Lots to unpack, let’s hit the big ones. Do any means justify peace? Is mass murder of entire countries okay because it would result in less overall friction afterward? How long does peace need to last after for it to make it worth it?
Displacement. Is it fair to the people who have lived in a country for generations to leave because of other’s actions? Moreso, many of them currently /want/ to leave (really really bad) but can’t, what should they do? And also, how is that fair to neighboring countries, they’re just required to take in refugees because Israel wants more land? (What if there weren’t neighboring countries?)
Finally, (please educate me), are universities very invested in Syrian companies/industries? That’s what the current protests are about, divestment from Israel. Are you required to care about all atrocities in order to care for one? What line marks which bad things in the world protesters should inclusively be knowledgeable about?
I’d argue that if Israel is attempting mass murder, they’re absolute shit at it. Sure they’ve killed a couple of tens of thousand Palestinians, but there’s something like 5 million of them, they’re having babies faster than Israel is killing people.
As for Displacement, most Palestinians haven’t lived there for generations, a lot of the current population comes from immigrants/internal migration from the surrounding region during the British Occupation, and also from the wars (Egypt owned Gaza for 20 years after the british left) The population of Palestine has grown so fast in the last 30 years that the median age is 19.6 (https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/state-of-palestine-population/#:~:text=The population density in the,2%2C311 people per mi2).&text=The%20median%20age%20in%20the%20State%20of%20Palestine%20is%2019.6%20years.)
How is it fair to neighboring countries? You mean the ones that invaded Israel because they weren’t happy with the UN drawn borders after the wars? The ones that occupied those territories and brought people in? Most of the people are THEIR people to begin with.
If there weren’t neighboring countries, Palestinians wouldn’t exist. They would have been removed entirely 70 years ago without the invasion by those arab countries.
Most universities aren’t heavily invested in Israeli anything… Israel only accounts for something like 40 Billion in total foreign direct investment, while Canada, the US, Mexico are each measured in Trillions of dollars. Unless a specific university went out of their way to pick up an Israeli-attached portfolio, it likely accounts for less than 1% of their total investments.
Here’s a quote from the encampment people at my local university with their divestment demands: the university leases space to a marine company that has in the past helped produce equipment for Israel, the university has $4.3 million invested in Blackrock (a global asset management company) that in turn invests part of its funds in companies like Lockheed and Boeing which have relations with Israel, and the university has 250k invested in Scotiabank, which is in turn an investor in a single Israeli weapons company. The total endowment for this university is over 500 million dollars, so less than 1% is invested in companies that are themselves only partially invested in Israeli-attached companies.
If a fraction of 1% is enough to cause an encampment, then yes, there’s likely some Syria-attached companies in the mix there too and nobody gives a shit about that (and it’s been actively killing more people per year than Israel for more than a decade)
How long will that rate of death last when they’re also causing mass famine while controlling the borders? You know starvation can cause number of deaths across a population to skyrocket, right?
Lots to unpack, let’s hit the big ones. Do any means justify peace? Is mass murder of entire countries okay because it would result in less overall friction afterward? How long does peace need to last after for it to make it worth it?
Displacement. Is it fair to the people who have lived in a country for generations to leave because of other’s actions? Moreso, many of them currently /want/ to leave (really really bad) but can’t, what should they do? And also, how is that fair to neighboring countries, they’re just required to take in refugees because Israel wants more land? (What if there weren’t neighboring countries?)
Finally, (please educate me), are universities very invested in Syrian companies/industries? That’s what the current protests are about, divestment from Israel. Are you required to care about all atrocities in order to care for one? What line marks which bad things in the world protesters should inclusively be knowledgeable about?
I’d argue that if Israel is attempting mass murder, they’re absolute shit at it. Sure they’ve killed a couple of tens of thousand Palestinians, but there’s something like 5 million of them, they’re having babies faster than Israel is killing people.
As for Displacement, most Palestinians haven’t lived there for generations, a lot of the current population comes from immigrants/internal migration from the surrounding region during the British Occupation, and also from the wars (Egypt owned Gaza for 20 years after the british left) The population of Palestine has grown so fast in the last 30 years that the median age is 19.6 (https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/state-of-palestine-population/#:~:text=The population density in the,2%2C311 people per mi2).&text=The%20median%20age%20in%20the%20State%20of%20Palestine%20is%2019.6%20years.)
How is it fair to neighboring countries? You mean the ones that invaded Israel because they weren’t happy with the UN drawn borders after the wars? The ones that occupied those territories and brought people in? Most of the people are THEIR people to begin with.
If there weren’t neighboring countries, Palestinians wouldn’t exist. They would have been removed entirely 70 years ago without the invasion by those arab countries.
Most universities aren’t heavily invested in Israeli anything… Israel only accounts for something like 40 Billion in total foreign direct investment, while Canada, the US, Mexico are each measured in Trillions of dollars. Unless a specific university went out of their way to pick up an Israeli-attached portfolio, it likely accounts for less than 1% of their total investments.
Here’s a quote from the encampment people at my local university with their divestment demands: the university leases space to a marine company that has in the past helped produce equipment for Israel, the university has $4.3 million invested in Blackrock (a global asset management company) that in turn invests part of its funds in companies like Lockheed and Boeing which have relations with Israel, and the university has 250k invested in Scotiabank, which is in turn an investor in a single Israeli weapons company. The total endowment for this university is over 500 million dollars, so less than 1% is invested in companies that are themselves only partially invested in Israeli-attached companies.
If a fraction of 1% is enough to cause an encampment, then yes, there’s likely some Syria-attached companies in the mix there too and nobody gives a shit about that (and it’s been actively killing more people per year than Israel for more than a decade)
How long will that rate of death last when they’re also causing mass famine while controlling the borders? You know starvation can cause number of deaths across a population to skyrocket, right?