Meanwhile on the International front....

I wish it where rhetoric - but that is true. In Georgia a State Senator was endorsed by then Sen. Saxby Chambliss for a Congressional seat :
"State Senator Jim Whitehead was the only candidate with electoral experience, and was considered the frontrunner. He was endorsed by U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss.

In the primary, Whitehead finished first with 44% of the vote. Paul Broun qualified for the run-off, ranking second with 21% of the vote, with only 198 votes more than third-place finisher James Marlow, a Democrat. Broun won a plurality of just four counties: Oconee (47%), Jackson (42%), Oglethorpe (37%), and Morgan (31%).[15][16]

In the runoff campaign, Whitehead angered some voters by failing to appear at a debate held in Athens and then by referring to his alma mater, the University of Georgia, as a "liberal bastion" that should be eliminated, save for the football team.[17] In the July 17, 2007 election, Broun upset Whitehead by a margin of just 0.8%, a difference of just 394 votes. After the votes were certified, Whitehead declined to ask for a recount despite the narrow margin.[17] Broun won the counties in the Northern part of the district, while Whitehead won the counties in the southern part. Broun's best two performing counties were Clarke (90%) and Oconee (88%).[18]

And Paul Broun was an idiot.

 

It almost makes a different point - that even more college students are seemingly lost in this bizarre protest.

 

This may be unreasonably blunt, but I think it is a relatively valid question to protest, vehemently, just how many dead Gazans the IDF is allowed to claim as collateral damage in their quest for security and to be aggrieved, whether that number is 1 or 100,000, especially but not exclusively when those Gazans share the same religion as roughly 3-4 million Americans, most of them in urban areas like New York. I don't think that's a concern solely for hippies and anarchists.

The great challenge in that question is that the accused are themselves victims, both of the October 7 attacks and of anti-Semitism generally.

So, the question is, is it inherently anti-Semitic to claim that there are limits on Israel's right to avenge October 7, on Israel's right to defend itself against a clear and present existential threat both past and present? It is in the best interests of both Netanyahu and the right-wingers in the US who enable him to say yes because that immediately paints those people in the same light as Jew-haters and terrorists. But let's not sit here and say that a policy of "Israel gets to blow up whoever and whatever it wants if it claims its target is, could be, or is adjacent to, Hamas" is a morally defensible strategy.

 

I don't think that's what Israel is doing.

The terrorists who committed Oct. 7 have largely returned to a vast tunnel system or embedded themselves among civilians who aren't terrorists. Presuming the civilians do not address the terrorists among them, the preferred theoretical solution is some kind of house-by-house, street-by-street tactical exercise for precise reciprocity. That could take years - decades.

Another approach, again in theory, is to pull back, accept the limits of a response, and end the generalized conflict.

Would that soften Hamas? Embolden it? Hamas is an extremist group of terrorists, and we have recent evidence - that is, ISIS in Iraq - of what happens when terrorist extremists run a state.

 

How do unarmed civilians with no combat experience “address the terrorists among them?”

 

I don’t think they do, or could. That’s why I’m presuming they won’t.

 

“Polls.” I’m sure lots of Palestinians are walking down the streets running into poll-takers or are waiting by their landlines to pick up those calls. They have more important shit to worry about, including whether there’s a functioning bathroom around where they can take a shit without sitting on a land mine.

 

Who funds that think tank? And would the employees be safe if the polling went the other way?

 

In the big Columbia news of the day, the baseball team, which is cruising to another Ivy title, edged Seton Hall 31-0 in a nonconference tilt.

 

Arresting media members?

https://x.com/davidgriscom/status/1783271873708507384?s=46&t=wVPJyeunUA-4G1zuWq69ug

 

High civilian casualties and blame focused on Israel was always the endgame for Hamas on Oct. 7th. They were counting on it. It probably does more to harm Israel and its standing in the world than any terror attack they could launch.