The Ivy League and other elite private colleges are losing esteem

If you think I'm flat-out wrong about something, obviously you should say so. But I think most of what you're seeing is me limiting the surface area of what I'm discussing on HN, because I think it is basically unreasonable to expect to resolve Israel/Palestine on a forum like HN. I get involved in these things when pro-Israel people claim that Gazans are equivalent to Hamas, and I get involved when pro-Palestine people claim that Israelis are all European. I'll pop up when people try to valorize the Houthis, and, if it comes up in a thread I'm already involved in, I'll probably go ham on post-2017 Hamas.

Otherwise: my views on Israel are complicated. Internet forums are rife with fundamental attribution errors, which makes those complications hard to perceive. I've already done that to you once already!

Might the quality of that education become suspect, if it lacks incentives to improve, since the branding largely carries everything?

You can start off with Khalidi, who was involved in previous negotiations. He wasn't at the Camp David summit, but he knows the people who were.

> their original position of getting rid of Israel entirely made sense and was a hard concession for them to make, a concession they should be praised for making?

The Palestinians were driven from their land by European colonists. Nearly every major city in Israel, with a few exceptions (like Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem) used to be an Arab city, and saw the vast majority of its Arab population expelled in 1948. Haifa was an Arab city. Lod was an Arab city. Beersheba was an Arab city. Jaffa was an Arab city. Etc. Etc. Yes, it is an extremely painful concession to recognize Israel's sovereignty over those cities.

In terms of international law, Israel has no right to claim anything beyond the Green Line. Israel's internationally recognized borders are the 1967 borders, and the UN Charter forbids acquisition of territory by force. That's why UNSC 242 calls for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories (the US and Israel argue that the resolution doesn't say that, based on a grammatical ambiguity in English, but the French text is unambiguous, and the resolution would have no meaning otherwise).

More than 30 years ago, the Palestinians offered the Israelis a formula for peace that essentially recognizes that in historical terms, "Israel won" and the Palestinians admitted defeat, and which is consistent with international law. Israel took that as a starting point and demanded much more: East Jerusalem, settlements in the West Bank, control over the Jordan River Valley. Israel was not even willing to accept a sovereign Palestinian state.

> Clearly this isn't true of Gaza. They didn't live under Israeli occupation

Under international law, they did. This is a bit like arguing whether the Warsaw Ghetto was under German occupation. The Israelis withdrew their permanent ground force presence, but maintained a blockade by land, sea and air, periodically send in ground forces, bomb when they want to, prevent the Palestinians from establishing their own ports, electricity supply, or other things necessary to operate independently of Israel.

> And they have an army

Calling Hamas an "army" is extremely generous. They have small arms and home-made rockets. They have no tanks, no air force, no air defense. They're essentially insurgents, fighting a conflict that is about as asymmetric as it gets. The Israelis are very confident of their ability to push Hamas aside. Their main concern is international condemnation, not Hamas' military strength.

> That there was no way to work on improving the lives of Gazan's and turning Gaza into a great place?

This statement is just so detached from reality that I'm not even sure if I should give it a serious response. You're aware, for example, that Israel's declared policy before October 7th was to only allow enough calories into Gaza to keep it from falling into famine, but to "put Gaza on a diet," right? Or that Israel bombed Gaza's only power plant in one of its several wars against Gaza over the last two decades? Or that Israel does not allow Gaza to build a seaport or airport?

For many hundreds of years, until the British Empire took over and began supporting Zionist colonization of Palestine. The British denied the native population, which was almost 100% Arab, the right to determine what would happen with the land they lived on. Instead, Britain promised Palestine to an outside group.

> E.g. Shai Davidai.

He's the only person who's been banned from campus, for the reasons I stated before: he has been harassing and doxxing students, and he tried to lead a counter-protest directly into the protest. Saying that Jewish students in general are banned from campus because one specific harasser has been banned is not accurate.

> Then there's all the Israeli students who were physically attacked?

"All the Israeli students"? There haven't been any physical attacks on Israeli students at Columbia. Yosef Hadad isn't a student. He's a professional pro-Israel campaigner who went to campus, started yelling in the faces of protesters, and then got shoved by one of them.

On the other hand, there have been plenty of assaults on pro-Palestinian students. A group of former IDF members on campus sprayed a bunch of pro-Palestinian protesters with a noxious chemical, sending them to the hospital. The university administration didn't care.