Chris: We know civilians are being targeted...

We don't even know how many civilians are dead. If Israel is targeting civilians then it's weird that the death rate is lower than the birth rate.

Israel kills it's own soldiers, that is not proof that it's targeting it's own soldiers.

Chris: ...as an occupied and/or besieged populace, it is legal for them to strike out at the people occupying besieging them.

The purpose of 10-7 was to attack civilians. So no, it was not "legal". Hamas killed every Jew they could get their hands on, so the word we should be using is "genocide".

Trying to argue that the Jews are responsible for their own genocide is antisemitic.

Chris: Many throughout the world see their actions as part of the resistance movement...

And what are they resisting? Hamas' charter explains that they're resisting the idea of Jews in the Middle East. That this is popular doesn't change that it's antisemitic on the face of it.

Chris: Who, then, gets to decide which attacks on civilians are terrorism, and which aren’t?

This is an effort to claim everyone is morally equal.

If Hamas had Israel's ethics, Hamas would have broken out of Gaza and only killed the Israel soldiers guarding the place. If Israel had Hamas' ethics, then all of Gaza would be lifeless.

Hamas is an openly genocidal organization and they live up to their charter attacking all Jews they can.

Israel either doesn't attack civilians at all (their claim) or it does so rarely it doesn't show up in the numbers.

Big picture the Palestinians are dialed up to eleven by the existence of Jews and a Jewish state. They "resist" through terrorism. The conflict comes down to antisemitism.

So it shouldn't be a surprise that it's challenging to avoid antisemitism and/or supporting terrorism when supporting the Palestinian cause. The big way to do that is to claim that everyone is a terrorist and everyone is genocidal, but this is an abuse of language.

Given that we deport immigrants for supporting terrorism, we should expect that people supporting Hamas are F-ing around with their immigration status.

The Jewish equivalent of Hamas would be plans to kill everyone in Gaza. If we had faculty arguing for this I'd expect the administration would treat them like they'd treat someone arguing for a return of slavery, i.e. they'd find a way to fire them.

Where the challenge comes for College administrators is whether or not they're going to put up with antisemitism.

One way for College administrators to deal with all this is to bite the bullet and admit their college isn't going to be welcoming to Jews, that they do support anti-Jewish terrorism, and then deal with the consequences.

If that's not what they're going to do, then they should confront the problem that Hamas is both popular in certain groups but supporting it is massively antisemitic on the face of it.

Chris: How would we classify Israel’s killing of citizens in Gaza?

I would call it a war. It's expected that civilians are going to die in an urban war.

Do you think civilians are being targeted by Israel? If so, then why?

DavidTC: You think being undone by the courts means the Trump Administration isn’t fascism?

We're a few steps short. I think we have a lot of chaos, incompetence, & fringe people. I also think there is a general lack of respect for the law and/or ignorance of the law.

I doubt this will end well, but I also doubt it will end with the US giving up elections.

DavidTC: Why do you think supporting terrorism via _speech_ is illegal...

It is not "illegal". However as a condition to entering this country we make immigrants sign legal docs saying they don't support terrorism.

DavidTC: would you like to explain exactly how that is defined in such a way that the government cannot simply declare anything it wants as terrorism?

This is also arguing for "there are grey lines" while ignoring that killing hundreds of civilians because they're Jews isn't even close.

DavidTC: He pointed out that 9/11 was basically a logical outcome of US foreign policy,

What he argued was the people who died in 9/11 shouldn't be considered innocent civilians, so killing them is fair game. Arguing that the terrorists are correct for killing civilians is crossing lines.

If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.[5]

Chris: Should the university allow debate about who is a terrorist...

You are pointing out that there are grey lines. You are correct, so the technical answer to your question is "yes".

However killing hundreds of Jewish civilians because they're Jews isn't even slightly close to a grey line, nor is that disputed.

Churchill was fired because of his academic work.

True. And if he hadn't been an American citizen, he would have been deported for supporting terrorism.

The university realized they had a terror supporting lunatic in their staff and they did a deep dive (well, just looked at) his work and bounced him. That they didn't technically bounce him for his views is besides the point.

When you select for those views you're also selecting for substandard work in fields affected by those views. Further the U was looking for a reason to fire him because of his views.

The current situation has had the University tolerate this set of terrorism supporters for years. Because Jews. Trump shouldn't need to get involved because the University has had more than enough time to clean house themselves.

Instead we've had their administration testify to Congress that they don't need to clean house and advocating genocide/terrorism is protected speech. So apparently supporting Hamas and arguing that Jews need to put up with terrorism doesn't break any codes of conduct and behavior that would in other situations be illegal should be shielded from the authorities by the administration. Because the First Amendment, and Jews.

My expectation is this example, assuming that op-ed is the limit of her involvement, will be undone by the courts.

CJColucci: There are normal, well-understood ways of dealing with actual threats and forcible obstruction.

Absolutely. However the problem on the table is the people who are responsible for doing those things have failed to do those things.

Both of the following can be true at the same time.

1) Trump is a blunt tool and bully.

2) The University is deliberately ignoring breathtaking levels of antisemitism which would never be tolerated against other groups.

This is similar to the U looking the other way when one of their employees is committing sex crimes (Michigan State). The institution doesn't want to do it's job so the institution needs to be punished as an institution.

If they want that then they need to have police prevent the Protesters from shutting the U down and/or threatening Jews.

At least then when they have discussions on whether advocating for genocide is a good thing, the U will be able to say they're only debating things.

If they don't want politics to matter, then they shouldn't be threatening Jews and insisting that everyone's politics need to match theirs or they'll shut down the University.

There is a vast difference between "a single narrative" and "a crack down on the idea that 'No Israel, No Jews' is acceptable." Advocating for genocide shouldn't be funded by US tax dollars.

I have little respect for "process" arguments because we wouldn't apply them in other situations.

Example: A professor who was openly a white supremist who publicly made an argument for bringing back slavery as a "solution" to various race issues would instantly be fired without the Feds needing to threaten budgets.

We wouldn't have University Presidents claim "it depends" on whether the code of conduct is being broken, nor argue for the first AM and so on. Protesters backing him and his issues would be handled by the police and they wouldn't be allowed to shut down the university much less threaten black students.

All of this would, correctly, be handled by the U calling in the cops if need be to enforce things that are normally illegal.

"Disagreements" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there in the face of published department support for 10-7.

Presumably there is supposed to be a carful review process where we prove someone who openly supports Hamas is unfit to teach ME politics and history. Clearly that hasn't happened.

But this is a process argument where we pretend we don't know what we know. Same with those protests.

Calling for Jews to be killed is deep into antisemitism. That's still true if it's rephrased into "No Israel, No Jews" or any of it's equivalents.

That's in addition to whether protesters have the "right" to shut down various things to force people to respond to their arguments and do other things that are normally illegal.

I think the next question is,

Is Columbia and Trump's crackdown of the pro-Palestinians the ‘Canary in the coalmine' (link at bottom, their answer is "yes") or is it a lot more reasonable?

Some of the claims are concerning; Trump is forcing Columbia's Middle East department to be seriously redone, ergo academic freedom is a problem. However (normally not mentioned) is a prof in this department, one day after 10-7, made posts referring to scenes from the attacks as “awesome” and “stunning” (same link).

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/29/columbia-middle-east-department-trump-edward-said

Really well written and well done. Good work DavidTC.

The behavior of the administration reminds me how we've seen them (not) respond to sex criminals in their staff. Michigan State and that "athletic doctor" for example.

They want to ignore (and/or downgrade) the problem and hope it will go away so they don't have to offend anyone or embarrass the U.

Here's a link which talks about "Trump's war on Columbia University explained"
It does a reasonably good job at bringing together the various things, including some I hadn't known about.

I hadn't realized the "protesters" were that clueless and about half aren't students. I also hadn't realized to what degree the protesters were causing problems (i.e. crossing lines) and the degree to which the University administration beclowned themselves in front of Congress.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9JiRcXob-Q

What a clown show.

I don't see even the slightest connection to George Floyd. All reviews say the movie is a trainwreck.

The only hint of a reprieve is Zegler's singing.

I've seen Zegler's red carpet interview and it's more cringy-woke and dissing-the-original than is normally shown.

To be fair, faict "cringy-woke" was the Disney line at the time. For example none of the finalists for the part of Snow White were White.

I've also seen Zegler openly admit that she's a narcissist (that's since my last post).

Wiki claims that Zegler has supported Palestine since 2021 and that predates her involvement in Snow White by a few months.

That high level producer flying out to talk to Zegler happened. That's amazing when you think about it, apparently a phone call or lesser person wouldn't do (or more likely, didn't work). It's like the CEO flying over to talk to you about your bad behavior.

Narcissists really don't like being told they're wrong, they don't change their behavior, and they don't accept responsibility for their behavior.

I expect Miss Zegler will find it harder to get employment in these expensive shows. Whoever hires her needs to expect her to create lots of personal drama to overshadow the film.

LeeEsq: there is no reason to doubt that Zegler might really believe what she put on social media about Israel or Gal Gadot

Zegler has been accused of being a narcissist and apparently has admitted the same. My ex was too.

Using flame bait to focus attention on herself would be in character. Even (and especially) at the expense of the primary project. People are supposed to be paying attention to her and not her fellow lead actress or even the movie itself.

So she might only believe in "free Palestine" when it's going to create problems and attention. She certainly is not going to listen to other views, either on what's going on in Palestine or even how stunningly inappropriate it is to bring this up on the set or in interviews.

And if she feels she's not the center of attention on her next project she'll find a different way to be toxic.

When we select for people who are thinking emotionally and not dealing with the real world, we're dealing with people who aren't dealing with the real world.

So if you have convinced yourself that Hamas are the good guys, then them torturing (and otherwise being heinous to) their own citizens isn't a thing. It doesn't happen.

North: consists of the Clintons getting entities to contribute more money to charitable causes

If that's what they were doing, then why did the money stream only exist while HRC was either Secretary of State or expected to be President?

The money disappeared the moment she lost. These groups didn't think about "charity" before.

North: no... nefarious benefit to the Clintons ever being demonstrated.

The money was used to give Clinton insiders jobs between political appointments and to create the same sort of influence that a Billionaire gets.

This was not a politician lining their pockets, it was a politician getting the influence of Bill Gates to fund their own interests.

North: ...provable facts...

I've only put down provable facts. I have admitted it was legal, I'm saying it was also obviously and openly corrupt.

Most people don't sweat the fine details. When the Clintons repeatedly and openly do this they figure out the system is fixed.

In many ways Trump is the result of the Clintons. If Blue is fine with HRC selling pardons and collecting Billions from Russia and the Saudis then that's the ethical standard.

Slade: Isn’t Team Red supposed to be an improvement over Team Blue?

If you mean "throw the rascals out" then the party out of power is always an improvement.

If you mean "has better ethics" then "no". BSDI.

If you mean "economic policy" then Team Red got rid of their economic sanity wing so still "no". Also extra negative points for the economic chaos.

If you mean "war in Israel" then I'd say "yes".

If you mean "war in Ukraine" then I'd say "no".

North: ...billions ... requires you loop in the foundation which was regularly audited and found to be above board.

No, it was found to be "legal", as in, "we can't prove anything illegal in court".

The Husband of the Secretary is State is accepting Billions of dollars from states She deals with professionally. This money is used to promote her political agenda and influence.

The entities that were giving the money don't normally do this. These entities entirely stopped giving money the moment she lost power.

All of this was "legal", meaning with marital communications being privileged we have to trust there's no connection. Much like kindergarteners accept that Santa exists.

Pointing to this and claiming "it was above board" takes us to willful ignorance. I fully admit everything that happened was not-provably-illegal-in-court, but that's not the line that most of the electorate uses to decide if there's a problem.

So if you're wondering why Team Red can be expected to back their guy even though the group chat was obviously illegal, a big part of that is we had the Clintons showcase for years just what Washington ethics looks like.

And we also had for that same period of time Team Blue declare in lockstep that this kind of thing should be ignored.