Oh, and sometimes I write really long replies to something somebody has said on here, read it over, edit it to make sure it says what I want it to say, then think “what is the point of posting this” and delete it.
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I do this a lot but I also read it, think “what’s the point of posting this” and then YOLO smash that “post” button
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I pretty much only talk about it online. I can talk about it a little with my kids, but even then there’s a danger of it getting a little tense. I’m not sure I would agree on things surrounding this fully enough with anyone to just link arms and be assumed to sign on to anything they might say.
I think you have a lot more people who are aligned with you than you think, but it isn’t a viewpoint that necessarily has or needs a platform.
For me:
College protestors are a bit ridiculous and over the top because of course they are, that’s expected of being 18-22. This issue isn’t about America or Americans and the entities they are protesting (their universities) have zero power to bring about the change they are seeking.
Cops and administrators bringing in the Cops are way over the line in using State sponsored violence to arrest a largely harmless population. Even if you have a Fox News Anchor’s opinion of the protesting population you should not be cheering police violence against them.
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I made the mistake of joining a conversation about this at work. Someone who I thought was likely to agree with me (pretty liberal and we agree on most issues). He was talking about how his Jewish daughter at Columbia was telling him that the protestors were peaceful and not particularly disruptive, so I thought my comment that about the universities and police over-reacting would be acceptable, but his view was they should all be expelled since they were trespassing and then pivoted to theories about how the protests weren’t organic since they all had the same tent.
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Policing in America being unnecessary violent and chaotic is the norm in America. Its always highly unlikely that what was going to happen to college students that would be anywhere near moving the needle because the cops were too brutal. UCLA of all places.
What good does trashing the PSU library do? That’s a resource used by an incredibly diverse group of people from every imaginable background including community members with special needs.
Whatever was gained from this I sure as hell hope is bigger than whatever was gained from the 2020 protests.
The protests were kind of dumb because you either need to be better at portraying yourself as martyrs or you need to be significantly more disruptive. They didn’t learn anything from Occupy Wall Street.
it wasn’t talked about in this thread, but it was mentioned in the original. Israeli land law is a hugely controversial topic, many palestinians did not accept compensation. it would be good to understand what the laws was based on, e.g. ottoman and british law, and that it was a collective legilslative decision by elected representatives. i do not recommend clicking on everything at the top of google search, but you can probably guess those terms are driving a lot of traffic right now
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Where do you guys stand on academic boycott? I’m very biased here even more than usual as my wife is a Principal investigator in Tel Aviv University and having no scientific collaboration with other scientists and universities would be catastrophic for her career.
On the other hand all Israeli universities are partially funded by the government so they would be well with in the groups to boycott.
On the other other hand, the Israeli academia is probably one of the most important centers for protests against Netanyahu’s government and is overwhelmingly left-leaning.
On the other other other hand, even that left leaning majority would be overwhelmingly Zionist.
If BDS is a fair tactic, then an academic boycott should be fair game.
To me it seems obvious that it’s “fair game”, it’s more of a question of do you support it or not.
There are obvious drawbacks to academic boycott that are more serious than not buying Soda Stream.
OK this is really dumb of me, but isn’t a Zionist someone who thinks Israel should exist, or shouldn’t be wiped off the face of the earth?
And therefore, isn’t an anti-Zionist someone who thinks Israel should not exist?
Or is a Zionist someone who wants to expand Israel and fully occupy all the territory?
Well, yeah, but what if half the people saying it don’t understand it that way?
And actually, I don’t think in 1880 it necessarily meant a state and doesn’t necessarily mean a state for everyone now.
What are the other possible interpretations? Just Zionist = Baddie without getting deeper into it?
Many Americans I think, take it just to mean Israeli patriot. Like an Israel-Firster. Pro-settlement. Israel belongs to Jews only.
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It’s not dumb at all and i’ve been beating this drum for a while now. It’s a question that is in the core of the protests for the majority of Jewish people.
To me, and to my parents and grand parents and grand grand parents Zionism means a homeland for the Jewish people in Israel. Granted like all nationalistic movements, it has inherent racist elements in it.
Since it’s “our” term, it feels odd to have someone claim that it means something else. But that’s the reality of those who use it as a derogatory term and claim they aren’t against the existence of Israel.
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I’m indifferent. I don’t think it has a direct effect on anything, but makes sense as part of a multi-pronged effort to turn Israel into a pariah state. That’s not necessarily the direction I would go in, but I’m not going to stand in the way of it.
The goal of divestment in South Africa wasn’t to make it a pariah state, it was to pressure it to end apartheid.
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This is pretty interesting/informative imo.
Different branches of Zionism.
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