Shani Gabay, 25, was a law school graduate who loved dogs, traveling, and singing. On October 7th, she escaped the Nova Music festival and took shelter in a bomb shelter nearby. After Hamas terrorists threw grenades into the shelter, she was severely injured but managed to escape. After being treated by a medic, she tried to take cover inside an ambulance with other festival-goers, but terrorists launched an RPG and burnt the ambulance down, killing everyone inside. Shani was initially considered missing, and her brother Aviel said "She knows everyone. We keep meeting people at the rallies who see her photo and know her from Costa Rica, or the army, or their studies. She cleans beaches and saves cats and dogs. I want to believe she’ll continue doing all of that."However, 48 days after October 7th, her DNA was found at another girl’s grave, as their bodies had melted together. The remains were separated as much as possible so she could be buried alone and in dignity.We will remember you as the beautiful soul you were.May Shani’s memory forever be a blessing.
I love you. I love you from the most observant to people who don't at all. I love you mentally ill and Disabled jews. I love you Questioning Jews. I love you Queer Jews. I love you Gender non confirming Jews. I love you POC Jews. I love you with all my heart.
Since October, a darkness has threatened us and many call for our deaths. I want to remind you they will not succeed.
Not only will we dance again, but we will remember our perseverance. How instead of fleeing, people lined up to give blood on the worst day since the Holocaust. How we are wearing religious symbols and celebrating passover. How we are going to Synagogue.
There is not a Dictator, Queen, King, Leader of tyrant that has wiped us all out. Not now, not ever.
I hope the irony of going to a university named after Christopher Columbus and protesting against the indigenous people of Israel isn’t lost in the literature department of Columbia University.
Or even the fact that they are on Manhattan island which was stolen from Native Americans.
But not Palestine? Not Hamas - the elected government of Gaza?
How about Russia? They bombed maternity wards and orphanages. Why aren’t the leftists demanding their war crime trial? The double standards are getting old.
Everything you complain about with Israel (if true) is exactly what Hamas and the Palestinians have been doing to them as well.
“Israel has wiped out entire families!” So did Hamas.
“Israel is bombing Gaza!” Palestine is bombing Israel (and, ironically, Gaza as well).
“An IDF soldier raped someone!” Hamas employed mass rape as a weapon of war against Israeli women.
“Israel is trying to wipe out Palestinians!” Hamas is trying to wipe out Jews.
We can keep going on this. The list goes on. Not only that, but multiple other countries have employed such tactics against their own people and other countries. Not a single cry for war crime trials.
The "Free Palestine" movement is genocidal. Straight up. It's not just a few select slogans they use or some fringe members.
The very name of the movement is genocidal.
I had a conversation with my former roommates last semester where they refused to understand why "Free Palestine" in and of itself as a statement is a problem.
To them, it's a liberation movement. But the first issue arises when we ask who or what is being liberated.
What, in modern geographical terms, is Palestine? Where is Palestine? Who is the ruling party of Palestine?
Anyone with even a bit of knowledge would realize that this is a trick question. There isn't any country actually called Palestine.
When people refer to Palestinians, they typically talk about the people either in Gaza or the West Bank, which are two separate entities with two separate governments.
So who are we supposed to be freeing? Gaza, which has its own government in the form of Hamas? Or the West Bank, which has the PA as its governing group? (By the way, the PA has this little thing called pay-for-slay I suggest you look into, but that'd be a post for another time.)
The actual term "Palestine" most commonly is used to refer to the entire area of where Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank are located.
Which brings me to my main point. When people call to "Free Palestine" they aren't calling for a two-state solution. Identically to their call for "from the river to the sea", this slogan calls for the complete destruction of Israel.
A lot of people have already spoken on the issue of why "from the river to the sea" is genocidal in nature, so I won't be going too in depth on that. My point is more so that those two phrases are equivalently malevolent in nature.
There's also the people who call themselves "pro-Palestine". If we take into consideration what "Palestine" as a term means, we're left with two interpretations.
First, they just use that instead of "Free Palestine", making their use of it still equivalent for wanting the entirety of Israel gone.
Second, they want Palestine to "win" in the war.
Now, since we've established that there isn't actually a country called Palestine right now, they're either rooting for the PA or Hamas to win.
As I recommended before, it'd be fantastic if you could just take time to read up on what pay-for-slay is. As a quick summary, that's exactly what it sounds like. The PA pays people money for killing Israelis/Jews. (That's the very vague version, since this isn't the point of the post.)
Therefore, you can probably imagine what would happen to Israelis if the PA were to take over Israel (G-d forbid).
If, G-d forbid, Hamas were to take over Israel, we'd end up with a series of atrocities akin to the horrors of Oct 7th. How do I know? Hamas leaders have repeatedly promised to repeat Oct 7th again and again and again.
Both the PA and Hamas have killed their own people for suspected collaboration with Israel, in rather cruel ways. So you can probably imagine what'd happen to Israelis in both scenarios.
I have seen very very few people who align themselves with either phrasing of the movement actually calling for two states, or for any viable solution. (And no, a ceasefire that leaves Hamas in power is not a viable solution. We had a ceasefire until the moment they attacked on Oct 7th.)
(I say "very few" as an allowance that some may exist, but in reality I haven't seen any.)
If your solution involves the dissolution of Israel and giving power to either the PA or Hamas, congratulations. You are actively backing a genocidal "solution".
And much like a previous "solution", most of the victims of this proposed genocide would be Jewish.
Protesters have impressed the leader of one of the biggest human rights violators in the world, the Islamic Republic of Iran. Or so he posted on this platform which he banned in his country.I wonder if these supposed ‘human right activists’ on campuses know what would happen to them if they protested under his regime?
Native Americans, who like Jews are indigenous (Jews are indigenous to Judea, as Native Americans are to their native lands in north and south America) show support in California, near UCLA.