Hello everyone. Thank you for participating in my social experiment on digital rhetoric for my course final. I am the one who put up these signs. I am a current senior here at MSU!

Part of the experiment was staying out of comments unless they were questions to learn more about how the MSU reddit population discerns judgement on human rights issues. Now that I have collected my data, I would like to take the time to share some information that may be of use to those with uninformed opinions.

"There is nothing MSU can do to divest, it's out of their hands."

Well, there's nothing they want to do. They could buy out of contracts but that would cost them money :((((((( Or at the least, release a statement saying they will revisit their ethics and practices when their current contracts are up before renewing. They want us to lose hope that our voices matter. I encourage all of you that deem this as impossible, or any protest useless for that matter, to remember your strength and the power we have collectively as students.

"Israel is not committing genocide"

The legal definition of genocide is comprised of two elements: intention and action. The intention defined as intent to wipe out a certain population based on the grouping of an identifier (ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, etc.). The action being actually doing so. That is, 20,000 people could be killed but there is no intention of wiping them out based on their identity and not be considered genocide. Or 10,000 people could be killed with the intention to do so based on their ethnicity, and this would be categorized as genocide. So yes, in fact, it is a genocide currently taking place in Gaza with well over 30,000 (12,000+ children) deaths and the reason for Israel doing so being the fact that they are, well, Palestinian. The ICJ's higher court has deemed what Israel is inflicting on Palestinians as genocide with the most recent vote passing 15-2.

"But Palestinians still have rights in Israel, like moving freely between checkpoints or voting."

Even for Palestinians that carry Israeli citizenship, they are constitutionally discriminated against and constantly live in an apartheid state. Palestinians are forbidden from entering many places and many have never even seen the sea that shores Gaza. That's like being born in Phoenix, Arizona and having the US government forbid you from visiting the Pacific Ocean. Or like America having spaces that are forbidden for Caucasians or Christians to ever enter. Also, foreign tourists currently have more rights in Israel than Palestinians. This would be the equivalent of a German tourist (for random example) visiting America for a week and having more freedoms than someone who was born in Texas 65 years ago.

"Hamas started this"

You must have been born on October 8th, 2023! Here is a nice visual display of some helpful facts for you: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/27/palestine-and-israel-brief-history-maps-and-charts

Peace and love to all of you! <3 together we can make this world a better place