Haaarrgh. So they're scared of the possibility of tit for tat treatment? The Hamas fans have been intimidating n harassing Jewish students and non involved students.
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Palestine and Israel
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What a ridiculous reply TM.
Firstly there are no Hamas fans there so you should retract that. They are pro Palestinian
Secondly what you are saying is that it is ok for the pro Israelis to do it because the others did it first. That's school yard stuff and of course the right answer is that it is not ok for anyone to do it no matter who they support.
That’s bloody awful. Peaceful protests are a persons democratic right, as long as they aren’t causing any problems or damage.
But as you say, the lunatic fringe (everywhere) who escalate it and put people at risk of injury or worse.
They should be like us, just get grumpy with each other at times
no violence at allunless addresses are made public
Exactly. I hate it and what is undoubtedly true is that any sort of violence and intimidation actually hurts the cause they are supporting.That’s bloody awful. Peaceful protests are a persons democratic right, as long as they aren’t causing any problems or damage.
But as you say, the lunatic fringe (everywhere) who escalate it and put people at risk of injury or worse.
They should be like us, just get grumpy with each other at times
unless addresses are made public
Your opinion, not mine.
As the good book says. Do unto others,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, first. If you've done it right then there's no tit for tat.
Obviously the right answer is that neither side should be bullying, intimidating, kabooming anyone but this ideology generally gets trotted out after the first mob has kicked *smile* out of the second mob and then somehow just expects the second mob to roll over and be grateful for the kicking they've just received.
Being a Palestinian rights sympathiser does not mean being a Hamas sympathiser and it never has. You can assume it but you will be wrong.
I and others have explained why so many times on here that I’m not going to bother again.
There is really nothing more to say.
I went to Monash many years ago, trust me, the only people feeling unsafe there will be those opposing Zionism which has a lot of support at Monash. I know this from personal experience.
DS
Really? I don't see Palestinian leaders going to the UN with a map of the area which has Israel covering all of the current Israel plus the West Bank and Gaza.
Add to this the settler extremists, who advocate removal of all Palestinians from all of "Greater Israel" and claim Palestinians are "sub-human", currently in the Israeli government, along with Likud who have a provision in their constitution which states Israel includes West Bank and Gaza, and the bombing of Gaza along with settler shooting of Palestinians in the West Bank, and you can see why the evidence points to the Israelis being the ones who not only want to expel the Palestinians but are also taking military action to do so.
DS
Back to the student protests, here is a statement from 23 academic staff (called Faculty in the USA) at Columbia Uni:
By Gabriella Gregor Splaver / Senior Staff Photographer
Dear President Shafik,
We write as Jewish faculty of Columbia and Barnard in anticipation of your appearance before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on April 17, where you are expected to answer questions about antisemitism on campus. Based on the committee’s previous hearings, we are gravely concerned about the false narratives that frame these proceedings to entrap witnesses. We urge you, as the University president, to defend our shared commitment to universities as sites of learning, critical thinking, and knowledge production against this new McCarthyism.
Rather than being concerned with the safety and well-being of Jewish students on campuses, the committee is leveraging antisemitism in a wider effort to caricature and demonize universities as hotbeds of “woke indoctrination.” Its opportunistic use of antisemitism in a moment of crisis is expanding and strengthening longstanding efforts to undermine educational institutions. After launching attacks on public universities from Florida to South Dakota, this campaign has opened a new front against private institutions.
The prospect of Rep. Elise Stefanik, a member of congress with a history of espousing white nationalist politics, calling university presidents to account for alleged antisemitism on their campuses reveals these proceedings as disingenuous political theater.
In the face of these coordinated attacks on higher education, universities must insist on their freedom to research and teach inconvenient truths. This includes historical injustices and the contemporary structures that perpetuate them, regardless of whether these facts are politically inexpedient for certain interest groups.
To be sure, antisemitism is a grave concern that should be scrutinized alongside racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and all other forms of hate. These hateful ideologies exist everywhere and we would be ignorant to believe that they don’t exist at Columbia. When antisemitism rears its head, it should be swiftly denounced, and its perpetrators held to account. However, it is absurd to claim that antisemitism—“discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews,” according to the Jerusalem Declaration’s definition—is rampant on Columbia’s campus. To argue that taking a stand against Israel’s war on Gaza is antisemitic is to pervert the meaning of the term.
Labeling pro-Palestinian expression as anti-Jewish hate speech requires a dangerous and false conflation of Zionism with Jewishness, of political ideology with identity. This conflation betrays a woefully inaccurate understanding—and disingenuous misrepresentation—of Jewish history, identity, and politics. It erases more than a century of debates among Jews themselves about the nature of a Jewish homeland in the biblical Land of Israel, including Israel’s status as a Jewish nation-state. It dismisses the experiences of the post-Zionist, non-Zionist, and anti-Zionist Jews who work, study, and live on our campus.
The political passions that arise from conflict in the Middle East may deeply unsettle students, faculty, and staff with opposing views. But feeling uncomfortable is not the same thing as being threatened or discriminated against. Free expression, which is fundamental to both academic inquiry and democracy, necessarily entails exposure to views that may be deeply disconcerting. We can support students who feel real and valid discomfort toward protests advocating for Palestinian liberation while also stating clearly and firmly that this discomfort is not an issue of safety.
As faculty, we dedicate ourselves and our classrooms to keeping every student safe from real harm, harassment, and discrimination. We commit to helping them learn to experience discomfort and even confrontation as part of the process of skill and knowledge acquisition—and to help them realize that ideas we oppose can be contested without being suppressed.
By exacting discipline, inviting police presence, and broadly surveilling its students for minor offenses, the University is betraying its educational mission. It has pursued drastic measures against students, including disciplinary proceedings and probation, for infractions like allegedly attending an unauthorized protest, or moving barricades to drape a flag on a statue. Real harassment and physical intimidation and violence on campus must be confronted seriously and its perpetrators held accountable. At the same time, the University should refrain whenever possible from using discipline and surveillance as means of addressing less serious harms, and should never use punitive measures to address conflicts over ideas and the feelings of discomfort that result. Where the University once embraced and defended students’ political expression, it now suppresses and disciplines it.
The University’s recent policies represent a dramatic change from historical practice, and the consequences are ruinous to our community and its principles. In the past, Columbia has periodically confronted attacks against pro-Palestinian speech, ranging from the vile slanders against Professor Edward Said to the reckless accusations from the David Project. But where for decades the University stood firm against smear campaigns targeting its professors, it has now voluntarily accepted the job of censoring its faculty in and outside the classroom.
Columbia’s commitment to free inquiry and robust disagreement is what makes it a world-class institution. Limiting academic freedom when it comes to questions of Israel and Palestine paves the way for limitations on other contested topics, from climate science to the history of slavery. What’s more, students must have the freedom to dissent, to make mistakes, to offend without intent, and to learn to repair harm done if necessary. Free expression is not only crucial to student development and education outside the classroom; the tradition of student protest has also played a vital role in American democracy. Columbia should be proud of having participated in nationwide student organizing that helped secure civil rights and reproductive rights and helped bring an end to the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa.
We express our support for the University and for higher education against the attacks likely to be leveled against them at the upcoming congressional hearing. We object to the weaponization of antisemitism. And we advocate for a campus where all students, Jewish, Palestinian, and all others, can learn and thrive in a climate of open, honest inquiry and rigorous debate.
Many members of our University community share our perspective, but they have not yet been heard. Columbia students, staff, alumni, and faculty can sign here to show your support for this letter’s message.
The 23 authors of this letter are Jewish faculty members of Barnard College and Columbia University. This letter derives from a much longer one by these same 23 faculty sent to President Shafik on April 5.
Sensible comments from those who know a thing or two about anti-semitism.
DS
Jewish faculty reject the weaponization of antisemitism
By Gabriella Gregor Splaver / Senior Staff Photographer
By Debbie Becher, Helen Benedict, Nina Berman, Susan Bernofsky, Elizabeth Bernstein, Amy Chazkel, Yinon Cohen, Keith Gessen, Nora Gross, Jack Halberstam, Sarah Haley, Michael Harris, Jennifer S. Hirsch, Marianne Hirsch, Joe Howley, David Lurie, Nara Milanich, D. Max Moerman, Manijeh Moradian, Sheldon Pollock, Bruce Robbins, James Schamus, and Alisa Solomon • April 11, 2024 at 5:33 AM
Dear President Shafik,We write as Jewish faculty of Columbia and Barnard in anticipation of your appearance before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on April 17, where you are expected to answer questions about antisemitism on campus. Based on the committee’s previous hearings, we are gravely concerned about the false narratives that frame these proceedings to entrap witnesses. We urge you, as the University president, to defend our shared commitment to universities as sites of learning, critical thinking, and knowledge production against this new McCarthyism.
Rather than being concerned with the safety and well-being of Jewish students on campuses, the committee is leveraging antisemitism in a wider effort to caricature and demonize universities as hotbeds of “woke indoctrination.” Its opportunistic use of antisemitism in a moment of crisis is expanding and strengthening longstanding efforts to undermine educational institutions. After launching attacks on public universities from Florida to South Dakota, this campaign has opened a new front against private institutions.
The prospect of Rep. Elise Stefanik, a member of congress with a history of espousing white nationalist politics, calling university presidents to account for alleged antisemitism on their campuses reveals these proceedings as disingenuous political theater.
In the face of these coordinated attacks on higher education, universities must insist on their freedom to research and teach inconvenient truths. This includes historical injustices and the contemporary structures that perpetuate them, regardless of whether these facts are politically inexpedient for certain interest groups.
To be sure, antisemitism is a grave concern that should be scrutinized alongside racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and all other forms of hate. These hateful ideologies exist everywhere and we would be ignorant to believe that they don’t exist at Columbia. When antisemitism rears its head, it should be swiftly denounced, and its perpetrators held to account. However, it is absurd to claim that antisemitism—“discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews,” according to the Jerusalem Declaration’s definition—is rampant on Columbia’s campus. To argue that taking a stand against Israel’s war on Gaza is antisemitic is to pervert the meaning of the term.
Labeling pro-Palestinian expression as anti-Jewish hate speech requires a dangerous and false conflation of Zionism with Jewishness, of political ideology with identity. This conflation betrays a woefully inaccurate understanding—and disingenuous misrepresentation—of Jewish history, identity, and politics. It erases more than a century of debates among Jews themselves about the nature of a Jewish homeland in the biblical Land of Israel, including Israel’s status as a Jewish nation-state. It dismisses the experiences of the post-Zionist, non-Zionist, and anti-Zionist Jews who work, study, and live on our campus.
The political passions that arise from conflict in the Middle East may deeply unsettle students, faculty, and staff with opposing views. But feeling uncomfortable is not the same thing as being threatened or discriminated against. Free expression, which is fundamental to both academic inquiry and democracy, necessarily entails exposure to views that may be deeply disconcerting. We can support students who feel real and valid discomfort toward protests advocating for Palestinian liberation while also stating clearly and firmly that this discomfort is not an issue of safety.
As faculty, we dedicate ourselves and our classrooms to keeping every student safe from real harm, harassment, and discrimination. We commit to helping them learn to experience discomfort and even confrontation as part of the process of skill and knowledge acquisition—and to help them realize that ideas we oppose can be contested without being suppressed.
By exacting discipline, inviting police presence, and broadly surveilling its students for minor offenses, the University is betraying its educational mission. It has pursued drastic measures against students, including disciplinary proceedings and probation, for infractions like allegedly attending an unauthorized protest, or moving barricades to drape a flag on a statue. Real harassment and physical intimidation and violence on campus must be confronted seriously and its perpetrators held accountable. At the same time, the University should refrain whenever possible from using discipline and surveillance as means of addressing less serious harms, and should never use punitive measures to address conflicts over ideas and the feelings of discomfort that result. Where the University once embraced and defended students’ political expression, it now suppresses and disciplines it.
The University’s recent policies represent a dramatic change from historical practice, and the consequences are ruinous to our community and its principles. In the past, Columbia has periodically confronted attacks against pro-Palestinian speech, ranging from the vile slanders against Professor Edward Said to the reckless accusations from the David Project. But where for decades the University stood firm against smear campaigns targeting its professors, it has now voluntarily accepted the job of censoring its faculty in and outside the classroom.
Columbia’s commitment to free inquiry and robust disagreement is what makes it a world-class institution. Limiting academic freedom when it comes to questions of Israel and Palestine paves the way for limitations on other contested topics, from climate science to the history of slavery. What’s more, students must have the freedom to dissent, to make mistakes, to offend without intent, and to learn to repair harm done if necessary. Free expression is not only crucial to student development and education outside the classroom; the tradition of student protest has also played a vital role in American democracy. Columbia should be proud of having participated in nationwide student organizing that helped secure civil rights and reproductive rights and helped bring an end to the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa.
We express our support for the University and for higher education against the attacks likely to be leveled against them at the upcoming congressional hearing. We object to the weaponization of antisemitism. And we advocate for a campus where all students, Jewish, Palestinian, and all others, can learn and thrive in a climate of open, honest inquiry and rigorous debate.
Many members of our University community share our perspective, but they have not yet been heard. Columbia students, staff, alumni, and faculty can sign here to show your support for this letter’s message.
The 23 authors of this letter are Jewish faculty members of Barnard College and Columbia University. This letter derives from a much longer one by these same 23 faculty sent to President Shafik on April 5.
Sensible comments from those who know a thing or two about anti-semitism.
DS
So you reckon the Palestinian leaderships dream wouldn’t be no Israel, no Israeli Jews and all that land that is currently Israel going to the Palestinians.
Dunno why they’d bother going to the UN. The most bloated corrupt administration of a world body that couldn’t sort out a game of marbles between 2 10 year olds.
Maybe you’ve missed what’s been going on for the last 76 years or more.
And you class yourself as a student of history??
Ever heard “from the river to the sea, we shall be free” I wonder what they mean by that?
Having a rave, a ramble or a few reds David?
Nothing there has anything to do with what I wrote.
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Part from those students yelling “we are Hamas” of course. And the ones that are clearly anti semitic.Back to the student protests, here is a statement from 23 academic staff (called Faculty in the USA) at Columbia Uni:
Jewish faculty reject the weaponization of antisemitism
By Gabriella Gregor Splaver / Senior Staff Photographer
By Debbie Becher, Helen Benedict, Nina Berman, Susan Bernofsky, Elizabeth Bernstein, Amy Chazkel, Yinon Cohen, Keith Gessen, Nora Gross, Jack Halberstam, Sarah Haley, Michael Harris, Jennifer S. Hirsch, Marianne Hirsch, Joe Howley, David Lurie, Nara Milanich, D. Max Moerman, Manijeh Moradian, Sheldon Pollock, Bruce Robbins, James Schamus, and Alisa Solomon • April 11, 2024 at 5:33 AM
Dear President Shafik,
We write as Jewish faculty of Columbia and Barnard in anticipation of your appearance before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on April 17, where you are expected to answer questions about antisemitism on campus. Based on the committee’s previous hearings, we are gravely concerned about the false narratives that frame these proceedings to entrap witnesses. We urge you, as the University president, to defend our shared commitment to universities as sites of learning, critical thinking, and knowledge production against this new McCarthyism.
Rather than being concerned with the safety and well-being of Jewish students on campuses, the committee is leveraging antisemitism in a wider effort to caricature and demonize universities as hotbeds of “woke indoctrination.” Its opportunistic use of antisemitism in a moment of crisis is expanding and strengthening longstanding efforts to undermine educational institutions. After launching attacks on public universities from Florida to South Dakota, this campaign has opened a new front against private institutions.
The prospect of Rep. Elise Stefanik, a member of congress with a history of espousing white nationalist politics, calling university presidents to account for alleged antisemitism on their campuses reveals these proceedings as disingenuous political theater.
In the face of these coordinated attacks on higher education, universities must insist on their freedom to research and teach inconvenient truths. This includes historical injustices and the contemporary structures that perpetuate them, regardless of whether these facts are politically inexpedient for certain interest groups.
To be sure, antisemitism is a grave concern that should be scrutinized alongside racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and all other forms of hate. These hateful ideologies exist everywhere and we would be ignorant to believe that they don’t exist at Columbia. When antisemitism rears its head, it should be swiftly denounced, and its perpetrators held to account. However, it is absurd to claim that antisemitism—“discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews,” according to the Jerusalem Declaration’s definition—is rampant on Columbia’s campus. To argue that taking a stand against Israel’s war on Gaza is antisemitic is to pervert the meaning of the term.
Labeling pro-Palestinian expression as anti-Jewish hate speech requires a dangerous and false conflation of Zionism with Jewishness, of political ideology with identity. This conflation betrays a woefully inaccurate understanding—and disingenuous misrepresentation—of Jewish history, identity, and politics. It erases more than a century of debates among Jews themselves about the nature of a Jewish homeland in the biblical Land of Israel, including Israel’s status as a Jewish nation-state. It dismisses the experiences of the post-Zionist, non-Zionist, and anti-Zionist Jews who work, study, and live on our campus.
The political passions that arise from conflict in the Middle East may deeply unsettle students, faculty, and staff with opposing views. But feeling uncomfortable is not the same thing as being threatened or discriminated against. Free expression, which is fundamental to both academic inquiry and democracy, necessarily entails exposure to views that may be deeply disconcerting. We can support students who feel real and valid discomfort toward protests advocating for Palestinian liberation while also stating clearly and firmly that this discomfort is not an issue of safety.
As faculty, we dedicate ourselves and our classrooms to keeping every student safe from real harm, harassment, and discrimination. We commit to helping them learn to experience discomfort and even confrontation as part of the process of skill and knowledge acquisition—and to help them realize that ideas we oppose can be contested without being suppressed.
By exacting discipline, inviting police presence, and broadly surveilling its students for minor offenses, the University is betraying its educational mission. It has pursued drastic measures against students, including disciplinary proceedings and probation, for infractions like allegedly attending an unauthorized protest, or moving barricades to drape a flag on a statue. Real harassment and physical intimidation and violence on campus must be confronted seriously and its perpetrators held accountable. At the same time, the University should refrain whenever possible from using discipline and surveillance as means of addressing less serious harms, and should never use punitive measures to address conflicts over ideas and the feelings of discomfort that result. Where the University once embraced and defended students’ political expression, it now suppresses and disciplines it.
The University’s recent policies represent a dramatic change from historical practice, and the consequences are ruinous to our community and its principles. In the past, Columbia has periodically confronted attacks against pro-Palestinian speech, ranging from the vile slanders against Professor Edward Said to the reckless accusations from the David Project. But where for decades the University stood firm against smear campaigns targeting its professors, it has now voluntarily accepted the job of censoring its faculty in and outside the classroom.
Columbia’s commitment to free inquiry and robust disagreement is what makes it a world-class institution. Limiting academic freedom when it comes to questions of Israel and Palestine paves the way for limitations on other contested topics, from climate science to the history of slavery. What’s more, students must have the freedom to dissent, to make mistakes, to offend without intent, and to learn to repair harm done if necessary. Free expression is not only crucial to student development and education outside the classroom; the tradition of student protest has also played a vital role in American democracy. Columbia should be proud of having participated in nationwide student organizing that helped secure civil rights and reproductive rights and helped bring an end to the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa.
We express our support for the University and for higher education against the attacks likely to be leveled against them at the upcoming congressional hearing. We object to the weaponization of antisemitism. And we advocate for a campus where all students, Jewish, Palestinian, and all others, can learn and thrive in a climate of open, honest inquiry and rigorous debate.
Many members of our University community share our perspective, but they have not yet been heard. Columbia students, staff, alumni, and faculty can sign here to show your support for this letter’s message.
The 23 authors of this letter are Jewish faculty members of Barnard College and Columbia University. This letter derives from a much longer one by these same 23 faculty sent to President Shafik on April 5.
Sensible comments from those who know a thing or two about anti-semitism.
DS
Not all the protesters are anti semitic, just as there are some who clearly are
How do they know these people are or aren’t students when they wear masks and keffeyah .
Why is he being stopped from attending the university he goes to. It’s surely not his haircut. Maybe it’s because he’s ….Jewish. Is that being anti semitic?
He should have taken a couple of pit bulls to school with him for show and tell
Why is he being stopped from attending the university he goes to. It’s surely not his haircut. Maybe it’s because he’s ….Jewish. Is that being anti semitic?
He should have taken a couple of pit bulls to school with him for show and tell
Those “peaceful” pro Palestinians should be made to pay for all the damage they did to the university.
As this young lady tells how she has been personally targeted with pro Hamas emails and all the rest for the usual cowards who can only target innocent civilians.
So far these pro Palestinian protesters have bobbed up at 32 university colleges. Hard to believe that they don’t have any anti semitic feelings. Anyone who says they all don't, must be a Hamas operative, a Hamas supporter or just a naive *smile*.
But no doubt all the pro Palestinian apologists will make a case that it’s all Israel’s fault. *smile* wits that they are
As this young lady tells how she has been personally targeted with pro Hamas emails and all the rest for the usual cowards who can only target innocent civilians.
So far these pro Palestinian protesters have bobbed up at 32 university colleges. Hard to believe that they don’t have any anti semitic feelings. Anyone who says they all don't, must be a Hamas operative, a Hamas supporter or just a naive *smile*.
But no doubt all the pro Palestinian apologists will make a case that it’s all Israel’s fault. *smile* wits that they are
So innocent students can’t go about their studies.
If these non peaceful protesters are there on student visas they should be seported! Never to return.
If they are Americans and cause damage and mayhem they are jailed until they pay for the damage they incur. If they’re Amaerican students, make them pay for any damage and expel them.
If they’re peacefully protesting, cause no damage or stop others from attending, fine, that’s their right.
But if they aren’t doing that, they pay.
If these non peaceful protesters are there on student visas they should be seported! Never to return.
If they are Americans and cause damage and mayhem they are jailed until they pay for the damage they incur. If they’re Amaerican students, make them pay for any damage and expel them.
If they’re peacefully protesting, cause no damage or stop others from attending, fine, that’s their right.
But if they aren’t doing that, they pay.
Just all noise. Nothing to see here. No innocent students impeded from going about their daily business, you know! Like studying. Because they’re….Jews.
And that’s not anti semitic targeting Jews! Righto.
And that’s not anti semitic targeting Jews! Righto.
FMD. Did I see correctly on this evenings meedjia that at some uni campus in Sydaknee there was a bunch of our educated intelligent elite future prancing around with Isis flags?????? Nowadays you get in deep deep *smile* if you've got some Nazi memorabilia or if you give a yay Adolph salute in public, because praising or glorifying some bunch of disgusting arseholes from seventy odd years ago is obscene behaviour. But prancing around promoting a bunch of throat slitting n beheading nut jobs from the present is somehow acceptable by our cultural educated elite. World's gone to *smile* on a one way hand rail. The sooner some prick hits the nuke button n cleans the place out the better. Civilised humans be *smile*.
The Israel-US game plan for Gaza is staring us in the face
30 April 2024The western media is pretending the West’s efforts to secure a ceasefire are serious. But a different script has clearly been written in advance
One does not need to be a fortune-teller to understand that the Israel-US game plan for Gaza runs something like this:
1. In public, Biden appears “tough” on Netanyahu, urging him not to “invade” Rafah and pressuring him to allow more “humanitarian aid” into Gaza.
2. But already the White House is preparing the ground to subvert its own messaging. It insists that Israel has offered an “extraordinarily generous” deal to Hamas – one that, Washington suggests, amounts to a ceasefire. It doesn’t. According to reports, the best Israel has offered is an undefined “period of sustained calm”. Even that promise can’t be trusted.
3. If Hamas accepts the “deal” and agrees to return some of the hostages, the bombing eases for a short while but the famine intensifies, justified by Israel’s determination for “total victory” against Hamas – something that is impossible to achieve. This will simply delay, for a matter of days or weeks, Israel’s move to step 5 below.
4. If, as seems more likely, Hamas rejects the “deal”, it will be painted as the intransigent party and blamed for seeking to continue the “war”. (Note: This was never a war. Only the West pretends either that you can be at war with a territory you’ve been occupying for decades, or that Hamas “started the war” with its October 7 attack when Israel has been blockading the enclave, creating despair and incremental malnutrition there, for 17 years.)
Last night US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken moved this script on by stating Hamas was “the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a ceasefire… They have to decide and they have to decide quickly”.
5. The US will announce that Israel has devised a humanitarian plan that satisfies the conditions Biden laid down for an attack on Rafah to begin.
6. This will give the US, Europe and the region the pretext to stand back as Israel launches the long-awaited assault – an attack Biden has previously asserted would be a “red line”, leading to mass civilian casualties. All that will be forgotten.
7. As Middle East Eye reports, Israel is building a ring of checkpoints around Rafah. Netanyahu will suggest, falsely, that these guarantee its attack meets the conditions laid down in international humanitarian law. Women and children will be allowed out – if they can reach a checkpoint before Israel’s carpet bombing kills them along the way.
8. All men in Rafah, and any women and children who remain, will be treated as armed combatants. If they are not killed by the bombing or falling rubble, they will be either summarily executed or dragged off to Israel’s torture chambers. No one will mention that any Hamas fighters who were in Rafah were able to leave through the tunnels.
9. Rafah will be destroyed, leaving the entire strip in ruins, and the Israeli-induced famine will worsen. The West will throw up its hands, say Hamas brought this on Gaza, agonise over what to do, and press third countries – especially Arab countries – for a “humanitarian plan” that relocates the survivors out of Gaza.
10. The western media will continue describing Israel’s genocide in Gaza in purely humanitarian terms, as though this “disaster” was an act of God.
11. Under US pressure, the International Court of Justice, or World Court, will be in no hurry to issue a definitive ruling on whether South Africa’s case that Israel is committing a genocide – which it has already found “plausible” – is proved.
12. Whatever the World Court eventually decides, and it is almost impossible to imagine it won’t determine that Israel carried out a genocide, it will be too late. The western political and media class will have moved on, leaving it to the historians to decide what it all meant.
13. Meanwhile, Israel is already using the precedents it has created in Gaza, and its erosion of the long-established principles of international law, as the blueprint for the West Bank. Saying Hamas has not been completely routed in Gaza but is using this other Palestinian enclave as its base, Israel will gradually intensify the pressures on the West Bank with another blockade. Rinse and repeat.
That’s the likely plan. Our job is to do everything in our power to stop them making it a reality.Yep, it's Israel which is aiming to take over the remaining small part of what was once Palestine all for themselves, in line with the ruling party's policy.
DS
Yeah, because classes are held on the South Lawn are they
No disruptions to classes going on there and the university appears to be calmly letting the students make their point. I can't see a problem.
DS
Obviously you missed the students being blocked from going inYeah, because classes are held on the South Lawn are they
Of course you couldn’t. You weren’t looking
- Status
