I watched Jon Stewarts piece about Israel Palestine and he joked about how the UN can’t get anything done with absolutely no mention that it is everyone voting for a ceasefire and the USA voting to veto everything.
It isn’t the UN that is doing nothing, it is the veto rules that allows the USA and other countries to throw out the collective good in order to protect empire.
I remember him mentioning it in both his recent episodes.
Pretty sure he even mentioned how when the US vetos something like this, we always send a Black person to do the veto. But that bit might have been from somewhere else.
That’s what I’ve been trying to tell people for almost two decades: the UN isn’t inherently ineffective, but the Big 5 makes it so by vetoing almost every important resolution.
If we take away that veto and grant the UN real enforcement power, it could make the world a much better place for the vast majority of humanity.
The 5 and the billionaires whose interests align with them would never permit such justice, though 😮💨
If we take away that veto and grant the UN real enforcement power, it could make the world a much better place for the vast majority of humanity.
I like to dream too, but if you remove the veto and give the UN enforcement powers, the UN would dissolve damned near overnight. The big players play because they can control the narrative and know that the UN is effectively toothless. You give them teeth and you’re going to see every right wing party in the world lose their shit about sovereignty or rev even harder at the derp state.
Now, that’s not to say it’s a bad idea at all. In fact I agree with you that it should be done. I just have no faith that the necessary changes wouldn’t also destroy it.
As if there wasn’t enough hatred towards USA from the Middle East, these actions are showing seeds of hatred towards USA for generations to come.
Which can be easily radicalized in the future.
“Rule 5: Keep it civil. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (perjorative, perjorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (perjorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect!”
Your comment was an adorable attempt at sowing division. If you’re really prepared to not vote and let Trump win because you don’t like Biden’s messaging, that’s a you problem (and by extension, becomes everyone else’s problem too).
With all due respect, which is none, fuck off with that false dichotomy.
They didn’t say that they weren’t going to vote, they said that they were worried that Biden will lose because he’s doing things that people hate and refusing to do things that people need.
It’s the job of a politician to earn votes. It’s not the job of voters to meekly fall in line as long as the other candidate is worse.
Yours is the kind of condescending ideological cowardice that got us to this awful point in the first place.
We just saw grassroots Muslims & allies in Michigan organize a 13% protest vote of ‘Undecided’ in the state’s Democratic primary. They aren’t alt-right trolls shitposting hot takes, that is a lot of real people who are absolutely FURIOUS that an administration they supported in 2020 has taken so little actual action on this matter
I also completely disagree that a personal voting choice should be seen as the ‘bad guy’ when the DNC did all it could to stifle challengers to Biden. Get angry at them and their political duopoly, not voters with conviction
If Biden came out and said “As a devout Catholic I cannot morally support abortion, I will not work to restore Roe v Wade protections” he would be rightly criticized heavily, and people would likely choose to note vote based on that
You got a source for that claim, or are you just parroting the DNC’s party line here? I didn’t find anything even implying this was astroturfed when searching
Able to stop the bloodshed? Very likely so, if he has the willpower. And they are trying to push on him to take concrete action. Abstaining from using UNSC veto is an easy lever he can pull as head of the Executive branch, as is using the ‘bully pulpit’ to criticize Israel’s actions and highlight the behavior of the extremists in the Likud coalition cabinet. Neither require congress or the courts, just the will to act
He doesn’t have the willpower and I don’t think anyone else in Washington really does, either.
A ceasefire, to me anyway, means Hamas remains the de facto leadership of Gaza, they get to keep whatever is left of their tunnels and weapons, and their fighters just have to lay low for a while before they go on fighting, which means more decades of Hamas terror attacks on innocent civilians, rocket attacks, kidnappings, more mass shootings of innocent’s and fitedt responders, maybe we’ll be back to their days of suicide bombings, and more decades of Israeli airstrikes in response. That cannot be allowed to happen, terrorists don’t get to have their own state. Biden knows that. Hamas can either surrender or be killed or imprisoned, then there can be a ceasefire.
The Tamils were denied autonomy or self governance in their own country after the colonial powers left - sound familiar? They rebelled and had their own state for decades until the Sinhalese majority decided to crush the rebels, causing over 20,000 civilian deaths in five months of the final offensive (sound familiar?) , atop the displaced and civic destruction. The issue of Tamil self-determination is still not really resolved, to this day, and remains a friction point - sound familiar?
Ireland had Sinn Fein running the Republic for decades as the IRA’s political wing, and that stood down as part of the peace process. Irish republicans arent super happy, the Nothern Irish more so - but they are at peace. Until Brexit opened the old wounds, there was very low levels of sectarian violence outside of marching season. Very different outcome.
Palestinians after Camp David weren’t offered any real choice, and still are not seeing a way out besides a “maybe, sorta, potentially if allies help and pay for it, but we still control you” future by Israel in negotiations - but that is predicated on total surrender and capitulation by Hamas.
That same week Israel stole another 650 acres of land designated as Palestinian in Oslo II - that Israel signed and was internationally recognized. Why would you capitulate to a state that openly breaks trust, offers nothing today for your complete surrender, and talks vaguely about a ‘suitable security arrangement’ while cabinet ministers drone loudly for ethnic cleaning and annexation?
Neither side are responsible actors here; both are repressing internal dissent heavily, both have broken and reneged on treaties and ceasefires, both have taught their society to hate the other, and the international community shouldn’t support either while they both pursue a path of destruction.
Isolate Netanyahu, let the Israeli courts send him to jail, and let the people vote new leaders who don’t court openly racist Kahanists that accelerate sectarianism and the violence it requires.
but that message is he’s not willing to call a permanent unconditional ceasefire and is willing to let more children die. am i supposed to like that message?
Honestly, like 99% of Americans don’t care about Gaza enough to not vote for Biden over Trump. The internet echo chamber has warped your sense of what normal people actually care about.
I think you underestimate the Arab/Muslim population in the US who stopped believing in “blue no matter who” because of what is happening.
Also on a side note, what do normal people care about? I’d argue if you don’t care about the fact that a Holocaust level genocide is taking place then you aren’t really that normal.
I’d argue if you don’t care about the fact that a Holocaust level genocide
17 million people died in the holocaust. IRC the population of Gaza is roughly 2.4 million of which just over 1% have died. That figure includes Hamas militants. The Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between combatant and civilian casualties in its reports.
It is possible to criticize and condemn Israeli war crimes and ethnic cleansing, which are without doubt horrific, without distorting the facts.
In fact, it actually makes your criticism more convincing and harder to discount by supporters of the current hard right Israeli government. The fediverse is a bubble on this conflict, but we should be aware that hyperbole does not serve the interests of the Palestinian cause or win the argument outside of this bubble.
Maybe you’ll be the exception, but I say this knowing full well that some will call me pro-Israel for this comment. But if anything these extremists are useful idiots for Israel’s far right government and its supporters, as they allow them to paint any criticism as anti-semitism or disingenious.
e: this comment already had downvotes within seconds of me posting it. This is not long enough to finishing reading it…
While I appreciate your thoughtful response, I disagree with the fact that we need to wait for 17million Palestinians murdered before we can liken the current genocide to the Holocaust.
The way I see it, the Holocaust was/is attributed to the systematic cleansing and expulsion of an ethnic group at a mass scale and not measured by the number of murdered people (not death, murder because that’s what it is).
You can call it whatever you want, but at the end of the day what is happening in Palestine is an ethnic cleansing at a mass scale similar to the Holocaust.
30,000 people have died. 17 million people died in the holocaust. That is not on the same level and it is not on the same scale. 30,000 is a significantly smaller number than 17 million.
If you support the Palestinian cause, pretending otherwise is a home goal.
I get that it feels right, because people are understandably angry about all this, but it’s not a winning argument. Quite the opposite. If you’re provably exaggerating the scale of what’s happening, it allows supporters of Israel’s far right government to sow doubt and claim you might also be exaggerating about the very very real war crimes and ethnic cleansing they are engaged in.
I feel like you and I are NOT on the same page, as a matter of fact, I feel like we are arguing to different points.
You seem like you are gatekeeping the definition of the Holocaust based on number of murdered casualties, I argue that the act of ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people is comparable to the Holocaust.
Please don’t create another straw man to argue over, the number of casualties was never the point, rather the act itself.
I argue that the act of ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people is comparable to the Holocaust.
Your comment above:
if you don’t care about the fact that a Holocaust level genocide
Maybe you misunderstood my criticism, but I wasn’t disputing that what was happening was genocide or ethnic cleansing. I was disputing the level or scale of what was happening. Clearly what is happening in Gaza (and the West Bank) is on a smaller scale. 17 million vs. 30,000 in Gaza.
This doesn’t make what is happening ok. It just means that it is on a smaller scale than the holocaust.
Please don’t create another straw man to argue over, the number of casualties was never the point
This is not another argument. The number of casualties was my argument from the beginning. The number of casualties may not have been your point, but it was mine when you said that what was happening was on the same level or scale as the holocaust.
This is also not a strawman argument. I am literally adressing something you said in your comment.
On a more general note, this is why comparisons to the Nazis or the Holocaust are rarely helpful, and partly why Godwin’s law is a thing.
For example, just because someone isn’t Adolf Hitler or a Nazi, doesn’t mean they’re not a fascist. Calling someone like Ben Gvir or Smotrich a Nazi might feel good, but it allows them to say “Aha! But I don’t believe x, y, z. Also, the Nazis hated Jews. I’m a Jew. So you’re wrong.” It undermines your argument, even if they are quite similar to Nazis. Call them a fascist or racial supremacist, based on things that they actually said and did, and it’s far harder to deny.
I have much respect that you are willing to engage in a civilized argument.
Now that you have pointed out what I have posted, I understand that I wasn’t being explicit enough in my definition and argument so I’ll do that here:
When I said Holocaust level, I didn’t mean it in the sense of the total amount of victims, but rather the act itself (systematic cleansing and expulsion of an ethnic race).
I agree that the victims of the holocaust are 17 million by many estimates, but did you notice how the wikipedia page of it only mentions 6 million Jewish deaths under the Holocaust definition as an event?
Curious to know what you think about that because it irks me. I don’t see how all those dead Polish people aren’t part of the tally.
Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it also includes indirect methods aimed at forced migration by coercing the victim group to flee and preventing its return, such as murder, rape, and property destruction.
Capturing 78% of Palestine in 1948, followed by colonizing and taking control of 60-88% of the West Bank for a total of 91-97% of all of Historic Palestine; dispossessing millions of Palestinians while violently maintaining an apartheid under permanent occupation isn’t doing a good job to you?
Unfortunately, we can’t go back in time. Second-guessing Israel’s creation and settlement by Jews does literally nothing to address the current problem.
October 7 changed the calculus: the tunnels have to be destroyed now and Hamas cannot continue to remain in charge. It is Hamas who built the tunnels under people’s homes and it is Hamas who encourages people to ignore their own safety and stay in harm’s way so that they can be killed as proud Martyrs.™
Hamas should surrender right now and bring the violence to an end but it won’t. The West certainly isn’t going to demand a ceasefire, that’s a courtesy we might extend to a state power in a political settlement of the war, but not to literal terrorists that only recently stopped using suicide bombers.
The death toll is horrifying but I blame Hamas for these numbers. It’s why they built the tunnels under people’s houses in the first place, it’s called using human shields. Then, Hamas acts all shocked Pikachu, “why would the IDF do this?!,” which is called lawfare.
That article you linked to about Hamas tunnels is wtitten by a guy namrd John Spencer. Same said guy said elsewhere that the IDF is takinh more measures than the US in Iraq and Afghanistan to protect civilians. Just for reference so that you know that what you consider “unbiased recognized law” is just yet another staunch pro Zionist writer.
So the whole “Lawfare” hinges on the premise of human shields. In bad faith of course, as it ignores all IDF use of Human shields and assumes all Hamas as a given despite any verified evidence. This also ignores the history behind the occupation, the daily violence needed to maintain the occupation, the conditions in Gaza before Oct 7th, and any comprehensive historical analysis of the development/actions of Hamas and other Armed resistance groups.
Thanks. Admittedly this person just drives me up the wall /: they don’t like it when I respond and has said they tried to block me… I offered help to show them how and I’m still unblocked so I will continue to challenge their crap
Meyer repeatedly argued that there are parallels between the Nazi treatment of Jews leading to (but not including) the Holocaust, and Israel’s dehumanization of Palestinians.
Ingram says experiencing anti-Jewish hate, losing family members to the Nazi killing machine and surviving the Allied bombing of Hamburg as a child all inspire her to speak out for peace. “What Israel is doing will not end this conflict. It will only exacerbate it,” says Ingram.
The rally was loud in its claim that Israel has the unconditional support of the U.S. government. But the U.S. people do not support Israel’s attack on Gaza, which Holocaust scholars have deemed a genocide.
My father was also deprived of medical care as a child, and that legacy scarred him for life physically and psychologically. While he was in hiding, he got sick with whooping cough; the sound of his coughing threatened his own life and the life of the family who sheltered him from Nazis. To spare everyone, he was taken to a Catholic orphanage in the countryside of Belgium.
What about these guys? … Meyer repeatedly argued that there are parallels between the Nazi treatment of Jews leading to (but not including) the Holocaust, and Israel’s dehumanization of Palestinians.
???
Ie. Meyer is explicitly NOT arguing that it is comparable to the holocaust, but only to the treatment of Jews leading up to the Holocaust.
I invite you to read the later career section. Some of it:
In his last recorded interview, coinciding with the 2014 Israel-Gaza Conflict, he lambasted Zionists as Nazi criminals, asserted that German hatred of Jews was less deeply grounded than Israeli-Jewish hatred of Palestinians, and denounced PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks that demonstrations against the war were evidence of hatred of Israel.[citation needed] He was the first signatory of a statement by 250 Holocaust survivors and descendants of Holocaust survivors protesting that war.[19]
At one talk, organized and hosted by the leader of the UK’s Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, in 2010, Meyer was later reported to have repeatedly likened Israel’s actions against the people of the Gaza Strip to the mass killing of Jews in the Holocaust and likened the government of Israel to that of Nazi Germany.[14][15]
But in the quote you used above he explicitly says he is not including the Holocaust. Perhaps use another quote next time.
To be clear, and I’ve said it here before, but IMHO it’s not helpful to make nazi/holocaust comparisons, when you can call them fascists or racial supremacists (because plenty of them verifiably are based on what they have provably said and done) and call what they’re doing ethnic cleansing or genocide.
It’s far harder to deny.
But I suppose the language you use depends on the goal you have in mind.
Anyone call this a Holocaust level genocide is an absolute moron.
You’re not entirely wrong, and I’m not accusing anyone here, but sometimes they’re not stupid. Sometimes they are doing it deliberately to disconcert and because they know it will be hurtful to survivors (most of whom weren’t Jewish, but I digress). Sometimes they’re being useful idiots and uncritically parroting that propaganda.
Unfortunately a lot of anti-Israel propaganda does have explicitly anti-semitic undertones. For example, the Russian/Soviet inspired stuff. Twitter is also full of actual Nazis using this conflict for their own ends. It’s important for people who oppose what Israel is doing, to avoid adopting those anti-semitic undertones even if they’re justifiably angry, because it allows the Israeli far-right to paint all criticism of Israel as anti-semitic. It also alienates the many Jewish people who are critical of the Israeli government and how the Palestinians are treated.
For example, saying “Zionists control all Western Media” plays into the trope of Jews controlling the media, and is easy to disprove. Obviously not all Jews are Zionists, but if you go on a website like StormFront, they’ll openly admit using Zionist as a dogwhistle for Jew. Hence, you’ll occasionally see an especially blatant comment which says something about ‘’‘Zionists’‘’ being cunning or the like. Plenty of western coverage is critical, which those who defend what Israel is doing will happily use to claim that there is no Zionist bias in Western coverage. Meanwhile if you don’t engage in hyperbole, and simply state that a lot of (but not all) western media are very often (but not always) biased(not fully controlled) in favour of Israel, that’s very hard to disprove because IMHO it’s largely true.
But you’ve been heavily downvoted, I’ve been heavily downvoted above, and this comment will inevitably also be heavily downvoted too. The fediverse is a bit of a circlejerk like that.
It’s not as if what we say will actually influence anything anyway, and we’re certainly not going to stop the killings. I participate in the fediverse to practice my English.
Uh… No? Polls have consistently shown that Biden is losing younger voters over this issue. And let’s not forget that there are multiple swing states (Michigan is just the most famous one) where losing Muslim votes is enough to cost Biden the state. Enough Americans care about Gaza to cost Biden the election.
The vast majority of people will choose half food for the chance to live until more food is available. There is not another candidate from the Dems that has the national recognition as Biden, or the successes that Biden should be doing a better job of selling, that could take his place at this point in time.
Yes, I would rather they ran someone else. But with half the voting population all in on wish.com Hitler it is necessary to eat half the food now and hope for a better candidate next time.
We should absolutely give Biden grief up until November when we need to grit our teeth and accept aomething less than perfection to vote against the Republicans who are worse on every single topic.
It isn’t like Biden is the only Democrat who is supporting Israel. How many Dems are passing the funding legislation that Biden signs? Who are they going to put up instead of him that opposes Israel?
Nobody.
Biden is the best that the party can put forth right now, and we should give him grief to get him to change. The action agsinst Biden in the primaries is great!
But come November it will be critical to vote against Trump, and a vote for anything other than a Democrat is a vote for Trump because of our stupid voting system.
The DNC blacklists companies for working on primary campaigns against House incumbents…
They straight up removed delegates from the first state primary because in the last two elections they picked progressives over party favorites…
“Just vote in the primaries” is about a decade outdated at the point.
I’ll probably still vote D in the general, just like I’ve held my nose to do in all but a single general election. 08 Obama I was actually hype to vote D, and we flipped a bunch of red states the DNC gave up on
But not everyone will this year, and Biden doesn’t have a lot of breathing room.
The best thing you can do to prevent trump from winning is do anything you can think of to drag Biden to the left.
Just shutting up and voting Biden isn’t enough, he’s too weak of a candidate to expect that to work again.
Stop letting perfect being they enemy of good enough. This line of thinking you’re engaging in will only accelerate Trump’s victory. Unless the finality of the United States is your goal, you may want to come up with a more apt analogy.
Biden is really going to let Trump become president again because he won’t take serious action.
The US is literally the reason the UN can’t do anything.
All you had to do was not be pro genocide Biden. It’s such a low fucking bar and that geriatric fuck just can’t meet it.
And whether Biden wins or loses, millions will suffer because he was the only other option than trump we were allowed to have.
I watched Jon Stewarts piece about Israel Palestine and he joked about how the UN can’t get anything done with absolutely no mention that it is everyone voting for a ceasefire and the USA voting to veto everything.
It isn’t the UN that is doing nothing, it is the veto rules that allows the USA and other countries to throw out the collective good in order to protect empire.
Weird…
I remember him mentioning it in both his recent episodes.
Pretty sure he even mentioned how when the US vetos something like this, we always send a Black person to do the veto. But that bit might have been from somewhere else.
That’s what I’ve been trying to tell people for almost two decades: the UN isn’t inherently ineffective, but the Big 5 makes it so by vetoing almost every important resolution.
If we take away that veto and grant the UN real enforcement power, it could make the world a much better place for the vast majority of humanity.
The 5 and the billionaires whose interests align with them would never permit such justice, though 😮💨
I like to dream too, but if you remove the veto and give the UN enforcement powers, the UN would dissolve damned near overnight. The big players play because they can control the narrative and know that the UN is effectively toothless. You give them teeth and you’re going to see every right wing party in the world lose their shit about sovereignty or rev even harder at the derp state.
Now, that’s not to say it’s a bad idea at all. In fact I agree with you that it should be done. I just have no faith that the necessary changes wouldn’t also destroy it.
It’s called the Security Council, and if it didn’t exist, we would have nuked ourselves into dust at this point.
This is just false info. It exists to keep public record of communication.
All the nuclear powers talk to each other all the time without any need for the UN. US and Russia even have a direct land line to each other.
Shoulda, coulda, woulda.
As if there wasn’t enough hatred towards USA from the Middle East, these actions are showing seeds of hatred towards USA for generations to come. Which can be easily radicalized in the future.
That’s why it’s always bullshit that we “need” a close ally there.
We dont. Especially when that “ally” just constantly instigates conflict then drags us into it to back them up.
If we weren’t propping up Israel and going after oil, most people in the Middle East wouldn’t give two shits about the West.
And without the instability it all causes, there’d be less far right religious extremists running shit. And everyone’s lives would be better off
Removed by mod
Removed, rule 5:
“Rule 5: Keep it civil. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (perjorative, perjorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (perjorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect!”
It’ll never stop being surprising when Biden supporters sound indistinguishable than trump voters.
As Michelle Obama said:
Be better
Quick edit:
Also weird how I always get replies from these brand new accounts after blocking trolls and they keep replying and I stop replying…
Your comment was an adorable attempt at sowing division. If you’re really prepared to not vote and let Trump win because you don’t like Biden’s messaging, that’s a you problem (and by extension, becomes everyone else’s problem too).
With all due respect, which is none, fuck off with that false dichotomy.
They didn’t say that they weren’t going to vote, they said that they were worried that Biden will lose because he’s doing things that people hate and refusing to do things that people need.
It’s the job of a politician to earn votes. It’s not the job of voters to meekly fall in line as long as the other candidate is worse.
Yours is the kind of condescending ideological cowardice that got us to this awful point in the first place.
And that’s the core of it right there. Why would I vote for someone who has done nothing to earn my vote?
We just saw grassroots Muslims & allies in Michigan organize a 13% protest vote of ‘Undecided’ in the state’s Democratic primary. They aren’t alt-right trolls shitposting hot takes, that is a lot of real people who are absolutely FURIOUS that an administration they supported in 2020 has taken so little actual action on this matter
I also completely disagree that a personal voting choice should be seen as the ‘bad guy’ when the DNC did all it could to stifle challengers to Biden. Get angry at them and their political duopoly, not voters with conviction
If Biden came out and said “As a devout Catholic I cannot morally support abortion, I will not work to restore Roe v Wade protections” he would be rightly criticized heavily, and people would likely choose to note vote based on that
AstroTurf and grassroots are not the same.
You got a source for that claim, or are you just parroting the DNC’s party line here? I didn’t find anything even implying this was astroturfed when searching
They believe Joe Biden is responsible for Israel’s actions. Obviously that’s not correct, so someone tricked these people.
Responsible? No.
Able to stop the bloodshed? Very likely so, if he has the willpower. And they are trying to push on him to take concrete action. Abstaining from using UNSC veto is an easy lever he can pull as head of the Executive branch, as is using the ‘bully pulpit’ to criticize Israel’s actions and highlight the behavior of the extremists in the Likud coalition cabinet. Neither require congress or the courts, just the will to act
He doesn’t have the willpower and I don’t think anyone else in Washington really does, either.
A ceasefire, to me anyway, means Hamas remains the de facto leadership of Gaza, they get to keep whatever is left of their tunnels and weapons, and their fighters just have to lay low for a while before they go on fighting, which means more decades of Hamas terror attacks on innocent civilians, rocket attacks, kidnappings, more mass shootings of innocent’s and fitedt responders, maybe we’ll be back to their days of suicide bombings, and more decades of Israeli airstrikes in response. That cannot be allowed to happen, terrorists don’t get to have their own state. Biden knows that. Hamas can either surrender or be killed or imprisoned, then there can be a ceasefire.
The Tamils were denied autonomy or self governance in their own country after the colonial powers left - sound familiar? They rebelled and had their own state for decades until the Sinhalese majority decided to crush the rebels, causing over 20,000 civilian deaths in five months of the final offensive (sound familiar?) , atop the displaced and civic destruction. The issue of Tamil self-determination is still not really resolved, to this day, and remains a friction point - sound familiar?
Ireland had Sinn Fein running the Republic for decades as the IRA’s political wing, and that stood down as part of the peace process. Irish republicans arent super happy, the Nothern Irish more so - but they are at peace. Until Brexit opened the old wounds, there was very low levels of sectarian violence outside of marching season. Very different outcome.
Palestinians after Camp David weren’t offered any real choice, and still are not seeing a way out besides a “maybe, sorta, potentially if allies help and pay for it, but we still control you” future by Israel in negotiations - but that is predicated on total surrender and capitulation by Hamas. That same week Israel stole another 650 acres of land designated as Palestinian in Oslo II - that Israel signed and was internationally recognized. Why would you capitulate to a state that openly breaks trust, offers nothing today for your complete surrender, and talks vaguely about a ‘suitable security arrangement’ while cabinet ministers drone loudly for ethnic cleaning and annexation?
Neither side are responsible actors here; both are repressing internal dissent heavily, both have broken and reneged on treaties and ceasefires, both have taught their society to hate the other, and the international community shouldn’t support either while they both pursue a path of destruction. Isolate Netanyahu, let the Israeli courts send him to jail, and let the people vote new leaders who don’t court openly racist Kahanists that accelerate sectarianism and the violence it requires.
but that message is he’s not willing to call a permanent unconditional ceasefire and is willing to let more children die. am i supposed to like that message?
Honestly, like 99% of Americans don’t care about Gaza enough to not vote for Biden over Trump. The internet echo chamber has warped your sense of what normal people actually care about.
I think you underestimate the Arab/Muslim population in the US who stopped believing in “blue no matter who” because of what is happening.
Also on a side note, what do normal people care about? I’d argue if you don’t care about the fact that a Holocaust level genocide is taking place then you aren’t really that normal.
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You’re cute. Stop consuming Fox news and then we’ll talk.
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Very transparent attempts at invalidating the feelings of the people literally having their families murdered you piece of shit.
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>Israel didn’t start this
this didn’t start october 7
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>Of course they have to defend themselves
this is a defense. it’s a genocide in a ghetto.
>Being “oppressed” gives you the right to rape and kill innocent civillians?
that didn’t happen
>After Palestine attacked, raped and killed more than 1200 israelis, 7th October?
that didn’t happen
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palestine didn’t attack, hamas did.
all the claims of rape lack substantive evidence.
many of those killed were killed by israeli occupation forces.
Weak
17 million people died in the holocaust. IRC the population of Gaza is roughly 2.4 million of which just over 1% have died. That figure includes Hamas militants. The Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between combatant and civilian casualties in its reports.
It is possible to criticize and condemn Israeli war crimes and ethnic cleansing, which are without doubt horrific, without distorting the facts.
In fact, it actually makes your criticism more convincing and harder to discount by supporters of the current hard right Israeli government. The fediverse is a bubble on this conflict, but we should be aware that hyperbole does not serve the interests of the Palestinian cause or win the argument outside of this bubble.
Maybe you’ll be the exception, but I say this knowing full well that some will call me pro-Israel for this comment. But if anything these extremists are useful idiots for Israel’s far right government and its supporters, as they allow them to paint any criticism as anti-semitism or disingenious.
e: this comment already had downvotes within seconds of me posting it. This is not long enough to finishing reading it…
While I appreciate your thoughtful response, I disagree with the fact that we need to wait for 17million Palestinians murdered before we can liken the current genocide to the Holocaust.
The way I see it, the Holocaust was/is attributed to the systematic cleansing and expulsion of an ethnic group at a mass scale and not measured by the number of murdered people (not death, murder because that’s what it is).
You can call it whatever you want, but at the end of the day what is happening in Palestine is an ethnic cleansing at a mass scale similar to the Holocaust.
The comment I replied to said:
30,000 people have died. 17 million people died in the holocaust. That is not on the same level and it is not on the same scale. 30,000 is a significantly smaller number than 17 million.
If you support the Palestinian cause, pretending otherwise is a home goal.
I get that it feels right, because people are understandably angry about all this, but it’s not a winning argument. Quite the opposite. If you’re provably exaggerating the scale of what’s happening, it allows supporters of Israel’s far right government to sow doubt and claim you might also be exaggerating about the very very real war crimes and ethnic cleansing they are engaged in.
I feel like you and I are NOT on the same page, as a matter of fact, I feel like we are arguing to different points.
You seem like you are gatekeeping the definition of the Holocaust based on number of murdered casualties, I argue that the act of ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people is comparable to the Holocaust.
Please don’t create another straw man to argue over, the number of casualties was never the point, rather the act itself.
Your comment above:
Maybe you misunderstood my criticism, but I wasn’t disputing that what was happening was genocide or ethnic cleansing. I was disputing the level or scale of what was happening. Clearly what is happening in Gaza (and the West Bank) is on a smaller scale. 17 million vs. 30,000 in Gaza.
This doesn’t make what is happening ok. It just means that it is on a smaller scale than the holocaust.
This is not another argument. The number of casualties was my argument from the beginning. The number of casualties may not have been your point, but it was mine when you said that what was happening was on the same level or scale as the holocaust.
This is also not a strawman argument. I am literally adressing something you said in your comment.
On a more general note, this is why comparisons to the Nazis or the Holocaust are rarely helpful, and partly why Godwin’s law is a thing.
For example, just because someone isn’t Adolf Hitler or a Nazi, doesn’t mean they’re not a fascist. Calling someone like Ben Gvir or Smotrich a Nazi might feel good, but it allows them to say “Aha! But I don’t believe x, y, z. Also, the Nazis hated Jews. I’m a Jew. So you’re wrong.” It undermines your argument, even if they are quite similar to Nazis. Call them a fascist or racial supremacist, based on things that they actually said and did, and it’s far harder to deny.
I have much respect that you are willing to engage in a civilized argument.
Now that you have pointed out what I have posted, I understand that I wasn’t being explicit enough in my definition and argument so I’ll do that here:
When I said Holocaust level, I didn’t mean it in the sense of the total amount of victims, but rather the act itself (systematic cleansing and expulsion of an ethnic race).
I hope you and I are now on the same page.
I agree that the victims of the holocaust are 17 million by many estimates, but did you notice how the wikipedia page of it only mentions 6 million Jewish deaths under the Holocaust definition as an event?
Curious to know what you think about that because it irks me. I don’t see how all those dead Polish people aren’t part of the tally.
Ethnic cleansing = 1% of the ethnic population dead?
Not doing a very good job are they?
Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it also includes indirect methods aimed at forced migration by coercing the victim group to flee and preventing its return, such as murder, rape, and property destruction.
Capturing 78% of Palestine in 1948, followed by colonizing and taking control of 60-88% of the West Bank for a total of 91-97% of all of Historic Palestine; dispossessing millions of Palestinians while violently maintaining an apartheid under permanent occupation isn’t doing a good job to you?
Unfortunately, we can’t go back in time. Second-guessing Israel’s creation and settlement by Jews does literally nothing to address the current problem.
October 7 changed the calculus: the tunnels have to be destroyed now and Hamas cannot continue to remain in charge. It is Hamas who built the tunnels under people’s homes and it is Hamas who encourages people to ignore their own safety and stay in harm’s way so that they can be killed as proud Martyrs.™
Hamas should surrender right now and bring the violence to an end but it won’t. The West certainly isn’t going to demand a ceasefire, that’s a courtesy we might extend to a state power in a political settlement of the war, but not to literal terrorists that only recently stopped using suicide bombers.
The death toll is horrifying but I blame Hamas for these numbers. It’s why they built the tunnels under people’s houses in the first place, it’s called using human shields. Then, Hamas acts all shocked Pikachu, “why would the IDF do this?!,” which is called lawfare.
That article you linked to about Hamas tunnels is wtitten by a guy namrd John Spencer. Same said guy said elsewhere that the IDF is takinh more measures than the US in Iraq and Afghanistan to protect civilians. Just for reference so that you know that what you consider “unbiased recognized law” is just yet another staunch pro Zionist writer.
https://www.algemeiner.com/2024/02/01/west-point-urban-warfare-expert-idf-implemented-more-measures-to-prevent-civilian-casualties-than-any-other-military-in-history/
Seems like almost any opinion you hsve echos that guy’s opinion. :/
Are you John Spencer?
He even loves Bibi.
You have been tricked, my bud.
I think it’s absolutely naive to think that Israeli oppression of Palestinians would end by anyone surrendering.
So the whole “Lawfare” hinges on the premise of human shields. In bad faith of course, as it ignores all IDF use of Human shields and assumes all Hamas as a given despite any verified evidence. This also ignores the history behind the occupation, the daily violence needed to maintain the occupation, the conditions in Gaza before Oct 7th, and any comprehensive historical analysis of the development/actions of Hamas and other Armed resistance groups.
When it comes to human shields, the only independent verification back in 2014 (Amnesty link) is of Weapons (not rockets) hidden at a vacant school, situated btwn 2 UNRWA schools housing displaced people, by a Palestinian armed group.
The Guardian journalists had encountered a couple individuals in 2014 too.
HRW on Laws-of-War Violations 2009
Amnesty on Hamas War Crimes 2023
Yet none of those come remotely close to making hospitals and schools bombing targets. Even if all the IDF claims were true, that does not exempt those hospitals and schools as protected under international law.
While we’re on the subject, let’s look at how the IDF uses Human Shields including Children (2013 Report)
This kind of apologia for Israel, where you blame the violence imposed on the Palestinians by their occupiers to be the fault of the Palestinians, shows you don’t genuinely care about resolving the conflict or bringing an end to the violence. Whether you know it or not; you’re justifing the brutal occupation, the apartheid, the martial law, the military courts, the theft and extortion of water, the exploitation of Palestinians as a workforce without rights, the settler violence, the deprivation of human rights for Palestinians, the destruction of schools, the destruction of hospitals, the destruction of homes, the starvation of children, the execution of women and children, the inhuman torture and abuse of Palestinians and yes even children in Israeli prisons. You don’t see Palestinians as human when you justify all this. If you do see palestinians as human, the same as Israelis or anyone else. It’s completely clear that this shit is completely unacceptable, yet it’s been the reality for decades and decades. I don’t know if it’s intentional or out of ignorance, but I hope it’s simply out of ignorance.
I see the denial is kicking in even stronger. The uglier Israel’s crimes are, the more pathetic your excuses and analysis.
That dude’s denial runs so deep. I’m just glad there are others like you that debunk the Israeli propaganda and dehumanization of Palestinians.
Thanks. Admittedly this person just drives me up the wall /: they don’t like it when I respond and has said they tried to block me… I offered help to show them how and I’m still unblocked so I will continue to challenge their crap
Hey stop making reasonable nuanced points!
Anyone call this a Holocaust level genocide is an absolute moron.
What about these guys?
Holocaust survivors who are anti-Zionist:
Hajo Meyer
Marione Ingram
Tal Frieden, grandchild of a Holocaust survivor
Elliot Kukla, another grandchild of a holocaust survivors
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Marione Ingram
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
???
Ie. Meyer is explicitly NOT arguing that it is comparable to the holocaust, but only to the treatment of Jews leading up to the Holocaust.
I invite you to read the later career section. Some of it:
Ok.
But in the quote you used above he explicitly says he is not including the Holocaust. Perhaps use another quote next time.
To be clear, and I’ve said it here before, but IMHO it’s not helpful to make nazi/holocaust comparisons, when you can call them fascists or racial supremacists (because plenty of them verifiably are based on what they have provably said and done) and call what they’re doing ethnic cleansing or genocide.
It’s far harder to deny.
But I suppose the language you use depends on the goal you have in mind.
You’re not entirely wrong, and I’m not accusing anyone here, but sometimes they’re not stupid. Sometimes they are doing it deliberately to disconcert and because they know it will be hurtful to survivors (most of whom weren’t Jewish, but I digress). Sometimes they’re being useful idiots and uncritically parroting that propaganda.
Unfortunately a lot of anti-Israel propaganda does have explicitly anti-semitic undertones. For example, the Russian/Soviet inspired stuff. Twitter is also full of actual Nazis using this conflict for their own ends. It’s important for people who oppose what Israel is doing, to avoid adopting those anti-semitic undertones even if they’re justifiably angry, because it allows the Israeli far-right to paint all criticism of Israel as anti-semitic. It also alienates the many Jewish people who are critical of the Israeli government and how the Palestinians are treated.
For example, saying “Zionists control all Western Media” plays into the trope of Jews controlling the media, and is easy to disprove. Obviously not all Jews are Zionists, but if you go on a website like StormFront, they’ll openly admit using Zionist as a dogwhistle for Jew. Hence, you’ll occasionally see an especially blatant comment which says something about ‘’‘Zionists’‘’ being cunning or the like. Plenty of western coverage is critical, which those who defend what Israel is doing will happily use to claim that there is no Zionist bias in Western coverage. Meanwhile if you don’t engage in hyperbole, and simply state that a lot of (but not all) western media are very often (but not always) biased(not fully controlled) in favour of Israel, that’s very hard to disprove because IMHO it’s largely true.
But you’ve been heavily downvoted, I’ve been heavily downvoted above, and this comment will inevitably also be heavily downvoted too. The fediverse is a bit of a circlejerk like that.
It’s not as if what we say will actually influence anything anyway, and we’re certainly not going to stop the killings. I participate in the fediverse to practice my English.
Uh… No? Polls have consistently shown that Biden is losing younger voters over this issue. And let’s not forget that there are multiple swing states (Michigan is just the most famous one) where losing Muslim votes is enough to cost Biden the state. Enough Americans care about Gaza to cost Biden the election.
Yeah bro…
The only reason to be upset with Biden is his support of Israel’s genocide…
/s
There’s also:
What he wants to do with our border
Pretending “the economy” is more about billionaires wealth and average Americans aren’t important
Record breaking fossil fuels production
Just ignoring the healthcare crisis
And a shit ton of other things.
Supporting Israel could very well be all you care about, but lots of people aren’t that simple.
Trump is worse on all of those issues, plus more.
If you get to pick between no food, or half enough food to survive…
How much effort would you put in to starve to death slower?
Running a bad candidate depresses turnout. And depressed turnout is the only way Republicans win.
Running Joe Biden is the biggest factor that helps Trump’s chances of winning, and there’s zero fucking reason we’re handing it to him.
The vast majority of people will choose half food for the chance to live until more food is available. There is not another candidate from the Dems that has the national recognition as Biden, or the successes that Biden should be doing a better job of selling, that could take his place at this point in time.
Yes, I would rather they ran someone else. But with half the voting population all in on wish.com Hitler it is necessary to eat half the food now and hope for a better candidate next time.
Except we only get a presidential election every four years, and not everyone will still be alive then
That’s not even part of the starvation example.
Literally people you’re asking to pick the lesser evil right now will die because of that lesser evil before the 2028 election.
Maybe you’re upper middle class and it’s not a big deal.
Congrats, you’re a very small percentage of Americans and the total votes Biden needs to win.
If you want to help Biden, try having some empathy for the less fortunate and start screaming your head off at the Dem party while there’s time.
We should absolutely give Biden grief up until November when we need to grit our teeth and accept aomething less than perfection to vote against the Republicans who are worse on every single topic.
It isn’t like Biden is the only Democrat who is supporting Israel. How many Dems are passing the funding legislation that Biden signs? Who are they going to put up instead of him that opposes Israel?
Nobody.
Biden is the best that the party can put forth right now, and we should give him grief to get him to change. The action agsinst Biden in the primaries is great!
But come November it will be critical to vote against Trump, and a vote for anything other than a Democrat is a vote for Trump because of our stupid voting system.
C’mon man…
The DNC blacklists companies for working on primary campaigns against House incumbents…
They straight up removed delegates from the first state primary because in the last two elections they picked progressives over party favorites…
“Just vote in the primaries” is about a decade outdated at the point.
I’ll probably still vote D in the general, just like I’ve held my nose to do in all but a single general election. 08 Obama I was actually hype to vote D, and we flipped a bunch of red states the DNC gave up on
But not everyone will this year, and Biden doesn’t have a lot of breathing room.
The best thing you can do to prevent trump from winning is do anything you can think of to drag Biden to the left.
Just shutting up and voting Biden isn’t enough, he’s too weak of a candidate to expect that to work again.
Stop letting perfect being they enemy of good enough. This line of thinking you’re engaging in will only accelerate Trump’s victory. Unless the finality of the United States is your goal, you may want to come up with a more apt analogy.
Quick, tell this to the 102,000 people in Michigan that voted uncommitted.
Yeah… Genocide is not good enough.