In this seemingly forever argument, it seems there is some nuance in that Palestine is not Hamas and vice versa. One of the perspectives as I understand it is that Hamas is actually a threat to the existence of Palestine; the militaristic behaviour undermines Palestinian efforts at independence (and this is an avenue for exploitation by those who don't want to see an independent Palestine).
It is a similar situation with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
You can argue that the government of Israel isn't the will of the people of Israel (in the same way the US government isn't the will of the people of the US), but in my opinion there's more of a separation between 'Palestine' and 'Hamas' than there is between 'Israel' and 'the will of the people of Israel'.
There's a lot of wrongdoing, which means there are a lot of innocents being harmed, and the harming of innocents is the greatest wrongdoing. Harm by inaction is also wrong. Harm by preventing aid and assistance is also wrong.
None of this stuff is easily answered.
The joys of ideology, or maybe more correctly, the joys of living amongst those who take ideology so seriously that they attempt to enforce their fantasies upon the real world.
In my personal logic bubble: Protesting in support of Palestine is not protesting in support of Hamas. Declaring support for Israel is protesting against Hamas and their acts of terrorism against Israel. I can do both of these things without being hypocritical (like I said, in my personal logic bubble).
There's simply no excuse for what Israel has been doing and everyone with a functioning moral compass should be denouncing it. Debating about Hamas is a distraction. They have a right to defend their country, but not treating a whole population as collateral damage.
Palestine attacked, and has attacked for ages, because they and other surrounding countries have a stated long term aim to wipe Jews off the face of the earth.
It's like if people in Wales were constantly firing rockets at London because they wanted to destroy all English people, and England doing nothing about it for years until there was a huge slaughter, and then finally retaliating.
> It's like if people in Wales were constantly firing rockets at London because they wanted to destroy all English people, and England doing nothing about it for years until there was a huge slaughter, and then finally retaliating.
Or just like the IRA… asymmetric warfare/terrorism is a natural response to violent oppression
Discarded proportionalty calculations is in response to asymmetric warfare/terrorism which is in response to violent oppression is in response to ethnic conflict, which is in response to migration which is in response to persecution.
Everyone has factors influencing their decisions but everyone still has their own agency and responsibility.
>asymmetric warfare/terrorism is a natural response to violent oppression
it always sounds more high-minded to adopt universal/philosophical wording, but it's highly effective, your point is well made. October 7th was violent oppression, your explanation is sound.
People are appropriately scouring your position because there was exactly what you are imagining: a population, living West of the rest of the UK, lobbing terrorist attacks at London. It's just that it was the Irish, not the Welsh, doing the attacks. History has given reason to the IRA's despicable methods; once the British got tired of the unionists' intransigeance, they sat down at the negotiation table and hammered a real deal to really end the violence.
The Palestinians engaged in violent warfare against the Israelis studiously study the IRA and the results they got. So your example is actually an example that proves that the Palestinians' methods could lead to success for them. You'll have to try again.
If the IRA's demands were that the British had to accept enough Irish migration to become a minority in their country (the right of return) somehow I don't think their despicable methods would have paid off.
The difference between the Irish and the Palestinians is the Irish took a real compromise and peace deal. They didn't demand the instant return of Northern Ireland and refuse all compromise to that issue, committing multiple generations to fruitless violence and high death rates.
The fact we are not in Israel's shoes is the best hope for a negotiated durable peace. I cannot find a peace deal in the 20th century that did not have the studious support of a neutral third-party.
There are many Israelis who conclude that their country is conducting a genocide in gaza and ask for it to stop [1]. Conversely, there are people who are "far far away", who have access to the same information as everybody else and don't see any wrong doing, and support the destruction of Gaza and its inhabitants. I have a hard time understanding how anyone can think this is right, or maybe they don't know or don't believe what is actually taking place.
What happens in Gaza is first and foremost Hamas to blame, thus I hold zero empathy for the Gaza people, and second, nonetheless important, does not withstand any definition of the term "genocide". If Israel wanted to commit a genocide they would finish the job within a week, the fact that there are so many surgical operations and methods like "knock on the roof" shows Israel are doing their best efforts to avoid civilian casualties. Moreover, as the Palestinians are separated between Judea and Samaria and the Gaza strip, while the first are quiet and living in prosperity while the later are hostages of Hamas, it is a very weird way from Israel's point of view to make what you call genocide.
israel has been documented countless times directly targeting civilians, including reporters, sniping women, children, sexual assault, the list goes on. It's a quick search away to see a very, very long list of war crimes.
Wait, you mean there is “no excuse for what Israel is doing” and “Hamas kidnapping and murdering Israelis” was just a distraction?
This is why we should just move on to EVs and stop getting involved at all in the Middle East. I see no morally right way of engaging with either side. Both positions seem to end in “let one side genocide the other side.”
See, it’s statements like this that make me want to run away like heck from this.
Netanyahu is a hack, a war monger, all sorts of bad, but Palestinians continued support for Hamas and seeing large scale cross border kidnapping/murder as a “police issue”, it’s hard for me to feel sympathy.
Have you ever stopped to think _why_ they might continue to support Hamas? The Israeli government (and many citizens) continue to take their land. Force them out of their homes. Treat them worse than animals. They can kill 70k people and face almost zero consequences internationally. They've got the backing of a superpower. If you were treated like that I'm sure you would plead for calm, peace, and love. If people are treated inhumanly on mass scale they will revolt because they feel like they have no other option.
> The Israeli government (and many citizens) continue to take their land. Force them out of their homes.
People in the Westbank seem to mostly support Fatah, not Hamas.
I do generally agree though that the strength of Hamas was fueled by the dire situation of the population in Gaza and Israel's actions (before Oct 2023).
That must not mean that one should stand by the side of mass murderers. You can be against Israel's actions and for the Palestine people and still condemn Hamas' actions, and every sane person should.
They came into power and murdered their own people to consolidate their power. They are a terror organization. It's disturbing to me that many (not meaning you in particular) fail to understand that.
Elon isn’t the only person selling EVs. I’m glad I’ve never given him money. We should just wash our hands of the Middle East though, maybe if the western world stops caring, all of the parties will come together and figure out a way forward that doesn’t involve killing each other.
Without Western support Iran and the proxies will choke Israel until either they make concessions to the Palestinians (which can be a very good thing, depending on the concessions demanded), or Israel gets backed into a corner and either really does a genocide, or drops a (hopefully only tactical) nuke.
The most likely best future is when Western support is predicated on making decent concessions to the Palestinians. I'm not in the position to say what they are at the moment but more autonomy for the Palestinian state proposed in Oslo would be a good start.
Hamas' mass murdering isn't a "police problem" whatever that's meant to mean and they are quite explicit in their goal of genocide of the Jewish population in the southern levante.
There seems to be a difference in capabilities here. Israel actually appears to be capable of eradicating Palestinians. The reverse does not appear to be true.
They have always been capable of doing that and yet there are 20% Arabic citizen in Israel and roughly 2 million in Gaza. Before Hamas' mass murdering, there were no signs that Israel intends to mass murder Palestinians (they do of course obviously try to strategically reduce the population in Westbank with their settlements).
How many Jews would be allowed to live in the southern levante if Hamas could choose?
So yes, there has always been a difference in capability and in intend. Under the criminal Netanjahu and the current extremist Government the difference has started to blur, though and Oct 7 worked as a catalyst. It feels like Hamas' mass murdering and kidnapping was a full success regarding their goals.
If they had the ideology of ethnically cleansing / enslaving all other religions in north america (aka literal nazis) yeah lets go. Worldwsr 2 was about that! Dont have to be successful to be evil!
If the Native Americans killed black slaves in their colonial resistance would that invalidate their claim in any way. It would hardly be a footnote. The slaves/workers help effectuate the outcome of the destruction of their homeland and the success of the colonial project. Who cares.
But I understand that Israeli soldiers need justification to shoot at children and raise houses- just as Germans needed justification for their genocide.
Hamas knows that and is willing to give Israeli army those excuses freely, they freely admitted that the whole point of the kidnappings and murders was to provoke Israeli into genocide, which in turn would provide world wide sympathy for their cause. Hamas will fight to the last Palestinian, which is sad.
Don’t get me wrong, Israel is not the good guy here, and Hamas is just taking advantage of their short fuse. Both sides are insane, which is why I think it’s better for us to just sit it out, the only thing we can do is make it worse.
Hamas has been the government in Gaza for the last years, so I'm not sure what you want to say by stating the mass murdering by Hamas is a police problem.
18 years IIRC. Entire generation has been raised with one and single mission - destroy Israel. Yes Hamas isn't Palestine, same way Trump isn't America. But it's pretty damn close.
Stating that most Palestinian support the Hamas and their actions is a very big accusation, but your have not provided much evidence for that.
I have read some poll results from years ago and don't have deeper knowledge of the topic, just saying one would be to provide real evidence.
And that's only talking about Gaza. Since you said "Palestine" it should be mentioned that Hamas had not been able to dominate in the Westbank so far, so I don't think what you wrote is accurate.
The argument that all Palestinans deserve to be genocided because of the actions of a terrorist organisation is so asinine that people should be ashamed of themselves.
It is the same reasoning Americans used for their war against the Apaches.
I think Israel's leadership has very unwisely lost the Strategic plot here in favour of tactical political advantages of survival.
The history of middle East for the last 5000 years (since Sargon of Akkad) is replete with 'the king X "pacified" (the most commonly used euphemism) the people in the conquered territory'. It has never gone well for the victors under successors of king X, often within a generation or two.
In today's age when access to technology and information is such that any small sufficiently competent and motivated group can cause massive destruction, is it wise to keep creating motivated enemies and expect they will somehow never become competent or that the competent won't become motivated? It is doubly ironic given Israel's own defense industrial complex is filled with such small motivated and competent groups and the evidence of Ukraine/Russia conflict is staring in the face. This situation will blow up I fear within a generation unless Israeli society chooses different leaders.
I agree. Netanyahu's strategy of destroying the possibility for the 2 state solution just locks his country into a future of either apartheid, ethnic minority status, or eternal war against ever more sophisticated and hateful enemies.
None are futures he wants. I wonder what the long term vision is? If the Palestinians have a hard enough time they'll just migrate away faster than they have children?
Why are there always so many conspiracy theories around the Israeli government. I mean, I'm sure one or two hold water. But the vast majority ...
And an even bigger mystery: why are there never conspiracy theories about hamas and the PLA? I mean, hamas is a conspiracy. There's no serious doubt about that. Obviously while there is a problem in Israel, Palestinians aren't behind hamas, unless they get very well paid. Many very bad state actors support Palestinian organizations, going back a loooong time. The PLA was created with the help of the KGB, imagine that. That's not a theory, that's a fact. Iran supports hamas. Qatar supports hamas. I mean, for hamas there's no doubt. It very much is a conspiracy, against Israel, against Jews (the KGB are the authors of "the protocols of the elders of zion" and the source of the whole Jews wanting to massacre the world theory) and against "the west" in general. China, massacres muslims and "reeducates" them in China, with hamas support btw, and supports hamas ... Do you think the KGB wants to support palestinians? Or muslims? Do you think China does? Do you think Iran wants to support Sunni religious nutcases? How do they treat those in Iran?
A lot of shady stuff happens in the region. This is one of them and certainly something to be aware of.
> Do you think the KGB wants to support palestinians? Or muslims? Do you think China does? Do you think Iran wants to support Sunni religious nutcases? How do they treat those in Iran?
Why is it that every pro Israel comment is full of unrelated questions? My answer to all of these is: I don't care in this context.
> Why is it that every pro Israel comment is full of unrelated questions? My answer to all of these is: I don't care in this context.
In other words, you're antisemitic. You don't care of a great many states that they have very bad intentions towards everyone, including Palestinians, you only care for conspiracy theories that say Jews do this too.
I mean the problem with this argument is that it is than transitively true than an entire people of any country with a crazy leader who bombs random countries in the middle east are inline and malovaent. I just disagree because that would imply the will of the US and its entire people is to bomb Palestine and Iran including these kids exiting there graduation. That argument just is factually debased. Collective blame of people for their government even in democracies just doesn't follow.
I agree that support for Palestine is not necessiarly support for Hamas and collective punishiment for Palestine from Hamas's actions is horrible but their is something to playing a useful idiot. And I think Israel and Palestine protesters both do this. Israel could 100% kill Hamas leadership and cause a democracy movement to elect a reasonable leadership in Palestine but they don't and don't want to. Palestine protesters actively persue a 1 state solution in its extreme to model it on the US and I don't think it works that way especially with such a vocal majority in Israel opposed to it. Hamas also don't really want a 2 state solution either because that would be real long term concessions and also a degradation of their authority because they are murders and losers but they are "protecting" some Palestians from Israel.
Israel game here is they want prolong conflict and attacks like Oct. 7 because it justifies more annexation and attacks like Oct. 7 do give strong affimative arguments to take action against Hamas and Palestine whether you like it or not.
Long winded way of saying its a quagmire but if the US wanted to spend less and solve the problem they need to strong arm their ally to engage in generating a democractic uprising against Hamas in exchange for concessions of land (mostly settler land) after a new democratic state reins in their radicals. I think Palestians would jump at that idea but Hamas would be extremely anti that idea because they would be the pariah in their society. Its pragamtic solution but also 1 that requires long term follow through that is also likely to fail. To me that the Kotkin approach no one is happy but progress is possible
"democratically elected" being an extremely load bearing sentiment if you know anything about what people's lives are actually like on the ground. did you know a large majority of the populace didn't even vote in 2006? since 2006? there hasn't been elections since. The median age is 18.
Pulled all their military out? Oh, they still controlled their airspace, critical infra, borders tho? Sounds very self determined!
Serious, bad faith or extremely reductive misrepresentation that I can't tell is borne from ignorance willful or accidental.
your comment is the equivalent of acting like cuba's economy is all their own choosing, without analyzing the immense damage sanctions (and why sanctions were there in the first place) have done to the country, or accosting haiti without knowing why their struggles exist. context matters.
2006 is 20(!) years ago, the elections had a 70% turnout, and Hamas received only 44% of the vote.
Considering that about 60% of the Gaza population is age 20 or younger, that means about 18% of the current population voted for Hamas.
And of course Israel directly helped this by arresting a huge number of Hamas politicians right before the elections, and openly interfering with the election process in general.
So no, Hamas does not represent the will of the people in Gaza, and calling it "democratically elected" is at this point a straight-up lie.
Support for Hamas also came from Netanyahu[0], he explicitly gave support to be used as wedge for the Palestinian cause, to perpetuate the conflict giving casus belli to Israeli actions against Palestinians in Gaza.
This argument you make is the same one Osama bin Laden uses in his 2004 “Letter to the American People”: he argues that because the American people re-elected George W. Bush, the populace was complicit in the policy consequences, self-rationalizing 2001.
Congratulations for using a heuristic that resulted in 9/11! Osama’s rationalization at least had a more accurate premise that the American people continued to be able to vote — unlike in Palestine. So congrats on having either a worse moral compass or worse reasoning skills than Bin Laden!
One MAGA hat at a Republican rally doesn't mean all Republicans are MAGA.
If anything is to be learnt, it is that individuals should be judged as individuals, or at least that individuals should not be judged by the worst actions of a group that they may (only appear to) be a part of.
A good way for "one side" to trivialise or demonise "the other side" would be to seed "the other side" with extremist messaging.
I mostly agree, except for the blatant calls for genocide from the Israeli side, and the blatant calls for genocide from the Palestinian side. I honestly don't know who to support - neither side wants to live with the other, and it seems, eventually, one of those sides will get their wish. To the detriment of us all.
Hamas also has widespread support within Palestine. Overwhelmingly the population of Palestine supports the actions of October 7. There is no clean separation between Palestine and Hamas, as much as one side wants you to believe there is.
No, it's actually really simple. You start with these two questions:
1. Is Israel an apartheid state?
2. Is Israel committing a genocide?
At this point (IMHO) you need to do some serious mental gymnastics not to answer "yes" to both questions. As soon as you do, it gets real simple. The existence of Hamas doesn't justify either of these things.
The people who bring this up are engaging in respectability politics or engaging in weaponized cvility. Instead of addressing the underlying issues, the focus is on the methods and the actions of the oppressed when it is the oppressor that sets the level of violence. As Nelson Mandela put it:
> A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a certain point, one can only fight fire with fire.
People understood this quite clearly with apartheid South Africa. Can you imagine protesters having to do the performative "does apartheid South Africa have a right to exist?" pledge? No, me neither.
While I actually have sympathy for people on both sides of the struggle, I also find it hard to answer "yes" to both questions, mostly because of how muddied the definitions of everything are. It's obvious to me, that both the Israeli government and Hamas are both committing serious warcrimes, and that there no good actors here, here are some questions I don't have an answer to.
For example, is Palestine its own country? Is Hamas is its rightful government? Does that extend to the West Bank or only in Gaza? Palestinians seem to say that Palestine is its own country, Israelis say that Palestinians are not a part of Israel - so how can it be an apartheid state if BOTH sides say they aren't part of the same country at all?
Is Israel committing a genocide? Well, what does a genocide look like? Israel is still distributing food in Gaza, to this day. I don't think it would look like this, but at the same time, there are terrorists on both sides (Itamar ben-Gvir being the most prominent on the Israeli side, in my opinion).
There are more issues and questions and uncertainty around the problems in Israel, Palestine, the Levant as a whole, Iran's involvement and so on.
Even worse, for most Israelis (who are 70% of Arab descent), the country of Israel no longer existing could mean a real genocide for the Israel side! (A counter-genocide?) Regardless, if this issue were easy to solve, it would have been solved already.
Honestly, the situation seems to complicated to boil down to two "simple" questions and I admire that you can have such an "obvious" outlook, but the more I look at Israel and the Middle East (and read, and research), the more questions I have.
Yes, Israel is unequivocally committing genocide in Gaza. Genocide is not just "are they killing everybody", but also "are they driving people from their ancestral homelands"?
Israel is constitutionally an ethnostate. If there is an existing population, there is literally no way to establish an ethnostate without genocide - either through killing or displacement.
Muslims do not have full rights, especially those who were murdered and had their land stolen. Do Muslims have the right of return? No. Can any Jew become an Israeli citizen? Yes. There are many other discrepancies.
Israeli Muslims have full equal rights. They can leave, they can return, their children are Israeli citizens by birthright. They have the same citizenship rules as Jewish Israelis.
Muslims that are not Israeli do not have rights in Israel, that’s how every country operates. When the state of Israel was created, citizenship was given to all Muslims within its borders (which also correlated with the Arabs that did not take up arms against the Jews or run to join the other side).
Separately, Israel has a special immigration law for Jews. That is discriminatory - it’s positive discrimination. But it still does not in any way affect the rights of Israeli Muslims.
Again, being Jewish does not give someone special immigration status. It’s completely orthogonal to citizenship. That Israel goes against this principle is what makes it an apartheid colony.
I'm replying to a comment that says Muslims have equal rights to Jews in Israel and pointing out that is 100% incorrect. That is the world that we live in, the world where Israel is an apartheid state.
Israeli Muslims have equal rights to Israeli Jews in Israel.
The 2 billion non-Israeli Muslims don’t have rights in Israel because they are not citizens. And they don’t need a “right of return” because they already have 50 Muslim countries - many of which have been ethnically cleansed of Jews and currently do not allow Jews to enter.
Again, "positively discriminates for Jews" is the definition of apartheid. I posted a link with many other apartheid laws. You're not arguing in good faith, so this will be the end of our conversation.
Judaism isn't just a religion; Israel happily accepts non-religious Jews. The goal was to solve a massive refugee problem for a persecuted group with nowhere else to go.
In any case, as a sovereign state, Israel gets to decide on its own immigration policy, regardless of how foreigners feel about it.
Judaism is in fact, just a religion. Zionists are not refugees, they are colonists. They didn’t need to “go” anywhere and regardless of need, never had the right to set foot in Palestine.
> regardless of how foreigners feel about it.
Without the US, Israel will cease to exist. It’s my problem to deal with as a US citizen.
So by this argument, we should just go defeat Israel and give the land back to the Palestinians and no one should have anything negative to say about it right?
Land ownership is determined by your ability to defend it. If you can get a coalition to take down Israel, the land is yours to do whatever you want with it. That is how it works, if you want land, have big guns or big friends.
Nothing I said has any bearing on morality or correctness.
It's also not my logic anymore than the wind stoking a forest fire is my logic. It's just shitty thing that is true. On the global stage, where there is no higher power to appeal to (none of these fools god's exists), your land is only what you can defend with either might or diplomacy. This is a (very shitty, but very real) natural law that exists in the universe we were born into (aliens might decide they want Earth one day). If you run a country, and fail at both of those things, you likely will not being running a country for long.
I mean, here you are agreeing that Israel needs to be stopped by force. An army assembled to go in and kill Israeli soldiers until Palestine is free. See how quick that "morality" flies out the window?
Diplomacy and guns, that's all there is. Morality comes later, if ever at all.
It’s absolutely the moral choice to end Israel. Just like apartheid South Africa. Israel just happens to be much worse and much more belligerent with much more control over the rest of the world. They created a situation where the moral option is their complete destruction.
The definitions aren't muddled. Apartheid [1] and genocide [2] are both defined by the UN. Apartheid in particular is also objectively true. Do Israeli Arabs have the same rights as Jewish Israelis? No, objectively [3][4].
As for Palestine being its own country, it clearly isn't. Palestinians live on land claimed by Israel and recognized by pretty much every country in the world. But what if it was? Then Israel is illegally occupying it. Is that better? Why does this matter? Does one make the treatment of Gazans (in particular) more acceptable?
> Even worse, for most Israelis (who are 70% of Arab descent), the country of Israel no longer existing could mean a real genocide for the Israel side!
You can't use a theoretical future genocide to justify a current actual genocide. Also, it's ahistorical. Did this happen when apartheid South Africa ended? What about slavery? No, what actually happened was the former oppressors continued to commit violence against the previously oppressed.
While I appreciate your candor, words matter. I wouldn't call Israel an apartheid state if, in fact, it was two different countries warring to the death over not enough land. I think that situation is closer to reality, with the "victorious" side refusing to completely destroy the loser and the loser refusing to surrender to the "victor".
That situation has changed for the worse in recent years, and the world should step in, if it can. How the world should step in is not obvious - especially if the thorny history of the region is considered.
Finally, on the "current vs future 'genocides'" - dismissing Israel's legitimate security concerns would be as wrong as dismissing Israel's obvious warcrimes, in my opinion. I can't, in good conscience, advocate for action that would replace one genocide with another and it's important to me to consider my actions and words in that light. You may think differently, but maybe you value human life and morality differently than I do.
It's obvious you've made up your mind, but I don't think you've convinced anyone who hasn't already made up their mind, nor have you addressed, what I believe, are very valid questions about the conflict.
Hamas has unilaterally broken every ceasefire and peace treaty. This war started with them unilaterally breaking a peace treaty, invading, kidnapping 1000+ civilians, and raping and murdering most of them.[1]
Does this justify what Israel is doing to the West Bank? Most people would say no. On the other hand, before the invasion normal Palestinians were chanting "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" on a daily basis, and they still refuse to recognize the existence of the nation of Israel. If your counterparty doesn't agree that you have a right to exist, there's no negotiating.
"kidnapping 1000+ civilians, and raping and murdering most of them" has been debunked by Haaretz, Israel's "Defense" Minister, UNs ICO, The Jerusalem Post.
So I just wasted my time reading through this garbage and I can't find anything that debunks what you claimed it does? The whole thing boils down to Israel fired a lot of ammunition, therefore it was actually Israel killing all the civilians.
On top of that, the whole article is mainly sourcing from "The Electronic Intifada", which definitely seems like the most objective source for objective truth on Oct 7th.
The devil is in the linked documents. The whole thing boils down to multiple claims primarily from the Israeli sources (press), but also public statements of the officials.
You seem to be suggesting it's all about the Hannibal Directive. It's not all.
And the thing you call "garbage" is for example the defense minister (Yoav Gallant) who was in power on Oct 7, stating in an interview in Israeli TV (Channel 12, as reported by Times Of Israel, much earlier reported by Haaretz), that Hannibal Directive has been issued and admission - from the top military figure, no less - that civilians have been killed.
> they still refuse to recognize the existence of the nation of Israel. If your counterparty doesn't agree that you have a right to exist, there's no negotiating.
Quick question - does Israel recognize the existence of the state of Palestine?
I saw someone post this was due to H1B visas. Then I drilled into the comments and saw it was a Palestine protest. It is getting hard to know what is true anymore as everyone is trying to push their own narrative.
To me, this seems like a rather unfortunate indicator of the death in intellectualism in this country. Granted I recall having stances and an optimistic naivete after graduating college and positions that, while still broadly liberal and left-leaning, shifted notably over the decades since. However, it pains me a bit to see how much "essentialism" stands as an argument and way of understanding the world, even to graduates of a top-tier institution. The argument that the Israel/Palestine situation is "essentially" genocide, rather than a tragic and complicated reality where the precise characterization of the situation is debated immensely and relies on ones own biases and expanding or narrowing the definition of the term. The further argument that since Google does business with Israel, they are "essentially" complicit and supporters of aforementioned genocide.
Depending on one's biases, my previous statement will likely elicit some sort of reaction, especially to college grads of this generation, without me ever stating a position.
This all to me is a rather unfortunate place for academia and intellectualism to have landed in the past decades. Or was it always this bad? I don't think so, I do think that always-online and recommendation engines and gameification of social media has created an acceleration of this.
But it pains me to think about where this is evolving to, and how these graduates will navigate life in the extremely complicated, suboptimal, often hateful or self-interested world we live in, if this is where they get to after graduating from a top institution.
Agreed that thinking about the natural progression of today's circumstances are painful to think about, and about the death of intellectualism.
However, I'd like to play devil's advocate here, and speak to your "without ever stating a position" line. I'd argue that's just careful wording hiding under the mask of intellectualism.
The argument against Israel is, as you say, that it is "essentially" genocide. Speaking as one of the cohort (although slightly older than new grad) of which you're referring, every argument against Israel is to my view quite straightforward. Killing innocent people is bad, doing so for political reasons is worse, and when you do it to an entire city/nation/people you have genocide ipso facto. While it's not a very complex take, it really doesn't need to be when there is a preponderance of evidence.
Contrasted with the defense of Israel's actions, and you have a vast array of whataboutisms, downplaying, justifying by means of referring to authority (in Israel), calling critics anti-Semitic, etc.
In my personal experience I find the majority of pro-Israel arguments to be at heart anti-intellectual.
So when you dress up a complex situation by emphasizing how above and beyond all understanding it is, to me that feels you are intentionally muddying the waters to try to obfuscate the real problem. And that, I would say, is also anti-intellectual.
Just because we have generational problems with anti-intellectualism does not mean this particular circumstance belongs in that category.
The intellectual take is that Israel is an apartheid state committing genocide. That's what's backed by history and facts. The "god promised us this land" European movement is anti-intellectual in every conceivable way.
I've never seen any protest by students that protested against Palestine.
In fact, at University of Washington, a protest was organized to support Palestine after the Oct 7 massacre on Oct 8; they chose to show support Palestine after Palestine did a massacre. And there was a very little criticism on that kind of actions.
We all know why, and the reason doesn't fit what you want to believe. That's why you pretend to be obscure about it. Otherwise, you would have just said so out loud already.
I was answering why you don't see people protesting Hamas, which is what you brought up. If you didn't want to discuss that, then you shouldn't have brought it up.
I didn't misunderstand or get angry. You brought up people not protesting Palestine. I didn't insult you, belittle you, or anything else so I don't know why you would think I'm angry except you've just decided everyone who agrees with you is angry, which is a bad habit to have
They were expressing a normative statement about an observation they made; that you took it as an insult is your problem. You brought up Palestine, then said this discussion isn't about Palestine. Indeed, if you think something is not relevant to the discussion, you should not bring it up in a given discussion.
Both governments may be but there isn’t a power balance between the two in any appreciable way nor in a civilian casualty balance, especially concerning children casualties.
You see this reflected in the huge number of children killed by Israel and minimal child casualties killed by Hamas. Israel is committing genocide while Hamas is resisting occupation and the stats make that crystal clear.
Yes, most people will try to remove the people that invaded their land and killed their families. That's common sense. It's been 78 years since Zionists invaded Palestine, not 50.
It's all Palestinian land, they've "invaded" nothing. They're trying to remove the people that stole their land and murdered their families. This is not complicated.
I think Stanford students are not out of touch. Google has enough revenue to sustain itself but yet they decided to become an arms dealer. CEOs only care about the shareholder.
> Only one side is being armed and funded by our tax dollars
I mean, yeah, I would heavily prefer for one of the sides in this conflict to be much better funded and armed than the other. Specifically, the side that I consider to be fundamentally in the right in the conflict.
Whichever side I am talking about is not relevant to the point. What's relevant to the actual point I am trying to make, is that I don't think that one side being better armed and funded serves as a reasonable indicator of which side is right/wrong in a given conflict.
> I would heavily prefer for one of the sides in this conflict to be much better funded and armed than the other.
Most Americans would prefer that we fund neither.
And this isn’t 2012, majority of Americans today do not see Israeli’s, who steal, spy on and try to get Americans killed through wars they start as the “good guys”.
> I'd say, based on the latest election result, this isn't true.
The Israeli-Palestine conflict is far from the #1 priority of things US voters consider when voting in presidential elections.
Also, winning by one of the narrowest margins in US election history, and with less than 50% of the popular vote is hardly a decisive mandate to give Israel a blank check. [1]
Let's not victim blame here. Would you have called the Indians evil for wanting to have liberty from the british occupiers? What about the many other european colonies in Asia and Africa, were the locals "evil" for wanting to resist and get liberty?
Two completely different things. Even the UN acknowledges a people's right to resist occupation. 9/11 was condemned by practically all Islamic Scholars.
I wonder what percentage of total graduates walked out? The video shows maybe around 50 people at all. The title makes it seem like everyone graduating walked out.
It might seem like a broad opinion, but that’s the reader’s own opinion either being reinforced or rejected by a single line of text.
The reader may wish the disagreement wasn’t documented at all, because it doesn’t meet their own personal editorial standards, and they like telling someone they don’t pay how to do their jobs.
But factually, there’s nothing incorrect about what was observed and reported.
Hate him or not, Steve Jobs understood humans. He spoke and behaved as a human. He was flawed and may be considered "cringey" now, but I think he'd be liked better than the rest.
His Apple keynotes conveyed a sense of magic, for example demonstrating pinch to zoom on the iPhone and pulling a MacBook Air out of a manila envelope. And something he'd be angry because things didn't go as planned.
These pre-recorded keynotes we get nowadays are just bland and AI-generated.
Steve Jobs? The guy who was adopted by working class parents, a hippy, with a Syrian immigrant father? I think he might view the world slightly differently than the guys born into wealth, who went to Ivy League schools, and who all seemingly share the same total inability to understand ordinary human beings.
As opposed to the current guy who gifted a custom 24K gold plaque to the current administration, after being raised by a shipyard worker and pharmacist and attending a public land-grant research university in Alabama.
When it comes to business, I think Jobs would grovel at the feet of Trump just as much as Cook has.
Yeah Steve Jobs was deeply frustrated with Obama when he got to meet him. Jobs hated unions, and felt like the Obama administration was not business friendly enough. He also felt the Obama administration was too reluctant to offend people.
He didn't live long enough to become the bad guy, but if he were alive today, I think there's a near-zero percent chance he'd support Clinton or Biden over Trump in either of those elections.
There's two opposing forces at work. Everyone wants to be Steve Jobs, and no one wants to be Steve Ballmer. So the only choice is to go to the extreme to stay as far away from the other end as possible.
Regardless of the details of this speech, I believe Sundar Pichai is uncommonly out of touch with reality and with the nation of the United States of America, even among tech CEOs.
Counterpoint, he is Google top CEO by stock percentage gain and possibly by management. Pichai successfully focused (can't say "pivoted" to AI because they've long been a/the leader) Google on AI (compare to Microsoft) and streamlined many of Google's redundant/fruitless efforts.
If he was so good why did Brin have to come out of retirement to steer the ship?
Remember, transformers were invented at Google. They could have been the first to market starving out OAI and Anthropic. That they did not is clearly a huge failure from Pichai. Its astonishing he wasn’t removed for this blunder.
He ruined Google, started by shattering the culture into a million pieces. He has negative charisma and no imagination. He was best as a mid level manager.
Will they reject google / meta / etc internships and job offers? If not and I suspect not, it's the classic performative stuff activists around the world are used to.
Everyone loves the "free Palestine" slogan, but I've never actually seen the people who call it offer a concrete realistic solution that could achieve that - is it a two state solution? Is it a one state solution that will burst into a civil war? What's the plan?
What does it actually look like?
I still think a two state solution is the only realistic plan.
Unless the people who shout “Free Palestine” are part of the Knesset or Hamas, I don’t think their offering of a “concrete realistic solution” matters one bit.
Maybe the shouts are less about "hey I have a concrete solution for a complex hundred year old ethnical problem" and more about "hey an authoritarian state shouldn't be allowed genocide of 100k civilians, or at least my state should not support them with weapons". Protests are about immediate action, solutions happen over long time, if ever.
Free Palestine simply means a sovereign Palestinian state separate from Israel, which Israel has rejected many times over the years, most recently in the Knesset vote in February and July 2024, opposing the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River. Any time there was outside attempts to recognize Palestine as a state (e.g. through UN efforts) Israel responded with building more settlements in the West Bank.
I've come around on the idea of a Palestinian state.
Once they have a state, the Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank will finally have defined borders and a single sovereign. And history shows they can be relied upon to launch another genocidal war on Israel more or less immediately.
Then it will be a war between two nation-states, not a nation-state vs. an unaccountable terrorist organization that pretends to be a proper state when convenient.
The Israel vs. Palestine conflict will then fall neatly into the framework of Westphalian nation-states and when Israel proceeds to utterly defeat Palestine, demands their unconditional surrender, kills all who resist, annexes their territory, and forcibly re-educates any who remain (post-WWII style), it will all be 100% kosher according to customary international law.
On Oct. 7 the Arabs in Gaza creatively used all means available to them to kill every single human in Israel that they could reach. This includes airpower, i.e. the infamous paramotor assault.
If Israel learned from them and creatively used all means available to them to kill every human in Gaza that they could reach, this conflict would have been definitively resolved years ago and the accusations of genocide would actually be true.
But if y'all keep spuriously accusing Israel of committing genocide when they're not, and Israel is "doing the time" anyway, they might just decide to actually "do the crime". As I said, it would certainly resolve the conflict.
So good work! Keep it up! The more you repeat the lie, the more likely you are to turn it into truth.
How can a solution ever be realistic, if on the other side you have: (1) Israel and its "we are the victims!" citizens, (2) Israel's military, bombing civilians, while they are trying to get to humanitarian aid, oh and journalists, especially, when they are coordinating with Israeli military to supposedly avoid being targeted, oh and whole news agency buildings, when they negatively report on what Israel is doing (3) Netanyahu, who starts one conflict after another, to stay in power, (4) Zionists, most of who are maximalist in their ideas about what land they want to possess, and assign a value of approximately zero to the lives of other human beings, nearing a racist ideology of "master race"?
(5) There are also complete idiotic and anti-semitic forces on the other side, who demand Israel to completely disappear.
What solution will be accepted as realistic by multiple sides of this conflict and acceptable enough for most sides to get everyone back to the negotiations table?
I have a very unrealistic idea about what should happen, which is directly opposed to factors (1) to (4):
Israel needs to return all stolen land and return to internationally recognized borders as a first step of showing good will. Israel needs to prosecute its own military personell for war crimes and for supporting armed mobs chasing people out of their own houses in the West Bank. Netanyahu and his gang need to be brought to Den Hague, and be put in front of the International Criminal Court. This is just the base justice level.
On the other side Hamas needs to disarm at least in majority. No more rockets launched. Also no more rockets launched from Hezbolla etc. Is the hostages situation still ongoing? Of course they need to be returned, if any still actually alive.
Next, Israel starts financing rebuilding efforts in Palestine.
Sounds realistic? Probably not, but that would at least be somewhat fair. Just not gonna happen with a US-supported dictator and his gang on one side and a guerilla militia on the other side.
Maybe the point is, that "realistic" probably != fair, and that is extremely painful. Maybe the point is, that fairness can only be achieved via a lengthy decades long process of first getting the weapons to cool down, and then holding all parties responsible at international courts. But guess what, Israel would never consent to be judged, because they do whatever the f they want.
I don't have a plan, but we could at least stop being part of the problem by not giving billions of dollars a year in military funding to their oppressors. If you really want to go crazy, we could stop arms sales to their oppressors altogether. That might not result in a free Palestine, but at least we'd no longer be contributing to its un-free condition.
Let's start by Israel no longer committing a genocide on the Palestinians and go from there.
Most "free Palestine" protestors probably don't care an awful lot about the final outcome of the conflict, they just want the mass killing of innocent people to stop.
There's a reason the movement only flared up when Israel started carpet bombing Gaza, and not during the mostly-quiet years before.
It's a fashion statement for some people I've found. Like the Anarchy symbol on a T-Shirt. I've run in to people with such a hard line opinion on the matter who couldn't even point to where Palestine is a on a map.
At least in the US I can guarantee you that the % of hardline pro-Israel people who can actually point to Israel on the map is at least twice as low. I'm willing to bet my assets on that.
The reason a two state solution seems unworkable is because the people who were there, and had their land systematically taken from them, are considered to be the ones that have to compromise. The world panders to the colonisers, who despite having a huge amount of wealth and global support, always want more than they've already got.
I skipped mine. Definitely worth skipping - I don't really need the super expensive pep talk by someone who I almost always really don't want to hear from, inspiration porn is free (and largely unavoidable) by the gigaton nowadays.
Save the money, fund the humanities with it. Maybe then the people planning these speakers would realize why people are booing and walking out.
Pretty light hearted, and honestly considering that he's given a speech to an empty stadium before (as referenced in the first few sentences, I think he'll have handled it just fine.
> But people have also been giving me a lot of advice on what to say. Actually, it’s been the same advice, and it’s about what not to say. People thought it would be really difficult for me; it is the last two letters of my last name, after all.
Ha, chuckle-worthy. Of course he'd find it hard to not pitch AI.
The only thing I find surprising is no-one points out that Stanford is a truly elite education system: Some 2 in 5 of students enter disabled, but almost all of them end up successful over time.
Not even that. Disabled as in "theoretically maybe could ask for some accomodation and maybe could get it". They dont get more time on tests, the moral panic is about them potentially being able to ask for more time if they cared.
I went to the Electrical Engineering ceremony, the only speakers were from the faculty and one newly minted B.S.E.E. I biked there and saw there were a lot of smaller ceremonies across the campus outside of the stadium the photo captures.
So funny how a site called "Hacker News," once vibrant with the ethos of lighthearted disobedience and an inquisitive spirit, finds itself almost religiously in opposition to those who decry a (horrendously incompetent) dystopia and panopticon forced upon the population by the very forces this website's (former, I'm assuming) users claimed to hate so much.
The easiest metaphor for HN's evolution is that of gentrification:
An outsider community forms in a down-market neighbourhood. Lacking money and power, it makes its own culture. That becomes "hip," and those with money start buying property in that neighbourhood, displacing the very people who made it hip to begin with.
As with "hackers," so also with artists, musicians, bicycle messengers, dirtbag rock climbers, frisbee players, &c. &c.
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