Israel orders mass 'evacuation' from Northern Gaza, humanitarian crisis certain to ensue

[EnterpriseSovereign]

All I can say is, better late than never.

Are you fucking serious? You support more money & arms for Israel so it can better carry out its genocide of the Palestinians?
I don't even know what to say to you, that is how fucked up you are.

I would prefer the Israel money to go on their Iron Dome to replenish their munitions, or does that also count as genocide?

How about you don't say anything at all, you fucking troll.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Then why, pray tell, are you posting that in this thread? I know the Ukraine thread has been locked for the moment, but you already posted the same thing there before that happened. It doesn't mean the same thing posting it here. This thread is about Israel, not Ukraine.

The most disturbing thing is that the three had to be combined to get through Congress at all.

[Solauren]

All I can say is, better late than never.

Are you fucking serious? You support more money & arms for Israel so it can better carry out its genocide of the Palestinians?
I don't even know what to say to you, that is how fucked up you are.

I actually find myself agreeing with Aerius on this one.

Quite frankly, every country in the world should go 'sorry, until your current actions stop, and the current government is removed from power and handed over to Interpol protective custody to face charges for the criminal actions during this action, you get NOTHING'.

Honestly, if Israel needs the aid badly enough, they'd listen for a change.

And if not, offer all citizens in the area a chance to leave Israel/Palastein/Gaza, and let the fanatics fight it out.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

All I can say is, better late than never.

Are you fucking serious? You support more money & arms for Israel so it can better carry out its genocide of the Palestinians?
I don't even know what to say to you, that is how fucked up you are.

I actually find myself agreeing with Aerius on this one.

Quite frankly, every country in the world should go 'sorry, until your current actions stop, and the current government is removed from power and handed over to Interpol protective custody to face charges for the criminal actions during this action, you get NOTHING'.

Honestly, if Israel needs the aid badly enough, they'd listen for a change.

And if not, offer all citizens in the area a chance to leave Israel/Palastein/Gaza, and let the fanatics fight it out.

Basically, demand Israel to stage a coup then?

[Batman]

Deny them support for their genocide. All they have to do is stop attacking Gaza and their neighbours, problem solved. If the current government won't do that, maybe a coup is in order.

[Gandalf]

Basically, demand Israel to stage a coup then?

Netanyahu can stop without it being a coup. It would be policy turnaround, but not a coup.

[Solauren]

Basically, demand Israel to stage a coup then?

Netanyahu can stop without it being a coup. It would be policy turnaround, but not a coup.

Hell, all he'd have to do is call off the attack, and call an election, then step down. That's like, what, a 30 minute press conference?

[Broomstick]

Deny them support for their genocide. All they have to do is stop attacking Gaza and their neighbours, problem solved.

Problem solved for Gaza.

It would not address the systematic oppression of Arabs within Israel proper - see West Bank and Settlers. Such oppression occurs in other parts of Israel as well.

[Broomstick]

Basically, demand Israel to stage a coup then?

Netanyahu can stop without it being a coup. It would be policy turnaround, but not a coup.

Hell, all he'd have to do is call off the attack, and call an election, then step down. That's like, what, a 30 minute press conference?

Yep. That's all has to do.

Then it's off to court with him for a long-delay trial and possibly jail for the rest of his life, which is why he doesn't do that.

[Soontir C'boath]

Yea, you know you're on the wrong side of history when the faculty steps in.

Columbia University faculty members have staged a walkout in support of students arrested and suspended after participating in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Students established a "Gaza Solidarity Encampment" at the Ivy League campus in New York City on April 17 to protest Israel's ongoing assault in Gaza and demand Columbia administration divest from Israel-affiliated companies.

Police soon raided the encampment and arrested over 100 students, who were then suspended by the university. The protests continued to grow after the clearout, with some participants putting up tents again over the weekend.

Amid the protests, multiple antisemitic incidents including the harassment of Jewish students have been reported, although students and Columbia officials have claimed that groups from outside the university are to blame.
On Monday, after it was announced that in-person classes were being canceled due to the chaos, a large number of Columbia faculty members walked outside to demonstrate in support of the protesters.

The faculty members did not demonstrate to express their explicit support for the pro-Palestinian cause. Instead, many held signs reading "End Student Suspensions Now," "Hands Off Our Students" and "Restore Faculty Governance."

While it was unclear how many faculty members took part in the pro-student demonstration, images and videos quickly shared to social media suggest that at least several dozen took part.

A Columbia University spokesperson on Monday declined Newsweek's request for comment on the faculty walkout, while sharing a statement that Columbia President Nemat "Minouche" Shafik released earlier in the day.

"During the coming days, a working group of Deans, university administrators and faculty members will try to bring this crisis to a resolution," Shafik said in the statement. "I know that there is much debate about whether or not we should use the police on campus, and I am happy to engage in those discussions."

"Over the past days, there have been too many examples of intimidating and harassing behavior on our campus," she continued. "I hope everyone can take a deep breath, show compassion, and work together to rebuild the ties that bind us together."

During the faculty demonstration, Columbia professor of history Christopher L. Brown condemned Shafik for calling police on the protesters, which led to the encampment being cleared out by officers in riot gear on April 18.

"Thursday, April 18, 2024, will be remembered as a shameful day in Columbia's history," Brown said. "The president's decision to send riot police to pick up peaceful protesters on our campus was unprecedented, unjustified, disproportionate, divisive and dangerous."

"I have no confidence in the president's leadership," he continued. "With what she has said and what she has not said, and with what she has done and what she has not done—she has forfeited the privilege of leading this great university."

Shai Davidai, a Columbia business professor who claims that he was locked out of the school because he is Jewish and opposed to the pro-Palestinian protests, condemned the university's president for a very different reason during a smaller demonstration on Monday.

"President Shafik supports terrorism, that should be the headline of every news media," Davidai said while speaking to a group carrying U.S. and Israel flags. "Because we have terrorist ideology on campus and we have a president that is negotiating with them."

"That makes her a supporter of terrorism," he added. "She should be fired not tomorrow, not tonight [but] today—this very minute."

Anyone who can say the bolded part with a straight face while the IDF drops 2000 pound bombs on women and children should have their humanity questioned.

[Broomstick]

Amid the protests, multiple antisemitic incidents including the harassment of Jewish students have been reported, although students and Columbia officials have claimed that groups from outside the university are to blame.

There is also reason to believe that some anti-protest Jewish people have gone to protests basically to stir up trouble and/or play the victim card. Meanwhile, anti-war Jews ("Not In Our Name") are part of the anti-war demonstrations. There are outside agitators contributing to the problems as well, as there always are.

The faculty members did not demonstrate to express their explicit support for the pro-Palestinian cause. Instead, many held signs reading "End Student Suspensions Now," "Hands Off Our Students" and "Restore Faculty Governance."

I gather they are supporting the right to free speech - these demonstrations are noisy and annoying to those in the area, but we're not talking about riots. Despite the use of riot police.

During the faculty demonstration, Columbia professor of history Christopher L. Brown condemned Shafik for calling police on the protesters, which led to the encampment being cleared out by officers in riot gear on April 18.

"Thursday, April 18, 2024, will be remembered as a shameful day in Columbia's history," Brown said. "The president's decision to send riot police to pick up peaceful protesters on our campus was unprecedented, unjustified, disproportionate, divisive and dangerous."

He's a history professor and doesn't remember the campus protests of the 1960's in the US? "unjustified, disproportionate, divisive and dangerous" but not "unprecedented".

Shai Davidai, a Columbia business professor who claims that he was locked out of the school because he is Jewish and opposed to the pro-Palestinian protests, condemned the university's president for a very different reason during a smaller demonstration on Monday.

"President Shafik supports terrorism, that should be the headline of every news media," Davidai said while speaking to a group carrying U.S. and Israel flags. "Because we have terrorist ideology on campus and we have a president that is negotiating with them."

"That makes her a supporter of terrorism," he added. "She should be fired not tomorrow, not tonight [but] today—this very minute."

Anyone who can say the bolded part with a straight face while the IDF drops 2000 pound bombs on women and children should have their humanity questioned.

As I indicated above, there are two sides to the more confrontational aspects of these protests. Being in favor of fair treatment for Palestinians is not "terrorist ideology". Neither is being anti-war. Neither is talking to people who are protesting.

[Broomstick]

Meanwhile, in New York City's Emergency Seder in the Streets:

We need an exodus from Zionism

This Passover, we don’t need or want the false idol of Zionism. We want freedom from the project that commits genocide in our name
Wed 24 Apr 2024 09.27 EDT
Last modified on Wed 24 Apr 2024 16.37 EDT

I’ve been thinking about Moses, and his rage when he came down from the mount to find the Israelites worshipping a golden calf.

The ecofeminist in me was always uneasy about this story: what kind of God is jealous of animals? What kind of God wants to hoard all the sacredness of the Earth for himself?

But there is a less literal way of understanding this story. It is about false idols. About the human tendency to worship the profane and shiny, to look to the small and material rather than the large and transcendent.

What I want to say to you tonight at this revolutionary and historic Seder in the Streets is that too many of our people are worshipping a false idol once again. They are enraptured by it. Drunk on it. Profaned by it.

That false idol is called Zionism.

Zionism is a false idol that has taken the idea of the promised land and turned it into a deed of sale for a militaristic ethnostate

It is a false idol that takes our most profound biblical stories of justice and emancipation from slavery – the story of Passover itself – and turns them into brutalist weapons of colonial land theft, roadmaps for ethnic cleansing and genocide.

It is a false idol that has taken the transcendent idea of the promised land – a metaphor for human liberation that has traveled across multiple faiths to every corner of this globe – and dared to turn it into a deed of sale for a militaristic ethnostate.

Political Zionism’s version of liberation is itself profane. From the start, it required the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and ancestral lands in the Nakba.

From the start it has been at war with dreams of liberation. At a Seder it is worth remembering that this includes the dreams of liberation and self-determination of the Egyptian people. This false idol of Zionism equates Israeli safety with Egyptian dictatorship and client states.

From the start it has produced an ugly kind of freedom that saw Palestinian children not as human beings but as demographic threats – much as the pharaoh in the Book of Exodus feared the growing population of Israelites, and thus ordered the death of their sons.

Zionism has brought us to our present moment of cataclysm and it is time that we said clearly: it has always been leading us here.

It is a false idol that has led far too many of our own people down a deeply immoral path that now has them justifying the shredding of core commandments: thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not covet.

We, in these streets for months and months, are the exodus. The exodus from Zionism

It is a false idol that equates Jewish freedom with cluster bombs that kill and maim Palestinian children.

Zionism is a false idol that has betrayed every Jewish value, including the value we place on questioning – a practice embedded in the Seder with its four questions asked by the youngest child.

Including the love we have as a people for text and for education.

Today, this false idol justifies the bombing of every university in Gaza; the destruction of countless schools, of archives, of printing presses; the killing of hundreds of academics, of journalists, of poets – this is what Palestinians call scholasticide, the killing of the means of education.

Meanwhile, in this city, the universities call in the NYPD and barricade themselves against the grave threat posed by their own students daring to ask them basic questions, such as: how can you claim to believe in anything at all, least of all us, while you enable, invest in and collaborate with this genocide?

The false idol of Zionism has been allowed to grow unchecked for far too long.

So tonight we say: it ends here.

Meanwhile meanwhile -- that same evening ended in the arrest of hundreds of Jews protesting the actions of the Israeli government. Brooklyn Seder Protest

As Senator Chuck Schumer of New York prepared for a final vote to pass an aid package that would provide $26 billion to Israel and billions more to Ukraine and Taiwan, approximately 200 protesters were arrested, according to the police, after blocking traffic in his Brooklyn neighborhood on the second night of Passover to call for an end to the United States’ military support of Israel.

Though Mr. Schumer, the Democratic majority leader, was in Washington, demonstrators rallied on Tuesday in Grand Army Plaza, one block away from his Brooklyn home, a common site of protests since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war. As the sun set, hundreds of people gathered around a circular banner representing a Seder plate, which included the words “Jews say stop arming Israel” alongside images of foods eaten during the Seder meal.

“This will not be a Seder as usual. These are not usual times,” Morgan Bassichis, a member of the progressive group Jewish Voice for Peace, said to attendees.

After a series of speakers addressed the rally, a large portion of the crowd moved into the street between the north edge of Prospect Park and the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch, blocking the flow of traffic and prompting drivers to lean on their horns. Police officers who had been monitoring the event warned the demonstrators that they would be arrested if they did not move; when they stayed put, officers wielding zip-tie handcuffs moved in and began making arrests. Roughly 200 protesters, some wearing reflective vests over black T-shirts that read “Jews Say Cease Fire Now,” were led away in pairs.

The protest, organized by pro-Palestinian Jewish groups, marked what has been a distinctly different Passover celebration for Jewish people in New York City and beyond, as college campuses and family dinner tables feel the ripple effects of the Israel-Hamas war.

Stefanie Fox, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, said the protest was held during Passover in order to send a message to Mr. Schumer as the Senate moved toward a final vote on aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. Roughly $9 billion of that $95 billion package is dedicated to “worldwide humanitarian aid,” including for civilians in Gaza. (The package later passed in a 79-to-18 vote.)

“Everything in our tradition compels us to bring everything we have to stopping these historic atrocities being done in our names and with our tax dollars,” Ms. Fox said in an interview on Monday.
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Mr. Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the United States, recently called for elections to replace Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, once the war winds down. His rebuke of the Jewish state’s leader last month — in a speech in which he also spoke of his love for the state of Israel and his horror at the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7 — exposed the widening gap between Israel and the United States, its most important ally, analysts said.

“Senator Schumer just very recently spoke very harshly about Prime Minister Netanyahu on the Senate floor,” Beth Miller, the political director for Jewish Voice for Peace, said at the protest on Tuesday. “For him to do that with one hand, and then on the other hand reward Prime Minister Netanyahu by pushing forward this military funding package, shows that he is not serious about actually shifting U.S. policy to leverage change.”

One attendee, Calvin Harrison, 29, a community organizer who lives in Manhattan, said he was at Grand Army Plaza “because I’m a Jew and I was raised to believe that Judaism is about justice.”

“Passover is a celebration of liberation for the future,” he went on. “We can’t celebrate liberation for ourselves while we’re oppressing Palestinians.”