Protests

The pro-Palestinian protests are spreading around the country and the world. The whole thing seems so dishonest and contrived to me, for a number of reasons ...

1) The protesters say Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Neither the US not the ICJ agrees with that accusation. But "gemocide" has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

2) The protesters say they want a permanent ceasefire in the war, but they have nothing to say about the fate of the hostages nor about the continued existence of Hamas. They ignore the fact that there was a ceasefire on Oct 6, and that Hamas is responsible for breaking that, not Israel. They do not call on Hamas to end the war.

3) And speaking of Hamas, how did these politically liberal protesters end up supporting a rigid religious autocracy that poops on women, gay people, and religious minorities? Do they know how badly they and their protests would go over if they were actually living in Gaza?

4) The protesters say they want Gaza to be free, and they want Israel to stop occupying Gaza. Surely they know that Gaza has been free since 2005, when Israel left Gaza. It was then that the Gazan people voted for the terroist group of Hamas to be their leaders in an election in 2006.

5) The protesters say they want peace, but their slogans and signs are anything but peaceful - they call for an end to Israel as a state and for an intifada. Just for reference, the Second Intifada is an exampe of what that would mean.

Given all this, it seems to me that the protesters are either terminally stupid or willfully ignorant of facts. It also occurs to me that the protesters hate the idea of Jewish people having a homeland, and have used this war as a plausibly deniable excuse to call for an end to Israel.

But of course, the facts don't matter. What really matters is being part of the groupthink ...

Isn't it awesome and noble and relevant to be a protester, like the anti-war protesters of the 60s?

And isn't it emotionally satidfying to righteously hate a group of people that everyone else around the world has hated for all time?

And, you know, summer is coming ... boring ... and there's the need to remind Biden to forgive more student loans before the election.