Mandrill of course they’ll get angry if an idiot shows up with an Israélien flag to provoke them. Yet they did not invade any buildings or injured or killed anyone.
Encampment on campus for support of Palestine
- Thread starter jalimon
- Start date
A lot of authority is very brittle and insecure.
Their first thought is to "show strength".
Look at McGill's reaction to their protest.
They claimed all kinds of nonsense to justify sending security in that the judge rejected because it was obviously ridiculous.
IIRC, that was the Jewish student's court application for an injunction. Not sure what is happening with McGill now.
It's pretty basic that a property owner can order non owners off his / her / its land. Simply trespass law. So there's no legal barrier to Columbia or UCLA using the cops to clear the encampments.
It's simply a case of at what point individual campuses decide that the presence of the encampment is no longer tolerable. If the campers are simply going to sit quietly in a group for a couple of days and then leave, then no need to clear them.
If the encampments become never-ending sources of harassment, violence and disruption, then the universities can use proportionate force to clear them. We all have our line in the sand and we're going to choose different points to draw it. I am entirely unsympathetic to the Palestinian cause and no doubt that influences me.
I’m not Jewish but have been to Israel on business trips and have seen Christians, Muslims, Hindus, different nationalities all free to hang their flags and what appeared as practice their religion openly. I’ve also been to Muslim nations where i haven’t seen anything else except Islam being practiced.
These protestors don’t have the maturity to know what they stand for or what they’re protesting. They just need a feeling of belonging with their peers and get sucked into these protests. Popular clip of one Columbia student not even knowing what she’s there for and had to ask her friend. Reminds me of how the young were recruited for Maoist China and then just discarded after their use was up.
University was named as an interested party and the administration was pretty clearly on the side of the injunction.
For now things are in a holding pattern.
LeGault wants them thrown out, the Montreal cops have pointed out things are peaceful and no they aren't going in yet.
Sure.
But there is also a long-standing tradition of free speech protest on university grounds.
Going right in with "sic the cops on anyone speaking up" is bad.
Yes.
And there is a huge difference between "we've negotiated in good faith for a while, things aren't going anywhere, we are bringing in the cops" and "WTF these kids suck, crack their skulls on day 1".
The fact is that different universities have reacted differently and gotten different results.
Sometimes, anticipating those different results is part of the protest tactic.
And "proportionate force" is also one of the axes of discussion.
A couple of universities in California have had cops clear the encampments entirely with no violence and no arrests.
Others have degenerated into brawls.
I don't think anyone sane is asking for that, least of all me. It's the point where they've been there for a week, have broken into buildings and are openly fighting with Jewish students that requires a response.
See above. We all realize that university students conventionally have licence to do this sort of trespass, if it's dressed as a "political protest". It's where you draw the line.
Undoubtedly due to a number of different factors.
Why does the West keep allowing these so called "refugees" in to their countries?
Even Middle East countries don't want them.
Even Middle East countries don't want them.
Why?
Because Syria, Lebanon and Jordan let Israel ethnically cleanse Palestinians half a century ago and to this day they are still hosting 5 million Palestinian refugees. What sane country would want to aid Israel in doing that again?
Sure, but that's not the only situation the cops are being called in.
Yes.
A major complaint is that the line is being drawn far too early.
Of course.
