One clear sign of how ignorant and immature the college protesters are is how they all don't seem to want to be held accountable for the crimes they committed.
I wish that our U.S. campuses would at least still assign students to read MLK's Letter from a Birmingham jail, and Thoreau's essay on Civil Disobedience.
I think these protesters have failed the guidelines of: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and effective direct action.
MLKJr: "In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. ... I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law."
Everyone should try to take a 1930's perspective and mentally substitute #Israel by the #ThirdReich or #Mussolini's #Italy and Iran by an opposing Allied Power like the UK or the US.
After listening to this debate, the West's, including Israel's, position doesn't have that much standing anymore.
@HistoPol
I haven't been convinced based on the evidence that I've seen that I can agree with the argument that the Iranian professor starts out asserting as fact so I'm not going to watch the other 25 minutes.
Too bad.
In this case, I find the whole counter argument very insightful.
Israel is, indeed, an apartheid state and the war crimes committed by it, e.g. the direct hit on the help convoy, etc., would have disqualified any other country from the West's help but Israel.
The moral yardstick is, even by well-meaning minds, so obviously different when it comes to Israel as to give representatives from authoritarian...
...states a real semblance of justified grievance. This must STOP.
President Biden was right to halt the delivery of offensive weapons to #Israel.
This can be but a first step. #Netanyahu has for decades been a grand master of letting US presidents look like school boys when informing them, often after the fact, of aggressive actions against its neighbors or #Palestinians. This must STOP. If Israel wants to be an equal nation,...
...special treatment needs to STOP, too, in particular when it comes to international law. The ICJ case must move forward.
Also, discriminating against part of the native population on the basis of race, ethnicity, or creed within its borders IS #apartheid clearly in violation of all (Western) democratic principles that are incompatible with a modern democracy.
Of course, the professor also makes biased argumentative mistakes,...
...however, this does not discredit all of his arguments.
The #Palestinians or their forbears did not commit the #Holocaust atrocities. This was done by the #fascist and communist regimes of Europe. They should have equal right like the Jews.
As long as this great injustice has not been remedied, war-mongers like the #Mullah Regime and the #Netanyahu Regime will always have ample possibilities to rekindle the embers. Al of...
There are quite a few things about Israel that I'm not fond of especially their long history of playing the U.S. off of the Soviet Union for their own purposes, but since I've never had to live in a neighborhood like that I'm not qualified to judge them.
Plus, since I know that right now America's and democracy's adversaries are on the side of Hamas, I'm on team Israel since there are big, globally big, issues at stake now.
However, the end never justifies the means. Over 30k civilian deaths are too many.
I did not live during the Vietnam War, but the currently globally spreading student protests clearly show that the #Netanyahu Regime has clearly abjectly lost the propaganda war for the minds and hearts of the global public.
Every day doesn't only cost innocent civilian lives in Gaza and Israel, but the remainder of any moral "Holocaust credit" that the Regime...
...deems to be limitless. It is not. It is approaching bankruptcy with every day that the war drags on.
That Hamas has agreed to the terms of a #ceasefire only accelerates its exhaustion. #Netanyahu seems to have forgotten that this year is a super-election year globally. Governments around the globe will not be able to ignore the students' demands, rightful or not.
French novelist Émile Souvestre wrote in 1848: “There is something more powerful than strength,..
#Netanyahu has for decades been a grand master of letting US presidents look like school boys
Don't leave out AIPAC, which has dominated both American political parties. AIPAC courts the GOP but let's not forget that a former Dem party chair was Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, foursquare in support of the Zionist project.
Ideals are great except when sticking to them too fastidiously cause the "good" guys to lose the overall war.
For example in this situation, if we abandon Israel that could result in making that region into a new Iranian radical Islamist caliphate with strong ties to Moscow. I don't believe that avoids the most human nor environmental suffering so I oppose that course of action for greater good even if I don't like doing it.
@HistoPol I agree with you in principle, @GreenFire , but much more extensive study of the situation is warranted because you said this:
For example in this situation, if we abandon Israel that could result in making that region into a new Iranian radical Islamist caliphate with strong ties to Moscow.
...which leaves out the Abraham Accords with Sunni Arab nations that don't like Shiite Iran either. Should Abraham Accord member states successfully evict Iran's Islamists, they could very well install their own favorite Wahab-flavored Islamists which range from the Taliban to ISIS. And it's the Wahab Sunni nations that ARE US allies.
You raise a crucial point, Clara. According to a recent extensive @TheEconomist podcast, the Sunni leaders are not really interested in a stable situation in #Israel, as that would endanger their own position. They need the #Palestinians as a destabilizing force.
This reminds me of l British foreign policy from the 16th-19rh century pioneered by Henry VIII, when the UK would switch...
...alliances with Continental European powers so that one would not become predominant. (As Emperor Napoleon's French did until Waterloo and the Congress of Vienna.)
@TheEconomist@GreenFire I'm also sure @HistoPol did not mean merely England, @Lassielmr because England was a small albeit ruling member of the broader British Empire even when it changed the name to something less imperial (United Kingdom). As the Empire lost colonies, it wasn't much of an empire but it was still more than just England alone.
Thanks, Clara, correct.
What did I mean by "UK" in this context:
I meant...
a) solely the Kingdom of England (but including Wales since 1284 ;)) until 1536,
b) the Kingdom of England and Wales until 1707,
c) The Kingdom of Great Britain until 1801 and, finally, as I was talking about the period before WWI, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (until 1922).
... "United" in the literal sense only since exactly the start of the 19th century.
It is good idea, though, to revisit this thought (I love the map below :) ), as there have been so many changes over the past milennia.
"Historian #NormanDavies has counted sixteen different states over the past 2,000 years.[1]"
"For example in this situation, if we abandon Israel that could result in making that region into a new Iranian radical Islamist caliphate with strong ties to Moscow."
I agree. I don't think that going along with #Netanyahu's extremist policies in Gaza is necessary to prevent this, though.
#Israel is part of the West. As is #Hungary. Rogue leaders must be removed without "dumping" their countries.
@HistoPol@GreenFire Ah. Well, going along with Netanyahu's extremism might not prevent a take-over by Iran but the Sunni alliances would, and here's a reminder that Turkiye IS officially a Western nation AND the Levant was already part of its Ottoman territory...and I'm sure it would positively drool over the prospects of regaining it back. Long story short, there are a number of ways Israel could be taken over, but Iran isn't one of 'em.
I agree with you, Clara, regarding the predilections of #Erdogan. (Interesting, BTW, that you should use the official #Türkiye;)) #Iran could not conquer #Israel.
However, as we can see by its huge production of drones for the #Kremlin, it can cause havoc regarding the region's #infrastructure.
Also, I have read a bit about the technologies it employs (actually...
...that question should be directed to a@TheEconomist@press.coop's Defence Editor, #ShashankJoshi, @shashj). 1)
My gut feeling is that, despite it being propaganda, Prof. #MuhammadMirandi's (see post above) assessment of the weaponry employed in the recent mass attack of #Iran contains more than a grain of truth.
...I took a trip in a virtual time machine in a discussion here. It leads to nowhere.
Historically speaking, #Palestine belongs to no-one and everyone b/c "everyone" has been their at some point in time:
@HistoPol
I wish that our geopolitical landscape provided the room for us to act like these complex situations were black & white, but I know that they're not because of the history that has brought us to this moment.
The only thing we can do is to act based on the high moral principles that were the basis for many Western democracies and the founding principles of the League of Nations and the United Nations from NOW on.
Nations or terrorists organizations that defy these principles must me brought to heel, however.
There cannot be double legal and moral standards, ..."with liberty and Justice for all.”
As a sidenote:
History will judge whether the current presiden of Russia or Israel or the former president of the US, #TFG, will have caused the most lasting damage to their respective countries in the long run.
What is at stake for the USA is nothing less than Democracy and individual...
...liberties, the final collapse and partitioning of the Russian Federation, and statehood and a safe heaven for Jews for Israel, as well as a Superpower guarantor of its security . I'd say with regard to discrimination and persecution Jews have already been set back globally since October, 2023.
Probably the most lasting achievement of #Netanyahu.
@HistoPol @claralistensprechen3rd So, I would suggest reading about our Civil War to help understand my perspective. Without campaigns of total war that would make the Rafah invasion look like arresting campus protesters like Sherman's march to Savannah I don't know that we would have ended slavery in the 19th century. Hopefully, it would have ended by now, but I don't know that.
These discussions are complex and best done offline with whiskey though.
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