Gonna throw this out there just to be clear.
The majority, even the vast majority, of the pro-Palestinian protestors on college campuses are LIBERAL. This is really the main point of this post as there seems to be some confusion about this here.
The rest of this are my thoughts on that:
1) This is a tough issue to take on and be 100% on the side of either. I submit that for a rational, thinking person, it is impossible to be 100% on the side of either group here.
2) What HAMAS did was unthinkable and not deserved. We should never forget how this current military conflict started. They killed innocent people. They raped women. They killed children (babies even) in front of their parents. They set people on fire. They kidnapped people.
3) Israel had every right to respond, even a duty to respond. And Israel does get to protect itself. Hamas' stated goal is to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth, and that's not reasonable in any way, shape, or fashion.
4) The problem of course is that Israel has done what many believe (I would be among those) to be indescriminate bombing and killing. I do not pretend to know exactly what Israel should do, and I do understand how Hamas has positioned bunkers and headquarters, using innocent people as human shields, but there has been far too much killing of innocent people (and, of course, any killing of innocent people is too much, but Israel hasn't seemed to mind this much at all).
5) The position of The United States in general is to help protect soverign nations, and in general I agree with that and agree that we should generally back Israel. However, we do get to say when an ally of ours has gone too far, and I think that Israel, specifically Netanyahu, has gone too far.
6) There needs to be a Palestinian state.
7) Some of the protesting is stupid. Here in Ohio for example, students have been protesting at Ohio State demanding that the university divest from Israel. Well, all fine and good except that there's a state law that says the University can not do that, so really, these protestors should be at the statehouse and not at the University.
8) Right now, most conservatives side with Israel. Why is that? Well, they perceive
Israelis to be less brown than Palestinians. That is the perception, and that is why they currently side with Israel in this conflict. They still don't like Jewish people, but in this case of two groups they hate, they hate Jewish people less...because again, the perception is that they are less brown.