One has to imagine it's vanishingly rare to hear anyone call for "the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims" -- esp. b

One has to imagine it's vanishingly rare to hear anyone call for "the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims" -- esp. by students at western universities. Expressing support for groups who have taken such actions is not calling for terrorism -- almost every state in the world has engaged in terrorism. Plausibly the CIA's (recent) use of torture prisons and kiddnapping was in large part about terror for political ends. Yet one can express support for the US, and indeed, the CIA in other actions (eg., non-terror actions against military targets). In very many cases today it seems "terrorism" is a political accusation that is used to suppress political expression and as a way around free speech and freedom of assembly laws. It is, I suppose, especially effective when acts of terrorism have recently been committed. The state, in having the prerogative to decide who counts as a terrorist and therefore what kinds of speech count as "support for terrorism" thereby basically grants itself universal licence to suppress any kind of speech it dislikes. In the case of israel/hamas, since gaza has been flattened by military bombardment and has no effective capability to resit or mount any opposition to israel -- speech in support of israel's enemies is particularly powerless. There's bascially nothing anyone can do, let alone as a student. So even to care, at all, what students in universities are saying shows this cannot plausibly be about the actual actions of hamas. The most charitable interpretation of why this is happening is that pro-israeli students and civil society groups (perhaps often leftwing) are engaged in a moral panic about their peers who have turned against israel. And higher-ups in power are responding to this moral panic. The backfire effects from this on US society will be enormous --- lots of people will be asking, "why is the US state engaged in violent actions against students for the sake of another country who is in an extremely powerful position?". Knowing US citizens, I think this will rub a lot of people the wrong way, in the end.