There were dozens… DOZENS I say! Dozens of people chanting. And CLAPPING! In a place of news!
Thank you @Jasmine (and also @Ann_Hedonia and @Ulfreida) . I’m a staunch lefty lib --at least compared to MAGA-- and the blame for the mess in Gaza rests squarely on the so-called “leaders” on both sides who have inflamed historical and economic grievances for their own political ends. Ordinary Israeli and Palestinian citizens are the victims.
You’re assuming independence of categories. If you randomly sort people into two different categories, and observe some behavior emerging in one of those sets, it’s reasonable to expect that that behavior might emerge in the other set. But if you sort people into two categories, not randomly, but based on their behavior, then of course you can’t generalize from the behavior of one set to the other, because the whole point of those categories is that they have different behavior.
When I was in college in the late 70s early 80s, I protested for Palestinian rights. I brought a speaker to campus to criticize Israel. I probably said some stupid stuff about the PLO. College campuses are supposed a place to debate ideas (And I oppose efforts–often by the “left”-- to stifle unpopular speakers on any campus). Harvard’s endowment is going to be fine.
As long as the protesters are peaceful, I support their right to be wrong, loud, and controversial.
Last week I had lunch with a Jewish friend who has a lot of family in Israel. She said they are frightened but okay. She also opined that the Hamas attacks were directly caused by Netanyahu’s policies and that she thinks – hopes – he will be deposed (it amounts to that) but not until the war is over. I’ve heard other American Jews and Israelis say similar things.
I think it is safe to say there are different levels of wrong. I have little doubt we could conjure something awful enough (hypothetical) that you would not be ok with people supporting.
Which gives him the motive to keep the conflict going as long as possible. 
The OP is simply drluded.
I’m a liberal and it’s worked its way into my thick libtard skull that Hamas launched a deliberately viscous attack confident that Israel would repay blood for blood tenfold. Negligibly concerned with the plight of the Gazans, and fully informed on the level of goodwill for the Gazans worldwide.
I’m not falling for it. And I’m not buying the term “anti-semitism” at the rate it’s been hurled at any criticism of Israel. It only insults our intelligence at this point. Since they must play this game of ghosts, they should know that a lot of us are staying out of it not out of apathy, but because our best intentions only fuel their worst desires.
This isn’t about their “right” to protest, though they certainly do have that right. It’s about what they are actually protesting. To quote a billionaire donor to Columbia, some college kids these days have shit for brains. As someone recently eloquently put it, some kids have formed the view that all conflict can be reduced to a struggle between the oppressed and their oppressors, and in this view Israel is the oppressor, and so Palestinians and Hamas need all the help and support we can give them. Like the man said, shit for brains that ignores all Middle East history.
As for blocking “unpopular” speakers from campus, this has been debated at great length in many venues, but I think it’s pretty simple. It depends on who the speaker is, and not on their “popularity” or lack thereof or any controversy associated with them. It simply depends on whether they are known purveyors of total bullshit.
One that I can remember students successfully blocking was Ann Coulter. This I can go along with, not because she’s a far-right nutjob, but because she’s poorly informed on many issues and habitually lies. She’s also intentionally provocative but so are many pundits. It’s mainly the lying and low-information dialog that makes it unlikely that anyone will learn anything from a talk by Coulter except how stupid some conservative pundits are. OTOH, Berkeley cancelling Bill Maher as commencement speaker because students regarded him as “anti-Muslim” was just stupid. Stupid, bigoted, and once again showing a complete lack of nuanced understanding. Shit for brains.
Who is “us” and who is “they” in this post? It is very far from clear.
Hamas and Israel, of course. They’d be happy if their war was waged as much on the streets of America as in Gaza City. “We” don’t want to play along. Because it just feeds the flames.
That’s even less clear. If “us” is Hamas and “they” is Israel, by replacement what you wrote that @LSLGuy quoted would read:
Since Israel must play this game of ghosts, Israel should know that a lot of Hamas are staying out of it not out of apathy, but because Hamas’ best intentions only fuel Israel’s worst desires.
Well, in that context, ‘they’ is the sum of Israel and Hamas and ‘us’ are those who don’t want to amplify the conflict unnecessarily I think.
Yeah, bad both-sidesing in the OP. But it might be prophetic: leftist nuttiness has shot up since the Hamas attack.
Noah Smith from the center-left lands a few deserved punches on certain hippies:
When I joined this board, I characterized myself as a centrist by European standards which put me on the far left fringe of the American political spectrum. Since then, Bernie shifted the Overton window and the Squad has voiced perspectives long shut out of the national conversation. This is a healthy development overall. But it places me as part of the center-left in the US.
There are always crazies on both sides, and I expect the left to continue to self-police far better than conservatives care to. I suspect that errant lefties will increase their influence over time causing much hand wringing, but relatively little significance.
Sage Rat:
Your side can be the same as that side and it’s just luck that it’s not.
Partly agree: the crazy was more balanced between the 2 parties during the 1970s. It’s not just luck though: center-leftists worked very hard starting in the 1980s to push for sound and well thought out policy prescriptions. As a contrast, the Wall Street Journal’s editorialists care little about getting their argument right, which makes for great messaging and inferior policy.
The solution is and always will be to set up systems that encourage diligent, trustworthy, and ordinary people to run for office, allow them to succeed against populists and schmoozers, and empower them to advance unpopular policy. Things like the electoral college, superdelegates, etc. are a goodness and strengthening and improving those systems is what prevents the political madness of the majorities.
I’m all for diligence and trustworthiness (and superdelegates), but I think ordinariness is over-rated and largely phony in practice. A broader range of backgrounds in Congress would be welcome, but that’s not precisely the same thing.
The ADL, meanwhile, seems content to ignore actual anti-semitism from the world’s richest man as long as he’s also willing to hate on Arabs.
https://twitter.com/MichaelEHayden/status/1725660336022299123
The ADL really needs to decide whether its mission is to fight anti-Jewish hate or to lobby for Netenyahu’s government, because they’re not doing so great at trying to do both.
Fox News is no longer news. Its “entertainment”.
Not to mention Fox is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of 1000s of Americans, due to its deliberately and knowingly false covid “info”.
Directly? No.
Yes. A bleak thought.
That depends on how you define ‘directly’. He enabled Hamas, he oppressed Palestinians to a new degree, his defense strategies were easy for Hamas to breach. Maybe those are indirect, but there is a clear line to his policies and the event, and it isn’t very hard to discern.