Tensions spill across universities like Columbia and Harvard as students on each side accuse the other of a kind of bloodlust

Tensions spill across universities like Columbia and Harvard as students on each side accuse the other of a kind of bloodlust

To one side, Columbia students stood silently, wrapped in the blue and white of Israel as they gripped pictures of the murdered and abducted. Across the grass and brick divide, a slightly larger cohort of students chanted “Free, free Palestine.”

The faultline between the two ran along the claim by each that the other was pursuing a kind of bloodlust – a charge that has divided university campuses across America in the wake of the bloody Hamas attack on Israeli communities and Israel’s ongoing military assault on Gaza.

Reactions within US universities to the killing of at least 1,300 Israelis and the abduction of about 100 more have swung from celebration of the Hamas assault as a legitimate act of resistance to occupation to condemnation along with a demand that it not be used to ignore the deaths of Palestinians killed in Israel’s retaliation on Gaza.

    • Neato@kbin.social
      251·
      1 year ago

      Both governments (Israel and Hamas) are driven by an urge to seek more power by claiming land and killing their "enemies". The populace are witting and unwitting pawns of that. I am not surprised people back the Israeli government with the amount of propaganda being put forth and I'm not surprised that people who have been murdered and had their homes destroyed for decades are willing to tacitly support the only group that seems like it can fight back. Desperate people don't make rational decisions.

    • orclev@lemmy.world
      188·
      1 year ago

      Yes, there are no good guys in this conflict. Israel has spent decades commiting low level offences against Palestine and her people, and Hamas has spent the same amount of time launching small attacks against Israel. They both have legitimate grievances with each other, but it's the civilians on both sides that suffer for it. Unfortunately there's no good solution to the problem, there's too much bad blood between them at this point that any hope for peace would be short lived. Even if Israel and Hamas agreed to stand down some other group on one side or the other would start things up again.

        • orclev@lemmy.worldEnglish
          182·
          1 year ago

          Low level as in murdering a dozen people there, evicting and bulldozing a bunch of houses over there, that sort of thing, as opposed to like, rolling tanks into the middle of Gaza and opening fire, dropping bombs on them, or like what they're planning on doing now where they've ordered them to evacuate in 24 hours before they presumably march in and most likely just start murdering people. Israel tends to keep up a constant low level attack. It's not one big thing, but thousands of small offenses happening nearly constantly. Hamas on the other hand tends to do less, but what they do is bigger. Bombs that kill or injure hundreds, launching indiscriminate rockets into Israel, that sort of thing.

          For better or worse, Hamas attack is exactly what Netanyahu wanted. It's an excuse for Israel to escalate things even further. In many ways Hamas played right into his hands. To be clear, they were absolutely provoked into it, but there's still an inbalance of power at play. Now Netanyahu is going to use that attack to justify even more atrocities, and there's not much Palestine or Hamas can really do about it. It will get very ugly over there before too much longer and both Palestinians and Israelis are going to suffer, but I fear the Palestinians are going to suffer a lot more before this is over. There's a distinct possibility that this is going to result in Israel completely occupying Palestine and them effectively ceasing to exist as an independent state.