I heard that people were walking out on Dave Chappelle’s comedy shows, and I was not surprised — he has a history of being offensive and expressing contempt for gay and trans people. But then I learned why they were walking out.
During his show at TD Garden on Thursday, Dave Chappelle spoke out about the Israel-Gaza conflict, which spurred a walkout by some of his audience members. According to The Wall Street Journal, the comedian first condemned Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel before slamming Israel’s bombing of Gaza and the United States of “aiding the slaughter of innocent civilians.”
Chappelle’s comments were made after he said that he didn’t think students should lose job offers for being pro-Palestine. An audience member then demanded Chappelle to “shut up,” which elicited an emotional response from the comedian. Chappelle proceeded to bash the Israeli government for cutting off water and other essentials to Gaza and accused it of killing innocent people, according to those in attendance at the Boston show.
A few members of the crowd cheered and shouted “Free Palestine” in support of Chappelle, while others yelled, “What about Hamas,” the attendees said. Some individuals got up and left the show. At the end of his routine, Chappelle reportedly added that “two wrongs don’t make a right,” when speaking about Israeli policies and the Hamas attacks.
But wait, I marveled, I agree with Chappelle in this one case. I think that’s the only humane position to take, to both condemn Hamas and their terror attacks, and to condemn the state of Israel for their hateful history. This does not excuse his other views by any means, but he is not approving of Hamas’ cruelty; he is simply also not approving of Israel’s cruel policies.
Fortunately, I am not a comedian, so I’m safe from ‘cancellation’ (not that Chappelle is cancelled — members of an audience have always had the right to disagree with a comic.) And then I read that a prominent academic has lost his editor position for expecting sympathy for the Palestinian people.
Michael Eisen, editor-in-chief of the prominent open access journal eLife and a longtime critic of traditional journals, says he is losing that job for publicly endorsing a satirical article that criticized people dying in Gaza for not condemning the recent attacks on Israel by the Palestinian group Hamas.
“I have been informed that I am being replaced as the Editor in Chief of @eLife for retweeting a @TheOnion piece that calls out indifference to the lives of Palestinian civilians,” Eisen tweeted today.
The furor began on 13 October when Eisen, a geneticist at the University of California, Berkeley, praised one of The Onion’s fake news stories on X, formerly Twitter. The story bore the headline “Dying Gazans Criticized For Not Using Last Words To Condemn Hamas.” Eisen said “The Onion speaks with more courage, insight and moral clarity than the leaders of every academic institution put together. I wish there were a @TheOnion university.”
Here’s the tweet that got him fired.
The Onion speaks with more courage, insight and moral clarity than the leaders of every academic institution put together. I wish there were a @TheOnion university. https://t.co/R8gufC9opJ
— Michael Eisen (@mbeisen) October 13, 2023
And the “offensive” tweet from The Onion.
Dying Gazans Criticized For Not Using Last Words To Condemn Hamas https://t.co/pshItr0uUS
— The Onion (@TheOnion) October 13, 2023
And here’s a sampling of the responses.
I agree with Hector Rivera; they’re proving his point. Eisen was not approving of beheading babies, there was absolutely nothing heartless and callous said by Eisen. He was not expressing moral ambiguity, but moral clarity, by expecting that we’d have the same respect for all human life. I guess his big mistake was expecting that people would have some sympathy for all the civilians currently targeted for death by the Israeli military.
Hamas and Israel mark each day of war with new numbers measuring the accumulation of death and destruction. The Gaza Health Ministry said more than 5,000 Gaza residents have been killed so far, including 436 in the past 24 hours, primarily in the enclave’s south, where Israel has told more than 1 million Gazans to seek shelter from air raids in the north. The ministry’s figures, which could not be independently confirmed, are not broken down between civilians and militants.
Palestinian babies don’t count, I presume. I made a quick search of a few sites where the anti-“cancel culture” fanatics hang out, Bari Weiss, Heterodox “University”, Jerry Coyne, FIRE, etc. — ouch, that was painful, I normally avoid that crowd, with good reason — and surprise, surprise: they’re not raising a hullabaloo about the Eisen dismissal. They’re all about hating the right people, so I shouldn’t be surprised at all — hating Palestinians is a fine thing to do now, since, don’t you know, they’re all Hamas.
Look, see all the Hamas terrorists fleeing the righteous wrath of the holy IDF?
If you don’t agree they should all be shot or bombed, you should be ashamed and be fired.
Well said, PZ.
Freedom of speech only matters to freeze-peach pundits when it’s speech they approve of, it seems.
And atrocities only count when they are committed against your allies, not those committed by your allies.
Is there a rule on Xitter that 3/4 of its membership have to be amenable to kneejerk responses demonstrating a clear lack of reading comprehension? Is Xitter now styling itself after the Daily Mail?
@2– It’s not just X/Twitter. If that report is accurate, Dave Chapelle started by condemning Hamas’s attack but members of the audience were still shouting ‘What about Hamas?’
The outrage is obviously ridiculous but it is also possible to criticize Israel in a way to not invoke the stupid reaction in people. One way is to direct the blame at Netanyahu instead of Israel. People usually get less defensive that way if you name the person in charge instead of naming the country. I guess the latter doesn’t fire up the dumb patriotic response. For example, you can blame Benji N. for moving the security forces from the border, for being complacent in keeping Israel secure, for distracting people via his judicial reforms, and for having made no progress in peace talks and for actions that have backfired historically (e.g., trying to assassinate Mashal which ended up costing Israel ). You can also say that Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t have any plans, e.g., to rescue the hostages, he is just trying to drop as many bombs as possible to seem powerful and to pretend that he is doing something while actually making the situation worse. And that he has been in charge for years now and it is clear that his solutions have not worked and will never work.
You’re saying it’s all Netanyahu’s fault? You don’t think that’s a bit reductive?
Well, it seems fair that since the Israelis want to spread blood libel against the Palestinians, they should also get the right to enjoy it again themselves.
Every tactic used against the Jews historically is now being used against the Palestinians by the Israeli government.
If I was face to face with Netanyahu, he’d be swinging at me as I assured him that Hitler would’ve thanked him for justifying his horrific final solution.
Never fear, the same would be true with Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas.
Get them swinging, then lock them together inside of a small room.
Work the way down the chain of command until I find people ready to talk to each other and begin with the premise, “We can’t undo the past, so this is how we move forward and putting down the noisy, hurtful toys is the first step”.
Because, the first step in any peace process is getting the shitheads out of the way.
As for Chappelle, never appreciated his style of comedy and I’ve disagreed on a fair number of points. Indeed, for once, I completely agree with him. Both sides have been behaving like children with destructive weapons. And no adults are in the room, only a pair of leaders whose leadership has failed badly enough that they needed the misery and horrors of war to distract their own population away from their failures.
Would that one cultural commonality could be harnessed.
Me against my brother. Me and my brother against our cousin. Me, my brother and my cousin against my neighbor. Me, my brother, my cousin and my neighbor against an invader.
It’s simple: The West has decided to allow a genocide.
lotharloo@4,
You seem to forget Netanyahu has won several elections; and that most of the opposition are little if any better on the Palestinian issue.
chrislawson@3,
Closely parallel reaction here: British Labour MP Margaret Hodge is outraged that leftwing journalist Owen Jones should so much as mention the Palestinians’ plight after he spent a good minute denouncing Hamas’s atrocities. She simply claims he said nothing about them, a few minutes after he’d done so.
Remember, we’re “selling” them the weapons and ammunition, which they’re “buying” with money we gave them expressely for that purpose.
@4:
Yes it is a bit reductive but if you want to get past the emotional responses that people exhibit everytime someone criticizes Israel then it could be effective to direct the criticism at a person and his policies.
@8:
See above.
KG @ Hodge works for the new Tony Blair, so she needs to practice her lying skills.
The support for Israel and its ongoing genocide of Palestinians revolts and disgusts me I know a manager of an aid agency in Gaza. He was told to pack up his operation and leave by the war criminal Israeli military. He did so but his house in the Northern Gaza strip was destroyed by Israeli bombs. Before he headed south he wrote his will and posted it online because he knew that Israel would target aid convoys and refugees fleeing south which is exactly what happened. Someone else I know of has lost 21 family members in Israel’s bombing campaign. None of them were members of Hamas.
Attempts were made in Sydney to silence protests. The caviling Premier threatened any protestors by invoking police emergency powers which allow police to stop and search anyone they want and any demonstrator would face $11,000 fines and /or 3 years jail. 6000 Sydneysiders became criminals. An inevitable court battle saw the premier over-ruled and a week later 12 to 15,000 marched and the protests will continue.
Hamas is a product of 75 years of Israeli bastardy. It doesn’t excuse what they did but it explains it. Bombing over the rubble and murdering thousands of innocent people won’t destroy it. More people who have lost everything at Israel’s hands will simply take their place and the crimes against humanity will continue.
“I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.”
― W. H. Auden
The current Israeli government is disgusting as is Hamas. Hamas were, in my view, hoping that Israel would react like this because Terrorism begets violent repression which in turn begets large scale revolution, or at least that is how I understand terrorism. Netanyahu in turn welcomes the excuse for a Final Solution of the Palestinian Question
OT: Rich Woods @ 2: I like ‘Xitter’ as a form provided we follow Pin Yin rendering which pronounces ‘X’ as ‘sh’.
Chapelle said something reasonable for once? This really is the stupidest time-line.
Yes, I’m sure they were, and that was probably part of the motivation. But very likely they also calculated that the Israeli reaction would make the expected agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia impossible, and put pressure on those Arab governments which have already concluded such agreements. I’ve seen this motive attributed to Iran by people who see Hamas as a proxy for the latter, but there seems no reason Hamas couldn’t work it out for themselves.
What is the difference between an Israeli baby killed by Hamas and a Gaza baby torn apart by an Israeli bomb?
This is a rhetorical question but I’m sure there are millions that can tell us which baby deserved to die and why.
They will however differ on whether it is the Israeli baby or the Gazaian one.
I predicted at the beginning that the death toll would be 5:1 or 10:1 for Israel.
We are up to 3.8 to 1 now, and the main war hasn’t even started.
What really stands out in this whole atrocity, is how absolutely incompetent the Netanyahu government is and was.
.1. They had a magic wall around Gaza costing over $1 billion to stop Hamas from getting out. It was cut in 30 places by Hamas in minutes.
Ask the French with their Maginot line how well those work.
.2. There wasn’t much human backup and no plans for what to do if there was a prison breakout. It took most of a day for the Israeli army to get themselves together and push Hamas back.
.3. They still have no idea what they are doing.
How is invading Gaza going to destroy Hamas?
They have to find 20,000 Hamas fighters hiding with 2.3 million civilians. Chances are most of them are hiding or have fled Gaza.
.4. What is their end game for Gaza?
We easily won the Iraqi war and the Afghanistan war. And then spent two decades losing the occupations.
They can occupy Gaza once again like they’ve done before and get the same result, which was…Hamas.
This is all obvious and even the US government is telling them to think things through before they just slaughter thousands of people for no real gains.
The Netanyahu government is good at destroying the Israeli democracy and pushing Palestinian civilians around. And that is about it.
Of course the anti-cancel culture crowd would be silent on this. They’ve never actually had principles about freedom of expression. That’s their disingenuous smokescreen for what they really believe: they, and only they, should be free from consequences. It’s very much how the second amendment crowd were stone-cold silent in response to the deaths of John Crawford III or Philando Castile. They don’t care about the right to bear arms or law-abiding responsible firearm ownership, they just care about right-wing white people not being held to any standard of behavior.
At some point, we have to stop acting as if these fucking clowns are engaging in these discussions in good faith. Just mock them, mercilessly and relentlessly.
raven @17: Actually, while it’s popular to blame the Maginot Line for France’s military failures in WW2, the Line actually worked: Germany never managed to breach it (unlike the wall around Gaza) and instead the Fall of France can be blamed more on a series of strategic blunders on the part of French leadership.
KG @15. Yes I agree re Saudi Arabia and the other Arab states. Iran looks ‘promising’ from this point of view, The trouble is hardliners on both sides (re Netanyahu it’s the super Maccabees in his government whom he has to placate) know that God has given them the country as their exclusive property forever (Waqf for Hamas).
Microraptor @ 19. These walls are only effective in keeping individual people in it seems to me. Re the Maginot line, R.V. Jones (British Scientific Intelligence WWII) claims that the Germans knew that the contractors for constructing the line cheated on the concrete!
Following on to KG @15: It seems to me that both the Likudniks and Hamas are provoking each other in order to silence internal dissent and justify their continued rule over their own respective peoples. And now it also seems the Iranians (specifically, the mullocrats and RG/Kuds force factions, IMO) are using both of them to drag America into this mess and thus reinforce their own continued dominance of their own country.
And US Republicans are now using this to discredit their enemies, keep Americans as divided as possible, and possibly retake power here. All of which is very beneficial to Russia (and possibly China) as well.
microraptor @19: Still, the Line failed in that it was never completed to spec (thanks to selfish Belgium not wanting to be sacrificed as a battlefield between French and German forces). And so, the invading German infantry simply flanked around the “unfinished” bit.
I think it would be better to focus on Bibi, Likud, and the Revisionist form of Zionism that preceded them historically than to generalize toward Israel as a whole. Before Hamas terrorists did their atrocities, a portion of Israelis were protesting Bibi and the gov’t. There is dissent over there in Israeli society. Sadly to dissent will be regarded a unpatriotic as it was in the US after 9-11. It’s potentially a with us or the terrorists binary with no room for complexity.
That is what the Israelis are doing right now.
It is blatantly obvious that the Netanyahu government dropped the ball big time in running Israel and guaranteeing national safety and security.
The Israeli people know that.
80% of them blame the current government.
Yeah, that’s just about the size of it:
It’s beast against beast,
no one is right,
everyone is wrong.
And those who suffer are bystanders and civilians on both sides, caught in a conflict which suits their rulers just fine.
And as a cherry on top of this shit pie, that dream of building an upright, compassionate nation for those fleeing persecution has gone right down the tubes, forever.
And another item to be added to the hideous list of things humans ought to be ashamed of.
Yep, definitely “Israel’s 9/11,” in more ways than Shrubenyahoo would want to admit…
PZ, you have often stated concern for the lives of all people.
This futile feudal carnage between the powerful hateful arrogant leaders of both these semitic groups has been going on for centuries. I see no likely end to it.
I cannot be indifferent to murder. I grieve for the decent non-combatant Palestinians AND Israelis caught in the jaws of this ancient, seemingly eternal, grinding death machine.
and @25 outis is correct when they say “another item to be added to the hideous list of things humans ought to be ashamed of.”
The prison walls around Gaza may have cost a cool billion but were really only intended to prevent small surprise attacks. Israel thought a big surprise attack was impossible, so they’d have time to prepare for any large movement and use their tanks and aircraft rather than their walls. And then they flubbed that not-getting-surprised thing.
The idea that you can’t even critique the slaughter going on in Israel is quite widespread in anglophone media, and utterly disgusting. Other countries seem much more capable to be both horrified at the Hamas actions, and horrified at the IDF response.
@wzrd1 #6,
This is one of the “Mirror World” conundrums pointed out in Doppelganger by Naomi Klein, published just last month, which I have just finished reading. The book initially is about the apparently common confusion of Naomi Klein and Naomi Wolf, and then it expands from there to other mirror worlds. Chapter 14 applies the metaphor to the Israel/Palestine conundrum, which though written before October 7 is pretty prescient in my opinion. I recommend the book.
submoron @ 13, pretty close and I’ve also taken to calling it his Final Solution. He’s literally using every blood libel trick and every tactic ever employed against the Jews and directly applying it, clumsily against the Palestinians.
To the point where people repeat the never proven decapitated babies is a valid excuse to blow up Palestinian babies, because being Godly is being the very devil himself or some inanity.
In Jesus alsmity love…
As for X, same rule for pronunciation here and what were once Tweets are now Xits. Given tweets were squawks, yeah, works out far more accurately now.
@ 20, precisely what part of that line was breached? The Germans did the sensible thing and just went around it. Hence, “French blunders” in not having defense in depth and someone waiting to greet them.
It’s still entertaining to hear Trumpites blather on still about how the magical wall against Mexico would cure all of our woes, still ignoring reality of course. Hell, one section that Trump posed at literally fell down of its own accord.
Raging Bee @ 21, I’d not be surprised to find Putin’s psyops and network warfare people also stirring the pot, as it attracts attention away from Ukraine and his incessant failures there.
Thanks for this post PZ. It’s obvious the Western Powers, including the US, have decided to support Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians.
Chappelle is a comedian. Comedians have been known to say things some other don’t like. In North American we have freedom of speech. He isn’t preaching hate speech or telling people to go out and kill, so he has the right to his opinion and say it out loud. May not agree with a lot of things others say, but Firing them for saying things is just so undemocratic.
All wars are ugly.
It wasn’t “nice” for Hamas to kill people when they entered Israel.
Israel wasn’t “nice” when the cut off food, water, medicine, fuel to Gaza.
Neither of these two actions gained either side anything.
It boggles the mind that Hamas was able to “invade” Israel and it took so long for the military to show up and start working. Bibi does have some things to answer for. Why he ignorned information from Egypt and Saudi that something was afoot in Gaza doesn’t make much sense. Of course he has been busy trying to destroy the Supreme Court of Israel, but just the same………..
No one is going to win this war. A lot fo non combatants will die. There will be orphans and dead children on both sides. Bibi ought to take a very long vacation, perhaps in Miami or somehwere. The leadership of Hamas, ditto, but not in Miami, perhaps in Qatar. If they son’t stop killing each other, then at least let the children out of both countries so they can go somewhere safe and peaceful and where women can give birth in safe, secure, hospitals.
Intellectualizing a catastrophe may seem out of place right now but I had let my readings on the Palestinian-Israeli divide lapse due to intense burnout in the mid-2000s. For part of my remedial reading I have been devouring Neil Caplan’s The Israel-Palestine Conflict: Contested Histories (Contesting the Past) and he’s been gaining my trust so far. I had previously cut my teeth on the New Historians like Avi Shlaim and whatever flavor Ahron Bregman is as they are Israeli Jews who don’t pull punches. My earlier views were heavily influenced by them.
Caplan seems a little different. Since my reading drifted off in the mid 2000s I have much catching up to do, though the early stuff rings a bell. Caplan’s is not the only book in my digital stack by far. Any suggestions?
Someone needs to ask that Roy Zuckerman guy if his baby has been beheaded by anyone.
@34 yes, I thought the same, what an asinine comment, how does not having a baheaded baby invalidate Eisen’s comment?
A bit OT: No comment from Jerry Coyne on this story but he is busy whining about Israel not being able to kill random civilians in peace. Quote:
Has it ever occurred to you, Jerry fucking blood thirsty scumbag Coyne, that maybe, perhaps maybe there is no military solution to this problem? Have you stopped for one fucking second to think about the decades of evidence of Israeli policies, or even American policies that terrorism cannot be solved by bombs?
I am reminded, re: Hamas, of the motto of Marvel comics’ premier terrorist organization, Hydra: “Cut off the head and two shall take it’s place.” Israel understandably wishes to eliminate the barbarians of Hamas. If they manage to do it (but what will they do about the leadership living large in Qatar?), how many of the children who survive being driven into southern Gaza will return in 6 months or 6 years as the new Hamas? And I’m still waiting for someone to ask President Herzog, who implicated all Palestinians as complicit and therefore targetable because they didn’t rise up and overthrow Hamas, “How’d that work for you in the Warsaw Ghetto?” I agree with the comment that maybe a nonmilitary solution should be tried.
Unfortunately it seems like a large majority of Israelis and Palestinians are unwilling to accept any of the obvious compromise solutions. A large majority of Israelis have been voting for decades for Apartheid policies and a slow-roll ethnic cleansing, and a large majority of Palestinians support groups whose founding documents and rhetoric also call for ethnic cleansing / genocide of the other side.
My position is: fuck them both, leave them alone, and let them kill each other, until such time that at least one side has a majority of people wanting a compromise solution.
The two most obvious solutions are: A one state with a religiously neutral government. A two state solution where Israel gives back a bunch of land to Palestinians. Raging Bee suggested that maybe we fold Palestinian territories into Egypt and Jordan, but that would require consent of all of the parties and that might be even more difficult.
…and a large majority of Palestinians support groups whose founding documents and rhetoric also call for ethnic cleansing / genocide of the other side.
When, and how, did “a large majority of Palestinians” effectively voice support for such militants? What other options did they have at those times/instances? Did the Israelis cooperate with more moderate groups so they could deliver for their supporters? Because if more moderate groups weren’t able to deliver anything for Palestinians, then Palestinians would have had almost no choice but to support someone else who promised better results.
A one state with a religiously neutral government.
Such a guarantee would be unenforceable. Also, remember that almost all religious conflicts are, at their core, ETHNIC and CULTURAL conflicts. And there’s no way any one-state Israeli government could be ethnically neutral — unless all sides could be persuaded or forced to accept a government of Wiccans, Confucians, Hellenistic Pagans, or some other totally non-Abrahamic regime. And such a regime would probably not be at all democratic, since neither Jews nor Muslims would trust or vote for them. (Can we find a direct descendant of Alexander the Great to be their king?)
Those who condemn the Hamas butchery and say that Israel has a right to defend itself will, at the same time, argue that no response by Israel that gets rid of Hamas is appropriate.
Two things. First, none of the things Israel are currently doing, or plan to do, will actually get rid of Hamas. This is why the world condemn them: they’re killing lots of civilians without actually accomplishing the worthy goal they say they want, and have a right, to accomplish.
And second, Israel and their zealot supporters need to be asking themselves what Israel have been doing to ENHANCE AND EMPOWER extremists like Hamas, and maybe…defend themselves by not doing them anymore?
So they were. But they were not protesting about the treatment of the Palestinians, but about Netanyahu’s corruption and bid to hamstring the judiciary. As I think I’ve pointed out here before, if you look at the results of the most recent Israeli general election, and follow up by looking at the policy positions of the main parties, it’s evident that only a small minority of Jewish Israelis favour peace with the Palestinians on any terms other than the continued subordination of the latter.
By voting for them in a free and fair election?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_election
Or how about this?
http://pcpsr.org/en/node/843
“A semi-consensus that Hamas has won the May 2021 confrontation with Israel triggers a paradigm shift in public attitudes against the PA and its leadership and in favor of Hamas and armed struggle; moreover, a two-third majority rejects the PA decision to postpone the elections, 70% demand forcing legislative and presidential elections on Israel, and the majority says Hamas, not Fatah under Abbas, deserve to represent and lead the Palestinian people.”
Again, fuck both sides.
What are you talking about? I didn’t suggest that the US should invade them and impose this by force – that would indeed be difficult.
Are you saying that the Palestinians should not trust the Israelis if they made such a promise? Of course not. That’s my argument. My argument is that a large majority of Israelis and Palestinians would refuse this peace deal, and so of course negotiators on both sides shouldn’t trust that the other side would stick to such a promise.
Or are you making a much more mundane claim that the people of a country can change their government, including constitution? Yes. They can, but you’re making a much stronger claim. To me, the claim that you’re making sounds like saying “the first amendment is nothing but a piece of paper; it’s unenforceable”. Au contraire, clearly the first amendment of the USA is enforceable, and enforced on a daily basis. It does require the consent of the governed to submit to a rule-of-law constitutional scheme even if they might not agree with every element of that constitution and government. That kind of culture exists in the USA. I agree with you that the public acceptance of a religiously-neutral government in that area of the world is probably quite small.
Yea, like the conflict in English circa 1600 with the Protestants vs Catholics, including the Gunpowder Treason Plot. That was totally ethnic and cultural and religion had nothing to do with it.
/s
This is obnoxiously stupid. Of course there can be religious conflicts without ethnic differences and without other non-religious cultural differences. Why are you being a religious apologist?
GerrardOfTitanServer:
Well, that election was held (from your own source) in 25 January 2006.
17 years, 9 months and 0 days ago, which is 6,482 days.
Of the thousands of Gazan residents who have died in the bombing campaign, a good proportion were not actually born then, of the many more thousands who have been wounded, similarly, and of the hundreds of thousands who have been displaced, similarly.
Little old ladies, young babies? Fuck’em, they live in the wrong country.
Gotcha.
—
In passing, your attempted rebuttal of RB is weak; the claim was “almost all” X are Y, your retort was “there can be” ¬Y.
(Think about it)
So, the last time the Palestinians had what you call a “free and fair election” was about seventeen years ago?
And where did this Palestinian election take place? In Israeli-occupied territory, under an Israeli occupation regime that was backed by overwhelming Israeli military force. Did Israel respect the will of the people as expressed in that election? Had they promised in advance to do so?
Also, Gerrard, Hamas only got 44.45% of the vote in that (long bygone) election. Hardly what I’d call a ringing endorsement.
Pointless it is to engage with someone who still thinks US had no choice but to nuke two cities in WW2. Of course she will say fuck the babies in Gaza and let them die. It’s the least surprising reaction.
I think I asked you before. Let me ask you again: What do you think we should do? How do we save those babies in Gaza? Use military force to occupy Palestine and Israel? No thanks. By pressurizing Israel to stop their indiscriminate attacks on Palestinians and stop their slow-roll ethnic cleansing policies? Sure. How would we do that? By stopping the flow of weapons and other support to Israel. Aka by fucking off until they change their position to something reasonable.
So, again, please explain how your position is different than mine.
PS: I support the first nuking in WW2, and not the second, as the clear lesser of two evils. It was necessary to achieve immediate unconditional surrender, and unconditional surrender was mandatory in order to reform Japanese society to avoid a repeat war 30 years later (like we saw with Germany between WW1 and WW2), and immediate surrender was necessary to save the thousands of innocent non-Japanese lives that were being lost every day in territory occupied by the Japanese to starvation and torture. There are other reasons too, but I think those are the most important.
PPS:
Of course, I also support BDS: boycott, divest, and sanction Israel and Palestine. Keep the flow of humanitarian aid incoming, and isolate them (the sanction part of BDS), but fuck off otherwise (the boycott and divest part of BDS).
John:
As I asked lotharloo, if you don’t like my BDS and fuck-off plan (boycott, divest, and sanction Israel and Palestine while keeping basic humanitarian aid incoming), then what do you suggest? Same questions I asked to lotharloo in a post or two above.
Raging Bee
Oh come on. I have found nothing suggesting that the elections were not free and fair. Also, you didn’t engage with the stronger piece of evidence which is that very recent opinion polling indicates that political support for Hamas is even higher now than it was before.
Again, these are not just a few bad actors that are using the civilians are human shields. Instead, we have two civilizations that are hell-bent on killing each other, or at the very least hell-bent on ethnic cleansing the land of the other. These are the facts. It seems that a lot of people here are uncomfortable with these facts.
I suggest that bombing the shit out of Gaza, displacing more than a million people, destroying entire city blocks, denying supplies of food, water, electricity, fuel, medical supplies, sewerage, and so forth is not really helping the situation.
But it’s fantastic revenge. And there’s no sign of it stopping any time soon.
I mean, it’s hardly an example of self-defense, is it?
(Your people killed our people? We’ll kill a shitload more of your people! And more!)
Non-sequitir. I said what the USA should do. I did that because I’m a voter in the USA. I have no direct influence over Israel. Thus your response is a complete non-sequitir.
If I had magical power over Israel to force them to change their actions, then I agree. It would be nice if they didn’t indiscriminately bomb civilians, blockade basic humanitarian supplies, and do collective punishment. I’m pretty sure I also expressed this quite clearly above.
So, what, if anything, do you take issue with?
. Sequitur.
Well, I am Australian, so what the USA should do is not up to me.
But, were the USA to, you know. stop sending bombs and F35s and whatnot to Israel with their billions of dollars worth of military aid, it might cause a slightly lower rate of casualties amongst the populace of Gaza.
So, sure. Thing is, your BDS idea to give neither side anything other than humanitarian aid essentially means that, not long hence, every person in Gaza will be either dead, seriously injured or displaced, and the place itself be razed.
See, what I think is that the USA is being a moderating influence on the degree of collective punishment Palestinian people are suffering.
Either Israel holds back a bit (as now), or the billions of dollars in aid might be held back.
I mean, not even counting Israel’s unacknowledged nukes, they could level the place to rubble from end to end. Lots of boom in their arsenal.
Mainly, what I commented about in the first place.
That election back in the day does not mean the current populace of Gaza chose Hamas to act for it. And you adducing it as a reason why ordinary citizens deserve no better than to be sieged and bombed made to suffer in various ways is not particularly enlightened. Or sympathetic.
(Not that you claim to be enlightened, these days)
Again, John, what is your problem? I don’t have a magic wand. I think the best thing I can do is BDS of both sides. Again motherfucker: Do you think there is something better my country can do? Do you actually disagree with anything that I’m saying? Because I don’t see any actual disagreement. I just see “you should use your magic wand to make things better”.
Do you want me to say that I think the USA or the UN should militarily invade Palestine and Israel? What do you want from me?
Oh dear. I am not asking anything of you.
I suppose I want you to read my criticisms (or commendations, as it may be) and at least consider them.
So. One can say “oh dear, this is not good right now” without having a prescription at hand to remedy the situation, and of course, as ordinary citizens, neither you nor I have any real power to influence realpolitik at the international level.
Since you want something you can achieve, I’ll note that I responded to your comment after you retorted “By voting for them in a free and fair election?” in response to “When, and how, did “a large majority of Palestinians” effectively voice support for such militants?”
I mean, you do get that whatever happened back in the day, that would not really apply to current denizens of Gaza, right?
At least concede that justification is not particularly persuasive.
It is one piece of many that shows that Palestinians support for Hamas and tacit support for the total destruction of Israel has always been high. AFAICT, this is what many years of polling data indicates. I will not back off my position that this is a problem that exists in most Palestinians and most Israelis. All of this data is quite persuasive for this seemingly unavoidable conclusion.
Gerrard, you can’t conflate Hamas and the Palestinian people, or even the Palestinian people in Gaza.
Facts:
“The U.S. government estimates the total Palestinian population at 3 million in the West Bank and 2 million in the Gaza Strip (midyear 2022).”
(https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-report-on-international-religious-freedom/israel-west-bank-and-gaza/west-bank-and-gaza/)
“The Palestinian Authority currently administers some 39% of the West Bank. 61% of the West Bank remains under direct Israeli military and civilian control. East Jerusalem was unilaterally annexed by Israel in 1980, prior to the formation of the PA. Since 2007 Gaza has been governed by the Hamas Government in Gaza.”
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_National_Authority)
—
So. You wrote “It is one piece of many that shows that Palestinians support for Hamas and tacit support for the total destruction of Israel has always been high.”
Now, sure, Hamas itself wants total destruction of Israel (and, quite notably and quite publicly, Israel wants total destruction of Hamas).
The Palestinian people? Well, who knows?
The historical parallels are ironic, no?
A people from whom their land has been taken, who have been put into ghettoes, who have endured a diaspora. Who are reviled.
Ok. Reality is more nuanced. Ex:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/palestinians-attitudes-about-terrorism
https://www.usip.org/publications/2006/01/willing-compromise-palestinian-public-opinion-and-peace-process
Support among Palestinians for indiscriminate violence against Israelis remains quite high, and support for Hamas is also increasing, but “paradoxically” support for a compromise two-state solution is also increasing. I guess that’s more an indictment of the Palestinian Authority than the Palestinian people.
Ok. I guess the Palestinians are less to blame because a majority seemingly support a reasonable two-state solution, but still most bear some blame for the seemingly very large support for indiscriminate violence against Israeli civilians apart from and in addition to their support for Hamas.
(sigh)
Right now, as we write these words, bombs are falling in Gaza.
Civilians are being displaced.
Buildings are being demolished.
What little food was in refrigerators in the flats and houses that are unbombed is either gone or rotten.
The water does not run from the tap.
The sewerage does not work.
Israel is defending itself.
Has been since October 7.
Is gonna keep defending itself.
However many civilians it takes.
I mean, sure. Kill all Gazans, probably destroy the powerbase of Hamas.
(Yay! Justice)
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/palestinians-attitudes-about-terrorism
.
.
.
Support for indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilians remains well over 50%. I can damn well blame them for that.
I also remind you that the Palestinian Authority aka Fatah has, to my knowledge, basically never morally repudiated Hamas’s terrorist tactics. They only dispute which method is more effective. That’s another sign of quite strong tacit approval of indiscriminate violence — just like the disturbing similarity on the Israeli side where there are parties that clearly stand for settlement expansion, and then other parties that tacitly support settlement expansion, with only a small minority of parties that are against settlement expansion.
Again, the indiscriminate violence against Israeli civilians is not an outlier in Palestinian society. It is overwhelmingly supported by the general public.
What, collectively?
(Like, you know, some of them are babies, and blaming babies is a bit extreme)
Good grief.
OK. This is one of those times when I know futility is at hand.
But, FWIW, can you construct the converse of that claim?
(If so, is it any less meaningful?)
GOTS,
You appear to systematically ignore the huge asymmetry in the confrontation between Israel and the Palestinians (if you have acknowledged it, do point me to that, but your constant refrain is “Fuck both sides”). Israel is rich, one of the world’s strongest military powers, nuclear-armed, dominating the region, in reciept of huge subventions from the USA, and constantly violating international law in its annexations of and setllements within territories captured in war. The Palestinians are poor, stateless, divided both geographically and politically, either under effective Israeli rule (in the West Bank, and Israel itself), or in what has aptly been described as the world’s largest open-air prison. None of that in any way justifies Hamas’s terrorist actions or antisemitic ideology. But “Fuck both sides” is, in effect, support for Israel’s oppression and imperialism – because neutrality between the strong and the weak always favours the strong.
@GerrardOfTitanServer
Easy. The problem gets solved once Palestinians get a country with a well-functioning democratic government with protected human rights for all its citizens. Gaza right now is a failed state with a failed government that is a religious theocracy. Those types of governments are very happy with infinite wars. Israeli government is also approaching the same thing. So the solution is well-functioning democratic governments for both.
The next obvious question is how do we get there? But before answering that questions, we have to agree that bombing the shit out of Gaza doesn’t get us closer to that goal and in fact takes us away from that goal.
…Also, you didn’t engage with the stronger piece of evidence which is that very recent opinion polling indicates that political support for Hamas is even higher now than it was before.
And you didn’t address my point about the relative lack of alternatives in a situation where the real power was in the hands of people who weren’t bound by the results of any Palestinian election. If the non-militant parties can’t get anything done for the people, it’s a pretty safe bet those people will vote for the militants, at least out of sheer frustration, and also because WTF else can they do?
(Also, I remember hearing that Hamas had also been credited, at least back then (which was SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO, remember?), with providing some basic services to civilians in Gaza…so again, if they’re the ones doing some good, they’re gonna get at least some votes for it. Hamas and other terrorist groups are sometimes like gangsters in that manner: everyone knows they’re violent criminals, but lots of people owe them for necessary assistance that no one else was providing.)
GOTS, You appear to systematically ignore the huge asymmetry in the confrontation between Israel and the Palestinians…
He’s also ignoring how that asymmetry can bork and pervert any electoral process taking place under an occupying power, and make the result of such elections largely meaningless, as well as not credible in the eyes of voters who know that those with all the real power won’t be bound by their votes. Just imagine America having elections after China has conquered and occupied the whole country — does anyone think the Chinese army would change anything in response to such an election?
Again, the indiscriminate violence against Israeli civilians is not an outlier in Palestinian society. It is overwhelmingly supported by the general public.
So…you’re saying “fuck both sides,” but you’re going out of your way to bash Palestinian civilians a good bit more than Israeli civilians. And you’re pretending to judge and condemn both “sides” equally, despite the huge and obvious economic and power disparity between them. To which I’m inclined to reply “fuck you, fuck your lazy-assed throw-up-your-hands isolationism, and fuck your unrealistic and mostly unworkable demands (which we wouldn’t be able to enforce if we were fucking off anyway).”
@51 John Morales said: Your people killed our people? We’ll kill a shitload more of your people! And more!)
I reply: Well, that is the tRUMP philosophy: (paraphrasing) when someone hits you, hit them back a thousand times as hard.
Putin, Netanyahoo, tRUMP, and thousands more. So many humans are violent, ignorant barbarians!
I repeat @23:
‘This futile feudal carnage between the powerful hateful arrogant leaders of both these semitic groups has been going on for centuries. I see no likely end to it.
I cannot be indifferent to murder. I grieve for the decent non-combatant Palestinians AND Israelis caught in the jaws of this ancient, seemingly eternal, grinding death machine.’
Call me naive if you wish. Additionally, given the apparently unstoppable invasions of Ukraine, Palestine, most of S. America (by the u.s. china and lothers), the war on decency by xtian terrorists in the u.s., etc. I see no agency powerful enough to stop let alone prevent these atrocities. Therefore, I expand my grief to cover the damage and murder perpetrated by the pervasive evil elements of humanity. My organization will, in its own small way, continue to work to encourage honest, rational peaceful values in people.
lotharloo
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Raging Bee
I’m sorry. Your arguments are bunk. I don’t know why you’re doing apologetics for the Palestinians. Most Palestinians are quite happy with indiscriminate violence against random Israeli civilians. These are what all of the facts show.
Ugg. This is the problem. Most people here seem to favor one side or the other. I don’t. I have been quite clear that both sides are about equally bad, with maybe a slight edge to the Palestinians as being the more responsible side (maybe). I have consistently condemned Israel’s indiscriminate attacks on Palestinian civilians, and their crimes against humanity for cutting off all supplies in collective punishment, and their slow-roll land grab that is ethnic cleansing. I’m pushing back against both sides because both sides, including a large majority of the Israeli population and Palestinian population strongly support indiscriminate violence against civilians on the other side, and a large majority of the Israeli population tacitly condones and – to a lesser extent – a majority of the Palestinian population tacitly condone the political approach of “victory or death; where victory is defined as complete ethnic cleansing of the other side”.
.
KG
I do recognize the great difference in power. My apologies for not making that clear.
I disagree. “Fuck both sides and fuck off” is just another name for BDS, which is the best that anyone, including you, is suggesting that we do, because the only next step is military intervention against Israel, which I don’t see anyone suggesting, including you.
You just don’t like my framing. Well, I don’t think we should excuse a shitty person in an abusive relationship who is the primary victim in that abusive relationship if they’re doing everything they can to dish back equal amounts of abuse. In this case, intent matters very much. Attempted murder is still a very serious crime. There’s a very good chance that the Palestinians would be doing just as bad stuff to their Israeli neighbors if they had the superior power, and probably worse (while also paradoxically having a higher tolerance e.g. more weak-willed acceptance of a feasible two-State solution compared to the Israeli public).
The Palestinian people will start having my sympathy once they change as a people and a culture to strongly favor non-violent civil disobedience, or at least more-more (and more effective) violence that is aimed at Israeli uniformed soldiers and police, and Israeli politicians. As long as a vast majority of Palestinians condone and favor indiscriminate violence against civilians, they are no better than the Israelis in that regard, and we should not do apologetics for them just because they happen to have less effective options for indiscriminate violence. Again, people who support Fatah over Hamas are generally not doing so because they think that indiscriminate violence is not morally justified; they are doing so because they think it is tactically unwise, and under other circumstances where Hamas’s approach was shown to be more effective, they would be supporters of Hamas. This is what the polling tells us.
Will fucking off allow the status quo to be maintained? Probably. Hopefully enough pressure can be brought under the “fuck off” campaign to change Israeli politics, but if that doesn’t work, I don’t see anyone else suggesting a different plan. I am struggling to see
typo
more-moral*
Well, I see Gerrard is just fine with cheering on genocide.
Gross.
The IRA is not the perfect example, but if they want to use violence, they should be more like the IRA. They should also take inspiration from the Afghan and Iraqi resistance against occupying US military forces. US forces were not beaten by indiscriminate attacks on US civilians. Sept 11. That only made the US civilians want to fight even harder and vote for politicians who used more military force. The way that they beat the US military was grinding down military targets. They didn’t use stand-up fights. They use improvised explosive devices. Bombs. They used asymmetrical guerilla warfare to kill significant numbers of US soldiers, and thereby made it a giant pain for the US soldiers to operate. The US soldiers and US people were unwilling to commit wholesale genocide, and the resistance soldiers could hide inside the general population, and eventually this worse down the will of the US civilians to continue to fight.
The Palestinian forces should take inspiration from this. This is how you win the fight with violence. Indiscriminate civilian attacks are morally outrageous, but they’re also quite counterproductive. It raises support for Apartheid and other harsh measures among the general Israeli population, and it also raises support for “military supplies to Israel” in the US population.
They are not wearing down the morale of their opposition. They’re strengthening it. Their resistance is worse than useless. But, AFAICT, the Palestinians choose this path because of their fucking stupid religiously informed cultural beliefs about violence and war. In short, they’d rather get immediate emotional satisfaction of hurting their enemy compared to actually accomplishing something because it might require them to lose some face in the process. Fucking stupid. And immoral (the indiscriminate attacks on civilians).
Notice how the Israeli government maintains the support of the US. They at least pretend to care about civilian deaths. They try to avoid the appearance of indiscriminate violence on civilians. Most of their violence is slow and invisible, the slow stealing of land via the courts and the police. That’s not sexy. That’s not the kind of violence that people in the US care about. That’s not going to make the US population react emotionally against them. Now compare that to all of our reactions to the indiscriminate attack by Hamas that killed like 1200 random Israeli civilians and how that makes us feel. The Israeli side, while just as immoral, is at least behaving more wisely. They’re winning, and I fear that as long as the Palestinians pursue these incredibly particular stupid religion-informed policies of indiscriminate violence, they’re going to continue losing.
What the fuck? How the fuck did I do that? I’ve been doing the exact opposite.
The IRA is not the perfect example, but if they want to use violence, they should be more like the IRA.
I’d be quite happy to see Hamas and Hezbollah just give up and fade out of relevance when they lose whatever public support they may have once had. That’s what the IRA did; but I’m not sure Hamas et al will be doing the same all that soon.
Indiscriminate civilian attacks are morally outrageous, but they’re also quite counterproductive. It raises support for Apartheid and other harsh measures among the general Israeli population, and it also raises support for “military supplies to Israel” in the US population.
Actually, Indiscriminate civilian attacks do serve the purpose of goading the enemy into rash reaction, which then further enrages their own people and forces them to fall back on supporting the terrorists (or whoever is running the terrorist ops), which further secures the terrorists’ power over “their” people and makes any more moderate or negotiated solution impossible. That was al Qaeda’s objective with 9/11, and I’m quite confident it’s also the objective of both Hamas and whatever foreign power is supporting, training and leading them. As I said earlier, Hamas and the Likudniks are using each other to secure their own power and silence all dissent or alternatives; Iran (or rather, mullocrats and Quds force factions) is using both of them for the same purpose, and to deepen internal divisions in the US; and Russia and maybe China are hoping to benefit from Iran’s actions.
This recent wave of terrorism and counter-terrorism is, in fact, working as planned (just not for the people of Gaza), and we in the US have to fight back in such a way as to heal the internal divisions our enemies are exploiting.
It’s geopolitics.
Qatar, for example, features prominently.
(https://www.timesofisrael.com/qatar-agrees-to-review-hamas-ties-after-gaza-hostage-situation-resolved-report/)
Raging Bee
Yep. Sounds plausible / reasonable.
There’s video of the young secular German jewish girl that as taken from the concert, legs broken, back of the head caved in, Palestinian civilians spitting on her as they parade her body around the street. They just found part of her skull, confirming she’s dead. You think these Palestinians would be out protesting if Hamas started winning against Israel? No, they’ve be cheering them on. There’s a lot of jew hate in the west, and they love the idea of the big mean jews beating up the poor little muslims. The christians cheer the jews on because they hope it means the end times. Meanwhile, muslims around the world are killing innocent people, using the conflict as an excuse to kill. Every post everywhere of a muslim killing someone, there’s a “but Israel!” excuse. These are the same people that were celebrating 911 BTW…
Actually, those claims about people “celebrating 9/11” were debunked long ago.
Also, citation required for that (alleged) video of a “young secular Jewish girl.” And does that video show whether she was “secular?”
https://nypost.com/2023/10/11/who-is-shani-louk-woman-who-hamas-paraded-on-a-truck/
You’re wrong about FIRE. They don’t favor conservatives.
https://www.thefire.org/news/statement-orders-florida-public-universities-derecognize-students-justice-palestine-we-must