Columbia University has fallen

[Byrd]

So what should Israel's response be to 10/7 the murder, raping, and hostage taking? Let's not forget they are still holding innocent civilians.

Well... I'm not in the Israeli government nor do I have access to what their military capacity is.  However, when they were outraged and mourning, the world mourned with them.  A return strike (as I've said before) on Hamas would have gained them support -- up to a point.

There were 695 people killed outright in the October 7 raid. (French source here: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20...t-7-deaths)

Israeli response resulted in (count is ongoing) has been to kill 32,000 people (https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-eas...024-03-21/ and confirmed by many sources.)

That's FIFTY TIMES the death toll from October 7.

That's not an eye-for-an-eye but rather an-entire-family-for-one-eye (not to mention the complete destruction of roads, cities, towns, infrastructure, animals, etc.)


And that's why the world is outraged.  

You know like those 4 late teens and early 20s women, now why didn't they release them with the rest of the women?

Possibly because Israel hasn't stopped?

Look... I can't answer that.  Nobody but the people who are holding the hostages (and their superiors) can actually answer that.   All we know is that they haven't.

We had today in my hometown promises from the protestors hundreds of 10/7s if not thousands. The response had to be swift, violent and overwhelming, it's all the Middle East understands, hell there are likely to be copycat attempts for years, once Gaza is over.  

I think something got lost there in your typing?  

But... let's stop and look at it from a "boots on the ground" perspective.  Just suppose that you are a Palestinian -- and this is your perspective (copied from Al Jazerra coverage on the war) To create the State of Israel, Zionist forces attacked major Palestinian cities and destroyed some 530 villages. Approximately 13,000 Palestinians were killed in 1948, with more than 750,000 expelled from their homes and becoming refugees – the climax of the Zionist movement’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Today, the refugees and their descendants number more than seven million. Many still languish in refugee camps in neighbouring Arab countries, waiting to return to their homeland. (source https://remix.aljazeera.com/aje/Palestin...alisations)

And today's strikes by Israel killed 22 Palestinians, including 5 children. (source:  https://apnews.com/article/israel-iran-h...f71187cc4e)

Wikipedia says the death toll includes 14,000 children (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel–Hamas_war) killed in the 6 months since October 7.

So there you are, a Palestinian.  Israeli fighters are killing your relatives and some of those are babies and young kids.  Does the killing (and you could call it murder) of people in your area incite you to surrender and agree to terms or does it make you so mad that you want to go in and kill all of them in retaliation?

For most people the answer is "I'm going to find the people who did this and do it to them, too!"

Israel's over-the-top slaughter of people is NOT self-defense and isn't inspiring anyone to surrender (there's an odd belief that bombing people into submission works.)  If it was happening in America, it wouldn't inspire you to surrender... or even negotiate.

Palestinians are humans, just like you.  If you were in a situation where another country was attacking, think about what tactics WOULD make you sit down and negotiate at the negotiating table.  In general, things like access and aid to help you and your country heal and build back (the carrot, so to speak) would get most people moving toward peace -- if you can get the attackers to Just Stop.  In fact, a promise of return to normalcy might get you to shut down the attackers.
 

Completely agree with a 2 state solution, HOWEVER negotiating it while hostages are being held and in the shadow of the 10/7 attacks is complete bullshit. 

Which is why many nations have stepped in to try and broker treaties that involve the exchange of prisoners and safety for aid workers.

. One-half of the protesters are just protesting because they are anti-war the other half is anti-semitic and believes any means necessary.

Do you have any source for that statistic (not a blog, please, nor an op-ed.)

It's a horrible situation and words and diplomacy aren't doing a lot right now.  Israel shows no signs of stopping and neither does Hamas.  It's going to take squeezing Israel with financial sanctions (such as companies withdrawing from them) and stopping sales and shipping of weapons to get them to stop the killings and putting pressure on the allies of Hamas to get them to the table.

Protests do have a useful function -- spurring companies (sources of finance and material goods) to pressure these allies into a course where they will bring both forces to the negotiating table and to stop the killing.  But there will always be troublemakers whose grudges run so deep that they will eagerly attack in order to provoke responses.

---

Yeah, its the 60s and early 70s all over again. Right down to the BLM rioting and looting much like the 60s. I was a kid but I remember it.

It's not just that, but also the fears of WW3. I remember the brochures my father had on the coffee table that advertised bomb shelter plans. The siren tests and the drills. I half expect things like that to start up as what appears to the genuine birth of WW3 progresses. Seems like history truly does repeat and fear is the trigger.

Remember the duck-and-cover drills for atomic bomb attacks?

Good times... good times (kidding, folks.  I'm kidding.)

---

This is not 60s and 70s protests

Network Behind Eruption of Anti-Israel College Campus Protests Revealed in New Report

The NGO Network Orchestrating Antisemitic Incitement on American Campuses

You might want to check the sources of the sources that you quote.  When I looked up the articles, I find that the main sources for your first article is not a standard news source but rather a right-wing source with a mission statement of "end the practice used by certain self-declared 'humanitarian NGOs' of exploiting the label 'universal human rights values' to promote politically and ideologically motivated agendas".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGO_Monitor

So you're not getting an unbiased source there.  You might want to dig a bit in less politically-aligned sources.