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).
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hey stop making reasonable nuanced points!
Anyone call this a Holocaust level genocide is an absolute moron.