From Matt Yglesias: Israel, Palestine, and the need for principled free speech

Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

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126 Responses

  1. Jaybird says:

    The whole essay is pretty good.

    I disagree with quite a lot and snorted in a couple of places but I’m sure that everywhere I disagreed/snorted would get MattY to say “that wasn’t the point of the essay”.

    It’s worth reading the whole thing.Report

  2. InMD says:

    There is something procedurally wrong with a public college or university declaring itself a leftist institution.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to InMD says:

      I mean, if it’s *TRUE*, there shouldn’t be a problem with saying it.

      Denial of it is probably bad for everybody involved.Report

    • Marchmaine in reply to InMD says:

      Agreed. [Edit: wrt Public Scools]

      The anxiety over the Ivies is the slow realization that a sort of bestowed Public Imprimatur Gateway to Merit has abandoned the ‘truce’ of Public Institutions. Which, I hasten to add is their ‘right’ as fallen seminaries.

      Once we abandon the shared illusion we can write them out of our gatekeeping program and free up new institutional projects. It still stings a little for folks invested in the old narrative though.

      This was basically the point of Douthat’s last column.Report

      • InMD in reply to Marchmaine says:

        They have more skin in it than one might think, or at least will as long as they want their students to be able to pay with federally backed financial aid. Not that I really have a problem with kicking them out of gatekeeping. But think for example about that situation where Trump had (IIRC) Princeton investigated for some overwrought statement about the institution being invested with white supremacy. Point being if they’re going to get government backed money they can be required to play by a lot of the same rules as a condition. And so they should be.Report

    • Greg In Ak in reply to InMD says:

      Has any Uni officially declared themselves “leftist’? That would be a very stupid thing to do and wrong.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Greg In Ak says:

        “Leftist”? Surely not.

        “Progressive”? Hrm.Report

      • InMD in reply to Greg In Ak says:

        I am responding to the excerpt.

        I strongly doubt any official university spokesperson has said that but it seems clear that a number of institutions, particularly the Ivies and private SLACs, and also at least parts of public colleges and universities are governing themselves as such. What Matt Y is saying is that it would be better if they just officially said that’s what they were doing, and implicitly, accept the consequences of that choice. Currently there is a bit of trying to have it both ways, where they demand the credibility and deference of the establishment and at the same time operate according to the ethos of the radical. It just doesn’t work.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to InMD says:

          Yeah. If we wanted to do a search for “most progressive universities” or “most progressive SLACs”, we’d get a decent list with an explanation of what their criteria was and why each institution on the list got placed where it did.

          “But they haven’t *SAID* that they’re progressive!” might be a good defense, I guess.

          Denial, in the long term, isn’t healthy.Report

        • Greg In Ak in reply to InMD says:

          They might be running their PR depts like that up until this crisis. But that is about it. Uni’s are run far more like big bushiness with to many VP’s then anything else. I”m sure most will, very correctly, learn that every org, uni and social club doesn’t need statements on every breaking news event. Which would be good for them. But “leftism”? At most performative statements. Which is very leftist in the current US sense fwiw.Report

          • InMD in reply to Greg In Ak says:

            It’s certainly a very particularized version of ‘leftism’ that is ironically also heavily infused with very American forms of ethnocentrism and consumerism. Which I certainly concede would come off as very weird and probably not even left wing at all to left wing radicals in I dunno the 30s or even the 60s. But I’m passed the ‘there’s nothing happening, nothing to see here.’ There is. Anecdotally I was just in Germany for a few days and unprompted heard some complaints about the latest wave of dumb sh*t we’re exporting to them. As a rule they are about 10-12 years behind us culturally on this kind of stuff.Report

      • North in reply to Greg In Ak says:

        Heck, Fox News calls itself “Fair and Balanced”.Report

    • Chip Daniels in reply to InMD says:

      How about “Classically Liberal” or “Champions of the Enlightenment”?

      Are those too controversial?Report

      • InMD in reply to Chip Daniels says:

        Those are fine.Report

      • Brandon Berg in reply to Chip Daniels says:

        Depends on what you mean by those. If you mean taking positions on specific object-level policy questions, I’d rather they not. What I want from universities is dedication to political neutrality, open inquiry, and high standards of intellectual and scientific rigor. I suspect that the main cause of universities becoming cesspits of left-wing lunacy is relaxing standards of rigor. There are entire academic fields that can only exist in anything like their current forms because nobody in a position to do anything about it is checking their work.

        Yes, I understand that enforcing this stuff is hard. But we should at least be trying.

        Yes, I even think they should refrain from taking positions like “genocide is bad.” We don’t need university administrators to weigh in on the question of whether genocide is good. These are people whose favorite thing in the world is racial discrimination. They don’t have any special insight, and they don’t have any special moral authority.Report

  3. Brandon Berg says:

    I think there are a lot of fair rejoinders to this centered on the fact that the people organizing chants and rallies seem to have expended approximately zero effort thinking through how exactly this is supposed to work.

    You can just plug this as is into any political essay.Report

  4. LeeEsq says:

    I know the focus is on using the I/P conflict to talk about the parameters of free speech but Yglesias should focus more on the difference between Pro-Palestinian advocates in the West vs. the Muslim world. Pro-Palestinian advocates in the West might think the end goal is for a United secular democratic country in that area but Pro-Palestinian Muslims see Palestine as part of the Muslim world and want it to be a Muslim country connected to other Muslim countries.Report

  5. Chip Daniels says:

    His essay seems incoherent, like he is struggling to reconcile a free speech stance without actually coming to terms with what that means.

    He references the Chicago Statement which states:
    In a word, the University’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed. It is for the individual members of the University community, not for the University as an institution, to make those judgments for themselves, and to act on those judgments not by seeking to suppress speech, but by openly and vigorously
    contesting the ideas that they oppose.

    But he also states:
    Most university campuses did not greet the initial Hamas attack on Israeli civilians with the kind of ponderous “statement” that schools have been issuing more and more of in response to noteworthy world events. That prompted backlash from many Jewish alumni who felt a pogrom in southern Israel deserved the full George Floyd treatment. Of course, the reason universities didn’t want to do that is there is a lot of political disagreement about the larger context of the conflict. But — and here’s the point — there’s actually lots of political disagreement about police misconduct and racism and all this other stuff, too.

    The actual difference is that universities were comfortable taking the progressive side of contested political issues and that was inappropriate.

    Wait, what?

    It is inappropriate for a university to pick a side of a “contested political issue”??

    Isn’t the UN resolution affirming Israel’s right to exist, a “contested political issue” position on which the university should remain neutral?

    And isn’t the “River to the sea” position also “contested political issue”?

    So according to his logic, eliminationist even genocidal positions are things upon which the university should remain studiously neutral.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      I think the argument is “the students can take that position, it’s inappropriate for the university (as an institution) to do so”.

      “Students for Palestine” can release a letter saying some dumb crap. Same for “Students for Israel”.

      It wouldn’t be appropriate for Fair Harvard to write a similar letter to what either student group would have written and release it as the position of the university.

      As I understand the argument.Report

      • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

        More sidestepping and evasion.

        Should the university be neutral, or unambiguously take a position on Enlightenment values even if they are a “contested political issue”?

        This is a hard question and no longer a gauzy hypothetical. There are prominent people currently who reject the concept of democracy and freedom and advocate for a return to autocracy and theocracy.

        Should a university reject these people and refuse to give them a platform? Should it punish or expel those who promote it?

        Matt Yglesias suggest that the university welcome these people in the spirit of “open debate”.

        But he isn’t willing to say so.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

          Wait, are we talking about “giving them a platform” or are we talking about “the university taking a position”?

          Because I could see that it would be appropriate to allow Students who support Israel/Palestine to invite speakers (and allow peaceful sign-holding protests in front of the venues) while, at the same time, being inappropriate to send out a letter where they say that they are in complete agreement with Students For Israel/Palestine.Report

          • InMD in reply to Jaybird says:

            Yea, I think there can be a lot of making these questions more difficult than they really are. Which shouldn’t be construed as me saying that there has never in the history of the world been a difficult decision about where to draw the line. Just that once you accept the law of sticks and stones 98% of these controversies evaporate.

            I recall back at Big State Flagship which was a very liberal place in a very liberal part of a very liberal state. There would periodically be demonstrations by anti abortion activists featuring, billboard size, graphic medical pictures of late term abortions. There was never any official comment on this and there was no need for there to be.Report

            • Chip Daniels in reply to InMD says:

              Didn’t you just get finished saying a university should take a position in favor of “Classically Liberal” positions?

              Like if a professor writes a book arguing for an unelected dictator, would it be wrong for the university to deny him tenure because his views clashed with their position?

              The argument that there is a difference between private action and public doesn’t really work in all cases either.

              Here, I’ll let Matt himself explain:
              But suppose you’re not an Israel-hater and don’t spend your time plugged into anti-Israel content and your general inclination is to have confidence in the IDF’s ethics. Well, how would know if you ever turned out to be wrong about this and Israel did commit war crimes? Presumably someone who is not you would notice the war crimes and point them out, and you’d hear about it second-hand and be skeptical at first and then hear about it from someone else and look into it in more detail and find out that the person you heard about it from was right. This doesn’t work very well if everyone’s understanding is that talking about Israeli war crimes is a career-ender.

              Huh. So if you’re a student and your future employer withdraws an offer of employment in a career-killing move, is that OK or not?

              What I’m trying to do here is present you with a case in which you admit that yes, sometimes we should punish people for transgressing norms on viewpoints.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Like if a professor writes a book arguing for an unelected dictator, would it be wrong for the university to deny him tenure because his views clashed with their position?

                See, I thought we were building up to “remove his tenure”.

                As it is, it’s just a boring old employment question and whether it’s possible to make oneself unhireable.

                So if you’re a student and your future employer withdraws an offer of employment in a career-killing move, is that OK or not?

                According to what?

                The norms of the university or according to what the norms of the university ought to be or according to the norms of the business out in the real world that is doing the hiring?

                Because I have two different answers for that.

                And, lemme tell ya, if the university had broad (nigh-Chicago) speech norms, it’d be easier to argue for their graduates being able to enjoy them.

                Instead of something like “stacking the deck” based on who/whom.Report

              • InMD in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                I think that’s an inaccurate understanding of what classical liberal principles are. To put it simply I don’t have a problem with a professor criticizing democracy of making statements in support of other forms of government. I have a problem with the university in its official capacity endorsing those specific views and punishing people who make statements different from whatever the endorsed view is.

                People as individuals can do what they want. I’m talking about institutions which when run by the government needs to operate under certain principles of neutrality.

                Private employers can do what they want but I’ve been generally against singling out these students in particular.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to InMD says:

                That’s fine, its a sort of very expansive view of legally protected speech while also being a very narrow view of privately protected speech.

                But let’s be clear- operating under this sort of framework, a university would not be able punish an actual Holocaust denier or avowed neo-Na.zi.

                But by the same framework, a large employer could fire anyone for any sort of DEI violation no matter how absurd and Twitter or a webhosting company can throttle or hide conservative comments or anti-vax comments.

                But I come back to Matt’s comment about the climate of fear that’s created when talking about certain things becomes a career-ending event.

                Allowing private actors to “do what they want” means allowing unpopular opinions no protection except the very narrowest legality.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                But by the same framework, a large employer could fire anyone for any sort of DEI violation no matter how absurd and Twitter or a webhosting company can throttle or hide conservative comments or anti-vax comments.

                But this has happened.

                And now we’re in a place where someone else’s ox is getting gored.

                To the point where even “Accountability Culture” afficionados are saying “wait, but I only wanted this to happen to *BAD* people!”Report

              • CJCOLUCCI in reply to Jaybird says:

                “Now”?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to CJCOLUCCI says:

                Yeah. People from *HARVARD* are getting denied jobs. Harvard!

                Did you see the New Yorker essay about it?

                If you haven’t, you’re in for a treat. Here’s the concluding paragraph:

                In the end, they’d decided against publishing the op-ed or identifying themselves publicly. As of this Wednesday, Accuracy in Media had exposed students further by setting up Web sites under their names; the truck returned to campus, and student protesters surrounded it, trying to block the displayed faces with their own signage. “Everyone we have organized with is scared and doesn’t want another piece that will give more attention to naming and shaming,” Yara said. Yasmeen had a job lined up after graduation, and her boyfriend had warned her not to risk jeopardizing it. For some students, one lesson of the previous week was that their position in an élite institution didn’t offer the protection they imagined it would. Instead, it had made them targets. Still, the women spoke hopefully about the potential of collective action to help bring justice to Palestinians. “If people would band together, it would take the power out,” Yara said. “Because you can’t fire seven hundred Harvard students. It would be a scandal. That’s a privilege we have.”

                Report

              • CJCoIucci in reply to Jaybird says:

                Point. Miss.Report

              • InMD in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                It could certainly go that way but it’s also why I advocate for a culture that can take it in stride that there are people out there with weird, crazy, stupid, or downright ugly beliefs and who make statements about them at times. I can concede you’re right that having a strong social stigma against certain ideas and arguments is not inherently the end of the liberal project, particularly when clear, narrowly construed, and there is a lot of evidence that the specific ones in question lead to very bad places. But overall we are better off when people can mostly say what they want without risking severe consequences. The presumption should be very strongly in favor of the latter, and the fact that there’s some truth to the former isn’t a case for constructing huge webs of taboos based around abstract, hypothetical harms. We need a society that can talk through things not one where everyone is walking on egg shells.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to InMD says:

                MattY had this great line in his essay: “a culture that encourages people to cultivate their own sense of subjective fragility in order to silence enemies.”Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to InMD says:

                Right, which means a culture which establishes boundaries on what speech is protected and what speech is not.

                Meaning that a liberal tolerant culture does, can, and should at times punish speech which falls outside the protected zone.Report

              • InMD in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                No, I think that’s a motte and bailey. The motte is the argument that certain ideas are so bad that it’s fair to apply harsh social consequences to those expressing them. The bailey is that we should have a massive web of taboos, based around abstract theoretical harms. The motte is IMO not so much a good thing as it is an inevitable thing, and I simply don’t agree with they bailey. At absolute best the motte is the exceptions that prove the rule that we should have as few such things as possible, not that making ideas taboo is great and we should attempt to impose as many taboos as we can in an effort to establish our preferred vision of society.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to InMD says:

                The boundary between a motte and a bailey is just a constantly shifting, negotiated location.

                What you might see as a theoretical harm, others see as very real, and vice versa.

                There isn’t some objective “Harm” molecule that everyone can agree on.

                So while I agree we should limit censorship as much as possible, it still needs to happen and we need to be honest about that.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                “This particular instance of censorship is wrong.”
                “Well, we have to have *SOME* censorship.”
                “But this particular instance of censorship is wrong.”
                “You can’t just allow people to say whatever they want, though.”
                “But *THIS* particular instance of censorship is *WRONG*!”
                “Free Speech Absolutism is a non-starter.”

                How’s this? “Nobody is arguing for free speech absolutism.”Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                Yes.
                We need to argue each instance of censorship on their own terms.

                If you think a particular instance is wrong, you need to persuade people why, not just yell “CENSORSHIP!”Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Sure. Let me just point to everything InMD said.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                Wouldn’t you rather point to your own posts, about the new McCarthyism in Hollywood?

                We are reaching a place where taking the pro-Hamas side of an argument can be a career-ending decision.

                Is *THIS* particular instance of censorship *WRONG*?

                You tell me.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Well, since the original topic was “The actual difference is that universities were comfortable taking the progressive side of contested political issues and that was inappropriate” (your emphasis), I’d be fine with talking about the whole issue of whether universities should take particular sides of contested political issues rather than the much thornier question of “should employers be allowed to not hire people”.

                (But, for what it’s worth, I do think that employers should be allowed to not hire people.)Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                Ok so Ron DeSantis has ordered Florida universities to take the anti-Palestinian side of a contested political issue.

                Is *THIS* particular instance of censorship *WRONG*?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Oh, I think that that’s completely inappropriate!

                Do *YOU* think that that’s within the bounds of the censorship you’re arguing for?

                “Well, since no one is arguing for free speech absolutism, I guess Ron DeSantis is doing the right thing here”?Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                In this instance, I think it is outside the bounds of what is appropriate.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                But surely you think that there should be *SOME* limits!!!Report

              • kelly1mm in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                “The pro-Hamas side” You mean the Hamas that has been designated a terrorist entity by the US government? That SHOULD be career-ending decision if one supports them.Report

  6. PD Shaw says:

    I generally agree with Yglesias’ take, but it overlooks that there are a lot of educated people saying vile things like the 30ish y.o. lawyer praising Hitler’s use of gas chambers to exterminate Jews as part of the discourse about the Hamas hospital. If we are going to have open dialogue, it should include where did something like that come from? I don’t believe she was born that way, her views are a product of her environment and what exactly is that environment? Her college experience is probably the most important factor. “In America, Jews feel very comfortable, but there are islands of anti-Semitism: the American college campus.” —Natan Sharansky (2005).Report

  7. Saul Degraw says:

    We treat university students weirdly in this country. On the one hand, they are technically legal adults. On the other hand, they often get treated like older teenagers because they are older teenagers. I don’t think our society has any good or consistent rules on when we treat college students like adults and when we treat them like teenagers who still have a lot to learn. Neurologically, we have known for a while that the brain continues to develop until people are 25 or so.

    My college had plenty of heated debates including on Israel and Palestine. The big difference was that I attended graduated from college 21 years ago and negative polarization existed but not to the current extreme. Social media was largely not a thing and there was nothing like the influencer/hot take/sub stack/partisan warfare economy.Report

    • LeeEsq in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      There are also seems to be a generational difference beyond social media and decolonization. There were a lot more suicide bombings and the Palestinians seemed more equally matched. 9/11 was also in our senior year and the events that led to the great awokening did not occur yet. Time was close enough to the Holocaust for Jews to be more in the not white category.Report

  8. Jaybird says:

    If we’re looking for tough edge cases on the whole free speech thing, Assistant Professor Shai Davidai from Colombia University gives a great one.

    Here’s him giving a speech on the quad:

    I’m sure that you won’t be surprised to hear that this speech went viral.

    Well, two days ago, he tweeted out about having given the speech and his thread also went viral. You can read the thread for yourself here but I’ll reprint it here locally so you don’t have to click through (his thread has a handful of errors like mixing up “know” and “now” and, inexcusably, uses the phrase “could care less”… I won’t clean the errors up).

    Here’s his thread:

    I am an assistant professor at Columbia Business School. I am a father, a husband, an uncle, and a son. I am a forty-year-old man, and last week I found myself crying in front of a group of complete strangers.

    In a video that has since gone viral, I stood on Columbia University’s main campus and pleaded with my employer to protect me and help me protect the thousands of Jewish students whose lives and safety have been entrusted to us by worried parents all across the United States.

    I pleaded with my employer to help me protect the lives of thousands of Jewish students from pro-terror student organizations who openly laud Hamas—an internationally recognized terrorist organization.

    I pleaded with the presidents of colleges and universities all around the country to take a clear moral stance against rape and torture and the kidnapping of helpless civilians.

    I pleaded with colleges and universities to live up to their stated mission of humanism and enlightenment. I pleaded—and still plead—because the silence of college presidents all across the country is deafening.

    I am not tenured. I could be fired for this.

    But if my research into behavioral psychology has taught me anything, it’s that looking back on my life, I am more likely to regret not taking a stance.

    I can’t afford not to take a stance.

    Not when students’ lives are on the line.

    Not when my children’s lives are on the line.

    My children may be American citizens, but, through their mother and me, they are Israelis, too.

    And because they are Israelis, because they are Jews, I fear for them.

    I fear for my two-year-old daughter, who’s funny and brave and thinks everyone in the world is her friend.

    I fear for my seven-year-old son, who still asks me to sit next to his bed for a few minutes every night when I tuck him into bed.

    I fear, because there are student organizations on my own campus who see my beautiful children as legitimate targets.

    I fear, because the president of my university—my very own employer—refuses to speak up against such senseless violence and hatred.

    Let’s call this what it is.

    This is cowardice.

    I see my son’s and daughter’s faces in the faces of the hundreds of innocent children and teenagers who were murdered, tortured, raped, brutalized, and kidnapped on October 7th.

    For Hamas and its supporters, those children are acceptable targets.

    And right now, in colleges and universities all across the country, there are hundreds of pro-terror student organizations that are celebrating these vile crimes against humanity.

    This is what the President of Columbia is refusing to condemn. This is what the President of Harvard is refusing to condemn. This is what the Presidents of Yale and NYU and UC Berkeley and many other “enlightened” institutions throughout the country are refusing to condemn.

    They would never allow student organizations to celebrate the senseless loss of life in the horrific attacks of 9/11.

    They would never allow student organizations to celebrate the horrific murder of George Floyd.

    They would never allow student organizations to celebrate the mass shooting of more than 100 LGBTQ+ people in an Orlando nightclub on June 12, 2016.

    And yet, when it comes to Jewish lives—when it comes to my own children’s lives—they could care less.

    Let me be as clear as I can:

    This is not about being pro-Israel or pro-Palestine.

    This is about making a clear distinction between legitimate resistance and unspeakable crimes against humanity.

    This is about human decency.

    You can support the rights of millions of innocent Palestinians and still take a moral stance against heinous violence and brutality.

    I know, because I do.

    You can spend your adult life advocating for the establishment of a prosperous Palestinian state next to a prosperous Israeli state and still be willing to draw the line at rape.

    I now, because I do.

    You can be a lefty and a softy who can’t fathom why we can’t just end this senseless cycle of violence yet still shout at the top of your lungs that shooting babies in their cribs and burning their corpses is just plain evil.

    Plain plain evil.

    I now, because I am and I do.

    You can be pro-Israel and pro-Palestine and anti-terror.

    I know, because I am.

    Parents from all across the country have reached out to me in the past week asking if their kids are safe.

    Thousands of worried parents who have been losing sleep as they see their children’s campuses rampaged by extremist organizations that openly celebrate and encourage terrorism.

    Thousands of moms and dads who only want to make sure that their children are protected from harm.

    To all those parents, I reply:

    No. Your children are not safe.

    Because, as a professor, I can tell you that universities across the country would rather appease pro-terror campus coalitions than care for their Jewish students.

    Because, as a professor, I can tell you that the presidents of universities all across the U.S. are more concerned with getting bad press than with getting your children home safely.

    What sort of education is your child getting at a place that refuses to condemn terror-sympathizing organizations and allows them to roam freely on campus?

    What sort of education is your child getting at a place that gives a platform and a mix to organizations that celebrate the execution of infants in their cribs?

    The raping of teenagers?

    The kidnapping of toddlers?

    The moral and intellectual bankruptcy of universities throughout the country is now undeniable.

    But I know that if we all work together we can make a real difference.

    This is not about me. I’m not some leader. I’m just a dad.

    I’m just a dad who is scared and who is willing to put EVERYTHING on the line to protect his children.

    Many of you have reached out in the past days, and your messages have brought me immense light into a very dark time.

    I am so extremely inspired by the stories people have been sending me.

    People are telling me about the committees they’ve formed and the PTAs they’ve joined and the politicans they’ve called and TV and radio shows to which they have called-in, demanding that their voice be heard.

    People have written to me about stopping their annual donations to their alma mater until it takes a clear stance against pure evil.

    Until it takes a clear stance against those who celebrate pure evil.

    If you want to get in touch and let me know about all that you have, are, and will be doing at your job, school, alma mater, neighborhood, and so forth, please email me at:

    shaidavidai2023@gmail.com

    Please help me spread this message.

    PLEASE SHARE THIS WITH AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN.

    (.gif saying “Pro-Israel Pro-Palestine Anti-Terror”)

    One more thing — If you have read thus far, I imagine that it must be because you are someone who cares deeply about this.

    So I have a small request:

    If every person who read thus far personally sent this to at least 10 of their friends RIGHT NOW and asked those friends to send this to 10 of their friends, I know that we will be able to make a big difference in the world. I truly do.

    (and if I’m wrong well, hey at least we will all know that in this time of crisis we did everything that we could).

    I know it’s weird, but can I please ask you to email this to all your friends and post it on all your social media profiles?

    I really just want the message to get through.

    Thank you!

    So. This is a *LOT* thornier.

    Instead of asking colleges to take a stand on the whole Israel/Palestine thing, is it inappropriate to ask that colleges take a stand on the October 7th Kinetic Decolonialism Incident? Specifically, to say that the acts that took place during it were wrong (if not evil)?Report

    • Chip Daniels w in reply to Jaybird says:

      This is why the whole “neutrality on contested political issues” fails.

      Should the university condemn every killing of civilians as evil?

      Or just some?

      Is there a metric you’d like to suggest they use to separate one from another?

      What if the very question of evil is a contested political issue?Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels w says:

        The continuum fallacy (also known as the fallacy of the beard, line-drawing fallacy, or decision-point fallacy) is an informal fallacy related to the sorites paradox. Both fallacies cause one to erroneously reject a vague claim simply because it is not as precise as one would like it to be.

        In a nutshell, the fallacy of the beard says something like a guy with a big beard has a big beard, and a guy who is clean-shaven does not have a beard… but a guy with stubble shouldn’t be said to have a beard… and a guy with stubble a little bit longer doesn’t have a beard…

        SO DOES THE GUY WHO WE THOUGHT HAD A BIG BEARD REALLY HAVE A BEARD AT ALL?!?

        If you can’t draw the line as to where “stubble” ends and where a “beard” begins, you’ve got a problem!

        The general rejoinder to this is something like “But that guy does have a big beard.”

        And the question is whether the murder of babies and the rapes of teenagers meets the standard for being willing to call it out as “evil”.

        Even if it is, technically, “punching up”.Report

        • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

          The argument of the beard doesnt apply very well but if used,, supports my contention.
          It states that there are two obvious ends and an indeterminate middle.

          First, very few cases of “evil” are ever obvious by my example of the American government deliberately incinerating women and children many times over.

          Second, even accepting that the Hamas attack was an obvious end, asking a university to be neutral for indeterminate cases but speak out in obvious cases literally demands they draw a line and have some defensible rationale for distinguishing a beard from stubble.

          Otherwise you’re just issuing a subjective opinion and calling it an objective fact.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

            Oh, I misunderstood. I thought that the Hamas attack was obviously evil.

            If it isn’t, could you provide an example of a guy with a big beard, if that event was still just stubble by your estimation?Report

            • rexknobus in reply to Jaybird says:

              Well, can you define what “obvious evil” is? Is it context sensitive? Can BSDI? I voluntarily participated in a a vicious, unjust war — how much evil am I smeared with? A stubble? A beard? Other than rousing public opinion, just how useful is the word “evil”?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to rexknobus says:

                Does “evil” even exist, then?

                I am willing to run with “it doesn’t”, for the record.

                Something like “‘Evil’ is a category error”, maybe.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                There’s about a couple thousand years of philosophers trying to answer that question.

                Can we produce Good by doing Evil?

                The consensus answer is Yes, Actually.

                Killing a few innocent women and children in pursuit of a larger Good is fully justified UNDER CERTAIN HIGHLY SUBJECTIVE CONDITIONS UPON WHICH REASONABLE PEOPLE OFTEN DISAGREE.

                I had to yell the last part because its been explained to you several times.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Okay. “Necessary Evil” at least acknowledges the existence of evil.

                I’m willing to assume that evil exists.

                Okay, killing children can sometimes be okay, though a necessary evil. If you’re punching up, maybe.

                What about raping teenagers? That was mentioned as well.

                Are there circumstances under which raping teenagers is pretty complicated and shouldn’t be condemned as an obvious evil?

                Because the explicit example that we’re discussing here: Hamas’s actions on October 7th. That is the example that we’re discussing here and that the professor was talking about.Report

              • rexknobus in reply to Jaybird says:

                So the adjective “Necessary” gives “Evil” some kind of stature? Surely at least one approach to defining the Big E would be to acknowledge that the action or philosophy in question is unnecessary. (And then try to define what “necessary” might mean in context).Report

              • Jaybird in reply to rexknobus says:

                It certainly moves us from “does it even exist?” to “okay, it exists, but we don’t know if we can properly categorize this particular thing into it”.

                This particular thing is Hamas on October 7th.

                The examples I gave was the whole killing infants/raping teenagers thing.

                Chip points out, hey, sometimes you kill babies.

                Fair enough. Maybe October 7th was Hamas’s Dresden. Dresdens happen, we’ve established.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                I think everyone here is in agreement that the Hamas attack failed to meet any of the justifications for necessary evil.

                Further, I agree with the guy you posted asking the university to condemn it unequivocally.

                Even further, I think universities should feel free to take positions on contentious political issues when they are grave and touch on the core values of university which as we all have repeatedly said, are to uphold the Enlightenment values of human rights.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Do you think that you’re going out on a limb by saying that?

                Like, are you normally surrounded by people who would disagree with you?

                To that point, are universities failing if they’re putting out a sizeable number of people who disagree with you on this (who, by the way, were taught by other people who disagree with you on this)?Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                No, yes, and no.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                You’re normally surrounded by people who would disagree that the Hamas attack failed to meet any of the justifications for necessary evil?

                Dang, dude.

                Well, I hope they’re cool otherwise. Good cooks, maybe.

                (And, for the record, I think that universities are failing in, like, *MULTIPLE* areas. This is one of the ones that I expect is particularly egregious.)Report

    • Damon in reply to Jaybird says:

      Seems like this guy only wants others to take a stand. He pleads for others to take action to do a variety of stuff. Where is he taking action, other than complaining that others are not doing what he thinks they should do?

      If he finds his employers actions so terrible, why doesn’t he quit?Report

  9. LeeEsq says:

    What bothers me a lot about the current moment is that very few to none of the Pro-Palestinian Westerners or Muslims can seem to bring themselves to say anything even slightly critical of Hamas or offer any solace to Israeli Jews or Jews in general on the Simchat Torah massacre. Either they outwardly praise it or don’t mention it all and put up their pro-Palestinian icons and memes without any co text as if Israel decided to launch an invasion of Gaza for no reasons. It is very disgusting and rather anti-Semitic to do this. They do not bend, twist, or change in anyway at anytime and reflect upon the enormity of what they have done.Report

    • Pinky in reply to LeeEsq says:

      I’m sorry if I keep pushing back against your comments, but I just don’t see how you could expect people under 25 or so to debate in shades of grey. They’ve never seen it modeled. They might not even believe in objective truth. And they believe that their own passion grants righteousness.Report

  10. Saul Degraw says:

    “FREE PALE STEIN!” Come on, let him out, he is starting to get a Vitamin D deficiency. Let him go to the park. The vandalism is bad and horrible but incompetent graffiti taggers are funny: https://missionlocal.org/2023/10/smitten-jewish-owned-ice-creamery-vandalized-tagged-with-pro-palestinian-graffiti/Report

  11. LeeEsq says:

    Pro-Palestinian students project messages glorifying Hamas on the exterior of the Gilman Library at GWU:

    https://gwhatchet.com/2023/10/25/students-project-anti-israel-anti-gw-messages-onto-library-sparking-outcry/Report

    • DavidTC in reply to LeeEsq says:

      …which of those message glorify Hamas? Here are the ones listed in the article:

      “GW is complicit in genocide in Gaza,” “Your tuition is funding genocide in Gaza” and “President Granberg is complicit in genocide in Gaza.” … “Divestment from Zionist genocide now.”

      It appears these statements are accusing Israel of genocide.

      …which is, of course, exactly what a lot of people are calling ‘glorifying Hamas’.

      Oh, is it “Glory to our martyrs,”? You do know that martyr just means, to quote Wikipedia, ‘someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an external party’. So pretending that message means ‘The Hamas fighters who invaded Israel who are mostly still alive (And thus by definition cannot be martyrs)’ instead of ‘The innocent people who are dying in Gaza due to their religion’ that all the other messages being projected are talking about is…certainly an interesting interpretation.

      It really is weird how somehow the American public has decided that the word ‘martyrs’ means something entirely different every time Arabs say it than when, for example, Catholics say it, despite the fact the word means exactly the same thing most of the time, and certainly _does_ require people to be dead, so no one would possible be talking about the Hamas invaders (who, again, are mostly alive).

      There are parts of Islam, the parts trying to drag people into terrorist, that have latched on to the idea of ‘suicide martyrdom’, but what Hamas did doesn’t qualify under that _either_. They did not go into Israel intending to die…you can’t intend to die and take hostages in the same mission! That’s specifically suicide bombers, which Hamas has sometimes done, but…I can’t think of any recent things they’ve done like that.

      I see it over and over again, Arabs mourning _the innocent civilians dead_ and calling them martyrs in the generally understood historic sense that seems to apply to everyone but Muslims somehow, implying they died for their beliefs and will be treated well by God, and people twisting things by claiming it was glorifying Hamas’ actions.

      You want to know if someone is glorifying Hamas’ actions? THEY WILL MENTION HAMAS. It’s a pretty easy test.Report

      • DavidTC in reply to DavidTC says:

        Feb 25, 2022: Pope Francis drew controversy when he praised martyrs from Reign of Terror. These counter-revolutionary religious fanatics part were of a group called the Order of Carmelite, which was renowned for its fervor and religious practice. The Pope, who is considered the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic religion, said they died in glorious martyrdom July 17, 1794, which he credited with helping stop the Reign of Terror ten days later, although authorities doubt this claim.

        He said their deaths, during which they were said to be chanting religious verses from their holy book, inspired others throughout they years, to find the courage for martyrdom. And as such, Pope Francis has elevated them to one of the highest position in the church, a saint.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to DavidTC says:

        Did you know that “from the River to the Sea” just means the area that people are hoping for happy people to live together in peace?

        “Jihad” means the overcoming of evil within oneself. It’s not “conquer other people”. It’s conquer *YOURSELF*.

        I don’t know where all of these misunderstandings originate.Report

        • LeeEsq in reply to Jaybird says:

          Western Pro-Palestinian people always project values on the Palestinians that the Palestinians themselves reject when asked. The Palestinians have never used the language of democratic inclusion.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to LeeEsq says:

            Hey, *I* am Pro-Palestinian. I’m just also Pro-Israeli.
            (And very, very, very anti-Hamas.)

            The Team Good manifestation of Pro-Palestinian does a good job of making people wonder about Manicheanism, though.

            I don’t think that it’s to Team Good’s benefit.Report

            • DavidTC in reply to Jaybird says:

              Hey, *I* am Pro-Palestinian. I’m just also Pro-Israeli.
              (And very, very, very anti-Hamas.)

              I mean, that is exactly the confusion going on here.

              What does ‘Glory to [Palestinian] martyrs’ mean? Who are they?

              A huge percentage of American have been trained to think ‘martyrs’ means ‘Muslim terrorists like Hamas, so they’re praising the attack on Israel!’. (Despite the fact that, as I said, martyrs literally cannot be currently alive, or at least have to currently be on a suicide mission…and almost all those Hamas soldiers got out alive from what we know, and none of that was a suicide mission.)

              The people _saying_ the words are probably talking about ‘People who died in the current war for the survival of Palestine people’. They might even mean to include some Hamas dead, I don’t know! Maybe even the ones that died in the invasion, who knows? But we can’t just _assume_ that.

              As I said, if someone wants to praise Hamas, there is actually a really specific word you can use to make sure people know who you are talking about, and that word is ‘Hamas’. It’s why we _have_ proper nouns, so we can clearly disambiguate references to specific entities instead of just vague terms. Or they could reference the invasion, or the hostages, or all sorts of things.

              Instead it’s a bunch of references to the genocide of Palestinian at Israeli hands, and…a reference to Palestinian martyrs, which we should probably interpret to mean _the same thing as everything else they said_, the people being genocided. Like, we have a lot of context clues here as to what they are talking about.

              But as LeeEsq just demonstrated, there are plenty of people who think the word Palestinian is the same as the word Hamas, which logically means any complaints about dead Palestinians are complaints about dead Hamas members.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to DavidTC says:

                But if someone said “Hamas”, that would force some people to defend Hamas and that would be a bridge too far for some.

                But if they talked about “our glorious martyrs”, we could be treated to the subtle nuances of language theory by people who are not defending Hamas, how dare you.

                “Martyr” doesn’t even necessarily mean “death”. Maybe it means “consequence culture”, have you ever considered that?

                Of course you haven’t.Report

              • DavidTC in reply to Jaybird says:

                Again: Instead it’s a bunch of references to the genocide of Palestinian at Israeli hands, and…a reference to Palestinian martyrs, which we should probably interpret to mean _the same thing as everything else they said_, the people being genocided.

                Literally nothing they put up was about the invasion or anything Hamas was doing, why would they have _exactly one phrase_ otherwise?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to DavidTC says:

                For propaganda reasons?

                I mean, if you were going to kill a handful of infants and rape a handful of teenagers… what phrases would you want to stick in the minds of your most ardent defenders?

                It’d probably be something about “the big picture” or references to some deep relationship to some much deeper reality.

                God knows, if you pay attention to the surface stuff, you’d leave your defenders with limp defenses like “they’re just trying to get a reaction!” or some crap like that.Report

              • DavidTC in reply to Jaybird says:

                what phrases would you want to stick in the minds of your most ardent defenders?

                You. Would. Point. At. The. Active. Ongoing. Genocide. By. Israel.

                You know, the thing repeatedly referenced!

                Why the hell would you stick something in there about what Hamas did that started it! Why would you remind anyone of that?!

                Your conspiracy theory doesn’t even make sense.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to DavidTC says:

                Man, I imagine that the go-proed stuff at the Kibbutz would really get in the way.

                I mean the whole “THEY’RE TRYING TO GET YOU TO REACT!” stuff that was playing to the cheap seats would probably overshadow the stuff that followed after.

                “Why the hell would you stick something in there about what Hamas did that started it!”

                I mean, if the stuff was egregious enough that its most ardent defenders could only appeal to how it was specifically intended to get a reaction, I think that that that would, itself!, make a good reason to put in in there.

                That’s the problem with doing stuff deliberately to get attention, after all.Report

              • DavidTC in reply to Jaybird says:

                I just spent 15 seconds searching on Twitter, and found a thread about this: https://twitter.com/zayoncerry/status/1718194471152529888Report

              • Jaybird in reply to DavidTC says:

                Yeah, maybe the people who are yelling “Glory to our Martyrs!” are talking about the people who die with bedsores or a stomach disease.

                You can’t prove that they aren’t!Report

              • DavidTC in reply to Jaybird says:

                Or people who have buildings fall on them.

                https://twitter.com/3alaba7rhaifa/status/1717968977195094344

                Martyrs is used, in Palestine, for _everyone_ who dies in a military conflict, from top to bottom. I don’t want to add another link to this, but I’ve seen one referencing ‘pulling wounded and martyrs out from under a building’.

                It’s almost a synonym of ‘dead’, and I only say ‘almost’ because there are a few ways to die that are not, like old age.Report

        • DavidTC in reply to Jaybird says:

          Did you know that “from the River to the Sea” just means the area that people are hoping for happy people to live together in peace?

          It doesn’t mean ‘Jewish people should die’, either. It means ‘One government over that entire area’. Anything else is something added by the speaker.

          “Dismissing or ignoring what this phrase means to the Palestinians is yet another means by which to silence Palestinian perspectives. Citing only Hamas leaders’ use of the phrase, while disregarding the liberationist context in which other Palestinians understand it, shows a disturbing level of ignorance about Palestinians’ views at best, and a deliberate attempt to smear their legitimate aspirations at worst.”

          https://forward.com/opinion/415250/from-the-river-to-the-sea-doesnt-mean-what-you-think-it-means/

          “Jihad” means the overcoming of evil within oneself. It’s not “conquer other people”. It’s conquer *YOURSELF*.

          No, it means all struggles. Internal or external.

          It’s not even a _religious_ word, it’s literally just the word that means ‘struggle’ in Arabic, or ‘striving’ might be a better one, as it has the implication that it is a moderately difficult but praiseworthy struggle you ‘should’ win…you could use it to say ‘I strove to finish my thesis’, but not ‘I strove to open the pickle jar’, unless you feel opening a pickle jar was some epic battle where you are proud to be the victor.

          I don’t know where all of these misunderstandings originate.

          Because of a weird bias where American media does not bother translating certain words so the only places we hear them are in terrorist attacks, which means we don’t understand they can appear in other contexts. And…that has become a rather serious problem.

          For example, name of the organization we were talking about recently is not Palestinian Islamist Jihad. It is Ḥarakat al-Jihād al-Islāmī fī Filasṭīn. I don’t expect American media to use that name, but the literal translitiation of that is roughly ‘Movement for the Struggle for Islam in Palestine’, or, flipping the structure around to more Englishy, ‘Palestinian Islamic Struggle Movement’.

          I don’t have a problem with them leaving off the word movement, hell, I wouldn’t have a problem with replacing ‘struggle movement’ with ‘army’, because that is actually what they mean and clearly some connotations has been lost in translation with ‘Struggle Movement’, which sounds like someone trapped in blankets. But instead, they chose not to translate one word in that, jihad? Why? Well, it’s so we know they’re terrorists, because that’s a word terrorists use that means ‘killing people’ or something.

          And it _does_ mean that, here! But if the media _only_ keeps it in places where it means that, no one will know any other meaning of it. And then they see Palestinians using it to mean, I dunno, ‘The extremely tiring fight to live, day-by-day, under Israeli rule’, and freak out.

          I think the biggest offender is their treatment of the word ‘Allah’, honestly.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to DavidTC says:

            Yeah. It’s weird.

            I’m pleased we’ve finally found sentences that can’t be misinterpreted, though. Nor even used misinterpretatedly by others in very high-profile incidents… though, if we acknowledged that, technically, some bad actors might have used these phrases incorrectly, it’s bad faith to take the bad actors at their word instead of the much more prolific good actors who don’t have the benefit of being loud and noisy and capable of playing to the cheap seats.Report

            • DavidTC in reply to Jaybird says:

              though, if we acknowledged that, technically, some bad actors might have used these phrases incorrectly

              Phrases cannot be used ‘incorrectly’. Language is descriptive, not prescriptive.

              However, it is descriptive _by the people using it_, not people in other countries reading newspaper headlines.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to DavidTC says:

                “Anything else is something added by the speaker.”Report

              • DavidTC in reply to Jaybird says:

                …do you not think the speaker is the person using the language? What are you talking about?

                The Palestinians have a bunch of different things that can be meant when they say ‘from the River to the Sea’, just like we could be referencing a few things with ‘remember the Alamo’, and we don’t always mean ‘Kill all the Mexicans before they kill us’…in fact, we rarely mean that.

                As was pointed out in that article, that phrase literally came about in the 1960s to talk about the idea of a _democratic and secular state_ existing across the entire area, free from any oppression, of Jews or Arabs.

                Or to put it as Yasser Arafat said, ‘When we speak of our common hopes for the Palestine of tomorrow we include in our perspective all Jews now living in Palestine who choose to live with us there in peace and without discrimination’

                I think that’s pretty clear.

                I am well aware that Israel does not like this idea, and insists they ‘Have a right to exist’ (1), but that doesn’t make that particular idea is a call for genocide or ethnic cleansing.

                Other times, I am sure it _is_ used in a genocidal war cry.

                You know the term nutpicking, right? We’ve talked about it here. Maybe it’s time to stop reading speeches by Palestinians and their supporters (And somehow only them) line by line and attempting to find the _worst interpretation_ of _one line_, and instead start actually looking at the entire speeches they just made?

                1. As I have pointed out, nations do not have a right to exist, and governments exist by the consent of the governed, they have no right to exist without it.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to DavidTC says:

                You know the term nutpicking, right?

                I *DO*!

                Seriously, I do.

                The whole “nutpicking!” defense is given after some variant of the whole “NOBODY IS SAYING THAT!!!” defense.

                “This guy is saying that.”
                “You’re nutpicking.”

                That does a good job of moving the goalposts.

                “Give me an example of the so-called ‘bad guys’ getting organized enough to put together a team of slaughering a kubbutz, killing infants, and raping teenagers!”

                “Well… I have this stuff, I guess.”
                “THOSE INFANTS WERE NOT BEHEADED!”Report

              • DavidTC in reply to Jaybird says:

                Jaybird, I can’t even start to address the silliness of that post. You start off talking about some hypothetical ‘nobody is saying that’, and then you somehow move on to actual events and not anything anyone is saying.

                Nutpicking is taking specific people who say absurd fringe things, and asserting they are _representative_ of a group, instead of actually pointing to leaders or any sort of representative polling.

                But fine, whatever, I don’t actually care. I was trying to make an analogy, but I’ll just say it: Do you or do you not agree that a) certain phrases can mean many different things, b) people in other cultures might not be aware of all the meanings, and c) the actual way to figure out the meaning of something is to look at their entire speech (Or, even, everything they’ve said on the topic) in context.

                I’m pretty sure we’ve actually had discussions about this before, where someone says something that could be bigoted or might just be a little unartfully put, and how we should probably extend the benefit of the doubt…and I’m not even saying that, I’m saying…check everything else he’s saying! It will kinda be obvious what he means.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to DavidTC says:

                Yeah, I’m pretty silly, I guess!

                I must be nutpicking! Ha ha!

                You’re not nutpicking! You’re making an analogy!

                Anyway, you have questions that I ought answer, I guess.

                Do you or do you not agree that a) certain phrases can mean many different things, b) people in other cultures might not be aware of all the meanings, and c) the actual way to figure out the meaning of something is to look at their entire speech (Or, even, everything they’ve said on the topic) in context.

                Yes. Certain phrases can mean many different things.

                People in other cultures might not be aware of some of those meanings.

                The actual way of figuring stuff out is *CONTEXT*.

                Sure.

                That provides plenty of outs for everybody.Report

              • DavidTC in reply to Jaybird says:

                You’re not nutpicking! You’re making an analogy!

                Jaybird, are you okay? No one in this discussion has been accused of nutpicking. Like, at all. And yet here you are, pretending people are being unreasonable by claiming what they did wasn’t nutpicking? None of those people even exist!

                The only reason I mentioned nutpicking is that I was going to make an analogy that _I did not even make_ because you went on this random tangent where you missexplained what it was. You seem to think it is just nitpicking exact and minute details of claim, that’s just called…nitpicking. Nutpicking is about what people can be considered representative of groups, and when people pick the most obviously insane example, like the guy wearing a swastika and sprouting overt racism probably should not be considered a representative conservative, and anyone claiming he is is nutpicking.

                But I just gave up on that analogy because it wasn’t worth it, so now there’s this entire discussion you’re having with yourself. You’re like two levels deep in the nonsense at this point.

                That provides plenty of outs for everybody.

                …and is also literally how communication works.

                I have to wonder if that applies to anyone else. Like, if someone makes a white supremacist symbol in a photo, would we need to understand any supposed ‘cultural context’ to know that that symbol can mean other things to Americans, or check and see if they are taking a picture with white supremacists or have said white supremacist-y things?

                Or do we just get to assume the worst of them to start with, but they have an ‘out’, so we all know they’re secretly white supremacists but just can’t _prove_ it, due to this damn loophole.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to DavidTC says:

                Did you know that there are *SOME* who use the phrase “from the river to the sea” to mean a Palestine devoid of Israelis?

                Also, did you know that there are *SOME* people who deliberately ignore these people?Report

              • DavidTC in reply to Jaybird says:

                Did you know that there are *SOME* who use the phrase “from the river to the sea” to mean a Palestine devoid of Israelis?

                Yeah, Hamas does that!

                And not only do I expect that Hamas explains this in the context of where they say it, but I also can look at what I know about them as an organization and just sorta _guess_ that’s the meaning they use it in.

                Also, did you know that there are *SOME* people who deliberately ignore these people?

                Did you know there are SOME people who throw live alligators through the drive-through window at Wendys? (I guess there’s just one of those people, but that’s only the ones THAT WE KNOW OF.)Report

              • Jaybird in reply to DavidTC says:

                Part of the problem is that the current situation we find ourselves discussing have the driver being go-proed Hamasians.

                And so when Hamas yells stuff like “From the River to the Sea!” they mean X but the people who were engaging in protests against Israeli action were also chanting “From the River to the Sea!”, I am not only asked to believe that you believe that they are going with the nice interpretation at the rallies, I am asked to believe it myself.

                I’m willing to agree that you believe that the people at the Israel rallies are chanting “From the River to the Sea!” with the nice version.

                But I’d like to ask you to understand that I see the chant as similar to, oh, the Confederate flag.

                “It’s not hate, it’s heritage!”
                “Okay. Sure. You know that it has a lot of baggage, right?”
                “Yes, but not the way that those guys are flying it!”
                “Okay. Sure.”Report

              • DavidTC in reply to Jaybird says:

                But I’d like to ask you to understand that I see the chant as similar to, oh, the Confederate flag.

                …I don’t know about you, but I don’t actually try to judge what symbols and slogans mean to _other cultures_. I opine about the Confederate flag because it’s people in _my culture_ that keeps trying to pretend the meaning is something other than it in _my culture_.

                You do not understand any contextual meaning of ‘from the river to the sea’, because you have never lived in a culture where that term is used, in any meaning.

                Hell, neither have most of these people chanting it at rallies, which means they have _recently learned what it means_ by from some other source. That source used it in some context, and they are repeating it.

                Which means we don’t even have to try to do a deep dive into cultural stuff, decipher a long history of meaning, we can just check at what else the speakers at these rallies said! Were those speakers talking about one country with all peoples, or where they talking about one country after Jews have been driven out? Because whichever of those is what that random white American chanting it is using ‘from the river to the sea’ to mean, there is no cultural context to add beyond ‘literally the public discussion that they are part of’, and we can just check the other things being said in that.

                Like I literally said we could do.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to DavidTC says:

                Yeah, yeah. It’s not hate, it’s heritage. Fine.

                You can believe whatever you want.

                But you aren’t likely to persuade folks about the subtle additional meanings of the confederate flag two weeks after a lynching.Report

              • DavidTC in reply to Jaybird says:

                Look, if you want to argue it’s horrifically bad messaging…it is. That’s not the same as arguing that’s what they ‘really mean’.

                But it’s absurdly hypocritical to complain about how some of that messaging appears when _a lot_ of connotations are due to western media in the first place! Like the connotations around jihad, which in a sane world would be roughly understood as ‘fight’, and in fact could be translated as that.

                But instead for some reason we have Israeli fighters and Hamas ‘jihadists’ or whatever, and everyone knows jihadists are wackadoodle religious terrorists, instead of media just neutrally calling both sides ‘fighters’, which is what they are actually calling themselves.

                Same with martyr, a word that is used to describe a good chuck of people who die in Muslim countries.

                Weirdly, the media _has_ done a somewhat a somewhat good job of pointing out ‘from the river to the sea’ can be understood to have multiple meanings. Probably because they _have_ to explain that phrase, they haven’t spent decades making sure Westerns already think they know what it means and have internalized connotations around it…like a bunch of other stuff.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to DavidTC says:

                I am 100% down with that! I have no doubt that when you say “From the River to the Sea!”, that you mean happy things and not sad things. That’s great.

                When others use it within a few weeks of an MTv Extreme Sports GoPro Paragliding event at a music festival, you should know that people are going to lump you in with the bad guys. Hey. That’s unfair. But it’s true.

                You know the old rule of “if 10 people sit down and talk with a Nazi, 11 Nazis are sitting at that table”?

                Guess who is at your table, Dave. Guess.Report

              • DavidTC in reply to Jaybird says:

                I have no doubt that when you say “From the River to the Sea!”, that you mean happy things and not sad things.

                See, I would assume that the use of ‘you’ in that was rhetorical, except you then acted like it wasn’t.

                I am not chanting common expressions from Palestinian for the somewhat obvious reason that I am not Palestine.

                As an American, I don’t really have a pithy term to refer to their specific situation, so I’d probably say ‘Governments exist by the consent of the governed.’ and then have to explain ‘No one, neither Arabs or Jews or anyone else in that area, should be living under the control of a government that does not treat them as full citizens and give them the same control of government and same security as everyone else.’.

                You know the old rule of “if 10 people sit down and talk with a Na.zi, 11 Naz.is are sitting at that table”?

                Oh, you’ve determined it’s used that way 10 out of 11 time, and also that we’re sitting at the same table instead of just…using words.

                Hey, does that apply to _any_ expression that people might use that bad people might use?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to DavidTC says:

                Oh, so *YOU* aren’t using the phrase, you’re just talking about… who? The people from a very specific geographic region?

                The ones actually governed by the group who uses it to mean “genocide”?

                Honestly, I think you were better off when you were saying that this phrase was a dog whistle and most people using it weren’t whistling and it’s unfair to treat them as if they were.

                Oh, you’ve determined it’s used that way 10 out of 11 time, and also that we’re sitting at the same table instead of just…using words.

                That’s the problem with showing up at the same marches and shouting the same slogans and defending others for using those same slogans, isn’t it?

                “HOW DARE YOU LUMP ME IN WITH THESE OTHER PEOPLE”
                Weird how that happens.Report

              • DavidTC in reply to Jaybird says:

                Oh, so *YOU* aren’t using the phrase, you’re just talking about… who? The people from a very specific geographic region?

                We’ve been pretty clear who we’re talking about, Jaybird, this weird trick of pretending to forget all context mid-discussion is annoying.

                We are talking about both Palestinians using it (Which has a lot of cultural meaning we are not privy too.) and how non-Palestinians at pro-Palestinians protests are using it, which is probably something they learned _right there at the protest_ and we can almost certainly listen to exactly what they listened to to know the meaning!

                That’s the problem with showing up at the same marches and shouting the same slogans and defending others for using those same slogans, isn’t it?

                The entirety of your premise requires the people doing that _understand the slogans the same way as you_. If I go somewhere, and I am chanting a slogan that I have just learned of and have been told one meaning of, and I see others chanting the same slogan, I am not going to magically know they are using it some other way.

                To know if people were using it some other way, I would have to LISTEN TO THE CONTEXT OF THE OTHER STUFF HAPPENING AT THAT LOCATION.

                You know, the exact same thing I keep saying.

                Hell, I wouldn’t know it _even if it was_ a purely evil slogan instead of a complicated one. That’s called a _dogwhistle_. You can easily get people to start chanting ‘We must secure the existence of our people’ without them realizing it’s the start of the 14 words. It doesn’t make them racist to chant that…although, they should probably look around the rally and see if there are any Na.zi flags, cause that’s probably a clue of the sort of rally they are at, and the speakers almost certainly will give it away.

                I don’t think ‘From the River to the Sea’ is a dogwhistle, but if it is, you realize that undercuts all the claims you’re trying to make about the people who are chanting it, right?

                You know, let’s use Occam’s Razor here a second. If I was some person who are going to _criticize_ those rallies, I would spend a lot of time documenting what was said by speakers and clearly of approved of by the crowd, instead of ‘chanted slogans’. And most of this, like any random public speech given to young people, ended up on the internet.

                And the fact we _don’t_ have anyone citing that rather implies that…the speakers did not say things that the people could make issues of, so have instead decided to interpret this slogan a certain way.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to DavidTC says:

                As it is, we just have a bunch of people chanting “From the River to the Sea!” and “Glory to our Martyrs!”

                And when it comes to “Glory to our Martyrs”, we get to bring in experts at translating the Koran into English and when it comes to “From the River to the Sea”, we get to say “plenty of people say this sort of thing and it doesn’t necessarily mean anything”.

                A weird Schrödingerian couple of slogans. They mean peaceful things and warful things but we can’t know *WHICH* they are until the waveform collapses and, therefore, we need to assume that the people chanting the slogans are chanting the nice version.

                I can totally see why you would want to argue for that.

                I have no idea why you think that a single other person on the planet is obliged to agree with the logic (given the last, oh, 50 years or so).Report

              • DensityDuck in reply to DavidTC says:

                ” I don’t actually try to judge what symbols and slogans mean to _other cultures_.”

                uhhhh, now you have to explain why Hamas is not part of Palestinian cultureReport

              • DavidTC in reply to DensityDuck says:

                No I don’t. I am not asserting that the way Hamas uses it is not a way to use it.

                I am asserting it has _multiple meanings_ in Palestinian culture. The literal meaning is one state, with either that stating being everyone (The original meaning) or Jews being forced out or killed. (Hamas) Which is a thing I know not because I am Palestinian, because I’m not, but because almost every Palestinian who writes about that phrase points it out.

                And, of course, the actual way it was being chanted was as a liberation cry, not a literal meaning at all. I know this going to get pushback because literally no one is willing to frame this discussion in this context, but it’s a _cry for freedom_ for Palestinians, and often those cries are…somewhat over the top sounding. They are aspirational, not literal.

                “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” is not actually asking patriots to murder tyrants. It usually just wants those tyrants to no longer be in power. And we probably are not intended to take ‘Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.’ literally.

                But, again, literally none of y’all seem to understand we are talking about 70 years of oppression of a people, and somehow have managed to bend your brains around where the problem is in the other direction.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to DavidTC says:

                I am *TOTALLY* willing to run with “Israel has treated Gaza poorly over the last few decades (including the part where they withdrew)”.

                Heck, I’m willing to run with “Israel was trying to goad Hamas into an indefensible attack!”

                I’m just not willing to run from there to minimizing the attack.Report

      • Pinky in reply to DavidTC says:

        Martyrdom means dying for one’s faith. For a Catholic to be considered a martyr, he’d have to espouse a belief. You could possibly include a soldier dying in a holy war, if he’d sworn an oath beforehand. So “glory to our martyrs” carries the implication that the war is holy, right?Report

        • Philip H in reply to Pinky says:

          Faith or other cause. While some in the Muslim world see eliminating Israel as a religious war, I suspect a great many Palestinians see it as a survival war. Which really has little to do with religion.Report

          • Pinky in reply to Philip H says:

            You wouldn’t typically call someone a martyr for, say, the Allies or Axis. You might use the term in a purely metaphorical sense, like calling a demoted coworker a martyr of a power play. But when you see the word, you assume religious context, correct? You wouldn’t call someone a martyr in a war for survival, which is the exact opposite of a cause.Report

            • Philip H in reply to Pinky says:

              If someone, regardless of religious bent, died in a war for survival I would absolutely use that term.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Philip H says:

                Martyrdom without a cause? Is this just you taking a contrary position to mine? Because I just can’t hear the words in my head.Report

              • Philip H in reply to Pinky says:

                Survival of your culture is a cause. Survival of your country is a cause. Neither of which require religion.Report

              • DavidTC in reply to Philip H says:

                I mean, it’s right there, second definition of Merriam Webster:

                1: a person who voluntarily suffers death as the penalty of witnessing to and refusing to renounce a religion
                2: a person who sacrifices something of great value and especially life itself for the sake of principle
                ‘a martyr to the cause of freedom’
                3: victim – especially : a great or constant sufferer

                However, I must point out that that word actually is translated, and the actual Arabic word is shaheed…although that is not super important as a distinction as that word _also_ includes non-religious sacrifice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaheed

                Shaheed (Arabic: شهيد [ʃahiːd], fem. شهيدة [ʃahiːdah], pl. شُهَدَاء [ʃuhadaː]; Punjabi: ਸ਼ਹੀਦ) denotes a martyr in Islam and Sikhism.[1] The word is used frequently in the Quran in the generic sense of “witness” but only once in the sense of “martyr” (i.e. one who dies for his faith); the latter sense acquires wider usage in the hadith.[2][3]

                The term is commonly used as a posthumous title for those who are considered to have accepted or even consciously sought out their own death in order to bear witness to their beliefs.[4] Like the English-language word martyr, in the 20th century, the word shahid came to have both religious and non-religious connotations, and has often been used to describe those who died for non-religious ideological causes.[5] This suggests that there is no single fixed and immutable concept of martyrdom among Muslims and Sikhs.[6]

                Interestingly, as Wikipedia pointed out, both words started out just meaning ‘witness’, as in ‘witness to the faith’, and then ‘witness to the faith by accepting death’, and even later ‘witness to any cause by accepting death’, which is a…remarkably parallel evolution of two words, I have to assume there was some back and forth cultural contamination on that one.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to DavidTC says:

                How dare you mess with things by looking beyond the Pinkipedia?Report

              • DavidTC in reply to CJColucci says:

                I was on Twitter this morning, and came across this:
                https://twitter.com/3alaba7rhaifa/status/1717968977195094344

                (That post is just a translation of the QT, which is in Arabic.)

                Pretty sure they were not saying that a small child was part of Hamas…or even really ‘died for their faith’ in an objective sense, the kid didn’t choose to die, he just…did because of his faith. (Well, that’s what they assert. I think he probably more technically died for his nationality or race, but I generally don’t arguing with people grieving for children.)

                This is a meaning that a _lot_ of religious people use the word martyr/shaheed, (Not just Muslims!) and it’s rather infuriating to see ‘Glory to our martyrs’ be assumed to be talking about Hamas.Report

  12. LeeEsq says:

    Austria apparently decided to criminalize the use of the phrase From the River to the Sea, declaring it to be hate speech.

    https://www.reuters.com/world/from-river-sea-prompts-vienna-ban-pro-palestinian-protest-2023-10-11/Report