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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      8 months 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.

      • Cethin
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        8 months 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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          8 months 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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          8 months 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.

        • Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz
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          8 months ago

          The real slaughter started after Hamas murdered a thousand civilians.

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

          • Thief_of_Crows@sh.itjust.works
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            8 months ago

            Oh, do palestinian lives not matter or not count? Or are you really so stupid you believe all Israeli propaganda? Because reality is that the “real slaughter” started decades ago, and has been done entirely by Israel.

          • Cethin
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            8 months ago

            I don’t know how you can justify it. Ask Israel. They have killed dozens of Palestinians for every Israeli killed prior to this attack. I wonder what we’re up to now…

            • Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz
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              8 months ago

              You can’t. Israel don’t have the moral high ground here.

              The slaughter of one group provides no moral justification for murdering another.