Americans who support Hamas are hideous. I’m allowed to say that because I’m an American. For now, I cannot be arrested for voicing such an opinion. For now.
It greatly annoys me when kids take to the streets to chant about “Palestine” being free from the river to the sea. It annoys me further when I see videos of college “Free Palestine” groups doing intellectual gymnastics through fields of moral ambiguity as they try to justify the kidnapping, rape, and murder of scores of Israelis by Hamas terrorists. And for the record, I get equally annoyed when I hear warmongers talking about how we or Israel should just nuke Gaza and be done with it.
But as annoyed as I may get, I would never try to stifle their speech through policy. I wouldn’t hire any of them for my company. I probably wouldn’t enjoy having a beer with them. I would love to debate them or engage in a counter protest at one of their events. But I would never try to prevent them from speaking anything lawfully whether I agreed with it or not.
The keyword there is “lawfully.” I am close to being a free speech absolutist, but I draw the line at speech that can cause real world harm. For example, a jaded ex-boyfriend can’t proclaim to a crowd or on social media the address of his ex-girlfriend, the times when she’s at home, the fact that she doesn’t own a firearm, and the location of her spare key in the fake rock to the right of her porch. That ex-boyfriend can’t claim “free speech” when she’s raped and murdered.
In regards to radical Islamic terrorism, I do not approve of rallying support for violence. There’s a very big difference between someone screaming “Free Palestine” and someone screaming “Let’s burn down this synagogue and murder Jews!” Again, free speech is limited only by the actual harm that it can cause, not the theoretical harm from “hate speech.”
In Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Supreme Court said speech loses First Amendment protection if it calls for and is likely to lead to “imminent lawless action.” That means saying “I hate Jews” is legal but saying “Let’s go beat up some Jews” is not.
Leftists who support Israel (yes, there are a few) would argue that the “hate speech” being used during pro-Hamas rallies or in meetings of pro-Hamas groups should be outlawed. Nikki Haley falls into this category by threatening to revoke funding from schools that allow it. According to Based Politics:
The Republican recently said, “We do need to make sure on these college campuses that we hold these universities accountable. They get the right to freedom of speech… but that doesn’t mean they get the right to freedom of hate.”
Actually, yes they do, Nikki. Hate speech, extreme speech, even most types of violent speech, are all protected by the First Amendment. But Haley sees these students’ speech as such a menace that she would revoke their constitutional rights.
Some will argue that these pro-Hamas idiots in America are “materially” aiding the terrorist group with their supportive words. This is ludicrous. Ron DeSantis is using this argument. According to Based Politics:
The governor recently forced Florida’s public universities to “deactivate” the student group Students for Justice in Palestine and said in a speech that the group’s claims “are part of what Hamas is doing” and that amounts to “material support to terrorism and that is not going to be tolerated in the state of Florida.”
DeSantis has provided no material evidence that this group has given “material support” —weapons, money, resources—to Hamas. He has just described their speech, and even if they are speaking in disgusting ways about faraway violence, that is still protected by the First Amendment. But DeSantis sees these students’ speech as such a menace that he is suppressing their constitutional rights.
This particular argument by DeSantis is the epitome of the proverbial “slippery slope.” If we claim that people are materially aiding Hamas by chanting their talking points and echoing their antisemitic sentiment, then we’ve fallen into the scariest trap. If we set the precedent that rallying for a “free Palestine” is materially aiding Hamas, then that precedent will be used against freedom-loving Americans in the near future.
It’s a false equivalent to compare Hamas and mass murderers in America, but don’t believe for a second that the left will be dissuaded from making the comparison. And if those who support “free Palestine” are considered to be aiding Hamas, then the left’s logic will dictate that those who support the 2nd Amendment are aiding mass murderers.
There are dozens of examples of how stifling pro-Hamas speech could lead to stifling the lawful speech of Americans. The gun example is simply the most likely argument to fall down that slippery slope first.
I get truly furious when I see these idiotic, uninformed, indoctrinated Americans chanting “from the river to the sea.” I can’t watch the videos anymore because it makes me so upset, and I have a high tolerance for viewing idiotic or heinous videos. But calls to suppress their speech by GOP candidates and many conservatives are misplaced. The moment we start stifling others’ lawful speech is the moment the globalists will turn our own words against us.
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You can swap “Hamas” with “Israel” and you will have a true statement.
I don’t understand how otherwise conservative people can support the terrorist nation of Israel.
Israel is our #1 enemy, even before China, because they’re deeply entrenched inside our country, they control the media, Hollywood and the US congress.
Check out the USS Liberty and 9/11 and see if you still support Israel.
B.S.
Did you ever check out the USS Liberty?
Of course not, you’re afraid to.
Go back to your safe space.
Shut the hell up you rotten TERRORIST! Hammas is going to be bombed out of existence just like Iran and the rest of those sand bastards.
I agree. The political decisiveness we see in our country today is causing many adults to forget themselves.
In my view, neither side is putting forth an objective reasoning on the Israel/Palestine conflict, because both sides conflate Hamas with the Palestinians in their arguments, which leaves the Palestinians devoid of any real representation in the discussion.
Let’s be clear about something: Israel is NOT our “ally.” Name one thing Israel has done in support of the American people. The fact is the Israelis are some of the most racist people on the planet, who run the West Bank like a concentration camp, on our dime. Then again, when we find ourselves with some 40 members of Congress, many of them in key influential committee positions, who hold dual citizenship with Israel, is it any surprise that we hand Israel $billions$ annually without any discussion about the matter?
Let’s be clear about something else: Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people, they prey on them. Hamas represents the Israeli opposition wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. They operate freely in our country under the protection of our own intelligence community, and with the support of their own members of Congress, afforded with loopholes that allow them to provide material support to their terrorist network tax free, all while plotting the destruction of our country.
So there is no “good side” here, and certainly nobody should be encouraging anyone else to choose one. But then again, that’s only true if we are being objective about things.
The reality is that both sides hate us. The reality is that we have our own, very serious problems which need immediate attention. The reality is that Nikki Haley’s political career is over, and Ron DeSantis’s career is about to be. They are both talking head shills for the dying NeoCon faction. The reality is that state universities SHOULD BE defunded because they don’t produce anything of value for America, but have become cancers on the institution of higher education instead.
As for “free speech?” Freedom isn’t the ability to do or say whatever one desires without fear of repercussions – that’s anarchy. Freedom would be best defined as, “personal responsibility.” YOU are personally responsible for your choices, actions, expressions, and perceptions. Your emotions do not absolve you of that responsibility; it is yours both before and after the fact. The government has no authority to interfere with that responsibility; in fact it is prohibited from doing so.
Regardless of how anyone “feels” about Israel, Palestine, or free speech, that supreme law is one of the cornerstones of our Republic and should be recognized as such by everyone. The fact that we feel compelled to discuss the issue at all means that law is already ignored, and that’s what we should be discussing.
Yes, just a short time ago too many Jewish–Americans were urging the shipment of the non–SPIKEVAXED to reeducation camps or concentration camps, stating we should forfeit all our rights as American citizens, the same ones who admonish us that antifa, the communist organization dating back to pre–war Germany and Russia, doesn’t exist and nothing was burned down nor looted during all those “peaceful protests”!!!
The thoroughly repulsive, anti–American, anti–Western Civilization Semites (or more appropriate, EvilSemites) in congress — the types like Schiff, Nadler, Raskin, Schumer, Feinstein (deceased, but did anyone put a stake through her heart, can we be sure she remains deceased???), Goldman and others have screamed and screeched against ALL public safety and ALL national security, suddenly scream “antisemitism” at every point!!!
I am not surprised by the abhorrent and atrocious behavior seen among the college snowflake Baby Bolsheviks —— Thomas Sowell long ago predicted this in the 1990s, and I recall from 1990 onwards meeting too many young sons and daughters of the high–middle–class, not a neuron in their teensy brains, advocating that due to their sociopolitical upbringing they had “special knowledge and awareness” the rest of us yahoos and thinking working class would never possess, so they were always correct in their perverted, twisted reasoning!
Rabbi Reuven, a former Wall Street trader and Israeli–American, has given talks and speeches to the Wall Street synogogue crowd, warning them to clean up their act and repeating to them the historical promises of a political candidate in pre–WWII Germany named Adolf, who promised to clean up the pornographers (who were mostly Jewish–Germans) and clean up the usury lenders (who were mostly Jewish–Germans) and clean up the communists (who were mostly Jewish–Germans) —— so now some chosenite billionaires and a few Hollywood types have supposedly finally seen the light —— too little, too late, for this situation THEY helped to bring into existence!!!
(Remember this Real History Lesson: when the corrupted LIBOR committee was relocated from the Rothschild Bank outside of London [the actual bank name, BTW] to ICE, or the InterContinental Exchange [owner of the NYSE and MERSCorp, etc.] this act was the same as when the FBI and CIA promise congressional committees that they have shut down certain programs, when all they have done was to rename those programs!)
Since there are only two sites I am allowed to post at on the ENTIRE global Web (this and the feckless NY Post —— and an online acquaintance told me he was banned from here for citicizing some legislation signed by Trump) I would state that full censorship has long been on us — and recall those hundreds of thousands deplatformed by youtube with their YT accounts closed days after the 2020 election and again fro Jan. 6 to Jan. 12, 2021?!