03

Fully six of the ten most active threads over the weekend were ones that I've already discussed. Moreover, two of the remaining four address topics that were the subject of other threads about which I've recently written. As a result, this won't be the most original of posts. I'll start with a thread that was the sixth most active. Titled, "Gaza war and College Campus Protests" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, the thread was created instead of a part 4 of the Gaza war thread. When the Gaza war threads have reached 1,000 pages, I have locked them and started a new part. When the previous thread was nearly 1,000, a thread about college campus protests was also getting very long and there was quite a bit of overlap between the two threads. Therefore, I combined them into this thread. The thread is currently 72 pages and I am not going to bother reading very much of it. From what I have read, it appears to consist mostly of the same things over and over. Strategies for debate the war and discussing the protests have really solidified with each side having established its talking points which are simply repeated over and over. Those supporting the Palestinians tend to highlight atrocities being committed by Israeli forces in Gaza and discuss the Biden administration's involvement in supporting such actions. Of course these posters fully support the protesters, whose actions they defend. The pro-Israel posters mostly take the exact opposite positions. They tend to describe the protesters, as well as pro-Palestinian posters in the thread, as being "pro-Hamas". They are unwilling to accept that someone can be opposed to the death and destruction being wrought on Gaza while also opposing Hamas. To them, any opposition to Israel is simply pro-Hamas. They, of course, for the most part are unwilling to recognize any Israeli excesses in Gaza. To the contrary, every action is justified and blamed on Hamas. Ironically, the pro-Israel posters are also critical of Biden at times. There are a few hardliners who actually consider Biden to be pro-Hamas himself. The mutual antagonism of both sides in this thread doesn't make for a very substantive discussion. A lot of it is simply attempts to score points. For instance, the most recent topic of discussion was a disruption by pro-Palestinian protesters of New York's pride parade. Pro-Israel posters claimed that this demonstrated antipathy toward the LGBTQ community on the part of the protesters. Such posters have often highlighted LGBTQ issues due to Hamas' normally anti-gay stances and the generally welcoming environment in Israel. The fact that neither Hamas nor Israel actually measures up to their portrayal is simply one of those details that gets ignored. But the disruption of the parade fed directly into the pro-Israel narrative. In point of fact, some pro-Palestinian protesters have adopted a strategy of disrupting any large event simply to obtain publicity and to demonstrate that they will not be ignored. The parade's disruption was not meant to be anti-gay, but rather to simply draw attention to the plight of Gaza. Whether this is a good strategy or not is another argument. But such nuances are impossible to discuss in threads of this sort.