If you are keeping score at home, you have surely noticed that the two most important defense officials in Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet — Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the former military chief of staff Benny Gantz — warned last week that Netanyahu is leading Israel into a disastrous abyss by refusing to present any plan for non-Hamas Palestinians to govern Gaza and appears to be contemplating a long-term Israeli military occupation of Gaza instead. Gantz said he would leave the government if there was no plan by June 8.
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“Netanyahu’s acquiescence to the extreme right, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, has generally been seen as motivated out of his need to keep his coalition together and himself out of jail,” Friedman told me. “Now it seems that he has willingly sold his soul to the extreme right. One explanation is that the extreme religious right projects a Messianic image onto him that corresponds with his own sense of having been called to save Israel and the Jewish people. He has a plan for the day after and it’s very clear to anyone who listens: ‘Total victory’ — and eventually the return of Jewish settlement there. Israel is on the way to reoccupying Gaza.”
If that happens, Israel will become an international pariah and Jewish institutions everywhere will be torn between Jews who will feel the need to defend Israel — right or wrong — and those who, with their kids, will find it indefensible.
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So Biden is essentially a dead man walking? No matter how much it terrifies me, I just don’t see him winning through all these disputes while the right is unified. This is exactly what they needed, and the right is exactly what Israel needs. What are we to do, the American People, when we’re caught in the crossfire?
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Oh man that’s a statement that just barely scratches the surface.
As someone that has bounced around from politics, to advanced earth sciences, to the arts and now just keeps learning new things because I can’t help it… Yeah, things aren’t looking so good.
Humans will prevail and all that but we are slamming head first into a wall of spikes that is going to be and already is starting to be a giant crushing destructionary force for all of what we think of as normal.
Everyone hates the people calling for change when they feel comfortable where it is but if you are calling for change to go backwards to when you felt even more comfortable somehow that always wins, and we go barreling towards fascism from it.
The first cause of the left must always be domestic anti fascism. Not out of a nationalistic sense, but out of raw practicality. When fascists gain power everything else we believe in is thrown away
What are we to do?
Vote for Biden. He’s no guarantee for the Palestinians, that is true. The alternative is confirmed annihilation of Palestinians and Ukrainians, as well as occupation of Taiwan.
And click one more ratchet to the right.
They don’t need to beat us, y’all are slowly but surely doing that for them
Yeah. Just another little step.
The question is: Is there a legitimate other option?
No fantasy perfect scenario world, or all people being made to be better and more caring. As is, can we come up with a solution, a driving force, even a solid nudge to alter course and direction, so that this impact doesn’t slam into us no matter what, accepting that the inertia is already behind it.
I say this fully knowing that Biden does little other than to appease the upper class corporate interests that be and keep everything feeling on track so that it feels like someone else’s problem to anyone above it.
But fuck me, I can’t think of an out that doesn’t involve fantastical imagination at this point.
Like the violent revolution of the progressives against a Trump-run government, through the masses of militant local and state police officers, and bloodthirsty and loyal right wingers?
Extremist progressives certainly aren’t the mathematicians of the left.
I mean historically we can see how well the people rise up to stop the national Fascist party.
People like money and feeling comfortable and it doesn’t matter how many necks must be stepped on for most.
We over assume that the empathetic humans are the ones that make up the majority. We are right they are mostly non violent but people are easy to turn a blind eye.
So yeah, can’t expect that so what can we do? I’m at bake cakes and see if I ever get a chance to kill a Nazi and be put to the firing squad.
I’ll get banned for this but we need to show up at Trump’s shit and boo him and demand he be thrown in jail, he needs extreme heat and the same right wing tactics shoved up his ass. We also need to put aside our differences as leftists and decide what is more important: keeping Trump at bay or stopping Israeli support. If you chose one right now, the other doesn’t happen. We are in the most fucked up situation. I don’t blame people for rejecting it and wanting different options. But what they need to realize is Biden can be held accountable even if he wins this election. Trump will make sure nobody in power is ever held accountable again.
The protests (both on campus and in primary voting) and continuing electoral concerns were what got Biden to his current not-100% support of genocide. It isn’t like there’s an irrevocable switch pulled right now that chooses between “Palestine” or “Biden”. He can be pushed to improve now, which will in turn help his election. You can’t look at the past 6 months and think protest doesn’t work.
I don’t believe he will be held accountable.
It doesn’t help that he has his own bunch of magats that will support him no matter what.
I honestly believe that Biden could rape a toddler on video, while holding up his id and giving his full social security number, and there are still a good chunk of people that would vote for him
Instead, he’s getting ruthlessly lambasted as a genocider by significant Muslim populations in swing states, losing their vote, and handing the election to Trump in the Electoral College.
Yep, so now you see why he’s not budging. He loses either way. My guess is he’s trying to thread the needle by counting on the Jewish, pro-Israel voting block being more valuable (i.e. larger) than the pro-Palestine left wing. Could also be that he knows Trump presents an existential crisis not just for everyone on the left, but also for many center-right voters who are already talking about swinging for Biden. He might (or might not) have good reason to. More likely, I think, he’s counting on the fact that young people care more about Gaza than old people, and young people consistently have the lowest turnout of any age group. It’s a hedge, to be sure, but apparently one they think they have to make.
And in the meantime children die. What a stupid world.
I didn’t say it was fair or good. Just that this is the situation we find ourselves in.
I know enough history to be used to not being able to vote not to kill children.
If I were presented with a choice to murder a child to avoid 100% certain nuclear Armageddon, I would murder the child. If I were presented with a choice to murder a child to avoid 1% certain nuclear Armageddon, I probably wouldn’t. Where the rest of us fall between those extremes is up for debate, and it seems to me like that’s how the administration is rationalizing it. Apparently to them the stakes (for the whole world) are just too high to change course.
I’d kill a kid to save an undetermined amount of people, but I would have the decency to kill myself as well
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