Yeah, you guys are right. All these colleges deserve to have their stuff destroyed and defaced.

Because somehow that will teach Israel not to commit genocide if I write "GAZA" on all the library computer monitors and break all the windows.

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CountScrofula · 41-45, M

Israel is bankrolled by the united states. The US has the power to immediately put a stop to the mass slaughter of civilians. It is, however, highly reluctant to do so for all sorts of political reasons.

Protest in a democracy is a protected right because it is one of the most powerful forms of direct democracy and one of the first things that is shut down in an authoritarian regime. Protests genuinely do work, even if it may be a lot of just creating an atmosphere that affects policy decisions.

An unruly and angry citizenry who are taking to the streets and not being good little worker bees is a major impediment to the operation of the state. Therefore, this will motivate the state to change its policy.

Notably, the point is not to convince people, or to win some popularity contest with onlookers. It's to make the status quo intolerable.

Students are young, political, and tend to be the forefront of any protest movement, and colleges are where they do their thing.

The Vietnam war protests are probably the closest comparison in living memory.

Burnley123 · 41-45, M

@CountScrofula Absolutely. There is a reason that the French have better state pensions than Brits and Americans. Voting for 'good people," can only do so much.

LordShadowfire · 100+, M

I guess I must have missed the part of the First Amendment that calls breaking and entering and destruction of property a peaceful protest.

I'm off to go reread it.

Burnley123 · 41-45, M

@LordShadowfire I'm off to put my straw hat on. It makes me easier to knock down.

basilfawlty89 · 31-35, M

@LordShadowfire you're not really reading the room here, mate. Are a few broken windows and occupation of a building worse then that dead Palestinian kids?

LordShadowfire · 100+, M

@Burnley123 @basilfawlty89 Quite literally nobody is saying that the destruction of windows and computers or the prevention of students from being able to study is worse than what's actually happening in Palestine. The two of you are talking about straw men while playing with one of your own.

Didn't your mothers ever tell you two wrongs don't make a right? If I'm angry that Netanyahu is not being stopped from following his current psycho path, should I go down and torch my local Walmart? It would get attention.

basilfawlty89 · 31-35, M

@LordShadowfire I understand your argument, but as I said before, the US government is making peaceful protest impossible.

Take what happened with BDS. You can't even boycott Israeli goods peacefully. Whereas as a consumer, what you buy and where you buy it from should be your business.

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LordShadowfire · 100+, M

@basilfawlty89 And I'm not cool with that, either. That's fuсked up.

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Elessar · 26-30, M

@CountScrofula It is reluctant because the geopolitical equilibrium in the region is so fragile that it's extremely easy going from one shìtty (present) disastrous situation, to another equally shìtty disastrous situation, except with the roles reversed.

People on the left who believe that things will magically sort themselves out in the M.E. by simply cutting funds to Israel are about as rooted in reality as the people on the right who believe the POTUS has a magic knob in the oval office to control pump prices, or a button to seal shut the US-Mex border.

It's plain and simple populism, selling easy solutions for complicated problems, and getting people enraged when said solutions aren't implemented. And the lesson from this last decade is that it's demonstrably effective.

LordShadowfire · 100+, M

@Elessar Well, I have to say, cutting funds to Israel would have the same effect as cutting funds to Ukraine did when Trump did it. As in, they have less money for weapons to continue doing bad things to Palestine. That's a start, don't you think?

Elessar · 26-30, M

@LordShadowfire Ideally, in a vacuum in which Israel was the only regional power in the ME, at most. In reality, it would have a series of consequences for both countries that the US/west would rather avoid, starting from giving Iran (and proxies) an advantage and clear signal that Israel would now be on its own.

More than cutting funds I think they should be curtailed similarly to how aids for Ukraine were also curtailed: for instance, the HIMARS were given at the condition they couldn't be used to hit targets in Russian land. Actually enforcing that is another problem, however. But still better going by steps than abruptly changing the geopolitical equilibrium of the region, I suppose.