State of the Discussion

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.

Nah, I'm comparing what's happening to Academia in general to 9/11.

Academia is the United States, in the analogy. The professors would be the "Little Eichmanns". The Trumpistas would be the hijackers.

I think you're failing the sh*t test with this line of reasoning, same as they have been. We either live in a world where people can deal with these kinds of questions, including when they're asked in ways many may deem offensive, or we can't.

Let me also add that I think killing civilians is wrong regardless of who those civilians are, just so there's no doubt in what follows. I'm trying to get at what discourse is OK among faculty at a public university, and what discourse should result in harsh penalties for university departments, like what's happening at Columbia. That out of the way:

We know civilians are being targeted, and we know journalists are as well. It's not really up for debate, and I point you to google for the copious evidence.

But even if you don't agree that there is clear evidence Israel has targeted civilians, let's stipulate it for the moment. So, considering that Hamas argues, and has points in international law in favor of their argument, that as an occupied and/or besieged populace, it is legal for them to strike out at the people occupying besieging them. Put differently, Hamas believes they are at war, under military siege, and therefore what they did was an act of war. Many throughout the world see their actions as part of the resistance movement, even if they condemn violence against civilians and taking civilians hostage (Israel, to be clear, also regularly takes civilians hostage; and, it should be noted, regularly uses human shields).

Is this discourse, which might end up with some people arguing in support of Hamas, allowable, or do we have to ban it from universities? Who, then, gets to decide which attacks on civilians are terrorism, and which aren't? And therefore, which faculty can support, and which they can't?

I'm mostly unclear on the requirements that you have for my answers to you and the requirements that you hold for yourself when it comes to the answers you give me.

Which, quite honestly, reflects the fundamental problem.

Do we want a set of universal rules?
Or do we want to temporarily hold to a temporary standard that matches what others say the universal rules should be?

Because, lemme tell ya, if we go back to “we’ll use your rules for me and we’ll use my rules for you”, that’s worse than “we’ll use the same rules we used yesterday”.

I think you give the game away when you ask if I know what 'important rights' are, so much so that everything in your comment before and after is best interpreted as a kind of nihilism, not a real attempt to grapple with the rights or principles in play, on the merits. Even if for the sake of argument we concede that at the end of the day nothing profoundly bad happened as a result of name your incident (and to be clear, I'm not doing that), all it would mean is that left wing or progressive illiberalism is the weaker prong of a pincer movement. Which is something I'd have agreed with well before we started putting the theory to the test.

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.

So let's now move to "and I answered" on your part.

My question was whether what I wanted was on the table.

You never answered whether what I wanted was on the table. Could you point out where you did?

If you didn't, that's cool. You can just say "I didn't answer that question".

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]

I may need you to explain how:

1) "I’d love to change the rules to how I’d have it instantiated."
2) "Yes, I would have it otherwise."

Are not direct answers to your question.
Or, I suppose, an acknowledgment that, whoopies, you guess that they are direct answers to your question.

He pointed out that 9/11 was basically a logical outcome of US foreign policy, have if we’re going to keep bombing them, they’re eventually going to start bombing us, a thing that quite a lot of people at the time pointed out.

So things, bad things presumably, will inevitably lead to other bad things happening as an inevitable outcome?

Huh.

Is that phenomenon universal? Or was it limited to just that one thing, that one time?

I can't say whether or not it ever happened, of course. I can only point to the contemporaneous account reported by CBS Evening News back in 1971.

Delmar Pickett Jr. said that it happened back then. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't, but a lot of people say that the mythology started back with First Blood (the first one), when, for what it's worth, the mythology started over a decade before.

(And, no, that's not the speech. The speech that got my roommate's Dad was the "I want what they want" speech at the end of the second one.)

Are we talking about the "they spit on me" speech? Powerful speech. Did a lot to create an entire mythology of airport and bus terminal encounters. Total myth, never happened.

I actually answered the question and then asked you a question.

Wait a second... is this one of those things where you get to ask me questions but I don't get to ask you questions?

Like, our relationship is that of lawyer versus person on the stand?

Wow, that would explain a lot!

I don't like that dynamic and I refuse to play by it, by the way.

A related question: Should the university allow debate about who is a terrorism, and what acts are terrorism, or should the university require all faculty to adhere to the official U.S. list of designated terrorist groups?

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.

Michael Kotlikoff is trying to do some light damage control: I’m Cornell’s President. We’re Not Afraid of Debate and Dissent.

It's a good essay. I don't know that it will *WORK*, necessarily, but it's probably the best play available.

My roommate when I was a college freshman told me that his dad took him to Rambo: First Blood Part II and wept during that final speech.

"I came here for explosions, why the room so dusty?"

I'd love to change the rules to how I'd have it instantiated.

Is that on the table?

Because, lemme tell ya, if we go back to "we'll use your rules for me and we'll use my rules for you", that's worse than "we'll use the same rules we used yesterday".

That was part of it but I think it may have also been an early indicator of otherwise highly obscure academic silliness becoming widely disseminated to non academic audiences via the internet. People like him and numerous pro-Palestinian/Israel skeptical types were in many ways the OG victims of 21st century cancelation campaigns. It's among the reasons that trying to treat everything from FedSoc judges or jurists to conservative provacateurs to just normal liberals who don't toe the line on some issue or another as safety threats was so self evidently a mistake from the outset. Anyone with a memory longer than a nat could see where this was going. People at these places are reaping what they spent 15 or so years sowing.

The irony about the Niemoller quote that's the subject of this piece is itself head spinning. When was the last time someone worked up about the current environment prominently stood up for the rights of someone they disagreed with, just on the principle of the thing? It just doesn't really happen anymore.

Speaking of Arnold one liners this brings to mind 'You're a f*cking choir boy compared to me!'

Still a good one even though it was a 'darker' 90s effort.