Palestine doesn't even have an army. What war are you talking about?
This is more a "special military operation" as retaliation for a terrorist attack. Because this ain't a war, it's a massacre of mostly innocent people. I mean.. they're literally targeting children. And the ambulance trying to reach them.
Ok, if they were confining that to Hamas maybe it would be good news. But how many Palestinians were "eliminated" on the way to delivering you your "good news". How many dead children? How many doctors, teachers, drivers, grandparents have been eliminated to bring you this good news?
I just don't think that Israeli lives are any more or less important than Palestinian lives. So murdering 30,000 Gazans doesn't seem like remotely good news to me.
Imagine being so blindly loyal to your party that you don't even understand that there's a genocide occurring and that said party is actively supplying the ammunition for said genocide.
They're not my party. They actively fucked over my guy Sanders.
They are only better than the alternative fascists Republicans so they have my vote.
Unless bullshit like women being forced to birth dead babies appeals to you then they'll have your vote as well. Things can always get worse beyond your wildest imagination.
Exactly, shut the fuck up about the genocide and vote for our walking corpse! If not, it's the end of democracy! Only Joe Biden is allowed to send bombs to Israel to murder tens of thousands of Brown children!
Centrist Democrats can't justify their support for genocide because there is no justification for supporting genocide. But since they don't want to stop, we get the Greatest Hits of Centrist Dismissals.
So much of the dismissal of those who are opposed to the genocide that centrist Democrats support boils down to "I'm old. I assume you're younger than me and are therefore wrong."
Exactly. It's just Boomers who are obsessed with getting their way. Then they turn around and tell us that we don't know how to compromise. The best examples they have about "compromises" they have made are things like "Biden stood with a picket line!" or "He tried for student loan forgiveness." They genuinely feel like those were material compromises on their part despite neither one having any impact on their lives in any way. It's fucking pathetic.
Centrist Democrats didn't want student loan forgiveness because of course they didn't, while progressives wanted student loan forgiveness because it helps people. Biden listened to progressives. When the Supreme Court agreed with Centrist Democrats and struck down Biden's first attempt at forgiveness, he kept trying.
I've been screaming for years that Democrats need to listen to progressives and not give up forever at the first setback. Biden did exactly what I wanted on student loans: he listened to progressives and kept trying. I cannot fault him on that issue.
There's a whole host of other issues I absolutely will fault him for. I agree with your other example. Centrist Democrats keep trying to give Biden sole credit for the UAW's hard work because he held a photo op.
If Biden had succeeded at student loan forgiveness that would mean moderates gave something up. He didn't and thus it's ridiculous to me they try to act like that's a compromise. It was an attempt at a compromise which failed.
I'm saying they've been "educated" by Tiktok, AKA brainwashed.
Nationally, 48 percent of U.S. Millennial and Gen Z could not name a single one of the more than 40,000 concentration camps or ghettos established during World War II. This number is reflected in individual state outcomes, with an astounding 60 percent of respondents in Texas, 58 percent in New York, and 57 percent in South Carolina, unable to name a single camp or ghetto.
56 percent of U.S. Millennial and Gen Z were unable to identify Auschwitz-Birkenau, and there was virtually no awareness of concentration camps and ghettos overall. Only six percent of respondents are familiar with the infamous Dachau camp, while awareness of Bergen-Belsen (three percent), Buchenwald (one percent) and Treblinka (one percent) is virtually nonexistent.
When asked how many Jews were killed during the Holocaust, 63 percent of Millennials and Gen Z did not know six million Jews were murdered.
Biden needs these votes to win the 2024 general election. You can mock them all you like but that isn't going to make them show up at the ballot box. If you don't want Trump to win you'd better hope he stops sending weapons to Israel.
You can mock them all you like but that isn't going to make them show up at the ballot box.
I'm aware.
There are people who are going to be dumb about this and stay home or vote third party. Thing is there's nothing anyone will say or do that will change their minds one way or another. I know because I voted for Jill Stein in 2016, in Wisconsin. Some have to make the mistake first hand to know it was wrong. It is what it is.
Upshot is I suspect major operations will be wrapped up by late spring. If so Gaza will be a distant memory to most voters in November.
Biden had an 81,000 vote margin in the key electoral college states to work with in 2020. Hopefully he can take the hit this Gaza situation will bring.
If he can't, so be it. Life will just get worse faster but at least I'll get to have a little bit of schadenfreude on the way down watching the Tiktokd left live the meme.
I see that meme and I think moderates when they cry that their pro-corporate, strike blocking, genocide supporting trash candidate who refuses to compromise with leftists or progressives loses to Donald Trump.
You look at 2016 and you feel guilty for what you did. I look at 2016 and thought "surely moderates will see the error of their ways and understand they can't win elections without us."
Nope. Despite moderates being the majority voting bloc they convinced themselves and a good deal of progressives that it was our fault. It's complete horse shit.
Right, so Biden should get no criticism for supporting genocide because the other guy does it more? Seems democrats can get away with anything by simply not being trump.
Sigh. Yeah no shit. The point is why not both? Holy hell why are all these replies still about only one or the other. Yes Biden is president, he should be protested. You all get a cookie. The Republicans are also a major part, a painful part, of the government. THEY TOO SHOULD BE PROTESTED. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills gif
Actions speak louder than words, and their actions show that they are more than okay with genocide. They are actively and enthusiastically supplying Israel with the ammunition to conduct this genocide. Even going so far as to side step Congressional barriers to fucking send that shit.
All these mental idiots in this thread equating criticism of Biden to supporting Trump are the reason why nothing ever changes.
Bet you its the same people who voted for Biden in the primaries instead of a real leftist/progressive like Bernie Sanders.
If Imran Khan sitting in jail sending messages to his voters via a fake AI version of himself can garner enough votes to defeat the militarily backed opposition in Pakistan, there is no excuse for why democrats can't be at least forced to listen to their constituency instead of running yet another corporate shill and then crying when they lose elections again because said corporate shill actively funded a genocide
I wouldn't be surprised. But damn does he have to open himself up to criticism like this during an election year? And to defend (checks notes) the world's most obvious induced famine genocide since the Holodomor?
Yes, get the orange man elected instead. I'm fairly certain a core platform of the GOP is to stop brown people dying and to stop selling military hardware.
GOP literally blocked the the largest immigration reform proposed by Democrats in history because they can't let it happen while Biden is in office. If you think the GOP is anything else except an entire party of traitors and turncoats, I have a bridge to sell you.
Dude literally defunded UNRWA in response to Israeli propaganda and is just sitting there watching Israel block aid. At that point sending aid to a place you know it won't arrive because of your own actions is incredibly disingenuous. Basically just so people like you can say "he already sent aid to Palestine!"
We're not dumb and we're not blind. Don't insult us.
Right. Because that UNRWA aid was used to fund terrorism and radicalization, unlike US aid to Israel which was used to defend it's population from terrorist rockets.
Biden also emphasized his view that "a military operation in Rafah just really cannot proceed without a credible and implementable plan for ensuring the safety of and support for the more than 1 million people that are now sheltering there," the official said, adding that they simply had "nowhere to go."
Biden and his team have also been irritated by Netanyahu’s public rejections of a two-state solution, long a lynchpin of American policy in the region.
The Biden administration has placed a particular premium on Israel reducing the number of civilian casualties in its military operations. The U.S. urging seemed to have some effect in recent days, as Israel began to withdraw some troops from northern Gaza and moved to a less-intensive campaign of airstrikes.
Israel has been not just uncooperative, but also openly hostile toward some smaller American requests, such as when Blinken pressed Israel to turn over the tax revenue it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, which Israel has refused to do.
I'm sure Biden is working tirelessly until the early bird special at cracker barrel to figure this all out. He won't stop until dinner specials are half off.
Biden knows he has the power to stop this. He stopped Netanyahu'a bombing in 2021 with one phone call.
If he isn't getting it stopped it's because he doesn't want it stopped. And that's without even getting into the fact that he's still sending them bombs. You'd think that would be the first thing to stop.
Most of these people do not know about the horrors going on in places like Yemen or Myanmar. And if you tell them about them, they don't suddenly feel a need to rush out and start pressuring others for a cease fire.
To me, this means that most don't personally care about what's going on in Palestine, they've just been told what to feel by social media which has filtered all Israel/Palestine information through a megaphone. These people flitter between one cause after another, never forming their own opinions or taking the time to view things objectively. They just wait for what the internet tells them they should feel and act on it.
Yeah, that's an incredibly shitty and nihilistic take. People only have so much bandwidth, so while yes, there does seem to be public responses to what's based on the news, people are at least having the right reactions to it. Would you rather no one say anything? What would that say about our society and culture as a whole if they were okay with blatant genocide when it was broadcast in front of him?
And here's the thing, we don't really have any ties to Yemen, or Myanmar, but we DO have direct ties to Israel. In fact, if it weren't for the US involvement and the alliance with Israel, they never would have been as advanced and powerful as they are now. The US President has a direct influence to what is going on in Gaza, and if he wished it, he could have immediately put a stop to it. But he didn't. He is putting pressure on them now at least to start minimizing the civilian casualties, but it never would have happened if it wasn't for people protesting like this. These people are some of THE ONLY ONES that are out there and making a direct change, and your minimalizing their efforts and success.
I find it incredibly ironic how you try to paint these people as being ignorant, when you yourself have shown just how ignorant and unabashedly jaded you are at people's attempts to help.
Israel never would have gotten there without US assistance. The US wanted a strong foothold to the middle east and thus enabled Israel by giving them almost $4 billion per year. They are literally a core element of the US's entire Middle East policy.
We had to work with someone in the area, better to do it with those who scored higher at understanding reality and rational thought.
Our other options were to trust those who worship a pedophile that married a 6 year old and raped her when she was 9. They will also behead you if you draw said pedophile with a crayon.
Not exactly the type of people you want to be allied with.
Judaism has some weird shit as well but I don't have to take my shoes off at the airport because of them nor do they get all beheady when you wanna make some cartoons about Yahweh so they're already streets ahead in my rankings.
Oh really? Hasn't worked on the Houthis and they've been actively striking them for months.
Aside from that nuclear powers don't have direct conflicts for obvious reasons. If the US even thought about it Israel would remind them of the Samson protocol.
The Houthis are a rebel group used to hiding in caves while bombs fall. Apples and Oranges.
And anyone who is using nukes to cover for genocidal actions needs to lose those nukes ASAP. We don't let Iran have nukes because we consider them unstable. If Israel is really willing to bomb the entire middle east just to keep killing civilians then they are demonstrably less stable.
That is an extremely shitty and inhumane take. We have exactly the same ties to Yemen and Myanmar as we do to Israel and Gaza as we are all members of the human race. Protesters on another continent aren't making any direct or indirect change. That is being made by the aid workers who are willing to go overseas, not by keyboard warriors like yourself.
Glad that you think the Yemenis and Burmese are not human. I have no idea how people like you look in a mirror let alone survive daily life. BTW, where exactly did I say anyone was worthless? I did say protests here are not helping the situation overseas but that is a far cry from calling anybody worthless. Why are you projecting? Do you feel worthless?
Most of these people do not know about the horrors going on in places like Yemen or Myanmar. And if you tell them about them, they don't suddenly feel a need to rush out and start pressuring others for a cease fire.
Countries around the world erupted in protests against Israel and in celebration of the attacks on Oct 7th before Israel even responded.
The answer is quite simple, they hate Jews. The reason those other issues don't elicit a reaponse boils down to no Jews no news
In what kind of way is trying to get a president to change his mind on helping to destroy Gaza and its people anything like bringing in a bunch of Young Republicans to stop counting legitimate votes in order to steal an election?
I think you have created a false dichotomy here where you seem to claim that the only two options are "Biden said explicitly that he supported the Israeli genocide in Gaza" or "Biden does not support the Israeli genocide in Gaza" when it seems self evident that more than those two options exist.
Did they threaten to vote for Trump since he will make a cease-fire in Gaza or were they just stamping their feet like children do during temper tantrums?
They can protest, but to disrupt the fundraiser is the stupidest thing they can do. And democrats do not support genocide - they do not think that what happens in Gaza is genocide.
I disagree. The situation is not simple and one sided. For example, I can easily say that if you are for immediate cease fire, then you are for Hamas staying in power. And Hamas does openly state that they would like to destroy all Jews in Israel and Israel itself, and in fact were showing how they would do it by recent events. Basically Hamas official policy is Jewish genocide. So, that makes you genocide supporter, right?
I can easily say that if you are for immediate cease fire,
"But did they CoNdEmN Hamas?!" has gotten quite worn out. The answer is... nobody except Hamas is for Hamas. Most people have condemned hamas. Most people are not for Hamas, and that argument only holds water with people that have already decided to support genocide.
Just gonna say: Hamas's official policy is that a two-state solution would be enough as accomplishment of their goals. That aside, even if Hamas goes away someone worse will take their place. To steal a random quote from the internet: The next generation of Palestinian terrorists/freedom fighters will think and do things that will make ISIS look like peace-loving hippies.
Not at all, Hamas rejects Israel's right to exist and that is what they have been aiming for since 1987 with the funding of Qatar. So in essence, you now find yourselves in a dissonant situation. While calling for Israel to cease defending itself, you are enabling a genocide of the Israeli people.
That "source" dives straight into debunked Israeli propaganda. From repeatedly claiming Hamas took control of Gaza by force to repeating the debunked claim about beheaded babies. Then it ignores anything written after the year 2000.
It buries the fact that Hamas won election more than ten paragraphs down. As if to provide the author a defense of having mentioned it.
They also completely neglect to mention Hamas won that election on a moderate platform and was immediately attacked by Israel, physically and politically, for doing so. When the result of a moderate, anti-corruption, party winning is an immediate de facto declaration of war, I don't see how anyone can objectively claim Hamas as the oppressor.
Now to the current situation. Israel should be dissolved. The commission of a genocide is beyond the rights of any state and is a clear sign they cannot be trusted partners in peace. The only right answer is a UN transition government to a representative democracy that gives everyone rights to vote and bars the military from acting inside the borders of the successor state.
Let’s not pretend that destroying Israel means just dissolving the state. Hamas quite clearly demonstrated this with recent attack aimed to brutally kill 1000+ of civilian Jews.
Oh no. We're going to mean it. Because the UN has done it before. Israel isn't some special snowflake. The Jews who live there can learn to live with their neighbors under an objective and fair government.
Incorrect. Let me ask you a question, Have you ever argued with a religious fundamentalist, and no matter how logical or devastating your argument is (or may seem), they just double down, dig in their heels and do worse? Well.....you guys really should start to think.
Hamas continues reflecting legitimacy of Israel, it never recognized it. Read any encyclopedia entry on Hamas. Sure, they would like to get all the land according to 1967 agreement, but they do not promise to recognize Israel even then.
I reject the legitimacy of Israel. It was built on terrorism, won a few wars, had a chance to create a stable solution and passed, and is now an Apartheid state at best.
Not recognizing Israel doesn't mean anything else. It's the diplomatic version of pretending someone is invisible.
It denies right to exist. It is not “invisibility game”. It has direct goal to erase the state and people in it. Hamas actions directly confirm it. For years it attacked civilian population with the goal of eradicate it. They are openly stating this the same multiple times themselves. They are showing it in their murderous actions and you pretend that it is some kind of “invisibility game”? Just Google “Hamas statements about Israel right to exist”. They want to physically destroy it. Jezus!
Edit: Also, your double standards appalling: you reject Israel legitimacy because 70years ago they used terrorism tactics to get rid of Brits. But you seems totaly OK with Hamas today.
I have never said I was okay with terrorists. You can have those words back. And the charter means exactly what it says. We didn't commit genocide when we denied Saddam's Iraq or Hitler's Germany an existence. And not recognizing a state has a known international meaning. No amount of word salad trying to conflate terrorist attacks with genocide can undo that.
The goal of Hamas, stated many times, is to destroy Israel. Hamas actions are terrorism. Hamas goal is genocide aimed against one specific group of people. Your example of WW2 is actually a good one. It was not a genocide despite of the fact that Allies bombed essentially to zero cities like Dresden. Allies goal was to remove Nazi from power. Israel goal is to remove Hamas from power. So, what’s the difference?
The difference is Dresden was a one off war crime. We didn't keep doing it to every urban area, we didn't corral civilians, and we certainly didn't deny them food aid.
Based on how dead set you are on them killing Israelis, are you sure it's not just you wanting to kill Israelis?
You sure about all that? Hunger within German population was present, the red army (part of the Allies) was known for rapes, and Israel did not bomb to the extend Allies bombed Dresden, not even close. The civilian losses in WW2 were massive. The cities after WW2 were in ruins, and both sides (with exception of Paris) did not hesitate to bomb cities if there were military targets including military manufacturing facilities.
Yes war is ugly, but not every war is genocide, most of them are not.
I am not claiming that ALL democrats do that. Those who support Israel do not think that this is genocide. Better?
I think the use of word genocide in this context is just scoring easy political points, honestly. What is happening there is not standard situation, but it does not look even remotely close to the genocide where everybody agrees that it is genocide.
@MxM111 much better thanks! Sorry for the misunderstanding.
As for political points though, I don't see why you think no one is in earnest in this context.
The reason I call it a genocide is because in my honest opinion it meets Raphael Lemkin's definition of genocide. Increasingly I believe it is appearing to meet the definitions used in international law.
I have a longstanding interest in human rights, including genocide prevention. As you can probably see from my post history - especially in @worldwithoutus - I'm interested in a wide range of human rights crises in the world today.
[Genocide] refers to a coordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups so that these groups wither and die like plants that have suffered a blight. The end may be accomplished by the forced disintegration of political and social institutions, of the culture of the people, of their language, their national feelings and their religion. It may be accomplished by wiping out all basis of personal security, liberty, health and dignity. When these means fail the machine gun can always be utilized as a last resort. Genocide is directed against a national group as an entity and the attack on individuals is only secondary to the annihilation of the national group to which they belong. 1946. Raphael Lemkin
I can easily see arguments that this situation is not applicable here. Israel stated goal is security, return of the hostages and Hamas destruction. (Hamas on the other side openly state destructions of Israel and Jews "from the river to the sea" as its one of the main goals, i.e. actual genocide). None of this fits into above definition. And while it is true that there are members of parliament from ultra right that want to do ethnic cleansing (but not genocide) this is not official position.
So, again, I will argue that calling this complex situation genocide is an easy political point scoring. Does not help discussion of the actual problem.
@MxM111 I don't find your arguments convincing. Incidentally, Hamas's own genocidal intentions are irelevant to the argument about whether Israel is carrying out a de facto genocide against Palestinian civilians.
Out of interest what is the "political point" that you think I, as a non-American from the other side of the world, would even be making?
I don't even subscribe in here, as I'm not interested in the minutia of US politics, it came up on All. As far as I can tell, unfortunately the bulk of both your main parties support and aid what Israel is doing.
Which right now happens to be a genocide that it's everyone's duty as a human being, to try to stop.
can easily see arguments that this situation is not applicable here. Israel stated goal is security, return of the hostages and Hamas destruction.
Who cares about their stated goals? Judge by their actions, and their actions are:
An artificially induced famine, with a quarter of the population suffering from acute food shortage.
Rape, torture and kidnapping (and of course wanton murder) of Gazans in the territories they've managed to capture.
Murder of at least more than 1% of the population. More likely much more because the hospitals who are supposed to count dead people aren't functioning anymore, and there are still people buried under rubble.
Etc etc.
And then they've stated that they'll make fucking "deradicalization camps". This is official Israeli policy coming from the mouth of Netanyahu himself. Total victory is sounding awfully close to a final solution now.
It is effectively genocide. While it's true they aren't specifically trying to wipe out everyone that's ethnically Palestinian, what they are trying to do is remove everyone living in Palestine who isn't Israeli either by murdering them or causing them to flee into another country. That's close enough to genocide to qualify, particularly when the people murdered by the Israeli army are about half women and children.
Their ultimate goal is the complete elimination of the state of Palestine. Are you seriously going to claim that isn't genocide?
San Franciscan here. Trump also pulls protest crowds when people find out that he’s in the area to get money from the tech billionaires. That said, I don’t think he’s been here for quite a while.
The amount of propaganda absorbtion it takes to reflexively 'but Trump' when people are protesting genocide is enough that if you lived in Russia theres a good chance you'd be pro Putin.
How does this always turn into what will Trump or Biden do next year about the Gaza genocide? Forget the election, Biden is president now, people are protesting what he is doing now, there likely wont be a Gaza by the start of the next presidential term. They've been pushed from the north into the southernmost region, and that region is currently being bombed.
Deep down I think protesters know nothing they do will stop the war in Gaza. I guess they just plan to keep kicking and screaming all the way because it makes them feel like they're doing something important.
Are you sure you're not going to vote for Trump? People like you have such a strong urge to defend genocide that I'm certain you'd fit in very well with that crowd.
Maybe we should be doing something about the whole genocide thing if we really don't want a fascist to take power in the US. Maybe the blame should be placed on those enabling genocide instead of the people that are protesting against it.
