Since the start of Donald Trump's second term, Israel has pivoted tactics in Gaza in a direction that is provoking mass famine. These new tactics have prompted condemnation from people who had not condemned earlier tactics.

To me, the most important thing now is to get as many people as people to continue urging a change of direction so that starving people can secure urgently needed assistance and hopefully lives can be saved. To others, the most important thing is to pick factional fights.

In particular, I've seen many calls for me and others to admit that these new Israeli tactics prove that student protesters and/or the left were right about this war all along. To assess that, I think you need to look back at what they were actually saying.

Of course there are lots of protesters and they said lots of things. But National Students for Justice in Palestine was a major node for organizing protests and I think it's not nutpicking to look to them as an important indicator. Were they right early about this war?

Their instantaneous reaction to 10/7 was to fail Operation Al-Aqsa Flood as "a historic win for Palestinian resistance," to proclaim that "national liberation is near," and to begin organizing protests. I don't think this forecast holds up well at all.

Many chapters of Democratic Socialists of America, similarly, responded to the outbreak of violence quite optimistically. This was also the era of paraglider memes and "what did y'all think decolonization meant?"

At the time there was a lot of debate as to whether this reaction was immoral, antisemitic, etc. But I think (and thought) that it reflected bad factual judgment. It was, however, in line with Palestinian opinion which was optimistic about violence.