@caseynewton@zoeschiffer My physics professor taught us to watch for words like "obviously follows" and "of course." He said this is how a lecturer elides the part of the proof they don't understand.
Up to this point, I was wondering why you didn't find anyone from Facebook to talk to—even though FB, much more than Amazon, Apple, and Google, was roiled by employee dissent in 2020, and before that in 2018 in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the Kavanaugh hearings. Now I see why.
@caseynewton@zoeschiffer Yes because BLM was about confronting our inner racism, and the Gaza protests are not innocent fights against racism, they are themselves racist agitations that call for systemic violence against millions of Israelis and have few qualms about Jew hatred.
You are platforming hatred by drawing a false equivalence.
@Jonathanglick You have mobs of people calling implicitly or explicitly for the murder of millions of Israelis, dehumanization of Jews everywhere, restricting the freedom of movement of Jews. You have protestors calling to treat Israel by a different standard than they would apply anywhere else, but it goes unnoticed because they have never concerned themselves with anywhere else.
I have stood on the streets in Israel and protested the actions of my government as a citizen. Fighting oppression is a thing. But it is nearly impossible to look at these protests with a functional bullshit detector and fail to see the hatred upon which their premises and arguments rest.
Of course there's a legitimate reason to put pressure on the Israeli government to do the right thing. But I don't see anyone saying that everyone should divest from Shameful Disgusting America because Trump was once president. And I definitely don't see anyone protesting China. Or Syria. It's racist.
@Jonathanglick Man, there's a lot to unpack in that, it's like three million dollar questions in one.
Start by unpacking whether you're really accomplishing that with whatever you're doing, or if it's just furthering someone else's agenda to enable and encourage violence against Jews and Israelis. Right now, that's the biggest problem. You cannot right a wrong by adding bigotry.
I am not understating the amount of homework it takes to understand the complex system that is FMF and how aid to Israel is ultimately a form of job subsidies for various congressional districts. Like any complex system, there are rarely single moves like "halt funding now!" which are neatly scoped. I do not see simple, slogan-sized actions. For starters, I do not think that calling US aid to Israel "funding Bibi's regime" is a legitimate simplification.
I think for protests to be taken seriously, they should be earned through real engagement, not reflexive parroting of slogans. I don't believe every crank with a sharpie and a poster protesting outside of planned parenthood that gays and abortions caused COVID, but it's easy for me to be incredulous of that because of how I was raised.
Nor do I think that only the largest fire in the world deserves protest. If you really take the time to wade into the endless backstory, I think you'd come out the other end feeling less sure of what to say and how to say it. But you'd have a lot more legitimacy in my eyes than the people who mindlessly retweet racist slogans because "babies are dying".
Protests can also be hate speech. It's always been hard to define hate speech. You're effectively asking me to define hate speech.
Your tax dollars are yours. If you don't want them spent on Israel, it is absolutely your right to say so. But it's very different to say "I understand that we deploy foreign aid $ as a carrot to achieve our strategic aims around the globe, but I don't want to give billions of dollars of foreign aid to other countries whose human rights record I don't like." and "Israel alone is a despotic evil regime deserving of protest" when the US spends billions on Egypt (why? because the aid to Egypt was the carrot exchanged for a promise to keep the Suez canal open in the interests of global maritime shipping.)
One is protest. The other is hate speech.
It's not hard to distinguish when you look at them; just like it's not hard to call bullshit on people who insist that the swastika is just a hindu symbol for luck. Sorry, some words have baggage.
@Jonathanglick@idan How to protest: in general, in a case like this, solidarity with domestic protesters is the best. This means protesting the Occupation and Bibi personally, and calling for a hostage deal, e.g. the #BringThemHome campaign. It means forging connections with Jewish-Arab partnerships like Standing Together.
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