A pro-Palestinian protest action briefly blocked all traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco Wednesday morning.
Starting at about 7:45 a.m. Protesters stopped cars and stretched banners across the roadway denouncing Israel’s bombing of Rafah in the Gaza Strip and demanding that the U.S. stop arming Israel.
Northbound and southbound traffic on the bridge was at a standstill as of 8 a.m.
how is it legal to protest on a bridge? that’s got to be breaking at least one law
This is called civil disobedience, it’s a well established method of protest. When law-abiding protests fail to stop people from being murdered, then the next natural step is civil disobedience. Unfortunately the powers-that-be have learned that the most effective status-quo response to any protest is for them to do nothing, neither interfering with the protest itself nor actually responding to the protesters’ points.
this is what’s called “peaceful protest” that the anti-riot people wanted so bad instead of riots, and now that they’ve got it they still aren’t happy. guess it’s time to start anti-genocide riots since we’ll be hated by ignornats either way. if they don’t want riots they should just appreciate peaceful protest
Did it work?
The point of civil disobedience is to refuse to obey unjust laws, like refusing to abide by segregation laws. Unless they’re arguing that it’s unjust to prohibit blocking of traffic, whatever point they’re making by blocking traffic is probably lost on those around them.
I’m not sure who gave you the impression that that’s the definition, but it’s not correct. It includes that, but isn’t limited to that.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/civil%20disobedience
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4725008/suber_civ-dis.htm
Admittedly other things can fall within the definition of “civil disobedience”, but as for what is useful civil disobedience I’d probably listen to this guy:
MLK Jr, letter from a Birmingham Jail
Thanks for digging up that quote. I’ve always felt iffy on if these things actually help the causes or not, and I think MLK Jr answers that question. Civil disobedience along these lines would be to refuse to pay your taxes and being jailed for it because you don’t want any of your money to contribute to the genocide.
I worry that making busy traffic even worse actually hurts the cause. Making tired working class people frustrated doesn’t do much unless that frustration can be directed in the right direction.
It reminds me of when Greenpeace did something similar to protest climate change. That at least made some sense since commuting generates a lot of emissions. Although that said, making traffic worse also makes emissions worse.
I don’t know. This is tricky.
It’s worth noting that blocking traffic has been a common tactic since the start of the civil rights movement, and we have been having this discussion over and over again for decades now.
Looking at this from a civil disobedience standpoint, the reasoning for civil rights or foreign policy protestors blocking traffic may be less direct than for climate protestors, but is in my opinion equally valid. Highways are the arteries of the capitalist economic system that both powers the US war machine and reinforces the social structures that keep black communities in poverty.
The main problem with this tactic is that recognizing how the action of blocking traffic relates to the protesters’ cause requires a political and class consciousness that most people lack. I personally still support the tactic because I believe we should be collectively working towards instilling that class consciousness in as many people as possible.
While many who choose to remain ignorant will continue to be annoyed and angry at such tactics, there will be some who stop to reflect and consider the arguments being made, and that is progress.
I think a more apt criticism here would be that there’s better ways to bring attention to their cause and affect change. I don’t disagree with you, I just think there’s better ways they could’ve approached this. I’m a firm believer that carrots work better than sticks.
Say they were giving away Palestinian cuisine for instance downtown, and using the free food as a way in to talk to people about the humanitarian crisis.
Be the change you want to see in the world; a diversity of tactics is always welcome.
don’t give the dude any concessions. your definition is correct. even the links he provided proves YOU correct. they all state that usually the unjust law is the law that’s broken and the examples in the definitions back up your definition. that dude is just getting defensive you corrected them.
It is unjust lol. It’s hard for car-drivers to have the moral high-ground where under each of this kind of news, you get comments calling for them to get run over.
Car drivers overall are more concerned about getting to their destination than not hurting people.
it’s not wrong to break the law, it’s wrong to commit genocide.
forcing traffic to halt on a bridge isnt going to stop a war on the other side of the planet.
It’s funny, they said the same thing about the protests against the Vietnam war.
Yeah, but it wasn’t the dead Vietnamese that were putting them off.
And it didn’t. The protests started in earnest a full 8 years before the war ended.
So the protests weren’t blocking enough bridges for 8 full years.
Yes clearly it wasn’t the method that was wrong it was the humans weren’t noble enough.
We solve problems in democracy by peaceful protest, voting, lawsuits, and swaying public opinion. We don’t solve problems in a democracy by blocking ambulances and pissing the hell out of regular people. No one just trying to pick up their kids is going to want to hear about your cause when you are blocking the road.
they don’t block ambulances, they let them through. you’ve never been to a protest and it shows
Uh huh. So how do they know an ambulance isnt backed up well out of sight from the traffic jam they caused? Trick question. They fucking don’t.
Your friends suck and cause death
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You do realize that your democracy is founded on violent revolution? And that slavery had to be abolished in a civil war? That the civil rights movement was shunned in the same way, now the protesters against genocide are shunned, because it inconveniences the white man on his day to day business?
If you truly object to non violent civil disobedience, than you need to object to violent revolution and civil war even more so, and reintegrate the US into the UK and offer yourself up for slavery, to reinstate what was unjustly overturned.
Should have started with that I would have known to block you earlier. Much the same way your friends are blocking ambulances
Hardly any american soldiers are dying in Gaza, though. The number might be zero.
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Israel is erasing any trace of Palestinean humanity and denies them any institutional political representation while destroying the local infrastructure and using any perceived or imagined association with the last remaining government as an excuse to murder them in the streets.
People’s collective understanding of the meaning of genocide must have kept up with the times.
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I said exactly what I said.
If we’re stretching the definition so far then there are a lot more ‘genocides’ ongoing in the world today, and many a lot worse than the one in Palestine. It’s weird that these people in SF (and on Lemmy) chose to focus on just the one
Show me the genocides where the US or other western countries are delivering billions and billions worth of weapons to the perpetrator.
Also the US, UK, and other countries argued at the ICJ for orders on the Myanmar genocide, arguing with the same arguments now brought forth by South Africa. Calling out the hypocricsy of the governments helping a genocide is absolutely justified.
Finally, you neither know if the people speaking out now, didn’t speak out earlier, nor is it any argument. A genocide is happening and it needs to be stopped. The West has the means to end it within a day. It is a moral obligation of any decent human being to demand an end to this genocide.
Well the Yemeni civil war comes to mind. 85.000 children dead from famine with the help of the US to starve them. If you claim “can’t know if these people on the GG bridge didn’t protest against that” I’ll call bullshit.
Finally, my point is not so much that US support for Israel can’t be criticized or that these bridge blocking bozo’s (sorry) are wrong, but that stretching up the definition of genocide to justify suddenly protesting now is something we should all push back on. It will just soften the public opinion to those that commit or are the victims of ‘real’ genocides
You say the definition of genocide was stretched, wrongfully assuming that the protestors wouldnt consider the Saudi and US war crimes in Yemen to amount to genocide. But most of them probably do.
You cannot hold the effectiveness of the US propaganda at propping up Saudi Arabia and silencing the voices about genocide in Yemen against the people who now protest for an end to the genocide in Palestine. If you want to condemn something, condemn how the US is acting.
If they buy into what you call US propaganda, while they literally have the entire internet at their fingertips, I certainly do hold that against them
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Frankly, you are not defending empirical truth, you are trying to have a linguistics debate. That’s not remotely the same thing.
But even in your linguistics debate, the statement “it’s not by definition a genocide” is not as clear cut as you are trying to make it.
Some excerpts taken from the (rather extensive) Wikipedia page regarding the Allegations of genocide in the 2023 Israeli attack on Gaza:
So in a lot of ways, it sure looks like a genocide. And it goes beyond just allegations.
Finally, I think this bit sums up it up nicely.
So if you are looking to die on the hill of your linguistics debate, you do you. But the actions taking place are unarguably morally wrong.
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Netanyahu has made it quite clear that his goal is the end of Palestine as a sovereign state. Quoted in the “Times of Israel” publication as saying:
Seeing as part of the definition of Genocide is to:
I would argue that falls under the definition as outlined by the 1948 Genocide Convention. Your focus on total eradication of people and culture is only a part of the definition of genocide. Also, they are certainly doing an unnecessary amount of eradication of Palestinians and their culture, regardless of if it is an “expressed intent”.
Lastly, “plausible” doesn’t mean “just run with it”, but I never said it did. Plausible means “plausible”. As in, your argument that it “definitely isn’t genocide” is directly contradicted by the ICJ ruling. People whose judgement the world put their faith in to make the distinction couldn’t definitively say it wasn’t occurring given the information they were given access to.
Edit: need to add some clarity. It’s not simply that Israel plans to end the nation state of Palestine. They are intending to end Palestinians as a National Group. This has been made clear by retorhic such as posted in this comment, as well as Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s statement during an Oct. 13 press conference. In his statement, Herzog said, “It’s an entire nation that is out there that’s responsible. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true,”.
Beyond that, according to Raz Segal, the program director of genocide studies at Stockton University:
Between the denial of statehood and other political rights, and association with the last duly elected government as a blank check for murder, it sounds to me like israel’s dick will not go any deeper into America’s asshole. If they can take our money and do this to other people around the world in our name while we Americans work ourselves to death then our freedoms don’t mean a thing until Netanyahu is removed from power.
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I thought it was Israel defending themselves against a terror attack. Apparently the goal posts have moved.
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The U.N. cannot call it a genocide because first, the US is vetoing any decision in the security council against Israels actions and second, there is the ICJ as a court that is currently ruling, with the authority to do so, if it constitutes a genocide.
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That is unsound logic. It is perfectly normal for murder suspects to be held in jail until the final verdict is reached. In the same wake it is most certainly absurd to give a mass murder suspect access to weapons, and to let him continue commiting acts, until the court has reached his final verdict.
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Look up the definition of ignorant.
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Stop excusing genocide, please
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Oh la-di-da. Who cares what “officials” call it? Do you have eyes, ears and brain? Most officials lie for a living. That’s the reason genocide is still happening, instead of Haag livestreams. You must be young or are tied to all of it somehow. Your last sentence prooves it. Just don’t, please
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Tell that to your friends Hamass who are sacrificing Palestinians for their politics and for their Mullah masters sitting in Iran.
Are they not willing to just roll over and die for you? I wouldn’t either, you know? Especially if you just murdered my family while your friends watched for entertainment. Hamas is Made in Israel. New members each day I bet.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
I have yet to find anyone on Lemmy willing to have that kind of discussion. They will pretend to, sure, but when it comes to discussing things, they just close their eyes and repeat the same thing over and over again.
And, if you were to write a well thought out, detailed post, with fully verified information that took hours to research, supermod Jordan comes along and deletes it as “misinformation” and threatens to ban you, even though literally everything you said is easily verifiable with four seconds of searching.
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The ICJ offered an initial finding, because researching and confirming genocide is a big step, that takes a lot of time, political will, and physical access to the area.
That said, it’s a really damning when you have to be reminded to not do acts that are genocidal.
And yet it did not actually order Israel to do anything that it was not already doing except submit a report by February 23rd.
Yes. This is normal in any legal case, not an exoneration of Israel and/or the IDF. Rwanda took 20 years to prosecute, Yugoslavia 16 years
Those were the criminal proceedings that took that long. The case against Israel right now is the application to institute proceedings. The Rwanda application was filed to the ICJ in 2002 and the final judgment was in 2006. The Yugoslav application was filed to the ICJ in 1993 and final judgment was in 2007.
You’re talking about the individual criminal proceedings of the special trial courts (the ICTR and the ICTY) against the perpetrators of charged crimes, which were mandated by the final judgments on the applications to institute proceedings.
The evidence in both of those cases, as far as my memory serves at this moment, included literal mass killings where civilians were lined up and shot, soldiers going door to door killing everyone inside houses, with a heavy helping of torture and mutilations. The stories were very real, as opposed to the allegations in South Africa’s application, which is loaded with innuendo, half truths, unverified stories from Qatari and Iranian media, and circular reasoning, a yes a helping of what appear to be very real war crimes. In Rwanda there were plenty of mutilated women and children there to say who did it. If the ICJ institutes proceedings against Israel at a special criminal tribunal, it will take decades to find and prosecute those responsible, and if Israel is telling the truth about what it has for intelligence, most of those proceedings are going to end in aquitals.
Either way, if South Africa’s claims were as clear cut and dry as the mob of this community believes they are, the ICJ could have granted any of the preliminary relief South Africa sought, but it didn’t. The UN isn’t going to open a new tribunal for isolated war crimes of invidiual soldiers as long as Israel is making good faith prosecutions on its own, and it is, as ICJ noted in its preliminary decision, denying South Africa’s proposed relief.
Of course, I guess since I’ve not included links to the the original legal decisions of the ICJ, the moderators might come along and delete this post for being disinformation if they can find an Al Jazeera link that implies in a few second something other than what I’ve said.
You’re correct throughout your post. We are at the super early phase, and the ICJ has elected to keep the case open because there’s credible allegations, along with a fuckload of disinformation.
I chose those two to highlight how long these proceedings and subsequent convictions take, hence my use of “prosecuted”. They are not the same severity nor wanton butchery, absolutely not. But international courts aren’t full of successful cases to draw parallels to - the situation in Ukraine or the Uyghurs resulted in condemnation but zero concrete action, and they’re much closer analogies to Palestine.
Thank you for the mature response. I’ve been thinking of those two analogies, also, though in my view the situation is Gaza is unprecedented and incomparable to anything the world has seen for two reasons: the tunnels and the martyrdom, which in large part are related.
Yes sure. Imaging a meeting at work. All of your colleagues are there. Your boss calls you up:
“JustZ, I have reviewed the information given to me, about your conduct. I deem it plausible, that you have violated company policy. Pending further investigation i order you to abide by company policy and general law. Specifically i order you not to steal your coworkers food from the fridge. I further order you to not spread slanderous rumors about your colleagues sexual life, or any other rumors. I order you to not touch coworkers, in particular not their private parts.”
Do you think, anyone would think this a normal occurence and to not be the result of serious doubt in your behaviour?
Anybody who claims, that the prelimary measures ordered by the ICJ are not confirming, that their is serious doubt about Israels abidance by the genocide convention and that its current behaviour is considered to be fully inside the law should rethink their position. If you need help to assess the trial, the meaning and the implications. Here is in full the video recordings of the trial so far:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOW_1exsHE8 - South Africas arguments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6CEKVSjg7o - Israels defense
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1niAwMbBC6g - Decision by the court for preliminary measures.
I didn’t watch but read all the filings, as an attorney.
At this stage the only issue was: whether South Africa’s application states a plausible claim.
That means that the tribunal must presume everything in South Africa’s application is true. The most salacious claims in the application are attributed to “reports” and often lack sufficient detail to even ascertain the data and location. Others are reports of things that are wildly speculative and solely from the putative victim’s vantage.
There has been no evaluation of evidence of Israel’s actual conduct, no consideration of Israel’s claims of military targets, and no consideration of Israel’s claims of having warned people.
Only jurisdiction and plausibility. Plausibility ≠ probability. Your analogy is clumsy in light of the actual state of the pleadings and the standard of proof at this stage, which is “everything the complainant says is deemed true, hypothetically.”
So for your analogy, just add the word “hypothetically” before the word “plausible” and it’s less clumsy, more accurate.
I truly wonder for how long a nice person such as yourself would remain in denial
I think you know I’m being honest in my posts, calling it as I see it, and when I’ve gotten it wrong I admit it and correct it. I’ve said many times the sort of evidence that would convince me, and many times that there is zero doubt that the Israeli’s have committed a number of war crimes, maybe even enough to say it’s part of a culture and custom within the IDF that must be addressed by the ICJ. It’s still a democracy and it’s fighting against people that have literally zero understanding or respect for human rights.
If you really think that the highest court of the UN, with an international team of judges is unable to identify which evidence brought forth in a case is plausible, in the sense of worthy of consideration, then i am sorry for all of your clients.
The court has in its decision mentioned, which information it deemed relevant and worthy of emphasis. In particular they quoted Statements by the Israel president, prime minister, minister of defence and IDF, that give reason to investigate genocidal intent.
Also they specifically mentioned, that Israel warnings and designated safe zones are insufficient, as Israel has regularly (and this is undisputed) bombed the areas it priorly designated as “safe”.
“Go south” isn’t the same as “we guarantee your safe passage southward.”
Hmmm look at this, Israel uses this term as part of their apartheid law!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_apartheid
It’s hilarious because they don’t even try to hide it. This is Israel that you defend so much, a G E N O C I D A L fucking A P A R T H E I D state.
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If you need to hang your argument so completely around “not adjudicated as genocide by the court” to feel like you’re winning internet arguments, you need to take a look at yourself dude
The situation for Palestinians is hugely fucked. Israel has the power to change that fact immediately AND continue to hunt down Al-Qassam/PIJ/Lions Den/etc as they have been doing for decades. The civilians need to feature as a restraint on the IDF and be protected from literally starving to death while aid trucks are denied entry at the border
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Agreed, but that wasn’t part of this discussion here
So you are excusing genocide because you are afraid your team will lose in your country? lol how selfish is that?
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it’s a genocide regardless of what the UN says.
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Yes, genocide of Palestinians committed by Hamass who are sacrificing those poor people for a war they could not win for 75 years, and will not win for the next 750 years.
no. Israel is doing the killing
The war that they could have won which would have been the war to exile Hamas as traitors, they did not want to fight, because apparently the people there love Hamas, which is more popular in Gaza than ever, or at least it was until October 6, not sure about now.
One day you will make up and have to face the fact you’re playing semantic games with war crimes and atrocities.
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ok cool :) have a bad life.
They should go protest somewhere out of the way where no one can see them!
I believe it is a misdemeanor in california if police bother to arrest you
Oh no breaking a law while the US sponsors a genocide. Those poor vacationers getting inconvenienced is surely more terrible than genocide.
A. Two wrongs don’t make a right
B. I question how you know that literally every single person on that bridge is on vacation and even if they were why that is acceptable
Shit like this never works.
Civil disobedience is required for protests to have effect.
There is no comparision between having to stand in traffic for a while and having your entire family annhilated, being dragged out of the rubble, getting your limbs amputated without any anesthetics, only to then die of starvation and disease. And that is if you are among the “lucky ones” that werent killed by the bomb or died in agony after two days of being stuck under the rubble of a bombed house, while Israeli snipers shoot at the people trying to pull you out.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right” is a fallacy if the consequences are so grossly out of comparision. Also we recognize in law the right to self defense and the right to prevent a crime. In many countries it is even your legal obligation to do so.
I never said anyone being on vacation. Are you that morally corrupt, that being 20 minutes late somwhere is worse in your eyes than a continued genocide?
Nice strawman
I bet you’d feel differently if you were in an ambulance trapped behind that mess of traffic or had a loved one in that situation. or maybe you’re a sociopath, I dunno.
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