Middle East Conflict

Tbh I think his thread is bollocks. Had a look on the ADL website and couldn’t find a breakdown on the source of antisemitism, and any dataset containing 20 years of data that has figures of 100% and 0% when there’s been tens of thousands of incidents sounds utterly implausible. Had a look at UK figures over the last year or two and whilst it’s true that right wing antisemitism is the largest subset, it’s more like 50% with the rest split between other sources.
You can use the ADL Heat Map tool referenced in the thread here:


If you set the date range to 2002-2023 (2002 is the earliest year available) and add ‘Left Wing’ or ‘Islamist’ filters it returns 0 results for either.

I think this is actually an issue with the tool itself, arising from a few of potential causes (bad formatting of underlying data, bad query calls from the tool, missing data in the origin database or staging views, etc.). But, even so, that doesn’t reflect well on the ADL and they really should fix the tool.

I do think the thread is a bit disingenuous, though, given anyone with even a cursory understanding of how these types of data visualisation tools work should be able to see the Heat Map is not returning valid results. Especially given you can review their recent Audit of Antisemitic Incidents in 2023 which conflicts with the Heat Map tool results.
 
What "deal on the table"?

That looks fake.

The deal on the table is a six week ceasefire for hostages and humanitarian aide(but remember Israel isn’t blocking aide).

Whatever you feel about Hamas, expecting them to agree to pause the killing for six weeks so Israel can start it up again is illogical.

“But what about their own people who suffer” I’m sure an Islamic death cult full of orphans and displaced people with nothing to lose care that much….
 
The full force of the American “centrist” and right-leaning press (and even some of the supposedly left-leaning publications) have been mobilised to denounce and demonise the student protests. I have read so many op-eds and blog posts masquerading as opinion pieces in the Washington Post, Politico, the Atlantic, New York Times, and the Economist over the last few days that I know the signs.

There are legitimate criticisms of elements of the protests—both participants and tactics—but the takes coming out right now vary from framing them as a natural consequence of decades long degradation of the institutions of higher learning (ostensibly claiming that the protests are a product of insidious “wokeness” and liberal ideological corruption of young minds) to characterising anti-genocide and anti-apartheid advocacy and as inherently anti-Semitic (because opposing anything Israel does, even at the direction of a proudly far-right government, is an attack on Jewish people everywhere, including me, apparently).

I even read this piece today which essentially claims that all of this started in the late 1960s with the anti-war protests at the elite universities and that the students are not interested in debate or reasoned negotiation (as if the protests now are not a consequence of repeated attempts at civil debate and restrained airing of grievances leading to absolutely no measurable change to the status quo).

Many are likening the protests, not the Israeli military operations in Gaza or increasingly violent occupation of the West Bank, to Nazi rallies and silence of the “good Germans”. The sheer idiocy and revisionism is astounding.

As I said, I don’t agree with everything that the various student groups at the various colleges and universities are doing. In fact, I personally think some of them are horrifically mismanaging their protests and related actions, undermining their stated messages and missions. And there are all manner of agitators, pragmatists, and malicious actors attempting to co-opt and corrupt their advocacy.

But to try to claim that all protest—or even criticism—of Israel’s response to the 7 October Attacks is “liberalism run amok”, “rampant and dangerous antisemitism”, or even “speech and actions that mirror that of the Nazis” is morally bankrupt nonsense and deeply intellectually dishonest.

And, ironically, fairly reminiscent of the propaganda being sponsored and distributed—and often directly written—by US intelligence agencies in the 60s and 70s to discredit and isolate anti-war activism.

Some of the arguments are just so blatantly moronic, revisionist, and/or fictionalised that one wonders if most of it was being generated via LLM chatbots.
 
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Texas Gov. Abbott faces backlash after mass arrest at UT Austin pro-Palestine protest


After Texas state troopers arrested more than 50 people at a University of Texas at Austin protest this week, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) is facing accusations that the state went too far.

Police in riot gear broke up an unsanctioned but nonviolent demonstration at the state’s flagship university Wednesday.

Among those arrested was a journalist with the local Fox 7 news affiliate, who has been charged with criminal trespassing, according to the news organization.



—————

I can almost guarantee that Abbott watches archive footage of the violent military and police crackdown of anti-war and civil rights protests in the 60s and 70s every night to take notes and have a good wank.
 
To be clear, the Netanyahu government will set unrealistic demands for the terms of the deal so that the negotiation will fail but give “legitimate” cover for them moving forward with the Rafah offensive, which they were always going to do.

It’s kind of crazy. I get why everyone wants to blame Hamas and rightfully so but we are talking about an Islamic death cult essentially. Anyone who has heard a religious fanatic speak whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and etc is they aren’t the easiest to converse with. But simply ignoring all that, what logic would there be for Hamas to agree to a six week ceasefire just so Israel can “finish the job” six weeks later.

If the goal in the end is a complete ceasefire then that should be the goal as it gets the hostages out and starts the political settlement that will end the conflict permanently. But unfortunately the powers that be still want to play politics, hence the attention on college students.
 

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