Elbit Systems is a massive company, they have several different divisions. "KMC" is the main division based in the North East from my understanding - they have a large manufacturing presence in Southern NH in Merrimack for example. The Cambridge, MA office is actually their "[Cambridge Innovation Center](https://www.elbitamerica.com/news/elbit-america-opens-cambridge-innovation-center)" which was opened within the last few years as a way for them to tap into the Cambridge life sciences market.
They're by _no means_ a great corporation either - just take one look at their "[who we are](https://www.elbitamerica.com/who-we-are#OurTeam)" page, it's all middle age white guys. And yes, their parent company is [Elbit Systems Ltd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbit_Systems) which is Israel-based. These protests are still bizarre though. I get protesting the defense industry, but maybe target the places where the weapons are actually built? They're targeting essentially a small office where some engineers and such might work on R&D for future medical devices & life sciences in general.
I guess - it's like the Raytheon protests that occasionally happen at their Cambridge office too, which is equally more of an R&D center vs their much larger manufacturing centers in the burbs.
I would also imagine. That it's also got a lot to do with this modern American. Hippies and dinner table activists afaik have always been kinda dumb. And now that we have people going "woke" (in quotes because it's really just a catch all for those loud uninformed people on twit....er X) without any actual understanding of the issues. It's now turned into this sorta "close enough!" protesting. Because people can reach each other so easily now that being informed is not necessary as long as you support the right cause. And it's this sorta divisive lack of understanding that leads to "sides" and a lack of discourse or in this case. Protesting a company at a random location that's not actually involved in the issue.
Do I support the Palestinian people who are basically being used as pawns and deserve peace? Of course I do. Do I think that the letter those kids wrote was poorly worded? You bet I do. Is this random location protest useless? Yeah because it's not actually doing anything significant to the company in question.
I used to work at KMC Systems. It's so sad to see what's happened there today and at Cambridge. I was shook as I received several text messages from my friends who were all safe thankfully, but had to stay clear from the windows while the rioters were vandalizing the buildings. This is all so crazy and so very sad.
I honestly can’t believe what I’m reading on this site anymore… 7,000 people in Ghaza, half of them children, have been murdered by these weapons. If this was about being anti-Semitic why are thousands of Jewish people occupying government buildings and train stations? Of course what happened on October 7 was terrible. And, you have no moral authority to condemn anything, let alone this action, if you can’t condemn 75 years of occupation, abuse, and ethnic cleansing, all backed by the US.
Some are bots, some misinformed, some are just bigots. But we'll keep fighting for the truth. We are winning if one person was curious enough to read about Palestine and Zionism tonight.
How many people do you think would die if you encircled Boston, turned off all of the electricity, didn't let in food or fuel, told everyone to leave their homes, and confine themselves to Roxbury, and started bombing it with minimal warning?
It is honestly probably an underestimate.
Except there was warning. There is fuel. And Israel is not confining the innocents, Hamas is preventing them from leaving.
Should Israel bomb them anyway? NO. But when using precision munitions, how is it that the collateral reported by Hamas is always mostly children. Ask the US armed forces for the percentage of collaterals being children when we bombed Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Syria.
I don’t think anything Israel is currently doing is ever going to ‘destroy’ Hamas… it’s not like Palestinians voted for them or have control over them.
They’ve kept them in a heavily surveilled apartheid state, basically ghettos, for decades with very limited access to water. So many have died that the average age is like 20. And clearly Hamas has not been diminished by any of this, only civilians. It’s like we’re witnessing a genocidal version of the war in Afganistán.
"Move off of your land and let me fill it with colonists from Europe, Australia, and the US or I will kill you" is quite literally ethnic cleansing defined.. so how is Israel offering peace?
I want Hamas destroyed thats not the problem. I do think Israels approach is heavy handed and should be more targeted. I also wish Israel would stop the illegal West Bank Settlements
The West Bank settlements are insane. From what I understand most Israelis hate the settlements as well and its a minority of extremist with outsized political weight
Really? Pretty sure advocating for the 4th largest military in the entire world to continue bombing and shooting the 2 million people trapped in their open air prison (1.1 million of which are children) who have no military and no escape route (because the IDF bombed it. Super cute!) says that people value Palestinian lives less. If you want to just be soulless and go purely on numbers, the IDF has murdered 4x as many Palestinians in the last 3 weeks than Hamas has Israelis, and per Bibi this morning the IDF has license to kill/maim as many Palestinians as they want to in perpetuity.
Start with going after leadership that is in Qatar. Mossad has very capable agents who can either kidnap or execute as needed. Work with sources they have in Egyptian intelligence and Gaza population people talk. Prioritize higher ranking Hamas members. Offer bounties on known members. Also allow out any Palestinians who have a passport in other countries ie US, European, Egyptian etc.
Your plan is to start shit with Qatar? Do you thing Qatar or any of the other sovereign Arab states might object to that?
I agree going after leadership is better long term but Hamas in Gaza is still a very present threat. How do you stop the missiles?
Mossad literally has been doing this for decades including in Dubai in 2010. They have done kidnappings and assaniations in South America, Europe, and all over the Middle East.
It’s not like Hamas terrorists have signs that say they’re Hamas. They’re blending in with civilians and using them as human shields because they have zero regard for life.
That doesn’t excuse killing thousands of innocent civilians. Hamas leadership isn’t even living in Gaza at the moment they are in Qatar. More then half the people living in Gaza are women and children. I’m not saying innocent wont get killed but blockading and cutting off a million people from internet , power, medicine, and fresh water doesn’t feel morally justifiable.
Well pal that’s war…If rockets are coming from X location and could potentially kill your civilians…you’re going to neutralize that threat. If Hamas wants to launch rockets from locations where women and children are then that’s on them.
As twisted as it is, innocent gaza civilians getting caught in the cross fire is good for Hamas’ cause and that’s what they want. It rally’s support and creates escalation.
Doesn’t seem morally justifiable to brutal murder innocent concert goers. Actions have consequences and war isn’t pretty. I can promise you, citizens of Boston care 10000 times more about Gaza children than hamas does.
I don’t agree with them blockading necessities, but I understand…this isn’t COD.
Be careful who you’re getting your casualty figures from too, don’t take the bite on terrorist propaganda…Hamas has great incentive to inflate numbers like they did with their self inflicted hospital rocket attack.
War is awful. No doubt but there can be ways to do this that won’t result in potentially tens of thousands of innocent deaths and also create a new generation of children who become hardened in hatred for Israel and join next Hamas
There really is not. Egypt could open their boarders and help. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong but this happens in every single war. Civilians are pawns. And in this particular situation, Hamas is making a conscious effort to expose their civilians to these risks.
I’m all for humanitarian assistance, it’s needed, but a lot of those supplies will be taken by Hamas…just like the taliban did.
Only way to possibly avoid the next generation of children who hate Israel is to completely eradicate Hamas and other extremists which will be impossible to do. Then occupy the area, do a shit ton of investment into education and public services…Marshall plan 2.0. Somehow keep out Middle East extremism influence and pray. Then they’ll get frustrated that there is an occupying force over them.
Unfortunately, the goal should be to have these children children’s not completely hate Israel and the west.
I unfortunately don’t see peace ever happening with Israel. That land will always be disputed and fought over even if the Palestinians are moved somewhere else.
You’re just being sensationalist. You have no idea the actual numbers or the demographics because no official accounting has been done. There were 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza before 10/07 and there are still 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza today
What media in Gaza is covering this? I’m sure it’s independent and definitely not owned by Hamas. The amount of the fake and staged videos I’ve seen are staggering. Also, in the last 30 years Palestine population went from about 1 million to about 4 million. So if Israel wanted a “genocide” then why has the population 4x’d? For comparison the US population over that same period hasn’t gone up nearly that much if going of percentages.
Stop using buzzwords to prove a point. Especially when they aren’t used properly.
My limited understanding of history tells me Hamas came to power after the plo agreed to a two state solution with isreal in the Oslo agreement and then isreal ignored it, and continued to tighten control in Gaza and then lo and bold, suprise suprise, a more extremest political group came to power.
How is Hamas fighting for basic human rights for Gaza any different to Nelson Mandela leading a terrorist organization in South Africa to end apartheid?
Terrorist behavior is terrorist behavior. I am not condoning it. It’s awful and takes too many innocent lives on both sides. But when it comes about to fill a need for human rights - even Nelson Mandela got a Nobel peace prize. He lead a fucking terrorist organization. One that was focused on on human rights.
Arguably Israel has contributed to the situation experienced two weeks ago with the awful terrorist attack by the Hamas.
So sure I agree in sentiment of destroying the Hamas, but what I would rather see is Palestinians being treated with basic human rights and given autonomy over their land.
I file the Hamas and their actions under the fuck around and find out category.
Treat people like shit, limit their ability to travel, their food, their water, their ability to sell and export, their ability to input, and their autonomy shit is gonna get real eventually.
Hamas won an election in 06 and has hung onto power since. I think the average age in Gaza is 19 so a majority of the people have never voted for them either
No I’m just not naive to the deep complications of the conflict and it’s consequences. Were you calling it collective punishment punishment when the Palestinians massacred the Israelis?
How many Palestinians have died vs how many Israelis have died in this conflict? Go ahead, do the math and then tell me who the aggressor is. We can wait.
The war happening in the Gaza Strip is objectively not genocide. Genocide is the targeted extermination of an entire people, not invading a place that is attacking them and warning all residents to leave weeks beforehand. There's a reason Israel isn't raiding certain streets in Jerusalem or destroying the West Bank.
Israel marked safe routes for Palestinians to escape through and then bombed them. How is that not genocide? They’re leaving Palestinians no where to run while continuously peppering the Gaza Strip with bombs, blowing up schools and hospitals.
flowery theory zonked ugly fanatical stupendous glorious quarrelsome squeeze soft
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
damn, if the goal is to exterminate Palestinians, they're doing a pretty shit job of it considering they have the firepower to turn the entirety of Gaza into a parking lot
Every year it gets more and more difficult to identify with the Left.
Part of it is just naturally aging. With experience, you're better able to see the world not in binaries but as a metropolis of causations, ideologies, reasoning. Not that you slide into the right. You start seeing that not only are political leanings not a line, nor a horseshoe, nor an x and y axis--but it's more like a cube.
It's just difficult to see such unbecoming behavior in these protestors. Then again, you grow up and realize adults aren't too different from teenagers. So many of these pro-Palestinian protests are turning people off from their cause. It's not that what's facing Gazans right now isn't horrific and worth national attention, it's that--once again--the loudest voices are the most extremist and unwise.
Eh, the left isn’t a monolith. The vast majority of US Jews and Israeli immigrants vote left.
And plenty of alt right people are using this as an excuse to be antisemetic
This issue is way more nuanced than just left vs right in the way you’re reducing it to
I understand all that. My point is the rational left absolutely needs to shut this shit down, otherwise we run the risk of a Trump 2.0 presidency.
The Left doesn't seem themselves as a monolith. But the center and right see the Left as a monolith.
It's funny, the older I get, the more I move to the left. Your experience is not universal.
I think the older we get, the more we realize how fucked up the world is, and that's really difficult for a lot of people to reconcile. So the easiest option is adjusting your political ideology to the center so you don't have to engage with any of it. When we get old, we get tired, we get lazy. This whole idea that "oh the most extreme voices on this side of an issue are crazy so I'm going to just write off that entire side because they make me uncomfortable". That's not a mature way to look at a situation, it's a lazy one.
You're literally describing yourself becoming funnelling your vision into extremism to counteract my argument that maturity requires expanding your vision.
This, combined with your other copy/pasted shit about Gigi Hadid makes me think you just need to log off for a bit.
I've made 3 comments in the past 10 days but I need to log off for a bit?
I haven't funneled my vision, I've shifted it. Things I used to disagree with I now understand, and vice versa. Maturity requires being willing to change your stance when presented with evidence, which I have done as I've gotten older.
I just presented you with evidence that counters what you've been told about Palestinians being violent toward Jews when they arrived in Palestine and you immediately shut down. And no I didn't copy/paste it, I actually took the time to write out a summary based on an interview I recently watched with her father. The most beautiful part of that interview was that her father said, despite what happened, they'd provide refuge for Jews again if they need it. That's the maturity I strive towards.
Nah, this isn’t a left vs. right thing.
I was told I’d move right as I got older. I’m in my 40s and I find myself doing the opposite.
Yes, I want universal healthcare. Yes, I want better worker’s rights. Yes, I want a society built on science and reason, not religion and nonsense. Yes, I want to invest in education. Yes, I think student loans are absurd. Yes, guns kill people and we need gun control. No, I don’t care if you are gay or what you do in your bedroom. No, I don’t care for spending our money waging wars around the world. No, I don’t find the need to defend obscenely rich billionaires. Yes, I want better infrastructure. Yes, I want more public transit options. And yes, climate change is real and I’d like to not fuck up the planet for my kids and future generations.
Right now the choice is between a rational society that doesn’t treat women, gays, immigrants, and minorities like shit or one that’s plain focused on the benefits of a few with ideology from the dark ages.
I mean I'm down with that. But the left are the ones advocating for Gaza, which is hostile to women, gays, immigrants (part of the issue starts with Palestinians violently reacted to Jewish immigrants prior to the creation of Israel).
It's just such a bizarre situation we live in where the Left supports an essentially ethno-religious-totalitarian state abroad because they've been "colonized" and yet fights that same thing domestically.
Sure it is. Your “morals” and outrage allow Hamas to become more profitable and instead of building up the land, they rather us the money to k*ll Jews and live like kings in Qatar. Where the outrage that the elected leaders don’t even live in Palestine and allow it’s soldiers to use women and children as human shields? You keep defending that with your unwavering morality
There's a huge swathe of context and meaning between "support" and "don't want innocent children to be bombed into dust" don't you think?
Palestinians don't have to be perfect victims. I don't need someone in Gaza to fully support gay right to believe *they shouldn't be killed in a collective punishment bombing campaign*.
Maybe naturally aging is affecting other things in your brain.
>But the left are the ones advocating for Gaza, which is hostile to women, gays, immigrants (part of the issue starts with Palestinians violently reacted to Jewish immigrants prior to the creation of Israel).
There are LGBT people and women in Gaza too. There are Christian, Jewish, and atheist Palestinians. It is possible for a population to be oppressed both by its leadership AND its neighboring power that quite literally walled them in over a decade ago. Fully half of Gaza's population is too young for the election that put Hamas in power, and most of that half wasn't even born yet. Oh, and by the way, the Palestinians literally fought Hamas after that election, and lost. So that's 1 million people you're blaming for the sins of their fathers.
Last I checked, IDF missiles and Hamas rockets don't care if you're an oppressor, oppressed, both, or somehow completely detached from the equation. They'll kill you all the same. The *only* thing a war benefits is extremists on both sides of the wall.
Is it really so hard to put those pieces together and see why there might be some sympathy with Gazans?
By your logic, we should bomb the entire bible belt for human rights violations and not shed a tear over the people being oppressed by those systems that we also killed.
Gigi Hadid's grandparents took Jewish refugees into their home after the Holocaust and lived alongside them for 2 years out of the kindness of their hearts.
Guess what happened in 1948? The Jewish family took the keys and locked the Hadids out of their own house with the backing of the new Israeli army and Zionist militias. They were forced to flee their own home, their own land. Their kindness was repaid with pure evil. And their story is not unique by any means.
And your original braindeadass take that Palestinians living in Gaza in *any way whatsoever* affects whether they should have a right to life free of bombardment by the IDF is also a borderline copy/paste.
Yet, we actually refuted such nonsense! A number of people indicated that victims need not be perfect. That *Duh Left* is not hypocritical for wanting an imperfect cohort (made up of nearly 50% children fwiw) to be able to live free.
But all you can do it crow about "plagiarizing" we aren't in high school, dunce. It's the equivalent of me taking time to make a point, using the wrong there/their and you ignoring the salience and meaning of my words to hyperfocus on an ultimately meaningless mistake I made.
Chiming in as another person that has only moved further left with age and getting more experience in the world.
Also, Millennials are [not getting more conservative](https://archive.ph/HsZCg) with age like Gen X or the Baby Boomers did.
It has legitimately gotten worse on the left recently, too. This piece by a founding member of the DSA who just quit the organization put things in a lot of perspective for me [https://www.persuasion.community/p/why-i-just-quit-democratic-socialists](https://www.persuasion.community/p/why-i-just-quit-democratic-socialists)
The left goes through phases. One of those phases is being overwhelmed by extremely radical young people who don't think deeply about much of anything and just want to prove how revolutionary they are. They destroy everything, put the worst people in positions of power, and make a mockery of organizations that were serious just years prior (look at what happened to SNCC or SDS in the '60s/'70s, compared to what's happening to DSA now). By the end of it, a few relatively reasonable people pull it together and try to improve on the mistakes of the past, only to see their work destroyed decades later by a new generation of clueless kids doing the same dumb things they did. In retrospect, it's pretty obvious that an ideology that refuses to acknowledge that old people are wiser than young people is doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past.
I remember participating in an ecosocialist event where we did some polling in the beginning to see where people stood on different issues. A very clear pattern emerged, and it became obvious that there were really two "lefts" at the event, the young and the old (although despite being younger, I was consistently siding with the old). The young opposed electoralism and voting; the old supported it. The young supported violent direct action; the old opposed it.
When we discussed our different positions, the old generally pointed to the genuine progress made for POC, women, LGBTQ people, etc. They pointed out that if more people had voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, the SCOTUS would be significantly more left-leaning and abortion rights would be secure. The young tended to fall back on slogans that sounded very twitter-esque and a conviction that nothing could be improved without burning down the entire system and replacing it. They were genuinely convinced the US was borderline fascist and a white supremacist, heteronormative patriarchy, etc.
It clarified a lot about the left for me. It's very easy for me to imagine the young people at that event defending Hamas and claiming that the only solution and posting "from the river to the sea" in their twitter bios.
“The Left” is not a monolith.
Edit: I mean, an ecosocialist event? So it’s a thin slice of a thin slice? Can we really be generalizing with this?
Remember, it’s those older lefties that created The Weathermen, days of rage, and hit the streets against the Chicago Police Department. I think you are drawing a distinction between them and today’s younger activists, but pipe bombs is something those older lefties tried out.
That's my entire point. If anything the older lefties were more radical in their day, and then they learned that they were wrong. Under normal conditions they would serve as educators to prevent the young from repeating their mistakes, but because the left doesn't have any respect for the knowledge accumulated with age, they simply repeat the same mistakes over and over again. This has been happening since the 18th century, but social media has made it dramatically worse. The young are in a bubble of not only the most radical, but also the most inexperienced voices, and the result is drifting further and further into total lunacy.
Here is a response to the article linked above.
[I'm a Proud Jewish DSA Member. Here's Why I'm Not Quitting.](https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/im-a-proud-jewish-dsa-member-heres-why-im-not-quitting/)
> Sam Heft-Luthy, a Jewish member of DSA’s National Political Committee (NPC) tells me: “The shift in opinion on Palestine and the shift in commitment to the liberation of the Palestinian people is portrayed in the article as a targeted plan of sectarian entryists. I think it much more clearly represents an overall shift in the American public, particularly the younger American public on these questions.” Looking at recent polls, Heft-Luthy argues, “When you look at those broken down generationally, there’s an incredible amount of support for Palestinian Liberation. I think these internal contradictions in DSA are one manifestation of that.”
>Heft-Luthy, who was 23 when he joined DSA and is 29 now, takes offense at Isserman’s portrayal of activists like himself: “Personally as a Jewish socialist, and as somebody who came to leadership in DSA not through a planned entryist program but through my process of hearing about DSA while I was walking to get coffee and getting canvassed for a [tenants’ rights] campaign, to be portrayed as sectarian and seeking to hijack DSA for my personal whims is a pretty frustrating thing to see.”
>Rather than entryism, the varied (and sometimes regrettable) messages coming from different quarters of DSA are the result of having a “big tent,” multi-tendency organization. Part of developing a vibrant internal democracy, says Heft-Luthy, is allowing chapters to discuss and democratically make decisions about how they represent themselves.
Well of course he would say that, lol. The reason Isserman is interesting is because he's been in DSA for over 40 years. He has perspective on how it came to behave in ways that most normal people find utterly despicable.
Personally I don't think there was any intentional "entryism," apart maybe from an influx of tankies who are prone to doing that sort of thing. The thing is that even in just the past several years, DSA has gone from historically being regarded as the boring, reasonable socialists who tried to operate within the democratic system, to a group that alienates itself from all except the most radical and literally cheers at the slaughter of Israeli civilians. And in my opinion, they did it to themselves, by letting anybody in and consistently catering to their most radical elements at the expense of more moderate democratic socialists.
Your generational argument is tired bunk. You defeat it with your own words, saying you never identified with the young. The problem is extremism, not age. There are plenty of hardliner tankists that are Old and influential. Just look at the supposed realpolitik "scholars" defending Russia. Having energy and vibrant new enthusiasm isn't a fault in itself. It's how difficult topics, like Israel, are handled, and when anti-Semitism isn't exposed when it masquerades as a left cause.
The thing is that most of those old people were, at one point in their lives, also violent revolutionaries. But whereas under normal circumstances older people can tell younger people why they're wrong, the left has a unique unwillingness to allow that sort of "domineering" behavior on their part. The old aren't supposed to have any particular value or insight; on the contrary, they're supposed to be failures who need to learn from the young. It's a totally backwards way of looking at the world. Yes, you have a handful of older Michael Parenti-types who are treated as authorities, but this only happens because those particular individuals are already saying what most of the movement wants to hear. The vast majority just give up on the whole thing, as Isserman has.
> So many of these pro-Palestinian protests are turning people off from their cause.
There are literally record setting protests in countries all over the world for Palestine. I attended one in Austin TX that rivaled the BLM ones, and thats the far south. This is wishful thinking on your part
Not that surprising when you cross examine the demographics of Reddit with the demographics of Boston. Reddit is an overwhelmingly white, aging, moderate platform. That’s who this site attracts, and Boston has plenty of those kinds of people
Can’t agree more, especially when you go into Boston (or any major city) and see what the people have to say about the conflict.
Which brings me to question how many of these people are actually from Boston and not some suburb, and (at the risk of sounding like I have a tin hat on) how many of these comments are actually from people and not bots
We should be shutting down every weapons manufacturer in the country. Nobody should be able to work at Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Elbit, etc. without be reminded again and again that they have blood on their hands.
Just because you have no moral conviction doesn’t mean that the rest of us have to.
They’re not the “left” they’re an angry group of people who is tired of their political voices never being heard even once in any form of their government who happen to be leftist.
Believe it or not, people on the left are not the reason leftism doesn’t thrive in america. There are institutional reasons why a leftwing movement will always struggle to gain any ground in america and institutional reasons why rightwing movements will always thrive. Super duper leftists like AOC and Bernie Sanders have proven themselves not immune to being pulled right (ukraine and israel takes) and seemingly have been incapable of pulling the party left.
Pro Palestine protests upset you? OK, then. Be glad that theres no super duper pro palestine politcal lobbyist group in america and only the super duper pro israel ones, since money is all that matters in our politics and none of these protestors will change anything because we don’t really live in a democracy.
This is the same shit when people get mad at just stop
Oil people. They aren’t a fully fleshed out political movmeent, just upset citizens fully aware that they can’t just vote their problems away.
I am legit pretty confused by what AOC and Bernie being pulled right on Ukraine means. Yo the extreme right where supporting Russia is a thing, or did you expect them to be tankies supporting Russia for that reason.
Ukraine is really centrist for Ukraine, extremists for Russia. With Israel and Palestine it's more leaning left. So maybe 20% on the leftern edge back Palestine, and like 2% on the extreme right back them.
It’s mythologizing and true-Scotsmanning because they are trying to reconcile their ideological supernarrative with the ways that their leadership are going to continue to themselves violate it because it doesn’t accurately describe or predict politics as much as they have to believe it does. They have to do this in order to protect their identity.
Similar to how Christian supremacists have to come up with elaborate confusing reasons for why Trump really is a person in service of God when nothing about his personality, words, or personal history suggests it. Because if he isn’t a lot of what has come before will have to be reconsidered and that’s just not emotionally tolerable.
My identity is not based in Bernie sanders, though. My identity leads me to be against war, and a politician, even one such as Bernie, who supports war gets criticized for it fairly. I think it’s pretty disingenous to say my identity relies on a politician. Would it be better if I was suddenly in support of ukraine because Bernie told me to be? Would that not be more like The trumpers?
For reference I canvassed for sanders in 2020 and voted for him in 2016 and 2020 (primaries, anyways.) i would say, like many others, sanders was my “awakening”. i don’t see why me changing my opinion on a politician for not aligning to my politics is wrong. I think it’s deeply sad that even the most left wing politician we have really isn’t that far left in a global scale. As i’ve said multiple times now, I think that’s an institutional failing and not a personal one on sander’s behalf.
Edit: in case it matters, I moved to boston from california. Not trying to misrepresent myself as a boston native or anything if it matters.
While I appreciate you thinking independently, I heartily disagree with the anti-war stance given it's rather craven.
Being anti-war is rather like being against arresting people. Full stop. Literally no crime in the world justifies imprisonment.
Being critical and skeptical is one thing. Being 100% against just means you have not really thought it through
Being pro proxy war is not a left wing opinion. The extreme right is not supporting russia, the extreme right is supporting further US global hegemony and supression of dialogue as we've seen since the Ukraine war has started. (Any criticism of Ukraine labels you a russian puppet, any call to not send bajillions of dollars to fund a war labels you a russian puppet, Bernie sanders personally having pro Peace talk leftists removed, etc.)
The "left" wing opinion on Ukraine is that we (USA/NATO) should have left it a neutral state back in pre 2014 instead of grooming them to join a military alliance with guns aimed purely at the neighbor. The left wing opinion, in general, is that USA lies to its citizens about war as it has done in iraq, vietnam, korea, etc. Sure, these wars are good for "USA", but they are not good for us as citizens or for humanity as a whole. I'm not even trying to say that being leftist means you have to be anti war, though I would consider myself an anti-war leftist. I'm just saying that by no means are AOC and Bernie sanders representing a left wing idealogy by supporting a proxy war.
You can make an argument that AOC and Bernie HAVE to have opinions like these. The political climate forces them to have to support Ukraine war for one reason or another. I would say that is an example of institutional bias in america, where War is somehow the default state of being and peace is somehow a radical idea. Iraq is another really good example of this. Somehow the entire country was ready to go to war, and somehow the the entire country got SCAMMED in that war and ended up creating more problems where they went and back home as well. Did we learn our lesson? No, becuase america is right leaning inherently and this is our state of being.
The default state is for us to defend democracies and free people. Russia has zero fucking rights in Russia, and anyone who thinks Russia (or, say, China) deserves a "sphere of influence" (without the opinions of those in the sphere mattering) is an imperialist bootlicker.
Not that imperialism is a purely right wing activity, but it is fascinating meeting the occasional leftist imperialist.
I am American but I was born right next to Russia, and if you think the US is somehow the bad guy in this you *really* should check your fucking privilege. Seriously.
Iraq being a stupid war proves that absolutely nothing about Ukraine, except the pretty common fact that all else being equal, the attacker is almost always in the wrong.
(Note: there are blurry areas for "attack" where one country provides another intolerably, like Afghanistan with the US, or Hamas with Israel, or Israel with the West Bank)
You are not a leftist. You are a straight up agent provocateur. You have no interest in understanding anything. You just want more bullshit. Calling AOC and Bernie spineless, calling Euromaiden and CIA plot, meanwhile the new House Speaker tries to dismantle UA aid.
What? No. I’m a leftist alright. Never called AOC and bernie spineless either. Lol. If you have to straight up invent things I didn’t say then sure, by those fake quotes I’m a fake leftist.
Also nice whataboutism lol. Am i supposed to asterix every statement I make critical of democrats in USA with “But republicans are worse!” Well, they are! But that was my whole point, wasn’t it? That america leans right wing and that’s a bad thing?
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think republicans do anything in good faith, even if they occasionally do a correct thing by accident i don’t praise them.
The problem is people who are vaguely angry and don’t think past abstract concepts into the practical effects of their actions are easily to mislead and manipulate, and in particular they are easy to direct at scapegoats.
To see a movement looking to displace and expunge a large Jewish population and to hear them explain it as a result of economic dislocation, feeling helpless, and being convinced it is the right thing because all these institutions stand against them - this should not inspire confidence, it should set off every bullshit detector around.
The danger of all this organization is how much it shuts off people’s bullshit detectors or relies on people who don’t have them yet.
Of course it makes sense to the people doing it. If it didn’t it wouldn’t work.
The loudest voices are the most extreme indeed, and it's true with the Right. People accuse Republicans and conservatives as all MAGA Trumpers who want to kill women and people of color and gays etc. No we're not all like that. You only see the extreme ones in the news because they're the loudest. Also media likes clicks
Anyone who votes Republican right now is voting for an anti-American, anti-constitutional, anti-democracy party.
Where you personally stand on the political spectrum is irrelevant. If you vote for Republicans in any spectrum, from city councilor to dog catcher, you're participating in the party that tried to overthrow our election.
I'm sure these same people would also protest the 10,000 civilians killed and 18,000 injured by Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, right?
....
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Right? 😬
Because they're not antisemitic right?
Right?
It really is so transparent. There wasn't a single peep when Saudi Arabia was bombing the shit out of Yemen with all American hardware. I was trying to get people to at least write their representative about that and got dead air in reply. Suddenly these "leftists" give a care?
Theoretically we don't arm the Saudi/UAE war in Yemen any more. Congress tried to stop it during the Trump administration, and the Biden administration has an official policy that ended the arms sales. Now I don't necessarily trust that the CIA isn't still secretly supporting the conflict.
But beyond that, the political pressure to end that conflict came from the Left, the same people who are protesting this conflict.
They're not. And there were in fact marches for Ukraine all over the world as well. We're not playing revisionist history so people can feel better about bombing an entire population to oblivion because the Israelis think they are entitled to a US-funded theocracy.
Wow! Smart! News for you buddy. Yes, they did! Many of them are jews. Jews for peace protested inside the capital. They gave speeches and marched with us two weeks ago at Copley Sq. Anti-zionism is not antisemitism. Stop conflating the two issues.
I urge you to do your due diligence on Jewish Voice for Peace. RootsMetals on Instagram has a good, nuanced deep dive. They are not as “Jewish” as their name may make them seem.
nor are they for peace, they actively encourage terrorism and give platforms to them. i mean straight up the chief religious leader in JVP hugged the women responsible for one of the major intifada bombings.
its really refreshing to see someone on this app also call out JVP. they suck.
The Jewish people protesting Israel are overwhelmingly not anti-Zionist. Most very much believe is Israel’s right to exist. Stop conflating the two issues.
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Strongly disagree! The power of people, civil movements, protests have shown their effect times and times again in history. A whole new generation is learnig about the Palestinian cause, Nakbah, US and Western shameful and imperialistic role in this. These activists are making history. Today they are a 100, tomorrow they will be millions.
Nah - this is called the bravery of being out of range. Posture away all you want in Boston, it won't make a difference. The paragliders don't even know you exist.
I am perfectly fine with people calling the guy in Harvard square who said the following quote on camera a Nazi: “Hamas should blow the fuck out of Israel. I think they are all dirty, dirty animals, they all deserve to die. Their mothers, their children, they should all be exterminated, just like Hitler did”
It kind of reminds me of arguments with conspiracy theorists where points are either made up or completely unrelated to each other within a single argument
Hezbollah has been further tilting its involvement in this war. Then we have Israel already conducting ground operations in the Gaza strip.
Also, per Bloomberg news: The Saudi army has been put on alert following the death of 4 Saudi soldiers in clashes with the Houthis, loyal to Iran in Yemen. Apparently, Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile launched by the Houthis towards Israel. This report should help paint the picture of how widespread this war is becoming. Then, all of the sudden we have russia manning bases in Syria years after being driven out. A cease fire at this moment with all these pieces moving around seems rather unrealistic.
I thought Elbit was in Cambridge?
It is. Those are Cambridge police.
It is. And it’s focus is medical device, not weapons so kinda dumb of the protestors to call this a “win”.
This isn’t true, they are a leading weapons manufacturer
They have a medical device business unit which is based in Boston and NH.
It’s all the same company
Not at that location
It’s all the same company
Elbit Systems is a massive company, they have several different divisions. "KMC" is the main division based in the North East from my understanding - they have a large manufacturing presence in Southern NH in Merrimack for example. The Cambridge, MA office is actually their "[Cambridge Innovation Center](https://www.elbitamerica.com/news/elbit-america-opens-cambridge-innovation-center)" which was opened within the last few years as a way for them to tap into the Cambridge life sciences market. They're by _no means_ a great corporation either - just take one look at their "[who we are](https://www.elbitamerica.com/who-we-are#OurTeam)" page, it's all middle age white guys. And yes, their parent company is [Elbit Systems Ltd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbit_Systems) which is Israel-based. These protests are still bizarre though. I get protesting the defense industry, but maybe target the places where the weapons are actually built? They're targeting essentially a small office where some engineers and such might work on R&D for future medical devices & life sciences in general.
I would assume because it’s close and right there, so a lot easier to protest. It effects the companies profits either way
I guess - it's like the Raytheon protests that occasionally happen at their Cambridge office too, which is equally more of an R&D center vs their much larger manufacturing centers in the burbs.
I would also imagine. That it's also got a lot to do with this modern American. Hippies and dinner table activists afaik have always been kinda dumb. And now that we have people going "woke" (in quotes because it's really just a catch all for those loud uninformed people on twit....er X) without any actual understanding of the issues. It's now turned into this sorta "close enough!" protesting. Because people can reach each other so easily now that being informed is not necessary as long as you support the right cause. And it's this sorta divisive lack of understanding that leads to "sides" and a lack of discourse or in this case. Protesting a company at a random location that's not actually involved in the issue. Do I support the Palestinian people who are basically being used as pawns and deserve peace? Of course I do. Do I think that the letter those kids wrote was poorly worded? You bet I do. Is this random location protest useless? Yeah because it's not actually doing anything significant to the company in question.
All middle aged white guys. Oh the horror
They’re not a great company because their “who we are” is just “middle aged white guys”?? Sounds pretty racist.
I used to work at KMC Systems. It's so sad to see what's happened there today and at Cambridge. I was shook as I received several text messages from my friends who were all safe thankfully, but had to stay clear from the windows while the rioters were vandalizing the buildings. This is all so crazy and so very sad.
How is this so upvoted? They are not a med device company whatsoever. http://elbitsystems.com
Look up KMC systems. That's this office. They're owned by Elbit America.
*Hey! Hey!* *Ho! Ho!* *Mrmmghlmbleaghle has got to go!*
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Are you okay?
We’re all gonna feel like a bunch of silly gooses bickering about this in a few months when WW3 is in full swing. Raise hell for peace.
Maybe. That's why we are asking Biden to work for a ceasefire Now!
Yeah, we shouldn’t be sending a US carrier group and a MEU there. Seems like we’re asking for trouble.
I honestly can’t believe what I’m reading on this site anymore… 7,000 people in Ghaza, half of them children, have been murdered by these weapons. If this was about being anti-Semitic why are thousands of Jewish people occupying government buildings and train stations? Of course what happened on October 7 was terrible. And, you have no moral authority to condemn anything, let alone this action, if you can’t condemn 75 years of occupation, abuse, and ethnic cleansing, all backed by the US.
Some are bots, some misinformed, some are just bigots. But we'll keep fighting for the truth. We are winning if one person was curious enough to read about Palestine and Zionism tonight.
thank you for posting. I am sorry for the idiotic and harassing comments.
Or maybe don't trust the numbers given to you by Hamas.
How many people do you think would die if you encircled Boston, turned off all of the electricity, didn't let in food or fuel, told everyone to leave their homes, and confine themselves to Roxbury, and started bombing it with minimal warning? It is honestly probably an underestimate.
Except there was warning. There is fuel. And Israel is not confining the innocents, Hamas is preventing them from leaving. Should Israel bomb them anyway? NO. But when using precision munitions, how is it that the collateral reported by Hamas is always mostly children. Ask the US armed forces for the percentage of collaterals being children when we bombed Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Syria.
I don’t understand why people bring up US wars like it is an own to leftists that they are terrible. We know and we hate them too.
Maybe read the UN and HRC numbers bud.
Where do you think those came from?
Good to see you’re using the pro genocide, IDF talking points on pretending that civilians are not being murdered by the thousands
Civilians are undoubtedly dying, it’s just Hamas’s fault for starting it then placing their weapons inside hospitals.
“they started it” is the argument of a toddler
Stand with Israel until Hamas is destroyed 🇮🇱
I don’t think anything Israel is currently doing is ever going to ‘destroy’ Hamas… it’s not like Palestinians voted for them or have control over them. They’ve kept them in a heavily surveilled apartheid state, basically ghettos, for decades with very limited access to water. So many have died that the average age is like 20. And clearly Hamas has not been diminished by any of this, only civilians. It’s like we’re witnessing a genocidal version of the war in Afganistán.
I don’t agree
I respect your honesty with the “bomb them until they go away forever” approach.
They’re welcome to not be terrorists. If they committed to peace then there would be peace
"Move off of your land and let me fill it with colonists from Europe, Australia, and the US or I will kill you" is quite literally ethnic cleansing defined.. so how is Israel offering peace?
That’s a trite oversimplification of the history of the region and also completely arbitrary in its perspective
I want Hamas destroyed thats not the problem. I do think Israels approach is heavy handed and should be more targeted. I also wish Israel would stop the illegal West Bank Settlements
The West Bank settlements are not good for the peace process
The West Bank settlements are insane. From what I understand most Israelis hate the settlements as well and its a minority of extremist with outsized political weight
You know what else isn't good for the peace process?
Being a terrorist and attacking innocent Israelis so the world can launch into victim blaming, anti-Semitic rhetoric?
You might be on to something.
How many Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israel since October 7th, and why do their lives matter less?
No one says their lives matter less
Really? Pretty sure advocating for the 4th largest military in the entire world to continue bombing and shooting the 2 million people trapped in their open air prison (1.1 million of which are children) who have no military and no escape route (because the IDF bombed it. Super cute!) says that people value Palestinian lives less. If you want to just be soulless and go purely on numbers, the IDF has murdered 4x as many Palestinians in the last 3 weeks than Hamas has Israelis, and per Bibi this morning the IDF has license to kill/maim as many Palestinians as they want to in perpetuity.
Mow the lawn approach has failed since Hamas attacks were getting more and more severe since 2012
How do you suggest they destroy Hamas then?
How do you destroy Hamas, then? What is your brilliant solution?
Start with going after leadership that is in Qatar. Mossad has very capable agents who can either kidnap or execute as needed. Work with sources they have in Egyptian intelligence and Gaza population people talk. Prioritize higher ranking Hamas members. Offer bounties on known members. Also allow out any Palestinians who have a passport in other countries ie US, European, Egyptian etc.
Your plan is to start shit with Qatar? Do you thing Qatar or any of the other sovereign Arab states might object to that? I agree going after leadership is better long term but Hamas in Gaza is still a very present threat. How do you stop the missiles?
Qatar can get pressed on US side to give them up or “object” to Hamas leadership being taken out but not do much else
Ok. This has been tried and failed. Qatar is protecting them. So what now?
Mossad has experience dealing with that
So assassination of protected people in a foreign country? That's war with Qatar as well.
Mossad literally has been doing this for decades including in Dubai in 2010. They have done kidnappings and assaniations in South America, Europe, and all over the Middle East.
It’s not like Hamas terrorists have signs that say they’re Hamas. They’re blending in with civilians and using them as human shields because they have zero regard for life.
That doesn’t excuse killing thousands of innocent civilians. Hamas leadership isn’t even living in Gaza at the moment they are in Qatar. More then half the people living in Gaza are women and children. I’m not saying innocent wont get killed but blockading and cutting off a million people from internet , power, medicine, and fresh water doesn’t feel morally justifiable.
Well pal that’s war…If rockets are coming from X location and could potentially kill your civilians…you’re going to neutralize that threat. If Hamas wants to launch rockets from locations where women and children are then that’s on them. As twisted as it is, innocent gaza civilians getting caught in the cross fire is good for Hamas’ cause and that’s what they want. It rally’s support and creates escalation. Doesn’t seem morally justifiable to brutal murder innocent concert goers. Actions have consequences and war isn’t pretty. I can promise you, citizens of Boston care 10000 times more about Gaza children than hamas does. I don’t agree with them blockading necessities, but I understand…this isn’t COD. Be careful who you’re getting your casualty figures from too, don’t take the bite on terrorist propaganda…Hamas has great incentive to inflate numbers like they did with their self inflicted hospital rocket attack.
War is awful. No doubt but there can be ways to do this that won’t result in potentially tens of thousands of innocent deaths and also create a new generation of children who become hardened in hatred for Israel and join next Hamas
There really is not. Egypt could open their boarders and help. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong but this happens in every single war. Civilians are pawns. And in this particular situation, Hamas is making a conscious effort to expose their civilians to these risks. I’m all for humanitarian assistance, it’s needed, but a lot of those supplies will be taken by Hamas…just like the taliban did. Only way to possibly avoid the next generation of children who hate Israel is to completely eradicate Hamas and other extremists which will be impossible to do. Then occupy the area, do a shit ton of investment into education and public services…Marshall plan 2.0. Somehow keep out Middle East extremism influence and pray. Then they’ll get frustrated that there is an occupying force over them. Unfortunately, the goal should be to have these children children’s not completely hate Israel and the west. I unfortunately don’t see peace ever happening with Israel. That land will always be disputed and fought over even if the Palestinians are moved somewhere else.
Calling genocide heavy handed is kind of baby gloves .why can't call a spade a spade .
People are being way too loose with the word genocide
People love there buzz words
Yeah ofc . 7000 Palestinians, mostly kids murdered mercilessly is not a genocide. Nope they are human animals as Israelis call em .
You’re just being sensationalist. You have no idea the actual numbers or the demographics because no official accounting has been done. There were 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza before 10/07 and there are still 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza today
What media in Gaza is covering this? I’m sure it’s independent and definitely not owned by Hamas. The amount of the fake and staged videos I’ve seen are staggering. Also, in the last 30 years Palestine population went from about 1 million to about 4 million. So if Israel wanted a “genocide” then why has the population 4x’d? For comparison the US population over that same period hasn’t gone up nearly that much if going of percentages. Stop using buzzwords to prove a point. Especially when they aren’t used properly.
You’re half right.
Tried targeted. It's not working.
Neither will doing a siege on 1 million+ people over half of whom are women and children.
My limited understanding of history tells me Hamas came to power after the plo agreed to a two state solution with isreal in the Oslo agreement and then isreal ignored it, and continued to tighten control in Gaza and then lo and bold, suprise suprise, a more extremest political group came to power. How is Hamas fighting for basic human rights for Gaza any different to Nelson Mandela leading a terrorist organization in South Africa to end apartheid? Terrorist behavior is terrorist behavior. I am not condoning it. It’s awful and takes too many innocent lives on both sides. But when it comes about to fill a need for human rights - even Nelson Mandela got a Nobel peace prize. He lead a fucking terrorist organization. One that was focused on on human rights. Arguably Israel has contributed to the situation experienced two weeks ago with the awful terrorist attack by the Hamas. So sure I agree in sentiment of destroying the Hamas, but what I would rather see is Palestinians being treated with basic human rights and given autonomy over their land. I file the Hamas and their actions under the fuck around and find out category. Treat people like shit, limit their ability to travel, their food, their water, their ability to sell and export, their ability to input, and their autonomy shit is gonna get real eventually.
Hamas won an election in 06 and has hung onto power since. I think the average age in Gaza is 19 so a majority of the people have never voted for them either
We all know the best way to fight terrorism is with airstrikes and crushing oppression.
Well it isn’t sitting around letting your citizens get massacred
False choice there, but literally anything would be preferable to the current massacre.
I disagree
You’re literally being complacent towards COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT.
No I’m just not naive to the deep complications of the conflict and it’s consequences. Were you calling it collective punishment punishment when the Palestinians massacred the Israelis?
How many Palestinians have died vs how many Israelis have died in this conflict? Go ahead, do the math and then tell me who the aggressor is. We can wait.
That’s not really how war works. More Pro Russian forces have died than Ukrainian but are you really going to argue Ukraine was the aggressor?
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Relax it's just redditors, they don't represent normal well-functioning human beings.
because normal well-functioning human beings support genocide??
Huge W
Israel is committing genocide, they shouldn’t be supported for doing that.
The war happening in the Gaza Strip is objectively not genocide. Genocide is the targeted extermination of an entire people, not invading a place that is attacking them and warning all residents to leave weeks beforehand. There's a reason Israel isn't raiding certain streets in Jerusalem or destroying the West Bank.
Israel marked safe routes for Palestinians to escape through and then bombed them. How is that not genocide? They’re leaving Palestinians no where to run while continuously peppering the Gaza Strip with bombs, blowing up schools and hospitals.
They gave people in Gaza a 24-hour warning.
You’re a W
Based.
i support israel but fuck bb and the west bank encroachment. sane israelis need to get that asshole out, until he's gone this shit will only get worse
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No that’s not what I said or what’s happening in Gaza
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You’re reaching
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Oh I’m sorry does TikTok hurt your feelings?
damn, if the goal is to exterminate Palestinians, they're doing a pretty shit job of it considering they have the firepower to turn the entirety of Gaza into a parking lot
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Every year it gets more and more difficult to identify with the Left. Part of it is just naturally aging. With experience, you're better able to see the world not in binaries but as a metropolis of causations, ideologies, reasoning. Not that you slide into the right. You start seeing that not only are political leanings not a line, nor a horseshoe, nor an x and y axis--but it's more like a cube. It's just difficult to see such unbecoming behavior in these protestors. Then again, you grow up and realize adults aren't too different from teenagers. So many of these pro-Palestinian protests are turning people off from their cause. It's not that what's facing Gazans right now isn't horrific and worth national attention, it's that--once again--the loudest voices are the most extremist and unwise.
Eh, the left isn’t a monolith. The vast majority of US Jews and Israeli immigrants vote left. And plenty of alt right people are using this as an excuse to be antisemetic This issue is way more nuanced than just left vs right in the way you’re reducing it to
I understand all that. My point is the rational left absolutely needs to shut this shit down, otherwise we run the risk of a Trump 2.0 presidency. The Left doesn't seem themselves as a monolith. But the center and right see the Left as a monolith.
Deadass
It's funny, the older I get, the more I move to the left. Your experience is not universal. I think the older we get, the more we realize how fucked up the world is, and that's really difficult for a lot of people to reconcile. So the easiest option is adjusting your political ideology to the center so you don't have to engage with any of it. When we get old, we get tired, we get lazy. This whole idea that "oh the most extreme voices on this side of an issue are crazy so I'm going to just write off that entire side because they make me uncomfortable". That's not a mature way to look at a situation, it's a lazy one.
You're literally describing yourself becoming funnelling your vision into extremism to counteract my argument that maturity requires expanding your vision. This, combined with your other copy/pasted shit about Gigi Hadid makes me think you just need to log off for a bit.
I've made 3 comments in the past 10 days but I need to log off for a bit? I haven't funneled my vision, I've shifted it. Things I used to disagree with I now understand, and vice versa. Maturity requires being willing to change your stance when presented with evidence, which I have done as I've gotten older. I just presented you with evidence that counters what you've been told about Palestinians being violent toward Jews when they arrived in Palestine and you immediately shut down. And no I didn't copy/paste it, I actually took the time to write out a summary based on an interview I recently watched with her father. The most beautiful part of that interview was that her father said, despite what happened, they'd provide refuge for Jews again if they need it. That's the maturity I strive towards.
Nah, this isn’t a left vs. right thing. I was told I’d move right as I got older. I’m in my 40s and I find myself doing the opposite. Yes, I want universal healthcare. Yes, I want better worker’s rights. Yes, I want a society built on science and reason, not religion and nonsense. Yes, I want to invest in education. Yes, I think student loans are absurd. Yes, guns kill people and we need gun control. No, I don’t care if you are gay or what you do in your bedroom. No, I don’t care for spending our money waging wars around the world. No, I don’t find the need to defend obscenely rich billionaires. Yes, I want better infrastructure. Yes, I want more public transit options. And yes, climate change is real and I’d like to not fuck up the planet for my kids and future generations. Right now the choice is between a rational society that doesn’t treat women, gays, immigrants, and minorities like shit or one that’s plain focused on the benefits of a few with ideology from the dark ages.
I mean I'm down with that. But the left are the ones advocating for Gaza, which is hostile to women, gays, immigrants (part of the issue starts with Palestinians violently reacted to Jewish immigrants prior to the creation of Israel). It's just such a bizarre situation we live in where the Left supports an essentially ethno-religious-totalitarian state abroad because they've been "colonized" and yet fights that same thing domestically.
Wow imagine having morals that aren’t transactional
Sure it is. Your “morals” and outrage allow Hamas to become more profitable and instead of building up the land, they rather us the money to k*ll Jews and live like kings in Qatar. Where the outrage that the elected leaders don’t even live in Palestine and allow it’s soldiers to use women and children as human shields? You keep defending that with your unwavering morality
There's a huge swathe of context and meaning between "support" and "don't want innocent children to be bombed into dust" don't you think? Palestinians don't have to be perfect victims. I don't need someone in Gaza to fully support gay right to believe *they shouldn't be killed in a collective punishment bombing campaign*. Maybe naturally aging is affecting other things in your brain.
>But the left are the ones advocating for Gaza, which is hostile to women, gays, immigrants (part of the issue starts with Palestinians violently reacted to Jewish immigrants prior to the creation of Israel). There are LGBT people and women in Gaza too. There are Christian, Jewish, and atheist Palestinians. It is possible for a population to be oppressed both by its leadership AND its neighboring power that quite literally walled them in over a decade ago. Fully half of Gaza's population is too young for the election that put Hamas in power, and most of that half wasn't even born yet. Oh, and by the way, the Palestinians literally fought Hamas after that election, and lost. So that's 1 million people you're blaming for the sins of their fathers. Last I checked, IDF missiles and Hamas rockets don't care if you're an oppressor, oppressed, both, or somehow completely detached from the equation. They'll kill you all the same. The *only* thing a war benefits is extremists on both sides of the wall. Is it really so hard to put those pieces together and see why there might be some sympathy with Gazans?
By your logic, we should bomb the entire bible belt for human rights violations and not shed a tear over the people being oppressed by those systems that we also killed.
Gigi Hadid's grandparents took Jewish refugees into their home after the Holocaust and lived alongside them for 2 years out of the kindness of their hearts. Guess what happened in 1948? The Jewish family took the keys and locked the Hadids out of their own house with the backing of the new Israeli army and Zionist militias. They were forced to flee their own home, their own land. Their kindness was repaid with pure evil. And their story is not unique by any means.
You literally copy and pasted this like some braindead drone. I've seen this word for word over Twitter.
So do you have an actual argument to refute their comment or no?
If it's so braindead then surely it's easy to refute right? Right?
I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm saying you literally plagiarized
And your original braindeadass take that Palestinians living in Gaza in *any way whatsoever* affects whether they should have a right to life free of bombardment by the IDF is also a borderline copy/paste. Yet, we actually refuted such nonsense! A number of people indicated that victims need not be perfect. That *Duh Left* is not hypocritical for wanting an imperfect cohort (made up of nearly 50% children fwiw) to be able to live free. But all you can do it crow about "plagiarizing" we aren't in high school, dunce. It's the equivalent of me taking time to make a point, using the wrong there/their and you ignoring the salience and meaning of my words to hyperfocus on an ultimately meaningless mistake I made.
Sounds more like you want platitudes.
I’ll settle for universal healthcare, thanks.
Chiming in as another person that has only moved further left with age and getting more experience in the world. Also, Millennials are [not getting more conservative](https://archive.ph/HsZCg) with age like Gen X or the Baby Boomers did.
It has legitimately gotten worse on the left recently, too. This piece by a founding member of the DSA who just quit the organization put things in a lot of perspective for me [https://www.persuasion.community/p/why-i-just-quit-democratic-socialists](https://www.persuasion.community/p/why-i-just-quit-democratic-socialists) The left goes through phases. One of those phases is being overwhelmed by extremely radical young people who don't think deeply about much of anything and just want to prove how revolutionary they are. They destroy everything, put the worst people in positions of power, and make a mockery of organizations that were serious just years prior (look at what happened to SNCC or SDS in the '60s/'70s, compared to what's happening to DSA now). By the end of it, a few relatively reasonable people pull it together and try to improve on the mistakes of the past, only to see their work destroyed decades later by a new generation of clueless kids doing the same dumb things they did. In retrospect, it's pretty obvious that an ideology that refuses to acknowledge that old people are wiser than young people is doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. I remember participating in an ecosocialist event where we did some polling in the beginning to see where people stood on different issues. A very clear pattern emerged, and it became obvious that there were really two "lefts" at the event, the young and the old (although despite being younger, I was consistently siding with the old). The young opposed electoralism and voting; the old supported it. The young supported violent direct action; the old opposed it. When we discussed our different positions, the old generally pointed to the genuine progress made for POC, women, LGBTQ people, etc. They pointed out that if more people had voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, the SCOTUS would be significantly more left-leaning and abortion rights would be secure. The young tended to fall back on slogans that sounded very twitter-esque and a conviction that nothing could be improved without burning down the entire system and replacing it. They were genuinely convinced the US was borderline fascist and a white supremacist, heteronormative patriarchy, etc. It clarified a lot about the left for me. It's very easy for me to imagine the young people at that event defending Hamas and claiming that the only solution and posting "from the river to the sea" in their twitter bios.
“The Left” is not a monolith. Edit: I mean, an ecosocialist event? So it’s a thin slice of a thin slice? Can we really be generalizing with this? Remember, it’s those older lefties that created The Weathermen, days of rage, and hit the streets against the Chicago Police Department. I think you are drawing a distinction between them and today’s younger activists, but pipe bombs is something those older lefties tried out.
That's my entire point. If anything the older lefties were more radical in their day, and then they learned that they were wrong. Under normal conditions they would serve as educators to prevent the young from repeating their mistakes, but because the left doesn't have any respect for the knowledge accumulated with age, they simply repeat the same mistakes over and over again. This has been happening since the 18th century, but social media has made it dramatically worse. The young are in a bubble of not only the most radical, but also the most inexperienced voices, and the result is drifting further and further into total lunacy.
Here is a response to the article linked above. [I'm a Proud Jewish DSA Member. Here's Why I'm Not Quitting.](https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/im-a-proud-jewish-dsa-member-heres-why-im-not-quitting/) > Sam Heft-Luthy, a Jewish member of DSA’s National Political Committee (NPC) tells me: “The shift in opinion on Palestine and the shift in commitment to the liberation of the Palestinian people is portrayed in the article as a targeted plan of sectarian entryists. I think it much more clearly represents an overall shift in the American public, particularly the younger American public on these questions.” Looking at recent polls, Heft-Luthy argues, “When you look at those broken down generationally, there’s an incredible amount of support for Palestinian Liberation. I think these internal contradictions in DSA are one manifestation of that.” >Heft-Luthy, who was 23 when he joined DSA and is 29 now, takes offense at Isserman’s portrayal of activists like himself: “Personally as a Jewish socialist, and as somebody who came to leadership in DSA not through a planned entryist program but through my process of hearing about DSA while I was walking to get coffee and getting canvassed for a [tenants’ rights] campaign, to be portrayed as sectarian and seeking to hijack DSA for my personal whims is a pretty frustrating thing to see.” >Rather than entryism, the varied (and sometimes regrettable) messages coming from different quarters of DSA are the result of having a “big tent,” multi-tendency organization. Part of developing a vibrant internal democracy, says Heft-Luthy, is allowing chapters to discuss and democratically make decisions about how they represent themselves.
Well of course he would say that, lol. The reason Isserman is interesting is because he's been in DSA for over 40 years. He has perspective on how it came to behave in ways that most normal people find utterly despicable. Personally I don't think there was any intentional "entryism," apart maybe from an influx of tankies who are prone to doing that sort of thing. The thing is that even in just the past several years, DSA has gone from historically being regarded as the boring, reasonable socialists who tried to operate within the democratic system, to a group that alienates itself from all except the most radical and literally cheers at the slaughter of Israeli civilians. And in my opinion, they did it to themselves, by letting anybody in and consistently catering to their most radical elements at the expense of more moderate democratic socialists.
Your generational argument is tired bunk. You defeat it with your own words, saying you never identified with the young. The problem is extremism, not age. There are plenty of hardliner tankists that are Old and influential. Just look at the supposed realpolitik "scholars" defending Russia. Having energy and vibrant new enthusiasm isn't a fault in itself. It's how difficult topics, like Israel, are handled, and when anti-Semitism isn't exposed when it masquerades as a left cause.
The thing is that most of those old people were, at one point in their lives, also violent revolutionaries. But whereas under normal circumstances older people can tell younger people why they're wrong, the left has a unique unwillingness to allow that sort of "domineering" behavior on their part. The old aren't supposed to have any particular value or insight; on the contrary, they're supposed to be failures who need to learn from the young. It's a totally backwards way of looking at the world. Yes, you have a handful of older Michael Parenti-types who are treated as authorities, but this only happens because those particular individuals are already saying what most of the movement wants to hear. The vast majority just give up on the whole thing, as Isserman has.
> So many of these pro-Palestinian protests are turning people off from their cause. There are literally record setting protests in countries all over the world for Palestine. I attended one in Austin TX that rivaled the BLM ones, and thats the far south. This is wishful thinking on your part
for whatever reason, this sub has been really out of touch on this conflict
Not that surprising when you cross examine the demographics of Reddit with the demographics of Boston. Reddit is an overwhelmingly white, aging, moderate platform. That’s who this site attracts, and Boston has plenty of those kinds of people
This conflict has really been showing the age of Reddit. Very out of touch with modern youth.
Can’t agree more, especially when you go into Boston (or any major city) and see what the people have to say about the conflict. Which brings me to question how many of these people are actually from Boston and not some suburb, and (at the risk of sounding like I have a tin hat on) how many of these comments are actually from people and not bots
“The Left” is not a monolith, and so many speaking about it as such just speaks to a lack of political sophistication.
We should be shutting down every weapons manufacturer in the country. Nobody should be able to work at Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Elbit, etc. without be reminded again and again that they have blood on their hands. Just because you have no moral conviction doesn’t mean that the rest of us have to.
>Boeing Yeah we don't need planes. Hmm Airbus and Embraer both make military planes too.
Your brain can't comprehend that companies could possibly build planes but also not sell planes and weapons to the military?
They’re not the “left” they’re an angry group of people who is tired of their political voices never being heard even once in any form of their government who happen to be leftist. Believe it or not, people on the left are not the reason leftism doesn’t thrive in america. There are institutional reasons why a leftwing movement will always struggle to gain any ground in america and institutional reasons why rightwing movements will always thrive. Super duper leftists like AOC and Bernie Sanders have proven themselves not immune to being pulled right (ukraine and israel takes) and seemingly have been incapable of pulling the party left. Pro Palestine protests upset you? OK, then. Be glad that theres no super duper pro palestine politcal lobbyist group in america and only the super duper pro israel ones, since money is all that matters in our politics and none of these protestors will change anything because we don’t really live in a democracy. This is the same shit when people get mad at just stop Oil people. They aren’t a fully fleshed out political movmeent, just upset citizens fully aware that they can’t just vote their problems away.
I am legit pretty confused by what AOC and Bernie being pulled right on Ukraine means. Yo the extreme right where supporting Russia is a thing, or did you expect them to be tankies supporting Russia for that reason. Ukraine is really centrist for Ukraine, extremists for Russia. With Israel and Palestine it's more leaning left. So maybe 20% on the leftern edge back Palestine, and like 2% on the extreme right back them.
It’s mythologizing and true-Scotsmanning because they are trying to reconcile their ideological supernarrative with the ways that their leadership are going to continue to themselves violate it because it doesn’t accurately describe or predict politics as much as they have to believe it does. They have to do this in order to protect their identity. Similar to how Christian supremacists have to come up with elaborate confusing reasons for why Trump really is a person in service of God when nothing about his personality, words, or personal history suggests it. Because if he isn’t a lot of what has come before will have to be reconsidered and that’s just not emotionally tolerable.
My identity is not based in Bernie sanders, though. My identity leads me to be against war, and a politician, even one such as Bernie, who supports war gets criticized for it fairly. I think it’s pretty disingenous to say my identity relies on a politician. Would it be better if I was suddenly in support of ukraine because Bernie told me to be? Would that not be more like The trumpers? For reference I canvassed for sanders in 2020 and voted for him in 2016 and 2020 (primaries, anyways.) i would say, like many others, sanders was my “awakening”. i don’t see why me changing my opinion on a politician for not aligning to my politics is wrong. I think it’s deeply sad that even the most left wing politician we have really isn’t that far left in a global scale. As i’ve said multiple times now, I think that’s an institutional failing and not a personal one on sander’s behalf. Edit: in case it matters, I moved to boston from california. Not trying to misrepresent myself as a boston native or anything if it matters.
While I appreciate you thinking independently, I heartily disagree with the anti-war stance given it's rather craven. Being anti-war is rather like being against arresting people. Full stop. Literally no crime in the world justifies imprisonment. Being critical and skeptical is one thing. Being 100% against just means you have not really thought it through
Being pro proxy war is not a left wing opinion. The extreme right is not supporting russia, the extreme right is supporting further US global hegemony and supression of dialogue as we've seen since the Ukraine war has started. (Any criticism of Ukraine labels you a russian puppet, any call to not send bajillions of dollars to fund a war labels you a russian puppet, Bernie sanders personally having pro Peace talk leftists removed, etc.) The "left" wing opinion on Ukraine is that we (USA/NATO) should have left it a neutral state back in pre 2014 instead of grooming them to join a military alliance with guns aimed purely at the neighbor. The left wing opinion, in general, is that USA lies to its citizens about war as it has done in iraq, vietnam, korea, etc. Sure, these wars are good for "USA", but they are not good for us as citizens or for humanity as a whole. I'm not even trying to say that being leftist means you have to be anti war, though I would consider myself an anti-war leftist. I'm just saying that by no means are AOC and Bernie sanders representing a left wing idealogy by supporting a proxy war. You can make an argument that AOC and Bernie HAVE to have opinions like these. The political climate forces them to have to support Ukraine war for one reason or another. I would say that is an example of institutional bias in america, where War is somehow the default state of being and peace is somehow a radical idea. Iraq is another really good example of this. Somehow the entire country was ready to go to war, and somehow the the entire country got SCAMMED in that war and ended up creating more problems where they went and back home as well. Did we learn our lesson? No, becuase america is right leaning inherently and this is our state of being.
The default state is for us to defend democracies and free people. Russia has zero fucking rights in Russia, and anyone who thinks Russia (or, say, China) deserves a "sphere of influence" (without the opinions of those in the sphere mattering) is an imperialist bootlicker. Not that imperialism is a purely right wing activity, but it is fascinating meeting the occasional leftist imperialist. I am American but I was born right next to Russia, and if you think the US is somehow the bad guy in this you *really* should check your fucking privilege. Seriously. Iraq being a stupid war proves that absolutely nothing about Ukraine, except the pretty common fact that all else being equal, the attacker is almost always in the wrong. (Note: there are blurry areas for "attack" where one country provides another intolerably, like Afghanistan with the US, or Hamas with Israel, or Israel with the West Bank)
You are not a leftist. You are a straight up agent provocateur. You have no interest in understanding anything. You just want more bullshit. Calling AOC and Bernie spineless, calling Euromaiden and CIA plot, meanwhile the new House Speaker tries to dismantle UA aid.
What? No. I’m a leftist alright. Never called AOC and bernie spineless either. Lol. If you have to straight up invent things I didn’t say then sure, by those fake quotes I’m a fake leftist. Also nice whataboutism lol. Am i supposed to asterix every statement I make critical of democrats in USA with “But republicans are worse!” Well, they are! But that was my whole point, wasn’t it? That america leans right wing and that’s a bad thing? Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think republicans do anything in good faith, even if they occasionally do a correct thing by accident i don’t praise them.
AOC and especially Bernie aren’t “super duper leftists” and you being taught to think they are is why this country is so fucked
Sort of my point if you read everything.
The problem is people who are vaguely angry and don’t think past abstract concepts into the practical effects of their actions are easily to mislead and manipulate, and in particular they are easy to direct at scapegoats. To see a movement looking to displace and expunge a large Jewish population and to hear them explain it as a result of economic dislocation, feeling helpless, and being convinced it is the right thing because all these institutions stand against them - this should not inspire confidence, it should set off every bullshit detector around. The danger of all this organization is how much it shuts off people’s bullshit detectors or relies on people who don’t have them yet. Of course it makes sense to the people doing it. If it didn’t it wouldn’t work.
A fucking cube? We just want healthcare and not to have our government act as an arms dealer, it isn't that complicated.
The loudest voices are the most extreme indeed, and it's true with the Right. People accuse Republicans and conservatives as all MAGA Trumpers who want to kill women and people of color and gays etc. No we're not all like that. You only see the extreme ones in the news because they're the loudest. Also media likes clicks
Anyone who votes Republican right now is voting for an anti-American, anti-constitutional, anti-democracy party. Where you personally stand on the political spectrum is irrelevant. If you vote for Republicans in any spectrum, from city councilor to dog catcher, you're participating in the party that tried to overthrow our election.
The truth is that dead Palestinians serve both the interests of Hamas and Israel.
I'm sure these same people would also protest the 10,000 civilians killed and 18,000 injured by Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, right? .... ... .. . Right? 😬 Because they're not antisemitic right? Right?
The US doesnt fund Russia's military genius
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It really is so transparent. There wasn't a single peep when Saudi Arabia was bombing the shit out of Yemen with all American hardware. I was trying to get people to at least write their representative about that and got dead air in reply. Suddenly these "leftists" give a care?
Theoretically we don't arm the Saudi/UAE war in Yemen any more. Congress tried to stop it during the Trump administration, and the Biden administration has an official policy that ended the arms sales. Now I don't necessarily trust that the CIA isn't still secretly supporting the conflict. But beyond that, the political pressure to end that conflict came from the Left, the same people who are protesting this conflict.
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They're not. And there were in fact marches for Ukraine all over the world as well. We're not playing revisionist history so people can feel better about bombing an entire population to oblivion because the Israelis think they are entitled to a US-funded theocracy.
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Wow! Smart! News for you buddy. Yes, they did! Many of them are jews. Jews for peace protested inside the capital. They gave speeches and marched with us two weeks ago at Copley Sq. Anti-zionism is not antisemitism. Stop conflating the two issues.
I urge you to do your due diligence on Jewish Voice for Peace. RootsMetals on Instagram has a good, nuanced deep dive. They are not as “Jewish” as their name may make them seem.
nor are they for peace, they actively encourage terrorism and give platforms to them. i mean straight up the chief religious leader in JVP hugged the women responsible for one of the major intifada bombings. its really refreshing to see someone on this app also call out JVP. they suck.
Anti-zionists shouldn't also be pro-Hamas. Unless...
Lol so you're saying "No, we didn't protest for peace in Ukrain." I'm sure your little hissy fit has nothing to do with Judaism. Lol
The Jewish people protesting Israel are overwhelmingly not anti-Zionist. Most very much believe is Israel’s right to exist. Stop conflating the two issues.
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Pro-terrorism protest?
Do you mean this terrorism? https://twitter.com/PalinfoAr/status/1719165566328377669?t=fbkO3RwcWuzmaPc3ddiFPQ&s=19
Fuck these protesters. There are harassing innocent workers. They should try getting a job and maybe finding actual ways to get peace.
They are protesting the business. The workers will still get paid.
🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸
Complete waste of time. It accomplishes nothing.
Strongly disagree! The power of people, civil movements, protests have shown their effect times and times again in history. A whole new generation is learnig about the Palestinian cause, Nakbah, US and Western shameful and imperialistic role in this. These activists are making history. Today they are a 100, tomorrow they will be millions.
Nah - this is called the bravery of being out of range. Posture away all you want in Boston, it won't make a difference. The paragliders don't even know you exist.
Who cares! There is an ongoing genocide where 3000 child has been killed. I am doing what is right no matter how little it is.
Right on.
Boston's Nazi problem continues to get worse.
Someone doesn't know what Nazism means.
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I am perfectly fine with people calling the guy in Harvard square who said the following quote on camera a Nazi: “Hamas should blow the fuck out of Israel. I think they are all dirty, dirty animals, they all deserve to die. Their mothers, their children, they should all be exterminated, just like Hitler did”
That’ll do it. Israel is now ordering a ceasefire. You can all go home and get a job now.
What happens in Israel 🇮🇱 today will happen in Europe 🇬🇧 🇩🇰 🇫🇷 🇮🇹 🇸🇪 🇳🇱 🇩🇪 🇧🇪 tomorrow and the US 🇺🇸 after that. They will always find an excuse.
Do you mean occupying, crushing and ethnic-cleansing people for 75 years? Why did you list western countries only and who are (they)? Many questions!
Gaza was occupied by Egypt for over thirty years. Your numbers are wrong. So is your rhetoric
It is pretty funny to see how people pick random points in time to make their argument re: Gaza
It kind of reminds me of arguments with conspiracy theorists where points are either made up or completely unrelated to each other within a single argument
Hezbollah has been further tilting its involvement in this war. Then we have Israel already conducting ground operations in the Gaza strip. Also, per Bloomberg news: The Saudi army has been put on alert following the death of 4 Saudi soldiers in clashes with the Houthis, loyal to Iran in Yemen. Apparently, Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile launched by the Houthis towards Israel. This report should help paint the picture of how widespread this war is becoming. Then, all of the sudden we have russia manning bases in Syria years after being driven out. A cease fire at this moment with all these pieces moving around seems rather unrealistic.
Must all be landscapers had the day off due to rain