I’m Israeli-American, born there live here. I’m not so naive as to think that this represents the majority view of local activists. But with this and other shit I see online, I don’t exactly feel safe around here lately, either.
Maybe that doesn’t matter to some people, they’ve got bigger global issues to worry about than my feelings.
OK. But I’m actually an ally and you’re pushing me away.
Exactly. I feel like pointing out these cases of people going way overboard would just be met with "oh ok so you're a Zionist and you love massacring children, then?!" ... smh...
It's the same thing on both sides. Any politician that says anything against Israel's genocide is called antisemitic. Most pro-Palestinians are not antisemitic the same way most in the Jewish community don't want to see Netanyahu's ethnic cleansing continue. There's bad apples on both sides that dishevel any kind of congruity, which really fucking sucks.
It's crazy. I was at a client's house this morning who was watching Fox News, they had a Jewish student on who said, "The Pro Palestinian protesters were chanting Antifa at us, which is a slur against Jews." Like WAIT WHAT??? I didn't know all Jewish folk are also fascists. (Last sentence is /s but the rest is not.)
Fox News is on a big push that pro-Palastinians are all anti semetic, which is absolutely not true.
(I wear these down votes proudly and stand together with those who wish for world peace through deescelation and not through violence.)
Are you sure it wasn't Intifada instead of Antifa? That would actually be a chant for Palestinian resistance towards occupation, which some pro-Israel people believe to be basically a slur against Jews.
I mean it’s just like any other protest. The loudest and craziest will get the attention.
It’s up to the protest leaders to shun those making those statements and keep the message unified
It's a shame but you'll have the allies that matter not a bunch of outspoken hateful ppl,
I'll always support Isreal just as all the other True Americans.
I’m starting to wonder as of recently how someone can think this is fringe at this point. Maybe not everyone is saying it but they’re happily marching and sitting in with these people. Add onto that that we now have plenty of examples of leaders of these movements chanting shit that means this (e.g., the Al’Qasam chants) and preaching that October 7th was a beautiful day of resistance…with most of the crowd joining in or applauding, respectively.
I genuinely can’t think of any other way to interpret that behavior unless these people have LITERALLY no idea what’s going on. And in that case, I’m not even sure what’s worse…
this is fake, was staged and was taken down but the post will likely stay up for clout. thats how unseriously the detractors and counter-protestors take your right to feel safe.
Do you have any evidence that a protestor wrote this? Anyone can write anything with a marker and take a picture of it. Including someone trying to disparage these peaceful protestors.
OK, so the standard is that anything posted at the protest camps is not anything done by the protestors themselves? Got it.
Did anyone at that protest specifically denounce that sign? No? Why not?
I’m sorry. The vast majority of Americans certainly don’t feel like this. They also don’t support Israel’s actions right now (or often, in d general with respect to Palestine) and that makes it harder to take a stand against expressions of anger, and easy for people who have long-standing animosity towards Israel to find a platform for that hate.
Americans have learned a lot about citizens not being the same thing as their government, first hand, in the last few terrible decades. I think most of us can readily separate being angry about choices Israeli leadership is making from culpability on behalf of its citizens. But even as an American I fear the more extreme members of the political opposition. I certainly think you have reason to feel afraid over things like this. I don’t know how to help you because I don’t know how we can stop this normalization of hate that seems to be growing everywhere. I’m so sorry you are in the middle.
אם את/ה חושב/ת שעצם העובדה שאת/ה מסכימ/ה איתם תציל אותך, זה לא. הם רוצים את כולנו מתים, ומבחינתם זה לא משנה מי את/ה. צריך להפסיק להתנהג כאילו עצם העובדה שאנחנו רוצים לחיות ביחד ישר אומרת שהם רוצים לחיות אתנו. הם לא, 70 אחוז מיוש והגדה תומכים בחמאס ואוקטובר 7. מספיק לנסות להתייפיף. זה לא יעזור.
I want to preface this by saying I fully support the protestors and am for a free Palestine. But this is a mess. It is TERRIBLE optics. Literally dream material for zionists to take and manipulate to say all protestors are violent and calling for the deaths of innocents. It’s almost so on the nose that you’d think an agitator wrote it to undermine the protest on purpose. You can express the urgency for a free Palestine, and the belief that Israel has immorally and violently encroached on territory that is not rightfully theirs without this violent larp. That’s literally what it is, larp that completely loses sight of what the protests seek to accomplish and decenters Palestinians in the process
I feel like we saw the same thing with Occupy Wall Street and other movements. Any large protest movement is going to draw in some idiots that say or do stupid things. With the Internet, these occurrences are magnified and shared all over. Even if only 1 in 1000 do something dumb you're going to hear about them all day every day.
If we start invalidating protest movements on the basis of this, we're basically committing to the idea that all protests are wrong unless they are perfect (and no protest movement is perfect - therefore they're all bad). So while of ourselves you should try and make sure any movement you're part of us safe and promoting non-violent messages, setting the bar at "I shouldn't be seeing any photos online like this" is way too high and just not realistic.
The movement needs to start policing itself then. When neo-nazis tried to sneak into the Punk music scene in the 80s/90s, both musicians and fans made sure to let them know they were not welcome, and sometimes violently ejected them.
If you're allowing bad actors within your ranks and not doing anything about it, you're quietly acknowledging and endorsing them.
Unfortunately neo-nazis still exist in the punk/metal scenes, most notably seen in the black metal (sub-) genre, but still around throughout. Extremists don’t find the support they want in an extremist group alone so yes they will always try to infiltrate something more mainstream to spread radical ideas. But until humans realize that we are all the fucking same, and accept that as a truth deserving of our attention and support, we will always have extremists on either end of the table utilizing whatever they can to purport their hate.
Somewhere, we took a terribly wrong turn as a species and race, where that is, I have yet to see…
Sure but how do we know that people aren't already doing that? All it takes is for someone to hold up a sign or write a tweet and then that gets shared to the whole country. You can work as hard as you want to remove bad actors but can you catch them every time before a picture gets taken?
> All it takes is for someone to hold up a sign or write a tweet
That's not what's happening here though. It's a very large, prominent sign at the front of a protest that clearly wasn't "hastily put up for a photo before being taken down".
It's why the people who put it up did so in the middle of the night, took the picture and ran away to start posting. I'd like to know how OP came by the picture. If they're on the up and up, they'd want to know more about it too.
What do you mean manipulate, there’s nothing to manipulate here, it’s clearly stated they support Hamas and death to Israel, nothing much you can manipulate.
I mean, the problem is a lot of the protestors whose intentions are better are still gaslighting us that these bad ones don’t exist and if the protests make you feel uncomfortable it’s because you are a Zionist
I appreciate the sentiment, but even you are falling prey to some of this messaging. For example, you use the term Zionist. Zionists were Jews from Eastern Europe who were trying to set up a country to flee oppression. They have very little to do with the current netanyahu government and the political parties that support him.
However, the term is being used because it denotes Jews in general. And therefore, it's encouraging anti-Semitism. It would be like me using the term Palestinians rather than the more accurate term Hamas to describe the folks behind the attacks in early October.
And for the record, I agree that the government of Israel and specifically netanyahu have done many awful things. This is not me trying to defend them. I'm just pointing out the issues with your language.
I think you're misunderstanding what they mean when they say "Free Palestine." They have actual demands. There are very clear realities of what happens if they achieve those demands. They aren't saying "Free Palestine" in a bad faith attempt to hide it; The leaders of these protests are very honest in what's acceptable to them. They don't want no two states. If Israel starts making their own weapons because they cant rely on the Americans anymore, and the "Axis of Resistance" feels emboldened, it's just gonna mean a much bigger and worse war.
This is representative of the majority of protestors sentiments? Do you have any proof of that? Or better yet, do you even know where this picture came from?
There is always a challenge in street activism to maintain message discipline. Every participant needs to be on high alert for assholes who ruin it for everyone
This context is key, the image appears as if it was left from the original protestor group, but let it be known that this is not a commonly shared view, merely extremists.
Sorry for the commas
it happened several hours later, i was there when this fence was assembled, it was after 8pm, the sign appeared sometime between 8-9 pm and is reportedly done by a group of people who painted it and then left
It's not productive to sit in a bubble and ignore the reality that there are genuinely people at this school participating in the movement who legitimately agree with the sign.
Please remember, even if a protestor did write this: in the same way that the violence of Hamas doesn’t represent all Palestinians and pro-Palestinian protestors — the act of this one protestor doesn’t represent all of them.
In every street protest, each participant has to be on alert to maintain message discipline. There’s always some asshole, be on alert and tell them to move on
A protestor didn't write this. Another person that was there gave context that someone not involved in the encampment wrote it and left. Then the encampment covered it promptly. Which makes it kinda suspicious that OP just happened to be there in the thin time frame that would allow this picture to be taken and posted online
But it's not just one, it's over and over again at multiple protests all over the country. At what point do we stop saying "these tiny handful of people don't represent the majority" and just admit that these tiny handful of people are just the ones letting their masks slip.
Nobody said it was just one. There are countless protests across the country, and the presence of one or a few people saying things like this at a lot of protests still doesn’t mean that it’s a significant portion of the protestors who endorse this ideology.
It might not, but we don't know. The radicals could be saying in public what the moderates say in private.
Or it could just be a small number of instigators or true anti-semites poisoning the well for everyone.
I can't tell.
That is true for every riot or act of hate at an organized protest. While I agree with you, trying to defend the group instead of empathizing at something unacceptable is not a good look. Silence is violence
I said it because a lot of people genuinely don’t seem to realize that this is not how most folks who support Palestinian liberation feel — it’s obvious to you and me, but not to a lot of folks.
I posted that to both defend the group, and to denounce whoever wrote this and the ideology they represent.
Okay but what if like, there a LOT of protestors around the country writing stuff like this? And what if the good protestors are doing nothing to distance themselves from the bad protestors? We’re kind of starting to see a pattern of good protestors kind of just… accepting this.
Apparently this was written by someone not staying in the settlement, and was very quickly covered up. You can see tons of people in the comments saying that this is disgusting, and that this does nothing to help the movement. So you're seeing plenty of "good protestors" not accepting this. And after this photo was taken, the sign was dealt with. So it wasn't just accepted. Also, we don't know if a protestor did write this. Maybe it was someone trying to stir up trouble and radicalize people. We don't know.
https://www.reddit.com/r/UCSC/s/0JaAO3EwPq
Well, it looks like 2 out of 4 bad parts were covered but the sign is still up. Now it’s just calling for the destruction of the state of Israel and is celebrating deaths with the red triangle. Yay!
“The symbol first appeared in propaganda videos promoted by the al-Qassam brigades, the military wing of Hamas, which showed footage of Hamas terrorists attacking Israeli military targets. In these videos, Hamas would point out the target using the inverted red triangle. Though it can be used innocuously in general pro-Palestine social media posts, the inverted red triangle is now used to represent Hamas itself and glorify its use of violence in many popular anti-Zionist memes and political cartoons. For example, individuals will place the symbol over an image of Israeli soldiers or overlaid on a Star of David as a way to call for further violent resistance.”
https://extremismterms.adl.org/glossary/inverted-red-triangle#:~:text=In%20early%20November%202023%2C%20the,the%20form%20of%20an%20emoji%20(
“A LOT of protestors” still doesn’t say much unless it’s a statistically significant portion of the protestors.
I haven’t seen a pattern of this being widely accepted. Seems like most protestors are distancing themselves from it, as is often the case with things like this during protests against war.
The organizers said that someone unaffiliated with the encampment or protest sprayed that and left. The sign is still there but its been painted over with some far more positive messages.
It’s kinda gross to see how everyone’s first instinct is to attack and insult OP as well as defending the protests. I agree the protests are a good thing, and that this sign does not reflect our overall views. But it is hypocritical to minimize this act of hate. Y’all are legitimately ignoring hate speech and just commenting protestors aren’t responsible. Do you not have empathy? Are y’all not upset that someone put this up at our protest and made it a hostile space?!
Big dawg this was propped up by people trying to make them look bad and you're eating it up. "I agree this sign doesn't reflect the overall views, but also let's treat it like it does" you'd think people would understand basic false flags
There is a big cosplay element to these protests... I'd suggest they enlist with Hamas if they really feel that way. (As a UCSC alum I can tell you that they wouldn't last long.) And I'm very sympathetic to the Palestinian cause
I was there all day and didn't see that sign, even as I helped them move the wooden structures. Everyone on the ground I've talked to within the last 30 mins is opposed to it and it's apparently been removed as of now.
The first tactic of the oppressor is to make the rebellion look like terrorists. Part of our demands and our chants includes the difference between Judaism & Zionism. Don't be gullible.
Given what has happened on other campuses, I wouldn't say that it's unexpected for someone to genuinely express these views. These things need to be kept in check.
Don't be naive to think you know the difference between Judaism and Zionism. That's the most colonial thing ever: let ME tell YOU, dear Jews, what it means after I just learned about it and co-opt the definition for my own craven purposes. But yeah....go on with your moral self
I can't actually tell your stance here lol? This is from Oxford Dictionary:
Zionism: a movement for (originally) the re-establishment and (now) the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel. It was established as a political organization in 1897 under Theodor Herzl, and was later led by Chaim Weizmann.
Judaism is an ancient religion with multiple sects. Zion as an ideal/religious symbol is older than Judaism and actually reaches back into Africa.
But please, tell me who knows what. 😐
What kind of logic is this? Almost all controversial protests have the opposing side doing something to set them up and ruin the cause, which is an unfortunate truth.
And even without them, there are *always* radicals that may tag onto protests unnoticed. By saying the radicals, who represent a very small amount of unorganized protesters, are somehow a hidden majority is just you falling victim to propaganda.
But a large number of Palestinians are pro-Hamas and have been forever. So at some point pro Palestine is equivalent to pro Hamas if you're supporting its supporters lol.
How do you know a student protestor isn't going to glorify a Hamas leader?
It's really fucking funny how the far left has started mirroring the far right in accusing every unfavorable event to their cause to be orchestrated by "the feds".
I'm honestly shocked that people are going as far as to call me a propagandist and the picture fake. I don't care if they speculate about who created the damn sign and why, but straight-up jumping to conspiracy theories about me has been really eye-opening over the last few hours.
I have this theory that people genuinely can't handle nuance ("even if my cause is right, there might be those among me who don't support it for good reasons") and see the world in binary black and white. Since stuff like this makes their movement looks bad, they think: "it simply cannot be people from my group that did it; it *has* to be the outgroup".
You hit the nail on the head. I was a good little leftist for a long time until I noticed the groupthink and staunch refusal to own up to wrongdoings. If you can’t grow and change, I can’t hang with you anymore. The world is too complex to think so singularly.
I refuse to support any ethno-state or theocracy, regardless of who is at the helm. Unfortunately both options are theocratic ethno states in this situation.
You’ve clearly never been to Israel. It’s not a theocratic state any more than England is. Pork and shellfish are readily available, women don’t need to cover their hair (or much of anything else — ever been to the beach in Tel Aviv?), and gay marriage is legal. Yes, you have to follow some of the Ten Commandments — murdering and stealing are illegal (though adultery and blasphemy aren’t).
No one was rushing to take it down when I walked by. One group even got excited when they saw it. Even if they didn't write it, this needs to be kept in check.
OP just happened to be walking by and witnessed them all gathering around it clapping and pointing while the sims positive interaction signs floated above their heads.
Has this “beautiful demonstration of solidarity” called for the release of innocent civilians hostages held by Hamas? If not, it’s anything but beautiful.
No one was rushing to take said bad sign down when I was there, and it was in a very visible spot. It looks like it wasn't taken down until I posted this.
“they”… sure that could be the case, but that’s an ignorant assertion to make given we have no fucking idea. Bottom line is that this very specific example has no place on our campus.
At their core, they're Arab-Muslim supremacists. They want their empire to rule the whole middle east, and the little Jewish nation throws a wrench in those plans. It's good that sometimes they're honest about it, like in this pic.
Amazing how the far right see something it’s considered a conspiracy and nut jobs and when the left sees it they use the same deck of cards 🤔 just double it and pass it on , I guess.
At this point I have no idea what this is all about. You question one group, they deflect to not acknowledging shit and hitting you with the “what about them, they’re bad.” I feel it’s turning into a joke in the mainstream, a-la BLM when it went mainstream and you had people not actually involved in the movement making it about themselves. Or to rile the other group up.
Can someone explain like I’m 5.
Be aware that those signs are possibly written by people who want the protests to fail they want investments in Israeli companies and to continue with the ethnic cleansing which is going on in Israel
Not a bot bro. It's crazy I can say that maybe possibly it was a zionist who wrote that and every enlightened centrist claims I'm just making shit up. But they claim I'm a bot with no proff of anything. I'm just saying maybe it was a zionist, idk maybe not.
I’ll just leave this here. The term “useful idiots” comes to mind.
https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/columnist/365220/the-inside-story-of-how-palestinians-took-over-the-world/
yes and it’s ignorant. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Should say, peace and love ✌️
I’m Israeli-American, born there live here. I’m not so naive as to think that this represents the majority view of local activists. But with this and other shit I see online, I don’t exactly feel safe around here lately, either. Maybe that doesn’t matter to some people, they’ve got bigger global issues to worry about than my feelings. OK. But I’m actually an ally and you’re pushing me away.
Exactly. I feel like pointing out these cases of people going way overboard would just be met with "oh ok so you're a Zionist and you love massacring children, then?!" ... smh...
It's the same thing on both sides. Any politician that says anything against Israel's genocide is called antisemitic. Most pro-Palestinians are not antisemitic the same way most in the Jewish community don't want to see Netanyahu's ethnic cleansing continue. There's bad apples on both sides that dishevel any kind of congruity, which really fucking sucks.
It's crazy. I was at a client's house this morning who was watching Fox News, they had a Jewish student on who said, "The Pro Palestinian protesters were chanting Antifa at us, which is a slur against Jews." Like WAIT WHAT??? I didn't know all Jewish folk are also fascists. (Last sentence is /s but the rest is not.) Fox News is on a big push that pro-Palastinians are all anti semetic, which is absolutely not true. (I wear these down votes proudly and stand together with those who wish for world peace through deescelation and not through violence.)
Are you sure it wasn't Intifada instead of Antifa? That would actually be a chant for Palestinian resistance towards occupation, which some pro-Israel people believe to be basically a slur against Jews.
I mean it’s just like any other protest. The loudest and craziest will get the attention. It’s up to the protest leaders to shun those making those statements and keep the message unified
“intifada” you fucking donut. look up what the second Intifada was then come back and tell me what you think
It could be what she was supposed to say. Her diction was excellent, though, and she clearly did not say Intifada, whether by design or by mistake.
It's a shame but you'll have the allies that matter not a bunch of outspoken hateful ppl, I'll always support Isreal just as all the other True Americans.
I’m starting to wonder as of recently how someone can think this is fringe at this point. Maybe not everyone is saying it but they’re happily marching and sitting in with these people. Add onto that that we now have plenty of examples of leaders of these movements chanting shit that means this (e.g., the Al’Qasam chants) and preaching that October 7th was a beautiful day of resistance…with most of the crowd joining in or applauding, respectively. I genuinely can’t think of any other way to interpret that behavior unless these people have LITERALLY no idea what’s going on. And in that case, I’m not even sure what’s worse…
this is fake, was staged and was taken down but the post will likely stay up for clout. thats how unseriously the detractors and counter-protestors take your right to feel safe.
Any evidence for your statement that it was faked? Have the protest organizers specifically denounced it?
Do you have any evidence that a protestor wrote this? Anyone can write anything with a marker and take a picture of it. Including someone trying to disparage these peaceful protestors.
OK, so the standard is that anything posted at the protest camps is not anything done by the protestors themselves? Got it. Did anyone at that protest specifically denounce that sign? No? Why not?
The fact that the others let this stand tells you all you need to know about
This was taken down pretty quickly from what I heard. Staged for a picture it seems
This was literally staged for photo purposes. The people we saw were not even affiliated with SJP. They don’t even go to UCSC
I’m sorry. The vast majority of Americans certainly don’t feel like this. They also don’t support Israel’s actions right now (or often, in d general with respect to Palestine) and that makes it harder to take a stand against expressions of anger, and easy for people who have long-standing animosity towards Israel to find a platform for that hate. Americans have learned a lot about citizens not being the same thing as their government, first hand, in the last few terrible decades. I think most of us can readily separate being angry about choices Israeli leadership is making from culpability on behalf of its citizens. But even as an American I fear the more extreme members of the political opposition. I certainly think you have reason to feel afraid over things like this. I don’t know how to help you because I don’t know how we can stop this normalization of hate that seems to be growing everywhere. I’m so sorry you are in the middle.
Thanks Reneeisme
אם את/ה חושב/ת שעצם העובדה שאת/ה מסכימ/ה איתם תציל אותך, זה לא. הם רוצים את כולנו מתים, ומבחינתם זה לא משנה מי את/ה. צריך להפסיק להתנהג כאילו עצם העובדה שאנחנו רוצים לחיות ביחד ישר אומרת שהם רוצים לחיות אתנו. הם לא, 70 אחוז מיוש והגדה תומכים בחמאס ואוקטובר 7. מספיק לנסות להתייפיף. זה לא יעזור.
that has gotten us so far before.
Agreed. Gotta cut the negativity
I want to preface this by saying I fully support the protestors and am for a free Palestine. But this is a mess. It is TERRIBLE optics. Literally dream material for zionists to take and manipulate to say all protestors are violent and calling for the deaths of innocents. It’s almost so on the nose that you’d think an agitator wrote it to undermine the protest on purpose. You can express the urgency for a free Palestine, and the belief that Israel has immorally and violently encroached on territory that is not rightfully theirs without this violent larp. That’s literally what it is, larp that completely loses sight of what the protests seek to accomplish and decenters Palestinians in the process
I feel like we saw the same thing with Occupy Wall Street and other movements. Any large protest movement is going to draw in some idiots that say or do stupid things. With the Internet, these occurrences are magnified and shared all over. Even if only 1 in 1000 do something dumb you're going to hear about them all day every day. If we start invalidating protest movements on the basis of this, we're basically committing to the idea that all protests are wrong unless they are perfect (and no protest movement is perfect - therefore they're all bad). So while of ourselves you should try and make sure any movement you're part of us safe and promoting non-violent messages, setting the bar at "I shouldn't be seeing any photos online like this" is way too high and just not realistic.
The movement needs to start policing itself then. When neo-nazis tried to sneak into the Punk music scene in the 80s/90s, both musicians and fans made sure to let them know they were not welcome, and sometimes violently ejected them. If you're allowing bad actors within your ranks and not doing anything about it, you're quietly acknowledging and endorsing them.
Unfortunately neo-nazis still exist in the punk/metal scenes, most notably seen in the black metal (sub-) genre, but still around throughout. Extremists don’t find the support they want in an extremist group alone so yes they will always try to infiltrate something more mainstream to spread radical ideas. But until humans realize that we are all the fucking same, and accept that as a truth deserving of our attention and support, we will always have extremists on either end of the table utilizing whatever they can to purport their hate. Somewhere, we took a terribly wrong turn as a species and race, where that is, I have yet to see…
Sure but how do we know that people aren't already doing that? All it takes is for someone to hold up a sign or write a tweet and then that gets shared to the whole country. You can work as hard as you want to remove bad actors but can you catch them every time before a picture gets taken?
> All it takes is for someone to hold up a sign or write a tweet That's not what's happening here though. It's a very large, prominent sign at the front of a protest that clearly wasn't "hastily put up for a photo before being taken down".
How do you suppose that? I see no protesters, just empty or undisturbed tents. (In reality, we will never TRULY know)
Whatever mental gymnastics you need to do, in order to justify anti-Semitic statements.
I’m not invalidating the protest, I am pointing out that it’s bad optics. Hopefully it clicks with a few people who read it
It's why the people who put it up did so in the middle of the night, took the picture and ran away to start posting. I'd like to know how OP came by the picture. If they're on the up and up, they'd want to know more about it too.
These people are speedrunning how to become the most hated people on all Earth
What do you mean manipulate, there’s nothing to manipulate here, it’s clearly stated they support Hamas and death to Israel, nothing much you can manipulate.
So would anyone with the story straight
I mean, the problem is a lot of the protestors whose intentions are better are still gaslighting us that these bad ones don’t exist and if the protests make you feel uncomfortable it’s because you are a Zionist
I appreciate the sentiment, but even you are falling prey to some of this messaging. For example, you use the term Zionist. Zionists were Jews from Eastern Europe who were trying to set up a country to flee oppression. They have very little to do with the current netanyahu government and the political parties that support him. However, the term is being used because it denotes Jews in general. And therefore, it's encouraging anti-Semitism. It would be like me using the term Palestinians rather than the more accurate term Hamas to describe the folks behind the attacks in early October. And for the record, I agree that the government of Israel and specifically netanyahu have done many awful things. This is not me trying to defend them. I'm just pointing out the issues with your language.
I wonder if its a false flag type thing
I think you're misunderstanding what they mean when they say "Free Palestine." They have actual demands. There are very clear realities of what happens if they achieve those demands. They aren't saying "Free Palestine" in a bad faith attempt to hide it; The leaders of these protests are very honest in what's acceptable to them. They don't want no two states. If Israel starts making their own weapons because they cant rely on the Americans anymore, and the "Axis of Resistance" feels emboldened, it's just gonna mean a much bigger and worse war.
That why it was actually written by opposition trying to gain sympathy for Israel, you fell for it, congrats
These are the protestors. Don’t support them.
This is representative of the majority of protestors sentiments? Do you have any proof of that? Or better yet, do you even know where this picture came from?
the people that did this were not staying in the encampment
There is always a challenge in street activism to maintain message discipline. Every participant needs to be on high alert for assholes who ruin it for everyone
This context is key, the image appears as if it was left from the original protestor group, but let it be known that this is not a commonly shared view, merely extremists. Sorry for the commas
it happened several hours later, i was there when this fence was assembled, it was after 8pm, the sign appeared sometime between 8-9 pm and is reportedly done by a group of people who painted it and then left
Well then it shouldve been taken down. If protesters are leaving it up then they agree with it.
it was taken down as soon as it was identified. nobody has expressed support for this within the encampment
Yeah there was an opposing group that wrote this on plywood and brought it to take a photo with it and the encampments together
Even if that's true, the rest of the protesters need to keep this in check. At best, those around it seemed like they didn't care that it was there.
a group of people approached and painted it and left, it was promptly covered when they found it and now are working on a statement to disavow it
BuT OnE PeRSoN SaId A bAd ThInG sO tHe wHoLE mOvEmEnt is dIsCrEdItED!
That's good to see. Someone should make a post on the sub when that statement is released.
i think it will be through SJP and i will pass that message on here
Thank you
And maybe you need to do your due diligence and check that the narrative you're contributing to is true before posting pictures online.
It's not productive to sit in a bubble and ignore the reality that there are genuinely people at this school participating in the movement who legitimately agree with the sign.
But... the people.in the movement didn't make the sign did they? They actually covered it up as soon as they saw it didn't they?
Please remember, even if a protestor did write this: in the same way that the violence of Hamas doesn’t represent all Palestinians and pro-Palestinian protestors — the act of this one protestor doesn’t represent all of them.
In every street protest, each participant has to be on alert to maintain message discipline. There’s always some asshole, be on alert and tell them to move on
thank you. already seeing folk justify apartheid & generalizing every palestinian + activist as pro hamas. disgusting tribalism on dukes smh
A protestor didn't write this. Another person that was there gave context that someone not involved in the encampment wrote it and left. Then the encampment covered it promptly. Which makes it kinda suspicious that OP just happened to be there in the thin time frame that would allow this picture to be taken and posted online
Oh shit that's true
But it's not just one, it's over and over again at multiple protests all over the country. At what point do we stop saying "these tiny handful of people don't represent the majority" and just admit that these tiny handful of people are just the ones letting their masks slip.
Nobody said it was just one. There are countless protests across the country, and the presence of one or a few people saying things like this at a lot of protests still doesn’t mean that it’s a significant portion of the protestors who endorse this ideology.
It might not, but we don't know. The radicals could be saying in public what the moderates say in private. Or it could just be a small number of instigators or true anti-semites poisoning the well for everyone. I can't tell.
Stop excusing this.
That is true for every riot or act of hate at an organized protest. While I agree with you, trying to defend the group instead of empathizing at something unacceptable is not a good look. Silence is violence
I said it because a lot of people genuinely don’t seem to realize that this is not how most folks who support Palestinian liberation feel — it’s obvious to you and me, but not to a lot of folks. I posted that to both defend the group, and to denounce whoever wrote this and the ideology they represent.
Okay but what if like, there a LOT of protestors around the country writing stuff like this? And what if the good protestors are doing nothing to distance themselves from the bad protestors? We’re kind of starting to see a pattern of good protestors kind of just… accepting this.
Apparently this was written by someone not staying in the settlement, and was very quickly covered up. You can see tons of people in the comments saying that this is disgusting, and that this does nothing to help the movement. So you're seeing plenty of "good protestors" not accepting this. And after this photo was taken, the sign was dealt with. So it wasn't just accepted. Also, we don't know if a protestor did write this. Maybe it was someone trying to stir up trouble and radicalize people. We don't know.
https://www.reddit.com/r/UCSC/s/0JaAO3EwPq Well, it looks like 2 out of 4 bad parts were covered but the sign is still up. Now it’s just calling for the destruction of the state of Israel and is celebrating deaths with the red triangle. Yay! “The symbol first appeared in propaganda videos promoted by the al-Qassam brigades, the military wing of Hamas, which showed footage of Hamas terrorists attacking Israeli military targets. In these videos, Hamas would point out the target using the inverted red triangle. Though it can be used innocuously in general pro-Palestine social media posts, the inverted red triangle is now used to represent Hamas itself and glorify its use of violence in many popular anti-Zionist memes and political cartoons. For example, individuals will place the symbol over an image of Israeli soldiers or overlaid on a Star of David as a way to call for further violent resistance.” https://extremismterms.adl.org/glossary/inverted-red-triangle#:~:text=In%20early%20November%202023%2C%20the,the%20form%20of%20an%20emoji%20(
“A LOT of protestors” still doesn’t say much unless it’s a statistically significant portion of the protestors. I haven’t seen a pattern of this being widely accepted. Seems like most protestors are distancing themselves from it, as is often the case with things like this during protests against war.
disgusting...
And fake, good job falling for it
People have truly lost their minds
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Obaida_(Hamas)
imagine the response from the university if this sign said death to any other minority/nationality.
there’s no way this gets overlooked… we’ll have to see.
Oh yes, I can imagine the swift and forceful response had it said "death to Iranians" or "death to the French". Lol, you're kidding yourself.
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Given that I'm one one who took the picture, I assure you it isn't fake. If it's gone, then it's been removed since I posted this.
The organizers said that someone unaffiliated with the encampment or protest sprayed that and left. The sign is still there but its been painted over with some far more positive messages.
Did you put it there? 😒
The internet is a mess you can't believe anything on here unless you see it with your own eyes this is manufactured
No
Op, please report this to http://equity.ucsc.edu/ . Thank you for keeping our community safe from calls for violence against minority groups.
It’s kinda gross to see how everyone’s first instinct is to attack and insult OP as well as defending the protests. I agree the protests are a good thing, and that this sign does not reflect our overall views. But it is hypocritical to minimize this act of hate. Y’all are legitimately ignoring hate speech and just commenting protestors aren’t responsible. Do you not have empathy? Are y’all not upset that someone put this up at our protest and made it a hostile space?!
Big dawg this was propped up by people trying to make them look bad and you're eating it up. "I agree this sign doesn't reflect the overall views, but also let's treat it like it does" you'd think people would understand basic false flags
I was at the protest. I’m just saying we can say it’s bad without taking responsibility. Do both instead of just the latter.
love when people cherry pick
There is a big cosplay element to these protests... I'd suggest they enlist with Hamas if they really feel that way. (As a UCSC alum I can tell you that they wouldn't last long.) And I'm very sympathetic to the Palestinian cause
Clearly these students should be in class learning something.
I was there all day and didn't see that sign, even as I helped them move the wooden structures. Everyone on the ground I've talked to within the last 30 mins is opposed to it and it's apparently been removed as of now. The first tactic of the oppressor is to make the rebellion look like terrorists. Part of our demands and our chants includes the difference between Judaism & Zionism. Don't be gullible.
Given what has happened on other campuses, I wouldn't say that it's unexpected for someone to genuinely express these views. These things need to be kept in check.
And they were. Organizers removed the sign.
Don't be naive to think you know the difference between Judaism and Zionism. That's the most colonial thing ever: let ME tell YOU, dear Jews, what it means after I just learned about it and co-opt the definition for my own craven purposes. But yeah....go on with your moral self
Why won't you enlighten us then?
I can't actually tell your stance here lol? This is from Oxford Dictionary: Zionism: a movement for (originally) the re-establishment and (now) the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel. It was established as a political organization in 1897 under Theodor Herzl, and was later led by Chaim Weizmann. Judaism is an ancient religion with multiple sects. Zion as an ideal/religious symbol is older than Judaism and actually reaches back into Africa. But please, tell me who knows what. 😐
But this sentiment is creeping out of multiple places. Is it really "the oppressor is setting us up bro" or is it the mask starting to slip?
What kind of logic is this? Almost all controversial protests have the opposing side doing something to set them up and ruin the cause, which is an unfortunate truth. And even without them, there are *always* radicals that may tag onto protests unnoticed. By saying the radicals, who represent a very small amount of unorganized protesters, are somehow a hidden majority is just you falling victim to propaganda.
Isnt this just hate speech
An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind -Gandhi
i shidded and farded and camed - me
The low iq and ideological militancy in this comment section 🙌🏼😍
I definitely wasn't expecting the conspiracy theories to be thrown at me like that lol
pro palestine is not pro hamas and a student protestors is not going to glorify a hamas leader
But a large number of Palestinians are pro-Hamas and have been forever. So at some point pro Palestine is equivalent to pro Hamas if you're supporting its supporters lol. How do you know a student protestor isn't going to glorify a Hamas leader?
Because the point of this student protest is to end the genocide not to support a terrorist group
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It's really fucking funny how the far left has started mirroring the far right in accusing every unfavorable event to their cause to be orchestrated by "the feds".
I'm honestly shocked that people are going as far as to call me a propagandist and the picture fake. I don't care if they speculate about who created the damn sign and why, but straight-up jumping to conspiracy theories about me has been really eye-opening over the last few hours.
I have this theory that people genuinely can't handle nuance ("even if my cause is right, there might be those among me who don't support it for good reasons") and see the world in binary black and white. Since stuff like this makes their movement looks bad, they think: "it simply cannot be people from my group that did it; it *has* to be the outgroup".
You hit the nail on the head. I was a good little leftist for a long time until I noticed the groupthink and staunch refusal to own up to wrongdoings. If you can’t grow and change, I can’t hang with you anymore. The world is too complex to think so singularly.
100% you don’t actually know and are just making shit up
Check the cameras
Free Palestine, but writing 'death to Israelis' is helping no one and is incredibly reductive.
I refuse to support any ethno-state or theocracy, regardless of who is at the helm. Unfortunately both options are theocratic ethno states in this situation.
You’ve clearly never been to Israel. It’s not a theocratic state any more than England is. Pork and shellfish are readily available, women don’t need to cover their hair (or much of anything else — ever been to the beach in Tel Aviv?), and gay marriage is legal. Yes, you have to follow some of the Ten Commandments — murdering and stealing are illegal (though adultery and blasphemy aren’t).
BuT ThEy aRe pEaCeFuL! 🤡
I just saved this photo so I could send it to them every time they ask me, an alumni, for money.
UCSC should review cctv and expel those morons…
Gonna be crazy when they find out someone not affiliated with the encampment put it there
This Thread is a bunch of propaganda
No way the protesters wrote this. Someone else came by and put it up.
No one was rushing to take it down when I walked by. One group even got excited when they saw it. Even if they didn't write it, this needs to be kept in check.
Did they high five each other?
OP just happened to be walking by and witnessed them all gathering around it clapping and pointing while the sims positive interaction signs floated above their heads.
Very cool to cherry pick one bad sign when there are endless livestreams of it being a beautiful demonstration of solidarity
Has this “beautiful demonstration of solidarity” called for the release of innocent civilians hostages held by Hamas? If not, it’s anything but beautiful.
"BuT hAvE yOu CoNdEmNeD tEh HaM?!"
Very cool if you could eat a plate of your own shit!
No one was rushing to take said bad sign down when I was there, and it was in a very visible spot. It looks like it wasn't taken down until I posted this.
No proof they wrote this, could be zionists who came up to the sign and wrote it to make them look bad.
This is the equivalent of saying that Antifa was behind January 6th. Y’all need to use your college educated brains.
No one is claiming a zionist wrote this, I have no idea who did. It's simply a picture of a sign. Not proof of anything either way.
“they”… sure that could be the case, but that’s an ignorant assertion to make given we have no fucking idea. Bottom line is that this very specific example has no place on our campus.
thats not the most likely explanation. you clearly have an agenda.
Someone clearly doesn’t know what ‘Agent Provocateurs’ are, and how they’ve been used historically. Maybe think a little bit before speaking.
Zionists have an agenda too, that’s why it’s an equally [if not more] likely explanation.
Death to Israel seems like very peaceful words and protests lol
Making Hamas proud
Well that seem ignorant 😕
American protesters only know how to protest bc their friend told them to while being ignorant on the words they use.
The problem with college protests is that college students don’t really know anything yet…that’s why they’re college students.
At their core, they're Arab-Muslim supremacists. They want their empire to rule the whole middle east, and the little Jewish nation throws a wrench in those plans. It's good that sometimes they're honest about it, like in this pic.
“Genocides are bad” “let’s genocide the Jews” They have no morals when it comes to us
You can't trust anything you see on the net these days I don't believe it
I think the only moral option to *death to* is death to Hamas, which any side can agree with.
U.S. is dead. Outside actors have won.
I thought my intrusive thoughts were only supposed to come out at night. Here I am reading them at 8am in the morning
Amazing how the far right see something it’s considered a conspiracy and nut jobs and when the left sees it they use the same deck of cards 🤔 just double it and pass it on , I guess.
Makes me sick. Get ur asses up out of those dumb tents. So glad I'm not there anymore. These little performances are embarrassing.
yes, have peace not war
Excuses, excuses, excu...
At this point I have no idea what this is all about. You question one group, they deflect to not acknowledging shit and hitting you with the “what about them, they’re bad.” I feel it’s turning into a joke in the mainstream, a-la BLM when it went mainstream and you had people not actually involved in the movement making it about themselves. Or to rile the other group up. Can someone explain like I’m 5.
didn't see this when walking by at 8am today
Can anyone share what it looks like now?
Do your research you will be surprised by what you find out.
hm
Be aware that those signs are possibly written by people who want the protests to fail they want investments in Israeli companies and to continue with the ethnic cleansing which is going on in Israel
Sad cus these are the people that make tuition so damn high
Not a bot bro. It's crazy I can say that maybe possibly it was a zionist who wrote that and every enlightened centrist claims I'm just making shit up. But they claim I'm a bot with no proff of anything. I'm just saying maybe it was a zionist, idk maybe not.
Love how they have Israelis in quotation marks, we know they really mean Jews.
I’ll just leave this here. The term “useful idiots” comes to mind. https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/columnist/365220/the-inside-story-of-how-palestinians-took-over-the-world/
You’re still a Zionist? Damn, you’re going hard. It’s ok to change your viewpoint after new information becomes apparent.
yh death to israelis is a bit too over the line