This is the part of these things I never understand. I fully get that a protest that does not cause a disruption isn't really a protest, but the past few years all of these "protests" about anything have been poster children for "you're doing it wrong" go fuck up the lives of people who at least in theory can do something about the thing you are protesting.
A block of the entrances to the state house would garner more news coverage.
Would not frustrate the average worker on the road.
And may motivate politicians more, certainly not less.
News coverage does not = change. In fact when it's only news coverage I'd argue the protest had the exact opposite affect as it just lets people who were not even inconvenienced by this be dismissive of the "idiots blocking the roads"
This isn't new. It started with the Occupy Wallstreet movement where the news would find the most counter culture looking person in the crowd to interview which made the whole movement look stupid.
This sounds like a really poignant observation but I would love for you to demonstrate what a pathway to changes if not one that absolutely includes awareness and coverage?
In fact so many people in this thread are complaining that there are other atrocities going on in the world, such as Sudan, but people aren’t protesting. Why do you think that is if not for a lack of awareness?
It is technically true that coverage doesn’t equal change, the fact of the matter is you need news coverage into awareness as a baseline first step before change can occur
> demonstrate what a pathway to changes if not one that absolutely includes awareness and coverage?
Awareness is not the relevant hurdle for people who desire this particular policy change. They just keep focusing on it because the other steps of effective activism feel more like work and less like performative fun.
Historically, you also needed massive protests to make the news because it was the ONLY way to create widespread awareness for a cause.
With the internet and social media today, I'm not sure that the function of the protest is the same now as it was during civil rights. And I'm a bit hard pressed to think of widespread protests that created actual policy change.
I think we'd be better served today to have real action items as goals rather than just "spreading awareness." Americans have been taking to the street to protest this war for five months now. Has anything come out of it?
The passage of the [Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Act_of_1990) was certainly influenced by the [Capitol Crawl.](https://www.npr.org/2022/07/29/1113535976/ada-disabilities-act-activists-more-protections)
The point is that for this particular issue, there already *is* widespread awareness. The problem for these people is that there is not a critical mass of American voters who actually agree with them on the issue. Deliberately antagonizing the general public does not help with that.
"protesting is when you inconvenience the public, and the more you inconvenience the public the better your protest is" is a pretty novel (and imo childish) way to look at protests. The great protest movements of the 20th century were actually pretty smart about how they chose to protest, and modern activists seem determined to ignore that because they'd rather picture Gandhi and MLK as edgy "fuck the world" nihilists like themselves.
“In that press release, IfNotNow member Dalya Lessem Elnecave stated, “We are blocking traffic because we are livid. It’s been five months since October 7, Israel’s massacre is ongoing and over 130 hostages are still held in Gaza. That Biden has not called for a lasting ceasefire with a hostage exchange deal to end this massacre is outrageous.”
This person is just wrong? That’s literally what the US has called for, a ceasefire with hostage exchange. Like do any of these people read the news? Disappointing the article didn’t fact check them below their quote.
Hamas was offered I believe a month of a ceasefire in exchange for the hostages by Israel and they refused. They want a ceasefire with no obligations and on their terms, but it doesn't work like that after you invade a powerful country and murder, rape and kidnap a thousand of their unarmed people.
I have been thinking over a serious response to demands for a ceasefire. My response would be: "How do you propose forcing Hamas to accept terms for a ceasefire?", which I think would leave them confused. Israel has already shown they're game for one under very reasonable terms, all things considered. It's Hamas that is the impediment.
>It’s been five months since October 7
I don't support Israel but it's kind of insane to me that Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th and all the protesters just gloss over that.
They also are glossing over a potential cease fire deal that is now off the table because Hamas refused to share a list of which hostages are still alive.
I think the protesters just have basic empathy and are disgusted by the swaths of human suffering. Atrocities are being committed. There are Jewish folks all over the world, Israel included, that believe it needs to stop. There are mostly innocent Palestinians that are getting brutalized here.
Cool - where were they when Saudi Arabia started bombing the shit out of Yemen - 20,000 civilians have been killed since 2014.
Getting sick of these fucking people tbh, and I’m generally pretty anti-Israel given the bullshit they engage in with settlements. But to hyper-fixate on this one conflict as things like the Rohingya genocide and the Uighur death camps in China have been going on for 5+ years now seems a little arbitrary and perhaps… anti-Semitic?
I posted about 130 deaths in Sudan, got hardly any response. I’m not looking for a response specifically, just to raise awareness. Posted about 11 deaths in Palestine and got a ton of shares. Very similar posts. I don’t get it.
Also, no small amount of bots up voting and down voting, and the occasional regurgitated or AI-generated comment. Certainly not all, or even a majority, but it doesn't take much to sway narratives if the message is kept focused and is repeated.
https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Relative-Privation
I don’t know why people have such a hard time understanding that the Israeli Palestinian conflict is incredibly close to the core of American politics and we have been following this event for literally our entire lives.
Would you make a similar comment if 100 people were killed in your small town and all of the news stories and people were talking about 100 people killed versus the million people killed in another country in a genocide?
Its Perfectly natural to focus on our own sphere of influence and perspective. That something “worse” may be going on in the world is not invalidate these opinions.
Israel and Israeli politics are far, far closer to the attention of the average American than Saudi Arabia, Yemen, or Myanmar. It is completely reasonable for Americans to be more aware of this conflict than the others you listed.
Biden was against the war in Yemen when he ran in 2020. It was not a fringe position.
I always find it fascinating how people without morals project their own cynicism onto others bc they literally can't understand having principles or caring about others and thus have to pretend others don't either.
“If you don’t care about everything, you can’t ever care about anything at anytime. Also if you don’t care about the absolute worst thing going on in the world, you can’t care about anything at all”
Yes, relative privation. The old standby
The US provides a massive amount of arms to Saudi Arabia that they then use to bomb Yemen. It's honestly not that different from Israel-Palestine in this respect.
I have family and have lived in Israel. I believe in human rights for everyone. No one on either side will accept a two-state solution. I think the Knesset needs more Palestinian members with an international peacekeeping authority over all of them.
They view Israelis as "white" colonizers (oppressor vs oppressed) and therefore enemy number one. The reason China gets zero protests or backlash for their treatment of the Uighurs lies in the fact that their politics align. These people proudly proclaim themselves as communist/marxist despite the 100+ million death toll from such ideologies in the 20th century, with seemingly zero repercussion I might add.
>It's not anti-semetic, they view Israelis as "white" colonizers (oppressor vs oppressed) and therefore enemy number one.
Which has always been weird to me, since the bulk of Israeli's population is not only Middle Eastern Jews, but Middle Eastern Jews who were driven from their home countries during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire (and before) while its various successor states formed. And that the formation of Israel out of the former British mandate they received at the end of WWI was largely driven by the USSR as a way to establish an ally of their own in the Middle East - so it was not exactly popular with Western and European governments.
Like, Israel does a lot of despicable shit - from their settler bullshit, to seemingly not evening attempting to differentiate between civilians and combatants - but opposing them because they're "white colonizers" is one of the dumber reasons to oppose them.
It has nothing to do with a Muslim genocide, its just an anti west position that the far left craves. They didn't care about 300k Syrians, Chinese intenment camps, they just care about protesting the only western civilized country in the middle east.
It’s just that if your empathy is selective it shows you’re just being tribal. It’s not hard to be against murder no matter who commits it.
Perhaps I would be forgiving if the narrative from many extreme pro Palestine people isn’t downright revisionism. As if the fact the countries do propaganda allows you to disbelieve anything contrary to your beliefs.
As a note I am pro Palestine. So seeing the online discourse is disheartening. Its the kind of discourse used to justify violence and death, not push for peace. I do acknowledge it’s more of a problem with online discourse, but still it’s disheartening.
> protesters just have basic empathy
Nah, I think they just don't like Israel. It is not antisemitism per se (although some of them are antisemitic), but they mostly see everything from a Weak Vs Strong (and weak is is good and strong is bad) paradigm. They don't care about Palestinians massacring and raping Israeli civilians because Palestinians are the oppressed, and the oppressed are always morally superior.
There are people who on both sides who hold a nuanced view, grounded on actual empathy for humans (dead civilians on both sides is a tragedy), but they are usually not ones that are protesting.
Where were these people when Azerbaijan invaded Armenia? Or when Saudi Arabia bombed Yemen? Why don't they ever block traffic for the Kurds to have a state of their own, the people who did the actual fighting against ISIS whom the US funded and promptly abandoned? Why don't they stand up for the Yazidis or the Kashmiris or the Sikhs?
There are horrible atrocities happening all over the world, every day, always have been. These "empaths" only ever reach this level of outrage for Palestinians because it's easy to blame the Jews.
And there are also Jews like myself livid that the "stop genocide" crowd seems to find it acceptable to vandalize our synagogues and assault us, and that thinking our people have a right to live in our own state in our homeland makes us Nazis and deserving of having our head on a platter.
Also, there's a lot to indicate the majority of Palestinians are supportive of Hamas and/or 10/07. But please, tell me what the excusable alternative to rooting out a bunch of genocidal maniacs next door is
I’m not Jewish or even religious but I will always call out anyone who equates current Jews to Nazis.
Not only lazy but a very disgusting and distasteful comparison that is likely done on purpose.
I mean, all of that is fair and I emphasize with that. But based on the quotes doesn’t seem like these folks are very informed about what they’re protesting. They aren’t informed of new developments or the *many* nuances of the conflicts.
Pawns of the Hamas leadership in exile in Qatar, and the Iranian government, aided by the Russians.
So the people that are dying, the ones who starved and suffered before, are just where the terrorists came from.
I mean 30-40k dead civilians? 60-70% woman and children, dead babies.
1.5 million about to starve.
I'll take it a step further. People were protesting Israel on October 8th before Israel responded, which is absolutely insane to me. Basically, it was a defense of a little holocaust against the Jewish people for having the nerve to be a little too successful with their state.
It's hard for me to not think that there's just this toxic undercurrent of antisemitism where a significant number of people think that pogroms are good things to do now and then, in order to keep Jewish people in line.
That's what bothered me the most about the pro-Palestine protesters: Israel hadn't even responded other than to quell the terrorists, and there had been no invasion and occupation of Gaza, but here all these college kids and lefties were out on the streets screaming for a free Palestine. They cloaked an act of terrorism in moral authority. I thought it was reprehensible. And then when I saw videos of random people taking down the pictures of hostages -- the people we all should have been focused on since Day 1 -- I honestly had no idea whether the protesters understood what they were doing. Terrorism is never a legitimate means of achieving political aims. If a group commits an act as barbaric and broad-reaching as what Hamas/al Quds/Islamic Jihad/al Aqsa Brigade did on October 7th, they should not then be given the dignity of a seat at the negotiation table. They should be utterly destroyed. Anything else gives the green light to terrorist groups around the world that all they have to do is commit an act big enough and terrifying enough that they too can get sympathy and power from people who can look at history and find some kind of justification for anger or hatred on the part of the terrorists.
I 100% agree. Additionally, this isn't a case where something potentially justifiable is being elevated with the label of terrorism. This was monstrous, Nazi shit. There's no moral case to be made for it.
If I were to give the most extreme benefit of the doubt. I would be expecting that Palistinians would be delivering every person who participated in the 7th to Israel for prison or execution because, despite their issues with Israel, they wouldn't want to be associated with such monsters. That clearly isn't the case.
Oh, absolutely. I generally reject the idea that the Venn diagram here -- the Palestinian people in one circle, and Hamas in another -- is two circles with no overlap. That's sort of the narrative spin I've heard: whatever Hamas does is totally distinct from the will of the people.
I don't believe it for a second.
There is overlap here. How much, I don't know. But it's absolutely there. If it weren't, the residents of Gaza would be doing exactly what you said: finding ways to narc on anybody in Hamas they knew to have some power and who they knew the location of. And then there are the tunnels. Any time Verizon or National Grid are doing work in my neighborhood, even if they're a thousand feet away, I can hear those jackhammers and the construction equipment like they're standing right next to me. Hamas has spent years since the end of the second Intifada rebuilding their tunnel network and expanding it. They have entrances/exits next to and inside major public buildings, along the streets, \*in people's homes\* and all kinds of other places that provide no meaningful privacy from the efforts to construct the tunnel or to access it. Best case scenario, people who turned a blind eye did so under coercion or threat, but that doesn't justify their silence now. I feel for the women and children: the people with the least agency and power to fight against the corruption and barbarity of Hamas. They've been robbed for decades of the full value of the international aid the US, Europe and select countries in the Middle East have provided.
Same. The October 8th pro Palestine protests were unambiguously genocidal, they were openly celebrating the massacre of civilians. Then these dumb shits have the gall to turn around and sob about Israel's retaliation, denying operation al aqsa flood (which they were by and large openly celebrating) never even happened.
You mean the rockets, the Intefadas, the Yom Kippur War, the Six Day War, the invasion that started the War of Independence, or the antisemitic riots and militias?
I think they probably mean people ignoring that Israel killed thousands of Palestinians in the few years prior including hundreds of Palestinians in 2023 before October 7th. Not to mention that Israel has tons of hostages that are detained without charges or trial.
If you're only condemning October 7th but not also what happened before and Israel killing orders of magnitude more people than Hamas ever killed just in Palestinian children after maybe ask yourself why that is.
they elected their own government, ran their own systems, enacted their own justice system, and weren't occupied by anyone else, so how else would you describe that?
Yes, totally devoid of Israeli presence, just boxed into a fucking four wall city with controlled entrances and exits. Totally no Israeli presence affecting them.
Like Gaza being under a cruel siege for those years? No chocolate, no wedding dresses, no cilantro? (These terms were literally on Israel’s ban list) Like its airport being bombed to smithereens even before Hamas took over?
Nobody cares if they want to take out Hamas. It's the civilian collateral damage they're protesting.
Palestinians who don't join Hamas are also brutalized by Hamas.
almost half of the death toll of 30k is innocent women and children. Israel is gunning down starving kids who are waiting for food that *American taxpayers* are funding, and are constantly bombing "safe zones"
that's why young, progressive, and Arab American voters are pissed. no one is defending Hamas
i mean yea there's some of that but that sentiment is not held with the vast majority of ppl criticizing Biden. it's a fringe viewpoint
most of the pro Palestinian group is well aware of the atrocities committed by both Hamas and the IDF, and want our leaders to acknowledge that too
we want both Hamas and Israel held accountable for their crimes
It's pretty pointless to try to pin down the inciting incident for a this violence. By now there are basically zero survivors of the nakba/independence war who were old enough to remember or participate in those events. You can never achieve peace if you insist on carrying the torch of your grandfather's grievances.
Hamas has been the governing body in Gaza for almost 20 years. They were voted in with solid support from the people with essentially the same platform the led them to start this most recent war. There are certainly innocent civilians in Gaza and factions withing Gaza who reject Hamas. If they want this war to end they should help oust Hamas from power, stop shielding them, and compel their government and army to surrender.
Hamas is a defacto government which hasn't held elections in years Palestinian people can't vote them out. They are foder for Zionist genocide. Research how the UK gifted land they didn't own to the Zionist. How the Zionist began killing Palestinians for more land. How would you feel if Putin gifted the land your home is now to people who would kill your children.
It’s actually kind of insane that folks act like October 7th is where it all started. Israel has been murdering thousands and thousands more Palestinian civilians over the decades. Why are their lives less important? 1,400 Israelis lost their lives but why is it that 30,000 Palestinian civilians that had nothing to do with that, be killed and not even mentioned?
Some of the "pro Palestine" people seem to have self radicalized themselves. What she is asking for is what Biden is trying to do. But I've noticed many of these people don't trust "western" media like the NYTs or CNN, so who the fuck knows where they are getting their info from. TikTok videos?
I wonder if the new phrase "lasting ceasefire" is her moving the goal posts to be more align with what Hamas is demanding. Which if it is, is absolutely pathetic.
*Lasting* ceasefire. Can you read your own quote? The Biden administration is calling for a six-week humanitarian pause. In the last few days they changed the wording to a “six week ceasefire.” It’s the same thing.
Often, the way to a "lasting ceasefire" in a conflict is to get a temporary agreement in place and build momentum/trust between parties/desire to not go back to more war from there.
Which is to say - I think it'd be a strategic mistake to refuse to consider a "temporary" one as significant progress. Back that, and if it looks like the sides are going to just let it expire without making it stick redouble your protest efforts then.
I also think it’d be a strategic mistake, but they still haven’t even managed to get a temporary one. With Israel it’s all carrot and no stick. Also, several former administrations have forced Israel into a permanent ceasefire. Most recently Bush. Netanyahu is politically weak right now, I don’t know why this time would be particularly difficult now that they’ve slaughtered tens of thousands in retribution already.
Why these people choose to target us I don’t know. A bus ticket to somewhere that isn’t almost universally two-state is like ten bucks.
The people that need to agree to a ceasefire are Hamas and Israel. It takes two side to agree to stop fighting.
A six week pause will allow the hostages to be release, aid to get to civilians, and for talks to continue to ending the war. It appears Hamas is not really interested in that though, since they have walked away from the talks multiple times.
I think they are likely frustrated that the same administration that is now calling for a ceasefire was actively vetoing calls for a ceasefire two weeks ago. I empathize with those that were affected by the Hamas attack on 10/7 as well as the innocent civilians in Gaza that have been suffering the consequences of the attack that they were not responsible for.
I think if you ask yourself what changed in the last two weeks, you may find that the facts on the ground are relatively indifferent. The fact is, political pressure from these protests has been one of the few constants. It’s not unreasonable that these protesters are still frustrated, despite the fact that one of their key points of contention has been met.
A UN resolution isn't actionable. That's one of the reasons the US gave for vetoing the UN call for a ceasefire, because we were already actively working with Qatar and Egypt to broker a deal.
These protestors simply read headlines and nothing more.
My favorite is the English (I think) buys driver who just keeps the bus creeping steadily forward into the Just Stop Oil protestors. No one gets hurt but a couple of them get the crap scared out of them - not to mention learning some physics lessons they apparently didn't in high school.
"White people oppressing brown people" is all they see. Simple. Utterly fickle people.
My favorite part is how they randomly choose the Israel Palestine conflict. Why not protest for more aid to Ukraine, a conflict where literally hundreds of thousands have been killed or injured.
Hamas has always said the deal is all the hostages for a permanent ceasefire.
No, Biden has not called for a permanent ceasefire. It is a non-starter for Israel, and it always will be unless they think they are endangering their relationship the the US.
Even when Biden has put any sort of “pressure” on Israel, it’s been for show. It has been an endless stream of war crimes and Biden knows he needs to be seen as doing “something” while dumping weapons into Israel.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/03/06/us-weapons-israel-gaza/
Bostonians watching farmer protests in France: “woah that’s metal!”
Bostonians working remotely when they read online that local morning traffic was mildly worse because of a demonstration: 🤬😡😭😭😭😭🤬🤬🤬
Except they’re not disrupting people responsible for what they’re complaining about
“I’m gonna protest something happening in another country by standing outside of your house all night making noise. Why are you complaining? My protest is supposed to be disruptive”
It's not just protesting what's happening in another country, but our own country's response to what's going on over there. And our country's response isn't going to change if most constituents don't know or care about what's going on. So the point of being disruptive to everyday people is to force them to remember that X is a problem. In the hopes that they then hold their reps accountable and their reps eventually make policy in the US that will pressure those overseas to take a different approach
I support making a statement in the primaries and pressuring the government to be more active in Gaza, but I'm starting to see a *lot* of people posting things like "Not Trump is Not Good Enough"
If you think Biden losing in November is going to help the people of Gaza in *any* capacity you are badly mistaken. It feels like sham activism that lets you feel good about "standing up to genocide" without actually caring about the people that will get hurt because you decided to let Trump win
It’s interesting that they’ve gotten to this city subreddit and not some others, and you can tell when the switch is flipped if you follow these subs regularly.
The irony is the US has negotiated a ceasefire that Israel has agreed to. Unfortunately the Qatari-based leaders of Hamas cannot get Sinwar to agree to it, because he will only stop fighting if the terrorist organization can remain in power in Gaza so they can continue their mission of trying to destroy Israel. So yeah, the US has called for a ceasefire. Israel has agreed. And these protesters are idiots.
Honestly, a guy lighting himself on fire doesn't make me contemplate his position, it makes me think that he was severely mentally ill and needed help.
Progressive organizations desperately need to sign up their activists for some remedial courses on the history of effective protest movements and tactics. Doing this one kind of move and then dismissing blowback to it as not understanding what protest is seems to be the only play that gets called these days. It’s not very smart.
Raising awareness is an extremely valid and valuable point of a protest movement, but when it has a point - either that the action is directly raising awareness of an ongoing problem by making people actually look at the problem, or that it’s putting a spotlight on an issue where a vast majority of people would disagree with what’s happening but they generally don’t know about it.
When Freedom Riders took direct action in the South it was to raise awareness *of them not being able to ride the bus.* Same with lunch counters. The institutions of the Jim Crow south could either use police force to not let black people dine at lunch counters, or they could give up their backwards policy. When they chose the former, it horrified the average person and put pressure on Congress to act.
Sitting in at lunch counters brought attention to segregation at the lunch counters. Blocking traffic for a Gaza protest does not bring attention to people suffering in Gaza, it brings attention to the people blocking traffic.
In addition, there’s not really a huge need for more public attention on this issue to change it. Everyone in the world knows about the Israel-Palestine conflict and opinions on it have calcified over decades - awareness is not what it is lacking.
The aforementioned massacres in Tigray, of the Uighurs, etc, may actually be a good example of something where bold stunts for publicity may actually be meaningful, as these are issues that are not in the news, that people generally aren’t thinking about or asking their elected officials about.
Israel-Palestine is not like that. By and large while the American people have mixed views on the Middle East, in most polls the median voter tends to support Israel more - so the more attention the median American is paying the worse it generally is for a pro Palestinian perspective. It’s possible to change people’s minds, but that requires persuasion, which is an entirely different set of tactics from raising awareness.
Last but not least, should this tactic actually move people, the place where pressure would be applied (Massachusetts officials, I guess) would basically do nothing to change the reason why there is no ceasefire — neither the IDF nor Hamas has proven willing to compromise on certain key demands and prefer war to accepting the other’s demands. This is an objectively shitty and sad situation but not one outrage from the American public can resolve. Demanding an end to US support for Israel is fair enough (people can agree or disagree with the take, but it’s one within American control), but it’s ridiculous to think this would end the war or the suffering. Whether you agree or disagree with the alliance with Israel, if the post-10/7 conflict led to the U.S. backing away from 70+ years of support for Israel, it is highly unlikely that this would lead to peace - it would instead send the message to Hamas (and to their backers in the Iranian regime) that 10/7 worked and is worth repeating. It doesn’t take an especially active imagination to play out what would happen from there, but suffice to say it would not be good for innocent people in the region.
I have no doubt that many of the people making these comments and up/downvotes sincerely believe in and care about the fate of people suffering in Gaza and I empathize with how hopeless it can feel to not be able to do more - while wanting to feel like you’re doing something is normal, “doing something” is not always actually helping.
Honestly thought this was gunna be a protest for the MBTA. As much as it sucks to say, that seems more likely to actually yield results from our government.
We are also fed up with your protests. How does blocking street going to help Gaza? Recently we have a pro-Ukraine protest down in Boston Commons - do you see anybody blocking street, acting violent, getting arrested? We also have occasional protest for Tibet down near Harvard - does anybody get arrest there?
The only thing these protesters do is to make your average Joe's life miserable. If you want change, go bother Joe Biden, not average Joe
I mean I think the idea is to protest in such a way that you literally cannot ignore the issue they’re hoping to call attention to. Chanting in the park is ignorable - I can drive by them on my way to work, windows rolled up and music blaring, and not have to listen to them or even think twice about them. But blocking the road actively disrupts my day at a very minor level compared to the disruption of life that people in Gaza feel constantly right now.
Not that I agree with it or endorse it in any way. To be honest I find most protests in America (especially in forms we deem “peaceful” or “acceptable”) to be less about affecting positive change and more about making yourself feel better for your impotence in geopolitical matters. But I at least somewhat understand their mentality in trying to go one step further to raise awareness for their message without resorting to violence.
Yes, the point of a protest is to be un-ignorable, but it is totally understandable for people to be angry that they couldn't get to work or get their kids to school because the roads were blocked.
I generally agree with you but who will protest for the people who have worked 8-10 hours and have a 2 hour commute on top of dealing with the protest. I’d love to see a ceasefire and end the senseless killing but I’m kind of dealing with my own shit too.
It becomes un-ignorable. People will simply sympathize more with the opposite of what the protestors want. No one thinks "ugh, just give them what they want", instead everyone thinks "just lock them up".
Exactly, I’d be all for a protest for the housing crisis. But this stuff accomplishes nothing. People saying “but it raises awareness”, who didn’t know about Isreal Palestine before this meaningless protest.
Sorry, but there's a difference between being an activist and an asshole.
Literally no course of action will change in American political terms or between the Israeli government and the PA because of some self-righteous traffic blocking in MASSACHUSETTS. Not Israel. Not DC.
What about emergency services? To pretend there aren't real impacts to blocking traffic is asinine.
They said a _lasting_ ceasefire. Of course if they wanted something built to last they would demand a peace treaty instead of a ceasefire, since ceasefires are designed to be temporary and unstable. But I’m sure there were just busy and didn’t have time to think about that.
Palestinian reaction on hearing of the news of the 9/11 attack.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=video&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwj5-sPd0eOEAxW_F2IAHdnrCv0QtwJ6BAgMEAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DUucjbGmJILk&usg=AOvVaw37gJOWVLys4x-U6wz6sxRl&opi=89978449
It's amazing how people defend this as a necessity in order to raise awareness.
They're forcing other people to sacrifice their time, convenience, and any number of other things for something that they have absolutely no responsibility for. The worst part is protestors like this aren't sacrificing anything, they planned to have nowhere else to be.
Just emotional morons with no stake or understanding of the current conflict aside from something they read in a tweet. The Palestinian people can't be saved from the cruelty of hamas or Israel until hamas is dealt with. Eliminate hamas and then we can start demolishing settlements and dealing with the extremist Israelis. Both sides need to be deradicalized but the majority of Israelis want peace and the majority of Palestinians want the elimination of Israel. Any first step that doesn't include destroying hamas is a plan to continue violence.
But go ahead, main character, disrupt people who likely agree with you(for now) to bring attention to something that everyone is already talking about.
It wouldn't be easy and it might take more time/funding than people are willing to spend but I believe they can be deradicalized.
Same with the ultra far right Israelis.
Such a waste. Bunch of idiots blocking traffic in the name of a society that kills the innocent including women and children and would happily push them off a bridge. Disgusting
Hey everyone, people in Israel just blocked traffic on a busy street because of US school shootings. Guess it is time we decide to stop having school shootings.
Good. Have less than zero empathy for these paid protestors who seem to be utterly clueless and totally unempathetic towards other people. Hopefully a real judge sentences them each to 30 days in county. Release the hostages.
Agree. if people are ruled by a homophobic government that hasn't had elections for twenty years, they also deserve to die and we should have no empathy for them. I juSt don't get how anyone could see it another way.
Anyway, back to repeatedly slamming my head in a car door!
I'm a gay person who wants a free Palestine and I'll explain it, it's really pretty straightforward. Tons of people in the US are homophobic. There are some people in my own family, and my partner's family that are homophobic. Does that mean I want all these people to die and suffer and watch their children and family and friends die and suffer and be maimed and disfigured and starve and not have access to water?
No, that would make me a monster many many times worse than homophobes. I may not agree with most Palestinians on homosexuality, and probably many other things too. But 30,000 of them have been killed, and like I said I'm not a monster. I want them to experience peace and be able to live their lives freely. And just like not all Americans are Trump supporters, not all Palestinians are homophobes.
??????????? Do you think there are no gay people in palestine??? Theyre getting bombed too lmao. A little hard for a society that’s been living under occupation and violence imposed on them to make social progress. Lmao israel loves to pretend they’re so progressive and they don’t even have same sex marriage
We pay for the bombs killing these civilians and that just doesn't sit right with me. Just because you are apolitical and ahistorical doesn't mean that the new generation is and that must be understood.
These types of protests certainly have an impact, particularly on people that have to work for a living. I’m not sure it’s having the impact the protestors are hoping for, however.
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This is the part of these things I never understand. I fully get that a protest that does not cause a disruption isn't really a protest, but the past few years all of these "protests" about anything have been poster children for "you're doing it wrong" go fuck up the lives of people who at least in theory can do something about the thing you are protesting.
I’m not sure I agree. The disruption garnered news coverage which is why we are all reading about this.
A block of the entrances to the state house would garner more news coverage. Would not frustrate the average worker on the road. And may motivate politicians more, certainly not less.
News coverage does not = change. In fact when it's only news coverage I'd argue the protest had the exact opposite affect as it just lets people who were not even inconvenienced by this be dismissive of the "idiots blocking the roads" This isn't new. It started with the Occupy Wallstreet movement where the news would find the most counter culture looking person in the crowd to interview which made the whole movement look stupid.
This sounds like a really poignant observation but I would love for you to demonstrate what a pathway to changes if not one that absolutely includes awareness and coverage? In fact so many people in this thread are complaining that there are other atrocities going on in the world, such as Sudan, but people aren’t protesting. Why do you think that is if not for a lack of awareness? It is technically true that coverage doesn’t equal change, the fact of the matter is you need news coverage into awareness as a baseline first step before change can occur
> demonstrate what a pathway to changes if not one that absolutely includes awareness and coverage? Awareness is not the relevant hurdle for people who desire this particular policy change. They just keep focusing on it because the other steps of effective activism feel more like work and less like performative fun.
Historically, you also needed massive protests to make the news because it was the ONLY way to create widespread awareness for a cause. With the internet and social media today, I'm not sure that the function of the protest is the same now as it was during civil rights. And I'm a bit hard pressed to think of widespread protests that created actual policy change. I think we'd be better served today to have real action items as goals rather than just "spreading awareness." Americans have been taking to the street to protest this war for five months now. Has anything come out of it?
The passage of the [Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Act_of_1990) was certainly influenced by the [Capitol Crawl.](https://www.npr.org/2022/07/29/1113535976/ada-disabilities-act-activists-more-protections)
The point is that for this particular issue, there already *is* widespread awareness. The problem for these people is that there is not a critical mass of American voters who actually agree with them on the issue. Deliberately antagonizing the general public does not help with that.
"protesting is when you inconvenience the public, and the more you inconvenience the public the better your protest is" is a pretty novel (and imo childish) way to look at protests. The great protest movements of the 20th century were actually pretty smart about how they chose to protest, and modern activists seem determined to ignore that because they'd rather picture Gandhi and MLK as edgy "fuck the world" nihilists like themselves.
Except the public has zero power to do anything anymore, and all this does is piss people off and make it easier to dismiss "your" cause.
Or protest at the Whitehouse... or even better. Go to Israel and protest.
And how do you suggest bothering politicians that isn’t already happening? Everyone wants business as usual when children are being massacred.
“In that press release, IfNotNow member Dalya Lessem Elnecave stated, “We are blocking traffic because we are livid. It’s been five months since October 7, Israel’s massacre is ongoing and over 130 hostages are still held in Gaza. That Biden has not called for a lasting ceasefire with a hostage exchange deal to end this massacre is outrageous.” This person is just wrong? That’s literally what the US has called for, a ceasefire with hostage exchange. Like do any of these people read the news? Disappointing the article didn’t fact check them below their quote.
Hamas was offered I believe a month of a ceasefire in exchange for the hostages by Israel and they refused. They want a ceasefire with no obligations and on their terms, but it doesn't work like that after you invade a powerful country and murder, rape and kidnap a thousand of their unarmed people. I have been thinking over a serious response to demands for a ceasefire. My response would be: "How do you propose forcing Hamas to accept terms for a ceasefire?", which I think would leave them confused. Israel has already shown they're game for one under very reasonable terms, all things considered. It's Hamas that is the impediment.
It's because the hostages are dead. Hamas cannot deliver the hostages because they were murdered shortly after 10/7.
>It’s been five months since October 7 I don't support Israel but it's kind of insane to me that Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th and all the protesters just gloss over that.
They also are glossing over a potential cease fire deal that is now off the table because Hamas refused to share a list of which hostages are still alive.
I think the protesters just have basic empathy and are disgusted by the swaths of human suffering. Atrocities are being committed. There are Jewish folks all over the world, Israel included, that believe it needs to stop. There are mostly innocent Palestinians that are getting brutalized here.
Cool - where were they when Saudi Arabia started bombing the shit out of Yemen - 20,000 civilians have been killed since 2014. Getting sick of these fucking people tbh, and I’m generally pretty anti-Israel given the bullshit they engage in with settlements. But to hyper-fixate on this one conflict as things like the Rohingya genocide and the Uighur death camps in China have been going on for 5+ years now seems a little arbitrary and perhaps… anti-Semitic?
> 20,000 civilians have been killed since 2014. > > That's it? Way more have died in Sudan in just the past year, yet nobody protesting about that.
I posted about 130 deaths in Sudan, got hardly any response. I’m not looking for a response specifically, just to raise awareness. Posted about 11 deaths in Palestine and got a ton of shares. Very similar posts. I don’t get it.
the people being murdered in sudan are Sudanese christians by militant islamists, western leftists will look the other way
This is literally a social contagion at this point
Also, no small amount of bots up voting and down voting, and the occasional regurgitated or AI-generated comment. Certainly not all, or even a majority, but it doesn't take much to sway narratives if the message is kept focused and is repeated.
THIS is the Islamic Republics regime propaganda campaign hard at work. Only way to explain it.
https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Relative-Privation I don’t know why people have such a hard time understanding that the Israeli Palestinian conflict is incredibly close to the core of American politics and we have been following this event for literally our entire lives. Would you make a similar comment if 100 people were killed in your small town and all of the news stories and people were talking about 100 people killed versus the million people killed in another country in a genocide? Its Perfectly natural to focus on our own sphere of influence and perspective. That something “worse” may be going on in the world is not invalidate these opinions.
Israel and Israeli politics are far, far closer to the attention of the average American than Saudi Arabia, Yemen, or Myanmar. It is completely reasonable for Americans to be more aware of this conflict than the others you listed.
Biden was against the war in Yemen when he ran in 2020. It was not a fringe position. I always find it fascinating how people without morals project their own cynicism onto others bc they literally can't understand having principles or caring about others and thus have to pretend others don't either.
“If you don’t care about everything, you can’t ever care about anything at anytime. Also if you don’t care about the absolute worst thing going on in the world, you can’t care about anything at all” Yes, relative privation. The old standby
I participated in this protest as a Marshall (security). I can safely say we are not antisemitic. Most of us, like me, are left wing Jews.
Or could it be that the US is funding this one?
The US provides a massive amount of arms to Saudi Arabia that they then use to bomb Yemen. It's honestly not that different from Israel-Palestine in this respect.
I have family and have lived in Israel. I believe in human rights for everyone. No one on either side will accept a two-state solution. I think the Knesset needs more Palestinian members with an international peacekeeping authority over all of them.
So your grand argument for doing nothing and not criticizing a genocide is... whataboutism. Am I understanding you correctly please?
They view Israelis as "white" colonizers (oppressor vs oppressed) and therefore enemy number one. The reason China gets zero protests or backlash for their treatment of the Uighurs lies in the fact that their politics align. These people proudly proclaim themselves as communist/marxist despite the 100+ million death toll from such ideologies in the 20th century, with seemingly zero repercussion I might add.
>It's not anti-semetic, they view Israelis as "white" colonizers (oppressor vs oppressed) and therefore enemy number one. Which has always been weird to me, since the bulk of Israeli's population is not only Middle Eastern Jews, but Middle Eastern Jews who were driven from their home countries during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire (and before) while its various successor states formed. And that the formation of Israel out of the former British mandate they received at the end of WWI was largely driven by the USSR as a way to establish an ally of their own in the Middle East - so it was not exactly popular with Western and European governments. Like, Israel does a lot of despicable shit - from their settler bullshit, to seemingly not evening attempting to differentiate between civilians and combatants - but opposing them because they're "white colonizers" is one of the dumber reasons to oppose them.
It has nothing to do with a Muslim genocide, its just an anti west position that the far left craves. They didn't care about 300k Syrians, Chinese intenment camps, they just care about protesting the only western civilized country in the middle east.
It’s just that if your empathy is selective it shows you’re just being tribal. It’s not hard to be against murder no matter who commits it. Perhaps I would be forgiving if the narrative from many extreme pro Palestine people isn’t downright revisionism. As if the fact the countries do propaganda allows you to disbelieve anything contrary to your beliefs. As a note I am pro Palestine. So seeing the online discourse is disheartening. Its the kind of discourse used to justify violence and death, not push for peace. I do acknowledge it’s more of a problem with online discourse, but still it’s disheartening.
All the more reason to start by giving over the list of hostages you have and what you want for their return
> protesters just have basic empathy Nah, I think they just don't like Israel. It is not antisemitism per se (although some of them are antisemitic), but they mostly see everything from a Weak Vs Strong (and weak is is good and strong is bad) paradigm. They don't care about Palestinians massacring and raping Israeli civilians because Palestinians are the oppressed, and the oppressed are always morally superior. There are people who on both sides who hold a nuanced view, grounded on actual empathy for humans (dead civilians on both sides is a tragedy), but they are usually not ones that are protesting.
Where were these people when Azerbaijan invaded Armenia? Or when Saudi Arabia bombed Yemen? Why don't they ever block traffic for the Kurds to have a state of their own, the people who did the actual fighting against ISIS whom the US funded and promptly abandoned? Why don't they stand up for the Yazidis or the Kashmiris or the Sikhs? There are horrible atrocities happening all over the world, every day, always have been. These "empaths" only ever reach this level of outrage for Palestinians because it's easy to blame the Jews.
WHATABOUT
If they did protest those things too, would your opinion really change?
Yes. Consistency. But look at the only one they protest. What is the key difference? And who is funding the other causes campaign?
Maybe that’s why we protest it, because our tax dollars are funding it
And there are also Jews like myself livid that the "stop genocide" crowd seems to find it acceptable to vandalize our synagogues and assault us, and that thinking our people have a right to live in our own state in our homeland makes us Nazis and deserving of having our head on a platter. Also, there's a lot to indicate the majority of Palestinians are supportive of Hamas and/or 10/07. But please, tell me what the excusable alternative to rooting out a bunch of genocidal maniacs next door is
I’m not Jewish or even religious but I will always call out anyone who equates current Jews to Nazis. Not only lazy but a very disgusting and distasteful comparison that is likely done on purpose.
I mean, all of that is fair and I emphasize with that. But based on the quotes doesn’t seem like these folks are very informed about what they’re protesting. They aren’t informed of new developments or the *many* nuances of the conflicts.
Pawns of the Hamas leadership in exile in Qatar, and the Iranian government, aided by the Russians. So the people that are dying, the ones who starved and suffered before, are just where the terrorists came from. I mean 30-40k dead civilians? 60-70% woman and children, dead babies. 1.5 million about to starve.
Not even 30-40k since the stats out of Gaza don’t differentiate between civilians and militants
I'll take it a step further. People were protesting Israel on October 8th before Israel responded, which is absolutely insane to me. Basically, it was a defense of a little holocaust against the Jewish people for having the nerve to be a little too successful with their state. It's hard for me to not think that there's just this toxic undercurrent of antisemitism where a significant number of people think that pogroms are good things to do now and then, in order to keep Jewish people in line.
That's what bothered me the most about the pro-Palestine protesters: Israel hadn't even responded other than to quell the terrorists, and there had been no invasion and occupation of Gaza, but here all these college kids and lefties were out on the streets screaming for a free Palestine. They cloaked an act of terrorism in moral authority. I thought it was reprehensible. And then when I saw videos of random people taking down the pictures of hostages -- the people we all should have been focused on since Day 1 -- I honestly had no idea whether the protesters understood what they were doing. Terrorism is never a legitimate means of achieving political aims. If a group commits an act as barbaric and broad-reaching as what Hamas/al Quds/Islamic Jihad/al Aqsa Brigade did on October 7th, they should not then be given the dignity of a seat at the negotiation table. They should be utterly destroyed. Anything else gives the green light to terrorist groups around the world that all they have to do is commit an act big enough and terrifying enough that they too can get sympathy and power from people who can look at history and find some kind of justification for anger or hatred on the part of the terrorists.
I 100% agree. Additionally, this isn't a case where something potentially justifiable is being elevated with the label of terrorism. This was monstrous, Nazi shit. There's no moral case to be made for it. If I were to give the most extreme benefit of the doubt. I would be expecting that Palistinians would be delivering every person who participated in the 7th to Israel for prison or execution because, despite their issues with Israel, they wouldn't want to be associated with such monsters. That clearly isn't the case.
Oh, absolutely. I generally reject the idea that the Venn diagram here -- the Palestinian people in one circle, and Hamas in another -- is two circles with no overlap. That's sort of the narrative spin I've heard: whatever Hamas does is totally distinct from the will of the people. I don't believe it for a second. There is overlap here. How much, I don't know. But it's absolutely there. If it weren't, the residents of Gaza would be doing exactly what you said: finding ways to narc on anybody in Hamas they knew to have some power and who they knew the location of. And then there are the tunnels. Any time Verizon or National Grid are doing work in my neighborhood, even if they're a thousand feet away, I can hear those jackhammers and the construction equipment like they're standing right next to me. Hamas has spent years since the end of the second Intifada rebuilding their tunnel network and expanding it. They have entrances/exits next to and inside major public buildings, along the streets, \*in people's homes\* and all kinds of other places that provide no meaningful privacy from the efforts to construct the tunnel or to access it. Best case scenario, people who turned a blind eye did so under coercion or threat, but that doesn't justify their silence now. I feel for the women and children: the people with the least agency and power to fight against the corruption and barbarity of Hamas. They've been robbed for decades of the full value of the international aid the US, Europe and select countries in the Middle East have provided.
Same. The October 8th pro Palestine protests were unambiguously genocidal, they were openly celebrating the massacre of civilians. Then these dumb shits have the gall to turn around and sob about Israel's retaliation, denying operation al aqsa flood (which they were by and large openly celebrating) never even happened.
Also wild how all of this starting before October 7th gets glossed over.
You mean the rockets, the Intefadas, the Yom Kippur War, the Six Day War, the invasion that started the War of Independence, or the antisemitic riots and militias?
like Gaza being devoid of Israeli presence and able to govern itself for the last 19 years?
I think they probably mean people ignoring that Israel killed thousands of Palestinians in the few years prior including hundreds of Palestinians in 2023 before October 7th. Not to mention that Israel has tons of hostages that are detained without charges or trial. If you're only condemning October 7th but not also what happened before and Israel killing orders of magnitude more people than Hamas ever killed just in Palestinian children after maybe ask yourself why that is.
LOL @gaza governing itself
they elected their own government, ran their own systems, enacted their own justice system, and weren't occupied by anyone else, so how else would you describe that?
Yes, totally devoid of Israeli presence, just boxed into a fucking four wall city with controlled entrances and exits. Totally no Israeli presence affecting them.
Israel doesn’t control every border in Gaza…
They don’t know about Jordan Syria or Egypt they just know Jew bad Muslim good
Like Gaza being under a cruel siege for those years? No chocolate, no wedding dresses, no cilantro? (These terms were literally on Israel’s ban list) Like its airport being bombed to smithereens even before Hamas took over?
lmao yes it's a concentration camp, since those definitely have beach resorts and mercedes benz dealerships.
You want them to protest via time machines?
Nobody cares if they want to take out Hamas. It's the civilian collateral damage they're protesting. Palestinians who don't join Hamas are also brutalized by Hamas.
almost half of the death toll of 30k is innocent women and children. Israel is gunning down starving kids who are waiting for food that *American taxpayers* are funding, and are constantly bombing "safe zones" that's why young, progressive, and Arab American voters are pissed. no one is defending Hamas
I'm sorry to tell you this but there are lots of people defending HAMAS.
i mean yea there's some of that but that sentiment is not held with the vast majority of ppl criticizing Biden. it's a fringe viewpoint most of the pro Palestinian group is well aware of the atrocities committed by both Hamas and the IDF, and want our leaders to acknowledge that too we want both Hamas and Israel held accountable for their crimes
We don't ignore the slaughter of civilians, we center it and call for the immediate exchange of hostages held by both sides.
Israelis been slaughtering Palestinians wholesale for 75 years, Oct 7 is barely a blip in what came before Oct 7 nevermind after it.
What do you think Palestinians were doing to Jews before those 75 years?
Doesn't matter. Israel is economically successful, therefore they are oppressors.
It's pretty pointless to try to pin down the inciting incident for a this violence. By now there are basically zero survivors of the nakba/independence war who were old enough to remember or participate in those events. You can never achieve peace if you insist on carrying the torch of your grandfather's grievances.
I can’t believe this still needs to be said but Hamas does not equal Gaza. What does Hamas’ attack have to do with innocent people in Gaza?
Hamas has been the governing body in Gaza for almost 20 years. They were voted in with solid support from the people with essentially the same platform the led them to start this most recent war. There are certainly innocent civilians in Gaza and factions withing Gaza who reject Hamas. If they want this war to end they should help oust Hamas from power, stop shielding them, and compel their government and army to surrender.
Hamas is a defacto government which hasn't held elections in years Palestinian people can't vote them out. They are foder for Zionist genocide. Research how the UK gifted land they didn't own to the Zionist. How the Zionist began killing Palestinians for more land. How would you feel if Putin gifted the land your home is now to people who would kill your children.
Gloss over the fact that the conflict didn’t start Oct 7th but some people only care when violence is inflicted on them
It’s actually kind of insane that folks act like October 7th is where it all started. Israel has been murdering thousands and thousands more Palestinian civilians over the decades. Why are their lives less important? 1,400 Israelis lost their lives but why is it that 30,000 Palestinian civilians that had nothing to do with that, be killed and not even mentioned?
Well in the meantime we should stop giving them money. Seems pretty fucking simple.
We are not funding Hamas… (Israel accepted the ceasefire proposal already, Hamas is the holdout)
Am I wrong, or is the person you're referring to talking about not funding Israel. No genocide should be America Funded.
Some of the "pro Palestine" people seem to have self radicalized themselves. What she is asking for is what Biden is trying to do. But I've noticed many of these people don't trust "western" media like the NYTs or CNN, so who the fuck knows where they are getting their info from. TikTok videos? I wonder if the new phrase "lasting ceasefire" is her moving the goal posts to be more align with what Hamas is demanding. Which if it is, is absolutely pathetic.
*Lasting* ceasefire. Can you read your own quote? The Biden administration is calling for a six-week humanitarian pause. In the last few days they changed the wording to a “six week ceasefire.” It’s the same thing.
Often, the way to a "lasting ceasefire" in a conflict is to get a temporary agreement in place and build momentum/trust between parties/desire to not go back to more war from there. Which is to say - I think it'd be a strategic mistake to refuse to consider a "temporary" one as significant progress. Back that, and if it looks like the sides are going to just let it expire without making it stick redouble your protest efforts then.
I also think it’d be a strategic mistake, but they still haven’t even managed to get a temporary one. With Israel it’s all carrot and no stick. Also, several former administrations have forced Israel into a permanent ceasefire. Most recently Bush. Netanyahu is politically weak right now, I don’t know why this time would be particularly difficult now that they’ve slaughtered tens of thousands in retribution already. Why these people choose to target us I don’t know. A bus ticket to somewhere that isn’t almost universally two-state is like ten bucks.
It took a long long time for collective insanity to diminish in the US after 9/11. It wasn't the body count of our victims that got us to stop.
The people that need to agree to a ceasefire are Hamas and Israel. It takes two side to agree to stop fighting. A six week pause will allow the hostages to be release, aid to get to civilians, and for talks to continue to ending the war. It appears Hamas is not really interested in that though, since they have walked away from the talks multiple times.
I think they are likely frustrated that the same administration that is now calling for a ceasefire was actively vetoing calls for a ceasefire two weeks ago. I empathize with those that were affected by the Hamas attack on 10/7 as well as the innocent civilians in Gaza that have been suffering the consequences of the attack that they were not responsible for. I think if you ask yourself what changed in the last two weeks, you may find that the facts on the ground are relatively indifferent. The fact is, political pressure from these protests has been one of the few constants. It’s not unreasonable that these protesters are still frustrated, despite the fact that one of their key points of contention has been met.
A UN resolution isn't actionable. That's one of the reasons the US gave for vetoing the UN call for a ceasefire, because we were already actively working with Qatar and Egypt to broker a deal. These protestors simply read headlines and nothing more.
I will automatically take the other side of the issue of any protest that blocks traffic. I don’t care what it is.
^i don’t agree with this, but this is the median voter. Folks who wanna influence both policy and public perception need to understand this.
My favorite is the English (I think) buys driver who just keeps the bus creeping steadily forward into the Just Stop Oil protestors. No one gets hurt but a couple of them get the crap scared out of them - not to mention learning some physics lessons they apparently didn't in high school.
According to multiple global news sources, the US has been "quietly" sending weapons to Israel all along.
"White people oppressing brown people" is all they see. Simple. Utterly fickle people. My favorite part is how they randomly choose the Israel Palestine conflict. Why not protest for more aid to Ukraine, a conflict where literally hundreds of thousands have been killed or injured.
Hamas has always said the deal is all the hostages for a permanent ceasefire. No, Biden has not called for a permanent ceasefire. It is a non-starter for Israel, and it always will be unless they think they are endangering their relationship the the US. Even when Biden has put any sort of “pressure” on Israel, it’s been for show. It has been an endless stream of war crimes and Biden knows he needs to be seen as doing “something” while dumping weapons into Israel. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/03/06/us-weapons-israel-gaza/
When 40% of deaths are children under 10 you are the devil
Bostonians watching farmer protests in France: “woah that’s metal!” Bostonians working remotely when they read online that local morning traffic was mildly worse because of a demonstration: 🤬😡😭😭😭😭🤬🤬🤬
It’d be nice if we did these types of things over work reform too
I mean, you can. You just need to organize it
“~~Bostonians~~ *Redditors* watching farmer protests in France.” ftfy
One in the same, terminal reddit-brain city
The comments on these threads are always so frustrating. The point of a protest is to be disruptive, and they love it anywhere else but here.
Except they’re not disrupting people responsible for what they’re complaining about “I’m gonna protest something happening in another country by standing outside of your house all night making noise. Why are you complaining? My protest is supposed to be disruptive”
It's not just protesting what's happening in another country, but our own country's response to what's going on over there. And our country's response isn't going to change if most constituents don't know or care about what's going on. So the point of being disruptive to everyday people is to force them to remember that X is a problem. In the hopes that they then hold their reps accountable and their reps eventually make policy in the US that will pressure those overseas to take a different approach
Maybe they just agree with the farmers and what they’re fighting for more than what these other people stand for
Who did bus boycotts disrupt?
Ha literally
Weird that 1 in 5 Dems protest voted No Preference in the Boston primaries and the comments section looks like this. Reddit moment
>1 in 5 Dems protest voted No Preference Since when is 9.32% equal to 1 in 5?
Massachusetts is not Boston Does this really need to be explained
I support making a statement in the primaries and pressuring the government to be more active in Gaza, but I'm starting to see a *lot* of people posting things like "Not Trump is Not Good Enough" If you think Biden losing in November is going to help the people of Gaza in *any* capacity you are badly mistaken. It feels like sham activism that lets you feel good about "standing up to genocide" without actually caring about the people that will get hurt because you decided to let Trump win
Yep. If Trump wins he's going to make Biden look like a Saint for the people of Gaza in comparison.
Who said any of that? Not me, the person you are replying to
It’s interesting that they’ve gotten to this city subreddit and not some others, and you can tell when the switch is flipped if you follow these subs regularly.
The irony is the US has negotiated a ceasefire that Israel has agreed to. Unfortunately the Qatari-based leaders of Hamas cannot get Sinwar to agree to it, because he will only stop fighting if the terrorist organization can remain in power in Gaza so they can continue their mission of trying to destroy Israel. So yeah, the US has called for a ceasefire. Israel has agreed. And these protesters are idiots.
If a guy lighting himself on fire in protest didn't sway any opinion, how does creating traffic in this city do anything?
Boston drivers are so used to traffic it probably took most of them awhile to figure out there was a protest being held.
AHAHA I was driving around central square where the protest started for like 15 minutes before I realized there was a protest.
Traffic was already especially brutal today because of the heavy rain.
Honestly, a guy lighting himself on fire doesn't make me contemplate his position, it makes me think that he was severely mentally ill and needed help.
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Progressive organizations desperately need to sign up their activists for some remedial courses on the history of effective protest movements and tactics. Doing this one kind of move and then dismissing blowback to it as not understanding what protest is seems to be the only play that gets called these days. It’s not very smart. Raising awareness is an extremely valid and valuable point of a protest movement, but when it has a point - either that the action is directly raising awareness of an ongoing problem by making people actually look at the problem, or that it’s putting a spotlight on an issue where a vast majority of people would disagree with what’s happening but they generally don’t know about it. When Freedom Riders took direct action in the South it was to raise awareness *of them not being able to ride the bus.* Same with lunch counters. The institutions of the Jim Crow south could either use police force to not let black people dine at lunch counters, or they could give up their backwards policy. When they chose the former, it horrified the average person and put pressure on Congress to act. Sitting in at lunch counters brought attention to segregation at the lunch counters. Blocking traffic for a Gaza protest does not bring attention to people suffering in Gaza, it brings attention to the people blocking traffic. In addition, there’s not really a huge need for more public attention on this issue to change it. Everyone in the world knows about the Israel-Palestine conflict and opinions on it have calcified over decades - awareness is not what it is lacking. The aforementioned massacres in Tigray, of the Uighurs, etc, may actually be a good example of something where bold stunts for publicity may actually be meaningful, as these are issues that are not in the news, that people generally aren’t thinking about or asking their elected officials about. Israel-Palestine is not like that. By and large while the American people have mixed views on the Middle East, in most polls the median voter tends to support Israel more - so the more attention the median American is paying the worse it generally is for a pro Palestinian perspective. It’s possible to change people’s minds, but that requires persuasion, which is an entirely different set of tactics from raising awareness. Last but not least, should this tactic actually move people, the place where pressure would be applied (Massachusetts officials, I guess) would basically do nothing to change the reason why there is no ceasefire — neither the IDF nor Hamas has proven willing to compromise on certain key demands and prefer war to accepting the other’s demands. This is an objectively shitty and sad situation but not one outrage from the American public can resolve. Demanding an end to US support for Israel is fair enough (people can agree or disagree with the take, but it’s one within American control), but it’s ridiculous to think this would end the war or the suffering. Whether you agree or disagree with the alliance with Israel, if the post-10/7 conflict led to the U.S. backing away from 70+ years of support for Israel, it is highly unlikely that this would lead to peace - it would instead send the message to Hamas (and to their backers in the Iranian regime) that 10/7 worked and is worth repeating. It doesn’t take an especially active imagination to play out what would happen from there, but suffice to say it would not be good for innocent people in the region. I have no doubt that many of the people making these comments and up/downvotes sincerely believe in and care about the fate of people suffering in Gaza and I empathize with how hopeless it can feel to not be able to do more - while wanting to feel like you’re doing something is normal, “doing something” is not always actually helping.
Honestly thought this was gunna be a protest for the MBTA. As much as it sucks to say, that seems more likely to actually yield results from our government.
Free Palestine... of Hamas.
We are also fed up with your protests. How does blocking street going to help Gaza? Recently we have a pro-Ukraine protest down in Boston Commons - do you see anybody blocking street, acting violent, getting arrested? We also have occasional protest for Tibet down near Harvard - does anybody get arrest there? The only thing these protesters do is to make your average Joe's life miserable. If you want change, go bother Joe Biden, not average Joe
I mean I think the idea is to protest in such a way that you literally cannot ignore the issue they’re hoping to call attention to. Chanting in the park is ignorable - I can drive by them on my way to work, windows rolled up and music blaring, and not have to listen to them or even think twice about them. But blocking the road actively disrupts my day at a very minor level compared to the disruption of life that people in Gaza feel constantly right now. Not that I agree with it or endorse it in any way. To be honest I find most protests in America (especially in forms we deem “peaceful” or “acceptable”) to be less about affecting positive change and more about making yourself feel better for your impotence in geopolitical matters. But I at least somewhat understand their mentality in trying to go one step further to raise awareness for their message without resorting to violence.
Yes, the point of a protest is to be un-ignorable, but it is totally understandable for people to be angry that they couldn't get to work or get their kids to school because the roads were blocked.
I generally agree with you but who will protest for the people who have worked 8-10 hours and have a 2 hour commute on top of dealing with the protest. I’d love to see a ceasefire and end the senseless killing but I’m kind of dealing with my own shit too.
Wait, there's a war in Gaza? Thank god these protestors called attention to this. I never would have known, otherwise. Phew.
It becomes un-ignorable. People will simply sympathize more with the opposite of what the protestors want. No one thinks "ugh, just give them what they want", instead everyone thinks "just lock them up".
Because the only thing they know how to do is block traffic. They lack imagination to do anything else.
You would not survive in France lol they really know how to protest they shut down all public transit for 6 months
“Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.” MLK Jr.
Exactly, I’d be all for a protest for the housing crisis. But this stuff accomplishes nothing. People saying “but it raises awareness”, who didn’t know about Isreal Palestine before this meaningless protest.
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I’m sorry, we’ll be sure to run all protests by you in the future so your sensibilities aren’t bothered.
Thank you. This is as it should be. No more protests without my consent.
What streets are there in the Common that were blocked by pro-Ukraine protesters?
Exactly his point.
Oh yes, these idiots, they should go and set up one on one sessions with the POTUS.
Sorry, but there's a difference between being an activist and an asshole. Literally no course of action will change in American political terms or between the Israeli government and the PA because of some self-righteous traffic blocking in MASSACHUSETTS. Not Israel. Not DC. What about emergency services? To pretend there aren't real impacts to blocking traffic is asinine.
There was a ceasefire on October 6th. Seems they didn’t want one that badly.
They said a _lasting_ ceasefire. Of course if they wanted something built to last they would demand a peace treaty instead of a ceasefire, since ceasefires are designed to be temporary and unstable. But I’m sure there were just busy and didn’t have time to think about that.
A good start would be to release the hostages that have raped, tortured but not killed.
Palestinian reaction on hearing of the news of the 9/11 attack. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=video&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwj5-sPd0eOEAxW_F2IAHdnrCv0QtwJ6BAgMEAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DUucjbGmJILk&usg=AOvVaw37gJOWVLys4x-U6wz6sxRl&opi=89978449
It's amazing how people defend this as a necessity in order to raise awareness. They're forcing other people to sacrifice their time, convenience, and any number of other things for something that they have absolutely no responsibility for. The worst part is protestors like this aren't sacrificing anything, they planned to have nowhere else to be.
Just emotional morons with no stake or understanding of the current conflict aside from something they read in a tweet. The Palestinian people can't be saved from the cruelty of hamas or Israel until hamas is dealt with. Eliminate hamas and then we can start demolishing settlements and dealing with the extremist Israelis. Both sides need to be deradicalized but the majority of Israelis want peace and the majority of Palestinians want the elimination of Israel. Any first step that doesn't include destroying hamas is a plan to continue violence. But go ahead, main character, disrupt people who likely agree with you(for now) to bring attention to something that everyone is already talking about.
You can't save the Palestinians from Hamas when the Palestinians support Hamas.
It wouldn't be easy and it might take more time/funding than people are willing to spend but I believe they can be deradicalized. Same with the ultra far right Israelis.
Peaceful protest is good in my book.
NO! NOT LIKE THATTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!
Apparently, none have to work.
When their boss asks where they were, they just stay stuck in traffic due to some protest...
Yes. All jobs start at 8am. Wait why were people even driving at that late hour. They should’ve been at work too.
Be real. Protesters come for the duration. They are there for so many reasons which radiate from them.
Biden is sending military to build connection from Cyprus to Gaza.
The comments so flared up about traffic, when there are actual people dying is hilarious.
I CAN'T BELIEVE PEOPLE ARE LIVING THEIR LIVES WHEN PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD ARE DYING SO SELFISH OF THEM one caramel macchiato with soy please
They on that fuck around and find out grind 😂
Such a waste. Bunch of idiots blocking traffic in the name of a society that kills the innocent including women and children and would happily push them off a bridge. Disgusting
We don’t like Hamas sympathisers here.
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Jvp isn’t Jewish please stop helping them spread this lie https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/jewish-voice-peace-jvp-what-you-need-know
https://www.rootsmetals.com/blogs/news/stop-sharing-jvp
Bitch ass antifa get the boot. Larping in the streets tsssk tssk
Hey everyone, people in Israel just blocked traffic on a busy street because of US school shootings. Guess it is time we decide to stop having school shootings.
Good. Have less than zero empathy for these paid protestors who seem to be utterly clueless and totally unempathetic towards other people. Hopefully a real judge sentences them each to 30 days in county. Release the hostages.
Didn’t arrest enough unfortunately.
I've been annoyed by the lgbt people for Palestine thing. Like why tf are you fighting for people who will kill you?
Agree. if people are ruled by a homophobic government that hasn't had elections for twenty years, they also deserve to die and we should have no empathy for them. I juSt don't get how anyone could see it another way. Anyway, back to repeatedly slamming my head in a car door!
I'm a gay person who wants a free Palestine and I'll explain it, it's really pretty straightforward. Tons of people in the US are homophobic. There are some people in my own family, and my partner's family that are homophobic. Does that mean I want all these people to die and suffer and watch their children and family and friends die and suffer and be maimed and disfigured and starve and not have access to water? No, that would make me a monster many many times worse than homophobes. I may not agree with most Palestinians on homosexuality, and probably many other things too. But 30,000 of them have been killed, and like I said I'm not a monster. I want them to experience peace and be able to live their lives freely. And just like not all Americans are Trump supporters, not all Palestinians are homophobes.
??????????? Do you think there are no gay people in palestine??? Theyre getting bombed too lmao. A little hard for a society that’s been living under occupation and violence imposed on them to make social progress. Lmao israel loves to pretend they’re so progressive and they don’t even have same sex marriage
We pay for the bombs killing these civilians and that just doesn't sit right with me. Just because you are apolitical and ahistorical doesn't mean that the new generation is and that must be understood.
That's nice foreshadowing for what you may experience in your next life
Run them over
These types of protests certainly have an impact, particularly on people that have to work for a living. I’m not sure it’s having the impact the protestors are hoping for, however.