“Pro-Palestinian?” Nah, let’s not make this a zero sum game. This effort will get more traction and good will if it’s framed as a peace movement.

Good on UW for not taking the anti-free speech bait. Just another day in the university of ideas! Learning is happening :)

"If UF continues to gain broad support, UW may have a harder time just waiting them out."

That's the trouble with campus movements. The audience is constantly shifting. Sure, the big commencement is coming up, but every quarter new people come in and other people leave.

And I wouldn't be thinking that the ASUW endorsement is all that. I was in student government in college, and resolutions like the the one referenced in the article are their stock in trade. Every year, we would pass a resolution condemning the US flag as a symbol of colonialism and imperialism, and if you were to go to Iowa City today, you'd still see the flag flying above the Old Capitol Building (which is the centerpiece of the campus)

@3: The UW can continue ignoring the protesters demands, and there’s nothing the protesters can do about it. If they start to become threatening or violent, then the UW will simply clear them from campus. As the UW operates on a quarter system, there’s some time remaining before students depart for Summer Break, but if the protesters antagonize the vast majority of students with antics (such as blockading the campus’ walkways), then the protesters will lose whatever support their hundreds currently have amongst the thousands of UW students.

Also, it would be great if the Stranger could actually recognize hate speech:

‘…media liaison Zho Ragen wrote in a message to The Stranger, hold a peaceful rally “centered on the reality in the ground in Gaza, where the Zionist entity…”’

“Zionist entity” is the term used by persons so unalterably opposed to Israel’s very existence, they engage in the magical thinker’s practice of not calling it “Israel.” The protesters really are getting into Protocols territory here.

“There’s less indicating where negotiations stand with the protesters’ demand to stop repression of pro-Palestinian students and faculty. ”

This should be easy as they are not being repressed…

“… On Tuesday night, right-wing activist Charlie Kirk drew hundreds of his fans…”

Actually, Kirk drew over a thousand paying attendees, mostly UW students, with hundreds more turned away:

“Despite having 1,002 seats in the space filled with primarily students, hundreds were turned away at the doors to the building.”

(https://www.dailyuw.com/news/charlie-kirk-s-live-free-tour-draws-sold-out-crowd-less-than-half-a-mile/article_490c1614-0d69-11ef-97e9-4b8744e96002.html)

Let that sink in for a moment: a speaker openly critical of the protest drew more paying attendees, and possibly more students, than did the protesters’ free events — and he could have had even hundreds more students come listen to him. That’s gotta hurt.

Tensor is really channeling Don Ameche as Mortimer Duke brothers today. "Turn those machines back on! TURN THOSE MACHINES BACK ON!!!"

How starved for entertainment does one have to be to want to go listen to Charlie Kirk?

“the United Front for Palestinian Liberation’s (UF) Liberated Zone”

It’s shit like this that makes it impossible to take these folks seriously (it’s just the Quad - try to tone down the 1984 rhetoric). JFC

@8
Personally I’m an adamant supporter for the Front United for Zones of…never mind. They’ve made it too easy to turn this into a Python sketch.

@8, @9: If you read the Stranger’s coverage carefully, you can see the protesters’ encampment doubled in size because the Popular Front for Judaea occupied the portions of the Quad not already occupied by the Judaean People’s Front.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIK there is no single stock called "Israel" which can be bought or sold. I'm guessing most Israeli-based companies are a part of huge index funds which cannot be picked apart piece by piece even by large investors. I have yet to see in any reporting what specifically "divest from Israel" actually means in real life.

Props to these cops for keeping order and protecting the Constitutional rights of all to free expression.

UW is lucky this didn't devolve into the debacle like the Yiannopoulos speech on 1/20/17 where Elizabeth Hokoana shot Joseph Dukes point blank in the guts when he tried to grab her husband's pepper spray.

While driving the around the other day I passed one of those vacant buildings fire departments use for training...and then I thought,

Why not have similar structures on college campuses - vacant buildings out back where the gravel piles and landscaping machines are parked. Call them "Hamilton" Halls. Students can seize and occupy the structures to hearts content, while offering reprieve to the sane and serious alike.

The only victim in such a scenario would be the assistant grounds keeper Carl Spackler, quartred next door, busy studying Chinch bugs between cannonball shots.

"Some good terrorists on both sides".

Who said that?

@13 - I too would appreciate a coherent example of what “divesting from Israel” would entail.

Practically every university has an endowment which retains financial advisors to invest their funds (and for that matter so do employee retirement funds run by city, county, and state governments, as well as labor unions). Even the relatively conservative approach of investing in an S&P 500 index mutual fund results in owning stock in hundreds of companies that market products and services all over the world, including to the Israeli government. Even the extremely conservative approach of investing in T-Bills means you’re just one step removed from supporting military aid to Israel.

Unless you expect UW to invest every penny of their endowment in pork futures, some of their money is in Israel.

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Who said that?

Who said that?
Lets see...with equal parts belligerence, grandiosity, and delusion, it might be either Al Capone, Caligula, or Hank the angry drunken dwarf. Im gonna guess Hank.

@20

whomsever it may have been
they seem destined for both
Glory & possibly Execution.

so: how Did
it turn Out
for them?

did their
Legacy leave
anything even
worth Remembrance?

and, lastly,
did the 'Leaders'
of their nation try to
Co-opt their Message?

@13 That's a good point. When people were protesting South Africa, they were protesting against a social construct that South Africa termed themselves, eg. apartheid. They were also protesting for the release of ANC leaders, eg. Nelson Mandela. Israel has never labeled the shit that they're doing to Palestinians, which makes it hard to pinpoint and put a finger one. Hamas on the otherhand are terrorists and no one should be supporting them and many people don't want to support their cause but also want to see Palestinians be treated equally and not be killed indiscriminately.

Charlie Kirk is a shit human and a racist.

So Tensorna, maybe not so much with that.

But the repeated use of Zionist this, Zionist that…. Yes that’s straight up anti-Semitic. Hannah’s stories on this subject have been filled with barely cloaked anti-Semitic dog whistles. It’s embarrassing for the stranger of a decade ago

@25: I wasn’t arguing for the merits, or lack thereof, of Charlie Kirk. I merely updated and corrected the information in the original post, which both understated the turnout he received, and that he’d been critical of the protesters. For all I know, he criticized them because they were insufficiently eliminationist towards Israel for his taste.