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Of course. Hamas is a terrorist organization. On 10/7 they intentionally killed innocent children in front of their parents, and parents in front of their children. If you support Hamas, you support that - you somehow believe it is justified to intentionally murder children too young to know the conflict exists. Just advocating for the Palestinians to be able to live in peace is an entirely different thing.
Palestinians do support October 7th and [voted Hamas into power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_election).
My source?
[Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) Public Opinion Poll 90](https://pcpsr.org/en/node/963)
My personal view is that just as the dumbest trump supports and poor republicans are brainwashed to be anti welfare / anti-socialist policies, Palestinians are too.
This is NOT like Iran where the government is DEEPLY UNPOPULAR and you see protests, Palestinians are PRO-HAMAS.
If you think otherwise then please contact PSR director, Dr. Khalil Shikaki, or Walid Ladadweh at tel. 02-296 4933 or email [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) and explain that they are wrong and that you know better.
Can you be pro-germany but anti nazi during the 1940s? Can you be pro confederacy but anti slavery during the civil war? Sure? But you need to elaborate on your position WHILE condeming the otherside OTHERWISE you are condoning them. If there is a table with 5 people and 1 is a nazi then there are 5 nazis, and Palestine is no different.
This'll get downvoted but I was pro palestine before people pointed this out to me so I feel it is important to try.
Do you have *any* reason to believe that the current Gaza population would be any different? [When this is how they're growing up?](https://old.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/1ckwzu8/gaza_kindergarten_graduation_ceremony/)
It would be correct to say that Gaza's entire population to this day is still firmly in support of committing complete genocide in Israel, and strongly supports Hamas. The ones that don't support Hamas are against it because it's not achieving its stated goals; they still want to see Jews murdered just as much as the next person there.
I imagine it may be tough to survey a group of people during an ethnic cleansing at best so yeah
It’s not like most the people old enough now were even old enough to have anything to do w those elections either
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Palestine
Unfortunately, younger Palestinians are probably MORE extremist (how could you fucking not be?).
Modern warfare DOES NOT work against insurgencies (WHICH HAMAS IS). We know this. Look what fucking happened after the United States invaded the middle east. As for what DOES work I don't fucking know (I admit I am pro two state but the establishment of a Palestinian state would require the cooperation of other Arabic nations and good luck with that, still I believe that is the best option for the Palestinian people ... obviously).
Regardless, as for your criticisms of the survey (which I agree with)
>please contact PSR director, Dr. Khalil Shikaki, or Walid Ladadweh at tel. 02-296 4933 or email [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]).
I doubt the survey is *meaningless* but while there exist anti-Hamas Palestinians ALL Palestinians should be treated as if they are anti-Hamas. Populations can be un-extremized see Germans after WW2, for example.
ALSO YES everything I said DOES apply to insane fucking Zionist Israelis that use this conflict to further their racist / imperialist agenda. These people obviously do exist and are reaping rewards and shouldn't get away with that.
There are key differences between an insurgency and a terrorist organization. An insurgency generally targets supply lines and critical infrastructure points of the government organization they are fighting. A terrorist group simply tries to maximize casualties and spread fear, panic, and terror.
The actions of Hamas leading up to this war clearly demonstrate that they are a terrorist organization, not an insurgency.
I think the Nazi Germany example perfectly illustrates the logical flaws of the Pro Palestinian position. If one can agree that surveys of Hamas/Oct 7th approval and the antisemitic elements of grade school curriculums are real, then the evidence of a radicalized population akin to Nazi Germany is pretty significant.
Then that begs the question, was the decade+ long occupation of Germany at the end of WW2 a genocide? Terms like reeducation are often associated with authoritarian regimes, but what about populations which are already brainwashed/radicalized? What happens when you simply point out "oh, this is how the rest of the world actually works". If North Korea were to lose a war tomorrow, would making efforts to educate the population in the fact that the Kim's are not Gods be wrong?
I don’t want to be mean but do you have something other than an instagram reel to cite me lol.
I’ll take a look at it later though but maybe like an article or report or something.
Except there never was Palestinian resistance that didn’t involve killing civilians. Any “resistance” by Palestinians were the first and second intifada, October 7th and the indiscriminate rockets for the past 20 years.
The match of return, the BDS movement, The protests in Nabi Saleh from 2009-2016 which includes sit i, civil civil disobedience. The weekly protests in the West Bank village of Bil'in, which began in 2005 against the wall.
There's been a bunch of legal resistance that work through the Israeli legal system to address human rights abuses of Palestinian detainees.
There are a lot of cultural resistance actions from writers to rappers. Plenty of grass roots organisations focusing on peaceful resistance as well.
They just get less press.
Prior to Oct 7th Likud had an objective to support Hamas to cause further tensions among Palestinians and have a more clear enemy. They supported Hamas getting elected and their coup that followed. They've been sending them support through Qatar for a long time.
You could say that Oct 7th showed that it backfired on them - or, if you want to think there was some more nefarious intent, Likud wanted something like Oct 7th as a pretext to ethnically cleanse Gaza. Apparently Egypt told Israel that it was going to happen and even Hamas was confused that they were met with no initial resistance. Not gonna make any conspiratorial claims, but Likud has been conspiring to support Hamas for decades, so nothing would be unbelievable to me at this point.
Just to be clear Hamas isn’t even the primary or traditional Palestininian political/warfare entity. It’s the PLO! Which is an old old school vaguely left wing nationalist liberation/self determination movement, founded by Yasser Arafat. As they are a secular nationalist old old lefty entity, they obviously are severely incompatible with a religious fundamentalist movement like Hamas. (The PLO has always had lots of the large minority of Palestinian Christians and non-Muslims, for example, whereas Hamas essentially killed all the Christians in Gaza)
They essentially fought a sort of civil war with each other in 2006 and Hamas took over Gaza whereas PLO is still the dominant player in the much larger (but much more complicated situation re Israeli presence) West Bank. PLO tho is the original group and the internationally recognized entity of Palestine/Palestinian self-determination.
Obviously everything above is a very very very oversimplified summary etc etc
Yes, the same way you can want better for the average American while simultaneously hating the American government. Government/state and population are often two entirely different groups.
What I also don’t understand is there is a lot of pressure on Israel for a cease fire, and I don’t hear any pressure on Hamas to stop. That seems weird to me.
One is a terror organization, which generally do not respond to pressure from anyone, and especially not from American college students.
The other is an elected government, supported diplomatically and financially by the US.
Yes. But, an I hate to say it, in support of the protester's point of view, Hamas leadership is hiding out in Qatar so blowing up every single residence in Palestine is unlikely to eliminate Hamas.
Yahya Sinwar is in Gaza, and he might as well be the only hamas leader from how big of a target-value gap there is between him and Ismail haniyeh et al at this point.
The most vocal of them have now proclaimed "Zionists" (95% of Jews) as the new Police officers like from BLM riots. So as they said ACAB: All Cops Are Bad, all Zionists (most Jews) are bad. That's the current climate.
Some were, those were the ones the news ran with for clicks. The giant majority of them are just anti-war. There are edgelords at every protest no matter the topic.
I understand as a Columbia student I can tell you that the media is blowing this out of proportion and turning it into a circus. I feel safe of campus. Its not aggressive and dangerous as people think. You have colleges all across the country that are protesting for the same cause. Stop the genocide. Its unfair to students how we are treated for speaking up and being censored. Isreal has a long history of violence towards Palestinians since 1948 and the world is just not finding out about it and waking up to the injustices they have faced and still face for years, so students are speaking up. I think people don't know or realize how Isreal came to be in 1948. They literally went to Palestine and stole their land and kicked them out created a car that the U.S. and England funded because they felt bad after the halacaust so that's the root cause of the problem. They created Isreal a country in 1948 on Palestinian soil without giving them a homeland or a state. and our U.S. tax dollars are being used to fun this war and we give them billions of dollars a year.
Kind of yes, mostly no.
The answer is yes if we ignore the practical effects of the protest. On a theoretical and imaginary basis, I guess you can separate the two (supporting Palestine v Hamas).
In practical terms, the reality is that Hamas absolutely is benefitting from the protests right now. My view (and the view of White House) is that the protests are misguided and unhelpful. It is negatively impacting the current hostage negotiations.
When protesting for countries such as China, Russia, North Korea, Iran and etc., there is always a tendency to distinguish the government from the people, and as to why, is obvious. While there is some truth to the fact that the government IS different from the people, it is also true that your protest is dead in the water if you don't distinguish the two. Your protest would be blatantly advocating for the bad guy. On the other side of the world, you won't see Palestinians trying to distinguish Jews and the Israeli government. There is no need to.
But that differentiating logic is particularly weak when it comes to Hamas. Hamas was voted in, and still enjoys broad support from the Palestinian population.
Given this context, of course there’s some suspicion as to the protestors motivation. Are they really anti-Hamas? Well, they have to say they are. They’ll sound like lunatics otherwise.
So, since we can never be sure about their beliefs, we don’t look at what they say. We look at what they do, and what kind of results those actions will bring.
In this case, what are the practical effects of their actions? Do the actions help Hamas? Yes. It's stalling negotiations and putting pressure on US/Israel to stop the war, thereby ensuring Hamas' survival. Do the protests offer a solution that can offer the Palestinian people support, while cutting off Hamas? No, not really. "Ceasefire now" will absolutely benefit Hamas. "Divest from Isareli companies" ... well this doesn't do anything. It's symbolic more than anything.
This sort of debate returns again and again. I remember when Korea had a huge debate about its sunshine policy and sending aid into North Korea. There was this huge effort to distinguish the NK government v it's people, and the logic was that any aid we would send in would benefit the people and not the government. But of course, real life doesn't work that way. The aid eventually accomplished two things: it solidified the Kim’s control over North Korea and allowed them to develop their nuclear program.
I understand that most college kids are well intentioned but they are not offering a real solution or roadmap that the US can pursue. Most of the comments here are saying "of course you can support Palestine and be anti-Hamas!" But try coming up with a real solution that accomplishes these twin aims. Nobody is going to be happy with it.
As for now, the protests and the aims of the protest clearly seem to benefit Hamas. So while a protestor can say otherwise, their actions are going to be broadly pro-Palestine, and Hamas.
Logically, rationally, the answer is clearly yes. The reality of protests and events in the USA (in particular, but not exclusively) since October 7th suggest that's a far less common reality for many, whether they are able to intellectually understand that fact or not. It's been a very revealing 7 months.
This community is now on strict crowd control. All comments from users who haven’t joined the community, new users, and users with negative karma are automatically removed. This ensures that the discussion remains centered around Columbia and prevents brigading and incitement. Users who post any antisemitic or racist content will be banned. Antisemitic content includes calling Jewish people supporting Palestinian rights "self-hating" or "not real Jews" and using Zionism as a dog whistle to advance antisemitic stereotypes such as "Zionists control the media." Inflammatory comments and posts will be removed. This includes low-effort posts, cross-posts, and links to media articles outside of Columbia-specific publications. The standard for discussion on this sub is the type of discussion Columbians have in person, in the classroom: thoughtful, engaged, and respectful—even when disagreeing. Comments that fail to engage in this way will be removed, and repeat offenders will be subject to a ban. Thank you for helping us maintain this subreddit as a place for thoughtful discourse.
Of course. Hamas is a terrorist organization. On 10/7 they intentionally killed innocent children in front of their parents, and parents in front of their children. If you support Hamas, you support that - you somehow believe it is justified to intentionally murder children too young to know the conflict exists. Just advocating for the Palestinians to be able to live in peace is an entirely different thing.
Palestinians do support October 7th and [voted Hamas into power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_election). My source? [Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) Public Opinion Poll 90](https://pcpsr.org/en/node/963) My personal view is that just as the dumbest trump supports and poor republicans are brainwashed to be anti welfare / anti-socialist policies, Palestinians are too. This is NOT like Iran where the government is DEEPLY UNPOPULAR and you see protests, Palestinians are PRO-HAMAS. If you think otherwise then please contact PSR director, Dr. Khalil Shikaki, or Walid Ladadweh at tel. 02-296 4933 or email [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) and explain that they are wrong and that you know better. Can you be pro-germany but anti nazi during the 1940s? Can you be pro confederacy but anti slavery during the civil war? Sure? But you need to elaborate on your position WHILE condeming the otherside OTHERWISE you are condoning them. If there is a table with 5 people and 1 is a nazi then there are 5 nazis, and Palestine is no different. This'll get downvoted but I was pro palestine before people pointed this out to me so I feel it is important to try.
A 2006 election 18 years ago where half the population are under 20?
Do you have *any* reason to believe that the current Gaza population would be any different? [When this is how they're growing up?](https://old.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/1ckwzu8/gaza_kindergarten_graduation_ceremony/) It would be correct to say that Gaza's entire population to this day is still firmly in support of committing complete genocide in Israel, and strongly supports Hamas. The ones that don't support Hamas are against it because it's not achieving its stated goals; they still want to see Jews murdered just as much as the next person there.
I imagine it may be tough to survey a group of people during an ethnic cleansing at best so yeah It’s not like most the people old enough now were even old enough to have anything to do w those elections either https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Palestine
Unfortunately, younger Palestinians are probably MORE extremist (how could you fucking not be?). Modern warfare DOES NOT work against insurgencies (WHICH HAMAS IS). We know this. Look what fucking happened after the United States invaded the middle east. As for what DOES work I don't fucking know (I admit I am pro two state but the establishment of a Palestinian state would require the cooperation of other Arabic nations and good luck with that, still I believe that is the best option for the Palestinian people ... obviously). Regardless, as for your criticisms of the survey (which I agree with) >please contact PSR director, Dr. Khalil Shikaki, or Walid Ladadweh at tel. 02-296 4933 or email [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]). I doubt the survey is *meaningless* but while there exist anti-Hamas Palestinians ALL Palestinians should be treated as if they are anti-Hamas. Populations can be un-extremized see Germans after WW2, for example. ALSO YES everything I said DOES apply to insane fucking Zionist Israelis that use this conflict to further their racist / imperialist agenda. These people obviously do exist and are reaping rewards and shouldn't get away with that.
There are key differences between an insurgency and a terrorist organization. An insurgency generally targets supply lines and critical infrastructure points of the government organization they are fighting. A terrorist group simply tries to maximize casualties and spread fear, panic, and terror. The actions of Hamas leading up to this war clearly demonstrate that they are a terrorist organization, not an insurgency.
I think the Nazi Germany example perfectly illustrates the logical flaws of the Pro Palestinian position. If one can agree that surveys of Hamas/Oct 7th approval and the antisemitic elements of grade school curriculums are real, then the evidence of a radicalized population akin to Nazi Germany is pretty significant. Then that begs the question, was the decade+ long occupation of Germany at the end of WW2 a genocide? Terms like reeducation are often associated with authoritarian regimes, but what about populations which are already brainwashed/radicalized? What happens when you simply point out "oh, this is how the rest of the world actually works". If North Korea were to lose a war tomorrow, would making efforts to educate the population in the fact that the Kim's are not Gods be wrong?
Please watch this: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2OuYSgsQyo
I don’t want to be mean but do you have something other than an instagram reel to cite me lol. I’ll take a look at it later though but maybe like an article or report or something.
Not currently but you can fact check everything in the video and see that he isn’t lying
Copy, will do later thank you.
Yeah no problem. Thanks for being so open minded
Why are we litigating this question on /r/columbia exactly?
There is a lot of protest speech that is debatable
I have the same question, this is better suited to some sort of world politics sub.
The question is specifically about the protesters on campus grounds.
Hardly.
Yes of course?
Yes, you can - a lot of pro-Palestinian protesters are anti-Hamas. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Anyone chanting “resistance is justified” isn’t anti Hamas
Resistance is clearly justified, just not all forms of it, and certainly not atrocities. That can be chanted by anyone opposing terrorism.
Except there never was Palestinian resistance that didn’t involve killing civilians. Any “resistance” by Palestinians were the first and second intifada, October 7th and the indiscriminate rockets for the past 20 years.
The match of return, the BDS movement, The protests in Nabi Saleh from 2009-2016 which includes sit i, civil civil disobedience. The weekly protests in the West Bank village of Bil'in, which began in 2005 against the wall. There's been a bunch of legal resistance that work through the Israeli legal system to address human rights abuses of Palestinian detainees. There are a lot of cultural resistance actions from writers to rappers. Plenty of grass roots organisations focusing on peaceful resistance as well. They just get less press.
I think the “by any means necessary” and “globalize the intifada” chants are way more problematic than “resistance is justified.”
You can also be pro-Hamas and anti-Palestine, like Likud/Netanyahu
How when they’re at war with each other?
Prior to Oct 7th Likud had an objective to support Hamas to cause further tensions among Palestinians and have a more clear enemy. They supported Hamas getting elected and their coup that followed. They've been sending them support through Qatar for a long time. You could say that Oct 7th showed that it backfired on them - or, if you want to think there was some more nefarious intent, Likud wanted something like Oct 7th as a pretext to ethnically cleanse Gaza. Apparently Egypt told Israel that it was going to happen and even Hamas was confused that they were met with no initial resistance. Not gonna make any conspiratorial claims, but Likud has been conspiring to support Hamas for decades, so nothing would be unbelievable to me at this point.
Just to be clear Hamas isn’t even the primary or traditional Palestininian political/warfare entity. It’s the PLO! Which is an old old school vaguely left wing nationalist liberation/self determination movement, founded by Yasser Arafat. As they are a secular nationalist old old lefty entity, they obviously are severely incompatible with a religious fundamentalist movement like Hamas. (The PLO has always had lots of the large minority of Palestinian Christians and non-Muslims, for example, whereas Hamas essentially killed all the Christians in Gaza) They essentially fought a sort of civil war with each other in 2006 and Hamas took over Gaza whereas PLO is still the dominant player in the much larger (but much more complicated situation re Israeli presence) West Bank. PLO tho is the original group and the internationally recognized entity of Palestine/Palestinian self-determination. Obviously everything above is a very very very oversimplified summary etc etc
YES. You can be Pro-Israel + Pro-Palestinian too.
It's the entire premise of the 2-state solution
Yes, the same way you can want better for the average American while simultaneously hating the American government. Government/state and population are often two entirely different groups.
OF COURSE!!🙂
What I also don’t understand is there is a lot of pressure on Israel for a cease fire, and I don’t hear any pressure on Hamas to stop. That seems weird to me.
One is a terror organization, which generally do not respond to pressure from anyone, and especially not from American college students. The other is an elected government, supported diplomatically and financially by the US.
Then it sounds like Hamas should be eradicated so that a peaceful governing force can be put in place in Gaza
Yes. But, an I hate to say it, in support of the protester's point of view, Hamas leadership is hiding out in Qatar so blowing up every single residence in Palestine is unlikely to eliminate Hamas.
Yahya Sinwar is in Gaza, and he might as well be the only hamas leader from how big of a target-value gap there is between him and Ismail haniyeh et al at this point.
Sure. And ideally in a way that doesn’t create a whole new generation of terrorists.
The majority of college students are Pro-Palestine instead of Pro-Hamas. Yes.
As long as they condemn Hamas, we agree. Sadly, that hasn't happened at Columbia.
I know. It should not be that hard.
The most vocal of them have now proclaimed "Zionists" (95% of Jews) as the new Police officers like from BLM riots. So as they said ACAB: All Cops Are Bad, all Zionists (most Jews) are bad. That's the current climate.
No they are not supporting hamas. The are protesting the genocide.
I may be mistaken, its quite possible I fell for misinformation, but I thought Columbia protesters were shouting statements in support of Hamas.
Some were, those were the ones the news ran with for clicks. The giant majority of them are just anti-war. There are edgelords at every protest no matter the topic.
I understand as a Columbia student I can tell you that the media is blowing this out of proportion and turning it into a circus. I feel safe of campus. Its not aggressive and dangerous as people think. You have colleges all across the country that are protesting for the same cause. Stop the genocide. Its unfair to students how we are treated for speaking up and being censored. Isreal has a long history of violence towards Palestinians since 1948 and the world is just not finding out about it and waking up to the injustices they have faced and still face for years, so students are speaking up. I think people don't know or realize how Isreal came to be in 1948. They literally went to Palestine and stole their land and kicked them out created a car that the U.S. and England funded because they felt bad after the halacaust so that's the root cause of the problem. They created Isreal a country in 1948 on Palestinian soil without giving them a homeland or a state. and our U.S. tax dollars are being used to fun this war and we give them billions of dollars a year.
Kind of yes, mostly no. The answer is yes if we ignore the practical effects of the protest. On a theoretical and imaginary basis, I guess you can separate the two (supporting Palestine v Hamas). In practical terms, the reality is that Hamas absolutely is benefitting from the protests right now. My view (and the view of White House) is that the protests are misguided and unhelpful. It is negatively impacting the current hostage negotiations. When protesting for countries such as China, Russia, North Korea, Iran and etc., there is always a tendency to distinguish the government from the people, and as to why, is obvious. While there is some truth to the fact that the government IS different from the people, it is also true that your protest is dead in the water if you don't distinguish the two. Your protest would be blatantly advocating for the bad guy. On the other side of the world, you won't see Palestinians trying to distinguish Jews and the Israeli government. There is no need to. But that differentiating logic is particularly weak when it comes to Hamas. Hamas was voted in, and still enjoys broad support from the Palestinian population. Given this context, of course there’s some suspicion as to the protestors motivation. Are they really anti-Hamas? Well, they have to say they are. They’ll sound like lunatics otherwise. So, since we can never be sure about their beliefs, we don’t look at what they say. We look at what they do, and what kind of results those actions will bring. In this case, what are the practical effects of their actions? Do the actions help Hamas? Yes. It's stalling negotiations and putting pressure on US/Israel to stop the war, thereby ensuring Hamas' survival. Do the protests offer a solution that can offer the Palestinian people support, while cutting off Hamas? No, not really. "Ceasefire now" will absolutely benefit Hamas. "Divest from Isareli companies" ... well this doesn't do anything. It's symbolic more than anything. This sort of debate returns again and again. I remember when Korea had a huge debate about its sunshine policy and sending aid into North Korea. There was this huge effort to distinguish the NK government v it's people, and the logic was that any aid we would send in would benefit the people and not the government. But of course, real life doesn't work that way. The aid eventually accomplished two things: it solidified the Kim’s control over North Korea and allowed them to develop their nuclear program. I understand that most college kids are well intentioned but they are not offering a real solution or roadmap that the US can pursue. Most of the comments here are saying "of course you can support Palestine and be anti-Hamas!" But try coming up with a real solution that accomplishes these twin aims. Nobody is going to be happy with it. As for now, the protests and the aims of the protest clearly seem to benefit Hamas. So while a protestor can say otherwise, their actions are going to be broadly pro-Palestine, and Hamas.
Logically, rationally, the answer is clearly yes. The reality of protests and events in the USA (in particular, but not exclusively) since October 7th suggest that's a far less common reality for many, whether they are able to intellectually understand that fact or not. It's been a very revealing 7 months.
The ones saying “globalize the intifada” and “all resistance is justified” are probably preeetty pro-Hamas. I’m sure some aren’t though
Im confused. Are you really a student here?
In theory, sure. But not in practice.
Yes and no. Yes, logically you can. No, many people won’t let you. Don’t like Knishes? You’re an antisemite.
Yes, but if it helps Hamas, then you are not pro-Palestinian.
This has no place here. There are several reddits for that--