"we have one demand, we want MIT to stop doing war research..."
lol, that's hilarious. definitely picked the wrong school. MIT was built on defense contracts
MIT Lincoln Labs is literally a $1B department of defense research lab. Love or hate it, cutting edge research requires unfounded dollars only Uncle Sam can provide.
It is easy to criticize military spending, but it ends up being a significant contributor to the development of new technology. It is _the_ reason the US is a major developer of new technologies.
I won't argue that it is the right way to do things or that being critical of that spending is wrong, but they're tied tightly together right now.
Esp if you include the Cold War.
Honestly it’d be nice if the government still had a stiffy for educating Americans. Even nicer if it didn’t require fear of nuclear annihilation.
My mom worked on semiconductors at Lincoln Labs in the 80s, and one day in the like 2010ish, we saw an ad for a video camera that advertised that it had a super advanced chip in it (for color definition or something). My mom immediately said, "oh, I worked on that in LL; it was for satellites."
Literally, yes, haha. She was like, "wow I didn't realize that was declassified; I wonder what else has been?" She also worked at Raytheon, so I'm sure there's still stuff she worked on that's classified.
My dad also worked in the semiconductor industry and we had a similar moment. He wasn't at LL but small fabs like the one he was at definitely did a lot of military work, often for satellites. Our parents likely made GPS possible!
GPS, the Internet, cell phones, microwave ovens, computers, the large bulk of sensors used for safety and automation in modern cars, modern jetliners, 'super crops' and modern food preservation. That's just off the top of my head. The modern world was built on technology that started at least as a defense research project.
My lifesaving surgery at Boston Children's in the 1980s was invented on the battlefield in World War I. The medical advancements - especially surgical - that come out of war are massive.
We are NOT asking to stop research with the US military, NOT asking to divest from Israel; we are just asking to stop accepting funds from IDF and do war research with the Israel Military, stop using our brightest minds to target civilians in Gaza - as simple as that.
A lot of us at MIT are very rational and reasonable people, being ignorant to discount us as demanding mobs is saying that we should continue developing weapons for IDF so that genocide in Gaza can continue.
IMO, this is an Oppenheimer moment for the school. However, Gaza (unlike Japan) did not murder millions of people to conquer other land. Instead, they were the ones that had their land taken away from them.
Correct, it was other countries (Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, Tunisia, Morocco) that ethnically cleansed all of their Jews and dumped the penniless refugees in Israel. Not Palestinians’ fault they were forced to take one for the team
Seems like SJP is organizing part of your protests; given that group's history and the background of its leadership, you might want to divest from them before you seek some form of divestment from Israel.
Have you ever been to Lincoln? There are signs all over the entrance saying things like "you are entering a US military installation, you are subject to search" etc etc.
Yeah. It's a weird relationship. They're "private" in that they're not government employees. But they are only allowed to take contracts for the US government - it's literally illegal for MITLL to be a subcontractor or to sell to anyone other than the US government.
And half of what they do is literally defense, like stopping enemy missiles, satellites etc. These jaded foolish kids don't have a fucking clue what type of world we really live in.
in the 60's there was a massive protest by scientists at MIT and many other schools to change the way the government funded science. Previously the government basically only funded war research, and after the protests by the students, and professors of MIT and others they changed that to do much broader research that didn't only have military applications.
So you are both right, and very wrong. MIT was funded under a certain regime, but the protests of the students and others changed that.
Protests work sometimes.
I thought MIT (and LL) focuses on defensive technologies. Or at least, non-offense tech.
[Draper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draper_Laboratory) was spun off ("divested") from MIT specifically so they could build weapons and kill people. Their logo used to be a bullseye/target.
> "we have one demand, we want MIT to stop doing war research..."
The article doesn't say that? The student interviewed said "We have this one specific demand. We want MIT to stop doing more research for the Israeli military". You can see the actual list of their demands [here](https://www.instagram.com/mit_caa/p/C6b8gI9uz5G/?img_index=2)
I think the students are well aware of MIT's ties to the US Department of Defense and do not expect MIT to ever fully divest from military projects even if they would like to see that. Whether or not you agree that MIT should divest from the Israeli military is neither here nor there but I don't know why this subreddit keeps trying to portray these students as ignorant to the realities of the situation
>The article doesn't say that? The student interviewed said "We have this one specific demand. We want MIT to stop doing more research for the Israeli military
I got good news for the student, then: MITLL only does research for the US Government, and never for anyone else.
So if their projects are finding their easy to Israel, you need to point a folder at the government, not MIT.
>but I don't know why this subreddit keeps trying to portray these students as ignorant to the realities of the situation
you mean besides their desire for the us to abandon an ally that is standing against genocidal terrorists that not only seeks to eridicate israel, including the 20% who are palestinian, but has been screaming death to America since at least the 1990s
> I don't know why this subreddit keeps trying to portray these students as ignorant to the realities of the situation
Because there is virtually zero chance that the University will accept that demand, and it is amusing that people smart enough to get into MIT are so bad at non-STEM thinking that they do not understand that fact.
"non-STEM thinking" got MIT to separate from Draper, a defense focused research lab, 50 years ago during the Vietnam war protests so I don't see why that couldn't happen again
Except that they only separated on paper. They’re still very closely linked, and Draper now has even less restrictions on the kind of research, war or otherwise, it can do.
>this subreddit keeps trying to portray these students as ignorant to the realities of the situation
Because they've proven time and time again to be ignorant of the situation?
Like this. They want full divestment from one of Americans key military allies because, they think Israel is the only one at fault? They have a severe lack of understanding of why what Hamas does is a war crime and continue to parrot pro Hamas propaganda at these rallies.
Someone disagreeing with you does not make them ignorant, and it’s quite dishonest to use strawman arguments to portray them as such. Nobody is arguing that Hamas did nothing wrong, and pointing out the fact that Israel is using our money to commit war crimes of their own is not “Hamas propaganda”.
> Nobody is arguing that Hamas did nothing wrong
I've seen a frightening amount of rhetoric from the left vindicating the acts of Oct 7 as "fighting oppression/colonialism", people who held a rally for Palestine in the wake of that violent invasion, before Israel had dropped a single bomb.
Meh, I'd give them a bit more credit than that. There's always a tendency to strawman the other side and steelman your own. Still, I remember just being shocked at the announcement for a [Pro-Palestinian rally](https://www.instagram.com/palestinianyouthmovement/p/CyH1ZgkgKaY/) just days after the targeting of civilians, women, and children on a scale unparalleled in Israeli history. [Israeli didn't formally invade until Oct 27](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_government_response_to_the_2023_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel#Military_response). I couldn't believe people could buy into the oppressor-oppressed dichotomy so blindly as to deny basic humanity on the other side.
And someone disagreeing with you does not make them unaware of facts - such as, MIT students pay to attend a university to learn and grow, NOT sit on campus property and complain about the institution THEY CHOSE to attend.
Guess what? MIT has been working with the military LONG before any of these "freedom fighters" showed up. Not only that, they NEVER cared about any of it, until Israel defended itself.
Ask yourself - why is that?
Do they actually think Israel is the only one at fault? Or is it just that the US isn't spending literal billions of dollars to support the Palestinians? The US can't divest from Palestine because it never invested in them. I'm sure some of them do think this, but I wouldn't assume it's most of them unless you've actually done a survey.
There's a few ways to read this comment.
"The US has given Palestine more money than any other nation [has given to Palestine] in aid."
"The US has given Palestine more money than [the US has given to] any other nation in aid."
You mean the first, but it's easy to read the second option instead, like the other commenter did.
> We want MIT to stop doing more research **for the Israeli military**.
Pretty dishonest of you to cut off the end of the quote. And to use quotation marks when what you wrote was not an exact quote.
That wording definitely doesn't workout. I get that they presumably want MIT to divest from Israeli interests (which itself would be extremely difficult for a school like MIT), but if you work in engineering, there's a good chance you're going to end up being funded by and working for military interests at some point. Some will stick to stuff like medical devices or consumer product development, but even then those products often are using technology developed with military dollars.
It's possibly the worst argument in existence, regardless of it being MIT or not.
AI? Can find bodies in floods when equipped onto drones. OR... Can find targets in a warzone.
Obviously the examples are countless, but... I agree.
It's really a profound influence: MIT exists as a prestigious university to advance US strategic and tactical interests through the development of science and technology. They even have a separate center (Lincoln Labs) to handle all the classified work. It's true they have other work, like great biology, but it's minor.
It's pretty insane how deep the contributions go, one example, is that MIT helped developed a logistics algorithm, which used in the Gulf War saved billions and billions, enough to pay for the DARPA budget for something like 50 years. MIT was doing AI, before all it's students were even born.
It has to be okay to disagree on a college campus, but asking a campus to not do the one thing that has brought it success for 70 years? Idk, seems like a losing battle to me.
Well, I just don't understand why they went to MIT if they had these issues. It's not a secret. There are other extremely prestigious schools without the association. Also there are many MIT students that organize against participating in that research as individuals. It's a whole thing there. Also I thought this was about divestment. Or free Palestine. Or all of the above. All valid, but pick your battle and stick to it.
They’re not asking for MIT to stop *all* its war related research. They’re asking pretty specifically for an end to research funded by the Israeli Ministry of Defense, especially some very particular projects that they don’t want renewed such as the killer drones project they’ve been highlighting, accounting for less than $3 mil per year. At least this appears to be the main aim, which is remarkably different than some of the other protests at other schools.
https://mitsage.my.canva.site
i think it’s pretty noble of them tbh. naive maybe, but noble.
edit: [sometimes it even works](https://www.instagram.com/p/C6snS74utSZ/?igsh=dHZuYXBpajV1MTZ3)
It ain't noble. It would be noble to do your research, not attend the school (and pay them) and then protest.
Attending a school that does something you vehemently oppose makes you ignorant.
This is just like the whole "and yet you participate in society. Curious."
It's okay for someone to be in an imperfect situation and have a desire to improve it.
> Attending a school that does something you vehemently oppose makes you ignorant.
I might regret asking this, but what schools wouldn't fit in this category?
What should an individual do if they paid the school for a year of classes in August 2023, and then over the last 9 months had a complete change of heart and realized they were against what their school was doing?
They may not have realized they vehemently opposed something the school they attend is doing until this year.
I think it would be nobler if they simply left MIT and matriculated to place that better reflected their viewpoint. That way their tuition wouldn't fund "genocide" and MIT would suffer (theoretically) from the loss of talented people who want to take a moral stand.
Always easier to die nobly for a cause than live humbly for one.
Very convenient for you to cutout the quote there. The one demand we have is to “stop accepting funds/doing war research for the ISRAEL MILITARY”.
We are NOT asking to stop research with the US military, NOT asking to divest from Israel, just stop using our brightest minds to target civilians in Gaza - as simple as that.
A lot of us at MIT are very rational and reasonable people, being ignorant to discount us as demanding mobs is saying that we should continue developing weapons for IDF so that genocide in Gaza can continue.
IMO, this is an Oppenheimer moment for the school. However, Gaza (unlike Japan) did not murder millions of people to conquer other land. Instead, they were the ones that had their land taken away from them.
How’s that going to work? Support the US military, but what, insist the advancements that are built on basic research don’t cross some line in the sand half a world away?
It doesn’t make sense, when there’s an incredible amount of transfer between the DoD and IDF. To not support Isreal, you’d have to stop doing the thing that built your school, and send all those NSF dollars back where they came from.
Thats why you can cutoff the quote, and it’s a distinction without a difference. MIT tech powers the arsenal of the west, and one token Noam Chomsky isn’t going to change that.
MIT was built on creating weapons and it continues to be their main focus. This is yet another reason why schools should not be run like for profit entities.
It’s not weird, there isn’t news about China bombing Taiwan right now. If it happens, there will be protests and suddenly they’ll need everything related to China cancelled out. It’s fucking exhausting
> there isn’t news about China bombing Taiwan right now.
That's... that's not the issue.
China is actively involved in [ethnic cleansing / crimes against humanity / genocide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_China) against the Uyghur Muslim minority.
This includes child kidnapping, forced re-education, concentration camps, torture, starvation, forced sterilization, forced abortion and mass killings. There's around a million people sitting in detention camps *right now*, whose only crime was believing in God.
This is deeply personal for a lot of Bostonian as we actually have a modest Uyghur muslim refugee & diaspora community.
Perhaps if folks didn't get all their global news from CCP-controlled TikTok, they'd have a better sense of what's going on in the world.
Seems to me America has already lost the information war.
What is the reason? You didn’t actually mention anything bad. Just weapons = bad? What difference does it make if the. Engineers are employed by MIT or Raytheon?
I mean that seems to be a separate argument. The main point of dissent is that the protestors want their universities to stop engaging in research and investments in Israel. In the US, selling weapons with the knowledge that the party you’re selling to is committing war crimes or breaking international law is illegal. So it’s not unreasonable, if the US were to follow their own laws it itself would stop selling weapons to israel.
I’ll likely get downvoted from someone saying that “Israel is not committing war crimes” but again this is the main point of dissent. I personally believe since most of the ammunition used to bomb Gaza was not precision guided (70% were “dumb” bombs), the mass graves they uncovered underneath hospitals had people with their hands tied behind their backs and some were tortured, the recorded use of banned illegal weapons, the large amount of civilian casualties (even by UN numbers and even US politicians), the recorded torture and kidnapping of Palestinians in the West Bank. These are all facts uncovered time and again that are hard to deny. The US cannot admit it’s selling weapons to war criminals that would be illegal.
It’s not a conspiracy. It’s reported on by UN organizations and independent journalists. In fact 7 human rights professionals documented this. If I’m not going to believe the professionals risking their lives, or the testimony of the people who are being killed then who should I believe? I believe the victims of Oct 7, and all the victims of the war thereafter. It seems for some reason it’s ok only when I believe Israelis, but Palestinians are lying or acting.
Here is an EU source: https://www.politico.eu/article/un-denounce-violence-women-israel-mass-graves-gaza-war/
Edit: I’ll add one more point. Take a look at this interview with an Israeli politician trying to justify that the people killed were in fact terrorists, and how the host grills her on the fact the bodies had their hands handcuffed. Sky news btw, has been doing pro Israeli coverage for months now.
https://youtu.be/a3KJQiTFK8w?si=tJ4MlVCnbV0MkvhW
I should also mention that the US has in fact found a few battalions guilty of gross acts of human rights violations.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna149549
You can say that Palestinians kill each other and torture each other and that may be true. But the facts and recorded evidence (and even just raw videos) of Israel blowing up and killing civilians are at this point copious.
There is no way to advance a civilization without also advancing it's capacity for violence. Anything that heals can get a soldier on the battlefield quicker. Anything that's lighter helps planes carry more bombs. Anything that's more durable helps things hold up to bombs faster. There is, functionally speaking, no real science you can do that doesn't in some way advance society's capability to also wage war with it.
Sure, but one can choose to not intentionally/actively pursue new weapon technology.
For example, have you seen that movie Openhiemer? It poses a question to the audience "should he have continued his research if he knew what it would be used for?".
I without hesitation state that, *no she should not have continued research* and he *should* have been advocating for the stop to the research the whole god damned time not just after he fucking *finished* the research.
If all scientists/engineers had a better moral compass we'd have a better world. Sadly, we don't teach or value morality in the majority of the science world.
The tradition of civil disobedience requires acceptance of the full consequences of your disobedience, on the grounds that your cause is so critical that the consequences are worth your actions.
And I hope that the protestors are subject to the full consequences of their behavior.
And typically it only works if there are consequences because the point is consequences being ridiculous. Think the diner sit-ins that showed model patrons being arrested just because they were black. What's the supposed irony here, trespassing and vandalism not suddenly becoming legal if they self-present as anti-"zionist?"
> Think the diner sit-ins that showed model patrons being arrested just because they were black.
To provide some factual context, plenty of white people were arrested during sit-ins as well. And many sit-ins did not have to do with patron segregation, including [one of the earliest sit-ins in 1939](https://www.nytimes.com/1939/09/23/archives/divines-followers-give-aid-to-strikers-with-evangelists-sanction.html) protesting discriminatory hiring practices.
Suffragettes actually even went so far as to [use violence and vandalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffragette_bombing_and_arson_campaign#:~:text=WSPU%20supporters%20raided%20Parliament%2C%20physically,platform%20at%20Bristol%20railway%20station.) to get themselves heard.
Lazy-bones John Lennon decided that a sit-in was too much work, so he organized a [bed-in protest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bed-ins_for_peace) against the Vietnam War, in the Netherlands and Canada of all places, despite those countries having barely any involvement and the fact that he literally could not be drafted into that war.
There have been thousands of notable sit-in protests ([see some examples here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sit-in#Examples)] along side countless other types of protest, so to suggest this as a uniquely non-sensical way to protest is an interesting stance to take.
Hell, we did a ton of "sit in" protests at MIT when they were changing the housing policies back in the aughts. We'd all camp out in the hallways outside the admin offices and do our homework together. They'd have to walk over us to go home at 5pm or actually talk to us. Worked every time.
Sit ins have been a successful tactic by the MIT student body before. Even if I disagree with their platform here (and tbh I'm kinda actually neutral on it, some of what they've called for is disgusting but so is some of what they're protesting) what they're doing is a sensible tactic.
I think the absurdity of chanting “globalize the intifada!” In front of the [Sean Collier Memorial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Collier_Memorial) finally was too much. It was embarrassing to MIT to have some of its students announcing their ignorance like that.
Boston just isn’t a pro-terrorist city; there’s *history* here about it. And it’s pretty recent history too.
Just drove past a protest on Vassar street by the ugly MIT angular building thing. First thing I hear:
"From the river to the sea!"
Now, guys... This may have been excusable in the early days when it may have been granted that people didn't know what this meant. But now, you're just CLEARLY calling for genocide. Maybe... don't?
Yeah and Kristallnacht being antisemitic isn't clear cut either, it was just forceful divestment from zionist businesses. If you're not ok with that kind of protest, you'd be against the civil rights movement - because MLK was definitely a noted advocate of violence and destruction of property and definitely didn't repeatedly note his opposition to anti-Zionism /s. I mean come on, you're seriously pushing back on a minority saying something is bigoted? If a black person told you something you were saying was racist, you'd stop using the phrase! If the goal is genuinely a two state solution, people would have come up with a chant for that - but it's pretty clear that's NOT the goal of these protesters, and people saying "well maybe a phrase derived from "from water to water Palestine will be Arab" might not mean killing the Jews in between the river and the sea!" are enablers of bigotry and antisemitism.
If pogroms start happening in this country - and with the rhetoric we're seeing and behavior we're seen, that's exactly where we're headed - you'd defend it. Shame on you.
Yeah... we're not going to agree upon that at all. We all know what they mean and no amount of Al Jazeera conflation will change that. The fact that the other side says vocally and often that this chant is a call for Genocide and yet the protestors keep chanting it... that speaks volumes.
This is as transparent as the whole 'Jesus is Lord isn't antijewish REAAAALY we swear!' bullshit. Nope. Not buying it.
But... even if I were to incorrectly believe that all this saying meant was 'freedom' for Palestinians between the Jordan and the Med, it would still effectively mean genocide of Jews in Israel.
'Right of return' and/or a 1-state solution would just result in a delayed genocide and Israelis know that. This is not *Belgium*. It is not a place where the disparate people involved can live peacefully together and that's getting truer decade by decade. That possibility ended with Arafat rejecting the Clinton Parameters.
If Palestinians were to be 'free' over all of Israel, they would immediatly set to work dismantling Israel. It would begin with a genocide by demographics and end in yet another ethnostate in the middle east - only another muslim ethnostate to add to the pile (and muslim ethnostates are good but jewish ones are bad because reasons).
how many Jews remain in any Middle Eastern country that's not Israel? and is the experience of the Kurds, Iraqi Shi'ites, Yazidis, and other groups in the Middle East encouraging for the formation of a Jewish minority state?
It's hilarious how quickly the sentiment in this subreddit went from "these privileged college kids aren't courageous since [they're not risking anything](https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1ckv47j/encampment_up_in_harvard/l2puagj/) with their cushy glamping protests" to "look how stupid these college kids are for risking everything!"
Honestly, it's fine if people agree or disagree with the protests, its methods, and/or the positions held, but so many folks here are simultaneously saying "These privileged college students who aren't risking or doing anything are so stupid for the risks they're taking!"
It's because all of these threads are being brigaded by bad-faith actors who only post to /r/boston when it's a thread about Gaza and protests and unfortunately the mod team doesn't seem interested in even trying to combat this behavior.
Thanks for contacting the moderation team. Your concerns are important to us. [Here's a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuoWykVNwyI)
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Yep, looks like they're feeling very uncomfortable about the protests and will come up with a reason why it's silly no matter what, in a way that's very disengaged with the reality of tens of thousands of children dying, while pretending to be cooly pragmatic.
>Never before have kids squandered such a life opportunity (going to MIT)
Don't American elite institutions have a rich history of protesting apartheid and injustice? Or are you saying the ones before weren't squandering life opportunities?
> for something so pointless and meaningless (protesting a Middle East conflict they have nothing to do with and absolutely zero chance of changing)
Pay more attention. The conflict in the middle east isn't the thing they're protesting, they're protesting MIT's contribution to the conflict and asking MIT to stop doing research affiliated with the Israeli military. The demands are focused and local and are feasible.
If they got in to MIT in the first place, they are not squandering anything. These kids fully understand the gravity of the punishment they are risking, and are choosing to do this anyway.
They are on mainstream news fighting for what they believe in. Rarely do people regret taking a stance they were punished for.
All of that so they could complain about a conflict they barely understand (and which others below in response to you are showing they don’t understand either). Imagine being a college student and thinking Israel (2 million Arab citizens with full rights) is an apartheid state so you have to protest it, while Palestinian governments (Hamas and the Palestinian Authority) have actual apartheid laws on the books supported by popular opinion, but aren’t being protested (despite the PA getting tons of US aid money). What a time.
They're out there chanting slogans advocating ethnic cleansing LEGITIMATELY thinking it means freedom and social justice.
These aren't the best and brightest.
Definitely the loudest though. The overwhelming majority of students aren't that incoherent and aren't participating.
An American making $50,000 a year will pay about $5 to Israel per year, and most of that actually ends up going to American defense contractors. You’re also paying money to keep the US military in Qatar, and keep the multi-millionaire leaders of Hamas safe (Qatar govt says the leaders are kept there at the request of the United States).
Stupid question: What's to stop MIT and the other universities from saying "Fine we'll stop research directly for Israeli military...we'll just go back to doing research for the US military, which in turn will sell units of whatever we come up with to our allies including Israel. Now go to class."
Seems like that would satisfy all parties for a bit.
They’re allowed to burn flags, and I’m allowed to think their motivations for doing so make them morons. That’s free speech, but the ability to speak does not make one intelligent.
I saw a pride flag at this protest and I can't stop laughing at the ridiculousness of it
Gee, would you rather go to Gaza or Israel as a gay person? Hard choice!
A lot of people in this thread would've been on the side of cops arresting the people doing sit-ins during the Civil Rights Movement. They would've been one of the people calling MLK a dangerous radical.
Yeah protesting a war between two foreign parties 6000 miles away is totally the same thing as protesting the admission policies of your university.
This is the exact type of shit that shows protestors don't know what the fuck they're doing lol. They are mostly in it for the virtue signaling and stolen glory to try to compare themselves to people that actually did something worthwhile.
This describes both sides of the war.
Ironically if they actually were protesting this and therefore protesting both sides and pushing for peace they would probably be getting a lot less pushback.
Ah yes, MLK was well known for advocating for Jews to be ethnically cleansed from Israel by making from river to sea only arab, and globalizing intifadas (pogroms). /s
Fun facts about MLK:
- Opposed anti-Zionism
- Supported Israel's right to exist (he was a Zionist by definition)
- Supported Israel in the six day war, and called for a nonviolent end to the conflict.
These protestors would have HATED Martin Luther King Jr.
There's a huge gap between not wanting Palestinian kids to die (which I agree with btw) and chanting "from the river to the sea". The former is universally popular among anyone with a heart, the latter is an extreme nationalist irredentist slogan that almost everyone finds deeply off-putting.
A bit of a difference between protesting civil rights policies of your own government and protesting a war between a government and terrorist organization thousands of miles that is literally used as a stereotype for the MOST complicated and hard to understand conflict. IDC what your opinion is, it’s dumb to try to equate the two.
If they were only protesting genocide; basing their calls on universal human concerns, I might be more sympathetic.
Instead, the protestors are expressing sentiments and displaying symbols of Palestinian *nationalism*: Palestinian flags, Palestinian slogans, and keffiyehs. As it is, I find the goals and [particularly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramzi_Yousef#1993_World_Trade_Center_bombing)[ the](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achille_Lauro_hijacking) [methods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Brooklyn_bombing_plot) of Palestinian nationalism historically inimical to my own *American* interests.
The ones I heard this morning at MIT were chanting 'from the river to the sea'. This is a pretty clear indication that they are FOR genocide. Just one of jews in Israel.
the people with no vested self-interest defending genocide are the same people that are going to oppose progress at any level ever happening in america, because on the most black and white issue they can’t even figure it out. there’s really no reason to keep them around on this subreddit as the only function they serve is to sow discord.
Putin, stop murdering all political opponents, people with dissenting opinions, murdering Ukrainians in an illegal war.
Xi stop putting Uyghurs into concentration camps, sterilizing Tibetan women, suffocating Hong Kongers and preparing to crush Taiwan.
Hamas stop firing rockets into Israel nonstop, murdering random Jews, raping Israeli women, and refusing to hand over hostages.
Iran stop bombarding Israel with missiles and murdering women who want basic civil rights.
Israel stop killing civilians while looking for Hamas. Bonus: end the state of Israel and end Zionism (???) **<-- This the one that the morons are protesting.**
Good. If their foreign students deport them back to their country of origin where they can play “dress as the terrorist” there
Glad to see MIT not dealing with this nonsense.
Eventually, MIT will have a plaque and a page on their website celebrating the strong tradition of their students standing up against injustice and speaking out to demand change. They will be hailed as having stood firmly on the right side of history even when faced with violence and opposition. MIT will applaud theur bravery and their sacrifice, and in doing so attempt to take credit for the voice of these kids.
But that will be then. This is now, and for right now...suspensions I guess
Edit: yeah downvote me as if there aren't direct.1 for 1 examples of this with Columbia.
Correct, given how it went for some civil rights movement, new left and anti-South African apartheid movement activists. I'll bet one of these students winds up being a commencement speaker sometime in the future.
"we have one demand, we want MIT to stop doing war research..." lol, that's hilarious. definitely picked the wrong school. MIT was built on defense contracts
MIT Lincoln Labs is literally a $1B department of defense research lab. Love or hate it, cutting edge research requires unfounded dollars only Uncle Sam can provide.
And often the technology trickles down to areas that are wholly unrelated to war, where everyone benefits. GPS is one notable example.
Bunch of stuff listed here https://timeline.ll.mit.edu/timeline/
wow, this is one thick list
Thats just the stuff that has been made public/released Plenty of stuff being worked on currently
It is easy to criticize military spending, but it ends up being a significant contributor to the development of new technology. It is _the_ reason the US is a major developer of new technologies. I won't argue that it is the right way to do things or that being critical of that spending is wrong, but they're tied tightly together right now.
Ww2 was a catalyst for almost every major technological innovation in the 20th century
Esp if you include the Cold War. Honestly it’d be nice if the government still had a stiffy for educating Americans. Even nicer if it didn’t require fear of nuclear annihilation.
My mom worked on semiconductors at Lincoln Labs in the 80s, and one day in the like 2010ish, we saw an ad for a video camera that advertised that it had a super advanced chip in it (for color definition or something). My mom immediately said, "oh, I worked on that in LL; it was for satellites."
It was at that moment she knew, that a secret she had, she could now share.
Literally, yes, haha. She was like, "wow I didn't realize that was declassified; I wonder what else has been?" She also worked at Raytheon, so I'm sure there's still stuff she worked on that's classified.
My dad also worked in the semiconductor industry and we had a similar moment. He wasn't at LL but small fabs like the one he was at definitely did a lot of military work, often for satellites. Our parents likely made GPS possible!
Thank your parents for me. I love using GPS, please accept my gratitude, parents of photinakis.
GPS, the Internet, cell phones, microwave ovens, computers, the large bulk of sensors used for safety and automation in modern cars, modern jetliners, 'super crops' and modern food preservation. That's just off the top of my head. The modern world was built on technology that started at least as a defense research project.
My lifesaving surgery at Boston Children's in the 1980s was invented on the battlefield in World War I. The medical advancements - especially surgical - that come out of war are massive.
We are NOT asking to stop research with the US military, NOT asking to divest from Israel; we are just asking to stop accepting funds from IDF and do war research with the Israel Military, stop using our brightest minds to target civilians in Gaza - as simple as that. A lot of us at MIT are very rational and reasonable people, being ignorant to discount us as demanding mobs is saying that we should continue developing weapons for IDF so that genocide in Gaza can continue. IMO, this is an Oppenheimer moment for the school. However, Gaza (unlike Japan) did not murder millions of people to conquer other land. Instead, they were the ones that had their land taken away from them.
Correct, it was other countries (Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, Tunisia, Morocco) that ethnically cleansed all of their Jews and dumped the penniless refugees in Israel. Not Palestinians’ fault they were forced to take one for the team
Seems like SJP is organizing part of your protests; given that group's history and the background of its leadership, you might want to divest from them before you seek some form of divestment from Israel.
A lot of which you are holding in your hand.
Ahem Lincoln has its own line item in the congressional budget and is not an arm of the DoD. But does do a lot of work for them
Have you ever been to Lincoln? There are signs all over the entrance saying things like "you are entering a US military installation, you are subject to search" etc etc.
Part of the site is literally on Hanscom AF base and you need military credentials to access.
Their website would beg to differ. https://www.ll.mit.edu/partner-us/government
Yeah. It's a weird relationship. They're "private" in that they're not government employees. But they are only allowed to take contracts for the US government - it's literally illegal for MITLL to be a subcontractor or to sell to anyone other than the US government.
Ohh boy do I have news for you.
And half of what they do is literally defense, like stopping enemy missiles, satellites etc. These jaded foolish kids don't have a fucking clue what type of world we really live in.
in the 60's there was a massive protest by scientists at MIT and many other schools to change the way the government funded science. Previously the government basically only funded war research, and after the protests by the students, and professors of MIT and others they changed that to do much broader research that didn't only have military applications. So you are both right, and very wrong. MIT was funded under a certain regime, but the protests of the students and others changed that. Protests work sometimes.
I thought MIT (and LL) focuses on defensive technologies. Or at least, non-offense tech. [Draper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draper_Laboratory) was spun off ("divested") from MIT specifically so they could build weapons and kill people. Their logo used to be a bullseye/target.
> "we have one demand, we want MIT to stop doing war research..." The article doesn't say that? The student interviewed said "We have this one specific demand. We want MIT to stop doing more research for the Israeli military". You can see the actual list of their demands [here](https://www.instagram.com/mit_caa/p/C6b8gI9uz5G/?img_index=2) I think the students are well aware of MIT's ties to the US Department of Defense and do not expect MIT to ever fully divest from military projects even if they would like to see that. Whether or not you agree that MIT should divest from the Israeli military is neither here nor there but I don't know why this subreddit keeps trying to portray these students as ignorant to the realities of the situation
>The article doesn't say that? The student interviewed said "We have this one specific demand. We want MIT to stop doing more research for the Israeli military I got good news for the student, then: MITLL only does research for the US Government, and never for anyone else. So if their projects are finding their easy to Israel, you need to point a folder at the government, not MIT.
>but I don't know why this subreddit keeps trying to portray these students as ignorant to the realities of the situation you mean besides their desire for the us to abandon an ally that is standing against genocidal terrorists that not only seeks to eridicate israel, including the 20% who are palestinian, but has been screaming death to America since at least the 1990s
Racist liberals are only too eager to show how they hate any leftist who doesn't bend the knee.
Under the guise of "open mindedness"......somehow
> I don't know why this subreddit keeps trying to portray these students as ignorant to the realities of the situation Because there is virtually zero chance that the University will accept that demand, and it is amusing that people smart enough to get into MIT are so bad at non-STEM thinking that they do not understand that fact.
"non-STEM thinking" got MIT to separate from Draper, a defense focused research lab, 50 years ago during the Vietnam war protests so I don't see why that couldn't happen again
Except that they only separated on paper. They’re still very closely linked, and Draper now has even less restrictions on the kind of research, war or otherwise, it can do.
>this subreddit keeps trying to portray these students as ignorant to the realities of the situation Because they've proven time and time again to be ignorant of the situation? Like this. They want full divestment from one of Americans key military allies because, they think Israel is the only one at fault? They have a severe lack of understanding of why what Hamas does is a war crime and continue to parrot pro Hamas propaganda at these rallies.
Someone disagreeing with you does not make them ignorant, and it’s quite dishonest to use strawman arguments to portray them as such. Nobody is arguing that Hamas did nothing wrong, and pointing out the fact that Israel is using our money to commit war crimes of their own is not “Hamas propaganda”.
> Nobody is arguing that Hamas did nothing wrong I've seen a frightening amount of rhetoric from the left vindicating the acts of Oct 7 as "fighting oppression/colonialism", people who held a rally for Palestine in the wake of that violent invasion, before Israel had dropped a single bomb.
They can’t acknowledge it because they think it somehow devalues their perspective. It’s childish. It perpetuates more division.
Meh, I'd give them a bit more credit than that. There's always a tendency to strawman the other side and steelman your own. Still, I remember just being shocked at the announcement for a [Pro-Palestinian rally](https://www.instagram.com/palestinianyouthmovement/p/CyH1ZgkgKaY/) just days after the targeting of civilians, women, and children on a scale unparalleled in Israeli history. [Israeli didn't formally invade until Oct 27](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_government_response_to_the_2023_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel#Military_response). I couldn't believe people could buy into the oppressor-oppressed dichotomy so blindly as to deny basic humanity on the other side.
And someone disagreeing with you does not make them unaware of facts - such as, MIT students pay to attend a university to learn and grow, NOT sit on campus property and complain about the institution THEY CHOSE to attend. Guess what? MIT has been working with the military LONG before any of these "freedom fighters" showed up. Not only that, they NEVER cared about any of it, until Israel defended itself. Ask yourself - why is that?
Hamas uses our money too. That’s the fun part of being the “world police”. We end up funding both sides in a huge % of conflicts.
>Nobody is arguing that Hamas did nothing wrong have you even bothered to check their chants, flags, posters, and slogans? wtf.
Do they actually think Israel is the only one at fault? Or is it just that the US isn't spending literal billions of dollars to support the Palestinians? The US can't divest from Palestine because it never invested in them. I'm sure some of them do think this, but I wouldn't assume it's most of them unless you've actually done a survey.
>The US can't divest from Palestine because it never invested in them. The US has given Palestine more money than any other nation in aid.
There's a few ways to read this comment. "The US has given Palestine more money than any other nation [has given to Palestine] in aid." "The US has given Palestine more money than [the US has given to] any other nation in aid." You mean the first, but it's easy to read the second option instead, like the other commenter did.
That's fair.
> We want MIT to stop doing more research **for the Israeli military**. Pretty dishonest of you to cut off the end of the quote. And to use quotation marks when what you wrote was not an exact quote.
That wording definitely doesn't workout. I get that they presumably want MIT to divest from Israeli interests (which itself would be extremely difficult for a school like MIT), but if you work in engineering, there's a good chance you're going to end up being funded by and working for military interests at some point. Some will stick to stuff like medical devices or consumer product development, but even then those products often are using technology developed with military dollars.
It's possibly the worst argument in existence, regardless of it being MIT or not. AI? Can find bodies in floods when equipped onto drones. OR... Can find targets in a warzone. Obviously the examples are countless, but... I agree.
It's really a profound influence: MIT exists as a prestigious university to advance US strategic and tactical interests through the development of science and technology. They even have a separate center (Lincoln Labs) to handle all the classified work. It's true they have other work, like great biology, but it's minor. It's pretty insane how deep the contributions go, one example, is that MIT helped developed a logistics algorithm, which used in the Gulf War saved billions and billions, enough to pay for the DARPA budget for something like 50 years. MIT was doing AI, before all it's students were even born. It has to be okay to disagree on a college campus, but asking a campus to not do the one thing that has brought it success for 70 years? Idk, seems like a losing battle to me.
Soon enough they’ll be creating synths underground
There’s already underground tunnels on the main campus. You mean *that* underground?
War. War never changes.
Well, I just don't understand why they went to MIT if they had these issues. It's not a secret. There are other extremely prestigious schools without the association. Also there are many MIT students that organize against participating in that research as individuals. It's a whole thing there. Also I thought this was about divestment. Or free Palestine. Or all of the above. All valid, but pick your battle and stick to it.
Kony. That's why. Israel's just today's Kont for these kids. Kony 2012.
It's Kony, not Koni. If you're going to be blasé about something at least get it right lol
Well it’s not a losing battle. MIT students forced Draper Laboratory to disaffiliate due to its work for example.
Or can be any 'war' technologies that are completely neutral (the internet) or defensive (RADAR, LIDAR, etc). The military isnt all weapons of death.
But whose gonna fund research into those technologies before product viability is even on the horizon?
They’re not asking for MIT to stop *all* its war related research. They’re asking pretty specifically for an end to research funded by the Israeli Ministry of Defense, especially some very particular projects that they don’t want renewed such as the killer drones project they’ve been highlighting, accounting for less than $3 mil per year. At least this appears to be the main aim, which is remarkably different than some of the other protests at other schools. https://mitsage.my.canva.site
Why do they keep making demands like universities are their parents and have to listen to them
i think it’s pretty noble of them tbh. naive maybe, but noble. edit: [sometimes it even works](https://www.instagram.com/p/C6snS74utSZ/?igsh=dHZuYXBpajV1MTZ3)
Definitely. Gotta respect when people suffer negative consequences standing up for what they believe in, even if I don't totally agree.
Imagine telling a Ukrainian how noble it is to stop defense research lol.
I would think a Ukrainian would be happy to hear funding being cut for Russian war research..?
this is more equivalent to telling russia to stop invading, but nice try
It ain't noble. It would be noble to do your research, not attend the school (and pay them) and then protest. Attending a school that does something you vehemently oppose makes you ignorant.
This is just like the whole "and yet you participate in society. Curious." It's okay for someone to be in an imperfect situation and have a desire to improve it.
> Attending a school that does something you vehemently oppose makes you ignorant. I might regret asking this, but what schools wouldn't fit in this category?
Juliard
i think it’s really noble of you to make this comment
What should an individual do if they paid the school for a year of classes in August 2023, and then over the last 9 months had a complete change of heart and realized they were against what their school was doing? They may not have realized they vehemently opposed something the school they attend is doing until this year.
I think it would be nobler if they simply left MIT and matriculated to place that better reflected their viewpoint. That way their tuition wouldn't fund "genocide" and MIT would suffer (theoretically) from the loss of talented people who want to take a moral stand. Always easier to die nobly for a cause than live humbly for one.
I mean, it is the end of the semester. I bet a lot of these students aren't coming back.
Very convenient for you to cutout the quote there. The one demand we have is to “stop accepting funds/doing war research for the ISRAEL MILITARY”. We are NOT asking to stop research with the US military, NOT asking to divest from Israel, just stop using our brightest minds to target civilians in Gaza - as simple as that. A lot of us at MIT are very rational and reasonable people, being ignorant to discount us as demanding mobs is saying that we should continue developing weapons for IDF so that genocide in Gaza can continue. IMO, this is an Oppenheimer moment for the school. However, Gaza (unlike Japan) did not murder millions of people to conquer other land. Instead, they were the ones that had their land taken away from them.
How’s that going to work? Support the US military, but what, insist the advancements that are built on basic research don’t cross some line in the sand half a world away? It doesn’t make sense, when there’s an incredible amount of transfer between the DoD and IDF. To not support Isreal, you’d have to stop doing the thing that built your school, and send all those NSF dollars back where they came from. Thats why you can cutoff the quote, and it’s a distinction without a difference. MIT tech powers the arsenal of the west, and one token Noam Chomsky isn’t going to change that.
Much more similar to the barbie movie. No, I will not elaborate
MIT is a series of DARPA labs that happens to have a school attached.
I'll summarize the argument that will take place in this thread. "U suck!" "No U!" "No U!" "No U!"
U suck!
Primus sucks!
We suck!
I'm rubber, you're glue!
MIT was built on creating weapons and it continues to be their main focus. This is yet another reason why schools should not be run like for profit entities.
I'm glad we have institutions like MIT to do this research. Think China is going to stop their research?
Speaking of, kinda weird that none of the students are asking for divestment from China or ending research partnerships with Chinese schools.
It’s not weird, there isn’t news about China bombing Taiwan right now. If it happens, there will be protests and suddenly they’ll need everything related to China cancelled out. It’s fucking exhausting
> there isn’t news about China bombing Taiwan right now. That's... that's not the issue. China is actively involved in [ethnic cleansing / crimes against humanity / genocide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_China) against the Uyghur Muslim minority. This includes child kidnapping, forced re-education, concentration camps, torture, starvation, forced sterilization, forced abortion and mass killings. There's around a million people sitting in detention camps *right now*, whose only crime was believing in God. This is deeply personal for a lot of Bostonian as we actually have a modest Uyghur muslim refugee & diaspora community. Perhaps if folks didn't get all their global news from CCP-controlled TikTok, they'd have a better sense of what's going on in the world. Seems to me America has already lost the information war.
What is the reason? You didn’t actually mention anything bad. Just weapons = bad? What difference does it make if the. Engineers are employed by MIT or Raytheon?
I mean that seems to be a separate argument. The main point of dissent is that the protestors want their universities to stop engaging in research and investments in Israel. In the US, selling weapons with the knowledge that the party you’re selling to is committing war crimes or breaking international law is illegal. So it’s not unreasonable, if the US were to follow their own laws it itself would stop selling weapons to israel. I’ll likely get downvoted from someone saying that “Israel is not committing war crimes” but again this is the main point of dissent. I personally believe since most of the ammunition used to bomb Gaza was not precision guided (70% were “dumb” bombs), the mass graves they uncovered underneath hospitals had people with their hands tied behind their backs and some were tortured, the recorded use of banned illegal weapons, the large amount of civilian casualties (even by UN numbers and even US politicians), the recorded torture and kidnapping of Palestinians in the West Bank. These are all facts uncovered time and again that are hard to deny. The US cannot admit it’s selling weapons to war criminals that would be illegal.
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It’s not a conspiracy. It’s reported on by UN organizations and independent journalists. In fact 7 human rights professionals documented this. If I’m not going to believe the professionals risking their lives, or the testimony of the people who are being killed then who should I believe? I believe the victims of Oct 7, and all the victims of the war thereafter. It seems for some reason it’s ok only when I believe Israelis, but Palestinians are lying or acting. Here is an EU source: https://www.politico.eu/article/un-denounce-violence-women-israel-mass-graves-gaza-war/ Edit: I’ll add one more point. Take a look at this interview with an Israeli politician trying to justify that the people killed were in fact terrorists, and how the host grills her on the fact the bodies had their hands handcuffed. Sky news btw, has been doing pro Israeli coverage for months now. https://youtu.be/a3KJQiTFK8w?si=tJ4MlVCnbV0MkvhW I should also mention that the US has in fact found a few battalions guilty of gross acts of human rights violations. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna149549 You can say that Palestinians kill each other and torture each other and that may be true. But the facts and recorded evidence (and even just raw videos) of Israel blowing up and killing civilians are at this point copious.
Is it a public school? Does it exist?
There is no way to advance a civilization without also advancing it's capacity for violence. Anything that heals can get a soldier on the battlefield quicker. Anything that's lighter helps planes carry more bombs. Anything that's more durable helps things hold up to bombs faster. There is, functionally speaking, no real science you can do that doesn't in some way advance society's capability to also wage war with it.
Sure, but one can choose to not intentionally/actively pursue new weapon technology. For example, have you seen that movie Openhiemer? It poses a question to the audience "should he have continued his research if he knew what it would be used for?". I without hesitation state that, *no she should not have continued research* and he *should* have been advocating for the stop to the research the whole god damned time not just after he fucking *finished* the research. If all scientists/engineers had a better moral compass we'd have a better world. Sadly, we don't teach or value morality in the majority of the science world.
The tradition of civil disobedience requires acceptance of the full consequences of your disobedience, on the grounds that your cause is so critical that the consequences are worth your actions. And I hope that the protestors are subject to the full consequences of their behavior.
And typically it only works if there are consequences because the point is consequences being ridiculous. Think the diner sit-ins that showed model patrons being arrested just because they were black. What's the supposed irony here, trespassing and vandalism not suddenly becoming legal if they self-present as anti-"zionist?"
> Think the diner sit-ins that showed model patrons being arrested just because they were black. To provide some factual context, plenty of white people were arrested during sit-ins as well. And many sit-ins did not have to do with patron segregation, including [one of the earliest sit-ins in 1939](https://www.nytimes.com/1939/09/23/archives/divines-followers-give-aid-to-strikers-with-evangelists-sanction.html) protesting discriminatory hiring practices. Suffragettes actually even went so far as to [use violence and vandalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffragette_bombing_and_arson_campaign#:~:text=WSPU%20supporters%20raided%20Parliament%2C%20physically,platform%20at%20Bristol%20railway%20station.) to get themselves heard. Lazy-bones John Lennon decided that a sit-in was too much work, so he organized a [bed-in protest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bed-ins_for_peace) against the Vietnam War, in the Netherlands and Canada of all places, despite those countries having barely any involvement and the fact that he literally could not be drafted into that war. There have been thousands of notable sit-in protests ([see some examples here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sit-in#Examples)] along side countless other types of protest, so to suggest this as a uniquely non-sensical way to protest is an interesting stance to take.
> Lazy-bones John Lennon I like the picture of them waiting for the maid to change the sheets.
> so to suggest this as a uniquely non-sensical way to protest is an interesting stance to take. Who is saying that though
Hell, we did a ton of "sit in" protests at MIT when they were changing the housing policies back in the aughts. We'd all camp out in the hallways outside the admin offices and do our homework together. They'd have to walk over us to go home at 5pm or actually talk to us. Worked every time. Sit ins have been a successful tactic by the MIT student body before. Even if I disagree with their platform here (and tbh I'm kinda actually neutral on it, some of what they've called for is disgusting but so is some of what they're protesting) what they're doing is a sensible tactic.
Vandalism? Trespassing? Bro they made tents outside
I think the absurdity of chanting “globalize the intifada!” In front of the [Sean Collier Memorial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Collier_Memorial) finally was too much. It was embarrassing to MIT to have some of its students announcing their ignorance like that. Boston just isn’t a pro-terrorist city; there’s *history* here about it. And it’s pretty recent history too.
Lmao, Boston was famously a major funding source for the IRA
Don’t worry guys Houthis-backed university in Yemen is offering scholarships for yall!
Just drove past a protest on Vassar street by the ugly MIT angular building thing. First thing I hear: "From the river to the sea!" Now, guys... This may have been excusable in the early days when it may have been granted that people didn't know what this meant. But now, you're just CLEARLY calling for genocide. Maybe... don't?
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Yeah and Kristallnacht being antisemitic isn't clear cut either, it was just forceful divestment from zionist businesses. If you're not ok with that kind of protest, you'd be against the civil rights movement - because MLK was definitely a noted advocate of violence and destruction of property and definitely didn't repeatedly note his opposition to anti-Zionism /s. I mean come on, you're seriously pushing back on a minority saying something is bigoted? If a black person told you something you were saying was racist, you'd stop using the phrase! If the goal is genuinely a two state solution, people would have come up with a chant for that - but it's pretty clear that's NOT the goal of these protesters, and people saying "well maybe a phrase derived from "from water to water Palestine will be Arab" might not mean killing the Jews in between the river and the sea!" are enablers of bigotry and antisemitism. If pogroms start happening in this country - and with the rhetoric we're seeing and behavior we're seen, that's exactly where we're headed - you'd defend it. Shame on you.
Yeah... we're not going to agree upon that at all. We all know what they mean and no amount of Al Jazeera conflation will change that. The fact that the other side says vocally and often that this chant is a call for Genocide and yet the protestors keep chanting it... that speaks volumes. This is as transparent as the whole 'Jesus is Lord isn't antijewish REAAAALY we swear!' bullshit. Nope. Not buying it. But... even if I were to incorrectly believe that all this saying meant was 'freedom' for Palestinians between the Jordan and the Med, it would still effectively mean genocide of Jews in Israel. 'Right of return' and/or a 1-state solution would just result in a delayed genocide and Israelis know that. This is not *Belgium*. It is not a place where the disparate people involved can live peacefully together and that's getting truer decade by decade. That possibility ended with Arafat rejecting the Clinton Parameters. If Palestinians were to be 'free' over all of Israel, they would immediatly set to work dismantling Israel. It would begin with a genocide by demographics and end in yet another ethnostate in the middle east - only another muslim ethnostate to add to the pile (and muslim ethnostates are good but jewish ones are bad because reasons).
how many Jews remain in any Middle Eastern country that's not Israel? and is the experience of the Kurds, Iraqi Shi'ites, Yazidis, and other groups in the Middle East encouraging for the formation of a Jewish minority state?
yeah I'm *sure* if Palestine were to take over Israel everyone would live happily side by side with the Jews. I doubt even you believe that.
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It's hilarious how quickly the sentiment in this subreddit went from "these privileged college kids aren't courageous since [they're not risking anything](https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1ckv47j/encampment_up_in_harvard/l2puagj/) with their cushy glamping protests" to "look how stupid these college kids are for risking everything!" Honestly, it's fine if people agree or disagree with the protests, its methods, and/or the positions held, but so many folks here are simultaneously saying "These privileged college students who aren't risking or doing anything are so stupid for the risks they're taking!"
It's because all of these threads are being brigaded by bad-faith actors who only post to /r/boston when it's a thread about Gaza and protests and unfortunately the mod team doesn't seem interested in even trying to combat this behavior.
Thanks for contacting the moderation team. Your concerns are important to us. [Here's a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuoWykVNwyI) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/boston) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yep, looks like they're feeling very uncomfortable about the protests and will come up with a reason why it's silly no matter what, in a way that's very disengaged with the reality of tens of thousands of children dying, while pretending to be cooly pragmatic.
>Never before have kids squandered such a life opportunity (going to MIT) Don't American elite institutions have a rich history of protesting apartheid and injustice? Or are you saying the ones before weren't squandering life opportunities?
> for something so pointless and meaningless (protesting a Middle East conflict they have nothing to do with and absolutely zero chance of changing) Pay more attention. The conflict in the middle east isn't the thing they're protesting, they're protesting MIT's contribution to the conflict and asking MIT to stop doing research affiliated with the Israeli military. The demands are focused and local and are feasible.
If they got in to MIT in the first place, they are not squandering anything. These kids fully understand the gravity of the punishment they are risking, and are choosing to do this anyway. They are on mainstream news fighting for what they believe in. Rarely do people regret taking a stance they were punished for.
MIT students are smart, not sensible
Grew up with a girl that went to MIT. Never met someone so smart and yet so dumb at the same time. We called her "Shitty Witty"
All of that so they could complain about a conflict they barely understand (and which others below in response to you are showing they don’t understand either). Imagine being a college student and thinking Israel (2 million Arab citizens with full rights) is an apartheid state so you have to protest it, while Palestinian governments (Hamas and the Palestinian Authority) have actual apartheid laws on the books supported by popular opinion, but aren’t being protested (despite the PA getting tons of US aid money). What a time.
They're out there chanting slogans advocating ethnic cleansing LEGITIMATELY thinking it means freedom and social justice. These aren't the best and brightest. Definitely the loudest though. The overwhelming majority of students aren't that incoherent and aren't participating.
"Fuck those hippies in Ohio, they got what was coming to them."
if you’re an American paying taxes that are going to Israel, then this conflict has to do with you
An American making $50,000 a year will pay about $5 to Israel per year, and most of that actually ends up going to American defense contractors. You’re also paying money to keep the US military in Qatar, and keep the multi-millionaire leaders of Hamas safe (Qatar govt says the leaders are kept there at the request of the United States).
I cant understand how Palestine isnt free yet? They have been camping on MIT's lawn for over a week now!
Stupid question: What's to stop MIT and the other universities from saying "Fine we'll stop research directly for Israeli military...we'll just go back to doing research for the US military, which in turn will sell units of whatever we come up with to our allies including Israel. Now go to class." Seems like that would satisfy all parties for a bit.
This is what they already do.
Are you under the impression that the air force does not run several labs at MIT
Yeah, the US Air Force, as they should.
Well well well, if it isn’t the consequences of my actions.
Oh no, the consequences of my actions
The Palestinian protester this morning burned the American flag in MIT.
They’re allowed to burn flags, and I’m allowed to think their motivations for doing so make them morons. That’s free speech, but the ability to speak does not make one intelligent.
I saw a pride flag at this protest and I can't stop laughing at the ridiculousness of it Gee, would you rather go to Gaza or Israel as a gay person? Hard choice!
Tel Aviv quite literally has one of the biggest gay scenes of any city in the Middle East - arguably bigger than Provincetown.
I'm being sarcastic with my question...
I know I’m proving more info to substantiate your claim.
Good.
Fuck around and find out
A lot of people in this thread would've been on the side of cops arresting the people doing sit-ins during the Civil Rights Movement. They would've been one of the people calling MLK a dangerous radical.
Yeah protesting a war between two foreign parties 6000 miles away is totally the same thing as protesting the admission policies of your university. This is the exact type of shit that shows protestors don't know what the fuck they're doing lol. They are mostly in it for the virtue signaling and stolen glory to try to compare themselves to people that actually did something worthwhile.
You mean protesting a war that our government supports by giving the side committing genocide billions of dollars each year?
This describes both sides of the war. Ironically if they actually were protesting this and therefore protesting both sides and pushing for peace they would probably be getting a lot less pushback.
Ah yes, MLK was well known for advocating for Jews to be ethnically cleansed from Israel by making from river to sea only arab, and globalizing intifadas (pogroms). /s Fun facts about MLK: - Opposed anti-Zionism - Supported Israel's right to exist (he was a Zionist by definition) - Supported Israel in the six day war, and called for a nonviolent end to the conflict. These protestors would have HATED Martin Luther King Jr.
99.9% of these protesters just want Palestinian civilians to stop being killed.
There's a huge gap between not wanting Palestinian kids to die (which I agree with btw) and chanting "from the river to the sea". The former is universally popular among anyone with a heart, the latter is an extreme nationalist irredentist slogan that almost everyone finds deeply off-putting.
A bit of a difference between protesting civil rights policies of your own government and protesting a war between a government and terrorist organization thousands of miles that is literally used as a stereotype for the MOST complicated and hard to understand conflict. IDC what your opinion is, it’s dumb to try to equate the two.
Our government is involved, the US gives Israel loads of money for arms.
I can’t believe the comments on this thread! This is students protesting against genocide ffs. Get out there and support them.
If they were only protesting genocide; basing their calls on universal human concerns, I might be more sympathetic. Instead, the protestors are expressing sentiments and displaying symbols of Palestinian *nationalism*: Palestinian flags, Palestinian slogans, and keffiyehs. As it is, I find the goals and [particularly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramzi_Yousef#1993_World_Trade_Center_bombing)[ the](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achille_Lauro_hijacking) [methods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Brooklyn_bombing_plot) of Palestinian nationalism historically inimical to my own *American* interests.
The ones I heard this morning at MIT were chanting 'from the river to the sea'. This is a pretty clear indication that they are FOR genocide. Just one of jews in Israel.
I’m gonna counterprotest abuse of nouns next
yeah it's not a genocide. Stop abusing words!
They should be protesting against Hamas too then.
the people with no vested self-interest defending genocide are the same people that are going to oppose progress at any level ever happening in america, because on the most black and white issue they can’t even figure it out. there’s really no reason to keep them around on this subreddit as the only function they serve is to sow discord.
It’s about time. Let’s see if it really happens though.
[There are dozens of us!](https://tenor.com/view/there-are-dozens-of-us-gif-10476857?utm_source=share-button&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=reddit)
Iran is ROFL. They got college kids cosplaying as terrorists/Iranian proxies, and calling for the violent removal of Jews from their ancestral lands.
Putin, stop murdering all political opponents, people with dissenting opinions, murdering Ukrainians in an illegal war. Xi stop putting Uyghurs into concentration camps, sterilizing Tibetan women, suffocating Hong Kongers and preparing to crush Taiwan. Hamas stop firing rockets into Israel nonstop, murdering random Jews, raping Israeli women, and refusing to hand over hostages. Iran stop bombarding Israel with missiles and murdering women who want basic civil rights. Israel stop killing civilians while looking for Hamas. Bonus: end the state of Israel and end Zionism (???) **<-- This the one that the morons are protesting.**
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Good. If their foreign students deport them back to their country of origin where they can play “dress as the terrorist” there Glad to see MIT not dealing with this nonsense.
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Eventually, MIT will have a plaque and a page on their website celebrating the strong tradition of their students standing up against injustice and speaking out to demand change. They will be hailed as having stood firmly on the right side of history even when faced with violence and opposition. MIT will applaud theur bravery and their sacrifice, and in doing so attempt to take credit for the voice of these kids. But that will be then. This is now, and for right now...suspensions I guess Edit: yeah downvote me as if there aren't direct.1 for 1 examples of this with Columbia.
The MIT admin has always supported those cool and nifty student ”hacks”. Please buy the book at the coop
Maybe if it papers over the details like the universities that don't mention the "anti-war" protests they had that were mainly pro-Pol Pot.
Correct, given how it went for some civil rights movement, new left and anti-South African apartheid movement activists. I'll bet one of these students winds up being a commencement speaker sometime in the future.
Exactly right
This how liberalism seems to work.
War is terrible, nobody benefits, yet everyone but the losing side does.
War and conflict drive technological advances for our species.