Our particularly gifted friend is at it again:
With students who are resistant to letting knowledge seep in, it sometimes helps to ask a question.
Do the Jewish victims of the genocidal Palestinian attack on 10/7 have the right to defend themselves from the Jew-hating, murderous, raping, baby-slaughtering savages who committed these atrocities?
No further “rights” questions will be accepted until you formulate a clear answer to mine.
Also, it’s impossible to follow links from an image.
Clarissa's Blog 
23 Day 3 Weeks & 2 Days in the tohor time oriented commandment of counting the Omar to remove avoda zarah from within our hearts prior to accepting the revelation of the Torah לשמה, the basis k’vanna of all time-oriented commandments.
All the UN condemnations made against Israel wherein that corrupt Whore of the League of Nations falsely attempted to try Israel for Genocide War-Crimes after Oct 7th! Time for Israel to break off all diplomatic relations with this international perversion of Inter-national laws. The GA nonsense of permitting nations which do not have diplomatic relations with Israel permission to vote on GA slanders which routinely condemn the Jewish State as wrong and the UN Apartheid that excludes, only Israel among all UN member States, as a country within its own geographic region of the world. Time for Israel to issue an ultimatum to this inter-national whore. Either recognize the Jewish State as a nation within the community of nations in the Middle East, and annul UN Resolution 242 which seeks to negate the Israeli victory in the June 1967 War – or Israel breaks all diplomatic relations and expels the UN from Gaza, Samaria, and Israel.
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The answer to your question is absolutely yes. (See I didn’t try to hide under convoluted arguments).
Now please answer mine. Here’s the link again https://twitter.com/Issaamro/status/1790820035201466412?t=2qyTjCuwaBDyGVivk3NaIA&s=19
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Yes, they should ask the smokers not to smoke.
I wish I didn’t see your link because it’s really weird. The people smoking are the big “intimidation”? You’ve found no bigger atrocity for your question?
But even beyond that, how do you know that these people are “Israeli settlers”? How do you know where they are sitting and why? Because some anonymous dude on Twitter said so?
But this must sound too convoluted to you.
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The question, which you’re avoiding again — you seem insistent on doing so, for some reason — is do the owners of the house have a right to defend themselves if they found those “smokers” a threat to their peaceful existence. You seem to think that they’re just peaceful visitors with a bad health habit and not a team of thugs out to intimidate a homeowner.
I’m retaining a last good faith belief that you aren’t as obtuse as you’re playing, and you can answer the question as plainly as I did.
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The “plain” answer you gave is reductive in the extreme. What I was hoping you would do is figure out that the only meaningful answer to my question isn’t “yes” or “no.” It’s “how?” Do Israelis have the right to defend themselves by dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza? Or Iran? Do they have the right to defend themselves by chopping every Palestinian into small pieces? With your “yes”, you seem to confirm that they do when that’s plainly insane.
And it’s the same with your question. You have not defined the terms. Which right? Legal, moral, some other kind? If you are asking about the legal right, I have absolutely no idea. A lawyer from the region is the right person to ask. If you are interested in the moral right as I see it, then it depends on which form the defense takes. If it takes the form of cutting the smokers’ heads off and placing them on stakes, then no. Beating them? No.
There are no “plain” answers to such questions because you haven’t defined the terms your using or explained them to your interlocutor. Or even yourself.
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Actually, it’s your answer here that is quite alarming.
When you asked me the question, it was simple: Does Israel have a right to defend itself against those committed horrible atrocities on October 7th. The answer was an easy one: yes. What other answer could there be?
I didn’t say they should nuke Gaza or perform genocidal actions or chop off hands. I only said they should absolutely be able to defend themselves, and they are. How they do that is where arguments can come, and I agree there. But that wasn’t the question.
It’s the same reason why my question was easy to answer: yes, everyone in the world, even those living under Israeli occupation, have the right to defend themselves when their lives and livelihoods are threatened. How they choose to do that I’ve not stated, because I don’t know, and because I’m not prepared to be open-ended about it. If I did, that would alarming. If you want, you can give me specific examples of self-defence and I can tell you if I agree or not. But the principle itself, I agree with, and so should you.
Simply saying that people have a right to protect their lives is NOT controversial or alarming at all — whether these people are Jew, Israeli, Arab, Palestinian, Christian, Buddhist, Ukrainian, or Uyghur.
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“do the owners of the house have a right to defend themselves if they found those “smokers””
First they’re outside as far as can be told and they don’t look remotely like Israeli settlers. They look like migrants and/or cheap labor imported to do the work poor Arabs used to do…
One looks more Afghan than anything.. What language are they speaking? (don’t have sound on at present)
But… let’s assume these are ‘settlers’… what means should Palestinians have to ‘defend themselves’
How? Ask them to stop smoking? Yes.
Ask them to leave? Yes.
Physically try to force them to leave the property? Yes.
Yell at them? Yes
Start physically attacking them (punching and kicking) if none of the above work? I’ll allow it….
Threaten them with knives, axes, firearms? Getting colder….
Machine gun them? No.
Suicide bomb themselves in a Tel Aviv pizza parlor? ….. no…..
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That’s the first thing I thought. These people look Jewish like I look Chinese. Plus , why are they so grimy? This can be a video of anybody from anywhere. It would take me under an hour to stage something like this in Illinois and post it as “Israel.” Why are people so gullible?
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My point, really, was to illustrate that in Israel today, some people have rights and some don’t. An Israeli settler can gun down someone for suspecting them of something (see David Ben-Avraham), while an Arab homeowner has to endure a rude intimidation by some rogue thugs with no recourse.
Jewish citizens of Israel can buy AR-15s but Arab citizens can’t. Jewish citizens live under civilian laws while Arabs (especially in the West Bank) live under military ones. etc.
There’s a word for that, beginning with A-, that comes from Dutch South Africa.
As long as we agree that this is the reality and that it’s not sustainable, not ideal, and not democratic, then my work is done.
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As I said, I’m not qualified to discuss the legal systems of other countries. I simply don’t know anything about the subject.
I wonder how you came about the information you relate. Does it all come from anonymous Twitter posters or do you have an actual reliable source of knowledge?
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This can help https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinian-islam-judaism-convert-killed-93dcc0b46cc61ac8a81c36501856952f
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Another anonymous commenter here. Reading this discourse is fascinating, and the impact it’s having on me, not having any prior or specific knowledge of south africa, is making me think “hmm, maybe apartheid was ok and made a lot of sense and perhaps people shouldn’t vilify it”.
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Strange. Everyone these days (even those who kept quiet during Apartheid) claim they were against it all along. And those who were not around then will swear that they would have been against it.
So if you’re one of the small majority who STILL think it was perhaps a great system, one that should be replicated everywhere, please feel free to announce that at your next public get-together, or write to your congressman. Or form an Apartheid party in the US (if you’re here). It’s a free country after all.
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Yes, feel free. I don’t feel bloody free to say “men don’t get pregnant” or “black students can fail math without racism causing it.” We are all terrified silly by you people. It’s a “free country” for you because you are free to bully us. For the rest of us, the reality is being unpersonned for the slightest infraction.
Free country. You had a free country. And you pissed it away using the mechanism you show in this very comment.
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Free to bully anonymously, whether from the safety of the internet or from behind a balaclava!
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If you think speech is bullying, then I don’t know what you’re doing in the comment section. Don’t you need like a “safe space” like those college snowflakes?
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Oh, yes, I’m a wee little melty snowflake made of fairy tears.
I have no idea how I’ve managed so long in the most maligned religion, and profession, in modern America. It must be because I live in a wee crystal box.
I’m terribly terribly afraid of the poor opinion of anonymous combox posters– see me shiver in my boots! You can totally shame me and change my behavior into social compliance by your snark alone, I’m that weak!
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…btw are you also one of those arseholes who defends bullying in public schools because “that’s how kids learn to be tough” and “how else will kids learn to deal with the *real world*”?
Just curious.
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Oh! A downvote! My self-esteem will never recover!
Oh, please PLEASE **PLEASE** don’t log into your other account and downvote me a second time! It’d crush me forever. I’d probably have to go kill myself! It’s literal violence!
Not the briar patch, Brer fox! *Anything* but the briar patch! All those sharp thorns and terrible vines!
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Wow, logged into ALL THREE dummy accounts! I win!
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No one said there’s no consequence for careless speech. I can’t be antisemitic or racist or sexist and expect not to be mocked or vilified. The market does its thing
If you choose to express atrocious opinions or take unpopular political stance in public, then you should be prepared to be mocked and derided for it. There’s nothing unAmerican about that.
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That’s exactly what we were told in the USSR. “We have the best freedom of speech protections in the world. Everybody is completely free to speak their mind. There is no freedom from the consequences of the speech, however. If you choose to express wrong opinions, prepare to suffer the consequences.” It’s kind of really funny how these totalitarian types always use not only the same arguments but the exact same vocabulary. It’s also really funny how these statements are delivered with the most luminous, unbothered ignorance of their historical antecedents. You are repeating quite literally the slogans of one of most murderous regimes in human history while feeling like a wonderful, truly enlightened person.
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Are you saying I should be allowed to be antisemitic/racist to anyone (including my students) without any consequences? That’s quite a position to take.
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Allowed by whom? Who is doing the allowing in your life? And why do you want to be racist so much that you require an external authority to terrorize you into not doing it?
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I’m a different anon. Country leaders say similar things regardless of whether that is the case in their country. For example, both Russia and Ukraine claim to be defending people.
All countries’ leaders will claim their governments care about children and families, but of course the reality will be different.
So the fact that USSR claimed that is pretty irrelevant. Forget the argument you’re having with this specific commenter. How would you yourself phrase how free speech would work in your ideal world without echoing the words of some dictator who claimed the same thing about his country while the opposite was the case?
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Also strange to hear you say you “don’t feel bloody free” to say the things you literally just said, and others you say regularly on your blog.
As Jon Stewart brilliantly pointed out this week conservatives like to regularly say/do exactly the things they say people are preventing them from doing, and then blame liberals for being the ones preventing them from doing/saying the exact thing they just did/said. It makes for a sad, if hilarious, spectacle, really.
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I say them anonymously. Please don’t pretend you are incapable of understanding what I’m talking about. I’m forced against my will to repeat “anti-racist” drivel at work because other people’s livelihoods will suffer if I refuse. You and people like you have put me and many others into this situation and are pretending that it’s not happening. For every person I hire I have to write two separate documents explaining why they aren’t black. You think I want to be doing that? Can you grasp how humiliating this is? And there’s nothing I can do because people like you made it literally illegal for me to hire without this.
Have you no shame that you come here to prattle about some stupid TV comic like his moronic jokes can alter reality?
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No, you’re not anonymous. Readers of the blog know who you are, where you work, what you teach, who your colleagues are. Yet no one has reported you or threatened your livelihood in any way. Having to fulfil official function is part of your work. Public funding of universities contribute to the need to make sure that the institution serves EVERY ONE as equitably as one can possibly can. We can’t create equality, but we can try to make outcomes equitable for those who have been historically harmed. Plenty Ukrainian immigrants were given expedited access to US residency just a few years ago because the horrible things happening to them by Russia. Is that “unequitable”? Some people can and do say it is (See Rightwingers). Same when Haitians were given the same access. Same for Cubans, etc etc. It’s proper and good. May not be ‘fair’, it’s good. Same with rules put in place to make sure that employers aren’t contributing to inequality. That you have a problem with that says a lot more about you than the institution.
As per speech, like I said, you are bloody free to say anything you like. But you’re not free to make your workplace a tough place for others, for no other reason except that you think you should, and you can. That’s called bullying. That’s what the rules seek to prevent. And it doesn’t always succeed.
And no, Stewart doesn’t do moronic jokes, just because you think so. Thanks.
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Ah, threats have started, I see. The bleeding hearts reveal their true selves, as always.
Please leave and do not come back. You are not wanted. Thank you.
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I’m the same anonymous 13:29. Yes, I agree, I’m free to do all those things you suggest. I’m not going to because that’s not how I prioritize spending my time and attention, and South Africa or Apartheid isn’t something I have strong feelings or connections to ( “I don’t care about South Africa”).
I haven’t thought very deeply about South Africa or taken the time to learn about its history, and am too young to have followed the news when apartheid was ending. In my mind, it was a bad thing that happened and then ended, and I’ve been reasonably comfortable with that view until recently. But seeing people compare things to apartheid is making me wonder if, perhaps, apartheid was a sort of reasonable system to have been put in place given the situation at the time. Again, I don’t care enough about south Africa to go learn more and make up my mind, but my point is that comparing current events to apartheid is shifting my bias from “apartheid bad” to “apartheid maybe not so bad”.
At this point it would be appropriate for everyone to call me a bad person. Fine. Regardless of my moral qualities, I am a citizen of the US with the right to vote. Are you comfortable with how your rhetorical comparisons to apartheid are changing my reaction to the term?
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I’ve heard this same argument in relation to almost anything: racism, antisemitism, the holocaust, Russia collusion, Russia’s horrible invasion of Ukraine, the current genocide in Gaza, communism, etc. “Oh you’ve compared things so many times to these bad things, so therefore it may not have been so bad.”
It’s as terrible argument now when these people make them as when you do so now. So to answer your question, my comfort level has not taken any changes from people’s self-imposed myopia, even if it’s fuelled by an irrational desire for being contrarian.
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“My point, really”
Would it be too much to ask you to pick some kind of nickname and always use it…. keeping track of anonymous contents is tiresome.
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