Tuesday evening and told them that the university would disclose its financial investments, making them accessible later this week, according to a post in the “UVM Palestine Solidarity Encampment” Telegram channel Wednesday morning.

Adam White, a university spokesperson, confirmed to VTDigger that the university plans to disclose that information. He also confirmed that Prelock, during her meeting with students, agreed to bring their concerns over the university’s commencement speaker back to leadership for discussion.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is set to speak at UVM’s commencement ceremony later this month. Protesters have characterized the choice as insulting, given that the U.S. vetoed three resolutions at the United Nations calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war.

At the UPenn encampment:

An unknown individual was detained after he walked through the encampment and sprayed an odorous unknown substance on signs in the encampment.

Protesters followed the individual, chanting “stop spraying pesticides on our fucking signs” until he walked out of the encampment.

The Daily Pennsylvanian could not confirm what the substance was, and encampment members also said they do not know.

When he exited the encampment, the individual was handcuffed and detained for investigation by Penn’s Division of Public Safety.

Glad he was alone, the videos from UCLA that I've seen are really scary

Had to unfollow a prominent cookbook author because he was both sidesing the shit at UCLA.

On a professor beaten by police and hospitalized:
https://merip.org/2024/05/merip-statement-on-the-arrest-of-steve-and-sandra-tamari/

Read something today and it isn't special but also gets at something I have been thinking about in recent days:

The students were correct about Viet Nam, they were correct about the first gulf war and the embargoes, they were correct about the WTO and "free trade," they were right about the second Gulf War and the "War on Terror," they were correct about the stakes in Occupy, and they were correct in 2020 around BLM. And they are correct now.

While the demos do provide a distraction for the MSM to latch onto instead of actually reporting on the genocide occurring right now with our tax dollars, there's also no helping the demos and encampments being overwhelmingly correct in their assessments of the situation.

Absolutely. Columbia's hypocrisy on this has been esp notable.

I would push back against the "distraction" piece though -- for one, I don't think media attention to Gaza has deterred Israel in any way thus far, though of course it's impossible to test that theory.

More broadly, on the negative side: I think the violently over the top response to these protests has been grimly instructive in terms of how brutally dissent is and will be repressed in the US (no matter which party is in power), how police have accrued more power and evaded accountability in the last four years, how fierce the right wing's antagonism to higher education is, how brittle liberalism is when it comes to defending its institutions, and so on. Baroness Shafik flatly stating that Columbia will not divest from Israel no matter what is also illuminating.

On the positive side, we need global solidarity and resistance to deal with fascism, climate change, etc. I'm heartened that young people recognize this.

Seeing on BlueSky that the UC system academic workers union is calling a strike vote in response to UCLA police watching while fascists attacked students and faculty. So another potential positive is organized labor getting pissed off

sorry to reference the NYT but there was a pretty good opinion piece there this week about the student protests being right:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/26/opinion/columbia-student-protests-israel.html?unlocked_article_code=1.n00.H9EM.7niiAQglNBkl

There is a somewhat sad hierarchy of labor unions in the UC system… academic workers union is basically who you’d expect to be sympathetic… like it’s not a big deal imo

Basically the faculty and staff that are already out there supporting encampments etc

I had that same thought, like, tell me the time the anti-war protesters were wrong. All I can think of is the 1930s America Firsters, who weren't so much "anti-war" as "pro-Nazi." (But of course anti-war protesters are usually right, because most wars are bad and terrible!)

What a fucking monster

If you don't understand why people are mad at Biden today I honestly don't know what to tell you https://t.co/u1GcGVcmXX

— Erik Baker (@erikmbaker) May 1, 2024

Easier to stomach if you convince yourself they’re all RUSSIAN agitators.

Honestly he has lost the college vote on this, good luck USA

I've been reading Al-Arian for a while, but the passive voice ("will be involved") is weird; so is the conditional "may be." If the Biden White House ordered the prosecution of the students, it would probably cost them the election, and FOX News would be happy to promote it. Does anyone have other links?

Not sure how closely they're linked to begin with, but this might be the first of many

BOGOTA, May 1 (Reuters) - Colombian President Gustavo Petro said on Wednesday he will break diplomatic relations with Israel over its actions in Gaza.
Petro has already heavily criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and requested to join South Africa's case accusing Israel of genocide at the International Court of Justice.
"Here in front of you, the government of change, of the president of the republic announces that tomorrow we will break diplomatic relations with the state of Israel ... for having a government, for having a president who is genocidal," Petro told cheering crowds in Bogota who marched to mark International Worker's Day and back Petro's social and economic reforms.

^^^ excellent

Today's WH press conference transcript: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2024/05/01/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-59/

I see a lot of the usual press secretary banalities and an incoherent one about Charlottesville vs now but nothing about prosecuting students.

look this is definitely gonna hurt him amongst college students and Muslims but I somehow doubt it's going to drive them to vote for a guy who pretty much openly says Israel should just massacre all the remaining Palestinians and that US citizens should be free to murder anyone who protests

They don’t have to… they just have to not show up at the polls.

TBF, college kids aren't the most reliable voting block anyway

That's a usual coping response but the youth vote is important - when you don't get them to turn up, Democrats have a habit of losing. 1992, 2008 and 2020 were all high youth turnout elections, 2000 & 2016 not so much. (2004 was also a high turnout election but didn't quite get Sen. Lurch over the line)

What’s the point in voting if the end results are the same? Are those in Gaza any less dead because Joe Biden’s in blue not red? So much sneering over the choices of the young but nothing to say about how the lack of choice is as damaging to democracy as anything else that gets far more attention.

Killing civilians is bad, maybe start from there instead of “What are you going to do, vote for the fascist?” None of these people will vote for Trump. They’ll stay home.

xxp yeah, I don't mean to be dismissive... it's just that a lot of college students don't always update registration to be able to vote in fall elections, more of a technical failing than one of motivation

I don't know about the rest of America or even Florida, but the students I address in South Florida as a local activist care most about (in order): affordable housing, legal weed, sea level rise, Gaza, abortion access. We have amendments on the ballot in November re legal weed and abortion.

Typically you'd say that a candidate who needs voters under 25 and/or Muslim voters to win isn't going to win anyway, since they're such small parts of the electorate. But we've had back to back elections decided by small numbers of votes in a handful of states, so either/both could hurt in key places (thinking about Dearborn and Madison).

Of course Trump would be worse on everything that people are mad at Biden for, but y'know.

What’s the point in voting if the end results are the same?

Well the end results aren't the same on a lot of fronts. For those of us living in Republican-occupied territories already, having a Democratic administration in Washington vs. a Republican one makes a pretty big difference! We already live under aspiring autocracies/theocracies, having an autocracy/theocracy-friendly administration in DC makes lots of things worse for lots of people, especially every single class of marginalized/vulnerable people. But this isn't the thread for that anyway.

I still have strong feelings about (in theory) voting for the lesser of two evils - even if there's one issue that the evil isn't lesser on, there are plenty of others. However, I live in NY so it doesn't matter who I vote for, and I also don't think browbeating others to do so is effective. People have the right to be one-issue voters, and, in fact, it's probably one of the more effective ways of using voting power to get concessions when done well.

as far as turnout, maybe the abortion rights thing can somewhat negate the Gaza mistrust? IDK

Eighteen hours ago Florida illegalized access to abortion, and it's pretty clear who's responsible.

its just a shit situation for Dems, like yes Biden needs to be a lot better on this and has a lot of blood on his hands but I feel like a lot of actions he *could* take to retain youth/Muslim voters would wind up pissing a different faction off, which is what happens when you're forced to be a "big tent" party because the other one is so uniformly committed to being pure evil.

even if there's one issue that the evil isn't lesser on, there are plenty of others

And you're not just voting for a single person - you're voting for an administration, cabinet secretaries and appointees, ambassadors, the whole crew

"Hope they stop caring about genocide and their peers being beaten by cops in defense of genocide because of X" is definitely a strategy.

I think people attach way too much moral weight to their vote. It's just a strategic decision, and one that only goes so far. It's completely independent of whether you continue to protest or take other actions. I get that some people feel like checking a box next to Joe Biden feels like they are personally sanctioning what Biden does, but I don't see it that way, I feel pretty dispassionate about it.

^^^spoken like a Biden voter

Trump voters feel like they're voting for God in a battle against Absolute Evil

I'm voting for a flawed hack in q battle against Absolute Evil.

That cuts both ways - if you're a stoic (potential) voter and realistic about the value your individual vote actually carries relative to millions of other votes (if you cast for Joe Biden you didn't make him sell missiles to Israel) but you feel no strong commitment to Joe Biden or the Democrats ... then why bother?

Convincing people that their votes do matter, that they do have moral weight because their individual decision helps determine the path of the entire country is pretty important. You can't rely on millions of people making the jerkoff motion with one hand and voting for your candidate with the other. (If there wasn't some moral weight attached to a vote, would people shame non-voters or those who vote incorrectly?)

Meanwhile Republicans and too many Democrats voted for this repugnant thing

https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinian-campus-protests-columbia-congress-df4ba95dae844b3a8559b4b3ad7e058a

Making it a violation of federal civil rights law to criticize the actions of a foreign government, just batshit stuff. I'm tempted to say it's clearly a 1st Amendment violation, but as with so many things related to free speech these days who the hell knows. Infuriating regardless.