A pro-Palestinian protest action briefly blocked all traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco Wednesday morning.
Starting at about 7:45 a.m. Protesters stopped cars and stretched banners across the roadway denouncing Israel’s bombing of Rafah in the Gaza Strip and demanding that the U.S. stop arming Israel.
Northbound and southbound traffic on the bridge was at a standstill as of 8 a.m.
Commuted on that bridge for many years. I wouldn’t stand in front of that traffic. Lucky they didn’t have any fatalities
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No, he said that he wouldn’t trust other not to do it. Also, you don’t know how much people are being inconvenienced by it, assuming that it’s a small inconvenience is quite the stretch.
I did indeed misread the first sentence of comment, apologies.
They are preaching to the choir in San Francisco. They should be protesting in D.C.
They do
I don’t get it. When does it become morally acceptable to block traffic?
Between Just Stop Oil and Stop Arming Israel, they both have equally valid points. So why is it that blocking the Golden Gate Bridge is “based” while blocking various feeder roads in Britain makes you a twat?
Edit: messed up the titles
It’s absolutely acceptable. Driving isn’t some untouchable human right that goes above everything else and can’t yield to something else for a little bit.
Nah brah. There could be an ambulance carrying your child to a hospital in that queue.
Or a dude on its way to an interview after more than two years trying to land a job.
Or a person about to catch a flight.
So, not absolutely acceptable. No.
Or tens of thousands of children being slaughtered. Nah brah
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How does this help though? It just makes people annoyed at protesters and, if anything, detracts from their cause. Protesting is great, blocking traffic is a criminal offence.
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They block ambulances and I have zero problems with people kneeling for the anthem.
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“common” “usually”
How about don’t do things like that and you won’t have to have faith in backup plans?
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If it prevents people from taking planes, that’s a good thing climate and pollution wise.
Considering that the planes were still flying around empty when travel restrictions were in place, I don’t think a few passengers caught in a traffic jam are going to keep the planes from taking off.
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/ghost-flights-pandemic-greenpeace-cmd/index.html
I just question the effectiveness of it. We want more people to join the cause, but making them sit and listen to honking for 15 minutes might have the inverse effect.
Great for spreading awareness, though.
Actually the right to travel is a human right. You are the oppressor in this because you are inflicting your will on everyone else.
It absolutly is not, protest how ever you want with or without a permit from the municipality, you are responsibly for your own actions. If you delay an emergency vehicle, those lives are on your head.
When I lived in Boston this happened multiple times. The one that comes to mind was some eco-protest that linked the protesters to oil drums filled with concrete on mass pike (the main east-west highway into the city). There were emergency vehicles stuck in the jam and someone died that was on their way to the hospital. IIRC most of the protestors are still in jail for murder.
Apparently if you are a farmer in Europe people support your right to block traffic
I don’t support them either
I wish we could block more than traffic
They’re both twats. They aren’t making converts or reaching the people who can even effectuate a change. All the do is poison the well for the middle of the country that otherwise might have been receptive.
If I’m on my way to work, or the hospital, or to visit gram gram and some whack job makes my life noticeably more miserable then I’m always going to have negative feelings for them.
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Nope. Not always. Next time you have to drive a loved one to the hospital, and then there is a blockade because of “the children of North Korea,” let me know if you feel like sympathizing with the blockers.
Edit: I understand the whole Palestinian crisis is a very sensitive subject, and people get emotional with this kind of topic. But we can’t have that “either you’re us or against us” mentality. It’s not like I’m saying “don’t protest, and your cause sucks!” I’m saying “yes, protest, and yes, disrupt, but disrupt it to the people who can actually do something about it.”
Yeah I’d take that risk lmao
Beside, buddy there’s traffic jam in front of my house every morning, how do you think that does for ambulance circulation?
That’s a false equivalence. The traffic in front of your house is not caused by some people who can’t think of better ways to protest.
Of course not. It is caused by people who can’t think of a better way to pollute.
At least protesters stands for something. They are not poisoning the air for the sake of not moving their collective fat asses.
Beside, your way of thinking about it is suspiciously close to the one of those who want protesters run over.
Again… not the point. And that’s another false equivalency. “People with different reasons to be on the road are blocked by people are being a public threat in the name of some cause.” “Well, serves them right for being a public threat with their cars!” No, that’s not a good argument.
your way of thinking about it is suspiciously close to the one of those who want protesters run over.
I’m just going to pretend you didn’t write this absurd sentence.
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If it’s an emergency an ambulance will drive an alternate route because they have contingency plans in place for blocked highways like with major car accidents or infrastructure failure.
Sure. Because an ambulance can totally divert to an alternative way when it’s already on the bridge. And if it’s not on the bridge already, then the “alternative way” is the “already too late” way. That’s why there is a bridge there in the first place.
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Insightful comment. Thank you.
I still gotta add, though: just because ambulances are trained to deal with protest blockades, doesn’t justify said blockades. Like a cop is trained to deal with thieves that shoot at them, we don’t say “ok! Violent burglary attempts may continue to happen, then.” So yeah, good to know that ambulances have an alternative, but that doesn’t mean I’m okay with these blockades all of a sudden. Plus not everyone wanting to cross that bridge (or road, or whatever) has a good contingency plan.
When does it become morally acceptable to block traffic?
When there is a truck with people carrying your mom to a lynching site.
Other than that, I agree with you. Blocking traffic is one of the dumbest way to protest. You won’t get any sympathizers from that car queue.
Unless you are DIRECTLY saving a human life, it isn’t.
I get that it gets your movement noticed. But not by the people that can do a damn thing about it.
And the people that maybe can do something, like Biden? They will never reward such tactics so as to not encourage more protests of the type.
And you want to point to civil rights protests doing the same thing? When the first Selma to Montgomery march happened, it was Sunday, a day when at the time few travelled anywhere but church on Sunday. They deliberately chose low traffic times and announced it well in advance.
Britain is the rotting husk of a colonial empire. The people are psudo-fascist bootlickers obsessed with institutional proceduralism who think good things fundamentally cannot happen.
*England is…
Time for bed, lass, school in the morning, off ye go
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Run them over?!
Rotting car brain syndrome.
someone needs to spend some time on !fuck_cars@lemmy.ml
Truly a gathering of the most level headed people on Lemmy
I don’t understand. Every shill in this thread explained that literally everyone blocked from the bridge was a white wealthy tourist and it was only for 15 minutes. Your “creative” meme implies direct control over the situation. Which is the truth?
Are they tourists or are they political elites?
Wait, do you think people continuing to drive would somehow cause more Palestinian deaths? Is that what you are claiming? You do know the vehicles are not carrying weapons for Israel or anything like that?
The fact is, this protest saved not one life. It changed no one’s mind. It accomplished nothing but making a lot of people have a bad day.
deliberately misunderstanding the point of protests doesn’t make you look smarter than the protesters.
Me not playing in traffic and blocking ambulances makes me smarter.
The problem with a lot of protests is the protesters don’t understand the point of a protest.
Sometimes people get so emotional over a cause they can’t understand things from the perspective of other people.
So they end up coming off like selfish crazy people which at best convinces no one, and at worst turns people against their cause.
Many times protests are just about people wanting to be around other people that share their emotions about the cause. This results in a need to find an outlet for these emotions. But because it’s an emotional thing they can’t think out a logical way to further their cause. So instead it’s just about expressing emotion. Which may be cathartic for the protesters but doesn’t do anything to further the cause.
Israel is obviously not going to stop until they get the hostages back. Blocking bridges won’t change anything. It’s just unnecessarily inconveniencing people and only serves to make people think Palestinian movement is an irrational movement that doesn’t care about anything other than themselves.
I’d argue there are no “rational” protests because protests only exist when there is no path to a legal or democratic resolution available.
You don’t protest your landlord fixing your broken heating because there’s laws saying they have to. You don’t protest the elected government, you protest when the elected government breaks the law without recourse.
I don’t think you understand what democracy is. Protest is a right in a democracy, because it can lead to positive change. It’s part of the process. A protest can influence elected leaders.
Emotional protests are poorly thought out and can often lead to negative outcomes. You of course have a right to do an emotional protest, but you aren’t accomplishing anything.
The Palestinian protests are the worst thought out protests I’ve ever seen. We just had one this week where I live and they protested a hospital founded by Canadian Jews. So everyone rightly condemned the protest as antisemitic and it didn’t help their cause at all. But I guess they got to spend some time with others that are upset by the same thing they’re upset about, that seems to be the only thing that’s important to them.
Protest is only a right in a democracy because of… well… protest lol. If they banned protests they’d get worse protests than if they didn’t, or else they have to murder dissidents (See Russia)
If we could’ve voted to end the war in Iraq, there would have been no protests about ending the war in Iraq because people would have just gone to the polls.
What are you on about? There is an entire procedure for lawful protest.
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What does it say about your cause when the leadership can’t be bothered to fill out a piece of paperwork?
Which is used when there is no democratic or legal recourse to a situation. What is the democratic or legal resource, then, for an average citizen to get their government to publicly denounce genocide in Israel/Palestine?
I don’t believe your question was asked in good faith.
What do you think the point of a protest is?
Apparently to block ambulances
Depends.
The point of a rational protest is to raise awareness and support for a cause. Potentially influence people in power to change policy.
The point of an emotional protest is to simply express emotion without any consideration of achieving any goal.
They Palestinian protests are of the second type. Which is the type of protest that can boil over into violent outbursts which is concerning. Not that violent outbursts will change anything either, no one is going to give in intimidation tactics. But people could be hurt by these protesters.
INB4 the “but they don’t hurt people as bad as Israel is hurting people” crowd, who only prove the point that this is all about emotion and nothing else.
Weird dichotomy.
Protests can be entirely rational without the main motivation being recruitment.
If you think that trolley problem meme accurately reflects the point of the protests, you look pretty stupid.
I was talking about the drivers and driving in the OP article.
Well, I was responding to the meme suggesting that blocking traffic was directly saving lives somehow.
The banner says “STOP ARMING ISRAEL”. Is “pro-Palestinian” really the best way to describe them?
Yes, if Israel stops attacking it’s the Palestinians in Gaza who will benefit. But, you don’t have to be pro-Palestinian to want that to happen. You can just be anti-killing-of-civilians, whoever those civilians happen to be.
Based.
Oh no! By completely blocking the bridge for 15 minutes they’ve slowed the traffic in that area down by…
0.003%!!!
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Yeah, fuck protesters. How dare they inconvenience people!
I can see you have nothing worthwhile to offer in a discussion, so I’m going to go ahead and block you now.
It solved things for them.
The pot calling the kettle black
And nothing of value was lost.
crayons, glue or paint chips which one did you eat?
I’m happy with leftists doing shit like this to support Palestine as long as they vote for Joe Biden too - even if they disagree with the DNC on foreign policy - out of respect for the minorities of the US and the western world at large who would be thoroughly fucked under Trump.
Doing anything else just means you’re just an accelerationist POS who wants everyone to suffer so we can all bask in your narcissistic vision of revolution/rapture as salvation.
Being silent on the Israel-Palestine war and not opposing all right-winger warmongers who started it (Netanyahou, Hamas) is also wrong.
I voted for Biden, and I’ll be doing so again. I voted for Hillary as well. Each time made me feel a little sick, like I had given my support to the atrocities that would now be committed with the “mandate of the voters”.
It won’t change the fact that I will vote for Biden (it is the best option after all). But comments like yours, that feel the need to throw accusations and bully people into selling that little piece of their soul, even when no one brought up withholding votes from Biden, make that sick feeling worse.
If there are people who are at the cusp of withholding their votes from Biden, your comment is not the kind of argument that will shame them into joining your side. Rather it will push them further towards abstaining. And while you might feel you have the moral high ground over people like that, you are still contributing to the problem.
Edit: To those considering their vote for Biden, I think this comment does a good job putting it into perspective. It talks about some of the good he has actually accomplished, and makes a decent case for how voting can’t become a zero sum game or we will lose more than we gain.
Yeah, some people haven’t learned that “if you do x, you’re an (insult)” doesn’t turn people considering x against x, it more often turns them against the one saying it. Even if they ultimately agree that x is bad, they often also continue considering the one who said that an enemy.
How to Win Friends and Influence People and The 48 Laws of Power were a couple of books that helped me learn this, because we have instincts that lead us astray in these regards (I used to think insults were a viable persuasion strategy myself). So much of it is obvious in hindsight, just by considering things from how I would receive them instead of how to convince someone of something.
Edit: fixed formatting for angled brackets
Edit 2: looks like they just remove angled brackets, escaped or not, switched to boring curvy brackets
I’ve already learned all this but your mistake is thinking I give a fuck. No one’s opinion changes, and the world will end in like 30 years tops.
Ah, so you’re going with the accelerate the end strategy. Can’t say I really blame you. Things aren’t looking good regardless of who wins.
30 years? An optimist I see. /s
Even if people will still vote for Biden we need public opinion to swing so drastically that the Dems will at least panic and do something different than unconditionally support israel.
Openly saying that you are going to vote for Genocide Joe while he does the Genocide is absolutely useless.
There is definitely some truth in what you are saying. But for me, that has to be weighed against the risks of another Trump presidency. Which from what I’ve seen, will be worse for the Palestinian people, as well as many others. There are people very close to me whose rights were infringed upon by the shifts in laws enacted during the Trump years, and fighting for their rights isn’t useless to me.
I do my best to take direct action to show support for the Palestinian people, and would encourage others to do the same. But I worry that if we genuinely want to affect change to benefit the greatest number of people, we can’t just pick our hills to die on, we have to push for solidarity.
What risk? We have seen 2016. Trump will only be marginally worse than Biden. People are still working 20 jobs for little money and have no housing but we sure have 14 Billion for israel lying around.
If you keep confirming to the Democrats that they will never lose by being Republicans Lite, then the Democrats will never change. In fact your direct vote confirms you don’t want them to change
Only by making Democrats lose votes (or at least polling numbers) will they actually start to care. Especially when they see those lost votes directly go to third parties
Due to electing Trump in 2016, we have the majority of U.S. states where women no longer have body autonomy, tons of anti-lbgt laws, and a Supreme Court that continues to weaken voting and civil rights. The Republicans publicly have a plan to install a “deep state” the next time they get a Republican in the presidency (project 2025). It’s quite possible the U.S. will never have “fair” elections after another Republican presidency. Trump and friends have learned from their previous coup attempt, and will try a different method next time.
And how do LGBT and abortion rights in the US protect the Palestinians from genocide? They are important issues too, but right now there is a president who supports genocide. If he is not punished for it, it will show every future president, that genocide is somewhoe politically acceptable. It shouldn’t be acceptable.
There is no incentive for the Dems to actually stop commiting the same atrocities like the Reps, if they will be voted either way.
You cannot parent a child without good consequences for good behaviour and bad consequences for bad behaviour. It is the same for polticians.
Biden is not doing nothing to fix any of those issues. Biden has been bypassing congress to give bombs to israel.
Unless the dems realize that their hostage holding of voters will no longer work they will never change their rhetoric as you are literally voting for them because of it. You are giving them zero incentive to fix any problems.
Biden is currently cracking down on immigration and supporting israel as if he is a GOP candidate. Not fixing abortion
I don’t think there will be real elections anymore if a Republican wins the next presidential election, so it makes no sense to me to punish the Dem party by locking them out of control of the federal government forever. Furthermore, Trump and Reps are hinting at committing more genocide-like actions on U.S. soil (“rounding up” all the undocumented immigrants, eradicating trans people from public life, etc).
Ah geez if only Obama was able to codify Roe v Wade which he purposely didn’t to keep the voters hostage.
The DNC sabotaged Bernie in 2016 you can thank the Democrats for losing abortion rights.
These are people that pay sticker prices at the dealership.
Bleh every other thread on Lemmy has “leftists” (usually suspiciously pro-Russia tankies) constantly threatening to shoot themselves and their neighbors by abstaining from democracy, I ain’t reading all that but I’m glad you’re not one of them and thus a comrade of mine, I meant no offense, I was just putting out there something that needs to be said. On reddit I’d usually just tell them to kill themselves and call them goobers but I’m trying to be nice here.
Honestly people hate to hear it, but voting for or against Biden won’t change anything in the US.
What can change things is a greater involvement in local politics, changing our local community and continuing upward to the state level. Then we can talk about abolishing the two party system, introducing term limits, and abolishing lobbying. These are the true plagues of American democracy imo and we’ll be stuck in this cyclical cycle of Biden vs Trump for far longer than the two will be alive for in the form of different names.
Protesting and voting are two separate acts.
As an non-american, I would blame american voters for supporting the US military complex. It doesn’t matter what you vote for and that you’ve been propagandized into the “lesser evil” thinking. The blood is on your hand.
Bruh you’re an idiot. Do you blame Russians for “voting” for Putin too when that mfer literally tortures the opposition to death in prison?
Me, no. My governement? Totally.
If 70% of Palestine people passively and actively support Hamas, are the protesters Pro-Hamas?
Edit: downvoters are just in denial. I mean, really, ask yourself this question. And it’s a hypothetical question nontheless so… no shame
Protesting for the right of Palestine to exist and not have thousands of their children bombed to death can hardly equate to support for Hamas.
Palestinian support for Hamas rises as Israel bombs them, their houses and their families. This suggests that supporting Hamas is an act of desperation for the Palestinians, as to them Hamas are simply the only group that actually do something against what they perceive as the Israeli oppressors.
Regardless, the vast majority of protestors would like to see a two-state solution that brings lasting peace to the region, with Hamas as well as Israeli warhawks removed from power. That doesn’t really equate to support for Hamas at all.
So the kilometers of tunnels under civilian houses and institutions were not built for decades with at least consent from the people living there?
The two state solution was rejected, several times, in the past from Palestine.
So do i understand you right, that you advocate for the genocide of the Palestinians, as is currently carried out by Israel?
If not, then why the fuck would you have a problem with people protesting for children, women and unarmed men not to be bombed and given access to food, water, shelter and healthcare?
No need to frame anyone. It’s just a question and if there would be so many supporters if they wouldn’t count at least as collaborateurs.
So yes, you’re pro-genocide.
Anyone thinking that protesting genocide means you’re collaborating with a terrorist group has the analytical capability of a moldy banana.
No need to frame anyone. It’s just a question
JAQing off is a bullshit defense, otherwise I could just ask questions about where you were when someone was murdered. After all, I’m not saying you murdered anyone, I’m just asking questions about the murder and your possible involvement.
You were the one framing Palestinians as Hamas supporters, you got called a genocide supporter now and you’re backtracking.
Oh boy. I’m out. Sorry to have y’all disturbed in your echo chamber opinions.
Have fun with the downvotes.
Again, the question is why you have a problem with protesting for children and women not getting killed?
Do oyu understaand the concept, that children cannot be criminals, and most certainly never “deserve” to be killed?
And I suppose all the Americans protesting the Vietnam War were dyed-in-the-wool Communists, huh?
What? How can you compare these two scenarios??? Oh my god, there really is nothing to be achieved with talking to the likes of you.
What’s the difference?
If those situations are incomparable, surely you can explain why, right?
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That’s not even a comparison
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This is the problem with the Palestinian movement. I’d support their movement whole-heartedly if it was a non-violent resistance movement.
But it isn’t.
It’s a movement that’s dominated by people that either support or look the other way about a part of their movement going into villages and massacring people. That’s not a movement a lot of people are going to support. It’s only something that can be supported by psychopaths or people too emotional to think things through because of the things that are being spammed on their social media feeds.
I don’t even think the Palestinian movement would have to be non-violent to get massive support from the world at large. All Hamas needed to do was not go after soft civilian targets, like the October 7th attack.
I think they would have much more support if they kept their military focused on the IDF and Israeli government, not Israeli civilians.
If Israel has shown us anything, Hamas could still get away with killing civilians, as long as they were collateral in an attack on the IDF and Israeli military. They lose people’s support by focusing on terrorizing non-combatants.
None of this is to say that the IDF or Israeli government are the righteous ones in this war. They have done disgusting things to the Palestinians, themselves. Both regimes are terrible in their own ways, and they kind of deserve each other. I just feel terrible for all of the innocent Palestinians and Israelis caught up in this mess.
I don’t even think the Palestinian movement would have to be non-violent to get massive support from the world at large. All Hamas needed to do was not go after soft civilian targets, like the October 7th attack.
If they had used the tens of billions of dollars that the world has donated them for building up their societies between 1990s and today instead of endlessly preparing to destroy Israel, that would have helped a lot. It would helped with everything.
Unfortunately, it seems that just pouring money into a society doesn’t help build human capital.
The money donated to Palestine was mostly used to save people from the many crisises and famines that the Palestinians have endured. A lot of it went to rebuilding the education system, providing health care, and social services in a war torn, open air prison. Sure, some bit of it went to building missiles and weapons, but that doesn’t mean that they haven’t tried to “build up” Palestine.
This situation is a bit too complicated to solve by just throwing money at it, anyways. Even if Hamas didn’t spend one penny of Palestinian aid on weapons, they would still be in a pretty similar situation.
Hamas gets funding from assholes in the region that are bitter over all of the humiliating defeats of Arab countries by Israel. The leadership of Hamas that lives in Qatar are billionaires. If they weren’t routinely fire rockets at Israeli population centers over the last decade and a half, that funding would go to another group. Similarly Iran would be providing weapons to some other group if Hamas didn’t go after civilian targets.
And If Hamas just went after the IDF directly, they’d be dead.
Entities like Hamas obviously don’t exist to protect their people. I mean they’re right now hiding in underground bunkers leaving the civilian population at the mercy of an army they claim to be committing genocide. They only exist to maintain power. They do this by fascist means of propaganda. Gotta keep that money rolling in from bitter old oil rich Arabs. They need there to violence so they can produce propaganda and maintain their power and their funding.
Israel and Saudi Arabia were very close to normalizing relations. In all likelihood that deal would block funding from Saudi Arabia going to Hamas. That’s a game changer. What can Hamas do to prevent the game from changing? It’s gotta be something big…
So no, Hamas just isn’t compatible with a peaceful co-existence. They simply wouldn’t exist without the violence. I was hoping Palestinian groups would denounce Hamas and separate themselves from these violent assholes. I can understand people in Gaza not being able to do this out of fear of reprisals. But Palestinians living in the West?
But unfortunately that didn’t happen. Seems too many people are fine with Hamas continuing to exist which means the violence will continue into the next generation. Unless Israel can succeed in their stated goal of obliterating Hamas, but that’s something that will cost many lives of Palestinians which will also result in the violence continuing into the next generation.
But some Hamas assholes are billionaires living in a life of luxury in Qatar and people in the west get to post memes that get them internet points, so I guess the violence has to continue to keep the assholes of the world happy.
how is it legal to protest on a bridge? that’s got to be breaking at least one law
This is called civil disobedience, it’s a well established method of protest. When law-abiding protests fail to stop people from being murdered, then the next natural step is civil disobedience. Unfortunately the powers-that-be have learned that the most effective status-quo response to any protest is for them to do nothing, neither interfering with the protest itself nor actually responding to the protesters’ points.
this is what’s called “peaceful protest” that the anti-riot people wanted so bad instead of riots, and now that they’ve got it they still aren’t happy. guess it’s time to start anti-genocide riots since we’ll be hated by ignornats either way. if they don’t want riots they should just appreciate peaceful protest
Liberals oppose every war, except the current one. They support all protests, except the current one.
Did it work?
The point of civil disobedience is to refuse to obey unjust laws, like refusing to abide by segregation laws. Unless they’re arguing that it’s unjust to prohibit blocking of traffic, whatever point they’re making by blocking traffic is probably lost on those around them.
I’m not sure who gave you the impression that that’s the definition, but it’s not correct. It includes that, but isn’t limited to that.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/civil%20disobedience
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4725008/suber_civ-dis.htm
Admittedly other things can fall within the definition of “civil disobedience”, but as for what is useful civil disobedience I’d probably listen to this guy:
One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
MLK Jr, letter from a Birmingham Jail
Thanks for digging up that quote. I’ve always felt iffy on if these things actually help the causes or not, and I think MLK Jr answers that question. Civil disobedience along these lines would be to refuse to pay your taxes and being jailed for it because you don’t want any of your money to contribute to the genocide.
I worry that making busy traffic even worse actually hurts the cause. Making tired working class people frustrated doesn’t do much unless that frustration can be directed in the right direction.
It reminds me of when Greenpeace did something similar to protest climate change. That at least made some sense since commuting generates a lot of emissions. Although that said, making traffic worse also makes emissions worse.
I don’t know. This is tricky.
It’s worth noting that blocking traffic has been a common tactic since the start of the civil rights movement, and we have been having this discussion over and over again for decades now.
Looking at this from a civil disobedience standpoint, the reasoning for civil rights or foreign policy protestors blocking traffic may be less direct than for climate protestors, but is in my opinion equally valid. Highways are the arteries of the capitalist economic system that both powers the US war machine and reinforces the social structures that keep black communities in poverty.
The main problem with this tactic is that recognizing how the action of blocking traffic relates to the protesters’ cause requires a political and class consciousness that most people lack. I personally still support the tactic because I believe we should be collectively working towards instilling that class consciousness in as many people as possible.
While many who choose to remain ignorant will continue to be annoyed and angry at such tactics, there will be some who stop to reflect and consider the arguments being made, and that is progress.
I think a more apt criticism here would be that there’s better ways to bring attention to their cause and affect change. I don’t disagree with you, I just think there’s better ways they could’ve approached this. I’m a firm believer that carrots work better than sticks.
Say they were giving away Palestinian cuisine for instance downtown, and using the free food as a way in to talk to people about the humanitarian crisis.
don’t give the dude any concessions. your definition is correct. even the links he provided proves YOU correct. they all state that usually the unjust law is the law that’s broken and the examples in the definitions back up your definition. that dude is just getting defensive you corrected them.
At least I have chicken 🍗
It is unjust lol. It’s hard for car-drivers to have the moral high-ground where under each of this kind of news, you get comments calling for them to get run over.
Car drivers overall are more concerned about getting to their destination than not hurting people.
it’s not wrong to break the law, it’s wrong to commit genocide.
Why are there 37 missing replies? Was Godzilla here?
forcing traffic to halt on a bridge isnt going to stop a war on the other side of the planet.
It’s funny, they said the same thing about the protests against the Vietnam war.
Yeah, but it wasn’t the dead Vietnamese that were putting them off.
And it didn’t. The protests started in earnest a full 8 years before the war ended.
So the protests weren’t blocking enough bridges for 8 full years.
Yes clearly it wasn’t the method that was wrong it was the humans weren’t noble enough.
We solve problems in democracy by peaceful protest, voting, lawsuits, and swaying public opinion. We don’t solve problems in a democracy by blocking ambulances and pissing the hell out of regular people. No one just trying to pick up their kids is going to want to hear about your cause when you are blocking the road.
they don’t block ambulances, they let them through. you’ve never been to a protest and it shows
You do realize that your democracy is founded on violent revolution? And that slavery had to be abolished in a civil war? That the civil rights movement was shunned in the same way, now the protesters against genocide are shunned, because it inconveniences the white man on his day to day business?
If you truly object to non violent civil disobedience, than you need to object to violent revolution and civil war even more so, and reintegrate the US into the UK and offer yourself up for slavery, to reinstate what was unjustly overturned.
Hardly any american soldiers are dying in Gaza, though. The number might be zero.
Look up the definition of genocide. Then stop using it as an argument. No one is committing genocide. The U.N. isn’t even declaring it a genocide. It’s a horrific territorial displacement war with a lot of nuance that goes back a LONG time, but by definition- it’s not genocide.
Israel is erasing any trace of Palestinean humanity and denies them any institutional political representation while destroying the local infrastructure and using any perceived or imagined association with the last remaining government as an excuse to murder them in the streets.
People’s collective understanding of the meaning of genocide must have kept up with the times.
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I said exactly what I said.
If we’re stretching the definition so far then there are a lot more ‘genocides’ ongoing in the world today, and many a lot worse than the one in Palestine. It’s weird that these people in SF (and on Lemmy) chose to focus on just the one
Show me the genocides where the US or other western countries are delivering billions and billions worth of weapons to the perpetrator.
Also the US, UK, and other countries argued at the ICJ for orders on the Myanmar genocide, arguing with the same arguments now brought forth by South Africa. Calling out the hypocricsy of the governments helping a genocide is absolutely justified.
Finally, you neither know if the people speaking out now, didn’t speak out earlier, nor is it any argument. A genocide is happening and it needs to be stopped. The West has the means to end it within a day. It is a moral obligation of any decent human being to demand an end to this genocide.
Well the Yemeni civil war comes to mind. 85.000 children dead from famine with the help of the US to starve them. If you claim “can’t know if these people on the GG bridge didn’t protest against that” I’ll call bullshit.
Finally, my point is not so much that US support for Israel can’t be criticized or that these bridge blocking bozo’s (sorry) are wrong, but that stretching up the definition of genocide to justify suddenly protesting now is something we should all push back on. It will just soften the public opinion to those that commit or are the victims of ‘real’ genocides
You say the definition of genocide was stretched, wrongfully assuming that the protestors wouldnt consider the Saudi and US war crimes in Yemen to amount to genocide. But most of them probably do.
You cannot hold the effectiveness of the US propaganda at propping up Saudi Arabia and silencing the voices about genocide in Yemen against the people who now protest for an end to the genocide in Palestine. If you want to condemn something, condemn how the US is acting.
It’s. It genocide by definition. Again, the U.N. will not even call it genocide. It’s a territorial dispute. And a long standing one with a shit load of nuance. I’m not defending anyone but empirical truth.
Frankly, you are not defending empirical truth, you are trying to have a linguistics debate. That’s not remotely the same thing.
But even in your linguistics debate, the statement “it’s not by definition a genocide” is not as clear cut as you are trying to make it.
Some excerpts taken from the (rather extensive) Wikipedia page regarding the Allegations of genocide in the 2023 Israeli attack on Gaza:
Legal definition of genocide: The 1948 Genocide Convention defines genocide as any of five “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.[18][19] The acts in question include killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group.[18] Genocide is a crime of special intent (“dolus specialis”); it is carried out deliberately, with victims targeted based on real or perceived membership in a protected group.[19]
Alleged genocidal actions: Since 7 October 2023, the IDF has been accused of the extrajudicial killing of Palestinian unarmed detainees,[48][49] doctors,[50] and workers, making threats of mutilation,[51] death, arson, rape,[52] and torturing Palestinians detained without legal charges.[53][54] It has also been accused of using excessive force against dozens of schools[55] and hospitals,[56] theft,[54] the cruel and unnecessary desecration and mutilation of deceased Palestinians,[50] and making no, or an inadequate distinction between Hamas forces and civilians.[57] During the fighting, Channel 14 kept a count of every Palestinian killed, labelling all Palestinian casualties as terrorists,[58] while Shimon Riklin, a Channel 14 journalist and anchor, publicly advocated Israel committing more war crimes.[58][59]
So in a lot of ways, it sure looks like a genocide. And it goes beyond just allegations.
On 26 January 2024, the ICJ issued a preliminary ruling finding that the claims in South Africa’s filing (accusing Israel of genocide) were “plausible”
Finally, I think this bit sums up it up nicely.
Russian-American author, Masha Gessen, when asked if what was happening in Gaza was a genocide said, “I think there are some fine distinctions between genocide and ethnic cleansing and I think that there are valid arguments for using both terms”.[167] When pressed further they stated, “it is at the very least ethnic cleansing”.
So if you are looking to die on the hill of your linguistics debate, you do you. But the actions taking place are unarguably morally wrong.
Their goal is not to eradicate the world of Palestinians and their culture. They could care less of their existence. It’s a territorial war. Period.
Always has been. You can spin it however you want. But as atrocious as it is- it’s not genocide.
By the way… “plausible” doesn’t mean…. “Run with it!”
Netanyahu has made it quite clear that his goal is the end of Palestine as a sovereign state. Quoted in the “Times of Israel” publication as saying:
“in any future arrangement, or in the absence of an arrangement,” he said, Israel must maintain “security control” of all territory west of the Jordan River — meaning, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. “That is a vital condition.”
He acknowledged that this “contradicts the idea of sovereignty [for the Palestinians]."
Seeing as part of the definition of Genocide is to:
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group
I would argue that falls under the definition as outlined by the 1948 Genocide Convention. Your focus on total eradication of people and culture is only a part of the definition of genocide. Also, they are certainly doing an unnecessary amount of eradication of Palestinians and their culture, regardless of if it is an “expressed intent”.
Lastly, “plausible” doesn’t mean “just run with it”, but I never said it did. Plausible means “plausible”. As in, your argument that it “definitely isn’t genocide” is directly contradicted by the ICJ ruling. People whose judgement the world put their faith in to make the distinction couldn’t definitively say it wasn’t occurring given the information they were given access to.
Edit: need to add some clarity. It’s not simply that Israel plans to end the nation state of Palestine. They are intending to end Palestinians as a National Group. This has been made clear by retorhic such as posted in this comment, as well as Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s statement during an Oct. 13 press conference. In his statement, Herzog said, “It’s an entire nation that is out there that’s responsible. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true,”.
Beyond that, according to Raz Segal, the program director of genocide studies at Stockton University:
Israeli forces are completing three genocidal acts, including, “killing, causing serious bodily harm, and measures calculated to bring about the destruction of the group.” He points to the mass levels of destruction and total siege of basic necessities—like water, food, fuel, and medical supplies—as evidence.
I thought it was Israel defending themselves against a terror attack. Apparently the goal posts have moved.
The U.N. cannot call it a genocide because first, the US is vetoing any decision in the security council against Israels actions and second, there is the ICJ as a court that is currently ruling, with the authority to do so, if it constitutes a genocide.
IF.
So it’s not a genocide… CURRENTLY. And yet- all the kids pile on the outrage when someone points this out.
That is unsound logic. It is perfectly normal for murder suspects to be held in jail until the final verdict is reached. In the same wake it is most certainly absurd to give a mass murder suspect access to weapons, and to let him continue commiting acts, until the court has reached his final verdict.
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No, I’m not.
Look up the definition of ignorant.
Perfectly fine rebuttal. I produce an argument that is based in reality, and empirical truth- and you respond with ad hominem.
It’s always good to know who’s not worth a discussion. Ignoring you now.
Stop excusing genocide, please
If they were committing genocide, and I were saying it’s okay for them to do so- I would be excusing it. Here I’m saying they’re not committing it/- officials won’t even call it genocide. And neither Biden or Trump are contributing to it.
Oh la-di-da. Who cares what “officials” call it? Do you have eyes, ears and brain? Most officials lie for a living. That’s the reason genocide is still happening, instead of Haag livestreams. You must be young or are tied to all of it somehow. Your last sentence prooves it. Just don’t, please
Tell that to your friends Hamass who are sacrificing Palestinians for their politics and for their Mullah masters sitting in Iran.
Are they not willing to just roll over and die for you? I wouldn’t either, you know? Especially if you just murdered my family while your friends watched for entertainment. Hamas is Made in Israel. New members each day I bet.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
I have yet to find anyone on Lemmy willing to have that kind of discussion. They will pretend to, sure, but when it comes to discussing things, they just close their eyes and repeat the same thing over and over again.
And, if you were to write a well thought out, detailed post, with fully verified information that took hours to research, supermod Jordan comes along and deletes it as “misinformation” and threatens to ban you, even though literally everything you said is easily verifiable with four seconds of searching.
Yep. Dare to disagree and if you’re lucky, you only get your comments removed- at worst you get banned.
The ICJ offered an initial finding, because researching and confirming genocide is a big step, that takes a lot of time, political will, and physical access to the area.
That said, it’s a really damning when you have to be reminded to not do acts that are genocidal.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Friday declared that Palestinians had a right to be protected from acts of genocide, calling on Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent such actions and allow the entry of desperately needed humanitarian aid
And yet it did not actually order Israel to do anything that it was not already doing except submit a report by February 23rd.
ICJ begins a legal process, requests report from the accused party
Yes. This is normal in any legal case, not an exoneration of Israel and/or the IDF. Rwanda took 20 years to prosecute, Yugoslavia 16 years
Those were the criminal proceedings that took that long. The case against Israel right now is the application to institute proceedings. The Rwanda application was filed to the ICJ in 2002 and the final judgment was in 2006. The Yugoslav application was filed to the ICJ in 1993 and final judgment was in 2007.
You’re talking about the individual criminal proceedings of the special trial courts (the ICTR and the ICTY) against the perpetrators of charged crimes, which were mandated by the final judgments on the applications to institute proceedings.
The evidence in both of those cases, as far as my memory serves at this moment, included literal mass killings where civilians were lined up and shot, soldiers going door to door killing everyone inside houses, with a heavy helping of torture and mutilations. The stories were very real, as opposed to the allegations in South Africa’s application, which is loaded with innuendo, half truths, unverified stories from Qatari and Iranian media, and circular reasoning, a yes a helping of what appear to be very real war crimes. In Rwanda there were plenty of mutilated women and children there to say who did it. If the ICJ institutes proceedings against Israel at a special criminal tribunal, it will take decades to find and prosecute those responsible, and if Israel is telling the truth about what it has for intelligence, most of those proceedings are going to end in aquitals.
Either way, if South Africa’s claims were as clear cut and dry as the mob of this community believes they are, the ICJ could have granted any of the preliminary relief South Africa sought, but it didn’t. The UN isn’t going to open a new tribunal for isolated war crimes of invidiual soldiers as long as Israel is making good faith prosecutions on its own, and it is, as ICJ noted in its preliminary decision, denying South Africa’s proposed relief.
Of course, I guess since I’ve not included links to the the original legal decisions of the ICJ, the moderators might come along and delete this post for being disinformation if they can find an Al Jazeera link that implies in a few second something other than what I’ve said.
You’re correct throughout your post. We are at the super early phase, and the ICJ has elected to keep the case open because there’s credible allegations, along with a fuckload of disinformation.
I chose those two to highlight how long these proceedings and subsequent convictions take, hence my use of “prosecuted”. They are not the same severity nor wanton butchery, absolutely not. But international courts aren’t full of successful cases to draw parallels to - the situation in Ukraine or the Uyghurs resulted in condemnation but zero concrete action, and they’re much closer analogies to Palestine.
Yes sure. Imaging a meeting at work. All of your colleagues are there. Your boss calls you up:
“JustZ, I have reviewed the information given to me, about your conduct. I deem it plausible, that you have violated company policy. Pending further investigation i order you to abide by company policy and general law. Specifically i order you not to steal your coworkers food from the fridge. I further order you to not spread slanderous rumors about your colleagues sexual life, or any other rumors. I order you to not touch coworkers, in particular not their private parts.”
Do you think, anyone would think this a normal occurence and to not be the result of serious doubt in your behaviour?
Anybody who claims, that the prelimary measures ordered by the ICJ are not confirming, that their is serious doubt about Israels abidance by the genocide convention and that its current behaviour is considered to be fully inside the law should rethink their position. If you need help to assess the trial, the meaning and the implications. Here is in full the video recordings of the trial so far:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOW_1exsHE8 - South Africas arguments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6CEKVSjg7o - Israels defense
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1niAwMbBC6g - Decision by the court for preliminary measures.
I didn’t watch but read all the filings, as an attorney.
At this stage the only issue was: whether South Africa’s application states a plausible claim.
That means that the tribunal must presume everything in South Africa’s application is true. The most salacious claims in the application are attributed to “reports” and often lack sufficient detail to even ascertain the data and location. Others are reports of things that are wildly speculative and solely from the putative victim’s vantage.
There has been no evaluation of evidence of Israel’s actual conduct, no consideration of Israel’s claims of military targets, and no consideration of Israel’s claims of having warned people.
Only jurisdiction and plausibility. Plausibility ≠ probability. Your analogy is clumsy in light of the actual state of the pleadings and the standard of proof at this stage, which is “everything the complainant says is deemed true, hypothetically.”
So for your analogy, just add the word “hypothetically” before the word “plausible” and it’s less clumsy, more accurate.
If you really think that the highest court of the UN, with an international team of judges is unable to identify which evidence brought forth in a case is plausible, in the sense of worthy of consideration, then i am sorry for all of your clients.
The court has in its decision mentioned, which information it deemed relevant and worthy of emphasis. In particular they quoted Statements by the Israel president, prime minister, minister of defence and IDF, that give reason to investigate genocidal intent.
Also they specifically mentioned, that Israel warnings and designated safe zones are insufficient, as Israel has regularly (and this is undisputed) bombed the areas it priorly designated as “safe”.
Hmmm look at this, Israel uses this term as part of their apartheid law!
Hafrada (Hebrew: הפרדה literally ‘separation’) is the Israeli government’s official term for the policy of separating the Palestinian population in Palestinian territories from the Israeli population.[254][255][256]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_apartheid
It’s hilarious because they don’t even try to hide it. This is Israel that you defend so much, a G E N O C I D A L fucking A P A R T H E I D state.
I truly wonder for how long a nice person such as yourself would remain in denial
So you agree then that it’s not genocide.
If you need to hang your argument so completely around “not adjudicated as genocide by the court” to feel like you’re winning internet arguments, you need to take a look at yourself dude
The situation for Palestinians is hugely fucked. Israel has the power to change that fact immediately AND continue to hunt down Al-Qassam/PIJ/Lions Den/etc as they have been doing for decades. The civilians need to feature as a restraint on the IDF and be protected from literally starving to death while aid trucks are denied entry at the border
I could care less about winning an argument. My problem is with people using the word to justify handing an election to a dictator that will destroy democracy in America.
Agreed, but that wasn’t part of this discussion here
So you are excusing genocide because you are afraid your team will lose in your country? lol how selfish is that?
it’s a genocide regardless of what the UN says.
ROFL! So some random person on the internet gets to dictate the rules of war- and labeling of acts of violence- regardless of what the people who CREATED the law say.
And how about you stop stalking me.
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I’m going to ask that you stop stalking me or I will have to report you to admins. This is your only warning.
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Yes, genocide of Palestinians committed by Hamass who are sacrificing those poor people for a war they could not win for 75 years, and will not win for the next 750 years.
no. Israel is doing the killing
The war that they could have won which would have been the war to exile Hamas as traitors, they did not want to fight, because apparently the people there love Hamas, which is more popular in Gaza than ever, or at least it was until October 6, not sure about now.
One day you will make up and have to face the fact you’re playing semantic games with war crimes and atrocities.
If I’m lucky, it’ll be the same day you wake up and understand that there’s nuance to almost everything that exists- And that the manufactured outrage you are feeling over things happening in a country you didn’t give two shits about a year ago- have been playing out for nearly a century- and will continue to play out long past your time on this planet.
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Just read up on it for once… and yet and understand what genocide means while you’re at it. Having taken a quick trip through your comment history- I can see that you have absolutely nothing to offer of any value to any discussion I might find myself it.
So I’m going to block you so I don’t have to keep suffering second-hand embarrassment.
ok cool :) have a bad life.
They should go protest somewhere out of the way where no one can see them!
I believe it is a misdemeanor in california if police bother to arrest you
Oh no breaking a law while the US sponsors a genocide. Those poor vacationers getting inconvenienced is surely more terrible than genocide.
A. Two wrongs don’t make a right
B. I question how you know that literally every single person on that bridge is on vacation and even if they were why that is acceptable
Shit like this never works.
Civil disobedience is required for protests to have effect.
There is no comparision between having to stand in traffic for a while and having your entire family annhilated, being dragged out of the rubble, getting your limbs amputated without any anesthetics, only to then die of starvation and disease. And that is if you are among the “lucky ones” that werent killed by the bomb or died in agony after two days of being stuck under the rubble of a bombed house, while Israeli snipers shoot at the people trying to pull you out.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right” is a fallacy if the consequences are so grossly out of comparision. Also we recognize in law the right to self defense and the right to prevent a crime. In many countries it is even your legal obligation to do so.
B. I question how you know that literally every single person on that bridge is on vacation and even if they were why that is acceptable
I never said anyone being on vacation. Are you that morally corrupt, that being 20 minutes late somwhere is worse in your eyes than a continued genocide?
Nice strawman
I bet you’d feel differently if you were in an ambulance trapped behind that mess of traffic or had a loved one in that situation. or maybe you’re a sociopath, I dunno.
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