Amid campus crackdowns, Gaza war triggers freedom of expression crisis

I don't think that's what I'm implying though. I'm all for signs that say "end the genocide" or "equality for Palestinians."

I think my question is, does the sign in the thumbnail imply that the state of Israel can't exist without genocide?

I think it absolutely can, and that's why I was questioning the message on the sign, as it seems to oppose what you claim most of the protestors want.

I agree with everything you said being the goal of the protests, but that wasn't my question.

My question was, "is this particular protest sign arguing for the abolition of the state of Israel?"

The sign seems to be advocating for things beyond what are listed in your post, which is why I asked the question.

Maybe I'm reading into the verbiage too much, but I have trouble coming up with an interpretation of "liberate Palestine" that is both a coherent and doesn't involve the dissolution of the state of Israel.

Maybe it's just going for vibes, and there wasn't much thought behind the choice of words, but it's the actual choice of words that threw me off.

I would consider the black population of South Africa liberated, absolutely. I'm iffier on saying that "South Africa" was liberated. But that's not a bad point at all.

But I think the thing that muddies this for me though is the use of "Palestine" instead of "the Palestinians." The issue is that there's a meaningful distinction between the two in the cultural zeitgeist, and they aren't therefore as interchangeable as "South Africa" in your above example.

But overall I don't hate that explanation/comparison. It works enough that I can reasonably interpret the person's intent with the sign through that lens. Thanks.

I do disagree with your second point though. A protest is, first an foremost, an exercise in messaging. The idea that the messaging doesn't matter is tantamount to saying the protest doesn't matter. I agree that this particular quibble is comparatively small, but I think nothing is more uncompelling than a protest that conveys "we don't know what we want, and we're mad as hell about it."

This is certainly just an opinion, but I think for a protest to be effective, it needs a fairly concrete set of goals, with well defined expected outcomes. Without that, the people you are protesting against have absolutely no incentive to change.

It's the Chick-fil-A problem to some degree. Exactly what steps does that franchise need to take to get people to stop boycotting? They took a lot of action in the wake of the bad publicity, and it made no difference to those who were boycotting it. (This isn't a defense of Chick-fil-A btw. Just an observation about the boycott.)

This is in direct contrast to something like a workers strike, where work is stopped until a concrete list of demands is met, and then people resume work. They act as a cohesive unit, and there are a concrete set of things that the target can do to make it stop.

And to be clear, I think that the student protests going on do have well defined goals. Get University money out of programs that support the state of Israel. I think the messaging was good on that front, at least at first.

Where it falls apart for me, and maybe this is just biased media coverage, but it feels like half the protestors don't know that that's the goal, as opposed to just general opposition the genocide. And that's why I think messaging is important, and needs to be policed, to keep the messaging clear. Anything other than that absolutely hurts your movement.

I don't really disagree with anything you said, though I think it's a pretty loose interpretation of the literal words on the protest sign, which was the crux of my question.

Though, I do agree that a protest sign has limited real estate, and there's certainly an interpretation where the sign was more going for "vibes" than any attempt to be read literally.

I will say that, while I agree that Israel hasn't exactly been champing at the bit for a two state solution, I don't know that all the blame falls on them there.

As late as 2017 the position of Hamas was, "we will accept the 1967 borders, so long as we don't have to recognize the state of Israel as existing and we retain the right to take over all of the Israel portion as well at some later date." https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/5/2/hamas-accepts-palestinian-state-with-1967-borders

There's also the question as to whether any deal made with Hamas has much weight, as it's not the only leadership structure amongst the Palestinians. Fatah still has significant pull, and have largely been sidelined by Hamas. So any agreement made might not even mean anything, as a lot of Palestine don't align with the group you're negotiating with.

Mostly I say all that to say, the position is more complicated than just "Israel are being a bunch of dicks." Negotiating to any kind of peace is going to be a hugely uphill battle, even if the Israeli government was suddenly super invested in coming to a compromise. There is no clear solution to the problem.

What issues would removing Israel from the map solve, and what would happen to all the Israelis?

Eh, I figured it'd happen when I posted. I don't really worry about it much.

I had a genuine question I was curious to get opinions on, and figured hearing what other people thought was worth loosing some meaningless Internet points, lol.