I’m old enough to remember when lol ikes was in here chastising the forum for not posting about the supposed “ceasefire deal” in a timely manner.
So what probably a week until we get a transcript of Trump telling him to be sure not to make any deals to help assure Trump gets reelected and nobody caring?
I think this is already baked in, everyone seems to know this is basically what’s happening (though even without trump, bibi is personally incentivized to keep the war going and not cut a deal anyway)
I’ll admit I’ve lost track of the internal Israeli Politics, but wasn’t Gallant a super right winger even to the right of Netanyahu, or am I confusing him with someone else?
The two main psycho right-wingers I know from their history of supporting right-wing terrorism and doing and saying awful things to Palestinians are Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. Gallant isn’t on my radar and his Wikipedia page doesn’t suggest he’s in that crew.
I haven’t been following recently but this would seem to be most damning evidence of Netanyahu intentionally sabotaging things for personal gain. Reading through lines there sounds like military told him make whatever deal you need to save the hostages and then we can do whatever we want later anyways
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Netanyahu doubling down: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/01/world/hostages-strike-israel-gaza-war/heres-the-latest-on-the-labor-strike-in-israel
So he’s wildly out of step with what the Israeli public wants. Seems like it will be hard for him to survive this if hundreds of thousands of people in the streets and a general strike are sustained.
Also, the UK is ceasing the export of some weapons to Israel, saying there’s a clear risk they’ll be used in ways that violate international law.
I think I’m confusing him with Ben-Gvir.
Edit, yeah, didn’t realize there’s both a “Minister of National Security” and a “Minister of Defense.”
Maybe, but I feel like there’s some other guy with a short-ish name that starts with Y on the list of ghouls beating the drum for genocide, or at least with some prominence in the Israeli government, even if it isn’t Yoav Gallant.
An interview:
I understand, of course, that Trump is worse on this score, but Harris’ complete spinelessness regarding this conflict, and, from what I can tell, promise to essentially continue Biden-administration policy toward arming and supporting Israel, is making it really hard for me to like her or feel any enthusiasm about her campaign.
The video where she responds to protestors by saying that unless they “want Donald Trump to win, I’m speaking” honestly sickens me. The fact that a bunch of audience members responded to the moment by beginning a chant of, “we won’t go back!” (which, iirc, is mostly about abortion) makes me wonder how many of her supporters have, like, worms in their brains.
I am completely on board with the idea that Israel is being monstrous and committing genocide. I also think it’s unsurprising that the Democratic candidate is wrong on this issue, and I would not expect otherwise. The median voter, even the median Democrat, has a generally favorable opinion of Israel, and Muslims are distrusted, especially those in the Middle East. As much as we want our leaders to be better than the populace and to guide the populace to the right position, they are risk averse well past the point of fault and frequently need to be dragged to the correct position by popular will. As much as popular opinion on gay marriage shifted quickly, politicians still lagged the populace. So for me, the work to be done is at the bottom. I don’t expect the powerful to shift on Israel until support of Israel becomes so bad that it’s unviable in a primary and perceived as a liability in a general (whether district, state or national) election.
Given that the opposition position is thinly veiled support for actual-gas-chambers genocide, I can’t see making this a purity test for Dems at this point. The downside to us of Republicans is too high, and the downside to powerful democrats is at least perceived as too high for them. We need to work on randos to drag our leaders in the right direction.
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I think it’s reasonable to expect moral leadership from a leader. What’s more, Harris, the actual person, has some set of real ideological views on Israel that aren’t the result of a calculated alignment between herself and the so-called median voter. Is she ideologically committed to what you’re characterizing as “being monstrous” and “committing genocide?” (Hopefully the answer is no.) The argument here is that the electoral cost of withdrawing active (and expensive) indirect support from those acts in a foreign theater of war is too high, because the public will then tend to realign itself in favor of “actual-gas-chambers genocide?”
At the risk of being accused of “reductio ad Hitlerum,” would withholding support from a leader who endorsed funding the Holocaust also have been imposing an unfair “purity test?”
You’re not wrong. You’re just setting yourself up for perpetual disappointment. Before my lifetime, we do have examples of leadership, notably Brown, and the Civil Rights Act. In my lifetime, it feels like Lawrence and Obergefell were way, way after popular opinion had shifted far to the left on those issues, and I’m not expecting anything but ghoulish, lawless, activist cruelty from SCOTUS going forward. From Congress, it seems like we might get the occasional 2 years of work on 1-2 issues before the midterms return gridlock, and the social pressure has to be there for something important to be at the top of the list. There’s good opportunity to push candidates left in primaries, but that takes a the very least a passionate cadre of citizens making things (Palestine, or the next big thing) their #1 issues, and more often it’s going to be the result of feeling how the wind blows with the general Democratic constituency rather than taking risks to lead on what are currently correct but unpopular issues. Maybe we’ll see something different than the gay rights model, where popular opinion changed dramatically and well in advance of candidates changing their positions, but that at least worked pretty well.
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What if it was an election with a candidate who didn’t want to stop funding the holocaust against a candidate who wanted to accelerate the holocaust and start additional holocausts another regions? I think you’d still have a moral obligation to support the lesser evil.
I’m suggesting that I have a moral obligation to support neither.
I know, and I’m disagreeing with that suggestion
As the philosopher Geddy Lee once said “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice”
The IDF shot (in the head, nice touch) and killed an American woman protesting a settlement in the West Bank. Great job, guys!
WaPo gift link: U.S. woman fatally shot at West Bank protest; witnesses say IDF shot her
The Israel Defense Forces said it was “looking into reports that a foreign national was killed as a result of shots fired in the area.” The statement said that Israeli forces in the area of Beita, in the northern West Bank, “responded with fire toward a main instigator of violent activity who hurled rocks at the forces and posed a threat to them.”
Sounds like she was a huge threat to Israeli lives, thank god they neutralized it.
First of all, I’m pretty sure Geddy and the guys wouldn’t be down with funding genocide. Admittedly, I stopped listening after Test for Echo, so maybe you know something I don’t.
Second of all, your argument, to the extent you’re even making one rather than just saying you disagree, is just a false dichotomy. Like I can vote for Chase Oliver or Jill Stein if I want to.
Sure you could, but voting 3rd party doesn’t in any way morally absolve you as a US Citizen for what the government is doing. When there’s only 2 candidates with a shot at winning, refusing to choose the lesser evil is helping the cause of the greater evil. If Trump wins we could easily be seeing a second genocide in Ukraine and an acceleration in Gaza. Maybe you don’t see it the way I do, that he’d clearly be worse for innocent people in other countries, but if you do then voting for Kamala is the most morally defensible thing to do despite the US Policy with regard to Israel.
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