No one in this country cared 21 years ago and they don't care now. All expressions to the contrary are performative and meaningless. The United States has made us all accomplices in the slaughter of everyone who is murdered in this situation, using the taxpayer dollars of working Americans to arm and fund terrorists, no matter who they murder.

“I Think the Word Is Dignity” — Rachel Corrie’s Letters from Gaza

Letters to her family from 23-year-old U.S. peace activist Rachel Corrie, who was killed in 2003 while trying to prevent the Israeli army from destroying homes in the Gaza Strip.

https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/rachel-corries-letters-and-questions/

And let's be really clear about what Israel did. They shot this woman in the head. A head shot is not a mistake. A head shot is a deliberate act of assassination. Letting Israel "investigate" its own crimes is absurd and evil.

"Zho Ragen, who organized the encampment protest for Gaza at the University of Washington (UW) with Eygi, called on the public to honor Eygi’s martyrdom by uniting in struggle and freeing Palestine."

Said encampment's protestors sure issued a lot of demands, didn't they?

'The protesters’ demands have increased, according to Cauce, now including: creating a new department to implement an “anti-Zionist” litmus test for faculty hiring; granting a student group oversight of awarding new, religion-based scholarships…' (https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/uw-president-calls-for-cease-fire-criticizes-protest-encampment/)

I'm not sure why someone who wanted to impose political censorship on the UW faculty -- via discriminatory hiring practices, no less! -- counts as a "friend of Seattle." Likewise, demanding blatantly religious discrimination at a state school showed a disregard for that core American value, separation of church from state.

"...an independent investigation of her killing,"

All that could possibly do is introduce doubt as to whether Israel is at fault. The International Solidarity Movement, with whom she traveled to the Middle East, has very clearly stated that all violence in the region, including the rapes, kidnappings, and murders on 10/7, is entirely Israel's fault. From the International Solidarity Movement's statement after 10/7:

"The International Solidarity Movement joins Palestinians and Palestine solidarity activists and organisations all around the world in restating that the root cause of the current violence is Israeli occupation and settler colonialism. Until the oppression of Palestinians comes to an end, Israel is responsible for the death and misery of Palestinians and Israelis." (https://palsolidarity.org/2023/10/ism-statement/)

Can someone please clarify what a “free” Palestine means. I keep hearing that as a goal but I’m unclear who it’s intended for. Surely not women, those of other faiths or sexual/gender orientation. This is a tragedy and it’s even more unfortunate that her life will now be used for propaganda.

Israeli forces mischaracterised events leading to fatal shooting of US activist, says Washington Post

The Post report did describe a chaotic scene after Friday prayers in the town of Beita, where young Palestinians put up barricades and threw rocks at Israeli soldiers, who, in turn, opened fire with teargas and live ammunition. But the protests had died down and Eygi had retreated to an olive grove far from the soldiers, about 180 metres away, before she was hit by a bullet in the head, killing her.

After Biden’s remarks, Eygi’s family said in a statement: “President Biden is still calling her killing an accident based only on the Israeli military’s story. This is not only insensitive and false, it is complicit in the Israeli military’s agenda to take Palestinian land and whitewash the killing of an American.”

Biden, in his statement, did not order an independent inquiry and appeared to indicate that US officials were making their conclusions based entirely on evidence provided by the IDF.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/12/israeli-forces-mischaracterised-events-leading-fatal-shooting-aysenur-ezgi-eygi-washington-post

No one knows whether it was a deliberate head shot or accidental - except the soldier who fired the bullet. Biden can't know, the Eygi family can't know.

I'm all for an independent inquiry - that will also be inconclusive. No way the IDF throws that soldier to the wolves.

@6

in other words
we're just
Israel's
bitch

Ayşenur Ezgi
Eygi The Activist,
Baklava Enthusiast,
Friend that Israel “Stole”
from Seattle. the quotation
marks’re Unnecessary that’s
Exactly what nutnyahoo’s warriors
Did - they STOLE FROM US & From
Aysnur the ONE THING she HAD: HER LIFE

the Grandest of Fucking Theft.
but Bibi cannot stop til
Eltrumpfster gets
Installed. Israel
is destroying
Itself & WE
are helping
Them do it

what
kinda
country
Are we?

"No one knows whether it was
a deliberate head shot or ac-
cidental - except the soldier
who fired the bullet."

you mean like her finger
(does the IOF have women
snipers too?) slipped on the
trigger when she just happened to
have a bull's-eye on Ayşenur's forehead?

at 180 meters? they'll investagate
the Fuckoutta this one. til the
next one & they'll Investa-
gate thefuckoutta That
one too, till eltrumpf-
ster's IN the Whitest
of Houses ketchup-
ping the Walls in
his own Inimit-
able Way. the
guy Needing
getting tos-
sed to the
Wolves is
The Boss.

& by the "wolves"
I mean Justice
SOMEWHERE
for fuck's
fucking
Sake

End the
Madness:
defund bibi.

Free Palestine means Free Palestine. Palestine existed until part of it was "gifted" by Britain to Jews as a form of reparations for the Holocaust. So Israel was created, all Palestinians already living in Palestine were forced to live in certain areas and exist under apartheid. As time went on the apartheid got more and more vile and violent and Israelis created "settlements" in areas they had no right to (which is just a euphemism for colonization).

Now Israel has decided to completely wipe all Palestinians off the face of the earth because they want Gaza and the West Bank and everything else that the original Palestinians were left with when Israel was created.

Free Palestine means free fucking Palestine from Israeli apartheid and colonization.

@7 there is no such thing as an accidental head shot. The other person shot was shot in the leg.

According to the International Solidarity Movement's press release on her death, this group has been holding protests at that site for many years, having little effect -- beyond getting protestors killed:

"Ayşenur, who we consider a martyr in the struggle, was the 18th demonstrator to be killed in Beita since 2020."

(https://palsolidarity.org/2024/09/israeli-army-kills-turkish-american-citizen-during-demonstration-in-beita-nablus/)

It's now hard not to see her protest at the UW earlier this year as anything other than a dress rehearsal for this tragic play. At the UW, nothing of negative consequence was going to happen. The UW administration finally eased the protestors out of their tents, and off UW's campus, with a promise of scholarships for Palestinians. (As commenters here noted, these UW scholarships should be reserved not just for Palestinians, but specifically for LGBTQ+ Palestinians, fleeing cruel repression at home.)

Such easy, consequence-free, performative posturing -- which the Stranger constantly hyped as tough, real-world confrontation against an oppressor -- enticed her into protesting in a place where basic human rights are not ensured, where no safe academic cocoon exists to ensure a soft landing for all involved. She may have believed she was a veteran of courageous direct action, but graduation is called "Commencement" for a reason. (Did she even know of just how many fatalities had recently occurred at ISM protests there?)

The real world is full of unmet needs. Rachel Corrie could have spent the last twenty years (say) improving the lives of girls in poor countries. Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, if she wanted activism in a dangerous place, could have volunteered to deliver relief supplies to war orphans in Ukraine, where a Western-facing democracy suffers under the boot of a classic imperial power. Instead, they're gone, lured into a conflict which was not theirs, their young lives thrown away -- and for what? A "Free Palestine," which would likely be nothing more than a dirt-poor theocracy, run by violently misogynistic jihadis? Truly a tragic end for any American lover of liberty.

@tensorna Did you really just try to justify the genocide of Palestine because it's a poor theocracy? It is truly astounding to me that you thought it was appropriate to post your insane, hateful drivel on a blog commemorating the murder of our fellow Seattleite. Your posts on this blog are some of the most disgusting posts I've ever read. You're clearly not only racist but homophobic as well. You dishonor the memory of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi. She was a truly brave person who was actually trying to make a difference and now Israel has murdered her. I would say get some help but you sound a like a truly irredeemable person

@13: “Did you really just try to justify the genocide of Palestine because it's a poor theocracy?”

No, and that you led with such a blatantly false accusation shows that you either did not understand what I wrote, or you do understand it — but don’t care enough to avoid making a false accusation.

Aysenur Ezgi Eygi died in a place where more than a dozen other persons had already died, doing exactly what they had been doing. None of these deaths have changed anything. The International Solidarity Movement is now milking her death for all of the propaganda value they can get, even though they hold some responsibility for it — a responsibility they had already pre-emptively denied. I suggest you direct your considerable anger at them. They made some contribution to her death; I didn’t. I’m merely hoping nobody else dies the way she,and over a dozen others, already have.

@1
And what, exactly, are you going to do?
Are you going to go to Gaza?
Will you put yourself in danger to help bring food and medicine to the Palestinians or will you just sit in Seattle bitching about things?
Were I a betting man, I know what I’d put my money on.

A Jewish American orthopedic surgeon who recently traveled to Gaza to treat the continuous stream of wounded civilians reports that Israeli Defense Force (IDF) snipers are intentionally targeting children.

His testimony provides compelling evidence that, despite assurances from Israeli officials, civilians are not merely collateral damage and the IDF’s military campaign in Gaza is not solely aimed at eliminating Hamas.

Dr. Mark Perlmutter, an orthopedic surgeon from North Carolina and vice president of the International College of Surgeons, volunteered in Gaza from late April through mid-May.

When asked by a CBS News reporter to describe what he observed in Gaza, he replied, “All of the disasters I've seen, combined – 40 mission trips, 30 years, Ground Zero, earthquakes, all of that combined – doesn't equal the level of carnage that I saw against civilians in just my first week in Gaza."

Perlmutter explained that civilian casualties are almost exclusively children.

"I've never seen that before," he said. "I've seen more incinerated children than I've ever seen in my entire life, combined. I've seen more shredded children in just the first week … missing body parts, being crushed by buildings, the greatest majority, or bomb explosions, the next greatest majority. We've taken shrapnel as big as my thumb out of eight-year-olds. And then there's sniper bullets. I have children that were shot twice."

When asked, “You're saying that children in Gaza are being shot by snipers?" Perlmutter replied, “Definitively.”

He added, “I have two children that I have photographs of that were shot so perfectly in the chest, I couldn't put my stethoscope over their heart more accurately, and directly on the side of the head, in the same child. No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the 'world's best sniper.' And they're dead-center shots."

An IDF spokesperson told CBS, “The IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target children. … Remaining in an active combat zone has inherent risks."

However, more than 20 doctors told the news outlet that they are treating children suffering from gunshot wounds from Israeli troops. One unnamed American doctor said he reviewed CT scans to confirm his observations because he “didn't believe that this many children could be admitted to a single hospital with gunshot wounds to the head."

A Virginia-based doctor told CBS, “We all see gunshots in the U.S., but we have never seen anything like the gunshots to kids in Gaza.”

Another Virginia-based anesthesiologist said during his two weeks in Gaza, he saw gunshot wounds to kids on a daily basis, estimating that he saw at least 30 children shot by IDF snipers.

A Chicago-based physician told CBS, “I thought these kids were in the wrong place at the wrong time, like sadly, some of the kids we treat in Chicago. But after the third or fourth time, I realized it was intentional; bullets were being put in these kids on purpose."

These doctors’ accounts are not unique. They align with reports from other physicians detailing the IDF’s intentional shooting of innocent children, suggesting that this practice is a feature, rather than a bug, of Israeli military strategy.

Dr. Irfan Galaria, a physician with a plastic and reconstructive surgery practice in Chantilly, Virginia, joined a group of doctors and nurses who traveled to Gaza to volunteer in late January.

In an op-ed written about the journey, he said that what he saw over “10 days in Gaza was not war — it was annihilation.”

According to his account:

I stopped keeping track of how many new orphans I had operated on. After surgery they would be filed somewhere in the hospital, I’m unsure of who will take care of them or how they will survive. On one occasion, a handful of children, all about ages 5 to 8, were carried to the emergency room by their parents. All had single sniper shots to the head. These families were returning to their homes in Khan Yunis, about 2.5 miles away from the hospital, after Israeli tanks had withdrawn. But the snipers apparently stayed behind. None of these children survived.

https://www.scnr.com/article/u-s-doctors-report-idf-snipers-intentionally-targeting-children-in-gaza_ebe4ffd74b6a11ef9c930242ac1c0002

[continued]

On July 25, a group of 45 American physicians, surgeons, and nurses who have volunteered in the Gaza Strip sent an 8-page letter to President Joe Biden, explaining that children targeted by IDF snipers is a regular occurrence.

“Children are universally considered innocents in armed conflict. However, every single signatory to this letter treated children in Gaza who suffered violence that must have been deliberately directed at them,” they wrote. “Specifically, every one of us on a daily basis treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head and chest.”

The medics, who worked with the World Health Organization and other groups, revealed the actual death toll is much higher than is being reported. “It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 92,000, an astonishing 4.2% of Gaza’s population,” they wrote.

Earlier this year, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor blasted the Israeli military for its “blatant violation of international law” after it said “the the Israeli army has executed 13 children by direct shooting in Al-Shifa Medical Complex and its Gaza City environs.”

The group added, “This is a war crime and a crime against humanity, and is part of the genocide that the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip having been experiencing for the past six months.”

IDF soldiers intentionally targeting children is not purely a phenomenon that has emerged in the aftermath of Hamas’s deadly October 7 attack.

Last August, the Israeli military faced criticism for killing children in the years prior, with 2022 being the deadliest year for Palestinian children in the West Bank in 15 years, and 2023 projected — at the time — to exceed 2022 numbers.

“Israeli forces are gunning down Palestinian children living under occupation with increasing frequency,” said Bill Van Esveld, associate children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch, roughly five weeks prior to the October 7 attack. “Unless Israel’s allies, particularly the United States, pressure Israel to change course, more Palestinian children will be killed.”

@13

"Your [wormmy's] posts
on this blog are some of the
most disgusting posts I've ever read."

well
Put. and
yet he Remains.

@5 For most of us, that means that Israel is returned to its 1948 borders, Palestinians are compensated for lands stolen from them, Israel surrenders all its nuclear weapons, Israel surrenders all settlers accused of crimes against Palestinians to the Palestinian state for prosecution, and Israel is prohibited from blockaiding Palestinian trade.

@16-17: What part of "human shields" did you not understand? Did you believe for an instant that Hamas was exempting children? “For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry [...]. This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly and the mujahideen.” -- Fathi Hamad, Hamas MP, 2008 (https://stratcomcoe.org/cuploads/pfiles/hamas_human_shields.pdf)

This is very old news.

And not relevant to the death of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, just another one in a long series of 'martyrs' created at that one protest site alone.

@18: What, you're not going to double-dip his accusations of racism and homophobia, too? (I did indeed mention the dismal status of LGBTQ+ persons in Palestine, hence those particular personal attacks.)

From these comments, I take it you guys are now done pretending to care about the death of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi?

you cannot
manipulate your
way outta who you

are.

my comment
@18 stands
wormmy.

@19 let's say for sake of argument Israel agreed to #1 and #2. Why would they give up their nukes when their biggest enemy in the region (Iran) has been doing everything they can to obtain a weapon over the years? How would giving up their nukes ensure peace with Arabs? If they were to surrender all settlers accused of crimes do you believe they would receive a fair trial? Do you think they would be granted due process? If the removed blockades of aid how would you guarantee that Hamas and other militant groups do not use aid shipments to obtain weapons as they have in the past?

I think you say these things but by doing any of them without conditions Israel would essentially be cutting their own throats. It's not a realistic proposition to even consider when you are bargaining with someone whose stated intention is to kill you.

@14 Her death will make a difference. The mask is off, the gig is up, and Israel as we know it is on the way to the dustbin of history to join Apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany, and other genocidal regimes.
@22 You are correct that Israel will never willingly agree to stop the genocide, theft of Palestinian lands, and vicious militarism against neighboring countries. It can only be stopped by force. The force will likely come from international solidarity and the threat of economic ruin. I think the IDF "accidentally" killed her on purpose because she was mistaken for a Palestinian.

@22: Your request for what a "Free Palestine" would mean produced some revealing answers @10 and @19 -- all of them commands as to what Israel would 'need' to do, and absolutely nothing at all about the Palestinians themselves, as you'd mentioned: the status of women, LGBTQ+ persons, non-Muslims, etc. under a Palestinian government. Seattle's "progressive" left simply doesn't care about such things. They claim to care about human rights in Palestine, but they actually care only so far as they can blame Israel and the United States for any (real or imagined) violations of those rights. (At least they're smart enough not to claim human rights in Palestine would actually improve under Palestinian government.)

Their contempt for human rights doesn't end in Palestine, either. As previously noted, the Pro-Palestinian protestors on the UW campus, led by Zho Ragen and Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, seriously demanded the UW censor any views which they did not like. Enforcement of their censorship regime was to require creation of an entirely new department at UW, one dedicated to imposing discriminatory hiring practices to eliminate dissent from campus. Again, how this makes Zho Ragen and Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi worthy of respect has never been explained -- and never will be.

10.09.2024

The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor has urged the court's Pre-Trial Chamber to issue arrest warrants “with utmost urgency” for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as well as Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif.

The arrest warrants are “necessary to ensure that they do not obstruct or endanger the investigation or court proceedings, prevent the continuing commission of the crimes alleged and/or the commission of other Rome Statute crimes,” Karim Khan wrote on Monday.
[..]

Israel has continued its onslaught on Gaza since last October, killing more than 41,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and leaving most of the enclave's population hungry, homeless and prone to disease.

Israel also faces accusations of genocide for its actions in the enclave at the International Court of Justice.

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/icc-prosecutor-says-arrest-warrants-must-be-issued-with-utmost-urgency-for-israels-netanyahu-gallant-plus-sinwar/3326865

ICC Prosecutor Says World Leaders ‘Threatened’ Him Over Israel Arrest Warrants

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) says world leaders pressured him not to apply for arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister and defense minister on allegations of war crimes in Gaza, the BBC reported on 5 September.

Karim Khan told the BBC, “Several leaders and others told me and advised me and cautioned me,” he said.

In May, Khan said there were reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had committed war crimes during the Israeli assault on Gaza that has killed over 40,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children.

The state of Israel faces separate genocide charges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

The chief prosecutor also applied for arrest warrants for Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh, claiming they bear criminal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity for actions taken by the organization’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, when it stormed Israeli military bases and settlements on 7 October as part of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

Some 1,200 Israeli soldiers and civilians were killed in the operation. Some were killed by Hamas, while many were killed by Israeli forces using attack helicopters, drones, and tanks, per the controversial Hannibal directive.
[...]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/icc-prosecutor-says-world-leaders-threatened-him-over-israel-arrest-warrants/ar-AA1qA4jq

@24 I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me as we close in on a year of this but I can’t comprehend how people never seem to ask why Israel started to restrict Palestinians to begin with (they just insinuate evil purposes and never mention the constant barrage of violence from their “neighbors”). There is also this unspoken assumption that if Israel ceased to exist as they demand a new garden of Eden will somehow sprint up in the area. It’s so beyond delusional it defies belief.

That doesn’t even dip into the crackpot theories @26 is now posting that are akin to the Haitian cat stories.

@19: "For most of us, that means that Israel is returned to its 1948 borders,"

Well, that choice was made in 1948, wasn't it? The Palestinian Jews accepted the United Nations' plan for Palestine. The Palestinian Arabs, who had boycotted those negotiations, attacked the nascent Jewish State, supported by the armies of six Arab countries, which had illegally invaded Palestine. Their stated goal was not to partition Palestine differently, but rather, "to push the Jews into the sea." Their resultant war created the borders and population dispositions we largely see today.

The Palestinian Arabs chose war, which means they chose to accept the consequences of war. Those consequences included scuttling the UN Plan, and then losing most of the land in Palestine. (I doubt anyone would take seriously a stated desire by, say, Japanese ultra-nationalists to return Japan to its borders of 1942.)

@27: Watching the Stranger and the "progressive" left simply dump every principle they've ever claimed to believe in, when this would obviously strengthen only the most regressive of causes and organizations, continues to amaze. They just assume it's all Israel's fault, and then hurl vile accusations at anyone who dares question this assumption, or who dares question the results of operating under this assumption. If this was all in the service of, say, driving Russian Army forces from Ukraine, then we miiiiiiiight be able to excuse it, under Goldwater's "extremism in defense of liberty" rationalization. But to excuse rape, murder, use of children as human shields, etc. in service of establishing a violent theocracy which would brutally oppress women, gays, religious minorities, and so forth is just bonkers.

"That doesn’t even dip into the crackpot theories @26 is now posting that are akin to the Haitian cat stories."

Look for ever-increasing amounts of that as they continue to lose. I'm actually surprised some of them haven't started openly quoting from the Protocols -- at least not yet, anyway.

@27 You are very poorly informed.

United Nation report:

. The Commission documented one statement by an ISF tank crew, confirming that the crew had applied the Hannibal Directive by shooting at a vehicle which they suspected was transporting abducted ISF soldiers.
The Commission also verified information indicating that, in at least two other cases, ISF had likely applied the Hannibal Directive, resulting in the killing of up to 14 Israeli civilians. One woman was killed by ISF helicopter fire while being abducted from Nir Oz to Gaza by militants. In another case the Commission found that Israeli tank fire killed some or all of the 13 civilian hostages held in a house in Be'eri.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/06/1150946

Haaretz:

IDF Ordered Hannibal Directive on October 7 to Prevent Hamas Taking Soldiers Captive

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-07-07/ty-article-magazine/.premium/idf-ordered-hannibal-directive-on-october-7-to-prevent-hamas-taking-soldiers-captive/00000190-89a2-d776-a3b1-fdbe45520000

Israeli forces accused of killing their own citizens under the 'Hannibal Directive' during October 7 chaos

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-07/israel-hannibal-directive-kidnap-hamas-gaza-hostages-idf/104224430

Well, we all knew "Tensorna" would come out as an unquestioning Likudnik settler enthusiast, didn't we?

Probably believes the Gaza Invasion is a battle or LGBTQ+, rights, and that there can be such a thing as pink imperialism.

Tensorna is "Scoop" Jackson with a rainbow flag.

@29/30 quite a leap to go from a directive to prevent soldiers from being tortured and executed to opening fire with gunships on their own civilians. Supposing any of this was true why would they not want their people to be captured? After all I’m sure Hamas follows all the Geneva Conventions and will treat them humanely. Again the assumption here is Israel is some morally bankrupt society and not asking what is so awful that they would consider this?

@32 Israelis themselves have answers for your questions (as found at abc link above):

"Investigative journalist Ronen Bergman wrote for Yedioth Ahronot newspaper that the military had enacted the Hannibal Directive at midday on October 7.

"The IDF instructed all its fighting units in practice to follow the 'Hannibal Directive', although without clearly mentioning this explicit name," he said.

"The instruction is to stop 'at all costs' any attempt by Hamas terrorists to return to Gaza, using language very similar to the original 'Hannibal Directive', despite repeated assurances by the security establishment that the procedure has been cancelled."

Bergman's investigation found 70 vehicles were destroyed by Israeli aircraft and tanks to prevent them being driven into Gaza, killing everyone inside."

and "Israeli philosopher Asa Kasher told the ABC the directive did not apply to civilian hostages

"That's a new situation, and all the considerations are different," Professor Kasher said.

"Killing the civilian in order to foil the attempted abduction is really [wrong] … everyone understands that that's way outside of what is allowed in a democracy."

Professor Kasher said he was dismayed by reports soldiers had applied the Hannibal Directive on October 7.

"They acted on very low professional standards," he said.

"That's insane, it's not the nature of a democracy, it's not the nature of the IDF, it's not the nature of the command."

@32 "what is so awful that they would consider this?"

I believe you'll find elements of response in the following:

"As a former IDF soldier and historian of genocide, I was deeply disturbed by my recent visit to Israel

This summer, one of my lectures was protested by far-right students. Their rhetoric brought to mind some of the darkest moments of 20th-century history – and overlapped with mainstream Israeli views to a shocking degree"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/13/israel-gaza-historian-omer-bartov?src=longreads

@31: You're getting better at covertly accusing me of racism, I see. Learned your lesson well from the time I nailed you for doing it openly, https://www.thestranger.com/politics/2017/08/24/25375520/qanda-nikkita-oliver-on-cary-moon-jenny-durkan-and-the-future-of-the-peoples-party/comments/39.

In keeping with your practice of making false accusations, I didn't actually offer an opinion on settlements in the West Bank. What I did note is the International Solidarity Movement has been protesting this particular settlement for a long time, effecting absolutely no reduction in settler activity, but no fewer than 17 protestors had died there -- in just the last five years. Why this carnage hasn't caused the ISM to re-think their method of protesting, I must leave for others to explain, but they protested the same settlement in the same way again, and again the result was a fatality, this time of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi. Yet, no one here has taken the ISM to task for their utterly callous attitude toward the lives of the persons they invite to protest.

I'm under no illusion as the the status of LGBTQ+ persons in Gaza. Do you really believe it would improve if the Palestinian Arabs had their own state?

"The IDF bulldoze Palestinian homes and shoot many people in the head by accident but the real culprits are the people protesting it"

Let me save you the trouble explaining: "there was an entire army of terrorists hiding behind that baby's head. I had no choice but shoot it twice to make sure"

@34 you realize of course all these examples are peoples opinions of some directive that is supposedly being ordered by Israeli leadership. There is not one shred of proof this occurred. You might as well have said they executed order 66. The net result of course affirms your already held belief that Israel is a morally bankrupt country and deserves to be wiped off the map. Yet the other day you demanded proof that part of Hamas charter is genocide when that is an actual verified fact. Again I’m left amazed how far people like you are willing to go to promote a government and a culture that is so antithetical to actual freedom and liberty.

@38 Not only is the existence of the Hannibal directive an established fact but it's what an Israeli investigative journalist who has studied the issue for decades, the writer of the IDF code of ethics (Asa Kasher cited @33), a United Nations investigative team, etc say happened on Oct 7. I strongly doubt any of these people would just say that publicly or issue a report based on "opinions"

You are free to characterize a society that commits apartheid and genocide however you want but when dehumanization of the enemy is widespread, there is inevitable blowback.

I was asking for evidence to back up your claim that Palestinian fighters were hiding in hospitals, schools, etc among other unsupported affirmations. I am not promoting anything beyond fairness but I know that what is happening in Palestine at the moment is certainly not freedom and liberty.

@39: "I was asking for evidence to back up your claim that Palestinian fighters were hiding in hospitals, schools, etc among other unsupported affirmations."

And you had it. Here it is again:

"Hamas’ most common uses of human shields include:
"Firing rockets, artillery, and mortars from or in proximity to heavily populated civilian areas, often from or
near facilities which should be protected according to the Geneva Convention (e.g. schools, hospitals,
or mosques).
"Locating military or security-related infrastructures such as HQs, bases, armouries, access routes,
lathes, or defensive positions within or in proximity to civilian areas.
"Protecting terrorists’ houses and military facilities, or rescuing terrorists who were besieged or
warned by the IDF.
"Combating the IDF from or in proximity to residential and commercial areas, including using civilians for
intelligence gathering missions."

(https://stratcomcoe.org/cuploads/pfiles/hamas_human_shields.pdf)

That was from almost ten years ago. Please do try to keep up.

@39 whether it exists or not is irrelevant. All kinds of plans exist for all sorts of contingencies. The question is was it used and there is no proof of that, merely conjecture. You say Israel dehumanizes Palestinians. Do you have an example of that? There are many Palestinians who live in peace in Israel so that seems suspect however we do know Palestinians dehumanize Jews

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/2621166/peace-isnt-going-to-be-possible-as-long-as-palestinian-schools-are-teaching-children-to-hate/

@Hannibal: The Haaretz article was behind a paywall, but the start of it clearly describes the fog of war which covered southern Israel during Hamas' 10/7 attack. (As a point of comparison, during the Imperial Japanese Navy's raid on Pearl Harbor, the US Navy attempted to shoot down the attacking aircraft with artillery. Most of the shots missed, with the shells falling into residential areas, where they detonated upon impact. In addition to civilians killed immediately in their own homes by these explosions, more civilians died in the fires started by the ordnance. These fires burned freely, as the local fire departments were overwhelmed, fighting fires started by the Japanese attacks in military areas.)

Regardless of whether the Hannibal Directive was ever used or not, the purpose of it was to prevent Israelis from being abducted. The tributes paid by the Stranger to Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, who willingly entered an environment where over a dozen persons had already died violently, contrasts wonderfully with the Stranger's thunderous silence at the death of American-Israeli citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was abducted from a music festival. (One might think Stranger writers would naturally have sympathy for the attendee of a music festival, but one would be disappointed.) Severely wounded in the attack, he was illegally held for most of a year in squalid conditions, then murdered to prevent his rescue. Whatever one thinks of the Hannibal Directive, the reason for development of it should be abundantly clear.

The reason for the Hannibal Directive is to allow the genocide and theft of Palestinian lands to continue unhindered. Netanyahu is not about to allow the fate of a few "nobodies" (by his calculus) like Hersh Goldberg-Polin or the other hostages interfere with his plans to annex and occupy all Palestinian lands and remain in power.
They have been surprisingly frank about this from the beginning, admitting that the bombing campaign is more about retribution for the October action and less about saving the hostages.

Retribution
& keeping the
Fuck outta Prison

puts a Massive
Smile on bibi's
fascistical face

and
here
WE are
funding
Genocide.

Make it
STOP Kamala.

@43: They intend to prevent a repeat of 10/7, by degrading Hamas' capabilities to the point where Hamas cannot launch another such attack. If you want to provide quotes from Israeli military strategists to support your retribution theory, please go right ahead. (Bonus points for a verified quote of Netanyahu calling Hersh Goldberg-Polin a "nobody." That was actually the Stranger's estimate of him.)

@23: "Her death will make a difference."

International Solidarity Movement will change their protest tactics? We'll see. Right now, they appear to be quite happy with the violent death rate amongst their protestors. Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi was just another 'martyr' to them, nothing more.

43: There is no reason to imply that Aysenur Eygi was somehow to blame for her own death for entering an area where protesters had been killed for. There is no reason to even come close to defending the IDF for opening fire at the time Eygi was killed, at a point where the protest was over, nothing was happening, no threat existed anymore and obviously Eygi had done nothing to justify having a shot fired in her direction to scare her. She wasn't a member of Hamas and wasn't responsible for anything Hamas had ever done.

And yes, what Hamas did on October 7th was wrong, but the Hannibal Directive was equally wrong- it's a barbarically stupid idea to think it's better to kill your own country's citizens than have them be abducted- and there is no longer any reason for the IDF to be carrying on operations in Gaza at all. It's enough that they killed 40 times more people than Hamas(possibly with the help of the IDF) killed that day.

The ISM's protest tactics are not to blame for Aysenur's death and you have no reason to be condemning them. Black South Africans and their small number of white South African allies sometimes used tactics petty, dismissive North American liberals objected to- but they used those tactics because when they'd used nonviolence, it led to the South African Defense Forces staging the unprovoked Sharpeville Massacre. African Americans formed the Black Panthers to DEFEND THEMSELVES against white police violence because none of the sanctimonious "why can't you be like that nice Dr. King?" type "establishment" white liberals were doing anything to try and stop police violence against northern Black communities in the US.

In any cases, Aysenur wasn't involved in violence- rock-throwing is petty vandalism, not a threat to human life- and nothing Netanyahu has ever done in the name of "security" in Gaza or the West Bank has ever been about LGBTQ+ rights or anything remotely resembling social liberalism or human rights.

Do I like Hamas? No. But I recognize that they can't BE wiped out- and that if they are humiliated and forced to play the role of the vanquished party- as Netanyahu did with the PLO earlier in this century- the ONLY thing that can come of it is that a new, more extreme, far worse group would be formed and commit more extreme violence in the name of avenging the humiliation.

Therefore, humiliation can't ever solve anything in this conflict and the only thing that can is...wait for it...for the Israeli government to admit that the Palestinian resistance isn't about hatred of Jews, it's about an oppressed people fighting to end their oppression. Having admitted that, the same Israeli government needs to end the relentless collective punishment of ordinary Palestinians- none of whom are responsible for anything the armed groups do and none of which have any agency to stop those groups doing anything.

The only way to end the conflict is to end the Israeli obsession with making a Palestinian state either impossible or only being willing to accept a Palestinian state too small and helpless to be viable. The fixation with crushing the Palestinians is hopeless and pointless, and there is no way to liberalize any people or culture through military victory or as a badge of conquest.

And quite frankly, in an age where anybody who is Jewish can get American citizenship essentially any time they want, why is Israel- a country whose survival is assured no matter what, so this is essentially a rhetorical question- necessary? Why keep pushing the deluded lie that Israel is the only place on the planet where people who are Jewish can be safe? Or that it's temporary moderate tolerance towards LGBTQ+ justifies anybody trying to pressure the US LGBTQ+ community to support Netanyahu's obsession with crushing and subjugating- if not forcing into permanent exile- all Palestinians? Why would you ever endorse the idea- as you implicitly do, that one people's liberation requires another people's persecution?

And whatever else could be said, why couldn't you just treat Aysenur Eygi's death with respect and admit there was no reason for any soldier to be firing at her? Why bring your unjustified contempt for the ISM, a group you have no reason to look down on, into this, and why blame them for something they are blameless in? This is all the IDF's fault, and nothing the IDF is doing in the West Bank or Gaza can be called "self-defense" anymore- it's all about the purely unnecessary and fascistic goal of taking land for the SAKE of taking land.

43: There is no reason to imply that Aysenur Eygi was somehow to blame for her own death for entering an area where protesters had been killed for. There is no reason to even come close to defending the IDF for opening fire at the time Eygi was killed, at a point where the protest was over, nothing was happening, no threat existed anymore and obviously Eygi had done nothing to justify having a shot fired in her direction to scare her. She wasn't a member of Hamas and wasn't responsible for anything Hamas had ever done.

And yes, what Hamas did on October 7th was wrong, but the Hannibal Directive was equally wrong- it's a barbarically stupid idea to think it's better to kill your own country's citizens than have them be abducted- and there is no longer any reason for the IDF to be carrying on operations in Gaza at all. It's enough that they killed 40 times more people than Hamas(possibly with the help of the IDF) killed that day.

The ISM's protest tactics are not to blame for Aysenur's death and you have no reason to be condemning them. Black South Africans and their small number of white South African allies sometimes used tactics petty, dismissive North American liberals objected to- but they used those tactics because when they'd used nonviolence, it led to the South African Defense Forces staging the unprovoked Sharpeville Massacre. African Americans formed the Black Panthers to DEFEND THEMSELVES against white police violence because none of the sanctimonious "why can't you be like that nice Dr. King?" type "establishment" white liberals were doing anything to try and stop police violence against northern Black communities in the US.

In any cases, Aysenur wasn't involved in violence- rock-throwing is petty vandalism, not a threat to human life- and nothing Netanyahu has ever done in the name of "security" in Gaza or the West Bank has ever been about LGBTQ+ rights or anything remotely resembling social liberalism or human rights.

Do I like Hamas? No. But I recognize that they can't BE wiped out- and that if they are humiliated and forced to play the role of the vanquished party- as Netanyahu did with the PLO earlier in this century- the ONLY thing that can come of it is that a new, more extreme, far worse group would be formed and commit more extreme violence in the name of avenging the humiliation.

Therefore, humiliation can't ever solve anything in this conflict and the only thing that can is...wait for it...for the Israeli government to admit that the Palestinian resistance isn't about hatred of Jews, it's about an oppressed people fighting to end their oppression. Having admitted that, the same Israeli government needs to end the relentless collective punishment of ordinary Palestinians- none of whom are responsible for anything the armed groups do and none of which have any agency to stop those groups doing anything.

The only way to end the conflict is to end the Israeli obsession with making a Palestinian state either impossible or only being willing to accept a Palestinian state too small and helpless to be viable. The fixation with crushing the Palestinians is hopeless and pointless, and there is no way to liberalize any people or culture through military victory or as a badge of conquest.

And quite frankly, in an age where anybody who is Jewish can get American citizenship essentially any time they want, why is Israel- a country whose survival is assured no matter what, so this is essentially a rhetorical question- necessary? Why keep pushing the deluded lie that Israel is the only place on the planet where people who are Jewish can be safe? Or that it's temporary moderate tolerance towards LGBTQ+ justifies anybody trying to pressure the US LGBTQ+ community to support Netanyahu's obsession with crushing and subjugating- if not forcing into permanent exile- all Palestinians? Why would you ever endorse the idea- as you implicitly do, that one people's liberation requires another people's persecution?

And whatever else could be said, why couldn't you just treat Aysenur Eygi's death with respect and admit there was no reason for any soldier to be firing at her? Why bring your unjustified contempt for the ISM, a group you have no reason to look down on, into this, and why blame them for something they are blameless in? This is all the IDF's fault, and nothing the IDF is doing in the West Bank or Gaza can be called "self-defense" anymore- it's all about the purely unnecessary and fascistic goal of taking land for the SAKE of taking land.

@47: "There is no reason to even come close to defending the IDF..."

Which is why I have not done so. Your dedication to making false accusations remains as strong as ever.

"And yes, what Hamas did on October 7th was wrong, but the Hannibal Directive was equally wrong-"

The Hannibal Directive requires gang-rapes?

"...it's a barbarically stupid idea to think it's better to kill your own country's citizens than have them be abducted-"

Indeed, the Hannibal Directive, if it ever applied to civilians, and if it had been put into effect on 10/7, could have resulted in Hersh Goldberg-Polin getting shot by Israelis. He could have died instantly. As opposed to what did happen to him, which. -- as you'll no doubt now explain -- was so much better.

"The ISM's protest tactics are not to blame for Aysenur's death and you have no reason to be condemning them."

Seventeen protestors had already died in ISM protests at that site alone, and you're sure their tactics had nothing to do with it? Really? Please do tell us the reason(s) you're so sure. Or tell us about eighteen consecutive pure coincidences. Your choice.

"...has ever been about LGBTQ+ rights..."

That really stings, doesn't it? All of the rhetoric about liberation sounds so pretty and morally uplifting -- until you understand what the 'liberated' government would really do to the persons it governs. Then it's not such a pretty cause, is it?

"Do I like Hamas? No. But I recognize that they can't BE wiped out..."

Really? How about throttling the flow of money, men, and materiel from places like Iran to Hamas? Could we try that? Or did your god simply tell you that the terrorists, we shall always have them with us?

"It's about an oppressed people fighting to end their oppression."

Outspoken women, LGBTQ+ persons, adherents to non-Islamic faiths -- all being so horribly oppressed by the Israelis. Once Hamas takes over, their repressions will all end. Very swiftly.

"...ordinary Palestinians- none of whom are responsible for anything the armed groups do..."

And especially not those ordinary Palestinians who voted for Hamas. Totally not their fault.

"Or that it's temporary moderate tolerance towards LGBTQ+..."

Israel's tolerance toward LGBTQ+ persons makes it the only country in the region with such tolerance. Pile as many unjustified adjectives upon that tolerance as you can, it remains tolerance. None of which is to be found in any place which funds Hamas.

"And whatever else could be said, why couldn't you just treat Aysenur Eygi's death with respect and admit there was no reason for any soldier to be firing at her?"

Um, because we don't actually know what happened? And why was she even there? ISM has been protesting there for years. Other than getting their demonstrators killed, what has the ISM accomplished there? What have they done to earn respect?

If the UW had removed the tents the moment the protestors started pitching them, had given the UW students amongst them academic warnings, and made the non-student protestors persona non grata on campus, this entire scenario might have been avoided. Actual consequences for violating the rules might have caused her to re-think her belief in direct action. Instead, the UW administration allowed several hundred protestors to disrupt a campus used by tens of thousands of students, and allowed the protestors to believe they'd accomplished something. Those lessons -- and they were lessons, as important as anything the UW ever taught her in a classroom -- were not without consequence.

@22 If a free and independent Palestine does not have a right to exist, then neither does Israel. I'll compromise on the Nukes. Israel can keep nukes, to long as they give half of their arsenal to the new Palestinian state for its self defense.

It isn't Israel vs. Hamas, it's the IDF vs the civilian population of Gaza- 70% of whom were either unborn or too young to vote when Hamas won that one election. Nothing justifies collectively punishing ALL Gazans for what Hamas does, or pretending that ordinary Gazans could stop Hamas but simply refuse to, or that Netanyahu isn't largely responsible for Hamas being in power in Gaza due to the years he spent trying to delegitimize Fatah as the Palestinian leadership when Fatah HAD recognized Israel and was trying to negotiate peace. Or to pretend its progressive to support Netanyahu's all-out drive to make a Palestinian state impossible or that that drive can produce a better Palestinian leadership when post-1967 history and the post-2000 rise of Hamas proves it never can.

And I've never made false accusations about you- I've made the logical inferences anyone would make about your unsaid views, based on what you DO say

Anyone who is as sanctimonious about the protest tactics of groups they oppose obviously wants to limit those groups to protest tactics that would be pathetic and doomed to failure

Jim Crow would never have ended without the Freedom Riders and their sacrifices- just singing "We Shall Overcome" would have been humiliating and doomed to failure. The LGBTQ+ rights movement would never have gone anywhere without Stonewall. And it would have been
insulting dismissive and useless to tell the 2020 antiracist protesters to get out of the streets and just campaign for Biden. No form of activism you would approve of would ever change anything anywhere. Nothing that was quiet, polite and "respectable" ever did.

It isn't Israel vs. Hamas, it's the IDF vs the civilian population of Gaza- 70% of whom were either unborn or too young to vote when Hamas won that one election. Nothing justifies collectively punishing ALL Gazans for what Hamas does, or pretending that ordinary Gazans could stop Hamas but simply refuse to, or that Netanyahu isn't largely responsible for Hamas being in power in Gaza due to the years he spent trying to delegitimize Fatah as the Palestinian leadership when Fatah HAD recognized Israel and was trying to negotiate peace. Or to pretend its progressive to support Netanyahu's all-out drive to make a Palestinian state impossible or that that drive can produce a better Palestinian leadership when post-1967 history and the post-2000 rise of Hamas proves it never can.

And I've never made false accusations about you- I've made the logical inferences anyone would make about your unsaid views, based on what you DO say

Anyone who is as sanctimonious about the protest tactics of groups they oppose obviously wants to limit those groups to protest tactics that would be pathetic and doomed to failure

Jim Crow would never have ended without the Freedom Riders and their sacrifices- just singing "We Shall Overcome" would have been humiliating and doomed to failure. The LGBTQ+ rights movement would never have gone anywhere without Stonewall. And it would have been
insulting dismissive and useless to tell the 2020 antiracist protesters to get out of the streets and just campaign for Biden. No form of activism you would approve of would ever change anything anywhere. Nothing that was quiet, polite and "respectable" ever did.

Why can't you just admit that the IDF was wrong here?

""The IDF's victims brought it onto themselves, Terrorists were hiding behind those children accidentally shot in the head. See, I am not defending the IDF"

The obvious solution to nukes in schools is to give teachers and students nukes to defend themselves from crazy kids and terrorists who get their hands on nukes.

There is no way other than encampments to protest anything now- removing the encampments would have been the same thing as saying NO meaningful, effective protest methods against Israel's oppression of ordinary Palestinians- I'm talking about the 95% of Palestinians who are not part of any armed faction and therefore are free of any responsibility for anything those groups do- will be allowed. Reducing activism to nothing but quietly singing "We Shall Not Be Moved" is the same thing as making activism impossible. That's what "tensorna"- btw, is that posting name meant as some sort of passive-aggressive dig at trans people or is it an outright denial that trans identity exists?- wants: to end activism and reduce activists to nothing but the meaningless act of "vot(ing) Blue, no matter who"- and act that has been proven to make no difference in anything.

is our dear Wormtongue
the Spokesperson for
the tyranny of evil
men or does it
merely Seem
that way?

Almost 70 years ago:

"Why should we blame them for their burning hatred for us? For eight years they have been dwelling in Gaza’s refugee camps, as before their eyes we have transformed the land and the villages in which they and their forefathers had dwelled into our own property."

Moshe Dayan, IDF chief of staff, 30 April 1956,

@50: "It isn't Israel vs. Hamas, it's the IDF vs the civilian population of Gaza"

Hamas has a long-standing and well-documented policy of using "the civilian population of Gaza" as human shields, behind from which it attacks Israeli civilians and the IDF. From a decade ago:

"Hamas’ most common uses of human shields include:
Firing rockets, artillery, and mortars from or in proximity to heavily populated civilian areas, often from or
near facilities which should be protected according to the Geneva Convention (e.g. schools, hospitals,
or mosques)." (https://stratcomcoe.org/cuploads/pfiles/hamas_human_shields.pdf)

More recently, the leader of Hamas lectured on the importance of more civilian casualties in Gaza:

"In dozens of messages—reviewed by The Wall Street Journal—that Sinwar has transmitted to cease-fire negotiators, Hamas compatriots outside Gaza and others, he’s shown a cold disregard for human life and made clear he believes Israel has more to lose from the war than Hamas. The messages were shared by multiple people with differing views of Sinwar."

[...]

'In one message to Hamas leaders in Doha, Sinwar cited civilian losses in national-liberation conflicts in places such as Algeria, where hundreds of thousands of people died fighting for independence from France, saying, “these are necessary sacrifices.”'

[...]

"High civilian casualties would create worldwide pressure on Israel, Sinwar said."

(https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/gaza-chiefs-brutal-calculation-civilian-bloodshed-will-help-hamas-626720e7)

@52: "Why can't you just admit that the IDF was wrong here?"

Because we don't yet have all of the facts. If I wanted to issue a blanket pardon to the IDF, it would read like a better-written version of this:

"There is no reason to imply that Aysenur Eygi was somehow to blame for her own death for entering an area where protesters had been killed for."

The ISM, who took her there, has been getting protestors killed there for years. Why this context has been completely ignored, I leave as an exercise to the reader.

As to entering areas where protesters had been killed before- would you say that nobody in the Black Freedom Movement should ever have entered Mississippi again after what happened to Emmitt Till, Medgar Evers, or Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman?

And yes, the area where Aysenur was killed was a place where other protesters had been killed- but no that doesn't mean nobody had the right to ask the IDF/IOF to STOP killing them- it's not as if there was no alternative to shooting unarmed people. Do you really believe THAT can be called "self-defense".

Why would anybody believe anything the IDF/IOF says about why it does things anymore?- the IDF/IOF hasn't acted in anything remotely like good faith since 1949 or so.

And nobody could possibly believe Israel HAS to do things like this to survive, or that doing things like this protects anybody in the group Israel purports to exist in the name of- a group Zioniam has often treated with massive contempt, such as when it despicably labeled Holocaust survivors cowards and implied that there was never any Jewish resistance to the Nazis during WWII, which is a despicable lie since there were active Jewish anti-Nazi militias all over Europe and significant Jewish representation in European antifascist organizations and guerrilla units- to say nothing or the large number of Jews in Europe, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada who joined their countries' militaries and fought with distinction against the Reich.

@49: "If a free and independent Palestine does not have a right to exist, then neither does Israel."

That was indeed the premise of the UN's 1948 Partition Plan. The Palestinian Jews accepted it, some of the Palestinian Arabs accepted it, others of the Palestinian Arabs rejected it. The last declared that the Jewish State had no right to exist, and invited in the armies of six Arab countries, who illegally invaded Palestine with the expressed mission of driving the Jews into the sea.

So, if you have problem with the breaking of the equation you just stated, please feel free to take your gripe to the people who actually broke it. The Palestinian Jews / Israelis did not.

"....they give half of their arsenal to the new Palestinian state for its self defense."

Now you're just petulantly juvenile in your attempt to provoke outrage, and so we adults may now stop taking you seriously. (Hmmmm... this year at UW, did you spend a lot of time in the tents of the United Front for Judea / Judean People's Front?)

@59: "As to entering areas where protesters had been killed before- would you say that nobody in the Black Freedom Movement should ever have entered Mississippi again after what happened to Emmitt Till, Medgar Evers, or Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman?"

Why do you equate violently (rock-throwing) demonstrators with the Civil Rights movement, which NEVER perpetrated ANY form of violence? Why do you malign American heroes?

Hint: throwing rocks at armed security personnel is never a good idea, especially when previous violent demonstrations at that very site had resulted in fatalities. Nobody deserves to die for throwing rocks, but the ISM's callous attitude towards the lives of demonstrators there was most certainly a contributing factor in the needless death of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi. Equating the violent and careless ISM to our disciplined, non-violent Civil Rights movement is truly hateful slander of the latter. (Unsurprisingly, you see nothing wrong with this false equivalence.)