It is a similar situation with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
You can argue that the government of Israel isn't the will of the people of Israel (in the same way the US government isn't the will of the people of the US), but in my opinion there's more of a separation between 'Palestine' and 'Hamas' than there is between 'Israel' and 'the will of the people of Israel'.
There's a lot of wrongdoing, which means there are a lot of innocents being harmed, and the harming of innocents is the greatest wrongdoing. Harm by inaction is also wrong. Harm by preventing aid and assistance is also wrong.
None of this stuff is easily answered.
The joys of ideology, or maybe more correctly, the joys of living amongst those who take ideology so seriously that they attempt to enforce their fantasies upon the real world.
In my personal logic bubble: Protesting in support of Palestine is not protesting in support of Hamas. Declaring support for Israel is protesting against Hamas and their acts of terrorism against Israel. I can do both of these things without being hypocritical (like I said, in my personal logic bubble).
The history of middle East for the last 5000 years (since Sargon of Akkad) is replete with 'the king X "pacified" (the most commonly used euphemism) the people in the conquered territory'. It has never gone well for the victors under successors of king X, often within a generation or two.
In today's age when access to technology and information is such that any small sufficiently competent and motivated group can cause massive destruction, is it wise to keep creating motivated enemies and expect they will somehow never become competent or that the competent won't become motivated? It is doubly ironic given Israel's own defense industrial complex is filled with such small motivated and competent groups and the evidence of Ukraine/Russia conflict is staring in the face. This situation will blow up I fear within a generation unless Israeli society chooses different leaders.
Don't forget that Israel financially supported Hamas for this exact reason.
I agree that support for Palestine is not necessiarly support for Hamas and collective punishiment for Palestine from Hamas's actions is horrible but their is something to playing a useful idiot. And I think Israel and Palestine protesters both do this. Israel could 100% kill Hamas leadership and cause a democracy movement to elect a reasonable leadership in Palestine but they don't and don't want to. Palestine protesters actively persue a 1 state solution in its extreme to model it on the US and I don't think it works that way especially with such a vocal majority in Israel opposed to it. Hamas also don't really want a 2 state solution either because that would be real long term concessions and also a degradation of their authority because they are murders and losers but they are "protecting" some Palestians from Israel. Israel game here is they want prolong conflict and attacks like Oct. 7 because it justifies more annexation and attacks like Oct. 7 do give strong affimative arguments to take action against Hamas and Palestine whether you like it or not.
Long winded way of saying its a quagmire but if the US wanted to spend less and solve the problem they need to strong arm their ally to engage in generating a democractic uprising against Hamas in exchange for concessions of land (mostly settler land) after a new democratic state reins in their radicals. I think Palestians would jump at that idea but Hamas would be extremely anti that idea because they would be the pariah in their society. Its pragamtic solution but also 1 that requires long term follow through that is also likely to fail. To me that the Kotkin approach no one is happy but progress is possible
Yet every Palestine support protest includes Hamas symbols and chants to exterminate a certain group of people.
That's like saying the Nazis were not Germany and vice versa.
That is technically correct.
Hamas governs Palestine (to be precise, Gaza).
1. Is Israel an apartheid state?
2. Is Israel committing a genocide?
At this point (IMHO) you need to do some serious mental gymnastics not to answer "yes" to both questions. As soon as you do, it gets real simple. The existence of Hamas doesn't justify either of these things.
The people who bring this up are engaging in respectability politics or engaging in weaponized cvility. Instead of addressing the underlying issues, the focus is on the methods and the actions of the oppressed when it is the oppressor that sets the level of violence. As Nelson Mandela put it:
> A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a certain point, one can only fight fire with fire.
People understood this quite clearly with apartheid South Africa. Can you imagine protesters having to do the performative "does apartheid South Africa have a right to exist?" pledge? No, me neither.
people will eventually start filtering out narratives they don't want to hear, and/or just tuning out entirely.
this serves those in power, as they have the ability to now shape the narrative.
see also: "the russian firehose of falsehood" https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood
Depending on one's biases, my previous statement will likely elicit some sort of reaction, especially to college grads of this generation, without me ever stating a position.
This all to me is a rather unfortunate place for academia and intellectualism to have landed in the past decades. Or was it always this bad? I don't think so, I do think that always-online and recommendation engines and gameification of social media has created an acceleration of this.
But it pains me to think about where this is evolving to, and how these graduates will navigate life in the extremely complicated, suboptimal, often hateful or self-interested world we live in, if this is where they get to after graduating from a top institution.
However, I'd like to play devil's advocate here, and speak to your "without ever stating a position" line. I'd argue that's just careful wording hiding under the mask of intellectualism.
The argument against Israel is, as you say, that it is "essentially" genocide. Speaking as one of the cohort (although slightly older than new grad) of which you're referring, every argument against Israel is to my view quite straightforward. Killing innocent people is bad, doing so for political reasons is worse, and when you do it to an entire city/nation/people you have genocide ipso facto. While it's not a very complex take, it really doesn't need to be when there is a preponderance of evidence.
Contrasted with the defense of Israel's actions, and you have a vast array of whataboutisms, downplaying, justifying by means of referring to authority (in Israel), calling critics anti-Semitic, etc.
In my personal experience I find the majority of pro-Israel arguments to be at heart anti-intellectual.
So when you dress up a complex situation by emphasizing how above and beyond all understanding it is, to me that feels you are intentionally muddying the waters to try to obfuscate the real problem. And that, I would say, is also anti-intellectual.
Just because we have generational problems with anti-intellectualism does not mean this particular circumstance belongs in that category.
Technically, that just means at least two people at the Pentagon who qualify as leaders disagreed.
But it seems like broad opinion.
At least in the 1990s and 2000s it felt they were doing some good stuff for humanity. But the 2010s and 2020s the masked pretty much slipped.
(You may disagree with the opinion of course, but "bold" is a counterintuitive adjective here)
He should step down.
Remember, transformers were invented at Google. They could have been the first to market starving out OAI and Anthropic. That they did not is clearly a huge failure from Pichai. Its astonishing he wasn’t removed for this blunder.
What does it actually look like?
I still think a two state solution is the only realistic plan.
I wish more people had the guts to reject Google and the panopticon they’ve built.
Save the money, fund the humanities with it. Maybe then the people planning these speakers would realize why people are booing and walking out.
Pretty light hearted, and honestly considering that he's given a speech to an empty stadium before (as referenced in the first few sentences, I think he'll have handled it just fine.
> But people have also been giving me a lot of advice on what to say. Actually, it’s been the same advice, and it’s about what not to say. People thought it would be really difficult for me; it is the last two letters of my last name, after all.
Ha, chuckle-worthy. Of course he'd find it hard to not pitch AI.
The only thing I find surprising is no-one points out that Stanford is a truly elite education system: Some 2 in 5 of students enter disabled, but almost all of them end up successful over time.
An outsider community forms in a down-market neighbourhood. Lacking money and power, it makes its own culture. That becomes "hip," and those with money start buying property in that neighbourhood, displacing the very people who made it hip to begin with.
As with "hackers," so also with artists, musicians, bicycle messengers, dirtbag rock climbers, frisbee players, &c. &c.
Once they have a state, the Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank will finally have defined borders and a single sovereign. And history shows they can be relied upon to launch another genocidal war on Israel more or less immediately.
Then it will be a war between two nation-states, not a nation-state vs. an unaccountable terrorist organization that pretends to be a proper state when convenient.
The Israel vs. Palestine conflict will then fall neatly into the framework of Westphalian nation-states and when Israel proceeds to utterly defeat Palestine, demands their unconditional surrender, kills all who resist, annexes their territory, and forcibly re-educates any who remain (post-WWII style), it will all be 100% kosher according to customary international law.
(5) There are also complete idiotic and anti-semitic forces on the other side, who demand Israel to completely disappear.
What solution will be accepted as realistic by multiple sides of this conflict and acceptable enough for most sides to get everyone back to the negotiations table?
I have a very unrealistic idea about what should happen, which is directly opposed to factors (1) to (4):
Israel needs to return all stolen land and return to internationally recognized borders as a first step of showing good will. Israel needs to prosecute its own military personell for war crimes and for supporting armed mobs chasing people out of their own houses in the West Bank. Netanyahu and his gang need to be brought to Den Hague, and be put in front of the International Criminal Court. This is just the base justice level.
On the other side Hamas needs to disarm at least in majority. No more rockets launched. Also no more rockets launched from Hezbolla etc. Is the hostages situation still ongoing? Of course they need to be returned, if any still actually alive.
Next, Israel starts financing rebuilding efforts in Palestine.
Sounds realistic? Probably not, but that would at least be somewhat fair. Just not gonna happen with a US-supported dictator and his gang on one side and a guerilla militia on the other side.
Maybe the point is, that "realistic" probably != fair, and that is extremely painful. Maybe the point is, that fairness can only be achieved via a lengthy decades long process of first getting the weapons to cool down, and then holding all parties responsible at international courts. But guess what, Israel would never consent to be judged, because they do whatever the f they want.
Most "free Palestine" protestors probably don't care an awful lot about the final outcome of the conflict, they just want the mass killing of innocent people to stop.
There's a reason the movement only flared up when Israel started carpet bombing Gaza, and not during the mostly-quiet years before.
None are futures he wants. I wonder what the long term vision is? If the Palestinians have a hard enough time they'll just migrate away faster than they have children?
Pulled all their military out? Oh, they still controlled their airspace, critical infra, borders tho? Sounds very self determined!
Serious, bad faith or extremely reductive misrepresentation that I can't tell is borne from ignorance willful or accidental.
your comment is the equivalent of acting like cuba's economy is all their own choosing, without analyzing the immense damage sanctions (and why sanctions were there in the first place) have done to the country, or accosting haiti without knowing why their struggles exist. context matters.
Considering that about 60% of the Gaza population is age 20 or younger, that means about 18% of the current population voted for Hamas.
And of course Israel directly helped this by arresting a huge number of Hamas politicians right before the elections, and openly interfering with the election process in general.
So no, Hamas does not represent the will of the people in Gaza, and calling it "democratically elected" is at this point a straight-up lie.
[0] https://www.972mag.com/netanyahu-hamas-october-7-adam-raz/
Congratulations for using a heuristic that resulted in 9/11! Osama’s rationalization at least had a more accurate premise that the American people continued to be able to vote — unlike in Palestine. So congrats on having either a worse moral compass or worse reasoning skills than Bin Laden!
These pre-recorded keynotes we get nowadays are just bland and AI-generated.
He was smart & very successful. I wouldn't call him relatable to most humans.
And remember how much going to it cost. Mine wanted a couple hundred for the outfit and paper and folder thing, which certainly didn't go to the materials! that can't have cost more than about $5 cumulative, almost all of that going toward the extremely cheap leather on the certificate-folder-thing. The only people who weren't complaining about that afterward were the ones who made their own (which were universally much nicer or more fun) and refused to pay.
The reader may wish the disagreement wasn’t documented at all, because it doesn’t meet their own personal editorial standards, and they like telling someone they don’t pay how to do their jobs.
But factually, there’s nothing incorrect about what was observed and reported.
When it comes to business, I think Jobs would grovel at the feet of Trump just as much as Cook has.
He didn't live long enough to become the bad guy, but if he were alive today, I think there's a near-zero percent chance he'd support Clinton or Biden over Trump in either of those elections.
They'll certainly have learnt a lot from Israel in that respect.
If Israel learned from them and creatively used all means available to them to kill every human in Gaza that they could reach, this conflict would have been definitively resolved years ago and the accusations of genocide would actually be true.
But if y'all keep spuriously accusing Israel of committing genocide when they're not, and Israel is "doing the time" anyway, they might just decide to actually "do the crime". As I said, it would certainly resolve the conflict.
So good work! Keep it up! The more you repeat the lie, the more likely you are to turn it into truth.
If anything is to be learnt, it is that individuals should be judged as individuals, or at least that individuals should not be judged by the worst actions of a group that they may (only appear to) be a part of.
A good way for "one side" to trivialise or demonise "the other side" would be to seed "the other side" with extremist messaging.
It's insane how universities are so chill when students literally call for genocide of Jews.
where exactly have students "literally" called for genocide of jews?
The only people I've heard the "kill them all" mentality blatently to my face so far have been pro israel zionists.
And an even bigger mystery: why are there never conspiracy theories about hamas and the PLA? I mean, hamas is a conspiracy. There's no serious doubt about that. Obviously while there is a problem in Israel, Palestinians aren't behind hamas, unless they get very well paid. Many very bad state actors support Palestinian organizations, going back a loooong time. The PLA was created with the help of the KGB, imagine that. That's not a theory, that's a fact. Iran supports hamas. Qatar supports hamas. I mean, for hamas there's no doubt. It very much is a conspiracy, against Israel, against Jews (the KGB are the authors of "the protocols of the elders of zion" and the source of the whole Jews wanting to massacre the world theory) and against "the west" in general. China, massacres muslims and "reeducates" them in China, with hamas support btw, and supports hamas ... Do you think the KGB wants to support palestinians? Or muslims? Do you think China does? Do you think Iran wants to support Sunni religious nutcases? How do they treat those in Iran?
A lot of shady stuff happens in the region. This is one of them and certainly something to be aware of.
> Do you think the KGB wants to support palestinians? Or muslims? Do you think China does? Do you think Iran wants to support Sunni religious nutcases? How do they treat those in Iran?
Why is it that every pro Israel comment is full of unrelated questions? My answer to all of these is: I don't care in this context.
In other words, you're antisemitic. You don't care of a great many states that they have very bad intentions towards everyone, including Palestinians, you only care for conspiracy theories that say Jews do this too.
For example, is Palestine its own country? Is Hamas is its rightful government? Does that extend to the West Bank or only in Gaza? Palestinians seem to say that Palestine is its own country, Israelis say that Palestinians are not a part of Israel - so how can it be an apartheid state if BOTH sides say they aren't part of the same country at all?
Is Israel committing a genocide? Well, what does a genocide look like? Israel is still distributing food in Gaza, to this day. I don't think it would look like this, but at the same time, there are terrorists on both sides (Itamar ben-Gvir being the most prominent on the Israeli side, in my opinion).
There are more issues and questions and uncertainty around the problems in Israel, Palestine, the Levant as a whole, Iran's involvement and so on.
Even worse, for most Israelis (who are 70% of Arab descent), the country of Israel no longer existing could mean a real genocide for the Israel side! (A counter-genocide?) Regardless, if this issue were easy to solve, it would have been solved already.
Honestly, the situation seems to complicated to boil down to two "simple" questions and I admire that you can have such an "obvious" outlook, but the more I look at Israel and the Middle East (and read, and research), the more questions I have.
As for Palestine being its own country, it clearly isn't. Palestinians live on land claimed by Israel and recognized by pretty much every country in the world. But what if it was? Then Israel is illegally occupying it. Is that better? Why does this matter? Does one make the treatment of Gazans (in particular) more acceptable?
> Even worse, for most Israelis (who are 70% of Arab descent), the country of Israel no longer existing could mean a real genocide for the Israel side!
You can't use a theoretical future genocide to justify a current actual genocide. Also, it's ahistorical. Did this happen when apartheid South Africa ended? What about slavery? No, what actually happened was the former oppressors continued to commit violence against the previously oppressed.
[1]: https://legal.un.org/avl/ha/cspca/cspca.html
[2]: https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/...
[3]: https://decolonizepalestine.com/myth/all-israelis-are-equal/
[4]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-...
That situation has changed for the worse in recent years, and the world should step in, if it can. How the world should step in is not obvious - especially if the thorny history of the region is considered.
Finally, on the "current vs future 'genocides'" - dismissing Israel's legitimate security concerns would be as wrong as dismissing Israel's obvious warcrimes, in my opinion. I can't, in good conscience, advocate for action that would replace one genocide with another and it's important to me to consider my actions and words in that light. You may think differently, but maybe you value human life and morality differently than I do.
It's obvious you've made up your mind, but I don't think you've convinced anyone who hasn't already made up their mind, nor have you addressed, what I believe, are very valid questions about the conflict.
Israel is constitutionally an ethnostate. If there is an existing population, there is literally no way to establish an ethnostate without genocide - either through killing or displacement.
Which is obviously why "Free Palestine" marchers regularly show their solidarity with the Germans genocided by Poland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_German...
Free Danzig! Down with the settler colonialist genocidal state of Poland!!1
I find the level of denial disturbing. It's not like Hamas has always ruled over Gaza, they stayed in power by force.
Why do people struggle to acknowledge political elites on both sides are evil?
Edit: see, you already managed to derail the conversation AND call me an antisemite. Good job.
Yes, the point was that you're only willing to discuss what Israel does wrong, and a conspiracy theory at that (yes, there's a core of truth. Yes, Israel protected Palestinian organizations from the PLA, including hamas. Dozens of them. No, Netanyahu did not arm hamas). How Israel can be blamed for everything. No other comments allowed!
The point is that when it comes to conspiracies, Palestinian organizations are supported clandestinely by foreign state actors with insincere and very bad motives (a hidden agenda if you will). Now THAT is a conspiracy. An actual, real, bona fide conspiracy. And with all the traditional horrible actors that you cannot in a million years imagine wanting to help anyone but themselves: Russia, China, the Qatarese royal family, Iran, ... None of them remotely care about the fate of sunni muslim nutcases like hamas, in fact most of these actors want to physically harm them. From massacring them (that's what Iran does), "reeducate" them, massacre them AND force them to fight wars ... that is what Palestinian supporters do to people they have control over that are similar to Palestinians. That is what this thread is supposed to be about. Why are these actors causing the Israel-Palestine issue?
You see the problem here? The worst possible thing that could happen to Palestinians, by far, is that they would achieve anything at all. That would cause their "supporters" to do to them what they always do. If Iran militarily controlled Palestine we would just hear "the military moved" (that's how the BBC reported it) and there was nobody left alive after prayers in 15 mosques, like Iran did in Zahedan and surroundings.
The rest is the messy middle around which negotiation is required for any form of minimal co-existence.
[1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/07/israel-opt-is...
This is why we should just move on to EVs and stop getting involved at all in the Middle East. I see no morally right way of engaging with either side. Both positions seem to end in “let one side genocide the other side.”
Wait, you mean the same Hamas that Israel knowingly funded, the same one Netanyahu bragged about funding?
[0]
"For years Netanyah propped up Hamas. Now it has blown up in our face."
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
[1]
"Netanyahu admits funding Hamas with $35m monthly Qatari cash."
https://dailytelegraph.co.nz/news/netanyahu-admits-funding-h...
Netanyahu is a hack, a war monger, all sorts of bad, but Palestinians continued support for Hamas and seeing large scale cross border kidnapping/murder as a “police issue”, it’s hard for me to feel sympathy.
So I bought an EV and that’s the end of it.
It is the same reasoning Americans used for their war against the Apaches.
THAT gets old. Really old.
According to wikipedia, there have been 80K people killed in Gaza, 80% are civilians, 30% are children.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war
> it is a very weird way from Israel's point of view to make what you call genocide.
It's not me who calls that a genocide. That's becoming the consensus on how it's being called outside of Israel.
If you're committed to hasbara, at least don't make it obvious. When you call people an antisemite, you undermine your own credibility and fall off of Paul Grahams hierarchy of disagreement.
Cool. So now you know not to respond when people point out how Israel supported Hamas to divide Palestinians.
I guess we learned something in the end after all.
Have you ever stopped to think _why_ they might continue to support Hamas? The Israeli government (and many citizens) continue to take their land. Force them out of their homes. Treat them worse than animals. They can kill 70k people and face almost zero consequences internationally. They've got the backing of a superpower. If you were treated like that I'm sure you would plead for calm, peace, and love. If people are treated inhumanly on mass scale they will revolt because they feel like they have no other option.
People in the Westbank seem to mostly support Fatah, not Hamas.
I do generally agree though that the strength of Hamas was fueled by the dire situation of the population in Gaza and Israel's actions (before Oct 2023).
That must not mean that one should stand by the side of mass murderers. You can be against Israel's actions and for the Palestine people and still condemn Hamas' actions, and every sane person should.
They came into power and murdered their own people to consolidate their power. They are a terror organization. It's disturbing to me that many (not meaning you in particular) fail to understand that.
The problem is that this is so ambiguous it took me a minute to work out who you meant. The mass murderers you're referring to have murdered many fewer people than the other side. They have done some heinous things but they're only a 'terror organisation' because their crimes aren't sanctioned by a state. A state which has also reportedly done many heinous things. My point being, if Israel were not so supported by the West I think we would look at both sides of this conflict with disgust.
That is a you problem, but the first step to improvement is acknowledgement, so kudos. An improved ability for sympathy is encouraged.
The most likely best future is when Western support is predicated on making decent concessions to the Palestinians. I'm not in the position to say what they are at the moment but more autonomy for the Palestinian state proposed in Oslo would be a good start.
How many Jews would be allowed to live in the southern levante if Hamas could choose?
So yes, there has always been a difference in capability and in intend. Under the criminal Netanjahu and the current extremist Government the difference has started to blur, though and Oct 7 worked as a catalyst. It feels like Hamas' mass murdering and kidnapping was a full success regarding their goals.
But I understand that Israeli soldiers need justification to shoot at children and raise houses- just as Germans needed justification for their genocide.
Don’t get me wrong, Israel is not the good guy here, and Hamas is just taking advantage of their short fuse. Both sides are insane, which is why I think it’s better for us to just sit it out, the only thing we can do is make it worse.
For the people in the southern levante to live in peace, Hamas must be overcome as well as Netanjahu and his clique.
I have read some poll results from years ago and don't have deeper knowledge of the topic, just saying one would be to provide real evidence.
And that's only talking about Gaza. Since you said "Palestine" it should be mentioned that Hamas had not been able to dominate in the Westbank so far, so I don't think what you wrote is accurate.