Would you have a problem with "Please watch this ad for samketchup's product before watching this blogger's pro-Hamas video!"? Remember, free speech means the blogger is allowed to say what they say...
Not the GP poster, but I would honestly be okay with that because I actually believe in free speech. As we discovered over the last 2 weeks, though, many colleges (including at least half of the ivy league) are also okay with pro-Hamas rallies -- not because they believe in free speech, but because they've chosen a side.
> As we discovered over the last 2 weeks, though, many colleges (including at least half of the ivy league) are also okay with pro-Hamas rallies -- not because they believe in free speech, but because they've chosen a side.
Were the rallies actually pro-Hamas, or pro-Palestine?
That's a fair question. I'm sure some attendees are pro-Palestine, but many of the important organizers might not be. I've seen a few things over the last 2 weeks that led me to this impression:
* While speaking at an off-campus event, Cornell professor Russell Rickford described the massacre of Israelis as "exhilarating" and "energizing". You can find plenty of citations (including video) by Googling his name; most of them come from right-wing news sources, but unfortunately the liberal newspapers didn't deem this worth mentioning.
* Many examples of the protesters chanting "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free". Wikipedia actually has an article about this phrase, which originates from before Gaza and the West Bank were controlled by Israel. In other words, the term "Palestine" referred to something other than West Bank/Gaza when that slogan was originated. In the true meaning of that phrase, "Palestine" refers to the entire region of which modern-day Israel is a subset, and "free" means "no Israel". All of this lines up with the Hamas worldview.
* Black Lives Matter tweeted a picture saying "I stand with Palestine" that had a picture of a man on a paraglider. [1] That's a reference to Hamas terrorists using paragliders to cross checkpoints at the Gaza border, and then murdering innocents (including women, children, and babies). Again, the words-as-written on that tweet just reference "Palestine" while the picture makes it perfectly clear who they really stand with. Also, I'm sorry for citing exclusively right-wing sources. I swear this really happened, and is being reported correctly here; it's just that liberal sources won't cover it.
You could kind of excuse American protesters for #2. I like to think that most Americans who sympathize with Palestine do so on the basic grounds of "everyone is entitled to personal freedom, dignity, and a place to call home." It all gets muddy when you understand the history and how they got here, but who in America really knows hardly any of that (even recent events)?
#1 and #3 are just bizarre. You have to have a seriously fucked-up world view to excuse what Hamas did on Saturday, regardless of anything and everything Israel did prior to that.
Well, it was poor choice of words since you can't expect mobs with pitchforks to understand nuance, but if I can interpret his words favorabily to him, the exhiliration is not because some Israeli grandmas and babies were being butchered, but because; imagine a dog that's been kept in a small cage and abused for many years, wouldn't you expect it to hate its owner, and wouldn't you expect it to bite the owner, if given the chance; well, finally it's gotten a chance.
To expand on "poor choice of words"/"nuance", yeah ok, I agree with you to a degree, being exhilirated rather than horrified does seem to me he's taking the deaths for granted. Here's your whataboutism: it seems some of the "Hate Israel" camp take the Israeli deaths for granted, just like some of the "Hate Hamas" camp take the Palestinian deaths for granted and justify these with "Well, what can you do if Hamas hides among civilians?"/"It's Hamas' fault anyway, not IDFs!" and deaths painful to family and friends are just summarized as "collateral damage".