A serious red line has been crossed: America’s democratic freedoms, expansive on paper, will simply not tolerate serious dissent on the U.S.–Israel relationship. As criticisms of Israel have become more mainstream, the attempt to shut them down entirely has become more extreme.
In pursuit of this blank-check relationship with an Israeli government that is becoming ever-more intransigent with each passing year, pro-Israel forces in the U.S. are attacking our own democratic freedoms in order to suppress public outcry about apartheid and potential genocide 6,000 miles away. And, if the recent campus crackdowns are any indication, these forces are winning their battle.
With tens of thousands of Palestinians left dead and the Israeli assault on Gaza ongoing, the U.S. protests targeting university ties with Israel over the last month — voluble and outspoken — have been overwhelmingly nonviolent.
Yet these nonviolent protests have met with the full brutal force of the U.S. security state. Dispersing the protest encampments, police have viciously beaten protesters, fired rubber bullets, and enveloped students in dense clouds of tear gas.
Anyone remember the war in Iraq? How people criticizing that war were treated as anti patriotic?
I protested that
Halliburton cash grabwar and it was rough. People young and old would treat us as if we were pissing on the flag. Still waitin’ on them WMDs Dubya!Thank you for your service!
It was unfortunately fruitless. That’s when I learned that Republicans don’t listen to protesters. They just vilify them in the news and call the police. Now we know they don’t even flinch at an insurrection. They may even call you a patriot.
That’s when I learned that Republicans don’t listen to protesters.
The best part was in 2006 when Democrats retook congress and demonstrated that they were just as much a rubber stamp for war as Republicans had been.
The US pulled out of Iraq in 2007.
And then stayed until 2011.
It took a while to hand full control back to their government after having destroyed and compromised so much of their nation.
What a photo. A guy clad head to toe in black squared up with a club in front of the ruins of a protest, the only color in his uniform a big gold star and an American flag.
Why do they have flags on their uniform? Is someone going to mistake which country they’re in? Are they soldiers at war? Bringing righteous patriotism into a career that mostly attacks US citizens is a really chilling idea.
Cops don’t have any direct association with America as a whole. They’re a civilian organization employed and directed by local officials. I believe those are California Highway Patrol officers. If they absolutely have to wear a flag, they can have a bear.
The flag is being used as a symbol of government authority. Governments are big on symbols (YT link) because they work.
Gee, who could have predicted electing someone that spent 50 fucking years loudly declaring that there is absolutely nothing that would ever make him support Israel any less…
Biden talking about current protestors sounds a hell of a lot like trump talking about BLM tho
“Dissent is essential for democracy,” Biden said at the White House. “But dissent must never lead to disorder.”
“Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?”
Yup. Indistinguishable.
“There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos,” Mr. Biden said into cameras in his first personal remarks on the campus fray in 10 days. “People have the right to get an education, the right to get a degree, the right to walk across the campus safely without fear of being attacked.” Antisemitism, he added, “has no place” in America.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/02/us/politics/biden-campus-protests.html
It’s peaceful protests to get him to stop funding a genocide, and he’s saying the protestors are the violent ones…
Like, you realize racists said the same thing about MLK and the civil rights movement?
Biden was friends with most of those senators. When he talks about the “good ole days” he’s talking about hanging out with Strom Thurmond and fighting school integration.
This is who he’s always been.
If protests arent inconvenient, how is it going to work?
He’s not talking about peaceful protest there. He’s clearly addressing attacks on Jewish people. In case you’re not aware, antisemitism is prejudice against Jews, prejudice against Israel is nationalism. I know Netanyahu likes to conflate the two, but Biden knows the difference.
He’s clearly addressing attacks on Jewish people.
But those haven’t been happening…
And cops are getting violent with all of them. Even the protestors who are also Jewish and carrying signs saying so.
This isn’t a religious thing. It’s a genocide thing.
That’s outrageously incorrect. We’re not talking about attacking pro-Israel protesters, or attacks by pro-Palestinian protesters. We’re talking about people ignorantly attacking Jewish students simply because they’re Jewish. They’re being attacked verbally and physically, receiving harassing emails, and being doxxed for being Jewish.
Antisemitism in the US is up 400% since October. College students across the nation have been targeted.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/29/business/antisemitism-college-harvard-upenn/index.html
This isn’t a religious thing. It’s a genocide thing.
That’s exactly the ignorance that is causing the problem. Jewish is both an ethnicity as well as a religion. That’s why antisemitism is uniquely different, it’s both religious persecution and racism. You should be more informed or you may unintentionally promote hate.
Jews are not committing genocide. Israel is.
People want their side to be all good and the opposition to be all bad.
I mean, the opposition is all bad in this case, but one’s own side is rarely all good. People more often engage in hagiography than analysis.
It’s just important to know that the side that is at fault is Israel and not Jews. If people understood that, then antisemitic hate crimes wouldn’t be up 400%. The real ignorance is people hearing Biden and Congress condemning antisemitism and conflating it with judgement of anti-Israel protest. They are not the same. Biden knows that, as do the thirty-something Jewish members of Congress. I blame Netanyahu for manipulating that term in defense of Israel, but that doesn’t excuse the ignorance of Americans.
Well, cops have beaten the shit out of a lot of Jewish students, so there definitely have been attacks on Jewish people. Don’t think that’s what Biden was referencing though.
