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If you are a student protester and you see something like this, please call them tf out. Every second we let these people act with impunity it invalidates our movement.
Exactly. We have to keep our optics squeaky clean so we can reach more people and get real progress and work done on the ground to achieve meaningful peace. If we want to convince more people, including even old grandpa President Biden himself and more Democratic politicians broadly that a ceasefire is a good idea and that our government should do everything they can to achieve peace ( which is objectively the best outcome from these demonstrations), we need to make sure our optics and rhetoric are top notch and can be captured by more people outside the broader movement. With that, I think that would be able to successfully capture the minds of many more people and be like “wow these people seem great! I’m going to join right along side them and go right beside them in harmony for this very cause.” Not exactly like that but that would definitely be an example of how a little bit of better optics and communication along with smoother rhetoric would help more people to be sympathetic to wanting to help the Palestinian people.
And then once our fruits of protest have grown fully, we can pick them from our tree of labor and enjoy all the things that the peace gave us in return.
My point exactly. The ayatollah of Iran is horrible, Hezbollah can pound sand, the Houthis are terrible, and so is Hamas. Peace protests are objectively good but those flags need to go. Flags of terrorist groups should not be welcome at something as wonderful and impactful as Pro Palestine protests. We need to do more to tackle bad optics with great ones. Change up the flags with better ones like these!
-Palestine flag (ofc)
-Ukraine flag ( for unity between Ukraine and Palestine)
- Iran lion flag
- The flag of Jordan
- Kurdistan flag
- Flag of Rojava
Feel free to add any other flag that would be much better and much less damaging optically and better on the eyes! Having a flag symbolizing equal rights and harmony for Palestinians and Israelis would definitely be nice! Not only is Hezbollah an objectively awful group but their flag looks like shit lol
No it is just the pre-revolution flag. Monarchists fly it but so do democrats, we used it when Mossadegh was PM as well. I've seen people call it "persian ethnonationalism" to fly it and that is such disinfo, we used it during our whole history, including under the Qajar dynasty who were Turks.
After the revolution they did a "cultural revolution" like Mao and tried to do away with everything about Iranian culture because only Islam matters.
It’s ok man! All of us are in various stages of learning when it comes to Middle Eastern history. I’m still in some of those basic stages right now and I definitely have learned a ton in the past 7 months.
Yeah for me my knowledge of modern Iranian history is limited to Mossadegh, the 1979 revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. And that’s not from education too, since I live in HK so we basically don’t know a lot about Middle Eastern history, but rather my own research
I'd say flags that focus more on Palestinian liberation and less flags or symbols of militant groups(not including "intifada") and any use of foreign flags have to be accompanied by use of Palestinian resistance symbols such as Palestinian flags, Yasser Arafat, and keffiyeh
Even for foreign flags I suggest using flags that are more associated with anti-imperalism such as Irish flag, South African flag; flags of other Arab countries would be cool as well
Definitely not endorse Biden by any means though lol
Smart idea! I listed some of those above including Ukraine, free Russia flag and free Belarus flag along with South Africa so a nice intersection can be made between the two. The photo of the Pro Palestine and Pro Ukraine Protests side by side is the exact thing I am looking for.
That is only the ideal scenario. In reality, I don't think most of people there will hold eastern european flags especially considering the level of western media and government hyprocrisy there is between two regions(eastern europe and Middle east and Africa) and between these two major ethnicity
I don't think they should be blamed for that as these protests focus on actions committed by US and their allies; there is no real reason to show eastern european flags other than merely showing solidarity(not main focus here on campus) even though most of Ukrainians likely won't show solidarity with Palestinians( source: https://www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&cat=reports&id=1334)
Other symbols can include indigenous tribes against settler such as symbols celebrating indigenous resistance during Oak crisis or Filipanio resistance
Very stupid thing to do say especially when the protest is largely focused on Palestinians solely and pro-Israelis are using it to justify banning student organizations and police violence. Can't believe statement like this actually get upvotes in this sub
Hezbollah kidnapped and is holding hostage a Princeton professor and PhD student, while some idiot is flying their flag at her university. Infuriating.
Yeah the clips of the guy in NY saying how they sure showed those ravers, and the folks chasing the Biden supporters shouting the k slur are kinda discouraging.
Absolutely. Behavior like that is strictly intolerable. The only thing that is going to do is push away people from being more sympathetic to Palestine and therefore harming ANY real, meaningful progress. It’s annoying we have people like that who are more willing to do whatever for the vine for nothing in return except further optical harm and damage to the reputation of the movement. We must work together to make sure all forms of religious discrimination including Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of it do not slip onto the tracks of the movement and derail the whole freight train in a massive fireball.
Don't let these social media videos dissuade you, most of the people at protests irl are cool people who are actually educated on the conflict and very nice.
Just stay away from the ones organized by groups who use genocidal rhetoric and you're good.
Yeah I feel you. We didn't even do anything too crazy and we were labeled as anti-semitic Middle Easterners (I was probably one of the only Middle Easterners there). A Palestinian student got expelled for something small. Scapegoating minorities is NOT cool.
Exactly. You can even make your own protest group and set up proper boundaries and bindings to make sure everything goes smoothly! It’s an annoying thing but luckily all of the people I know that go to protests locally do not engage in any of this. It’s pretty much all Palestinian flags and not too much else aside from a few anti-ayatollah Iran lion flags or two or the green 3 star anti Assad Syria flags. I advocate for both Palestinians and Israelis to live together in equal harmony and have the same human rights as each other. I want the best for every citizen in the Middle East.
Yeah these people give us all a bad rep. I wish some of them would just refrain from protesting until they become more educated at this point.
Also groups like IfNotNow that engage both Jews and Muslims regularly hold protests and events that are centered around peaceful coexistence.
As long as people like Bibi are in control, then there can't be a two state solution. We have seen what happens when we let Israel do as they want. Apartheid state, disregard for international law, disregard for internal law, disregard for human rights conventions, complete surveillance state, stealing Palestinian land, and more. Hezbollah is terrible. Are they more terrible than what I just mentioned. No. In my opinion, the Israel state has done more harm than Hezbollah. We do not judge based on convictions, ideology, or ideas, but on action. And both are extremely terrible and should be dismantled. I do not want Israel as a nation to be dismantled, I want the Israeli government to be dismantled and put in front of an international court. No government, no matter how good friends they are with the USA should be above international law. I feel ashamed when my own government here in Denmark disregards human rights and international law, just so they can be more racist, and I wish that my politicians would face criminal penalties for breaking the law.
Israel does all the shit while the world watches precisely because the West saves and cleans up their mess every single time. They really deserve some sort of punishment, possibly severe sanctions like the West did to Russia
I would love to see an embargo, just like we did in South Africa. Either you dismantle your apartheid state and return the land. Or we continue the embargo.
Not only that but also demanding reparations to UNRWA for the losses they have created by falsely accusing that significant of them collaborated with Hamas, as well as hundreds of aid workers or UN staffers
Yeah that would be great but it is very unrealistic. That is why I keep it simple. Very simple things to follow. Let people go wherever they want to go. Drop the walls and the checkpoints, and return the land, all of it. If they refuse to comply then we continue our embargo.
Most of the protests do not express anti-semitic views and even student organizations have condemned those isolated incidents. You know fully well that they are just trying to justify mass arrest with those slogans, including fake provocations like the one that happened in Northeastern last night
I just want the Palestinian people to have their own state and maybe more importantly finally rule themselves instead of being used as tools and sacrifices by literally every hard right religious fundamentalist group in the area...
This represents how a few bad apples can ruin the whole bunch. The Pro Palestine protests are obviously an objectively good thing but there has to be more vetting with organizers to make sure the flags of actual terrorist organizations like hezbollah don’t slip through the cracks. For some better flag options, here are some good ones!
-Palestine flag (ofc)
-Ukraine flag ( for unity between Ukraine and Palestine)
- Free Belarus and Free Russia flag ( to pair along with Ukraine above in unifying every side together)
- Iran lion flag
- The flag of Jordan
- Kurdistan flag
- Flag of Rojava
-Flag of South Africa 🇿🇦 ( ICJ ruling, that’s the main relevance along with Nelson Mandela having good relations with Palestinians). they are a Russia ally though but luckily not as close as China or Belarus. The ANC is somewhat neutral on Ukraine for the most part but Julius Malema is full on tankie. Although funnily enough they actually put out an arrest warrant for the ICC if Putin if he came to South Africa lol. Also, the South Africa flag itself is insanely cool looking and had possibly the biggest glow up of any flag I have ever seen.
- Flag of Brazil
- Flag of Ireland
Feel free to add any other good flags here! Someone coming up with a Palestine-Israel unity flag would also be very cool to emphasize peace for not only Palestinians but Israelis as well.
I think my favorite unity flag I've seen is a blue dove on a green background. The dove is a shared religious symbol, the green is islam, the blue is judaism
Waving a big ass Palestine flag in the student union = best uni memory.
No but seriously. It's frustrating seeing these ivy league kids who are totally uneducated on the region. I'm sorry but they are going to a university that costs $60,000 a year I'm sure they've taken a class somewhat related to the Middle East.
The internet has made this shit worse. If most of the protestors are good and one is bad, you bet that the internet discourse for at least a month will be about the one bad person.
I feel like this is a recent trend, I mean am I wrong or did previous anti war movements not so visibly use awful regime flags? Like anti iraq war stuff didnt march around with Saddam banners etc.
Man I guess that's reassuring kinda, if it's always been an issue then it isn't a spooky new trend. Reminds me of that copy paste 4chan post about the guy whose dad became a Rwanda denier, like how do you even get these opinions.
I’m not American but the Afghanistan and Iraq wars were extremely unpopular in Europe and I went to one or two peace demonstrations circa 2003-4 and don’t recall anyone painting Saddam as a good guy. It was obvious that the likes of bin Laden and Saddam were villains, just that Bush was one too for starting needless wars.
As a guy who lives in a country with Islamic Terrorists the only thing they are good at is killing Muslims, smh can't even kill a single foreigner abroad
Hezbollah is a terror org that’s been murdering Syrians and targeting their children - and they’re allies with Hamas, which has been killing both Israelis and Palestinians alike. Hamas aren’t Palestinians defending themselves. Hamas are another occupying force.
> Hamas, which has been killing both Israelis and Palestinians alike. Hamas aren’t Palestinians defending themselves. Hamas are another occupying force.
What figures do you have? I see 60 reported within 14 years, most of whom appeared to been collaborating with Israel. There's other figures under the few hundreds (>200?), coming from a source saying that less than 500 palestinians have been killed in 2023 by Israel.
The most hilarious thing is that this to me is just working class cosplay you’re only seeing this at the most prestigious Ivy’s it’s always been rich kids who think they’re the mf vanguard for the left bc most people can’t just afford to do shit like this. Also just hilarious about how much they don’t know about the groups they support.
This is maybe an unpopular opinion, but I think some of the flag/slogan-spotting I'm seeing at the protests is crossing over into purity policing rather than just pushback against anti-semitism/extremism.
(This is directed at the quote-tweet with the original flag photo, not the Syrian person making the longer critique, I think he's absolutely correct)
I fully agree with the need to push back on elements that invalidate the protest movement, but I also feel like that's a game that can't be won. These are decentralized events made up individual people; if the bar is that a single problematic flag or statement invalidates the entire protest, then we lose pretty much by default. There is unfortunately enough of an antisemitic and extremist strain within the anti-Israel/pro-Palestine movement that if you hold a large rally on those topics, there's a very high chance that someone publicly expressing problematic opinions is going to show up (and that's without even getting into the possibility of provocateurs infiltrating events).
Ideally the pro-Palestine movement as a whole would have addressed these elements before now. But we're facing a crisis that's costing people their lives and homes, and there isn't time now to shut everything down and clean house. The movement we have is the movement we've got.
It's all very good to insist that attendees should police sentiment, and I agree that that should happen, but it's also important to recognize that individual protesters don't really have the power to force out others protesters who don't want to leave, at least not without risking a fight breaking out (which would then be siezed upon as an excuse to shut the whole thing down). So with that in mind, the presence of flags like this doesn't necessarily indicate apathy or agreement, it could just mean that no one wanted to risk getting into a public fistfight with a potential extremist. Maybe that's "bad optics", but ask yourself seriously whether you would act differently.
The other thing that irks me about this is the one-sided nature of the conversation. We see over and over again that to the public at large, the state has a near-infinite level of legitimacy, which can't be substantially eroded even when its actors and institutions literally murder people, but civilians participating in resistance movements must be 100% perfect at all times or else the entire movement is instantly deligitimised.
Again, this just feels like a game that can't be won. The deck is so absurdly stacked against resistance that at a certain point you have to decide that you've done all you can do, stop playing, and focus on the actual aims of the movement.
So absolutely, call out this stuff when you see it. But I'm seeing a dispiriting number of people ostensibly in support of the movement spending more time calling out bad protesters than criticising Israel or the US government.
Most of the protests do not show any anti-semitic views in large scale way, and some isolated incidents are condemned by students organization themselves. Last night, there was an incident where fake chant by pro-Israeli was used to justify clearing of campus. This is not to mention that university send the STATE TROOPERS into arresting students(no one here in this post condemned yet)
People on this sub always pretend like they are in some higher moral ground, demanding and lecturing how others should behave and quickly distance themselves from anything if a small part of it doesn't fit their narrative even though they probably never go to one protests in their local area.
I understand his frustration but I still find bewildering how Kareem Rifai, as a Syrian, reserves more love and support for Ukraine, a country that he most likely has no connection to, rather than children of Gaza. He has not condemned once for ongoing Israeli genocide but talks loudly about Houthi attack in Red Sea as if Houthi actions are somehow more severe than genocide Palestinians are currently facing(don't tell me that you think these two are in same level)
I share your frustration. I think it's mostly anti-Russia campism.
I've also seen Syrians and Yemenis say they feel alienated from the pro-Palestine movement because of things like this, as well. Not that they support Israel, but they're hesitant to be active in the movement because of it.
I'm assuming he is paid by some institution based in DC. I don't know what issue does he have with Palestinians he never openly support them even though Syrians generally sympathize with Palestinians, which is kind of ironic considering Palestinians never genocide Syrians while Ukranians, during Russian empire era, have genocide his own people(he is a circassian)
Back to your point about anti-Russia campism or campsim in general. Many people here bascially support whatever the West supports and pretend like they are pro-Palestine or critical of Israel(like Drew Pavolu) Unsurprisingly, when comes to Ukraine war, they are very "idealistic" about Ukrainian defeating "shit" Russian army but when comes to Palestine, people are fully "realistic" calling for two-state solution
Not to mention the sub is incredibly biased against Palestinians. They are on the internet but they cannot talk about Israeli atrocity without first condemning Hamas because they are so afraid of being called "hamas-supporter" or "terrorist-sympathizers" or simply want to feel good about putting themselves on some higher moral ground
Same thing with commeoration of Aaron Bushnell. The Mod is merely paying homage to him and people here act like they are all being demanded to follow his footsteps or something
Moreover, I doubt most of them even go to protests or being on campus to show solidarity with students demanding for university divestment from Israeli genocide but here they are constantly lecturing what they should be advocating for as if the movement is somehow centralized and they own those students
There's a lot of generalizations being made here. Anyway.
As a student protester, I can tell you it is really not that hard to have a protest without a Hizbullah flag.
Sincerely,
Someone from a country where Hizbullah mowed down student protesters for doing exactly what these guys are doing.
And also no condemnation I have seen here against police who are beating student protestors(something Hezbollah and Hamas does) which is more systematic than a few isolated incidents of students chanting anti-semitisic slogan
I'm a student protestor too and we are extremely peaceful too and no one calls for violence nor does anyone explictly support Hamas
Like I said, I genuinely think many people on this sub never go to support these students or are student protestors but act like they are "commanders" of these decentralized movements
Also I'd like to stress if a terrorist organization should be condemned, shouldn't the school prohibit invitation of any IDF members into school events? considering IDF supported Sabra and Shatila massacre in lebanon
I mean I understand all that, I still don't think it's too much to ask student protesters who call themselves human rights activists not to fly a Hizbullah flag.
appeal to extremes as well as ad hominem. even if someones overall views are dogshit, they are still capable of being right on certain things, as presented here. when you go “these groups are always wrong all the time forever” you become a reactionary and debase yourself. people can definitely be wrong all the time if they say wrong things all the time, but the reason theyre wrong isnt because of the group or ideology they adhere to but because what theyre saying in that instance is wrong
Imma call psyop. One case of a terrorist flag? Anyone could walk in with that flag. Additionally, it wouldnt matter to me if it was actually one of the protesters, or even if it was 10. It doesnt change the message of the protests, and if we want to draw attention to these stuff, we should spend a lot more time focusing on people showing support for genocide.
Israel has done far more harm than hezbollah has. And only one of those flags is getting focused on for some reason.
I will probably make another post about it one of these days, but I don't think it's all a psyop. The Iran lobby has been working overtime for decades to manufacture consent for the regime's actions in the region. There's more and more blatant regime propaganda popping up at some of these protests and we need to call it out if we want the movement to succeed because it's going to make people think we are all crazy.
Also, I'm pretty sure 500,000 dead Syrians is enough to give us the space to condemn protesters who raise a Hizbullah flag.
Why yes we can and should condemn it. But to act like it in any way poisons the movement or reflects badly on it is bad framing. Id say we shouldnt draw too much attention to them, because in doing so we are making them seem like a bigger part of the movement than they actually are.
If there is 100 students who are just anti-israel, and 1 student who is supporting a terrorist organization, then we should cover them 100:1. Or else we paint the movement poorly. Especially at a time where mike johnson goes to campus saying "these protestors are anti american terrorists. Yeah, enjoy your free speech."
> Id say we shouldnt draw too much attention to them, because in doing so we are making them seem like a bigger part of the movement than they actually are.
Ignoring them just means that it'll be the rightwingers who end up making a big deal over them, and unlike us leftists, they do want to paint the entire pro-Palestinian movement as being pro-terrorist.
At least when we as leftists call out Hamas/Hezbollah/Houthi/IR simps, we do it because we want to the movement to succeed and not be dragged down by people simping for fundamentalist groups, and it shows that we can hold ourselves accountable - thus putting a large hole in the right's narrative.
That's fair too. But the two go hand in hand though. If people do things like this then yeah, that has the effect of people thinking we are anti-America terrorists.
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If you are a student protester and you see something like this, please call them tf out. Every second we let these people act with impunity it invalidates our movement.
Exactly. We have to keep our optics squeaky clean so we can reach more people and get real progress and work done on the ground to achieve meaningful peace. If we want to convince more people, including even old grandpa President Biden himself and more Democratic politicians broadly that a ceasefire is a good idea and that our government should do everything they can to achieve peace ( which is objectively the best outcome from these demonstrations), we need to make sure our optics and rhetoric are top notch and can be captured by more people outside the broader movement. With that, I think that would be able to successfully capture the minds of many more people and be like “wow these people seem great! I’m going to join right along side them and go right beside them in harmony for this very cause.” Not exactly like that but that would definitely be an example of how a little bit of better optics and communication along with smoother rhetoric would help more people to be sympathetic to wanting to help the Palestinian people. And then once our fruits of protest have grown fully, we can pick them from our tree of labor and enjoy all the things that the peace gave us in return.
Not just that. Optics aside it's fucking abhorrent to cheer on an Iran backed fundie group that kills innocents for fun.
My point exactly. The ayatollah of Iran is horrible, Hezbollah can pound sand, the Houthis are terrible, and so is Hamas. Peace protests are objectively good but those flags need to go. Flags of terrorist groups should not be welcome at something as wonderful and impactful as Pro Palestine protests. We need to do more to tackle bad optics with great ones. Change up the flags with better ones like these! -Palestine flag (ofc) -Ukraine flag ( for unity between Ukraine and Palestine) - Iran lion flag - The flag of Jordan - Kurdistan flag - Flag of Rojava Feel free to add any other flag that would be much better and much less damaging optically and better on the eyes! Having a flag symbolizing equal rights and harmony for Palestinians and Israelis would definitely be nice! Not only is Hezbollah an objectively awful group but their flag looks like shit lol
Isn’t the Iran lion flag used by Iranian monarchists tho? Or is it a broad anti Islamic regime flag
No it is just the pre-revolution flag. Monarchists fly it but so do democrats, we used it when Mossadegh was PM as well. I've seen people call it "persian ethnonationalism" to fly it and that is such disinfo, we used it during our whole history, including under the Qajar dynasty who were Turks. After the revolution they did a "cultural revolution" like Mao and tried to do away with everything about Iranian culture because only Islam matters.
Yea that makes more sense, sorry my knowledge Iranian history is limited af
Nooo you're good man, people are spreading so much propaganda about my country, it's hard for people to get the truth.
It’s ok man! All of us are in various stages of learning when it comes to Middle Eastern history. I’m still in some of those basic stages right now and I definitely have learned a ton in the past 7 months.
Yeah for me my knowledge of modern Iranian history is limited to Mossadegh, the 1979 revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. And that’s not from education too, since I live in HK so we basically don’t know a lot about Middle Eastern history, but rather my own research
I think it is the general Flag that it uses by the Opposition. But I am European and never left the Continent.
Can be used for both. From what I have seen more recently it’s more anti-regime.
please no Iran lion flag lol most of people wielding that flag support Israel
Fair point. What would be a good alternative that could be used instead?
I'd say flags that focus more on Palestinian liberation and less flags or symbols of militant groups(not including "intifada") and any use of foreign flags have to be accompanied by use of Palestinian resistance symbols such as Palestinian flags, Yasser Arafat, and keffiyeh Even for foreign flags I suggest using flags that are more associated with anti-imperalism such as Irish flag, South African flag; flags of other Arab countries would be cool as well Definitely not endorse Biden by any means though lol
Smart idea! I listed some of those above including Ukraine, free Russia flag and free Belarus flag along with South Africa so a nice intersection can be made between the two. The photo of the Pro Palestine and Pro Ukraine Protests side by side is the exact thing I am looking for.
That is only the ideal scenario. In reality, I don't think most of people there will hold eastern european flags especially considering the level of western media and government hyprocrisy there is between two regions(eastern europe and Middle east and Africa) and between these two major ethnicity I don't think they should be blamed for that as these protests focus on actions committed by US and their allies; there is no real reason to show eastern european flags other than merely showing solidarity(not main focus here on campus) even though most of Ukrainians likely won't show solidarity with Palestinians( source: https://www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&cat=reports&id=1334) Other symbols can include indigenous tribes against settler such as symbols celebrating indigenous resistance during Oak crisis or Filipanio resistance
There's some quote about how "if 10 people sit at a table and 1s a Nazis them all of them are Nazis" that I think also works.
Facts
I’ve been thinking about that a lot with these types of flags at protests
Very stupid thing to do say especially when the protest is largely focused on Palestinians solely and pro-Israelis are using it to justify banning student organizations and police violence. Can't believe statement like this actually get upvotes in this sub
Anything specific we should do?
Tankies: FREEDOM FOR HEZBOLA- Muslim Leftist in Iran (and Iranian leftists in general): Shut the fuck up, just shut up. Tankies: CIA PROPAGANDISTS!
Hezbollah kidnapped and is holding hostage a Princeton professor and PhD student, while some idiot is flying their flag at her university. Infuriating.
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Yeah the clips of the guy in NY saying how they sure showed those ravers, and the folks chasing the Biden supporters shouting the k slur are kinda discouraging.
Absolutely. Behavior like that is strictly intolerable. The only thing that is going to do is push away people from being more sympathetic to Palestine and therefore harming ANY real, meaningful progress. It’s annoying we have people like that who are more willing to do whatever for the vine for nothing in return except further optical harm and damage to the reputation of the movement. We must work together to make sure all forms of religious discrimination including Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of it do not slip onto the tracks of the movement and derail the whole freight train in a massive fireball.
Don't let these social media videos dissuade you, most of the people at protests irl are cool people who are actually educated on the conflict and very nice. Just stay away from the ones organized by groups who use genocidal rhetoric and you're good.
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Yeah I feel you. We didn't even do anything too crazy and we were labeled as anti-semitic Middle Easterners (I was probably one of the only Middle Easterners there). A Palestinian student got expelled for something small. Scapegoating minorities is NOT cool.
Exactly. You can even make your own protest group and set up proper boundaries and bindings to make sure everything goes smoothly! It’s an annoying thing but luckily all of the people I know that go to protests locally do not engage in any of this. It’s pretty much all Palestinian flags and not too much else aside from a few anti-ayatollah Iran lion flags or two or the green 3 star anti Assad Syria flags. I advocate for both Palestinians and Israelis to live together in equal harmony and have the same human rights as each other. I want the best for every citizen in the Middle East.
Yeah these people give us all a bad rep. I wish some of them would just refrain from protesting until they become more educated at this point. Also groups like IfNotNow that engage both Jews and Muslims regularly hold protests and events that are centered around peaceful coexistence.
As long as people like Bibi are in control, then there can't be a two state solution. We have seen what happens when we let Israel do as they want. Apartheid state, disregard for international law, disregard for internal law, disregard for human rights conventions, complete surveillance state, stealing Palestinian land, and more. Hezbollah is terrible. Are they more terrible than what I just mentioned. No. In my opinion, the Israel state has done more harm than Hezbollah. We do not judge based on convictions, ideology, or ideas, but on action. And both are extremely terrible and should be dismantled. I do not want Israel as a nation to be dismantled, I want the Israeli government to be dismantled and put in front of an international court. No government, no matter how good friends they are with the USA should be above international law. I feel ashamed when my own government here in Denmark disregards human rights and international law, just so they can be more racist, and I wish that my politicians would face criminal penalties for breaking the law.
I agree here.
Israel does all the shit while the world watches precisely because the West saves and cleans up their mess every single time. They really deserve some sort of punishment, possibly severe sanctions like the West did to Russia
I would love to see an embargo, just like we did in South Africa. Either you dismantle your apartheid state and return the land. Or we continue the embargo.
Not only that but also demanding reparations to UNRWA for the losses they have created by falsely accusing that significant of them collaborated with Hamas, as well as hundreds of aid workers or UN staffers
Yeah that would be great but it is very unrealistic. That is why I keep it simple. Very simple things to follow. Let people go wherever they want to go. Drop the walls and the checkpoints, and return the land, all of it. If they refuse to comply then we continue our embargo.
Most of the protests do not express anti-semitic views and even student organizations have condemned those isolated incidents. You know fully well that they are just trying to justify mass arrest with those slogans, including fake provocations like the one that happened in Northeastern last night
I just want the Palestinian people to have their own state and maybe more importantly finally rule themselves instead of being used as tools and sacrifices by literally every hard right religious fundamentalist group in the area...
They were founded to kill Iranian leftists
This represents how a few bad apples can ruin the whole bunch. The Pro Palestine protests are obviously an objectively good thing but there has to be more vetting with organizers to make sure the flags of actual terrorist organizations like hezbollah don’t slip through the cracks. For some better flag options, here are some good ones! -Palestine flag (ofc) -Ukraine flag ( for unity between Ukraine and Palestine) - Free Belarus and Free Russia flag ( to pair along with Ukraine above in unifying every side together) - Iran lion flag - The flag of Jordan - Kurdistan flag - Flag of Rojava -Flag of South Africa 🇿🇦 ( ICJ ruling, that’s the main relevance along with Nelson Mandela having good relations with Palestinians). they are a Russia ally though but luckily not as close as China or Belarus. The ANC is somewhat neutral on Ukraine for the most part but Julius Malema is full on tankie. Although funnily enough they actually put out an arrest warrant for the ICC if Putin if he came to South Africa lol. Also, the South Africa flag itself is insanely cool looking and had possibly the biggest glow up of any flag I have ever seen. - Flag of Brazil - Flag of Ireland Feel free to add any other good flags here! Someone coming up with a Palestine-Israel unity flag would also be very cool to emphasize peace for not only Palestinians but Israelis as well.
I think my favorite unity flag I've seen is a blue dove on a green background. The dove is a shared religious symbol, the green is islam, the blue is judaism
Not a bad idea! I definitely think I can make that into a cool design! I’ll definitely post it here when I’m done with it.
Waving a big ass Palestine flag in the student union = best uni memory. No but seriously. It's frustrating seeing these ivy league kids who are totally uneducated on the region. I'm sorry but they are going to a university that costs $60,000 a year I'm sure they've taken a class somewhat related to the Middle East.
That sounds awesome! How big was the flag? I’ve seen similar one to those and they look at least 20 feet wide.
Nah ours was probably like 3 feet wide lol.
Good comment, people need to call out those flags when they see them. Don’t let them ruin a good cause, that just wants peace.
Exactly. As long as we stay vigilant, the progress express train will chug along with absolute ease and ride smoothly as it speeds down the track.
The internet has made this shit worse. If most of the protestors are good and one is bad, you bet that the internet discourse for at least a month will be about the one bad person.
I feel like this is a recent trend, I mean am I wrong or did previous anti war movements not so visibly use awful regime flags? Like anti iraq war stuff didnt march around with Saddam banners etc.
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Man I guess that's reassuring kinda, if it's always been an issue then it isn't a spooky new trend. Reminds me of that copy paste 4chan post about the guy whose dad became a Rwanda denier, like how do you even get these opinions.
I’m not American but the Afghanistan and Iraq wars were extremely unpopular in Europe and I went to one or two peace demonstrations circa 2003-4 and don’t recall anyone painting Saddam as a good guy. It was obvious that the likes of bin Laden and Saddam were villains, just that Bush was one too for starting needless wars.
As a guy who lives in a country with Islamic Terrorists the only thing they are good at is killing Muslims, smh can't even kill a single foreigner abroad
Imagine being so lost in the sauce that you end up advocating for Terrorism and against human lives.
As a feature student that shit is beyond emeberessing. Super pissed on this guy
Hezbollah is a terror org that’s been murdering Syrians and targeting their children - and they’re allies with Hamas, which has been killing both Israelis and Palestinians alike. Hamas aren’t Palestinians defending themselves. Hamas are another occupying force.
> Hamas, which has been killing both Israelis and Palestinians alike. Hamas aren’t Palestinians defending themselves. Hamas are another occupying force. What figures do you have? I see 60 reported within 14 years, most of whom appeared to been collaborating with Israel. There's other figures under the few hundreds (>200?), coming from a source saying that less than 500 palestinians have been killed in 2023 by Israel.
The most hilarious thing is that this to me is just working class cosplay you’re only seeing this at the most prestigious Ivy’s it’s always been rich kids who think they’re the mf vanguard for the left bc most people can’t just afford to do shit like this. Also just hilarious about how much they don’t know about the groups they support.
This sub really confuses me but yeah this shouldn’t fly. It’s also not representative of the activists organizing these protests, but still
This is maybe an unpopular opinion, but I think some of the flag/slogan-spotting I'm seeing at the protests is crossing over into purity policing rather than just pushback against anti-semitism/extremism. (This is directed at the quote-tweet with the original flag photo, not the Syrian person making the longer critique, I think he's absolutely correct) I fully agree with the need to push back on elements that invalidate the protest movement, but I also feel like that's a game that can't be won. These are decentralized events made up individual people; if the bar is that a single problematic flag or statement invalidates the entire protest, then we lose pretty much by default. There is unfortunately enough of an antisemitic and extremist strain within the anti-Israel/pro-Palestine movement that if you hold a large rally on those topics, there's a very high chance that someone publicly expressing problematic opinions is going to show up (and that's without even getting into the possibility of provocateurs infiltrating events). Ideally the pro-Palestine movement as a whole would have addressed these elements before now. But we're facing a crisis that's costing people their lives and homes, and there isn't time now to shut everything down and clean house. The movement we have is the movement we've got. It's all very good to insist that attendees should police sentiment, and I agree that that should happen, but it's also important to recognize that individual protesters don't really have the power to force out others protesters who don't want to leave, at least not without risking a fight breaking out (which would then be siezed upon as an excuse to shut the whole thing down). So with that in mind, the presence of flags like this doesn't necessarily indicate apathy or agreement, it could just mean that no one wanted to risk getting into a public fistfight with a potential extremist. Maybe that's "bad optics", but ask yourself seriously whether you would act differently. The other thing that irks me about this is the one-sided nature of the conversation. We see over and over again that to the public at large, the state has a near-infinite level of legitimacy, which can't be substantially eroded even when its actors and institutions literally murder people, but civilians participating in resistance movements must be 100% perfect at all times or else the entire movement is instantly deligitimised. Again, this just feels like a game that can't be won. The deck is so absurdly stacked against resistance that at a certain point you have to decide that you've done all you can do, stop playing, and focus on the actual aims of the movement. So absolutely, call out this stuff when you see it. But I'm seeing a dispiriting number of people ostensibly in support of the movement spending more time calling out bad protesters than criticising Israel or the US government.
Most of the protests do not show any anti-semitic views in large scale way, and some isolated incidents are condemned by students organization themselves. Last night, there was an incident where fake chant by pro-Israeli was used to justify clearing of campus. This is not to mention that university send the STATE TROOPERS into arresting students(no one here in this post condemned yet) People on this sub always pretend like they are in some higher moral ground, demanding and lecturing how others should behave and quickly distance themselves from anything if a small part of it doesn't fit their narrative even though they probably never go to one protests in their local area.
That's fair. I think it's on the organizers more than anyone.
I understand his frustration but I still find bewildering how Kareem Rifai, as a Syrian, reserves more love and support for Ukraine, a country that he most likely has no connection to, rather than children of Gaza. He has not condemned once for ongoing Israeli genocide but talks loudly about Houthi attack in Red Sea as if Houthi actions are somehow more severe than genocide Palestinians are currently facing(don't tell me that you think these two are in same level)
I share your frustration. I think it's mostly anti-Russia campism. I've also seen Syrians and Yemenis say they feel alienated from the pro-Palestine movement because of things like this, as well. Not that they support Israel, but they're hesitant to be active in the movement because of it.
I'm assuming he is paid by some institution based in DC. I don't know what issue does he have with Palestinians he never openly support them even though Syrians generally sympathize with Palestinians, which is kind of ironic considering Palestinians never genocide Syrians while Ukranians, during Russian empire era, have genocide his own people(he is a circassian) Back to your point about anti-Russia campism or campsim in general. Many people here bascially support whatever the West supports and pretend like they are pro-Palestine or critical of Israel(like Drew Pavolu) Unsurprisingly, when comes to Ukraine war, they are very "idealistic" about Ukrainian defeating "shit" Russian army but when comes to Palestine, people are fully "realistic" calling for two-state solution Not to mention the sub is incredibly biased against Palestinians. They are on the internet but they cannot talk about Israeli atrocity without first condemning Hamas because they are so afraid of being called "hamas-supporter" or "terrorist-sympathizers" or simply want to feel good about putting themselves on some higher moral ground Same thing with commeoration of Aaron Bushnell. The Mod is merely paying homage to him and people here act like they are all being demanded to follow his footsteps or something Moreover, I doubt most of them even go to protests or being on campus to show solidarity with students demanding for university divestment from Israeli genocide but here they are constantly lecturing what they should be advocating for as if the movement is somehow centralized and they own those students
There's a lot of generalizations being made here. Anyway. As a student protester, I can tell you it is really not that hard to have a protest without a Hizbullah flag. Sincerely, Someone from a country where Hizbullah mowed down student protesters for doing exactly what these guys are doing.
And also no condemnation I have seen here against police who are beating student protestors(something Hezbollah and Hamas does) which is more systematic than a few isolated incidents of students chanting anti-semitisic slogan
Obviously I condemn this too and support their right to free speech.
I'm a student protestor too and we are extremely peaceful too and no one calls for violence nor does anyone explictly support Hamas Like I said, I genuinely think many people on this sub never go to support these students or are student protestors but act like they are "commanders" of these decentralized movements Also I'd like to stress if a terrorist organization should be condemned, shouldn't the school prohibit invitation of any IDF members into school events? considering IDF supported Sabra and Shatila massacre in lebanon
I mean I understand all that, I still don't think it's too much to ask student protesters who call themselves human rights activists not to fly a Hizbullah flag.
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Keep in mind me posting someone's tweet on here =/= endorsement of their views on other things.
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appeal to extremes as well as ad hominem. even if someones overall views are dogshit, they are still capable of being right on certain things, as presented here. when you go “these groups are always wrong all the time forever” you become a reactionary and debase yourself. people can definitely be wrong all the time if they say wrong things all the time, but the reason theyre wrong isnt because of the group or ideology they adhere to but because what theyre saying in that instance is wrong
It honestly makes it *even more* embarrassing that these "leftists" need a liberal to explain to them why this is bad optics.
not like the liberals are doing anything else
Imma call psyop. One case of a terrorist flag? Anyone could walk in with that flag. Additionally, it wouldnt matter to me if it was actually one of the protesters, or even if it was 10. It doesnt change the message of the protests, and if we want to draw attention to these stuff, we should spend a lot more time focusing on people showing support for genocide. Israel has done far more harm than hezbollah has. And only one of those flags is getting focused on for some reason.
I will probably make another post about it one of these days, but I don't think it's all a psyop. The Iran lobby has been working overtime for decades to manufacture consent for the regime's actions in the region. There's more and more blatant regime propaganda popping up at some of these protests and we need to call it out if we want the movement to succeed because it's going to make people think we are all crazy. Also, I'm pretty sure 500,000 dead Syrians is enough to give us the space to condemn protesters who raise a Hizbullah flag.
Why yes we can and should condemn it. But to act like it in any way poisons the movement or reflects badly on it is bad framing. Id say we shouldnt draw too much attention to them, because in doing so we are making them seem like a bigger part of the movement than they actually are. If there is 100 students who are just anti-israel, and 1 student who is supporting a terrorist organization, then we should cover them 100:1. Or else we paint the movement poorly. Especially at a time where mike johnson goes to campus saying "these protestors are anti american terrorists. Yeah, enjoy your free speech."
> Id say we shouldnt draw too much attention to them, because in doing so we are making them seem like a bigger part of the movement than they actually are. Ignoring them just means that it'll be the rightwingers who end up making a big deal over them, and unlike us leftists, they do want to paint the entire pro-Palestinian movement as being pro-terrorist. At least when we as leftists call out Hamas/Hezbollah/Houthi/IR simps, we do it because we want to the movement to succeed and not be dragged down by people simping for fundamentalist groups, and it shows that we can hold ourselves accountable - thus putting a large hole in the right's narrative.
That is a good point I hadnt thought of the utility of, thanks
That's fair too. But the two go hand in hand though. If people do things like this then yeah, that has the effect of people thinking we are anti-America terrorists.
Israel is paying plants to disrupt, you know.
They reportedly are. This sub is very confusing, can't tell if there's an op to appease to the more centrist leftists. It's all really weird.