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

Is this issue not one where Trump's anti-globalist, ultra-isolationist rhetoric actually presents an at least functionally "no static" brighter side alternative for voters like the ones in that college dems tweet? Worth remembering that, in the now moment, he's already starting to moderate his tone on abortion.

― Rich E. (Eric H.), Thursday, May 2, 2024 9:29 AM (forty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think we had a version of this conversation in December 2016.

We’d probably stop talking about it it tabes and milo promised to vote for Biden

genuine lol

The fact is that traditionally the Jewish community in the UK was left/ progressive leaning - in terms of voting patterns - and now it overwhelmingly votes Conservative. There are various reasons for that, of course, but the slide accelerated because of a change in the Labour Party's attitude to Israel and Palestine.

seems like it's been majority Conservative-voting for a long time:

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/how-british-jews-vote-and-why-they-vote-this-way/

Overwhelmingly, British Jews support the Conservative party. Which means that their political predisposition is centre-right. This taste for the conservative side of the British political spectrum has been with us for many years now, a quarter of a century at least. A study of the British Jewish political attitudes conducted in the mid-1990s produced these most unambiguous results: when asked about their voting intentions, 45% of British Jews said that they would support the Conservative party, 41% preferred the Labour party and 14% – the Liberal Democrats. Arguably, the preference for the Conservative party was far from overwhelming then, but consider the contrast with the general population of Britain at that time: only 29% supported the Conservatives and 57% preferred the Labour party. This was before any controversies concerning to the presence of the antizionist or antisemitic elements on the British Left, and in the Labour party in particular, developed.

I think the UK doesn't track exit poll data, so it's hard to know for sure. but it's nothing like the historical association between American Jews and the Democratic Party

(xps) Alfred otm. Say what you will about the naivete of college students, but they have developed the necessary brain functions (object permanence etc) to understand that Donald J. Trump will not actually disentangle U.S. and Israeli military and strategic interests, a thing that would require a lot of hard work and would not make him any richer

My students distrust Biden but loathe Trump and Trumpism with every breath. Remember: in my non-trad public university many students live at home with their MAGA families.

saw this retweeted, as I said above.

These "rubber bullets" now maiming students protesting for Gaza in US cities were first pioneered by the British Army in Northern Ireland during the so-called "Troubles."

They ki!!ed 17 civilians. 8 of them were children under 16. None were armed.

Birds of a colonial feather. https://t.co/k44EqxDRiT pic.twitter.com/yqsdpUFaw2

— Friendly Neighborhood Comrade (@SpiritofLenin) May 2, 2024

The same lies that Trump would trot out, couched in nicer language.

Biden is now giving a completely one-sided, dishonest speech about these campus protests.

“Dissent must never lead to disorder.” pic.twitter.com/fevNwImBAj

— Read Let This Radicalize You (@JoshuaPHilll) May 2, 2024

saw this retweeted, as I said above.

🐦[These "rubber bullets" now maiming students protesting for Gaza in US cities were first pioneered by the British Army in Northern Ireland during the so-called "Troubles."

They ki!!ed 17 civilians. 8 of them were children under 16. None were armed.

but-but xyzzzz__ wtf would you or I know about living in countries where abortion access is illegal or violent institutional racism 🙄 clearly more condescension will work

*exists!

I medic’ed a dude who was shot with one by pigs during one of the Oakland Commune sieges in 2011, fwiw. This man’s leg had been broken. We had to drag him to safety and get him to a medic car, saw him again a few weeks later and he bought us a beer.

Rubber bullets are fucked

Also fuck Joe Biden

I medic’ed a dude who was shot with one by pigs during one of the Oakland Commune sieges in 2011, fwiw. This man’s leg had been broken. We had to drag him to safety and get him to a medic car, saw him again a few weeks later and he bought us a beer.

Rubber bullets are fucked

Honestly I am more interested in hearing from non-US posters about events/issues where they live than debating the upcoming presidential election in yet another thread

otm

I just walked by a group of counter-protesters wrapped in Israeli flags and could hear one of them say, "They're a bunch of followers. It's just like with Covid."

We must restore order: https://www.thecity.nyc/2024/05/02/nypd-officer-fired-gun-columbia-hamilton-hall-raid/

Cop probably dropped a gun they were going to plant on a protester.

FYI: NYPD official Rebecca Weiner, who cited “outside agitators” as a reason for NYPD raids but offered no transparency is a Columbia adjunct. The unit she leads came under fire in the early 2010s for spying on Muslim New Yorkers. I know because I sued that unit for spying on me. https://t.co/NaxnDY36B0

— Asad أسد 🗽🍎 (@AsadFromNYC) May 2, 2024

See Colombia have cut all relations with Israel and Turkey are imposing sanctions.

Statement of the #ICC Office of the Prosecutor pic.twitter.com/Cw331pMcDm

— Int'l Criminal Court (@IntlCrimCourt) May 3, 2024

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/05/03/college-campus-protests-israel-gaza-student-journalists-00155672

US universities are toast.

During a speech at the United Nations General Assembly, Israel’s UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan, said that “Hamas was hiding” in “Harvard, Columbia, and other elite universities,” in reference to the pro-Palestine protests breaking out in universities across the US. pic.twitter.com/zSx9pGbV6r

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) May 3, 2024

No-one believes anything that comes out of the mouths of anyone even remotely connected to the Israeli government anymore.

Right wing media is gonna have a field day with this one:

https://www.ktvu.com/news/photos-stanford-protester-seen-wearing-hamas-headband

the NYPD found a TERRORISM INSTRUCTION MANUAL guys

Pencils, books, laptops, those are the tools of students and what you expect to find on a college campus. But here’s what the NYPD found in Hamilton Hall at Columbia University after we were able to arrest the protestors and agitators for commandeering and barricading themselves… pic.twitter.com/EKQV6nJySu

— NYPD Deputy Commissioner, Operations Kaz Daughtry (@NYPDDaughtry) May 3, 2024

Harvard is not 'toast' give me a break. but lots of people on both sides of the issue may not want to go there as a result of all of this.

Gee officer tell us why protesters carry this stuff as standard equipment. Can’t possibly imagine.

Popular knapsack

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-2655847/Video-Eric-Adams-teaches-parents-search-kids-rooms-2011.html

Apologies if someone shared this already

https://defector.com/going-off-script

This is an especially absurd story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2024/05/04/columbia-professor-arrested-nypd-protests-israel-gaza/73561493007/

Gregory Pflugfelder had just finished the final class of his career at Columbia. In 28 years at the university, he achieved many accolades as a professor of history who taught a popular course on Japanese monsters – mostly focused on Godzilla and "the role of the monstrous in the cultural imagination."

He didn't know it, but a cultural monster of sorts would soon be at his door.

The next night, on Tuesday, the 64-year-old silver-haired scholar stepped outside his apartment building, located off campus across the street from Columbia. He wanted to record iPhone video of hundreds of police responding to historic student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. Fifteen minutes later, the NYPD arrested him.

The New York Police Department listed Pflugfelder among 112 arrests made at Columbia on Tuesday night, according to police records obtained by USA TODAY. But Pflugfelder was never on campus.

he's mentioned in yesterday's NYT story too

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/05/03/university-endowment-funding-protests-israel/

https://archive.ph/7bAhn

But student protesters could try a different tactic, one that doesn’t seem to have been found any traction amid the volley of demands. They could become investors in the U.S. defense contractors or other companies they want to influence. That would allow them to become activist investors and push for the changes they want to see from the inside as investors, Marsicano said.
“I would love to see that, as a public policy professor,” he said. “I would be fascinated by any student group that did that.”

Only 68 billion or so needed to take a controlling interest in Raytheon, students better start passing the hat.

"This could be a moment for significant reform, but it would require a challenge to at least some sections of capital. Changing university funding models means taking on Wall Street. Arms companies rely on US defence spending and its military interventions or proxy wars. Action on climate change means losses for fossil fuel companies, whose owners often fund the conservative right.

Liberals in the US and across Europe have decided they do not want to take on this challenge. Their latest wheeze is to de-risk investment in the hope that it will revitalise stagnating economies, while doing what they can to see off any challenge from the more progressive left. That means heavily policing and demonising protests, working with the right to undermine candidates and parties that do seek to challenge capital"

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/may/liberalism-without-accountability

Israel’s military on Monday ordered about 100,000 civilians in parts of Rafah to evacuate “immediately”

Any hint yet where they are supposed to go

into the sea

Ipswich Town captain Sam Morsy @sammorsy08 celebrates the team’s promotion to the Premier League wearing the Palestinian flag 🇵🇸 pic.twitter.com/dQXYsOVWEc

— Leyla Hamed (@leylahamed) May 5, 2024

Interesting statement

#Statement | The Foreign Ministry expresses Saudi Arabia’s warning of the dangers of the Israeli occupation forces targeting the city of Rafah as part of its systematic bloody campaign to storm all areas of the Gaza Strip and displace its residents towards the unknown. pic.twitter.com/3AQs9WgqUU

— Foreign Ministry 🇸🇦 (@KSAmofaEN) May 6, 2024

Trinity College Dublin to divest from investments in Israeli companies that feature on UN ‘blacklist’https://t.co/s6aFISMETv

— Dr Mary McAuliffe (@MaryMcAuliffe4) May 6, 2024

the Israelis are starting the 'we'll just go it alone then' chorus that doesn't bode well... shades of Rhodesia in 1965

In the 1980s, Israel's defense industry was cash-starved until it struck a secret and unprecedented $1.7 billion deal to sell South Africa 60 Kfir combat planes. South Africa under apartheid was the Israeli defense industry's biggest customer and funded its most ambitious projects.

they do have a pretty massive weapons industry and can probably carry on even if the U.S. were to cut them off (which it won't)

I read Mads Gilbert's Night In Gaza this morning which was based on his time there 10 years ago. Spoiler At the end of the book the Israeli forces don't let his replacement emergency anaesthetist in and he hasn't been able to return since. But he does still do great talks.
The book is very scathing about Israel and lack of recognition of ambulance immunity and pretty much any form of truce/white flag/ whatever immunity. & since he is one of several people continually treating children who have suffered heavily from continual attack he doesn't have a lot of sympathy for the oppressor.
Good book anyway.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/05/05/university-of-chicago-shabbat-encampment-protest/

I thought this was a very interesting and rather moving article (though I wish the reporter had noted that the UC rabbi's appalling line about Black Confederate soldiers is not just racist but also inaccurate)

My friend was attending a JVP/anti-Zionist Jewish shabbat dinner at UKansas-Lawrence, and a bunch of Christian Zionists called him and his group a bunch of Nazis. Half his family was wiped out in the Shoah.

ugh that's awful

people feel emboldened to be disgusting in so many ways over this

would the university be willing to do anything about it?

in germany you have people literally raised on nazi plundered wealth equating their own ancestors with jewish people who question the national consensus - which in theory violates holocaust minimization laws but seems to be considered a respectable way to behave

I've also been enjoying the graphic hamas hate crime fantasies that queer people are currently being bombarded with by the pro-genocide crowd

the black confederates thing is a popular lost cause talking point - interesting convergences happening

Finally! The worst response I've read:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/shibboleth-the-role-of-words-in-the-campus-protests

I haven't read that essay (and I won't), but this Twitter thread on Why Zadie Smith Is Like That is very interesting, in a depressing way. It starts here:

Let me tell you what kind of a place Cambridge is. Thread. https://t.co/YSPp528tRA

— con questi nuovi ritmi americani (she/her) (@racheledini1) May 6, 2024