Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis defended his call to ban pro-Palestinian groups from Florida state colleges Sunday, after one of his Republican presidential primary opponents, Vivek Ramaswamy, slammed the demand as “a shameful political ploy.”

“It’s unconstitutional. It’s utter hypocrisy for someone who railed against left-wing cancel culture,” Ramaswamy posted on X (formerly Twitter) Thursday, alleging that it violates students’ right to free speech.

DeSantis held firm Sunday.

“This is not cancel culture. This group, they themselves said, in the aftermath of the Hamas attack, that they don’t just stand in solidarity that they are part of this Hamas movement,” DeSantis said during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

      • Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz
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        1 year ago

        Hamas represent Palestinians like the KKK represent people from Tennessee. Some people support them, most don’t.

        It’s possible to support Palestinians while denouncing Hamas as murdering terrorist wankers.

        It’s equally possible to support Israelis and Jews while finding the actions of the Israeli government reprehensible.

        • Thief_of_Crows@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Hamas is the only group meaningfully defending Palestine from the attempted genocide. Not at all like the KKK. They would only be like the KKK if they were doing it unprovoked. Palestine has a right to defend itself against genocide, and the only way that seems to work in Israel’s eyes is killing Israelis. Peace is not a language that genocidal states understand.

          • Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz
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            1 year ago

            Hamas is the only group meaningfully defending Palestine from the attempted genocide. Not at all like the KKK. They would only be like the KKK if they were doing it unprovoked. Palestine has a right to defend itself against genocide, and the only way that seems to work in Israel’s eyes is killing Israelis. Peace is not a language that genocidal states understand.

            Hamas directly provoked the current outbreak in violence by murdering over 1,400 Israelis. Mostly civilians, and many of them elderly and children. They took 120 hostages.

            Hamas aren’t freedom fighters - they’re terrorists.

              • Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz
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                1 year ago

                Who’s says it wasn’t provoked?

                Intentionally murdering civilians is still terrorism. It’s wrong when Israel does it, it’s wrong when Hamas does it.

                  • Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz
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                    1 year ago

                    The real slaughter started after Hamas murdered a thousand civilians.

                    How can you justify killing innocents to achieve a political goal?

                • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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                  1 year ago

                  The implication from your statement is Hamas provoked the attack through an unprovoked action. It’s implied that you’re justifying Israel’s genocide because Hamas provoked them. However, Hamas was provoked as well. Is their attack justified?

                  • jj4211@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Considering he said “It’s wrong when Israel does it”, it doesn’t sound like he is justifying Israel’s genocide.

                    If Hamas were attacking IDF facilities, ok, that would seem to be a desperate move that could be seen as provoked. I could perhaps understand that approach.

                    Hamas instead striking innocent civilians cannot be condoned.

                    Neither can we condone Israel going scorched earth without regard for collateral damage. We should be sick to our stomachs every time an Israeli representative responds to a question about mitigating civilian casualties with “It is simply imperative that Hamas be destroyed” clearly showing they are perfectly fine with Palestinian casualties.

                    We can recognize that both sides are culpable for their actions. We can recognize several opportunities for peace that have cropped up, but failed to some key extremist Zionist or Palestinian keeping it from happening.

                    So sick and tired of folks that need to see one side or the other as unambiguously justified when ESH.

                  • Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz
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                    1 year ago

                    You’re reading a lot into what I said that isn’t there.

                    Israel isn’t justified. Hamas isn’t justified. They’re both murderous bastards and civilians, both Israeli and Palestinian, are being killed.

            • Thief_of_Crows@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              No, Israel provoked that attack by committing 30 years of war crimes on Gaza, and attempting to steal all of their land. What exactly would YOU have done in reaction to an enemy intentionally starving your people for 30 years? I know that compared to how America would have reacted, Hamas is a full on pacifist

              • Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz
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                1 year ago

                NOT murder civilians, including children and babies?

                There’s no justification for murdering innocents, no matter who does it.

                • yuriy@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  i like to believe they’re still trying to type up a response that justifies killing civilians without actually saying it outright

                  • Thief_of_Crows@sh.itjust.works
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                    1 year ago

                    Nope, killing Israeli civilians is justified. Ideally they kill soldiers, but any Israeli they find is good. Remember, the IDF has compulsory service. So all of them are guilty of the genocide. But a better reason is that, since the US made them overwhelmingly powerful, it would be absurd to expect Gaza to fight back along traditional lines of warfare. Whatever they are capable of doing to hurt the people genociding them is justified.

                • Thief_of_Crows@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 year ago

                  Israel will not respond to peace. If they don’t kill every Israeli they can, Israel will genocide them. It is downright absurd to suggest Gaza is beholden to any traditional rules of warfare in the face of genocide.

        • Thief_of_Crows@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          To a degree, yes. The only reason Israel hasn’t invaded Gaza full force already is that Gazans have Hamas as a credible threat. Obviously not enough Israelis have been killed yet to fully end the genocide, but Hamas is forcing Israel to think twice.

          • yuriy@lemmy.world
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            Obviously not enough Israelis have been killed yet to fully end the genocide

            listen to yourself, this is abhorrent.

                  • yuriy@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    “It’s not a justification, I’m just saying they’re in the right for this reason.”

                    Do you know what the word “justification” means? Are you arguing based on some specific meaning that only you know about? I feel like I’m being gaslit, next you’re gonna say that you never said killing civilians indiscriminately was a good thing.

          • jj4211@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Israel’s reluctance to just full on destroy Gaza is not because they were afraid of Hamas, it was because they knew that they would be judged and treated unambiguously as ‘the bad guys’. It seems like October 7th was a gift to Israeli government itching for a justification to just go all in.

            Your logic would have been that Israel would have been scared off by the October 7th, but they instead decided they were fully justified to inflict as much Palestinian collateral damage as it takes to eliminate Hamas. It seems Israel will be happy if Gaza is nothing more than a smoldering crater by the end of it, and declare itself justified in response to the Hamas attack.

            So no, Hamas has done nothing to prevent genocide and if anything has helped contribute to the possibility of it happening. IDF is still be directly wholly responsible for their actions, but it seems their hands were at least somewhat politically tied before.

            • Thief_of_Crows@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              So you would say Palestine should have just rolled over and accepted the genocide? STFU, that’s a disgusting view on society. You sound like you only care about preserving the status quo.

              • jj4211@lemmy.world
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                No, they shouldn’t just accept the oppression. However I was saying that Hamas is not, in fact, staying Israel’s hand. Current events make that blatantly self-evident. As bad as Israel was before, it was nothing compared to their retribution for Hamas attack now.

                Israel wasn’t holding back out of fear of Hamas, Israel was holding back due to: -Trying to achieve their goals without as obviously looking like the bad guy. They think Hamas attack gives them a free pass, so they are taking it. -Conflicts among their government. At times the hardcore Zionists are steering things, but not always and even while steering they face opposition that disagree with them. Again, it’s hard for the reasonable voices to speak up now without being perceived as pro-Hamas (USA had this same phenomenon after 9/11, where any concern about broad anti-Islamic hatred was perceived as being “with the terrorists”).

                They certainly shouldn’t have to put up with Israel’s treatment, and I will confess I don’t know what can work. I’ve heard tell of several occurrences where the right answer seemed to be just in reach before some extremist Zionist or Palestinian tanked the whole thing. However, the Hamas approach is evil, vile and even demonstrably ineffective at keeping Israel from inflicting harm on Palestinians.

                • Thief_of_Crows@sh.itjust.works
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                  I would assume that the extremist palestinian or Zionist you heard of was Israeli propaganda. IMO, the only reasonable voices are the pro Hamas ones. Imagine if Jews had had a group like Hamas in 1939. Don’t you think the Holocaust would have been significantly less bad if a group of Jews had been able to effectively terrorize the Nazis? In 1939-1945, the only good German was a dead German. I don’t see why it should be different now.

                  • jj4211@lemmy.world
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                    Israeli propaganda would blame Zionists? That would be an odd stance. I refer to various documented peace talks. A very obvious one was when a Jewish nationalist assassinated Yitzhak Rabin, derailing the peace process of the time. That is hardly Israeli propaganda.

                    No, if the Jewish population resorted to indiscrimate terrorism that would have not overcome nazi oppression. See this current scenario, Israel was not scared off by a big terrorist attack, they took it as a free pass to drop any pretense of restraint. Now if Hamas had specifically attacked IDF or police, I could see, but they explicitly targeted civilians. It is hypocritcal to be pissed over Israeli harm done to civilians while explicitly taking a pro-Hamas stance.