The Ivy League and other elite private colleges are losing esteem

First off, that isn't what the slogan generally means as used by protestors. Or even most Palestinians, for that matter.

Second, there are of course essentially equivalent variants that have been used by Jabotinsky, Likud, and of course Bibi and his crew among others over the years (e.g. "Between the sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty"), as I'm sure you are perfectly aware. Which, aside from being more specific than the protesters' chant, are arguably even more obnoxious than the Hamas variant, given that the current hypernationalist regime in Israel seems intent on making, and -- unless it is stopped -- has the capability to make this deeply disturbing vision a reality (while the various Palestinian armed groups, in regard to the more extreme versions of their slogan, do not).

In short: this is a well-read crowd, and your selectively filtered presentation of current events and well-known regional history simply won't work here.

They've written the latest bill in a way that they think will allow them to avoid First Amendment objections, but it's functionally equivalent to a ban.

0. https://www.rubio.senate.gov/rubio-gallagher-introduce-bipar...

I’m a bit confused here. I was under the impression that Jaffa was annexed into Tel Aviv in 1949. Jaffa today is only a neighborhood, a district, or a part of a larger city. According Wikipedia[1] the Arab population of that portion of Tel Aviv called Jaffa is 33%, which is still only 16000 people. Before the Nakba the population was around 95 000 (of which 15 000 Jews). Only 3800 Arabs remained during the Nakba. So in historic terms, Jaffa hasn’t recovered to previous population numbers.

Aside, the annexations of Jaffa into Tel Aviv, is colonialism 101. The eradication of the place names and administration boundaries is straight from the playbook of the colonization of Ireland by the British.

When you say stuff like: “The vast majority of the Palestinians who still live there and are Israeli citizens sure as hell don't want to be ruled by the Palestinian authority.” I thing is very disingenuous given the history of the place. The thing is, they don’t still live there, they were overwhelmingly displaced, and those that remained were assimilated into the culture of the colonizer. To the extent they mostly identify as Arab Israelis (not Palestinian as you call them; it is of course up to them if they want to identify as Palestinians though, and I bet some do). By the same logic you could claim that Dublin has no claims on Belfast because Belfast has some Catholics that vote for the DUP.

Aside 2, the way the British finally achieved peace in Northern Ireland was by actually recognizing the fact that Dublin does have claims to Belfast and it is up to the citizens of Belfast to decide if they ever want to reunite with the Republic of Ireland. Just compare that to how Israel is responding to a crisis of similar nature.

Thanks for the numbers btw. I appreciate it.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa#Demography

EDIT: If we crunch the numbers of the 2022 elections (very interesting link btw.) we get 14% of all Arab voters that voted for Zionist parties. Only 53% of Arabs voted in that election, and that number includes Druze and Bedouin. This comes down to a grand total of 36230 votes, 13000 of those are for Yesh Atid and Labour which are a liberal/reformist versions of Zionism (kind of like the Alliance party in Northern Ireland). I also wonder about the methodology here as the tally is broken down by Arab neighborhoods, so if a Jew is living in an Arab neighborhood, they are counted, and if an Arab is living in a majority Jewish neighborhood, they are not (I also wonder how East Jerusalem is counted here here).

I wanted to see how this compares to Unionist support among Northern Irish Catholics, but I was just as bad as finding numbers of that as in Israel (turns out speaking the language is not enough). The best numbers I found was from a 2014[2] poll which got hardline Unionist parties 1% of Catholic votes, and nonsectarian got 6%.

I don’t think this is enough to compare, given the different methodology, difference in participation, etc.

But what I get from this is this is that it is not that easy to claim that “Palestinians” that still live in Jaffa vote Likud in shocking numbers.

2: https://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/2014/Political_Attitudes/POLPART2...

> There's stuff like this

I'm personally interested only in the student encampments. There are many other protests trying to join the momentum, but there are all kinds of extremists with different objectives and the students protesting in encampments would have the discipline and means to put out their consistent message and demand of ending excess civilian deaths and divestiture, and controlling access to others trying to co-opt their protest.

> The letters sent by Ivy leagues right after Oct 7th are probably the most damning.

I would draw a distinction between those letters and the current protests on encampment.

> There's plenty of videos with people chanting "river to the sea"

> organization who literally sabotaged the attempt we had to form a Palestinian state.

They have chanted "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free". I'm not a fan of the slogan either, as it expresses a desire for freedom without a more concrete demand for a particular solution (which may be peaceful or not); a listener who hears it interprets it as the solution that they expect the person saying it to want. The phrase "the phrase from the river to the sea" is not a Hamas thing, and Wikipedia can tell you that people of various persuasions have used it for their cause.

Presumably, they have the same desire as you.

> Right now all pro-Palestinian demonstrations are (intentionally or not) pro Hamas.

I disagree. If you think that Israel is conducting war crimes in Gaza against Palestine civilians in its retaliation against Hamas, as it has been accused of, then the protest is a request for Israel to do it without doing such war crimes. For example, you can condemn acts of genocide by the US government against indigenous peoples during their colonial expansion without also considering that to be showing support for perpetrators of indigenous terrorist violence against the US, even though it might embolden their expressed casus belli.

> They are encouraged by these demonstrations and see them as a sign of Israels imminent demise. That's why they're refusing the deals on the table and the war won't end.

I don't think you can say with any certainty how such protests affect any decision made by Hamas.