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Police move in on Northeastern encampment
By adamg on Sat, 04/27/2024 - 10:30am
The Huntington News reports. Protesters with Northeastern IDs were released, although they could face disciplinary action; people without Northeastern IDs were arrested.
The school says it reversed its initial stance on letting the encampment continue after it was "infiltrated" by outside agitators who began yelling antiSemitic slurs and stuff like "Kill the Jews."
Tori Bedford at GBH reports she actually heard a pro-Israel counter-demonstrator yell "Kill the Jews" but "seemingly as a provocative joke in response to the group's pro-Palestine chants."
Matthew Noah Smith, a Northeastern professor, wrote:
I hope Northeastern is not weaponizing anti-semitism to justify arresting the protesting students.
I spent all day Thursday with the students there and they were clear in standing against all forms of hate and violence.
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Is this the best use of tax/tuition money?
How much $$$ has the state troopers, Boston PD,
and Northeastern spent on this non-violent, non-destructive protest? How many of the best paid Boston employees https://www.masslive.com/news/2024/04/boston-salary-database-see-which-c... were there? There’s better uses of our tax dollars and tuition money.
Once you get a taste of
Once you get a taste of siccing police on protesters, it's hard to go back.
"Pro-Palestine Chants"
Do "pro-Palestine chants" include quoting and lionizing actual terrorists, as well as calling in Arabic for the ethnic cleansing of Jews? I've seen both documented (in written form and in videotaped chants) at Harvard Yard, which is currently ID-restricted to affiliates, as well as other places like Columbia.
Harvard signs in this thread:
https://twitter.com/StephenESachs/status/1783924777775993024
https://twitter.com/HarvardJews/status/1783954017993048404
Video of the chants at Harvard here:
https://twitter.com/ShabbosK/status/1757167703524339793
Other local schools too
Here's another "pro-Palestine chant" from Tufts:
https://twitter.com/StopAntisemites/status/1784253600631259517
"Long live the Intifada" and "there is only one solution" (presumably about to be followed by the common "intifada revolution").
Awkward
Sounds better in the original German
Those signs don't call for killing anyone
The Arabic reads: "from the water to the water, Palestine is Arab".
It's the exact same claim Zionists make for the same land.
Why is it OK for one side to make this claim, but when the other makes it, everyone cries "genocide!"
It's bullshit. "Genocide" is way overused today. People need to stop shouting and start talking. The only real solution is peaceful coexistence, with everyone enjoying equal rights.
Not true
Israelis live in a multicultural and multiethnic society. A quarter of Israelis are Arab and there is not a popular movement to expell those people from the country. Gaza was rendered Judenrein along with, fundamentally, the entire Arab world, such as former thriving Jewish cities and kingdoms in Saudi Arabia or Yemen.
Now that I'm not on my phone
My previous comment was in regards to your statement: "It's the exact same claim Zionists make for the same land." I also wanted to address the subject of your post:
(Specifically in the context to "from the river to the sea" or "min il-ṃayye la-l-ṃayye")
Ahmad al-Shukeiri, founder of the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) in the 1960s, said in the lead-up to the 1967 war (later known as the Six-Day War) that "the time had come to annihilate the State of Israel and that the Arabs would throw the Jews into the sea." (paraphrased by Jordanian historian Samir A. Mutawi)
Here is an Arab propaganda poster from I believe Egypt around that same time:
Saying the phrase/chant "from the river to the sea, Palestine is Arab" or its variants in English or Arabic in 2024 is intentionally evoking the 1960-era Arab ethnonationalist genocidal rhetoric that, marching from the inland areas, they would literally and figuratively push the Jews out of Israel and into the Mediterranean. It is similar to telling Jews to "go back to Poland" when they mean Auschwitz.
Now you've done it
They'll be carrying around that poster next week. After all, it only shows the glorious uprising of the repressed overthrowing settler colonialists. What did you think liberation looked like?
But seriously, one of the most screwed up things about these kids packing away their Che Guevara t-shirts and click-buying a cheap Chinese keffiyeh on Amazon so they can be "revolutionary" with their comrades is how little good their posturing actually does for people in Gaza. The only thing they might achieve is electing Trump, who, as Bill Maher points out, they really sound like - they learn a soundbite about something they don't understand and then keep repeating it to get a rise out of people. Build a Wall, From the River to the Sea...
Not even Gazans (the non-Hamas Gazans, that is) appreciate their nonsense. Don't take my word for it, but maybe listen to Hamza Howidy:
https://www.newsweek.com/message-gazan-campus-protesters-youre-hurting-p...
Unlike these kids, who may have endured being zip-tied and losing a tent, Howidy has suffered for his beliefs. He was arrested and tortured by Hamas. He knows who they are. They're not freedom fighters, they're vicious oppressors of the Gazans.
https://www.newsweek.com/hamas-tortured-me-dissent-heres-what-they-reall...
If Americans really want to make Gaza a place where people like Howidy can life and prosper, Hamas must be eradicated.
Hear, hear
I follow Hamza on Twitter/X along with other Palestinians who advocate for peace such as John Aziz and Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib - these are valuable voices to listen to, even if their ideas of the best or most just way to establish that peace differ from what I believe. As long as they don't believe in genocide and martyrdom, that's a starting point for peace.
Over the last month, many Palestinians like them have posted that Students for Justice in Palestine accounts have proactively blocked them. SJP doesn't support peace, they support continued war.
If Palestine is Arab why are Persians involved?
Palestine is not just Arabs. It is Jews as well.
Hamas and supporters attacked Israel as an act of war. War is a dog that cannot be leashed.
War has no rules, the bogus rules of war notwithstanding. WW2 and the indiscriminate killing of Dresden and Tokyo civilians, as well as the indiscriminate killing of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki proves that point.
There is only one solution: Incorporating Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights into Israel.
Iran and the Arab governments of evil that want to eliminate Jews from the Middle East will still strive to destroy Israel. But they will not have proxies to do their filthy, dirty work for them.
You may be unpopular here but you're not wrong
The October 7th attacks permanently sealed the fate of a "Palestinian state" (in addition to the Palestinian state that is Jordan) existing in the West Bank and Gaza. Anyone claiming otherwise, like the Biden administration and a lot of other Western leaders, are living in denial. All the people living in the kibbutzes - aka socialist communes - in the Gaza Envelope were the most ardent peacenik Israelis. These were the people who advocated the most for Palestinian sovereignty; they employed Gazans; they drove them across the border to Israeli hospitals for medical care. The same Gazans they employed provided information about their communities that facilitated the 10/7 attacks, and all of these most left-wing hippies (including those like Nova Peace Festival attendee Shani Louk, who got an exemption from serving in the IDF as a contentious objector) were slaughtered in the most horrible ways imaginable. The remainder of Israel has no stomach for the idea of empowering the people who - even more than on 10/6 - want to genocide them further.
Despite the "triggering" phrase used in the headline, you might find the proposal in this article interesting:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-790622
Hamas's attack was an act of terrorism not war
War is the use of wholesale violence to impose one's will on an enemy. It is "the continuation of policy by other means" (Clausewitz).
Terrorism is an act of violence carried out against innocent people for the purpose of grabbing attention.
As for incorporating Palestinian lands into Israel, that is a solution, IF all residents are full Israeli citizens with equal rights, none are under martial law, and there is no discrimination on the basis of nationality or religion.
For this to work, both sides must renounce nationalism, as the peoples of Europe have since 1945.
It's not okay
There are currently over 7M Jews living in the land "from the river to the sea." Saying that whole area "is Arab" is a call to force them out or kill them.
Yes, Kahanists (not all Zionists are Kahanists. You can support the existence of a Jewish homeland without claiming that it needs to be that full area or believing that Palestinians don't have rights) also make the same claim. They are also calling for genocide and are wrong. It is NOT okay for them to make that claim, just as it isn't for supporters of Palestinian liberation.
There are 7M Jews and 7M arabs (5M Palestinians and 2M Arab Israelis) living in that area: the ONLY solution long term is a negotiated two state solution.
TIL
What Kahanism is.
Can it be called something else? I'm not going to have Stick Season ruined for me.
This isn't helping anyone
Cops and University officials weaponizing fake (or even real) anti-semitism to justify mass arrests of peaceful protestors doesn't help Jewish people.
All these demonstrations are pointless
Benjamin Netanyahu doesn't care what anyone at Harvard thinks about his policies. They can yell until they're blue in the face, and nothing's going to change.
Remember the anti-Vietnam war protests of the late sixties? Remember the protests calling for Harvard to divest from apartheid South Africa, and later from fossil fuels? Remember Occupy Wall Street?
None of these protests ever accomplished anything, and the Vietnam protests only helped elect Richard Nixon. These people should put down their signs and go back to studying.
Beside the Point
God forbid students take a stand for what they feel is right. Anyway, all those civil rights marches didn't change anything and apartheid still exists in South Africa, right?
However, changing the mind of amoral Netanyahu isn't the point here. Getting to Biden and the elected officials worried about their re-election campaigns who are continuing to provide unlimited funds and weapons to Israel are.
Students caught up in hysteria
The lies at the base of claims of genocide are useful to create hysteria. But the claims of genocide in Gaza IGNORE the real genocide of gays and lesbians in African nations.
We are living in a period of hysteria. Hysteria that Trumps revels in. Hysteria that extends to absurd and silly complaints of cultural appropriation (MFA a few years ago) and now hysteria regarding Gaza because, well, we all need something to fill the addiction to outrage and hysteria.
Where are these students in decrying the murders of Ukrainians by Putin and Russians?
While the feeling is noble - decrying killing - the target of Israel is intellectual lazy, convenient and, hopefully college students are educated well enough to understand this term, sophistic.
They are letting themselves be used to satisfy their need to feel like they can do something in a world where they are (and they realize they are) powerless.
Powerlessness is an awful feeling. Most people run from that feeling like running from Hell. But in a world where there are billionaires by the dozen, and politicians who are so inured and guaranteed no matter how grotesque they are (Trump, Greene) finding something to feel good about is paramount, regardless of how shallow the thinking and reasoning.
It's Simple
The US is providing arms and funding for a genocide happening before our eyes: hospitals targeted, cities destroyed, tens of thousands of innocent civilians killed.
Your endless dumps of word salad and attempted misdirection to other crimes in Uganda cannot obscure that fact.
Refresh my memory
Refresh my memory: what's the size of the portfolio of Columbia, Emerson, Northeastern, UC, Harvard, etc. in Uganda and Russia?
Apartheid is gone, sure enough
...but not because of any student protests in the United States.
They'll get to Biden, all right. I hope they enjoy living under another Trump Presidency.
It feels like 1968 all over again. Even the calendar is the same.
Oh Student of History
You sure that sanctions and international pressure which student protests helped call for didn't have anything at all to do with the fall of apartheid? The South African regime just magically collapsed?
Here's one government source that disagrees with you: https://geneva.usmission.gov/2013/12/17/pressure-to-end-apartheid-began-...
The foreign influence operation is backfiring
I've talked about this from the beginning. It started with astroturfed complaints about antisemitism at Harvard and MIT protests - basically framing "From the River to the Sea" as antisemitic, when it is just one point of view on a just solution of Jews and Palestinians.
Whether you agree with a one-state solution with Jews and Palestinians sharing the land - I don't, only two states with true sovereignty and autonomy are realistic - is irrelevant. It's a valid point of view in a debate, one which some Jews in the USA and Israel share.
I say astroturfed and foreign-influenced because Israelis and pro-Israel organizational activists were heavily represented among the initial complainants of antisemitism at Harvard and MIT and in the organizational amplification, not to mention Netanyahu speaking about it regularly. The complaints were amplified and the intimidation campaign started with Bill Ackman paying for a billboard with the names of students who had supported "divestment from 'illegal Israeli settlements.'" Pretty mild opinion.
Then the Israeli lobby's political power was able to get Congress to haul the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn before them and subject them to a McCarthy-style grilling, followed up with deep-dive investigations into their past life and work. Gay had to resign.
Someone paid for an aerial banner reading "Harvard hates Jews" to be flown across the Boston sky for hours.
All because some students protested against a military operation which is not only framed as disproportionate and indiscriminate by Palestinians or Al Jazeera, but by the UN, the EU, and most timidly even the USA. Even the Tiktoks, Facebook postings and television pronouncements of Israeli soldiers, members of the government, and regime apologists confess to murderous intent.
I avoid the word "genocide" as having too many different meanings, but there's no doubt Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank through the use of disproportionate and indiscriminate force. There certainly is an ethnic cleansing campaign going on, even if you just look at Jewish settlers' actions in the West Bank supported by Israeli military units.
But the propaganda operation has tried to divert attention from killing whole families and 1000s of children in Gaza to the odd kook among the protestors. "Nutpicking" is when you find the most unbalanced and extreme protester and amplify their unhinged statements to discredit the whole. This happened this week when Boston's own shithead and Latin Academy grad Khymani James took the spotlight for his/her/they's advocacy of murder and was kicked out of Columbia.
The unprecedented and sometimes brutal crackdowns on protests against Israel - contrast summer 2020 and BLM - are provoking resistance and radicalization. Actions like what Texas gov Abbott ordered on the UT campus are obviously unconstitutional, and those who value the right to protest, such as myself, are drawn in on the protesters' side.
DNC Chicago 2024 looks like it will be an updated replay of Chicago 1968, with social media.
There's also a substantial body of comments now on the right-wing which could not help but notice how the freedom to assemble and protest is being squashed.
They could have let the students and other protesters have their say and go back to the dorms/home, but they had to crush them. The intolerance of any dissent and wish to divert attention from dead babies is backfiring.
(Expletive) everyone's mythology
And (expletive) Northeastern.
related to Operation Husky False Flag 2024
Another incident on a campus - false complaints of threats and antisemitism
https://twitter.com/BubblesToBurst/status/1784488383928234296