Stanford grads walk out on Google CEO Sundar Pichai speech

1. Is Israel an apartheid state?

2. Is Israel committing a genocide?

At this point (IMHO) you need to do some serious mental gymnastics not to answer "yes" to both questions. As soon as you do, it gets real simple. The existence of Hamas doesn't justify either of these things.

The people who bring this up are engaging in respectability politics or engaging in weaponized cvility. Instead of addressing the underlying issues, the focus is on the methods and the actions of the oppressed when it is the oppressor that sets the level of violence. As Nelson Mandela put it:

> A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a certain point, one can only fight fire with fire.

People understood this quite clearly with apartheid South Africa. Can you imagine protesters having to do the performative "does apartheid South Africa have a right to exist?" pledge? No, me neither.

The history of middle East for the last 5000 years (since Sargon of Akkad) is replete with 'the king X "pacified" (the most commonly used euphemism) the people in the conquered territory'. It has never gone well for the victors under successors of king X, often within a generation or two.

In today's age when access to technology and information is such that any small sufficiently competent and motivated group can cause massive destruction, is it wise to keep creating motivated enemies and expect they will somehow never become competent or that the competent won't become motivated? It is doubly ironic given Israel's own defense industrial complex is filled with such small motivated and competent groups and the evidence of Ukraine/Russia conflict is staring in the face. This situation will blow up I fear within a generation unless Israeli society chooses different leaders.

Yet every Palestine support protest includes Hamas symbols and chants to exterminate a certain group of people.

That's like saying the Nazis were not Germany and vice versa.

That is technically correct.

Hamas governs Palestine (to be precise, Gaza).

Don't forget that Israel financially supported Hamas for this exact reason.

I agree that support for Palestine is not necessiarly support for Hamas and collective punishiment for Palestine from Hamas's actions is horrible but their is something to playing a useful idiot. And I think Israel and Palestine protesters both do this. Israel could 100% kill Hamas leadership and cause a democracy movement to elect a reasonable leadership in Palestine but they don't and don't want to. Palestine protesters actively persue a 1 state solution in its extreme to model it on the US and I don't think it works that way especially with such a vocal majority in Israel opposed to it. Hamas also don't really want a 2 state solution either because that would be real long term concessions and also a degradation of their authority because they are murders and losers but they are "protecting" some Palestians from Israel. Israel game here is they want prolong conflict and attacks like Oct. 7 because it justifies more annexation and attacks like Oct. 7 do give strong affimative arguments to take action against Hamas and Palestine whether you like it or not.

Long winded way of saying its a quagmire but if the US wanted to spend less and solve the problem they need to strong arm their ally to engage in generating a democractic uprising against Hamas in exchange for concessions of land (mostly settler land) after a new democratic state reins in their radicals. I think Palestians would jump at that idea but Hamas would be extremely anti that idea because they would be the pariah in their society. Its pragamtic solution but also 1 that requires long term follow through that is also likely to fail. To me that the Kotkin approach no one is happy but progress is possible

people will eventually start filtering out narratives they don't want to hear, and/or just tuning out entirely.

this serves those in power, as they have the ability to now shape the narrative.

see also: "the russian firehose of falsehood" https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood

However, I'd like to play devil's advocate here, and speak to your "without ever stating a position" line. I'd argue that's just careful wording hiding under the mask of intellectualism.

The argument against Israel is, as you say, that it is "essentially" genocide. Speaking as one of the cohort (although slightly older than new grad) of which you're referring, every argument against Israel is to my view quite straightforward. Killing innocent people is bad, doing so for political reasons is worse, and when you do it to an entire city/nation/people you have genocide ipso facto. While it's not a very complex take, it really doesn't need to be when there is a preponderance of evidence.

Contrasted with the defense of Israel's actions, and you have a vast array of whataboutisms, downplaying, justifying by means of referring to authority (in Israel), calling critics anti-Semitic, etc.

In my personal experience I find the majority of pro-Israel arguments to be at heart anti-intellectual.

So when you dress up a complex situation by emphasizing how above and beyond all understanding it is, to me that feels you are intentionally muddying the waters to try to obfuscate the real problem. And that, I would say, is also anti-intellectual.

Just because we have generational problems with anti-intellectualism does not mean this particular circumstance belongs in that category.

Technically, that just means at least two people at the Pentagon who qualify as leaders disagreed.

But it seems like broad opinion.

(You may disagree with the opinion of course, but "bold" is a counterintuitive adjective here)

Remember, transformers were invented at Google. They could have been the first to market starving out OAI and Anthropic. That they did not is clearly a huge failure from Pichai. Its astonishing he wasn’t removed for this blunder.

Once they have a state, the Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank will finally have defined borders and a single sovereign. And history shows they can be relied upon to launch another genocidal war on Israel more or less immediately.

Then it will be a war between two nation-states, not a nation-state vs. an unaccountable terrorist organization that pretends to be a proper state when convenient.

The Israel vs. Palestine conflict will then fall neatly into the framework of Westphalian nation-states and when Israel proceeds to utterly defeat Palestine, demands their unconditional surrender, kills all who resist, annexes their territory, and forcibly re-educates any who remain (post-WWII style), it will all be 100% kosher according to customary international law.

An outsider community forms in a down-market neighbourhood. Lacking money and power, it makes its own culture. That becomes "hip," and those with money start buying property in that neighbourhood, displacing the very people who made it hip to begin with.

As with "hackers," so also with artists, musicians, bicycle messengers, dirtbag rock climbers, frisbee players, &c. &c.