[wat0n]

I find it very easy to tell if a protest is peaceful. Are they hurting anyone? No? Then it is peaceful.

This is not difficult.

Given the harassment documented in several of these protests, they aren't peaceful.

[Pants-of-dog]

Given the study that looked exactly at how peaceful these protesters are, these protests are generally peaceful.

And the specific protest I am discussing has been entirely peaceful.

[QatzelOk]

...Jews are indigenous to Israel ...

Yes, and "organized crime" is indigenous to Sicily.

But if well-armed Russian mobsters start showing up in Sicily to "reclaim" their land, World War Three won't be far behind.

[wat0n]

Given the study that looked exactly at how peaceful these protesters are, these protests are generally peaceful.

And the specific protest I am discussing has been entirely peaceful.

This is misleading, a non-violent demonstration is defined as a "protest" in their methodology, whether a protest is peaceful or not does not depend on whether demonstrators are peaceful or not but on the actions of authorities.

Demonstration Events
Protests

A protest is defined as a public demonstration in which the participants do not engage in violence, though violence may be used against them. Events include individuals and groups who peacefully demonstrate against a political entity, government institution, policy, group, tradition, businesses or other private institutions. Events that are not coded as protests are symbolic public acts such as displays of flags or public prayers (unless they are accompanied by a demonstration), protests in legislatures such as parliamentary walkouts or MPs staying silent, strikes (unless they are accompanied by a demonstration), and individual acts such as self-harm actions (e.g. individual immolations or hunger strikes).

Protesters are noted by generic terms (e.g. ‘Protesters (Country)’); if representing a group, the name of that group is recorded in the respective associated actor column.

The following sub-event types are associated with the ‘Protests’ event type: ‘Peaceful protest’, ‘Protest with intervention’, and ‘Excessive force against protesters’.

Peaceful protest

This sub-event type is used when demonstrators are engaged in a protest while not engaging in violence or other forms of rioting behaviour and are not faced with any sort of force or engagement. Interaction terms here include: 60, 66, or 67.

Protest with intervention

This sub-event type should be used when individuals are engaged in a peaceful protest during which there is an attempt to disperse or suppress the protest without serious/lethal injuries being reported or the targeting of protesters with lethal weapons. Additionally, this sub-event type should cover any instance where armed groups or rioters interact with peaceful protesters without resulting in serious/lethal injuries. Interaction terms here include: 16, 26, 36, 46, 56, 68

Excessive force against protesters

This sub-event type should be used when individuals are engaged in a peaceful protest and are targeted with violence by an actor leading to (or if it could lead to) serious/lethal injuries. Interaction terms here include: 16, 26, 36, 46, 56, 68.

If the demonstrators are not peaceful, they code it as a "riot":

Riots

‘Riots’ are violent events where demonstrators or mobs engage in disruptive acts, including but not limited to rock throwing, property destruction, etc. They may target other individuals, property, businesses, other rioting groups or armed actors. Rioters are noted by generic terms (e.g. ‘Rioters (Country)’); if representing a group, the name of that group is recorded in the respective ‘Associated actor’ column. Rioters may begin as peaceful protesters, or may be intent on engaging in spontaneous and disorganized violence from the beginning of their actions. Contrary to armed groups, rioters do not use sophisticated weapons such as guns, knives or swords. “Crude bombs” (e.g. Molotov cocktails, petrol bombs, firecrackers) may be used in rioting behaviour.

The following sub-event types are associated with the ‘Riots’ event type: ‘Violent demonstration’ and ‘Mob violence’.

Violent demonstration

This sub-event type is used when a group of individuals engages in a demonstration involving violence. Examples of rioting behaviour include vandalism; road-blocking using barricades, burning tires, or other material; other types of violent and/or destructive behaviour are also included here.

Mob violence

This sub-event type is used when rioters violently interact with other rioters, another armed group or civilians, outside of demonstrations and without the use of lethal weapons like guns, knives, swords, etc. A mob is defined as “a large crowd of people, especially one that is disorderly and intent on causing trouble or violence.” Note that this type of violence can also include (unarmed or crudely armed) vigilante mobs clashing with other armed groups or attacking civilians. Vigilante groups that are more than crudely armed are not considered to be spontaneous mobs and rather are assumed to be organized and would hence not be included here

So violent protesters would be classified as rioters, and that includes those at UCLA for example.

[Deutschmania]

The very term "Zionist" now has taken on a negative connotation , and history shall commend the activists who are acting to bring an end to the oppression of the Palestinian people . Even Holocaust survivors have come out against the regime in Israel , comparing it to fascist Europe .

For decades, Joe Biden has proudly declared that he is a Zionist, and he has repeated that claim since Hamas’s 7 October attacks on Israel. But for the student anti-war protests gripping the US, the words “Zionist” and “Zionism” have become a watchword – pejorative and emblematic of the violent state policies driving the war on Gaza.

On social media and in the streets, critics no longer call out supporters of the state of Israel as “pro-Israel”: they call them Zionist. Some university encampments have posted signs saying: “Zionists not allowed.”

Student protesters say that their criticisms of Zionism are rooted in the state of Israel’s displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Pro-Israel activists have responded by defending the term. “If the last six months on campus have taught us anything, it is that a large and vocal population of the Columbia community does not understand the meaning of Zionism,” a group of more than 500 Columbia University students recently wrote. “We are proud to be Zionists.”

In the emotions stirred by the war, the late 19th-century ideology that underpins the state of Israel is getting as much attention as the state itself. But it doesn’t have a meaning that everyone agrees on. The Viennese journalist Theodor Herzl launched the First Zionist Congress in 1897. His project for a new homeland for Jews with self-rule came in reaction to the rampant, violent antisemitism in Europe and was shaped by political ideas of that time. He became committed to a Jewish state in Palestine, which he called “an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism”. Israel would be founded in 1948, several decades after his death.

Today, a generation of students emphasizes what they see as the settler-colonial nature of Herzl’s vision.

The shift in opinions on Zionism has been particularly confusing for many Jewish Americans. Though 58% of Jewish Americans describe themselves as Zionist, according to a 2022 survey conducted by Carleton University political scientist Mira Sucharov, the term means vastly different things to different people. A majority see Zionism as signifying a connection to Israel (about 70%), and about just as many view it as a belief in Israel as a Jewish and democratic state (72%), while a small minority describe it as “privileging Jewish rights over non-Jewish rights in Israel” (10%). Recent polling of Americans more broadly shows that many are unfamiliar with the term.

But for Palestinians, the notion that there’s a version of Zionism under which they can live in dignity is contradicted by history, because Zionism underpins the policies that drove their mass displacement from what became Israel in 1948 and has continued to displace them since. “When people think of Zionism now, they look at Gaza,” Saree Makdisi, a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), said. “This is what it means: that you want to have an ethnically exclusive state,” he said. “It’s ugly.”

Arguably for the first time, a Palestinian perspective on Zionism is taking center stage in mainstream discourse. “A lot more young people, including young Jews, are listening to their Palestinian friends and classmates who are saying: ‘This is what Zionism means to us,’” said Simone Zimmerman, the media director of Diaspora Alliance, an international organization focused on combating antisemitism and its weaponization. This explains how terms like “ethnostate”, “Jewish supremacy” and “settler-colonialism” have become central to the protests. After the Holocaust, Zionism became a core tenet of American Jewish establishment organizations. American Jewry’s connections to Israel deepened especially after the 1967 and 1973 wars. In that era, Jewish Americans saw Israel as a bastion of liberal values, and the American Jewish community mustered immense philanthropic efforts in support of Israel. Most Jewish education programs, synagogues and community groups taught Zionism as basically inseparable from Judaism.

“I am a Zionist,” the New York Times columnist Bret Stephens recently wrote, “because I see Israel as an insurance policy for every Jewish family, including mine, which has endured persecution and exile in the past and understands that we may not be safe forever in our host countries.”

But there have always been Jewish communities that rejected Zionism – from secular communists to strands of Orthodox Jewry. Today, anti-Zionist Jewish students are more visible and have played an outsized role in the protests against Israel’s Gaza war.

The student tent city at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, for example, has been holding teach-ins on the history of Zionism, highlighting narratives that many of the Jewish students participating in the encampment had not gotten in their own formal Jewish education.

They echo grassroots organizations that have been embracing the moniker of anti-Zionism to, as they put it, reclaim Judaism from its association with Israel. Jewish Voice for Peace has been a force behind protests that delayed Biden’s State of the Union address in March and interrupted his recent appearances in Manhattan. Jay Saper, an organizer with JVP, pointed out that the movement is also building “an anti-Zionist Jewish community, a Jewish community beyond Zionism”.

These views still represent a relatively small proportion of US public opinion, but the protesters have forced a new conversation about Jewish Americans’ relationship to Israel.

Israel’s enduring occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has also shifted the conversation on the left, which increasingly views Zionism itself as being essential to understanding the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the war on Gaza as a logical conclusion of Zionism.

The partition of land into two states – Israel and Palestine – was once consensus, viewed as a way to preserve a Jewish state that would not indefinitely rule over the Palestinians. But two decades of land-for-peace talks between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization collapsed under the Obama administration and have never been restarted. The failure of the peace process to produce an independent Palestinian state, alongside perpetually expanding Israeli settlements on Palestinian land, became proof for many observers that subsequent Israeli governments were never serious about those negotiations.

Israelis and Palestinians, especially those younger than 35, are less likely to support two states. A majority of Middle East scholars, according to a 2023 poll, don’t think a Palestinian state is possible.

The breakdown of a process toward a Palestinian state has also come as Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights groups have documented what they have found to be increasingly repressive apartheid policies in the occupied territories, which challenge the very notion that Israel is a democracy.

Though only a small portion of Jewish Americans see Zionism as “privileging Jewish rights over non-Jewish rights in Israel”, Palestinians, including citizens of Israel, live a very different reality. This has put liberal Zionists in America in a tenuous position. Under ever more extreme right-wing Israeli governments, the long-simmering tensions between a Jewish and a democratic state have come to a boiling point. “The painful truth is that the project to which liberal Zionists like myself have devoted ourselves for decades – a state for Palestinians separated from a state for Jews – has failed,” Peter Beinart wrote in 2020. “It is time for liberal Zionists to abandon the goal of Jewish–Palestinian separation and embrace the goal of Jewish–Palestinian equality.” Beinart now describes himself as a cultural Zionist, drawing upon debates in the 1940s that held out the possibility of a binational state that also supported a growth of Jewish and Hebrew culture in Mandatory Palestine. But a version of Zionism in practice that doesn’t favor Jewish interests has yet to materialize, and it’s not clear what it would look like.

Can Israel be separated from Zionism? “In principle, nobody has an objection to the Jewish people having a state,” Makdisi, of UCLA, said. “The problem is, where do they choose to have this state? And under what circumstances, and who is being asked to pay the price for it?”

“Jewish people don’t have a right that overrides the Palestinian people’s rights,” he continued.

The rhetoric common on the left today is also perhaps part of a more maximalist shift toward Palestinian liberation. Language of “resistance” has figured prominently in the anti-war protests, in contrast to an earlier emphasis on the co-existence of Israeli Jews and Palestinians.

Many of the protesters believe that a binational state with equal rights for Palestinians is the only way forward. “People have come to the conclusion that reform has not worked and radical action is the solution to make change for a just and peaceful world,” Allie Ryave, a Harvard Law School student protesting in the university’s encampment, said.

Many American Jews feel under attack by the attention on Zionism right now. They may identify with a range of paradigms – secular Zionism, religious Zionism, labor Zionism, liberal Zionism or other forms of Jewish nationalism – now collapsed into a single derisive word.

But Palestinian scholars say the Zionism that the protest movement has put at the center is simply the state of Israel’s overt ideology, which asserts the dominance of Jews over the land. “Zionism as practiced is not an abstraction,” Makdisi said. “It happened in the land of Palestine. It happened at the expense – and it’s happening at the expense – of the Palestinian people.”

At Harvard University’s protest encampment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, sophomore Violet Barron said that she defers to her Palestinian classmates and peers in thinking through these complex issues. “It took watching the scale of devastation in Gaza to understand what a staunch belief in Zionism can justify,” she said.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask if you would consider supporting the Guardian’s journalism as we enter one of the most consequential news cycles of our lifetimes in 2024.

With the potential of another Trump presidency looming, there are countless angles to cover around this year’s election – and we'll be there to shed light on each new development, with explainers, key takeaways and analysis of what it means for America, democracy and the world.

From Elon Musk to the Murdochs, a small number of billionaire owners have a powerful hold on so much of the information that reaches the public about what’s happening in the world. The Guardian is different. We have no billionaire owner or shareholders to consider. Our journalism is produced to serve the public interest – not profit motives.

And we avoid the trap that befalls much US media: the tendency, born of a desire to please all sides, to engage in false equivalence in the name of neutrality. We always strive to be fair. But sometimes that means calling out the lies of powerful people and institutions – and making clear how misinformation and demagoguery can damage democracy.

From threats to election integrity, to the spiraling climate crisis, to complex foreign conflicts, our journalists contextualize, investigate and illuminate the critical stories of our time. As a global news organization with a robust US reporting staff, we’re able to provide a fresh, outsider perspective – one so often missing in the American media bubble. The Guardian

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. Student activists were at the heart of the black civil rights movement from the very beginning. To much derision and abuse, they pushed for more rights, protections and respect for women and queer people on their campuses than the wider world was long willing to provide. And over the past 20 years in particular, policymakers have arrived belatedly to stances on economic inequality, climate change, drug policy and criminal justice that putative radicals on campus took up long before them.

They have not always been right; even when right, their prescriptions for the problems they’ve identified and their means of directing attention to them have not always been prudent. But time and time and time again, the student left in America has squarely faced and expressed truths our politicians and all the eminent and eloquent voices of moderation in the press, in all of their supposed wisdom and good sense, have been unable or unwilling to see. Straining against an ancient and immortal prejudice against youth, it has made a habit of telling the American people, in tones that discomfit, what they need to hear before they are ready to hear it.

Only later, after the teargas clears and the leering and laughter subside, do we sit puzzled, in the filth of our own entirely avoidable mistakes, and look regretfully backward. Books are written. Documentaries are made. Plaques are installed. At Kent State, a plaza overlooking the university’s commons was constructed to honor the four students the Ohio national guard killed there in 1970. It’s bounded, the university’s website says, by “a jagged, abstract border symbolic of disruptions and the conflict of ideas.” There are daffodils. “Inquire, Learn, Reflect,” an inscription reads. One thing visitors might reflect on is that a Gallup poll taken not long after the shootings found that 58% of Americans believed that anti-war activists had, perhaps in the unrest of the preceding days, brought the deaths at Kent State upon themselves. Today, more than half a century after the fact, we mourn them. We have regrets.

What will we regret the most about the last few weeks? Which responses to the Gaza protests will linger the longest in our minds? CNN’s comparison of the campus protests to the persecution of Jews “during the 1930s in Europe”, perhaps? The University of Virginia changing its policy on tents to justify the deployment of more force against its students than it called for against the actual Nazis who marched on its campus and killed a woman seven years ago? The New York police department presenting to the press, as proof that outside agitators had organized the occupation of a building at Columbia, a book about the causes of terrorism written by a historian and a bike chain Columbia had been selling to its students? The outside funding actually raised by pro-Israel counter-protesters at UCLA who beat up and threw fireworks at students and faculty as campus and LAPD officers stood by?

Whenever all of this ends ⁠– whenever we find ourselves ready to survey what’s left of Gaza and its people and ask whether we could have done more to prevent the use of our weapons and our money in their destruction ⁠– what will we have to say for ourselves? When the talking heads are assembled to offer voiceovers atop footage of police grappling and tackling students and faculty whose voices, it will be painfully obvious to most by then, should have been heeded, what words of useless contrition will be offered?

There have been real instances of antisemitism on campuses since the protests began; here and there we’ve seen real instances of malevolence and idiocy. But to believe, on the basis of anecdata, that hatred and ignorance have motivated the vast majority of students who’ve set up encampments and other pro-Palestinian protests over the last month ⁠– in their many thousands at well over 100 colleges and universities in all but four states ⁠– is to believe what can only be described as an extraordinary propaganda campaign, one pushed by critics in the press and in office who can’t seem to agree on what the protesters are like. These students, we’ve been told, are both popular and unpopular among their peers. They are both ugly and chic. They are fragile and cold-blooded, pathetically soft and remarkably violent. They hate Jews. They are Jews who hate themselves. They’ve exercised both too little message discipline and too much caution with the press at demonstrations that are both laughably chaotic and suspiciously organized. And whoever they are and whatever’s spurred them into action, the students are, clearly, in need of either a good sock to the mouth or a good lay ⁠– the better to focus their attention away from politics and on their studies, on political matters close to home rather than halfway across the world, or political matters halfway across the world more deserving of their attention, like the plight of the suffering in China, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan, Iran or Azerbaijan.

No one with their eyes on Gaza denies that there are many bad things happening in the world at any given time. None of those who’ve troubled law- and opinion-makers so with their insistence that the Palestinians are people would argue that the Palestinians are the only suffering people on the globe. But they are suffering largely as a consequence of American foreign policy. On Wednesday, President Biden announced that the United States will freeze the supply of offensive weaponry to Israel if it continues with the full invasion of Rafah, an announcement that follows admissions that the campaign being waged in Gaza, with our bombs, has thus far been waged with dubious military objectives and with insufficient regard for civilian life. What the White House has yet to admit, though, is that the nearly 35,000 Palestinians who have been killed and the 1.9 million Palestinians who have been displaced over the last seven months are the victims not only of this particular war and the logic of collective responsibility for the massacres of 7 October being deployed by Israeli leaders, but the willingness of this country to sanction Israel’s denial of Palestinian human rights for decades. And the guilty parties here include not only our political leaders but our private institutions, our colleges among them, which, through the investments they have sustained in Israel and the arms manufacturers supplying its war, have rendered themselves complicit in wrongs that should trouble us as deeply as apartheid in South Africa now does. Nothing should surprise us about the fact that Israel now faces similar divestment campaigns; after weeks of moaning and groaning that the demands of student protesters have been unexpressed, unclear or impossible to meet, multiple colleges have, in fact, made certain concessions to them and announced plans to take further demands into consideration. Encampments at Brown, Northwestern, Rutgers and the University of Minnesota were voluntarily disbanded on that basis.

But it should also be unsurprising that far more colleges have responded to student demonstrators by calling in the authorities ⁠– an authorization of force prefigured by the remarkable crackdowns on pro-Palestinian speech we’ve seen at institutions across the country since October. One of the perversities of the situation is that despite all this, we probably haven’t heard the last about our “woke universities” ⁠– as they have for more than a hundred years, the right and centrists who share their contempt for college students will, against all available evidence, continue insisting that American campuses have been ideologically captured by the very people we’ve just witnessed campus administrators go to war against. They will do all they can to obscure it, but it should be plain now that all the shallow representation most visible to pundits⁠ – the diversity and equity teams, the minorities in high positions ⁠– hasn’t changed the fact that the majority of American universities are largely beholden to donors, trustees and, increasingly, politicians, well to the right of the most progressive voices on campus.

In the months ahead, many on the left will surely call upon universities to hold true to their commitments to open discourse and redress the censorship and harassment of Israel’s critics. They should. But we should also resist the flight to abstraction ⁠– dishwatery invocations of free speech, murky and lukewarm, that no one ever seems to really mean and that function chiefly as bulwarks against substantive debate. The dignity of the Palestinian people and their right to resist their oppression plainly aren’t chief among the dangerous and controversial ideas we’ve heard so much about protecting over the last decade; we cannot rely upon the putatively neutral authorities and institutions that have done so much to suppress them to act now in their defense on abstract grounds. So it goes. The job now, as the Israelis press into Rafah, is to change public opinion ⁠on the actual matter at hand – to make urgent arguments to the American public not about the plight of Palestine’s defenders on campus but the plight of the Palestinians. The students have done their part; they will be recognized in time. Now it’s up to the rest of us. The Guardian

[Unthinking Majority]

Then clarify exactly what you meant when you said that all the protesters are advocating for genocide of the Jews.

I don't remember saying that. If you can provide a quote of something I said i'll clarify it.

So, a movement where everyone wants to kill all the Jews is just as bad as protesters trying to stop a genocide and the only moral position is to invest in companies and regimes that commit war crimes.

Is this seriously your moral argument?

No i'm arguing the exact opposite.

Yea, I am proud to care more about state violence against individuals exercising their free speech than I care about some tents placed on grass without proper paperwork.

The law thankfully doesn't care what you or I care more about, it needs to be applied equally and objectively for justice to prevail. This is why dozens of Trump supporters aren't allowed to show up on your lawn and put up tents, barricades etc without your consent, and why the cops are allowed to remove them for trespassing if the Trump supporters refuse to leave after you ask them to.

Okay. What about the occupation of Gaza?

I just answered that. Please me more specific.

Then why are you defending the cops in this context?

I defend their right and duty to enforce the law, I don't condone any abuse of that authority EVER.

I'll make my position on everything simple and clear: everyone should follow the law. So that means:

- Israel should remove all of its illegal settlements and its occupation of the West Bank, and avoid specifically targeting innocent civilians in Gaza and avoid blocking humanitarian aid, and anything else against international law.
- Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups should stop specifically targeting civilians with rockets and other terrorist attacks.
- Protestors are free to protest but should abide by all laws and university regulations, including trespass orders. Protestors don't have a right to build encampments on property that isn't theirs without authorization of the property owners.
- Police have a right to enforce the law, such as trespass orders, but they shouldn't use unlawful excessive force when doing so.
- Any illegal harassment or discrimination on any campuses shouldn't be tolerated and violators held accountable.

[starman2003]

- Israel should remove all of its illegal settlements and its occupation of the West Bank, and avoid specifically targeting innocent civilians in Gaza

Fat chance that will happen. Given the zionist stranglehold on our government, Israel has virtual carte blanche. Senator Lindsay Graham wants Israel to nuke Gaza while Tom Cotton called for the impeachment of Biden for pausing deliveries of bombs being used to kill civilians.

[KurtFF8]

I find it bizarre that people like @Unthinking Majority go on about how these protesters have "ViOLaTeD ThE LaW!" and that we're supposed to be outraged by this. Then the same people who want us to be outraged by minor property damage will defend blatant war crimes by a regime like Israel.

[wat0n]

I don't think he, or anyone else here, is defending blatant war crimes like the West Bank settlements.

What I find bizarre is that leftists pretend to be outraged by war crimes when they've been defending the October 7 massacre since day one.

[Pants-of-dog]

I don't remember saying that. If you can provide a quote of something I said i'll clarify it.

No i'm arguing the exact opposite.

It may help if you clarify your positions.

The law thankfully doesn't care what you or I care more about, it needs to be applied equally and objectively for justice to prevail.

This is why it is puzzling that you brought it up and asked me what I cared about.

Do you think that, as it currently exists the law is applied equally?

More importantly, do you think the law itself is inherently equal and objective?

- Israel should remove all of its illegal settlements and its occupation of the West Bank, and avoid specifically targeting innocent civilians in Gaza and avoid blocking humanitarian aid, and anything else against international law.

Yet the IDF and Israeli government do not do this, will not do this, and are actively doing the exact opposite, as they did so even before October 7th.

And so people are protesting.

- Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups should stop specifically targeting civilians with rockets and other terrorist attacks.

Is shooting a rocket into a civilian home a terrorist attack?

- Protestors are free to protest but should abide by all laws and university regulations, including trespass orders. Protestors don't have a right to build encampments on property that isn't theirs without authorization of the property owners.

This seems minor compared to everything else.

- Police have a right to enforce the law, such as trespass orders, but they shouldn't use unlawful excessive force when doing so.

Was the use of batons necessary in Edmonton?

- Any illegal harassment or discrimination on any campuses shouldn't be tolerated and violators held accountable.

Police were stopping everyone with a keffiyeh at the University subway station in Edmonton after the protest and asking for ID.

This seems like discrimination and harassment.

[Rich]

I find it bizarre that people like @Unthinking Majority go on about how these protesters have "ViOLaTeD ThE LaW!" and that we're supposed to be outraged by this. Then the same people who want us to be outraged by minor property damage will defend blatant war crimes by a regime like Israel.

The Liberals are and always have been very moral people. The Liberals were outraged by Nat Turner's rebellion. His followers literally cut the heads off of babies. Many, many liberals supported the idea of eventual emancipation, but Nat's rebellion just confirmed that "Blacks" were not yet ready for freedom. Many White Liberals believed that Blacks had to earn their freedom, in the same way as they believe today that Palestinian Arabs must earn their right to be full citizens of a state,

Now apologists for Nat's atrocities would often try and relativise things by claiming that far, far more American Blacks were killed by Whites, than Whites by Blacks. The Liberals would say that these killings were done legally. Of course there were claims that some Black slaves and even free Blacks had been killed illegally, but these were just accusations rarely if ever proven. I think the Liberal argument then and now would be that we must put a complete stop to all these illegal killings, especially the blatantly illegal killings like Nat Turner's and 10/7. Then maybe we can think about reducing the legal killings.

I mean I think all decent people would agree with Madeline Albright that the deaths of half a million Arab and Kurdish children is a small price to pay for the restoration of the rule of law, while the numbers of these perfectly legal killings in Gaza is even more trivial than in Iraq in the nineties.

[Unthinking Majority]

I find it bizarre that people like @Unthinking Majority go on about how these protesters have "ViOLaTeD ThE LaW!" and that we're supposed to be outraged by this. Then the same people who want us to be outraged by minor property damage will defend blatant war crimes by a regime like Israel.

You're making false assumptions about me. I just said this 2 posts above yours:

- Israel should remove all of its illegal settlements and its occupation of the West Bank, and avoid specifically targeting innocent civilians in Gaza and avoid blocking humanitarian aid, and anything else against international law.

If people want to protest those things that's fine and even good. But regardless of what issue anyone protests about, their level of outrage is not an excuse to just do whatever they feel like including breaking reasonable laws that have nothing to do with their protests.

[skinster]

Great to see the encampments only keep growing and all the displays of support for Palestine at the commencement speeches (that weren't boycotted, walked out of etc.)

I went down to SOAS to check out the encampment there and it was looking good. Some twat-y Zionists turned up and tried to intimidate people and failed and quickly left..

UCLA attackers exposed: meet the violent Zionist agitators LA police haven’t arrested
The Grayzone has obtained a dossier detailing the identities of the Zionist hooligans who assaulted UCLA anti-genocide student protesters. It was sent to LA police, but no arrests have been made. And the cops still can’t explain why they disappeared for hours during the mob attack.

On April 30, thirty people were injured when a mob of Zionist hooligans savagely assaulted the pro-Palestine UCLA encampment shortly before midnight. For over three hours, local and campus police stood down as the masked thugs assaulted students, journalists, and even officers of the law with fireworks volleys, pepper spray, and metal pipes. Though multiple attackers have been identified by community members on social media, to date there have been no arrests of pro-Israel goons.

The Grayzone has obtained a dossier composed by anonymous sleuths claiming involvement with the UCLA student protests which apparently identifies some of the attack’s perpetrators. The students emailed the document to the UCLA administration and police (UCPD), as well as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. It contains detailed information about the identities of those who were filmed carrying out wanton violence.

Los Angeles-area police have arrested droves of students protesting Israel’s US-backed genocide in Gaza, accusing over 40 students and journalists of “conspiracy to commit burglary” for attempting a sit-in on school grounds. Yet local authorities have made a grand total of zero arrests in the coordinated Zionist mob assault against UCLA anti-genocide protesters on April 30.

The LA Times has reported that local law enforcement is relying on sophisticated facial recognition technology to hunt down the attackers. But as the UCLA sleuths’ dossier makes clear, many assailants have already been identified by matching their identities with social media profiles.

The UCPD and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department did not respond to questions from The Grayzone about whether the persons identified in the dossier were under investigation, or had been taken into custody.

Alleged attackers listed in the email include:

Liel Asherian. Asherian, who uploaded videos directly from the scene of the attack to Facebook, was reportedly seen assaulting pro-Palestine demonstrators with a tennis racket. In an interview with the New York Times, Asherian claimed without offering a shred of evidence that he was called a “dirty Jew” and doused in pepper spray. “That made me start breaking down their barricades,” he stated.

Nouri Mehdizadeh. Footage from before and after the attacks show Medizadeh was a constant presence on the periphery of the protest encampment. According to the email from student activists, Mehdizadeh “was involved in planning violence continuously” and UCLA officials were likewise “warned about him continuously.” The email’s author suggested Mehdizadeh’s actions would constitute hate crimes, given that he “referenced a desire to attack those who were not his “Jewish brothers.” A photo of Mehdizadeh taken shortly before the violence erupted indicates he had foreknowledge of the assault and may have helped organize the attack.

Later that evening, a masked Mehdizadeh was recorded attempting to destroy barricades while a compatriot with a speaker blasted “Mani Mantera,” a Hebrew-language children’s song that Israeli soldiers have played while torturing and/or taunting captive Palestinians on camera. Despite getting caught red-handed by several security officers — and despite nearly getting into a fistfight with another guard in a separate incident — Mehdizadeh was allowed to remain in the area.
Tom Bibiyan. Footage uploaded to social media by Bibiyan himself reveals he personally participated in the April 30 attacks. A day after the assault, Bibiyan published a video on Instagram highlighting his involvement, alongside a caption boasting that “we rushed the terrorist encampment.” When another Instagram user asked Bibiyan to clarify his role in the violence, he bragged, “yeah I’m in this video” – apparently confident that he would face no legal repercussions for his crimes. Bibiyan reportedly spent several years participating in questionable cryptocurrency schemes while part of the Los Angeles NFT community, before being exiled from such groups following accusations of indecent exposure and sexual harassment. A website representing the Bibiyan Family Philanthropic Foundation indicates the family regularly donated to not only vehemently Zionist groups like the zealous and insular Chabad ultra-Orthodox cult, but also to liberal news outlets like Democracy Now.

Violent Zionist thugs wave the flag of the messianic Chabad cult on their way to assaulting anti-genocide protesters at UCLA pic.twitter.com/FNdsLI6Vii

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) May 1, 2024

A man seen waving the “Moshiach” flag of the militant Zionist Chabad organization was identified by students as Rony Yehuda. An instagram account belonging to the virtually-unknown pro-Israeli rapper, @Judah_fire_, indicates Yehuda is a Los Angeles resident. The email by student organizers said the 35-year-old provocateur has returned to UCLA campus on multiple occasions since the attacks, despite lacking any affiliation with the school — and despite claims by students that they alerted police to the presence of the aggressive outsiders.Among the most prominent cheerleaders of Yehuda’s actions were members of Team Moshiach, a Chabad-affiliated outfit which describes itself as “a global non-profit organization that unites Jews from around the world in acts of goodness and kindness.” In the days following October 7, Team Moshiach spearheaded a campaign to funnel military hardware to the Israeli military, and even uploaded a video to Instagram showing an Israeli soldier personally thanking the group for the equipment.The director of the nearby Chabad House claimed to the NY Times his organization had no role in organizing the attack at UCLA.

Another outside agitator was identified as Narek Palyan, a local Armenian activist with a penchant for publicly performing the Nazi ‘sieg heil’ salute, and who frequently posts material idolizing the Third Reich. Though the alliance between Zionist Jews and an avowed anti-semite might strike some as confusing, there is a long and well-documented history of collaboration between the two forces, which fundamentally depend on one another for their survival.Bizarrely, Palyan claimed in an interview with the NY Times that he only appeared at the protest “because he had seen a video of a Jewish woman on the pro-Palestinian side criticizing white people.”

Narek Palyan gives Nazi salute pic.twitter.com/AaZqB3BfKG

— Daisy Gardner (@daisykpgardner) August 23, 2023

A man seen spitting on pro-Palestine protesters and hurling racial slurs the day prior was revealed to be 23-year-old David Kaminsky. The trained boxer has admitted calling a student the n-word but denied accusations that he committed violent assaults, claiming he wasn’t in the vicinity of UCLA campus during the mob attack. Kaminsy has appeared in videos training with the rapper, Blueface, who was sentenced to two years probation for a 2022 shooting at a Las Vegas strip club.

Aaron Cohen. Cohen is an Israeli ‘counterterrorism analyst’ who embedded with police shortly before their May 2 raid on the encampment while shooting an ‘undercover’ special for television personality Dr. Phil. The actor previously served in Duvdevan, the infamous Israeli military unit upon which Netflix’s notoriously propagandistic series Fauda was based. Though he hasn’t been accused of participating in violence directly, shortly before the raid, Cohen wrote on Instagram: “I just wrapped [up] a [sic] independent quiet infiltration operation for @drphil tonight into the heart of the UCLA encampment. I’m now down here with LASDs elite SRT who’s staging now and preparing to make entry onto the pro terror antisemitic encampment.”

Also present in the run-up to the attack were members of Magen Am, a Los Angeles-based Jewish private security firm founded in 2017 by Yossi Eilfort, an MMA fighter-turned-Chabad rabbi. Magen Am, which claims to employ 12 former Israeli and US soldiers, bills itself as “the only Jewish, non-profit organization licensed to provide physical, armed security services on the West Coast of the United States.”

Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, Eilfort admitted coordinating with UCLA on an April 28 counter-protest aimed at antagonizing the pro-Palestine encampment, which featured speakers including an Israeli diplomat and a member of the California State Assembly. Footage published to social media appears to show a member of the group hulking over students and violently ripping them away from the encampment.

The group maintains a close working relationship with local law enforcement. At the conclusion of a training ceremony in 2020, LAPD commander Vic Davalos publicly declared: “I see Magen Am as the next evolution of an organized public/private first responder partnership in the community.”

"I see Magen Am as the next evolution of an organised public/private first responder partnership in the community."

LAPD commander Vic Davalos praises the Zionist militia group Magen Am, which is staffed by former Israeli military personnel. Did it have a role in clearing UCLA? pic.twitter.com/WPG9AJCKD6

— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) May 4, 2024

That “partnership” appears to be paying off, with Magen Am now openly boasting about its ability to influence LAPD operations. In an Instagram post published in early January, the group wrote that the LAPD’s new “online hate incident reporting policy” had been “spearheaded by Magen Am.”

In an accompanying video, the now-deceased head of Magen Am, Ivan Wolkind, described the change as “a project that we’ve been working on for about a year with LAPD,” and offered a hint as to its purpose:

“Why are we excited about this and why is it important to report these incidents? … First of all, every police department in the country makes resource allocation decisions based on the number of incidents reported. If these incidents are occurring in our community and we don’t report them, the LAPD has no way of knowing that they should allocate more staff time and more patrols in our areas.”

But their links to the security state don’t end there. Magen Am’s official website boasts: “We have direct connections at the FBI and Local law enforcement, including the LAPD, Sheriff’s Department, DA’s office and the US Attorney’s office.” This means, they say, that “If, G-d forbid, an incident occurs that requires immediate attention, Magen Am is able to push it all the way up the chain of command.”

The Grayzone wrote to Magen Am to inquire whether any of its members were involved in the April 30 attack, and solicited their opinion on the violence, but received no response. Phone calls to Magen Am’s Los Angeles office also went unanswered.

As of publication, some of the most violent perpetrators in the April 30 mob assault have yet to be identified. According to students, these include:

A man in a red bandana, seen beating students with a rod, who admitted during an interview with local media during the mob assault that he was not a UCLA student – a literal outside agitator.

So far, none of the figures listed above has faced legal consequences for the well-documented acts of violence they carried out against peaceful student protesters.

But the mollycoddling of violent pro-Israel agitators does not appear to be limited to UCLA.

Though he’s been removed from his postdoctoral teaching position at Arizona State University, Jonathan Yudelman, who moonlights as an assistant professor at the University of Texas, has so far faced no legal repercussions after being filmed hurling sexist obscenities while physically intimidating a Muslim woman in Tempe – despite a call by the Council of American Islamic Relations’ chapter in Arizona for “law enforcement to arrest… Yudelman for allegedly harassing and assaulting a Muslim woman in a hijab during his participation in a pro-Israel protest near campus.”

This is Jonathan Yudelman, a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University, verbally abusing a Muslim woman, invading her personal space & forcing his body towards hers.@princeton this is unacceptable and he must immediately be investigated.

Twitter, do your thing. pic.twitter.com/gptlDfHumx

— Niz (@NizMhani) May 6, 2024

Another agitator filmed in the incident was identified by social media users as Sammy Ben, a US citizen who has recently documented himself repeatedly violating the Geneva Conventions while he spent two months occupying Gaza in an Israeli uniform, despite holding only a tourist visa.

Sammy Ben also filmed himself mocking captured Palestinians pic.twitter.com/E1sfpUndUy

— In Context (@incontextmedia) May 6, 2024

Meanwhile, at Columbia University, two former Israeli army soldiers who attacked students with toxic chemical “skunk” fluid this January, sending at least 10 anti-genocide protesters to the emergency room, have not been expelled from campus, nor have they been arrested. “There are no arrests, and the investigation is ongoing,” an NYPD spokesperson told HuffPost.
https://thegrayzone.com/2024/05/13/ucla ... s-exposed/

Wrong again! The ICJ has not made any determinations on the merits at this stage.

What it does mean is that, if South Africa's allegations were correct, the Genocide Convention would be applicable.

The ICJ actually considered the case plausible to proceed, with charges of genocide made against the Zionist colony.

And again, genocide scholars and lawyers, hundreds of them, have confirmed what Israel is doing is committing genocide. Anyone with eyes can see it by looking at their social media. Meanwhile, Zionist continue to do that thing of lying and lying and lying and lying.

Palestinians seek an Arab state, which is mentioned in their Constitution.

Palestine is an Arab state. The natives are Arab. They speak Arabic. Christian and Jewish Palestinians too are Arabs. And if you can't find a Palestinian source for that claim regarding a constitution in the other thread, weird you're bringing it here too. You're doing that Goebels thing again about thinking if you repeat your lies that they might somehow be convincing. That doesn't work..

Syria is an Arab Republic. It's in the name.

Syria is also an Arab state, yes, because the people of that region are Arabs. It also includes multiple religions and groups.

Are you really confused about the area being Arab? Do you think this is a thing I made up?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_world

Some do, they are one reason why I don't want to move to Israel. Others however don't have issues with diaspora Jews.

lol coward Zionist.

Again, this is a completely valid source and you're trying to smear it because it shows you're full of shit.

No, it's not. If you can't find text you're attributing to a Palestinian Constitution from a Palestinian source, then you need to accept it doesn't exist.

Too bad I already posted videos of it, gaslighter.

It has only been Zionists attacking Jews and gentiles at the campuses so far and Zionist provocateurs pretending they are victims by hitting themselves in the eye and claiming they got hurt or doing silly stunts like wearing shirts saying 'JEW' and demanding to be doxxed like some projecting weirdos, since it is Zionists that usually dox others for their support of Palestine.

Let me know when you can prove briefers to the Russian UN mission work for free

Let me know when you can prove your claim that they are bribed, since it was you who made the claim to begin with but have yet to prove it despite talking about this over a handful of times now. I guess you just like to remind me and the audience about how full of shit you are. Which is fine by me, I already know but maybe that repetition thing Zionists like to do like the Nazis before them actually works..

It's an anti zionist chant. Look it up on Wikipedia.

This explains a lot regarding your position, if that's where you get news about Israel from.

[wat0n]

The ICJ actually considered the case plausible to proceed, with charges of genocide made against the Zionist colony.

And again, genocide scholars and lawyers, hundreds of them, have confirmed what Israel is doing is committing genocide. Anyone with eyes can see it by looking at their social media. Meanwhile, Zionist continue to do that thing of lying and lying and lying and lying.

Former ICJ President Donoghue disagrees, as discussed in the other thread. She's far more credible than you are.

Palestine is an Arab state. The natives are Arab. They speak Arabic. Christian and Jewish Palestinians too are Arabs. And if you can't find a Palestinian source for that claim regarding a constitution in the other thread, weird you're bringing it here too. You're doing that Goebels thing again about thinking if you repeat your lies that they might somehow be convincing. That doesn't work..

Syria is also an Arab state, yes, because the people of that region are Arabs. It also includes multiple religions and groups.

Are you really confused about the area being Arab? Do you think this is a thing I made up?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_world

Why put it in their Constitution?

By this token, most Israelis are Jews so you shouldn't have any issues with Israel being a Jewish state.

lol coward Zionist.

Ohh so you want me to go and serve in the IDF? I'd think you'd be happy for me to criticize Israel.

Also, why didn't you valiantly fight the IDF when you were in the region?

No, it's not. If you can't find text you're attributing to a Palestinian Constitution from a Palestinian source, then you need to accept it doesn't exist.

More denial, even when posting from a reputable source.

It has only been Zionists attacking Jews and gentiles at the campuses so far and Zionist provocateurs pretending they are victims by hitting themselves in the eye and claiming they got hurt or doing silly stunts like wearing shirts saying 'JEW' and demanding to be doxxed like some projecting weirdos, since it is Zionists that usually dox others for their support of Palestine.

And now more denial, even in the face of footage. The kind that led to some pro-Israel rioters to go to UCLA to start trouble

Let me know when you can prove your claim that they are bribed, since it was you who made the claim to begin with but have yet to prove it despite talking about this over a handful of times now. I guess you just like to remind me and the audience about how full of shit you are. Which is fine by me, I already know but maybe that repetition thing Zionists like to do like the Nazis before them actually works..

Let me know when you can prove briefers at the UN aren't paid even when the UN itself charges for briefings. There's absolutely no reason for mission briefers to work for free when the UN itself charges for this service.

[Unthinking Majority]

1. Do you think that, as it currently exists the law is applied equally?

2. More importantly, do you think the law itself is inherently equal and objective?

3. Yet the IDF and Israeli government do not do this, will not do this, and are actively doing the exact opposite, as they did so even before October 7th.

And so people are protesting.

4. Is shooting a rocket into a civilian home a terrorist attack?

5. This seems minor compared to everything else.

6. Was the use of batons necessary in Edmonton?

7. Police were stopping everyone with a keffiyeh at the University subway station in Edmonton after the protest and asking for ID.

This seems like discrimination and harassment.

1. No not always. Cops and judges are human beings and therefore have personal biases.

2. Overwhelmingly yes, but there's always exceptions. No set of laws are perfect. I see no issues with laws regarding trespassing in this case. If you don't like the decision to have them trespassed, your issue is with the school, not the laws.

3. Yes, they're free to protest, they aren't free to break laws while they protest. Someone's personal level of outrage doesn't give them a license to break school regulations and disobey lawful orders. That's anti-democratic.

4. If they're specifically targeting innocent civilians, yes.

5. Not relevant.

6. I have no idea, why do you keep asking me this? I haven't seen all of the evidence nor do I really want to take the time to investigate it all.

7. It might be yes. Unless they were actively looking for a specific suspect who fit the description of wearing a keffiyeh.

[Rich]

Someone's personal level of outrage doesn't give them a license to break school regulations and disobey lawful orders. That's anti-democratic.

I'm sure the civil rights protesters of the 1960s were frequently acting in contempt of local laws, rules and regulations. And of course in Liberal fantasy there was a clear dividing line between lawful, peaceful decent civil rights protesters and the urban rioters that burned parts of American cities to the ground. Of course the reality was there was a murky continuum and absolutely no clear line between where the good protesters ended and the bad protesters started.

[Pants-of-dog]

1. No not always. Cops and judges are human beings and therefore have personal biases.

2. Overwhelmingly yes, but there's always exceptions. No set of laws are perfect. I see no issues with laws regarding trespassing in this case. If you don't like the decision to have them trespassed, your issue is with the school, not the laws.

Then why are the cops not being held accountable for beating protesters?

Why are Indigenous people not allowed to set up tents on Indigenous land?

How can laws be equal and just when a university can invest in regimes that commit human rights abuses and that is fine?

3. Yes, they're free to protest, they aren't free to break laws while they protest. Someone's personal level of outrage doesn't give them a license to break school regulations and disobey lawful orders. That's anti-democratic.

That is not the point.

The point is that the IDF and Israeli government are committing human rights abuses and this is reason enough to protest,

4. If they're specifically targeting innocent civilians, yes.

If the IDF are shooting a rocket into a family home at a time when they are fairly sure that the family is at home sleeping, would that be considered an exmaple of the IDF “specifically targeting innocent civilians”?

5. Not relevant.

Yes, the whole outrage over tents does seem irrelevant when compared to IDF genocide, cops beating protesters, and the inherent inequality of the law.

6. I have no idea, why do you keep asking me this? I haven't seen all of the evidence nor do I really want to take the time to investigate it all.

This thread is about the protests against the Israeli occupation and genocide and the reaction by the state to said protests.

If you think the law is inherently just and equal, this fact needs to be explained.

7. It might be yes. Unless they were actively looking for a specific suspect who fit the description of wearing a keffiyeh.

So if the problem is discrimination and harassment, as you said, the this unequal treatment by the law also needs to be explained, or you must concede that the law is not equal or applied equally.

[KurtFF8]

I'm sure the civil rights protesters of the 1960s were frequently acting in contempt of local laws, rules and regulations. And of course in Liberal fantasy there was a clear dividing line between lawful, peaceful decent civil rights protesters and the urban rioters that burned parts of American cities to the ground. Of course the reality was there was a murky continuum and absolutely no clear line between where the good protesters ended and the bad protesters started.

The people who are railing against protesters today are the same kind of people who would have called MLK a terrorist.

[wat0n]

I'm sure the civil rights protesters of the 1960s were frequently acting in contempt of local laws, rules and regulations. And of course in Liberal fantasy there was a clear dividing line between lawful, peaceful decent civil rights protesters and the urban rioters that burned parts of American cities to the ground. Of course the reality was there was a murky continuum and absolutely no clear line between where the good protesters ended and the bad protesters started.

Actually there was, and still is. It has something to do with burning stuff to the ground and harassing people, for example.

Just saying.

[KurtFF8]

Actually there was, and still is. It has something to do with burning stuff to the ground and harassing people, for example.

Just saying.

Exhibit A. People like @wat0n would have been out there counter protesting against Civil Rights demonstrations because they're "too violent" or "making people uncomfortable"